Sun 2 Jan 2005

I woke yesterday thinking I must have left the radio on all night. White noise everywhere. And why was my neighbour hammering on the wall at such an hour on New Year's Day?

The terrible truth took a moment or two to filter through. This was a corker of a hangover.

I was able to gather just enough marbles together to locate the clock, and to interpret the data. It revealed to me that in 80 minutes time, 50 miles away, my 10K race would be starting. Not just any 50 miles away, but 50 miles away in the centre of London. The very thought of struggling through the city feeling like this, just for the privilege of joining a load of goody-goody health fanatics was intolerable. Instead I closed my eyes, pulled the duvet over my head, and sank into a deep slumber, in which a remarkable dream began to unfold....

I dreamt that I got up, had a shower, ingested a couple of bananas, a block of malt loaf and a black coffee, pinned a number to my shirt and left the house.

I dreamt that I drove like the clappers down the M4, listening to Gregorian chant on the radio. This usually makes me feel like I'm in heaven. Not today though. Today I was in The Other Place.

Coming into London, you pass a derelict building on which someone has painted in three foot high letters: IT ISN'T A RACE!. I don't think it's intended to be profound, but it always makes me think. Over Hammersmith flyover, then plunging down into Earls Court and along the Cromwell Road through South Kensington, past the Natural History Museum. I dreamt that suddenly M was in the car, asking to be dropped off at the V And A. Then I was turning left up Exhibition Road, past the Science Museum and Imperial College, places I'd not visited for years. A minute or two later I was crossing Kensington Gore by the Albert Memorial, and parking along South Carriage Drive.

Jogging along Rotten Row I come across a man walking a golden retriever. He bellows out "Happy New Year" in an east coast American accent, and I realise it's Kevin Spacey. A little further on I find a Tory member of the House of Lords strolling along with a very attractive young woman on his arm. His daughter, I'm sure. Fortunately I can't recall his name. Twenty four hours on, I wonder if she can?

I get to the start of the race with ten minutes to go. It's a mild day though rather grey. But it's New Year's Day, and just like your birthday, and Christmas Day, it feels subtly, indescribably different from any other.

The race starts and I find myself plodding behind a couple of guys wearing teeshirts which shout at me: THE BIBLE IS THE TRUTH OF THE WORLD! BELIEVE IT! I want to say to them, "Yeah, God played a blinder this week in the Indian Ocean, didn't he?", but this would agitate us all too much at what is supposed to be a grand athletic start to the new year.

For a while I forget that I'm hungover and dehydrated, and settle into a steady rhythm. The Hyde Park 10K is one smallish circuit repeated three times. It starts at the bandstand at the eastern end of the Serpentine and heads north towards Speakers Corner before turning left towards Kensington Palace and the Albert Memorial. Then round again along the northern edge of the Serpentine back to the bandstand where you can see the London Eye in the distance. London marathoners look to this landmark as a sign that they are in the last three or four miles of the race. Just before completing my first circuit I was lapped by the eventual Kenyan winner. I did think about chasing him, but I didn't think about it for that long.

One feature of this race is the peculiar noises made by some of the runners. I noticed this at the same race in 2003. I presume it's the same guys, because I've not noticed it anywhere else. I was overtaken by a couple of chaps at different points in the race who sounded like they were in enjoying very noisy orgasms. Except "enjoying" isn't the right word as they sounded as if they were in deep pain. I suppose there has to be some solemn reason why they have to do this, but I'm afraid it still makes me laugh.

In the end, I was only a couple of minutes outside my PB. Perhaps it really was a dream after all. Despite being cotton-wool-headed and dried up, I somehow managed my fastest race pace for well over a year.

The afternoon was spent watching a listless and goalless draw between QPR and Brighton. I thought I deserved better than this after the sacrifice of the morning, but of course, god works in wondrous ways.

Mon 3 Jan 2005 - Bank Holiday

And so the four weeks of pre marathon-training training get left behind, and I enter the Restricted Zone. The brief had been simple - to run just 20 miles in each of the last four weeks, yet this final week is the only one in which I actually managed it. It has to be said that Christmas hasn't been a roaring success in terms of food, alcohol and running. Well, there's been plenty of roaring, particularly after a few bevies in the pub next door, but not so much of the success.

It could have been much worse, however. I've picked up a couple of pounds during the period when I was scheduled to lose about 4, but the two races were moderately successful and I'm feeling upbeat about the coming 16 weeks.

The training plan I'm hoping to follow comes from Bob Glover's Competitive Runner's Handbook. It's not hugely different from the Hal Higdon except that the mid-week runs are a bit more consistent in length, and a short weekend run is added in. And at 16 weeks, it's two weeks shorter than usual. This might make it a shade less daunting.

Let me say yet again that I find detailed discussion of other people's training schedules horribly dull, and so I apologise for dragging out this tedious crap, but a couple of people have asked what I'm aiming for, so here it is (including a few minor adjustments for races or other commitments):-

Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri	Sat	Sun
-	3	4	4	-	8	3
-	4	4	4	-	10	3
-	4	4	3	-	13	3
-	5	4	5	3	-	13	Almeria Half Marathon
-	4	5	5	-	3	15
-	6	6	6	-	5	13
-	6	4	4	3	-	20	Bramley 20
-	6	6	6	-	12	5
-	5	6	6	3	-	13	Reading Half Marathon
-	5	4	5	3	-	13	Silverstone Half Marathon
-	5	6	6	-	20	3
-	6	6	6	-	13	4
-	5	6	6	-	20	3
-	6	6	5	-	15	3
-	5	6	5	-	5	5
-	4	4	4	2	-	26	Hamburg Marathon

Plans - doncha just love 'em? I had to go hunting on the web for some quotations about planning. Here are a few of the less cynical:

Let your plans be dark and as impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt. (Sun Tzu, ca. 500 BC)

Dreams, ideas, and plans not only are an escape, they give me purpose, a reason to hang on. (Anon)

In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. (Dwight Eisenhower)

There's resonance in all of these. It's not defeatism to say that I know this plan won't work out. It's realism, not negativity. The purpose of plans is not to look into the future to see how things are going to work out. They are there to offer some kind of emotional structure to half cling to, and that makes them vital. So you can be dismissive of them but still understand that they have a value. More than having a value, they are a necessity. They serve to cajole and to inspire, but I've learned not to feel too distraught when they start to crack and splinter, as this one surely will.

Today was the first day, and in a sense, I've already failed. It was supposed to be a rest day but, being a public holiday it seemed like too good a running chance to waste. So before lunch I set off on a cheeky little 4.5 miler. It wasn't fast but I didn't feel that it was a struggle. I've noticed that over the past few weeks I've not felt the slightest temptation to stop for a walk break. First time in a while. It's another thing that I like about the Bob Glover approach. Unlike most other published coaches, he's rather dismissive about factoring walk breaks into the marathon. He doesn't quite forbid it but he encourages you not to stop unless you really have to. Here's an extract from the book about marathon strategy.

Tues 4 Jan 2005

Is it just me, or do other adults fancy a go in the ball pool at IKEA?

OK, so it's just me, but anyway, this thought strayed through my head just now as I wondered about endorphins. Chemicals, I know, but I sort of imagined for a moment that they might be a bit like balls in the IKEA ball pool, and I thought of myself flapping around in it, having a lovely time, while all the solemn adult types did solemn adult things like walking round the store in shoes with sensible heels, shopping for a new bedside cabinet.

I'm rambling, I know, but I feel sort of elated. Not that this evening's run was particularly fast or long -- in fact it was pretty slow and pretty short at 3.6 miles. But I did it in the company of a local running group, and enjoyed the experience a lot. Last spring I joined the gigantic running club in Reading and attended about half a dozen of their Wednesday track sessions. I was easing into a reasonable routine with them but then the dreaded Dartford-Leeds-Dartford job came up and trashed six months of my life. I'm still planning to go back to them - perhaps as soon as tomorrow - but I've been looking round for a different type of running club to complement them. I may have found it. The first club is massive - one of the biggest in the country. This has plenty of advantages, like good facilities, plenty of social events and a wide range of abilities and coaching possibilities. But their size brings with it a sense of being a very small cog in a large wheel. Or just one ball in the IKEA ball pool perhaps. And the sessions are highly structured - which may be a good thing for some, but not quite what I usually feel like.

I just fancied the idea of meeting up with a bunch of people. A bunch that splits into different pace groups to rush around the darkened streets. I like the anarchic edge of that thought. Battalions of silver-haired commandos, hell-bent on eliminating the kids from the local housing estate who didn't obey the curfew. And that's pretty much what I got this evening when I turned up to have a run with the Reading Joggers.

I've been aware of them for months, but all previous attempts to rendezvous have been abortive. Tracking them down reminded me of my unsuccessful week trying to spot a tiger in the Sunderban. You'd hear a rumour that they could be found near Asda in Tilehurst (no, I've left the tigers behind now), and you'd turn up to find nothing but the faintest whiff of linament lingering in the air. Then word would come through that they'd been spotted in the bar at the other sports centre round the corner and you'd arrive there, panting, to find nothing but a few empty Lucozade Sport bottles and a crumpled blister plaster on the table in the corner.

I had a breakthrough last week when I was able to make email contact with the commander of this elusive group. After some hesitant negotiation, a meeting was arranged. I turned up in the wrong place. We rescheduled, and I arrived too late. Tonight I tried again. I waited round outside the sports centre as directed, as the hour came and went. Nothing. I was trudging back to the car when suddenly there they were, spilling out through the doors of the gym. About thirty of them. I introduced myself, pleaded to be allowed to join the slowest group, and was admitted.

The slow group was just a bit too slow for me as it turned out. They comprised just two women and Arthur, the time-worn captain. Very sociable people and agreeably impressed when I claimed to have run three marathons. No hang on, I really have, haven't I?. I don't know where we went but it was pretty slow and civilised until, about a mile from our destination, we were joined by the middle group who'd traversed a longer route. I fell in with this lot now. It was much more like it. Even the towering, killer hill that finished the run was digestible in the company of others. Would I have stopped to walk if I'd been on my own? I suspect I might.

It was interesting and useful. I'll team up with them again. They meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and normally run about 5 miles. This fits in well with my marathon training plan.

After the run it was home for an annoyingly healthy baked potato and home-made carrot, celery, apple and nut salad. Then a shower. Then I got into bed and wrote this. And now? Now I'm going to turn the light off and dream that impossible dream.

Just five minutes in the IKEA ball pool. Oh please.....

Thurs 6 Jan 2005

Rest.

The very word is peaceful. Like the hiss of the steam train at Adlestrop Station.

Rest, I need it. It struck me last night that I'd run 5 days out 6, and with the likelihood of doing my first long run of the campaign tomorrow rather than Saturday, it's makes sense to take it easy today. It means I won't be rejoining my tigers again tonight (yeah, I think I'll call them the Tilehurst Tigers from now on), but will aim to get back there next week.

Yesterday evening, I called in to see the Reading Road Runners again after a long time away. I think I'm going to give up on this club, even though they provide access to a track, and have good facilities. I think they're just a bit too big for my needs. I turn up to find loads of different groups and activities, but I've no idea what the choices are or where I should be. So I end up just padding round the track for an hour in the teeming rain. It did give me the chance to dabble in intervals - or my version of intervals, which I suspect is a slightly different thing. But it seems that if all I get out of it is the chance to use a track, I can probably find somewhere more local to do this. If I was that keen, of course I could ask one of the coaches to point me in the right direction, but I've not done that, so perhaps I'm not that keen on the feel of the club. In the meantime, I prefer the thought of the smaller local group. I'll try them again on Tuesday and get a better idea.

Fri 7 Jan 2005 - the accidental run

Working from home today, so was able to get out at lunchtime on a grey and very blustery day. First half was a struggle against the wind, which might explain the rare occurrence of the negative split - running the second half faster than the first.

Here was the first long run of the campaign, and it was a good one. The schedule said 8 miles but it ended up as an accidental 9½, making it the longest non-race run I've done for nine months. It's a long while since I went along the canal past the ill-fated level-crossing, but I had it in mind that the water-stop was just about four miles from home, so decided on a there-and-back. And it was 4 miles along the canal, but I'd forgotten to factor in the distance from home to the canal, so I ended up with 4.7 miles each way. It happens.

Towards the end of the run I thought back to the first 9 mile run I ever did, and how enormous a landmark it was at the time. Three years ago yesterday. We were in Yate in those days, north of Bristol. I'd asked M to drive me to some godforsaken point up near the M5, from where I plodded back through the freezing rain and the spray coming up off the roads in the wake of the trucks. Rather bizarrely, I recall having some Ryvitas in a bag in my pocket as a mid-run snack.

Nutritionally, things have changed a bit. I thought it time to try out a Lucozade Sport gel today. Orange in colour and flavour. The usual sweet, viscous snot sensation. I rather like them.

The good thing about today's accidental run was that I could probably take the next two days as rest days and still just about hit my weekly target.

Sun 9 Jan 2005

Mildly hungover and slightly bloated after yesterday's family golden wedding celebration, I nonetheless managed to get out for a sporting 3½ miles late this afternoon. It was dark and raining steadily. I like it when it's raining so hard that you can hear the water trickling into the roadside drains. Much nobler than namby-pamby drizzle.

I heard on the radio the other night that 4% of food is consumed "in front of an open refrigerator". This was one of the things that exercised my brain as I ran. The other was last night's showing on the BBC of Jerry Springer - The Opera. This was the best thing I saw in the theatre during 2004, and it was great to get the chance to enjoy it again on the box. I spent much of the run grinning at the memory of the tap-dancing ku klux klansmen. Rather inadvisably in my view, the Christian lobby chose to make a fuss about it, thus tripling its viewing figures at a stroke. I'm hoping that this is just the first of many defeats for these nutters. It reminded me of the best definition of a puritan I've come across: Someone who is desperately afraid that somebody, somewhere might be having a good time.

And so, Week One of my Hamburg training comes to a close. 25.1 miles chalked up. My spreadsheet tells me this is 14% above my 22 mile target. I suppose this is a good thing.

Next week the sought-for figure is 25. In theory, this should be broken down into REST - 4 - 4 - 4 - REST - 10 - 3 but I suspect that it won't work out quite like that.

Good.

Tues 11 Jan 2005

This has become a bad week, and like a lot of bad weeks, it's sprung up out of nothing, quite unexpectedly.

It's true that I popped out for an unscheduled 3.3 mile recovery run last night, but after returning, showering and getting changed, I popped out again, this time for an unscheduled couple of hours in the pub, followed by a frenzy of calorific feeding at midnight, and a very late night, leading to fatigue today which has removed the prospect of getting out this evening for my planned 4 miler. Instead I've polished off what was, on Sunday, a gigantic slab of chocolate cake. It is no more.

Result? Tiredness, bloatedness, disappointment with myself.

Bah.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

On the positive side, I've spent the evening planning this year's coach to Silverstone for the half marathon on March 13th. The Running Bus rides again. For anyone reading this who plans to travel from London for the race, do check out the possibility of joining us. Last year we took about 90 people up there, and had a good day out. www.runningbus.co.uk.

And now, an early night with my weary head resting on the sweet pillow of renewed good intentions. Here's to a chilly early morning run to make me believe again.

Hurrah!

Wed 12 Jan 2005

Dense, succulently moist, cloyingly rich and sticky. Chocolate cake. Laced with Cognac.

I need to fix it in my memory, because that's where it must remain confined, at least until after the Hamburg Marathon on April 24. Last night I opened the fridge, hoping to find a tomato or half a stick of celery to snack on - and there it was. A slab the size of half a house-brick. As mentioned yesterday, it was originally somewhat larger than this, but my hunger and greed has... eroded it over the past few days.

Guzzle and chomp and slurp and lick. It was mutually-assured-destruction. We finished each other off.

I bring it up again today... [no, that would be far too easy...] because it was only today that the full, terrible implications of the cake's extermination made themselves clear. This afternoon I went for my planned 5 mile run, and... and Jesus-Tapdancing-Christ, what a horrid experience it was.

The first two miles, lurching along one of the local lanes, was as miserable a plod as I've had in a year. The cake was there. I could feel it kicking. It must have somehow been reunited with the other great chunks consumed over the previous few days, because now it was the size of a shoe-box. My stomach was so distended and bouncy that it actually felt like a new limb.

Into the third mile, things got slightly better, and I managed 4.9 miles eventually. But never again. Never ever ever again in the next 14 weeks will I eat chocolate cake. Dense, succulently moist, cloyingly rich and sticky. Choc-choccy-chocolate cake. Laced with Cognac. Size of a house brick.

Wed 19 Jan 2005

Four runs, a new job, and no chocolate cake.

It's been an interesting week.

And it's one of those ironies that the more interesting and eventful life is, the less time there seems to be to digest the lessons fully and to regurgitate the wisdom. But perhaps there's still just time to leave a blogoscopic scratch on the week's surface before it vanishes completely.

Thursday 13th: No run, but a voluble and bibulous evening to mark the end of my bondage to those who would send me to orifices malodoreuses like Leeds and Dartford. Well, perhaps Leeds has things going for it, but Dartford? But most things were forgiven during a delightfully fractious, argumentative session, lubricated by the fruits of Mr Brakspear's labours. I even managed to catch the second half of Jez Lowe's set at the local folk club. Jez Lowe? Why, one of the finest songwriters in the country, that's who. [Bah. What do you know?]

Post-party Friday was largely a remote experience, and a run was never on the cards. Instead, I had the unusual sensation of a Friday evening QPR match, thanks to the football despots at Sky TV, who had decreed that our first victory in two months was an occasion worthy of live, global satellite coverage. Oh. Well, not a bad decision this time, perhaps. The crushing 1-0 trouncing of Stoke City was a good way to end a hectic week.

But Saturday woke me with a clearer head and a powerful sense of liberation. It had taken a good night's sleep for the old road to rapidly fade, as the prophet had decreed it would. It felt like a birthday. One of those occasions when you and the world seems new and different for a few hours. This sense of having walked free from Wormwood Scrubs after a 4½ year sentence kept me afloat all day, and it was a buoyancy I needed to manage a sloshy, bedraggled plod in the early afternoon. 4 and a bit miles round the damp lanes. Chilly yes, but refreshing chilly, not punishing, wretched chilly.

Sunday: Ten miles, get in.

I had all sorts of interesting stuff to think about on this long meander up the canal. The state of my new year resolutions for one thing. Most of them are limping along, ready to fall into the gutter, but one is doing OK. It's the attempt to break the ankle irons that shackle me to the computer. I'm nearly free boys, nearly free.

I'm not looking for a total divorce. I love these machines really, and I work with the things, so I can't hope to remove them from my life, and nor would I want to. But I realised over Christmas that the web was intruding too much. I was beginning to feel like a dutiful vicar, tramping round the parish to small-talk his flock and tend to his Favourites. It can be a draining, geeky whirlpool.

This site and all who sail in her are, of course, not included in this. It's the pointless bickering I've tired of. So all my football sites went for a burton on the first day or two of the new year. Crikey, the sheer weight of bullshit that gets thrown about over on those places. And all those newsgroups I was drifting around for no very good reason. Time gentlemen please.

It struck me on my run that computers and the web has destroyed almost as much as they've created. Chess. Chess has had its creative heart ripped out by limitless number-crunching power. And do students bother reading books any more? What for? The web is a plagiarism wonderland. General knowledge competitions are a thing of the past. And anagrams - what's happened to anagrams? I used to love trying to solve or create anagrams, but computing has broken the challenge now.

Tramping up the canal towpath, I remembered how pleased I'd been to discover, years ago, while torturing myself with the Times crossword, that carthorse is an anagram of orchestra. As I ran, something struck me as odd. I've often thought that the distribution of letters makes it a corker of an anagram, but I'd never thought beyond this technical level to compare the meanings of the words, and I'd certainly never related it to running before. But think about it. What's a carthorse? A slow, heavy, shambling, unsubtle creature. Lovable maybe, but ungainly. And what's an orchestra? A collection of wacky wooden and brass objects? Perhaps, yes, but in the hands of the right people, capable of generating something sublimely subtle and complex, inspiring and energising. And how easily we turn this clumsy behemoth into this angel. Carthorse becomes orchestra. And isn't that what running is all about?

Monday was new job day. I seem to have fallen in with a good bunch of people. Even better, the two guys who sit closest to me are runners. Proper runners. Reading half marathoners.

So far, it's all been an unusually pleasant and civilised experience. Y'know, I'd honestly forgotten that it could be like this. Colleagues regarding each other with respect and good humour, and all buying into agreed, joint objectives with a common plan. It's been a long time.

The work is much better suited to me than my last job too. But the icing on the cake? The location of the office - just under a mile from home. How luxurious to be able to pop home for lunch. And how good to arrive home at 5:40 and get out for a run without all that post-work motorway stress to throw off. It's a good move for me, and I'm going to make sure it works well.

Tuesday looked like a bad night for running - black and cheerless, with a biting wind that would cut you in half. So there wasn't much choice. I took most of my clothes off and ran around the streets for nearly 5 miles. To sugar the pill, I joined up with the local running group again. But it was still pretty hard, Sunday's long run weighing heavily in my legs. There were other difficulties - these streets are unfamiliar to me. Broken pavements, badly lit in places and full of obstacles like wheelie bins left on the pavement for the next day's collection. This was a really tough run, but sitting in the car afterwards, breathless, hot sweat dripping through my cap onto the steering wheel and down onto my legs, I luxuriated in the reward.

Tonight, Wednesday, was milder, the run more bland. I was out again for another 4½ miles, these ones local and familiar. It wasn't a bad run, and was less slow than most of my over-stately recent efforts, but there was something a bit unsatisfying about it. A useful reminder that it's just as easy for the orchestra to re-emerge as the carthorse.

Thurs 20 Jan 2005

Back to the local road running group tonight for a vigorous 5 miles through the suburban capillaries of Tilehurst. This was one of the best runs I've had in a long time. It did what I wanted it to do - forced me to run a bit faster than I was accustomed to, and just a bit faster than I was comfortable with.

For a short while at least, I felt like a better runner.

Sat 22 Jan 2005

Mid-afternoon. The world was getting colder, wetter, darker. And the football was about to start.

So I did what I had to do - put on my running stuff and ventured out along the canal for a twelve mile slog.

The first of those miles was as long and as miserable a mile as I ever ran. I couldn't see myself making it to the third. But I persisted, and as always, gradually, the real world began to drop away and I entered that other place. The Feelgood Club. Open to all, but entered by so few. Hardly any rules, and so cheap to join. Such amazing benefits and perks. Yet the hoi polloi stay without, whispering in groups. How terrible the suffering must be in there, they say. How sorry we feel for the inmates.

Hee hee.

Six miles out and six miles back. The pace was never fast, but it remained steady. As I turned round at the halfway point, I looked at _colin, my GPS gadget, and worked out that if I was to manage negative splits again I needed to get back before 2 hours 17 minutes were up.

It didn't seem likely. The light was fading now, and as it did so, the temperature began to drop. Those last four miles were dark and chilly and difficult, but I kept going, slithering on the muddy, bumpy paths along the water's edge. I saw no one for nearly 45 minutes, and it struck me that if I fell and hurt myself, as I could easily do in those inhospitable conditions, it could be a long and painful wait for help. The last mile, back along the road to home, jarred my shins and plucked at my hamstrings, but I just tried to keep the pace steady. 2:17 was the target, but for the last 2 miles or so I forced myself not to look at the watch. As I turned into my driveway I hit the stop button and hit the backlight button. 2:16:56, it said.

I'd run for two and a quarter hours without a break, and had managed to hit my target by 4 seconds.

The beer tasted good this evening. I sat by the fire in the public bar, enjoying the ache in my legs and the beating of my heart. Such simple pleasures, but amongst the best. At one point, one of the regulars chuckled and said to me: "I've been watching you, Andy. You've been sitting there grinning to yourself for the last five minutes. What have you got to be so pleased about?"

"Oh, it's a long story".

"How long?"

"How long? I'll tell you exactly. Two hours, sixteen minutes and fifty six seconds. That's how long."

Sun 23 Jan 2005

Three juddering, frozen recovery miles, early on a Sunday morning, while the church bells rung out across the village.

Mon 24 Jan 2005

Coldest day of the year by some distance, and a rest day - but it seemed a shame to stay clear away from it. I had to go and have a taste of the pain. Only 3½ miles, and slow, but strangely important. If I'm to do better than I have in my previous marathons, I need to work harder than I did in preparing for them. Part of me finds that sentiment nauseatingly goody-goody. But squinting at it in another way, it seems to show not starey-eyed, clean-shaven, Hitler Youth tendencies, but a nod towards the more palatable ascetic Buddhist perspective. The one that says that you achieve equilibrium only through suffering.

Sigh. I must still be an old hippy.

Went into a butcher's shop today and said "Bet you £50 that you can't reach the meat on the top shelf". The butcher said: "No, the steaks are too high."

Wed 26 Jan 2005

The Gospel According To Bob Glover?

How strictly should training plans be adhered to? How bad should I feel about missing a run or falling a few miles short over the week? To find some answers, I decided to ask someone who is currently training for his 4th marathon.

Myself.

Don't feel too bad about missing a midweek run, I opined, though it depends why you're missing it. "Can't be bothered" or "It's too cold out there" are pitiful justifications, and will not be accepted. I went on: Don't make the mistake I made when training for my first one in 2002, when I would feel terrible about running 4½ miles when the schedule had said 5. At my level, I think of midweekers as fat-burning fitness runs. They're morale boosters. Sharp injections of serotonin. The long 'uns are more important. Try not to miss the long runs.

I thought about this for a minute. Well OK, but how much is a run worth in financial terms?

Financial terms? How's that?

Well take tomorrow night. I'm keen to join the local running group again for the 5 mile run around Tilehurst. It made me feel great last week.

So what's the problem?

Well, I really should be filling in my annual tax return. It's my last chance. If it's not done tomorrow night, I'll not get it in by the end of the month. And if it's not in by the end of the month I'll be fined £100. No questions asked, no excuses accepted. So I have to decide whether a good run is enough justification. Hmmm. How much is a run worth? What's the monetary value of that post-run euphoria? It's valuable, but is it worth a stack of twenty crisp fivers? That's a lot of beer vouchers.

Do the run.

Thurs 27 Jan 2005

Taxing Run 1 Tax Return 0.

Only 3.4 miles this time, but the pace was 9:58 - fast for me, but still comfortable.

Things are looking good for the Almeria Half on Sunday. Readers of the forum will know that there are 6 of our small but beautifully formed community running in Spain in a couple of days time. The hand of history weighs heavily on our quads.

Training has gone well. Except I've not been training for the half at all, but for the Hamburg Marathon in April. Almeria is part of that larger training - but it's gone well in any case. I've run on 10 out of the past 12 days, and most of those have been good 'uns. I've even shed a few pounds. Crikey. I feel almost well prepared.

To comment on this, or anything else, please visit the Forum.

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