Tuesday 1 November 2005

It's been a day of firsts. The first day of November, and with it, this morning, the first hint of frost -- a gentle reminder of what's to come. Despite the mild autumn, they say it will be a long, harsh winter. The coldest for 40 years, according to some reports.

The thought of winter might be daunting, but there's excitement there too. Non-runners will wonder how we can feel a thrill at what's ahead, but runners know that our affair with this season is more intense, more private, and more tempestuous than with any other. Winter is the runner's best friend and worst enemy. Early on a frosty, sunny Sunday morning in January, the season is an utter joy; an experience to justify every negative. But after a day's work, when all you want to do is sit in front of the fire and the TV, few things will match the profound misery you feel when stepping outside the back door into a blustery, frozen, pitch black night.

This morning's was the third outing in 3 days, and at last, I might have seen another first -- the first sign of renewal. Just a hint of green shoot perhaps, but it was there alright. A slight strengthening in my plodding stride, and the needle on the pantometer gauge just beginning to fall back slightly.

I was up at 5:30 to take M to the station, and at that time there was a dusting of frost on the windscreen. By the time I came to run, a couple of hours later, I had to decide what to wear. Could it really be the first time this season that a jacket or gillet was needed? The latter would have been better, but it's not a flattering garment at the best of times, and emerging from a slothful, gluttonous autumn, I'd have looked like a Christmas pudding in cling film. I settled instead for a long-sleeved, bright yellow running top that appeared from nowhere the other day when I was clearing out the back bedroom. It set me thinking.

When I first started running, in 2001, the acquisition of quality items of running gear was an occasional thrill. I remember clearly those trips to Easy Runner in Bristol for Thorlo socks and lycra undershorts and my first technical tee and the Brooks Adrenaline shoes that I ran the London Marathon in. Each item was cherished, and welcomed to the fold like a new child in the family. But now? Now, just rooting around in the bottom of a wardrobe reveals not just this pristine (it still had its store tags attached), long-sleeved, technical running shirt, but (get this) a brand new, boxed, unworn pair of New Balance 854s. How can you buy, and forget about, running shoes? I must be going doolally, or getting too rich to care.

The former seems rather more likely. I recently started to take a belated interest in pensions, beginning the painful process of pulling together the odd scrap of money that's been sitting round in ill-managed pension funds for the last 15 years or so. It doesn't amount to much, believe me, so I took the decision to start a Self Invested Personal Pension (SIPP), a newish goverment scheme that's both tax-efficient and allows you to invest your money much more widely than traditional schemes (OK, so perhaps I did read some of those FTs after all... Anyway, certain that I could outperform the average managed pension fund, a few months ago I distributed my meagre pile of pennies round a variety of equities, then sat back to watch the graph shoot up like a neighbour's leylandii. Hmm. Rather against my expectations, not to mention hopes, the value of the fund immediately plunged. Everything I touched turned to something pretty unpleasant.

But then today, another first - it's actually edged into the black for the first time. Who knows? I may be able to retire before my 80th birthday after all.

On the subject of retiring, it's time for bed, and I'm laughing. I just heard that Chelsea lost this evening for (of course) the first time this season. Ah! A good day indeed.

Tomorrow I'll take a rest, or at least wait till the evening to run.

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Wednesday 2 November 2005

Ventured out this evening for 44 minutes encouraging minutes. After my patchy late summer/autumn, a fourth run in 4 days was always going to be testing, and yes, it was a struggle towards the end. I even walked briefly once or twice. But overall, I was happy: for the first half of the run, I could feel some strength returning.

Have I ever talked about "bounce"? It's something I'm often aware of when I'm out. When things are going badly, it's like driving with a flat tyre, or running in very old, worn shoes. It's a drag; it's a grind. When the going is good, you have an extra element to help you along. You seem to be bouncing, the way you feel when you're wearing brand new shoes, or running on springy moorland turf. No, this isn't what I felt this evening -- far from it. But I was conscious of the faintest of stirrings. A few more runs and I should be feeling it more clearly.

Talking of bounce, this battle has many fronts. Speed, strength, distance, injury worry... and weight. Weight is the keystone in all this. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I'm not planning on getting weight-obsessed, and I've reduced my weighings to once a week at most, but I also know that it's the quickest short cut to running better and feeling good about it all again. This evening I could feel that great blubbery, yuk-filled balloon bouncing up and down in front of me as I plodded ever onwards. If I were to suddenly stop, I thought this evening, my belly would probably continue its forward course for about 5 feet, before snapping back to propel me backwards into a puddle or soggy hedge. It could be dangerous. I need to talk to check my household insurance and see if I'm protected from such a calamity.

Another pressing need is to make decisions about the new year and spring. Almeria Half? Paris, Zurich Marathons? The Thames Meander? Compton Challenge? Ridgeway 40? Dartmoor 32? All these events have winked at me at some point over the past few weeks. Some continue to do so. Now that we're in FLM-rejection season, races like Paris start to fill up, so I can't delay a decision much longer.

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Friday 4 November 2005

The Paris Marathon, or to give it its full, foreign name, the Marathon de Paris.... is full.

Oh.

So I have to think of another race, preferably round the same date, 9 April. It looks like a choice between the David Davis of marathons, Rotterdam, and the David Cameron-like Zurich.

They are both pretty flat, but the mountain-fringed lakeside route of Zurich offers something fresher and cleaner than the workmanlike Rotterdam. Zurich is risky though; it has a very strict 5 hour cut-off which could be calamitous, or could be just the sort of challenge I should be accepting. I think my choice of race will tell me something about my attitude. Am I happy to keep on plodding, or do I really want to improve?

Sometimes I wonder why I should want to improve. Seriously. We take it as a given, but should we?

I took a second rest day today, to make sure I'll be fresh for a longer run tomorrow morning. Nothing too strenuous. 5 or 6 miles is a reasonable weekend run at this stage of my gradual return to the running habit.

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Thursday 10 November 2005

Too busy or too drunk to write anything this week.

I'm not often moved to go into work on a Sunday, and it's not often that I'm sitting at my office desk at a quarter to midnight, but I've had both experiences this week.

"Too drunk" is an exaggeration, but there's something pleasing about the phrase. As it happens, I did absorb my full weekly allowance of ale last Saturday, but it was for medicinal purposes only. I had a psychological ailment that needed emergency beer therapy. I'd just seen my team outplay Reading, but still go down to a 2-1 defeat. To make matters incalculably worse, our tormentors are the local side. The village pubs are infested with their supporters, many of whom will feel the need to remind me of the result over the coming long, cheerless weeks and months. A couple of hours of deep beer treatment in Shepherds Bush was the only way of preparing for the ordeal ahead of me.

The day had got off to a grand start too, with a reasonably buoyant 5 miles which first took me down a quiet, previously unexplored, lane alongside the lake, then back along the canal. I was positively vibrating with goodwill after that one, if only for 4 hours or so.

There followed 4 barren days. Work, work, work, work, with no run to be found. Then this morning I was up and out by about 7, plodding round my usual circuit.

I needed it. This run was the pin that popped the balloon of 4 stressful days. Even with so little running recently, I felt pretty strong in my legs. I just didn't have quite enough puff to sustain the effort, and had to walk for a minute or so after a couple of miles.

Received my Brighton 10K number yesterday. The race is 10 days away. No chance of a PB, but it will be good to feel that desperate misery once again.

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Monday 14 November 2005

I have 6 days to reinvent myself. Six days to switch identities yet again. The beer-guzzling, midnight chow mein and cheddar eater must die once more. It's like that movie - Cape Fear. The one where you keep thinking the baddie has been finally exterminated. But he just keeps coming back to set the cinema screaming yet again. (Robert Mitchum's 1961 version is probably better than De Niro's remake in the 90s, but the latter's baddie picture is badder.)

So here I am again, lurching to the surface to wreak destruction on a harmless Berkshire village. But that was Saturday, and we had a famous victory over the Argies to tease into reality, and then to pick over and celebrate. Waking up yesterday, the memory of the 3 a.m. bowl of Häagen-Dazs Macadamia Brittle painfully recent, I knew it was yet again time to turn myself in to the authorities. I'd been on the run too long.

Just one last indulgence, I decided. So I got up in search of bacon sandwiches. No bread, so I wandered up to the village. On the way back, I noticed the wreaths of poppies around the war memorial in the grounds of the church. Of course. Remembrance Sunday.

It makes you feel sort of ashamed, doesn't it? I had to go in and take another look at those names from the Great War. I've looked at them, and wondered about them, many times. In all, 21 names. One died in 1914, none in 1915, then a big group in 1916 and 1917.

Last year, I was out running when I came across the village Remembrance Day parade. This year I was hunting bacon sandwiches in the pathetic tail of another lost weekend. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow... At least we have tomorrows to look forward to, unlike many.

There are only six tomorrows left before the Brighton 10K, and it's time to act if I'm going to give myself any chance at all of smashing the world record next Sunday morning. Positive thinking. It's the only way.

Today I ate all the right things and this evening I got out for a gorgeously cold and black 4 miles. Not particularly fast, but steady, and with no walk break. Another 3 or 4 of these before Sunday and I'll be OK. With running, it's never too late to start again.

Today's piece of wisdom: never let the postman deflect you from the path of self-beautification. Let me explain.

I was in the kitchen at 0845, finishing off a coffee, and just gazing out of the window at the new pond, as you do. M appeared in her usual last-minute fluster, telling me she was going to be late. I manfully offered to help her. While she scraped her windscreen, I slipped on my old gardening shoes and trotted out to the end of the driveway to open the gates. Just as I'd finished the painful task of dragging them across the gravel, the postman appeared with a large box. We exchanged greetings, and I took the package from him. It could only be my new running shoes.

And so it proved. I'd ordered two pairs of New Balance 854s as it has yet again been claimed that they are being discontinued at the end of the year. After admiring them for a couple of minutes, I realised I was going to be late for work myself, so returned them to the box, grabbed my coat and jumped in the car. Drove to work. Got out of the car, walked to the office. It was just as I got to the door of the office that I looked down, and saw that I was still wearing... my gardening shoes.

Mortified isn't the word. These ancient, mis-shapen slip-ons are caked in mud, and have tufts of dead grass and weeds plastered all the way round, like the straggly beard on that Lithuanian tramp I'd chatted to on Shepherds Bush Green recently. What could I do? I had a meeting to attend. I couldn't go home and change them. I'd no spare shoes in the car. No choice. I had to go through with it. I felt like Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption, walking back to his cell for the final time. Except his shoes were too clean; mine were too dirty. As Red explained:Andy did like he was told, buffed those shoes to a high mirror shine. The guard simply didn't notice, neither did I... I mean, seriously, how often do you really look at a mans shoes?

Not that often, mercifully. All morning I hid my rustic footware as far as possible under the desk, desperately hoping that no one would notice. And I don't believe they did. I don't work with the sort of people who would hold back in such a situation, bless 'em.

After about 16 hours, lunchtime arrived, and I was able to rush out of the office without being seen, and get back home to change them.

Let's hope that before Sunday I can change the rest of me as easily.

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Tuesday 15 November 2005

Worked from home today, and able to feast on a rare treat -- a midweek run in the daylight. Got out at lunchtime for the standard 3.5 miles round the block. It's getting easier.

Then I tempted fate by doing some more race planning.

Definites (insofar as I've entered them) are the Brighton 10K this Sunday and the Cliveden post-Christmas 6 miler.

Then the robust possibility of the Woodcote/Goring 10k in early January. It's local, and we should support our local races.

Almeria at the end of January is looking more likely now. A few of us flew to Southern Spain in January this year to meet up with RC forumite Antonio, and run his home town half marathon. The weekend was good, and it was great to get a sliver of Spanish sun in the heart of a long, grey winter. It's a big temptation, and no doubt post-Brighton 10K conversation over lunch will touch on it. I suspect that the combination of finisher's euphoria and a couple of glasses of decent Chianti will make the prospect of Almeria as exciting as those last 5 minutes against Argentina on Saturday.

Februrary, and the Wokingham Half comes into view. It's one of those many races that I mean to do each year, but never quite get to. Flat and fast, and local. Perhaps 2006 is the year for it. Another race in the same category is the Bramley 20 on February 19th, a week later. A tall order perhaps, but if I plan to do a marathon, I need to get 2 or 3 of those thankless 20 milers ticked off.

Yet another race that you read and hear a lot about, the Hastings Half, comes along on March 12. Then April 9th arrives, and with it, quite possibly, the Zurich Marathon.

You have to fill the winter months with these agonising spring fantasies to hang onto your sanity.

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Thursday 17 November 2005

Another ungainly, breathy gallop round the lanes this afternoon beneath a canopy of strong winter sunshine. A fantastic day for running.

Just over four miles. It was just tough enough to know for sure that I will struggle on Sunday in Brighton. But if I can plod 4 miles and survive, I can plod 6 and survive.

Forgive me father for I have sinned. It is 5 months since my last confession. The Dorney Dash in July seems like a very long time ago.

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Friday 18 November 2005

Im shocked. I've been sexually assaulted.

Plodding along the village high street this evening in sub-zero conditions, I glanced up at the moonlit church, ready for 40 minutes of contemplative exercise. As I did so, I came across a group of 4 or 5 teenage girls, aged about 13 or 14 years old, walking towards me. As I went past them, one of them suddenly said "Ere, fancy a shag then?", and lunged at me. Before I knew what was happening, she grabbed my testicles, then shrieked.

I shrieked too.

It was a profoundly startling experience, and instinct made me sprint off into the distance at a fair old rate.

Let's hope my good fortune holds out for the Brighton 10K on Sunday.

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Monday 21 November 2005 - Brighton 10K

I've taken part in 34 races now, managing to write reports on all of them apart from the Brighton 10K in 2003. For some reason I never identified, that one slipped past.

My second Brighton 10K happened yesterday, and I think I might have to keep quiet about that one too. I just can't think of too much to say about the race. It starts on Madeira Drive and bounces along the front for 6.21 miles without much happening apart from a couple of turns.

Unenjoyable? No, far from it. To run by the sea is always a pleasure for someone living in landlocked Berkshire. It went OK.

The target was modest - to finish the 6 miles without stopping. I'd not run the distance for 4 months, so this wasn't as simple as it sounds. But I made it.

I spent nearly all the race gazing out to sea, in the way that people who rarely see it, do. Someone swigging from a Heineken can around the 4 mile point shouted "Egg and spoon race!"

"Fork off", I retorted, and one of his mates cackled.

And that was that. There are great reports about this race on the forum, in Nigel's and Sweder's training diaries. I can't add much to what they've said.

Here are some snaps (courtesy of SP mainly):

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Tuesday 29 November 2005

How typical. After getting round the Brighton 10K as comfortably as I could have hoped, I then spend 9 days focussing on nothing but work and pie consumption.

Tomorrow the news will be better.

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Wednesday 30 November 2005

Zurich Marathon, April 9, 2006. I've entered the race and bought air tickets -- just like I did for the never-attempted Loch Ness Marathon. This time, things will be different.

This time, things will be different.

I need them to be different from Hamburg too, even though that was one race that I did actually turn up for. Zurich has a strict 5 hour cut-off. Anyone failing to reach the finish line in that time is dragged from the course, pelted with over-ripe Gruyere, and flung into the icy Zürichsee. Even worse, you don't get a medal or a teeshirt, despite 4 months of deprivation and self-flagellation.

This could be just the incentive I need.

A few weeks ago, I wondered how I might approach the next marathon, given that I no longer wanted to terrorise myself with schedules and targets. Hmmm. But I've had to admit that I actually quite like schedules and targets. I'm going to use them because I need to, to ensure I end up with a Zurich medal. It's the "terrorise" bit that I aim to discard.

Halfway round Hamburg, after a confident first 20km, my legs went. It took just a few minutes. The strength suddenly drained away, and along with it went much of the pleasure, and much of my self-confidence. I plodded on for another 22km, but as I did so, I told myself that next time, I had to prepare better, and make sure that my legs could take the strain over the full distance.

So this evening I spent a rather forlorn hour or so at the gym, being sold at.

We'll see.

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