Tuesday 5 December 2006
Confessional.
Forgive me further, for I have sinned. Again.
Time of year is an easy excuse, so let's grab it while it's still
available.
A long-planned festive pub get-together last Thursday, corporate
Christmas bash on Saturday evening, lunch with some mates today.
Several days of wine and dozes on one side of the scales, with just a
semi-run for an hour on Saturday morning, and a mundane 4 miles in the
middle of last week, on the other.
Did I mention scales? The weight dive seems to have come to a temporary
halt as I struggle to metabolise 6 days of gluttony. I can see the
headline now.
MY
GRUB HELL.**
But tomorrow's another day, we can exclusively reveal.
**
Except... except
it was all rather pleasant really. That's the confession.
Monday 11 December 2006
There it is again: that muffled clacking from the other side of the
window.... Ah wait, it's just the limping Ghost of Christmas Past.
Five years ago today, I did the first 3 mile leg of my first marathon.
You can
read
it here. I read it myself now and then, trying to gauge the
great improvement I must have experienced.
But it only ever reminds me that
plus ça change...
Wednesday 13 December 2006
Someone mailed me today and mentioned Monday's "gloomy" entry.
Gloomy?
I reread it, and I see what they mean. But it wasn't supposed to sound
like that. The intention was to be faintly whimsical, not pessimistic.
Perhaps I
should be pessimistic, but I'm not
feeling too down about my running at present. It's true that the last
two weekends have contained long hangovers in the slots normally
reserved for long runs, but hey, it's Christmas. I've still managed to
get out the door for 3 or 4 restorative miles almost every other
day.... ish, and the last few, including this evening's, have actually
felt quite brisk. Even...
lusty.
I was careful to say "felt" brisk; it's a strange thing that despite
feeling quite perky during recent lopes, My Bloody Garmin tells me that
I've not made a lot of progress on the time front. Perhaps I should
add, to My Bloody Garmin, defective timekeeping to go with the
defective altitude readings and the defective calorie measurement and
to my other complaints: the features implemented less well on the
Forerunner 305 than on its predecessors, and the overhyped (that is,
non-existent from what I can see) improvements in GPS
satellite-locking. What a bunch of bastards.
Er, but I digress.
Mentioning my overall optimism about running at present is a necessary
aperitif to the main item on this evening's menu: my recent thoughts on
the chances of polishing off April's Two Oceans Marathon in South
Africa. Let's face it: they're not that great. It's true that I'm a
keen lost-cause gambler, but staking a couple of trans-continental
airfares on the equivalent of a three-legged entrant in the Grand
National, is perhaps one wager too far.
I'll add the usual caveat: This is nothing to do with negativity or
self-pity or defeatism. I'm just being realistic. Or starting to be
realistic. I've not made a definite decision, and won't do for a few
weeks yet. Who knows? I may suddenly start cookie-cutting 15, 18, 20
milers at an average of under 10:30 to 11:00 a mile, which is the
absolute minimum I'd need to feel confident about getting through 35
miles in under 7 hours. It may happen, but there again, it probably
won't.
Instead, I'll be happy to keep knocking out 12-15 miles in midweek and
8, 10, 12 at the weekend for a few weeks, until Almeria at the end of
January, and see where that gets me. Where I
hope
(and presume) it will get me, is to a standard marathon in the spring
somewhere. We'll see.
Monday 31 December 2006
It's January 1st really, but I've been meaning to write something here
for so long that it seems better to pretend that it's still 2006, so
that I can say cheerio to it properly.
How was it for you? By my usual steady-as-she-goes standards, it was
almost tumultuous. That 5 hour marathon demon got its come-uppance at
last, yet I managed to rouse a few dormant ones I'd long forgotten
about.
Six months of illness, idleness and burgeoning blubber presented me
with a stop-start final quarter. December was shaping up to be a steady
but unspectacular tickover month but I've managed to pick up a couple
of modest, but unignorable injuries.
The lanes round here are narrow and undulating, meaning that rain
collects in great Caspian Sea-like puddles. The first way of dealing
with this problem is to change your route -- the technique favoured by
the sensible. Needless to say, I don't do this. If you confront these
great lakes,
you can either plough through the middle of them, filling your shoes
and indeed your very soul, with black, viscous, icy water, or you can try to
circumambulate the expanse of water by nimbly leaping
onto the
thin grass verge, hoping that momentum will propel you forward
just a bit quicker than fatigue and the sodden slope will pull you
under.
A few winters down the line, I've become reasonably adept at skipping
round these ephemeral lagoons. Or thought I had. Alas, it was this
complacency that encouraged me to try bounding along this bumpy ribbon
of safety a
little faster than I should have done. Not only did I manage to lose my
footing and slide into the
unwelcoming slough, but was able to take the opportunity of twisting an
ankle along the way.
The shock of the cold water was such that the it didn't immediately
register
that I'd jarred my ankle quite badly. It was only as I was arriving
home a few minutes later that it started to throb a little. As the
festive season was approaching, I thought it appropriate to break with
tradition and use a
packet of frozen brussel sprouts as a cold compress rather than the
customary
petits pois. Despite my best efforts, it
had swelled up a
bit by the following morning, and I realised I'd better take a few days
out.
The following week was Christmas in any case with all the attendant
over-indulgence and family obligations, so I've ended up not just
sidelined
for more than two weeks, but about 5 pounds heavier than my weight
schedule told me I was supposed to be by now.
To make matters worse, I also have my first ever cricket injury. And
not just
any old cricket injury but an Ashes test series injury. Here's the
story:
I bought another DAB radio a couple of months ago, which sits on my
bedside table. I sleep on my right, but the table is behind me, to my
left. Now I'm not that enthusiastic a cricket fan, but
over the past few weeks, I've found that during the Australia - England
test matches, I keep waking up in the middle of the night anxious that
I may be missing out on something. I need to find out what's happening
down under. For all I know, Panesar is about to get 6 successive wickets in a history-making double hat-trick.
Pietersen is on the verge of hitting 401, to beat Brian Lara's record.
I need to be able to say I was listening live.
To minimise disruption I sort of half turn, reaching out behind me,
fumbling in the dark for the 15 minute 'sleep' button. The double whammy is that
not only have my cricketing hopes been consistently dashed, with
nothing approaching the faintest, whispered hint of
England glory greeting me when I finally succeed in turning the radio
on, but after several days of these nocturnal contortions,
I've managed to develop a pretty severe pain in my neck that jumps out
to ambush me every time I move my head more than a few degrees to the
left.
I got so fed up with these latest setbacks that a couple of days ago,
while out for a post-Christmas limp, I seriously thought about
discontinuing this website. What's the point of a running website with
no running in it? It's like a cinema that doesn't show films.
But then, just today, talking of films, I watched a DVD I'd been sent a
couple of years back about the Hamburg Marathon. I'd never bothered to
play it before. It features me at the 10km, 20km, 30km points, and
crossing the finishing line. Apart from reminding me that I waddle from side to side when I 'run' it
did stir my enthusiasm a little. I can't pretend that it ignited
some great furnace of determination, but it certainly pumped enough
energy into that tank to keep the pilot light going for a little while longer.
The Two Oceans Marathon in Cape Town is a dead ambition for 2007 now.
I'd still love to do it, but I have to be realistic. It won't happen
this year. Perhaps 2008? We'll see. My immediate plan is to get into
some sort of shape for the Almeria Half at the end of January. That's
going to be a struggle now, but I will be there, and I'll get round. I
need to re-re-re-resurrect my running regime so that I can reach at
least 10 or 11 miles a week out from the race, and I should be OK.
After I get round Almeria I'll take a look at where I am in the
firmament, and whether a voyage to a spring marathon is feasible.
I think it will be. I've re-looked at a race that I've thought about
almost every year since I started running: The
St Anthony Marathon in Padua, near Venice. It's on April 22, which is just about 2 or 3 weeks sooner than I'd like it to be, but I'll get stuck into Project Almeria, then take it from there.
I've said it before, and I fear I'm about to say it again: This game is all about knowing that however bad things get (and being realistic, they are not actually that bad), you can always get started again with the right attitude. Yep, it's common sense time again.
No alcohol in January; strict diet; re-establish order and routine. End the month by feeling good about getting round Almeria, and seeing Antonio, Suzie and some of the RC gang again. All will be well again. And mentioning Almeria and the people I've got to know on this journey is, of course, the best reminder of all of why I should keep the site going. There are great people around this place, and we need each other's help.
This seems like a good point to say a genuine "Thank You" to all those who post on the forum, and mail me with their running stories, questions and bits of encouragement. You were a huge help to me during 2006, and I look forward to both giving and receiving more support from you all during 2007.
Time to get going again.
