Thursday 4 January 2007

New Year resolutions? One of mine is to read more. I visited a bookshop in Windsor just before Christmas where I bought myself two armfuls of reading matter. These were then given to my wife so that she could solemnly hand them all back to me on Christmas morning.

It's how middle-aged bah-humbuggers like me do things.

I forgot to buy any Mark Twain though, as intended. Apart from Tom Sawyer, read as a 10 year old, all I've seen of Twain is quotations, but it's these quotations that have convinced me we should get reacquainted. I need some of that sagacity.

The latest corker of a Twainism I heard is:

"When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned."

On the running front the news, as always, is mixed -- which is at least better than being totally bad, as it seemed to be a few days ago.

On the negative side of the equation are two items: a deeply discouraging, stuttering plod on Tuesday evening. And the streaming head cold I somehow managed to conjure for myself yesterday.

Despite these disincentives, I forced myself out this afternoon. It was a rare opportunity to run in the daylight, albeit the half-hearted, overcast, wintry mid-afternoon version of daylight. But being able to see where I was putting my feet seemed to cheer me, and I managed nearly 4 miles without too much difficulty. I felt heavy and immobile, yes, and my pace never broke through the 11 minutes a mile barrier, but I didn't need any breaks, and perhaps most important, I felt no ankle twinges.

My only focus at the moment is the Almeria Half, now only 24 days away. Half of me is sufficiently stupid/positive to think this is plenty of time to knock myself into shape, lose a stone and develop thighs and calfs of iron, while rediscovering a never-actually-possessed Bambi-like agility.

The other half knows it's going to be a gruesome struggle up the Rambla, and through those long, lonesome, windblown final two miles along the seafront.

There was some talk about Sweder of this parish pacing me to a sub-2 hour half at Almeria, but it isn't going to happen. I'll drop in the usual aside here, that there's a difference between being negative and being realistic, and I'm not being negative. I need to be realistic about Almeria so that I can afford to be positive about races further along the calendar.

My aims are simple: to get round the course without finishing last, and to stay alive long enough to sup a few beers with my mates and talk gobbledigook half the damn night.

And after that...? Well, let's survive Almeria and its hangover first.

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Sunday 7 January 2007

On New Year's Day I was generous enough to treat my nephew to a trip to Vicarage Road for the Watford - Wigan match. It was of course a treat for me rather than him. Just before the game, he confided in me, admitting something that must be every parent/guardian's nightmare:

It seems he's tired of supporting Liverpool and Arsenal now, and has become...[you know what I'm going to say]... a Chelsea fan. Sacre Bleu! I nearly choked on my Mighty Giant Cheeseyburger. I was disgusted. And the news about his newfound loyalty to Chelsea was terrible as well.

Once I'd recovered, I placed an avuncular hand on his shoulder. "Actually", I said, "I have to say that Abramovitch has performed wonders since he's been at Chelsea."

The young lad looked pleased, until I explained: "Yep, to turn ninety percent of the country into Man United fans is an absolute miracle. Never thought I'd see the day when I'd be cheering on the reds every weekend."

I'd chosen Watford because it was the only localish Premiership game I could get tickets for at short notice. It also gave me the chance to check the progress of Danny "Man Mountain" Shittu whose move from QPR in the summer largely explains the plight of the Hoops. Feet are normally sweaty, but the foot of the Championship table is danker and smellier than most. In that division, you do at least feel as though you're clinging to the skirts of the big time. Below that level, you are nothing. A subterranean slug, creeping invisibly, barely sentient.

It was good to see the big man in action again. Indeed, it was good to see anything at all through the dense curtain of rain that hung over the ground for the entire first half, half time, and for 11 minutes of the second half. This was the moment chosen by the referee to abandon the game. Needless to say, the heavenly tap was swiftly turned off as the last ballboy left the park. Disappointing, but at least I wouldn't be astounded and terrorised again by the sight of Emile Heskey looming towards me through the misty torrent. I thought he'd retired, or even died, about ten years ago.

So almost half a season after my last live game, my appetite, nay hunger, hadn't been satisfied by this demi-contest. I won't be resuming my fortnightly trips to QPR for a while, I suspect. I'm a prisoner of conscience, making my own silent protest at the egregious chairman, Signor Paladini. But I know you won't want to intrude further into familial grief. Just take my word for it.

The absence of in-the-flesh footie means I've become more of an armchair fan than ever before. Since reluctantly paying the Murdoch shilling a few weeks ago, I haven't wanted for live matches on the TV. Indeed, I can report with some embarrassment that I seem to measure my life by the next piece of live action.

There are exceptions to this tendency. Yesterday lunchtime for instance, I reasoned that a 4 mile run in cold, torrential rain was marginally preferable to Tamworth v Norwich in the FA Cup. So off I went.

People gazed at me -- partly in admiration, partly in fear. The distance wasn't set in advance. I decided to run my routine round-the-block plod in reverse, taking me first through the ancient deer park that always cheers me as I plunge through the final anguished stretch, and then onto the maze-like narrow lanes that normally witness my desultory first couple of miles. The reason for this, and the reason that I didn't know in advance how long the run would be, was that I'd decided to run to the first Caspian puddle (described a couple of entries ago) but then to double back rather than risk another ankle problem. The first lagoon would appear too soon if I went the usual way.

In the event, the turning point came at just a shade under 2 miles, giving me 4 in all. Just enough to get deeply damp and feel that I'd had a good loosener before today's longer effort.

The plan today was to get back in time for the Man United - Aston Villa game at two o'clock. Even played a spot of bad online chess against people from Australia (our very own Mid Life Crisis Man), Brunei, Spain and the USA. People over the age of 30, and sadly I'm now trapped forever in that decaying gulag, sometimes have to remind themselves that there was a pre-Internet world in which you couldn't easily have a game of chess and a chat with some Argentinian soldier as he sat in a bar in Buenos Aires one afternoon, while I chopped a few vegetables for supper here in Berkshire -- an experience I had a while ago.

Er, where did I just escape from? Ah yes, my office chair. There I sit, dressed in my running kit complete with cap and bastard-Garmin-bastard-Foreunner 305, playing chess. Suddenly I spring to my feet, realising I could be late for kick off if I didn't get going. "Spring to my feet"? Where do we get these expressions from? No, I sort of oozed out of the chair, slid slowly down the stairs and ended up outside the back door in a viscous puddle.

I did miss the kick-off. The half time whistle had just blown when I finally got back. I didn't mind. I'd planned on 5 or 6 miles to ease my way back into longer weekend running but managed around 8.5 instead. Good news.

I'd even implemented the plan (and it's not often you hear me use those words in that order), mentioned a while ago, to explore some new routes on longer weekend runs. I'd headed towards the canal as usual, but carried on past, ending up in a warren of narrow lanes which took me through a previously undiscovered hinterland of rolling farmland and mucky tracks. Everywhere were flashes of silvery water: the canal, but not as we know it. The locals, out walking their dogs, seemed friendly -- they all grinned broadly as I panted past.

It's good to run through your own territory like this, though I wonder how much longer I have to wait before being hit by a speeding car round here. The serpentine lanes are full of blind spots and high hedges that prevent the runner, and the driver, seeing each other till the last moment. Night is safer: I see their lights long before they see me. Daytime is always problematical, particularly when listening to loud, throbbing heavy metal through headphones.

I thought again about my running schedule for this year. I'm glad I've postponed the Two Oceans attempt. It's inconceivable that I could get there and get round before the cut-off time this year. Perhaps 2008 will be my year.

2007? I've three half marathons lined up so far: Almeria at the end of this month, Wokingham two weeks later, and Reading in March. I've toyed with the idea of liberating myself from marathons this year, but it's too early to make a decision. If I feel up to a spring marathon, Padua in April looks like the one, or I could wait, and build up slowly to a big autumn race. The three half marathons will decide things for me. I'll have a better idea of how the story will end once these three chapters are written.

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Wednesday 10 January 2007

In this fast-paced, ever-changing world in which we live, it's important to choose an opening sentence devoid of nugatory cliché.

Seventeen more RC Tip of the Day opportunities left till the Almeria Half. On the evidence of my 4 miler this evening, the pain of the post-Christmas, post-ankle recovery effort is becoming more bearable.

The church bells were clattering over the village as I left. Every Wednesday at 19:30, the local campanologists ring the changes. It's an optimistic sound, so a good time to get out and run. After yesterday morning's early lope around the block, I'd planned to have a day away from it today, but the rather grim weather forecast for tomorrow encouraged me to swap the days around. It was a dark evening, but clear and mild. Où sont les neiges d'antan?

It was also the first outing for a few weeks in which I could sense an improvement in my fitness. I'm still prodigiously over-larded, but there's nevertheless a kind of relative looseness, a keenness, a mild bounciness that appears now and then. I saw just its shadow this evening, so the real thing can't be too far behind.

Seventeen days isn't long enough to make the race anything but a struggle, but it's sufficient to burn off a few pounds and sharpen my attitude.

And develop a thirst. 2007 continues to be a grog-free zone.

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Monday 15 January 2007

This year, I reach my gritty half century. When considering long races for this most significant of years, I wondered about doing something around the end of June to mark the great day. It may seem paradoxical to celebrate my unscheduled longevity with an attempt to kill myself in public, but that's a discussion for another time. Anyway, my researches threw up this: that Finland is a cornucopia of bizarre, midsummer races. Wife-Carrying

If I wanted to do a marathon on my big day, the world could offer me a choice of two - both in Finland. There's the Arctic Circle Santa Claus Marathon -- one of those midnight sun jobs -- and another that defies pronunciation, never mind explanation.

Or I could wait 2 days and instead (but still in Finland) take part in the World Wife-Carrying Championships. At 253 metres, the course has its appeal, but the significant downside is concealed in the title of the event. You're expected to, let's say, take your spouse with you.

According to the publicity, "The competition is dominated by Estonian teams and that doesn't please the Finns, who have been wife-carrying for centuries."

The prize is your wife's weight in beer. This introduces a dilemma into the proceedings. Do you maximise your chances of winning by borrowing the more lissom wife of your neighbour (as the rules permit you to do)? This may increase your chance of winning, but you win less nectar in the process. Also, explaining to your own wife why you felt it necessary to borrow someone else's, may not be the most comfortable of tasks.

Returning to my own manor, the plan to use my weekly long run to explore the parts that other runs do not reach -- internally or externally -- bore further fruit yesterday. I'd had a mail from the local running club a few days ago, reminding me that their fortnightly jaunt through the woods was due to happen yesterday. I've semi-intended joining up with them here for ages, but a variety of inadequate reasons have prevented me.

Yesterday, I failed again, the inadequate reason this time being a more-than-adequate breakfast. I'd woken early. Something inside me couldn't ignore the call of the sun and the clear sky. I was up, and within minutes, fuelling on honey toast, banana and black coffee. For most runners not called Nigel, food is a contradiction -- both propellant and deterrent. You don't just need food, but food you digested 2 or 3 hours ago.

Once I'd eaten, the last thing I felt like doing was go running. When the urge finally returned, the running club would have been halfway through their 9:30 session. No matter, I decided to head off for the woods in question in any case, to take a sniff around some new territory.

The first mile or so followed my normal daily route, but instead of carrying on along the lanes, I took a path to the right, past a couple of farms and a field with a few horses in it. There was a sign on the gate which began: "POLITE ADVICE FOR HORSE THIEVES...". Inexplicably, I didn't stop to read the rest of the sign. It's been troubling me ever since.

Through a brief band of peaceful woodland before the Roar of a Wave That Could Drown the Whole World appeared, in the form of the M4 motorway. I turned up the volume on my iPod, and carried on over the footbridge, to Joni Mitchell's anticipatory Chelsea Morning. Left the traffic behind and carried on through another patch of trees, then out into an open field with one path straight ahead, pointing towards a large (by local standards) hill, and another shooting off to the left, following the fringe of the copse. A moment's hesitation, and I took the path to the left.

Running on grass is something I rarely do. Apart from my canal runs, where my feet trudge along a variety of surfaces -- but mainly cinders and gravel -- 95% of my running is on tarmac and concrete pavement. There isn't a lot of excess energy in my legs, and grass drags out what little there is. Yesterday quickly reminded me of this.

I was floundering from the start, and it got worse as the meadow became softer and wetter. Panting, I reached a stile and clambered over. I jumped off, expecting to bounce forward off the grass, but instead there was a sickening splash, and I found myself at anchor. For a moment I stopped where I was, staring down at my submerged feet. I glanced back over my shoulder. Too far to retrace my steps, and anyway, my feet were already drenched, so what did it matter? I carried on across another plashy field, skipping along some emotional high-wire, like a toddler who can't quite decide whether to giggle with glee, or bawl his head off.

By the time I reached the road, and crossed it, another half mile further on, I was past caring. My shoes squelched for England. Even my shorts were dripping. I headed up the steep hill for a hundred yards before reaching a bridleway that promised a zig-zag route to the summit. Even better, the track was dry. A mile or so further on and I found myself vanishing into a patch of forest and scrabbling up a precipitous ridge. The steepness was bad enough, but it was made worse by the soft wet mud and the gnarled tree roots that lay half concealed by it.

I know what you're thinking but remember, I am but a trotter of solid footpath and tarmacked lane. This was more like a commando assault course than a running route. 'Treacherous' doesn't do it justice. Every other step was like tossing a coin with the devil. Every other step saw my foot half vanish into the mud -- and I waited for the slither that would twist a knee or the hidden hole that would snap an ankle. Mercifully, it never happened.

Eventually, another half mile or so further, I emerged from the trees and reached dry, flat tarmac at last. I'd been a ship adrift, tossed and blown and buffeted and out of control -- but at last I'd found terra firma. And yet, in the words of Sweder, the indisputable king of mud maniacs, I found myself "grinning like a loon". Yes, I had to concede there was something... strangely exhilarating about mud and puddles and invisible branches that first whipped you across the face, then showered you with a gallon of rainwater before you'd even managed to finish your wince. Running can make you feel antiquated and haggard and debilitated; and almost the next moment, young and wholesome and weirdly unprocessed. Much of it is desperate and bloody, but just now and then the guards nip out for a cigarette, and you are left to liberate and to reinvent yourself.

But it was still good to have a breather by plodding along ten minutes of enamelled road. Five miles gone, and five more miles to go.

The return journey took me down the hill again but via another path. Here I remembered that scrambling down a steep, wet, muddy path is even more dangerous than scrambling up. And even more fun.

Through most of this run I was thinking, "If only people could hear the music, they'd understand". But of course that isn't true. I had my iPod on shuffle mode, so never knew what was going to pop up next, but as so often happens, what appears in your ear frequently seems to match that which appears in your sights.

At one point, as I broke through the woods again and emerged onto a long, curling ridge overlooking the valley that would take me home again, the instrumental break in Al Stewart's Year of the Cat slid through my head. It's a modest minute of music but on this sunlit wintry English morning, heading home, my work almost done, it seemed to have been composed for this very moment in this very life.

LISTEN: Instrumental bit from Year of the Cat

As I reached the footbridge across the roaring motorway, it was Hendrix and Purple Haze bursting through the headphones.

Through the final familiar mile, floppy and incarnadine, the charm of squelching wearing off, dog tired. But with 10.5 miles deposited in the training account, this had been a morning well spent.

Wearily, I crunched up the gravel drive to Tom Waits and Martha. I knew that one day soon I'd be back in Sulham Woods.

Next time, perhaps I'll take the wife.

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Wednesday 24 January 2007

Yesterday, and last Friday, I did what I should perhaps have been doing for some months -- went for a lunchtime run from the office.

Bracknell, a town of roundabouts that funnel traffic towards yet more roundabouts, doesn't have a great reputation as a picturesque location. A place to work rather than to live. And yet I've recently found that around this fallow, futuristic core, are fringes of civilisation -- and even quaintness.

On Friday I went out for a 3 mile run that accidentally became a 7 miler. Lost in Bracknell. Easily done, as one vista looks pretty much like the next. Yesterday I took a different route and found a long, rustic track leading to the pleasant village of Binfield -- a place in which I have some historical capital invested. About 25 years ago I was a regular visitor here. A friend lived in a cottage in the grounds of some huge house, and hosted regular weekend parties -- the sort of social events that gave the youth of the day a bad name. One day, when I no longer have to worry about keeping my job and my marriage intact, I'll probably write about them.

On my run, I was in danger of drifting into a spell of maudlin self-reflection, but my attention was arrested by a track-suited woman waiting at the end of a leafy lane. "Oh good", she said, "Someone to run with". And that was it. Saved from the torture of happy memories.

It turns out that Kim works for the same company as me, so no doubt we'll team up again.

That's it for now. The palm trees along the Almeria seafront are waving to me.

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Wednesday 31 January 2007 - Almeria Half Marathon

It's 10 months since I ran this distance: long enough to forget a few things I should have remembered, but too long to remember what it was I'd hoped to forget.

The race was as tough as any half I've done -- a comment not on the event (a straightforward town race with no gotchas worth wibbling over) -- but on my lardy unpreparedness.

The weekend began at 0325 on Saturday, more than half an hour before the alarm. Rather pitifully, I found myself lying awake, picking over recent troubling events at work, instead of looking ahead to a weekend in Spain with friends, and the prospect of a bracing Mediterranean race.

By four a.m. I'm muesli-munching in the kitchen, and calculating. Four days away from work. Four days and... four hours. A total of... one hundred hours. Almost to the minute, I have 100 hours off work.

A hundred hours. Fantastic. Let the sun obscure the clouds for once.

Mouth full of toothpaste: the phone rings. Time to go.

Almeria was just about sunny. We had a few minutes to enjoy the unfamiliar brightness before Antonio turned up. Much shaking of hands.

Breakfast isn't a sacrament in Spain, nor in many places beyond the English-speaking world, so finding something to eat before noon can be a stressful experience. This puts a strain on Antonio, whom we expect to fight a corner to which he owes no cultural loyalty.

It's one of the several reasons we love the guy -- and after some tense negotiation with the proprietor of a pleasant seafront café, Antonio managed to secure for us some ham and cheese toasties, and orange juice and coffee.

Pre-Race Kit

Then a spot of sight-seeing on a rocky promontory, a few miles out of town. Antonio made us line up for posed photos at every opportunity before good-natured album-cover anarchy broke out. There was a suggestion of bar-hopping with Carmen, the feisty English teacher we met last year, but it wasn't the right time. We needed rest, so we found the hotel and holed up there for a few hours. I was weary and spaced-out. The perfect mood for my book: The Road by Cormac McCarthy. As bleak a tale as you could ever, ever read. At six, carrying a wretched headful of its post-nuclear-holocaust prose-poetry, I shambled round the brightly-lit supermercado next door, gazing blankly at the primary coloured abundance of the vegetable aisles, as though seeing these items for the first time.

Just like last year, I bought bananas and clementines and lemon water and warm bread and a pot of olives, and returned for a spot of hotel room haute cuisine.

Antonio collected us at seven, and drove us to the stadium for the race registration. This should be a straightforward process. They find your name on a list, check it, and hand you a bag containing a teeshirt, ChampionChip, ticket for pasta meal, race number, magazine. But it never works like this. Instead we see a good deal of head-shaking, furtive consultation, and we make multiple visits to the same person to collect the items not given to us first time around. It's part of the event's charm. We grumble about it, but we wouldn't have it any other way.

We were joined for the the pre-race meal by some new friends, Paul and his wife (whose name I didn't catch, unfortunately). Paul's a decent standard club runner from Oldham, and was enthusiastic enough to ask Antonio if there were any races in May, when he'll be back in the area again.

As always, this last supper brimmed us with carbs and protein: cold pasta, chunks of bread, the legs of monster chicken, water by the litre. The runner's ambrosia. The chatter was of PBs to come -- though not alas from me. When I said that my two targets were to avoid finishing in last place, and to get in under 2 and a half hours, there was an air of general mirth around the table. No one actually said: "Ha ha! That's a good one!" But I got the impression that that's what the cheery laughter meant. Sorry guys, but I was being deadly serious.

We waddled back to the hotel. Before falling unconscious, I remembered the advice of the godlike Hal Higdon, conveyed via his earthly emissary, Pope Nigel. It seems that you don't just lay out your race kit; you should point your shoes towards the door. It's the detail that counts, and it's the detail I'd been overlooking all these years...

The Tryp Indalo is a great name for the official race hotel. The breakfast room was filled with fellow explorers. Mournful Kenyans loped around the room, eyeing the buffet with suspicion. Giacometti figures. I remembered a lifesize Giacometti encountered in Zurich, the day after the marathon. I have a photo somewhere... here you go... Giacometti And Me in Zurich

This time, we walked to the stadium for the start. The gathering grey-black clouds were ominous, but other signs were kinder: cool rather than cold, and dry. Ash vanished with our fleeces to the baggage drop, and re-emerged a half hour later, blinking in the light, his expressionless face indicating a post-traumatic daze. He explains why in his excellent reports here and here.

The Almeria start always provides a talking point. Last year it was the pain of the blustery, freezing rain. The year before it was the peculiar double start. The gun went and we launched ourselves, only to be brought to an unexpected halt again, a hundred yards up the road.

This year it was the start line that never was. The gun sounded, we moved forward, thumbs poised to start our watches as we passed over the chip mats. And we kept moving, kept jogging, but no chip mat came, no start line was crossed. A minute or two further, with confused runners looking round at each other, we realised the race had begun without us.

Running is a solitary activity. Always. Even in races, surrounded by hundreds of others. Races may even be more solitary than training. The close proximity of so many people doing the same thing forces the runner to confront, yet again, that question: why am I doing this?

I feel more reflective in a race than in training. It's partly that all these other people remind me that it's not a rare compulsion. This is comforting, but increases the fascination with the question. More than that, a race adds a dimension of relentlessness not found in training. I won't stop to walk unless there is really no choice. And as the grind factor increases, the question becomes more urgent, and the answer more complex. It's not that it has no answer, but too many answers, with each of them spawning more questions. It's this explosion of thoughts, the explanation's exponential fragmentation, that makes the question ever more unanswerable, and ever more compelling.

The first four or five miles were tolerable, but after this I struggled. Time for an inner pep talk. OK mate, you may be knackered, but you've eight more miles to go, so don't even think about it. You're going to feel a lot worse than this, so get used to it. You've been here many times before and you've got through it every single one of those times. Today we'll get through it again. And afterwards? Afterwards my friend, we will drink beer and eat heavy, sweet puddings to replenish the spirit.

Inspiration

The promise of alcohol and blunt carbohydrate pulled me through those eight miles, even though I knew the chances of acquiring a glistening mahogany pint of West Berkshire Brewery's Good Old Boy, here in Spain, or indeed anywhere outside West Berkshire, were small.

Up and down La Rambla a couple of times. Along to the end of the extended, wind-blown Avenida Maritimo. This stretch is long but it has its compensations. For those of us living far from the sea, the sight of the Mediterranean, and those waving palm trees, can be uplifting. Something happens. A sudden wistfulness that gnaws at my heart: threatening and consoling at the same time.

Out and back, out and back. All the time, confronted with the faster guys coming towards me, whistling past like missiles. After the gliding Kenyans and the best of the rest -- the muscular, athletic Spaniards, came the first of our lot: whippet Paul, head down, straining at the leash, face tomato-red and blotchy, gurning angrily, anxious, carrying some appalling burden I'd never experience. Ten or twelve minutes later, in a cloud of steam, Ash appears, scarlet and sweat-glistened, cooking in his clothes, but, in his often used phrase, grinning like a loon. Here's the long-limbed Nigel, rangy galloping strides, that characteristic, distant smile -- the man who knows too much. Antonio: intense, determined, rhythmic. Head up, eyes straight. This is a serious business. And Suzie. Relaxed, beaming, gentle gait, a runner who knows what she's doing; a runner at peace with herself.

All of us crossing and re-crossing those thresholds, picking up and peering at nuggets of self-doubt before tossing them over our shoulder and out of sight.

Twice I reached the roundabout at the end of the Avenida Maritimo, and twice I had the chance to measure how far I was from the back of the field. The first time, I counted eleven casualties behind me. The second time, just three. There was an elderly couple holding hands, and finally, some way behind, a plump young girl in a red, military sweatshirt, plodding along like her life depended on it. Immediately behind her, just a few feet away, were two police motorbikes with flashing lights, an ambulance, a transit van, and five hundred metres of honking traffic. I've never seen anything like it.

I overtook someone -- a girl dressed all in white -- two kilometres from the stadium. Through that long final stretch towards the stadium, I constantly expected her to float past me again, but she never did. The end of this race was always going to be grim, but it really shouldn't have been as hard as it was. It had become a marathon survival-shuffle, and it shouldn't have been.

Let's end the misery. How nice to hit that ramp and plunge down into the stadium to the finish line. I got home in 2:28, my slowest half marathon in 5 years.

The others were waiting to greet me -- thank you. They needn't have waited, but it meant a lot to me that they did.

The girl in white never appeared, so she must have dropped out in the final mile. The older couple arrived, still holding hands, still grinning. I wanted to clap in the final finisher, the girl who'd led the angry queue of traffic, but I missed her while I was collecting my fleece. But the records show that she finished. Beatriz Ramos Jorge, we salute you.

How good that post-race shower feels. How good to sink into that bath. How good to pull on a clean, sweat-free tee-shirt, glowing like a saint. And downstairs in the hotel bar, the glass of beer that isn't big enough, or brown enough, but it will do. By god, it will do.

Lunch this year was in a nicely-tiled seafront restaurant romantically entitled The Building. If you're Spanish, it probably sounds exotic. Jugs of beer arrived, then ham soup, a massive paella crawling with alarming crustaceans, and a slab of celestial cheesecake. This is what I'd spent 13 miles running towards. The annual trip to Almeria has many enjoyable moments, but the post-race meal is perhaps the best of the lot. The hard work is done; from now on in, it's wall-to-wall pleasure.

Another ritual had to be checked off the list -- the visit to Molly Malone's, Almeria's Irish bar. Now Irish bars that aren't in Ireland are, by definition, phoney, but it has to be said that Molly's in Almeria isn't even a phoney Irish bar. It's a Spanish bar that happens to sell draught Guinness in pint glasses. I can't think of any other concessions apart from the name. We'd hoped to catch some English football -- a staple of Irish bars across the world, but instead we watched a lacklustre Barcelona lose. And then we discover it wasn't Barca at all, but some other team playing in the same kit. How fitting to watch a bogus Barca in a bogus bar.

My shouted conversation with Suzie was real enough: in Canada, she runs in temperatures so low that her water bottle freezes. And I tried explaining the plot of Citizen Kane, but never quite got to the denouement because I thought I'd cry. (How pitiful is that?). We talked about marathons past and to come, like old soldiers ruminating on past battles.

A few beers further into early evening, the music gets just too loud for these old timers, so we clamber delicately into a cab back to the hotel to find the bar we went to last year. But there were too many decibels in the air there too, so we start walking the mile or so back towards the town. Another backstreet bar, another football match: this time it really is Barcelona, confirmed by an outrageous penalty decision to give them the win, shortly before the end.

Next item on the agenda was a place we visited the first year we were here. By now we were hungry again, so food was shouted up, and we moved onto the Rioja. And so it went on.

We talked a lot about this website, and compared ideas for how it could be developed. This was extremely useful for me, and I was pleased that people clearly felt a sense of shared ownership -- as they should. Without the contributions of people like Ash and Nigel, it wouldn't have evolved as it has. We decided on a number of changes that will start to appear shortly.

There was plenty more weekend left after this. More wine, more Guinness, more tapas, more running (for some), more conversation. But this report will close here. To learn everything, you'll have to join us there at the end of January 2008. Almeria has become a festival of running, of good food and wine, and good conversation. It's the chance to prise open one of the windows that winter nails shut, and to glimpse a little sunshine, some mountain scenery and the Mediterranean. It helps to pull us through.

Above all, it's a celebration of the friendship that running offers. No matter how slow, or how old, or how serious. Racing may be elitist by nature, but runners are democratic to the core. It's what the Almeria weekend stands for.

Almeria pictures

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