Wednesday 13 June 2007 - Bracknell Forest Five

From the previous entry:
Sometimes you get away with it, but usually you don't. This time, I seem to have got away with it.

I spoke too soon.

I wasn't the victim of an immediate collapse in resolve, more a victim of the Curse of Niguel. A couple of days after writing the above, I met up with the celebrated Nigel of this parish. Not for the first time, a pleasant rural plod with the great man presaged a precipitous and quite unforeseeable decline in my athletic career.

We were galloping heartily through Bracknell Forest, discussing the route of the Oxford 10K, when my right toe encountered a piece of rock embedded in the bumpy trail. Offering less resistance than the rock, the toe stayed where it was, nestled against the obstacle, while the other 99.95% of me carried on regardless. Result? A couple of traumatic seconds later and rather to my surprise, I find myself in a horizontal position, staring intently at a patch of brown earth.

It's the fourth time I can recall making an unscheduled dive to the ground while running. Once on a moonless night in Yate, when a sleeping policeman said hello. On the canal towpath in 2004, and again while plodding the Thames Path with the running club in 2005. Falling over while sober seems inexcusable, but four tumbles in 5.5 years probably isn't too bad.

My dignity tank shows a yellow warning light at the best of times, but a mid-sentence plunge pretty much siphons off the dregs. The only obvious, immediate physical consequences were a few grazes. Next day however, the toe was throbbing in protest, and I had to take another few days' rest. Then came a trip to Ireland with work. My bag was swollen with running paraphernalia but it never emerged. Perhaps I could have tried harder to squeeze out a run. Instead, the Guinness and the football won the day. Ah well, it happens. Returned home last weekend and opted to potter in the garden rather than plod the mean streets of rural West Berkshire.

Last night I finally resurrected myself by joining up with the local running club. I knew this would be a tough experience, and it was. Despite sticking with the slow group, I found the 4½ undulating miles pretty hellish.

Tonight I returned to the scene of my downfall. The Bracknell Forest Five is one of life's nice races. It's such a gentle affair, with something of a Midsummer Night's Dream quality about it all. Truly captivating. You follow a soft, springy track meandering through dense, fairytale woods. My GPS watch didn't like it much, but the rest of us were well satisfied.

Given that I work just ten minutes drive away, it was inevitable that I was very nearly late for the start. Distinct nightmare memories of the Fleet Half in 2002 hung in the air as I parked haphazardly at the Look Out, and sprinted through the woods in the wake of a couple of distant stragglers.

I made it to the start a minute or so before the hooter, just in time to find Nigel and have a quick natter. "Right", he said, "I'll wait for you at the finish", and vanished into the crowd of runners in front of us. I reflected that his remark had been presumptuous. Perhaps I'd spent a fortnight at the Gebresalassie Training School. But I hadn't, and after a heavily panted first half mile, during which almost the entire field had evaporated from forward view, I ruefully accepted that it was indeed fairly possible that this time he may just edge in ahead of me.

This was a hard race for me. A revealing remark, as all the indicators seemed to point in the other direction. For a start, it was short. And almost dead flat, apart from a one-minute hill bang in the middle. Even the weather conditions were perfect: a mild to warm evening underneath, but cooled by a pleasant, delicate rain. It should have been a breeze. Should have been, but wasn't. And Nigel did indeed edge home — 11 minutes ahead of me.

I was struck by just how easily and rapidly I can now lose fitness (or my version of fitness). After feeling better than I have done for well over a year, I now find that just a couple of weeks of inactivity feels like an absence of months.

But it's OK. In fact it's good. It's good because I can now see what I'm really up against. Better to discover it now than further down the line. My big autumn target is the Dublin Marathon on October 29. The standard 18 week training plan starts the week after next. I've got 10 days or so to ease myself back to where I was a month ago. It's a final warning, and it's come at the perfect time.

A decent longish run at the weekend, and I'll be right back on track.

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Monday 18 June 2007

More toe trouble, just as I head into the final week of 'training for training'. Yep, a week today the 18 week road to Dublin starts.

I had a good long run scheduled for yesterday but it didn't quite come off. I managed 4 miles round the block in the morning, before gardening duty beckoned. Early evening, I managed to drop a paving slab on my left big toe, neatly balancing the whack I gave his counterpart recently. It was painful at the time, but that's now given way to mere tenderness. The swelling has gone, and thankfully, nothing is broken apart from my spirit.

Well, that's how I felt last night, when the frustration of not being able to get going properly threatened to overwhelm me. So I got mildly drunk instead. Most unlike me.

The garden is as good a workout as any I know. First I mowed the 'lawn' at the back with iPod at full throttle. By strange coincidence it shuffled out a quartet of great Canadians at the start: Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Gordon Lightfoot, and the renascent Joni Mitchell. Perhaps Gordon hasn't endured too well, but the others will always be personal musical giants. I get the urge for going, but I never seem to go. I hum this tune most nights as I sit on the loo before bed, reading Moneyweek.

It reminded me of one of the greatest gigs I ever went to, at Wembley Stadium in 1974. Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. It was only when I came across this old poster on the web that I remembered that The Band appeared. Or did they? They must have done, but I don't remember them. Without Dylan, I'm afraid they left no mark on me. But the others did. I remember a long set from Joni and her band, then individual performances from David Crosby, Steve Stills, Graham Nash and Neil Young, then a composite CSNY set, then a "CSNY & Mitchell" set. If you like that kinda thing, it was the gig of a lifetime.

But my track du jardin popped up just as I was finishing up my lawn-mowing. The Doors, andRiders On The Storm. Haven't heard it for quite a while. As always, it convinced me that it was raining heavily, even though I was outside at the time, in the sunshine, wearing teeshirt and shorts.

I dispensed with the iPod after this, and dug two holes to accommodate a Gunnera Manicata and a pear tree that had languished in a pot for two years. I was its jailer, which made me feel bad, but also, now its liberator. Once planted, the tree didn't know whether to thump or embrace me. Like me sometimes, it seemed paralysed by indecision, and decided to do nothing at all. It just sort of stood there, looking rather sheepish at being the centre of attention. An endearing characteristic for a tree.

Then it was time to cart about 40 slabs from the front garden to the back. Hauling granite slabs on a sack trolley down a long gravel driveway is not to be recommended. I leant the final one against a fence and stepped back for a breather. The slab seemed to regard this an opportunity to escape, and casually flopped into a horizontal position, coming to rest on my toe. "Owch", I murmured to myself.

The upside was that it meant the end of my gardening session. So I hobbled indoors, had a shower and changed, then went to the pub. I won't be doing any running for a couple of days, so I may as well take advantage of the situation, I thought.

So I spent the evening consuming London Pride and watching Real Madrid win La Liga, giving David Beckham the sort of send-off he seemed unlikely to receive just a few months ago when told he'd never play for the club again. He's become something of a hero again to most people. Or at least an admired person. No one believes me when I say this but I was the only non-Manchester-United-supporting person in England who didn't vilify him after the World Cup in 1998. The treatment he received in the year that followed was embarrassing to witness. His offence had been trivial, and the punishment he received, both on the field at the time, and during the next season, was hugely disproportionate. But as we know, he reinvented himself, and now we all like each other again.

Talking of reinvention, I'm mindful that my own has suffered a small puncture since the Oxford 10K. I prefer to blame bad luck over bad judgement, though it must be conceded that in my self-flagellatory world, these two afflictions tend to be two sides of the same coin.

Anyway, don't panic. I said DON'T PANIC!! Everything will fall perfectly into place again very shortly. My plan for the year ahead is still very much alive and getting a kicking.

Or it would be if it wasn't for this toe.

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Thursday 21 June 2007

No running on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. Overdid the cheeky nebbiolo on the first evenings. Naughty I know, but be reasonable -- I needed something to wash down the Himalayan plates of cheese, nuts and olives. High-fat Heaven. I chomped and glugged for England, and wondered whether to blame or thank my scarlet toe.

Then yesterday came, as it always must, and it was time to act. So I sentenced myself to 3 hours gardening, and grimly dug in. I could feel the rich red nectar from Alba re-emerging through the pores on my scalp. But at the end of it, it was hard to be unhappy, though I did try. It was good to have done the work, but even better to have done it without complaint from Toe II.

It meant that this morning I could get up early, strap myself into my running shoes and get out there.

With so little running recently, I was dreading it. I got up at 6:30 but didn't leave the house for an hour and a half. In that time I mooched around, eating a banana very slowly and checking my share prices.

I seem to have got quite keen on financial planning again recently. I go through phases. My current big thing is the High Yield Portfolio strategy. Hmm. I now have to ask myself just how interested people will be to read about the HYP. Should I take the risk? On this occasion, I'll take a rain-check. If I get an email urging me to reveal all, I'll do so.

It's hard to recall feeling so unenthusiastic about a run. But as (nearly) always, once I was out in the real world, slaloming my way round clumps of smirking schoolkids, it really wasn't so bad. After half a mile, I knew I'd be OK. Both toes kept quiet, and I was moving along at an acceptable pace. That said, it's not so much the speed in these situations, as much as the bounce factor. The more leaden and trudge-ational I feel, the worse it is, and the more likely I'll have to stop for a breather. The opposite is a kind of buoyancy and self-confidence. I can't say there was no vestige of trudge this morning, but in the circumstances, I felt pretty bouncy and strong. Another one of these, plus a proper long run at the weekend, and I'll feel good going into Week One of mara-training next week.

I've been having anxious moments about the Dorney 10K in nine days time. I was confidently assuming that I could have a good crack at a 10K PB, but it seems unlikely now. Perhaps more serious, I'd found the perfect pub for a spot of lunch on what will be my 50th birthday: the Palmers Arms. Local, really good food, nice beer garden and a decent pint of bitter. What more does a 50 year old bloke need? We even test-drove it a couple of weeks ago. But I now find it's closed for a private party that day. [Profound sigh.]

It may not matter, because I'm not entirely sure that anyone else will turn up. I'd best dash off a few emails.

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Friday 22 June 2007

It's good to be back in the groove. Worked from home today, so had the chance to get out his afternoon for 6.44 miles in the rain.

I left home with no idea where I was headed, or how long I was going to be. I needed some sort of boundary, so before I left, I trapped a huge potato and manhandled it into the oven. It meant I wouldn't be tempted to get carried away and run twenty miles unless I wanted to return home to the sight of a caravan of fire engines and thousands of horrified villagers fleeing for their lives.

So I chugged up to the crossroads, a bruised young spirit in search of the devil. If you've not heard the story, the young Robert Johnson apparently upset the great old bluesman Son House in some juke joint near Clarksdale, Mississippi, in around 1930. Son House ridiculed his basic guitar style, and Johnson vanished for a while, returning as a virtuoso blues player and singer. What happened in the intervening period? The tale is that Johnson met the devil at the crossroads — as you do — and sold his soul in exchange for becoming a great bluesman. There is an alternative theory. I note that one controversial author attributes his improvement to "a year of intensive practice". Naaah. It wouldn't seem quite the same, somehow.

I'm one of the many who've stood at the crossroads of Highways 61 and 49 in Clarksdale and pondered the matter. I'd hate to think I'd wasted my time. In time-honoured Mississippi bluesman style, Johnson died aged 27 after drinking a bottle of whisky laced with strychnine, following an altercation over a married woman.

Anyway, so I'm approaching the village crossroads with the Hellhounds On My Trail, wondering whether to sell my soul to the deer park and wood in the north, or to the bird lake and canal in the south....

The bird lake and canal won out, I suspect because it meant I avoided the bus stop, which in turn meant I avoided running through the herd of grunting schoolkids gorging on greasy Co-op sausage rolls, and spoiling for a spot of old-person-disparagement.

A mile later, I was at the lake. I'd been here a couple of Sundays ago, releasing the coot with the dodgy leg. We'd found it in the corner of the garden, limping disconsolately round the pond. There was something clearly wrong with its leg, but when we approached, it flapped away and skulked in the compost heap. You can't imagine how exciting this was to urbanites like us. What should we do? In the end, we rang the RSPCA for advice and they said they'd send someone round. "Just pop it in a box for us", was the final instruction before the nice man hung up.

Eh? Pop it in a box? Easier said than done. Half an hour later, we'd given up the wild coot chase. In another explosion of feathers and sqwawking, it had vanished into a massive laurel bush and would probably never be seen again. But then the RSPCA lady turned up and said something along the lines of "leave this to me", and similarly disappeared into the dense bush. I half expected Archie "Moonlight" Graham to step back out, fifty years younger. But instead we got the same lady, a little more red-faced than heretofore, clutching a compliant coot by the scruff of the neck.

The prognosis was good, so I had the rare experience of travelling in an RSPCA van down to the local wildlife lake. Crikey, if you think a student's bedroom is smelly, you need to travel in one of these things. I didn't like to ask what was rustling and groaning in another cage behind my head, but whatever it was, it smelt bad. Whatever it was, the coot was back there with it. After being chased round a garden by two hollering humans for half an hour, then plucked from the heart of a bush by a plump lady in uniform, and thrust into a box in the back of a van, it must have been saying its prayers and thinking: "Man, I'm going for a burton here, and no mistake."

But instead we took it to the lake and released it. How nice to see it swimming away, glancing back at us a couple of times to make sure this was really happening. "Must have died and gone to heaven", it seemed to be thinking.

I took a seat in my inner multiscreen and replayed these happy scenes once more this afternoon, as I plodded round the lake. I was hoping to see a bar-tailed godwit, and I may well have done, but I've no idea what a bar-tailed godwit looks like, so I'll never know.

A mile later, as I headed off towards the canal, the rain started. But this is summer rain, so it's OK.

I had my hair cut today. Paula, my exceptionally talented hairdresser, was confiding in me that she'd like to start running but didn't fancy having to do it in the rain. I was explaining how liberating and how anarchic it is to run, and that running in the rain and the cold, semi-naked, while everyone around you is stressed and anxious and coated in a dozen layers of cloth and plastic and leather, strangely confused and directionless, like nicely wrapped Christmas presents with no delivery instructions, is to start to truly understand how modern life removes us from the natural world of which we are a part. By stripping all that stuff away, we reveal ourselves to the world, and the world in turn reveals itself to us. Running illuminates the gulf between the freedom we think we have, and the actually have. It's there for the taking. Suddenly exposed, like a burglar at the end of a torch-beam, we're shown the target and the direction to go in.

At least, I told Paula that running in the rain is fun, which I think amounts to the same thing. The other stuff is what it led me to think as I skipped through the long grass of a neglected field, and on down the towpath.

It continued raining, and I continued running. I began to fantasise about the baked potato that awaited me. Hot molten butter and mustard, perhaps some tuna or egg mayo, and a thick sprinkling of coarse-ground pepper. Do other runners think about food? I pretend I get all philosophical when I run. But really, it's food, food, food.

Listened to most of an episode of Phedippidations. First time in a while. But I gave up halfway through, when he launched into a long preachy bit about how great the American army is, and how he'd be proud of his teenage son if he joined up. Oh shut up Steve, I'm not interested. So I switched to shuffle mode and for the remaining half hour filled my head with the Beatles, John Martyn, REM, and some contemplative John Surman. Track du Jour was going to be Ticket To Ride for its irrepressible early-Beatles joie de vivre, but just as I was crunching up the gravel drive of home, Joni Mitchell and Little Green nipped in to snatch the title. Its multi-layered melancholy overwhelmed me, just as I was entering that slightly delicate, vulnerable post-run mode.

But back onto a more manly agenda: after nearly seven damp miles, I couldn't wait to get my teeth into some carbohydrate. Threw open the kitchen door, and waited for my nostrils to fill with rich, tempting roasted-potato fumes.

But none came. Eh?

I'd forgotten to turn the bastard oven on.

You can run, you can run, tell my good friend Willie Brown.
You can run, you can run, tell my good friend Willie Brown.
Now I’m standing at them crossroads, and I believe I’m sinking down.

They say that "the blues ain't nothin' but a good man feelin' bad", and for a moment or two, I felt bad. But then I resolved not to let an unexpectedly uncooked tuber come between me and happiness.

After the on-off regime of the past three weeks, this was a good distance to get under my belt again, and I'll aim to do something similar on Sunday. If that goes well, that's it. I can declare myself ready and waiting for the start of marathon training next week.

Hurrah!

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Sunday 24 June 2007

Here's a new one.

Today, a kilometre into my afternoon jaunt, as I ran past a new gypsy encampment, four dogs ran out and surrounded me, barking angrily. I tried walking slowly away, and one of them, a pathetic Jack Russell, took the opportunity to sink its teeth into my ankle. First time I've had dog trouble since we moved here in 2002.

What's a man to do? I didn't fancy marching into the camp to complain, and no one would have admitted owning the dog in any case.

It was quite a nasty nip — broke the skin and left a bloody patch on my sock. Nothing for it but to limp onwards. A half mile later I was able to crank up again into a jog, but it wasn't comfortable. It didn't help that the route I took led me through an unkempt field. The long straggly grass was dripping with two days' rain, and underfoot was soft and muddy. Miserable. I'd planned on at least 6 or 7 miles but I turned off early and got back in about 4½.

After a shower and some medical attention from Nurse M, I called the police who were surprisingly helpful, and took it all pretty seriously. Would I recognise the dog again? Would I be willing to visit the travellers' camp and try to find the dog? Hmm. The idea of walking round the camp with a couple of uniformed police in tow, demanding to see their dogs didn't fill me with enthusiasm. I'm willing to do my civic duty but the reality is that we'd have got no co-operation, and even if I was certain I'd spotted the culpable canine, I've no doubt that the owner (if anyone would admit to owning it) would deny that such an incident was possible. It would be my growl against his.

So it wasn't the send-off I was looking for, a day before Week One proper of marathon training starts, but at least it was memorable.

A couple of instructions to self:

- Do long runs early. Whatever the distance, aim to be back by noon.
- Don't overdo breakfast and end up flopping about for hours.
- Don't over-prepare for a long run. The more 'right' I try to get things, the more certain it seems that something will go wrong.

It's useful to don my philosophical cap at times like this. There are only so many bad runs available to a chap, and it's good to get a couple out of the way at this stage, leaving the way clear for four months of trouble-free weekend loping.

And today's Track du Jour? Towards the end of the fitful run, sandwiched between Hendrix's Bold As Love and Franz Ferdinand, came Judy Garland and Somewhere Over The Rainbow.

That'll do nicely.

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Monday 25 June 2007

How do you get to Dublin? Well I wouldn't start from here, as the old joke goes. But too bad. It's where I am.

I've mentioned several times that this week marks the beginning of the traditional 4½ month marathon schedule. And yet... what schedule?

You see, I don't yet have one. Perhaps I'll never have one.

It's one of the things that changes as you accumulate marathons. It's not complacency. Just familiarity. Even a sense of comfort. You know what you have to do. I know what I have to do.

Trouble is, I've always known what I have to do. I've simply never actually done it before. I get waylaid by drifting focus, by periodic boozy weekends, by inertia, by lapses in sensible eating, and by occasional injury.

Hal Higdon, in his Marathon - The Ultimate Training Guide puts it like this:

To become a successful runner/marathoner, you need to: (1) follow a proper diet, (2) eliminate extra body fat, (3) refrain from smoking and avoid heavy drinking, (4) get adequate amounts of sleep and (5) exercise regularly.

I reckon I score an average of half a point for each of those. Typically, while going through marathon training:

— I eat perfectly for most of the time, and like a pig on the brink of starvation for the remainder
— I always lose weight, but changing from obese to merely fat isn't good enough
— I don't smoke (gave up in 1995). I don't drink alcohol with any frequency, but when I do, I tend to go about the task with disproportionate gusto
— I try to get enough sleep. I'm usually in bed by midnight, but never manage to get my eight hours. Something wakes me between 5:30 and 6:00. I think it's the elderly earwig that's been gnawing at my brain since 1974
— I exercise regularly during a training schedule, of course, but I rarely manage to complete a week with all boxes ticked. I miss midweekers here and there, or end up turning in a curtailed weekend long run.

It looks like I've been applying about 50% effort, which surely explains why I've rarely hit my targets. It's a recursive process: not hitting targets leads to low expectations and a loss of motivation. This killer combination guarantees failure.

It's unrealistic to expect a full house. At some point during a four or five month marathon training spell you're certain to come up against social events, celebratory dinners, unavoidably late nights, disruptions to your schedule from travel or work commitments. The occasional injury, or simple, honest fatigue.

A perfect 5/5 is probably undesirable too. There has to be a trade-off. Some judicious belt-loosening can be therapeutic. Yet I hesitate as I say that — I know all too well that this is where the aspirant marathon runner's Bermuda triangle is found. That stretch of uncharted sea where good intention meets indiscipline. It's not a battle I've won before, but this time I must.

Hal's list is good as far as it goes, but it isn't quite enough. It deals only with the body, and not the mind. I think they carry equal weight, each half of that equation simultaneously feeding and draining the other. It's a complex marriage, but you have to make it work. And more. I may have made it function but it's never bloomed, and I think this is where the secret lies. It's the difference between running a business that survives, and a business that flourishes. Up till now I've managed to keep the taxman at bay. I've invested a lot, but not especially wisely. I've worked hard but not hard enough. The shareholders have been patient, if bemused (and how lucky I was to have found them). But it's time to pay that dividend, or they'll be off.

Today I followed tradition, and took Day One as a rest day. No mileage beyond a stroll round the corner to the medical centre, for a post-dog-bite tetanus jab.

My task this evening is to rest.

Tomorrow I run.

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Tuesday 26 June 2007

And they're off...

A 4.62 mile outing with the local running club this evening gets the invisible schedule underway. A strangely gentle affair. A couple of runners were coming back from injury, so we ran slowly to ensure their smooth transition from one sort of pain to another.

The pace gave me a rare chance to enjoy the run, instead of being yanked from my comfort zone and cudgelled to the ground. The medicinal benefit is normally a good enough reason to turn up, with the sociable bits sprinkled on top like small flakes of chocolate. But I don't enjoy these runs till I've finished them, and am back in my car, separated from the world by steamed-up windows. Tonight was different. It was like a warm-up run: some mild jogging interspersed with the odd minute of walking, before we finally stepped up the pace for the final mile.

And of course it is a warm-up run. I'm aiming to do at least 500 miles between now and the finish line in Dublin's Merrion Square, and tonight I crossed off around 0.9% of that target. My real destination is Boyleston Street and Boston, next April, but first things first. I can't allow myself to get too carried away by the thought of Boston. If I focus my attention on the far hurdle, I know what's likely to happen when the closer ones arrive.

Good news this evening that Sweder will be able to make it to Dorney for my celebratory 10K on Saturday. I don't yet know if this occasion will be a restrained luncheon and early departure, or if it will be just the rim of a deep black hole: the start of a collapse into a profoundly lost weekend.

I'd happily settle for either.

The good news is that my weekend long run (albeit a mere six miles for this first one), will be safely tucked up in bed by the time the festivities start.

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Wednesday 27 June 2007

Something old, something new.

This evening I took to the hills. Or to the hill. One hill, but consumed, sicked up and re-eaten four times.

Dublin and Boston are not flat races, so I have to get used to the undulant way. Besides which, hill training will, they say, transform me into a herculean athlete at long last. It's a good thing to do, regardless of hilly races to come. It's part of my plan to mix things up a bit.

I grumble that West Berkshire is flat, but it isn't really. We don't have the craggy monsters of Yorkshire and Cumbria or the lesser, but still formidable, climbs of Sussex and Surrey, but there are enough ascents round here to satisfy the runner. There's one local road in particular made up of three or four good sized hills in rapid succession. Struggling through those 1½ or so miles is quite a workout. The only reason I've not done it more often is that it's a narrow, twisty, busy road with no pavement. I'd say the life expectancy of a regular runner on this road wouldn't be too high. Around a fortnight.

But I did once discover an overgrown bridle path off this road, leading to a rarely used steep hill, and this is where I headed this evening. According to my GPS watch, the hill is around a fifth of a mile. Enough for hill reps. I struggled up and down four times, which is OK for a first session. Next time I'll add a rep. Next time? Yes, the plan is to do this once a week.

A couple of days ago I spring-cleaned my iPod playlist. Out with most of the old, and replaced with another tranche of... mostly old. I was glad I'd retained Purple Haze. I needed it on the third hill. And I was delighted to learn how neatly the Kaiser Chiefs' I Predict a Riot fell in with my pace. But tonight's track du jour was Soft Cell's iconic cover of Tainted Love. From an era that most of us old gits in the RC community ignore, but one I have many fond memories of.

When you're happily married, as I am, it doesn't seem to be the done thing to mention ex-girlfriends. But it's hard to hear Tainted Love without wondering what became of Jane, my other half for around 7 years in the eighties. It was an important era for me. University, extended travels in India, wine trade, settling back in London with my first mortgage, Thatcher, Ken Livingstone's GLC parties... Exciting and dynamic times, all experienced with Jane. When I hear Tainted Love, I think of those late-night student union discos and blottotastic parties. She'd once met the band, and would often mention the fact to bystanders when this song appeared. It's very eighties, and still thrills me the way it did when churned out at throbbing disco volume.

Back then, I couldn't have thought that 25 or so years later, I'd be listening to the song on a wafer of an MP3 player as I willingly trotted up and down a hill. 'Joggers' were little more than freaks of nature to me in those days.

It's fun, but it's sad, to have these ancient, flickering episodes involuntarily replayed in one's mind.

More memory fodder of a less personal sort earlier in the day, when the credits finally stopped rolling on Tony Blair's premiership, and the new chap, fellow by the name of Brown, stepped in. Blair has been an extraordinary, though far from perfect, prime minister. Brown promises us steadfastness, and a more traditional captaincy. It seems we've had enough of the Blair experiment. It was spectacular and entertaining, but like all theatre, it's no substitute for the real world.

Brown In, BBC

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Friday 29 June 2007

If a marathon is the top of my distance scale, the lowest is the humble 3-miler. It was my first ever target, back in 2001, and as I've mentioned more than once, it took me 8 months to reach it. It's also the shortest run in the Hal Higdon training plans. His Novice schedule begins with a midweek of 3 x 3 milers, and an initial 'long run' of 6 miles.

Today I turned in the easiest of 3 milers just to loosen up a little before the race tomorrow. I should have done it yesterday, but a couple of nights of reduced sleep had left me feeling tired and spaced out. I listened to my body, and my body said "No".

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Saturday 30 June 2007 - Dorney Dash 10K

(Written Sunday 1 July 2007)

There's nothing quite like a rainy race to wash down the first fifty years.

The Oxford 10K last month broke a long sequence of races run in filthy conditions, but the Dorney Dash 10K got us back on track. The steady drizzle leading up to the start suddenly became a hefty deluge just as the hooter went. For the next hour we were splattered with varying strains of rain, but still managed to squeeze some pleasure from the occasion.

I arrived with Kev, a mate of mine from distant schooldays, and we soon located Nigel, Ash and Chris. It was good to meet up with Moyleman, the legendary loper from the hills of East Sussex.

The race was generally well organised, but there were two minor complaints. One was the Almeria syndrome: no start line. We heard the hooter, we moved forward... and moved forward. Eventually started jogging, wondering when to start watches. But no start line appeared, and I eventually realised that this was like lying in bed, waiting for the day to start.

Ash and Nigel, evidently consumed by morbid curiosity, decided they wanted to witness the wretchedness of life at the back of a race field. They stayed with me all the way, Ash relating the odd saucy joke and music-biz anecdote, while Nigel uncharacteristically entertained us with a series of single entendres.

The second complaint was that the race numbers started to disintegrate in the rain — a shame, as I was rather proud of my number 50. I'd asked the organisers if I could have the number to mark my notable anniversary, and like good sports, they agreed. It's one of those small things that actually means quite a lot. So the first thanks of the day go to the Dorney organisers. But the number proved strangely unresilient in the rain. These things are usually pretty indestructible but halfway through, the pinholes tore, leaving the number flapping about on my chest. Does this matter? Well, it does a bit. Firstly, it meant I lost a few vital seconds in mid-race as I stopped to hurriedly re-pin it. And second, it means all the race and post-race photos show me with a wonky number, suggesting that I'm incapable of performing this simple task properly. (As it happens, this is one of M's pre-race duties.)

But there are worse things happening in this world. Compared to the fate of many, a misaligned race number shouldn't rank high on any misery list.

So we chugged on — through the billowing curtains of rain. The splits tell the tale. By my usual standards, a fast opening, slower middle, and fast finish. We decided to pick it up in the last two. I found it pretty tough, but I knew this was the best chance I'd had in a long time to get down below an hour for a 10K.

It's a sensation familiar to all racers, whatever their standard. The closing stages, when you're going for a time but are beginning to feel stretched and stressed. The conflicting emotions. I read something in a newspaper recently which resonated. A guy discussing his alcoholism. Described how he cracked his problem only when he began to think of himself not as a single person with a single voice, but as a sort of committee. It seemed to me a useful way of thinking, helping to rationalise some of the paradoxes we experience.

Dorney Splits

In my own head, during those last couple of kms, there was quite a hubbub. The committee was excited, and there seemed to be a consensus that we should be gunning for a PB here. But then a voice from the back cries out: "Nah! Why bother? It's not the end of the world for heaven's sake. It's your birthday. Just take it easy."

The committee shrinks back, and seems to say, "Er, OK". And for a few moments, I gave up.

Then another voice, from the side. "Eh? Come on, you won't get another chance for ages!" And another voice: "And it's your birthday! How good would that be?"

And so the discussion goes on.

The final kilometre was hard. I started to feel sorry for Ash and Nigel, running so far below their instinctive pace, they must have been considering taking a nap. I could imagine them thinking: "Wake me up when we've crossed the finish line". But they stuck with me, and kept the encouragement going. Being the person I am, I found this a little uncomfortable, though I greatly appreciated their help. One of my problems is that when people say nice things about me, I 'know that they are lying', and it embarrasses me. Also, I was trying hard to concentrate. But I think the true reason for my grumpiness was that I was struggling quite badly, and was forced to the very margins of my comfort and my patience.

But we made it. My GPS watch showed us reaching 10K in 59:40, but I always run to the course, and by the time I'd stopped my watch, a few yards over the line, it was showing 10.11 kilometres travelled in a few seconds over the hour. Still the fastest 10K I'd ever run. A month or two back, I resolved to break all my main PBs before the end of October, and then again by the end of April. This was the first to be crossed off.

Dorney, the venue for the 2012 Olympics rowing events, is an unusual race setting. The two laps of the lake strike some as dreary, but I like it. My most memorable runs seem to have been alongside water, whether lake, sea, canal, or river. Running and water seem to go together well. Some sort of confluence of nature takes place. The two things fit and feed off each other. And a long run alongside water is always a more contemplative occasion.

Walking back to the cars, we talked about the idea of forming a proper running club. There was general agreement that this was A Good Thing To Do. Watch out for developments.

And so, beneath a sky striped grey and black, while the rain held off for a few minutes, the five of us shared a bottle of Champagne and reflected on an enjoyable race. I'll aim to be back next year.

Time to hit the pub. Our first choice, a genteel gastropub, the Palmers Arms in Dorney, was unavailable, so I decided to slide to the other end of the scale. The Watermans Arms in Eton is a good old backstreet boozer, what M calls "an old man's pub". Well, I'm an old man now, so it seemed quite apt.

We were joined by some other friends, and even my older brother came out of social retirement to attend. The carousing went on for another 12 hours or so, in Eton and back home, but I'll draw a discreet veil over the proceedings. In a case like this, we must protect the innocent.

At the age of 50, my own innocence is now well and truly shot. Still, I like that quotation from Abraham Lincoln: It's not the years in your life that matter. It's the life in your years. The discovery of running six years ago has changed the rules for me. I'm much fitter now than I was when I was half my age. I'd like to think that 10 years from now I'll be writing an entry describing the race (and PB) I did to mark my sixtieth, and I hope that some of the good friends I've made through this site will still be around too.

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