Friday 2 March 2007

They're already calling it the Race of the Century.

Scanning RW for likely local races last night, I happened across the Oxford "Town & Gown" 10K, May 20. Researching further, I glanced through last year's results as I usually do, to get an idea of how many take part, and how close to the back I'm likely to finish. And there I spotted a name I'd not seen in ten years -- Mark M-W. An old wine trade friend.

Twenty years ago, I worked with Mark in Wimbledon. The irresistible combination of testosterone and alcohol gave our friendship a competitive edge, and I instantly recalled a slurred conversation we'd had over a few glasses of Champagne after work one evening. He was bragging about his athletic prowess, to which I responded, somewhat disrespectfully, by guffawing loudly. "Right then," he said. "There's only one to settle this. I bet I could easily beat you in a running race."

Eh? I would have lit another cigarette and laughed again. The idea of doing anything more aerobic than walking to the pub at the end of the road had no meaning for me. "No problem," I said, with the swagger of a man who knew he'd never be called to account. "Anytime."

I'd not seen or heard from Mark in ten years. So this afternoon I made a few phone calls and tracked down his work number. Hmm. Still working in the wine business. Good. Probably still chucking down the claret, and being invited to far too many fine dinners. Even better news, from a competitive perspective, was that he was laid up at home with a ski-ing injury. He'll have to bottle out of it. The moral victory is mine.

So I called him at home. Yes, he was off work with a broken shoulder. "A shame, because I was going to challenge you to that race you suggested all those years ago".

"Which race?"

"The Oxford 10K".

Without hesitation, he said: "Yeah OK, I'll be there and I'll beat you..."

Oh.

At least I had the presence of mind to suggest he gives me a ten minute handicap. He did 51 minutes last year, nearly ten minutes faster than my 10K PB. Brighton in November, my first proper run in months, was a horrendous 70 minutes. But it's about time I had a proper challenge. It's all very well boasting about being a grinning back-of-the-field jogger, but if I'm to have any chance of lining up in a GB shirt at the London Olympics in 2012, I need to start taking my training up a gear. Oxford, scene of the first ever four-minute mile, could be about to witness another significant athletic landmark.

B-b-brring it on.

This afternoon I took my clothes off and ran up the road. It's been a while. I think I managed two brief lunchtime jogs in the week after Almeria, but since then, the only sweat I've produced has come from a heavy, 9-day cold. The most exercise? Probably the 10-minute wander down the Dock Road in Limerick in search of Dolan's, and its paradigm pint of Guinness.

Today wasn't pretty, but at least I did chalk up 3½ miles with only the briefest of walks halfway. I can't think of a truly strong and confident run since the early miles of the Zurich Marathon, 11 months ago. Come on, let's get that back.

A good start would be to shed a few more pounds. The previous anti-lard campaign began well enough last November/December, but it never recovered from the deft blow to its kidneys delivered by a gluttonous Christmas. As it writhed on the ground, groaning, along came Almeria to stamp on its nuts. Since Monday I've been saintly once again, chiselling away at the lard mountain with five frugivorous, low-carb days. Five pounds down, at least thirty more to go. Chocs away.

At least the weather is turning, with exercise coming more naturally. Maybe the bike will be out again this weekend, and those vegetable beds need digging over. Spring at last, and it's all waking up again.

One other thing. Who else knows about Phedippidations? Just me?

Steve Walker, otherwise known as SteveRunner (geddit?) produces a weekly podcast, Phedippidations, designed to be downloaded and listened to on your long run. I like this guy. Discovered him a few weeks ago, but he became submerged by my three weeks of slothful demotivation. Time to have another crack at the archive of 85 or so podcasts. It's where I first heard the Marnie Mueller verse I liked. Steve describes the podcast as "Thoughts, opinions observations, rambling diatribes composed during distance long runs". An arbitrary cocktail of earnest philosophy, gentle humour, occasionally bland music, and more -- all designed to keep you occupied and motivated and entertained. I doubt I'll manage to work my way through the entire back catalogue but if you want to give it a go, you'll find the main website here: www.steverunner.com and the podcasts here: www.steverunner.com/podcast.htm.

For a quick blast, here's a random episode I listened to this afternoon, and enjoyed. OK so he calls Alan Sillitoe "Alan Stiletto" but I'll cut him some slack on that one: Phedippidations 34 - Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner.

I tend to think he'd fit in pretty well at RunningCommentary. I'll drop him a line.

Enjoy, or otherwise.

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Wednesday 7 March 2007

Waking on a Saturday without a hangover is an unsettling experience. I needed an extra hour in bed while the nausea subsided.

More strangeness was to follow. Porridge-Spoonful-1 had just successfully taken off and was climbing steadily mouthward when the bastard phone rang.

Damn. The flight was nearing its destination. What to do? I had to think fast.

Only two people ring on Saturday morning: one is my wife's mother. She is, it need hardly be stated, wonderful, but at that very moment, let's face it, a dessert spoon groaning under the weight of raisiny porridge had an allure unmatched by any human being, or any mother-in-law.

The other serial-ringer is my very own wife, who sportingly feigns sleep as I slide out of bed and creak down the stairs, but who then calls me on the internal phone as soon as she calculates that the kettle must have boiled, to demand tea and the blood of two freshly-strangled oranges. Consequences follow if I don't co-operate.

Scared enough to abort the breakfast project, the spoon u-turns and crash lands. Farewell. I may be some time, says Captain Oats.

Reach for phone.

But instead of that familiar "Yoohoo! It's only me!" trilling down the line from Sussex, or the unwarranted grumpiness from Her Majesty Upstairs, it was a call from somewhere slightly further afield -- Tasmania.

Yes, it was the great Midlife Crisis Man himself, pulling off the information superhighway for a brief comfort break. The painting in the attic had sprung to life.

The shock subsided. Brass tacks were scattered everywhere, and all had to be got down to.

The news was good. The Galloway run-walk method is breathing new life into the ageing cadaverous dingo, leaving the Australian medical profession stammering apologetically. All will celebrate. It's called March for a reason. Everyone - back on the road. Now!

We discussed The Curious Case of Seafront Plodder in some depth, but our deliberations must remain confidential.

I seem to have invited myself over for the Ashes series in 2010, and the cultural exchange will be completed with the arrival of MLCM for the 2012 London Olympics.

Crikey. The Future. We look at the calendar and get excited about isolated patches, but these are just excursions on the bigger trip. It's all wondrous. Every tiny, unturned stone on that road. The holiday of a lifetime. I spend half my time thumbing through the brochures, dreaming of those warm and sunny days on Tomorrow Beach. The other half is consumed mooching round the past: some disgruntled phantom, trying to rearrange that which I know can never change.

I really should spend more time unwrapping the present.

But it's a bad time to tell myself that. This is a big nostalgia week, so as Prophet Bob decreed, let me forget about today until tomorrow. Forty years ago, something momentous happened.......

I'm there somewhere.

Downhill ever since, but that's life.

This weekend, at Loftus Road, at half-time, I'll be applauding the eight survivors.

Nine, if I include myself.

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Tuesday 13 March 2007

I've mentioned Mark Twain before, admitting that my admiration for him is derived not from a comprehensive reading of his works, but from arbitrary quotations spotted in other people's email signatures.

Here's the latest one:

A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.

I like that.

Money is something I think about too much. When I was a kid -- and I was a kid until 7½ years ago -- I worried about money because I didn't have any. Now that things are a little less fraught, I worry about how best to deploy the bit I have. It's one of the few problems that's solved -- or never exists in the first place -- by having children. Money is sucked up by a combination of their demands and your guilt. That's how it appears to this spectator.

I often wish I had kids. But there again, I know plenty of parents who often wish they had money.

As far as finances go, I assume nothing anymore. I've experienced two redundancies so far, and there's just the faintest whiff of another in the air. But frankly, the more I'm threatened, the less I care.

On the running front, I'm still feeling positive and renewed, even if I've not been out as much as I'd planned to be. Last week I managed two pleasant four-milers, and one evening I got home early enough to treat the fresh air to the pleasures of my push bike.

The weekend passed, untroubled by physical exertion. The emotions had a thorough workout however, as I made a rare visit to Loftus Road to acknowledge some of my boyhood heroes (see previous entry). More another time. I'm still throbbing.

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Sunday 18 March 2007

I've been quiet recently, but have a good excuse.

From time to time I mention writing a book. In fact, I've been mentioning it to someone or other for much of my adult life. There's been the odd false start: a few years ago I wrote a really terrible novel which fortunately, no sane person was willing to help me publish.

Then running happened, and I knew I really wanted to write about it. Running and writing are different creatures but they sit on the same rock. It's why this website exists. The plan was always to do something more substantial, and a couple of years ago I wrote a hefty chunk, offline, of a book-to-be, then stopped. I didn't know where to take it.

In Almeria this year, the subject appeared again, and I had, let's say, a frank discussion with Nigel, Ash and Suzie. Encouragement without indulgence. They got it right. Nigel suggested a format and a strategy. The format pretty much matched my own existing thoughts (with a couple of extras thrown in). I was grateful. It got me thinking. I resolved to get on with it.

And I sort of did. I re-read all my stuff and made some more notes in the air with the index finger of my left hand. Then I stopped -- as you do.

As I do.

Then last week I had a mail from my old pal Glaconman, mentioning the same topic. We had a brief correspondence and he said a couple of things that made me suddenly realise that it really could work. Now I know I will do it. There's no question.

I'm not being one of those annoying people who say: "Y'know, I really should write a book sometime". I've already written it. Perhaps I've written it several times over. What I've not done is organised it or talked to the people I need to talk to. A combination of Almeria and Glaconman has given me the strategy, and the motivation I need to follow it.

I don't want to be that bloke in the cartoon. The one reputedly created by the great Peter Cook. Two chaps at a cocktail party:

First Man: So, and what are you doing these days?

Second Man: Me? I'm writing a novel

First Man: Really? Neither am I

It's what I've been doing for the past week or so. I've done my research and I've been preparing my submission. In turn, it's helped clarify what my angle should be. The angle. It's been one of my hang-ups.

Essentially, the direction now is towards getting some support with what I have, rather than trying to create the perfect finished item. But I need to polish up what I've got, and this is where I've been recently.

I may just absent myself for a little while. I'll be around on the forum of course.

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Monday 19 March 2007

Every time I glanced through the window today, I felt smug about working from home. Who would want to venture out in that? The temperature bobbed around freezing all day, though the wind chill must have brought that down further. In the morning it rained heavily; in the afternoon, we had sleet and snow. By five-thirty, as I was winding down for the day, we were back to rain, while the windows rattled ever louder. Two or three decades ago I would have thrown another log on the fire. Nowadays we turn the central heating thermostat up a couple of notches. Not quite as satisfying.

It was at that precise point -- at the very peak of the tempest, and the very peak of my smug cosiness -- that a truly terrible thought began growing in my brain: why not go for a run?

Oh jesus, no.

Ten minutes later I opened the back door and stepped outside. Before I had time to lock the door behind me, I was back in again. For the first, and almost certainly the only time this winter, I was going to have to wear leggings. Not only that, but gloves too, were called upon to make their shocking, fluorescent-yellow seasonal debut. Yes, it really was that bad.

I'd almost forgotten that it could get like this. I seem to have insulated myself from it pretty well through the winter, mainly by experimenting with a revolutionary, minimalistic training schedule, specially formulated for the athlete with the fuller figure: the Lazy Bastard Plan.

Despite being unusually optimistic recently, I've done little running, concentrating my lifestyle-shaping efforts instead on eating three high-fat meals a day and getting profoundly drunk each evening. I think it's time I faced up to the truth: that this new weight-loss regime appears to have one or two worrying flaws. But I'm uncharacteristically keen at the moment, and a spot of enthusiasm is all that's needed to get sorted.

The angry weather may have done the cause a favour this evening. I'd planned on doing a run-walk session with some short runs and longer walks. But the sharp wind and the icy, horizontal rain didn't lend itself to such a laid-back plan. This wasn't ambling weather. It was still a run-walk, but I had to get a move on.

So why did I go out at all? Two reasons.

One was a post that appeared on the forum this afternoon from Ana, our newest diarist. She mentioned that her running group, in Spain, where she lives, had cancelled its run because it was raining. It reminded me yet again that running exists only at the junction of heaven and hell. If it's anywhere else it isn't the real thing. Trying to keep the hell out of running is like trying to ward off the wind with a stick. This isn't heroic self-sacrifice but something much cleverer. Runners know that demons will shrivel when embraced. You may not defeat them, but you learn to manage them. You can at least defeat the fear of them. Get out there and engage with whatever it is, internal or external, physical or spiritual, real or imagined, and watch the trepidation subside.

It's true that there's temporary inconvenience. When I first left the house this evening and felt the raw edge on that wind, I was mad at myself for having had such a great idea. A few minutes later I stepped in a puddle, and felt my shoe fill with freezing, gritty rainwater. Shit.

But it's easy to lose our sense of proportion. Nature is brutal and ruthless. We forget how cosseted we are. Imagine how fraught things must be for my tadpoles at the moment as they struggle for life. Not only do they have the current cold snap to deal with (and many won't survive it), but they'll soon have to get used to the daily visits from a pair of magpies who'll gobble up as many as they can reach. And we think that we have it bad?

The second reason for going out tonight was that I've been thinking recently about how I first managed to get into running: the ten-week schedule whose goal took me eight months to reach. Learning how to run for three miles without stopping was quite a saga. I'm not back at that stage, but I have regressed badly over the past year. It's true that I plodded round a half marathon only seven weeks ago. Maybe this should have filled my sails with gusts of self-confidence, but what it did instead was illuminate my chronic unfitness.

I'm pleased to have run 40-odd races, including five marathons, but I need to relearn some of the basics to help me reconnect with the electricity of running.

As well as retrieving all of that, I thought about the writing task, and saw that to help me describe my early experiences, it would help to relive them. It may be easy enough to re-experience the physical side because I haven't improved radically over the past five years. It's harder to reproduce the emotions. You can only ever lose your virginity once -- thank god.

So I ran this evening because I really didn't want to run this evening. It was that simple. Running is all about paradox. It's a celebration of all that is illogical. It helps you come to terms with the bigger stuff that won't make sense.

Longer term, I need a new or unfamiliar goal. Aiming for a longer distance isn't the answer for me just at the moment. It may be in the future, if ever I get into proper shape. The solution could be an autumn marathon. I've done only one, and that was five years ago, in Chicago. The experience is different from a spring race. An autumn marathon means summer training. Initially, I presumed this would be easier than the cold weather variety, but it isn't. A twenty mile training run on a hot day is nothing to feel wistful about. But of course, I'd plan it better next time, wouldn't I?

Wouldn't I?

Tomorrow I'll rest, but Wednesday morning early, I'll be out again on the mountainside in my sodden, sub-zero blanket. But please don't feel sorry for me. I'm the lucky one.

If you've sorrow to spare, think of my tadpoles. What's left of the poor blighters.

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Wednesday 21 March 2007

If I had a pound for every time I'd heard someone say: "If I had a pound for every time I'd heard someone say: 'If I had a pound for every time I'd heard someone say: "If I had a pound for every time I'd heard someone say: 'I'd like to be a rich man', I'd be a rich man", I'd be a rich man', I'd be a rich man", I definitely wouldn't be a rich man because I've never heard anyone say all that.

This flash of insight came to me at lunchtime, during my brief round-the-block 3½ miler. It's the sort of thing that appears to someone who likes words and docile computer programming. Is it diverting enough to put into a RunningCommentary entry? That was the question I asked myself just after I wrote the date, above.

Then I got so confused writing the first paragraph, that I could check it only by separating the arguments, which made me realise this might make an even more self-referential computer programmer's joke:

If I had a pound for every time I'd heard someone say
   (If I had a pound for every time I'd heard someone say
      (If I had a pound for every time I'd heard someone say
         (If I had a pound for every time I'd heard someone say: I'd like to be a computer programmer, I'd be a rich man)
      I'd be a rich man)
   I'd be a rich man)
I'd definitely not be a rich man, because I've never heard anyone say all that.

And then, seeing what had happened, it becomes:

If I had a pound for every time I'd heard someone say
  (If I had a pound for every time I'd heard someone say
     (If I had a pound for every time I'd heard someone say
        (If I had a pound for every time I'd heard someone say _
        I'd like to be a computer _
         programmer I'd _
         be a rich man) _
       I'd be a rich man)
      I'd be a rich man)
    I'd be able to
   buy a gun and
   shoot myself.

It is itself a metaphor for this enterprise. Start with a simple idea. Write it down and see it get a bit more interesting and complicated. Then a bit more. Then watch it disappear up a handy orifice.

Why do I never learn?

Anyway, the bulletin that the world has been waiting for: At seven o'clock this morning, with the temperature at one degree Celsius, I could be found at the end of the garden in my dressing gown and flip-flops, punching holes in the crust of ice on the pond. I felt like god. Or Superman. I could see the little things wriggling around beneath the ice, desperate for help. I could see the hope draining from them just as I arrived on the scene with my tent pole. At first, they must have thought the magpies had arrived. Then it got even worse than that. For them, it must have been reminiscent of a B movie, where you see the distorted face of your murderer through a sheet of glass, before the glass shatters, everything goes black, and a terrified scream is heard. There was a sense of "Oh god, that's all we bloody need" about their body language as I loomed over them. But once they understood my role in their universe, they were pretty OK about it.

The lunchtime run was pretty good. No walk breaks this time. Not fast of course, but steady. It's heartening to see how quickly the body remembers that it really can do this stuff. I overtogulated, which is a word I just made up. It means to put too many clothes on. I couldn't think of another. "Overdress" means something else. No casual observer would ever describe me as an overdressed runner. It has to be conceded that no casual observer would ever describe me as overtogulated, either, though that's just confusing matters.

I wore an undershirt for the first time in history. It came free with a consignment of apparel I once received. It was all a bit annoying. I wanted to buy some running caps, and found a cheap source of supply -- a mail-order sportswear company in the States. I decided to go with them because there was a special offer on. If I spent more than $30, they'd send me a free gift worth an additional $30. So I ordered six running caps from them. And guess what the free gift was? Yes, six running caps. I now have the largest collection of running caps in private ownership in the Home Counties.

Anyway, they also sent me this garment that they described as a base layer. It's really just a cotton vest for a four year old. But if you call it a cotton vest for a four year old, you can't sell it for more than £2. Call it a 'performance base layer' for runners however, and you can multiply the price five times. And then find that you have to give it away because no one is taken in by your description.

It was a bit weird running with a vest for a four year old, plus a long-sleeved top, plus a jacket. It cooked me, and I think it was this overheating, and the subsequent cranial braising, that created the thought with which I started.

But it was another few miles stashed away, so worth it.

Oh yes. Go here and sign up. If you're not sure who these guys are, check out their website. Amazing guys. I see them round the place a lot. Mick even joined our forum a while ago, but I think he felt we were a bit too eccentric, even for him.

Where could he have got that idea?

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Friday 23 March 2007

You know how sometimes you pop into Marks and Spencer to top up your Y-front collection, and come out with a suit and half a dozen shirts (and no Y-fronts...)? Same happened today on the running front. Went out for three miles and came back with seven. Encouraging.

I'm serious this time. Yes OK, I was serious last time, and the time before that. But I'm properly serious now. The weather's breaking, spring is close. Races start glowing on the calendar.

There's no April marathon to taunt me -- first time in four years. Thoughts are turning autumnwards, but I'll leave a decision for a while. Runners find it easier to enter races than to get to the start line. I'm no different, though my failures are more public than most.

So I'll shut up. But shutting up is hard to do, as someone almost sang. I've had some interesting thoughts about future challenges, but I'll wait awhile before bean-spilling, just in case.

A by-product of my refreshed ambition is the gym induction session I've booked for next week. I don't have many good excuses for not putting the effort in this time: it's in the basement of the building I work in.

Tip for British readers: The clocks go forward this weekend, so think about a run very late on Saturday night. As long as you're back after 1 a.m., when the clocks change, you can add an hour to this week's running time. Should get you out of that annoying long run on Sunday morning.

It was back to the canal today. First time in a while. Midweek, midday, with the towpath to myself, beats the weekend congestion. Saw hardly anyone. A smiling guy, double-dogged. Then a pensive, solitary youth in school uniform. What was his story, I wondered? But I knew. Same as mine, I should think. Couple of canoeists slid past. That was about it.

Listened to a couple more episodes of Phedippidations, the podcast of Bostonian Steve Walker. It's a nice idea, well executed. I have a feeling he's one of us.

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Wednesday 28 March 2007

Three partial workouts to report.

The last of the three -- today's gym induction -- was never going to register as an over-rigorous ordeal. You usually expend more effort trying to sound convincing when asked about weekly alcohol intake, than you do on any particular piece of apparatus.

A gym induction comes close to being almost faintly exciting. For the first bit you sit there and say all the things that you want to hear yourself saying. You're talking not to the instructor but to yourself; to the plump shirker within. It's intra-propaganda, and it's cheap and easy. Like bragging about running the marathon that's still several pages away in the calendar. You can afford to sound utterly self-assured about your athletic future, while still leaning on the bar, sucking on a pint, and chewing those communal nuts that are said to exhibit traces of urine from an entire swarm of snuffling barflies.

And so early this morning I spent a pleasant ninety minutes talking to a nice skinny lady -- perturbingly cheerful at seven thirty -- about how this time I would do what I've never done before, and stick to my plan. This time I will adhere to my mission with zeal and fortitude. At least twice a week my desk will depopulate. Should anyone notice my absence (unlikely), and want to locate me in order to seek my wisdom on some vital issue of team business (totally unimaginable), they will have to dive into the building's lower intestine, where I'll be found in a small pool of salty water, face aflame, colour of a September pimento, making a noise like the soundtrack of a porn film.

These weren't the precise words I used to the cheerful skinny lady, but she beamed at me anyway. Did I detect the faintest vestige of dubiety on the Mona Lisa's lips? She must have heard all this before.

The other two partial workouts have been filed in the running drawer, but towards the back, in the folder marked "OTHER". They were nearly runs. On each occasion I sort of taxied for 45 minutes, without quite taking off. Too much cargo in the luggage hold. But the ballast is being slowly discharged, and soon… soon I'll be gliding through these brightening spring skies towards heaven.

Oh yes, it'll be different this time.

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