Monday 21 April 2008
Notes from the ledge
I woke this morning feeling troubled and empty, but didn't know why. It was something beyond normal Monday fatigue, and the distant nausea that's part of the aftermath of football weekends. Yes, I ate an Everest of mashed potato last night -- a self-referential monument to my inability to judge food portions (as I would have it), or to my greed (as M would prefer). But that wasn't it. I concede I'd 'gone for a walk' in the early evening, and returned with three agreeable pints of West Berkshire Brewery's Good Old Boy seeping through my intestines. Shortly to be joined by a couple of generous measures of Tesco's finest riserva Chianti, while I tearfully chopped the onions and peeled far too many spuds.
There would have to be a modest physical penalty to pay for these pleasures, but a better explanation was needed for this morning's cranial fragility. It was a deep pang, hollowed out by something more emotional, more cerebral than simple over-indulgence. What was it?
I sampled a few theories, but the real answer didn't come until mid-morning when I first had cause to reach for my phone. As the screen lit up, I saw it was flashing a reminder against today's date. Strange. I rarely use this feature. A couple of key presses, and all was revealed. With a touchingly naive self-confidence, the message proclaimed: Today I run the Boston Marathon.
Today, as will be clear, I did not run the Boston Marathon. Nor am I even in Boston. The message was like a small, unexpected explosion. And when the dust cleared, a moment later, I suddenly saw where I really was, and it was a shock.
The journey up here has been so gradual and so free of self-questioning that not even I realised where I was headed. Here, on this lofty lifestyle window ledge, I can suddenly see so much.
I won't exaggerate. I'm not clinging by my fingertips, but I am straddled across it in a rather careless fashion, and it wouldn't have taken much. I hope I've spotted myself in time. Now comes the task of talking myself out of it.
*****
Somewhere along the line I fell out of love with running. We lost that lusty joy. It became instead a marriage of convenience, despite there being little that was convenient about the arrangement. This running thing is a tag that has somehow helped give me an identity, though the cynic in me might prefer to see it as giving myself an alibi. Trouble is, I've latterly seemed to want these uncertain benefits without the nuisance of having to put in the graft.
Something in my relationship with this sport altered after the Zurich marathon. It's a rather pitiful confession, but cracking the five hour marathon had become the pinnacle of my ambition, even though I didn't fully realise it until after I finally achieved that in Switzerland. I'd climbed the stairs, and there I was, in fulfillment's desolate attic. Nowhere else to go but back down the way I'd come.
Last spring, I did finally start to rediscover some enthusiasm, with a string of 10Ks. But something unfingerable changed after my significant birthday of last summer. It was as though I was asking myself if this was a worthwhile pastime for a fifty year old bloke. (The answer is yes, of course it is. In fact it probably gets more worthwhile as we age.) Arranging my Boston place through the JDRF was my attempt to arrest the drift, as well as raising some funds for that fine charity. It worked well for a while, until the intermittent knee injury that popped up every time I tried to step up my pace or distances, made it impossible to build up the pre-Christmas momentum I needed.
Almeria came and went, with little to show for it but a languid plod around the 10K course (which the legendary organisation managed to turn into 13K), and a careful jog down a dusty orange mountain to test the knee. It came through the examination with barely a twinge. But here's a funny thing: I felt something closer to irritation than relief, as though aggrieved that I'd run out of excuses.
It was too late to resurrect Boston, but at least I could move gently back into a running routine with possibly a crack at the Reading Half in March. But no, that didn't happen either. February sank without trace, hit by the torpedoes of work and beer, and the alleged good life.
March, and I'm now ten pounds heavier than I'd been in Almeria at the end of January. I climbed aboard a new eating regime, and started walking every day. Two weeks and the loss of those ten pounds later, I get inexplicably bored, and start to revisit the haunts of February. Until last week, when I start to realise it's now or never.
So this evening I strapped myself into the iPod, hauled on those ever-tightening lycra undershorts (which I'm sure used to cover more than half my arse), and went for a four mile waddle. Christ, I am well and truly enlardened. This morning I was 234 pounds, by some distance the heaviest I've been since I started running, in 2001. I must lose one whole stone just to get back to where I was in Almeria, when I felt consummately unfit, and fatter than I had done in years. I then have to shed another 20 pounds to arrive at my relatively lissome Zurich self (and I'd felt pretty fat there too).
Tonight's over-optimistic plan was to repeatedly jog for a minute, walk for two, and to assess how I felt after a mile or two. I got nowhere near this. The first minute of 'running' was like some form of rapid suffocation. I was constricted, unable to ingest enough oxygen to keep this mighty juggernaut rolling along. The entire two minutes of walking was spent panting, and staring at the pavement just ahead of my feet. I couldn't take the risk of having to make eye contact with someone I know. Or even someone I don't know.
The second minute of jogging was no better. The third? Far worse. Tragically, it coincided with Bruce Springsteen and Born To Run. I can't hear this great song without being transported back to the start line of the Chicago marathon, when it was an inspiration and an emotional anchor among the chaos and the screaming excitement of a frozen Grant Park. It grabbed me again this evening, and elevated me. It made me believe I could just set sail again, as though I'd never stopped.
Owch. Bad mistake.
I felt a sort of crackle in my ankle, then a shooting pain in my right calf. But I think it's OK: it wasn't a red card, and probably not even a yellow. Just a stern finger-wag that meant: let this be a warning. Any more of that old nonsense and you really will pay for it.
So that was it. Three minutes of running, 48 of vigorous walking. But I didn't mind. Getting out of the house was the important thing. I walked briskly through the avenues of blossom; along the familiar, secluded lanes, past a parked Porsche containing a grinning middle-aged baldie and a giggling blonde old enough to know better. As I continued on my way, I fancy I heard the painful splintering of a marriage or two on the gentle Berkshire breeze.
A dog-walker nodded, and chewed contemplatively on his pipe. On the other side of a garden fence I heard a child cry: "Yes! And Gerrard must score!" It's a sentiment I'm in complete agreement with, just 24 hours ahead of a match that has become an established annual fixture: Liverpool's Champions League semi-final against those gluttonous town mice, Chelsea.
On the return leg, I see a tottering figure in the distance. It's Railway Bob, prima inter pares of the village drunks, stumbling homewards. He's one of the old school. One of a dwindling tradition of happy inebriates. He really does stagger home, bouncing himself off the walls of some imaginary narrow corridor, huge grin across his purple face, murmuring some unidentifiable tune. As I approach, he clings to a garden fence, as if protecting himself from the threat of alien abduction.
"Good evening, Bob."
"Hull-oooo sir! Ha ha ha! Hull-ooooo!"
I decide to leave the conversation there, taking a detour across the cricket pitch so I can slip back home with little risk of being spotted by anyone else.
I won't pretend I feel great. I'm not sure I feel anything much, apart from mild relief. What I do know is that I'm back to square one. And square one is not some place I was in December or January. I'm back to the beach at Puerto Banus, April 2001, where I got up early one morning and set off, kitchen timer in hand, on the first step of what was supposed to be a ten week plan to be able to run three miles. It took me eight months. It seems like a long time ago now, and it's another story. Or is it?
It's hard to avoid the feeling that it's actually the same one. Back then, although I didn't realise it, I was 12 months away from what would have seemed like a laughably improbable London Marathon. This morning, I put my name in the hat for a 2009 London Marathon ballot place. Crikey. It's déjà vu all over again.
In truth, there are major differences, the main one being that I've now been there and done it whereas before, the thought of completing a marathon filled me with awe, and an excitement that throbbed through every waking hour. That's what's missing just at the moment: the buzz; the thrill.
Let me work on that. In the meantime, I need a pencil plan. Before I think about proper running again... y'know, the sort where I set off and return, six or ten miles later, without having walked or puked or felt the need to cut across the cricket pitch to avoid being seen... I need to get a few basics in place.
Delardification has to be top of the list. The best thing about being as fat and heavy as this, is that the pounds will drop off quickly and easily. It's instant gratification in the other direction. Time to relearn some good habits. Walk daily, eat sensibly. I need to roll away that Almerian stone, before I can leave this cave.
I also think I need to return here, to runningcommentary.net. We tried other things, but they never quite worked out for me. This feels like home. In recent years I've taken to calling this a blog, but I dislike the word, and I'm not sure I much like the phenomenon. And I just don't want to think of RC as a blog. When I began writing it, in 2001, I'd never heard the word. I suspect that people were 'blogging' before RC began, but this website has never been part of any movement. The original premise was that if I publicised my struggle and my ambition, I would feel more motivated to keep going. That still holds true.
But what's my ambition this time around? Just to 'do London' again? That won't inspire me, or anyone else, the way it once did. At the moment, I'm a wobble without a cause. But the searching has begun. I need to sleep on it.
A final RC point, of which I need to remind myself more often: how many great people have I met through this site? We're not a big gang, but we write, we fight, we run -- sometimes together, sometimes apart. I've met so many inspirational people here. Perhaps that's the best single thing to emerge from all this: the proof that people (well, runners anyway) are essentially good and interesting, and that the adventures of other people can so easily become our own, if only we are prepared to let them.
It's one of running's many paradoxes that, for an activity rooted so deeply in competitiveness, it's remarkably selfless. I need no reminders and no persuasion about the rewards on offer. But ultimately, it's the kindness and decency of people, and their support, that keeps me coming back.
Did that sound convincing?
Wednesday 23 April 2008
You can do a lot in three days, it seems. I still have an opulent, fleshy sack of ballast separating my soul from this keyboard, but my spirits at least are lighter and more agile than they have been in weeks. The two bursts of exercise (if my regal circumambulations of the village can be described that way) would have an energising effect on their own, but there's a synergy thing going on here. It's the platefuls of fruit and foliage, and booze avoidance, that seem to combine with the exertions, and provide something -- clarity and appetite and animation -- amounting to more than a sum of their parts.
The tyranny of lazy cliché equates the neanderthal with the drunken yob, but I reckon the noble caveman gets a raw deal out of this comparison. He was probably several times fitter and stronger than the average Stoke or Hull City fan, and more discriminating in how he deployed his cunning and aggression. A few days gnawing on roots and shoots, and plodding, and you start to uncover the hirsute Adam that resides somewhere in all of us.
Today's effort was less unsuccessful than Monday's. I stuck to my run-walk idea, but this time the plan survived beyond the third cycle. I may even have managed to keep it up for the whole four miles but decided to extend the walking element after halfway as a precaution. Seriously. There is an awful lot of extra tonnage hammering down on these knees and ankles, and it's as well to protect them while I move through the process of shedding some of it.
Today's intellectual highlight came while gliding alongside the hedge that bounds the golf course. As I approached the entrance to the club, an SUV pulled up beside me. I could see the puzzled-looking middle-aged guy staring at his SatNav for a few moments before he stuck his head out of the window and asked me the way to the golf club. By this time I was literally at its gates, standing right beside a very large painted sign saying... GOLF CLUB. The driver must have been around six feet from it. So I stood beside the sign, panting slightly.
"Golf club?"
"Yes, there's a golf club around here somewhere".
I thought he must have been joking, and played along with it:
"It rings a bell, but... I'm really not sure...."
But it seems he really was blind to his environment, because I watched him drive on 50 yards or so, and ask the next person coming down the road. Someone rather more helpful than me, because I saw them pointing back to where I was.
I turned off onto a narrow footpath at that moment, neatly avoiding his return, and a probable glare of indignation, suddenly reminded of the dangers of technology. I couldn't easily live without it, but it can so easily filter out the real world (if a golf club can truly be called upon to represent the real world, which I have reason to doubt).
SatNavs are notorious for it. I do it myself. I may be driving round some midlands connurbation, hunting for an escape, but if my SatNav is pointing me in one direction, I just don't see the M1 South sign indicating the other (probably better) route. And when I'm back in the same city the following week, without the gadget, I've no idea which way I went last time. Technology that promises to bring more of the world to us, often succeeds only in creating a barrier.
So I turned off my iPod, and spent the next 20 minutes of the outing enjoying the warm sunshine, the birdsong, and the smell of spring.
But I couldn't resist a final blast, and as I sub-jogged home, the shuffle threw up Bruce Springsteen's anthemic Jersey Girl. As I reached my back door, I was left wondering how such an iconic American managed to develop such a keen affinity for the inhabitants of the Channel Islands.
Sigh. Another mystery to add to the collection.
Friday 25 April 2008
Crying out loud
Another step forward.
Four miles on a mild and bright evening, with the run element of the run:walk ratio back over 50%. The aim is to keep it creeping up, but I won't let it reach 100% before I'm a stone lighter than I was at the start of this week. The good news, as predicted, is that the pounds are sliding off. The gains so easily made over the last few weeks and months are just as easily removed -- to begin with, at least.
I've become something of a running wuss in recent years. It was only two years ago that a jacket became standard issue on cold winter mornings. For the four years or so before that, I wore a jacket a total of perhaps three or four times, when a number of conditions co-incided:
jacket = (temperature.Celsius < -5) AND wind AND (rain|sleet) AND (run.distance.miles > 5)
Anything else, and I wouldn't bother. I'm not sure why I didn't. It wasn't bravado but, I think, the pleasure-deferral principle: the knowledge that while the first mile would be anguish and misery, the remainder would be more than adequate compensation. Once the inner furnace got going, something more than warmth and comfort resulted. The sense of liberation was tremendous. To run past the astonished stares of passers-by, insulated by so many layers that they could barely walk, added much to the joy. And the sweat -- so much hotter and sweeter against the frozen air.
It's nearly May, but today I went sans jacket for the first time since the late autumn. I was reminded of how good it feels to be unencumbered. I'll pass up the easy metaphor opportunity, and press on, past the first two village pubs, with which I never make eye contact. I'm suddenly aware of a great commotion of pop music and mechnical noise in the field behind the church, and remember that the fair has begun today. A ripple of apprehension as I approach it. I pull the peak of my cap further down over my eyes, and therefore (so says the hat-wearer's creed) becoming less visible myself. If I can see only 40% of the world, then only 40% of me is visible to the crowds of exciteable teenagers through which I must now move.
It's also a good moment to increase iPod volume. I have what I'm sure would be regarded as an odd mixture of tunes. This evening's shuffle moves me from The Beatles (Across the Universe), through King's College Choir (Hark the Herald Angels Sing), Jimi Hendrix (Purple Haze), and the Kingston Trio (Puff the Magic Dragon). It's a while since the Kingston Trio have made an appearance, and I'm pleasantly surprised. Enough to stop the shuffle and point the iPod at the album: Kingston Trio Golden Greats - 1957-62.
What fine young men, and how stirring their music remains, even to this day. I defy anyone with a beating heart in their breast to listen to these tunes without weeping:
Shady Grove/Lonesome Traveller
Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
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Yet again, I've been thinking about trying to get some running writing published. So I spent some time last month pulling together, and editing, some previous entries into a compelling composite of the story so far -- and sending them off to a couple of literary agents. Today I had my first rejection. The email read as follows:
Many thanks for sending this through and you make it all sound so easy! However, I am really sorry but while I think this is fun and entertaining, I think I would struggle to find you a publisher for a number of reasons. First you did the run several years ago, and so there would be limited publicity available for it, and second, and this is the one I am most embarrassed about, you haven't got a profile and so we would competing with any number of celebrities when trying to place this book. If you had been Jordan, Richard Hamilton or any number of other celebrities I can't be bothered to mention, you would immediately attract the type of interest this project deserves. Without that hook, the project is dead.
I am sorry to be both brutal and candid, but it is a factor in today's highly competitive, celebrity driven market. You only have to look at the non-fiction bestseller lists for last Christmas to appreciate what I am saying.
So it is with regret I am turning this down - ever thought of changing your name by deed poll?
My first thought was, "well at least she read it", but when I looked at her email again, I realised that she hadn't. Since when have I made running sound easy? And what's this about doing "the run several years ago"? I made it clear in my covering letter that this was an epic struggle stretching the length of the century so far.
Bah. Watch this: Rejection
After sustained weeping over the Kingston Trio and the recollection of the earlier dream-crumbling rejection, I resolved to reach for a climactic hat-trick while still five minutes from home. With an anticipatory tremble in my fingers, I located Ron Goodwin on my iPod and jabbed the play button.
Not many people know who Ron Goodwin is, but one day in every year, the spotlight lands on one of his compositions, The Trap. It's another hot button for me. At least once during the BBC's four hours of London Marathon coverage, all the commentators run off to a portaloo, leaving the cameras to sweep over the perspiring, plodding hordes while this music blasts out. I've posted it before, but let's hear it again
The Trap
(twice, back-to-back for some reason)
Yep, as cheesey as a bread-free quattro formaggio pizza, but it gets me each and every time.
It makes me run too though, and with my headphones shooting the shameless triumphalism through my brain like the electrodes crackling on the temples of Frankenstein's monster, I felt positively spring-heeled as I loped past the car park of the Crown, just in time to see my mate Russ emerge from his car with his faithful 4-pint beer container, ready to be filled with the luscious Good Old Boy (both of them). I called out a breathless greeting, but didn't stop. Couldn't stop. He grinned and gave me the thumbs up. He nags me to get running again.
Then round the front of the pub, almost knocking another regular, Rob, off his feet. He seemed aghast at the appearance of this floundering, tear-streaked mammal bearing down on him. I'd recently had a heated discussion with him about the value of 'jogging' for people our age. As I lumbered past him this evening, there was something in his look of incredulity -- no, terror -- that said: "Oh my g-god, he's only g-gone and done it..."
Indeed I have.
Wednesday 28 April 2008
Scales of injustice
There's this bloke who forgets his wedding anniversary. His spoilt wife is furious, and growls at him: "Tomorrow there'd better be something in the driveway for me that goes from zero to 200 in a matter of seconds."
The next morning, she finds a small package in the driveway. She opens it and finds some brand new bathroom scales...
Compared with her, I'm regarding my own bathroom scales quite favourably. As a glass half-full man, I prefer to focus on them showing me to be around 9 pounds less laden than I was at the start of last week, rather than on the fact that I'm still somewhat... over-substantial. According to HM Ministry of Fat People, a healthy weight for someone of my height is between around 148 and 185 pounds, which puts me somewhere between 43 and 77 pounds overdrawn. Last week, this would have been between 52 and 86 pounds, so this is marvellous news. No matter how fat and unhealthy you are, there's always someone even fatter and unhealthier, even if it's yourself.
No loping over the weekend, though I did have two extended bursts of activity in the garden instead: one to pick a thousand dandelions and mow the grass (and there's a lot of it), and one the following day, to dig a couple of beds and re-plant the apple trees that have been in a temporary home for more than six months. Moving them while they're in blossom isn't a great idea, but leaving them to grow more roots in the wrong place is marginally worse. It felt good to have these tasks checked off, but the cost was a bad back ache that I feared might hamper my revival.
By Monday I felt able to venture out for a 40 minute plod, though I shouldn't have bothered. I was still tired from the sudden explosion of exercise in the past week, and would have been better off resting another day. But no harm was done. It was a warm evening — warm enough to bring out the flies, and with them, the reminder of how annoying it is to get a mouthful of the blighters (protein or no protein).
Today was better. The start of the afternoon deluge seemed like a good opportunity to take an hour out from my work, and head for the bird lake. It's a pleasant environment: wild enough to break the computer's curse, but with just enough stretches of well-maintained paths to keep my ankles out of the mud. The rain was heavy but warm, and sort of respectful. A circuit of the lake is around a mile, after which I headed off down one of the lanes along by the canal. Not much more than 3½ miles logged, but I felt better for it. I'm still not running from start to finish, though the ratio is getting bigger all the time, Today it was around 7:2 jogging:walking.
I'm happy with that.
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