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Tuesday 2 December 2008 — 20 weeks to BostonWhen does marathon training begin? Perhaps the very first day you start running. But when do you start running? Before you're born?This isn't a helpful line of enquiry. Adopting a more prosaic perspective, I suppose the usual answer would be "When the training schedule says you begin", and that could be anything: 16 or 18 or 20 or 26 weeks. The plan I'm using says 16 or 18 weeks, depending on which version is cooing more seductively at any given moment. But I'm still 20 weeks out from Boston, and I'm impatient. I've done 9 weeks of base training; lost twenty pounds; pushed my long run into double figures; sorted out my approach to training, and even cleared a little spot in the fridge (just behind the jar of goose fat if you must know) to store my gels. I'm good to go. That's what I told myself today as I lifted anchor, slipped the mooring, and set sail into the grey, frosty afternoon. I was like a kid impatiently waiting for Christmas. Which is odd, as marathon training is supposed to be such a bind. Something is different about this time. To hell with the waiting, I thought, and decided to make the rather low key announcement, discernible only to myself and any passing mindreaders, that this is now officially a 20 week programme, and this was Day 1. I was pleased with myself, and sensed the faintest hint of involuntary acceleration radiating from my gluteus maximus. So what difference did it make? Something quite notable for me: I decided to run some intervals, for the first time since... medieval times. Or thereabouts. The task was pretty modest fare by the standards of most, but a big enough deal for me at this greenest of green shoot stages. All it amounted to was 6 x 1 minutes of speedier-than-usual running, separated by 3 minutes of heavy panting. The 20 minute warm-up was long enough to deposit me in a stretch of desolate parkland within which no other human witnesses made themselves known. Good news all round. My 6 bursts of activity came out an average of 8:30 minute miles. Scoff away, you whippets. In my book, this is the velocity of well-lubricated lightning. It wasn't exactly sprinting, but it was, I imagine, the stuff of threshold pace. At least I now have some idea of what it feels like to run a 1:50-ish half or a 3:45-ish marathon. For the marathon, I would simply have to multiply one of those lung-busting minutes by... 225. [Gulp. Thud.] But at least I felt kinda holy for the rest of the day, so it was all worth it. 4½ miles banked, and a light sprinkle of intervals to decorate the statistic. Today the postman arrived with the book that will guide me through the next 20 weeks: Run Less, Run Faster. It's the volume that sets out the rationale behind the Furman F.I.R.S.T. 3-runs-a-week marathon schedule. Now that Danny Baker is over for another week, it's time I went to bed and had a peek at the first chapter. Nothing like a good horror story last thing at night... Comment
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Friday 5 December 2008Items for perusal on the agenda for today's gathering:Wednesday1: Puzzled by apparently contradictory guidance on the eligibility of the elliptical cross-trainer as a cross-training option in the celebrated Furman FIRST marathon plan, I write a speculative email to Furman University, asking for clarification. I get a detailed reply within 20 minutes from Professor Bill Pierce, who wrote the book. The reply is copied to Ray Moss and Scott Murr, the co-developers of the program. I'm impressed by this; and pleased that the advice on the elliptical is just ambiguous enough to let me sneak the machine into my plan. Wednesday2: I celebrate Wednesday1 by making my 15 elliptical minutes especially cocky. Another 15 each on the stepper, the bike and the rowing machine. Thursday: The inaugural 'Key Run #2', the tempo run in the FIRST running trinity. 2 miles slow, 2 miles 10K pace, 2 miles slow. Before setting off, I wonder what my 10K pace might be. I seek clarification in the book, and am glad that I do. All target times on which the runs are based, must be current, not aspirational. My last race becomes my benchmark. Last race? Brighton 10K and its moderate 10:15 mile pace. BUT. But this benchmark must be altered through the course of the schedule if races dictate a change. I set off. My first easy mile takes me through the village, and over the footbridge that spans the M4 motorway. As I ease through the village, I pass the electrical shop whose QPR-supporting owner, a nice old boy known as Electricity Bill, peers at me through the window as I pass, his worried expression saying: "How come I recognise that half naked bloke...?" Easy mile 2 sweeps me past Sainsbury's along the A4 towards Reading. So it's come to this then? Yes it has: the route may be blunt and brutish, but it's long and straight and not knobbly underfoot. I think of a cartoon I saw in Punch magazine in 1969, the year that Concorde started testing, much to the excitement of schoolboys like me. Punch used to have a caption competition, where they'd invite readers to provide a topical caption to an original cartoon from (usually) the 19th century archives of the magazine. This one depicted two elderly gentlemen in a primitive railway carriage, with one shouting into the other's ear trumpet. I can't recall the original joke, which was always mentioned, but the modern caption is: "We go supersonic once past Potters Bar..." I've no idea why this cartoon has lodged in my memory, but it has. Anyway, I think of it today as I look at my watch. I go supersonic past Tesco Express, I say to myself. And despite the admittedly weedy pace target upon whose altar I am about to throw myself, there is a truly ridiculous sense of: oh my god, here it c-c-comes..... And so, once past the appointed mark, I give the peak of my cap a determined tug... and go supersonic. Trouble is, I really have no idea what my pace is until I finish each mile. Despite a concentrated effort, I've not yet sussed out how to show my real-time pace on the new Garmin. (I call it "the new Garmin" because, despite being another 305, it's clearly an advance from the one I used to have.) So anyway, at the end of supersonic mile 1, I note that the pace is 09:55, and not 10:15. So I introduce a theatrical limp for mile 4 (supersonic mile 2), and pretty much hit the button with a satisfying 10:14. I now revert to proper slow for the final two easy miles, trotting home with that sense that I could comfortably eke out another 5 were the schedule to pop up with a last-minute request. Friday1: Up at 5:30 for the near-3 hour drive to Nottingham. It feels good to put on a suit again, and escape my rabbit-hutch home office. On the way up I listen to a Bloody Mary-type confusion of audio flavours: the Today Programme, Radio 3, and an audiobook reading of Dostoyevsky's great Crime and Punishment. Reading this book as a 19 year old, was like – ahem – being coshed on the head. Listening to the first few chapters again was curiously painful nostalgia. What a writer. What a man. The work experience is slightly depressing, but I don't talk about work here. Except... except to say that I keep hearing the whispered word: "redundancies". Here in the cold and damp economic trenches, every instance of the word used to be a small shell exploding in the far-off distance: just a rumour of someone else's war. But now, every time I hear it, it's louder and closer. We used to be nonchalant observers; these days we are cowering lower and lower, barely daring to peer above the parapet to see how close the enemy is getting. Friday2: I drive home in the dark, wondering where I'm heading. Friday3:: Ten minutes after arriving home, I'm in my smalls, and on my way round the corner to the gym. 45 minutes of very sweaty aerobic resistance. Friday4:: By the skin of my teeth, I avoid the temptation of sloping off to the pub. Instead, as I'm chopping up our diced turkey and vegetable stir-fry, I decide to cram into the freezer the glorious, and rightly lauded, NZ Cloudy Bay Sauvignon that's been sitting in my wine rack for too long. Ten minutes later, I'm enjoying the first taste I've had of this wine for many years. It was a sensation when it first appeared here back in the 80s. It's marvellous stuff still. Live update: The third glass ain't half bad either. Any other business?: Yesterday, I take part in a brief correspondence on the Runner's World forum (yes, seems adulterous, I know) about overseas marathons. Hamburg crops up, which leads me to re-read my Hamburg Marathon race report this evening. It's a long time since I read that one. It cheers me up. Tomorrow: rest day. QPR v Wolves, followed by La Clique, which we've been looking forward to for months. Two sets of clowns in one day. If that doesn't cheer me up, I really am a lost cause... Comment
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Sunday 7 December 2008 — 12.25 milesIt's been quite a 24 hours.It started on such a gentle note, too, in the Asics shop in Argyll Street, just opposite the London Palladium. I went to have my feet analysed. The smiling Japanese girl was a delight, and just giggled at my very English embarrassment at not having cut my toenails in a while. She carried on attaching tiny black stickers to a selection of my pedal protruberances without any outward sign of disgust. I then had to put each foot into a sort of box, before a lid was attached and locked down so securely that I had to wonder if I'd ever be reunited with the far end of my body. This is what appeared on the printer: 
I'm an over-pronator -- my feet turn inwards as they land. Actually, we are all pronators, but some of us go a bit overboard. Interestingly (well it's interesting to me, anyway), it's significantly more marked on my left foot than right. Other fascinating foot facts include: left foot 3 millimetres longer, but 3 millimetres narrower than the right. Er, that's enough fascinating foot facts for the moment. We descended via the open-plan spiral staircase into the spaceship-like basement floor, where my attendant suggested a couple of possibilities to help the pronation problem and cater for my laughably expansive plates. I tried on each pair in turn, and stepped onto one of the treadmills for a spot of video gait analysis. Using a split screen, she then matched up the two views so that my left foot in Pair A was shown alongside Pair B, landing and striding in sync with each other. This is a way of comparing how each shoe was correcting the excessive pronation. While we were at it, she made a couple of observations:
I took her recommendation and invested in a pair of Asics Gel Foundation 8s. They felt good in the shop, though I'm slightly concerned that she thought 10½ would be fine, when all my New Balance shoes are 11. We'll see. We chatted about Japan for a few minutes before exchanging final arigatos. The next excitement in my day was the trip to Loftus Road for the 5:30 kick-off against table-topping Wolves. At least I thought it was 5:30. It turned out to be 5:20, so I had to jog the final half mile between White City station and the ground. No Mick Jones today. Whenever I'm running late for the game, there's a good chance that the celebrated ex-Clash guitarist will be on the same train as me. More than once I've found myself racing him to the ground. Funnily enough, his lack of punctuality is said to be one of the reasons that Joe Strummer asked him to leave the band. What a match. Joy has been on ration for some weeks at HQ, but it was being liberally doled out last night. The new coach, ex-Inter Milan star and Scolari sidekick, Paolo Sousa, seems to be doing something positive. We suddenly have three attackers, and are regaining the swagger that seemed to have drained away over the last few months. The match was decided in the 60th minute by a superb Martin Rowlands screamer from 20 yards that rocketed over the goalie's head but suddenly dipped, Ronaldo-like, into the top of the net. Oh... oh how we showed our appreciation for that one. Tragically, I had to leave the ground 10 minutes from time to ensure that I wasn't going to be late for La Clique at the Hippodrome, Leicester Square. I'd not been to this Edwardian venue before; it's what used to be the Talk of the Town back in the 70s, in the days when cabaret was still socially acceptable. Now it's become a red and black velvetty sort of place: burlesque, and ever so slightly seedy. But managing to stay just on the right side of tasteful. La Clique is an extraordinary experience, and one I urge anyone who can, to get there and share the pleasure with me. Most of the action takes place on a tiny circular stage. We were in the second ringside row. The show is a spectacular mixture of song and circus. Irreverent, and occasionally downright rude. Not an event suitable for kids sadly, as some of the more conventional acrobatics are breathtaking. Let me share a couple of highlights I've found on YouTube. Do please take a look. Here's the beautiful, and mysterious, hoola-hoop girl: Oooohh!! The Freddie Mercury-loving Mario: Aaaaah!! And perhaps most amazing of all, the Rubberman, or Captain Frodo as he is sometimes called. If you've never seen a guy squeeze his entire body through two tennis rackets, you need to put down what you're doing, and watch this: Amazing!! They sent us home happpy, but the weekend fun wasn't completely over... Today I had one of those great runs. 12.25 miles: my longest for... I don't know. My records are unreliable, but I suspect the last time I exceeded 12 miles was the Almeria Half in January 2007 – nearly 2 years ago. I decided against a third hilly run in 3 weekends, and opted instead for distance. The Furman FIRST plan is all about variety, and even though I haven't truly started it yet, I've already adopted the spirit and format. The first half was a lovely trot along the canal in the opposite direction from usual. It's a grittier terrain than the other way, skirting the M4 motorway for a short stretch, and taking me away from the water along the enamelled SUSTRANS cycleway here and there. But it's pleasant enough, and was made greatly more enjoyable by my iPod selection. At the last minute, I'd added a playlist called "Running" that I'd not used for a while. I wasn't sure what was on it, which was half the pleasure. Here it is: The Trap (London Marathon) --- Ron Goodwin Rock the Casbah --- The Clash Substitute --- The Who My Generation --- The Who And a Bang on the Ear --- The Waterboys The Whole of the Moon --- The Waterboys Vertigo --- U2 Wonderful Land --- The Shadows Patriot Games --- Clannad Fairytale of New York --- The Pogues Black Dog --- Led Zeppelin You Really Got Me --- The Kinks All Day And All Of The Night --- The Kinks Na Na Na Na Naa --- Kaiser Chiefs Everyday I Love You Less And Less --- Kaiser Chiefs Love Her Madly --- The Doors Hello, I Love You --- The Doors Light My Fire --- The Doors 155 BPM - World Cruise --- DJ Steve Boyett I Fought The Law --- The Clash White Riot --- The Clash Dancing In The Dark --- Bruce Springsteen Born in the USA --- Bruce Springsteen In A Big Country --- Big Country The Trap (London Marathon) --- Ron Goodwin The London Marathon theme tune was a fun way to start. It never fails to fill my sails and get me feeling buoyant and excited about the challenge ahead. Then a few rockers to help me set a steady pace. By the time I was on the canal, the Waterboys were stirring my emotions. These are songs tht mean a lot to me, for reasons that don't belong here. It was a glorious day, and by now, the strong wintry run was making the canal sparkle. How appropriate to find Wonderful Land swooping through my brain. The run was going beautifully. Three or four miles in, and I was feeling strong and in control. It was a brief spell of perfect satisfaction. The world is good, and I am of this world. Just now, with emotions running high, that greatest of modern Christmas songs: Fairytale of New York came along. There's something about this song that reaches inside me and jangles any passions worked loose by the aerobic struggle. It's a complex and fascinating piece of music, and one that truly tugs and threatens cultural boundaries. Here we have degradation and despair and disfunction, but all wrapped up in a festive promise of renewal and reinvention. It's a song that makes me cry, and I can't give it higher praise than that. Then bang! Led Zeppelin and the Kinks and the Doors, and I'm back on the rails. Now it's time to leave the canal and start the long loop back home. I have a long, nasty stretch of busy road ahead of me. I'm also starting to feel some tiredness now, so it's time to dig in and flick the auto-pilot switch. How damn perfect that the next 50 or so minutes can be written off to the steady 155 beats per minute of the podrunner track. Exactly what was needed. The music is repetitive and throbbing, but it helps me push one foot in front of the other, almost all the way back to the village. Just as its charms are starting to wear thin, it suddenly stops, and the jangle of Mick Jones's guitar cuts in: the very same Mick Jones I sometimes chase through the White City Estate to Loftus Road, and all is well again. I really must thank him next time I see his tiny, wiry frame up ahead of me. I can't get over just how immaculate is the timing of this playlist. After the wakey-wakey thrash from the Clash, and a spot of anthemic Springsteen, it's two big hops: one to long-time poppy fave Big Country, and finally, to bring me back through my garden gate, a repeat of the opener: the chest-swelling Ron Goodwin theme for the London Marathon. How different it sounds now. The first time around it's a call to arms; this time, a pat on the back. A few minutes of stretching, then it's through the back door and straight to the cooker for some scrambled egg on toast. Happy with the protein and carb hit, it's up the stairs to the embrace of the shower, and an afternoon of football on TV. Sometimes running is a trudge and a duty. At other times, when it all comes together, it's a sublime privilege, and something very great indeed. Comment
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Sunday 14 December 2008 — 9.71 milesThe end of Week 19 (counting back from Boston). I got the 3 key runs in, and the 3 cross-training gym sessions. Sounds great, yet the week didn't go quite as planned.With M away Monday and Tuesday, I managed to resist the lure of alcohol the first night, but slipped out to the pub on Tuesday, hoping in vain to see Chelsea chased out of the Champions League by a bunch of plucky Transylvanians. The London Pride never tasted richer or more satisfying, but I didn't overdo it. Yet it was still enough to disrupt my routine, and presented me with the first week in 2 months when my weight didn't dip to a new low. This shameful statistic was aided by another pub visit on Friday, followed by a Chinese meal and some fizzy Australian wine. So be it; man cannot live by Marks & Spencer's layered prawn salads alone. The week was another triumph for the gym. Ordinarily I would have had no appetite for a run on Wednesday or Saturday, but despite having a slightly fuzzy head on Wednesday, and a fair old hangover on Satuday, I managed to argue myself into popping round the corner for an hour of panting cardio-vascular on the elliptical, the stepper, the static bike, and the rowing machine. Yesterday I even added a half hour of weights to boost the punishment index. Today I sat in my little office, working. I have a ton of stuff to try to get finished, and it looks like seven-day weeks from here to eternity. I'd just about decided that I would give my long run a miss this week until some friendly voice whispered the advice I needed, and I was up and away. It's the sort of running day I hate. No, nothing to do with temperature or rain or wind or sleet. I can handle all that cold and wet stuff. It's this wintry greyness, so typical of the last 6 weeks of the year, that corrodes the spirit. Those featureless, dismal skies and the anaemic afternoons they produce. I find them utterly depressing. Despite this, I aim to get in a reasonable distance. I have no target, but I am aware that this is my step-back week, so anything over 8 miles will do just fine. I head for the canal, and trudge the damp and muddy path for a couple of miles before heading off towards my 6 hills. The first is the killer 1 in 4, and I nearly don't make it to the top without walking. I just manage to cling onto something I can reasonably call a running motion as I struggle to the summit. I wonder if it's a good thing to have the bad one come first. Does it help to get it over with early? Or does the strain affect everything that comes after it? I don't know. It would be a right bastard wherever it happened. I should have got out earlier. By the time I reached the second clump of hills, it was dark, and the twisting, narrow roads were treacherous. I could see the headlights of every approaching car, but they couldn't see me until they'd rounded the bend and spotted this semi-naked man behaving suspiciously by the side of the pavement-less road. It must look like I'm trying to hide, but I'm just sort of shrinking into the bushes to avoid turning into a bloody splodge of flattened road-kill. Avoiding death was a handy outcome, but the downside of my bush jumping was a slower-than-hoped-for overall pace. That disappointment was largely erased by the flat final mile of the 9.71 that I managed. Despite the effort expended on the hills and the distance, the pace of that final mile was by far the fastest of the afternoon. It felt astonishingly comfortable, and it really shouldn't have done. Good omen. Comment
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Sunday 21 December 2008I got up early this morning and ate a banana and some Marmite toast, washing them down with a small black coffee. In my life, this signals only one thing: the long run.OK, or a race. Even a shortish one. But today, it was the long run. The clue is not so much what's on this menu, but what's omitted. Apart from special occasions, breakfast is the greatest meal of my day. Over the past half century, the content has evolved. I no longer care so much for Ready Brek, or cigarettes, or even newspapers. These days, my perfect early morning is: ( (muesli OR porridge) AND banana AND ((raisins OR blueberries) AND (chopped prunes OR clementine)) AND (smoothie OR tomato juice) AND ( black coffee OR ((green tea OR white tea) AND lemon) ) AND Radio 4 ) Should I have kept quiet about the prunes? Och. Quite apart from their digestive attributes, they taste good. On long run and race mornings, I try to avoid dairy. Not sure why. I created this running axiom somewhere along the line. As far as I can recall, it isn't founded on painful experience, or on any other sort of experience, but it does satisfy the need to have a personal philosophy about such things. Food aside, a good pre-run breakfast should be solitary and reflective. I did a couple of hours work before turning on the TV to half-watch the performing seals of Manchester United appear in an event called the Club World Cup final. It was unchallenging, inoffensive entertainment, as befits the festive season. Three things stood out: — the Japanese audience oooh-ing and aaah-ing in a strangely warbling, high-pitched tone every time the Brylcreemed show pony did a little heel swivel. — the post-show interview with Layne Looney in which he tried so hard to sound "quite pleased really" to have had to travel halfway across the planet to nibble at this nonsensical sporting confection. Wayne knows it's nowt but a FIFA exhibition match, but he couldn't possibly say it. And what would the Japanese interpreter have made of "nowt" anyway? — the great Stan Collymore's radio punditry. I genuinely like this guy, but was startled when he said: "The South Americans' attack this half has been conservative with a small C...". The tiny but overworked Department of Surrealism residing somewhere in the back of my head went into overdrive at the possibility of a South American football attack that could have been conservative with a capital C. Despite my reservations about this fixture, it seemed only honourable to uncork something decent this evening to mark the British triumph, so I'm tackling a 2005 cru bourgeois claret as we speak. Fortunately, my work is done for the day -- both paid stuff and running. My life is one long shoefest these days. For several centuries, I was a New Balance 854s man, but some marketing nincompoop at NB, fresh from what s/he thought was a free lunch, decided some time ago that the loyal army of 854-ites had misguided preferences that needed correcting. They withdrew the much-loved model and applied a sort of marketing orthotic without first examining the way we walked. These idiots need to understand that running shoes are chosen for reasons beyond the cosmetic. It's not the fashion magnet that pulls us in, but biomechanical compatibility. They now know they way I walk: away from New Balance. I was reminded of this on this week's Tuesday interval session (Asics Foundation 8s) and Thursdays tempo run along a muddy canal towpath (Asics Gel Guts). The first of those was not memorable, the second was. The choice of shoes played no part in the Tuesday run's distinct turkey quality, but did in the success of the Thursday one, when the extra grip of the off-roaders seemed to haul me through the canalside mud more slickly than the smooth-soled New Balance roadies I have always used. Today it was back to the NBs for just under 9 miles of tarmac hills. Not the best of runs, largely because of the traffic on the narrow lanes. As good as these 6 challenging undulations are, I may have to seek an alternative where I can concentrate on getting up and down without having to stop to let vehicles pass, or switch sides to avoid blind bends. This sort of staccato experience never feels quite as satisfying as the distance merits. So slightly disappointing but hell, 9 miles is 9 miles. Comment
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Tuesday 30 December 2008 Here is the news — good and bad.
Hold on while I switch on the dry ice machine and play a few arpeggios on the harp to set the mood... Look into my eyes, look into my eyes, the eyes, the eyes, not around the eyes, don't look around my eyes, look into my eyes, you're under... It is Boxing Day 2008 — just 3 days ago. The sun is smiling on all runners this afternoon. Free from worldly cares for a precious hour or two, I set off for a brisk post-Christmas 10 miler along the canal. The kids beam at me from their new bikes; the normally grumpy grandpas radiate contentment from behind their Christmas scarves and outlandish jumpers. Five miles in, and I decide to explore a trail off to the right, and one that I suspect will lead me back to the main road, allowing me to double-back and head homewards. A few hundred yards up this deserted track, it happens. A sensation I'm familiar with, though not one I've had for a few years. Out of the blue. Unexpected and impossible to prepare for, like a bullet in the dark. Bang. My left calf. I knew immediately that this was bad news. Very bad. I had to stop right there, in mid-stride, so that I suddenly switched from striding semi-athlete to a hopping fat bloke, gargling with pain and irritation. Tragically, this piece of festive slapstick was played out in front of a line of people trickling towards the Madejski Stadium for the Boxing Day match. At the best of times, Reading fans normally have strangely strangled expressions, as though they can't quite synchronise their 'thoughts' with the optical data they're trying to process. But here was a fragment of life that they had no chance of assimilating. Fearful adults started to shepherd the kids away from me, as though I was about to pounce on them, or mug them for their new gloves. Anyway, it's me who needs the sympathy, not them. It was a grim moment and a grim day. Sod's Law dictated that this time, I had no phone or change with me. It took 15 minutes to hobble half a mile to a payphone. Remember them? The last time I used one was in the approach to the Zurich Marathon, 3 years ago. They haven't got any better. Indeed, any pleasure in the experience has declined sharply, just as the cost of desperation has risen to "a minimum of three pounds ninety" according to the recorded message. I've paid at least double that, as M presumed it was some scam when the robot called her to offer her a reverse charge call. I had to call twice. Immeasurably worse than the £7.80, or whatever the call cost me, was pulling a calf muscle just three days before the official start of my 16 week Boston training. How long would I be unable to run? 3 weeks? 6 weeks? The day was spent resting the leg, occasionally treating it to a cushion of frozen peas. The good news was I couldn't feel the sort of lump that might appear after a bad muscle tear, but it continued to throb for the rest of that day, and the next. Sunday was supposed to be the Cliveden 6 mile cross country. I entered the race a few weeks ago, but there was no chance of taking part. Instead I drove to Shepherds Bush for the QPR-Watford game, and parked in my usual place, about 15 minutes walk from Mecca. But after just 5 minutes of expectant hobbling, I had to turn back. The calf seemed to be tightening and becoming more painful. I was doing more damage than good. And so the next 3 wretched hours were spent sitting in the car, waiting for M to emerge from the new Westfield shopping centre, brandishing the trophies from her shopping battles. I knew I had to get some help without further delay. To boil the story down to the facts, I went to see a physio (Laura) yesterday and today, a sports masseur (Phil). Both were helpful and reassuring. No amputation seems necessary at this stage. In fact, both seem to think that the seizure wasn't anything to be too anxious about, but that it should be taken as a warning shot. Exactly what it's warning me against is the big question. There are plenty of variables to pick over. A lot of things have changed in my routine: new shoes; new training schedule involving tempo runs and intervals; training on hills for the first time; gym work, and using things like the step machine which is supposed to imitate steep hill running. We talked through all these possibilities without reaching any conclusion. There's no obvious weak point in the current regime. For my money, it seems likely that the calf problem is down to an accumulation of pressure from different sources, but primarily the hills and the intervals. Anyway, both experts gave the calf a good pummelling, particularly Phil, who went on deep tissue attack for a painful half hour or so. If it helps, I don't mind. Both recommended stricter, more regular stretching. This is something I'm going to have to get used to doing daily as a matter of routine, whether or not I'm running. Current status? It's been a disrupted period, and not the sort of start to the 16 week marathon training that I was hoping for, but I'm feeling pretty good about things. If there's going to be a problem, best that it happens now and not later in the timetable. The important thing is to learn the lessons and try to come out stronger and better equipped. If it forces me into a stretching routine, and makes me take a less frenetic approach to the weekly interval session, then it will have been worth it. Boring stats bit: Last week, Christmas week, saw 4 rest days instead of 2, with 1 gym session, a 5.21 miler incorporating some intervals, and the abortive 5 mile 'long run'. The 2 days of this week so far have seen 2 gym sessions including, today, 15 minutes on the elliptical and 10 on the treadmill to try out the new calf. So I've not missed too much. I can possibly be forgiven a patchy Christmas week, and this week I'm still on course for the full monty, even if I have to shuffle things round a bit. The unanswered question hovers over Thursday, New Year's Day. I'm entered for the Hyde Park 10K. It would be a shame to miss this, though my plan to aim for a PB to ignite the running year will have to be shelved. I plan to take a stately 3 or 4 miler tomorrow to see how the leg is shaping up, and will make a decision then about the race the day after. If I do it, I'll aim to take it nice and slow, and just enjoy the exhilarating sights and sounds of Hyde Park on a frosty New Year's Day. Comment
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