Sunday 11 January 2009

Perhaps I imagined that by not writing about my troubles, they would somehow go away. They haven't, and I'm still very fed up.

To pick up the story from last time, I did indeed set off on my "stately 3 or 4 miler" the following day, but got no further than 100 metres before the calf went again. Not as sharply as it had the previous week, but I couldn't run on it. The only consolation about it happening so shortly into the run was that I didn't have far to hobble back home. The Hyde Park 10K was out of the question.

Since then, I have managed two fairly normal, if short, outings of around 4 miles each time, and another jaunt that I had to abort after two miles with the calf monster growling in its cave, threatening to leap out at me if I carried on. I've also managed 3 trips to the gym for an hour of cardiovascular agitation.

The good news is that I don't have a serious injury. It's nothing more than a strain, but it's come at a bad time, just as the 16-week schedule was getting under way. More important, it's disrupted the momentum, which had been so positive in the weeks before Christmas. Things had been going well, and I was greatly looking forward to the two races I ended up missing. I'm currently on the darkened downward momentum slope, hoping it isn't a long one.

Nothing for it but to carry on, taking it easy and hoping for the best. As long as the gym retains some appeal, and I take the recovery runs steadily, I hope this rather desultory period will be over soon. At least Almeria gives me something to aim for, even if the idea of a PB now seems unlikely. If I can get round the half marathon course without aggravating the calf, I'll be happy.

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Monday 12 January 2009

Within hours of gloomily tucking up the previous entry in bed, and retiring, head bowed, I feel obliged to rush back up this glittering celebrity staircase to announce these better tidings. It's a small gain, but at the moment, any gain is something to be snatched and shown off.

It was nothing more than 3.5 miles around the block at lunchtime, but for the first time since Boxing Day, I managed it without feeling any calf twinges of note. Even better, it wasn't a desperately slow, damage-limitation plod, but a jog of medium intensity at around 10:30 minutes per mile. Not exactly a sprint, but enough effort to feel as though I was testing the bloody-minded tendons.

It's tempting fate, but I'm hoping that I'll be able to look back on these wretched 17 days and think that it was the best thing that could have happened as it served as an early warning signal about the perils of overdoing the interval sessions, and piling on the hills and the long runs before I was truly ready. Though there is another, more prosaic explanation — a change of shoes.

The run before the fateful Boxing Day jaunt, I went for a robust 6 miles along the canal, and decided to wear a pair of Asics off-roaders (Gel Guts) that I've had for years but barely worn (probably no more than 30 miles, and not for 2 or 3 years). They felt pretty good at the time, but my calf went during the next outing. And then again, last week, I went along the canal again in the same pair of shoes, and felt a definite calf jangle after 2 miles — bad enough to make me stop running and walk back. Perhaps they have too unforgiving a last; or perhaps their age has crumbled some invisible, vital inner organ. Since then, I've played safe and stuck to the new Asics Foundations I bought in December. Of course, I have pointed the finger of suspicion at the new Asics too, but have released them on police bail. They feel surprisingly good on these short pavement outings, and were recommended to help deal with my pronation, so I'm prepared to give them an extended chance. I'm not sure how they will hold up on longer runs; perhaps I'll stick to the tried-and-tested New Balance 854s for anything over 6 miles.

There's another reason I have a spring in my step today. I'm still warming the cockles of my heart on the afterglow of Chelsea's limp defeat at the Devil Bowl yesterday. Seeing those overpaid tarts so roundly humiliated really is among the most joyful of life's experiences these days. Even more cheering are the growing rumours of Roman Abramovitch's disillusionment with his plaything. You can't help feeling that his perfect scenario would have been to see his side win the Champions League final in Moscow, enabling him to exit on a firework display of glory.

And yet another reason-to-be-cheerful is this morning's Amazon delivery of Series 2 of The Wire on DVD. Apart from Rodney Marsh's hat-trick against Birmingham on The Big Match in 1970, this must be the best TV ever. And this is why I must stop now. I need to get a slug into my system. Now. N-n-now.

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Sunday 18 January 2009

After 3 weeks of clinging to the Boston ledge by my fingertips, I may just have clambered back to safety.

An enforced lay-off can be a good thing. It's one of nature's slick self-protection mechanisms. When your instincts may be to overload, you end up compelled to take some rest and recovery. Sounds good, but during a marathon training plan, you can very quickly have too much of a good thing. A few days will never be a problem, but it's 3 weeks since my calf popped, on Boxing Day, and 3 weeks blasts a fair sized hole in a 16 or 18 week schedule. Not irrecoverable: far from it. But any longer might be, so I decided this was a kill-or-cure week.

It started well. On Monday I stole a lunchtime hour to get togged up, and get out for nearly 4 miles around the block at a very decent pace. I'd worked all weekend, so it was good to blast a few frustrations out of my system.

The plan was to consolidate on Tuesday with a gym trip, but I was scuppered by a defective train. I'll come to that. It was good to escape from the house for a whole day in London. Working from home is a privilege, but it's not quite the bed of roses that some might think. A man can go stir-crazy in there... so a trip outside the walls comes as a welcome relief.

It was my second London trip in a week. My recent RC diffidence prevented me from talking about a foggy morning I had in Clapham about 10 days ago. It wouldn't normally be a significant discussion point, but I used to live there, so the trip had a thick coating of sentimentality. In the mid eighties, I spent a couple of happy years living just off Clapham Common South Side with Jane, a girlfriend from university days. I bought my first flat there, in 1985, for the outrageous sum of £38,000. I see that equivalent flats have been selling in the past couple of years for between £350,000 and £450,000. Madness. The decision for us to sell in 1988, that is.

It's a long time since I was there — nearly 20 years. I was reminded why I was so happy living in Clapham. It has just the right balance of Bohemia and prettiness and civility. I was a deliberate hour early for my meeting, enabling me to mooch around Abbeville Road, my old stamping ground. The shops have become even trendier, and we now have a splatter of brasseries and high-end wine dispensaries. I spent a wistful half hour in Starbucks, noting the studious writers and media types, and the table of giggly students who looked as if they hadn't been to bed. My heart bled just a little for Clapham, and for the first time since I left t'Smoke in 1989, I wondered if I wanted to move back. M would need little persuasion, though I doubt we could afford to do it.

Maybe it's becorz I'm a Londoner,
That I lah-ve London so....
Maybe it's becorz I'm a Londoner
That I fink of 'er, wherever I go (Oh!),
I get a funny feelin' inside o' me
Just a' walkin' up and dahn....
Maybe it's becorz I'm a Londoner
That I lah-ve London Tah-n

On Tuesday I was back in the big city — this time in our corporate office in Victoria, for a meeting with my boss. Things have been uncertain for several months now, but listening to her plans made me feel better. The plans are only plans at this stage, and yet to be approved by the even-higher-ups, but the very fact that she is thinking expansively sets a reassuring tone.

After a good day, I had to run to catch the 18:00 Reading train, but wish I hadn't. Just a minute or two outside Paddington, the train stopped. The guard (or Train Manager, as I think we now have to address him) announced that we were stuck at a red signal. This was soon followed by a second announcement saying that "In fact, the driver has now reported that the train has experienced a total loss of power". Being an indolent type, I felt a certain empathy with the train, yet it wasn't enough to prevent me taking my place in the choir of groaning passengers. It was an impressive sound, this harmony of despair. I watched several grown (or groan?) men lowering their heads into their hands as though about to weep.

The hard nasty fact is that we sat in that spot, on that immobile train, for almost 3 hours. It eliminated my plan to get to the gym. Instead, seeking a diversion from this mechanical paralysis, I fired up my laptop and trawled through the contents of my flash drive to try to take my mind of the dozens of grumbley phone calls taking place all around me. What I found was the last version of my running book. I wish I didn't have to call it "my running book", but I can't think of a suitably arresting working title. I'm also unsure of when an ocean of words ceases to be just an expanse of text, and becomes "a book". The document I found myself looking at is about 65,000 words, made up of roughly two thirds new material, topped up with a lump of stuff grabbed from the early days of this website. (It's about my first year of running.)

I skim-read the first 40,000 words: the unpublished stuff. It's embarrassing to admit, but I found myself thinking: "This really isn't too terrible..." And so, yet again, I hereby announce another attempt to get this finished. Sitting on a static train for 165 minutes is no fun, but at least I may have dragged something positive from the experience.

I won't bore you with the minute-by-minute timetable of how I got home that night, other than mentioning that I was home about 4 hours later than intended, at around 11pm.

The displaced gym session happened on the Wednesday instead. I played around with something new — intervals on the treadmill. Worked quite well, and could be the answer to a nagging worry I have, that running intervals on concrete and frozen tarmac means a lot of extra pounding on ankles, knees and calfs, and may well have contributed to the injury. I hate treadmill running, but I can see that intervals could be a good use. Apart from adding a pinch of variety to the tedium, it will be much easier to regulate the speed and intensity — something I've found impossible on the open road. In fact, the more I think of it, the more irresistible the idea becomes. Wednesday's session was just a trial; I didn't have the right footwear to do a full version.

Yes, I've become slightly paranoid about shoes now too. One of the positive consequences of the injury is to make me rethink everything I do. It's a good thing. I'm stretching much more than I ever did before, for instance. If I'm hanging round in the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil, why not elongate those calf muscles and invigorate those quads?

Late on Wednesday I had a phone call from my father, telling me that my mother had been taken to hospital. She's not been well for a couple of years now, but seems to have deteriorated further since Christmas. It was a reminder that I seem to have become sidetracked recently. It's as if only two things have existed in the past month: work and marathon training. There are other avenues that haven't been explored much recently. Memo to self...

But, er, back to marathon training. The first half of the week had gone pretty well, but it was time to push the boat out. Since the start of this recent problem I've been in limbo, wondering if and when I'd be fully recovered. With the Boston clock rapidly running down (just 13 weeks of that fuse left to burn), I decided it was time to jump back into the schedule, and find out once and for all whether I was ready. There's also the little matter of Almeria in a couple of weeks. The PB attempt now seems a forlorn hope, but I need to be able to get round comfortably, and this isn't going to happen if I continue to knock out cosy 3 or 4 milers.

So on Thursday, I set my target to 6 steady miles, and set off on a flat, grey, chilly lunchtime. I headed along the tumultuous A4 towards Reading. This is a nasty running landscape, but I'm in a remedial frame of mind. Just now, running has detached aesthetics; this is biomechanical medicine. I made the distance. It was the furthest I'd run since the weekend before Christmas, and the loss of fitness was clear. It would have been worse had I not been putting in regular gym trips, but still, there's an electricity in the road, or on the trail, that can never be reproduced in the gym. As I pushed beyond 4 miles, I could feel the rust in my legs, and my energy dwindling. But I made it. Not especially quick, but I got there. Much more important, there was no calf pain.

Thursday evening, I went over to Harrow to see my ageing parents. Ma is out of hospital again, but seemed weak. She's had heart problems for years, and it seems that the old ticker is finally beginning to pull down the shutters and think about closing for business after a long, tough shift. We've been told that she's unlikely to recover fully; she's heading for the departure lounge. So it's a question of when rather than if. Without wanting to accelerate the process — needless to say — I hope that it's not a long drawn out, painful exit.

Early Friday evening, I trotted round to the gym where I managed a vigorous 45-minute burst of aerobic activity. I'd already decided at this point to postpone my long run attempt to Sunday, so felt able to nip down the pub for a spot of beery rehydration, followed by an hour of vegetable dissection and stir frying. The bottle of Rosemount Chardonnay in the fridge seemed to be taking up far too much room, so I put it out of its misery. And me out of mine.

The troublesome truth though is that no net misery is removed with alcohol. We simply spread it around a bit, or postpone it until the following day. On Saturday, yesterday, I woke with a painful head, glad that this was going to be a rest day. I got up late and aimlessly pottered about. It was a glorious day; the garden was filled with strong golden sunshine, the sort that you get on just a handful of winter days. I tried working, but gave up, and instead surfed the web in rather disconsolate fashion, still conscious of the unseasonal brightness. I began to regret pushing the long run back a day, but I didn't want to break my convention of not running with a hangover. It never works well. Another hour into the afternoon, however, and I decided that there'd be no harm in a gentle round-the-block plod to enjoy the rays. And so, around 3pm, I got changed and set off on my 3 mile jog.

11.14 miles later, I arrived back home.

The accidental long run. How did this happen? Strangely, I think my sub-conscious may have been in on it all along. For instance, I wore my contact lenses, which I only ever do for long runs and races. Why did I put them in? I think I was teasing myself with the possibility that this might be a more protracted jaunt than I was letting on. I think I tricked myself into it.

I'm delighted with the run. 11 miles is the second longest in the current campaign. My schedule growls back at me that this weekend should be 17 miles, but that was set pre-injury. My plan for this weekend was to take anything in double figures.

Once again, I set out along the busy A4. Horrible chav-stained highway. Four times I had things shouted at me from ageing Fiesta-type boy-racermobiles. What is the point of it? Someone tell me. After a couple of miles, I smiled to myself, realising that I wasn't turning back. I gave my cap a symbolic tug, and plodded on at a steady lick. The sun wasn't warm, and was winding down after a hell of a performance for January, but it kept the day bright and cheerful. I had an iPod with me, but opted not to use it. Sometimes it's good to think. I ran about 3½ miles along this hellish ratrun before veering left and skirting Prospect Park. I descended deep into the bowels of unlovely Tilehurst before completing the loop, around 3 miles further on, and releasing myself onto the return leg. This was the best part of the run: between miles 6 and 8. It wasn't the fabled runner's high, but just a slightly smug sense that I was in control, and running smoothly. I almost said "effortlessly", but this would be quite inaccurate. I found the run challenging, and not quite as comfortable as the pre-Christmas long 'uns. But it was also noticeably more comfortable than the 6 miler 2 days earlier, which I hope is evidence that the old bod is repairing itself and strengthening fairly rapidly. That said, I quickly ran out of energy after 8 miles, and the last 3, which traced most of my usual round-the-block quickie, were tough bastards.

I think the gym has made me stronger though; I can't remember the last time I stopped for a walk break on a long run. I'm not sure that I've done this at all since the current campaign started, in October.

As with Thursday's outing, no serious after-effects. There were one or two moments in the final 2 miles when I felt the remotest of twinges in my left calf, but I think this was just the sort of run-of-the-mill achiness that you're likely to get after running 10 miles plus.

And today, Sunday? Mid-afternoon, I strolled round the corner to the gym for a largely solitary 75 minutes of elliptical cross-trainer, static bike, rowing machine, and a clutch of weight machines. Interesting that I felt much less achey after this session than before it. There is something in the recovery principle that I saw working today.

Early in the week, my official entry form for Boston arrived from the redoubtable JDRF. I hesitated before completing it. Not through lack of commitment, but I had to be as sure as I could be that I would be fit enough, and that this injury was over and done with. It was a great time for the form to arrive, because it forced me to embark on this testing week. If I'd had a setback, I would have had to make a tough decision. Instead, 17 pain-free miles between Thursday and Sunday, surrounded by strenuous gym visits, with no obvious ill-effects, gave me the message I was dreaming of. Just after my gym visit this afternoon, I trotted down to the post office and posted the completed form back to the charity.

A very good feeling.

And finally... my mood was brightened further this weekend by a rare away victory for much-loved Queens Park Rangers. Only last week, the once great Manchester United had travelled to Derby where they were roundly pummelled, going down to a 1-0 defeat. Just days later, QPR visit the same ground, but return with a 2-0 victory. Apart from my poor old mum's health, it's been a week of largely cheering news, and this proof of QPR's superiority over the crumbling wizards of the Devil Bowl was the final, jubilant flourish.

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Tuesday 20 January 2009

Success: my first experiment with treadmill intervals yesterday evening. At least I'm presuming it was a success. I did what I set out to do, namely run 6 x 2 minutes fastish, interleaved with 6 x 2 minutes slowish, on a treadmill set to an incline of +1. This followed 30 minutes of bug-eyed biking and elliptical cross-training to get the blood bubbling nicely through my arteries. 8:25 minutes a mile pace will be jogging speed for some reading this, but for me, it's fast enough.

Rest day today. Another trip to London, but managed to escape early enough to get back home to see the epochal inauguration of President Obama. Then this evening, I scuttled along to the back room of the Red Lion to witness politics at the other end of the spectrum — the monthly meeting of the village parish plannees. My main responsibility is to make sure the group is represented on the village website I put together a few months ago. A secondary duty seems to be to upset as many people as possible. Oh well. Clichés about omelettes and eggs whisk through my mind.

No beer tonight. Tomorrow it's back to work for me and Obama. 8 stiff miles for me, and 8 exceedingly stiff years for the other guy.

Here's to both of us.

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Friday 23 January 2009

Life is frantic these days. It's like being pursued by a gorgon, with each mini head yelling at me to get something done. It's all happening. What is? Too much, you'll be relieved to hear, to list and to pick over right now. I have a thousand things to do, including, now, at 11 p.m. on a Friday night, the need to pack for a party weekend in Yorkshire and a complicated business day in Nottingham on Monday. But let's get our priorities in place. I also need to record today's long run, and I'd better complete the Oz Chardonnay that's sitting in a state of... sort of semi-attemptedness, in the fridge. I must be brief. Before Christmas, I'd set my sights on a PB. I don't think that will happen now. This isn't false modesty, and it isn't pessimism. Given the injury scare a couple of weeks ago, I'm truly delighted to be back where I am now. I'm very pleased to be running into double figures, and barring disaster, am as confident as I can be that I'll do better than my last 2 Almerias. Last year I relegated myself to the 10K/13K, and the year before I was just very fat, and finished just a few places from the end.

Today's run was dutiful; a box-ticker. I set out with high hopes, as I always do. Wore new shoes. Or to be more truthful, some old shoes, bought in 2005, but unworn until today. This may sound like the worst excuse ever, but I think I laced them up wrongly. Check out this web page. If you bothered to click that link, you'll see that lacing a running shoe has something in common with the art of cat-skinning. Variable lacing? Fascinating: it seems to make sense. I went for the wide-feet option, as I, er, have wide feet. So I laced my brand new New Balance 854s in that funny way they suggest -- missing out the lowest holes -- and set off.

The shoes started attacking me about 5 miles in, and had redoubled their efforts by mile 8. Around this time, I decided to bail from the 13 or 15 mile plan. The feet were sliding a bit because (I am surmising) of the lack of tightness in the toe-end lacing.

Still 11.25 isn't bad. Here's my route:

As you can see, it was a nasty, urban meander.

Let's step back 24 hours. Here was yesterday's unposted entry:

A bracing 7.25 miles yesterday, starting with 2 or 3 miles along the canal before doubling back through a broken dog-leg of tranquil farm tracks.

Talking of dogs, at one point I had to wind through a farmyard, past a colossal hound with a throaty growl like a blown exhaust. Fortunately, the beast was tethered, or I may have experienced his Jaws-like set of pearly whites even more vividly than my dry throat told me I had on this occasion.

I won't let Thing deter me from taking this unfamiliar route again soon. It's good to find a new running option, or to rediscover an old one. I think I must have been down that way before, but a few years ago, late on a warm and fragrant summer evening.

My running routine is a bit confused this week. I'm away most of the weekend, so have decided to play safe and bring my long run forward a day, to tomorrow (Friday). I've even booked a day off work to deprive me of excuses. This rescheduling has had a reverse knock-on effect, with the usual Tuesday and Thursday jaunts becoming Monday and Wednesday.

So yesterday was my tempo run — or what I call my tempo run, even though the pace is probably what most runners would think of as a mild warm-up jog. 10:00 to 10:15 minute miling is about as good as it gets for me these days, and this is quite an advance on what I was managing when I got back on the road back in October. My average pace for the first few outings of that first month was over 12:30 a mile. Looking back at my SportsTracks stats, I seem to have knocked off a steady 45 seconds off that average for each of the months since then. I'm not sure how much more I can improve on that in the short term; I'm getting towards my historical norm for my current weight. I'll need to maintain the delarding process to slip under 10 minutes as a standard average for these medium length runs. We'll see.

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Saturday 31 January 2009

My mum died this morning at 10:40.

The decision not to go to Almeria was the right one. I'd set my sails, and was ready go. Then late yesterday afternoon, having just made arrangements with Sweder to pick me up in Crawley on his way to Gatwick, I went to see my mother. She's been unwell since Christmas.

Last weekend, M and I drove to North Yorkshire to help celebrate the 50th birthday of M's old friend, Sally. The party was raucous, but beautifully organised with a never-ending supply of decent Australian fizz and spicy canapés -- distributed by a small platoon of unflappable professional caterers. We finally got to bed sometime after 3 a.m., only to be woken 4 hours later by a call from my sister to tell me that my mother was rapidly deteriorating, and they thought we should come back immediately. So instead of heading for a nostalgic lunch at our favourite Chinese restaurant in Leeds with a bunch old friends, we found ourselves heading back down the M1, not sure what we'd find at the other end.

The answer to that unspoken question was a roomful of family, and a very frail old lady, barely able to speak, gazing out through a face shrivelled and ancient beyond her 79 years. She was unable to move her body, though she could flex her fingers upwards, as though she was waving goodbye. Which of course she was. We grinned at each other, even though we both knew she was dying. Maybe that's why we grinned: some final act of defiance. She croaked a few sentences in my ear. "No one ever comes back", she said mysteriously. Then added: "Death means nothing". She asked to speak to my wife. "Melinda, there's something I must tell you..." We both leaned forward. She cleared her throat with difficulty, then said: "You're the spitting image of Sarah Palin".

We chuckled. Then she retreated again, just staring out at me. "Look after your father", were her final coherent words to me.

For the rest of the afternoon, we took it in turns to hold her hand and stroke her face. She just stared back, with a very distant smile on her parched lips. I was convinced she would die at any moment, but incredibly she hung on. Not just for the rest of the day, but for the rest of the week.

Until I saw her yesterday, I was convinced she would keep chugging along for a while yet. But yesterday I knew the game was up. If she recognised me, she wasn't letting on. There was no movement in her fingers this time. Worst of all was the news that she had stopped drinking water. She'd barely eaten for a fortnight, but people can keep going for a long time if they keep hydrated. But without fluids, there's no hope. I got back home and called Sweder, to tell him I'd have to miss Almeria this year.

The expected call came at 10:45 this morning. She'd stopped breathing.

In death she looked heartbreakingly frail and insubstantial, like a tiny sparrow frozen in the snow.

The pain is over. Goodbye Ma, and thank you.

For the rest of us, life goes on. Tomorrow morning at 9 a.m., at the exact moment that our friends in Almeria are igniting their medio maraton effort, I will leave home on my own 13.1 mile adventure. This one more sombre than usual, but more determined too.

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