Tues 10 Sept 2002

The summer is gone for sure. It was cold at 5:30 this morning when I set off to do my 5 miles along the canal. The first time it's been this nippy since March.

Predictably, it wasn't a great run. The lack of a consistent training regime has taken its toll, and I even got a stitch today for the first time in months. Dark, cold, painful, totally bloody miserable.

If I use a bit of imagination, I think it could have been worse. Apart from a 3 minute break to shake off the stitch, I ran solidly for an hour. Or jogged. It was slow, but so be it. I need to try to claw back some endurance while there's still a few weeks available.

The other positive from this morning was the discovery that running along a canal at 6am on a crisp autumnal morning can be utterly spellbinding. As the sun rose, the dense mist started to lift from the surrounding fields, giving the world a weird, Middle Earth sort of feel. Plenty of rabbits about, and swans on the adjacent lake. Then a splashing, and a heron emerges from the reeds and glided languidly down the canal, close to the water, looking for breakfast.

Three hours later I'm crushed into a corner on the tube to Waterloo, but I can feel myself smiling faintly. I'm still somewhere else.

Thurs 12 Sept 2002

Missed my long midweek run again yesterday. It was M's birthday, so we went out to a posh eatery called L'Ortolan near Reading. Disappointing. At least the cheese course was interesting.

Tonight I went out for 50 minutes or so. I'm struggling to find good routes I can run at night. Most of the roads around here have no pavements, which isn't too safe in the dark. The canal is refreshingly traffic-free, but too dark without a torch. The A4 does have a narrow pavement but is horribly noisy and fast.

I ended up running around the local high-tech business park. This is another strange other-world. Vast modern glass warehouses and offices, brightly lit, and with barely a human in sight. Slightly eerie, like some sci-fi film set.

Again, not a great run; I'm still looking to rediscover the 'bounce' that I had a few weeks ago. It's hard work and it feels a bit of a chore, frankly. Time is slipping away, but I need to keep searching for that vitality and enthusiasm. Without it in Chicago, it's going to be very difficult.

Work is supressing my spirit at the moment. We're under pressure, and it isn't easy to get focussed on preparing for the marathon. It's ironic really: training should be a release, a de-stressing treatment, but sometimes it just seems to wind up the tension and the pressure even more.

Fri 13 Sept 2002

In my ruminations on the lack of good local routes, I'd forgotten the obvious alternative: the gym. So I paid a visit this evening, and spent an hour or so pounding the treadmill on my own, staring at the patch of sweat on my pale blue T-shirt grow from nothing to a large blob the shape of Madagascar.

Sat 14 Sept 2002

An interesting day.

I got up early (for a Saturday) and ran 4 miles. Quite a good run, at a pace of around 10:10 minutes a mile.

After a quick shower it was off to London for a trip -- sorry, "flight" -- on the London Eye. For reasons best known to herself, M has long-hankered for a trip on an open-top London tour bus, despite knowing central London better than most of us. I thought of arranging this as part of her birthday present, but the weather was looking a bit unpredictable for Saturday, so I opted for the Eye instead. Worth a trip. In case anyone doesn't know, the London Eye is a huge wheel containing 32 glass capsules, each capsule containing 25 wide-eyed tourists and curious Londoners. It revolves slowly and reaches about 140 metres off the ground, giving the punter a good aerial view of the city.

Part of the deal was a jaunt up the Thames, but the long queue to get on the Eye made us literally miss the boat. I had to rush off to Loftus Road to witness another championship-winning performance from Queens Park Rangers, so we ended up meeting back at Waterloo at 6pm to catch the last boat trip. Actually, it was good fun, and well worth doing. We'd seen all of the buildings many times before, but it was interesting to see them from the river, and to learn the odd interesting fact (for instance, that Waterloo Bridge was built largely by women during the Second World War).

Sun 15 Sept 2002

I woke this morning feeling bloated and unfit again. My recent runs have done me good, but I ate badly yesterday. Up till 4pm everything had been fine. A couple of slices of toast for breakfast, a coffee at lunchtime, confident that I could survive the afternoon until something suitably healthy in the evening to set me up for today's long run.

But then, just as the second half of the match was about to kick off, a young girl walked past eating some chips and some switch was tripped in my brain. I knew I had to eat. I ran to get a cheese and onion pasty and a hot dog. Oh dear.

Then on the way home, M fed me a series of tasty, but probably high-fat, middle-eastern snacks from Selfridges. Then, when I got home I treated myself to some Singapore noodles from the local Chinese. The latter was an honest attempt to carbo-load, but the food was fried and full of meat, and I knew I'd made a mistake.

Today when I awoke, I could feel these nutritional errors lying heavily in my stomach. I just wasn't in the mood at all. Despite that I managed to do my 18 miles, though my legs seized up after around 13, and I walked most of the final 4 or 5. When I got home at 4:30, I showered and sloped off to the pub for half an hour to cheer myself up.

It feels bad. I now have 4 weeks left to work some kind of miracle. Will I do it? Of course I will!

Next week >