Christmas Eve 2002

Sometimes a run just jumps out of nowhere and ambushes you.

Today, after spending all morning and most of the afternoon lounging in front of a computer, still in my dressing gown, I glanced out of the window and saw the first signs of darkness. With some reluctance, I decided that a short run would be a good idea. I can barely bring myself to confront the calorific calamity that lies in wait for me tomorrow. Perhaps if I can go into the day with some kind of calory defecit from today, it might help, I thought.

The plan was to do a quick three miler before M returned home. If the timing was right, I could do just enough hoovering and washing up to convince her that I'd been hard at it.

But the quick three miler turned into an eight mile run. 8 miles! How did that happen?

I set off along the canal, turning back at the point where the generally sound tow path turns into a mud-swamp of a field. But approaching home, I realised that I wanted to continue, and headed off up one of the local lanes.

Last week, I had some correspondence with the administration office of the local baronial estate. This had been the location of the 10K race I did in August. I emailed them, asking if I could have access to some of the paths across the estate. To my surprise, they didn't send a gamekeeper round with a shotgun to warn me off making further impertinent enquiries. Instead, I had a courteous reply, pointing out that there were some permissive paths that I was allowed to use, and even a suggestion of a route that would form a loop of about 4.5 miles.

Today seemed like a good opportunity to explore this suggestion, so I tacked it onto the end of my initial three miles. It was quite exhilarating to find myself running on good paths away from the traffic. The only problem was that it pitch black by now, and I had little idea where I was going. At one point I followed a path past a huge detached residence in the grounds of the estate, and into a farmyard, where I found myself trapped. There was no option but to retrace my steps. Fortunately, there seemed to be no one at home - or I really may have got a shotgun embedded somewhere pretty painful.

Eventually, through the darkness, I heard the ethereal sound of carols being sung, and could make out the steeple of the tiny fifteenth century church that sits on the estate. I knew where I was now, and turned towards home -- though there was still about a mile and a half to go.

After getting back and showering, it was 6:15pm. Perfect. This left me 45 minutes to nip down to the Sainsbury's Savacentre to buy all my presents, cards and wrapping paper to get me through the next couple of days. I've never understood this nonsense about starting your Christmas shopping at the start of November. I've always done all mine in the last shopping hour of Christmas Eve. As long as you have a rough idea of what you want, what's the problem? It gets a bit like Supermarket Sweep, admittedly, as you career round the aisles, throwing things into your trolley, but it's better than agonising over it for weeks on end.

Today I received my number (508) for the Hyde Park 10K race on New Year's Day. Part of me resents the constraints it puts on my New Year's Eve carousing opportunities. But it's an important marker for the year ahead: starting how I mean to go on, and all that stuff.

And anyway, if I do well in the race, I might just treat myself to a glass of shandy on New Years Day evening instead.

Sat 28 December 2002

The party's over. Three days of alcohol, chocolate and other calorific unmentionables, and it's time to start repairing some of the damage. After three weeks of running and dieting, my weight has actually increased by half a pound.

Coming after the 7.5 miler on Christmas Eve - my longest run since the marathon in October - the 4 mile run on Christmas morning was painful and slow. I'd been looking forward to it as a curtain raiser to three days of gluttony and sloth, but it was a rather miserable affair. I decided to do the decent thing and go through with the gluttony and sloth, however. So after returning home, there were a few glasses of Champagne (Heidsieck NV) to be dealt with while cooking lunch, and my first reasonable claret in months (Ch Citran 95), while eating it. Throw in the Brown Bros late-harvest riesling with the pud, and I was just about done for.

Boxing Day started out as a rather groggy affair, but I did manage to get to Shepherds Bush in time for the midday kickoff. This was my last match of the season, and perhaps much longer. I waste too much time on the game. I'm challenging the idea that football supporters are hopelessly addicted. If I managed to give up smoking, I can surely get over this stuff. At least we won for the first time in thirteen games. To mark my au revoir, I consumed some hamburgers and a balti pie, before visiting my parents and enjoying another full Christmas dinner and a box of chocolates. But no alcohol at least.

Had to pop round to the pub last night for a neighbourly drink, which went on a little longer than planned. Long enough to make me feel decidedly rough this morning.

A run was the last thing on my mind when I eventually awoke, but it was such a wonderful day -- bright sunshine all morning -- that I really had to take advantage of it. So I ended up doing a 6.2 mile run along the canal. Oh boy. The excesses of the last few days caught up with me at last. I was cream-crackered by the halfway mark, and had to take a 5 minute walk break before forlornly jogging home the second half.

Sun 29 December 2002

No run today.

Negotiations about the Wokingham Half opened, but are not going well. The issue is that it's on the same day (February 9th) as M's dad's birthday, which means lunch out somewhere in Sussex. Can I finish the race and get down to Sussex by 1pm/1:30? I think yes; M thinks no. I might have to concede graciously here, and bank a bit of goodwill instead. I've no doubt I'll have to call on it as the running season progresses.

Mon 30 December 2002

Monday is normally a rest day, but with the Hyde Park 10 kilometre race on Wednesday (New Year's Day), it seemed sensible to go for a three mile loosener this evening, and rest tomorrow instead.

Running in the rain offers a great sense of liberation. A dark night, the rain dense and cool, no one on the black, flashing pavements except a mad runner with a grin hanging from one ear to the other. The pleasure comes from the certain knowledge that you're going to get soaked through. Why worry about it? It's a kind of Buddhist perspective, I suppose. Discomfort ceases to be discomfort once you stop fighting it. That's the theory, anyway. It works well enough with rain, though I confess I've had less success with violent stomach pain, toothache, and the fear of being beaten by Brentford.

I turned away from the main drag, and followed one of the local lanes for a mile or so. I can't tell you how happy I was in this cocoon of darkness and liquid. For a while at least, it was like some unassailable state of safety; I was somehow detached and suspended from all those things from which you want to be detached and suspended.

Eventually I had to stop and turn back, as I was literally up to my ankles in rainwater. It wasn't the squelching that put me off, but the worry that I couldn't see what I was stepping on. A bite from an indignant jellyfish would have put me out of action for weeks.

I've discovered MP3s rather late in life, and have been having fun downloading and playing some of the musical odds and sods that litter the cutting-room floor of my rather dissolute existence. All sorts of things that I'd forgotten about have slid off the mortuary slab into some kind of second stab at life. This evening, for the first time in more than 21 years I've heard The Turn Of A Friendly Card by Alan Parsons. I don't know why I thought to search for this, but it was a song from an album that I heard time and again in a hotel room in the Himalayas in 1981, where I and a hirsute German mathematician called Martin were held captive by a massive monsoon downpour for an entire weeekend. For some reason, this was the only tape that he had, and we must have played it dozens of times through that weekend, while we tried to disprove his assertion that it was impossible to die from smoking too much marijuana.

What a wistful half hour it was this evening, hearing this again - and again. And again.

And I wondered what might make me wistful 21 years from now? The discovery of a pair of ancient, rat-chewed running shoes in some dark corner of the shed...? A blackened, dented old medal from the Hyde Park 10K of Jan 1st 2003?

One memento that I won't come across in 21 years time is my 2002/2003 Queens Park Rangers season ticket. Today I sent off the unused half to a fellow QPR fan. I've drawn a line under the Hoops for a while at least. Time to get running instead.