April Cools

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

Do you find that performance on the tready translates directly to performance on the road? (e.g. the road includes factors like wind resistance and uneven surface.)

Um, no. In a word. There's no comparison, really!

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

My weekly weigh-in this morning revealed the true horror of the last week's illness and reduced running - weight, muscle mass, body fat etc etc are all back to nearly identical levels of three weeks ago, showing just how fickle this fitness business is. I'd expected it to go backwards, but not quite that much. I still ran just over half of my scheduled kilometres, but I guess it was the lack of walking and the undisciplined shovelling of food (you are supposed to feed ear infections aren't you?) that did the damage...

Still, I'm 95% over it now and will get back into the running togs tonight and see how I go. Trouble is, Easter's coming up, Mrs MLCM is away and I have a good friend coming to stay for a couple of days over the weekend which will entail food and beverage consumption at an unhealthy rate.

But what's a MLCM to do?

Maybe I should hire a personal trainer to get a bit more discipline back in my running life?

Meh.

[marathondan]

I have no scientific explanation for this, but hopefully you might find that the stats bounce back quicker than expected once you get back into the groove.

And I don't think you should worry about taking on a few calories over the Easter weekend. It's a long haul; these are wobbles on a generally upward curve.

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

I have no scientific explanation for this, but hopefully you might find that the stats bounce back quicker than expected once you get back into the groove.

And I don't think you should worry about taking on a few calories over the Easter weekend. It's a long haul; these are wobbles on a generally upward curve.

Dead right, Dan! An enforced layoff by illness and a completely voluntary over-indulgence over Easter impacted not at all ... I must have been better behaved than I thought, as everything's looking fine... thank God.

No, I mean, yes. I jumped on the treadie yesterday for a testing tempo run just to make sure I was still on song, and managed a respectable 11km in good time, so I was more than happy with that, and this morning's weigh-in showed I am still trending in all the right directions in regard to weight, body mass, muscle mass etc etc, which was more than something of a surprise, I must say, but there you go. Further happiness was found in today's run, a 5km toughish hill climb, which was likewise completed in good time and feeling strong. All is well, it seems, in the MLCM camp.

Touch wood!

Bring on that race... I can hardly wait now.

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

I step on to the bottom of the ancient wooden escalator at Wynyard station and begin my 1 minute 15 second ascent (yes, sadly I must confess to having timed it). Above and around me is the mayhem of Sydney at evening rush hour, with a squillion anxious people all heading home, eager to get out of the cold and wet autumnal weather that is already presaging “winter” with as much torment as the busker outside the station murdering the blues.

I’m in one of my introspective moods. That’s perhaps not unusual for this time of year, but it’s more than just the miserable weather that has me taking a scouring pad to my brain. Unlike the thousands hurtling with manic intent around me, I’m on my way to work, being in the middle of another stint of the dreaded night shifts. That means arriving in the city in the early evening as everyone else is trying to leave, and then sitting alone for twelve and half long hours in a control room waiting for something to happen. Which at night is a rare thing. This has its good points of course, but one tricky thing it does do (apart from add further introspective analysis) is mess up one’s training schedule. For example, this afternoon’s 5km “easy” was actually just plain hard work, being akin to a run at 3 a.m. The mind may be willing (just) but the body goes into a kind of primordial spasm, saying “what the....?”

Actually, this afternoon’s easy/hard run was just the start of it. In the mail arrived a copy of the fell running film The Bedlamites (see review here). This got me thinking about some of my favourite bits of RC running and as luck or fate would have it, whilst searching through the filing cabinet for some sheets of exercises my physiotherapist had given me a while back, I stumbled across some hard copies of favourite Running Commentary writing. And as luck or fate would further have it, I was in need of something to read on the train, so into the bag it went.

It’s probably no coincidence then that those favourite pieces of RC writing were in fact all equally soul-searching pieces. They were:

• Seafront Plodder’s write up of his 2004 New York marathon.
• EG’s 2005 Almeria write-up that included his amazing escapades on the moors as a teenager.
• EG’s 2005 Hamburg marathon and the frustration of kaput legs.
• Sweder’s frank and astonishing piece from January 2006 about his father.

Of course there are many other superb pieces of writing, but these happened to be the four I read on the train. And I have to tell you, it’s impossible to read of the inner workings of a runner and not be touched by them.

So. (Which also happens to be the first sentence of EG’s I ever read – right at the start of his London marathon training diary, and which had me immediately hooked on his writing.)

Here I am, suitably RC’d up after my train journey, and now being jostled by streams of homeward-bound city people going the opposite way to myself. And it’s cold. And it’s dark. And yes, it’s raining.

OK so let’s do this properly. In his Hamburg marathon entry, EG talks about liking tabula rasa trips (don’t worry, I had to look it up as well). Well, I’ve actually arrived in town early. It’s my habit to walk 2km to and from work if I can, by getting off at the wrong station. Tonight I’ve caught an even earlier train than usual and so can take an extended walk through the Darling Harbour part of town and see what tabula rasa-inspiration I can come up with.

I make my way toward the harbour via the side streets to try and get away from the crowds somewhat. I’ve never liked crowds except in a few special circumstances. Being in the middle of a quarter of a million people on Olympic Boulevard during the 2000 Olympics for example, was a strange and generally positive experience I have to say – and I think that if the crowd is a happy one, then I don’t mind so much. But a crowd of people anxious to be somewhere else is not a happy one and I try to avoid them.

So, the side and back streets of Sydney it is – seemingly full of smokers trying to get a last lungful of cancer before going home (‘please hurry up and die’ is all I can think as I rush past holding my breath) and (more happily) packed pubs doing brisk after-work trade and of course heavy, impatient traffic. Probably a story repeated in cities all over the world. People are after all much the same everywhere.

There are however, also lots and lots of runners. I’m always impressed at the sheer numbers of runners in Sydney’s streets at any time of day, and with the first of two major city-based half marathons only two weeks away, there are hundreds of ‘em, which is a little puzzling at first until you realise that Sydney’s foreshore is a fantastic place for running. Sydney’s suburbs are generally quite undulating, so I suppose many take the opportunity to go for a run around the harbour on the flat before heading home at night.

Pretty soon I reach Darling Harbour and cross Pyrmont Bridge – once open to traffic but now a pedestrian and cyclist-only zone, except for the overhead monorail, which was pretty fancy and hi-tech when it opened as part of Sydney’s bicentenary redevelopment in 1988, but which now, to be honest, is a bit clunky and tattered-looking. Still, the tourists love it and I suppose it’s an interesting way to see certain parts of the city. No-one who lives here seriously uses it for public transport though.

And no-one runs in Sydney without crossing Pyrmont Bridge and then cruising around Darling Harbour - surely one of the big city running delights of the world. Tonight is no exception and dozens more runners make their way to... wherever. All of them (so far as I can tell) are younger, fitter and definitely faster than me. Well, that can’t be literally true, but I struggle to see anyone my age or more. I try to gauge the pace of everyone I see, but it’s hard and I put them all into one of two categories: either “faster than I can run” or “I could perhaps run that fast for a short time”, with only a handful falling into the second category. I see none of the slow pokes I more often see during the day – tonight they all seem to be serious runners.

The mix of pedestrians, runners, cyclists and water sloshing down from the overhead monorail makes Pyrmont Bridge a little risky at times (I’ve yet to see any cyclist obey the 10kmh speed limit that supposedly applies to them), but everyone seems happy and takes the ducking, weaving and occasional drenching in their stride.

At the far end of the bridge with still plenty of time to kill I take a loop around the Maritime Museum and past Pyrmont Bay Park – usually full of personal trainers doing one-on-ones or working with groups, but given the weather strangely empty tonight. From the Maritime Museum is the classic view of Sydney: a metropolis-like skyline with the square-rigged sailing ships, naval destroyers and a submarine all belonging to the museum in the foreground. I want to stop and take a photo, but there’s no way I can do it justice with the camera on my phone. Anyway, I'm now very near the restaurant strip and nearly cry from the incredible, wonderful smell of seafood coming from the restaurants in full flight for the evening. I desperately want to stop and sample their wares or at least have a quick drink at one the bars, but ... duty calls.

I plod on.

Beyond the restaurants and water features I veer right, walking past the convention centre and exhibition halls. It’s a bit quieter here, but soon I reach the Entertainment Centre, near where the incredible expressways fly 20 metres overhead with thousands of vehicles log-jammed on their way out of the city. Under one of the fly-overs an Asian dance group are rehearsing in front of a boom box ... I’ve seen this sort of thing here before. I can only guess they are part of the show at the Entertainment Centre that evening and rehearsing in public is just a means of drumming up business (or perhaps just massaging their egos). I don’t know if it works, but they certainly attract an appreciative crowd (the girls are little short of stunning).

The Entertainment Centre car park access path runs from there behind the back of the centre and as I walk on I can see the stage crew setting up for the night. The stage door is also back here and a few weeks ago I caught sight of Lemmy and the guys from Motorhead arriving for a gig to the cheers of a black-shirted crowd of men and boys of surprisingly diverse ages ... now I can’t walk past there without thinking of Sweder!

Speaking of some of the heroes that often get mentioned in these pages, Bob Dylan is in town tonight, but he’s not playing at this venue, as evidenced by the dancing girls rehearsing outside – hardly Dylanesque. His Bobness is instead across town – I’d be at the concert myself if I wasn’t working nights. Hopefully next time. (*Or so I thought - it turns out Dylan was playing there that night ... the girls must have been part of some other show.)

Just a short walk now past the Business faculty of the University of Technology and then I’m at work. So, was this a tabula rasa journey, or just another walk to work? It’s hardly one of EG, SP or Sweder’s dark and deep soul-searching expositions following a marathon, but it does at least prove one thing: that running is good for the mental health as well as the physical ... erm, even if you’re only walking... erm... and er, thinking about running. Oh dear, this is not turning out all that well, is it???

Hell, just read Sweder’s magnificent piece about running along the A27 and you’ll see what I mean. As he says, sometimes a run is not a thing of beauty but of necessity. Sometimes I forget that. Often I forget that, but that’s also why I keep hard copies of some of the best bits to come out of these training diaries.

There’s no denying we’re all getting older. However I still have a few running goals and I certainly don’t want to die wondering if I could have kicked them or not, but I’m also fairly well aware that some of them are beyond my reach now. Just at the moment I’m running OK, but I’m definitely (a lot) slower than I was and I’m alarmingly far less flexible than I was (and maybe the two are related). Hence the searching for physio’s recommended stretching and mobility exercises earlier in the day. And hence the digging deeper into the runners’ psyche.

And there’s still a little matter of a mountain to run up in a few months time. This for me cannot be a winter of lazy training. This winter has to be one of hard work no matter what. And half the battle is mental. Maybe more. But I’m even more determined than usual and I’m on the way. We’ll see what the winter can throw at me... I think I’m ready.

Thanks for listening.

[El Gordo]

Great post, MLCM. I read it the other day, but didn't immediately reply, for the simple reason that I didn't think it needed a reply. I still don't. But I don't want you to misinterpret the silence. You've said what you needed to say, and allowed me, and I'm sure others, to ponder.

A fascinating mini-tour of Sydney Harbour too. I'm in Hong Kong in a couple of weeks. I had a look on the map, and Australia is just around the corner. If I get a spare evening, I'll try to nip over.

Don't be too disappointed by not seeing Dylan. I've attended his meetings several times, and if I'm frank, it's mainly just to pay homage to the saintly presence. The music isn't great these days (and of course, I would argue, hasn't been much good since 1966). I have two signed Dylan prints on my wall. The signatures pretty much do the same job for me now.

Are you on the wagon? Or still uncorking the odd gem?

[Sweder]

What he said

Darling Harbour holds fond memories for me. I was there in 2003 for the World Dental Congress (in that very exhibition centre) one month before England swept to Rugby World Cup glory. It's a fabulous venue for eating, drinking, people watching and generally enjoying life. I hope we get a chance to tarry there a while in November.

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

I'm in Hong Kong in a couple of weeks. I had a look on the map, and Australia is just around the corner. If I get a spare evening, I'll try to nip over.

Yep, it's only a nine and a half hour flight. I'll pop the kettle on.

Are you on the wagon? Or still uncorking the odd gem?

Still uncorking a few gems, EG. Although lately I'm seriously beginning to think I need to cut down quite a bit. Wouldn't go on the wagon totally however. Perish the thought!

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

Darling Harbour holds fond memories for me. I was there in 2003 for the World Dental Congress (in that very exhibition centre) one month before England swept to Rugby World Cup glory. It's a fabulous venue for eating, drinking, people watching and generally enjoying life. I hope we get a chance to tarry there a while in November.

Indeed we must, Sweder. Already looking forward to it!

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

Let's get the bad news out of the way first ... took off for my scheduled long run yesterday intending to complete 22kms, but threw in the towel after slightly less than 4kms ... some days are just bad days, and it's clearly not going to work out. I was happy with my decision, but there was no escaping the fact that I still had to do that long run...

Today was a much happier day. First off, some good news... I have a new physiotherapist, the lovely Abby. Abby does not inflict severe pain. In fact she seems genuinely concerned when causing any discomfort. Perhaps I have crossed that threshold labelled "Older Runner - Handle With Care"? None the less, she knew her onions. I went with the intention of getting a tailored stretching and mobility regime, something which takes into account my dodgy left knee and my running aspirations. This she did with professional ease and I left happy with her package of stretches and exercises, though slightly worried by her admonition that she will know all too well upon my return visit in two weeks time just how often I have been following the plan and how well.

She confirmed much of what I already half-knew, particularly that my glutes are "woeful", my hamstrings "awfully tight" and my overall flexibility "not good at all". She was however pleased with the state of my calf and quad muscles, so we built a plan to maintain my strengths and work principally on my weaknesses without putting any load on the knees. Her diagnosis was remarkably similar to that given to Glaconman (here) just the other day - I suspect it might be true of many runners who don't stretch or crosstrain sufficiently?

A little later I headed off on a second attempt at the week's long slowie. Slowing it right down, I felt really good and completed a very pedestrian but quite comfortable 24km (15mi), and of course immediately followed it with a lengthy stretching session, and I have to say, it felt bloody good. Really did loosen up the muscles tightened by the run but also gave those that missed out a work-out too.

Of course, I have to do these stretches and exercises three times a day, as a sort of mobility boot camp, but I'm going to tackle it, as I feel my flexibility has suffered in recent years (perhaps causing my loss of speed), and my knees "need" all the help they can get, too.

So anyway that was my last long run before the half mara in two Sundays time. It won't be a fast race for me, but the main thing is to have a bit of fun and continue building a good base mileage.

So far all is good in Camp MLCM. Stay tuned.

[Bierzo Baggie]

A little later I headed off on a second attempt at the week's long slowie. Slowing it right down, I felt really good and completed a very pedestrian but quite comfortable 24km (15mi), and of course immediately followed it with a lengthy stretching session, and I have to say, it felt bloody good.

That sounds good MLCM
Looking forward to your half marathon report, keep it up!

[glaconman]

Nice work MLCM. You've passed the 'listen to you body' test with flying colours. Very smart and not always easy.

I do a fair amount of cycling but it could just exacerbate the problem. One thing I am sure of is my flexibility is woeful. From my hips down to my ankles. Hell, I can barely turn my kneck.

I need to sell the house and move to an ashram and get seriously bendy.

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

I do a fair amount of cycling but it could just exacerbate the problem.

Not sure about that, G'man. Both my podiatrist and an earlier incarnation of my physio told me that cycling is important for correcting the imbalance running causes in the quads, which leads to, or exacerbates knee injuries. One of the primary quads which running strengthens has a slight lateral pull on the patella, whereas cycling favours other quads which counteracts that lateral pull.

Something like that, anyhow. You can read a bit more about all those muscles here.

Have you seen a specialist of some kind about your neck? It might be something obvious like one leg longer than the other or a hip displacement?

OK I'm off to do some stretching...

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

A testing, hilly 10km run around the local streets yesterday proved unexpectedly fast. I had set out with no real thought about speed, and just wanting to cover "7 or 8" reasonably undulating kilometres. Instead, I ran 10.1 km in just under 62 minutes - very fast for me, especially considering I had no intention of a quick run and was really just seeking out some new climbs.

This is not too far short of what I ran in the Lindfield 10km race last month (59:45) on a similarly hilly course. This makes me now wonder that if I can run 6:08/km on a standard training run on a hilly course, then perhaps I can get close to that 2-hour mark or even under in the coming (flat) half marathon? Tempting, to say the least.

Let's see how we get on, shall we?