A tricky week comes to an end with all four of my scheduled runs completed as required, the final run this morning being the weekly long run, now stretched to 15km, and my longest run since the Sydney half marathon five months ago! Had I run that half marathon at today's pace, it would have taken me a full 2 hours and 15 minutes, but I'm honouring the training guru's edict that the long, slow runs be completed at an easy, 'conversational' pace.
I managed a slight strain to my left calf despite the gentle pace, but application of recovery compression skins and that miraculous piece of plastic known as
The Stick are quickly putting things right again. The Stick is a bit like having your own masseur, but far cheaper, on tap whenever you need it, and self-regulating in terms of how much pain you subject yourself too. For finding and teasing out those difficult knotted bits of muscle, it is brilliant.
Since my last post there has been a wave of opinion about Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize for Literature awash throughout the media, much of it derisory. Comments such as Nobel Prize being reduced to something akin 'Sweden's Got Talent' or that the selection committee comprised 'senile, gibbering hippies' have to my mind just proven how much elitist bullshit there is surrounding the subject.
Quite some years ago, a good friend of mine and I decided to read as many Nobel and Booker Prize-winning author's tomes as we could to try and dispel our impression of the time that those particular books were in fact, rubbish. Between us, we read over a dozen and it only cemented our belief that there was something fundamentally wrong with the allocation of literature prizes, at least at that elite level. Now that Dylan has won the big one, I hope that the pendulum has swung and that major awards will be given again to authors on the basis of genius alone, and not their ability to talk the elitist nonsense that judges apparently wanted to read, to the detriment of actual, approachable, masterful art.
A step-back week now appears on the calendar for me, and probably just at the right time. The training is going well, tremendously hard at times, to be sure, but eminently worthwhile.
Not so worthwhile, it seems, is my entry each year into the London Marathon ballot. Once again I have received the standard rejection email that I get every year:
Dear Graham,
We regret that we have to advise you that your application to run in the 2017 Virgin Money London Marathon has not been successful due to massive
over-subscription.
Yours Sincerely
Hugh Brasher
Event Director
Oh well. Such is life. Never-the-less, I shall still have some choice words to share with Mr Brasher when we meet ...
RackOfftober
