2007 - May

[El Gordo]

Am just finishing off the Sicily stuff for imminent posting, incidentally. Then we get into all the, er, "good animal" stuff.

You'll understand soon enough...

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

Sorry, who were you again?

[El Gordo]

Sorry, who were you again?

Who was I?

That is a most profound question, and one I've been wrestling with for some weeks.

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

Who was I?

That is a most profound question, and one I've been wrestling with for some weeks.

I understand Sicily can do that to a man.

Or was that Cecily? I forget.

[Sweder]

So long as its not Sissily.
I'd hate to think of Andy in frills . . .
Oh God I need to lie down . . . I feel unwell . . .

[Sweder]

I really enjoy taking part in foreign driving rituals.
I've driven all over the US, taking great delight in slaloming between gas-guzzlers, their drivers' vacant stares fixed on the insides of their sunglasses. And in Paris, where to have a car without a serious rent or metre-long scratch on the bodywork is an affront to the locals.

Palermo sounds like fun, although I must say the older I get the less I enjoy this form of mechanical jousting. I would, for example, resist any offers to drive in Rome, the worst city in Europe in my humble experience. However the Eternal City, or city of eternal traffic, only just sneaks into my Top Five Cities I've Been To But Would Never Drive In:

5) Rome
4) Moscow
3) Jakarta
2) Mexico City
1) Beijing

[El Gordo]

I'm not sure if there's any city that I just wouldn't drive in. Mind you, I've never been to Rome -- though I'd be amazed (and horrified) if it was worse than Palermo.

In fact I've not been to any of your top 5, though I've been elsewhere in China. When I was there (in 94) it was full of bikes. Not sure if it's still like that, but I can see that that could be pretty hazardous.

Of the places I have been to, I suppose India would be the place I'd be most wary of, though again it's a while since I was there, so things may have improved. The driving was crazy, but the state of the roads was terrible too. Pot holes, dead dogs, that sort of caper.

I really like driving in the US but without doubt the best place I've driven is Iceland. No traffic, fantastic scenery. It's "motoring" rather than driving.

One thing I always notice though, is how bad most countries' road-signs are. Germany is pretty good as you'd expect, but in general, I end up appreciating just how good UK signage is after driving overseas.

[Sweder]

Beijing has changed.
Setting off on a car journey in rush-hour must be like stepping into a fast-flowing river. There are still pushbikes a-plenty, adding to the general spirit of chaos. In Shenzhen last year we witnessed a car take out a cyclist at a junction. It seemed to us that the larger vehicle was in the wrong; however, once he'd established minimal impact damage to his bumper the driver angrily admonished the female pedalist as she stirred sluggishly on the ground.

The other issue in Beijing supports your last point about signage, though the confusion is exacerbated by the language and alarming lack of landmarks. I'd simply never know where the hell I was; so many buildings look identical when covered in a generous coating of dust.

On reflection Mexico City probably wins.
Taking a cab in Mexico is a hazard. We were warned to stick to the 'official' taxis and steer clear of the ubiquitous green VW Beatles. On arrival at our hotel the concierge offered conflicting advice, assuring us that the sickly love-bugs were 'safe, senior. Very, very safe.' One type of cab was likely to drive you off at breakneck speed to the edge of town, whereupon you'd be robbed, beaten, raped and left for the vultures; the other would take you to your destination. It took several nervy days for us to determine which was which, and I'm buggered if I can remember now.

Perhaps it's safer to drive :o

[glaconman]

India was one of those places I thought I'd never drive in. Just looking at the quality of roads and both the amount and variety of traffic is very
intimidating.

But when you actually get out into the traffic it's not so bad. Rather thathinking about it as some kind of escoteric skill that takes years to master, you just need to view the spectacle for what it is: just alot of people doing their own thing. Then you feel more comfortable joining in.

Drivers will pull-out without looking, expecting you to accomadate them; but equally, drivers are also very forgiving when you f*ck-up. It's the swarm mentality I guess, preserving the momentum of the group.

I'm not saying there are no hazards (cows and bullocks, for example, move for nobody), but the biggest problem for me was the noise and fumes that combine with the heat. I did occasionally find myself parking up in the middle of a busy junction in Pune (reputably the worst city to drive in) shouting at some 4x4 driver for deafening me with his horn. But this was only an occassional occurance to let-off-steam.

In general the speed of traffic in cities is much slower, and when you've got your family on the back of the bike you don't take many risks.

My worst driving experience was between Pushkar and Jaipur on a highway. It was a similar road to the M1, with some cars doing a similar speed. But there was no lane discipline, with trucks taking up 2 lanes and pedestrians crossing the road dragging sacks. It was more like a video game.

Driving in the rural parts of India through the jungle was a sublime experience. When we got back home my lad was very disappointed that he couldn't sit on the tank of our Yamaha.

I'd agree with Andy that driving in countries like USA and Australia can be a wonderful experience. I remember well driving into San Francisco at dusk in an open-top Mustang, taking a left turn downtown and being confronted with a one-in-two hill.

We went to Rome last year. We didn't drive but, to be honest, the traffic didn't look too crazy. I suppose it's all relative. I think I've had my baptism of fire.

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

I'll never complain about the local traffic again!

[Sweder]

But there was no lane discipline, with trucks taking up 2 lanes and pedestrians crossing the road dragging sacks. It was more like a video game.

That's a perfect description Gman - love it!

New Delhi looked pretty civilised road-traffic-wise.
I'm told the trip out to the Taj Mahal was a little scary - quite a few blanched faces returned from that journey. Sadly I worked through and missed it; another visit to the parking lot of a World Wonder

[El Gordo]

That's a perfect description Gman - love it!

New Delhi looked pretty civilised road-traffic-wise.
I'm told the trip out to the Taj Mahal was a little scary - quite a few blanched faces returned from that journey. Sadly I worked through and missed it; another visit to the parking lot of a World Wonder

Much of New Delhi is OK because it was actually designed (by Edwin Lutyens), and was intended to have wide roads befitting the new capital. Old Delhi, or pretty much anywhere else over there, is very different.

[glaconman]

True enough. Although it's fair to say there's been alot of recent improvements. I found some of the Rajastani cities (Jaipur, Jodhpur) to be much better in terms of wide roads and proper pavements. And there's a real rush-on for many cities to improve their infrastructure in order to attract inward investment as IT hubs. Cities like Nagpur and Chandigarh have been partially transformed in this respect. It makes India even more of a wild mix than ever. Camels competing at the traffic lights with Mercedes.

[Sweder]

It's definitely a dog's head
I've said before (some time ago, long before some artful dodger relieved me of SPs' Garmin) there's mileage in these run-maps as an art form. I fully intend to saddle up to a Garmin 305 in the near future - GBP 160 seems to be the best online rate at the moment - and I'll post the results occasionally in gallery form.

As to the longer piece (today), it's funny how we echo one another’s' thoughts sometimes. I've had an introspective time of things since my return from Cape Town, pondering whether or not I'd reached a pinnacle or in fact just turned a corner. I think it's the latter, but in order to progress I have to get a little honest with myself - as you have patently done. I like to talk about hard graft - 'hard yards' is a phrase that I use a lot - but as far as sustained effort goes there's a lot of foundation work to be done.

There's also more to running than mere PBs.
They're a great measure of personal progress and reward for the blood, sweat and tears, yet the thought of pacing some fellow forumites to PBs in Almería has really got my juices flowing. It'll be a challenge - I don't see running a half marathon in precisely 1:59:00 and at a steady, measured pace as being particularly easy - but one I'm really keen to take on.

I’d wish you good luck, Andy, but there’s a steely resolve in your recent posts that suggests luck will have very much a bit part in the next act.
Go for it.

[El Gordo]

Thanks. I don't want to be obsessive about PBs, but they're a good mechanism for improvement.

Yes, I was struck by something similar brewing in your own entry. Has something been slipped into the RC tea-urn, I wonder? Whatever it is, let's have some more of it. (And make sure SP gets a cup... )

£160 for a 305 is pretty good. Do check out Sportstracks. There are a couple of smilar others but remarkably, ST is free. It can be used just as a manual log (though I'm not sure if you're into that sort of thing), and if you have a GPS watch it'll download all the data automatically and plot it on a map. The SW is easy to use, but needs to be explored. There are quite a few nooks and crannies.

As for Almeria, we'll see nearer the time. The pacing offer is much appreciated though.

[Antonio247]

I´m very glad you have such enthusiasm about running again, Andy. I´m sure you will manage to reach your objectives and that enthusiasm which is all over this forum will help all of us improve our way of running and our targets.

Best of luck

Antonio

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

In sitting down to write this response to Andy’s brilliant effort of May 6, and realising that one of my best mates was even right at that moment on the other side of the planet running the Belfast marathon, I had a flash of inspiration! There was only one way to properly contemplate all of this, and that was of course with a bacon sandwich and a pint of stout. And so armed with the appropriate carbohydrates, and toasting both Bill’s efforts in Northern Ireland, and Andy’s efforts with the pen I felt ready to tackle the greatest issue of all. Not whether there is or isn’t a God, or our great purpose in life, but that far trickier and devilishly ticklish question of “Why we run”.

It occurred to me that in trying to navigate one’s way through the bewildering smorgasboard of options that life presents us with, we sometimes make use of self-help gurus, philosophers and religion. But of course, this can be self-defeating for all it generally presents us with are even more confusing alternatives and exponentially rising numbers of questions. As Neo said in “The Matrix”, the (real) problem is choice. And obviously all of us here have, or are at least contemplating the option to run as a viable, life-enhancing experience.

Andy quoted George Sheehan and spoke of jumping off the train of comfortable indifference and actually making some choices in our lives. We’ve all done that to a certain extent – that’s why we’re here in RC. But even though we decide to move away from the buffet car and towards the a la carte restaurant, we may yet hesitate. Why are we choosing to do this? What do we really want from our running? Probably very few of us analyse it to this extent, but sooner or later we do indeed have to ask those questions, for there comes a time when we’re no longer sure of where we are going with our athleticism (especially those of us in the “mediocre” class).

I personally have found that as I get older, failure – once an unimaginable and generally avoidable horror - now becomes an annoying and unavoidably persistent part of life. From double chins and high blood pressure to failed job interviews, family troubles, business failures, and the death of parents, siblings and friends, the fact is that failure becomes an everyday occurrence. The glorious optimism of youth vanishes and a more prosaic daily reality sets in. I thought initially that I took up running because I needed to restore my failing health. And whilst that’s true, I think also there was always the need to vanquish some of those constant failings with a little success – a "victory over the mocking demons" as Andy put it so well. And as he went on to say with equal eloquence, yes, in mid-life expecially, we are not only running against the calendar (rather than the clock), but also to deliver news of liberty and victory, if only to ourselves. Probably most importantly, to ourselves.

Even so, many of us oscillate between dogged, focussed determination and wretched idleness. You reach a goal, or you fail to reach a goal – either way it seems to signal a period of inactivity, from which we have to begin the whole process again of jumping off the George Sheehan Express, making some choices and going through the motions once more, and that takes both physical and mental energy, often enormous quantities of it. For me, it’s often purely the thought that the train is actually an express service to the cemetary that gets me moving on my own two legs again. But that could of course also be attributed to normal middle-aged paranoia.

But as we said before, the problem is choice: do we make an effort to do this properly, or give up and jump back on the train, with its relative comfort, adequate buffet and sense of purpose (it is going somewhere, even if we don’t quite know the destination)?

Many people simply don’t need to understand why they run – it’s enough for them to know that’s it’s worthwhile, and they do it regardless. And all power to you. I am envious. But I suspect a few of us here are still troubled from time to time with not knowing why it is such a worthwhile thing. This becomes especially pertinent when it’s below freezing, we’ve slept badly and we’re 20 kilometres behind in our running schedule for the week. At those times you once more have to choose. And there it is again – choice – it’s always the problem. At the end of the day, we are solely responsible for our actions, and it’s therefore helpful to know what motivates us.

Like Andy, I suspect I’ll never know exactly what motivates me to run, but I have also decided that it is worthwhile, and having made that decision, I owe it to myself to bother to do it as well as I can. I too, get Sheehan. The thought of getting back on that train of complacency fills me with dread, even though I know I will sometimes succumb. As I once heard one of those self-help gurus say in a lecture one time, “Get up! Do something! If you just sit there, the only thing that’s going to slap you in the face is mediocrity!” OK, bad example given Andy’s explanation of the true meaning of that word, but I think we can all appreciate the context in which it was given.

I may never amount to much in the running world, but at least I know I’ve gotten off that bloody train.

Like Andy says, let’s go.

The secret to life is not in understanding it,
but in pretending that you do. - Kurt Vonnegut (RIP)

[Sweder]

I too appear to get Sheahan, though I think I get Vonnegut more.
Kilgore Trout has been part of my upbringing. One of my favourite Vonnegutisms has to be

I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.

Another that may have more resonance here and now is

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center.

That's funny, because 'the edge' was very much in my thoughts as I battled unseasonably stormy weather on my morning plod. David Lee Roth sang about it in the excellent Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love (Van Halen). It's a line I've quoted here before, perhaps in one of my earliest ever rambles on a tour of my home town.

I've been to the edge
Man I stood and looked down
You know I lost a lot of friends there baby
I got no time to mess around

There's a lot to be said for pushing our limits. One man's limit is, of course, another man's bread and butter which is why comparing endeavour is so rarely fair or ever truly revealing. Your mountain challenge last year exceeded anything I may have accomplished so far because of the ugliness of the odds against you at the outset. Likewise Andy's five hour epic in Zurich. These are peepholes through tears in the fabric of normal life, a snapshot of what we might achieve. I have this feeling that if I really knuckled down and stopped faffing about I might one day make a decent effort at one of these races. I catch fleeting glimpses of my potential, like a wispy figure meandering along a perfect beach, only for the vicious tide of everyday life to crash in and erase those delicate footprints even as I try to focus on them.

The trick is to know there is more and, whilst accepting that for us the pinnacle will always be a horrendous struggle it is within that struggle that our victories lie. The Spartans knew the gig was up at Thermopylae, but they also knew the telling of their valour would be the making of their nation. Even in the faith of certain death Leonidas understood the value of spin, so sent Dilios, the finest yarnsmith amongst the three hundred, home with news of his 'victory' against the mighty Persian hoards to rally the council and ensure Greece stood firm against the invaders.

Steely resolve; it's here in spades

[El Gordo]

It's hard to do justice to either of those excellent posts.

Yes, choice.... the trouble is, although we're always being told that we have choice, that's it's simply up to us whether we stay on that train or get off, I've never been convinced that it's that easy. Or not that easy for non-nutters like you and me (he said, controversially). One wants to be, y'know, normalish. We want, in short, to have our cake and eat it. We want to be matey and joke about getting drunk with the lads and wolfing down curries and chocoate, while at the same time having those tuned-in periods when we run and write noble stuff about challenges and achievement. It's that oscillation that's so wearing, and which prevents us from fulfilling our potential. Uugh. Did I really just say that? Gulp, I did. But it's the way my mind is wandering -- for all sorts of reasons.

But anyway, it makes the exercising of choice all the harder. We say we have choice, but then we go and load the dice against ourselves.

It's all about sex and drugs and rock'n'roll. All my brain and body need. I've always loved that song, and the sentiment, though as you get older, there's a temptation to be sniffy about it. I thought about it recently and decided that no, it's still true as you age, but it's just that your "sex and drugs and rock'n'roll" aren't always so literal. It was when I was doing the Copenhagen Marathon that I realised: "running is acid for grown-ups".

This is the way I can deal with goody-goody stuff about potential and achievement. Running gives you a great buzz. Feeling healthy, "being a good animal", is actually one of the most 'far-out' things you can do. But I've only ever taken it so far, and I'm curious about, y'know, the harder stuff....

I've always pushed myself to my limits, it's just that my limits fall far short of where they could be. I suspect I hurt during a race just as much as anyone else, yet I still finish at the back. I want to know what it's like to be a better animal, and to be a better athlete, and the only way I can do this is by changing my lifestyle again, taking it a step further.

I've always had that choice, but sort of convinced myself that I didn't really, because it seemed to hard to select a certain path. But then I saw that it wasn't hard at all. It's a liberation, not a constraint. Lose the fear of failure, and everything's OK.

The good news is that I won't be giving up alcohol and junk food, but I've made a few... management changes. From now on, they report to me, and not the other way around.

Anyway, I did a race this morning, and need to go off and write about it.

Thanks for the posts. Great stuff.

[El Gordo]

Re MLCM's question: "Why do we run?"

I thought this essay was interesting:

http://www.georgesheehan.com/essays/essay46.html