April Fuel 2014

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

9 p.m., the night before.
I’m laying awake in bed listening to the ferocious drumming of heavy rain. It set in a few hours ago and is threatening to seriously dampen my pre-dawn run tomorrow morning. Tomorrow’s run is important, but I’m not thinking about that just now. Instead I’m transported in my mind well over four decades back to my youth in Tasmania; of laying in bed on cold winter nights with my pastel-blue AWA two-transistor pocket radio surreptitiously tucked under my pillow and tuned to stations hundreds of miles away, mainly rock and top-40 stations like 2SM in Sydney or 3AW in Melbourne, although often I’d listen to a weird eclecticism of whatever was available: greyhound racing from Ballarat, Garner Ted Armstrong’s oddly fascinating bible-bashing programmes from any of a number of church-owned stations, or country stations with terrible fake American accents playing Hank Williams tunes. I'd listen to anything that was a bit different and was from somewhere else. As long as it was a long way from the isolated, trapped-in-time island on which I lived I’d happily listen to it, and I flattened many Eveready 9-volt batteries by falling asleep with my trusty radio still chirruping under my pillow.

The Australia of those days was a product of the resources boom of the ‘50s and ‘60s. Wool, wheat, copper and iron-ore had made Australia “The Lucky Country” with an affluence that had enticed hundreds of thousands of migrants from all parts of Europe, including my parents who arrived in the antipodes aboard the S.S. Fairsky from England three years before I was born.

One of the icons of the resources boom was cheap, plentiful iron and steel; the most visible example of this being the ubiquitous corrugated-iron roof which adorned vast swathes of Australian housing. It was extremely popular, being cheap, lightweight and simple to work with, and it could be painted almost any colour you liked. As common as it was, the iron roof was singularly ill-suited to the Australian climate – exceedingly hot in summer and bitterly cold in winter. It did have one benefit over tiled rooves which had nothing to do with structural values, and that was the sound it made in a rain storm. The heavy drumming of rain on a tin roof lulled many an Aussie kid to sleep, and still does today. As a youth I enhanced the effect by deliberately placing my bed next to the window so I could have the double benefit of listening to the rain hit both the roof and the glass of my window. It also allowed me to feel the chill of cold air from the window on my face while the rest of me was toasty warm in my bed. On such nights I would turn off the transistor radio and instead of “Back to the Bible”, the Rolling Stones or the trots from Albion Park, I would happily nod off to the sounds of nature reclaiming its sovereignty over mankind on my roof and window pane.

Now that I live in a house with a tiled roof, I miss it so much that on rainy nights, no matter how cold it is, I will sleep with the window open to better hear the rain, and always struggle with that bitter-sweet irony of wanting to listen to the rain but finding it sends me off to sleep in an instant.

Tonight though something is keeping me awake and I listen to the rain for ages wondering why I can’t sleep. Eventually I do drift off, only for some reason to dream strange, restless dreams about unsuccessfully attempting to grow giant pumpkins in my backyard. It’s all a little weird.

3:50 a.m., the next morning.
The alarm sounds and I’m out of bed and into my running gear before it even registers that the rain has stopped. I’m still wondering about the pumpkins as I step outside, rubbing the sleep from my eyes and fussing with my Garmin. The ground is sodden and I see the sky is overcast so I don a water-proof layer and with a sense of reluctance over-written only by a dimly-sensed yet somehow keenly-felt obligation, I head off into the night.

It has to be said that it’s a special morning to be running, but for the moment that’s far from my mind as I head up the first hill, lungs barely coping with the sudden transition from their relaxed, comatose role in the arms of Morpheus to now frantically sucking in air as legs and mind struggle to understand the rude and inhuman rush from bed to hillside.

Slowly however I start to remember why this is such a significant morning. In less than an hour – at 4:49 a.m. to be precise – it will be exactly one year since the catastrophic Boston marathon bombings occurred, and I had wanted in some small way this morning to remember the occasion and register my own small act of defiance against those that wish to kill and maim innocent people.

A year ago I had arrived at work at 6 a.m. to find the news services all crossing live to the Boston marathon, but of course for all the wrong reasons. For me the impact was not unlike watching the 9/11 World Trade Centre attack. If Boston was on a smaller scale in terms of devastation and loss of life, its impact on me was magnified due to the attack being against a running race – a marathon at that, and only a day after I too had run a marathon, albeit in Canberra on the other side of the world. And I knew as I watched the TV coverage that running – no matter where it was - would never be quite the same again.

In the aftermath of Boston, my desire and plan to do something about the tragedy had actually been to travel to Boston and run the race the following (i.e. this) year. Being hopelessly unable to run a qualifying time however I was going to have to rely on a charity entry and this didn’t eventuate. Plan B was to run the Canberra marathon again, which is held within a few days of the Boston event, but work pressures in any case intervened and my training plan fell apart. I was left therefore with only this small token gesture of an early morning run at about the time the bombs went off. As small as this gesture may be in the bigger picture, for me at least it was not an insignificant one.

There is something almost dichotomous about the nature of my defiant run through the darkened streets of Sydney this morning. It’s an almost perfect solitude at this time of day – there’s absolutely no-one about at all other than myself, and anyone who knew me who happened to think of me at that moment could have no real clue as to where I was or what I was even doing. And so as a gesture of defiance it seems a little ridiculous, but I believe that somewhere there is a running God, and that She will somehow honour my small tribute.

Of course it is very hard when you’re running up and down hills in the dark to remain fully focussed on the terrible events of a year ago, but as the appointed moment came and went and the universe went on regardless, I at least felt pleased to have made this small effort. Terrorists – even if somehow they might have noticed my token effort - will hardly be concerned by it, but despite that I believe it is doubly important in the wake of Boston that we keep running. The mindset that even these solo efforts bring about will meld with the minds of others at countless races around the planet with a heightened sense of the importance of standing up to terrorism everywhere.

And so we run on. Doubtless the victims of Boston wouldn’t want it any other way.

Two days later.
I’ve been puzzling over why I felt this strong connection between the dark rainy nights of long ago and the Boston bombing. There’s an inherent loneliness I think in both my listening to distant radio stations in my youth – longing to be somewhere else – and also in the act of long distance running. And like the Boston bombing, there’s always a sense that dramatic events only happen to other people, a very long way away.

But if the shrinking of the modern world says anything, it’s that dramatic events don’t only happen to other people and no-one is ever really that far away. We’re all inextricably connected and bad things happen much closer to home, even if they are on the other side of the world.

All I really know is that while the Boston bombers planted their bombs some 16,000 kilometres from where I live, I felt the impact at an oddly personal level.

Such is the bond among distance runners. May it always be so.

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

My previous post about Boston does (now that I think about it) seem appropriate for Easter. The horror of the bombings and the resurgence and determination of runners everywhere to stand up to evil seems to work (tragically) as a secular motif for the Easter weekend.

This morning's long run through Lane Cove National Park seemed to prove that. The park was chock-a-block full of runners, walkers and cyclists today, many of the runners in "Can Too" shirts, training for up-coming half marathon events and raising funds for cancer research in the process. I chatted to several of them as (unusually) I overtook them (woot!) and the air of confidence and determination they had was fantastic and a great boost to my own run.

Even though I overtook several runners today (and even more unusually was passed by no-one), my pace is still well down on that of a year ago. I certainly felt stronger though, particularly on the hills so I know I am making progress, and indeed I was about ten seconds per kilometre faster than last time I ran this course. I just need to run quite a few more of these long 'uns to see some real improvement.

In all it was a good run on Good Friday, and I'm mighty pleased I made the effort. 20.4 hilly kilometres (including the evil twin hill climbs "The Beast" and "Mother") covered in 2h12m. It'll do.

[El Gordo]

Don't misinterpret my lack of response, MLCMM.

It's one of those situations where the Lewes Loper would utter "Amen, Brother". And perhaps another of his famous phrases (in relation to a response, not your articulate sentiments): "Less is more".

Thank you.

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

Cheers, EG.

I rounded out week 4 of my 26-week Sydney marathon training plan this evening with a gentle 10.1km around the local streets. Today's run was very nearly hijacked by a bout of hangover syndrome following a night of wine, more wine, a little more wine again, and then the killer, 18yo Chivas Regal scotch followed by still more wine. Not the greatest component of my marathon training program, but gee it was fun.

So after feeling sorry for myself most of the morning, mother-in-law came over for thankfully booze-free healthy lunch (although hair-of-the-dog probably would have helped). A post-lunch snooze then had me feeling much better and so I finally headed out at dusk for an easy 7 or 8 kilometres to put the training schedule back on track. It was such a pleasant evening however that I added a couple more clicks to give me a 73 kilometre fortnight.

So all is on schedule and looking good.

Heading into week 5 however I have the dreaded overnight shifts to contend with, so some thought needed on how to keep to the schedule. Never mind, we'll get there somehow.

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

Running headlong into a season of overkill, and having already commemorated the anniversary of the Boston bombing a few days ago, today I also commemorated the actual running of this years Boston marathon with my own long run. I'm not quite yet at the stage of running a full marathon distance again, but I figured I could at least run for as long as the winner Meb Keflezighi did, and so to do so I ran my "standard" Lane Cove River run and tacked on a couple of laps of the block when I returned.

Whereas Keflezighi ran the full 42.2km of course, in about the same time as he took (actually I was about a minute longer at 2h09m), I ran less than half that distance - 20.2km. No matter, it was a good run by my standards, and once again a little faster than previously, so I'm still improving, which is gratifying.

And boy did we teach those Boston bombers a thing or two!

[marathondan]

I like this concept! We're always told it's all about "time on feet" - so running at your own pace for the same length of time as a marathon winner is a worthy tribute.

[Sweder]

Yes I like this. Funnily enough I 'wrote' a very similar piece on my 10k effort last night about how I 'beat' my first Almeria Half opponent Haile Gabrselassie's winning time by three minutes, having run almost exactly half the distance. 'Wrote' it only in my head. I scrambled a truncated summary before heading out to w*rk this morning.

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

There is no way to describe the weather here today in Sydney as anything other than “unseasonably hot”. In fact it’s something of a shock after several weeks of cooling weather and increasingly thicker clothing to step outside into what would be described, except for the fact that the calendar suggests it ought to be otherwise, as a very warm summer’s day.

It is not what I expected, nor is it particularly welcome for it is now 2 p.m. and I have not long been awake. Having completed the first of this week’s night shifts at work, I arrived home at 7 a.m. shattered – the first night shift always being the worst – and after ensuring my windows were closed against the sound of early commuters, and the blackout curtains carefully shut against the worst of the daylight, I quickly fell into a fitful sleep.

Too few hours later I am outside my back door in running kit and debating with myself the value of what in this heat is going to be a gruelling and largely unnecessary run. Gruelling only because of the heat and my exhausted state, and unnecessary because no-one on planet Earth or beyond is even aware of my scheduled run today, and even if they had known of it, would care still less whether I completed it or not.

But here’s the thing: I’ve just finished reading Richard Askwith’s Feet In The Clouds, a particularly evil yet brilliantly crafted tome designed to simultaneously make you feel utterly inadequate as a runner, and yet absolutely determined to find your limits as one. For many people with ready access to the fells of which he writes, that will meaning running up and down remote mountains in vile weather, constantly risking injury and at times even death for no other reason than it’s a pretty neat if utterly insane thing to do. For those of us with nothing but hot, smelly suburban streets to jog about in, it’s a little less wild, but no less insane as we feel obliged to push the boundaries ever further in the quest for ... whatever it is that Askwith evokes so strongly within.

So I head off, already sweating and needing a drink (I’ve only just had one) and telling myself I will just run for fifteen minutes – enough to have something in the running log but nothing that will cause me too much suffering. I turn right and then right again to avoid the first hill; at the end of the lane I turn left to stay on the flat and check myself over: hot, sore, sweaty and already threatening to cramp. Pretty much what I expected. But as my thoughts inexorably return like some cursed soul to the irresistible suffering described by Askwith in Feet In The Clouds, I find myself comparing again my pathetic whimpering to the genuine agonies of the heroic fell running champions he so mesmerizingly writes about. And then it becomes a matter of pride to turn this run into at least something worth putting in the logbook. And so as if by magic that is what happens.

Back at home I puzzle over what did exactly just happen. Most running books that commemorate the exploits of champion runners tend only to highlight my mediocrity as an athlete and dissuade me from attempting anything beyond my reach. Askwith similarly highlights my mediocrity with his frankly astonishing tales of champion fell runners, yet at the same time makes me desperately want to have a go. Most epic tales of champion runners do quite the opposite. For example, I am currently reading Pat Farmer’s Pole To Pole, detailing his run from the North Pole to the South Pole, no part of which I can even begin to believe is within my scope of ability. Askwith on the other hand, despite the adverse conditions and danger, will have you out in all weathers running for the sheer thrill of it. Even though I live nowhere near any picturesque fells at all, and despite the unseasonable warmth of the day; despite my exhaustion from night shift and with no-one standing over me with a stopwatch, he had me running for no other reason than it was a thrilling thing to do.

Feet In The Clouds is something of a “perfect storm” of a book. A great accessible setting, colourful champions, and superb writing that forces you into your running gear, desperate to get out there and have another crack at it.

I only wish I had read this book years ago.

[Charliecat5]

I am having a similar experience having read Feet in the Clouds in recent weeks. Through his writing Askwith has shifted my motivation by an alarming degree. In the space of three weeks I have gone from someone who wanted to do a little bit of running to improve my mountain biking fitness to someone who now gets a kick out of pushing his running boundaries… I have done runs in the last while that I don’t think I would have contemplated pre FITCs… and discovered, as Askwith points out, that the biggest barrier to what you can achieve is in your head, not in your legs. Mind you when your legs go on strike, there is not a great deal your head can do about it.

To be honest I probably would have got there without Askwith as I slowly discovered the joys of hill running – but I certainly have got there a lot quicker with him. My love of the Lake District is deeply ingrained (which is another reason I enjoyed FITCs so much) and I am already planning a run over the Cats Bells, hopefully in the summer.

If only I could shake this incessant cough and get back out there.

[Sweder]

I only wish I had read this book years ago.

I hate to say 'I told you so' but ...
Just joshing. Glad this book is having the same affect on you both that it did on me some time ago. As death-defying as some of those runs sound, you simply yearn to take them on. Magical stuff.

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

A funny sort of day. A thin, high-altitude layer of cloud and unusually quiet streets gave the morning a very surreal feel. It was quite warm, but a gentle breeze gave a hint of the winter to come. For some reason it brought to mind three specific memories from childhood, presumably when conditions were very similar to today, for the memories were all of being at various places outdoors and suddenly being aware that the world seemed somehow ... "odd".

However odd it may have been, it didn't stop me running, although I did check the news services first to make sure the world hadn't blown up or something equally dramatic before I headed off up the street. It wouldn't do to be running the streets blithely unaware that everyone else was glued to their TVs and radios contemplating the arrival of Armageddon. Does this happen to anyone else or is it just me?

Anyhow, to the important stuff - the run. It was supposed to be a long run of 20+ km this morning, but after a bad night I slept in and had to curtail it somewhat to just 11.5km. Never mind, it was a reasonable run around the streets (surreal as they were) with loads of the usual hills (nothing surreal about those) and which netted me a total for April of 136km, about 30km more than March. Not where I want to be (nearer 200km is the aim) but a healthy increase without pushing things too much.

I was so glad I did this run. Work has become close to intolerable lately, and the day ahead turned out to be one of the bad ones; but having run in the morning I was far better able to cope with everything thrown at me without resorting to violence, tantrums or outrageous depression. In fact, apart from one or two moments of angst and frustration, I managed to handle it all with relative ease, all thanks to the magic of the simple act of running. As several medicos have pointed out to me, it really is far more beneficial than just about any drugs or therapy that they can dish out.

And so we run on, folks - it is the only way.

[glaconman]

What's the off-road scene like in NSW MLCMM? I imagine there's some superb trails in the National Parks; and probably some geat events and clubs using them. Perhaps access from the suburbs is a big factor.

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

What's the off-road scene like in NSW MLCMM? I imagine there's some superb trails in the National Parks; and probably some great events and clubs using them. Perhaps access from the suburbs is a big factor.

The mountain and cross-country running scene is as big here as elsewhere of course, though only a few events are within easy reach of my home. That said there are plenty of bush tracks which offer scope for long runs within a few kilometres of home. I've generally avoided these as they seemed like overkill for my LSDs for road races, but this year I'm pretty much determined to give them a try, figuring if I can do 30+ kilometres off road then it will make the road races seem that much easier. Maybe.

As ever, stay tuned!