It’s good to be reminded that running makes a difference to the world. Today saw a spectacular illustration of this. The running week hasn’t been trouble-free. It was good to get that first ‘revival’ jog on the board on Monday. The rest of the week though has been hit-and-miss. I’ve managed another couple, but both were shorter than planned. Work has been encroaching on my life again, squeezing my running time. Today I was up early, planning to get out for a decent long run. The schedule says 7 miles as it’s a ‘step-back’ week, but I planned on at least 10. Races are beginning to loom from the mist, and with bloody daggers in their teeth. Silverstone Half on … …
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Well, it may be “easy to start”, but that first mile is still tough. It’s all about incongruity really: a good yardstick of fitness. It seems that the fitter you are, the more sort of natural you feel when you’re running round the streets. Adonis-like youths with rippling biceps stand aside in silent admiration. Pouting, sighing housewives ogle you as you pass. Gangs of hair-tearing schoolgirls scream their phone numbers at you in discordant desperation. Conversely, when you’re feeling tubby and out of condition, you’re devastatingly out of place as you trudge along. Small children burst into spontaneous floods of tears as you come near. Porcine schoolboys in Chelsea shirts oink and squeal with derision. Farmers with bushy sideburns drive … …
Forgive me Father for I have sinned. It is five days since my last confession. A very bad week to relate. I even considered inventing a life-threatening condition to let me off the hook, but thought better of it — but only because I might need to use that ploy on another occasion, and I suspect it’s a joker that I can’t play too often. The week began with a watertight excuse. Much vomiting, dizziness and associated unpleasantries came a-visiting on Sunday and Monday. By Tuesday I had perked up, and even managed a fragile four miler on Wednesday. But the appetite for running was diminishing just as my appetite for solid food was returning. The problem was that my … …
Feeling much saner than I was yesterday, but… but I find myself in that tragic no-mans-land where I’m probably fit enough to return to work tomorrow, but still not quite up to running, or going to the pub, or eating furnace-like curries. Despite being on the up, I sense that this week may be something of a write-off. M is away in Edinburgh with her job, so from tomorrow, I fear I may find myself plunged into the kind of lonely, hollow despair that will drive me into the local taverns for the sort of fragile, momentary solace that only other middle-aged men and attractive young barmaids (I’m told) can truly understand. For anyone feeling short-changed by the last few … …
A bad couple of days. After a poor run on Saturday I was looking forward to something better yesterday, but it didn’t happen. Then today I’ve been ill with what seems like some kind of food poisoning so I wasn’t able to get out. And I’m not feeling much better now, so perhaps it will be another missed day tomorrow. I’ll call it an unscheduled rest, and not worry about it. In the training schedule I’m doing this is a ‘step back’ week in any case, so I can probably allow myself to take a couple of days off. Better than trying to run while feeling the way I do.… …
Not a comfortable plod along the canal this morning. A hangover, even a moderate one like today’s, is a burden. It wasn’t as cold as earlier in the week, but the strong wind was, literally, staggering. It gave me another chance to parade my new gilet along the village high street. It’s a fetching goldy-grey colour, and combined with my bright yellow teeshirt, navy shorts and white Chicago Marathon baseball cap, I felt rather well turned out. It’s not often one feels positively smart while running but today I could pretend that I was modelling a new range of sportswear for Gieves & Hawkes. I trotted along the canal for 2½ miles, then turned round and came back. A … …
Snow, snow, quick quick snow… How startling to wake up and find the world suddenly white. I expected it to reduce my lunchtime run to a nervous plod but remarkably, I did my usual 3½ miles at an average 10:01 mile pace which for me is quick. The quickest training run for seven months. It was a bizarre outcome: it didn’t seem any faster than normal. If anything, the opposite, as I was constantly dodging the patches of slippery snow and ice, and the slush. I’m beginning to enjoy the company of _colin, the ‘virtual partner’ hiding in my Garmin Forerunner. I set up a race against him where I’d have to do 11 minute miles to pip him … …
Blame Lord Hutton and a large pickled onion. Thames Trains couldn’t be trusted to deliver me to London today so I worked from home. The snow never came, though we did have hail, thunder and lightning in an exciting 3 minute spell in mid-afternoon. The run was over by then, though an even earlier outing may have been a better idea, while the sunshine was strong. Instead I had a robust, gusty wind and an air temperature of one degree above freezing. Five windy, disconsolate, canal miles clocked up. I began in a good mood, but that wintry assault blunted my keenness just a bit. Unusually, I took a radio with me, and my spirit became flatter and flatter the … …
It’s like the threat of an imminent attack from some dreaded, unseen enemy. For days now we’ve been warned about the arctic weather on the way this week. The much-feared ‘cold snap’. Up to 6 inches of snow, they say, and temperatures down to minus 14 Celsius. Monday is supposed to be a rest day, but the siege mentality encouraged by the weather forecasts has finally got to me, and (to stretch the metaphor unreasonably) I decided to rush out and stock up with baked beans before the doors are nailed shut against the icy winds and the snow. Yes, I broke a long-time habit and went out for a run this morning. Who knows? It might be weeks before … …