6am. It’s dark and cool, and the streets are profoundly empty. Just a yawning fox, sitting on the pub wall, and me. It was hard getting out of bed, but I did, and I ran. It’s one of those questions you’re often asked: how do you manage to leave a toasty bed an hour earlier than necessary, just to be able to run half-naked for several miles in the cold, black morning? The question, it’s true, has never been phrased quite like that, but it’s what people are thinking, because I think the same thing sometimes. Here’s the answer: I suspect I’ve said this before, but running is the opposite of drinking. And using a credit card. Running is like … …
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I was wrong. England avoided defeat, and even managed to look pretty good in patches. I watched it on a big screen in a packed village pub. A great atmosphere: intense, seething, emotional. All the contempt we felt over the last few days was forgotten. When it mattered, we couldn’t desert them. So, we’re in the finals of Euro 2004 in Portugal next June. Unfortunately (which may not be quite the right word here), we’re in Cuba next June, and seem likely to miss the first week or two of the tournament. If it was the World Cup, the games would be on in every bar, but I’m assuming there’ll be less Caribbean demand for a European tournament. But I … …
A blip to report, though not an unexpected one. (Side question: can you schedule a blip, or must it always be unpredictable?) A sort of compulsory-but-voluntary work get-together last night in a posh Knightsbridge hotel, where we were encouraged to ingest good food in quantity, blew a hole in my good intentions this week. Biggish, yes, but not too ragged for stitching. Recoverable. And at least I resisted the temptation to drink alcohol. Well, no more than just a couple of beers. So this morning I woke, not with a hangover but a kind of bloated feeling that didn’t really shout “Yes! Run time! Hurrah!” at me. But eventually I did get up, pull on my long-sleeved Datchet Dash shirt … …
Maybe it’s the onset of the colder weather, but I’ve suddenly stopped waking instinctively at 6am. Again today, I didn’t see the light until nearly 7:30, when all thoughts of an early run had to be shovelled out of sight. Instead I had my first night-time outing for a long time. Not just dark but fairly cool. I can’t think how long it’s been since I ran in these conditions, not being able to see where I was putting my feet. It felt pretty good. I think I have to rediscover running; to relearn the basics and find the real joy of it all again. We all say it’s important to have a goal. Typically, that goal is a race, … …
Autumn, that’s what it is. Has anyone else noticed how fed-up everyone is at the moment? The last two weekends in particular have been orangey-brown and windswept. The garden is cold and dying, and nothing has gone to plan. We’ve passed this way before, though it’s previously happened only after a marathon or an injury. That sense of anti-climax that results in me not doing anything very active for far too long. It’s only been a couple of weeks this time, but given the plans I had for the next month or two, that’s too long. It hasn’t been a totally inactive period; I did manage a 4 miler the Saturday after the race, and I’ve walked to the pub … …
That’s odd — the GNR report seems to have lost its final paragraph, which was a brief mention of Monday morning. We eventually tracked down the Baltic Gallery next to the new bridge over the Tyne. The bridge is fantastic, and I’m sure the gallery will be — but at the moment it suffers from being almost totally empty. I wasn’t sure if they were making a statement, or if they’d built the gallery but just forgotten to put things in it for people to look at. There are 3 exhibits on the ground floor, and a video installation on the 3rd. Apart from that, not a sausage. It’s Thursday, and I’ve not run since Sunday. Whenever I do a … …
Surely no one sets out on a career in radio, hoping to become a traffic reporter? So where do they all come from? The Traffic Desk strikes me as a kind of holding cell; a place to store failed broadcasters on their way out of the profession. I was able to gather plenty of evidence on the way up to the north east on Friday. “Long queues on the A1 near Durham. Particularly bad southbound. And northbound is even worse.” Even more baffling is the army of civilian volunteers patrolling the roads network on behalf of the radio stations, with their vigilante-like nicknames. “The Prince of Darkness of the A14” was one of todays’s reporters. Make that the “Prince of … …
GNR minus 3 days. Tomorrow we set off for the north-east. Beginning to feel quite apprehensive about the race now. It will be a slog. Every time a race appears I vow to do things better than last time. Always top of the list is that I’ll get to my target weight. Don’t even ask… I have another 3 days to lose 7.8 pounds. Still, it could have been worse. If I hadn’t carried out some attempted face-saving butchery at the beginning of this week, it would have been 17.8 pounds. Just how pathetic is that?… …
These scales just can’t be right. After an entire day of fasting I find I weigh two pounds more than I did this time yesterday morning. How can this be? I’d already cheated and revised my target GNR weight upwards by a whopping ten pounds. I now find that I have to lose nearly two pounds a day between now and Sunday to achieve even that doctored target. Not ideal news in this pre-GNR week, but I’ll have to live with it. At least the surplus ballast will give me extra momentum once I’ve managed to launch myself in the direction of South Shields. No run yesterday. The backs of my legs were still smarting from the heroic effort of … …
Something pretty amazing happened this evening. I went off at about 7pm to do my 3 or 4 miles. My foot was still aching a bit, and I felt sleepy and utterly unenthusiastic. But inexplicably I ended up running TWELVE miles. It was slow — in fact the 12 miles took me a lot longer to complete than I hope the half marathon will take, but who cares? The secret ingredient was the decision to run-walk. I started off with the idea of walking 1 minute for every 9 run, but I kept losing track as my watch resets the display every mile. So I changed the plan and walked a minute every mile, and two minutes every three miles. … …