A hard 11.2 miles this afternoon.
I spent much of last winter trudging along frozen lanes in the dark, fantasising miserably about the promise of long hazy summer days. Like Jeffrey Archer wistfully dreaming of ice buckets loaded with Bollinger, I remembered only half the picture. Or perhaps I wasn’t thinking as a runner then. The airlessness, the raw heat, the sweat stinging your eyes, the squinting glare, the salt-encrusted lips and cheeks, the mouthfuls of flies, the deep fatigue, the heaviness of the bones, the extra effort. It’s hard.
Am I saying that I preferred running in winter? No, certainly not. Just that summer is not the smart riposte to winter that I thought it would be. Perhaps the autumn or the spring might be, but not mid-July.
I ran two circuits of the 5.5 mile run I did on Thursday. This isn’t my favourite way to do a long run: there’s something dispiriting about knowing that you have to do it all again. Physically, the first half wasn’t bad. I began slowly but after 2 or 3 miles I had… adjusted. I wanted to say something similar to “got my eye in” – the way that a bowler is said to get his eye in after a while. What’s the running equivalent? Things just click after half an hour or so, and you enter a spell of short-lived pleasure in which you feel co-ordinated and in control. I don’t think this is the fabled “runner’s high”, though it’s related.
The halfway point was our house, where I stopped briefly to fish out the bottle of orange squash M had hidden just inside the gate. Thirty seconds of enthusiastic glugging, and it was on my way again towards the canal. Still feeling on top of things at this point.
It’s a 0.9 miles to the canal. Past three pubs in the first half mile, then a sharp turn past the station and into the countryside beyond the village. Here the road narrows and I often have to thread my way through cars waiting to get across the tiny bridge over the Kennet & Avon. It’s the final 21st century image before turning to the infinite promise of the canal, with its silence and stillness, and its almost overwhelming sense of peace.
A mile or so of rabbit-scattering takes me to the first gate, beyond which the path takes me across a bumpy field, and another gate, past the weir where a heron is often seen, a stretch of gravel then another field, this one with the additional hazard of overhanging branches. I have to watch my footing here. It would be easy to twist an ankle on the uneven path, or to end up sprawled across a trailing root. Eventually the narrow track turns into a tarmacked surface again. A relief.
Three miles or so after I started, I reach the second road bridge, and it’s here (if I’m doing the 5.5 mile circuit) that I turn away from the canal and start back. Three hundred yards of country lane then bang! Onto the A4 for about a mile and a half of noise and chaos. It’s not a nice stretch. The road is busy, the path is narrow and filled with overhanging trees. It seems to be a path not designed for walking on.
On the first circuit I was feeling fine here, but by the time the second came around, the game was up. Apart from the brief stop to rehydrate, I stopped only once on the run, about halfway along the second A4 stretch. I was very tired, but the 45 seconds or so of walking did me good. From there I was able to press on, and managed the final mile on auto-pilot.
So, five weeks down and thirteen to go. Another 11 miles in the bag, but it’s not been easy. I don’t have the same fears about completing the distances that I had last time. I know now that I can do it. But perhaps this is itself a problem. I find myself underestimating the challenge of the weekend runs. Last time I would spend half the week anxiously psyching myself up for the long run ahead, scared of failing but excited about the challenge. This time, what I initially thought of as confidence and a refusal to be overawed, I’m now beginning to think might be complacency.
Another manifestation of this is the way I’m eating. Last time I lost nearly 10 pounds during the first 5 weeks. This time it’s fluctuated like mad. Just at the moment I’m only three pounds lighter than I was five weeks ago, but this could easily change in the wrong direction.
Right. It’s time to get serious about this. If I was a stone lighter it would make all the difference. The hard-line diet begins… tomorrow. After breakfast.
