Let’s face it, this year is fast becoming a wash-out as far as running goes.
It was all going fairly swimmimgly up till mid-March, with two half marathons and a couple of 10Ks under my ever-loosening belt. Then came the right calf injury which scuppered the Bath Half and the next 4 or 5 weeks of training. But eventually I got going again, confident enough to announce that I’d started serious preparation for the Dublin marathon. But two weeks into the eighteen, ping! The left calf muscle this time, and another five weeks on the bench.
Early in the year I entered three big autumn races: the Bristol Half, the Great North Run and the the Great South Run. The Bristol Half now turns out to be happening on the same day as a training course I’ve been booked on. In Israel.
Am I glad to have the trip as an excuse to miss a race for which I’d be desperately undertrained? Or should I have used the race as an excuse to avoid travelling to the troubled Tel Aviv? A colleague at the BBC mentioned the other day that someone from the Technology Department had recently gone off to Israel to install some software, and had been issued with a bulletproof vest…
The advice I’ve received is that as long as I avoid hotels, restaurants, shops and all forms of transport I should be OK. Which is great. The course I’ve been invited to attend starts early in the morning and continues through the evening, so I don’t expect to have much time for sleep, never mind dining out.
However, I do plan to run.
I need to train because the Great North Run is looming, like some B-movie monster in a shadowy alley. Crikey. A half marathon. I’ve not run that distance since March. In fact, apart from the 9 miler in early July that damaged my left calf, I’ve not feasted on more than 5 miles at one sitting in 5 and a half months.
Of course, I could duck out of it on those grounds, but that would be pretty pathetic, wouldn’t it? There’s a month to go, so I’ll have a crack at it. But it means I need to do some serious training in the next 4 weeks, so no invitations to opium dens or pork pie parties please.
Which reminds me. Have I ever related the tale of my visit to an opium den in Chittagong? OK, quickly…I’d always wanted to check out one of these establishments, ever since Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had painted such a fascinating picture of one in a Sherlock Holmes story I’d read as a child. Anyway, this place didn’t disappoint. It was tucked behind a small bazaar down by the dockside (if you know Chittagong). The only surprising thing was that it was next to a police station. But it was superbly atmospheric. Dark and dingy and thick with pungent opium and hashish smoke, and incense. The clientele, perhaps surprisingly, seemed to be business people. Almost everyone in there was smartly dressed in suit and tie. They lolled around on bunk beds, moaning and giggling, and rolling their eyes – the way you’d expect people to behave in an opium den. I eventually got talking to a guy in the adjoining bed. I say “eventually” because I got the impression he thought I was just a hallucination for a while. I spoke a few sentences now and then, and he just peered at me vacantly, with a sort of distant grin. But then he seemed to sort of wake up, as though he suddenly realised I was a real entity, and began to speak to me. An affable sort of fellow. We chatted for a while before I asked: “Aren’t you worried about the police station next door?” He smiled, and related my question to some of the guys on the other side of him, who chortled manically. I was confused until he turned back towards me and explained: “We are the police…”
This morning I jogged 3 simple miles and survived. It’s a start.
