There seem to be a lot of medium length words beginning with A to describe things about which I am decidedly, unquestionably, ferociously… sort of ambivalent really.
Alcohol.
Anarchy.
Arsenal.
America.
Asparagus.
This morning at 7:30, as I left home to drive to a 10K on the other side of Reading, I was reminded of another: Autumn.
Perhaps you had to be there, when the mist hung over the garden like cotton wool, and the air carried a chill, a faint wintry edge. I can’t call it frost but there was a bite there that said “welcome to autumn”. It happens every year, just once. The moment you know for sure that summer is flagging. The ambivalence comes from the struggle between the season’s undoubted splendour, and the threat of winter it likes to frighten us with. Six months of dreary darkness? Coming right up, Sir.
Right. Here’s a tip for runners new to racing. If goody bags are important to you, go for a race sponsored by a multi-national computer company. Today’s 10K race was sponsored by the Oracle Corporation, no less, and they served up the sort of organisational feast you’d expect. It’s a long time since I’ve seen so many professionally produced signs, so many beaming, smartly turned-out marshals. The medal was satisfyingly chunky, the post-race apples large and crisp. The goody bag was filled with lifestyle mints, and sachets of foot balm, pesto sauce and energy gel (better not get those mixed up), a lollipop, handy guides to the Thames towpath, vouchers for the local shopping centre and discounts for Sweatshop.
But hang on, goody bag? I’m getting ahead of myself, pretty much like the great majority of the other runners did this morning.
There were around 600 of us – a good turnout for this inaugural event. Quite a lot were Oracle employees, and there may have been an element of greasy pole manipulation in evidence. “One of my achievements this year was to run my first 10K race. This demonstrates that I am ready to take on new challenges in the year going forward.”
We mustered at 8:20 for a burst of rather reluctant aerobics and to hear a couple of life-affirming speeches. While this was going on I had a look round at the runners. It always surprises and impresses me that so many people will turn out this early on a Sunday morning in some remote field, for no greater inducement than the chance to run 6 miles, or 10 or 13.1 or 20 or 26.2 miles, instead of lying in bed tending to a severe hangover and picking over some awkward recollections from the previous evening.
But this scene is replicated in dozens, perhaps hundreds of similarly remote fields all over the country. All over the world, indeed.
And every time I do it, every time I find myself entering the first stage of chronic breathlessness, usually around the 200 metre mark, when the first pin-pricks of sweat catch the early morning air, when the reality hits, the reality of having to do this for another 6 miles, or 10 or 13.1 or 20 or 26.2 miles, I ask myself the simple question: Why?
Steve Cram wrote something in the Guardian a couple of weeks back that caught my eye. He was considering whether Paula Radcliffe should run the Olympic 10K. It was a great piece of analysis, and at one point he wrote, in an almost dreamy aside:
I have often stuck by the mantra that how we do something is much less important than why we do it. If the reasons are meaningful enough then the mechanics become secondary.
Cheers, mate. I thought of this again today, and felt reassured.
The crisp autumnal blanket had almost gone now, and it was turning into a hot sunny morning. Plodding through the field alongside the river, still bunched up, I notice what people are wearing. I ask myself: why do so many people wear Nike, when they make such irritatingly smug TV ads? I’d rather do a race in a shirt made of sack-cloth than anything with that nasty swoosh on it. And then there’s the usual collection of strange choices. Old-fashioned plimsolls, track-suits, rugby shirts, woolly hats, cut-off jeans.
On a bright sunny morning like today, why don’t more runners wear caps? I rarely run without one, and certainly not when the sun is as hot as this. Sorry to name-drop but it was Hal Higdon who first advised me on the subject. “Expect eyesight problems later in life if you don’t protect your eyes from the sun”, he told me in Chicago. “Always wear a cap”. By an amazing coincidence, shortly after this conversation I received an email announcing the launch of the Hal Higdon running cap. I snapped one up while stocks lasted, and have attached my head to this vibrant yellow object in every race since.
A cap keeps the sun out of your eyes in the summer, but also keeps your head warm in the winter. It keeps the rain off your face in any season. The strip of towelling inside absorbs the sweat and prevents it from streaming down your forehead into your eyes. Once the band is sodden, the sweat bursts through the material above and drips down the brim onto your knees. About one drop every two seconds I reckoned today. Better than stinging your eyes, and strangely gratifying to have your physical exertions confirmed in this vivid fashion.
The other thing I like about a cap is the way it allows you to block out the world when the going gets tough. You can pull it down so that it sort of restricts your vision. It can actually give you a sense of privacy in a crowd, a kind of unexpected intimacy at a time when you fear you may be losing control, and need to get to work on marshalling your inner resources. Maybe that doesn’t really work, but the delusion helps.
Not that this sort of thing is normally called on in a 10K. Far from being an inner-resource marshalling aid, it’s just, well, just a cap really. Keeps the sun out of your eyes and that’s it.
“See you back here in half an hour or so”, boomed the announcer just after the hooter sounded. This was met with the sort of groan you’d expect to hear from the constipation ward.
I went out way too fast. I’m always puzzled by the way we can run at a relatively fast pace in a race without realising it. I mentioned recently that I was pleased to find myself doing 10:40-ish miles, yet the first three today were 9:24, 9:48 and 10:14. I didn’t notice going any faster until well into 4th mile, when I suddenly felt robbed of all energy. It was like the flicking of a switch. I had to walk for a minute or two, and from then on I just sort of pottered along, turning in casual run-walk miles, ending with a disappointing time more than 7 minutes outside my PB, over a distance measured by _colin, my GPS gadget, as 10.11 km, or 6.28 miles.
A shame. The course was flat and fast, taking us along verdant stretches of the Thames for a while before joining the gravelly towpath of the Kennet & Avon Canal for the journey into Reading town centre. Around the Oracle Shopping Centre (giving the race its ingenious title: the Oracle to Oracle 10K) and then reversing it all on the other side of the canal and back up the river to the finish.
Most races have a snapshot moment – a few seconds containing the essence of the race. Today’s came at a point at the start of the second half, shortly after we’d looped back on ourselves. Suddenly we dropped down onto the canal again and chugged along beneath a line of oaks. Coming down the small slope I had a quick view of the snake of runners in front of me, and to the right the placid water with the trees, the riverside apartments and the approaching bridge all reflected in the sunshine. The faintest puff of mist lingered over the water in the distance. Something dropped from the sky and bounced off the peak of my cap.
It was a crunchy, brown leaf.
