If the Chinese can do it, so can I.
September 5th – the Running Commentary New Year. The point where we
throw off the excesses of summer and tuck into healthier fare.
I’ve said something similar a hundred times. Most recent entries here
record the explosion of good intentions. We know what happens next. Yes
indeed, many good intentions have exploded in this space.
Things have changed. Things are different now. Perhaps it was last
week’s first yawn of autumn. Or the distant growl of winter. Perhaps
I’m wary of making a public fool of myself by calling too many new
dawns. Perhaps it was the
recent correspondence on the forum about the need to nurture
and pamper the runner within. In fact, it was all of those things, and
it was also my entry, last Friday, to the 35 mile Two Oceans
Marathon in South Africa, next April. It concentrates the
mind, and that’s what I’d been missing.
A race entry alone isn’t enough, as I discovered on Sunday morning. I
squinted through my turbulent hangover at the bedside clock at various
points between 8 and 9, but it was never going to happen. The Oracle
10K will have to wait another year. I hope the previous evening’s party
had been enjoyable. A couple of memory fragments have made their way
back to base, but I’m now resigned to them being the lone survivors.
The festivities were in North London; I woke in my bed in West
Berkshire. How I got from one to the other is a question I’ll have to
pose to M at some opportune moment. I’ll, er, I’ll not trouble her on
the subject for a while though. Perhaps a year or two will soften and
blur her own, contrasting, violently acute, powers of recollection.
I did however manage a feeble plod later that day, and another this
evening. Both were run-walks rather than runs, and I imagine this may
still be the case a week from now. The week after
next, however, I must hope that things are falling into place a bit
more. That’s the scheduled, or rescheduled, start of the 8 week
preliminary Two Oceans training plan I’m hoping will really throw me
back in the saddle. It’s immediately followed by the full-on, 21-week
schedule I found on the Two Oceans website.
I like the plan. It’s aimed at someone like me, aspiring to get home
before the 7 hour cut-off.
Yes. Another year, another cruel race. Another cut-off with which to
stress, to terrorise, and to haunt myself.
Readers who’ve been around more than a few months may recall that
Zurich and its 5 hour limit perturbed me for most of last winter and
spring. It perturbed me until the afternoon of April 9th, when I
tottered home in 4 hours 56 minutes to avoid the humiliation of being
dragged from the course sans medal, sans
existence.
At the moment, I don’t stand an earthly. Cats and snowballs in hell
spring to mind. Of course, it’s what I told myself all last winter too.
Out with the old, in with the new, eh?
Happy New Year.
