There’s nothing the British like so much as a joke they really know, so it’s been impossible to mention to anyone in recent weeks that I’m going to, or have just come back from, Iceland, without some mention of Tesco or Sainsbury’s. As they throw their head back and guffaw loudly, I quietly thank the god of destiny that I wasn’t born with a jokey name. Someone did once point out that my name is an anagram of LARDY NEW MAN, but I’ve resolved never to mention this to anyone. I once worked with a chap who carried the burden of his name. One wonders what the parents of little Albert Hall were thinking of as they made their way to the font.
Anyway, we had a great holiday. Iceland is a remarkable and inspirational country. Literally an "awesome" experience. It saddens me to have to put that word in inverted commas, but it’s been abducted by aliens hell-bent on trying to change its meaning. Americans now think that awesome is a synonym for "pretty good" or "quite large".
Iceland is truly awesome; it produces a sense of awe in the visitor. Its land-mass is about the same as England’s but the population is only just 200,000, or around the size of a town like Reading, or Southampton, or Derby. So apart from its extraordinary natural beauty it has a raw wildness, and with it, something that’s hard to find in Europe — a feeling of remoteness and isolation that gives you a chance to be alone with yourself and to ponder the state of your relationship with this lump of muck spinning onwards through space.
We don’t normally associate a ring road with driving pleasure, but Iceland’s is 2,500 kilometres long, and it will take your breath away. It stretches round the perimeter of the island, embracing the contours, shooting up and down the spectacular fjords and along the cliff tops. If you see two cars within the same hour, you’re in a traffic jam.
It reminds the weary, Western European urban car owner that driving can be hugely entertaining and even genuinely thrilling. But while driving there is good enough, Iceland is a country that should ideally be seen and understood and enjoyed on foot. With more time and different company, I’d have liked the chance to walk long stretches. Instead, I made do by running in short, early morning sessions. The physical training benefit probably didn’t amount to much, but mentally, these patches of solitude helped a lot, and seem to have completed the task of reigniting my faltering enthusiasm and ambition. To run before breakfast in a vast, empty, mountainous landscape, devoid of people and traffic, with no sound but the occasional mournful bleating of a sheep, the white noise of the distant sea breaking on the cliffs, and the cadenced crunch of plodding feet on gravel, all wrapped up in a fresh 7 or 8 degrees, is all you will ever need to reunderstand and to relearn everything that a hot boozy World Cup summer in Britain tried to brainwash out of you.
Weirdly, although I was apparently totally alone, I had the sense that I was being watched, or even watched over. I was in my own Truman story, but utterly safe — both protected and protecting.
It reminded me of a long run I did one Sunday afternoon in February, 2002, when I was training for my first marathon:
…now it was a friendlier, brighter road, and the countryside seemed more awake and more content with itself. At one point, in a kind of semi-hallucinatory spell I heard some church bells far off across the valley, and had a quite unexpected Adlestrop moment that brought tears to my eyes. I felt like a ghost; an actor declaiming to an empty theatre; a flickering candle in a darkened cathedral. This nervous shadow in a vast, hollow landscape. For a moment I was in someone else’s story. Then I came back. This is what running can be.
It’s not often you get such a moment of insight. That first time was in the rough wintry countryside of Southern Gloucestershire. This time it happened in Dyrhólaey, the southernmost tip of Iceland, a remote peninsular with empty, basalt-black sandy beaches and a craggy coastline. The cliffs here are said to be the home of ten million puffins but disappointingly, they were all out for the day when we visited. In fact, we’d missed them by a couple of weeks. It seems they fly out to sea for the winter months and just bob around in mid-ocean, chomping fish until it’s time to return to these cliffs in spring for the party season.
The next day I ran in Hofn, 300 km further north. This wasn’t quite so successful. On the one day that I stepped outside without my cap and jacket, I found it cold and teeming with rain. The guy on reception duty had stared at me with such amazement as I crept past that I couldn’t face the humiliation of returning within a minute of leaving to collect these items, so I shrugged, and plodded off towards the small harbour for a trip round the outside of the fish-canning factory. Again, much incredulity from the odd local. Running seems to be a minority interest in this country. Indeed, on the entire trip, the only time I saw another runner was when I ran past a bathroom showroom in Reykjavik and spotted my own grotesque reflection in a long, horizontal mirror.
It was in Hofn that I came across the first of many fans of English football. The manager of the hotel we stayed in is a fanatical Arsenal supporter. He confided in me that most lunchtimes last year were spent chewing herrings in front of a computer screen, on which he watched a web-cam image of the new Emirates Stadium being built in North London.
Perhaps he was a puffin in a previous life.
The following morning, we woke in Egilsstadir in the north east of the country. Running along the main road around this small town was probably my least scenic jaunt of the trip, yet the most successful in running terms. At last, I managed to dump my run-walk days. Only 45 minutes, but they were 45 continuous jogging minutes. No walking. Hurrah!
The moment of triumph didn’t last long. It’s true that my keenness to run never wavered, and I went out for pre-breakfast sessions almost everywhere we stayed. There was the crazy lunar landscape around Lake Myvatn, the quaint streets of Akueyri and Reykjavik, and the mottled lavafields near Geysir in the south. I tried to do my duty everywhere — but after the first few days, I just couldn’t. Why not? Because halfway through the holiday, I got taken violently fat.
My lard quotient has rocketed in the past few months. The week before the trip, sick of being 30 pounds heavier than I was in Zurich, I started to eat properly again, and managed to lose 4 or 5 pounds. It was this small weight dividend that had helped me out of the run:walk routine in Egilsstadir. But eventually, Icelandic cuisine got the better of me, and I slipped back into that lardy quicksand.
Iceland is a pretty barren land, and this lack of greenery extends to its cuisine. It’s meat and sweet-heavy. Add to that my inability to drive any distance without a constant supply of toffees and Everton Mints, and you’ll get the unpleasant picture. I OD-ed on sugar and fat, and for the last half of the trip felt noticeably… more substantial than I had earlier on.
I got home to confirm that the gains of the previous week had been wiped out. More than wiped out.
But we move on.
With exactly 200 days to go to the Two Oceans race in Cape Town, it’s déjà vu all over again. Marathon number 6 starts here. 200 days is much further out than usual, but I need a longer run up this time. The race… let’s say, offers 8.6 miles more pleasure than the standard 26.2 marathon. And it’s hilly. More challenging are those 30 pounds that I didn’t have when I plodded round Zurich in April. But 200 days is enough time. Excess blubber is burdensome enough without the unnecessary ballast of pessimism.
Finishing a long race is a great feeling, but setting off on the training is pretty good too. Every long race campaign must start with an explosion of excitement and a sense of adventure, or it serves no purpose for me. When I lose that, I lose the thrill, and that’s when I’ll stop. As the training proceeds, I’m likely to get disillusioned and negative. Last time it was gloom about my chances of getting round Zurich before the 5 hour cut-off. This time, it will be anxiety about the need to pull another 15 kilometres from an empty locker, and about getting through the distance in the 7 hour time limit. But if I don’t do that, I don’t get my medal — and that would never do.
Oh.
I dread the thought of sounding too goody-goody about this. Or about anything else, come to that. Last night I ran with The Clash on my iPod. It’s a minor regret that I never saw them live. In fact, I didn’t like them much in their heyday. In 1978 we’d all prematurely ‘moved on’ to JJ Cale and Dire Straits. Worthy enough I suppose, but it’s only from the reluctant vantage point of middle age that I now recognise the essential analgesia of such anodyne AOR. I didn’t want the chaotic pain of punk then. But now? Now it seems to have been converted back into adrenaline via some mysterious midlife filter.
But the great Joe Strummer and the Clash are long gone. Heck, even Mick Jones is suddenly older than me. Mick’s choice of middle-aged rebellion is the same as mine — the poor fellow sits behind me at Loftus Road. Good health is the new depravity, marathon running the favoured hallucinogen. We once wanted to change the world. Now all we crave is a new PB.
We fought the laws of nature, and the laws of nature won.
And that’s not funny either…
