Sunday 6 May 2007

Now then, friends…

Sweder’s heroic battle with the Two Ocean’s Marathon (and if you’ve not read it, read it now) added a bit more fuel to a fire that’s been glowing for a few weeks now. I started thinking about all this a couple of months ago  —   shortly after my dismal performance at the Almeria Half, and Sweder’s tale has neatly stepped in to plod alongside, and offer encouragement to, my train of thought…

I’ve been thinking how feebly we fight against the worst part of ourselves; how easily we accept our current state of being. Instead of asking ourselves what we want to do, where we want to be, then calculating what we need to do to achieve those things, we tend to say: this is what I am and this is what I can do at the moment — what choices are available to me?

It’s not always conscious. We can even convince ourselves that the mere act of considering our options is tantamount to being ambitious and aspirational. But being a planner isn’t the same as being a winner.

The TOM stories influenced my thinking because I’d intended doing the Two Oceans, but wimped out around the new year. My attitude was "it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen", as though I was making a detached observation; as though this state of affairs was outside and beyond me; as though I was merely reporting something over which I had no control. The likely reality is that I’d made some subconscious decision not to prepare for it, so that I could present myself with a fait accompli.

It becomes helpful to stockpile ignorance and self-delusion like this. It immunises us from ourselves, and protects us from having to make the tough decisions. Failure is painful and awkward. Or is it? The fear of failure is actually more injurious, because it prevents us from acting at all. A fear of failure leads to paralysis.

It’s better to look at failure in a more positive light — as the first, and perhaps even necessary, step towards success. If we can see it like that, we see that by extension, a fear of failure amounts to a fear of success. A pointless neurosis, and a self-fulfilling prophecy.

About 11 years ago I stopped smoking after several failed attempts stretching back years. Campaigns had become a twice-yearly tradition. My smoke-free state might last a few days or even two or three weeks, before my resolve disintegrated. But I felt great about trying. I felt better about trying, than I felt bad about failing. And then one day I got fed up with failure. One day I put aside the books, the patches, the mints, the acupuncture, the hypnotism, the strategies… I pushed them aside, breathed a deep sigh of relief, and announced that I’d stopped smoking. And? And I stopped smoking. In the end, my desire to be liberated from failure became even greater than my desire to be liberated from a severe nicotine addiction.

It’s time to recall that lesson and relearn it. How easy, and lazy, and smug, to think that my running is worth writing about — or reading. It isn’t even glorious failure anymore, just aimless ramblings.

This isn’t to denigrate myself  —  that wouldn’t be fair. Until recently, I had no athletic history beyond running to the pub to get there before closing time. I came to the sport extremely unfit, overweight and demotivated. To move from that low point in November 2001 to the London Marathon in April 2002, and onto Chicago a few months later, taking 36 minutes off my time for the same distance, was a decent achievement. Well done me. Excellent improvement. A vindication of the training and commitment…

Isn’t that enough? Isn’t it all just a bit of fun? Well it can be. It usually starts off that way. Someone tackling their first 10K or half marathon or marathon, particularly if they’re emerging from a non-athletic background, is likely to be aiming for little more than getting round the course in one piece. Reaching the start line is success; reaching the finish line is victory. It’s a triumph for your new life; a conquest of your pessimism, your self-doubt; a victory over the mocking demons, both within and outside you. How much time passed while you were moving between start and end doesn’t matter much. It was only after I finished my first marathon that I could see that, for me, there was no beginning, and there would be no end. The race began long before the start line, and it will never finish.

If you’re anything like me, you’re not running against other people. The only ticking you hear is from the clock of your own life as it slowly winds down. In truth, we run not against a watch but against a calendar. In that first long race, you’re straining to out-run your own history, your own paralysis, your own paranoia. Like Pheiddipides, the original marathoner, you’re running to deliver news of victory and liberation  —  Your own.

There’s nothing wrong with leaving it there. Different people run for different reasons. Some — many — want to complete a marathon as a one-off fund-raiser. Or as a personal challenge. Or as part of some complex social compulsion: another tick, another box.

But others recognise its potential as a springboard, as a route to further advances in both running and in life generally. That was the script I read, and have kept re-reading. And I’m only now realising that all I’ve done is to learn the lines without daring to step into the real drama.

So although London and Chicago were good achievements, there’s barely been any progress since. Five years on, I’m still unfit and overweight and slow. After Chicago, my marathon time capsized again for a couple of years before coming back in 2006, when the fear of the Zurich sweeper bus was enough to push me below the five hour mark for the first time. But even so, 4:56 after 5 years isn’t great. And half marathons? My first one, Reading 2002, was a perfectly acceptable 2:32 for someone who’d been unable to run three miles just 12 or so weeks earlier. But five years on, Almeria 2007, I plod home in 2:28. OK, so between those two races I’ve managed halfs in 2:11 and 2:12 but these are hardly dazzling beacons of achievement.

Here’s what’s happened. Between Reading ’02 and Almeria ’07, I have passed through the gates of the fabled Plodderama, the virtual land of compromise, where we alternate patches of good behaviour with larger expanses of bad. Our goals are as wobbly as we are. Modest targets remain unreviewed and unchallenged. No one and nothing troubles us. We have risen to our natural level of mediocrity, and here we stay, bobbing up and down a little in the conflicting and temporary tides of diet mania, extended lost weekends, anxious race preparation, holiday lethargy, renewed determination, injury… activity, panic, activity, panic… a disorientating and self-defeating oscillation, the result of us remaining anchored to our own chronic lack of ambition, of self-confidence and ultimately, of courage.

It’s easy for failure to become part of our personal culture. Or worse, to convince ourselves that failure is actually success. How do we manage this? Well, residents of Plodderama reach out alright  —  just never quite far enough. The very act of stretching seems sufficient because we see that so many don’t bother doing even that. Plodderamatists quite enjoy the comfortable stretch. Far enough to generate that delicious, self-congratulatory inner warmth, but never quite far enough to get any better at what we do. We are satisfied to drift onwards on that slowly deflating cushion of distant past achievement, unable to see that we are losing altitude with every passing month.

Mediocrity can be a pretty savage word, or is usually intended to be. As I just demonstrated, it’s deployed lazily  —  an all-purpose insult  —  but its literal etymology is actually rather colourful and interesting. It means "halfway up a rugged mountain".

That’s where I am. Halfway up a rugged mountain.

Let me get to the point. I’ve recently done a lot of thinking about the running firmament, and my place in it. I’ve mentioned the Two Oceans failure and my hopeless Almeria performance as sources. There are others, like the writing I’ve been doing for the proposed book, and the analysis and introspection this has prompted. And then there’s Doctor George Sheehan, the running writer I’ve been looking for (without realising it) these past six years. Sheehan, who died from cancer in 1993, was a prolific, and in my view, great writer. A true philosopher, and a runner. People either get Sheehan, or they don’t, in the way that people get Bob Dylan or get golf.

I do get Sheehan.

At the age of reason, I was placed on a train, the shades drawn, my life’s course and destination already determined. At the age of 45, I pulled the emergency cord and ran out into the world. It was a decision that meant no less than a new life, a new course, a new destination. I was born again in my 45th year.

The previous "me" was not me. It was a self-image I had thrust upon me. It was the person I had accepted myself to be, but I had been playing a role…

…I stepped off that train and began to run. And in that hour a day of perfecting my body, I began to find out who I was. I discovered that my body was a marvelous thing, and learned that any ordinary human can move in ways that have excited painters and sculptors since time began. I didn’t need the scientists to tell me that man is a microcosm of the universe, that he contains the 92 elements of the cosmos in his body. In the creative action of running, I became convinced of my own importance, certain that my life had significance…

Our rebirth will be a long and difficult task. It will begin with the creative use of the body, in the course of which we must explore pain and exhaustion as closely as pleasure and satisfaction. It will end only when we have stretched our minds and souls just as far.

But there is an alternative.

You can always get back on the train.

From "Dr. Sheehan on Running"

And that’s my choice. To stay off the train, or to get back on. For the last five years I’ve been jumping off at stations here and there, but as the train has pulled away again, I’ve panicked and leapt back on.

My decision is to get off, and stay off.

Notwithstanding my recent visit to the epicentre of the gelato universe, I’ve been mulling over Sheehan’s maxim, "First, be a good animal".

Running helps you to become a good animal, but being a good animal is a prerequisite for being a good runner. It’s a self-referential continuum — the journey, not the destination. But I don’t want to get too Zen-drenched. Some people may indeed turn on and tune in, but too many others will turn off. I’ll leave aside Sheehans’s scalpel-sharp insights and analysis. Read it for yourself.

In summary, my point is this: that it’s time I decided either to do this properly, or not to bother. And I’ve decided to bother.

To keep things manageable, this is a one year plan. It began a few weeks ago, and will end, or at least it will be reviewed, on Monday April 21, 2008.

On that day, a major ambition will be realised. I’ve spoken to the tireless Adele at the JDRF, and on that day I will run the Boston Marathon for the charity.

I’ll also run a marathon in the autumn of this year — probably Dublin.

I just deleted a long paragraph with more detailed race plans and targets. It missed the point. The year ahead will be more than just a list of races. It’s the manner of them, not the the mere act, that will focus my mind. I’ll say this though: that all my PBs will go in the next six months, then they will go again in the six months to follow.

This site will also evolve further and become more inclusive. The best writing on the site appears on the forum, and I plan to showcase more of this on the main site, to give it the attention it deserves. There are also plans to revive the original aims of the site — to help new runners get off the ground, and organise and re-present some of the great material that’s been produced over the years about training and race preparation.

In the five or six years that this site has been going, I’ve never known such a powerful wave of optimism among the RunningCommentary community. Feeling positive is itself uplifting, but hitched to a plan of action it’s sublimely liberating. If you’ve not tried it, try it now.

OK fellas, let’s go.