At last. Thank god, at last. It’s all gone wrong. I was beginning to worry…
I don’t know where these uninvited, anarchic impulses come from, but one arrived on Friday, mid-evening. I didn’t have time to reason with myself. I just suddenly thought: "Let’s go to the pub" and up I got. Five minutes later, I’m gulping a pint of the outstanding Good Old Boy from West Berkshire Brewery, and chewing a bag of salted peanuts. An hour and couple more beers later, I went home to a large plate of high-calorie moussaka, and a bottle of Chilean Cabernet.
On Saturday, full of guilt, I crept to the gym for an hour of cranky self-flagellation but evidently, it wasn’t enough to drag me back to the narrow path. On Sunday, I got up full of good intentions, yet my legs were heavy and unco-operative. Eventually, in late afternoon, I togged up and ventured into the cold, grey, dismal rain. In the up times, rain is seen as a gleeful challenge. In reverse gear phases, it becomes muggle weather: nasty, cold wet stuff that makes runners miserable, just like it seems to make non-runners miserable.
I couldn’t do it. Half-heartedly, I trotted up the road for a couple of hundred yards, but it just wasn’t going to happen. As the wind whistled, and sprayed cold water around my bare ankles. I slunk back home, a beaten man. I got changed before slipping off to the pub in the darkness.
On a runless Monday, as I sipped my post-pizza 2004 Gevrey-Chambertin, I opened my spreadsheet to survey the wreckage of my schedule. I then confronted myself with this question:
Is giving up alcohol and comfort food the painful sacrifice I make in order to achieve my goal, namely running a marathon?
Or
Is training for/running a marathon, or some other notional race, the painful sacrifice I make in order to achieve my goal, namely giving up alcohol and comfort food?
I wrote the above in my little black book, before hacking a chunk from the slab of creamy Roquefort, and taking another generous sip of velvetty Burgundy. It was a great way to crash and burn. The occasional epicure in me was on cloud nine — from where he had a perfect view of the confused looking, bloated, wretched runner below.
The collapse has come at a bad time: just days before the Brighton 10K. Will I get to the start line? I really don’t know. I’ve taken the first few steps back towards the straight and narrow, with two sweaty sessions in the gym, but I haven’t had a proper run for a week now. I tried and failed on Sunday, and tried and failed on Monday. Perhaps these two days of detox and gym will get me round the block tomorrow. I’ll soon find out.
So why does a brief burst of gluttony set me back so much? It’s a baffling question. Admittedly, if I dabble in the dark side, I go over the top, but still… Look at the red line on this chart, which shows actual daily weight over the past 6 weeks:
Over this period, I’ve been ultra-careful about what I eat, and have exercised almost every day. The weight has been slowly eroded. Then look at the two circled points, where the weight shoots up. The first one, a couple of weeks ago was one single evening when I had 3 pints of beer and a Chinese takeaway (yeah, sorry, I kept quiet about it). Just 2 or 3 hours of excess, but it took 5 days to get back to where I had been. The second circle is the last few days. The rise is much steeper than the falls ever are, and I know from experience that it will take a week to 10 days to get back to where I was. It’s disproportionate. Even a brief lapse gets punished. For days afterwards, I feel toxic and bloated. The very thought of pounding the streets seems to belong to some late night film I once saw, or to some other existence that is remote and unavailable. Maybe it’s an age thing. It is said that recovery gets tougher as your body deteriorates. Perhaps that applies to overeating just as much as it does to long runs and other strenuous exercise.
If I wasn’t due to run the Brighton 10K on Sunday, I wouldn’t be so bothered. I still have almost 6 months until I arrive at the distant marathon mountains of the spring — if that’s really where I’m headed. I would write off last weekend, put it down to experience, and move on. [ASIDE: which reminds me of something heard on the radio yesterday…. "I’m on an alcohol-only diet. Last week, I lost 3 days."] But it’s disappointing that after 6 weeks of serious preparation to get me back on my feet and to the Brighton start line, I find I may have blown it in the very last week.
Bah. Stop whining, mate. The last paragraph says it all. My real goals are not this weekend, but post-Christmas. I’ve got 3 more days to try to get a decent run on the board. If I manage that, I’ll be OK for Brighton. If I don’t, my life won’t end.
The important thing is that I take stock of the last few days and learn the lesson.
Which of course I won’t.
