Items for perusal on the agenda for today’s gathering:
Wednesday1: Puzzled by apparently contradictory guidance on the eligibility of the elliptical cross-trainer as a cross-training option in the celebrated Furman FIRST marathon plan, I write a speculative email to Furman University, asking for clarification. I get a detailed reply within 20 minutes from Professor Bill Pierce, who wrote the book. The reply is copied to Ray Moss and Scott Murr, the co-developers of the program. I’m impressed by this; and pleased that the advice on the elliptical is just ambiguous enough to let me sneak the machine into my plan.
Wednesday2: I celebrate Wednesday1 by making my 15 elliptical minutes especially cocky. Another 15 each on the stepper, the bike and the rowing machine.
Thursday: The inaugural ‘Key Run #2’, the tempo run in the FIRST running trinity. 2 miles slow, 2 miles 10K pace, 2 miles slow. Before setting off, I wonder what my 10K pace might be. I seek clarification in the book, and am glad that I do. All target times on which the runs are based, must be current, not aspirational. My last race becomes my benchmark. Last race? Brighton 10K and its moderate 10:15 mile pace. BUT. But this benchmark must be altered through the course of the schedule if races dictate a change.
I set off. My first easy mile takes me through the village, and over the footbridge that spans the M4 motorway. As I ease through the village, I pass the electrical shop whose QPR-supporting owner, a nice old boy known as Electricity Bill, peers at me through the window as I pass, his worried expression saying: “How come I recognise that half naked bloke…?”
Easy mile 2 sweeps me past Sainsbury’s along the A4 towards Reading. So it’s come to this then? Yes it has: the route may be blunt and brutish, but it’s long and straight and not knobbly underfoot. I think of a cartoon I saw in Punch magazine in 1969, the year that Concorde started testing, much to the excitement of schoolboys like me. Punch used to have a caption competition, where they’d invite readers to provide a topical caption to an original cartoon from (usually) the 19th century archives of the magazine. This one depicted two elderly gentlemen in a primitive railway carriage, with one shouting into the other’s ear trumpet. I can’t recall the original joke, which was always mentioned, but the modern caption is: “We go supersonic once past Potters Bar…”
I’ve no idea why this cartoon has lodged in my memory, but it has. Anyway, I think of it today as I look at my watch. I go supersonic past Tesco Express, I say to myself.
And despite the admittedly weedy pace target upon whose altar I am about to throw myself, there is a truly ridiculous sense of: oh my god, here it c-c-comes…..
And so, once past the appointed mark, I give the peak of my cap a determined tug… and go supersonic.
Trouble is, I really have no idea what my pace is until I finish each mile. Despite a concentrated effort, I’ve not yet sussed out how to show my real-time pace on the new Garmin. (I call it “the new Garmin” because, despite being another 305, it’s clearly an advance from the one I used to have.) So anyway, at the end of supersonic mile 1, I note that the pace is 09:55, and not 10:15. So I introduce a theatrical limp for mile 4 (supersonic mile 2), and pretty much hit the button with a satisfying 10:14.
I now revert to proper slow for the final two easy miles, trotting home with that sense that I could comfortably eke out another 5 were the schedule to pop up with a last-minute request.
Friday1: Up at 5:30 for the near-3 hour drive to Nottingham. It feels good to put on a suit again, and escape my rabbit-hutch home office. On the way up I listen to a Bloody Mary-type confusion of audio flavours: the Today Programme, Radio 3, and an audiobook reading of Dostoyevsky’s great Crime and Punishment. Reading this book as a 19 year old, was like – ahem – being coshed on the head. Listening to the first few chapters again was curiously painful nostalgia. What a writer. What a man.
The work experience is slightly depressing, but I don’t talk about work here. Except… except to say that I keep hearing the whispered word: “redundancies”. Here in the cold and damp economic trenches, every instance of the word used to be a small shell exploding in the far-off distance: just a rumour of someone else’s war. But now, every time I hear it, it’s louder and closer. We used to be nonchalant observers; these days we are cowering lower and lower, barely daring to peer above the parapet to see how close the enemy is getting.
Friday2: I drive home in the dark, wondering where I’m heading.
Friday3:: Ten minutes after arriving home, I’m in my smalls, and on my way round the corner to the gym. 45 minutes of very sweaty aerobic resistance.
Friday4:: By the skin of my teeth, I avoid the temptation of sloping off to the pub. Instead, as I’m chopping up our diced turkey and vegetable stir-fry, I decide to cram into the freezer the glorious, and rightly lauded, NZ Cloudy Bay Sauvignon that’s been sitting in my wine rack for too long. Ten minutes later, I’m enjoying the first taste I’ve had of this wine for many years. It was a sensation when it first appeared here back in the 80s. It’s marvellous stuff still.
Live update: The third glass ain’t half bad either.
Any other business?: Yesterday, I take part in a brief correspondence on the Runner’s World forum (yes, seems adulterous, I know) about overseas marathons. Hamburg crops up, which leads me to re-read my Hamburg Marathon race report this evening. It’s a long time since I read that one. It cheers me up.
Tomorrow: rest day. QPR v Wolves, followed by La Clique, which we’ve been looking forward to for months. Two sets of clowns in one day. If that doesn’t cheer me up, I really am a lost cause…
