At 12:30pm yesterday, I announced a personal state of emergency. My wife represented the population of planet Earth, and it’s fair to record that she did not immediately grasp the gravity of the moment. Instead, she leant forward and turned the radio back on. I had silenced it just a moment earlier, in readiness for my declaration. “But it’s The Now Show“, she said, as if this justified her recalcitrance. I pressed on regardless, certain that the significance of my statement would eventually perforate her bulletproof indifference.
The venue for this weighty moment was my car. We were travelling to London for an afternoon of intended pleasure in Shepherds Bush. Hers, at the new Westfield shopping centre, was pretty much guaranteed. 42 years of experience told me that my destination, just around the corner in Loftus Road, would be a less reliable source of satisfaction.
We parked in Westfield’s palatial subterrane. It’s rare to find a reception desk at a car park, never mind a space-age chrome and glass version, surrounded by dense carpet and luxurious seating where you can wait while the valet retrieves your car. With time to kill before the match, we aimed for The Balcony to nose around the food outlets selling every variety of international exotica. Lunch hadn’t been on the schedule, but it became increasingly impossible to resist. Eventually we stopped, almost arbitrarily, at Comptoir Libanais, where we filled a tray with Lebanese delicacies. I’d love to report that this was an exquisite culinary experience… in fact, I think I will. This was an exquisite culinary experience. Let’s pretend. Let’s also pretend that M hadn’t managed to send half of my Levantine titbits clattering to the ground while I was busy paying for them. No offer of a replacement. It is part of the marriage contract that, despite her mistake depriving me of most of my lunch, she retained the right to be upset, while I had to console her, while glancing enviously at her overflowing plate.
I bade a hungry adios, and headed off to the venue of so much joy, anxiety, boredom and rage over the decades. The reason we keep going is that we never know which emotion will be served up this time. Or rather, the proportions of all of these, and others. It’s never total glee, or total despair. In fact, the proportions are not that important, now that I think about it. It’s the order of them that matters. I would happily settle for 80 minutes of gloom and a final 10 minutes of elation. Hugely preferable to the reverse. It’s the residual bit that matters.
Yesterday’s residual bit was little more than boredom streaked with sadness. The team, and the club, are in disarray. For the record, we (QPR) drew 0-0 with Sheffield United, and I don’t intend saying more about it. Flavio left the directors’ box grim-faced. Last season, when the commoners were allowed to sit alongside the orange-faced god, I would often get a handshake from His Holiness as He passed. He was a benevolent deity back then. These days he’s a mean-spirited grouch, grumbling snootily about the commonweal in the cheap seats, and their unreasonable demands. Of course, there are no cheap seats anymore, which is partly why there is so much griping. Unless I renew in the next month, season tickets will increase in price again next year. My seat will cost over £700. Or would do if I were to renew. I’m going to do something philanthropic with the money instead.
Met up with M again at Westfield. While she shopped and consumed milkshakes with startling ingredients like raspberries and Dime bars, I sat in a comfy armchair high above the mercantile tumult, reading volume 5 of A Dance to the Music of Time, Anthony Powell’s glorious 12-novel social history of the first half of the 20th century. Long-standing RC readers will be familiar with my quest to get to the end of volume 12 before I die.
Eventually, M agreed to suspend shopping hostilities for long enough to eat with her ravenous old man. I’d earlier earmarked a salad bar called Tossed. I’m in healthy mode again, and this would be ideal. And it was, apart from the clearly irresistible temptation to make the staff wear teeshirts with slogans like I’m a tosser, and Watch me toss, and I love tossing, which just went to prove that a joke does not get funnier in the retelling. Apart from that crass error, I enjoyed the fruit of the tossers’ labours. I ordered their ‘signature salad’ which is an Everest of lettuce and lean chicken and apple and grapes and pepper and olives and cashews and thousands of other things. It even comes with a halo — or did I imagine that? While I was smugly crunching, M was rather mournfully fighting a large bowl in which a sea of gravy supported a flotsam of Vietnamese noodles and anaemic meatballs. Ha!
Last weekend’s run was a disaster. I’d set off along the canal on a grey, blustery morning. Five miles later, I reached Reading. An interesting mile followed, through the town on the towpath. It’s always a good way to see a place. It’s like an urban boat trip — you see things that you suspect you’re not supposed to. It’s as if you’ve got behind the defences of a place. You’re seeing the real thing while its back is turned.
Not that Reading’s backside is especially elegant. At some arbitrary point I left the towpath and darted between two unfamiliar blocks of flats to find myself in Broad Street. This was the best part of the run, as it was such a novel experience. I’m not accustomed to threading my way through large flocks of sullen shoppers. We thought each other mad and unfortunate, but each interaction lasted just a couple of seconds, before we moved onto the next visual confrontation. I felt like a hallucination. So many people blinked and double-taked, and raised eyebrows, as if needing to be sure I was real, and not some spectre sent to shock them awake.
It made me think of the final, salty-faced miles of the Copenhagen Marathon, when I had to shuffle through parting, cheering crowds of shoppers and tourists, trying to spot the red balloons that would guide me home. Nothing so glorious in Reading last Sunday, but the thought came back to comfort, and perhaps threaten, me.
Out the other side of the town, and onto the Thames Path. I looked at my watch. 8½ miles down, with perhaps another 5 to go. I wasn’t sure. I was beginning to tire, but knew I had to dig in and get this one done. And then it happened — again, without warning. A sharp pain in my left calf, and I had to instantly pull up. I hobbled to a nearby bench and swore like a trooper with Tourette’s. I wasn’t going to get any further. Long story short — I called my wife who, for the third time in this marathon campaign, has had to drive to pick me up. What do unmarried marathon trainees do in these circumstances?
Fortunately, there was a pub close by called The Moderation, where I thought it advisable to take refuge. In for a penny, in for a pound. I wasn’t going to be running for a while, I reasoned, so I may as well cheer my spirits with a couple of pints of Brains SA and the citrussy Tribute Ale from Cornwall. I was sitting next to a couple of young guys, and overheard this conversation:
Believe me, I’d love to go, but I just can’t. I’ve got no holiday this year.
No holiday? Why’s that then?
Well, I’m going to Japan for two weeks with Jackie. Then I’m in New York for a week for my brother’s wedding, plus I’ve got two fortieth birthdays, in Paris and Prague, and a long weekend in Amsterdam for a stag do. I’ve got no bloody holiday left at all. I’m absolutely pissed off about it….
The beer put me in reflective mood. Why was this happening to me again? The canal path had been unusually interrogative this time around — though I don’t believe that was the cause of the injuries. I think it’s overtraining. This may sound laughable, given my patchy regime, but that’s the very point. I’ve had two extended periods of inactivity, following the first injury, and the funeral, and I committed the classic error of trying to make up for lost training. On the Tuesday I ran 11.5 miles, followed by two hard gym sessions, then an attempted 15 miler, halfway through which I broke down.
But the news isn’t all bad. It’s not a pull or a tear; just a strain. This second injury isn’t as bad as the first, though it is in the same place, which is worrying. I don’t want to find I have a permanent weakness in that spot. Unlike the first time it happened, I didn’t have to hobble half a mile or more this time. I was able to get somewhere warm and comfortable quickly. Also, I bought a neoprene calf support strap last time but not until about 10 painful days had passed. This time, it was on within an hour and has stayed on during the day ever since. I believe it helps, and if I believe it helps then it does help.
I did nothing energetic for three days this week, but managed a reasonably serious gym session on Thursday. Friday I went out for a probing 3½ miles round-the-block. The first 1½ was surprisingly comfortable, though I was cautious. After that, I started to feel a twinge, and thought it wise to walk the rest of the distance.
On Friday evening I went to the pub and drank too much beer. I awoke Saturday morning feeling rough, with a strapped-up leg and the realisation that there are only 6 short weeks until the Boston Marathon. I lay in bed, scared.
Boston has to happen. I’ve booked our flights, and accommodation. I missed it last year, and can’t miss it again. What I need is a new plan — one that will get me round. I long ago abandoned ideas of PBs and enjoying the race. I need to complete it in one piece, which I can do as long as my calf holds up. How do I ensure that happens? I can run through blisters and stitches and general fatigue, but a calf strain or pull is impossible.
The most important thing, I decided, was to admit that I’m in trouble, because this will focus my mind. So at 12:30 yesterday, in the car on the way to London, I admitted I was in trouble. It’s true that M did not seem overly concerned by the announcement, but it didn’t matter. She wasn’t the real audience. The person who had to hear it was me, not her.
My plan is this.
- Something I can improve without risk is my ballast quotient. No alcohol until after Boston (with the possible exception of March 21, when I’m going to dinner at a friend’s. Here, good wine always flows freely. That may have to be my single indulgence).
- Need to get obsessive about a healthy diet between now and then.
- I need to stay as fit as possible, while minimising the pounding on my calf. This means extra gym work.
- Daily ritualistic stretching to be resumed.
- In bed by midnight.
- Would dearly love to get a single 20 miler under my belt before the big day. Next weekend I have an entry to the Finchley 20. Can I do it? I’ll take a decision nearer the time. Two weekends later comes the Reading Half. If, by some miracle, I manage to do both Finchley and Reading successfully, I’ll be more than happy.
- Need to develop a defensive race-day strategy.
- Need to stay positive.
The first two days of this new regime have passed successfully. Today I eschewed my small local gym, and headed off for the monstrous Fitness First in Reading. I was able to get a free one day pass, and needed to squeeze maximum value from it. I spent 4½ hours in the cogs of this machine, of which 4 hours and 10 minutes were spent in sweaty motion. I’d like to talk more about this miserable cathedral of lycra worship, and the bizarre cultural paradoxes I experienced there today. But it will have to be some other time. I have only ten minutes to hit my bed-by-midnight target.
