On your marks… get set… STROLL!

I’d been waiting for the chance to issue some cliché along the lines of “normal service has been resumed”, but it struck me today that normality will probably never reappear. Or not that old normality. Some different lifestyle, currently unimaginable, will eventually rise from the swamp and conquer all that came before. The form it might take will be revealed — just as soon as I manage to identify the real thing in among the statues and their shadows.

In the meantime, I chew greedily on luxurious flux. It’s delicious. A couple of weeks into the supposed hell of redundancy blues, and I’ve not felt this busy, this happy, and this liberated, in a long time.

My new freedom didn’t start too well. Unemployment might be bad, but death is worse. News of my brother-in-law’s demise put my own professional extermination into salutary perspective. I wasn’t especially close to Brian, nor to my sister, his long-time partner, but witnessing her public grief was a powerful reality check. I didn’t have the capacity to store enough sympathy for both of us, and her cause was more deserving than mine.

At the cremation service, I learnt things about him I wish I’d known when he was alive. Why was I unaware that he was a jazz afficionado, majoring in Benny Goodman? That he’d spent 15 years at sea? That he’d spent numerous early summers in Alderney, a Rosebud-like experience that had produced reams of sentimental poetry late in life?

As always at funerals, I was struck by the irresistible theatricality of the occasion. You can see why they feature so prominently in novels and movies. We dress up and behave differently. It’s like being an extra with a walk-on part in some Pinteresque soap opera. One day, we all quietly think to ourselves, one day I will take the starring role.

Damn. I’ve just realised: that paragraph is now likely to feature in my own event. Some poor bugger will be given the task of ‘saying a few words’ at the crematorium, and will give thanks to the Google god for uncovering that. Oh well. Glad to be of service. Hope you are all having a nice time.

It’s been a fascinating week or two. Lost my job and a brother-in-law. Gained a great-nephew. Spent a few days in Ireland with the RC crew, and even took part in a race. Let’s do Connemara.

I’d been nervous about this trip for 8 months. Not the race, but the accommodation. What a pleasure it was, to feel 8 months of anxiety fall away, when we walked into the Connemara Lake Hotel in Oughterard and found that our booking was intact.

I was here last year. Deep into a day of stress and disappointment and anger, searching for a room in Galway City, I’d shifted my search to the small town of Oughterard, 26 kilometres away. Here again I was stonewalled by the B & B community on the grounds that I wasn’t an entire family, or even a couple, and therefore not profitable enough for them to make the effort. No matter that the room would otherwise lie empty; no matter that the rain was torrential, and night was approaching. I wasn’t up to snuff on the ROI acceptability index. Both ROIs. Return on investment and Republic of Ireland.

The hotel was my last shot. Luckily for me, it had only just opened, and had no one staying there. They seemed pleased to see me, and boy, was I pleased to see them. After checking into the sparkling white, minimalistic room, I spent a great evening in this small, one-street town, washing away the frustrations of the day with a few pints of Guinness and a string of pleasantly inconsequential chats with the friendly locals. After the inhospitality of Galway, this place suddenly felt like home.

The main reason for stopping in the area at all was reconnaissance for this year’s Connemarathon trip. This would make a great centre of operations, I realised. Small friendly town, and buses from Galway City to the race start would be doing a pick-up here. It would be a busy place around race weekend, so I needed to plan ahead. Next day, I asked about an April booking. The manager at the time, Ivan, seemed mystified that I would want to reserve rooms 8 months in advance. He couldn’t, or wouldn’t, make a note, but just told me to get in touch nearer the time.

I can see why the Irish think the Brits uptight and stressed. In common with Americans, who invented the phrase, we tend to “sweat the small stuff”. We worry about things; they don’t. An extended strike at the Guinness brewery might see a blip in stress levels, but nothing else appears to worry them too much. In the time that separated this trip from last year’s, I’ve besieged them with emails and phone calls, achieving a response ratio of about 1:4. When they did occasionally answer the phone, or on one memorable occasion, reply to an email, they would assure me that everything was in order. The reservation was there in the book somewhere, probably, and no, they didn’t need advance payment or even a deposit. Just turn up and we’d be OK.

And we were, even if they still seemed a bit surprised to see us, and had to make hurried arrangements to prepare the rooms, while we called in next door to watch the Grand National and knock back a couple of pints.

We’d arrived in Ireland the day before. M and I had met up with Ash (Sweder), Andy (SP) and Claire at Gatwick, and Suzie at Dublin airport. Later, Antonio arrived from Spain and met us at the hotel. Dublin was warm and sunny, and in party mood. The streets and bars overflowed with excitable French rugby fans, over to watch Clermont take on Leinster. How very strange, and heartening, to see fans of rival teams literally embracing in the streets. Strange to a football fan, that is. Rugby fans feel no less a sense of tribalism, but unlike us, manage to keep it in intelligent perspective.

We started off in a delightful back-street boozer before an astonishing influx of about 200 boisterous Frenchmen, hooting and singing. The chances of ever seeing the bar again seemed remote, so we moved off to explore Temple Bar. On a quiet Tuesday evening in midwinter, this could be a delight, but on a busy Friday night all I could see was a swarm of tourists and the money-honey traps conveniently left open for them. For us. Eventually we meandered back to the hotel to meet Antonio, before heading off out again to an austere Chinese restaurant.

Next day was sunny and hot: a good day to drive across country to Galway City. I’d envisaged a long and winding road through drowsy, variegated Irish villages, but no. These days there’s a motorway all the way. Progress? Questionable, though it did mean we got there in 2½ hours rather than the 4 I’d thought likely. Eventually we found the Marriott Courtyard hotel, and collected our race numbers. Then back on the road, retracing last year’s steps to Oughterard.

More Guinness of course. This was an unusual way for me to prepare for a race. I’ve long been in the conservative camp on this one. No booze the day before a race. It dehydrates you. Why invite an unnecessary disadvantage?

But this time was different. I had already decided to adopt a run-walk strategy, but without the running bit. After no exercise for over 2 months (unless you count strolling to the pub), I wouldn’t consider running, or even casual jogging, which is a better description for what I used to do. So, with the decision made to walk the course, I reckoned that this time, I could get away with the most reckless preparation. Not so Ash and Antonio, who had manfully signed up for the 39 mile ultramarathon. Ash in particular had belatedly realised that a bit of planning was in order if he was to have any chance of making the distance. His forehead spent much of Saturday wrestling with itself, as he mentally swapped items of food and drink and apparel around his 3 permitted bag drops. It was like some fiendish logic puzzle. By contrast, Antonio seemed positively insouciant. Was this impressive self-confidence? Or denial?

As I lined up at the start of the half marathon the next morning, I mused over my own unpreparedness this time, compared with my normal anal attention to race detail.

• 8 pints of Guinness the evening before
• No carbo-loading pasta meal
• By mistake, I’d brought only the still-unwashed socks I’d used in Almeria
• No lycra undershorts
• Forgot heart-rate monitor strap
• No pre-race hydration (I bought a 2 litre bottle of water before the start but didn’t get as far as opening it
• Full Irish fry-up for breakfast: 3 sausages, bacon, 2 eggs, fried tomato, black pudding, and toast and jam
• No gels for the race
• No bum bag of any sort to carry anything
• No nipple plasters

About 200 of us lined up at the bunch-of-walkers start at 11 a.m. The megaphone instructions were alarming: “Anyone caught running will be taken off the course. Anyone finishing in under three hours will be disqualified. No race walking.” I can only imagine that they wanted to deter half marathon runners from trying to bag an early start.

On your marks… get set… STROLL! The gun sounded, returning an atmospheric echo from the mountains on the other side of the lake. Off we sauntered, feeling embarrassed at the polite applause from the big boys and girls waiting to do the proper race.

It turned out that many of the people in this group were hell bent on finishing on the stroke of 3 hours, as I quickly learnt when I saw how the field instantly spread itself out. I decided to join in the questionable fun to give the experience a light competitive touch. It’s actually quite a strenuous challenge if you’re not race-walking. And if you’ve done no exercise for 2 months and had 8 pints of Guinness the night before and a mountainous fry-up an hour or two earlier and drunk no water and all the rest of it. It means about 4½ miles an hour. It was also baking hot, with the sun leaving all participants badly exposed.

But there my bleating will stop. I was involved in a very low-key challenge compared with some. As I felt the heat of the sun, and the sweat beginning to drip through my clothes and collect in my unwashed socks, my thoughts were with my two courageous travelling companions, by now more than 2 hours into their 39 mile odyssey.

Just before 7 a.m. that morning, I’d heard Ash’s bedroom door close quietly. It was a lonesome sound. I’d wondered whether I should chase after him to offer good wishes, but somehow it seemed more poetic to allow him to proceed alone, in keeping with his single-minded, solitary quest. Or maybe I was just too idle. Waking up on the morning of a race with a hangover was a new experience, and I wasn’t minded to jump put of bed.

He and Antonio had long gone by the time I made it to breakfast. A good fry-up seemed just the thing to deal with a bad head. (See above for menu.) The plate arrived at the same time as Suzie, and she audibly gasped at the sight. “My god”, she said. “Well at least the toast isn’t too unhealthy…”

The coffee, like the shower, was lukewarm, but the rest passed fatboy muster. My stomach had acquired an unusual spherical quality as I attempted to scale the stairs back to my room, and the breathlessness I felt at the top completed this picture of flabby ill-health.

I had plenty of opportunity to dwell on my poor condition through 13 miles of wild and sweltering Connemara countryside. Despite the puffing and groaning, the occasion was jovial. For an hour or more, the walkers were out on their own, creating a deceptively calm atmosphere, and giving me the chance to chat to several of my companions. It was like speed dating, but without the speed and without the dating.  Middle-aged men in the main, from Dublin or Galway City. One was recovering from a heart operation; another was raising money for the cancer charity looking after his young daughter. An older lady told me she came and walked every year in memory of a lifelong friend who had lived in the area, and died 5 years earlier. The stories sound unhappy, but that’s not how they were expressed. It was classic human race syndrome: a bunch of strangers assemble in a remote, mountainous landscape to plait a few strands of their lives together in some irrepressibly joyous ritual.

The calm couldn’t last. An hour or so into the party, the first of the gatecrashers arrived. A solitary runner bounded past, followed a minute later by another two. Probably marathoners. We’d been talking a lot about running styles, and approaches to injury. Ash had been reading, and describing, Christopher McDougall’s acclaimed “Born to Run”, with its espousal of the idea that we need to retreat to a more innocent, pre-Nike running age, and simpler, more natural, unencumbered running styles. His conviction had started to challenge my pessimism about my running future. The argument is compelling: that the increasing sophistication of running shoes, far from helping, has taken us away from natures’s intended way, and led to a marked increase in injuries. In particular, the over-engineered, over-insulated shoe styles encourage us to clomp along on our heels, transmitting the jarring effect all the way up our skeletons.

So it was with extra interest that I watched the marathon pack leaders skip past. They wore thin-soled shoes, and bounded along on their toes. There was something balletic about it that I found rather beautiful to witness.

Once our defences had been breached, there was no stopping them. Like the influx of French rugby supporters in that pub in Dublin, the trickle became a torrent, and we were soon overwhelmed. By the time I arrived at that long, 2 mile upward hill, just before the finish, I was part of the crowd. So many people walked or walk-ran up the hill that I lost sight of who was engaged in what campaign.

The discomfort of the heat and growing fatigue were expanded by the fear of Andy SP and Suzie catching up with me. Each time the possibility crossed my mind, I sensed a mild frisson of consternation. It would have been too humiliating, and the closer I got to the finish, the higher the paranoia needle rose. By the time I reached the top of the hill, with the finish barely a mile away, the gauge was vibrating. Fear drove me to move from earnest yomping to easy jogging, though with 12 miles of asphalt in my legs, it wasn’t completely pain-free. This fitful walk-plod-walk was far removed from the graceful style of those leading marathoners, but that wasn’t important. All that mattered was getting  to the finish before the sun was blacked out by the gargantuan shape of the Great Plodder looming up behind me.

I made it, just missing out on my target. Time for a new one. Where was the bus? The sooner I found it, the sooner I’d be able to enjoy a shower, a pint of the black stuff, and at least a bit of the FA Cup semi-final. An hour or so later, I was in that happy place.

My ‘race’ was a stroll in the park. I had to think twice before pulling on the finisher’s teeshirt, and allowing the medal to dangle dangerously near the mouth of my pint. I was a fraud, and even if I could fool the bar staff and the late-afternoon drinkers, with their beaming nods of recognition,  I couldn’t pull the wool over my own eyes. Thirteen hilly miles under a hot sun served only to triple my admiration, and concern, for those still out there on the mountain roads, and in particular, Ash and Antonio. They’d been in my thoughts all day, but my half marathon stroll had given me a more vivid appreciation of the scale of their task, and their efforts.

Not long after the first Guinness was despatched, Suzie and SP arrived, the latter looking satisfyingly crestfallen to see his quarry home and dry before him. Not long after, Antonio appeared, with a heroic tale to tell. All of us, including Antonio himself, had expected the ultra to be too great a stretch; the question was how many of the 39 miles he would be able to knock off. The answer was an unexpected 26. The plucky Spaniard had gone and bagged himself a marathon. Mucho congratulations and sweaty back-slapping before they went off to wash away their exertions.

A couple of beers into post-race, the football over, I was able to enjoy a reflective spell. From the pub across the road came the strains of The Fields of Athenry. The band had been playing for an hour, and would continue to pump out the Irish classics for the rest of that long afternoon. I stood in the doorway, pint in hand, absorbing that Irish stew of emotions.  I could sense the arrival of that inexplicably blissful Irish melancholia. Just before the tidal wave hit, Suzie reappeared, and the bubble was burst. Probably  a good thing.

It wasn’t long before the true hero of the day arrived. I’d wanted to capture the moment on video, but was distracted at the wrong moment. Instead, I was suddenly aware of a shadow in the doorway, and the sight of Ash lumbering across the floor towards us. “Oh no! I wanted to film that!” He was game enough to walk out again, and repeat his entrance. After 39 miles, what’s another 20 yards?

The wordsmith can be relied on to tell his own tale, but I have to put on record here some acknowledgement of the scale of the achievement. Anyone who followed his Two Oceans saga will remember that the South African race was the cherry on top of a very large cake that he’d been chomping away on through many long winter months. The groundwork hit a few blips, as race training must, but it was largely copybook stuff, with a long and winding schedule of fearsome weekend runs, and a hilly marathon or two thrown in for extra torture. Classic preparation: incremental improvement over a long period.

The Connemara Ultra had no extended foundation like this. He decided to switch to the 39-miler only a couple of weeks before the event, and managed just one extra-long weekend run. 24 hours before the race, he was feverishly shopping for a new pair of running shoes in Dublin, and wondering how best to distribute his in-race victuals.

Despite all that, did anyone seriously think he wouldn’t make it? I didn’t. The man is a monster, with a rapacious appetite for challenge, underpinned by a seemingly unshakable mental toughness. Barring something unexpected — accident or injury — he was always going to get round, and he did. Well done, Ash.

As if an ultra wasn’t enough activity for a while, within 18 hours we (Ash, SP, Claire, Suzie and me) were standing at the rocky peak of Croagh Patrick, the legendary spot from where St Patrick is said to have banished all the snakes from the island. I’d always believed this was the highest peak in the land, but extensive in-depth research i.e. a glimpse at Wikipedia, tells me that it’s only the 3rd highest in County Mayo, never mind the entire country. No matter, the day after running 39 miles, it must have seemed a bit higher than it actually is. It’s bad enough at the best of times.

I’ve made this strenuous upward journey twice before, so I’ll spare the reader the task of having to scale the tale yet again. If you’re that keen, you can try here (2004), or here (2006).

Maybe this will be the last time I do it. I keep forgetting just how wearing is that final asault on the peak. It’s not just steep, but made entirely of loose rock that shifts and gives beneath you with every single step. And in case you think reaching the top is the end of your trouble, you soon discover that the descent is even more treacherous. An extra twist this year was the scorching sun. We all complained about it, but the last time I made the trek it was in the aftermath of a spectacular cloudburst, and the residual mist and drizzle never let up throughout the 5 hours on the mountain. In comparison, the sun was a relief.

Later, my companions were good enough to let me indulge myself in a little sentimentality by agreeing to drive over to nearby Newport to let me check out the new headstone on my mother’s grave. I’d like to have taken them down the rocky track nearby to show them the spectacular lakeside cottage that she had grown up in, but decided that might be stretching their patience a little too far. Maybe next year….

Instead, with the sweet  scent of Guinness in our nostrils, we hared back to Oughterard, driving along the half marathon course one last time as we did so.

And that’s it for this entry. I nearly called it a race report, but it’s not a true race report because for me, it wasn’t a true race. Those laurels are reserved for, and deserved by, Ash, Antonio, Suzie and Andy SP.

Will I ever run a proper race again? What am I doing about the latent injury? What have I been doing for the past 6 weeks?  I offered a partial explanation in the first paragraph, and will return to it shortly.