Crikey: good news to report. A decent morning’s work merited a break at about 2pm for a 7-miler along the canal towpath, and back on the farm track. What a corker of a day it was today. At this time of year, the sunshine doesn’t always deliver the heat it promises when viewed from inside, but today was an exception. It was genuinely warm out there.… READ MORE.... …
Blog Posts
My first ever DNF (Did Not Finish) today. But it’s OK — it was expected, and I’m not unhappy about it. I entered the Finchley 20 a month or so ago, before the recent recurrence of the calf strain. It was going to be the culmination of four carefully choreographed training weeks in which mounting mileage was to be added to increasingly frenzied aerobic gym sessions.… READ MORE.... …
Over yonder, in Twitterland, I’ve been trying to allocate a regular "Boston optimism" index to my daily disposition. A 60% score may not sound too good, but it has crept up from 45% a few days ago. I suppose the direction it’s heading is more important than the absolute value. So the important message is that hope is waxing, and the optostat is showing my mood moving from cool to tepid.… READ MORE.... …
Like the final overs of the cricket (in which, as I type this, England have 5 overs to get 3 West Indian wickets**), Boston has become a touch-and-go marathon. I’m definitely going, and unless events (like a bad injury) make it utterly futile, I will be at the start line on April 20th. The big question is whether my stroppy muscles and tendons allow me to make the distance.… READ MORE.... …
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.… READ MORE.... …
The wheezy alarm cough woke me at 5 a.m. again, just like it has the last 2 or 3 days. I felt unrested, and despite just the single glass of wine last night, felt faintly hungover. Maybe the tiredness and the medication, mild though it is, had turned it into a more potent cocktail than it deserved to be. Damn. How likely was a decent run today?… READ MORE.... …
A disappointing attempted long run today, but there’s no disgrace attached. It wasn’t for lack of effort or commitment. If anything, the opposite. I woke yesterday with a feverish brow, throat like sandpaper, and lungs full of wheezey phlegm. I’ll resist the schoolboyish temptation to be even more graphic. But it wasn’t pleasant. Today the corporeal thermostat was a few degrees lower, with the throat less raw and sore.… READ MORE.... …
Since the last entry, another furious gym session, raging against the step machine. More significantly, today, 7.2 steady country miles. I waited till my attention-seeking computer was whirring and grinding. It’s become self-important — a recent habit that doesn’t please me. I made a dash for it. It was mid-afternoon and mild. How liberating, and how promising, to be able to run in just teeshirt and shorts again.… READ MORE.... …
A spot of encouragement to peer at, and be grateful for. After Saturday’s panting plod, that I did at least get through, I chanced my arm with 4½ miles or so along the canal yesterday. The sun had switched itself off by the time I got out, leaving nothing but that cold grey glow to warm my spirits. It wasn’t enough.… READ MORE.... …
Back from Ireland. I am tempted to add blithely, “back to reality”, but apart from being a useless cliché, I’m not sure it’s true. Why is getting back to work, and sleeping in my own bed, any more ‘real’ than spending time with rarely-seen relatives, and burying my mother? The former activities are certainly more representative of normal life, but if anything are a kind of smokescreen behind which the big important things — death included — play out.… READ MORE.... …