Someone I admired early in my plodding career was Julie Welch, whose resignedly matter-of-fact tale of the London Marathon, 26.2, I found strangely inspiring. Her piece on the Serpies website still brings a distant sheen to the old eyeballs, ten years after I last read it. The lachrymosity is part nostalgia, part melancholy, part euphoria, and part Chianti. Her post-running life has been somewhat pedestrian: she became a long distance walker.… READ MORE.... …
Blog Posts
So. Erg. Yes. Erg. This is a new word for me, and one with a satisfyingly quasi-onomatoepic quality, reflecting the sound I made, internally at least, when it appeared on my doorstep: the point at which I realised there was no going back. For a three-letter word it packs quite a complicated linguistic punch, but I’ll stick with the job in hand.… READ MORE.... …
The previous entry was a circuitous way of reporting a little enforced downtime. One lives and learns, as last week’s painful, swollen ankle could attest. The lesson? That high-speed IKEA shopping and MBT footwear are not perfect partners. A less specific refresher lesson in imperfect pairings was the one featuring increasing age and injuries. My period of pre-training training is an acknowledgment that I’d at least thought about this one, though I suppose I’ll now have to think about it some more.… READ MORE.... …
Let me apologise in advance to Antonio. Here’s a question you probably won’t be able to answer: ‘Any other JAM fans out there?” Ambiguous on a good day, but the capitals add another dimension of uncertainty. If I say that I’m listening to an MP3 called JAM69, you take another step into the darkness, because of the long-defunct Hersham-based, hairless, raucous beat combo of a similar name.… READ MORE.... …
I bought a new gadget recently to remove the top from a boiled egg. The packaging urged me to believe that at last, I could say goodbye forever to those ragged-edged, egg fracture blues. How I made it this far in life without owning such a device, or even knowing about it, is a mystery. Late on Sunday morning, still smarting from the previous day’s IKEA 5K, I limped into the kitchen, keen to give this new lifestyle aid a rigorous workout.… READ MORE.... …
Despite the words of his Bobness, don’t pity this poor immigrant — even if I do trample through the mud here and there. Any discombobulation I’ve felt since arriving, nearly four years ago, has largely evaporated — if it existed at all — but it’s a subject I reflect on from time to time. The disorientation of the immigrant is built with big, obvious blocks: new job, social circle, language.… READ MORE.... …
It’s been a while, but let’s lift the latch and see what blows in. It’s good to be sweating and feeling the heart-rate soar once again. I experienced this at the weekend, when studying my bank statement and working out how much I was paying for the gym that I rarely visit. And so, today, a rather ferocious lunchtime session — my first in a long while.… READ MORE.... …
As I glanced at my GPS watch on Saturday afternoon, a moment after it finished recharging, I fancied I heard a snatch of this drifting in through the open balcony door. The watch was last stopped on September 29 at 15.15pm. It was now March 29 at 15.15, precisely six months — to the minute — since I’d tottered across the finish line in Berlin.… READ MORE.... …
Friday: Early Last week I spent three days in a windowless room near Helsinki Airport, Understanding Leadership with ten silent, but charming, Finns — and my silent, but charming, Swiss colleague. The ladies fidgetted with their ID badges and worried about their figures — the ones they’d scribbled in the margin of the handout, to be compared with some other set generated in an earlier reverie.… READ MORE.... …
1. SC Freiburg vs Bayer Leverkusen (26 January 2013) Germany is one of those pleasures I discovered late in life, like tinned artichokes. My first ever visit was for the Hamburg Marathon in 2005, followed soon afterwards by the series of work trips to Dusseldorf. I liked it then, and I like it now. Enough to think about living there one day.… READ MORE.... …