Something rather odd happened today. I was out at 7 this morning for my pre-work energiser. The standard short route — 3.5 miles. Felt good all day, and even worked late. Arrived home, looking forward to my Marks & Spencer’s Chicken & Bacon layer salad and an evening in front of the Champions League, but blow me, when I heard the product of the Wednesday evening bellringers’ practice reverberating across the village, I found myself changing into my running kit and getting back out there for a testing 5.2 miles around the pitch-black, drizzley lanes.… READ MORE.... …
Blog Posts
Brighton has a kink. I’ll come to it. Time break a minor tradition by actually writing about today’s Brighton 10K. For reasons now lost in the Sussex mists, I’ve written up all thirty-odd races I’ve done apart from the two previous runnings of the Brighton 10K. Having ignored it the first time, it seemed almost customary to do so again. But it’s so long since I did a race of any kind that I can’t let the opportunity pass to prattle on about it for a bit.… READ MORE.... …
Two or three early morning runs and an Everest of fresh, raw fruit and vegetables, has left me vibrating with good health all week. I’d forgotten how invigorating this is. Work has been a pleasure. Yes, it’s that serious. Another 5 miles due tomorrow, then a 48 hour rest before the Brighton 10K on Sunday, my first race since Zurich in April.… READ MORE.... …
When I was at school, I noticed that had TS Eliot been called ST Eliot, his name spelt backwards would have been… well, work it out for yourself. Thought about that this evening, as I re-read the start of The Waste Land. I hadn’t looked at it for… gulp, nearly thirty years. Tonight, I finally realised what my English teacher was going on about all those years ago.… READ MORE.... …
Some people like to run with their dogs. An interesting way of staying motivated. I’m thinking about buying a tortoise to tag along with. Help coax me out of my comfort zone. Progress is slow, but there is progress. I was out again at 7 this morning, turning in around 4 miles. Again, no walking. I seem to have emerged from that phase.… READ MORE.... …
Last weekend I was 232 pounds, or, for those who prefer to measure humiliation in metric, 104.5 kilos . That is one egregious lard mountain. Checking my running stats later, I found that this was heavier than any time in the last 5 years. The fattest I’ve been since records began, you could say. Wow. I was so shocked, I nearly got out of my armchair.… READ MORE.... …
At 6:30 this morning, I opened my eyes and thought: “Thy will be done”. My first pre-breakfast UK run since the early spring. I don’t suppose I ever really enjoyed an early morning run but I tell myself that I did. There is pleasure, but it’s deferred. It’s the getting back home, like a carthorse after a day’s work, breath steaming through your nostrils.… READ MORE.... …
It’s not been a good month in the plodosphere. Things had been going pretty well, it will be recalled. I’d finally disembarked from my blotchy, shirtless summer and the Svengoranertia of another World Cup failure. All on my own, I’d somehow got down from my shingley sick bed. How heroic, and how very pleased with myself I looked when I glanced down to see my reflection in that highly polished — and slippery — floor.… READ MORE.... …
Bad run today. Chugged along the canal for 3 kilometres before having to stop for a walk, and never really got going again. I amused myself by listening to a collection of podcasts from Hal Higdon and the US Runner’s World magazine, the latter mainly on the subject of the New York Marathon. I’ve had it in mind that I have so few marathons in me that I should aim to do them in different countries, so I’ve not seriously thought about doing another in the US.… READ MORE.... …
There’s nothing the British like so much as a joke they really know, so it’s been impossible to mention to anyone in recent weeks that I’m going to, or have just come back from, Iceland, without some mention of Tesco or Sainsbury’s. As they throw their head back and guffaw loudly, I quietly thank the god of destiny that I wasn’t born with a jokey name.… READ MORE.... …