All races are events, but some are Events. The Reading Half belongs in the capitalised category, where accountants and marketing teams often seem to nudge out running people. And yet I manage to approve of Reading, partly because they seem to have the balance between sport and business just about right, but mainly because it’s my local big race, so a spot of greasy chauvinism is always going to blur the lens of objectivity. Many halfs start and finish in a town centre, but vanish into the countryside for a 10 mile loop in between. There’s a lot to be said for that. Who would object to a Sunday morning spent winding through the lanes? Yet I like the urban … …
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Can my luck hold out for another 25 days? In my universe, it’s a bigger question than Is there a god? (no); or Which came first, the chicken or the egg? (the chicken); or Will the Rowdies win the quintuple? (no). At 6:30 on Tuesday morning I was in the gym for 90 minutes of sweat production. This wasn’t enough to satisfy my new-found craving, so I returned in the evening to top up with another 60. Well, I say “returned”, but I’m a 2-gym man at the moment, so I selected my secondary facility for the evening’s exertions. I’ve previously presented Little Gym as the knees of the bee, but I’m starting to have my head turned by the … …
Up at 06:45 for a 7.2 miler along the canal and back through the lanes. After weeks of running through the farm, and grumbling to myself about the hazard of the wild canine, I realised last night, on looking at an Ordnance Survey map, that it isn’t actually a right of way. So the scowls I occasionally see on the faces of man and beast alike as I trot through, are more justified than I imagined. I wish I didn’t know this. I’ll now worry about being shot or eaten alive each time I take this route. But it was a decent run for all that. Boston is four weeks today, and things are going OK. Tomorrow, the plan is … …
I’m not quite sure how, but perhaps — just perhaps — Boston really has been dragged from the jaws of failure. I set off yesterday morning, knowing that the following few hours would reveal all. Strangely, it all felt beyond my control. I knew I had to try hard, and stay focused. But I could do that and still fail if my calf or general fitness let me down. I had 18 italicised miles on my training spreadsheet, but started out with no good idea of how many of them I’d be crossing off. The weather forecast was for a hot and sunny spring day, but when I poked my head out the back door at 6.45 a.m., I could … …
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. The canal was at its glorious, silvery glinting best. It’s days like today when the deserted towpath, winding its way around the lakes, beneath the overhanging trees, becomes some sort of secret England; one that, through the winter, you keep fearing is lost and gone forever. But today it came back. A good day … …
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. A sturdy, indefatigable athlete was to emerge through the dry ice at the climax of this process. But that was then. Instead, I had a good 1¾ weeks, before the calf twang left me well and truly plucked. Since then, just 7 road miles in total, with (admittedly) some crazy gym stuff. After talking … …
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. Oh moderately happy days. This isn’t the same as positive or negative thinking. I remain startlingly upbeat about my chances of getting through the Boston Marathon on April 20th (37 days from now), and am doing everything I can to maximise my chances. But I have to do … …
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. All I can do is try to maximise my chances. The calf is my, er, Achilles’ heel, so I’m doing as much stretching and massaging as I can without actually weakening it further. Gym this evening, for a more moderate session than Sunday’s 250-minute monster. Tonight I settled for 30 minutes … …
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 … …
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? I turned the radio on low. The news is all bad again, just as it has been for the last year. It’s like being in a war; or under siege, when you listen to the news in the hope that relief is on its way. But it never is. Despite the unpromising start, … …