If a marathon is the top of my distance scale, the lowest is the humble 3-miler. It was my first ever target, back in 2001, and as I’ve mentioned more than once, it took me 8 months to reach it. It’s also the shortest run in the Hal Higdon training plans. His Novice schedule begins with a midweek of 3 x 3 milers, and an initial ‘long run’ of 6 miles. Today I turned in the easiest of 3 milers just to loosen up a little before the race tomorrow. I should have done it yesterday, but a couple of nights of reduced sleep had left me feeling tired and spaced out. I listened to my body, and my body … …
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Something old, something new. This evening I took to the hills. Or to the hill. One hill, but consumed, sicked up and re-eaten four times. Dublin and Boston are not flat races, so I have to get used to the undulant way. Besides which, hill training will, they say, transform me into a herculean athlete at long last. It’s a good thing to do, regardless of hilly races to come. It’s part of my plan to mix things up a bit. I grumble that West Berkshire is flat, but it isn’t really. We don’t have the craggy monsters of Yorkshire and Cumbria or the lesser, but still formidable, climbs of Sussex and Surrey, but there are enough ascents round here … …
And they’re off… A 4.62 mile outing with the local running club this evening gets the invisible schedule underway. A strangely gentle affair. A couple of runners were coming back from injury, so we ran slowly to ensure their smooth transition from one sort of pain to another. The pace gave me a rare chance to enjoy the run, instead of being yanked from my comfort zone and cudgelled to the ground. The medicinal benefit is normally a good enough reason to turn up, with the sociable bits sprinkled on top like small flakes of chocolate. But I don’t enjoy these runs till I’ve finished them, and am back in my car, separated from the world by steamed-up windows. Tonight … …
How do you get to Dublin? Well I wouldn’t start from here, as the old joke goes. But too bad. It’s where I am. I’ve mentioned several times that this week marks the beginning of the traditional 4½ month marathon schedule. And yet… what schedule? You see, I don’t yet have one. Perhaps I’ll never have one. It’s one of the things that changes as you accumulate marathons. It’s not complacency. Just familiarity. Even a sense of comfort. You know what you have to do. I know what I have to do. Trouble is, I’ve always known what I have to do. I’ve simply never actually done it before. I get waylaid by drifting focus, by periodic boozy weekends, by … …
Here’s a new one. Today, a kilometre into my afternoon jaunt, as I ran past a new gypsy encampment, four dogs ran out and surrounded me, barking angrily. I tried walking slowly away, and one of them, a pathetic Jack Russell, took the opportunity to sink its teeth into my ankle. First time I’ve had dog trouble since we moved here in 2002. What’s a man to do? I didn’t fancy marching into the camp to complain, and no one would have admitted owning the dog in any case. It was quite a nasty nip — broke the skin and left a bloody patch on my sock. Nothing for it but to limp onwards. A half mile later I was … …
It’s good to be back in the groove. Worked from home today, so had the chance to get out his afternoon for 6.44 miles in the rain. I left home with no idea where I was headed, or how long I was going to be. I needed some sort of boundary, so before I left, I trapped a huge potato and manhandled it into the oven. It meant I wouldn’t be tempted to get carried away and run twenty miles unless I wanted to return home to the sight of a caravan of fire engines and thousands of horrified villagers fleeing for their lives. So I chugged up to the crossroads, a bruised young spirit in search of the devil. … …
No running on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. Overdid the cheeky nebbiolo on the first evenings. Naughty I know, but be reasonable — I needed something to wash down the Himalayan plates of cheese, nuts and olives. High-fat Heaven. I chomped and glugged for England, and wondered whether to blame or thank my scarlet toe. Then yesterday came, as it always must, and it was time to act. So I sentenced myself to 3 hours gardening, and grimly dug in. I could feel the rich red nectar from Alba re-emerging through the pores on my scalp. But at the end of it, it was hard to be unhappy, though I did try. It was good to have done the work, but … …
From the previous entry: Sometimes you get away with it, but usually you don’t. This time, I seem to have got away with it. I spoke too soon. I wasn’t the victim of an immediate collapse in resolve, more a victim of the Curse of Niguel. A couple of days after writing the above, I met up with the celebrated Nigel of this parish. Not for the first time, a pleasant rural plod with the great man presaged a precipitous and quite unforeseeable decline in my athletic career. We were galloping heartily through Bracknell Forest, discussing the route of the Oxford 10K, when my right toe encountered a piece of rock embedded in the bumpy trail. Offering less resistance than … …
Sometimes you get away with it, but usually you don’t. This time, I seem to have got away with it. I’d always intended a spell of R’n’R after the Oxford 10K. Not because the race was especially taxing, but because it marked the end of a solid spell of running. For the first time in well over a year I’d done three successive weeks of 20+ miles. Burnt off another ten pounds of lard. So I scheduled a couple of days off, and a slightly more adventurous rehydration regime than I’ve enjoyed in recent times. I offered myself an inch of rope, but took rather more. Though not quite enough to hang myself, it seems. Despite the patchy week, I … …
Writing a race report on the Oxford 10K without using the phrase "city of dreaming spires", or even less resistible, Frederick Raphael’s "city of perspiring dreams", is probably tougher than the race itself. But I’ll give it a go. This is the race, mentioned here, to which I’d challenged my athletic Moriarty, Mark. Getting out of bed at seven in the morning on a Sunday, isn’t much fun, particularly after a late night. We’d made our first ever trip to Camberley where we saw an amateur production of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying . A sixties’ satire, but with plenty of truth in it. We enjoyed it. Am-drams is always a risk. We went to a … …