My only previous experience of Germany amounts to a brief, and patchy, recollection of a hundred soldiers pointing guns in my direction, on the other side of a rainy aeroplane window. I was out of my head on a cocktail of severe food poisoning, homesickness and amphetamine psychosis, and this wasn’t what I needed. An hour or so earlier, the pilot of the Afghan Air plane transporting me from Delhi to London had made a dramatic announcement over the public address system. He was crying. Russian soldiers had recently marched into his village and destroyed it, he said. He didn’t know what had happened to his family. He didn’t want to go back and find out, he told us. We … …
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I suppose I should be crafting some portentous paragraph about the impending marathon, but there’s too much fluster to contend with here. As usual, I’m not well prepared for the trip so it’s going to be another last-minute job. It might be a good thing. Had a good, brisk run on Monday evening, and nothing since. I should try to get out for half an hour tomorrow, then that will probably be it. It’s always difficult to judge what to do in this final week. Over-training or under-training? Whatever you do doesn’t feel right. I’ve had a reasonable 2005 so far, managing to collect a few PBs along the way, though I seem to have lost the zip I felt … …
London Marathon day. It’s my favourite session of the year. A sunlit, Sunday morning, and here I am, armchaired in front of the TV, in the thick of my marathon preparation. As I write, Paula Radcliffe is well on her way to another record-breaking victory. I feel ambivalent towards her. Her ability is beyond question, but the Paula industry is dispiriting. It spoils the purity of the story. Is she an athlete or a commodity? The obvious answer is “both”, but I don’t much care for the ratio. I’m happier with my own marathon prospects than I was this time in 2002, when I did the race. I’ve done more training than when I did Chicago later that year. … …
Perhaps this is the boost I was looking for. I weigh less today than I have done since… since records began, 2½ years ago. When I ‘ran’ London and Chicago in 2002 I was under 200 pounds, though I don’t seem to have a record of the exact weights. My post-marathon visit to the Chicago Cheesecake Factory (just go and look at the 35 cheesecakes on their menu….) was the first step on the road to renewed corpulence. I’ve hovered between 215 and 220 for most of the intervening period, but for this marathon I’ve made a real effort to move down again. This morning I was 204, and I’d love to dip below 200 for Hamburg in 9 days … …
Bigger, better, bouncier news. Yes, bouncy. Tonight I felt bouncy. Have I ever talked about the running bounce? I must have. Sometimes, for no very good reason, you just feel like you’re bouncing along the road without the usual effort. It’s a good feeling. It means, or I take it as meaning, that there’s something in reserve. I’m not plodding along on empty, panting and wheezing and aching. A feeling of controlled strength, and one that gives you confidence. Just the usual round-the-block 3½ miles tonight, then back in time to listen to Liverpool surprisingly hold out against Juventus to reach the Champions League semis. What a celebration there’ll be if they manage to get through to the final. Looks … …
I’m an early-morning-run evangelist. Odd then, that this morning’s was one of the very few early runs I’ve done on this current marathon campaign. The habit evaporated during that long, wearying spell working away from home last year, and I’ve not yet picked it up again. As the world turns into spring, it’s a good time to rediscover this life-enhancing habit. The sun was out at 6:40 this morning, but it was cool and slightly raw. Good waking-up weather. It must be a traumatic experience for the body. One minute supine, warm and shut down. Five or ten minutes later, pounding along a chilly street. You can imagine the warning sirens blaring out through your internal organs. All hands on … …
How many people under 40 know what this is? Until this morning, I hadn’t realised how low in our esteem the humble bicycle bell had fallen. It seems to have been all but eliminated. Running down the canal for 12 miles, I was overtaken by a total of 34 bikes. I’ve no objection to them on the towpath. The average cyclist looks like a quivering sack of jelly abandoned on a garden wall, so it’s probably the only exercise these poor people get. Moreover, the path is part of the SUSTRANS network, so I expect to see the weekend cyclist, and believe in our harmonious coexistence. But some of them are complete tossers. Perhaps the excess weight that most of … …
Being able to distinguish between a trough and a mere dip is a bit like owning a grapefruit knife. It’s hardly ever needed, but invaluable when it is. I’m having a dip. Today was supposed to be my 12 mile long run day, as part of the wind down to the Hamburg Marathon in two weeks time. 12 miles today, went the daydream, with a restful 3 or 4 tomorrow. Butit hasn’t happened, and with the few beers consumed this evening, I’m not sure it will happen tomorrow either. I woke up knackered after a late night in front of the computer, where I’d been kicking off the lengthy (in fact, eternal) task of sprucing up this website and migrating … …
The least startling newsflash of the year so far came late morning, with the announcement of a general election on May 5th. The thought of four weeks in which no baby is safe from the rasping upper lip of some grinning, matey candidate fills most people with dismay – but I’m delighted. An election is like the World Cup or the Olympics to me. A quadrennial treat, rich in drama. The jousting may be verbal rather than athletic, but the competitive element is there for us all to marvel at. This evening I teamed up with the local running club again to do a perky 4.8 miles. How different it is to have daylight on these runs. I’ve spent half … …
Perhaps the past really is a foreign country. Ambling idly through my teens the other day, I came across a tiny snicket I’d not noticed before. Peering down it, I see myself walking home from the pub one evening, aged about 17, and coming across a very fat skinhead with his left hand around the throat of a pretty girl. In his right hand he had a hefty claw hammer, and was waving this around above her head. He was shouting drunkenly: “If you don’t fall in love wiv me, I’m gonna smash yer fackin’ face in, yer bitch.” Call me conventional, but this didn’t seem to be much of a seduction strategy. It did set me thinking though. The … …