Miles to go before I sleep

Constitution Hill

2011-06-06T10:33:00.000Z

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Probably two thousand of mine. So here's a picture:

Constitution Hill, Swansea. Friday 10 June.

And here are some more pictures:

Y Bwlch, north of Price Town, which is north of Bridgend. And two cyclists chilling out immediately after the above:

Even marathon runners need to nap

2011-04-22T07:33:00.000Z

London is a great, mysterious city, with always a surprise, so I suppose you have to run around it every year, on a pilgrimage of self-exploration and self-abuse. It was time for the marathon again. I took the train in, finally opened the envelope with my entry documents (sitting on desk for months), read the Virgin London Marathon magazine and almost cried. Adrenaline was - at least - seeping out through my tearducts. I'd forgotten what adrenaline tasted like. Today it tasted like defeat and tomorrow's hope in a pitiful cocktail. I was trying to think of a name for this cocktail when the train pulled into King's Cross.

I dodged the crowds at the ExCel Centre exposition, went to the hotel, checked in, wandered around Carnaby Street and wondered when it had been swallowed whole by the Evil Chains. I went out for dinner at the worst pizza express on the planet (Byward Street), near All Hallows by the Tower Church. My pasta came burned black, the sauce shrivelled away. They must have lost it at the back of the oven. After a tine on my fork shattered on first contact I proposed to the waiter that he might want to bring another one (I've never done this before, honest). He looked puzzled, so I explained, perfectly nicely, that it seemed quite burned to me. He scowled and carried it away. A couple of minutes later the manager showed up. "What it is?" he said, and glared at me. I explained again. "It's because it's warmed in the over," he said. "I think perhaps it was in the oven a bit long," I said. "No, it's just that the oven is very hot at the top." He was glaring now. "Well, would it be possible for me to have another one that's a bit less burnt?" "DO you want to choose another plate?" he asked, "I can bring you another, but it'll be just the same." I had lasagna, which the manager had probably spat on, but at least it wasn't burnt through. I needed my carbohydrate. The restaurant appeared to be full of runners, all in their casual sports gear, carrying backpacks. I still think wearing cufflinks saves adrenaline.

The hotel was nice (Apex, near Tower Bridge), quiet and roomy, with a view of St Olave's church. The phone was nice, a Jensen phone. I didn't use it. The TV looked ok. I didn't use that either. The shower was excellent, and I used that. The bed was huge, and I used that. I finally got around to looking at the train timetable for the following morning, and thought I could get away with the 8:10 from London Bridge overground station. Not caring about your performance can be pleasingly relaxing. Gone are the days of tense evenings with Sean micromanaging our breakfast and checking the contents of the race bag for the twentieth time. I could barely be bothered to crumple my race number before pinning it to my shirt (for aerodynamic purposes). I slept with my feet up on a pillow and dreamed of my dog running across the fens.

The morning was overcast, but the air was humid and the clouds promised to break later. A few runners haunted the streets. Most were at the station, taking their hydration seriously, their bladders inexorably filling.

I fell asleep on the train to Blackheath. Then I made my fraudulent way to the Fast Good For Age pen. Because I had held over my place from last year, when I had obtained it by merit of being fast. But I was no longer Fast, nor even Good For Age. I am an overweight sluggard, with my best miles left behind me, spent with a bottle on the sofa. The problem with middle-age runner culture is that no one believes you, because talking your race down is universal.

I see the old crowd there, and they're still runners, proper runners. I bump into Chanti from Long Eaton. "How's it going?" I ask. "Not great, digestive problems ... I won't run flat out," he says, dismissively, meaning "I'm hoping for 2:49." Then Giulio, "oh, ok," he says, which Giacomo glosses as "sub 3 for sure". Giacomo says "not bad", and Giulio explains that means 2:45. Then Ish, who is a new father and hasn't trained, so he's going to trot around in 3:15.

You? They all ask. I'm fat and I haven't trained, I say. They all think that means 2:59. I explain that I'd be happy with 3:59. They all think I'm talking my race down. I'm not, but not one of them believes me. Only I know how very not-pretty it's going to be.

I creep my way to the back of the Fast Good For Age starting pen, at the very front of the red start. The sides are lined with men - there are almost no women here - peeing under the barriers, away from the pen. They had a choice between peeing in the toilets, or making it to the front of the pen, a choice that was none.

We crammed in together, in a fug of testosterone and adrenaline and watery urine. There were a couple of idiots talking over the PA, which I think may have been the TV or radio coverage. 9:45 approached. There was a countdown. And nothing happened. Gradually I saw a few heads begin to move. And then it all began.

I was running without a watch. I didn't need to know how slow or fast I was: my target was to enjoy myself. It never really works as a target that (am I enjoying myself yet?). Having people run past me was a new experience. One guy asked me a question or said something - I forget what - and we fell into conversation. We hit the two mile mark and he looked at his watch. "Oh this is good," he said, "I didn't think I was going to be able to pace myself because I've no practice at doing that, but we've run the first two miles in exactly 7:20 each." Oh Christ, I think, slow down.

I run (if you can call that running). I see a lot more than usual. The sun emerges - gently at first, but soon intensely, and licks London with sparkling light. Around the water stations the roads coruscate.

Oddly enough, running a marathon slowly isn't very different from running one quickly. You go through all the same moments of apprehension and of fear that you won't finish. You worry whether that twingeing in the toe is the start of a blister. The pain is quite similar, though I did have a new one this time: the pain caused by completely worn out shoes. I'd tried to buy a new pair of shoes, but they turned out not to be quite right. So I wore a pair that were a couple of years old, with many hundreds of miles in them.

I ignored the slow people passing me, and reminded myself that I was here to enjoy it. A woman said "hello". I looked over at her. "Oh Christ," I think, "Nell McAndrew is speaking to me." A thousand reasons run through my head why Nell might want to speak to me. Actually none do. I can't think of a single one. Some of this must be legible on my face, and so Nell says: "I'm from your running club - my name's Caroline." I look down, and she is indeed wearing a Cambridge & Coleridge vest. She runs nicely and I follow her for five to eight miles before I lose her.

Tower Bridge is great, except you know that the next few miles are a bit boring. I'm still feeling pretty good. I see the leaders -- Mutai has a twenty second lead on Lel, and he looks strong and determined; you can see the resolution in his face, and I think, yes, I want to be like him. Then it is - as always, just as it is when I'm fast - in the three miles after Tower Bridge that people pass me. This time people in fancy dress. Short overweight people. Everything is in slow motion. I pray for the turn when we start to head back west.

You can't lie to the Marathon. You can't cheat it. You think you can sneak around, but 26.2 miles won't let you get away with it. When your training schedule includes a couple of thousand miles on the bike together with a couple of crashes, scars and a broken hand, one long run (26.2 miles), plus another when you got lost in the fens and ran out of water, one abandoned set of hill repeats, plus a handful of 7-mile runs, you cannot hope that a poker face is going to persuade the Marathon to let you get away with it. I keep on waiting for the hamstring to give up.

But I think I'm going to be ok.

And then the turn happens and I'm feeling pretty good, and I pick my heels up a bit. And I pass all of those people who passed me. They're slowing, some are stretching against the barriers, many are walking. And I'm feeling pretty good. I look at the clocks on the mile markers and figure out that I should make 4 hours. Then I calculate that I will make four hours even if I have to stop and walk a bit. Then I work out that 3:45 is quite plausible. I'm deeply confused because I am passed by the 3:30 pacers twice, and I have no idea - having no watch - why they should be anywhere near.

While the thirteenth mile had been the longest mile of my life - at least until the fourteenth, which only held its pre-eminence until the fifteenth - after about twenty everything speeded up. Though the markers do seem to go a bit funny for the last couple of miles, and that "800 metres to go" was an age in coming. It reminded me of my old friend Ned's complaints in 2008 when I cheerily exclaimed "that's only twice around a track"; but once I hit that the metres disappeared pretty quickly, and I bounded past a few old codgers and cripples towards the finish.

I saw Ish and Caroline, who complained about the heat, but kept on walking, and within minutes was in Trafalgar Square, sitting on the steps in front of the National Gallery.

Here's a useful bit: an advanced marathoning technique Sean taught me. Take flip-flops for after the race. I haven't had a running blister in years, today the flip-flops were an exquisite relief. In Trafalgar Square the sun at last went away, giving some relief to the 4+ hour slowcoaches.

The waiter at Les Deux Salons brought me a bavette steak that was the shape of my fist, and somewhat bigger, good and bloody on the inside. Somewhere deep inside me the memory of thirty years of vegetarianism stirred, and I ate every inch. That's how to recover. Maybe I'll become a runner again one day, and I'll be able to forget this 3:34.20, and return to lighter numbers. In the heart of this bavette steak I look for inspiration for the autumn, and it's perhaps a sign of being a runner, however faint and inaudible, that the inner chorus is asking "where next?". First, however, I need a new pair of shoes.

J

Lazarus

2011-04-15T21:08:00.000Z

There are things that John forgot to mention about Lazarus: the Bible is long enough, proverbially long in fact, and it was obviously never going to be possible to tie up loose ends with all minor characters. But when Lazarus was resurrected things just weren't quite the same as before. He'd been lying in the grave for a few days; and the things that had resulted in his death were still affecting him anyway. So there he was, alive, but with a body that just didn't work quite right.

It's a bit like coming back from injury. Just because my torn hamstring healed doesn't mean that I'm an athlete once again. Since the horror of being in Scotland ... this mortal coil has been patched back together and once again acquired the semblance of what might be called, at a glance and in a dark alley, a body. But it doesn't mean I can run.

Ok, let's be clear. I have lost my Mojo. If you are an endurance athlete you will know what I mean.

Since that fateful May of 2009 my comeback has been halfhearted. My hamstring healed; I damaged it again; it healed again, but only sort of. It turned out that my problems were neurological, and there was stuff going on in my spine that was generating pain without actually doing any damage (it's only pain, so that's fine). Then I tried to do the Tour Ride on 5 September 2010. The crash left me with a salad bowl of contusions. Sleep wasn't easy, but I got back on the bike and quickly overcame my fear of speedy descents. In fact a few weeks later I rode the Oxford-Cambridge bike ride, and a few days afterward that discovered that I had a broken hand. Again: it was only pain, and I could operate the shifters just fine.

But still, nothing like a training schedule: a few causal runs, no speed, no real distance, no Mojo. Soon, I said to myself, soon. Then it was March and the week of the Boundary Run. In past years that's been a training run for the London Marathon, one of five or six 20+ mile runs. This year it was my first and only long run in preparation. While others were looking at a schedule that said "This is the week to: Give your routine a check-up: As you embark on the heaviest four weeks of marathon training (the 'Monster Month') it's a great time to check over your training routine." I was asking myself: "where are my running shoes?" In fact my running shoes were worn out, so I bought a new pair. Nike had adjusted the model slightly, and I twisted my ankle. Another injury, another blow upon a bruise.

I ran it in a killer four hours, the longest time I've ever run for. Some of it was ameliorated by a rather lovely triathlete, who chatted for a while about training 'n stuff, before she took off. Her name was Rose. I never saw her again. Then I was alone. The photographs are just hideous. My legs are practically plaited. Running was clearly not the way to train for the next marathon, so last weekend I went out and cycled 133 miles around Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire in an audax event, also without training. That was surprisingly easy.

And that's my training, with London in two days' time. It's just as well I've taken up drinking, as it numbs the anxiety. My last-minute preparation plan: I'm going for a shave. And I'll probably try to get an early night. Maybe. Just me and my worn-out shoes a bottle in a hotel in London. Being back from the dead is not enough; benefitting from the Resurrection and the Life isn't enough. A man needs his Mojo. Lazarus lived on for a few years with a dodgy hamstring, a significantly reduced VO2 max, wasted muscle, an expanded waistline, and a poor attitude. Jesus was no longer his friend. Pray for me, to any god that will listen.

J

No Regrets

2010-09-19T19:39:00.000Z

Last week, in a fug of self pity because I have a haematoma the size of a fist on my left hip meaning I can't sleep, and because I've been cycling around with a suspected broken wrist, I read an email from my friend Dean Johnson. I was overwhelmed not only with the news but the lesson therein, so I asked him to write it up for the blog. J

My affliction seemed as well timed as it could be. I would go out on top. One week before the onset of symptoms, I had my best finish ever (third fastest) in a six hour adventure race where we competed in 37 deg. C heat. The day after symptom onset, I was in full denial mode and won my team classification in a six hour orienteering race. At almost 52, finishing uninjured by the cut off time is a realistic goal. Finishing near the top or winning is out of the question.

On my nightstand, the latest New Yorker magazine contained an article detailing the lack of benefit from massive intervention to advanced stage cancer. Many medical professionals agreed that hospice care resulted in no diminishment in life remaining and certainly a far more comfortable decline. This finding corroborated my belief that my time left, to the extent I could control it, would be marked by vibrancy and not a drug addled struggle to prolong breathing.

Admittedly, no one thought that I was going to die. I had a disk between C4 and C5 in my cervical spine that was severely bulging into my spinal cord. In several places, my spinal cord was compressed into ribbon.

I am not the first person in the world with this condition, but the consulting neurosurgeon stunned me within the first 15 seconds of his entering the exam room. He had been fully briefed by his resident and Fellow who had each evaluated my current symptoms (numbness in hands, arms, torso and back and gradual loss of fine motor skills) and closely consulted my MRI. In the manner of a man accustomed to dealing with gruesome spinal conditions on a daily basis, he matter-of-factly stated that I was one strong sneeze, bad cough, minor auto accident or fall away from serious spinal cord injury. The kind of spinal cord injury that could lead to quadriplegia...

You could have pushed me over with a feather.

He reckoned that normally I would want to research procedures, doctors and medical centers, but in my place, he would not wait an instant. He consulted his next day’s surgery schedule and offered to cancel the morning operation and substitute my case. His canceling another neurosurgery operation forced reality on a previously surreal situation. Medical consumerism would never outweigh the potential harm from spinal cord injury.

Scarily enough, the precise condition that was so concerning to the neurosurgeon had already been acute for a month. It took that long to weave my way though the US insurance-driven necessity of a GP visit, physical therapy, another GP visit, an MRI and another GP appointment. On top of that, I had to enlist the help of a neurosurgeon friend to get a neurosurgery consultation in less than two months. During this time, I had sneezed, coughed, driven, had kids hanging around my neck and orienteered. Ignorance had been bliss (with a healthy chance of paralysis).

I took him up on this offer for next day surgery. The procedure involves making an incision in the neck, moving the esophagus and trachea to the side and getting to the cervical vertebrae from the front. The surgeon remove the bulging disk, replaces it with cadaverous bone and screws a bracket to the surrounding vertebrae to secure them while bone forms and the vertebrae fuse. In my case, they removed two disks and bracketed three vertebrae. One loses the flexibility of the joints, but there is still much movement available elsewhere in the cervical spine.

The physical recovery has been pain and trouble free. The "flirting with death" part has been the larger matter. My current work/family/leisure balance results in my physical vitality being the key to all other happiness. I crave serious exercise and have taken up endurance bike rides as my next physical challenge.

Not only was all that extraordinary activity in danger from my impaired condition, but also I was slowly losing my fine motor skills -- like buttoning shirts, tying shoes and typing. When the activities of daily living become a challenge, this condition risks becoming the defining event in one’s life. The traumatic realization that I had a “near miss” with life defining quadriplegia was pretty terrifying and is only starting to fade.

I am now three weeks post surgery. My numbness has gradually declined and fine motor skills are coming back. While I am making progress, it has been at a slow enough rate to appreciate the unfortunate alternative. I do not want to over dramatize, yet this is precisely the physical condition I mean when I, lightheartedly, had hypothetically balanced my quality of life versus euthanasia.

I joke with my 8 year younger wife and 42 year younger kids that they will not need to pick out a nursing home for me because I will have topped myself before moving in. I have an agreement with a friend that if I am on a respirator, he will pull the plug when the nurse is not looking. I promised to do the same for him.

Perhaps my life has been so worry free that I am excessively self absorbed with this close call. Maybe. However, my principal learning from counseling has been that my problems do not amount to a hill of beans in this world, but my problems are my problems.

As the old people say, “If you have your health, you have everything.” More germane to vibrant souls like ours is not to waste a day, an hour, or a minute. Shorten your time horizon. Take that day off, do that bike ride, do an extra push up because you can and for heaven’s sake, take nothing, not a walk, a jump, a ride, a lift, even shoe tying, for granted. God forbid the "time coming," but at least you will have no regrets.

a blow upon a bruise

2010-09-08T20:52:00.000Z

The drive down was nice, as was breakfast. I listened to John Lee Anderson's biography of Che Guevara, and I thought about many things. In the afternoon sun, and with the roof down, I found my way to the hotel in Dunster, a couple of miles from Minehead, where the Tour Ride started. There I bumped into Matt and Ned and John unloading the gear from their car. Ned, who had produced some utterly implausible excuse for being unable to ride his own, crap bike, happened to have borrowed a brand-new Pinarello from an importer ... unridden and worth six or seven grand. It was a thing of great beauty. Who'd have thunk that the notorious scrounger would have somehow found himself riding a carbon-fibre jet?

I nonchalantly threw the wheels on my bianchi, checked the shifting, and we cycled into Minehead. There we met the crew, Team Real Peloton, and recorded material for a podcast which should go out sometime this week (ignore my undistinguished comments on why Contador should have waited for Schleck). There were some good people there and we drank some. Minehead was full of wired eyes, expectant, tremulous hands holding the saddles of yellow bikes.

I slept appallingly and woke to rain. I hate it when it rains on a Sunday morning. It reminds me of almost drowning in Istanbul and of those mornings when I can't get out of bed because I know my jacket is only water-resistant, not waterproof. I oiled my chain, checked the brakes, loaded my pockets with flapjacks, my water bottles with electrolyte, and put my brand new jacket in my back pocket. Ned, Matt and John were in the breakfast room, wearing the Real Peloton team shirts (above) that Matt had had brought over from Columbia, and of which we were duly proud. At seven, ready for the unknown we mounted our bikes in the pouring rain and headed out.

It wasn't going to go well. Over wet tarmac we hammered our way to the start, where we were going to meet the team. Ready for mountains, I forgot that it was the start of the day and hugged someone's wheel close. For some unseen reason up front brakes were applied, my wheel caught, and I went bouncing over the tarmac.

After sitting by the side of the road and a few exclamations of 'F**k', 'f**k', 'f**k' - I suppose I could have called out that bit about waking on the burning lake, poetry never seems to work in these circumstances - I climbed back on the bike. But my left brake head was almost broken off, I couldn't do anything with my right hand, and there was blood running down both legs and blood on the handlebar tape. I couldn't see my chin, though Ned pointed out that my rain jacket was torn across the front. It looked like a bullethole. 'Was there anywhere you didn't land on?' he asked.

I started with the team, rode the first couple of miles, and then headed straight into the hotel where I showered (they still had about 105 miles to go at that point). But not before I'd been displayed to Ned's motorbike camera crew: the event will feature in the ITV4 coverage of Stage 4 of the Tour of Britain on September 14. As I watched the blood run down the plughole I decided I had done the right thing.

And that was my ride. I drove to the finish, in Teignmouth, and saw a paramedic, who patched me off and showed the worst of the bruising to his assistant, thinking she might find it instructive. I had bruising and cuts on the front and back of my right knee, grazing on my right shoulder, a big graze on my chin, a knock on my forehead where my helmet had protected me, bruising on both wrists, an inoperable right thumb, a big cut and swelling on my left ankle,grazes on the inside and outside of my left knee, a swelling the size of a golfball on my left elbow, grazes and a swelling the size of half a cricket ball on my right shoulder, and something indescribable on my right hip.

So I missed all the fun. I missed seeing Ned fly up the first mountain, and then have the freewheel on his brand new Pinarello bike freeze. It was an hour and a half before it was fixed. I missed Rob's rear derailleur snap (he also had to abandon). I missed crashes. I missed watching Matt pushing his bike up hills. I missed eight plus hours of cycling and several of standing around. Instead I limped to a bar and had a roast dinner and some wine and re-read a PhD thesis. It was all about how spirit is inseparable from matter, which seemed self-evident at that point. Then I went to the finish and saw individual members of team Real Peloton finish in better-than-respectable times. And finally I saw the Lanternes Rouge roll up -- Ned, Matt, team captain Steve Trice and Chris with the supportive girlfriend -- and finish side by side at the end of an honest days work slogging over the unforgiving hills and through the uncompromising winds of Somerset and Devon, navigating the incommunicable chemistry of camaraderie and isolation that is cycling.

We went out drinking in Torquay. This is how some of it looked the next day (don't look if you're faint at heart). As my friend Sarah said: so much for cycling being easier on the body.

J

On the back seat of my convertible

2010-09-03T21:19:00.000Z

Few people who do not own them know how practical a car a convertible is. The phrase "a practical, sensible car" probably evokes an image of an estate or a 7-seater family car. Not so. In the past I have placed six trees on the back seat of my Saab 9-3 convertible (with the roof down). And today my bianchi is sitting on the back seat. Though I did have to take the wheels off.

This is because I'm taking part in the Tour Ride this Sunday, 175k and 10,000 feet of climbing across Somerset and Devon. Having survived the London to Cambridge ride --

ok, a little more on that. It was pleasant. At least once my lost bike had been relocated at the start it was pleasant. I started off gently and admired the London morning. Then a group of racers flew past me. I couldn't bear it, so I hung onto the back. We churned through London and the southern parts of Essex at some pace. For a moment i thought: this is going to be fast. Then they pulled over for lunch. I kid you not. Half way through, they just pulled over to a pub. So I kept on going. And then I began to worry that they'd catch me up, so I pushed it all the way, over the hills of Essex.

I made it to the finish. The banner was so high that I failed to notice it, and I shot right past it into the drinks tent on Midsummer Common and almost crashed into a marshall. The whole experience took three hours, which is perfectly respectable for 59 miles. Then I went for a beer (belgian) at the Fort St George.

So, back to the present. I signed up to ride with the Real Peloton team in the Tour Ride, 175k and 10,000 feet of climbing, with my friends Ned Boulting and John Beech, with whom I've run marathons. In fact John was there in New York in November 2006, meaning that he's the other man who beat Lance Armstrong. Also Matt Rendell, who's written some interesting books on cycling. These are people who talk about cycling, and are sometimes paid for it. And then there are some other people signed up for the team who actually train and so on. We will be wearing matching shirts, but the bodies underneath will be very various.

Let's be clear: having learned to cycle I love it. It's less hard on the body, you go faster, get to see more, and can drink more the night before. But 10,000 feet is like going up Mont Ventoux one and a half times, and then cycling another seventy or so miles. And I'm not allowed to do it with my bike in the back of the car -- I have to take it out and ride it. Together with the new gears that I personally fixed on when I heard about the 20% gradient (thanks to Howard Zinn [Zinn & the Art of Road Bike Maintenance -- great book] I managed to do this with zero knowledge). The petty hills around Cambs and Suffolk are no preparation for the ravenous pit of suffering that awaits us.

And what's worse, I hear from Ned that the whole thing is going to be filmed for the Tour of Britain TV coverage, and that there'll be a motocam on him the entire way. You may be able to watch eight hours (?) of self-inflicted pain on TV when the proper Tour of Britain rides through a few days later. Perhaps if I get in front of him I can ride in the slipstream of the motorbike.

J

Virgin London Marathon 2010

2010-05-12T04:52:00.001Z

I was ambushed, caught off guard. After a splendid and wine-intensive meal at Polpo in Soho the previous night, I wandered out of the hotel near Tower Bridge into the overcast morning in search of coffee. After a few steps I spotted an 'Eat' and headed towards it, only to find myself on a familiar road. Barriers on either side, a pulsating vaccuum pulling me west ... I was crossing the route of the London Marathon. I fell to my knees and wept. Then I moved quickly to avoid the cyclists who were following the route long before the race started.

After breakfast we headed back to the route to watch, and found a good spot where we could see the runners after they turned right after Tower Bridge, at 13 miles, and then again as they headed back, at 22 miles, towards the finish. My hamstring felt just fine, and I wondered if I could have done it. But it was a nice spot to watch from, and a good way to spend a morning.

We saw the wheelchair race, then the elite women, then the elite men, then the masses; then we saw them all again, their journey almost done. I spoke to a guy leaning on the barrier next to me, with a fold-up bicycle. His PB was 2:52.

I saw Tsegaye Kebede, with a pack at 13 miles, running alone and strong at 22 (he won in 2:05.19). I saw, amidst the mass runners, Fergie, Simon, Pietro, Alessandro, all former training partners. I saw a giraffe, a mosquito, and many superheroes. Then we wandered off and had lunch in the shadow of the gherkin.

I walked across London, faster than the tail enders. The Cambridge and Coleridge Athletic Club (which has a fancy new website) met at Chandos, a pub near the Mall, and I drank some beers with the runners, all pretty gloomy except Fergie who'd knocked five minutes off his PB, running 2:52. Then I walked some more, the sun now out, and London felt very small.

And that was the 2010 London Marathon. I found myself empty of words, no longer able to turn running into them. Perhaps the blog has reached its natural end. I wanted to find a way of writing about something that was not about language, about a feeling that was hard to translate into ideas (and all the more so when I read Murukami's disappointing What I talk about ... which didn't seem to describe it at all). I still do: I would like to write a book about running, not the history of running (like John Bryant's various books), not the stats and the practice (ever read The Lore of Running? it's been done), but a book that used the culture of running as a way into describing the experience, the raw thing of what it feels like when you're lost inside a long run on the road, along the river, over a hill. But here I am, not running, but riding instead, and learning the much more material and mechanical business of how to realign your derailleur when, on a long ride, your gear keeps slipping, learning about riding in a group, learning about clothing to protect against the wind, and learning about a very different kind of loneliness.

J

Did Not Start

2010-04-24T05:44:00.000Z

I've been carrying around a manila envelope for a few days, avoiding postboxes. On Thursday evening I carried it around London, when I went to an Esquire party. Yesterday morning I knew I had to post it, so I decided to cycle the 200 metres to the postbox. Of course that involved fixing my bike, because last weekend in the middle of an 80 mile ride I lost the use of the top two gears (necessary of course on those 200 metres), and the chain kept slipping. So I eased the chain off and cleaned the cogs and the derailleur, tightened the cables, washed the rest of the bike. And then I had to do some work. Eventually by mid afternoon I was still holding that manila envelope, and I knew that if I didn't post it before the end of the day I would be putting next year's marathon schedule in jeopardy.

The envelope contained, of course, my withdrawal from this year's Virgin London Marathon. By withdrawing this year I would be guaranteed a place next year, and a place, importantly, in the special fancy pen for fast people. Alternatively I could jog around, abandoning all notion of being a real runner, and try to enjoy myself. It couldn't be so bad, could it, a nice jog around London on a sunny day with lots of cheering people ... while my alter ego was an hour in front. I tried to think: 'What would Milton do?' No answer came, but then Deuteronomy spoke: 'neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest: but the LORD shall give thee there a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind'. Dismissing all thoughts that I might never run a decent race again, I resolved that next year I will hold my head high.

So today they descend on London, the mad multitudes in their brightly coloured thoughts. Sean will not be among them: he's in Kuala Lumpur, stranded without a flight. Sophie will be there, albeit not at the peak of her fitness, disguised as a small furry mammal or something. And some of the C&C crowd will be there, while others, like me, are nursing niggles and full-blown injuries. Don't despair: one of the thieves was saved. Don't presume: one of the thieves was damned. They're fair odds, I suppose.

Nicky pushed my hand into the mailbox, and the manila envelope started its journey. I will be among those travelling to London, but only to eat and drink at Polpo, enjoy a night in a hotel, and watch the race on Sunday morning. And out of the bitterly clenched teeth of dejection and envy I say: good luck, start easy, run strong, remember your vaseline, and run a good time, because this year the odds are with you.

J

Fear and Loathing in Barton In Fabis

2010-04-15T06:35:00.011Z

There is a Barton In Fabis in every man's life. There is always a road that leads to it, and you had better hope there is another that leads out. I ran in to it with my friend Sean, on a long Sunday run, and did not know what would happen next. The energy reserves were empty (Fabis is Latin for beans, and I was not full of them), and my left leg was going numb. Yes numb. If you've never lost feeling in a leg while running, it is a very worrying thing. Especially when you've seen an MRI of the inside of your back (remember The Vapors' 'Turning Japanese': I asked the doctor to take your picture, / So I can look at you from inside as well ...?), and it looks like a gravel pond from the post-Industrial wastes of North Wales. There is nothing good about this picture.

So how did I find myself on this road? Ten months ago I tore my hamstring while running the Edinburgh Marathon. The road to recovery has been long and inconclusive. I lost all fitness and speed while resting, and while I can still run it is painful, and the pain does not seem to be diminishing, while I am not getting any faster. I've been puzzled about this, very puzzled. It's taken much of the joy out of running, and most of the life out of this blog. And all the time I've been anticipating the London Marathon, now days away. Would I be able to run?

This is my training schedule, in its entirety, excluding all short, slow and probably physiologically pointless runs.

28 Feb: Long run, 16 miles
7 March: Race .... Boundary Run, 13.1 miles
13 March: Race ... Roman Road Run. Missed start.
14 March: Race: Muddy Mucky Marvel (at Lode, Cambridgeshire), 5 miles, turned out to be 5.25. Felt ok
17 March: Race: 800 m university sports. 2.40. Very slow but it did not affect outcome as I started an hour before everyone else owing to a meeting.
17 March: Race: 100 m, 13 s. See above.
21 March: Long run. Felt unwell, so did it on 22nd instead. Bailed at 13 because the weather was too bad and I was underdressed. Etc.
4 April: First long run -- in the sense of long run as I would have understood it when I was a proper runner -- with Sean in Long Eaton, 20 miles.

That's it, my training schedule. London beckons on 25 April, and I have a place at the Exclusive Start for Very Fast People. Everyone else at that start will be fine tuned, pure aerodynamic muscle, and have a shaved head (every man that is -- only some of the women).

So on Sunday 4 April we set off from Sean's house in Long Eaton along the Erewash canal to the Trent, and then along the Trent to Sawley Marina and over some fields towards the river Soar. The Radcliffe on Soar Power Station beckoned from ahead. Local are very proud of this landmark: seven cooling towers, symbols of Nottinghamshire's proud industrial heritage, which from the A50 look like a dose of molluscum contagiosum. They will return, from all sides, throughout this exquisitely-planned run. But now the Soar is flooded. I like nothing better than running along rivers. I am more diffident about running through them. We try to find a way around the floodwaters (and remember, my old back trouble began with my carrying my little boy from a car in a flash flood ...), but there is none, except for a path through the middle of a firing range which is currently in use ...

So we run through waters up to our ankles, and feel the exclusive joy of completely sodden socks and shoes. A bridge takes us over the canal and through the shipyards and soon we pass the power station and run on into Radcliffe on Trent and then up some very old hills. I am still feeling human at this point. I have been in pain for many miles, however, unsure whether I should tell Sean. The hillside fields are newly plowed, and our wet shoes are now heavy with the farming soil.

Medieval Thrumpton follows, and then down to Barton in Fabis. Barton in Fabis is a nice kind of place, and its denizens are village-proud. You can tell by the sound of hand-pushed lawnmowers, the clean streets, and the fact that the Parish Council website begins by announcing its opposition to local building. (As a matter of historical interest, it is around here that Ken Clarke MP owns a house, though, until recently, he claimed to the local authority that he doesn't spend enough time here to pay council tax, while claiming to the parliamentary expenses office that it was indeed his main home, thus enabling him to claim mortgage payments and council tax for his London 'second home'. The landscape we run through is one of medieval buildings, ancient fields, ancient greed and modern instruments of self-reward. He knows his jazz though.)

Then we followed the south bank of the Trent through parklands and woods, all beautiful, and all telling me that I had to stop, that I was empty, in pain, and without sensation in my left leg. I had to hobble over all gates and other obstacles, always leading with my right. London never seemed so far away.

When it came to the steps leading up to the A52 I didn't know if I was going to be able to finish. Sean nobly offered to call the ladies (on my phone) so they could collect us in the car a few miles ahead, but this steeled my resolve ...

Having crossed the Trent we descended to river level once again, and found ourselves just behind Sat Bains' restaurant. I've never been there, but I'm told it is one of the finest in the country. I was very hungry. I thought about knocking on the back door and begging for a slow cooked egg, or at least some dahl. Or some porridge. Or even a sandwich. But he would probably not be there, and anyway it would take too long to explain about my leg, and the car accident and everything. So instead I consumed the one gel I had brought with me.

We passed the windowless Imperial Tobacco bunker on our right, and then a Boots building, like an aircraft hangar, and I thought about D.H. Lawrence's poem about the University of Nottingham ('In Nottingham, that dismal town ...'), then an under-12s rugby festival on our left, and then followed the Nottingham to Beeston Canal to the Trent.

I was beyond hope at this point. The sensation had come back in my leg, only to disappear again. And now there were people around, while I feared being dropped, like a domestique on the last climb of the day ... Sean offered some hope by talking through T.S. Eliot's very complicated and capricious relationship to Lawrence. It was a plaster for my suffering, but by now I was counting the miles. We arrived at a marina and there were only another four to go. Through the Attenborough Nature Reserve -- the sun had replaced the earlier rain and occasional shower -- and still the towers loomed, though not perhaps now so large, or at least further away.

On the far side of the nature reserve was Long Eaton. We stepped lightly over protruding roots, skipped along past dogs and their walkers and children watching toy sailboats in the river. Then Long Eaton, then Tamworth Road, and then the finish line. No one cheered, no one wept, no one said a word. Twenty miles and three and a half hours.

And so now I think: do I run London? What do you think? I could plod around it in 4 hours, perhaps, slower for sure than that day -- it seems more than a lifetime ago -- when I paced minor-celebrity Ned around, still living on old fitness. Or I could save myself for the autumn, and hope that I can run properly then. Numbness in the leg means that the problem is probably less muscular than neural, which would demand a different road to recovery.

Why do we do this? I could say that we do it to stay honest (see under Ken Clarke, above). That we do it to put Barton In Fabis behind us. That we do it to understand friendships. That we do it in order not to be humiliated at the London Marathon. But in truth none of these would be sufficient: we do it because we're runners, and why we're runners no one knows.

J

Half a boundary

2010-03-11T18:55:00.014Z

It was not like it used to be in the old days. I couldn't find any safety pins. I wasn't sure what to wear. I'd been drinking the night before. I couldn't find my drinks bottle, and my energy drink powder was musty anyway. I almost forgot to put my contact lenses in. I forgot everything. The deceptively effortless suavity of the race morning routine had disappeared without trace.

Sean was impatient. That much was just like the old days. "Just how slow are we going to do this?" I asked him, aware that I could barely run. "I'd be happy averaging between 7'45"s and 8'00"s." Fair enough: 8'00"s I could probably manage. But these days running for more than an hour would be running into the unknown. "Nothing silly," says Sean, "you're not going to go haring off?" "Unlikely," I say, "you?"

It was my first race since the Edinburgh Marathon in May 2009, when I tore my hamstring. I've yet to recover: I can run, but very, very slowly, and always with discomfort. I've lost endurance, of course, and my speed has entirely disappeared. And I've put on about a stone. I've been working harder at it over the past few weeks, and have gone out maybe three times a week, running up and down the hill in Swaffham Prior in the dark, past the mobile fish and chip van that parks at the bottom of Cage Hill.

I used to think that in order to be a runner, a real runner, you needed to race. Whether or not you were in the top 2% or the top 50%, you needed to experience the excitement of a start, the logistics of bodily functions, and you needed to confront the gravityless moment when you push beyond the boundaries of comfort or even common sense, and enter the vertiginous clouds of the darkness.

I used to think that. These days it seems I manage to race without even really running.

So, on Sunday 7 March Sean and I eventually made it to the start of this year's Cambridge Boundary Run, hosted by Cambridge University Hare and Hounds. We did it last year, when we were actually fit. I saw some of the old chaps there: Simon, Fergie, Andy. They're training for London and were planning to run the whole thing. I muttered something about jogging the half.

"Text Meike for me, tell her everything's fine," said Sean. "You do it," I said. "No you, just do it quickly."

I was doing it of course when the horn sounded, and spent the first few seconds of the race trying to text Sean's Mrs, while forgetting to start my watch.

And actually it feels ok. It feels fine to be surrounded by these back-of-the-pack types, all enjoying themselves. And it's a glorious beautiful, sunny day, the perfect day to follow the notional boundary of the City of Cambridge, starting at the David Lloyd gym on Coldham's Lane, and finishing near Coton, in a field at the Park Farm. Real runners carry on and finish where they start. But I think I can finish a half, and it's all feeling just fine. I like running. I like races. I remember how to do this.

We're running towards the Victorian silhouette of the mental hospital when Sean says "I need to pee". I'm overwhelmed by nostalgia. "Ok, catch me up." And I add as an afterthought, "we'll always have Milan," alluding to a former occasion when we ran slowly owing to injury and stupor. That was the only race I've ever heard of someone throwing up before, during and after a race (not me). I slowed down, and waited. And waited. I stopped to pee myself. I carried on running slowly, and waited. And waited. So after a while I decide to just carry on, and catch up with the Cambridge & Coleridge chaps, chatting with greater facility than I can manage. But then they take off (they're running the full distance, remember), and I'm alone again, plodding away at a jogging pace, though I'm slowly and surely passing people, and it could almost be old days.

The course at first follows pavements and roads, but the real joy comes in the fields around Addenbrooke's Hospital.

Here, if you squint, you can just see the runners ahead, circumnavigating a large field. It really brings out the pointless joy of running, I think.

I finished without seeing Sean again, averaging a little under eight-minute miles, and taking about 23 minutes more than it used to take me to run this distance. By the end my hamstring hurts like hell.

Sean shows up a couple of minutes later, puffing. We eat some pieces of banana and chunks of a peculiar chocolate bar. It's no surprise when, instead of jogging the five or six miles across town to the start, as we had planned, he proposes catching the bus; and I don't object because it's hurting, and another few miles might be imprudent.

The bus is abuzz with talkative runners, talking numbers, talking clothing, talking the next race.

It's good to be back on the road again. But it's a slow road, and London is five or six weeks away (it's in my diary somewhere), and I've yet to do a 20 mile training run.

Meanwhile there are rumours up north of Chanti having run a 1:19.04 half, and he has London in his sights. It's like Jacob and Esau: one has to be damned for the other to be elect. We are locked in a seesaw. I'd be happy just to eat with the angels.

We drive home from the gym with the roof down, and go to the pub. Sean recovers with sausages and beer, and I do something similar.
J

The day came by my window dressed in snow

2010-01-11T19:24:00.020Z

A brief hiatus in the marathoning tips, to write about an actual run ...

This is the weather to run in. I'm not running much at the moment, just two or three times a week, not even thirty miles, which is no distance for someone planning to run the London marathon in April, but this is the weather to do it in, especially facing day in the barrenness of the winter fens.

I've moved house, a few miles away from Cambridge. The Cam is now five miles north of here, and sometimes I run there and back, between the farms and the cold storage warehouses. Cambridge was flat, but here it is really flat, the slightest elevation being a source of wonder. Here is the view from the road that heads north from my new house, towards Reach. The rise is the size of a nipple, and breaks the horizontal tedium like a bird's cry.

I went for a run one morning last week, through the snow and ice. It was slow, but the slowness of the snow, and the careful footing you have to take, concealed the appalling weakness of the body. While at the same time footprints in the unbroken snow cannot lie about your decreasing stride length.

I crossed a nameless lode and entered White Fen.

I passed humming pylons, scarcely witnessed by man. I passed frozen craters that might have been from Tarkovsky's Stalker, footprints of a greater civilisation, purposelessly left for us humans to wonder at. Or perhaps some fennish landscaping conceived and designed in Peterborough, just big ice-shallows in the scrub.

I arrived at nowhere, turned around, and came back again.

When you see a white-snow road like this, winding away from you, whispering of the miles ahead, it's hard not to feel that it's yours, that you have something in your empty, double-gloved hands no one else does. Runners know about this, but it's easy to forget when you're accepting injury as a reason to stay at home.

J

Advanced Marathoning tips (ii): great expectorations

2009-12-16T08:35:00.002Z

Have you ever found yourself running along a pavement or a towpath, somewhere with limited width, and seen your way obstructed by pedestrians or other malingerers walking two or three or four abreast? You expect that they'll accommodate you, make way, move over a little, share the space. You make eye contact. You hurtle towards them. And nothing happens. The block your way. You slow down. You slow down more. You stop. And then they issue a big smile and clear some room.

Once this has happened a few dozen times you begin to puzzle about it. Are they stupid? Do they think that you like to stop? Are they incapable of judging your speed, and thus inadvertently move over too late? At least with dogs you know what will happen: they look over their shoulder and invariable drift into your path. Dogs are reliable, and thus can be negotiated. People are blockish.

Now, you may have read the odd letter in Runners' World, or the odd personal email for that matter, complaining about runners spitting. It's an unpleasant habit, apparently. I suppose that in most contexts I would agree. However, I can assure you that nothing gets the obstructive pedestrian's attention than a throat clearing followed by a modest expectoration into the pathside. Nothing substantial or portentous, just a functional vacating of the airwaves. It's not clear to me why this should be the case. It's not as if spitting runners are faster, or need more room than others. But there's something about the confident and focussed spit, performed with a rhythmic indifference, or even insouciance, that declares to obstinate path-blockers, 'excuse me, could you move over a little in order to let me through?' Even if you think spitting in public (or in private?) an unpleasant activity, it is one you need to master. Other columns can supply you with mere rudimentary details.

So ignore the social opprobrium attached to the business. Regard conspicuous spitting as an essential training technique, especially when running intervals. And the good news is that in these days of swine 'flu panic it is more effective than ever.

J

Advanced Marathoning tips (i): refection

2009-11-10T18:03:00.007Z

Since I am on the road to recovery, now being able to run 10 miles, albeit in a painfully and shamefully tedious 85 minutes, I thought it time to dig into the slagheaps of my memory in search of inspirational training tips. And, bombarded with complaints about how long it is since I wrote a post (if a week's silence in the blogosphere is death, I am père lachaise), I thought I would share these nuggets of wisdom with you. Old runners are worse than old fishermen. The older I get, the better I could have been.

So this is the first post in a series of tips for marathoners looking to improve their PBs. Post ii, on advanced spitting technique, will follow shortly.

Eating. We need to do it a lot. When I first started running I couldn't figure out what was happening to me: I would begin to slow down towards the end of a run, as if I was out of energy. And I lost kilogrammes. These days, now I am more of an I-could-have-been-really-good runner, I am piling the kilogrammes on, of course, because at some point in between these events I learned how to eat. I have not, however, yet learned how not to eat. I am even contemplating running the London Marathon next year as Mr Blobby. Without fancy dress. Sean and I could compete to be the fastest Mr Blobby (long gone are the days when I contemplated competing to win the fastest Elvis race). I should add that I have never seen Mr Blobby, and don't know what he looks like, but I have read about him - or it - in newspapers.

So what to eat to get faster? Fruit of course, and protein and carbs in well-timed and measured doses. Of course, I'm too lazy and too busy for all that, so, malingering in the kitchen this morning with an hambre, I thought I would take a short cut. I would satisfy my complex nutritional needs with something that would really accelerate me. And then I remembered the biscuits my gorgeous girlfriend brought me back from her summer holiday in Bulgaria. Feast your eyes ...

Yes, no small claims made by these biscuits. They should be available on the NHS. And anything that cheers you up should make you go faster, right? You have to love Bulgaria: political rights, civil liberties, a temperate climate, centuries of empire concluded by centuries of Ottoman domination, (I'll skip World War II), and now biscuits that cheer you up. 'Antidepressant' is a better name even than 'Nice', better than biscuits named after mathematicians, like 'Leibniz' and 'Fig Newton'.

But they don't taste as good. They are chocolate wafers that taste like coffee you bought at a gas station in New Mexico and left sitting in the armrest before you drove through Texas and decide belatedly to drink in, I don't know, Georgia or somewhere. And they do not -- let me make this clear -- make you any faster or any less depressed. In fact, if you find yourself at a crossroads one day, out running along the Cam or the Mississippi, and the one path is labeled 'Antidepressant', that'll be the one that leads you to being the second fastest Mr Blobby in the spring.

So, advanced marathoning tip (i): eat wisely.

J

Curryworst and Weissbier

2009-10-05T08:44:00.005Z

It is just before 9:00 am on Sunday 20 September, the morning of the Berlin marathon, and the race is about to start. The air is crisp with expectations and the scent of loose bowels. Haile glances at his flourescent adidas racing flats. The race organisers run through the usual preparations, and check that Vangelis' Chariots of Fire theme is cued to play. I look at my watch. Painedly. It's almost 9 am, and here I am in bed, looking first at my watch, then at the limbs of my beautiful girlfriend, crumpled beneath white sheets, and here I am nursing a sore head.

The hotel coffee is bad. More or less all drinks in Berlin are bad, except for the bier (though the spatburgunder is pleasant enough in context, you probably wouldn't go to an effort to import it). So I put on my jeans and wander off to a nearby strasse where I saw a row of cafes yesterday. As soon as I turn onto it there's a familiar guitar riff, and a band breaks into 'I Shot the Sheriff'. Groovy. I limp along the street, and the memories of passing down the long, straight, vacant strasse that lies ahead of me come rushing back. I used to be an athlete, I remember that now. And then there came the hamstring.

Hi-vis marshalls crowd water tables. Haile will be 8k into the race by now. He'll pass by here in a little less than an hour. I find a cafe and buy a large, muddy coffee, a large tea, and a couple of pieces of cake.

If I am guilty I will pay.

I limp back to the hotel, wrestle with the door holding drinks. It's the art-otel Berlin, elegantly themed in lime green and full of pictures of Andy Warhol, and the fancy electronic keys don't work. My head begins to clear, and soon I've dragged Nicky from the room so we can watch the end of the race. In the bright and cool sun we stand half a kilometre from the end, close to the Brandenburg gate. Cyclists pass by on the route, soaking up the atmosphere as if anyone cares about cyclists here.

Nicky charitably goes to Starbucks, which I've reluctantly learned to accept as a guarantee of a half-decent coffee. Then the runners approach. Haile first, and he passes us at 2:03:59, the same time at which he crossed the finish line last year. It's funny: he doesn't look like he's running very fast at all. I fumble with the camera and shoot the floor because I'm too busy watching him. Then the others. They're all wearing flourescent adidas racing shoes. I make a mental note to get a pair. Here's Kiprop, who came second in 2:07.04 (Haile finished in a leisurely 2:06.08, which isn't particularly overwhelming these days):

Note the shoes. And then came the others, including the pacer. I think his name was Negari Terfa, and he came in half a minute after Kiprop. It struck me as a little unfair that he ran under 2:08, and ran by as anonymously as the fat cyclists. It made me want to offer a little thought for all of the pacers in the world, who lead in the names for an agreed fee, and almost never win.

Then others pass, thousands of them. As the mortals run by I'm beginning to feel despondent. I see my own time from two years before pass ... that could be me. We don't stay but wander off to lunch. It's bad Italian food, but the weissbier is just fine. I will be back next year, and, racing flats or not, I will be neither hung over nor slow. It's time to get righteous again.

J

Return to the physiotherapist

2009-09-03T06:38:00.004Z

I have been reading The Body Broken by Lynne Greenberg, a fellow Milton scholar. This is not a book about Milton, but a memoir about pain. Having recovered, with miraculous speed, from serious injuries sustained in a car crash when she was 18, nearly two decades later her body began to disintegrate, to un-heal. I remember meeting her between these two episodes, on a paddle steamer in Beaufort, South Carolina. That was before I became a runner, and before she fell apart. Her reflections are harrowing, and reading them has chastened me: I'm not going to write about my self-inflicted injury in terms of pain again, because it's just not up to it.

What I do need to write about is age and recovery. I also need to apologise for my last, out-of-character post, which has received more complaints than any previous post has received compliments. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I won’t do it again. Instead, I’m going to reflect upon my shortcomings.

Among the expressions of goodwill I received when news of my Decline and Fall spread was the following from Edward Jones, another Miltonist, and the fastest academic I have the pleasure to know (2:40 in Boston):

"Unfortunately the kind of injury you have combined with your personality do not match up well. The injury usually wins in the end by both chastening and not forgiving the personality. It is surely no comfort for you to know nor me to remember the decade of injuries I experienced from my early thirties to my early forties--except in one respect. After adjusting in my early forties in little ways (not beating myself up with speed, allowing ample recovery between quality workouts [4 days between them], and alternating shoes [3-4 pairs]), I have run 335 days a year since then. Last year I had a pr in terms of miles logged.

"You still have good years ahead and opportunities for better marathon times, but over forty runners must manipulate their bodies in ever so subtle ways in order to balance wear and tear with slowly decreasing VO2 max. I wish you good fortune with all of that."

So there’s my future: a Manichean struggle between a failing body and a raging struggle to outwit the inevitable. Lengthening times (race times, that is), shortening hamstrings. I hear the Raven look at my limp organs, and say: pathetic.

The physiotherapist took me seriously the second time. I explained that I'd found it hard to run. She nodded with her usual lack of concern. She goes through it again. “So how long do you run each day.” Last time she evidently switched off somewhere around “It depends …”

So I try to be more succinct. “My shortest run is eleven kilometres. My longest run is 37 kilometres.”

She looks confused. “In one go?”

Now I have her. “Yes.” She blinks twice before asking:

“Ok. Did you bring shorts?”

I still hadn’t brought shorts. I explained I was wearing decent underwear, without adding that my underwear is a lot more decent than my running shorts, even those pairs that are not torn, and certainly more decent than my Skins.

She begins to massage my leg, and this time there is plenty of pain. There is also a big bruise. She looks for some cause other than the injury, but there is none. She’s impressed.

I go out running every other day. It’s slow and I don’t enjoy it. I can’t understand why at first, but it begins to become apparent. One of the reasons I used to enjoy running was because it felt natural. I was good at it, and developed nice, efficient form. These days it’s all a struggle, and with concentration and effort I can run slowly. My footplant is quiet, at least, but I can feel the decline in efficiency that comes with a loss of core strength. I used to enjoy running because I was good; and I’m no longer good.

The next visit to the physio, I’m barely through the door before she says, “Could you get undressed please.” She massages the offending leg once again. It troubles her that I still don’t have much flexibility. Of course it’s not news to me. I’ve been like this for months, and have grown grimly accustomed to it. I’m just not getting any better. Is it because I’m not diligent enough in doing my prescribed stretches?

You see, I’m beginning to worry that it’s in my head. Perhaps running was just like this when I started five years ago, and I’ve forgotten that it involves struggle. Perhaps I am no longer motivated. Perhaps the weakness is in my mind. What’s injured is character. I re-read Edward’s email and think: do I really have the strength and resolve to go through that? Do I need to adjust to my age? Is mind or body inadequate here? Are they racing each other, to see which will give up first? Running used to be my struggle against adversity, an encounter with the non-rhetorical, the immiscibility of the physical world.

I think of John Milton writing glibly (in Greek) in the visitors books of European friends: “My strength is made perfect in weakness.” I try to think of ways that through my weakness I will be made more perfect in my strength. I hear an empty conch. Next weekend is the Berlin marathon, which I was scheduled to run. I’ll go anyway. And over my shoulder I hear the Raven look at my legs and say … pathetic.

Meme

2009-08-24T10:57:00.008Z

I've been writing about i) angels and ii) asperger syndrome this month, so I have been thinking at length about memes, or cognate concepts bearing different names. I was a little surprised, then, to find that I'd been 'tagged' with a 'meme', which apparently means that I have an answer some questions and then invite some other people to answer the same questions. The tagger was my dear friend Mrs Trefusis, here, who has an inflated notion of me, for which I am very grateful. She makes the very valid point that as I'm no longer in a position to call myself a runner, then I need something else to blog about. So here goes.

What's the favourite thing you've ever written?

Milton's Angels: The Early Modern Imagination, forthcoming from Oxford University Press next February. If the question specifically designates a blog, then I have to confess that I am quite proud of some entries, while I regard others as fillers. I put much more effort into the entries on marathons. Only followers of this blog will have read the really good ones. They are:

The Muezzin's Call - the Istanbul marathon.
Five Bridges, Five Boroughs, and a Lake of Fire -- the 2005 NYC marathon.
New York, 5 November 2006 -- the 2006 NYC marathon, with a guest appearance by Lance Armstrong.
Basta problemi, on re-running the Milan marathon, was also quite good -- especially with the benefit of hindsight (the end of my 17-year marriage would begin when I got off the plane)

These were good because of the occasions. I was also quite pleased with an entry about the place that running sometimes holds in the bigger movements of your life, Recovery Runs, though that's a much more understated piece of writing.

What blog post do you wish you'd written?

Probably something by Brad Hickey -- such as this one -- because I would have liked to have had the meal (though the man isn't short of good meals, good wine and good company). I would also like to have won the Tour de France.

Choose a favourite quotation

Too many to choose from. Perhaps:

"Leaning, half rais'd, with looks of cordial love /
Hung over her enamoured"

Or:

"Hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way."

Or:

"Put me back on my bike."

Or:

"Sunt lachrymae rerum". (Because I love the economy of the Latin: "these are the tears of things" doesn't quite do it. See also: "Coelo tegitur non urnam habet.")

Or:

"Time held me green and dying / Though I sang in my chains like the sea."

Or:

"Between the thought ..."

Or:

"Who if I cried would hear me among the angelic orders ..."

How could one possibly choose?

Three favourite words

That's tough again. Are the three words linked? Are they context sensitive? In which case "Agent Provocateur Shorts" have to be right up there with the most sublime words. If we're just talking nice, fancy words, my 14-year old self would have had a proper answer: umbrageous, incarnadine, desuetude. Perhaps numinous too. These days, I like all of my words, and feel that I need to hang onto as many as I can, as the years strip the elasticity of my brain cells and the words slip beyond reach.

Do you have a writing mentor, role model, influence or inspiration

Mnemosyne and Erato. And sometimes Clio.

What's your writing ambition?

Oh, to be Shakespeare, Joyce, the usual stuff.

Now I have to recommend three bloggers, which is tricky, because Mrs T. and all her friends -- MTFF, Belgian Waffle and so on -- have already been involved in this meme. And it seems unfair to drag in others, who have better things to write about: Brad Hickey, Fat Cyclist, Chris Priestly. So I respond: no. Basta.

J

The physiotherapist

2009-08-06T12:43:00.002Z

Nurse Ratchett looked unimpressed as she dug her thumb deep into my hamstring and waited for a response.

That's how I had planned to start this, together with appropriate disclaimers about any resemblance between truth and blog being purely coincidental, but it worked out quite differently. My NHS physiotherapist was a diminutive Indian woman with a pleasant disposition. Having evidently signed up to the job in anticipation of helping people who can barely make it through the door, she adjusted to dealing with an endurance athlete suffering from a self-inflicted condition with equanimity.

Her diagnosis: I need to stretch. Who'd have thunk? We debate the merits of short versus long stretches. She is on the other side to me. She does stick her thumbs into the wound and can't find any soreness. Which is peculiar, as my masseuse, Zoe, who is almost qualified as a physio and should be hired by the British cycling team -- really -- had me writhing around on the table in the most exquisite raptures of agony not so long ago. You probably have to pay for that kind of stuff.

And then my physio tells me that I'll be running, slowly, and for 20 minutes, in a couple of weeks. And ushers me out of the door.

So I went home, and stretched. And then I put in my contact lenses and donned the lycra, got on my bike, and took to the B roads around the fens. And I put the hammer down. I cycled until my heart was louder than the air. And I held it right there, on the slight inclines and declines, through the cross winds, until my vision blurred at the edges. I held it just until the end of the kilometre, waiting for the beep of my GPS watch. And then I eased off, and then I went there again, and again. And then I cycled home and lay on the kitchen floor, and my head was as empty and echoing as a conch.

J

On inhabiting that liminal space between not yet being able to say 'I used to run' but being able to say 'I used to be a runner'

2009-07-21T07:04:00.003Z

Or, why I hate Scotland (ii) ...

Seven weeks without running left me grimacing, but I knew that leaving it so long, without even trying a short one, was doing me good. When I put my shoes on again I would be ready to start training for the Berlin Marathon in September. I would come back refreshed, determined and therefore focussed.

So on Saturday I looked out of the window at a bright dawn, put my shoes on, adjusted the orthotics, and headed out along the Cam.
kilometre 1: I am slow to the point of stretching my own credulity. I hope that no one will see me. I knew, however, that it was going to be tough to start with. I have to remember how to run, how to pick my feet up, how to stay relaxed.
kilometer 2: still very slow, slower than 5'00" per kilometre, or 8 minute miling. I find the physical movement unfamiliar. I really have forgotten how to run.
kilometre 3: I'm stiff, but am I loosening up a little. I look at the watch and see that I'm running at 4'30" a kilometre, which is a bit more like it. I slow down almost immediately upon apprehending this.
kilometre 4: back to slow again. I think about turning around and heading back, having at least made a start. But I'm almost at the half-way point. It's nice along the river bank. My lungs feel ok, though my heart rate is probably a little high. Be still my heart.
kilometre 5-9: gradually I realise that my legs aren't going to loosen up. In fact the left is beginning to feel the same stiffness it felt in Edinburgh, a dull referred pain spreading along the leg. No stabbing or burning pain, but an immobile woodenness.
kilometre 10: in desperation I try to run faster. Perhaps I can just run through this. I can't. A rowing crew catch up with me as I lollop homewards.
kilometre 11: I really don't feel very good about this. I've made a start on the road to recovery, but it isn't going to be like it's been in the past, when I've been able to pick things up very quickly, and build mileage back to normal levels within a few weeks.

I walk the last few hundred metres. It's hard to walk. I stretch as best I can.

And then everything goes really pear-shaped. That afternoon I find it hard to walk. The next day the pain is real, stabbing, aching, undermining, just like it was after the ruin of Edinburgh. It hurts to sit. There's deep pain with movement, but also surface pain. I go for a cycle, but even that is hurting now. The injury hasn't gone away after all, despite 7 weeks of real rest.

Yesterday I went to see my GP. He uses words like "chronic" and "months", "physiotherapy" and "just one mile with walking". He draws some pictures to suggest the kinds of tearing I might have caused. Berlin in September? Not a chance. I am no longer a runner, and it's not clear that I ever will be again.

J

The King is Dead, Long Live ...

2009-07-02T15:21:00.003Z

People have stopped asking me about my hamstring. It's probably as well: it's getting boring for everyone. I haven't run a step. I do have a new friend, though: Ms Bianchi. She's made of aluminium and carbon fibre. I hope that she'll stop my VO2 from plummeting into an asthmatic rut.

I picked her up yesterday, and soon remembered how to use clip-ins and brake-head gear shifters. And this morning I woke early and couldn't get back to sleep. So I downed a good load of coffee, and took to the road. It was a beautiful, warm, sunny morning, with only the faintest of mists rising from the fens, the breeze perfect for summer lycra. Somehow, however, while my legs and lungs presented no problem, my hands went numb, as if I was doing the death vice grip. I could barely change gear, or lift my hands from the drops. Seldom do technical problems present themselves in running. I wasn't even sure I was going to be able to get home. If a lorry didn't smash me into the ditch, I would fall off in any case, unable to manoeuvre.

By the time I reached Swaffham Bulbeck (via Midsummer Common, the river, Fen Ditton and then Quy and Lode), I was thinking of my friend Dean. Dean lost the use of a knee last year, and had to stop running. He has successfully returned, however, to his main sport, cycling. And last weekend he was involved in a two-day 600k race. That's a very long race. I'd only done about 16k, and was already contemplating my demise. I haven't heard from him since he set off ... does anyone know his whereabouts?

An hour after setting off, at about 6:30, I arrived at Nicky's house in Burwell. No one was awake. I stood outside her bedroom window and threw stones at it. I kept on missing, because my hands were numb. I called out and eventually she came downstairs and let me in. I made her a cup of tea, and set off home again. Could this be romance, I asked myself? This time my hands didn't feel so bad, and I made it in time to take the loaf out of the breadmaker. I miss running, but there's nothing like an early morning ride. I just need to fix the hands business - perhaps a month of intensively watching cycling on the TV would do it?

Normal service will be resumed shortly; in the meantime say hello to Ms Bianchi.J

The silent blogger

2009-06-18T15:45:00.003Z

I haven't blogged for a fortnight, which, as I am told, is blogosphere death. I no longer have any readers, let alone followers. I am once again speaking into the silence.

What does a running-blogger blog about when there's no running? I suppose I could write about not running, about society, about history (the history of running, or anything else for that matter). But the fact is that I don't feel much like writing because I'm not running. And runners who can't run inhabit a certain darkness that they talk around but seldom say anything interesting about about, because runners are on the whole positive people, and that darkness is pain and withdrawal.

Injury is a terrible thing. My hamstring still hurts; I'm still limping; I haven't run at all since crashing to a halt in Edinburgh; I haven't succeeded in buying a bike; it hurts when I sit down. I saw my excellent masseuse Zoe last week, and she located the tear, but it will take time to heal. I had to cancel my entry to the Stathern 10k. That's the practical picture. Then there's the affective, subjective picture. I wake each morning, at dawn, feeling stressed. I move to get up and remember why. There a blunt pain in my glute. Throughout the day the pain shifts between a dull ache, a tightness that makes me stumble, and a throb. I look for things to say about this.

Elaine Scarry wrote a book called The Body in Pain, which begins with a discussion of the difficulties of describing pain (I read it as an undergraduate, so forgive me if I'm making this up). Our language is inarticulate. Physicians have devised questionnaires offering a standarised range of terms, so patients can quickly bypass their fumbling with the language and get to meaningful statements: stabbing, aching, throbbing ...

What's this pain like?
it's a despondency in the heart, like the one you feel when your standing by the side of the road, watching slow runners pass, knowing they're faster than you now
it's the black defeat of the soul, when you can't bring yourself to think about when you might be able to run again
it's the ache in the head that paracetamol won't dull, because you know that you don't like yourself when you don't run
it's a leadenness in the muscle cells, as they gradually decay
it's the fear in the lungs and the closing of the veins

That's what I want to say into the silence, as I sit at my desk, but I really don't know how.

J

Why I hate Scotland (i)

2009-06-02T06:41:00.012Z

This is the first time I've been back to Scotland in several years. I used to live in the north east of the country, the land of the midnight sun and midday eclipse, depending on the time of year. Things have changed a little. For a start, it's a beautiful hot day, and the granite looks almost like marble in the bleaching sunlight. And since I left I became a runner, and now I'm standing at the start of the Edinburgh marathon, sweating in the morning sun, and I haven't yet started running.

Edinburgh is crowded with tourists spilling in and out of the discount cashmere and rent-a-kilt and full-rugby-kit (cheap kilt, rugby shirt, sporran, box of tissues) shops; and with runners too, some putting in a final run on the morning before the race, all complaining about the prospective heat. Boots is running out of suncream, which no one thought to pack. Come to Edinburgh for a spring marathon and ... bake?!? I'm a Welshman, of course - indeed a Welsh Icon, as I read this week, though I appear in the list of writers, rather than athletes - and this just doesn't seem right.

I'm relaxed, notwithstanding a sleepless night. The previous evening Nicky and I had watched cyclists tear around a small, hilly loop on the other side of the city. I thought, once again, about taking up cycling as another sport, with all of the spare time I have. I like the idea of a non-impact sport (except I'd probably be coming off all the time), and the nice bike, not to speak of the lycra. We walked past Greyfriar's Kirk, home of Greyfriars Bobby.

Thinking about it, Greyfriars Bobby is a useful cultural point of reference, so I should unpack just what I intend by alluding to him. He was a Skye Terrier, whose master John Gray, a policeman, died in 1858, leaving Bobby alone. So poor Bobby sat on his master's grave for fourteen years, a sign of unerring devotion. References to, and statues of him, are scattered across Edinburgh. The cycle race whizzed around one, opposite the Greyfriars Bobby Pub, the tightest bend of the circuit, just before the big downhill. You can buy miniatures and brooches. Wikipedia says this: "A red granite stone was erected on Bobby's grave by The Dog Aid Society of Scotland, and unveiled by the Duke of Gloucester on 13 May 1981. It reads: "Greyfriars Bobby — died 14th January 1872 — aged 16 years — Let his loyalty and devotion be a lesson to us all.""

Me, I feel sorry for the terrier. After all, why did he sit there for 14 years? Because this two-year old watched his master be put under the ground and no one explained he wouldn't be coming back again. No one advised him to move on. Instead Bobby sat there waiting for his master to climb out of the soil, when he could have been off having a life - chasing balls, sniffing other dog's bottoms, making puppies, the things that dogs do. And I think to really grasp the nature of Edinburgh I think you need not only to see this, but to appreciate the fact that they turned him into an unwitting local hero for doing this, and then sell keyrings.

Then I'd lain awake half the night, and watched the sun slowly burn through the darkness and the tall curtains. The hotel room has the feel of expansive Scottish architecture: big proportions, high ceiling, square and uncomplicated. Breakfast at the hotel was too late - I passed the puzzled runners getting anxious, standing outside the cafe - so I went around the corner to starbucks and bought a large coffee, a breakfast muffin, a granola bar, and tea for Nicky. I've given up on doing these things properly: surely by now I must have enough glycogen stored. I drank my coffee, ate as much as I can, then lay in bed, listened the shower, read the newspaper.

We walk down to the start, with hundreds of runners. There are about three portaloos, and a queue for them a mile long. The race information pack tells us that there are CCTV cameras everywhere, and that if we're caught on one we'll be disqualified. But they can't keep runners down: there's a little copse of shrubs and trees right near the start, and runners pile in without gender discrimination.

At the start I'm calm and still. I don't stretch or warm up. These are the closing moments of my short and deep taper. From pen no. 2 (sub elite, 2:30 to 3:15) I'm led to the start line. It begins, in the usual way.

Except there's no music, no chariots of fire, no bagpipes even. We just run, down the hill, through streets and parkland and it's all very pleasant. And then, between two and three miles in, my left hamstring begins to hurt. It's not a stabbing pain, nor a tearing pain (which is hard to describe, but distinctive if you've experienced it), but a harsh and unforgiving ache. Despite the heat, which is a clean, dry heat with a fresh breeze, I'm feeling pretty good. The first few k have passed in sub 4'00" pace (because it's downhill), and I'm up for a PB. But the pain won't go away. It begins to spread up and down the leg. I think to myself that it will ease off as the muscles warms and stretches. But the pain doesn't go away: it intensifies. I can do this, I tell myself, I know pain, I know it intimately, and this is just pain. But it gradually clouds my mind, even as I pass people, one after another, with my relentless plodding marathon pace. I'm now hitting the target pace of 4'06" - though I'm not watching my watch, which would tell me this, because I have decided to run zen - a pace that would bring me in with a new PB of around 2:52. But I am deluding myself, because you can't run with this pain for so long. Gulls circle and call mockery.

We turn onto the coastal path. In a way I'm running well: I can feel the miles tick away underneath my feet, and my heart maintains its consoled pace. But by the time I hit 8 miles I know that it's over, and I decide that I will run until I see Nicky, and then abandon. By now my pace has drifted down to a shoddy 4'30", which wouldn't even earn me a sub-3-hour marathon. The pain has spread to my ankle, and I understand that I must be limping as I run. People begin to pass me. I'm not used to this, and I'm not sure what to do. I am inhabiting a cloud of pain that shuts me off from other sensations: it's ceased to be an obstacle, and has become the environment.

At ten miles I haven't seen Nicky, so I stop anyway. I can hardly walk. As soon as the adrenaline's gone I am hobbling and stumbling. Other runners flood by, more and more slowly. A very kind family of spectators, concerned, offer me water, ice spray, and lend me a phone. With a struggle, because I can't bend over, I remove the tag from my shoe so I can read Nicky's number. I call her, and she's half a mile back, delayed on the bus. We walk towards each other and when we meet we head to the finish area at Musselborough racecourse.

There a race official explains that they need to keep track of all the runners, and all the chips, and he takes me to the finish line. "You need to cross it," he says. "You want me to walk over the finish line?" He nods. It's unbelievably embarrassing. In front of a gathering crowd of spectators I hobble to the finish line, look up at the gantry clock and, half an hour before the winner, cross the line, the first runner to do so.

Then I eat two bananas and watch the end of the race with Nicky. I've never not finished a race before, never, as I had hubristically said (in answer to a question - I didn't ask for it that much) the day before. The emotions are strange.

At the end of a marathon you'll often see runners having a moment. They'll sit by the side of the road, head in hands (somewhere between Rodin's Thinker and Munch's Scream), coming to terms with something about themselves they've just learned. It's an intense, delicious, impenetrable emotion, a release of wordless experiences accumulated over the preceding few hours. They flush through you, breaking down your rational soul. That's after a good race too: the moment precedes the beatific calm that follows and stays with you for a week or so. After my first dnf ("did not finish") I had one of these, but in a different form: it was a moment of hopelessness, in which those half-formed emotions found no outlet, and simply fell to the ground, passing through muscles as their uncooperative conduit. For a while I couldn't speak.

A Scot won, in 2:18. As he crossed the line he gestured to the crowd to lend him more voice. A pipe band played him in: you can see them in green tartan in the picture. Then an Englishman followed. We watched them, light on their feet, carrying no fat.

Then we went to catch the race bus back to the hotel, and learned another reason (beyond the lack of mile markers and clocks, and infrequency of water stops) why the Edinburgh Marathon has a reputation for appalling organisation. Let's put that to one side for now.

In the taxi to the hotel pictures of what just happened come back to me. I visualise my watch at ten miles, just after I'd hit 'stop'. It say 1:07. Even after slowing down for a couple of miles I'd been running quickly. I think about this, and why it had happened. Perhaps the taper had been too deep, perhaps I'd needed to stretch before running downhill. It could have been one or more of a number of things. But it could have been the lightning strike of providence, and provided no lesson and nothing to be learned. I could be Greyfriars Bobby perched mournfully on the flinty soil, and I wouldn't know it.

I hobble to a great lunch in the sun, and we take the train home. The pain keeps coming back, and my balance is poor. I won't be running for a couple of weeks, or longer. So does anyone want to sell me a racing bike? I need a 58cm frame and I like interesting colours.

J

Foie gras

2009-05-27T18:42:00.004Z

I love running. I love those early mornings on the wet grass; those late nights through city streetlighting, when the cats watch from fenceposts; I love track sessions when you count down the repetitions, feeling yourself drawn ever thinner on each one.

But sometimes I don't enjoy it much at all. Every runner has been there: the training session you face joylessly, but need to complete because it's on your schedule. The session you feel you need to do because you ate too much yesterday (and the day before). And not running is often not much fun.

And then there are occasions like last week, when ten days before a marathon I find myself in Paris, with Thing 2 (aged 12), showing him the delights of that city. Because I only had five weeks between two marathons, and because I am not a professional athlete, and have too much else to do in a professional capacity, I decided that I would have a brief, deep taper (a taper is the period in which you cut down on your running in preparation for a race -- it gives an opportunity for muscle tissue to repair, and for your mind and body to build strength in preparation). This means that I trained very hard on Tuesday, then took the train to Paris on Wednesday. And I did not pack my running shoes. So my taper is going to be short and deep -- ten days of total rest.

The problem was that I was in Paris. And no matter how much I restrained myself, L'Avant-Gout, one of my very favourite restaurants, is just irresistible. It was a conflict I could not win. And many other places and foodstuffs in Paris are irresistible. I ate macaroons, pain au chocolat, pot au feu, fois gras, pate de fois gras, snails, steak, moulleux chocolat and more. And I have returned looking, and feeling like foie gras. And this is the burden I have to bear for 26.2 miles around Edinburgh this coming Sunday. And this is why, sometimes, I do not like the self-denying rigours of being a runner.

J

Fields of pain

2009-05-09T16:49:00.011Z

Because I am a fool I am running two marathons with five weeks (i.e. four weekends) between them. I am devising new and innovative training schedules. Runners' World should hire me (though this month they've been speaking to Jay Dicharry at UVA, and he is very worthwhile; see p. 64 and my discussion of silver balls). So here I am, 13 days after London, running 20 miles. At least it is a nice day.

I drop my youngest off at the chess tournament and head north east towards Ely. I plan to run 10 miles out, turn round, and then run back. It's late on a Saturday for a long run, but you have to steal the opportunities that present themselves. I'm not concerned about time. I have single bottle of water. Picture me.

I don't feel too bad. It's a lovely day. I meet some obstacles. This one slowed me down.I pass some cows. And then the path becomes a little overgrown.
I am of course wearing shorts. Either I turn back, and find some unsatisfactory back-and-forth substitute for this run I had planned, or I plough on through the nettles. On I go.

And then happens the magic part that has to inhabit every run ... Ely Cathedral peeks around some trees, lying flat on the horizon. I run towards Ely, thinking that this is how it would have looked half a millennium ago, and that I am in contact with some raw history. The end of the journey is in sight; I am not lost; humans can make their modest impressions on the inherited land (and the land says that it does not mind). I almost think - if you discount the wicking fabrics, the neoprene, and the GPS watch - that I could have been born centuries ago.
I stop to take a photograph, and then - blissful moment - I hear the swat of wings, and four swans fly over my shoulder. I catch them as they pass by, with the cathedral in the background. This is what long runs should be about, and I almost don't mind that I am running out of fluids.
(I wish camera manufacturers would introduce better lenses: this was all almost touching my eyelashes on Saturday)

But I don't make it to Ely: a few miles short I see that I've run ten miles already, so I turn around. And then the headwind strikes my chest, and I see that it's going to be a long return. Past the cows again, over the tree, through the nettles. And everything is hurting in the wrong way. I'm not tired and my heart is almost still; though my ankles are rioting from all the slipping on the invisible footing. No: the problem is the parched mouth and the stinging shins. Eventually I find a doc leaf ("docleaf"?) and learn that you can't run through nettles for half an hour and then apply the salve. Perhaps it would work if you broke the medicinal leaf up and rubbed it into your skin before running through the nettles; but by now the stinging cells have already worked their way deep into my skin, and they won't be neutralised (I go out tango dancing that night, and my shins still have that uncomfortable nettle-tingle, along with all the other customary pains). Runners learn from me.

But eventually I make it back to civilisation, and an unconscionably slow two hours and fifty-five minutes later I'm back at the chess tournament and guzzling Science in Sport electrolyte. My boy's been doing well, and has hopes of qualifying for the national competition.

We recover with an ice-cream. Dairy's a good recovery fluid, though I'm not sure that this soft scoop - more of a squirt really - ice cream has any cream in it. It's welcome in the drought-desert-dryness of my oesophagus, though.
Then - what else is there to do? - I head home, open a meaty bottle of Malbec, and cook. Runners learn from my poor and fated example.
J

2009-05-06T14:26:00.003Z

"Welcome back," said Tom, as I hung on his shoulder on yet another 500m repeat on the track, referring, I inferred, despite the racing pulse, to the fact that I hadn't been away long enough. Eight days after London I was at the Cambridge University sports track doing speedwork. This is not sensible behaviour. The body needs to recover after a marathon. Common wisdom says - in fact the training manuals say it too - that for every mile you race you should recover for one day. This does not mean not exercising at all: it means swimming, perhaps cycling and then some gentle running. It does not mean haring after Tom in a headwind, doing 500m hard, 100m jog recovery, 600m hard, 100m jog recovery, 700m hard, 4 mins rest, then repeating the whole routine twice.

At the end of the session I felt worse than I had done on Marathon Sunday. My lungs were empty. My muscle fibres were like spaghetti that's been cooked, drained then left to dry on highland gorse. But I was righteous. Running hard is so much more fun than those long, slow runs. "Welcome back," I thought to myself. The London Marathon is over and done - glory is very transient - and Edinburgh beckons at the end of the month, and perhaps all manner of things will be well.

J

The Light of Day

2009-04-26T19:36:00.020Z

There are two ways of running: from within or from without. Both are equally valid. They're like different ways of seeing the world, though it is not possible to hold both at the same time. The second is probably faster.

London could almost become a habit or a tradition. Elias and I took the train down to Lewisham on Saturday afternoon, stopped to meet my friend (marathoner and French book historian) Sophia for a smoothie on the way, met with Nicky, and landed at Ned and Kath's. John and Jane were there, plus Sean and Meike with Janni. And they were all drinking. It could almost have been a re-run of last year. John Crannage, of Heroes of Switzerland fame (you can see them live, or at least hear them, gazing at their shoes here, or, better, here, where you can also buy the CD) was there too. He's a minor character in this blog, here and here, for instance. Except that this year Ned and Kath had moved to a house a few doors down from John and Jane. And Sean, of course, was injured. So the teetotallers were in the tortured minority of two: me and John C. John and I sat quietly through a riot of 80s pop and light rock (someone had left Sean with the stereo controls) and harboured our thoughts. As the hour draws near you begin to feel insulated from things. Not tense, but peaceful, an air-eater. Surrounded by sirens and lotus-eaters.

What did we eat? Pasta of course, spaghetti bolognese. And apricot crumble and chocolate brownies. And when we were full we knew we'd had enough, and we just wanted to retire to bed, and plant our feet up on cushions and dream of lines.

Nicky and I slept upstairs in John and Jane's studio attic, a brackish night. Sleep was interrupted in the way it always is on pre-marathon nights. Elias curled up in a sleeping bag in a day bed, and the house was as quiet as a church mouse. Because the riot was still going on three doors up the road, where John C was being kept awake by drinking and singing along with Abba and so on.

Dawn came with a flush of light through the curtains, and I saw the future. The weather forecasts had varied between heavy showers and light showers (I'd been watching them nervously all week). But instead what I saw and felt was April sun, tenuous at first, but then fat and full. It was going to be warm. Pulses would be raised. The water tables would be crowded. The spillage would evaporate from the tarmac. The crowds would be full-throated and happy. The runners would expire and slow.

I put on my vest - I had pinned on the number last thing the night before - and leggings. Five years ago, when I took up running, I had to wear really baggy shorts because I was faintly embarrassed both about the running and about showing my legs. These days I wear lycra compression tights. Elias thinks it's embarrassing; Nicky rather likes it. If I were to stop and think about it I'd probably stop: 42-year old English professors should never, never wear lycra. In fact after writing this I may well stop. They feel great. But they are rather revealing (and I've never seen the back). I picked up a text from John C, telling me that up the road the porridge was ready. Outside the air was still crisp, but you knew it was going to turn.

A room full of hangovers and a bowl of porridge. You drink water hard, and then stop. Endless ribbing (a bit premature for pinning your number, don't you think? What shoes are you wearing? You're not really going to carry the gels, are you? Have some of this, you'll be grateful at the 20-mile mark). Your muscles heavy with glycogen, your stomach hot with carbs.

The number business matters. Because this year my number looks like this:

The green stripe says it all. It means I'm at the new 'Fast Good for Age' start, which is at the front of the red, mass start. The old 'Good for Age' start was at the very small green start, but it was positioned behind the celebrities, which meant you had to shove your way past the good, the bad and the ugly before you got an open road (at which point you joined the runners from the blue start, causing more mayhem). The Fast start has a lovely small pen, and you can show up late and still be near the front. So even though 31591 has no music, that green diagonal does.

Then we all congregate and walk to blackheath, a twenty minute walk full of emotions that you can't distinguish well enough to name. Blackheath is lovely at this hour. The blimps indicating the three starts float high. The grass is bright. All smells of spring.

We say goodbye to the gang. I exchange expressions of support with John C, as he heads off to the red mass start (unfortunate: hence, perhaps, the face), find my pen, and join the toilet queue. I speak to the two guys in front of me. That's one of the great things about races: social boundaries break down, and you can speak to strangers knowing they'll share something.

I speak to Giulio (Boundary Run and Milan), Alessandro, Simon, and Fergie, all at the Fast start. Fergie and I are looking at about the same time: we've been training together, including a very fast long run, and some Yasso 800s with Simon too).

three wise men: Fergie, Simon and me

Even the Fast start has its share of fancy dress. There's a smurf. And a Lara Croft: I wished I'd had a camera for her. The really odd thing about the fast start, however - it's definitely noticeable - is that most of the men have shaved heads or crew cuts. My curls are out of place. I begin to worry that either a) they slow you down, or b) no one will think you can run. But it's too late to dwell on that, because the next thing I know is that it's 9:40 and everyone is already at the start line, forcing me, Simon and Fergie to line up at the back. Not everyone in front looks very Fast. Perhaps they'll consider a 'Fast (really)' start next year.

And it begins. I watch the clock at the start gantry. Seconds tick by as we nudge forward. It's a full 45 seconds before I cross the start line (last time I did New York, I think it was a mere 20 seconds, and I was at the mass start - now why is that?). And there are 20,000 people behind me. It doesn't bear thinking about.

So we run. Fergie's sometimes in front, sometimes behind, Simon usually just behind. I can't see Giulio. I can see lots of other people getting in my path though: it's the way with London. You just have to be patient, and not waste energy getting irritated. It's been worse. I realise with some regret at the first mile marker that I seem to have run it in 6:15, which is disappointingly fast. I've forgotten that universal lesson, which I have dispensed to others on countless occasions: don't start out too fast.

And we run. And it grows warm. And I grow hot. I take on board lots of fluids, but I can feel that this is far too much effort. The heart diverts blood to the skin to cool down, and this can accelerate your heart rate by 10 beats per minute. You begin to feel that after a while. There are no clouds, just a hot, cerulean canopy, cruelly smiling on us.

At 10 miles I know I'm cooked. I'm too hot. There's this irritating bloke called Simon (not my Simon, whom I've lost track of) behind me. The crowd keen on cheering out his name. He's obviously some minor celebrity. At one point I look at him. He's in his twenties. I don't recognise him. Which confirms that he must be a minor celebrity. Probably presents a TV programme, or was once in a TV programme. Recycles other people's ideas about fashion or house decoration. Probably works about two hours a day, and gets to run as often as he wants, which explains how some minor celebrity can keep up with me. Worse, John has drifted off ahead of me. I lost that psychological contact at some point, then I lost sight of him. I'm running at about 4:11 a kilometre, not the 4:06 for which I was hoping. My left ankle is going to carry me - I can tell that much - but it is sore and stiff. I'm developing a blister on my right heel. I'm cooked.

London looks nice in the sun, however. It's a nice day for watching. The clouds drift in for about a minute, a temporary cooling period, but they soon evaporate. It's quite glorious really. Tower Bridge is magnificent. For a wonderful moment I'm on my own: there are no runners in the ten metres in front or behind me. I've never seen that at London before. I'm slowing, though I keep passing people. London marathoners must all run huge positive splits (where the second half of the race is slower than the first). Every mile I pass dozens. Unfortunately at about 14 miles I hear people shouting encouragement to Father Christmas. And then it happens. A man in a fancy dress costume passes me. A shaven-head Santa.

It is about the half-way point that I realise that I'm not getting a new Personal Best today. The halfway point passes at 1:27:58. A good time is going to take a big negative split, and I can feel that I don't have it in me. I calculate the numbers a million ways (I'm a maths wiz normally, but it's the first thing that goes when my pulse tops 100) and I can see that it won't happen. So I do the only sensible thing. I relax a little. I accept that I'm not going to break 2:54:36, not today, and so I resolve to take things a bit easier and enjoy myself. So I run from within.

It's a funny thing. When you race, and when you train hard, it's often about beating other people. Times are things too abstract to focus on, so, although you may be aiming for a time, you use other runners as markers for that time. You'll say: in order to run under X, I will pass him ... then her ... then him. Your body may be very good at feeling and sticking to a certain speed, but external markers of time help you focus. When training at the track you learn to hang on to the runner that's faster than you; perhaps you try to pass him on the final repetition.

Sometimes, however, you run within yourself. People say that to me often: 'you look like you're running within yourself'. It usually means that I'm comfortable and am not trying hard enough, when I shoul dperhaps be in the red zone. But there's another, underappreciated aspect to this. When you run within yourself you are powered by the positive feelings of pleasure, and sometimes those numb pain and push you along anyway. Once, in a particularly disastrous period of my life, I ran the Milan marathon a mere six weeks after the Berlin marathon, and deliberately took it easy, running only for the pleasure and not caring about time. Somehow I ran 2:55:58. Whatever pushed me along at that pace came entirely from within. Unfortunately the outcome would be very different today, but I nonetheless carried with me that ease of movement and lightness of spirit, which made the race a more pleasurable thing.

They say that you have five or six good marathons in you, when everything comes together and you run well. I've had New York, and Berlin. This wasn't one of those occasions. I was doing fine, but the chemistry of age-defying brilliance wasn't there. Perhaps it will come another day. With my foot off the accelerator, but knowing that I would probably come in under three hours, I ran on, and looked around, feeling like a child smelling new things and seeing the light of day.

I pass dozens of people, some now walking, some stretching muscles against barriers. There are so many faces. Everyone is alive and living, so many centres of consciousness. Imagine you could hear their thoughts, pitched at this intensity. I imagine that every single one has as many things going through his or her head as I do every second, I imagine the countless moments of consciousness of 40,000+ runners as they run 26.2 miles, and I imagine I can hear them all, like one of the angels in Wings of Desire. It would be heartbreaking - and deafening. I have to stop imagining that.

I have little positive to say about miles 17 through 22. They're mostly very dull and ugly. But once you're at 22 miles you feel closer to the Thames, and you know that you are free to do what you want because you will probably finish. Simon was history. The crowds were vocal, calling out names as if they cared. Children proffered Jelly Babies through the railings. I dumped bottle after bottle of water over my head.

The wild darkness I had looked for does not come. These miles go by all too quickly. I'm running at - as I discover later - three hour pace, and all feels fine. There is the usual horrible moment when I feel a rippling in my calves (this time it's both), as if cramp is beginnning to set in. But I just alter my form slightly, by speeding up, and it goes away. I count down the miles: 22, 23, 24. I like running by a river in the sun - not racing, running - it's my fourth favourite pastime. I pass Parliament, and hear the voices chanting in favour of Tamil separation within Sri Lanka. Someone there is dying. We run on, through the crowds, now really deafening (and, I have to say, in a mushy kind of way, it really is heartening to hear people calling support as if it matters, as if they know how it feels). I know that this stretch has more turns than appears possible when you look at the map, but this year it doesn't matter. I'm running within myself, and I'm doing fine.

And then for a moment, with about a kilometer to go, I think I see Fergie. I look harder. I realise I must be hallucinating in the heat. I run on. And then, I see him for certain. He's under the '600m to go' sign. And I think: 'I'll have him'. Now Fergie is fast. He doesn't have a job and gets to train a lot. And he has a shaved head. And I know for sure that he's faster than me, because I've been training with him (read 'behind him') this season. Except on some sessions I can tear in front of him on the final repetition (of 6 or 10). So the prospect of catching him when he's 100m or 150m ahead of me and we have 600m to go is simply not realistic. But, discounting this, in that magical zone you only inhabit when you're in a big marathon on a sunny day and you feel good, I start running outside of myself. And sure enough, with 100m to go, or less, and with the finish line in plain sight, I fly past Fergie.

The heart is a strange place. When it sees a finish line it can do untold things. It knows more than it lets on. This is one of the reasons why runners are runners, I think, though they can't explain it. Sometimes it lets you do things that are born in chaos. I fly to the finish line. Only as I am two or three metres short do I feel a sharp knock on my right arm, and know that Fergie is there. I am sandwiched between him and another runner on my left. I think he passes me. I don't know. Perhaps we cross the line together. Not that it matters: for some unaccountable reason I've stopped competing at that point.

Fergie and I head off through the maelstrom of the finish area, collect medals and goodies (valedictory medals and T-Shirts for Flora, which is withdrawing is sponsorship of the marathon) and part ways. 'Honourable draw' he says in his gruff way. He looks a bit tired.

Now, there's a great paragraph on the last minute instructions for the London Marathon that says that 'runners numbers are assigned randomly to avoid congestion at the baggage lorries'. Because you wouldn't want to do what they do in Milan -- assign numbers according to predicted speed, and then put numbers 1-500 on one lorry, 501-1000 on the next, and so on, so runners all congregate around the same lorry at the same time. London has sensibly avoided this idiocy. Except with the Fast Good For Age. We're essentially all the runners who come in between 2:45-3:15, and we all have to claim our baggage from the same lorry. But it's not so bad, and it's not long before I meet Sean and Nicky, and have my photo taken with Meike and Janni. Sean's glum because he didn't run, and I don't blame him. Meike exclaims: how can you look so normal after doing that? But the good feelings always overcome any pain, and you soon get your breath back. And what, I ask myself, have I learned? I suppose I now know, without any doubt, what it takes to run this game.

Nicky and I head off to the pub, just off Trafalgar Square, where my club, Cambridge and Coleridge, is meeting. But they're not there yet So we sit at a window seat, with the sun warming our backs, and drink a glass of red wine. My recovery drink after a week on the wagon.

And then we travel back to Lewisham, through other runners, limping, smiling and not, meet up with Elias (who's not feeling well: back to parenthood, and the rest of the week begins), and catch up on the news of the other runners. Chanti (Ian Chant) has done well. John Crannage has made a big leap to 3:03 from 3:11, though those in the know thinks he may have more in him. and so on (more below). Simon doesn't show up in the results, and so I worry about him. When I hear of people who've run good times I think - and I wouldn't say this in public - why didn't I try harder? But the feeling is a good one. And after a while we beat our ways back to the fens, and back to more measured, more accountable life.

And besides, after all the noise and doubt, I'm running Edinburgh in five weeks, so I always have another chance to run outside.

I may receive some more photographs shortly, so I'll add them in as they arrive.

J

The roll of honour:
Alessandro: 2:45.07
Chanti: 2:57.05
Fergie: 2:57.10
Joad: 2:57.11
John C: 3:03.50
Giulio: 3:07.12
Sophia: 3:40.49
Simon: dnf

Into the darkness

2009-04-19T21:06:00.001Z

The London Marathon is less than a week away. It's time for marathoners to fall quiet. Talking drains reserves of adrenalin. Instead they let their limbs grow heavy with glycogen, and breathe temperately.

Runners become peculiarly, obsessively reflexive at this time of year. They think about details far too much. It's been a funny season. I should not be confident. My left ankle hurts, my shinsplints keep threatening to return. I've run nowhere near enough miles. Yet I've had the fastest long run of my career (faster than I used to run 20-mile races a couple of years ago), and the best yasso800s session I've ever run: but perhaps those were based on so much rest time between training runs. But whatever happens now is beyond significant adjustment (at least upwards), and I will no doubt learn some lessons about my body on Sunday. And I would would venture that everyone -- everyone who is not injured outright, and out of the running -- is in the same place. Everyone is judging and judging, and measuring and measuring.

And everyone who's been through this before is trying to suppress the excitement. Thinking too much about it will use up the reserves that will be needed on Sunday: reserves of energy and stoicism and fortitude (and perhaps a lot less talent). But it's hard to shut it out altogether: it's a looming figure waiting at the end of the week. Sometimes you catch a sight of him out of the corner of an eye.

But I am looking forward to it. Not in the way I sometimes do -- when I just want it to be Sunday, so I can get on with it and run, when the anticipation overwhelms, and I want to know how it will go. But I'm looking forward to the physical experience itself. I'm remembering that hard passage, which begins after about 18 miles, when you don't know what's going to happen (and it has the potential to be catastrophic). Other races don't have this quality: they have periods when you feel you may have to slow down, but not when you your spirit may break; not the passage empty of voices, uncharted and without form. Over this morning's generous bowl of porridge and dried fruit I can sense that shadow looming, and the thing I most look forward to is also that which I most fear: that wild, unpopulated darkness that lies before the finish line.

J

Half Measures and fair percentages

2009-04-13T21:09:00.013Z

A fortnight before the London Marathon and calves are tight and hamstrings drawn thin. Runners fall into two categories at this time of year: either as fit as they will be all year, bounding with energy as they anticipate the deep taper; or at breaking point, trained to the point of collapse, longing for the rest that will capitalise on the suffering that has brought them to this point. One of the thieves was saved; one of the thieves was damned. It's a fair percentage. Don't despair or presume: get on with it, and sleep with your feet in the air.

So I found myself nesting the night with Sean in Long Eaton, home of great runs and ignominy, preparing for the Belvoir Half Marathon on 12 April. As you will see from the photographs, we decided to treat the event as a training run, which means we weren't going to push it hard, and were therefore entitled to drink the preceding evening. We cooked camembert and cannelini bean risotto. When Sean was warming the stock he said: "make some dessert while I do this ... no we have to have desert ... why don't you make a meringue or something." So Sean stirred the risotto while I whisked the egg whites and made a pavlova. Meika played with Janni. You can see them smile.

Deep in the evening, Meika took a photograph.

You can see us here, with Sean's running number. He unburied that when we realised that neither of us knew at what time the race started. Then Meika went to bed. And then everything took a turn for the worse. Somehow I tried to describe the argument of the last chapter of my book, and Sean and I set about making some fine distinctions between narratives of transition, multiplications of ways of talking about things, discourse, and practices ...

This is not ideal preparation for a half marathon, especially when it takes place over a couple of bottles of wine. And if you look closely at the pavlova - blueberries and sour cherries soaked in cherry brandy, with my apologies for the lack of whipping or double cream: what you see is a stream of Jersey single cream - you'll see a large carton of very good sake behind it.

The next morning we drove in my new convertible (sic.) to Belvoir without much gusto, though with the roof down, and much complaining about headaches and wondering whether there was any ibuprofen in the boot, parked in a big field, and greeted Sean's clubmates, including John Crannage (he ran Cardiff and London in former entries, though some of the photos seem to have disappeared). After 90 seconds of warm up we lined up and started.

It's a very nice course, a PB course they say, though that's probably in part because of the time of year. What counts as flat in Derbyshire is positively alpine in Cambridgeshire terms. It's picturesque, straightforward, flat for Derbyshire (a bit like "normal for Norfolk", I suppose). The single lap is well marshalled, and there are four water stops. We've agreed to run at about 6:40 a mile for the first couple, and then perhaps pick up the pace. Nothing that will risk injury. The first mile we run on target. And then two things happen. I forget myself, and accidentally run a 6:15. And Sean disappears. These two things look as if they're connected -- but this is one of those stories when there's another story underneath the one on top. I slow down, and run for 85 minutes, taking it fairly easy. It's not a jog, mind you, but it doesn't hurt. I pick it up for the last mile, which I run in about 6 minutes. And I am very surprised when I see Sean, not out of breath, at the finish line.

And then the story goes horribly wrong. Sean pulled a hamstring a couple of miles into the race, and had to walk back. He thinks he's put himself out of action for London. He's the model of gloom. I give him a fiver to pay the physiotherapist. There's John Crannage too, having set a new PB with 1:24 something. I'm given a crystal cuboid trophy, with a lazer engraving of two runners. I'm delighted. I needed a paperweight.

Sean and I head off to Langar Hall, this time with the roof up. It's raining now. Easter rain.

At Langar hall we shower and meet up with Meika and Janni and Malcolm, Sean's dad. We have a great meal: in my case a poached duck egg on salad with bacon; braised shoulder of lamb with roast veg; and sticky toffee pudding with vanilla ice cream.

Even with the single glass of wine I can feel my weight increasing. Sean is fretful. He describes the sound of a hamstring popping. "Pop", and the etiolation of muscle, as the runner slows to a walk, bends over, and breaths the crystal air. I think, and say, that he may recover in time, if he rests hard enough. He remains fretful.

We take turns with the baby. And lunch ends with, as you can see ...

Malcolm racing Janni across the floor of Langar Hall. It's in the genes.

I drove home through Melton, Rutland Water, and a pentameter of places I'd like to live in or near. It rained intermittently. Running is a solitary business, and I like it for that settled loneliness, the temperate glimpse into the woods. But it's not always so lonely.

J

Perceived Exertion

2009-04-06T06:38:00.002Z

The road to the start line of a marathon is paved with little bits of debris that runners try to turn into signs and prognostications. Mostly they're just debris. This week three things made me reflect on and triangulate my position.

1. I read a tweet from Sally, a cartographer and personal trainer, reminding me that alcohol provides useless calories. Not that I don't know this, but I used to go on the wagon about a month before a marathon, and these days my cupboard has no Science in Sport Go or Gels or Rego, but plenty of good wine from Chile, Argentina and France. Subsequently, knowing that I'm not as light as I used to be, and having hidden from the reality for months, I give in and one morning I weigh myself. I'm 3 kgs overweight, and 5 kgs over ideal race weight. I look in the mirror. It's not obvious. There is a thin band of fat around the waist, however, and my abs don't protrude as much as they used to. I begin to worry. My ex- used to complain about my concern with weight (she also used to complain that my legs were disproportionately muscular), but she never had to carry an extra few kilogrammes for 26.2 miles. Staring in the mirror I persuade myself this is entirely different from an eating disorder.

2. Someone at the running club asks me what my half-marathon PB is. I fumble. "1:23? No, maybe about 1:21." Have I lost focus? Running magazines and trainers will tell you that pain is temporary and glory lasts forever. This is not true. It's ass backwards. The glory of my fastest half marathon has long faded, and I can't remember how long it took. But the pain is pretty constant. This morning my ankle really hurts (thanks to yesterday's 20-miler). I have my feet up and my computer on my knees. I'm worried I won't be able to run tomorrow.

3. On Thursday, at the club session, we ran a 5k loop on the roads, had a five minute recovery, then ran a 3.5k loop, five minute recovery, then ran 800m on the track. In the middle of the second effort, the coach tried a new technique. Fast David was 80m up ahead. Everyone else was behind and out of sight. My Perceived Exertion was very high, and I was happy where I was in the chain. The coach pulled alongside me on the Blue Bike of Hell -- the club's new piece of training equipment -- and started shouting in my ear. "Try harder. For the next 30 seconds I want you to close the gap with David." I had been running perfectly well, I thought, but I succumbed to his advice and ran harder. Coach replaced ego. He continued to express similar opinions at a similar volume for half a minute or so. I narrowed the gap with David. Everything began to burn nicely, and the Blue Bike went off to torture someone else. I almost caught David (if 30 metres counts as almost catching). But I'm not that fast.

What do we triangulate from this? Only that I'm living in the Comfort Zone. And the Comfort Zone is ... perfectly warm and bearable, which is probably why I'm going to stay here for a while. I will no doubt curse myself for this on 26 April, when I count the costs and the seconds drizzle away. I have nothing but respect for those who push themselves into the red zone day-in-day-out, week after week, risk their physical and mental health, in order to shave those seconds off their PBs: respect, but they're borderline crazy.

J

Survivors

2009-03-30T06:12:00.002Z

Saturday morning's run, the penultimate long run before London, was very different from last week's. Instead of a sunny river trail, it was mostly along pavements, through the cold, rain, and wind. It was miserable. I could barely bring myself to leave the house, and probably wouldn't have were it not for the fact that I was momentarily duped into thinking that the weather was going to clear up.

Fortunately I was not alone, but joined a group from the running club. As we ran we talked about training, and then about work, and this gave me time to think about what a distinctive sociology lies behind distance running. I don't think there's much overlap with football. I ran with a psychiatrist (still in training), a speech therapist and a teacher at a private sixth-form college. I regularly run with other professionals. In case you don't know, I'm an English professor (not "something to do with finance" as The Sunday Times averred) We don't talk about work much, and social background is never an issue, but it struck me that running marathons, and finding time on a sunday or saturday morning to run for three hours, was something that appealed to the extensively educated. I wonder if this has less to do with the economics pushing it than the psychology pulling it? Even running in company there's space for that calm, that loneliness, that seductive blankness that makes me want to run slowly around Cambridge.

It's slow, but we're all also teetering on the edge of breakdown. On Thursday night's training session I was running 1.35 mile loops with a number of men including Andrew. When I came back from my months off (see earlier postings) Andrew was a transformed runner. He was faster, much faster, and ran with his super high cadence (he's not the tallest man) very comfortably. He was doing long runs as early as January. He was targeting London and clearly had a chance to run a good time. Then he disappeared with a calf injury. He came back a couple of weeks ago. He came back slower, inevitably, but not much slower, and till determined. Then on Thursday, on the third of our five repeats, he uttered an animal grunt and pulled up in evident pain. He could barely walk and the coach had to drive him home. He had evidently returned from injury too soon. He may well be unable to run London, now only four weeks away, after months of training.

We are all on the brink of injury at this time of year. That's the narrow area, between comfort and breakdown, where you can significantly improve. But almost every morning you climb out of bed with stiff legs, and wonder if the pain in your knee or calf or ankle or groin means something. Everyone should send good thoughts out to Andrew and the hundreds who found themselves in similar positions this week. Even if we should know better than to put ourselves in harm's way.

After 23 wet miles, taking over three hours, I arrived home, late to take my son to his tennis lesson. Later the rain began to clear, and I was hungry all weekend.

J

Fen violets

2009-03-22T17:38:00.005Z

It's the time of the year that those training for the London Marathon have to do long runs of around 20 miles every weekend, the apogee in the training cycle when both mileage and speedwork count. Sometimes it's hard to fit in the training, and -- however many excellent training schedules Runners' World gives you -- you have to work around parental and work responsibilities, and the powerful urge to inertia.

So this weekend I decided that I would run to see a friend in the fen-edge village of Burwell. After a few additional loops, including dropping one of my boys off at tennis (he would be collected by Medea), that would add up to 20 miles. And a glorious 20 miles it was. Uneven underfoot, but sunny and mild. Birds everywhere, including a big yellow one I couldn't identify (I grew up in the city, and it's not my metier ... though I knew it wasn't a parrot. It looked a bit like a woodpecker, but it was bright yellow.)

To get to Burwell from Cambridge you follow the south-east bank of the Cam: I was taking the opposite course to last week's race. Taking the path through to Waterbeach, crossing the river and passing through deserted countryside until Upware, I then turned right and followed the Burwell Lode. The water forks, the right-hand course becoming the Reach Lode, and on the left, following the bank, to Burwell. Two paths ahead, and I could have (with a short swim) chosen either. I paused to take a photograph. Though I knew which path I would take.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet, knowing how way leads onto way
I doubted if I should ever come back

I picked up the pace heading into Burwell. Though I had to stop again, when my younger boy called me, and I saw a perfect curve of bullrushes. I had to photograph them.

I ran hard into Burwell, and added a loop around the village to ensure that I was closer to 20 miles than 18 ... and then I turned into my friend's house. For some reason she makes me think of violets, and I remembered the patch I had seen on the banks of the Lode. This was my recovery drink, a bottle of Espelt, a Spanish wine with a nicely-drawn label.

The following morning I made porridge and headed back home, this time avoiding any additional miles. At first my legs were stiff and heavy, especially with the ferocious headwind; soon they loosened, and Between Upware and Waterbeach a German tourist stopped to ask me whether this was a good way to Ely. Later I saw Giulio, Giacomo and a tall Italian that I think was Ben, all storming in the opposite direction, out for their twenty-miler, preparing for London. Nearer Cambridge everyone was out running, taking in the glorious sun.

But back in the fens, there's a privacy, and an intimacy with the perverse emptiness of nature. Looking over the banks of the Cam I saw this straight line of evenly spaced trees. Sometimes I think that the fens are an expression of a creator's malign indifference; sometimes I think that s/he just got bored and left it half-made. Perhaps God was tired after making Derbyshire.

I arrived home, a little shy of fourteen miles, and made an egg sandwich.

J

Ely to Cambridge but not back again

2009-03-16T11:30:00.011Z

I used to be so meticulous in my preparation. I would plan my nutrition and hydration strategies days before a race. I would stop drinking alcohol a couple of days before, a week or more for a marathon. On the night before I would pin my race number (pre-crumpled for aerodynamic purposes) to my shirt. I would eat breakfast 3 hours before the gun. I would schedule my movements.

On Sunday I woke after a very few hours sleep with no porridge oats in the house, to discover I had no gels left. I cleared the empty bottles from the kitchen. For breakfast I tried something new (never do that before a race, but never): Oatibix. They are not pleasant, but the faint nausea at least staved off the hunger. I drank some coffee, thought about it, woke Nicky and persuaded her to drive me the 20 miles to Ely. I spent 15 minutes calculating logistics, which centred on whether I should wear shorts with pockets, in which I could keep a key and my phone, or my nice lycra knee-length tights. I went with lycra, the visually pleasing effects of which were cancelled out by the poky running vest.

The Turing Trail Relay is named after Alan Turing, the Cambridge computer wiz, who used to run along the river bank -- the Great Ouse and the Cam -- between Ely and Cambridge. The race extends from Ely Cathedral to Jesus Green in Cambridge, along the west bank, and then back again along the east bank. It's about 36 miles and is divided into 6 stages. I was scheduled to run Stage 2, from Dimmock's Cote to Waterbeach, with a Cambridge and Coleridge team (the slow men's team); but I also needed to get a long run in, as part of my training for London next month.

The perfect solution. Nicky dropped me off in Ely. I said hello to the runners from my club, all waiting for the starting gun, and then started to run stage 1, with a fifteen minute head start. I ran past the cathedral, to the river, and along the bank. It was a beautiful morning, cool at first, but bright and clear.

The race logisitics were excellent. Even I didn't get lost. It's hard to lose a river, though.

There were clear arrows, and the race marshalls were in place as I made my way, jogging eight-minute miles on the firm footing. A few weeks ago it would have been hell. I stopped to take some photos with my phone. Six miles later, I arrived at the stage 1 / 2 handover with just a few minutes to spare. The marshalls stood ont he bridge by Dimmock's Cote staring at me, wondering how I could amble at that speed and get such a large lead on the field. I disabused them, stripped off my gilet and handed it with my water bottle to Adam, the team co-ordinator. In my vest I was ready to run. A minute or so later, Tom handed over, and I was running legitimately in a race. After about 30 seconds, I was passed by a very tall heavy footed runner in a bright shirt. This was depressing, especially as I was running a sub-six-minute mile. Over the next six miles I passed three others. I said good morning to one, but he didn't respond. We passed a couple of walkers, but nothing much else happened. I was left alone with my thoughts. It was all quite pleasant in a Sunday-morning-ish sort of way.

Sometimes the fens are perfectly bearable: when it's sunny, when there's a clear difference between river and soil, when there are no people around, no Alsatians to savage you (I can't believe I forgot to blog that), just you and the clay air of east anglia.

Approaching Waterbeach things were more familiar. I ran this way a few times last year. I think the last time was when I made it through a field of very jumpy cows, unnerving me a little, only to find, on the gate at the far side of the field, a sign saying "Beware of the bull". I had no choice, really, as the other way home was an extra thirty miles, and I only had one bottle of water.

As we approached the end of the stage I thought I stood a chance of catching Mr Yellow Jersey. He'd stopped gaining on me and had been an even 200m for a couple of miles. In the last mile I pulled this back to about 30m. He was now my mortal enemy. But the finish came too soon, after a little wrinkling around Waterbeach, and he kept his 30m.

I handed over to my team-mate Peter (who appears in a photo below), and he disappeared along the towpath that reaches from Waterbeach to Cambridge. I chatted to some people from the club, and then started running again. I ran, this time, to the end of stage three, at Jesus Green, where I often walk Mercury and run the odd interval. Strangely only a couple of people passed me, one of them when I was speaking to an acquaintance who was marshalling the event. The towpath was an obstacle course, owing to some pointless rowing event.
the finish at Jesus Green

I paused to take a photograph, and spoke to Peter and his wife. Here we are at the end, in matching outfits.

Then I lifted my heels and ran around Jesus Green a couple of times, just to make sure that I had done at least 20 miles. You could call that last couple junk miles, but they may well be the only thing that keeps me going 22 miles into London. Or there I may learn that haphazard preparation is no barrier against that lonely pain that wells up after mile 22.

I have seldom enjoyed a long run quite so much, which perfectly legitimises the insanity of running three consecutive stages of a six stage relay, and racing the one in the middle. I commend it as a useful part of anyone's training plan. Then I went home and ate bacon and poached duck eggs with Nicky, and drank a fine bottle of 2005 La Bolida (costieres de nimes). Some aspects of preparation I have down to an art.

J

A very long run

2009-03-02T20:09:00.018Z

The Cambridge Boundary Run is an astonishingly good idea. Legend has it that in 1924 three men and a dog founded a university ... apologies, I mean they ran around the boundary of the borough of Cambridge in one go. Hearing about this twenty-five years later, James Hasler and Derek Shorrocks decided to do the same. It was harder in those days without Garmins and google earth. They laid a careful plan, and about fifteen of them ran around the boundary in February 1949. That was thirty years ago now, and it's been an irregular event over the decades. It was revived a few years ago, and the borough had stretched a little, until in 2007, when I first ran it, the route was 25.6 miles. Last year, and this year, the organisers agreed to extend it with an otherwise pointless wiggle or two around a field so it extended to a full marathon, 26.2 miles.

So there I was, with Sean, last Sunday morning. We'd both been drinking the night before, because it was, of course, only a training run. And here I am with Sean. Since I -- or, rather, this blog -- got famous, one commentator has complained about last week's photograph of an anonymous spot in Fenland, pointing out that the Times had commended the photographs herein. Well, there are some good photographs herein -- check out Istanbul, for example -- but I can't say much for this posting, except that it presents the boundary of Cambridge naked, as it is. What my writing lacks in brevity it makes up for in honesty. After a glorious 20-mile run through Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire a couple of weekends ago, this was as visually uneventful and lacking the sublime as a tin of herring.

It was 10:30 am, a late start, and the cold had cleared during our long discussion of what we should wear. As you can see, this had more to do with thermal protection than sartorial impact. With us here is Giulio, of Milan fame, and proprietor of the finest men's clothing shop in Cambridge. And the yellow sleeve belongs to Alessandro, who is not young and is frighteningly, frighteningly fast.

There is limited signing on the boundary run, so you carry a map. Either you study it carefully beforehand, or you compromise your speed and accept that you'll either have to follow someone, or hope that the signs are adequate. Sean and I agreed that we would compromise our speed. In any case, this was a training run. Eight minute miles and no faster. Our eyes are on London, 26 April.

Off we went, marathoners and half-marathoners together. The BBC filmed the start. People whizzed by and we stuck doggedly to our plan.

Surreal moment no. 1: we pass a pub in Cherry Hinton, and there's a full forensic team standing in the front yard, wearing white gloves and face masks. They're all stationary and facing us, with their hands upwards in the air, like it's a piece of performance art. I wonder if they're demonstrating in favour of a cause (a unit being closed? Gaza?). Later I realise. They think we're the spectacle. I'm looking at them thinking, what on earth's that all about; and they're all looking at me thinking, what's all that about? Inside, we're all cannibals.

(It's true, by the way ...)

Then we're at loose around the roads of Cambridge. I see Fulbourne hospital from a distance. It's a nice victorian mental hospital. I stayed there for a while as an inpatient, but that's another story. I see it from another angle. And then another angle. The boundary of Cambridge isn't entirely flat, but it is quite flat. Sean and I pass a late middle aged woman trudging up a slight hill. Surreal moment no. 2: "All men runners should be made to wear lycra" she says to the man next to her. You don't hear that too often within the boundaries of Cambridge. I let Sean loose with my camera. This is the outcome:

I think he's captured my left foot nicely.

At the start we bumped into Johann, a friend from C&C Athletics Club, and a fellow marathoner. He'd signed up for the half marathon, but said he thought he might stick with us for the full. Some runners are like that. It's a nice morning, so even though they haven't done a long run recently, they decide they'll run for 26 miles as long as they feel ok. They forget the qualification at some point, so even though they feel like hell they'll stick with it.

Here are Sean and Johann circumnavigating Addenbrook's hospital:

They seem to be swaying. I don't know why that is. Weak core muscles, perhaps.

Most of the people who signed up for the race did so with a half measure in mind, a mere 13.1 miles. It's annoying running with people who are running only half the distance, because they run faster than you, and you want to say to them: hey, I'm not bailing out half way. After about 10 miles everyone thinks that, however far they're running. It's a way of negating the niggle of inferiority. But at 13.1 miles you get to grab a mars bar (I have never done that in a race before) and then to stretch past them, as they puff and look for the bus, and you think to yourself: you missed the best bit! The bit where you enter the unknown, where anything can happen, where your muscles can seize up with only a few seconds notice, the point where your glycogen stores drain and you have to drag yourself to the finish with your fingernails ...

Something else happens after the halfway point in Coton nature reserve ... the terrain changes. While most of the first half of the race is on roads and pavements, the second half has plenty of clay soil and ploughed fields, And some sharp uphills. It is not a race for a negative split. Within 100 metres of the half way point my shoes weigh 10kg each because of the soil. And there's a hill. And then a field, with a narrow path and a tree blocking it. And then endless styles and kissing gates. This doesn't happen in London.

Now I said the Boundary Run was an interesting idea, and this is why. You run around Cambridge in a clockwise direction. This means that Cambridge is always on your right. Now, Cambridge is in many ways a fine place: great medieval architecture, lots of books and some very smart and interesting people. On the other hand, it also has a disproportionate share of people who are entirely enamoured of their own intellects, colon-gazers of the worst kind. And it has a grand share of nepotism, corruption, complacency and greed. So as you run you feel on your right the smog of iniquity, and on your left the pull of the outside world. And your job is to navigate the path down the middle. They knew a little about symbolism, those three men and their dog (I would love to know what kind of dog).

The other interesting dimension is the fact that the run revives the medieval custom of "beating the bounds". Once a year the community, or at least its children (or at least the boys in almshouses; customs varied from place to place), would walk around the boundaries of their parish with a big stick, with which they would, presumably, beat the ground, marking out the place to which they belonged. It instilled in them a sense of the limits of their community (if they wandered too far beyond them, without means of support, they might risk becoming vagrants), but it also reminded them of where they belonged, reminded them in the most physical sense. It may be older than medieval in origin, but I wouldn't know about that. The Boundary Run is more or less the same thing, in modern fabrics.

Also in the second half of the race the signage becomes sparser. This is important later on. The signs are mostly chalk arrows on the floor, with the odd little Cambridge University Hare and Hounds poster on a lampost to let you know you're on the right track. You can get a little anxious, especially as the runners are now much more spread out, and as you pass them you realise your on your own and you actually have to pay attention.

"We'll stick with 8-minute miles, and maybe empty the tank for the last three," I say to Sean.
"That's hubris that is," he replies.
But I'm feeling good. Nothing hurts, at least not much, and I'm not very tired, as we tread lightly over the broken footing of the path around the gypsy camp. We say hello to Kim Masson, a very, very talented runner from the club, who's also looking strong.

And then, for a moment, we are in familiar territory. We arrive in Milton, a village abutting Cambridge to the north east, and then reach Baits Bite Lock, over which I've run a hundred times or more. And I'm feeling strong, like the finish is pulling me with an elastic line. This is a good feeling. A little tired maybe, but I'm running well within myself. Nothing hubristic about it.

Over the fields from Baits Bite Lock to Fen Ditton. I usually run them the other direction, so I like this bit. I'm feeling ridiculously cheerful now, which is very, very wrong, because this is a marathon disguised as a training run, and I'm at 22 miles. Sean's looking a bit worse for wear. The turning point for him had clearly been when he tried to pee near the railway crossing by Milton. He'd tied a knot in his lycra leggings. I held his gloves for him, and jogged along as he cursed, "bloody beginner's error," repeatedly. Eventually he loosened the knot and relieved himself against a tree as I jogged on, but he didn't look the same after that, as if it had broken him. It made me think, just for a second, of a similar experience in New York in 2006, when I had an altogether more urgent calling, in less pastoral circumstances, and everything went horribly wrong, allowing Lance Armstrong to catch up with me ...

I hold the various gates open for Sean, he holds them for Kim, she holds them for Johann. It's all very friendly. And then, to my shame, the elastic pulls a little harder, and a little harder, and, what with Sean saying, "it's ok, you can go on ahead if you feel like it," I succumb to the temptation, and, a bit shy of 23 miles, I pick up the pace, and pass a few more runners. I find myself lost for a little ... there's no arrow, so I run to the wrong corner of a paddock. And then a guy in orange shoes catches up with me, so I drop in behind him. "Oh well," I said, "I was feeling strong." And he proceeds to tell me that he's been running 7-minute miles or 7'30" miles, and something about that digs ... So I keep up with him. And a quarter mile later he takes a wrong turn and we're lost. We're under a bridge, with no arrows. I dig the map out of the bum bag Sean made me wear, spoiling the line of my lycra. I read it carefully. I have no idea where we are. We go up on to the bridge and look around. There are no discernible landmarks. I can't tell which way is north. I can't see the airport, or the park-and-ride, which is our next destination. We g back under the bridge and decide to take another direction altogether. We run for a while. Then double back. After about five minutes Mr Orange Shoes sees someone, "a runner!" He calls to me. We run along a fence, get through a gap, and set off across a ploughed field. Then all of a sudden we step on a pile of chalk, and we're back on course. I've lost 8-10 minutes and gained a kilometre (which makes this, technically speaking, an ultramarathon for me). In front of me are a bunch of runners I passed 20 minutes and more ago. That does it. I put my foot down.

Mr Orange Shoes is soon a receding blip in the background. I run around the airport. I pass men walking to the finish. I've now had enough of this 8-minute business, and run the last three miles at about 6'40". The last 250 metres I run in about 50 seconds. I feel strong. And very, very stupid.

Sean is sitting on a wall at the end, holding two bottles of water. "I did call out for you when you disappeared," he said. Kim and Johann were inside. Probably showering. Or getting a massage. Outside I stood clutching a hot cross bun and a water bottle.

"Hubris, I told you", said Sean.

Now, this is what I will think of when I remember Cambridge: a sloping field, with mud caked on my shoes, with some runners disappearing into the distance, speckles on a bow of mist, and more behind, and lands like the surface of a stock pan you've left in the garden overnight, crabbed with fat and bone and flesh with all the goodness sucked out. It's a lovely run, and you should think about coming next year.

J

Between Runs

2009-02-23T14:15:00.006Z

I finished my book on Friday. I don't know exactly how long I've been working on it. Longer than I've been running. It's been hard to juggle finishing it, single-parenting, and running recently. Not to speak of the fact that I have a job. But somehow the book got finished, and, even though for the last few weeks I looked like a drug-crazed zombie, that's a good thing.

So on Saturday afternoon I went out for a run. I did about fourteen miles along the Cam in the bright and unexpected sunshine. And then on Sunday afternoon I went out for another run. I went along the Cam, through Fen Ditton, Stow-cum-Quy, Anglesey Abbey and Lode, then behind Commercial End, past some farmhouses, and then along an interminable stretch of the Swaffham Bulbeck Lode, with Prior Fen out to the right, until I hit the Cam again and headed West back home. For the middle ten or twelve miles I barely saw a soul. You can see here the snowdrop woods somewhere north of Quy, lining a public footpath the reason for the existence of which I can scarcely conjecture. When I got home I showered and went to a tango class, despite the blister. And today I look a lot less like a zombie.

Now, 34-35 miles over a weekend isn't too digraceful, and these are the first steps on the road to regained righteousness (Righteousness Regained ... has a ring, doesn't it?). But as you run by the snowdrop woods, you do wonder just how many miles you have ahead of you, and remember to remind yourself that some of those miles will be very good, and that others won't be. And speaking of bad miles, the Cambridge boundary run takes place next Sunday. Who could resist a full marathon following the man-made boundaries of the city of Cambridge, mostly off-road, without many markers, guided by a map? Look here for more information.

Finally I have received a number of emails about the Sunday Times list of the 100 best blogs. And all is true. You, gentle, regular readers, all 20 of you, have shown great discrimination.

J

A Ham Sandwich Saved My Life

2009-02-09T07:14:00.002Z

The following entry is written by my friend Sean, much mentioned in the pages of this blog, who found himself on 7 February running a 50-mile race that I'd withdrawn from (on account of undertraining, injury and accedia). This is his account of the experience ...

"Yes, a ham sandwich saved my life. No pickle. No mustard. Not a hint of cajun. Just a sliver of ham between two slices of white sliced bread, I think with a bit of butter on. As I contemplated, from an immodium and diaralite haze, the awful possibility of retiring at check point 2 of the Thames Path Ultra, a bare 18 miles in, the Squirrel drew the illustrious item from his bag of tricks and broke, well tore, a half of a half bit for me. I ate, and I was transformed. Never mind Gagnaire, the Fat Duck, Sat Bains, this was as important a mouthful as I've ever eaten. Much of the subsequent 30 miles was taken between building up to, and then coming down off, further ham sandwich highs, and bearing in mind that we only had two sandwiches, which we eked out over 3 further checkpoints, and also bearing in mind that this was one of the most improbably, beautiful, challenging runs I'll ever undertake (until next year, when Mr Joad is going to do it with us, because he has to), that's no small indication of the significance of a savoury snack on a day such as this. It's surprising how central a ham sandwich can become to one's being. So, my thanks to Karen for The Sandwich, and to the Squirrel for sharing it.

The run was stunning. Joad's initiative and instinct in signing up for it was correct: it's one of those runs one should do. And although the conditions underfoot were dire (crusted frozen snow, mud, little in the way of stuff you could run on until about 35 miles in when we ran through Reading), it was such a beautful, fresh, cold winter sunny day that you couldn't have wished for better, really. Dont let anyone kid you the Thames Path is (a) a path (it isn't); (b) along the Thames (it often isn't, the most notable diversion being through a housing estate in Reading); (c) flat (a reasonable expectation, but so very wrong, as the ramble through some mountainous range at around 30 miles demonstrated).

Thanks also to BGit, who prepared a Garmin with pre-loaded route, and the laminated maps. We seemed to be the only people with either. After the second time we'd followed some people completely the wrong way, we decided that BGit was a better guide than other people in Lycra. The term 'schadenfreude', the delight in the misery of others (a german term, of course) was, I think, dreamt up by a German on this very run, as s/he tottered down the south bank of the Thames at 25 mile or so, and saw a very pacey group of 'leaders' barreling along the north bank -- going back some 5 miles to the bridge they'd failed to cross. BGit -- we are eternally in your debt (though we need to talk about that railway bridge you wanted us to go over outside Moulsford).

I feel like Gwynneth Paltrow.

Thanks also to the Hornet, he of Boots, for a sack of snacks and treats. Flapjacks and gels that we were unable to keep down after about 4 hours, but which we knew had done us good, and which we knew might keep us alive if anything catastrophic supervened. And at about 6 hours, a handful of Sport Beans was almost as good as a ham sandwich.

Looking back, the 10 minutes we spent in the dark outside Henley trying to find our head torch, when we were a bare mile from the finishing tent, could have been better used -- but we'll know for next time, and Joad will benefit from our experience.

I have been asked, a lot, since the finish, what it feels like. Well, the hitting the wall bit is just like a marathon, except in a marathon you have between 6 and 8 miles to go, and you're expecting it. I didn't think I'd hit the wall at that point - we'd barely broken sweat although it was tough terrain - and I didn't expect that each of the 32 miles that followed would feel like the penultimate one of a marathon -- the one before you get the adrenalin rush that carries you to the finish. But there was an adrenalin rush at the finish, which was at the bandstand at the Green at Henley-upon-Thames. A cup of tea, a handful of crisps, a medal the size of a dustbin lid, then into the car and away, into the night -- it was just gone 6pm, it was dark, and it was over. Meike picked us up, relieved that we'd survived, astonished that we'd done it, drove us to Oxford where we were feted and fed by lovely friends.

Often after a race one can feel an odd sense of loss, of regret. All that preparation, and now the only thing in mind is the next race. This feels different, for now, as if it's an achievement that will always be there.

It was a glorious day, and I am still delirious. Thanks above all to the Squirrel, who not only shared his sandwich, and carried my coat for me, and pointed out both buzzards and the woodpecker, but was also the perfect companion for a first ultra. It's a good job Joad has put that vegetarian nonsense behind him -- this time next year he'll understand how a ham sandwich might also save his life."

Two Little Boys

2009-02-05T17:49:00.007Z

It's not often that you think of Rolf Harris twice in one week. It happened in December. I'd signed up for a fifty-mile race next weekend (7 Feb). And my friend Sean told me that, as an act of self-sacrificial companionship, he was going to join me. The email quoted the song ...
do you think I would leave you dying,
when there's room on my horse for two ...
And so on. You can probably hum it, though I would advise against it, in case you can't stop. Then I heard on the Today programme on Radio 4 (the only constant in my life, apart from managing the kids and clearing up dog turds) that Rolf was re-recording the song, in hope of a christmas hit. I wondered how he thought he could improve on the original. But that probably wasn't the point: in our celebrity-obsessed, consumerist world, even Rolf singing sentimental tripe off-key might be marketable under favourable conditions. I'm not sure what happened to Rolf, but I understand the Christmas hit was someone murdering Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah' (a song I can murder as good as the next man or woman, but I prefer to do it away from the microphone).

So there I was, thinking of Rolf Harris in December. And, of course, not training. Instead I was hoping to finish the damned book. And I had a recurrence of the diarrhea. And a bad cold. And I put my shoulder out. So of all of the many things I was doing, murdering Leonard Cohen songs among them, running figured less than it should have.

And here I am now. I'm running well (when there's no snow), but without sufficient miles under my belt to justify attempting a fifty miler. And there's Sean, looking at the weather forecast. He's made himself righteous again, with some eighty-mile weeks, and I'm guessing, though I haven't seen him in far too long, that he's shed some of those tyres. Sean has found another sacrifial lamb, Glen, who has agreed to run with him. And the Thames Towpath, where the race is due to be run on Saturday morning, is deep in snow. The roads to the start (near Reading) are likely to be unpassable. If he makes it to the start, he will through run fifty miles of snow at near-freezing point (on the positive side, there's unlikely to be any wind).

I want everyone to say a prayer for him on Saturday morning, and pray that, if he makes it to the start, he will make it to the end. Failing that I will be starting a collection for his widow and daughter next week.

J

happier days ... Sean and I do the gay couple routine in Milan in 04 and 07.

Epistemology vs ontology

2009-01-24T08:29:00.007Z

I am a marathon runner. I now know this to be true. Even though I am three kilograms overweight and my mileage isn't what it used to be, I am a marathon runner. It's official.

How do I know? Because I read it in Esquire. And then I read it in Harper's Bazaar. The former sells about 59,000 copies, the latter about 110,000 copies. Each of those copies is probably read by about three people on average. My last book sold 2-3,000 copies (I take consolation in the probability that some of the people who will read it are not yet born). So what these magazines say must be in some sense true, and therefore I am an author, English professor and marathon runner.

Why do these magazines disclose this? Some months ago my dear friend Helen suggested I might want to be involved in a photoshoot. I confess to having been doubtful about the exercise. But in November I found myself in a London hotel being handed a dark blue Prada velvet suit. My civilian clothes were evidently not up to scratch. Also present were Sarah Storey, an extraordinary athlete who has about 16 paralympic medals over five games in two disciplines -- cycling and swimming (and no Wikipedia page?!?); Roger Black, multiple olympic medalist and former 400 metre British world record holder; Cat and Georgie, both SUPERchicks (evidently -- the make-up artist spent much more time with them than with me); and Alex Vero, the documentary maker and would-be olympian, about whom you may have read in Runners' World.

I belatedly cottoned on to the fact that the event was being run by Scottish Widows, and that we were meant to be discussing finance from an athlete's point of view. We sat around a table, drank Krug, and waffled on about finance. Philip (thanks for the photos!) took pictures as we talked, and Esquire editor Jeremy asked questions. And you can see the results on every high street ...

Needless to say my fifteen-minute discourse about packaged leverage, internet finance, market (de-) regulation and the inevitability of the present collapse wasn't the kind of thing Scottish Widows were looking for, so that didn't make it into the magazine. Nor the picture of me waving my hands about like I'm i) a prophet, ii) explaining my theory about Shakespeare, machiavelli, the Essex circle, and the difference between the two tetralogies. Nonetheless, the suit looks nice. Shame they didn't let me keep it. Now I just have to hope that none of my students reads Esquire or Bazaar. And, let's face it, I need to concentrate a bit more on my running.

J

Fenland brine

2008-12-25T08:38:00.013Z

The Hereward Relay came around again, on Sunday 23rd November. The weather, unusually mild for the season, suddenly turned, and the ground froze as hard as a psychiatrist's smile, and the air bit cold as a Texan republican's heart. Snow was promised, though little came. Cold rain drifted in and out. The fens rested in total indifference to anything that might happen, with nothing to lose.

Things had not gone well since Istanbul. First had been the invasive amoeba ... I'll spare you the liquid details ... then a cold. Then a dampness of the spirit. All deterred me from running. Instead the children needed to be parented, and a book needed to be finished. That's sometimes how it takes you: and if there's no joy, what's the point in doing it?

At least the diarrhea had gone by the time I was waiting at Welney for the handover. Welney is the starting point for the fourth and final 9.6 mile stage in the Hereward Relay, which extends from Peterborough to Ely. It is the glory stage. Already long gaps extended between the teams. I stared into the unbleached-wool air.

My handover came, and I ran off across the fenland. Nothing happened. No one came, no one left.

Sixty minutes later (an hour in which I had cause to regret the ancient off-road shoes I was wearing, inflexible, hard, and fitted to the less-efficient style with which I ran a couple of years ago) I found myself slipping off a narrow path with a ditch on either side heading up a steep incline. There was nothing for my feet to hold on to. This is not a metaphor: it was just the most memorable moment, in all the dull homogeneity of the fens.

Ten minutes later the race ended in a sports field near Ely. I was handed another horse brass, to match the two I already have. Alas I missed the first race in 2005, so I don't have a full set. I enjoyed lunch by the river in Ely. This time I remembered to visit the toilets before lunch so I could wash the sweat and spittle from my face, and not immediately repel my beautiful lunch date. An old dog can learn new tricks.

J

The Muezzin's Call

2008-10-30T16:48:00.025Z

It is 9:00 am on Sunday 26th October and I am standing in Asia for the first time in my life. Asia looks like a big bridge. It is the start of the Istanbul Marathon, and it has been raining hard for twelve hours, during most of which I lay in bed and listened to the rain and wished I'd brought something more to wear than my Cambridge and Coleridge vest. I imagined myself being carted to an Istanbul hospital for hypothermia, and wondered if I'd need to pay the ambulance cash. It was raining hard, and it would rain hard all day. I stood at the start line in my vest, gloves and a woolly hat facing the Bosphorous Bridge (seen below in much better weather, the longest suspension bridge in the world).

The weeks of preparation had been the best of times and the worst of times. At one speed training session at Jesus Green, where us oldies at the running club had doubled up with the glorious, muscular, lycra-d and confident track-based youngsters, I discovered that I was faster than most of them provided we were doing endless multiple-kilometre repetitions. They're good for 200m, but the years tell over the longer distances. It was a confidence-building moment. And on 12 October I had set a new half-marathon Persona Best of 1:21:36 at the Great Easter Run, scooping a part in the second men's team prize at the same time (last year we won the third men's team prize). It was the first PB of the year, and I had run with my head high.

And then it all went wrong. A few days before the race I started showing cold symptoms. I weighed in at 3 kg over my best weight. And then, on the Thursday night, the day before flying to Turkey, I went out for a final run -- 2k slow, 2k at race pace, and 2k slow -- and turned my ankle. Instead of icing it up I had to catch a train to London to go to the Esquire James Bond party. On Friday I was limping and couldn't lift my suitcase without pain. Over the next two days I consumed about half a kilogram of ibuprofen. On Saturday I limp around the exhibition hall and through the Spice Bazaar.

And then it got worse. Though on the night before I do manage to persuade the restaurant to give me some rice with the grilled meat, I realise that breakfast in the hotel starts half an hour after I need to leave for the race start. There will, of course, be no porridge for me on Sunday morning. So I go to a cafe and buy a bowl of rice pudding and put it in the hotel room fridge. Then through Saturday night I lie awake and hear the rain blow in. It rains hard. It rains torrentially. I think about hypothermia and ambulances.

Eventually I get up, eat my rice pudding - delicious and creamy, but there's not much rice in there - and head off to Hagia Sophia square with an umbrella, to catch the bus to Asia. There the buses are, lined up mainly for overseas competitors: this is the only well-organised part of the race. When the buses arrive a mile or two from the start at 8:00 am we are told to get off. It's raining very hard, thrumming on the roof. There's no sheltered area, and we can see that it's a long way to the start. Almost everyone refuses. Then the police car that is blocking the bus moves off, and the bus unexpectedly starts up and moves closer to the start. This happens another four times. Conversations break out in many broken European languages throughout the bus. Russian, English, French, German, Italian. Eventually we find ourselves quite close to the start. Where there don't seem to be any toilets. At 8:50 I get off the bus, pee over the edge where the bridge starts, and stand freezing at the start. I forgot to bring a bag to shelter under. There is no effort to sift the swift from the slow, except the elite have their own pen at the front. I look enviously. I will beat some of them.

The gun fires. We start. I run a hundred metres, keeping close to the centre of the bridge fearing an attack of acute vertigo. A journalist steps from the central reservation straight into me. We bounce off each other. Evidently I got in his way. Nothing seems to be hurt. I carry on, and fifty metres later I have to run through a big puddle. The water permeates my shoes and socks. There is now no inch of me that is not completely soaked, and I only have another 26 miles to run. The view over the Bosphorous, disappearing into the grey rain, is spectacular. I pass from Asia into Europe. (The welcome sign was photographed in an earlier, sunnier year.)

My left ankle, the twisted one, is utterly inflexible. I wonder how long it's going to last. It feels like my foot is welded to my shin.

It is a shocking race. Twenty-six miles of puddles, floods and sheet water. All around strong men (and there are few women, though more than in the exclusively Turkish male photograph that's part of the poster for the event, overlooking the consistent wins of Ethiopians and Kenyans) break. They peel off. Some probably drown. At one point I run through three inches of standing water under a bridge that turn out to be overflow from a sewer. And it is not flat. "Mostly flat" said the website, lacking an elevation profile. It was not. Most of it may have been mostly flat, but the rest of it, and much of the mostly flat bits, is hilly. Some of those hills are long and slow, some short and sharp.

There are some human moments. At one point I pass in turn a German who had passed me on the first bridge, and a short Turkish man who is chasing him. Running up the long hill to the viaduct the latter accelerated, dragging the German with him. I had a plan to be the first western European, and I am not going to let this twenty-something get in my way. He doesn't. He drifts back. I will see him half an hour or more after I finish, dragging himself up the mean finish of all mean finishes. But the Turk, who is about 5'2", passes me. Then I pass him on the downhill. Then he catches up, and slips an inch in front of me, moving over so his should is almost touching mine, an aggressive stance. Our arms brush, and he turns to me ... with a huge smile. He sticks his thumb up. And then falls back, ever so quickly, so that within a hundred metres he's lost. I'm glad he enjoyed the moment, because I think the next fourteen miles were a disappointment.

After the bridge, the course takes you through through the Besiktas and Karakoy regions before you cross the Galata bridge just short of 10k. By this point my left ankle feels normal, and I realise that I'm probably not going to catch hypothermia, at least while I'm still running. Someone calls out and cheers me on there -- she was quite fetching, actually, and I can't tell you how glad I was that she was there -- but then I have to wait another 20k before anyone else cheers. There's no applause and no calling out of names. In fact there are no crowds and little support at all, apart from a few lonely souls in shop doorways and bus shelters watching the rain.

We turn right and run 6k along the Golden Horn to Eyüp before doubling back, cut across Fatih, which is where some of the grim hills greet us, hit the Marmara sea, and run for about 10k into Bakirköy before doubling back again. The weather doesn't improve, but the turn makes things easier, because you know that you're heading towards the finish.

I set out for Istanbul targetting 2:52. I set out that morning hoping not to catch hypothermia. I run the first half in 1:28. All is not lost with a good negative split, but it's hard to see how I could speed up that much in the second half. The hills and riptides of sheetwater in the road see to that. Throughout the second half I pass other runner, one by one, with wide spaces between. It's lonely and there's no one to race, just the occasional broken runner decelerating into the gathering wind. I try to keep at my target 4:05 pace, but keep on drifting down to 4:15s. It is a struggle. But down in that core protected from the wind and the rain I feel proud at the effort I'm still making.

Around the 30k mark someone calls my name. I'm bruised and beaten by this time, and it takes me a second to realise that something odd has happened. I'm in a remote area of apartment-block Istanbul and someone has pronounced my name correctly. Then she calls out "Cambridge and Coleridge, go Cambridge and Coleridge". I smile and wave. I have no idea of who she was, but I am grateful.

Even though the finish line is only 10k or so ahead, I am finding it hard to keep up the 4.05 pace. I know that 2.52 is out of my reach, but can't do the maths to figure out where I really stand. And there's no one to race against. It's lonely. No one is pushing me. The people I pass put up no resistance, but despondently watch me go by. Even the elite African woman, despondently holding on. I'm on my own. And then I remember the Round Norfolk Relay. If you can run the twenty miles from Scole to Thetford on your own in the middle of the night, then this must be manageable. The RNR is specific training for this guts-out anti-clement masochism.

Then the angels descend. About 2k from the finish line I hear the call to prayer at the Blue Mosque, and know that as the call-and-response wind up, spiralling down from the high pitches, I will be approaching the finish line. The final hills are shocking. Worst of all, five hundred metres from the end there's a hugely stiff uphill, too steep to descend in heels even when it's dry. But it leads you up past the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque to the Hippodrome, what's left of a C6th AD athletic stadium, with a 3500 year old obelisk in the middle. At least the last 200m are flat. The Muezzin sings. The universe fractures. There will never be an experience like this again: running from Asia to Europe through an unremitting downpour to the soundtrack of an ethereal call to prayer. The clock says 2:59. My time will turn out to be 2.58.57. The pictures show my shoulders tight even as I pump my arms. The finish line is like daylight.

The organisation at the end is as choatic as you might have predicted, but let me leave that for now .. eventually I locate my kit bag ... at least no one tried to sell me a kilim or bargain over the contents of the goody bag. The medal - you can see it as I stand by the side door of the Blue Mosque - is two sided, in Turkish on one, English on the other. My breath returns with suprising speed. That's an extraordinary sensation, that no one to my knowledge has ever written about - the way that after the finish the air in your lungs swiftly and smoothly becomes enough, and a recalcitrant ease settles on your shoulders as the film over your eyes thins. Someone should write something about that.

It would rain all day, as I walked around the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia. I drank a blueberry margarita at the Four Seasons Hotel as a pianist played. I drank some bad wine. In my heart I was content. The following morning I went to a Turkish Baths, where my scrubber/masseur massaged my stomach crying 'shish-kebab', and my calves crying 'maraton', as the water dripped from the high marble dome onto the warm marble plinth where I lay. I walked and walked, through the Mosque and Tomb of Suleiman the Magnificent, and snake around the Grand Bazaar, where I am fed apple tea and coffee by many merchants, sitting on stools in bright, busy shops, as we talk around the issue of money.

I get the results at home. I knew that my 2.59 ish was a true effort, perhaps better even than my PBs in NYC and then Berlin. The official results may confirm this. I came 33rd. No one older than me beat me. The one man, a Turk, who passed me and stayed ahead during the entire marathon -- this happened just before the half-way point -- finished 24 seconds ahead of me and was first veteran. Once again, strange fortunes, I was second vet. One other western European was in front, hence I was thwarted in my other target of being the first. It seems a shame to reproduce poetry to numbers. What matters is the line that reaches from Asia, through rain and the splash of waters over the ankles, to an ancient stadium and the Muezzin's song, one sense collapsed into the other.

J

Running in the cold dark night

2008-09-27T07:12:00.011Z

The heading is meant literally. But before I go there, let me mention Grunty Fen. If you're not local there are a lot of fens around here. They are flat, farmed, not very interesting pieces of land. They were rescued from the sea by imported dutchmen in the C17th, and therefore saved for maybe 400 years. People won't be terribly sad when that process is reversed later this century.Except their owners, perhaps, though I think they're very prone to suicide in any case. Fenland is ugly. It breathes that permeability between boredom and despair.

The weekend before last, that is, 14 September, was the Grunty Fen Half Marathon. Two laps of Grunty Fen and the spur of the start and finish. I didn't have high hopes, but I started manfully hoping to make about 1:26. After a couple of miles I found myself running with my club mates Ish and Simon and David (who runs with the club but hasn't signed up, and hence runs with a shirt from his old Midlands club ... and he, incidentally, beat me by two minutes in the last 5k I raced). That was nice. I felt like a real runner. I was at the front. We were a club. Then it all fell apart ... David pulled off, I held onto him, and the rest of the team drifted back. And all around us was fenland.

The wind was hard, but it's a flat course. I sheltered in others' lee until the field was too disparate, then made my own headway. I was pleased when David came back in sight, and doubly pleased when he came within reach as we turned off the fen into the village, and towards the finish. I engaged in a sprint for the line with the guy in front of me, and was surprised when we passed the said David. 1.24 something. That was just fine. But I was 35th, which wasn't good, and, it turned out, there were a lot of old men in front of me. No second vet this time. Nonetheless the reward was a lovely lunch in Ely with my support team, sitting by the river on a perfect English sunny autumn afternoon.

Now for the Round Norfolk Relay. Norfolk is a county in England. If Britain is shaped like a bunny rabbit (ok, a pregnant one), Norfolk is the tail. It is about 193 miles around. On 20 September this year, at 10:30 am, a relay began. It finished about 23.5 hours later. Seventeen stages, tracing the boundary of Norfolk, through the night. And, unlike the Hereward relay, there is an actual baton that needs to be carried ("in the hand" specify the race instructions -- you are explicitly not permitted to stuff it down your shorts).

I arrive at my start, in Scole, which is three miles east of Diss, a name which has always amused me as it's a metonym for Hell (Proserpine "herself a fairer flower / By gloomy Diss was gathered", or something like that, from somewhere in Paradise Lost, probably book 9). It's a dark field, fragmentally lit by uplights. The race has been in progress for about 14 hours, and this, coupled with the staggered start, means that most of the rest of the 48 teams have already passed, and it's going to be a long, lonely night for me. I meet up with the co-ordinators for my team, Andy and Carmel, who are asleep in a car with the number '30' on the back. In the corner of the field there's a van selling hot tea, and the survivors gather around it. Andy gives me and my support team, Nicky, a flashing orange light to go on top of my support car, and tapes another "30" on the back. I load the passenger seat with gels and water bottles. I'm freezing at this point, shivering and bewildered after an hour's nap earlier. It's about 2:15 in the morning and a mist is settling. A couple of cars with flashing orange lights pass, and a couple of other runners take off. I'm waiting for Adam, who is due in at about 2:30.

He arrives on cue, and I set off into the depths of Norfolk oblivion, Nicky driving a few metres behind me. I pass through Diss and hit the A1066, and run along it for about 16 miles ... almost nothing happens. I run for 2 hours and fourteen minutes and see 2 other runners. I run a thin pool of light, the rest of the night obscure to me. Deprived of your senses it's hard to stay motivated. Deprived of competition, it's hard to race. I run a very modest pace of about 4'20" per kilometre, occasionally up to 4'09". I try to push, but there's no adrenaline on tap to help me along. There's a learning experience smothered in this.

I see another runner a mile or so ahead. It's had to tell in the dark ... the other runner is a flashing yellow light, of course. It takes me about 40 minutes to catch him up. Then I steam past him, suddenly invigorated. And then I'm a little regretful. He might be the only runner I'll see all night. Learning that there will be no glory in this run is a hard lesson.

There's a lot of roadkill. That's the thing I notice most. Pigeons, squirrels, rabbits, pheasants, indecipherable entrails ground into the tarmac, casting black and white silhouettes. At one point I hear a chorus of crickets. That's the highlight of the run. A chorus of insomniac crickets in the narcotic Norfolk night.

And who said Norfolk was flat? I have GPS proof that it is not. There's at least one mountain between Scole and Thetford. I listen to Nicky shifting between first and second, and second anf first, and first and second. Her car isn't particularly happy at 9 mph. We work out hand signals when I want a gel or a drink. The air varies between a disdainful cold and oddly humid warmth. The hours pass, as does a guy from another nameless athletic club (plus his car and his accompanying cyclist, is coaching him along). He stays with me for a while, turns a corner, and then is gone with suspicious acceleration.

Finally I hit a roundabout, turn left, and begin a 3k ascent to the handover. It's the loneliest approach to a finish I've ever known. I hand over to Brian, whom I've never met, but identify through his shirt and because there's hardly anyone else there anyway. Assuming that this will be like an Olympic 4x400 handover I shout 'go' and keep running and hold the baton out to his hand -- he starts up but has difficulty keeping up, and I pull him along for a couple of metres before I realise that the time probably doesn't matter anyway. At least we don't drop the baton. Another support car takes over. And there at the finish are Andy and Carmel. Nicky gives them the flashing light. And it's over. It's a quarter to five in the morning and the dawn is still some time away.

My team arrives at King's Lynn - where the race also started - after 23:38:28, and is placed 13th overall. I don't see this because I've gone back to Cambridgeshire to nap, though at the moment they finish I'm chasing a dog with separation anxiety through the streets of a Cambridgeshire village, though that is another story. The night has passed. And, no doubt, I'm mentally stronger for it. I'd post some photos, but they'd be black on black.

J

Edmonton

2008-09-03T15:03:00.003Z

"To get to the trail I just head out of the door and turn left, right?" I asked the doorman of the Varscona Hotel in Edmonton. "Yes," he said, "along Whyte, but you go about two blocks to 94th street, and then you turn right. It turns into the trail ...". I had to check this because to get to Whyte you have to turn right out of the door, and then go left to 94th, but it seemed he assumed that to go out of the hotel meant to go through the door and walk around the corner to the front of the hotel, where the front door would be if it were not at the side ...

So I followed his directions and found myself, after several miles, on what seemed an unending highway of 6 am traffic in cold rain. Eventually I saw a sign saying "Calgary Trail" and realised that, though I was wearing my running kit, the doorman obviously thought I wanted to drive to the airport. It seemed I was about halfway there. I turned back and my fingers froze before I found the hotel. I had brought no running kit other than vests and shorts for the week.

Later in the day, and after that inauspicious start, I followed my nose and headed left out of the hotel, and found, after some winding through barbed wire and ominously empty stretches of tarmac, the entrance to the trail that follows the North Sakatchewan River. Down a flight of stairs that reminded me of Sacre Coeur, I turned to run west. It's a beautiful stretch of river valley, perfect for running: narrow and soft, gently undulating, traffic- and almost human-free. I only turned back, after about six miles, when I had to for dinner ...

The following morning I looked out of my window and waited for the sun to rise. It began to -- reluctantly -- and I headed to the river and took the cycle path east. As I followed the bends in the river, up and down a steeply undulating path, the sunlight caught the tall buildings in the downtown area on the far side, and, briefly, Edmonton looked glorious, rich with imaginative architecture, Scottish domes, neo-Victorian stone gothic, glass bubbles and a red ziggurat. I turned back, again, because I needed to make my conference ...

I've never been to Canada before, and Edmonton, Alberta might not have been my first choice, but the valley and the running it offers (comprising, by the way, the largest system of Urban parks in Canada) was very satisfying. But never trust a doorman.
J

5k league

2008-08-13T15:04:00.003Z

My running club, The Cambridge and Coleridge Athletics Club, particpates in a summer 5k league with three other local clubs: Newmarket, Saffron Walden and Haverhill. Each hosts a 5k race on a Thursday evening. With an elaborate scoring procedure, each event has a winning male and female team, and this results in a winning male and female team and a winning club for the league. It's a nice event, better since Haverhill decided to hold theirs in Kedington, a nice village a few miles from Haverhill, which makes Peterborough look like Florence. And though Haverhill became my PB course last year, it certainly wasn't on account of the friendly local teenagers shouting obscenities between sniffs from their paper bags.

The Cambridge 5k last month saw a welcome comeback. Last year, when I was seriously fit and on the road to Berlin, I ran it in 18:20 (though I was running a fever for several days after, which may have affected that time). This year, when I am fat, slow and uncommitted, I ran it in 18:24.

A few days later I went running with my friend and fellow Miltonist Edward Jones. Edward is an advertisement for the beneficial effects of running. He looks about 45, is seriously fit, and confessesto being in his late 50s. I am genuinely and pleasantly surprised. Edward once ran Boston in 2:40. I would be interested to know if there has ever been a faster Miltonist, or an early modernist for that matter (I know of another 2:41 man). Edward is bemused by my PB of 18:06, and tells me that I don't run like an 18-minute man, suggesting, with an extraordinary air of confidence, based on years of experience at the track, a somewhat faster time. I like friends like that.

Last week was the Haverhill / Keddington leg. It was hilly and windy. The first 2k were more or less continuously uphill, and the first 500 metres were pretty sharpish. It was an attractive run, however, and I was perfectly content with 19:09. Though that brought me in 18th, which seemed a long was down the field. There are some fast people in the league these days.

Which brings me at meandering last to my point: again my times haven't fallen as much as they should have, given the shortcomings of my training (and the long-absent principle of fairness). So have my training patterns been useless? Or has the experience of divorce and single-parentdom over the past nine months merely raised my pain threshold? I would be interested to hear if there are any studies on the relationship between divorce and athletic performance. There must be some funding for such research with 2012 bearing down upon us.

J

What a runner does when he doesn't run

2008-07-31T07:18:00.003Z

It's been a long time since I tarnished this wearied page, for which I apologise. I shall try to apply myself weekly from henceforth. It's been a funny year. The miles have been few, but they have been pleasurable. And there have been some unexpected outcomes.

First, there was the Brandon half, in which I was placed second vet. Then there was the Stansted 10k. Guess what? I scraped home in a miserable 40.59 (official time), 12th overall and was placed ... second vet. No prize this time.

Then there was the Stathern 10k, on 22 June 2008. Once again, the preparation could have been better. I was staying with Sean and Meike (a few days before they became parents ... more on that on another occasion), and we had a very splendid dinner and drank far too much. I could barely face getting in the car the following morning, and Sean and I did our usual routine of talking down expectations. It was a glorious but windy morning, and I was pleased at the discipline I showed in not throwing up at the start. It's a very attractive course through countryside and village, with a couple of significant ascents. The wind was a little heartbreaking at times, but I came in in a little over 39. The finish line was over a very short footbridge (not really a bridge, more a 3' platform) stepping into the finish tent. It's an odd finish, as it didn't encourage you to sprint into the darkness, and there wasn't much room to decelerate. Sean arrived a couple of minutes later.

We collected our lurid, lurid green polo shirts, and headed off to Langar Hall, where -- and then I knew we weren't in the south anymore -- the management allowed us to use the shower in one of the guest rooms, before we sat down to lunch, courtesy of Sean's dad Malcolm, a noted gastrophile. Langar Hall is a country house (1837) turned into a hotel with an excellent restaurant. As an end to the race and a recovery strategy it was a cut above the Stathern Beer Festival. There is a splendid garden, and the walk to be had there takes in the village church, whose former rectors include Thomas Butler, father of Samuel (Erewhon) Butler.

The results were posted on the internet a week later: 39.21 amounted to 9th place, and I doubt there was anyone over 40 ahead of me ...

So there have been some good moments in this strange, non-running era. But something has troubled me in the intervening weeks. These results aren't great, but coming in second vet as a matter of some consistency suggests that the racing is better than the clock indicates. But I have not been training. Does this mean that my former training practices had a deleterious effect on my running? Perhaps the autumn marathon will show. In the meantime it's lovely running in the humidity along the banks of the Cam, while Mercury pants along.

J

Down and out in Stansted

2008-06-17T19:41:00.004Z

The Stansted 10k took place on Sunday 15 June. It involved chasing Jamie Oliver as he ran between the anti-new-runway-for-Stansted campaign, and the clubhouse for the first-class only airline he flies to NYC.

It didn't. It was, instead a very pleasant course around Stansted Mountfitchet and nearby farms and villages, multi-terrain and not very flat. It's a fun run, so there were no timing chips, no lead car (or cycle), and some people had dogs. I wished I'd brought Mercury because we would have won the first person with dog category, had there been one. And it would have been more fun.

I travelled there with my friend Michelle from running club. Neither of us wanted to do it, but that's the great thing about friends from running clubs. They make you do things you don't want to do, just as you're making them do something they don't want to do, in a perfect symbiosis of mutually assured gloom.

I've had a cold for a week, though I never get colds, a cold so severe I've been unable to run for fear of getting really ill. So I knew that my time wasn't going to be great. Accordingly I was more than happy to accept a dinner invitation for the preceding evening, with my friends Eivind and Sudeshna. And I was very good with the wine. I restrained myself to a couple of glasses of rosé. At least until the food arrived. Then Eivind pulled out a classy Riesling. And then a 1999 Gevrey-Chambertin, which was gorgeous in its gloomy and resinous intensity. And then he had a desert wine that we had to try out for some reason. So when I called on Michelle on Sunday morning I had a hangover and couldn't breathe.

We made it to the start in good time, but the finish was another matter.

There was a sharp right turn five metres in front of the start line. That was interesting. And then it wasn't very flat at all. And there were hills too. Hills up fields, with uneven footing. Fields of corn. And it rapidly grew lonely. There was no passing or direct competition. After a couple of miles there were ten or so men out of sight in front of me, and no one audible behind, not even barking dogs. Occasionally there was a marshall. However, the Stansted 10k is a biannual fun run, so the marshalls don't get much practice. Only one didn't have his or her hands in his or her pockets, and he was holding a camera. I wasn't always sure of where I was going, and once had to ask. What with the pain, the gloom, and the loneliness I objected to this a little.

Still, the last kilometre was rather splendidly downhill , and for a while I was chasing someone thinking I might catch him up. After a decent first half (about 19), the more severe second half took its toll, and I came home in a miserable 41:03, close to a personal worst. Still I got to cheer Michelle - who had no idea of how quickly or slowly she had run it, being watchless and fundamentally disinterested - and we went for a beer at the Rose and Crown pub overlooking the finish line. It was a funny beer. It had a funny real-aleish sort of name and had undertones of rancid lime. Still, Roger Bannister used to go for a beer after his sessions at the Cowley Road track, so I'm sticking with it.

J

Brandon Forest

2008-06-05T20:35:00.006Z

It doesn't pay well, this running gig.

Monday last week, the bank holiday, I ran the Brandon Forest Half-Marathon, my first race since puffing around London. Brandon Forest is near Elvedon, near Thetford, half-way between Cambridge and Norwich ... ok, it's nowhere really. But it is a very nice forest. No lions and tigers and bears, just vistas and gentle slopes and trees and howling winds and driving rain.

I've been running most days, quite slowly, occasionally fishing Mercury out of the river and picking up his poop. Still nothing that would constitute training. Nonetheless I toed the line of the race feeling quite cheerful, an unfamiliar sensation of late. I like this racing game. When the horn went off I followed the leaders into the woods.

The course is superb. It follows a three-leaf clover shape, and you run it twice. This means that you pass the area around the start six times, so supporters can cheer their runners frequently, more or less every two miles. It's a splendid design, and the marshalls are good too. The race organisation is perfect. I commend it to everyone. As for the course, in the second half you know what to expect, and I rather like that experience, except for the outward stretch of the second leaf. The race is noisy and exciting at the start. And suddenly it gets very quiet. You're in the forest, and the mid-packers have receded into the distance. There are a couple of guys in front, a couple of guys behind, and that's it. And it gets worse. But then it gets better. You return to the start, the drinks table, and the cheering crowd. And then it gets quiet again.

And on the outward leg of that second leaf there is a mile-long stretch into a roaring headwind that almost stops forward progress. It's a little dispiriting. My Garmin considers autopause. But eventually I turn a corner and I'm winding through the trees again, stepping over the rocks and puddles, trying not to turn an ankle on the corners, picking my footing. My legs hurt like hell because it's off-road, and being an urban type I don't much use those muscles required for lateral support. I contemplate the humiliation of not finishing as hurting turns to burning turns to numbness.

There's a nice moment when a tall, slim, attractive, dark-haired woman wearing a light raincoat billowing in the wind cheers me on by name as I pass by the drinks table. I have my name on my shirt, which was evidently a good investment. She does it next time too. The next time I lift my heels a little harder as I approach this central nexus. Then I smile. Then the next time I wave. By the last time I'm a bit less sociable, however.

After six miles there is no other runner in sight, though there is a guy a hundred metres behind me puffing away. It's alarming I can hear him, all things considered (it's the tailwind I suppose). After ten miles the end is nigh, and when I enter that final leaf I know that everything is going to be just fine. It's not quite, as the twenty-year old who has been behind me barrels past just as my ankle goes on a rough patch with 200 metres to go. I can't be bothered to catch him (the difference between a trained runner and a runner between training schedules). Nonetheless I figure it's been a decent outing. 1:25.30, which isn't bad for an unfit runner off-road.

There is a magnificent mound of bananas at the finish. Everyone ahead of me seems to have done it before. They're swapping war stories. "D'ya win?" asks one. "Yeah," says his interlocutor.

I chat to the dark-haired woman. She seems quite nice. Then I head off home.

Imagine my surprise when I look up the results online and find I was second M40. I won ten pounds, which followed by post. That's the first individual prize I've ever won. You know, being 41 isn't so bad at all. Looked at in strictly financial terms, £10 isn't great for an hour and a half's work. But I was just a little bit pleased with myself anyway.

J

Dean's knees

2008-05-08T14:29:00.004Z

My friend Dean has bad knees. Bad knees in that they don't work. One in particular. It hurts when he runs. It also hurts when he cycles, but especially when he runs. This is not good for Dean because he is an endurance athlete. He's been unable to run at all or cycle far for many months. He's defaulted on at least two NYC marathons because of injuries picked up on long runs in the spring. A recent injection of steroids felt nice, but had no long term benefit. So last Monday he had surgery. Some other stuff was injected into his knees in the hope of simulating nice soft cartilage. But anything would be better than facing the prospect of not being able to compete again ...

How would you react to the prospect of surgery? Dean emailed me last week to ask if he should sign up for the New York Marathon. Prudence held the day, but he's looking forward to adventure racing in 2009.

However, it's going to be a long haul. He's in bed on a machine that rehabilitates his knee by slowly moving the joint (I bet adventure racers don't get that on the NHS). He tells me that it moves 150 degrees per minute, and bends his knee to 85 degrees (which takes approximately 65 seconds - on his facebook page Dean lists "practical maths" as one of his interests). He is required to do at least 500 repetitions per day. Sound like fun? You should visit his facebook page and request to be his friend, because I would imagine he's going spare. He's going to be measuring and counting every one. He's even started collecting and speaking to soft toys.

I have no doubt that every reader of this page has contemplated the prospect of injury over the past six months (and if not, shame on you); Dean has been out of action for a year, and has been forced to concentrate on his job. So say a prayer for Dean and wish his knee a speedy recovery.

J

My new running buddy

2008-05-01T07:28:00.005Z

Mercury no longer eats running watches, and has started to run with me. His first birthday was last Saturday, and I decided he was old enough to go out for more than 20-25 minutes. Of course when we walk he runs around like a madman, and if I throw a ball he'll do 25x100 metre repeats at 30 mph with 10 second recoveries (see the pictures, featuring a demonstration by my assistant), so I figured a run with me would be a cakewalk.

We've been out a few times now, a mile and a half on lead, four off lead, then a mile and a half back on lead, out to and over Baits Bite Lock. He rushes ahead and lags behind, of course, but he's less inclined to eat cow shit when running with me. He's good company, and it's fun to watch him sprint effortlessly past when he's catching up.

This morning as we were heading back along the tow path he didn't catch up. I called for him. He didn't come. A sculler went by. "I think he's in the river". Sure enough, I looked to the water, and there he was, a hundred metres behind, his pointy head poking out, splashing furious. Despite being a bird dog he's not very confident in water. He must have fallen in, or perhaps jumped in after a duck. Or decided that, having conquered running, he was going to train for a duathlon. I sprinted back. The bank was quite high, and he was panting, doing the doggy paddle, drifting along the riverbank.

There was nothing for it but to lie in the bed of nettles -- I was wearing shorts -- and lean into the river to haul him out. He was cold and wet. I was stinging and cold and wet. It started to rain. We ran back. He learned his lesson. He's sitting in the kitchen smelling like a sewer. And I have big nettle weals on my bare legs. He's a good running buddy, but he needs to work on his training schedule.

J

The Runner's Fear of Injury

2008-04-26T05:27:00.002Z

First of all an apology. In my list of recent Welsh sporting triumphs I omitted to mention my old sparring partner Joe Calzaghe whose latest victories include being noticed by the English press after years of being the greatest British boxer. Pound for pound you're the man, Joe.

I'm back running, and have probably notched up a respectable 50 miles this past week. I'm not committed enough to find time to plug my Garmin in and find out how much I've actually run, but it's about 50 miles, including two hour-long runs with Mercury (on which more anon). And of course I went out yesterday morning and coming home felt some pain around my right ankle. A combination of stiffness and shooting pain as it rotated. A couple of cycle rides later (a few miles -- practical transport rather than fun) it was still hurting. So this morning I'm going to rest, of course. Of course not: I'm going to notch up some more miles.

Why do all runners do this? I've given so much advice about the importance of resting niggles to novice runners ... and I have shared the same advice mutually with non-novitiates, as you all probably have (ohhh ... I don't know ...). We know what the dangers are, we know what we should do, and we don't. So why?

Here's a theory: because it feels good. Not the machismo of putting your body right on the edge of self-harm, though there's probably something in that. But one of the joys of running is that grey area between comfortable training and fierce unholy excess. That's where the spiritual release and the endorphins lie. On the edge of injury the body finds itself. This is built into the practicalities of marathon training, which is always about doing more and doing more faster until the event, and then getting back on the road as soon as possible. For non-marathoners it's just a temptation. It's because being there feels good that we do it.

So where are my shoes?

J

And still they come

2008-04-16T09:11:00.011Z

When April, with its sweet showers has soothed March’s deep-rooted drought, pilgrims descend on London, the tired, the hungry, the ill-shod, full of longing and apprehension, they swell towards the Excel centre, then again at Blackheath, in search of joy, redemption, absolution. They clutch their energy gels in their hands like pardons, their hearts beat as in their heart of hearts they confront the almighty. It is time for the London Marathon, and this year marks the 100th anniversary of the distance being established at 26 miles 385 yards – prior to the marathon in the London Olympics of 1908 the distance had been a long race of about 25 miles … you know the story about Queen Alexandra wanting to see the finish outside the palace.

2008 has been a good year for Welsh sport. First the well-deserved Grand Slam in the Six Nations rugby union championship, then the bizarre progression of Cardiff FC to the FA cup final (when I didn’t know there were eleven – is that the right number? – people in Wales who know the rules for football). But my running does not form part of this picture. Instead it has been a year of retreating from light drizzle, of contemplating fine wines, of reading and writing and generally shrinking from the field where glory is sought, not without dust and heat.

Odd then to find myself at the green (fast-for-age and celebrity) start at the Flora London Marathon this past Sunday, next to Sean, perennial daemon, and to Ned Boulting, host, self-styled minor celebrity and significant fundraiser for ECHO (see here for ECHO, and here for his hospitality last year). If I was in poor shape, Sean was possibly worse off, untrained and vying with Meike for that seven-months pregnant look. Looking in fact like foie gras, of which I understand he has eaten a good deal recently, along with a number of French regional wines.

The preparation had been less than perfect. Again. Friday night the kids were off at sleepovers and I thought that I would aid my rest by trying to make margaritas with the tequila I brought back from DC. And I discovered that I could make a cracking margarita. Which was pleasing, because I’m always keen on finding new skills and potential new careers. And then I drank some wine, and was lulled to sleep by the spicy fumes of mourvedre, the bandol varietal. And then I woke up after a few hours feeling less than athletic, and had to cycle to Grantchester through an East Anglian gale to Collect Elias. A few hours later, on the train to London with Elias, my quads were cramping, and the nausea had less to do with the hangover than the anticipation of the marathon the following morning. And life remains full of surprises. Elias and I took a taxi to the station to save my legs: who should be driving it but Giacomo? Giacomo has been injured since Milan, and still runs with pain. An MRI has failed to reveal what’s wrong. It’s perverse that he’s not running, and I am, and I begin to wonder if my blog is reading like a soap opera. Giacomo tells me that Pietro will be there, and, despite a poor performance in Milan, he’ll be at the elite start, trading on his 2:30 marathon from some years ago …

Elias and I collected my number at the Excel expo, met up with Jon “Hero” Crannage and Sarah “Squealer” Crannage (Saturday Striders pseudonyms) and we all headed off to Ned’s in Woolwich.

Ned and Kath’s house is brilliant. It’s like a rural farmhouse in Woolwich, full of comfort and nice floors and warmth and character and the smells of cooking. Elias loves it: he thinks it’s happy living without ostentation (I think those were more or less his words). Kath had cooked up a storm with her mother-in-law Juliet, and we ate pasta until we all looked a bit like Sean. Suzy and Edie had painted a banner with their mum, to support not only their dad but all of us sorry marathoners who had descended upon them that weekend: all the above-mentioned plus Ned’s old friend Simon, a spry triathlete who had trained, his neighbour Graeme and others I didn’t meet. You can see it in the photograph, accompanying (right to left) Sean, Sarah, Jon, Ned, Simon and me. It choked me up a little seeing it. Family life is different when your parents are young anarchists in Tiger Bay in the heady ’60s, and when you’re not a single dad. Elias and I slept in the living room, and my head was full of quiet thoughts of the dawn.

I love marathon dawns. Someone should write a book about them. Coffee never tastes better. You have just the one cup, lest you end up peeing too much, but it’s always a great cup. Wearing half a tracksuit you force yourself to eat porridge as the sun rises, with your safety pins and race number in front of you. You know it’s coming at you and there’s nothing you can do but save adrenaline and give in to the wait for that starting horn. You live in a perfect balance of wellbeing and trepidation. Gradually people come and go in the kitchen. It gets light. You watch the minutes go by, visit the bathroom frequently, think abut pinning your number to your shirt. Someone puts motivational music on the stereo (but Dr Hook, Ned?) Then it’s time to vaseline up, pack your kit bag, and head to the start. Ned and I walked a couple of miles through the cold brightness to Blackheath and to the green start. I received a bunch of misdirected texts from people I didn't know who can't spell. We met Sean there; Sarah and Jon and Simon were at a different start.

You know the rest: toilets, bag check, starting pens, the rising storm of excitement, checking out the other runners. The start and holding yourself back, suppressing that urge to run how you feel, which would be much too fast. Ned, running his first marathon, had set himself a target of 3:45, and Sean and I planned to run with him, hoping that 26.2 miles without real training wouldn’t leave us crippled. We wound through the April streets, manifesting the support that London always provides, cheers, bands and beer.

Soon we found ourselves behind the Masai warriors, raising money for a water supply to their Tanzanian village, with car-tyre tread strapped to their feet, carrying spears and shields. We ran with them for a mile or so. They were chanting and dancing and generally expending energy doing things that weren’t running. I moved on after I almost lost an eye for the second time. It was a bright and beautiful morning, perfect for running. We passed Elias and Suzy and Edie and Kath holding their banner and cheering. There was nothing wrong with this picture.

It was shortly after this that Sean discovered that he needed a toilet break. But we didn’t spot any toilets for a while. This was the reason he disappeared into a dodgy-looking pub in Deptford. I prayed that he didn’t start an argument over any bills involved. We didn’t see him again for quite a while. We are still trying to establish the precise sequence of events.

Ned and I trudged on at about 8’25” to 8’35” pace, which would bring us home in requisite time. I love running. I’ve really missed it. I love races too. I love drinking Lucozade to keep you buoyant during the long middle miles. And the comfort of energy gels. There were more supporters: Meike, whom I missed, Juliet and Norry, Ned’s parents, whom I missed, Glenn Tilbrook (yes, of Squeeze fame), who’s a friend of Ned’s, and Nicky, a friend from Cambridge, who brightened Commercial Road, usually the dullest part of the race. Plus lots of people who called out Ned’s name, no doubt because it’s easier to pronounce than mine.

As we headed towards Tower Bridge, the skies opened. We were soaked, cold (I hope the people running in underwear were suitably punished) and heavy-shoed, running into the wind. That was the only point at which I wished I was running faster. We went over Tower Bridge, which was such an enormous boost, a mainline injection of adrenaline and good-feeling. I couldn’t see anything until I realised I was still wearing my wrap-arounds in the downpour. The gang waited for us with their vast banner at another point on the route, about 15 miles, but found the banner was dripping paint over other spectators.

For some reason I kept on hearing the crowd repeatedly shout “go, toilet”. I pondered on this for a while. Then I became intensely worried that Sean, who still hadn’t reappeared, had for some reason been forced to escape from his Deptford pub with the toilet, or that the toilet had been wrapped around him in some way, which would explain why it was taking so long for him to catch up. Then the toilet passed us, and it was only a guy in fancy dress, and soon Sean reappeared, without a toilet.

Ned was doing well. He was pushing the pace, feeling good. He went ahead for a while. He didn’t seem apprehensive. He didn’t know what was coming. At about 22 miles we passed Jon and Sarah. They were also aiming for 3:45, but Sarah was flagging. Ned didn’t begin to really suffer until shortly after this. His head went down. His face turned red-orange. His eyes looked like they were going to pop out in disgust. But he more or less held the pace with exemplary determination. Sean and I adopted the pacers’ role, sitting in front of him, urging him on. We were probably very culpable in our smug encouraging remarks. But before long Big Ben was in sight. We entered the uncountable series of turns that comprise the palace gardens and the home stretch.

And still they came! How does it feel to be part of that great sea of humanity, everyone with his or her own story? To be among the tired, the poor, the hungry, the chafed and bleeding? How does it feel to live in the imaginary centre of those tv commentators’ clichés? Just fine.

We hit the sign that marked 800 metres to the finish. We ran for what seemed like a kilometre. Then we hit the sign that marked 600 metres to the finish. Then eventually the finish line came into view. Ned started pumping his arms. We fell in behind him. At the finish we took hands, and crossed as finishers numbers 7637-39, in 3 hours, 45 minutes and 47 seconds. As we came to a halt a race marshal instructed Sean and I to hold Ned up, as he didn’t look very good.

Soon he was fine though. We collected our medals, met up with friends, were once again soaked in a fierce downpour. Ian Chanty, of Berlin and Saturday Striders fame, was there: he’d missed another sub-3:00 by a handful of cruel seconds. He treated it with Roman fortitude, notwithstanding the rain. We didn’t see Pietro, but he’d achieved 3:00 with a few seconds to spare. Then headed back to Woolwich, where we were feted with family compassion and lots of food and wine. See grand family picture, missing Kath behind the camera. Simon had missed his three-hour target by a couple of minutes. Jon and Sarah had run the race 12 seconds faster than us (they must have started out behind us in time, as they were at the mass start). Martin Lel had set a new course record. We ate and ate and drank wine and were photographed again, with medals and then with family and friends, including Jon and Jane, last year’s co-hosts. You’ll see Elias holding Pops, Suzy also in front, Edie perched on Ned. Elias is planning on running London soon he tells me.

Ned described the experience as horrible, surprisingly horrible, indescribably horrible and more horrible than he’d imagined. Nonetheless he made his target, struggled through the pain and desperation to finish despite an injury sustained during training, and he will now be a shining light to other first-timers, and a credit to ECHO. Sean and I hope to persuade him to come back next year; and we’re working on Jon and Jane. This was the first day in our next campaign. Maybe Welsh sporting victories will pick up again in the autumn.

(l-r: Sean, Graeme, Simon, me, Ned)

J

Washington DC

2008-04-04T13:11:00.008Z

I have been in the nation's capital this week, living on Capitol Hill and working in the Folger Shakespeare Library, one of the finest working environments on the planet. And I have been running along the Mall. It's beautiful. It inspires me with poetry. I run a gentle 4-5k up to the Lincoln Memorial, and read the Gettysburg address, then cross the hall, passing Lincoln looking ever so lean, and read the second presidential address. Then I run back, around the reflecting pools, past the heart-stopping Vietnam memorial, the Washington monument, the Smithsonian, around the Capitol. An easy 10-12 k could not be more invigorating.

The only hitch is that I seem to have done something to my calf - it feels like minor tearing - and it hurts like hell, and the London marathon is next weekend. I can sense impending disaster. Perhaps taking the ten-miler too quickly (see pictures below - it does look like I'm making an effort) was imprudent.

J

Charlottesville ten miler

2008-03-29T15:37:00.009Z

Ten more miles and I'm still here. I survived the 2008 Charlottesville Ten Miler, its 33rd running. The preparation was immaculate, of course. No training, unless you count the four-month taper. I stayed with my friends Dean and Maurie the night before, and ate a delicious seafood gumbo, together with their friends Tim, Christy and Sandra. Tim was running in the morning too. Dean insisted that as I wasn't really racing in the morning, just jogging, I should have a drink. I conceded to half a glass of pinot noir. Dean found a 16 oz glass, and carefully half-filled it, so a couple of those later and I was well hydrated.

Instead of my usual evening-before meticulous kit preparation and pinning of number to shirt -- hard to do, given that I didn't bring an appropriate shirt, not knowing that I was going to be racing -- I went to bed, wrote emails and read Robert Lowell's correspondence. The bed was very comfortable, however, and I did manage a few hours' sleep. I rose in the dark and ate instant oatmeal, drank some coffee, wrote more emails and read Robert Lowell and pondered the problem of the shirt. I really wanted to wear my C&C vest, so I would look fast, even if I was going to be slow. Dean lent me a shirt, which meant that I was running a race with a brand new, unworn pair of shoes and a shirt I'd never worn before. The gel in my shorts pocket was leaking. I didn't even bother with the watch.

Dean is a man of action, and meticulous in his organisation. At 7:10 he announced we would be leaving at 7:15. I pinned my number, 2395, to the shirt. At 7:15 he bundled me into the lexus and drove me to the start, without baggage, warm clothing, or a race plan, but with intensifying nausea. At 7:24 he bundled me out of the lexus 200 metres from the start at the John Paul Jones stadium. He went home to nurse his hangover; I went to find a toilet, successfully as it turned out. The start was clearly marked Start. All the slow people moved instinctively to the back (contrast other entries in this blog). In front of me were a bunch of guys wearing vests. They had trained, and looked fast. Someone sang that song about the flag. The weather was cool and clear, and the light warm and full of life. The gun fired at 7:45. We started uphill.

There were many more uphills to come, and downhills too. There were no mountains, but plenty of foothills to foot up and down. I reminded myself that I was meant to be having fun. No watch, just the tell-tale beating of the heart. I fell in behind a bunch of women. I can usually keep up with women. Falling in behind other runners means that you don't have to concentrate. And women have less testosterone than men, which means that they're more likely to run sensibly (this is founded on extensive empirical observation). After about half a mile I developed shinsplints, really painful shinsplints. I saw I wasn't going to be able to finish. They went away after a couple more miles, I think. The first mile came up in six-twenty-something. Perhaps this wasn't such a good idea. Then, when I heard someone call out "first woman", I realised the magnitude of my error. This only diminished slightly when other spectators called out, correctly, "second woman".

There's little else to tell. The course is a hilly and very attractive one, which loops through part of the university campus before swinging through the brick-paved streets of downtown Charlottesville. The marshalling and the water stations were impeccable. At five miles I was feeling ok. I was watchless, but it went through in 32-something, much quicker than I had intended. I stayed behind the pack of women (diminished by the fact that one of the four had surged ahead) until about six and a half miles, when I foolishly decided to press on ahead. I regretted this almost immediately, though I did catch up with the surging woman. Some faintly distressing urban hills followed, and I plodded on until I realised that the end must be near, and pushed a little beyond the 6:30 pace that I had entirely inadvertently and consistently maintained. I finished a couple of seconds behind the woman I had pitched in behind optimistically at the start. She was obviously a keeper.

The time was 64-something.

The finish area was magnificent: bananas, endless choices of drink, bagels, cookies ... not sure about the pizza though. There was no queue at the massage tables. Everything seemed to be working too: nothing bleeding or broken. The masseuse was a little disturbed by the state of my neck and shoulders, which had little to do with running. The results were being pinned up, as they came out of the computer, on a noticeboard in the sports arena. I was 62nd (out of about 2400), with a time of 64:41. Not too disappointing for a middle-aged fat runner. Six months ago I would have been pleased with that as a tempo run. The bananas were good too. Heading for more water I bumped into Tim and scored a lift back to Dean & Maurie's with Tim's friend Greg, in the backseat of a SUV with running gear, golfballs, a baseball glove, a child seat and no doubt other sports equipment buried and ready for the weekend.

I will wear the pink and lilac finishing shirt ("what kind of man is going to wear that?" I overheard a female UVa student ask outside the arena) with some satisfaction. Unless someone else wants it? Lesson: running slowly is ok, and race whenever you can, because, even when it seems like you're one too many mornings and a thousand miles behind, things may very well be fine. And this is a race worth doing if you're ever in town.

J

PS: check out the ragged mountain running shop for races in Charlottesville; and it's a good place to buy shoes too.

Fat runner strikes back

2008-03-26T21:04:00.004Z

First, a point of clarification. I have been receiving correspondence from all kinds of readers who think that my not training for London involves cutting back on speedwork. Let me clarify: I'm not training. I've been going out maybe two or three times a week, and running a handful of eight-minute miles. I'm about half a stone overweight. When I run London I will be facing hitting the wall long before Tower Bridge.

However ... I was in Ragged Mountain Running Shop in Charlottesville Virginia on Monday, buying a new pair of running shoes for my youngest. They didn't have any of my model in my size in stock, which is a shame as the pair that I'm carrying around with me on my US sojourn are very worn out, and the exhausted rear cuts into my heels. But just as I was going to pay I asked the sales assistant whether there were any local races this weekend. Yes, she said, the ten-miler is on Saturday.

The Charlottesville ten miler is a big deal. It's a large race (2300 runners) a few weeks before the marathon. Now the CVille marathon is a bloody affair with some very big hills. It attracts obsessives, you know the kinds. The ten miler is less bloody, I think, but it's a popular and famed race that loops around the downtown area and through picturesque Jeffersonian architecture. So having asked, I could hardly decline, no matter how much I wanted to. This may well be my last trip to CVille ever, and I happen to be in town on the day of the race ...

So I signed up, and went and ran some hill intervals in my worn-out Sauconys. Then I drove down to Durham, North Carolina, winding through the hills of southern Virginia on route 15S, and this morning ran gently around a Duke University cross-country track, which winds around the golf course, with my friend Nigel, who is recovering from a major health crisis. It was good to ease the red wine toxins out of my blood. Two days' training should be enough, no? I would have won a prize this time last year: this year I'll be luck to break 75 minutes.

It's nice to be running again, in the open skies and clean air of country, and up and down some real hills, of the kind that Cambridge can't afford. I may have forgotten to mention over the past few weeks how much I like running. Everyone needs to do it. Now I have to pray that my new shoes arrive before Saturday, else I'm running ten miles barefoot.

J

Fat runner

2008-03-15T07:37:00.003Z

As you know, I'm a deep-rooted optimist, always looking for the silver lining among the rainclouds in which I live. The London marathon comes ever closer, and my training recedes further and further into the past. It would clearly be unwise to run. However, instead of just ducking out, I have found a way of turning this round, by becoming the subject of my own experiment.

I have tended to go into Marathons reasonably well-prepared. I have raised eyebrows at those who think they can show up and make it to the finish line. Those who don't respect the distance. Ingenues, neophytes, amateurs, people who just don't get the life-and-death reality of marathon running. Fat runners. Runners who aren't going to test the mental strength that is, even more than intelligent training, the foundation of a good race, but will, instead, just see what happens.

Now I have decided to be the fat runner. I'm going to run London without training. I may put a few miles on the Garmin in the last week of March and the first week of April. Then I'll have a week or so's taper, and then I'll run and see what happens.

I won't be alone. I will be running with Ned Boulting (one of my hosts last year). Ned's running his first marathon, and he's been injured. Ned is raising - has so far raised three and a half grand - sponsorship for ECHO at Guy's Hospital, London. He's running to thank them for all of the support they have given for his daughter Edie, who has a heart problem. You can find out more and sponsor him here. Sean will also be running, and he too has been injured - the podiatrist says that his legs don't work, or something like that. I'm not sure if we'll be three wise men or three blind mice.

One thing is for sure. I won't have respected the distance. I will see the marathon from the other side, from the perspective of the unprepared fat boy pushing his luck. We will see what happens. Let's look upon it as an existential experiment.

Perhaps it will be fun. Watch this space.

J

So what am I running from?

2008-03-03T12:47:00.005Z

No account of how one began running can possibly explain how one becomes a marathon runner. It's easy enough to understand why someone would run a marathon -- it's festive, it's fun-of-sorts, it's a way of connecting with people -- but harder to explain is the life of the marathon runner (a quite different thing) the emotional or psychological impulses that drive you into running twenty or more miles on a weekend in preparation for a marathon, especially when the preparation is at best tenuous. I haven't run 20 miles since 2 December, but I did have a two-hour child-free slot last weekend, and eked out 16, which felt like an accomplishment. But it was also pleasurable. It's what I do. Now why would anyone do that? What am I -- or anyone -- running to? What am I -- or you -- running from?

People -- sane, non addicted people that is -- assume you think when you run, and for me that's half true. I fret about the things that are wrong in my life (there have been some of them of late), I dabble around in explanatory narratives (it all happened, because ...). But if I push those things aside, or if there aren't such things to worry about, in fact I think about very little. As the heart rises, and the mind finds its way into a rhythm, as your eyes begin to see things as they really are, as you see unaccommodated man and unfiltered space, as the blood takes over, there are no abstract or complex thoughts. The moment is what matters -- and perhaps, if you're racing, the moment at which you're going to collapse, literally or metaphorically, which has a nasty habit of fixing itself in your horizons -- and the moment tends to be free from anything but meditation on the immediate, material surroundings, or at most a good feeling about a friend, a lover, or the running itself.

This is the runner's secret. I think. For all I might claim right now that running is running from the pain of the winter, from realities I'd rather not stare in the slavering eye, or to the pleasures that the spring will bring, to the turning of the air, to the arms that might catch me, the truth is much less poetic and simpler than that. Running is its own down time. Running is a recovery period for the mind. That space, that unabashed intimacy with the naked, bony self, is both what we're running to, and what we're running from.

J

Why run?

2008-02-18T18:05:00.009Z

A lot of people ask me why I am a runner. I guess it kills the time. The question has gained new depths since I ceased to be a runner, and became someone who trundles off for a few miles a couple of times a week. Maybe. If the weather looks good.

However, I think it's worth taking a pass at an answer to the question. It takes the convergence of a number of life-threatening elements to persuade a previously mostly-sane and largely indolent man to take to the road, and to see anything less than a fifty-mile week as a recovery period. These are the answers that came to me in late November -- when I was still a runner -- as I trod softly by the Cam in the dark, along the stretch that extends from Lammasland to Grantchester, when I began to reflect on the many thousands of miles I had run since my Road-to-Damascus like conversion in 2004. Ten thousand probably. Where did they all come from? How and why did a sedentary scholar discover the pleasures of lycra and stability shoes?

There were four reasons that suggested themselves to me.

One. Aging. It happens. One moment you're fine, the next you have soaring cholesterol and thinning hair. Something has to be done. Having not done any exercise for the preceding sixteen years, I bought a pair of running shoes in the early summer of 2003. But they weren't running shoes: they were Nike cross trainers. The only reason I didn't cripple myself was because I ran for no more than twelve minutes, which almost took me to the end of the street. I tried this maybe half a dozen times and didn't like it much. Then ...

Two. Sean Matthews, my then colleague. He suggested we go out for a run after work. We did so. In retrospect it was not unreasonable that he should get me to run 10-11 k, but 54 minutes later I thought I had been disembowelled. He announced that he'd done the same route the preceding day in 44 minutes. He was training for the New York Marathon that year. That experience taught me that whatever I was doing before, it wasn't running. I bought a running watch.

Interlude: it's the evening of the New York Marathon 2003, and I'm sitting in Bouley in Manhattan, a stunning restaurant, with my friends Sean and John Beech. Sean is being studiedly vague about his time. The sub-3 had not appeared. Only the stunning wine fed us by the then-sommelier Brad Hickey (see his blog) can cheer him. Sean and John try to convince me that I need to run marathons. It's a deucedly ridiculous notion.

Three: drowning my father-in-law's Audi 6. It all really begins with my climbing out of the window of an Audi into a flash flood in central New Jersey, and lifting my youngest son from the roof (he'd climbed through the sun roof). This was in December 2003, and it was meltwater from the long-frosted snows on a nearby golf course that gave rise to the flood. The waters had caught us, killed the engine. Things looked bad when the waters started to come in through the door. We began bailing with plastic cups. We watched with alarm when my youngest dropped his, and it shot off in the floodwaters, like a racing yacht.

The Audi was a write off, and so, nearly, was my back. I waded through the waist high water towards the flashing police lights ("stay in the car") they were shouting at me, but I'd had enough at that point. I'd watched a deer stare at me from the elevated woods, before stalking off, and had felt the sting of his scorn.

So my youngest was fine, but when I lay on the floor back at the apartment later that evening I found it hard to get up. And then my leg started to go numb. Plenty of pain medication -- some black market demerol from a neurosurgeon friend (think childbirth painkillers) -- later I found myself having an MRI. The scan showed a problem with my spine, and threw up some strange shadows. Another, much longer scan was called for (I napped for 90 minutes in the machine -- it was quite restful). On reading the scans I was told that I was lucky I could walk. This was nothing to do with the flash-flood: instead the scan had turned up a congenital defect, hydromyelia, or water on the spine. My father in law remarked that I was luck I wasn't a poster-boy for the March of Dimes (a disabled charity in the US). The hospital asked if they could scan my brain to work out what was going on, i.e. why I seemed to be able to walk. They were a little surprised when I declined. So I left with a prescription for physiotherapy, serious physio of the kind you get with private health insurance in the US. An hour or two, twice a week.

It was great. And starting to run again (I used to increase the speed on the treadmills when the physiotherapist wasn't looking) taught me how much I had missed it. In the spring of 2004, I recommenced running around the woods in Princeton, peaceful and restorative, then along the canal. It was a life-transforming experience. I was utterly hooked. Being told that you shouldn't be able to walk, being told that you're not allowed to run -- these are the ultimate motivators. Not to speak of the bucolic delights of running along the New Jersey -Delaware canal.

Four. My brother in law Steve signed me up for a race, the four-mile Run for the Parks in Central Park, New York. He's a footballer rather than a runner, but he thought it might be fun. The boys did it too (see picture). It was a carnival. The weather was perfect. The crowds cheered. It was central park, one of the most improbably nice places on earth. It was too crowded to race, but I knew, from the moment my heart rate passed the comfortable zone, that I was instantly addicted to the drug of racing. I've never been one for parties and dancing, but if I had been, this was it. As we walked back to Steve's apartment on the upper west side New Yorkers thanked us for our support of the Parks charity. Soon after that I signed up for the Cardiff Marathon in the Autumn of 04. And the rest is pain, blisters, bleeding, limping, obsessive record keeping, torn calves, carbo-loading, free t-shirts, worn out shoes, stretching and binge-teetotalling.

I really should start doing it again.

J

Standing at the Crossroads

2008-01-30T15:55:00.000Z

On Saturday morning outside the free library in Long Eaton, Notts., I lay down and wept. More precisely I clasped the wall and tried not to throw up. It was a turning point in the morning's long run.

It began a couple of house earlier with the Seven AM Saturday Striders. The Striders do a twelve mile loop every Saturday morning at seven o'clock. They are an informal group attached to Long Eaton Running Club (see here) who like to take in the great views of Nottinghamshire at dawn, hills and mud and all. Sean and I had just done these twelve with Hornet (Ian Chant, of Berlin marathon fame); Hero (Jon Crannage, of Heroes of Switzerland fame; look back to the Cardiff half-/marathon, where he made his debut: I rather regret not having made more of it at the time); Squealer; Rookirunna; Rollerman; Dodgycalf. They're a cheerful bunch, given the time and the percentage gradients. I suppose that, unlike Sean and me, they had not drunk four bottles of wine (and we may have lost count) and watched five episodes of the West Wing the night before.

So at a leisurely pace, with plenty of banter (Hornet trying to persuade me to publish this in hard copy, or get sponsorship from Lucozade, for example; and the most appalling series of puns on "stride" and "striders" you can imagine) and bodily-function stops, we went from the Long Eaton sports centre through Strawberry Fields (just gorgeous as the sun is coming up), across the Erewash golf club, up to No Man's Lane (at this point the sky was purple) then a lung-bursting climb to Risley Lodge Farm. I think it was there that I performed the initiation rite of jumping over a horse fence. Which I managed. Despite the mud. And the fine Bordeaux. Then down from the ridge until we made our way back to the Erewash Canal, which we followed for a mile or so back in Long Eaton.

Then we waved breathless farewells to the Striders, and found ourselves at the crossroads. To the right was Sean's house. To the left was the Trent, and the path back to The University of Nottingham (About which D.H. Lawrence memorably wrote: "In Nottingham, that dismal town / where I went to school and college, / they've built a new university / for a new dispensation of knowledge"; note the pun on dispensation, as UoN was funded by Boot's the chemist). Sean had left his car there.

At the crossroads I was on my knees, trying really hard not to throw up after a mere twelve miles. It's all gone, you see, all that fitness has dissipated. Sean gave me half a cereal bar. The problem was that I'd persuaded him, when he'd been trying not to throw up ten minutes earlier, that it's really important to finish the run you'd planned, because if you don't you take a mental defeat. So we took the road less travelled, to the Trent and along its glorious path to the University, probably nineteen miles in all.

My thanks to the Striders, and to Sean as ever. Without them I wouldn't have made the distance, and would have felt really guilty when we opened that bottle of wine for lunch.

J

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence
Two roads diverged in a wood
And I took the one less travelled by
And that has made all the difference.

When your legs are taken from under you

2007-12-30T21:49:00.000Z

I wrote too hastily in my last post. I said that I had run the Milan marathon at the end of one of the more stressful weeks of my life. I had not foreseen the subsequent week. Nor the week after that. And don't ask me about Christmas. On the night of the Milan marathon, and in the three weeks that followed it, my life fell apart. Or some major part of it.

I was going to write a post about winning the Cambridge and Coleridge Athletics Club marathon trophy for my Berlin performance. You can see it sitting on my mantlepiece in the accompanying photograph. It's next to the horse brass for a stage in the Hereward Relay (a crazy and wonderful off-road four-stage relay from Peterborough to Ely in late November. I ran it with a cold). You can also see there a very attractive plaque - for third (male) team in the Great Eastern Run (the Peterborough half marathon). I've never won any silverware before, ever, so the cup is quite pleasing. When I start running again, it will probably motivate me.

But I'm not going to write that post. Nor the post about struggling runs, trying to eke out a few miles through the gloom. Nor a trite post about convalescence, the recuperative powers of running, and the consolations of hope. I was tempted to write a sequel to "Recovery Runs" (see here) in which I reflected on how putting one foot before the other pulls you through. Though I should mention, not really by way of digression, Sean's big news, his imminent husbandhood and fatherhood, which can be appreciated in Brad Hickey's wonderful and mouthwatering blog:
Wine Odyssey (no, I insist, go and look at it).

But nor am I going to write a post about my life falling apart. Instead I am going to reflect on a comment a friend sent me in an email -- and it's been good to have such committed friends who are rallying round and offering recuperation and hope. As I look to a new future, one that had been entirely uncontemplated on 1 December, I think of these words: "Don't let it get in the way of the blog."

It has got in the way of the blog, obviously, and I apologise for the silence. I will now return to form, though as a slower runner, and will be more diligent in writing the blog. The blog has a life of its own, and is the space where narrative clashes with judgement, perspective and morality. Reader, please don't give up on it.

J

Basta Problemi

2007-12-04T17:34:00.000Z

As Sean and I stood at the start line of the 2007 Milan marathon, I knew that the preparations were not auspicious. I had a cold, my first of the year, which left me short of air. My legs were still a bit ponderous from Berlin, nine weeks earlier. In between I'd heard that my cholesterol levels had increased significantly over the past few years. Training had been short, sweet and slow. I was wearing contact lenses, only a few days old, and I'd not run a marathon in them before. I had intended to bring my usual shoes and my new ones, but had forgotten my usual ones, so I only had my new ones, not only new but a brand new model (Saucony Paramounts), and I hadn't run more than eight miles in them. And I'd just lived one of the most stressful weeks of my life. I hadn't slept properly in longer than I could remember (literally: it does terrible things to my memory). I stood there, tired, sore, technically-challenged and emotionally beaten to a pulp.

But this was a revenge match. Milan had thrashed us three years earlier in 04 (see Veni, vidi, serpsi), when I ran it injured (tear in calf) and Sean ran it hung over, neither of use having put on our shoes over the preceding six weeks. Today we were seeking revenge -- by enjoying a good run. As the name of the sex shop 200 metres from the finish proclaimed, "basta problemi".

At least I had remembered one pair of shoes. We were on the bus from the Stansted airport car park to the terminal, with Sean showing me how minimalist a packer he is and how much space there was in his bag, when he realised that this was in part because all of his running kit was still in the car. Once that was fixed we made it to the terminal and suffered the best that British airport procedures have to offer. The upside was that we saw Giulio and Giacomo, two fellow-runners from the Cambridge and Coleridge Athletics club. The three of us (G, G and Me; Sean is from Long Eaton) constituted in fact the team that had come third in the Great East Run, despite our advancing years. Giulio alas had taken an injury ten days earlier, so was coming along to watch. Giacomo's a whippet and was going to do great things.

Why was I doing this, so soon after Berlin? For pleasure, of course. And because I'm not one to pass by a bargain. I received an email from the race organisers stating that entry was a mere five euros to all runners who had run in former Milan marathons. I checked the cost of the flights: two pence for a return flight, plus tax (rather a lot more than the flight itself, of course). So I signed us up. Only later did I realise that I had speed-read the Italian, and the discount was meant only for those who had run all former Milan marathons. So a double-bargain, in a sense. All that was left was for us to book into a hotel -- the Hotel Milton Milano, no less (in real life I'm writing a book about the C17th poet) -- and we were ready.

The expo, where we picked up our race numbers, was near the Duomo: you see it here, with the upper two-thirds cleaned, the bottom third still under boards. It was Italian-style chaos: expos are all about queues, and Italians have a love-hate relationship with queues. As soon as we made it within the tent it was a free for all. After the chaos we started talking to a lean-looking man at the Saucony stall. For some reason Sean asked him what his PB was -- more about PBs later -- and he said that the marathon was not his distance. He ran shorter distances. "My name is Genny di Napoli," he said, "I was twice world champion at 3000 metres." We shook his hand. Sean asked for his autograph. He agreed and signed his autograph, then wrote down his times. We thought it was a bit pompous at first. Then, over lunch we read them.
1500: 3'32"78
Mile: 3'51"
2000 m: 4'55"00
3000 m: 7'39"
He was twice world champion at 3000 metres.
Bloody hell. Three k in 7:39??? Sean saw him at the finish, but he wouldn't say his time, and I can't find him in the official results.

Otherwise it was a perfectly normal expo. Except that there was a very comely woman standing on a podium wearing skimpy knickers and bra, being painted as if she were wearing a running kit. I just didn't get that. I didn't get it at all.

We ate some good food (at Peck, the wonderful delicatessen and restaurant in the city centre), we ate some less good food. I didn't sleep. I lay awake in a broad white bed. We hung out with Sean's brother Karl, and his girlfriend Nora. We ate more. My eyelids turned into styrofoam. Shellfish. The night before, we checked out the start and finish, near the castle. Sean and I practised on the podium (see photo). Just in case.

On the Sunday morning itself we met over breakfast. The hotel breakfast was great, provided you persuaded the waiter to make you a cappucino, instead of accepting the diffidently labeled "american coffee" at the buffet table. I'd had a long breakfast there on the Saturday: from about 7:00 to about 10:00, when Sean woke up. I read my novel, sitting facing a nordic-looking woman who was also reading. We did that read-look up-smile-read thing. Then at one point I looked up and she had her finger in her nose. What's more, she was looking at me with terror. I could see what she was about to do, she knew what she was about to do, she knew that she was going to be unable to stop herself, and, worse, she knew that I was going to see it, and that there was nothing she could do to prevent this, and this spawned terror in her eyes ... she removed her finger from her nostril and slipped it into her mouth ...

Anyway, back to Sunday. Breakfasted, we left the hotel. What was playing on the stereo? Bronski Beat, singing "(Tell me) Why?". We got into a taxi. What was playing on the stereo? Frank Sinatra, "My Way". It was a cool and misty morning.

After a long discussion of what to wear - Sean and I could bore for Britain on this - we opted to leave the baselayer, and wear vest and gloves. Sean was uncertain, but I was adamant, and I was right. Then we both peed about 15 times as we walked to the start. Then we surreptitiously peed in our empty bottles (hidden by the rubbish bags you wear until just before the start, to stop the cold). We peed copiously. We both stopped to pee in the race. That hasn't happened me in years. Could it have been the cappucino?

Now, as I said, this was a revenge match. We were going to get our own back on Milan. But there was a sub-plot. I ran 2:54:36 in Berlin, effortlessly crushing Sean's PB of 2:56:something. And Sean is very competitive. Very competitive, and he's actually a much better runner than me (he's much more determined, in his own way; he pushes himself harder, and runs more easily). And his pride was hurt. So while I was out there to beat Milan, Sean was out there to beat me, retrospectively. And the conditions were perfect. Cool. No wind. A pancake-flat course. Off went the start gun.

I took it easy. I put one foot in front of the other (I'm getting good at doing that). There's no scenery worth looking at in Milan -- though the loop around the Duomo was great -- so I emptied my mind and took it easy. The splits were fine, when I bothered to pay any attention to them.

More than ever before, I felt the rewards and comforts of support. Giulio called out to me from three different spots on the course, and Karl and Nora too. I felt the glow of the universe in its connected sort of way. Milan 04 was being exorcised. I went through the half in just under 1:29, which felt pleasantly pedestrian. Funny, that wasn't that much slower than Berlin. The only sad moment of the race was passing Giacomo a little after half way: he'd badly injured his hip and was walking by the side of the road. My heart went out to him. He's a great runner, and has had a string of bad luck.

After about 30 k I lost my zen. I allowed to enter into my mind all the stresses of the previous few days. My pace went up from about 4:12 a kilometre to an even 4:00. Even before that, however, I was amazed at the way I was passing people (on average more than one every hundred metres after the first 10k, the stats say). These were people who were until recently in front of me, ergo they must have been good runners. But they went out too fast. A few elite women limping by the side of the road, dozens of men with cramp, dozens and dozens of those who were simply slowing. One person passed me. It was as if they had not respected the distance.

I hit the final kilometre, as far as I could tell from my hazy memory of the preceding evening. There were a few too many cobbles for my liking. I passed Basta Problemi. I kept on running. At this point I was cramping, but fleet of foot -- the finish video shows a middle-aged man pumping his arms and cruising effortlessly under the arch. The clock said a little over 2:56. My chip time was 2:55:58. I came 229th. Now where did that come from?

What would have happened if I had made an effort? I was only 82 seconds behind my Berlin PB. Could I have broken it? One answer to that question is: undoubtedly. But that would be to miss the point. This was not about times, but about running. I wasn't in the right place for a hard run. My legs would have been fine, but I was not emotionally prepared. One has to save these things for when they matter. It would not have been the right thing to do. I ran a sensible race, and happened to end up with a silly time. Silly in a good way. Unanticipated. There's a lesson I learned here, though. Skip to the next paragraph if you're not a runner. I said at the end of Berlin that I didn't think I could necessarily go any faster. But after running sub-2:56 without focussing on time, without the mental preparation necessary to pass through the darkness, I now know that I have it within me to beat that Berlin time. I may not do it immediately, but it can happen. Taking it easy can make you mentally stronger.

I met Sean. He wasn't saying anything, but he was clearly confident that he'd broken my PB. Eventually the computer confirmed: 2:54:33. Three seconds. Fair enough. Congratulations to Sean: I'm proud of him. That's him with the smile, in the picture, over lunch doing our gay marathoning couple routine in our finish shirts.

The finish area was hysterical. The first race 700 numbers were assigned according to predicted time. And bags were put into half a dozen storage bays according to number. i.e. everyone predicted under 3 hours had their bags in the same place. It was chaos. a hundred sweaty, lean and chilled men climbed over each other to collect their bags with tracksuits and washing stuff. Why not spread their bags out? Numbers, numbers!

The massage tent was better. There were five massage tables. Yes five, for a race of 5-6,000. I hear that there was another ten with perhaps another five tables. Nonetheless I was dealt with almost immediately, and received a copiously-oiled leg massage from four twenty-year old Italian girls. There were no cameras. Then the showers. The shower rooms were equally small, but they were crammed with lean, naked, tanned bodies, few of them showing any inhibitions with respect to sight or touch, all squeezing under the heads to get wet and lather up. It was Dante-esque. I hardly know how to explain it to my American friends. I've been in the showers after rugby matches before, but there was something much more ... naked about this.

We all met up. Then lunch. Bizarrely we couldn't find a nice restaurant that was open, so we found ourselves lunching at the same faintly dire restaurant that we ate at when we arrived in 04. We ate pasta. We had defeated Milan, but we ended in the same place we started. We found our bags in the soaring arches of the central station. They don't build ceilings so pointlessly high these days. Then the motorway, then more Italian-style queues at the airport, then the flight home. I read Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle on the plane, and thought about the joys of being part of the universe, and the pain that we sometimes have to go through to get there.

J

Recovery Runs

2007-11-11T21:27:00.000Z

Last Thursday, in Nottinghamshire, I went for an extraordinary run. It was a little short of ten miles, late afternoon, into a cold north wind. I was running with my friend Sean (who has appeared often in the pixels of this blog). We followed a canal for some miles, then turned into farmlands. As we followed the hedges it grew so dark that we could barely see where we were placing our feet, especially with the cold wind drawing tears from our eyes. What was extraordinary was the fact that we were doing it. A few hours earlier Sean had delivered the eulogy at his mum's funeral.

Running demands that you observe patterns in the crazy demands of everyday work. It also gives you a space to make, acknowledge, and filter through the blood, the singular moments that change you. Being able to live through these things, to trust instinct on where to place one's feet in the unsure-footing of the dark, by steadily and surely pacing through fields, is a consolation and a potent resource. The run, anything but a training run, made me reflect on what privilege is found not only in friendship but in being able to run.

(Note: in training parlance, a recovery run is a short run at a very easy pace usually performed the day after a hard training session. The theory is that the run will speed recovery to muscle tissue by stimulating circulation, clean out accumulated waste products and accelerate the realignment of fibres, or at least diminish soreness. Recovery runs should not be ten miles long.)

J

Addendum (ii)

2007-10-30T14:06:00.000Z

I'll take it, seconds and all. No sooner had I posted my reflections on the last two digits of a race time, than I discovered that having lost the dash against the clock, the race against the competition had been more successful. Apparently my team came third overall in the Great Eastern Run. The fastest three men from each club qualify, and their overall time is measured against other clubs and teams. Notwithstanding the fact that all three of us were vets (40+), we came in third position. There's a plaque waiting for me somewhere. (Incidentally there's a women's competition as well as a men's, and our women also came third.) Which makes those 00 seconds easier to appreciate. I believe this is the first time I have ever been placed in a race. Even though 41 (the age, not the seconds) is whistling over the horizon. There's a lesson here (and not that knackered legs will never take you anywhere): you can't always see what you're racing against.

J

What a difference a second makes

2007-10-25T15:16:00.000Z

1:23:00. Why does that sound slower than 1:22:59? More than a second slower, that is? It's the £5.99 mentality, isn't it? Though I'm sure a million schoolchildren have discussed how £5.99 sounds more than £6.00 to them, really, except when they think about it, and that few runners have pointed out the irrational foundations of runners' targets. When was the last time you heard anyone say that they were targeting 3:00 for a marathon (except, perhaps, as a figure of speech), or 3:15 and so on? Never. It's always 2:59:59 or sub-3. When was the last time you heard someone target 3:00:01? Surely not. The :01 and :00, even the :07 (I know someone who ran 3:00:07 and stayed there for some years) are as welcome as a blister, a slippery shoelace, a pile of dog deposit. The :59 is a close getaway. :31 - :49 is "some change". But :00 to :09 is unforgiving.

It's not about the watch

2007-10-14T17:20:00.000Z

Peterborough. Again. So named because the "Slough of Despond" had already been taken. Ah, but that was an allegory, you'll say: well, so is Peterborough. Imagine the place where you queue for your passport, fretting that you've failed one of the 146 numbered requirements for the photograph; Peterborough is the town that surrounds such a place. It's what Kafka would have encountered if he'd have left the castle or the courtroom and decided to look for an expresso.

Still, it's a fine pace for a race, because there's no chance you'll want to slow down to look at anything interesting. Also because the good citizens want you to have a good time -- they really do -- and they put on an excellent race. The said race was the Great Eastern Run, a half marathon, where I scored a still-standing PB of 1:24:39 last year. There was plenty of parking. There were enough toilets (read that again). The baggage lorry was straightforward. Finding the start line was straightforward. Getting into the start pens was a little tricky. My ankle was already gushing blood before I started. But once there it wasn't too crowded, nor full of obese civil servants on their first race. It was really very easy.

Did I mention that my watch wasn't working? Completely dead. I have used it most days this week, but this morning it just wouldn't start up. No watch again. As dedicated readers will know, this is the third time my watch has died, though the first occasion on which I wasn't running a marathon. And on both previous occasions, I'd set new PBs, going under three hours in NYC and Berlin. No pressure then. Just run it according to how you feel. Which was, of course, not very good, since I had reduced myself to near-retching at a tempo run with the club on Thursday (why I don't know, as I was setting the pace from the front), and then had spent Friday limping because of a stabbing pain in my left upper inside thigh that left me staring with bloodshot eyes even after the ibuprofen and contemplating amputation.

It all went just fine. I had no conversations. There was a little bit of racing. At 7.5 miles I thought about giving up but decided to hold on because I needed to get home, and an ambulance was going to take a long time. Peterborough is flat. Everyone who'd done it before -- including myself -- was telling neophytes that at the start. Yet miles 5 through 10 seemed pretty constantly uphill to me this time. Nonetheless, it was very straight. And quite green. Wide verges, rather than parks, but just fine. There's a really very annoying bit when you see the cathedral at about 10 miles, and it seems terribly close. After all, when you see the Brandenburg gate or the duomo at Milan or Buckingham Palace you know everything is going to end soon. Yet there's another three miles of desperation to go. My true moment of darkness was when I began to push things after ten miles, and my heart race passed into the heart-rate zone known in technical circles as the time-and-space-and-numbers-no-longer-make-sense zone; in a frenzied delusion I began my final surge at about 12 miles, and was near-catatonic when I saw the 13-mile marker. Still, I held on and managed a real sprint for the last few metres. And then it was all over. A goody bag with -- wait for it -- a real bag that you can use, a towel, a t-shirt, a key fob, and a medal??? And a huge table of organic bananas. After my new-born children I honestly think that a table of organic bananas is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. I ate a bunch, spoke to some runners from the club, who'd put in excellent, PB times, and then drove home.

My time? I don't know. No watch, you see. The clock above the gantry said 1:23 plus a handful of seconds as I passed under, but I don't know how many seconds, or at what point I crossed the start line. Small change either side of 83 minutes. Which is fair compensation for having to go to Peterborough. And I would recommend to anyone that the next time they renew their passport in person they time their visit to coincide with the Great Eastern Run.

So, new PB of unspecified proportions. I would ask Garmin to sponsor me, and supply me a new watch. But recent form suggests that racing with watches only slows you down. We need to run with the ashen resources of the heart, and with visions of mounds of bananas.

J

A correction, mexican politics, and stolen elections

2007-10-07T13:32:00.001Z

One of my competitors last weekend was a Mexican politician. Fifty-five year old Roberto Madrazo came third in the presidential election last year, and ran 2:40 last week, coming in 146th. Which was an impressive improvement on his previous (London) PB of 3:43. According to yesterday's Independent it was the Mexican newspaper Reforma that dug deeper into the statistics. Reforma had its gripes: in 1988 Madrazo's party "won" an election when the computerised voting system went down, and a recent investigation into the man himself found an impressive portfolio of real estate.

Madrazo's splits were a little erratic. He did the first 20k in 1:42:42. (I ran them in 1:23:08). The computer records then went silent, and no 25 or 30 splits were recorded. Nor does there seem to be any photographic or video evidence of those painful miles. And then he reemerged somewhere before the 35 mat, before finishing at 2:40. Which means he ran the last 22k in 58 minutes. Which would be world record ... Even Gebreselassie didn't manage to run his second half that fast.

A glance at the map suggests an alternative explanation. The course loops around so that 20k and 35k aren't so far apart. It looks like Mr Madrazo took a short detour. Perhaps he even stopped for an expresso on Potsdamer Strasse. Then he bypassed a couple of thousand runners for a glorious finish. I suppose it looked like he was struggling with the wall, as he finished with the six-minute miling guys (and a very few gals) at an eight-minute pace.

It seems the race managers have been persuaded: while Madrazo's name still appears with the aforementioned time on the race website, his splits and finishers certificate have disappeared, and his place isn't recorded. My thanks to Reforma: I have moved up a place and now came 630th. But I do look forward to seeing whether George Bush will try to improve on his marathon PB of 3:40.

Joad

The Dog Ate my Watch

2007-10-01T12:46:00.000Z

This is Haile at the Berlin Marathon 30 September 2007. He won. He won in 2:04:26, shaving 29 seconds off Paul Tergat's world record for 42.195 k. I was there. I didn't see him though.

I was running with Sean again. "With" being an overstatement: we seldom stay together for long, usually because he hares off in front of me after the long pre-race negotiation of a race plan that involves a few miles together. We were also with Ian, a friend of Sean's from Long Eaton, who was allegedly starting in the pen behind us. We'd all suffered at London earlier this year. Today looked more promising. There'd be no exuses. Sean and I made it to our start pen about 5 mins before the starting gun. Just long enough to hear the strains of Chariots of Fire. Why, if endurance runners are so inured to pain, can you always rely on them to tear up when Vangelis plays those plaintive opening chords? The gun went off, Gebrselassie went off like a rocket, and the rest of us shuffled towards the start with the peoples of the world in front of us.

It really was very crowded on the Strasse des 17 Juni. as we elbowed our way around the Siegessaule. Those first few kilometers seemed to pass very slowly. The miles even slower. It's tricky running in Real Europe: you don't know whether to go native and run it in kilometers, or to stick with the remnants of the imperial system and count the miles. Depending on what time you're aiming for the maths can be easier with either. I went for setting my watch to clock the miles and having a race plan in my head for the kilometers. Of course the kilometers splits would be indicated by clocks around the course. This becomes important later ...

How was the preparation? Perhaps not clockwork. As I've said earlier, I'd worried that I'd simply not put enough miles under my shoelaces. But then the speedwork had been great. I'd focussed on track sessions rather than the longer road intervals, and the race times (see below) had been promising. I thought things were really coming together just before the flight, when I weighed myself in at 157 pounds after lunch. 157 is good: not much excess baggage there. It may only have been a precursor to weighing the luggage (naked after lunch and a shower?), but one gets sucked into reading the runes. Especially after reading an article about how tall people can't be great endurance runners.

After that first 5k I settled into a steady pace. The course was still really crowded for the first hour, but it became possible to keep a constant leg turnover and head in a straight line. And this part of the course was quite pleasant, passing along the north side the Bundeskanzleramt and the Reichstag in a great big loop that would swing us clockwise around the city. Things got duller after that, passing through Fredrichshain and Kreuzberg. Even the course map couldn't find anything remotely interesting to identify on that 7k stretch. It has to be said that Berlin isn't the most attractive city in the world. But it's perhaps not the place of a Brit to say that. I'd been reading Max Sebald's On the Natural History of Destruction on the plane as part of my race preparation, to get me in the right mindset.

Then into the depths of suburbia in Shoneberg. This was near where we were staying, with the family of a friend of Sean's. They were very splendid, gave us a great breakfast with acres of cereals, fruit, yoghurts, meat and cheese. And on Sunday afternoon we were fed Kaffee und Kuchen. But I'm getting ahead of myself. The crowd unexpectedly picked up in Shoneberg. We passed a samba band. And, outside a church, a line of girls dressed all in white, with blue ribbons. They were a little like the three groups of cheerleaders we passed on the route, but not quite. They weren't moving at all for a start. I raked my brains for bits of Luther that might help me, but couldn't find any.

The bands in Berlin are great: mainly jazz, but plenty of drumming and some grungy rock. I was deeply grateful to them: it's hard playing to a transient audience. I passed a guy wearing a vest with a Welsh dragon design. "Bore da i chi," I called out. He grunted. He didn't seem to be enjoying himself enough. I passed a million Danish shirts, but I'd forgotten every word of Danish small-talk I once knew.

So everything was going well. The 5k splits were looking fine, perhaps a little slow, but not too bad. The weather conditions were perfect: cool, and only a little wind now and again. The half went through in a little shy of 1:28, I thought. I just had to speed up a little and hold on, and I wasn't feeling too bad. But, I consoled myself, 3 hours would be just fine, wouldn't it, if it came to that? Or at least a new PB. Only another ... how long to go?

I looked at my watch. It didn't seem to have a signal. This is not just any watch, of course, this is my beloved Garmin Forerunner 305, the GPS training device that accompanies me along the beaches of North Carolina, over the mountains of Virginia, and through the bitter fens of East Anglia, the same watch that ran out of power at the start of the New York Marathon. No signal. Then it started flashing, flickering between its various screens, blinking random numbers at me. My training partner was dead. After ten minutes I tried turning it off. It wouldn't turn off.

I blame Mercury. Possessed by a spirit of madness L and I had acquired a dog three weeks earlier. On the eve of the Cardiff 10k we'd found a four-month old German Shorthaired Pointer. Perhaps it was the good spirits associated with being a dog owner that had given me the fillip during the 10k. However, it also has drawbacks. Like having to stay up with him until he falls asleep. And the fact that if you leave the house for 15 minutes he'll get your Garmin down from the kitchen counter and chew it. Only now, doing an unknown pace around the streets of Berlin, did I realise that the hole in the back of the watch that I thought had been caused by the rough handling of my bag on the plane, had in fact been caused by puppy teeth. You can see him on the right. The Jacques Brel boxed set behind him has a song entitled 'Les Filles et les Chiens'. Regard it with caution.

So where was I? 16 miles or 18? Was that 27 k I'd just passed? My heart sank when I saw the 25 k marker approaching. When was I going to hit the danger zone (18-22 miles: and what was that in k)? There was only one remedy left. Chin up, and run it with the heart. I tried again, and this time the watch went off. Focussing on my cadence I headed into Charlottenberg. The crowds were getting even better, and the course built a sense of expectation ... we were heading back into the city centre, and around Potsdamer Plaz the air grew electric. Passing people was no longer a matter of gliding past those who'd started too far forward, or went off to fast. These were runners struggling for times. They didn't want to be passed. These were proud people. At 37 k the end was in their mind's eye. On Potsdamer Strasse I was already thinking about a massage and a shower.

And it was beginning to hurt. My right calf began to show the fore-signs of cramp. My breathing grew tense. We hit a couple of right angle turns and the acceleration was getting harder. At 40 k I knew I was on for a real time. I did the math. Keep at about a four-minute-kilometre pace and I might make 2:55. No I wouldn't, I'd ... I can't do math when my heart rate's at 200+ the 41st kilometre was surely the slowest. I think that was the wall. My legs were heavy, my pace drifted down, and focussing on my cadence didn't seem to make any difference. Then came the dawn. We turned into Unter den Linden, and ahead, less than 1,000 metres away, was the Brandenburg Gate.

The body is in many ways its own master. After 40 kilometres it is really not interested in anything the mind may have to say. Sometimes it falls back, and sometimes it purrs forward, draining the tank. It went for draining the tank, pushing past another bunch of runners, all of us magnetised by the sight of the gate. 250 metres from the finish line one runner decided to stop me from passing him by shoving sideways into me as I did so, pressing me into the barrier ... I caught the kerb, almost toppled over the barrier, and only just kept my balance with my toes. No matter. I saw the finish and that was where I went in the mental dusk that is the end of a marathon. I'm not sure what that 100 metres between the Gate and the finish line were like. I think I was looking at the clock over the finish line. It was blinking towards 2:56. I was under the impression that I had crossed the start line about 90 seconds after the gun. I finished. The thought in my mind was, of course, that 2:55 had been sealed. But of course I did not know, because the dog ate my watch.

I felt quite tired at that point. The legs seemed to be just about able to move forward, but the rest was nauseous. It took as much willpower as I had to head towards the finish area, despite the showers and masseuses. The medal was just fine, with a nice German-flag ribbon. I smiled for the photographers.

One of the good things about being fairly quick is that you don't have to wait for the massage. It was very exciting to see the masseuse holding a bottle of arnica massage oil. I threw myself down on the bed and asked, "sprechen sie English?" She smiled and shook her head. "Italiano?" Blank look. "Francais?" She looked positively irritated at that point. I smiled and shrugged, figuring that it wasn't essential to our relationship.

Next the showers. They were just great. The start had seemed somewhat chaotic. The usual problem with slower runners in front of faster runners; and new problems, such as the fact that the signs to the start disappeared half way there, hence the fact that Sean and I were almost late. This wasn't what one expected from German hosts. Surely it would run with the oiled precision of an Audi six series. Actually it didn't, but it was fabulous at the end, because the finish area was the same as the start area, so you knew where everything was, and there wasn't the London problem of your bags being transported 20 miles to some place that you really can't be bothered to walk to find ... the organisation was relaxed and admirably effective. And there was a nice big piece of grass, where we'd vaselined up beforehand (fortunately the nice security guard at Stansted decided not to confiscate my vaseline when I failed to put it in a zip-loc bag, thus causing all the sirens to go off at security). And it had been great before the start to see all the peoples of the world dropping their inhibitions and happy to pee into the hedges in the big piece of grass, regardless of nationality, gender or probable speed.

The communal showers were big tents with beds at one end and hot water piping from the ceiling at the other. There was something faintly world war oneish about standing in the steam as emaciated men soaped themselves. Outside again: was that beer that the other finishers were drinking? Sure enough, I found the beer stall. I'd tried to mix my recovery drink with the water bottle I'd been given at the finish, unaware that it was carbonated. A good deal ended up over my tracksuit, so I thought I'd try a beer. Seldom has beer tasted so good. Clutching a beer I wandered back to the massage area. Now it was filling up. It was an open space (luckily no rain ...) with six rows of metal beds, about fifteen in a row. That's a lot of beds. On each lay one prone figure, and at the head of most were hunched one or two forlorn and physically drained figures, waiting for relief. It was strangely quiet. I though I'd walked into a hospital behind the trenches.

I couldn't find Sean or Ian there, so I headed off to the Reichstag where we we had agreed to meet. By this point all the grey had drained from the world, and everything was rainbow coloured. The day had lost all of its sharp edges and all of its granularity. All of the pain had gone. It was just me and my beer and my two-forty-or-fifty-something. I checked my phone messages, but no one had told me what the something was. So I took a self-portrait in front of the Reichstag.

Obviously my arms aren't long enough. Sean and Ian were on the steps of the Reichstag. If you look carefully you can see them on the left-hand side, at the top of the stairs, Ian in fluorescent, and Sean in his new grey Sugoi water-resistant running jacket with reflective piping. Ian had taken nine minutes off his personal best, and gone under three hours. That's a huge shift. It may be the time it takes to make a good coffee, but in runners' terms that puts you in a different league. Does it get better than that? Does it get better than breaking (note the verb) three hours and slashing nine minutes off your Personal Best? Actually, it's only racing, and of course there are many things that are better than that, but it's not bad fare for a Sunday morning. Sean had - despite a distinctly self-indulgent summer in the south of France, his pursuit of Michelin stars, and despite his growing resemblance to Michelin Man - run another sub-3, a few second ahead of Ian. You'd think they would have had a sprint finish in the shadow of the Gate (metaphorical: the sky was overcast), but in fact they hadn't seen each other during the race, though they finished five seconds apart, because Ian had started a minute ahead. Sean was magnanimous about the breaking of his PB, and I could see in his eye an iron resolve to return the favour at his next race (Milan), at least until we made it to the bar.

So that night we headed back to Berlin Shonefeld airport, they to Nottingham and I to Stansted, where Mercury was waiting for me. He'd thrown up in the back of the car.

The following day I got the results. 2:54.36. Fifty minutes and ten seconds behind Haile (he's now 2-1 up in our head-to-head series, thanks to his failure to finish in London). Four minutes off PB. 631st finisher, 137 in age group (forty-something males). The 5k splits verged on the metronomic. Running eight 5ks and / or four 10ks is the future. It's now eight weeks to Milan. I was suckered into entering the Milan marathon when the entrance fee was dropped to €5 for previous competitors, and I found a £1.98 return flight. That was pretty foolish. Maybe I'll just treat it as tourism. I don't know where to go now, because I don't think I can do it much faster.

Joad

sub elite

2007-09-16T18:32:00.001Z

I dislike the nomenclature "weekend warrior", but I have to confess that us middle-age almost-fast runners with thinning hair and Swedish cars do have a competitive streak in us. I was at the Cardiff 10k this weekend, feeling sprightly, and almost gleeful at the thought of the prizes for the first ten places, plus one each for age groups. It's the fourth time I've run this race (the first was only my second race), and I've never made a good time, mainly because I can't run 10ks. I run them at the same speed as half marathons. But I was feeling quite up, and strangely sleepy before this outing, which is usually a good sign. Maybe I could even get placed. Then the announcer read out the names of the elite runners who were participating. There were twenty four of them. This is my home town. You can't go and flood it with ringers. No prizes then, but the weather was fine, mild without being warm or sunny, and the air clear.

I'd sliced almost twenty seconds off my 5k PB at Haverhill on the preceding Thursday, coming in 8th at 18:06. That felt pretty good. And I'd put in some miles on Friday morning. These races aren't targeted for good times. They're just stepping stones and speed workouts and fun events on the road to Berlin. The Berlin marathon is now only a fortnight away, and that's the target. Not that I've got sufficient miles in ...

They changed the course at Cardiff this year. Instead of a hairpin turn followed by a couple of loops around the museum block before heading into the park, the race started in Sofia Gardens -- the castle grounds -- and headed towards Llandaff, before turning into cathedral road -- and even this looked good at this speed -- looping around the castle and back into the grounds. The various contiguous parks around the castle, and the river banks that curve through them, are a wonderful resource, that we don't always appreciate. I appreciated every step as, at 6k, I checked my watch and realised that I was going to break my target of 37:59 even if my pace dropped off to a relatively easy four-minute-kilometres. Instead they kept rolling in at around 3:40, and I gained enough confidence to pass some pretty decent runners. The clouds were rolling back, and it was proving to be a glorious day.

I came in at 36:42, 58th place, shearing 100 seconds off my PB. I enjoyed every minute. Even though I didn't win a prize. But by now I've learned something great about racing. Running knowing that you're always going to lose, and running hard anyway, is a statement of character. It's a perverse and valuable conception of "competition".

So, despite the low mileage, the speed is looking good, and maybe Berlin will be ok.

JR

Running and all sorts of animals

2007-08-20T21:26:00.001Z

I've had some strange encounters running with, to, by and from animals during the past four years. But none as strange as last Saturday's.

I've almost stepped on a snake in Princeton, and saw it jump from me as precipitously as I jumped from it. I've bounded over turtles. I've run alongside dolphins as they've leaped from the waves, just ten metres from my shoulder, on the coast of North Carolina, running on the beach at dawn. I've run into a vulture (not a buzzard, mind, a real hook-beaked, arch-winged, fleshy and bulbous vulture) eating roadkill in Virginia: I had to run at it shouting before it finally conceded lazily to flap its wings and clear the road.

One Sunday in Virginia a dog started to follow me. I was about 8 miles into a 20-mile run over mountains. I tried to persuade her to leave, but she wouldn't; and in any case I couldn't see where she had come from. I reasoned that she must know what she was doing. 12 miles later she was visibly exhausted and still following me. She flopped onto the floor when we got home. My kids ran into the house and she barked protectively, defending her new master. I checked her name tag. It read "Sunday". It was a Sunday. It's providence -- I thought -- I've been given a dog. What on earth am I going to do with a dog, and how am I going to get her back to England? There was also a phone number on the tag too, so I called it. Sure they were in, and they were wondering where she was, and they gave me their address. I opened the back of the truck and Sunday leaped right in; she knew how to do this. I started driving into the hills. And then I thought: what if Sunday's owners are a couple of careless, or, worse, callous and cruel Virginian rednecks who don't care if their dog wanders off? What if Sunday chose me? Will I turn the car around and drive away? They seemed ok, though, so I left Sunday with them. Weird, perhaps, a couple of young Jewish kids in a redneck neighborhood.

I was once attacked by an overprotective goose: he flew at me and hammered me in the sternum with his beak. Onlooking hikers panicked and turned away.

Then there was the morning I was chased by a buffalo. It was a beautiful misty morning on a farm in Virginia. It was about six, and I was running gently past a field with bison. The tranquility was disturbed a little by the emergence through the mist of a great bull, towering above me. He began to get really jumpy as I passed. Now these beasts are behind an electrified fence (at least, I thought it was electrified), but the fence is really quite flimsy, and the cable holding the charge quite narrow. Then the bull starts to flex and bound. The animals around him get really jumpy too, and start to jog. That's an awful lot of muscle on the move (and it's doing no good to the meat, either). I realise that this is a bad idea and turn off onto a different path. I descend a short, steep hill, and there emerges in front of me ... a baby bison. This one, however, is not in the adjacent field but on the path. It's slipped under the fence. I hesitate. The bison starts the panic, spinning around. I think about turning back. Then its mother shows up at the fence. I turn around and ascend the hill. The baby starts to run at the fence, and can't find a place to ease under, so it comes towards me; the mother panics. The mother's friends and relations panic. They all start to run alongside me, on the other side of another flimsy fence.

I put in a good six-minute mile up that hill.

Once I ran past a hedge in Cambridgeshire and was suddenly and overwhelmingly surrounded by a cloud of yellow butterflies that spawned from its leaves, thousands of them, swarming and dancing in and out of the hedge and all around me for a quarter of a mile.

A grey heron once accompanied me for miles, taking off from the path, gliding in that inimitable languid style (there's a great Derek Walcott poem about that), and landing ahead of me on the path, only to do the whole sequence again. A couple of weeks ago I saw a miniature donkey trying to mount a pony. And I've seen many other kids of animal and insects.

But Saturday was decidedly strange. I was going a gentle seven-mile run accompanied by my youngest, E, on his bike, from our house, through Fen Ditton, over Baits Bite Lock, and back along the towpath. We were crossing Midsummer Common when I saw, not far from the path, a half-naked obese couple having sex in the grass. He was staring into her eyes, while her legs reached from the soil like the rainforest's fallen and rotten trunks. A prim woman on the path was on the phone with the police. What was wrong with them? Well I don't know: they were obese, and they were having afternoon sex on midsummer common.

Oh the things you see that might pass you by if you did not run.

reflective silver balls in Charlottesville VA

2007-08-14T23:54:00.000Z

Jay Dicharry can make you feel inadequate, or at least very inefficient. You have no idea of this when he sticks little silver balls to your joints - knees, hips, ankles - and tapes over the reflective patches on your shoes. He then makes you run on a treadmill: no treadmill like you've seen before, but a grand platform with a moving section split into three parts in the centre, with a great arch overhead and eleven cameras positioned around the room. How fast do you want it? asks the techie whose hands move over keyboard and mouse.

This biomechanical test happens in Charlottesville, Virginia, where I happen to be killing time. The Speed Clinic is not a bad place to kill time. Even if there is a faint undertone of mockery. I guess they don't mock the elite who pass through their doors seeking a 3D analysis that can only be obtained in a handful of research labs, but the majority of their customers must be the aging and the hapless, the desperate-to-improve whose day jobs won't let them, or the well-heeled curious. I'd recommend it to anyone.

The treadmill measures pressure, the cameras measure the movement of the balls. Next thing you know the computer is spilling out graphs showing the forward, lateral and rotational movement of each joint. Then Jay is telling you that the 5 degree reverse mobility in your right hip is somewhat less than the 18 or 19 he'd hope for. And that there's too much vertical motion. And your cadence is too low. And your right leg tends not to cross the line of movement. And the power is delivered too late in your stride. And your right foot seems to have no idea what it's doing, sometimes landing on the inside, sometimes on the outside. And guess what: you're a heel striker (not news).

And I have the graphs to prove it. Pages and pages that represent the inefficiencies and irregularities of what seems a natural motion. This is me running on paper in two-dimensional linear form. It's pretty amazing. I should scan and blog them so you can laugh.

The outcome is a series of stretches, exercises and drills to improve your form, your tranverse abdominals, your stability more generally. And a DVD showing you running and presenting the same exercises. Oddly enough I watch a video of me running and everything looks fine, even quite efficient. But according to Jay I'm a series of thinly-disguised train wrecks happening in quick succession.

I've upped my cadence, running early to avoid the humidity and high temperatures of Charlottesville in August. I've tried lifting my heels more. I've worked on that core stability. I've done my time on a foam roller. I've no idea if it's going anywhere. Unfortunately when you've had graphs made, it increasingly looks like the only point is to go somewhere and to go there faster.

British 10k

2007-08-09T23:44:00.000Z

I should have written this up before. I haven't though, because I no longer own a computer. This isn't because I have plans to give up being an academic and commit myself to being a full-time athlete, but because my old one died, and my hopeless pathetic university won't buy me a new one. Apparently computers for those who generate 100% of the university's income aren't as important as support technicians who don't know what the jobs of those whom they're allegedly supporting are ...

enough. Recent races: on Sunday 1 July I ran the London 10k. At about 1k I passed Catherine Ndereba. Read that again, because I won't be able to write it again.

The start of the British 10k is crazy. 20,000 people line up along the north side of Green park. On the other side of the road, separated from them by the entrance to an underpass, the elite line up before the actual start line (the usual inflatable arch). They do their strides and enjoy freedom of movement. The rest of us squeeze, though packed like sardines in a can, trying to get closer to the start. There's not much to do except wiggle, inhale a heady mix of traffic fumes and sweat, and watch the elite warm up. Catherine Ndereba looks very cool. I don't spot Baldini, but there's an awesome guy in a Morocan shirt. And two, twin models. I think they're meant to be celebrities.

Just before the actual start, at 10 am, the crowds are released so they can walk over a bridge in an orderly fashion to stand behind the elite. In other words push like hell to save those extra seconds. A fat middle-aged lady in a a yellow t-shirt is overheard saying, "perhaps we shouldn't be so close to the front?" It's ugly out there, and uncharitable. The gun goes and the sub-elite trample the overweight, undertrained and genetically disadvantaged.

It's a beautiful cool and sunny morning, though, and the course could not be nicer. And there's Ndereba fiddling with her shoe by the side of the road. There's not much point in having a nice warm-up area, and a 10 second advantage over the plebs, if you can't tie your shoelaces right from the first. Six k later we hit a switchback and I see her in front of me. She passed so silently and effortlessly that I didn't even see her. She ran 33:11, coming in second woman.

The kilometre markers disappeared about half way through, and I realised while plodding along about a kilometre from the end that it was almost over. I charged what was left. I was greatly assisted by a woman wearing a Cambridge University Hare and Hounds who materialised thirty metres ahead of me in the final straight. The photographs show me bounding past her. Far too much vertical movement. I spoke to Emily afterwards: it turned out she'd just finished an advanced degree at Oxford, and was no longer associated with CU. So I needn't have bothered.

I took ten seconds off my PB -- it would have been more had I paid more attention in kilometres 6-9 -- coming in at 38:24. However, the official time was, irritatingly, 38:34. That's watch and pencil timing for you. I was 69th. Stefano Baldini won in 29:27.

The following thursday the eastern clubs 5k league (the Kevin Henry league) race was held in Cambridge. I brought my PB down to 18:20 and felt pretty good. Sub 18:00 may be in sight.

More pressingly, I've signed up for the Berlin Marathon on 30 September. It was Sean's idea. It means doing my long runs in the blistering heat of Virginia over the summer. Watch this space.

Round the houses

2007-06-14T13:59:00.001Z

The Henham 10k was held in the picturesque Cambridgeshire village of Henham last Sunday. Henham is a well-kept secret. To get there you have to leave the M11 at Junction 8 and either head through Stansted or go to Stansted Mountfitchet and cross a bridge that is currently under construction (i.e. closed). Fifteen minutes before the race started and I was still trying to find my way out of Stansted airport, having been circling it for about half an hour (I even tried heading to Colchester and doubling back). Only when I took a sign marked for the service station did I find a tiny exit (and no service station), that enabled me to zig-zag between the villages and find the race car park and run to the start, in the car park of Henham and Ugley School and Community Hall. The clouds parted with exquisite timing, and the sun beamed down.

My club mate Pietro was there at the start area, looking spry. We shoved our way to the front. And at 11:30, after a lecture from a medic about the dangers of dehydration, off we went. Henham looked fine enough in the sun, though there's not 10k of it: we went along country trail, through some farms, up some off-road hills, and back again. At about 1k in I was only ten or fifteen metres behind Pietro, which didn't seem like a sensible place to be. He was running side by side with the leaders. He's the guy with the red hair in the picture, no. 2, behind the guy with the tight shoulders. Then he evidently got bored and disappeared. By 2k he was out of sight. I'm in the picture too, about a third of the way over from the right, biding my time. Slowly I picked off the runners in front of me, one by one, with increasing frequency. There was a very grim and quite long off-road uphill, before a long downhill. Suddenly we were back in the village and I picked my heels up to leave one forlorn looking veteran behind me and commence a very lonely finish. They cheered charitably enough at the end, and gave me a t-shirt. Pietro won of course, in 35:13. He was going to have to hang around to receive his prize. What a nuisance.

I jogged back to the car park, and it was a beautiful Cambridgeshire afternoon, and I'd completed my first race since London. Alas it wasn't a PB, as 38:49 is half a minute behind that target. But you get old and these things happen. It later emerged that I was sixth overall (of 400, many very young or old, mind you), and the third vet. Someone's changed the rules, so that now that I'm 40 vet status comes at 36. Which is a serious moving of the goalposts. However it was a nice day, and I didn't mind too much when I discovered the closed bridge as I approached junction 8 from the other side.

The thousandth man

2007-04-23T07:48:00.000Z

One Sunday London lay burning in the unseasonable morning sun. At eight am, in the blue start area, I lay on the grass and admired the pure cerulean. The cloud cover that had dogged the week's temperatures was far away. It was going to be a scorcher. In fact, this, the 27th running, was the warmest London Marathon ever.

The preparation had been immaculate. A string of PBs, weekly mileage from 50 to 75, followed by a good rest. Everything was pointing towards a successful run. I was strong, and I knew it. Sean and I were well fed and well rested, courtesy of Kath and Ned and John and Jane, Sean's old friends from Cambridge days. We'd stayed in Blackheath itself, only a short drive and walk from the start areas. Oh, it was all perfect. And, like John Milton, "I cannot praise a fugitive and cloister’d vertue, unexercis’d & unbreath’d, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat." Bring it on, we were thinking, fools that we were.

There were even enough toilets this time. Though the queues for the urinals were so long that men began peeing on the outside canopy of the urinals.

A former student of mine approached and spoke to me. I didn't recognise him at first. He was aiming for sub 3:00. Everyone was aiming for sub 3:00. He ran 3:08 it transpired.

I applied sun cream. I have mixed feelings about this. The problem is that it can impede your perspiration. On the other hand, it can help prevent dehydration, not to speak of melanoma. So I applied it to my ears and nose and shoulders and suprasternal notch. Which is why I now have a burnt forehead. I was more liberal in the application of vaseline to the usual places.

It was hot. Thousands of extra bottles of water were used. I saw one half conscious man attended by paramedics at about 25 miles. Someone died. Shakespeare writes: "These high wild hills and rough uneven ways / Draws out our miles and makes them wearisome" (R2, 2.3.4-5) perhaps suggesting that he'd run in the north. But hills are not as fierce as the blaze of the noonday sun.

Ok, I'm going to cut to the miserable stuff and cut it short, because I've already complained enough over the past 24 hours. The start was slow. There were too many people. Too many slow people. At the end of the first mile I succeeded in passing two sexagenarians carrying a big Saltire and wearing t-shirts that said they were "Proud to be a Scottish Sikh". Now, impressive as they were, the front pen is meant for sub-3:00 runners anyway, and these guys weren't in that league without the ten-foot flagpole. So what were they doing there? And what were the other thousand or so people I passed in the first half hour doing starting in front of me? So it started slow. Over 8 minutes for the first mile. Then it continued slow. I couldn't find a rhythm as I was continuously dodging people in order to make progress (and at the end, my watch told me that I'd run 26.7 miles). And it warmed up. And then I couldn't find a rhythm because my heart rate was lifted by the heat, and my 6'40" pace was not in its proper, fitting, moderate effort zone. After hitting this pace in all those hilly 20 milers in blustery, adverse conditions somehow it wasn't going to come today. Halfway came at 1:29:30, and I still hoped for a big negative split. But it was still crowded and still heating up. And then I was running 6'45"-6'50", more like it, but with a little too much effort.

I wasn't alone in finding this. I passed quite comfortably at this stage a number of people I've seen in local races whom I know are around my level. Good, well-trained runners struggling. Joyfully I passed "the beautiful couple", who always steam past me at the midway point of local 20-milers, running a huge negative split. It was my turn. But there the joy ended. All around me runners were falling like late April cherry blossom, peeling off to the barriers and walking, holding their sides, puffing their cheeks, stretching their calves, looking like the haunted or hunted. And I was passing them in their dozens, but I was slowing too. At some point I revised down my target. Perhaps a PB was still on, even if my initial target wasn't. Then I revised it down again. Sub 3:00 would do fine. Please. Until close to the end it was still possible. I did the math at 20 to check, and knew that 6:50s plus a little sprint would get me there. I increased my effort, but drifted down.

Some point after 22 I hit the wall. I've never hit the wall before. It wasn't sudden. I gradually became aware that I was running with real effort, yet my watch was telling me that I was running at 7'20" pace, and it felt like there was a big piece of elastic attached to the back of my shorts. This was no fun at all. This was hard, and I wasn't enjoying myself. Why couldn't I run like I normally can? Where were all those 5'40" mile intervals? The answer: behind me, on the streets of Cambridge.

I lumbered through the last few miles. At 24 I was almost sick and had to ease off a bit. At 25 I realised that I was struggling to keep the sphincters sealed at both ends. The finish wasn't at all interesting. I got a medal and a t-shirt that reads "You see impossible, I saw the finish line". But not really; at least I didn't see it clearly because I was on the wrong side of it. The official time was 3:03:26. I came 1000th among men (the women's is a separate race in London, and it really was today, as their race started 45 minutes earlier -- though many women run in the mass race as well). Sean, aiming for 2:50, and running so strongly of late, ran a 2:59:59, placing him on the right side of the line that really matters, with only a second gracing him.

There's a life lesson here: when it's hot revise down your target before you start. Not when the statistics are beginning to tell against you. Not when the chemical shifts in your blood are offering you advice. MEMO to self: learn this lesson. There will be other races.

So, it turns out that heat is worse than hills and rain and wind and sleet. My interest in running the Mumbai marathon or the Marathon des Sables has evaporated. Perhaps I'll go for the Midnight Sun Marathon in Alaska, or maybe something in Greenland or Norway. Or perhaps I should give up everything else in my life and go to train in South Africa, with its combination of heat, hills and altitude.

I beat myself up quite a bit about this. And felt crushed. How could all of that careful preparation be thwarted by an adverse meteorological coincidence? And then today I sat down to read Lucy Hutchinson's Order and Disorder (an epic on the book of Genesis written in the 1660s and early 1670s). Calvinist moralisers are seldom good sources of comfort in times of darkness. However, this is what I read:

O the unperfect state of human bliss!
The happiest mortals still some comforts miss,
And such man's wayward nature is that, one
Felicity denied, all else seem none.

I guess she has a point. Or maybe that 3:03 wasn't the call of a predestinarian God or a malign global warming deity and I'll try again.

After a visit to Blackheath, and a barbecue -- the sun had, with mordant irony, already hidden its glory behind a veil of cloud cover -- and here thanks to John and Jane and Ned and Kath and Suzie and Edie for company and hospitality -- Sean drove me home. We sat in the garden under the blossoming cherry tree and drank a bottle of '96 Chateauneuf de Pape and had a chocolate tasting. And felt a little better. Sense of humour to be restored soon.

J