Bah Humbug: An Alternative view of the Christmas Festivities.

It certainly has been a crazy year and with it drawing to a close, I was going to open with some sort of Dickensian opener like: “it was the most interesting of times, it was the most frightening of times”; however my better judgement managed to overcome my poor sense of humour.

I will start with saying that I am not the biggest fan of Christmas (and the Boxing Day/ New Year sales for that matter) as it currently is. It seems that everywhere you go you are encouraged to spend ridiculous amounts of money on objects, which are meant to make us happy. Yet this promise of gaining happiness by spending money on physical objects is as empty as the promise of someone telling you that there will be snow across the whole of the UK every Christmas. Yet each year the same message is broadcasted and everyone is expected to have the same type of Christmas celebration. This is another flaw with the way the Christmas season is presented to us, in that we should be expected to celebrate Christmas in the same way; when we all know that as humans we are incredibly complex and diverse. So why be forced to do things in exactly the same way?

It is important for me to state that I do not think the meaning of Christmas is a bad thing or that the idea of caring for your fellow man is something that we shouldn’t aspire to. It’s just that I can’t help thinking that these noble sentiments have been corrupted by companies wanting to make as much money from consumers’ generosity. This has led to people placing way too much emphasis on how much they spend over the Christmas period, rather than the things that truly matter to them. Of course I am making a sweeping generalisation, in that I know not all people have the urge to just spend loads of money over Christmas; it is more to illustrate how Christmas is presented to us on TV, in magazines, newspapers, social media, etc.  Furthermore, I am not immune from wanting to indulge myself and others with Christmas presents; I have a special weakness for Ashmei running gear, so realise that I am criticising the very thing that I am partaking in. I also realise that using social media, whether it be posting pictures on Instagram or Facebook is another aspect of the constant consumerism that surrounds us on a daily basis, so again I am part of the system that I feel uneasy about.

So if you have managed to read this far, you may be thinking why is this person having a go at the Christmas season? I suppose what I am trying to put forward is that I believe that Christmas is not about looking at your credit/ debit card bill and seeing how much you have spent or how many objects you have bought. It can be about connecting with your fellow man, looking back on the year you have had, catching up with those closest to you and hopefully getting a moment in the day-to-day hustle and bustle of our lives to think of those who have been less fortunate than us.

I have tried to put this into practice by volunteering for Crisis during the Christmas period. I don’t want to go into too much detail about what the volunteering entails, for fear of sounding sanctimonious and self-righteous. That aside, it is truly an amazing experience; and it is quite surprising how much satisfaction you get from doing certain tasks at the Crisis centres. There are also some truly unique moments that you get to experience (a notable one being Chris Martin visiting one of the centres). What I found truly humbling, was speaking with the guests at the centre I was at about their lives and being thanked for what we were doing. In a city such as London, where public transport consists of an endless round of people bashing into you or being rude to you; it is very moving to find someone who doesn’t have a roof over their head and very few possessions , to thank you for what you have done for them and wishing you a happy new year. I hope I can take this humility with me into 2017 and not care so much about what possessions I do or don’t have. 

My Running Slump

‘What I ended up with was a sense of lethargy, and before I knew it, I felt covered by a thin film of, something I’ve since dubbed runner’s blues…. I lost the enthusiasm I’d always had for the act of running itself. Fatigue was a factor, but that wasn’t as clear as before’- Haruki Murakami, What I talk about when I talk about Running.

I haven’t really been running properly since I did the Abingdon Marathon in October and I cannot seem to shake this feeling of being indecisive about whether I run or not. That is why I began this blog with a quote from Murakami, as he so effortlessly describes the feeling a runner has after their own accomplishment. Admittedly Murakami was talking about 62 mile race, and I am talking about a marathon, but I genuinely believe all running achievements are relative to the person doing them (be it a Parkun or the Barkley marathon).  I think part of it was down to simply having a slight burnout from running solidly from June to the end of October, something that I realised I have never done before. Another reason is that I have lost that feeling from running, which tends to come with a successful marathon training cycle, which is primarily that of progress. What I mean by that is you feel like you are improving second by second, minute by minute, race by race or mile by mile during your training. It can be ordinary moments as well; like running for the bus or up the stairs and finding that it is reassuringly easy. All those tiny moments make me think how great running is and after Abingdon I felt like I had lost that. 

Indeed I was completely surprised by my result at Abingdon and in some ways achieved the goal of this blog, which was to run a marathon in under three hours.  I am still immensely proud of the time I achieved at Abingdon, but I am worried that it could be a one-off event and in some ways it feels like a distant memory. I mean this specifically to the training that I was doing and my worries about getting injured in the build up to London. I suppose I just made the assumption that I could just make under three hours or just over it at Abingdon, and then have another go at London. In that sense it has made me re-evaluate what I want from running, but at the same time I feel quite lost about it.

‘Perhaps all these various factors had combined into a mysterious cocktail inside me. As the person involved in this, it’s hard for me to analyse it objectively. Whatever it was, runner’s blues was my name for it’- Murakami.

I realise how lucky I am to be able to be able to run London next year and also have the option to run London in 2018 as well. I just want to be sure I approach it in the right way. One of the most common pitfalls I have seen, partially experienced and heard about is runners setting unrealistic running goals; then not enjoying their marathon because they didn’t achieve their goal, despite running well. I don’t want to do this at London. I remember how amazing the Brighton Marathon in 2014 was, where I didn’t have any goals and it was simply to enjoy the city and the marathon for what they were.  In marathon timescales, London is looming in around five months’ time. For most people that may seem like a long time; but to properly build your base and then once you have done that to train hard for two to three months, it is actually a relatively short period of time. In this context I will just have to see how I feel at the beginning of January and take it from there.

More than anything I just want to get back to enjoying running. Believe it or not, the time I got at Abingdon was just a by-product of an amazing training cycle and being very grateful to be able to run long-distance races after an injury.

So that is where I will start with my running, with the patience that I employed when I had my injury. Building back up slowly, but surely. For now I will not be thinking about what personal bests I want to aim for, what races I need to tackle before London and what paces I should be targeting for my training. It will just be about putting one foot in front of the other.

‘Now I feel like I ‘m finally getting away from the runner’s blues fog that’s surrounded me for so long. Not that I’ve completely rid myself of it, but I can sense something beginning to stir…as I lace up my running shoes, I can catch a faint sign of something in the air, and within me’- Murakami.

Achieving at Abingdon: a surprise marathon personal best

This is why I run. For those moments where everything flows and you can just enjoy the race.

A photo posted by Edward (@uncertainrunner) on Oct 23, 2016 at 3:04pm PDT

My experience of marathons to date was of large crowds, booming music, large sponsor banners and it being a general chore to get to the main starting point of the race. Tilsley Park in Abingdon, Oxford was in complete contrast to the large marathons that I had attended (Brighton specifically comes to mind). On this cold, crisp and overcast morning there were few indications that anything was about to occur, if it weren’t for the signs and cones indicating road closures, you could have been forgiven for thinking a large track meet was going to take place.

Getting Back on Track

Descending Dead Woman's Pass

So it has been a very busy couple of months- August and September to be exact. It currently feels like I am playing ‘catch-up’ with all my hobbies, this blog being one of the many things that I have had to leave dormant while dealing with a few really exciting weeks. I have also been trying to think of theme(s) to link all the many things that I have been doing during August and September. After quite a lot of thought, it has to be humility and perspective. I chose humility because I realise how lucky I am to be able to come back from my injury and be able to train for a marathon again. I hope I have found some sort of perspective by being able to juggle the many things that life throws at me, whilst still finding time to enjoy running. 

Recovering from Injury: Sticking to a Plan

In my last post I talked about how I tried to deal with the uncertainty of coming back from injury, the things I had learnt from my injury and how I planned to get back into marathon training after missing out on London 2016. I don’t want to get too bogged down in how to recover from injury, that’s more for your osteopath/ physio to deal with. I am more concerned with how to follow a marathon plan, whilst you are still getting back from your particular injury. These are the top 10 things that I have learnt from trying to train whilst still coming back from an injury:

1)      Don’t be afraid to step back and ask yourself why you are training for a particular type of sporting event. It may not sound very helpful as the first bit of advice when coming back from injury, but it’s definitely something that allows you assess what you can and can’t do. What I mean by this, is that if you have had a serious injury then you may not be able to train like you used to.

When I was trying to recover from my calf  injury I took up a lot of swimming and considered doing a few swimming events in the Summer, because I was worried I still wouldn’t be able to run by then. Therefore it’s worth looking at what other type of sporting events you can get into if you can’t train like you used to.  In my opinion the main aim of recovery is to get over your injury and stay fit; stepping back and reassessing what you can do is one of the first ways of doing that.

Dealing with Uncertainty

It’s going to be a fairly short post from me for June. I have been juggling loads of things whilst trying to improve my running form, to get back to what it was before my Watford Half Marathon. Overall I think it has been pretty successful, with most of June being spent running a weekly mileage of around 30 miles and above. However this distance has not been without its niggles and with the quality running sessions I have added in; my right lower back and glute have  become quite tense over the last couple of weeks. Luckily I have had the advice of my fellow club members, as well the physio who I have been seeing for the last couple of months about my calf and my more recent issues.

So in a lot of ways things are looking positive with my running and I feel like I am heading in the right direction. That said I am still apprehensive, as I begin my marathon training. Ultimately the reason for feeling like this is the fear of becoming injured again, therefore having to miss another marathon this year; which to be honest would lead me to contemplating whether I should train for another marathon in 2017. Being injured is not a great feeling, but it does give you a marker as to what you can and can’t do in regards to training. Now that I am relatively okay and am free to start increasing my mileage, this is where the uncertainty comes in. How do I know when I have pushed myself too much? What sort of sessions take more out of me than others? These are questions that I can’t answer right now, but will only be able to know once I have begun my marathon training.

Running in Limbo

It has been a strange month or so since my last post. Things have been moving in a very positive direction for my running. In general my calf seems to be holding up well with a weekly mileage of between 20 – 29 miles, including tempo sessions and intervals. However I have felt that I haven’t had a real sense of structure to my running recently. This is mainly down to tearing my calf (back in February) and also having to sit out of the London marathon this year. Though it has also been about being patient and letting my calf heal, especially with the occasional twinges that seem to haunt my running at the moment. Indeed it has been pretty difficult to determine whether my calf has just been put through a tough run or whether I have exhausted the muscle. This feeling usually occurs after the end of my longest run (currently 10 miles) or after a hard session. 

The result of this inability to understand whether I have pushed my calf too much- either because of my past experience from pushing myself too hard during my marathon training  or that I am just experiencing phantom pains in my calf- has led me to feel in a sort of limbo. I am reluctant to enter the short, sharp and hard races that the summer running season brings. At the moment it feels like I am on the running equivalent of being on a desert island; you hope that you will be rescued soon, but you do not know when. I know that my calf is healing and that I am being able to do more with it, but I really don’t know when I can start pushing as hard as I did for London. Until you really push yourself beyond your current limits do you really ever know how far you can go? It is from this reasoning that I am going to run the North Downs Race on Sunday 26^th June. This race is over an undulating 18 mile course and should hopefully instil a sense of confidence when approaching my marathon training again. If this goes according to plan then I will try to enter the 5km and 10km Sri Chinmony London races in July. These speed races should then prepare me for my two half-marathons (in August and September), which combined with my overall marathon training should help me towards a personal best at Abingdon.

Parkrun and Public Spaces

The London Marathon has finished for another year, and for over 30 years hundreds and thousands of people have experienced what is arguably one of the world’s greatest marathons to race. Though how do you prepare for such an event as a marathon? People have come up with all sorts of plans and the latest training advice that makes a marathon easier to train for, but a cornerstone of any effective marathon plan will be running a certain number of miles per week. Inevitably this will lead to people running through parks, shared public spaces in cities, woodlands, areas of outstanding natural beauty, etc.  There’s no doubt that wherever people will be running, they will most likely be sharing that place with people who are not running. This leads to a question of what the purpose of public spaces are for: sport, fitness classes, relaxing, walking? There is no easy answer and anyone who goes to a park will be able to see the whole variety of different activities that I have just mentioned.

Just Keep Swimming

I’m nervous, the music is blaring, I’m sweating and trying to copy a series of dance moves; but I can’t do the moves and instead it looks like I have lost all co-ordination. I wished I could say I was incredibly drunk and I was trying to dance in some random nightclub, but I am actually in a ‘Total Body Conditioning’ class. It feels like whilst I perform my dance warm up moves- completely out of sync by the way- that the instructor and the rest of the  people in the class are staring at me in disbelief, but I am happy. I am able to exercise again with only a very slight feeling of pain in my calf, and for me that is a huge step in the right direction.

Long Road to Recovery

Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth- Mike Tyson.

This quote pretty much sums up the situation I am currently in; I am injured and haven’t been able to run properly for the last three weeks. Tyson’s quote- for me sadly- is an appropriate follow up to my last post in January. Up until the second week of February I had been following my marathon plan perfectly. In fact January for me had been one personal best after another, culminating in a great run at the infamous Parliament Hill cross country run on 30^th January where I started to realise that I may have a certain aptitude for running in mud.  This was probably more to do with my rugby days than actual running ability, but who knows. The following week I felt pretty tender; not surprising really after completing the Parliament Hill course and the next day doing a 20 mile run. However I thought it was just the deep ache of marathon training starting to kick-in and anyway I had the Watford Half Marathon to prepare for. So I told myself all I had to do was get to Thursday night and then I could rest for a few days before tackling Watford on 7^th February; but as the week progressed a niggle in my right calf wouldn’t  go away. I pushed on though and felt slightly apprehensive about Watford.

New Year, New You…or just another fad

Me at a Cross Country Race

I have been taking a long time to think about what I want from 2016. January always seems to be a strange month; a mixture of everyone full of good intentions, trying to get through the hangover of Christmas and waiting for the first paycheque of the year to tide them over from an expensive December. It may be a cynical way to look at the year, but it’s not helped by the range of diet books promising to help you become a new improved version of yourself. I’m not disputing whether these diet books help or not, I’m not qualified to make that decision, but I always find it fascinating that these books are launched at this time of year. It seems we go through a ritual each year of saying that we are going to finally change all our bad habits and become a new person.