Drawing to a close…

The Christmas holidays have brought a much needed rest for me, with the chance to catch-up with family and friends. I always find the period between Christmas day to New Year’s Day a strange time, as people seem to become focussed upon finding the best deals and the latest gadgets. I found myself drawn into this whirlpool of consumerism, as I tensely searching the websites of running stores to buy my preferred running shoe at the cheapest price. I convinced myself that it was necessary to obtain these shoes, as I aim to be running the London Marathon in 2019; however I couldn’t help thinking that I had become caught up in the spending rat race that characterises Christmas now. This vast splurge of spending was contrasted with the sad news in the run-up to Christmas of a homeless man dying near the Houses of Parliament. It seems that homelessness is becoming an increasing problem in the UK, with complex causes and taking place against a harsh economic climate and volatile political situation. Regardless of your political or religious beliefs I found this clip I listened to on Radio 4 to be a relevant call to action about how we – as a society – confront homelessness, as well as show some compassion for our fellow man. Whilst people may not agree with the religious message, it does serve as a counter-point to the increasing material nature of Christmas.

Running in the present

I’m coughing and spluttering, all the while as I try to gulp breaths of air running along on the ‘dreadmill’ (a nickname I heard another runner give speed training that is done on the treadmill). The man next to me, who is going at the enviable speed of walking pace, grumbles something about ‘bloody runners, getting in the way of you on the street and making loads of noise in the gym....’ I lose track of his moaning, as I try to focus on not flying off the treadmill. I would say that I care about what this man is saying, but I am finding it simply too hard to get a good rhythm on the dreadmill and I am having to use every ounce of concentration to complete this workout. Not a pleasant experience.

It seems even Google is willing to confirm this, as typing in ‘treadmill history’, immediately brings up posts about treadmills being invented as a form of keeping idle prisoners active and productive in the early nineteenth century. I base this on a Wikipedia post, so how reliable that account is another matter; but what it does state to me is that treadmills were never invented with a positive purpose. Even if they have been adopted en mass by the fitness industry, my speed session is certainly not a pleasant one.

A brief interlude

It’s late and I step out of the air-conditioned hotel apartment onto the balcony. I’m on holiday in Turkey and I feel relaxed. It’s more than just relaxation though, and I always wonder what people mean when they say they are relaxed; it can mean a variety of things to so many different people. For me everything feels lighter and more distant, it’s almost as if all the things going on back in the UK are a distant memory. Something that happened a while ago and there is no need to recall those events or even dwell upon them.

The heat of the September night hits me, as I step outside of the apartment. The previous booming sounds of clubs and cafes have started to die down, with the laughing and chatter of revellers starting to become quieter. I can smell cigarette smoke from a neighbouring apartment, as I look out across the bay. Lights start to switch off, as the last guests make their way back from the bars towards the hotel, with the music becoming ever quieter and in some cases being switched off.

I lean on the balcony railing and look up across the bay and watch the sea from the bay onwards laying in a state of complete calm. It provides a mirror-like surface to reflect the moon that appears to be shining a path of light from the sea all the way towards the bay. The sun beds are empty on the beach of the bay and a few lonely figures stumble along the beach, no doubt feeling ‘jolly’ from their activities at the various bars.

Winding my watch

I decided to take a break from writing about my running in August. I felt there was just a lot going on and frankly my running still hasn't been improving.

The problems with the builder still persists and I seem to be uncovering more problems. In the long run this will be a really valuable lesson, as my wife and I will know what to expect when buying a home, however it is a hassle I could really do without at the moment. Then towards the end of August, I started to feel shooting pains down the right side of my shin. After seeing a physiotherapist I found out I had shin splints, due to tight calf muscles. So a key problem for me in 2016 had arisen again, though luckily ths time I had caught the problem before it became a serious issue; such as a stress fracture.

Whils the shin splints have not been catastrophic for my running, they have put an end to a good spell of consistent running; as well as delaying me entering a 10k and a half marathon. Hopefully I will be able to get to a decent level of fitness before running cross-country this season.

Besides the shin splints I have found another problem with my running. The new club that I am training with start their training sessions at 6:30pm, which means I cannot make their regular training sessions due to the Thameslink train timetables. In a lot of ways this is more of a setback for me than the shin splints. I have always been a firm believer in training with a club, as it has a whole host of benefits that aren't purely running related. The obvious solution for me would be to turn up periodically, but not consistently, to the training sessions; however I do not believe this would be beneficial to my training. I would still like to train with the club, and they are incredibly friendly, but I do need to assess whether it is the right for me and the way I want to train.

It was whilst all these issues were bubbling away, that I was listening to a podcast interviewing a military helicopter pilot who specialises in search and rescue. The pilot stated how part of her training was to 'wind her watch' when the helicopter encountered a severe malfunction and had the potential to crash. In other words rather than panic, it was taking a calm and decisive moment to fix the problem. What I took from this, given the current state of my running, is that instead of trying to fixate on any potential races. I am going to take a step back from my running and see what I can do to solve some of the more significant problems facing my training at the moment.

An old clubmate had also shared an article by Steve Magness about being adaptible as well as mentally tough. Regarding adaptability Magness discusses how runners have to be responsive to what life throws at them, whilst still being able to train. For me this is about putting daily training practices in place to develop my running, whilst I can't train with my new club.

The advice on mental toughness is not so suprising, but nevertheless useful for my current situation. Essentially it is making the right choices whilst being under pressure, as well as being fatigued, and not trying to appear 'macho' when dealing with the problems that life deals to all of us.

So with all these different things going on, I am not going to rush to change things; however I am going to need to make a decision about how to change my current situation for the better.

Distractions from Running….

There has been more of the same, and a lot of change since my last post. Most notably the World Cup has been and gone. I am not a huge football fan, but I did find myself sucked in to the wave of pride in the England team- and dare I say it a large degree of nationalism. I saw Ian Wright say that the country needed a win more than ever. It did strike me that surely what this country needs are more schools, hospitals, trains running on time etc. than a World Cup; however, I do see Mr Wright’s point. No one expected the England to get as far as the semi-finals, but I think what was far more important was the way they handled themselves on and off the pitch. There was a real sense of integrity and sportsmanship displayed by the team, and this was no doubt inspired by Gareth Southgate.  So for me what made this World Cup so special was the way the England team conducted themselves, they looked like they genuinely wanted to be there. So while I do think there is a lot that needs addressing within the UK- e.g. Brexit, Healthcare, the growing polarisation between left and right, etc.- I think this event provided welcome relief for a lot of people (myself included); it gave people the opportunity to talk about something with each other that unites, rather than divides. In this current political climate that is something I am grateful for. 

A lack of train(ing)

The months of May and June have not been that great for me in terms of running. This is partly down to struggling to recover from the London Marathon and also more serious matters from moving to Bedford. Before I go onto explain what has happened I thought I would start with a brief but funny conversation I had with two schoolboys on one of my runs over the last two months. For context I had made no effort to engage them or say hello, I just saw two silhouettes against the sun approach me and then say:

Silohouettes: ‘Sir, do you think you are a cool?’

Me (surprised at being spoken to randomly and the nature of the question): ‘I don’t know, what do you think?’

Silohouettes: ‘Yeah, you are okay. Have a good run’

Me (relief at my response having passed the school boy test): ‘Cheers’.

It seems that children, at the very least, are a lot more open to saying hello (and even trying to have conversation with random runners) in Bedfordshire than they are in London. The reason for including the conversation was that it sums up how my running has been over the last two months. Subject to random interruptions, that have been both surprising and unnerving. I have been trying to get my running back on track, but have had some funny – and not so funny issues- from this random thing we all experience called life. Each little interruption on its own did not cause too much of a problem, however, it was all of the problems below that has led to my running being severely curtailed.

It started with me trying to recover too quickly from the London Marathon. I seem to take a long time to recover from marathons, but this time I did not get my usual two to three day rest as I had to be back at work the next day. This led to a deep sense of fatigue that I felt throughout May. I think this was for two reasons; I had enjoyed the London Marathon so much that I don’t I realised how much effort I had expended in getting under  three hours, and not being able to rest due to there being a busy period at work.  With all this going on I tried to rush back to a specific training program, which rather than making my running better, led to me limping off the track at Bedford and going through a gentle rehab routine for healing a strained hamstring.

Then on 20 May a new timetable from Bedford to London was introduced, which led to my journey in some cases increasing by up to two hours each way. It wasn’t as bad as the Northern service in Manchester, however after much publicity about how good this new timetable was going to be, it was frankly a shambles. It wasn’t so much the time it took to get home, it was the sheer unpredictability of being able to get to work and/ or get home that made everything so much more difficult to plan my running around. During this time I thought I had come with a novel hashtag of #thameslate, but then saw that a lot of Thameslink’s customers had also thought of this. I think the worst part of the delays isn’t even that they happen- there are always going to be teething problems when a new system is introduced- it’s that train travel costs so much in the UK for season tickets.

Alongside all of this my wife and I discovered that the builder of our house had decided to cover our bricks, due to incorrectly installing the disabled access in our house. We thought the builder was a reasonable person, but since alerting him to this problem, he has become increasingly unreasonable and used intimidating behaviour in response to our concerns. It has made things quite stressful, as besides litigation, there is no real way of bringing this builder round to discussing how to fix this problem.  Of course there are rogue customers as much as there are rogue builders, but it does make you question how someone can be okay with allowing their poor workmanship to lead to serious damp within a new build.  Towards the end of June I also managed to get another bout of man-flu, which didn’t really help matters.

Hopefully all these issues that I have mentioned will get sorted. Of course there will always be periods where work is busier than normal, and that is to be expected, however I was just unlucky with when this happened straight after London. With all the other problems I feel like my running is like an internet connection, with various issues causing my training to grind to a slow halt. I appreciate that this post appears to be negative, but I think it is good to record the bad as well as the good times; because you can look back on those times and see what you learnt from it. Also I think social media is biased towards and has too many unrealistic images of everything being positive,  without any sort of setbacks. For me it is about having the trust to not try and force my training back to where it was before London. It will come, I believe and hope it is about just hanging in there.

Tired of this taper malarkey...

I’m so tired that I decided to let a 1980s Lethal Weapon montage introduce this post:

It’s taken a long time to get this post written. Moving house, sorting out house issues and the change in train time tables have all contributed to writing about the London Marathon 2018 far later than I would have liked to. The main reason for writing this post, despite it being delayed, is after five years of trying to run marathons successfully (or unsuccessfully- you can take your pick) is how tapering has fascinated me. It’s ultimately a time of reflection, to see what I have achieved or alternatively what I am about to prepare for.

Some perspective...

My post today is not about my running or how I am progressing towards the London Marathon 2018. It is a defence of the marathon distance against an article by Adharanand Finn about how running 26.2 miles just isn't enough and my view on the upcoming strike that will more than likely disrupt the London Marathon 2018.

My view about RMT's strike relating to the pay and conditions provided by KeolisAmey is that employees should have rights to reasonable redress when their employer treats them unfairly, and in extreme cases protest against this matter if necessary. However in the case of the London Marathon 2018 I think it is hijacking a high profile event to show that they are being treated badly, which I find ironic; i.e. we are being treated unfairly, therefore we are going to make life incredibly difficult for people who are trying to raise millions of pounds for charity. 

The Grind

Before you read any further this isn’t a blog post about coffee or coffee making; though with my marathon training reaching peak mileage in March it has certainly felt like I am some sort of coffee bean. Gradually being ground down into some finer form, which will help me achieve a smooth, refreshing run at London. Maybe I should just stop with the metaphors now and continue with March’s entry...

A change is a comin’

When I used to play rugby there was a moment during the match, where I felt the fear and thrill in the anticipation of the next 80 minutes. That moment was at the beginning of the match, when the referee blew his whistle and the opposition fly-half kicked the ball into the air towards me and my fellow team mates. There were generally two ways the ball would be kicked to us. The first would be a quick short kick luring us forward to get the ball, whilst allowing the opposition to steal the ball in mid-air or quickly allowing them to nail our unsuspecting player (or me) to the ground. The other was a high, slow ball that fell deep in our territory which, even though it allowed us time to gather the ball, meant we were pinned back in our territory. Each approach presented its own problems, but also provided the excitement of rugby and is what made the game so fun to play.

Gradients of thought

“I’m normally a lot better going up the hills than I am going down them” pants the runner by my side.

I look at one of my competitors; or more accurately the person who is sharing the pain of the Southerns with me. He’s bent double, breathing deeply as tries to take in as much oxygen as possible and all whilst trying to avoid falling down the slope he has so painfully climbed up. I hope that I don’t look like I am in this much pain for only the beginning of our second lap of this dreaded hill; and realise I am pretty much identical to his agonising form.

We are scrambling up one of the hardest parts of the nine mile Stanmer Park course. The climb we are on resembles some sort pathway to Count Dracula’s castle than a cross-country race to me. I know it’s cold, as sheets of rain are pouring down, but I am boiling; a clear sign of my exertion. My pace is getting slower and slower, whilst my heart rate soars, and it seems as though we are no nearer to getting to the top of this climb.

My fellow climber falls over and slips down the slope, he has realised our worst nightmare. I ask if he is okay, he grunts as well as nods. By now I’m already a few metres away from him, we both know that this is still a race and I also can’t afford to lose momentum going up the steepest part of the course. I keep trying to draw more air into my lungs and, whilst I struggle for breath, saliva fills my mouth. My feet start to slow to what almost feels like a walk and I spit to clear my mouth, as the top of the hill comes into view. Unknown parts of my body start to ache as I attempt to carry on running up the hill. I try to think about how satisfying it will be to finish the race in one piece. Then another thought enters my head, what happens if I just pull out of the race; I am only just recovering from an injury, no one would think any the worse of me.

The answer to that thought lies in December 2017. My mind was on not running London, as the house move seemed to be taking up all my time and my hamstring didn’t seem to be improving. In essence I felt like Bill Paxton in Aliens: