Smile and say PAIN!

I feel like I want to throw up, as I am bent double and retching in the finishing funnel of the Middlesex 10k. The tight knotting in my stomach combined with the lack of air, makes me feel dizzy as I try to make my way down the funnel. Strewn around me are other exhausted runners, who I am guessing didn’t feel the need to be as sick as me. I always knew that September was going to be hard month of racing, and once I had understood the full implications of my torn hamstring; it was going to be a different sort of challenge. Whilst the way races went and the results haven’t gone how I would have planned or liked, I am still glad that I attempted this month of racing. If only for completing on the challenges that I set myself post-London Marathon, as well as the mental battles that I have found myself in.

Someone I ran with once said: “the distance of the race is not important, it’s how hard you choose to run it”. At the beginning of September I don’t necessarily know if I would have agreed with that statement. I may have cited the Buddhist monks who run to achieve enlightenment or Sri Chinmoy’s now (in)famous 3,100 mile race round a small square piece of land in New York for 60 days. Whilst I doubt that I will do anything as amazing or extreme as the examples shown above, I have come to learn the challenge of pushing myself at shorter distances than a half marathon. In some ways bringing more of a challenge for me than running a marathon. In short, and to potentially save you from having to read the rest of this post, racing shorter distances- when not fully fit- has tested me in more ways than I could imagine, but specifically and most acutely in my mental game.

Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger

American Football collides with racial, economic and personal tensions; in a book which is ostensibly about a high-school football team, but really about the meaning of sport and its place in our society.

You could be forgiven when reading the cover of Friday Night Lights, that it is another clichéd heroic rags to riches story about a high-school football team. The sort of story where despite economic hardship and various other obstacles, the power of positivity and just believing things will go well wins the day; the type of story that doesn’t hold up well in the harsh light of reality. Friday Night Lights is not that book, it is a far deeper story going beyond what American football means in small-town America; to what sport (of any type) means for us.

The story takes place in Odessa, Texas, 1988. Right from the outset of the book Bissinger tells us that he moved his family to live with the people of Odessa, to understand what football meant for them. It sets the tone for this non-fiction story of a compassionate, but gritty and realistic, account of a season with the Permian Panthers. Bissinger hints at the fall-out the book created, and the bonds of trust he may have broken, to create this portrayal of Odessa; indeed we will never know in what guise Bissinger inserted himself into Odessa and what explanation he gave to the subjects of his book. Whilst some may question the impartiality of Bissinger, it is clear that he has gone to great efforts to paint of realistic picture of what high-school football means for the people of Odessa.