RunningPosted by kevin Tue, August 31, 2010 22:34:17
Ok, so I was a little surprised when a number of people approached me today and suggested that I might be a bit simple for thinking I could run a marathon on a treadmill. After all, I should be able to knock out this sort of mileage as long as take it easy, right? Wrong, apparently.
But I take solace in the knowledge that others have made complete twits of themselves on treadmills for years now, so I can just join the queue. I had a browse around youtube this evening to see the sort of thing that people have copied up - unfortunately in amongst all the people flying into walls off the end of treadmills, it' hard to see which ones were really accidents.
Consequently, am linking to one that shows people actively trying to do stupid things on treadmills. I'll obviously be practicing the correct way to demonstrate these stunts as part of my intensive training plan.
RunningPosted by kevin Mon, August 30, 2010 18:27:51
Here's a short list of things that don't work properly when I go running:
1.Lower back, following recent bizarre gardening accident. This one kicks in on long runs, and if I'm stupid enough to lift anything heavier than a paperback the day before.
2.Left hamstring, pulled during a track session in 2005. The failure to fix this has been as frustrating as anything I've ever experienced, with the possible exception of watching Norwich play in the brief period of time they were 'managed' by Bryan Gunn. Still, at least it managed to pay for a couple of holidays for the hard working alternative therapists in East Anglia.
3.Both knees. If I run the previous day, I make it to the top of the stairs only by treading very carefully. If it's been a tough session, the journey from stairs to kettle is often made by 'bumping' down like a two year old.
4.Right achilles, which went 'ping' a couple of years ago, and means I have to start every run looking like I'm wearing some sort of bizarre foot caliper. This one goes away after about a mile.
5.Both calf muscles. These now seem to be impossible to relax, which is all rather inconvenient, and if I put in a hard session, both will cramp up at the same time. This is intolerably painful but I would imagine quite entertaining to watch, as the muscle spasms make you boing about like MC Hammer trying firewalking for the first time.
All of which does rather make me wonder why I should have said 'yes' when I was asked to run a treadmill marathon a few days ago. And it's in 12 day's time. And apparently doing this can really mess your legs up for ages afterwards.
But it is, as they say, all for cheridy. And, after all, whining about legs that hurt is kind of missing the point here. I think this is all about setting your expectations accordingly, and not necessarily based on the irritating limitations that niggle daily.
If this was, say, Ernest Hemingway pitching up for the event, he'd have a quart of rye by way of a warm up, keep himself going with a few snifters of absinthe, then gone on to a big night out afterwards. Steve Prefontaine would keep going for about five hours to see if he had the guts to do so. Sir Ranulph Fiennes would emerge from his garden shed, after hacking off a couple of irritating fingers, then run 7 marathons on 7 different treadmills in 7 days with the treadmills being pulled across 7 different countries by a pack of 7 huskies. Probably. Anyway, the point I'm struggling to make here is that people that reach further tend to get more stuff done. And accordingly, my plan of action on 10th September is to try to assume this is all doable, rather than drone on like a miserable middle aged wimp. Well, that's the plan, anyway.
So, given that this is undoubtedly a plan due to end in ungraceful failure, please sponsor me at here
And if you're planning to be anywhere near the Start event in London on the morning of 10th September, please remember to pass the absinthe.
RunningPosted by kevin Wed, April 28, 2010 17:08:20
And a mystery (or mythtery, as Toyah would say*) it certainly is.
It is an absolute mystery to me that I can spend 10 hours a week, for 3 months, training for an event, do half a dozen really long runs, have a a great warm-up race, a perfect marathon taper, then go into the race that really mattered last Sunday and get horrible*** cramp at 14 miles; so much so that I ended up pleading for salt with those lovely people**** from St John's, then walking large sections of the rest of the race, feeling very sorry for myself.
Anyway, the whole thing resulted in the slowest I've run a marathon for 12 years, and it's really really really infuriating that I can't put my finger on the reasoning. I guess if I were to take a world view on this sort of frustration, I would assess it as indicative of our desire these days to capture everything in black and white - everything has a cause and effect, and the simpler the better. And whilst it would be great to be able to do this, I think it's pretty unlikely in practice - in this case, I might just have to put the whole thing down as a bad day at the office. And in doing so, maybe accept that there's a bit of ambiguity and mystery in why things happen, and that sometimes all the planning in the world won't stop some bad luck.
Meanwhile, at the end of the course, Jr Emu #2 was waiting with his mother.
"Well Done", he said, really meaning it, "You did really well"
"Thanks", I said, "but I should have finished about 15 minutes quicker than that"
"Yes, but Dad", he reassured me, "I was watching everyone finish, and noone ahead of you looked nearly as old or as grey as you"
Which I think he meant as a positive.
Must dash now. Got an autumn comeback marathon to plan.
*And this does give me an opportunity to tell you my favourite Toyah story. Some time after her 'classic' EP 'Sheep farming in Barnet', Toyah shot to the top of the 'hit parade**' with an album that included hits like 'It's A Mystery', and, err, some other stuff. A friend of mine was manager of a large record store at the time and took delivery of several boxes of the album. The record bombed, and he was left with boxes and boxes of records that he had to return. Normally, this would involve cutting open a record sleeve, putting a light scratch on it and sending it back damaged, but there were hundreds of these, and a) it would have taken ages and b) it might have been seen as a bit of a scam. So, in a moment of sheer genius, he put a 'damaged/return' label on each box, and wrote in big letters: "Singer has lisp".
** ask your Dad
*** Really horrible
**** I'm sure they really are lovely people. Just wish they knew a bit more about fixing injuries.
RunningPosted by kevin Mon, March 22, 2010 20:03:03
Sadly, another day in which I feel old before my time. As my dear children will often remind me, I am old, at least by their standards, but this morning at around 0800, on the Newmarket Road leading into Norwich, I had my first 'senior' moment. For it was there and then, dear reader, that I suffered a fall.
Suffering a fall is the sort of thing that I'd associated previously with shopping trolleys on wheels, thermal bootees, and for some reason, Thora Hird. And I do have the excuse that I was travelling at least at some pace, but even so, a fall it certainly was.
Being a bloke, I do feel it necessary to drag out both the extreme pain and the ignomy of the experience in some detail. I was running to work along my normal route, not really going either fast or slow, and listening to Danny Baker tearing up the podcast charts, when I, well, just lost my footing. On what appeared to be (and I did check) a perfectly reasonable piece of pavement. At this point I stumbled, and cracked my knee very hard onto the pavement. Which hurt. Then I bounced along the pavement, before I bashed down simultaneously on my left shoulder and elbow. Which really hurt. Then, one more bounce, before I came to rest with my head perilously close to the gutter, having broken my fall with both palms. Which really really hurt.
For those of you familar with this part of the world, you'll realise that at that time, on that road, there's lots of traffic, moving pretty slowly. And I must have sailed past about 5 cars travelling in the opposite direction before I finally stopped moving. At which point a succession of very slow moving cars will have seen a bloke in shorts, lying down on the pavement next to them, bleeding. For my part, I think I lay there for a couple of minutes, not through any other reasons than thinking that I'd broken my arm, and not having the first idea of what to do. And, as it happens, whether I'd still make it for my 0830 meeting.
And, nothing would please me more to report to you that the traffic stopped, and I finally came to, wrapped up in a tartan blanket from the back of a car, while perfect strangers administered basic first aid, sweet tea, and kind words of comfort.
But, this being fact, no such thing happened. Every single car drove straight by, although a couple of cars did steer slightly to the right as they did. I suspect that this was to protect their tyres rather than my body though. As it happens, a couple of guys walking into the city ran over, checked me out and lifted me up. Having thanked them, and deciding that nothing was broken, I continued both my run, and, indeed, my general disillussionment with my fellow man.
RunningPosted by kevin Wed, February 17, 2010 22:01:10
Here are two things
that happened to me on a run this morning.
It was a reasonably
early start, the temperature was about -3, and I wanted to get 20 miles in,
ideally before the family had started missing me. For anyone who has met my
family, you'll realise that this is veering into the realms of
self-aggrandisation; no member of my
family admitted to missing me, has ever pleaded with me to stay at home rather
than go out, and none of them has ever been in the least bit pleased to see me
on my return from a run.
Anyway, it was
really cold. If I'd not been reading Mark Beaumont's excellent book about
cycling around the world the night before, I would have started feeling a tad
sorry for myself. If you get a chance to read this, do. Once you get past the
rather graphic descriptions of open saddle sores, it's an amazing account of
self determination in the throes of a real physical test. And the bit I'd read
the night before included him sleeping outside in sub-zero temperatures, and
getting back on the bike just to keep
from freezing, so a frosty run around the French countryside didn't actually
seem so bad.
I was in a vaguely
grumpy mood, partly as I found my ipod had lost its charge again. Normally I'm
accompanied by Simon Mayo, Sandi Toksveg or Danny Baker on these runs, but no
luck this morning, so, I was going to have to do 2.5 hours alone with my thoughts. And again, as my family will testify, that's
a dangerous amount of time. If you spend that amount of time just thinking, you
can a) solve the riddles of the world, or b) let your mind wander around in a
random collection of vaguely connected and surreal thoughts. I tend to opt for
the latter, not least as my normal long runs with my friend G are more
constructive, generally trying to ease him from his lofty political position
just to the right of Ghengis Khan, to something a little more liberal.
Occasionally I get him just this side of Lord Tebbit, but then we get to the
end of our run, and he reads another week's worth of the Daily Mail and by the
following Sunday we're back to square one.
But I digress. There
I was, alone with my thoughts, and two things happened.
Running along a
frozen track, with fields either side, three deer ran across in front of me.
Not for the first time in this situation, I wondered why on earth I ever
bothered with this running lark. To see an animal as graceful as that, running
across ploughed and frozen fields, and springing along just…well, naturally,
was fantastic to see, but a bit of a contrast to the rather ambling shuffle
that I was effecting. It did make me think for a while about human form - other
than the absolute top athletes, do we ever look at each other (or ourselves,
for that matter) in awe at our grace, or naturalness, when moving? Have a look
at a really big event like the London Marathon, next time you see it - after
(say) the first 100 finishers, who looks like they're naturally running? Or
better still, if you're a runner, take your next run through a town centre and
sneak a glance in the shop windows when you go past. That, ladies and
gentlemen, is you, and it's exactly why kids point and laugh at you.
So, this thought
kept me going for a couple more miles, during which, of course, I tried,
remarkably unsuccessfully, to adjust my form to that of a graceful and stylish
athlete. And then the horror of the Smurfs struck. If you're a runner, you may
recognise this phenomenon. You're rattling along, alone with your thoughts, and
suddenly, you run out of thoughts, and a song comes into your head. And not
just any song, often the most irritating song you've ever heard, and you just
can't shift it. Sometimes I give up on the 'trying to shift it' bit, and start
singing it to myself. Which is why, for the last 4 miles of the 2004 London
marathon, I ended up singing verse one of The Smurf Song. Constantly. And, I'm
pretty sure, audibly. Fortunately for me, the song that came into my head this morning was
slightly less painful. It was the first verse of The Judds' "John Deere
Tractor". I first heard this in the mid-80's and the sheer C&W-ness of
the lyric has been a benchmark for me ever since, describing a country girl's
adventure into the big city leaving her alone, vulnerable, and fed up with not
getting anywhere. Has anyone ever crammed so much good ol' boy emotion into a
metaphor?
I'm like a John Deere tractor in a half acre field
trying
to plow a furrow where the soil is made of steel
Oh I
wish I was home, where the bluegrass is growin'
and the
sweet country boys don't complain
And, as I went
trough this verse for the umpteenth time, I looked to my left onto the field.
Which was about half an acre. And frozen. And the John Deere tractor on it was
definitely struggling with the plough.
Spooky, huh? Thanks
goodness I'd lost the Smurf song by then, otherwise I really would be
tripping...
RunningPosted by kevin Tue, November 18, 2008 22:36:45
13 miles on Sunday, not too bad but my legs ached all Sun pm
4 miles Mon am to get moving again
4.5 miles Mon pm as Achilles sore and wanted to know that it would bear a run – reasonably ok after 3 miles but really sore after
5 miles Mon pm – hills x 10 (1min) achilles sore but good to get the smell of London off
So, this is the sort of thing that a blogging runner ought to put into his or her blog is it?
I do find, 10ish years after I started this running lark, that it’s harder and harder to get all the bits working at the same time. I live about 2 miles from work, and get marginally more comfortable as I get to the office in the morning, and just about moving properly as I reach the door – which means that I end up putting a couple of extra miles in to prove to myself that I can still run.
All of which is fine. Really.
However…where I do have a bit of a problem is in hearing some of the things that people say for why they don’t run*
“Terrible problems with my knees”
“Tried running but had to give up after a few days”
“It hurts my legs to run”
This probably sounds a bit too alpha-male, but the whole point of it, is that it does hurt.
That’s why it’s called training. It’s training your body to deal with exertion which either you’ve untrained it to do over the years, or, if you’ve kept yourself clean, is at the extremes of your capability. So of course it’s going to be uncomfortable, especially at first. But then it sort of becomes a (good) habit. Even if your achilles aches all the time.
