TrainingPosted by kevin Sun, July 04, 2010 13:35:20I think I might have gone on ad nauseum on this site a while back about the joys of cycling in Holland, and in the likely event that you didn't catch that message, here it is in summary:
- Dutch people are, as far as I can make out, all lovely in every way…
- …and they all ride bicycles. Which means that….
- being a cyclist in Holland is an absolute pleasure…
- not least because they've covered the country in a fab network of cyclepaths that can get you anywhere, without a sniff of a car. Or car driver…
- …who, incidentally are all lovely and polite as well, although I believe this is partly due to the rule in Holland that any accident involving bike and car is automatically the car driver's fault.
Plus, it's flat, which means that you can rattle away for a few hundred miles on one gear if you want. Which, last year, I did.
This year's expedition did involve a few more gears on my part, and as a result we went a tad faster and further, but the lessons from last time are just the same…but more so.
Which means that the last few weeks of cycling in the UK have, for me, brought into sharp relief just how far behind we are compared to countries like Holland.
The last couple of bike rides provide no end of good examples:
- Piling into potholes on major roads. If you've thought 'ouch' when hitting these in a car, just imagine what it feels like on a bike
- Following a cycle path that appeared, Wile E Coyote-like, to end at a brick wall
- Following a hatchback in Norwich in traffic, just missing the lit fag thrown out of the window by the driver, swerving to the left, then just missing the lump of phlegm gobbed out of the window by his passenger. I don't think either of them knew I was there; it's just the way that people behave when they're in a car
- Getting overtaken while going around a roundabout - impressive driving skills to get through the gap, but it scared the living daylights out of me
- Cycling in central London and mixing it with the tourist pedestrians, lorries, taxis, and, my personal favourite, the 18 metre 'bendy bus'
It just all a bit crap, frankly.
And while I know that we all rely hugely on four wheels(or eight, or sixteen) to get about, unfortunately almost all the issues I have as a cyclist in the UK are related to big vehicles that put me or any other cyclist in danger. As a matter of principle I would never drive a journey of less than a couple of miles, but nowadays I have to really think about this, especially if I'm travelling with the kids. Which means one more car on the road, half an hour less exercise, and so on.
So, given all of the above, I've decided to get a bit radical on my bike. Whilst I don't think the urban warrior/cycle courier is really me, I'm going to make sure that people in cars at least see me, and if they tee me off, I'll try to engage them in conversation about driving with at least one eye on their fellow road user. All of which, of course, means that the next edition of the Emu may well be written from an A&E department*.
Feel free to wish me well in this quest. Whilst I don't think one more saved journey will make a difference, a hundred might, and imagine how fab the world would be if we all saved, say, 50% of these marginal journeys. Might even persuade that strange people friendly coalition that appears to have been left in charge of the country to put a few cycle paths in place.
*Cue my favourite on-stage joke…'this song features Chris, who when he's not playing guitar, is studying to be a Doctor. To demonstrate this, he's going to spend the entire evening tonight in A and E…'
TrainingPosted by kevin Tue, April 06, 2010 20:55:28So, we're back in foreign climes again, or as my friend Richard would say, the land of ecouté et repeté.
And, given that this part of my marathon training plan calls for a horribly tough training week, what better time to lace up, and head out the door, much to the surprise of the French residents hereabouts, who tend to regard anyone not wearing overalls and driving a tractor with deep suspicion. And yesterday, out the door I went, with a certain amount of trepidation, to try for a rather hilly 20-miler.
All good up to about mile 15, where I aimed to take on (as we runners call it) a drink and a gel to see me through the last quarter of the run.
I had been slightly influenced in this by a presentation on sports nutrition that I went to a couple of weeks ago. Now this had been sponsored by the lovely people from Lucozade, and reminded me, probably quite unfairly, of the posters that I used to see at school advertising drug use. Well, not advertising drug use in the traditional sense (although if you jotted down some of the numbers in the boys toilets then you'd probably be alright for a lively weekend. However, you needed to be reasonably alert - I knew a boy who swapped his moped one Friday for what turned out to be an Oxo cube.) I mean advertising that drugs use was pretty much A Bad Thing, and that people who dealt in such wares always gave the first few hits free.
And so it turned out with the Lucozade man, as he described how important it was to get nutrition into you during a marathon, and that the London Marathon would be supplying all runners with Lucozade gels and drinks on the course. Anyway, all interesting stuff, and in true Nick O'Teen (remember him?) style, he invited us at the end of the talk to help ourselves to as many free samples as we could justify to ourselves. Which, looking at some of my fellow runners, was quite a generous justification. Standing outside the scrum, I asked a friend if she could pass me a couple of gels, which she duly did, and off I went, happy that I could try the gels out (For Nothing!) before I set off on a race proper.
So, at mile 15, I had stashed a bottle of water and a gel, and picked them up almost without breaking stride. I should mention at this point that the weather at that point featured what I believe weathermen call 'squally' winds. I think this just means the wind blows fairly random directions, and I evidenced this earlier in the run when I spat out of the right side of my mouth, only for the spit to complete a 270 degree rotation of my head and land in my left eye. Anyway, let that be a lesson for all sportsmen to keep their saliva in their mouth at all times. Back to mile 15, and I expectantly bit the side of the wrapper off the gel, and squeezed the contents into my mouth. There followed an odd sensation, which was a bit like eating stardust sweets mixed with the inside of a sherbert dip. Not unpleasant, but not quite how I expected a gel to feel. About half way through I realised that I wasn't eating a gel at all, but a single serving Lucozade powder. At which point, two things happened. Firstly, running along at a reasonable pace, I was briskly followed by all manner of insects, who were for some reason attracted to a runner caked in sweat with a unshiftable layer of raspberry sherbert all over his face. And secondly, I remembered about osmosis. Osmosis, you may recall from school, is where water diffuses across a semi-permeable membrane, such as you might find, oh I don't know, maybe in your stomach wall. And if you put a concentration of powder that absorbs water into a stomach when you're nicely dehydrated, you can almost feel the particles of water dragging their way across the stomach. I really don't know if this is an exact physiological description of what happened, but it certainly felt like it at the time.
The rest of the run wasn't quite so much fun as the first bit. The flies disappeared after a while, and I dragged myself back to the house.
'How was your run?' enquired Mrs E.
'Finished.' I said.
*If you get this reference, then good on you. I miss Norwich in the 1980's.
TrainingPosted by kevin Mon, February 01, 2010 09:36:39Firstly, apologies for absence from the waves of t'interweb. I have no excuse other than being slightly busy, and a bit blind to new thoughts - what a horrible way to start the year! I do have a plan to fill such gaps in 2010 with a short series of memoirs of my life n Rock n Roll, such as it has been. But more of that another time.
Also, half-hearted apologies about the title…but all will make sense soon. If you're not familiar with the work of Russ Meyer, here's a synopsis from Wikipedia of 'Faster Pussycat! Kill, Kill!"
"Three thrill-seeking go-go dancers encounter a young couple in the desert while drag racing. After killing the boyfriend with her bare hands, Varla drugs, binds, gags and kidnaps his girlfriend, Linda. On a desolate highway, the four stop at a gas station, where they see an old man and his muscular, dimwitted son, known as the Vegetable. The gas station attendant tells the women that the old man and his two sons live on a decrepit ranch with a hidden cache of money. Intrigued, Varla hatches a scheme to rob the lecherous old man, who is confined to a wheelchair."
Go on, rent it. Better still, have a weekend 'in the style of'. Actually don't, but it does sound like the sort of thing that we might have aspired to a few years back.
Several years (and a number of children) ago, Mrs Emu and I, together with Mrs Emu's younger brother, took a convertible hire car from LA to Vegas 'in the style of' Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. And a very wonderful time we had as well, at least partly re-enacting the book. For some reason, myself and ME'sYB necked a bottle of tequila and Mr & Mrs T's Marguerita Mix in the back of the car, accompanying ourselves as Mrs E drove across the desert, with impromptu strains of 'It's Marguerita Time'. By Status Quo. At which point our journey & Hunter S Thompson's started diverging, and the weekend became officially lost.
And nowadays, when I think about taking this sort of trip, my immediate thoughts are:
Can I afford the time off work?
Who will look after the kids?
Will I get arrested?
How can I avoid a hangover?
How will I get enough sleep?
Will I still manage to get a run in every morning?
…all of which feels, let's face it, a bit middle aged. And I wasn't planning to get to middle aged, ever. And it gets worse...
I've bored readers of this blog before with tales of running and training, and I'm finally realising that I'm really getting on a bit. You will of course, be chorusing 'Oh no you're not' at this point, but sadly, it's true. I've been training up for the joys of the London Marathon in April, and training on the same sort of plan that I've been using for about 4-5 years. And, apart from the fact that I struggle a bit more to get out of the door these days, I've been doing the same sort of sessions. Irritatingly though, my 1km efforts this evening are about 20 seconds a mile slower than the pace that I ran for a whole marathon in 2004.
It being the London Marathon, my overriding fears are that a) I'll do an 'embarrassing' time and b) I'll be overtaken by someone in fancy dress. Actually, this happened a couple of years ago when I was overtaken in the Mall by the runner going for the Guinness Book of Records entry for 'Fastest Santa'. Given that his costume consisted of normal running gear with a light red cape over the top, I didn't think that counted. No, metaphorically looking over my shoulder I can start to see a Rhino approaching.
So the grim reality that I am no longer 26, unable to knock out a training session in the morning, an evening of flaming sambukas and cigarettes in the evening, squeeze in a couple of hours of sleep, then do the same the next day, appears to be hitting home. But it's not going to stop me from trying….
TrainingPosted by kevin Sun, June 21, 2009 22:38:46A long long time ago*, I cycled from Land's End to John O'Groats, which I attempted to do using just two Michelin road maps (England and Scotland). Consequently, given the scale of the maps, I remember spending about four days on the A1 as it seemed like the shortest way between two points, and much of that time diving onto the hard shoulder in an effort to avoid being dragged into the undercarriage of passing trucks.
The reason I mention this is because, I fear, that if I wanted to cycle the end to end again today, I reckon I'd possibly still plan to use the A1. Whereas, having just spent two and a half days cycling in Holland, it's pretty clear that there's a very different way of doing things. Hard to know where to start, so here's a list.
1. We went from Hook of Holland to Den Helder on the first day - to save you looking at the map, this is about 100 miles up the west coast of the country. Then from Den Helder, across the Afsluisdijk dam and down to Stavoren, across the ferry to Enkhuizen, and down to Amsterdam. Then on Day 3, across country to the Hook again. In total, we pedalled around 250 miles, in which I reckon we shared the road with cars for about 5 miles.
2. The network of cycle lanes connecting the towns and cities in Holland is simply astonishing. It splits into two: the LF routes, a network of 6,000 km which have been built specifically for cyclists and walkers, and the cycle lanes in every city and town that mean that you can travel between points either parallel to the road network or with interconnecting paths that take a shorter route. Compare that to the UK, where on the one hand the fine efforts of SusTrans have got us to a fairly disconnected system of paths, and where cycling in towns and cities is even more of a joke. When I cycle with my kids into the city, two of them go on the road in front of me, and the other two cycle on the pavement. I can't imagine that it's anything but annoying to pedestrians, car drivers and other cyclists, and, frankly it's not much fun for me or them either. And did I mention that the cycle network in Holland goes through really really pleasant countryside, that if you have to get across a bit of water in the way that you just hop on a (free) ferry, that everyone, from racers to kids on dutch bikes, to families to senior citizen outings uses the network, and that cars are obliged to give way at junctions?
3. And that unfailingly, if you appear lost, a cyclist will stop next to you, and point you in the right direction. In perfect English. On day one, after about 70 miles, a weather-beaten cyclist of around 50 gave us directions to Den Helder. We'd been going about 5 miles when he came past us to tell us we'd taken a wrong turning, turned us round, led us back to the right turning, did about another 5 miles with us to make sure we got on the right route (a perfectly tarmaced road about 5 metres wide) before he turned round and went home. Can you imagine that happening where you live?
4. So, what's stopping us in the UK going anywhere near this? After all, the man who considers himself our next leader is pushing himself as a keen cyclist, as is the mayor of London. So, we're in for a pedalling-friendly decade as we put in place a series of cycling networks to encourage us all to pedal rather than float around in cars, aren't we? Well no, not really. The government and opposition contributions to the debate have been pretty poor, frankly, and have been partly along the lines of 'infrastructural constraints'. This means that no-one can see a way to satisfy car and bike user...so they don't. Our obsession with the car means that, while they're still the main form of transport, they'll still dominate the debate, and in the meantime the car users who don't ride bikes (I get the impression there aren't too many of these in Holland) will continue to run the cyclists off the road.
If you need to see a different way of doing things for yourself, get over to Holland and go for a ride. It's absolutely phenomenal. Meantime, there are some pressure groups, and www.goskyride.com and www.sustrans.co.uk might be good places to start to shake up our rather pathetic approach to transport issues.
* (and I can still remember how the music used to make me cry...)
TrainingPosted by kevin Wed, January 21, 2009 22:22:33Tony Cascarino was a journeyman footballer, occasional Irishman and writer of the excellent ‘Full Time’ – one of the few readable footballing biographies around. In Full Time, he describes the process of going to training, towards the end of his career. He struggles to get out of bed, finds his legs completely seized up, hopes against hope that the next cortisone injection will free up his frozen joints, and all the time tries to keep his team-mates and coach in the dark. I remember reading this a few years ago, and thinking how I never wanted this decrepidness to happen to me…
So, I woke up on Sunday to go for the traditional long slow run. Running to my training partner’s house (about 3 miles), then an hour with him, then another 3 home. No problem at all, until I tried to get out of bed. A small pixie with a good supply of drawing pins had installed himself inside my right achilles, and every time I tried to move my foot, in went another pin. Managed to get downstairs to put the kettle on. Despite the early hour, Mrs Emu would be needing tea. Hobbled back up the stairs, and about half way up, my right knee locked, so had to travel the rest of the way on all fours. Finally got out the door, and slowly made my way along the ring road to Glen’s house. After a mile, I figured that it would be more hassle turn back than to carry on, so I carried on, although it felt like a shuffle more than a run, as my legs just didn’t seem to be responding. And so went the rest of the run, which was conducted largely in silence – Glen seemed to be suffering just as much after 2 weeks out with a virus.
So, between the silences, the conversation you’d expect would be a series of whines and complaints, but that’s not what happened. And I put this down to the fact that I read books about Glenn Cunningham, and my training partner reads books about Ranulph Fiennes. Now, most people know about Fiennes – 7 marathons on 7 continents in 7 days, regularly leaving bits of his body behind on arctic explorations, fretsawing his fingertips off in the garden shed because he was annoyed by the pain of frostbite, that sort of thing. And as a result, Glen never complains about the cold, or the length of time we have to spend dragging our sorry carcasses around the Norfolk countryside.
You may be less familiar with Glenn Cunningham though. You can read more about him on the net, and I really recommend his autobiography, appropriately titled ‘Never Quit’. The summary of his story : Cunningham used to run with his older brother, Floyd, to their one-room schoolhouse in Kansas. Floyd’s responsibilities included getting the kerosene stove started in the morning to heat the school for class. When Glenn was eight years old, a delivery truck inadvertently left petrol rather than kerosene at the building. Consequently, the stove exploded into flames, killed Floyd and left the younger Cunningham in critical condition for six weeks. His injuries were horrendous - he'd lost all the flesh on his lower legs, lost all the toes on his left foot, and his left foot arch was destroyed. Doctors were planning to amputate both legs and, after deciding not to, concluded that he would never be able to walk normally again.
The rest of his story reads like a Hollywood screenplay. In the film, Cunningham would probably be played by an overweight Michael Douglas (ever seen the film ‘Marathon’?). So far as I know, there’s never been such a film, but the key parts of the story are about Cunningham teaching himself to walk, then to run, to run competitively, and, astonishingly, to compete twice in the Olympics, and each time with the support of his parents, who would spend hours massaging his legs just so that he would be pain-free enough to put one foot in front of the other. There’s a lot more to this story than I can do justice to here, but suffice to say, it’s an absolute inspiration.
And my personal lesson out of all of this, is that it’s an excellent story to think about when your legs are getting a bit tired or your knees start misbehaving. We can’t all have the talent, the perseverance and the pain threshold of Glen Cunningham, but maybe we could all use a bit of ‘Never Quit’ now and again.
TrainingPosted by kevin Sat, November 15, 2008 14:10:32So...this morning's session on the bikes....
1/2/3/3/2/1/1/2/3/3/2/1/1/2/3
The numbers above do not really do justice to the horror of this session. Best part is always getting off the bike at the end and not being able to walk. What happens then is that we emerge from my front gate onto the road, and attempt a run round the block. Now, I have neighbours that may well witness this every Saturday morning:
"Look, there they are again, Wilfred"
"Yes dear, what do those silly men think they look like?"
"Are they still in all their lycra then?"
"Yes dear, and they all look like they've built up quite a sweat round the back of no 210. They've got lots of gear, but if they're this sweaty already they can't really be very fit, can they? And I reckon I could go faster than that on my zimmer frame"
"No dear - I expect they've been up to some other lycra-related activity round the back of the house. What do you think could need such tight clothing, cause such sweating and result in them barely able to move their legs?"
"I really have no idea"
