2006 - November

[El Gordo]

I've got computer problems at the moment. I can only get online with my work laptop, and that doesn't give me FTP access, so I can't upload anything. So until normal service is resumed, here's the entry from Tuesday.
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Tuesday 7 November 2006

Some people like to run with their dogs. An interesting way of staying motivated. I'm thinking about buying a tortoise to tag along with. Help coax me out of my comfort zone.

Progress is slow, but there is progress. I was out again at 7 this morning, turning in around 4 miles. Again, no walking. I seem to have emerged from that phase. It's horribly slow; still well over 11 minutes a mile. More like 11:30 in fact. But it's 4 miles without a break, and that's a good sign that I'm slowly starting to build up some endurance again.

At the moment I'm sticking to the party line -- I'm doing the Two Oceans 35 miler, and plan to get round within the 7 hour cut-off. But somewhere at the back of my mind is the teasing knowledge that there is a Two Oceans half marathon as well. I'm not yet thinking about it as a strong possibility but I'm glad it's there as a fall-back. I'll carry on as I am, but at some point before the end of the year I have to rediscover reasonably comfortable double-digit long runs, or it will be time to sit myself down and have that tough conversation.

I need a change of long run scenery. Did running up and down the canal ever have a sparkle? I think it must have done, but it fell off on some marathon campaign somewhere. I plodded along it again for a few miles on Sunday, thinking that life must have more to offer than this. Glittering in the wintry sun, the canal was as lovely to look as ever, but the soft uneven path saps my physical strength, and the out-and-back nature of the run drains my enthusiasm. To run somewhere, then turn round and run back the way you came, seems to encapsulate the essential futility of the human condition. It becomes a simplified model of Shakespeare's Seven Ages of Man.

And I know precisely what I mean by that, so just back off...

Looks like I'll need to drive somewhere to run long. Getting into the car to go running goes against the grain, but it's time to rediscover the cold thrill of going long, and the excitement of exploring a new route. When I was training for that first marathon, my weekdays were coloured by a febrile sense of fear and glee. The long run was the fulcrum of the week. I'd spend half the week being amazed at what I'd done the previous Sunday, and the second half panicking about pushing it another mile or two the following one. Let's have that again. Time to reinvent the LSD.

In a rash moment a few months ago I did suggest to Sweder of this parish that I'd go down to Brighton to join with one of his famous hillside lopes, but the more I read about those craggy monsters, the more frightening they sound. And that's just the runners, not the hills. Safer to stick to my lonely Berkshire dominion for the moment, I think, though I need to find some road less travelled.
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Stop press: And an unbroken 5 miler this lunchtime (Thursday) as I was working from home. Could be worse.