Author: Richard

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Marathon Training, Week 4

The miles are piling up, but slowly, too slowly. I canned Tuesday’s run because I couldn’t fit it in during the day. That was 11 miles gone from the plan. I had a very lovely 14 miles on Christmas day, out to Coton Country Park via Grantchester and Barton and then home through the city centre. It was calm and peaceful. People were emerging from the churches in Trumpington and Grantchester and milling around Great St Mary’s in the city. Mass on Christmas Day was always one of my favourite occasions. Even if I’d been to Midnight Mass, I would get up and head out to church again in the morning. Sometimes, I’d have to because I was serving on the altar but there were times I didn’t have to be there and went anyway.

I pegged a quickish 4 miles in the C&C Boxing Day fun run. My 28:18 was just under a minute quicker than my time in the same run last year. I didn’t go off too quickly for once. In fact, my legs were heavy and I didn’t really get going until the halfway mark. I pulled in a man pushing a buggy in the first 800m back from Trumpington. I saw Margaret Phillips and Chris Hurcomb ahead and thought they would be too far ahead. I pushed a bit harder on the gentle downslope and reeled them both in. I caught Mags with a mile to go and Chris a bit after that. I pushed on again after that because Kris Semple was another few metres ahead and passed him just before we crossed the narrow bridge over the stream on Lammas Land. There was a man pushing a bike onto the bridge just as we passed. I think he held Kris up. I didn’t look back. If you look back you slow down and it gives then man behind hope. I had about 400m to go at that point. Julian Hardyman was ahead and I set off after him but couldn’t close the gap. Each time I kicked, he kicked harder and he beat me home by 4 seconds in the end, accelerating away from me all the while. It took a good 10 minutes to stop feeling ill so I must have given it some in the second half of the race.

I had 9 miles on the plan for Friday. I thought I’d do 5 instead. What with one thing and another, I didn’t really eat all day. Breakfast was late and fried and then I got distracted writing a couple of blog posts and then it was dark and I was grumpy and my blood sugar was through the floor so I didn’t run. Again.

I did my 5 mile recovery run on Saturday in spite of not really having anything from which I badly needed to recover. I had just enough in the tank to take a Strava segment in slippery conditions. I find pushing hard on my own quite difficult and I didn’t want to check my watch while I was running because it might slow me down too much. I just hit a pace which felt quick but sustainable in the conditions and kept going from one end of the segment to the other. There is more to come along there because I wasn’t running anywhere close to flat out and it was very slippery. I think on a spring evening I could take another 20 or 30 seconds off my time along there, especially if I have someone to chase. I could get some clubmates out on a Thursday night and have a good, square go at it.

Today’s run was lovely. The conditions were perfect for a nice, long, steady run. I had 18 on the plan and very good intentions. I ran 13 in the end and it was a real struggle towards the end. The climb up the hill out of Stapleford towards Gog Magog Downs was horrible. I’d wanted to run to the Gogs to meet the others, run a loop with them then run home. Snuggling up next to Anne and the cat seemed like a better thing to do than getting up in time to have breakfast and then heading out the door when it was only just light. Had I done that, I would have done the 18 miles easily because basically I was being a wuss.

I also think that I run better on my own sometimes. I finished my solo Christmas Day run on a high and today’s run in a funk. I don’t always go out unless I have company but then I don’t complete my session if nobody else is doing the same sort of distance. It’s a bit of a sod. I’m sure I’ll be able to come to some sort of compromise where I meet people to start the run but do more of it on my own. I don’t want to sound graceless because I did enjoy everyone’s company today. I need to fix my motivation to the sticking place and complete the sessions the way I need to. It was just too easy to stop when everybody else did today.

Week 5 starts tomorrow with a rest day. The weather is supposed to be foul anyway. It’s nice to have a proper excuse for once.

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Running Tech Sucks Donkey Dong. Official.

I love my running toys but they have drawbacks. The chest strap for my Garmin leaves a welt across my chest if I forget to smear Vaseline across it. When I take my top off I look like the victim of an unusually precise sadist. Sexy. That’s when I can find the strap in the first place. I’ve wasted hours over the last couple of years searching for it. Then there’s all the time standing around waiting for the watch to get a signal from passing satellites. I’d be as well waiting for pigeons to evolve vocal skills and have them read a map to me.

It’s not just high-tech that causes problems. Compression gear is supposed to reduce injuries and improve recovery. You’ll find all sorts of advice about that all over the web. What nobody ever tells you is that you look like you’re dressing yourself for the very first time every time you pull it on. There are photos on the Skins and 2XU websites of toned athletes running and posing with their musculature barely contained by straining supportive and elastic technical fabrics. There are no film clips of them flailing their arms like willow branches on a windy day when they’re trying to pull on their compression tops. It takes me fully five minutes to pull on a pair of compression socks. I know I’m weak and physically unco-ordinated but that’s just silly.

Then there’s taking the bloody things off again. You’ve worked quite hard so you’re knackered. In these circumstances getting off a normal t-shirt can be a challenge. It’s stuck to your skin for a start and your arms don’t bend well enough and you’re tired and your brain doesn’t work and you’d like a drink and maybe you’ll just lie on this bench for a while and… And then you’re shaken awake by the cleaner in the gym because he wants to go home and you only have one arm out of your tee. It’s worse in compression gear because it welds itself chemically to sweaty skin and you need to be even more bendy to take it off afterwards. Ordinary socks are easy to take off as long as you can still bend over. Compression socks require special tools and the help of a blacksmith or other sturdy chap.

There’s a lot to be said for naked running. Not running around with your bits flapping in the breeze. That’s probably an arrestable offence in most places. I mean running without the distractions of GPS watches, iPods or any other bits and bobs. It means you avoid some of the issues I’ve already mentioned. See the The Naked Runners website for more information and inspiration.

You could even try barefoot running. If you’re not up to that, pull on a pair of Vibram Five Fingers to protect the soles of your feet. You should manage to get each toe into its little pocket in the shoe on the thirteenth or fourteenth try at the very outside. You might not swear violently and throw them across the room when they fail to go on easily. Even if you do hurl them away from you they should do little damage because they’re quite light.

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Marathon Training, Weeks Two and Three

Oh God. Man was born to suffer. It’s true. I’ve been in hiding in my Happy Place, a rictus grin fixed on my face in an attempt to fool my brain into thinking it’s all fine. It so very, very isn’t. I’m logging miles like a Morris Minor driven by a woman with hairy ears and a floral hat. S-l-o-w-l-y.

My long runs have been a little short but nothing too dreadful. I raced 5 miles and went out later to do another 10 later in the day one week and then did 25km the following Sunday. Both distances are a little less than were on the plan but I felt okay running them. I bonked* last week after 23k and ran out of gels so I stopped when I got back to the car instead of going past it for another mile and then running back which had been my plan.

(*Note for non-runners, bonking is a lot less fun than you’d think.)

Weekdays have been stressful and horrible and filled with what can only really be described as My Job. My Job has dragged me round the country quite a lot or had me damaging my fertility under a hot laptop or sitting in a meeting room in a hotel for so long my legs were like jelly. That’s a funny expression, isn’t it? I used to really love jelly. Jelly came in colours but not in flavours. Red jelly was always my favourite and green jelly would always be left until there was no alternative. Anyway, as much as I love jelly, I don’t really like the feeling of wibbly-wobbliness my legs have after an entire day spent in a meeting room.

Nothing quite saps motivation quite like long, long drives. In the past couple of weeks I’ve been to Manchester and Newcastle and back on consecutive days because I needed to get back to Cambridge to coach at the club. It’s not the same as other ways of draining energy. You need to stay alert to all the other bastards out there intent on killing you on the road. That’s a special form of anxiety and it really nibbles at your ability to function as an athlete or a coach at the end of the trip.

I wanted to run early in the mornings for an hour or so but I didn’t have the energy for that. I ran on Tuesday evening for five and a half miles and Wednesday for about eleven and a bit. Wednesday’s run was the first one that felt good: Ealing to Kew then up the river to Richmond Lock and back to Ealing via Brentford. I was bumping along, ticking off each kilometer in five and a half minutes whenever I didn’t have to cross a road. It felt easy mostly because it was. I’m definitely an evening runner though. You morning people are all weird.

I’m parkrunning tomorrow then maybe doing a few more miles on my own. My long run on Sunday is only 15 miles but I might do more depending on how I feel. Plans are like drunken promises, after all – made only to be broken.

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Jingle Mile II: The Christmas Wreath of Khan

Yesterday’s Jingle Mile meeting at Cambridge University’s athletics track was an enjoyable affair. It was for me, anyway. I wasn’t running in any of the events. I’m always too nervous about things going well to run when I’m involved with organizing one of these events. It’s the second running of what seems to have become an annual excuse to eat mince pies and cake while people hang around in the cold waiting for me to decide what to do next.

The gold ribbon at all Fetch Mile events, of which the Jingle Mile is but one, is of course the Mile itself. There were four rounds of the mile with the quickest runners in the first round, then the slowest in the second with each successive round getting quicker from there on. There were some storming performances here including Paul Makowski’s fastest time of the day to take Round 1 in a time of 5:05. Our fastest lady was Susie Tautz who ran 6:02 in Round 4. There were PBs for Paul Makowski, Paul Beastall (6:47, Round 4) and Martyn Brearley (5:57, Round 4) amongst others. I very much enjoyed Cameron Smith’s relentless progress round the track for his 8:10 in Round 2 and his sister’s 9:34 in the same round. Youngest runner of the day – not counting Evie Makowski in the 100m for obvious reasons when we get there – was Alexander Wood who logged a very impressive 9:14 for 1,200m.

The next event was the 4 x 100m Mince Pie Relay. The rules were simple; get your mince pie round intact as quickly as you possibly can. The winner team of Wood, Whittle, Pretlove and Makowski did better than the British men at this year’s World Championships in Moscow and got the baton mince pie round without getting disqualified along the way. Lucy Johnson gave us a glimpse of her sprint talent running a terrifyingly quick third leg.

That class became glaringly obvious when she stormed her round of the Hurtbox of Crackers 400m. She slipped right at the start but in spite of that had completely unwound the stagger by 250m and just kept accelerating, only fading in the final 100m. She managed to keep ahead of a fast-finishing Chris Hurcomb. The first round of the 400m was won by a completely exultant Lee Pretlove who charged across the line in 0:59 just ahead of that man again, Paul Makowski.

Makka also won the Where’s Grep? 200m Delusion in an impressive 0:27. He was followed over the line a few seconds back by a tightly-packed gaggle of determined runners none of whom were called Greg. Neil Tween took the tape in the Tinsel Insole Insanity 100m Take 2 just ahead of Evie Makowski in her buggy, pushed by her dad. Isobel Moir put in an impressive performance for a girl sprinting a 100m in walking boots.

The full results are laid out below. I’m sorry not to have mentioned everyone in this report. I thoroughly enjoyed watching all of your run. You were inspirational, awesome. Thank you for coming.

Full Results

Jingle Mile

Round 1

1 Paul Makowski 5:05
2 Iain Wood 5:10
3 Chris Gay 5:14
4 Wei-Ho 5:20
5 Lee Pretlove 5:22
6 Andrew Whittle 5:34
7 Neil Tween 5:43
8 Rob Moir 5:44

 

Round 2

1 John Wilderspin 7:33
2 Erminia Carillo 7:44
3 Vicky Judd 7:45
4 Chris Hurcomb (Pacer) 7:55
5 Cameron Smith 8:10
6 Louise Pryor 8:28
7 Claire Mitchell 8:29
8 Brian Judd 8:36
9 Pauline Blake 8:37
10 Linda Crook 8:54
11 Katrina Mitchell 9:09
12 Amie Smith 9:34
13 Alexander Wood 9:14* (1200m)

Round3

1 Kevin Stigwood 6:56
2 Dave Mail 7:00
3 Jen Richardson 7:06
4 Chris Gay (Pacer) 7:06
5 Andy O’Dowd 7:13
6 Jason Mundin 7:16
7 Katie Tween 7:18
8 Sarah Hall 7:20
9 Gianluca Savini 7:24
10 Gill Mundin 7:24
11 Jane O’Callaghan 7:26
12 Abigail Boswell 7:26
13 Diane Bunch 7:27
14 Rob Moir 7:28
15 Anne Adkins 8:09
16 Cheryl Boswell 8:16

 

Round 4

1 Chris Tautz 5:55
2 Ben Chamberlain 5:55
3 Martyn Brearley 5:57
4 Susie Tautz 6:02
5 Neil Coates 6:04
6 Cliff Weatherup 6:11
7 Julian Hardyman 6:12
8 Bernard Shannon 6:14
9 Chris Poole 6:17
10 Paul Jones 6:17
11 Neville Hawkins 6:18
12 Chris Hurcomb 6:28
13 Iain Rogers 6:29
14 Sam Johnson 6:28
15 Paul Beastall 6:47
16 Paula Kessler 6:58
17 Lynn Roberts 6:59
18 Alex Geoghegan 7:00
19 Julia DeCesare

 

4 x 100m Mince Pie Relay

1 Iain Wood/Andrew Whittle/Lee Pretlove/Paul Makowski 0:58
2 Neville Hawkins/Paul Jones/Chris Tautz/Susie Tautz 1:05
3 Iain Rogers/Cliff Weatherup/Kevin Stigwood/Jane O’Callaghan 1:06
4 Laura Coates/Sam Johnson/Lucy JohnsonNeil Coates 1:06
5 Rob Moir/Katie Tween/Sarah Hall/Neil Tween 1:09
6 Andrew O’Dowd/Gill Mundin/Jason Mundin/Julia DeCesare 1:09
7 Alex Geoghegan/Erminia Carillo/Gianluca Savini/Ben Chamberlain 1:13

 

Hurtbox of Crackers 400m

Round 1

1 Lee Pretlove 0:59
2 Paul Makowski 1:00
3 Iain Wood 1:01
4 Andrew Whittle 1:03
5 Neil Tween 1:11
6 Chris Tautz 1:14
7 Ben Chamberlain 1:15
8 Susie Tautz 1:17

 

Round 2

1 Lucy Johnson 1:13
2 Chris Hurcomb 1:14
3 Paul Jones 1:15
4 Martyn Brearley 1:18
5 Neil Coates 1:23
6 Alex Geoghegan 1:23
7 Andy O’Dowd 1:24
8 Gianluca Savini 1:34

 

Round 3

1 Jason Mundin 1:24
2 Gill Mundin 1:27
3 Laura Coates 1:33
4 Sarah Hall 1:36
5 Cameron Smith 1:42
6 Bobby Makowski 1:50
7 Alexander Wood 2:42

 

Where’s Grep? 200m Delusion

1 Paul Makowski 0:27
2 Chris Tautz 0:32
3 Chris Hurcomb 0:33
4 Cliff Weatherup 0:33
5 Paul Jones 0:34
6 Lucy Johnson 0:34
7 Susie Tautz 0:35
8 Ben Chamberlain 0:36
910 Erminia CarilloAnne Adkins 0:450:47

 

The Tinsel Insole Insanity 100m Take 2

(No times recorded for this race.)

1 Neil Tween
2 Evie Makowski (powered by her Dad)
3 Kevin Stigwood
4 Paul Jones
5 Cliff Weatherup
6 Lucy Johnson
7 Ben Chamberlain
8 Sarah Hall
9 Anne Adkins
10 Isobel Moir
11 Amie Smith
12 Rob Moir

 

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Marathon Training, Weak One

Did you see what I did there? Did you? Did you? It was quite rubbish, wasn’t it? Oh well, the only way is up. The first week of my marathon training has not gone well. I’ve been doing a good impression of the bastard offspring of Coffin Henry and Bob Fleming. My cough has developed a personality of its own. It’s a solid, traditional character; John Bullshit, maybe. It has however given me an excellent excuse to eat Pantagruellian quantities of ice cream in an effort to stave off the sore throat. Given the choice between a couple sad, wee, wee-flavoured Strepsils (other wee-flavoured lozenges are available) and a biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig bowl of Green & Black’s vanilla or chocolate, what would you do?

The cough has kept me awake at night all week. Bastard thing. I’ve had about four hours of sleep each night. I’ve also made return day trips to Manchester and Newcastle on consecutive days. I’d be knackered in the normal course of events this week with my normal training load and even though I haven’t kicked up to 55 miles immediately, I have done three hard sessions, a race and a long run in the past seven days and my legs are mashed as a result.

I’m following the P&D 55-70 miles plan. The plan says 50 miles next week but that would not be sensible at this stage for me. I need to add miles again next week so I am closer to 40 miles than the nadge over 30 I did this week. I also need a rest day or two. I’ll drop a couple of miles off each session next week and swap things around so I can train with Alan tomorrow.

Anyway, let’s hope for a better Week Two because Weak One was horrible.

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26.2

Marathon training starts tomorrow and I don’t mind telling you that I’m bricking it. I don’t have a happy marathon history. I’ve only completed two of them, Moray in 2011 and London in 2012. I started Edinburgh in 2012 but DNFed and didn’t even reach the start line of Amsterdam in 2012 due to injury and idiocy. (I continued to run long after I knew I was too broken to run. Idiocy, as I said.) I’m running the Greater Manchester Marathon on 6 April next year as the first step towards qualifying so I can run the Boston Marathon as a 50th birthday present for myself. It’s an odd thing to want to do but there are worse mid-life crises to have.

26 miles, 385 yards is a sod of a long way to run and training for it takes a lot of time. I’ll rack up the best part of 900 miles in the next 18 weeks if I follow the plan fully. I’ll wear out a pair of road shoes just training for the race, or I will if I do all my training on the road. I’ll probably do at least half my long runs off road, round Wimpole or on the Roman Road, Fleam Dyke and the Devil’s Dyke. I should probably get myself a new pair of road shoes and possibly a pair of race shoes. I go very well in my inov-8 Bare-X. I did 5 miles in them last night and it felt easy and light. my 12 miles today were off-road round Wimpole estate for the most part and hard work. I was very tired by the end.

I could be quite pessimistic about my prospects of hitting my targets on the basis of today’s run but that would be daft. I’m at the beginning of the process, not at the end. I’m not marathon fit but I shall be in four months’ time. Manchester or Bust is not the most inspiring of slogans but it’ll have to do for now.

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The God of Small Joys

There must be one surely? I’m not talking about those major events in life like the birth of children or falling in love. I’m talking about the little things. Finding a fiver you didn’t know you had in a pocket when you really need a coffee and a cake. A smile from your beloved when you wake up. That sort of thing. They deserve to have a god. If love can have a god, then so can smiles from loved ones and children.

This came to mind because I had a really rubbish run yesterday. I had no energy, no vim or vigour and I worked really hard to post a 26 minute run around Wimpole Estate parkrun. It was a bit muddy and sticky but it shouldn’t have been so bloody hard. I’d spent the week on the road in Manchester and Yorkshire meaning lots of miles, hotel nights, unfamiliar beds and crappy food on my own. I hadn’t run since Sunday’s St Neot’s Half in spite of taking all my kit and shoes with me. My lack of energy and oomph has been hanging around for a while.

So I ran flat out and slowly round parkrun on Saturday morning and crossed the line feeling a little meh. However, it wasn’t a crap run. It was a beautiful morning – really, really cold. It took the best part of twenty minutes for the feeling to return to my fingers even though I was wearing my best winter running gloves. It’s definitely winter again and that makes me happy. I was running among friends. I saw familiar, smiling faces everywhere I looked. I know lots of them now but even more of them know me. There were runners of all ages out on the course yesterday and they were by and large giving the absolute berries. Afterwards I had a very nice mocha, one of Cambridgeshire’s better sausage rolls and a slice of Bakewell so sexy I wanted to call it Joan.

My parkrun is so much more than the run and that’s just as well. Running in general is like that. My St Neot’s Half was an hour and three quarters of socialising and partying. I ran the last mile quite hard and it took a good five minutes before I stopped wanting to throw up but apart from that I was chatting and laughing. My time wasn’t dreadful, less than three minutes slower than my 2011 PB on the same course and it was a happy, happy day.

Small joys are important. They keep us going and give us something to rely on when small sadnesses creep up on us and the god of small joys knows there are enough of those around.

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The Moaniness of the Long Distance Runner

I’m injured again. Again, I’m injured and I tell you what, it’s a complete pain in the arse. Except that it’s in my right foot, and up the outside of my right leg and ultimately in my groinal bits. A physio would probably say – has in fact said – that it’s because of weak gluteals but that’s by the by. It’s a pain in the arse foot. I should probably try to have Anne massage my intimate areas. It wouldn’t be any sort of cure but it would definitely cheer me up because there’s nothing quite as mardy as an injured runner.

I’ve had a couple of weeks off now ever since having to stop at 8 miles in the Wimpole Hoohaah Half Marathon. I shouldn’t really have run there, just as I shouldn’t really have run at the Bourn to Run 10k the previous week but having got away with it once, I thought I’d get away with it again and I really, really didn’t. Coming downhill at speed resulted in stupefying pain and I ended up gingerly walking down the hills and caning it up them. I was climbing at better than 8:00 per mile and descending more slowly than 10:00 per mile and the whole thing was a mess so I’m moaning about it now. I finished, by the way, in a PW of 1:55 something, jogging in while people frothed and foamed and sped and sprinted past me. Well done, them.

I’ve been moaning about it quite a lot to anyone who’ll listen and it’s a testament to my friends and clubmates that they will listen to me. Endurance runners all know what it’s like to be on the bench. They will lend an ear to one of their own in pain because they know, know in their super-stressed ligaments and bones that they will hurt too soon. Perhaps “moaning” is the wrong word, at least for what everyone else does. We swap stories of our aches and pains. We get help and advice and support from one another. Positivity comes but first there’s the grouchiness and ouchiness and just the faintest tangs of whine. “Oh, it’s nothing really but I’m slightly fed up…”

The thing about not being able to run is that nothing else is really the same. I wanted to take my bike out today but it rained off and on all day. Running in the rain is a joy. Cycling in the rain is misery cubed. I hummed and hawed and bumbled round the house not doing any chores until I dragged my weak glutes to the gym for a stint on a rowing machine. I lasted all of fifteen minutes. Fifteen miserable minutes or miserable misery. Chris said on Facebook that I should have taken my bike out in the rain. He was probably right. I’m going to try again tomorrow. I’ll take my headphones and listen to some music or a podcast and maybe I’ll last longer or maybe I’ll just break down.

I have another week of Not Running. I’m being good. My foot feels okay with just a hint of tighness across the top when I dorsiflex my toes. I’d like that to be gone before I try again. Patience is a virtue, quite an old fashioned name for a girl and something with which I am usually completely unacquainted. It’s so tempting to join in with tomorrow’s session running the triangles on Parker’s Piece or the mile time trial on Tuesday night at C&C. I need to be sure that I’m back properly before I start training again so the idea is to have a bimble round a parkrun on Saturday and if that goes okay to do five or six miles on Sunday. Please God, let it go well. I can’t cope with being this grumpy for much longer.

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On The Drowning Of Rats And Nakedness In Toilets

Went for a run this morning with Paul. It was pissing it down when we set off just after nine. I love running in the rain; it keeps you cool when you’re working hard. We weren’t working all that hard today. It wasn’t that sort of run. We were trotting along through the wind and the rain, ticking off six minute kilometres. The wind made things a little more difficult than they ought to have been.

There is a particular combination of wind and rain which can make running a complete misery. We were lucky today in that the wind and rain kept just missing that particular combination. It was a damn near run thing at a couple of points. There was a moment as we were running back along the top of a ridge just the wrong side of a hedge line for about half a mile. The wind blew the rain across us and just for a few seconds straight through us in a denial of the laws of physics and common decency. it was easier for us to keep going in one another’s company. I don’t think I would have gone out on my own in those conditions.

I had an equipment failure too. The zip on my rain jacket kept sliding down without me noticing. It’s not a great piece of kit, if I’m honest. It’s barely showerproof so today’s conditions were always going to test it. I’d be running along and glance down and the zip would be almost completely undone. I have an ongoing problem with zips. I’ve turned into one of those men whose flies are continuously undone because I forget to do them up in the morning when I pull my trousers on. I don’t notice until I head for the loo. No matter how many times I say “Oh fuck” to myself when I discover that, I never remember to check before I have my coffee.

My foot began to hurt again after about four miles so we cut our run short. It’s frustrating. I can run more quickly uphills than down them just now. The braking forces through my right foot cause me to slow down. too much. I don’t trust it enough to run hard downhill and going slowly causes even more pain. We looked like drowned rats when we arrived back at the stable block. It’s a funny phrase that. I’ve never seen a drowned rat. I’ve seldom seen a dry one either. I know they’re around, like paedophiles or UKIP councillors but we have little to offer one another so we seldom encounter one another. Paul said he would take a photograph to mark the moment but he set off to do a little more running while I headed to the loo to get changed.

I found myself naked in a public toilet (not for the first time but I’m not ever going to be drunk enough to tell that story.) I had a change of clothing in my bag. I headed for the sole cubicle in the gents and began pulling layer after sopping layer off before I started to chill and shiver. I was quickly naked in the loo, rummaging through my bag looking for a pair of boxers. Happily there were two pairs in there, alongside two pairs of socks, my jeans, a t-shirt and a jersey. There wasn’t a shirt but that wasn’t a problem. There wasn’t a belt for my jeans and that was more problematic. I will happily contemplate spending ninety quid on running shoes or two hundred or more on a new Garmin but baulk at the thought of blowing £20 on a pair of jeans from Tesco. As a result, all my trousers are too large for me now I’ve lost weight. It’s been three years and I don’t think I’m going to put that weight back on now. Even so, I’m not all that keen on throwing the baggy trousers out and buying more. I have only one belt which is small enough to hold them up now too and that was on my bedroom floor and not in my bag.

Paul and I had our sausage rolls and hot drinks in the restaurant when he returned from his extended trot. My foot stopped hurting quite quickly which was a relief. It’s sore now, as I write. When I flex my toes up, there is a tightness across the top of my foot. I need to get rid of that before I run again. I’m due to race next weekend in the Fenland 10 in preparation for the St Neots Half Marathon next month. I don’t think that’s going to happen now. I’ll probably rest my foot now for two weeks and cycle instead to keep my fitness up while my foot heals itself again.

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Inhalers Go In The Other End

I’ve had a couple of disappointing races recently. The fourteen and a half miles down the A143 to a town called Scrotum – or something like that – in the Round Norfolk Relay were in the middle of a damp night. I had an asthma attack. That interfered with things just a bit. Then I ran out of energy and had to have a word with myself just to get going again. The Bourn to Run 10k on Sunday was also a bit of a struggle. I’ve enjoyed it the last couple of years and it’s my PB race. I just didn’t have much oomph at the weekend. I’ll blame my flu jab and my sore feet for falling short of last year’s time with 45:14. I worked hard for it if you go by the length of time I spent retching into a hedge at the finish. I’m racing again on Sunday in the wonderfully-named Wimpole Half Marathon Hoohah. It’s an off-road course and it’s not flat so it’s not going to be a PB attempt. I’ll treat it as a quickish long run and see what happens.

Last night’s training session was… It was an interesting experience. It’s always an unusual night when your inhaler almost disappears up your bum. Well it is for me. Maybe it’s what you do for diversion of an evening. A warm up, the usual dynamic stretches and drills followed by a 1k time trial which I thrashed in 3:45. I have run that distance more quickly but it felt good. I think my post-jab gronkiness has gone. We followed that with 4 x 1k at a slightly more relaxed but still very brisk pace.

Now, a brief diversion: I was wearing a pair of skin-tight track shorts last night. Nearly all my shorts have a zipped pocket on them where I can stash my car key, inhaler and a tenner in case I need to get home from a long run on the bus or by cab. These don’t so I usually only wear them at the track where I can stash all those things trackside in my race bag. I left my car key with a friend who needed to stash his bag while he was running and who would be back before me and pushed my inhaler into the back of the waistband of my shorts. I couldn’t find the little pouch on a belt

I set off on the third rep having had a quick puff a the end of the second. I was a little rushed and didn’t quite hook the jutty-outy bit over the top of my waistband. I pegged it off up Clerk Maxwell Road and as I started to climb the gentle rise onto Madingley Road where everyone else seems to slow down, I felt the inhaler jiggle down into the back of my shorts. I could have slowed down at that point and fished it out but I’d just worked hard to overtake a couple of other runners and I didn’t want to let them past so I just kept going. The further along Madingley Road I went, the more the inhaler disappeared down until it was nestled uncomfortably between my bum cheeks. There were a couple of moments as I ran down J J Thompson Avenue when I thought the sodding thing was going to work its way up inside me.

I got to the end of the rep with an inviolate anal sphincter and pulled the inhaler out of my  shorts. It was sweaty but not smelly so I tucked it back into place more carefully before I headed off on the final rep. I can’t imagine that even if you were so minded to push an inhaler into your fundament that you’d get much pleasure or satisfaction from it. There are probably better butt plugs out there.

And no, I’m not going to road test any butt-plugs for your amusement.

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