Author: Richard

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Duelling Affletes

Recently, I have been Thunder Running across scorched earth during daylight and through the sort of quagmire unseen since the Somme in the First World War. I have been riding my bike on high days and holidays and having a whale of a time. I still think cycling is still cheating, mind. I have swum in a lake and not drowned myself while chilling the fuck out and calming down. And all of this was in preparation for the Cambridge Triathlon which took place yesterday.

Only it didn’t. Thank you, blue-green, pestilential and poisonous algae. You can bugger off. Cyanobacteria produce toxins which can kill people to death and sadly they showed up in the lake at Mepal where we were due to swim yesterday. I thought that drowning was going to be a greater hazard than poisoning and have practiced really quite a lot so that I hardly drown at all these days. The organisers took the view that losing participants to something which still has the hump at us for being out-evolved a billion years ago was not an acceptable risk so changed the event to be a duathlon of 6k/40k/6k. The organisers are always right but I do wish that the bloody algae would just let it go. Your time has passed, my little blue-green friends.

I had planned to get out of the lake not last having enjoyed a bit of a splash around, bimble the bike leg waving cheerily to the marshals maybe overtaking a couple of ladies of a certain age if they didn’t mind and have a wee jog round the run course, chatting to friends as I encountered them. That plan went out the window because I would now have to actually do some racing. I had a steady first run during which I was overtaken by a handful of competitors from the next wave back. They were flying. I timed the run at 27:49. I didn’t know exactly where the transition lines were so it doesn’t reflect my official time. I didn’t faff too much in T1. Helmet on. Shoe off, shoe on. Shoe off, shoe on. Bike off the rack and run with it across rough ground to the start of the bike course. I have no idea how all that took 2:16.

I had overtaken some of the women from the previous wave on the run course and one of these nailed me right at the start of the bike. She was off like she didn’t fancy being chased round the bike course by a skinny, middle-aged, bearded bloke with pubes poking through his trisuit. I wonder whether the Brownlees shave down there. Maybe they just wear thicker material. It was a fun ride. The course was as flat as week-old roadkill and I was catching and passing some of the women regularly enough. The quick guys came past me at astonishing velocities. I could hear the whum-whum-whum of their wheels as they came up behind me. One came by so closely and at such speed that I was momentarily blown off-course. On a few occasions, someone came past and then struggled to make headway. I would overtake them again and try to pull away. I managed that once, never to see the rider again. Once I yelled at someone much younger to try it again and make it stick this time. He did and was gone off up the road after his next victim. Finally, I duelled with a bloke between Earith and Haddenham. He finally got away from me on the only climb of the day, a short 300m or so up to a junction in Haddenham itself. I must have demoralised the one guy on a time-trial bike I overtook somewhere between Chatteris and Somersham. Chris gave me a huge lift when he came past me halfway round the bike course. I was yelling and shouting and may have whooped a bit. I dug in there and continued my race all the way to Haddenham. I timed the bike leg at 1:19:35 which gave me an average speed of 30km/h, as near as makes no bollocks. It was the target Chris gave me so I’m quite chuffed with that.

T2. Oh, T2. It’s when you find that someone has taken your legs away from you and left you Christy Brown’s instead. Unclip the right foot. Stop at the dismount line, Attempt to unclip the left foot. Go on. Fucking unclip. That’s it. Swing your leg over. No, the other leg. That’s not working. First leg again. That’s better, Jog through to the bike rack. No, walk through to the bike rack. Walk slowly to the bike rack. Smile at the supporters. No need to swear at them. They’re being nice. Where the chuffing fuck is my bag? That’s it! No, it’s not. That’s it there. Right, rack the bike. Helmet off. Drop shades. Bend to pick up shades. Ohhhhh fffffffffffffuuuuuuucck! Why does that hurt? Shades back on. Shoe off. Fuck! That’s sore. Shoe on. Wince. Shoe off. Shoe dropped, Fumble. Swear, Wince. Swear again. Shoe on. Jog to the run course. Walk a few steps. Remember you’re supposed to be a runner and just fucking run. 2:41. Worst experience of the day.

I thought I would not be able to run at all. My back was aching. I had some intimate chafing issues because I’d forgotten to apply my chamois cream in the morning. As it turned out, I ran slowly but well. I think it was only my technique which got me through. I had little energy left and no strength at all. I turned out to be in better nick than the people I was overtaking. I kept thinking about light steps and using my arms to drive me forwards. I tell my athletes that your arms will get you home when your think your legs can’t. Drive back with your elbows not forward with your wrists and your knees will come up themselves. You’ll keep some poise and balance. There were some very, very tired boys and girls out there. I tried to encourage them as I went by. There must have been some people overtaking me too but I don’t remember any. I caught up with Clare with 2k to go and tried to encourage her to stay with me but she was completely spent. She had a stonker of a day overall though and came 4th in her category. I’ve been given a time of 13:48 in the provisional results for my second run. 31:48 would be closer since I timed it at 28:55. I made my overall time 2:21:18 which was reasonable since I would have happily have taken 2:25:00 when I set off.

Finishing isn’t the end. No. Then you have to try not to throw up over anyone important. Chris was waiting by the finish. It was a huge pleasure to see him there. There’s something about the snot you generate in course of vigorous exercise which makes it far more viscous and unpleasant than usual. I couldn’t find my inhaler because I’d left it in my car that morning along with the tissues I keep for removing mucilage. I was using the water I’d been given to dislodge the mucus which was making me gag and looking at the banana in my other hand as if I’d never seen a banana before. It was an alien object. I’d no idea whether to eat it, use it as a weapon or take it home as a pet. I saw Clare come in and then Glyn a few minutes after that. So, I beat a girl and an elderly man. Woohoo! I feel really good.

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Rubbery-Jubbly

The life lived in Lycra is quite a sweaty one, I’ve found, but it’s not as sweaty as a life in rubber. I went swimming in a lake for the first time on Friday and the first mistake I made was quite a basic one. I got into my wetsuit far too early on one of the warmest evenings of the year so far. Rubber is not breathable, famously so, Wearing black rubber on a warm, sunny evening meant I soaked up the heat like the first gecko in spring. I thought for some reason it would feel a bit like wearing a condom all over and it really, really didn’t. It felt more like being inside one of those basting bags which seal in all of the flavour, in this case the flavour of armpit and groin sweat seasoned with a soupcon of BodyGlide. Only a barest smidgeon of BodyGlide because I’d forgotten to buy a new stick. It’s on the list for next week along with talcum powder.

I buddied up with Colin and Linda who were good enough to allow me to join them and waded a few steps into the water. I was expecting it to be cold but it wasn’t too bad. In fact the top two or three inches were oddly warm which meant that my hand had the sensation of passing through the warm surface layer and down into the colder water below. After two or three doggy paddle strokes I tried putting my face into the water. I was expecting to see nothing in the murk. I fact, I could see my arms and hands through the water. When some water inevitably entered my mouth, it tasted thin somehow. Chlorinated pool water tastes thicker.

I’m used to swimming for about 20 strokes then taking a break as I push off the side of the pool. That obviously wasn’t happening this evening. I still stopped for a break and trod water or floated on my back for a few moments to get a break or find my way. I tried to concentrate on my stroke and breathing, blowing out bubbles. It didn’t always work. There were times when I couldn’t push any air out at all and I have no idea why. I tried humming but got hung up on what tune I should hum. Handel’s Water Music seemed appropriate but I couldn’t remember exactly how it went, not with my head under water. Humming at least stopped me shouting for help which would no doubt have brought instant attention from the lovely men in the canoes.

I enjoyed having the extra buoyancy of the wetsuit. I sometimes forgot to kick and it didn’t seem to matter. My legs were floating up easily. It was actually difficult to do breaststroke in the wetsuit, so very slow was it. I hardly made headway at all. I only did it for two or three strokes at a time to get my bearings. I also had problems swimming in a straight line. I’m so used to following the blue lines on the bottom of the pool at Green’s. I kept pulling to the right like the cheapest hire car at the airport. I had to make a conscious effort to keep left. Linda had to keep calling to me to swim to the left a bit more. The old adage about men drifting to the right as they get older seems to be true after all.

I’d like to upgrade my Garmin to one I can use in the water too. I like to have the time and distance logged. I also like my toys. I have a PoolMate swim watch just now which is very good for swimming indoors. Its accelerometers allow it to count the number of strokes per length that you swim. It assumes that the pauses in a set are your glides at the start of a length so it counts the lengths you swim too. It’s a clever bit of kit but it doesn’t have GPS so it can’t work outdoors. The Garmin Swim watch doesn’t have GPS but there are a couple of Forerunners which are intended for multisports but I’ll have to save up a bit before I can buy either of them.

I have a lot of work to do if I’m even going to finish the swim at the Cambridge Triathlon in a scant few weeks but it was a good first session. I need to be less of a wuss about swimming crawl in murky, cool water. I did enjoy the session. I think I swam between 700 and 800m.I intend to build up to swimming an entire lap of the lake – about 1.4k – by the time of my big race. It’s a little shorter than my race distance but good practice.

My thanks to Linda and Colin for swimming with me and to the rest of my new clubmates at BRJ Run and Tri for laying on such a wonderful evening’s swimming. I’ll be back at the lake next Friday, lubed up, talced up, rubbered up and raring to go. I might even remember not to be quite so keen to get into my wetsuit.

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PB Saturday

I hadn’t really planned it. I seldom do. I thought it likely that I’d be needed at Wimpole Estate parkrun on Saturday morning so when Paul said he had a full roster and that I wasn’t needed, I thought I’d have a trot round Cambridge instead. I’d planned to have a real go at my Mile PB at the Fetch Summer Mile which was on Saturday lunchtime at the university track. It’s traditional to have a bit of a blow at a parkrun first, I thought I’d take the opportunity to have a pop at my parkrun PB while I had a decent set of legs. Training’s been going very well and I haven’t had an injury for a few months so I knew I was in good nick. I’ve been running at the back of the quick groups at C&C’s Tuesday night training sessions and not being too far off the back of the group.

I thought I’d be able to hold the pace I needed. My previous 5k PB, set in March 2012 was 21:03 and I’ve been running 800m repeats in around three minutes. I knew that pace was unsustainable over 5k but I should have been capable of running much more quickly than seven minute miles for the distance. I asked on Facebook for pacing help and Peter Stephens and Neil Tween both volunteered. I thought I’d need to be kept in check a bit at the start. I have a tendency to go off like a teenager at a porn party. There was a chance I’d blow up at 3k if I went off at my usual harum-scarum pace.

On Saturday morning, I had my perfomance porridge (not at all Scottish – made with honey, blueberries, blackberries and raspberries) and a coffee. I remembered to finish my orange juice but not my banana. All done before 7:30am. I need to have my breakfast to run properly but I can’t have it too late or I park my porridge on the finishing line and that’s just not pretty. I met Neil and Peter at Milton. Peter was in a very nice Tweed jacket. He intended to wear it on his run. Chris Darling has a reputation for dressing up on his pacing days so Peter thought that the least he could do was look smart. He looked very smart.

I warmed up. I don’t bother when I’m just jogging round but I needed to be on it from the start. I did the shorter first lap of the course and ran up the finishing straight to check conditions and to visualise crossing the line. I like to say that I don’t have a ritual before a race, that I just rock up and run but that’s not quite true. I need to get my heart rate up before I start or I spend the first half mile running through treacle. I do the same warm up and stretches each time I run hard. I suppose that counts as a ritual.

I ran just behind Neil and Peter for the first lap, It felt really easy. I nearly tripped on another runner and then nearly tripped her. The first lap can be really congested at Milton. I moved past the pace group just past the 1k board. I thought I’d cruise along just ahead of them for a bit in case Peter came in a little behind his target. I gradually pulled out a bit of a lead. I wasn’t wearing my watch so I had no idea how quickly I was running. I ran up behind a junior in a C&C vest at the far side of the lakes. I pushed out a few words of encouragement as I went to pass him and he kicked on a bit. Each time I caught him he would speed up a bit and I nearly fell over him a couple of times. I was a little frustrated but impressed that a boy who couldn’t be in his teens yet was easily keeping pace. He was right there for almost the entire lap. I finally got past at about 3k, I think. Martyn Brearley had overtaken us just before the long straight going back down to the Slippery Bridge at 3.5 and I set about trying to keep him in sight.

As we went through the final lap, I gradually began to close the gap to Martyn. I try very hard not to slow down on Milton’s many corners and each time I ran round one, the gap would come down a little bit. I finally came onto Martyn’s shoulder with a huge effort going past the cafe for the last time and kicked hard to overtake him on the straight just after the final left-handed corner onto the starting straight with 400m to go. I was sure that not only Martyn but Neil and Peter were right up my chuff and I gave the finish everything to stay ahead of them. That finishing straight goes on for fucking ever. There is nothing but pain in your legs, nothing but fire in your lungs, the very hounds of hell in the form of a very gentle, kind and tall man are chasing you down and you can’t look back. You. Can’t. Look. Back. Look back and you risk falling. Worse than that, you give those chasing you heart. They think you’re worried about them. I was.

I crossed the line, collected my finisher’s token – number 45 – and then glanced back. Martyn was there. I had no idea of my time. Neil and Peter came across the line a few seconds later, Peter’s watch stopped on 21:00 so I had a new PB. I didn’t know what my time was then. I waited at the finish funnel for some more friends to come through and then wandered off for a coffee with Julia, Martyn and Alex. It was a happy, happy and completely exhausted time. James gave me my time before I left. 20:38 – a PB by 25 seconds. Job done on PB Saturday, part 1.

And then I had my Mile.

Once again I had a pacer. John Oakes is a legend. He consistently runs at the front of races up to Half Marathon distance and regularly wins his age group. He is another quietly driven, self-effacing, personable and very generous athlete. I had asked for a 5:50 pacer, once again more to stop me going off too quickly. Ours was the fourth of five rounds and it was the busiest. I settled in just behind John after the off and concentrated on moving as efficiently as possible round the track, hugging the inside of lane 1 on the bends. I had Martyn there again. He moved just ahead of me and sat on John’s shoulder at the end of the first lap. We cruised up behind Stacy Wheat, the only woman ahead of us at the 1k mark and this is where I came unstuck. John and Martyn overtook her on the straight before the bend but I was still on the inside of lane 1 and had to move round the outside of her to overtake her because I was losing ground on them. I took the entire length of the bend to do it and then had to work hard to close the five or six strides which had opened up between us.

I didn’t do it. Martyn was flying and I couldn’t close the gap. I took maybe two strides out of him in the final lap. I crossed the line in 6:06, three seconds outside my PB and 16 seconds outside my target time. It was silly to expect two huge PBs in a day but I had so much fun trying. I then ate far too much cake.

I would like to publically thank Peter and Neil for their time and generosity at Cambridge parkrun and John for his pacing at the track. Chris Hurcomb did a grand job organising everything at the track. My thanks to him as well.

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On Mutlow Hill

I’ve done a couple of really long training runs this month, both of them on Fleam Dyke and the Roman Road. I love being out on these old, old routes. Fleam Dyke is a Saxon construction which runs for four or five miles south east from just outside Fulbourn. It’s more or less parallel to the Roman Road to the south and you run along the top of it. There are fewer people on it than on the Roman Road. I didn’t see another soul the first time I ran there at the beginning of the month and yesterday I saw less than half a dozen people in two hours, all of them round Mutlow Hill.

The Roman Road is a thing of beauty. It’s my absolute favourite place to run. You pick it up just south east of Cambridge where it runs parallel to the modern road towards Linton. It runs almost all the way to Haverhill. There is a circular route which was established by the Friends of the Roman Road and Fleam Dyke which joins the two together. I use the Icknield Way or Harcamlow Way which runs through Balsham to get from one to the other.

Well, I try to anyway. I get lost whenever I leave the straight lines of the Dyke or the Roman Road. I know that where I need to be is somewhere “over there” but then the path I’m on goes all wiggly on me. I’m going to have to start carrying a compass and map with me. I check the route I want on a map before I set out but it never quite matches the terrain or I forget a turning or something. Anyway.

I’ve now done two runs over 20 miles along these routes and I’m smitten. The Roman Road is wide and relatively firm underfoot for most of its length. Fleam Dyke is narrow. You’re running along the top of the dyke and there are places where tree roots are a definite trip hazard for tired legs. There are steps up and down breaches in the dyke. I think it’s what experienced trail racers would call a “technical run.” It’s also breathtakingly beautiful in places.

Yesterday, I stopped for my final gel and a drink on Mutlow Hill. If the archaeologists are right, then people have been stopping here for 4,000 years. It’s a Bronze Age barrow and was an Anglo-Saxon meeting place. It’s one of the most beautiful places around here. I had one of those “who the fuck do I think I am” moments standing by a tree at the top of the hill. I thought that while it was very beautiful, the greenery was a bit sparse and yellow in the heat. The chalky, disturbed soil must be quite poor up there. I had completely forgotten that just because there was a path and a handful of people around, that even although people had been managing this landscape for four millennia, it was still a wild place. What reminded me was the sight of a couple of butterflies intent on a spot of lepidopterile rumpy-pumpy. It was windy up there and they were blown past me quite quickly but they still gave me pause: who am I to criticise the butterflies’ love pad?

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Boston

I’m trying to make sense of things, so this is going to ramble even more than normal. When I became interested in running marathons, I heard about Boston. It has a mystique, a reputation beyond other mass-participation races. You need to qualify for it and the qualifying standards are high. You need to be a very good club-standard runner to get to the start line. What happens then is up to you. The course is net downhill and very quick on a good day. You run past Wellesley College and I’m told there is nothing quite like a Wellesley girl. You need to cope with Heartbreak Hill towards the end of the course when you’re really beginning to feel it. It’s the oldest marathon race in the world and it’s on the bucket list of lots of us who run marathons.

And now it’s changed for ever.

A cunttard or cunttards unknown have attacked the Boston Marathon. Cowardly cunttards. Cunttards with access to pressure cookers, nails and ball bearings. Cunttards who can follow a schematic  downloaded from the internet. Hateful and hate-filled. Weak, pathetic little cunttards who can’t attract attention for their cause. Ineffective cunttards, incapable of persuading people by the force of their argument so he or they build a couple of bombs and left them in black holdalls to detonate near the finish of a race. A race. In spite of it being the Boston Marathon it was just a race. And it was the spectators and supporters who took the fullest force of the blast.

As runners we rely on our family and friends for all sorts of support. We shouldn’t have to rely on them as shields against bomb blasts. It’s all just so fucking horrible and pointless. There is nothing, nothing which warrants such an attack. It’s affected me more than other attacks because it was at a race. I suppose that from the point of view of cunttards, that’s job done. Except they haven’t claimed responsibility or tried to explain their fucked up reasoning. They lack even that little confidence in their convictions.

There is a problem in all this, apart from all the obvious ones about blowing people’s legs off with bombs made from pressure cookers and nails just to make a point. If these bombs had gone off in a market in Pakistan, we wouldn’t have heard quite so much about it. And I’m not going to go into state violence because frankly, the whole thing sickens me and I can no longer bear to think about it. I run in part to escape from the dark thoughts and the anger which used to drive me. At the moment all I feel is sadness.

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Duathleticism

I have committed cycling the last couple of weekends. I know. I always said that cycling was basically cheating. I used to hate those smug bastards with their two-wheeled ways, spinning along merrily in sociable bunches of two or three, chatting away easily as they cruised past me on my long runs. I was the one working hard. I was the one who was making a real effort. Not them. Not them with their silly helmets and their carbon crotch rockets and shorts Linford Christie would think twice about putting on. They didn’t appear to be doing anything at all. Cycling? Pah! It’s for people who weren’t hard enough to run.

Ummm…

I have silly shorts you have to smear unguents into now. I have shoes I can only wear one one bike. I have two bikes. I have one bike made from carbon fibre and air and the other of aluminium and spite. I have to wear different shoes for each bike because the pedals are different on each bike. I have a helmet which makes me look like a weird hybrid of Alien and Scot. I have discovered new ways to spend money I really, really don’t have on stuff I’ve found that I really, really need. And sometimes I properly need things like food instead of gels and to pay a bill instead of a new tyre and things become all tense and angsty.

I am obsessing over my time up the hill to Fulbourne. I have become a slave to Strava. If you don’t know about Strava and you like your stats or are a bit competitive but already have a full online life, do not – and I can’t emphasise this enough – do not look at Strava. Don’t.

The last two Sundays, I’ve run in the morning and ridden in the afternoon. It was easy the first week. I’d just bimbled round the Gogs and Wandlebury in the morning and I was still feeling quite fresh. Yesterday was different. Yesterday, I smashed myself in a PB attempt at the Cambourne 10k in which I went off a little too hard and died on my arse at 4k. God knows how I held on. For the rest of the race, I kept Stuart Mills’ words of wisdom in the front of my mind, “It’s not pain. It’s a challenge.” The TORQ Trail Team selection doobrie paid dividends. There was a strong wind at times, and some insidious climbs at least two of which were into the wind but I just about kept it together. The bit I normally enjoy is a downhill section around a lake just after 5k. Yesterday, that was straight into a 20mph headwind and it was tough work. I was running at the front of a group for most of it because nobody else would take on the wind. I got round in 44:41 for 81st gun time (44:31 and 83rd on the chip), over a minute faster than last year when I was 143rd. I was completely broken by the end. The sprint finish I needed to stay in front of a group who were chasing me down finished me off. I took one place from a woman on the line but lost two to other blokes in the final couple of hundred metres. I thought that one of them was a club mate who had started beside me but they were a bit further back.

So, how do you recover from that sort of effort? Recovery drink, a massage, a proper protein and carb meal and the afternoon in front of the telly watching a re-run of the F1, right? I suppose you could do that. What I did was have a cake, a bit of milk shake, a cup of tea and a couple of rice cakes with peanut butter before I anointed bits of myself with chamois cream, got into those ridiculous shorts and headed out for a 30 mile ride. In the end, I cut it short because I couldn’t face the climb up to Balsham into that headwind yesterday. I did just over 30k in an hour and ten.

Cambourne is my anniversary race, the first one I did when I started running so it’s a bit special for me. When I’m Dictator Presidential Emperor of Earth for Life, I’m going to have the New Year start on the same weekend as the Cambourne 10k and make everyonel celebrate by running around a beautiful 10k course instead of getting drunk and having inadvisable sex. The first year I did this race, I spent the afternoon eating pancakes with cream and Nutella. Last year, I celebrated my PB by sitting in a jacuzzi. This year, I flogged my guts out on the bike because I could. I was shouting at the wind and singing songs to the grass verges and having one of the best afternoons of my life – not actually spent in the intimate company of my beloved wife – and I didn’t feel like I was cheating at all.

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I Am A Trying Afflete

I’d intended to blog about the Easter Beginners’ Triathlon in Newham on Sunday when I got home from it but triathlons are exhausting and I fell asleep. I was still knackered in the evening when I had another go at it but I couldn’t think straight. I suppose it was fair enough because I couldn’t swim straight in the morning. I was tucked up in bed by 8:30 last night and comatose ten minutes later. I was still wiped when the cat stood on my head at five this morning. I haven’t been so completely ruined by a race since my first half marathon in Edinburgh in 2011.

I was late arriving. Of course I was. I put off leaving for two reasons, neither of them particularly legitimate. I was replying to an email which probably could have waited until I got back. I also didn’t really want to arrive too early and have time to get nervous. Registration closed at 9:45am and I rocked up just after 9:30am. I’ve found in my extensive racing career that if you want to compete, you really need to enter the race. I’d been wittering on about doing this race for weeks but had somehow forgotten to enter it until Thursday. I sent the organisers a text and got a reply saying that I should hand-deliver my entry to their office in Stratford. I was busy taking Anne up to Nottingham that day but I had time to do it on Friday. Which was a bank holiday. Which meant the office was closed when I rocked up. I popped the entry through the letterbox and hoped for the best.

I didn’t really have time to worry about it because of the TORQ Trail Team day on Saturday. When I arrived to register at Newham Leisure Centre on Sunday morning, they hadn’t received my entry. I offered to help out instead. I was terrified of making an arse of myself in the race but Corral said that I’d brought all my kit so I should go ahead. She gave me an entry and I’m glad and grateful that she did. I had time to listen to the first part of the race briefing before I went to rack my bike. I set up my first transition there with my towel on which I would dry my feet, my arm warmers and gilet to keep me warm on my bike and my bike shoes and run shoes. I faffed a bit doing all that and missed the next bit of the race briefing. I’d regret that.

The other competitors were sorting out their first transitions outside the pool when I went to rejoin them so I pulled my carefully-arranged transition apart and set it up again right under a lamppost. I thought I’d be disoriented when I came out of the pool so I picked a huge landmark I’d be able to find easily. I asked one of the organisers about this and she said that they didn’t want to have competitors run round the outside of the building to their bikes in their bare feet. I wouldn’t have minded. I’m hard, me. I went to get changed once I’d arranged my T1. I’d left my running shoes by my bike. That’s the bit I would come to regret.

I had time to get nervous once I’d got changed into my trisuit. I was one of only two people in such fancy gear. Everybody else was in swimming trunks. Most of the blokes were in baggy shorts. Some of the youngsters were in more streamlined gear. I distracted myself by talking to some of the other competitors and to the dad of one of the boys. He wanted to see his son compete but had to leave to go to work. He was immensely proud of what his son was going to do.

The competitors were set off in waves of three or four, juniors first. My wave was due to start at 11:10am. We were supposed to wait outside the pool but it was far too cold for me to do that so I hung around near the start area and tried to look inconspicuous. It was hard to do, given I was in my body condom. I was watching the other swimmers looking for last minute tips. Nearly everyone set off in front crawl but quite a lot of people didn’t manage to get to the end of their swim still doing their crawl. The juniors only had to do 50m. I was in the Challenge event and I had 200m to do. One of the marshals was waving a huge white board under the water at the end of the lane when each swimmer had done 150m to let him know he only had a couple of lengths to do.

I got into the water when the last of the swimmers from the previous wave had cleared the pool. I swam a few strokes to reassure myself that I still knew how to swim. I was surprisingly calm. The starter set us off. There were four of us in the 11:10 wave. The only other bloke in a trisuit was one of us and I think he was the one who shot off into the distance. I was right against the side of the pool for the first couple of lengths until I managed to get ahead of the young man beside me. I took the decision not to try bilateral breathing. It was causing me stress when I was practicing it and I just wanted to get through the swim in one piece. I was concentrating instead on slowing down my stroke and relaxing. The swim was over quickly. I lost count and didn’t notice the huge white board being waved under my nose at 150m. I had to check with the marshal that I was finished. I hauled myself out of the pool by the steps and headed out to T1.

I pulled on the bike shoes, gilet and armwarmer remarkably quickly for a change and trit-trotted round to my bike where I put my helmet on. I pulled my bike out the rack and headed over to the bike start line. The marshal gave me the go-ahead to start. I couldn’t clip in. It wasn’t happening. I tried the left pedal. Nothing. I tried with the crank at the bottom and then at the top and it still wasn’t happening. Half a minute had passed at least. I tried the other pedal. Still nothing. I was buggered. The marshal was asking me if I had problems. I wanted to scream. I just pushed off and used the wrong side of the pedals to get going. Finally first the left cleat then the right one clicked home and I was off and rolling.

We were cycling round the outside lanes of the Newham athletics track. I forgot how to operate the gears on my bike. It took the best part of half a lap to remember how everything works and hit my pace. I had to do twelve laps and I kept track by counting to myself all the way round each lap. “One, One, One, One. Two, Two…” I was moving quite quickly. Mine was one of only a handful of road bikes. There were lots of mountain bikes there and even one or two BMXes. I lapped one bloke about three times. On the final straight I dropped off the big ring and started spinning my legs hard to get them working for my run and tried to unclip. Then I tried again going round the last bend. And again on the way to the line. I had to cling onto a barrier and struggle for valuable seconds to get my shoes out of the pedals. It took forever. For ever. And my running shoes were the best part of 100m away. I briefly considered running the 1,200m barefoot but one of my toes was bleeding already.

I ran back to get my running shoes and swapped over to them. The best that can be said of my run was that I didn’t get overtaken. One of the guys I’d overtaken on my bike was 10m ahead of me and I thought I’d easily overhaul him again and pull away but my legs just refused to co-operate. I tried shortening my stride and upping my cadence and I got slower. I tried lengthening my stride a bit and got slower again. The man ahead was 30m away now and dropping me. On our second lap, he stopped to tie his laces and I closed him down again but he dropped me easily. I had nothing left. At least there was nobody behind me to make me look even slower.

I crossed the line at the end of my third lap and received my medal. I was chatting to the marshals and timekeepers at the finishing line when I saw one young man walking at the other end of the finishing straight. I thought I’d go and run in with him. I encouraged him to start running but he stopped running again after another 200m. I was doing all I could to get him moving again even running backwards ahead of him. I found out that his name was Robbie. He started running again as he crossed the line for his final lap and began to drop me. Instead of clinging desperately on to him I headed across the D to the finishing line to welcome him in. Robbie was still running strongly on his final bend.

Robbie was typical of the competitors. He was giving it everything to finish. It was an excellent event. The organisers have lots to be proud of. They had forty or so people out on Easter Sunday morning swimming, cycling and running when they could have been giving themselves a chocolate coma. I loved the event. The atmosphere reminded me of a parkrun. It was warm and supportive. If you get a chance to try one of Keep it Simple’s events, do so. I’m looking forward to the next one. They may be able to use the Olympic Park next year and that will be very special .

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I’m All Torq

I feel slightly sick. I spent a chunk of today learning about nutrition strategies. TORQ Fitness, purveyors of fine nutrition products to the running and cycling classes invitied me along to an assessment day for their new trail running team. I spent a fascinating few hours learning about nutrition for exercise, psychological strategies for success and a little bit of injury prevention. I put all that to good use this evening by not stretching after my run this afternoon, driving home, getting cramp in my calves, eating pizza and half a family-sized tub of very nice Green & Black’s vanilla ice cream. With maple syrup. I’m pretty much every kind of awesome.

I’ve been thinking a lot about nutrition for performance of late. Julie Pashley at GCAN put together a couple of coach workshops on nutrition for beginner athletes and elite athletes respectively. They were excellent. There was lots of science I didn’t understand at the time. I’ve had to go away and do more reading on physiology and energy use in the body. I love that, I really do. I like it when one thing that you read leads you to another and another and then you find yourself reading and learning about things that you never expected. I haven’t done that since since I was at university and lost weeks because I tried to read Fleurs du Mal instead of getting on with Chekhov and the collections of really, really dull 19th Century Russian verse I was supposed to be reading. My French wasn’t up to Baudelaire but that didn’t stop me. I was enjoying the intellectual journey too much.

The nutrition session today was what originally attracted me to take part and it was excellent but the highlight for me was Stuart Mills’ talk on the psychology of success. Stuart is an ultrarunner, a Kiwi who has represented Great Britain in the ultradistance world championships. He is also an academic as in sports science and has a blog which I’m looking forward to reading immensely, If I remember what he said accurately – and I wasn’t taking notes so I may get things very wrong in places – his attitude to race preparation is to concentrate as much on mental preparation as on physical training. He might acknowledge negative thoughts and feelings but only to find positive strategies for dealing with them. Pain is a negative. Challenge is a positive. Live in the moment even if the moment is full of pain, or challenge as he would have it. Don’t count down the miles. For example, when you get to Mile 20 in a marathon don’t think “Great! Only 10k to go!” We run because we love it. Why would we want the run to end?

I try to turn that into a positive. I’ve reached 20 miles. How fucking incredible is that? I’ve been running for about three hours and I’m still going. For someone who didn’t run three years ago, that’s tremendous. I do get a huge kick out of movement, rapid movement. Well, rapid for me. There is joy in movement even when continuing that movement is a challenge. To answer the question about wanting the run to end, we have a goal in every race that we do. It’s usually a time goal, and one that’s tied to the end of the race: 26.2 miles and not our time at Mile 20.

Positivity can only carry you so far. You need the physical preparation, the long runs, the tempos and hill session and the run until you puke reps on the track. Confidence is good. I have my “Train hard. Rock up. Run like fuck.” thing going on. I think this is the common ground Stuart and I share. He notes that training hard gives you confidence which leads to an improved perfomance. It’s not the training which improves your performance so much as the confidence that training engenders. It’s an interesting idea. My performance at the Cambridge Half was all down to a couple of really good training sessions in the week before the race which gave me the confidence to rock up and run like fuck. I could have run 1:42 and change but I just sneaked under 1:39 because I was feeling incredible.

There’s a lot to think about and a lot to process. I really want to carry on with this process and having the support of the TORQ Trail Team would be a help. I might spend even more time training on the Roman Road. I’ve entered an 18 mile trail race in the Lake District in August as a way to relax after the stress of the Cambridge Triathlon. I’m contemplating another in October after the Great Barrow Challenge. I could do 25k reasonably easily but today has got me thinking about doing the 50k instead. I’ve said I’m not doing a marathon this year but I didn’t say anything about not doing an ultra.

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How Not To Say “Fuck” On The Radio

I was on the radio again today. It was Andie Harper’s Mid-Morning Show on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire. The producer contacted me thanks to Sue Dougan who is a runner and Radio Cambridgeshire presenter. I’ve been on her show a couple of times and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

We were talking this morning about wearing headphones when out running and in particular during races. I was on after Adam Moffat from One Step Beyond, the organisers of the Cambridge Half Marathon. They have banned headphones from the race on safety grounds and I think the Beeb wanted a runner’s perspective as well as the organisers’. Cue Rich.

I had much more notice when I went onto Sue’s show. I had a good couple of weeks in each case to worry about it, to tell people about it and then to worry some more. I was most worried about allowing a little sweary word out inadvertently. I’m a sweary man. I know little about mass press and public relations but I know that if you want to get invited back to day-times shows you can’t be sweary. What I am sure about is that I have to try really hard not to say “Fuck” on the radio, All the way there in the car, i kept saying to myself, “Don’t say fuck, Don’t say fuck.” I thought about writing “Don’t say ‘Fuck'” on a post-it note and sticking it to the desk in front of the microphone but that wouldn’t have been politic in the circumstances.

I’m not going to rehearse the arguments for and against wearing headphones when out running. There doesn’t seem much point. I don’t like wearing them because they’re just one more thing between me and the world. They’re a distraction. I understand how someone else might feel just the opposite. Still, they’re wrong…

And I managed not to say “Fuck” this morning. Aren’t I good?

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Less Than Handy

I am a complete plonker. Everybody who knows me knows this. Most are kind enough not to mention it, at least in my presence. I’m a clumsy plonker at the best of times and during the winter things only get worse. I can guarantee falling over at least a couple of times when it gets slippery in spite of wearing grippy shoes and trying really hard not to. I usually fall over in full view of attractive women or men with a physical sense of humour.

I was supposed to be running the Folksworth 15 on Sunday. The race was canceled because the very sensible organisers thought that they would have lots of Richards on their hands had they gone ahead with it. Instead of flogging my sorry arse round fifteen miles of hills through wind and snow, I headed off with some mates for twelve gentle miles around the Gogs, the Roman Road and Wandlebury.

It was beautiful. There was snow on the ground and more falling as we set off. The car park was icy and treacherous but once we got onto the snowier surface of the dog park, it became much easier to move. The route Phil chose is one I know a bit since it uses the same trails as Alan B does for his 9 Miles of Hills. The surfaces on the trails were mostly snowy and grip was good in the Saucony Peregrine trail shoes I was wearing. Things were a little more difficult when we came off the Roman Road and headed down the road from Worsted Lodge towards Babraham. The tarmac surface was as icy as the car park had been,

I fell over. Of course I did. I fell over like I have dozens of times. I was jogging gently down a slippery part of the road and had just told Andrew to be careful around here when my legs were no longer where they should have been. When I was at school, I once had the chance to play a set of kettle drums. I liked the resonance when I beat the skin and held the side of the drum. Ever since then, I’ve thought of kettle drums when I fall over. There is a proper thump of stomach and lungs and bladder and bowels all the other cavities of the body when you go down in a oner. I didn’t notice putting my hand out but I must have done because my left middle finger wasn’t bending inside its glove. I gave Andrew – who was asking me if I was all right – a very crooked bird and said I probably wasn’t.

We’d been right at the back of the group and I tottered the rest of the way down the hill to meet up with the others who had crossed the main road. I showed off my very crooked bird, the sight of which was beginning to make me queasy. It wasn’t painful at that point but I thought it might become painful when the endorphins began to subside. I worked very gently from the knuckles and pulled the finger straight again. Some of the others wanted to head back with me to make sure I was okay but I didn’t want to spoil their run further so I set off on my own back up the side of the main Cambridge-Haverhill road. My hand felt funny from time to time but it wasn’t painful and I began to push the pace a bit. Because we’d been bimbling along and chatting my legs were fine in spite of having run five miles or so and I was able to push a bit back up the hill.

A&E at Addenbrookes dealt with me swiftly and competently. I was in and out of the hospital in less than an hour and a half and that included about half an hour of me wandering around a silent and empty, Sunday morning hospital. They checked out my finger, x-rayed it, spotted a teeny-tiny chip floating around in the joint, gave me advice about keeping it mobilised and icing it from time to time and sent me on my way.

I woke up during the night with pain in my wrist. I couldn’t move my hand much in the morning so I headed back to A&E. I explained what was going on and again I was seen very efficiently. I couldn’t have more x-rays immediately but I was given another assessment. I had a second round of x-rays which showed a chip from my triquetral. I may have damaged my scaphoid as well but it would require bone scans to be certain since the images from my x-rays aren’t clear. My wrist wasn’t hurting on Sunday morning which is why I didn’t mention it then.

I haven’t trained since then, not really. I had a kettlebells class booked for today which I couldn’t attend. I won’t be going for a while. To add slight insult to minor injury, the very nice cross-training gloves I ordered arrived this afternoon. I ran on a treadmill at Green’s this evening and it was horrible. I’d planned a 50 minute session but could no longer be arsed after five minutes. I stuck it out for a mile, the absolute minimum I could justify as a run for the purposes of Jantastic. I managed a few Russian Twists having assured myself that I could hold the medicine ball and some planks resting on my elbows and toes. I couldn’t do the rest of that workout because it all involves resting my weight on my hands – twisting planks and press-ups and all that torturous modern jazz.

I’ll be doing more running on that dreadmill, at least until the ice disappears. My joy is as palpable as dysentery. For the first time in my life, I really, really want the thaw to come. So come on, I’d like a nice calm westerly and mild weather for the rest of the winter. No more snow days. No more ice. Sorry, kids.

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