Author: Richard

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What I Swear About When I Swear About Running

My legs fucking ache. I mean they’re sore, sorry, tired, wee twigs of nothing much at all other than embarrassment. This morning’s Wimpole 10k Hoohaah was hard work on a warm and breezy morning. The climbs took whatever little oomph I had in my wet rag legs and put squeezed it out as thoroughly as one of those old fashioned mangles. My get up and go got up and fucked off after about 3k and now I’m sitting here on my sofa watching re-runs of NCIS with a cat flaked out beside me. She has spent quite lot of time this afternoon with her nose in my smelly ‘pits with no sign whatsoever of distress. She’s a strange creature.

As I was dying on my arse towards the end of the final climb of the morning I had a particularly virulent swearolog running through my head. “Please end. Please fucking end. I don’t mind if I die as long as I die in front of this fucker but please end.” I usually feel more supportive of my fellow runners but today it was all about me and my woefully shagged legs. I wanted to stay in front of every bugger I overtook and cursed my legs and lungs when I couldn’t.

I took a walk break to sip some water at the halfway mark and found that I couldn’t breathe when I started to run again. Running with COPD is always a bit of a challenge. My lungs just don’t function as well as they would have had I not given them a nice tarry coating over twenty-odd years of smoking. I have nobody to blame but myself so that means I reserve a particular vitriol for my own stupidity.

Sometimes I wish that the first thing to fall to hand in my language toolbox weren’t the fuckhammer but it’s just so satisfying to give things a thorough twatting with it. I don’t think things actually improve when you use the fuckhammer. I didn’t run any faster because of it today for example. I couldn’t have; some complete tosser had taken the fuckhammer to my legs already. You just feel better for the emotional release.

I’d like to know whether different people get the same amount of relief from using different words. For some people “Dash it all” would have the same degree of intensity as “Bugger it all to fuck” does for me. Someone should do that experiment. I would but I don’t know anyone who would want to be really sweary for science. Also, I’m a fuckwit who wouldn’t be able to design such a research study.

In addition to the fuckhammer, the linguistic toolbox contains the cuntdriver, the bastardrill, the twat chisel and the plane speaking. Everyone has their own range of descriptors and emotional intensifiers which they use when they’re communicating. Some can do it wordlessly. If you know what you’re doing you can give your opinion of someone as a cockgobbling twatbasket with only a raised eyebrow.

Swearing can carry the same degree of linguistic invention and innovation as other speech. I love playing with words and swearing is a bit like playing in the mud. Who doesn’t love splashing through mud? Making mud pies? Mudtastic fun! And you can do the same with words for fucktastic fun! So remember that when you have your linguistic wellies on.

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Food, Glorious…

I want to talk about food. It’s so much more than just nutrition. We have a complex, complicated, infuriating relationship with food. It’s bound up in external power structures and personal struggles for freedom or control.

There have been times when I just couldn’t be arsed to eat but that’s depression for you. Hunger failed to overcome lassitude until I could summon the oomph to toast some bread or boil a kettle for tea. There was just the smallest feeling that I might not be able to move my arse from the bed or the sofa but I could overcome the need to eat. Sometimes even the smallest and most stupid victory is all you have. There could be something of a much larger magnitude going on for some people living with eating disorders. I don’t really know.

In a more positive way, there is food as celebration. I’m an awful one for cake. It’s a code for a small luxury or reward and not just a confection of flour, eggs and sugar. It’s notable that we celebrate with cake and not, say corned beef sandwiches. (Other sandwiches are available.) We have birthday cakes and wedding cakes, cakes at Christmas and Easter and to mark every other celebration. Cake is acceptable when alcohol just isn’t and not just when children are involved.

I’d like to know why. Why it’s cake, that is, and not bread or cheese or fruit or honey or anything else. A birthday sausage is somehow almost completely wrong and not just for vegetarians. Sugar has been a luxury and indulgence for centuries. It’s very expense made it a means to display the wealth of the person laying on the spread. The depth of a man’s purse on display in the delicious shape of a very sweet slab of cake.

Celebratory cakes are an evident hangover from those times. We have a cultural memory of hand-crafted display and indulgence even if we can buy some mass-produced, iced confection from a supermarket for a couple of quid. I’m still not sure why it’s cake and not another expensive foodstuff like squid ink pasta, for example.

All those beautiful, tasty, sweet and sugary calories in cake bring me back to  the complex emotional relationship we have with food. There is that slight tang of guilt that some of us swallow with every mouthful. If food is a reward for “good” behaviour then starvation can be a punishment for “bad” behaviour and there we have a very simple and probably completely inaccurate explanation of the origins of eating disorders.

I don’t want to talk about them and not only because I don’t know enough about them. Whatever I say about anorexia or bulimia or dysphoria would probably upset someone for no good reason and I’m not going to do that. Instead, I’m going to link to Beat’s website and point you there. Whereof thou knowest nought, thereof thou shouldst keep silent. Nevertheless, if you know someone who would benefit from help, please point them or their loved ones in the right direction.

Remove the joy and the fellowship from food completely and you’re left with food as nutrition. The only place I’ve ever heard of food only as nutrition is from the founder of a company called Soylent. I can’t find the reference here to the interview. The attitude lying behind this product is that food is just food, a means to keep physiology running. I disagree completely, of course. A shared meal is an opportunity to bond and talk, to exchange ideas and news. When you do it, where you do it and what you eat while you’re doing it are all less important than the people you share the meal with and that you talk while you’re doing it. I don’t think you’d have much of a shared experience over a vat of concocted food powder. You’d have a better meal of porridge. The emotional connection goes through the food somehow to the other people.

All food comes from somewhere of course. Its production and distribution is increasingly complex. There are geo-political implications involved for nations in considering their food security. Meat production uses up land and resources and demand for meat is increasing as more people become wealthier. We’re going back to food as display here. I really want to talk about GMOs in food but that’s probably another post when I’ve had a chance to do more research. I’m not going to talk off the cuff about that. I will say now that I can see the value in using as many different technologies as possible to meet the challenge of feeding the billions of people living on our planet. The rational thing would be for us all to farm maggots or eat Soylent or its like but we’re not at all rational about food and that takes me back to where I started.

Sorry for the lack of swearing this week. Normal service will be resumed soon when I talk about fuckwits or falling over.

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Tell Me The Truth About Lufu

There is a problem with English. We don’t have enough words. Really. There are only about 170,000-ish entries in the OED and it’s nowhere near enough. There are about another 47,000 obsolete words. You’d think that among those 211,000 or so words and another 9,500 derivatives there would be sufficient words for love.

Maybe it’s hyperbole but I find myself loving a lot of things and many, many people. I love running – of course – except when I don’t. I’m not especially enamoured of it just right now. My mojo has become nojo and rather than fret about it I’m just letting it go. I’ll run or I’ll not run and hope that the love comes back in time for me to get some Thunder Run training in. Because I’m not bricking it about that at all. No. Not me.

I love cheese and sausages and bacon. Sorry, vegans; I do. I have been experimenting a little with not eating meat and cutting back on dairy and to be frank, it hasn’t worked at all. I’ve tried soy “milk” and almond “milk” and thought I might as well have had Milk of Magnesia. My knee-jerk breakfast when I haven’t had time for my porridge in the morning is a bacon roll. I forget about the pig who died to sate my hunger until I see an animal transporter and then the guilt hits me like a bolt gun. Tonight’s beef with peppers and paprika was spectacular. I thought this afternoon about dinner and that’s what popped into my head and I was out of Tesco’s with 400g of cattle flesh before I’d even remembered.

Love and guilt, mixed together as if I were having an affair with meat.

Which brings me to people and relationships. I love my friends, I really do. I can’t think of a better word to describe the general feeling of esteem, bonhomie or intimacy I have for all of them but at the same time love is a completely inadequate word to describe every relationship.

I remain besotted with my wife more than 10 years after we met. I need her like I need my next breath. Then there is the whole naked thing and I’m really not going to go into that here. I think everyone is going to be so very pleased about that. She is my closest friend and dearest companion. I like her even more than I like bacon and I love bacon and there we have an example of the inadequacy of the English language.

Nor is it particularly nuanced. There are no graduations in love for varying degrees of intimacy, friendship or esteem. It goes without saying that I don’t have any real desire to get sweaty and breathless with any of my friends except when we’re racing, yet I love them. I don’t want to share intimacies of the same kind as I do with Anne even with my dearest friends but I don’t have any word to describe the emotion I have for them other than love.

I love a cup of coffee in the morning but I don’t derive the same amount or kind of pleasure from it as I do from seeing my wife’s face.

Then there are the cats, chickens, nephews and nieces, parents, brothers and sisters and everyone else I love. It’s such a small word, such a huge range of emotions. Ancient Greek does better. There is eros, that naked, sweating, boobs and bits love. Philia covers my feelings for cheese and bacon quite well. Family stuff is mostly storge unless you’re in parts of the Appalachians then there is agape. Agape is the selfless love of one for another. It gets mentioned most often in relation to theology nowadays and that’s quite sad. There should be more agape in the world. It would mean fewer misunderstandings when telling a friend that you love them.

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Dating Disasters

Valentine’s Day is coming. This used to fill me with small amounts of dread. When I didn’t have anyone to spend the evening with, I would be filled first with self-loathing and then with Guinness and vodka. Then sometimes I would have a Valentine’s date and the stress of what to do for the evening would leave me gibbering. The Day of Love, my arse.

I’ve often wondered how a Roman priest became the patron saint of over-commercialised expressions of hopeless amorousness and very expensive flowers. He’s also the patron saint of beekeepers, epilepsy, plague, travellers and greetings, not just greetings cards and their makers. I suppose that epilepsy and plague need a patron saint. Lovers and engaged couples certainly do.

Useless daters don’t have a patron saint as far as I know. I could have done with a bit of supernatural intervention down the years. It’s not just the times I’ve wanted to swallow my own tongue to stop myself saying stupid stuff. Is there really a need to tell your date you’re off to the loo, for example? No, I can’t think of a reason to do that.

One time I thought we were both enjoying ourselves. We’d ordered food and a second bottle of wine. I came back from a trip to the loo to see her disappearing out the front door of the restaurant with the second bottle of wine. She shouted, “That’s my bus!” and disappeared onto the mean streets of Richmond leaving me with two pizzas and the bill. Who does that?

Yawns are a strange reflex. I yawn when I’m nervous. You’re probably going to yawn when you read this sentence for a start. I yawn when I’m nervous too. It’s physiological, irresistible and certain to worry a date who thinks she’s boring. “No, you’re not boring me at all. You’re making me really nervous.” Another one for the tongue-swallower.

The next stage of nervousness on from yawning is barfing, of course. The liquid yawn. Of course, it is. It should be realising that you’re not nervous at all and that the person in front of you is enjoying your company but no, it’s not. I have several times had to disappear to the loo to regurgitate the meal I’ve just eaten. On one really special evening  I had to pay that visit twice in five minutes. Not easy to explain that one away. Do you lie and say something along the lines of “Sorry, bothersome prostate?” Your date would no doubt be really flattered were she to know that she was having such a strong effect on you. This particular effect? Not so much.

The thing about all of these disasters is that I never felt nervous at the start of the evening. It’s only when things were starting to go well that the yawning, the shaking – I haven’t told you about shaking so badly I couldn’t put my glass to my lips without risking rattling my front teeth with it – or the puking start. My body always let me down.

I need to close with a running analogy. That one’s really easy though. My body always lets me down.

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The Forgetful Man

I am a distracted, forgetful man. It’s true that the internet makes you stupid. In spite of having access to the accumulated wisdom of several thousand years of civilisation, constant internet access has reduced me to being a three-year old who has discovered a stash of chocolate and pictures of puppies. I can’t concentrate on anything for much longer than it takes to get pissed off with a Britain First post on Facebook.

Actually, anything on Facebook is a distraction. I was at a very good workshop today. Hello to any Bits on the Side who are reading this. I said during one of the sessions there that I would do the Hitler thing to Mark Zuckerberg if I could. Not kill him, but go back in time and prevent the coitus that resulted in him being born. Give Mark’s dad a spot of brewer’s droop or his mum enough of a headache to tell his dad to sod off. Of course, that would probably only result in all of us wasting time on My Space instead.

So, I am a distracted, forgetful man… Wait a minute.

I was forgetful and distracted long before I could blame Mrs Zuckerberg’s little boy for anything though. I’ve always been much more interested in the next thing than the thing at hand. Or the thingie at hand since I can’t always remember the word for the thing I have at hand. It’s as if the little name tag which is supposed to be attached to something falls off. I know that a table is a table that it’s not a hat, for example. I know that just because it’s got legs I don’t have to try to put trousers on it or take it for a walk.

A table, even a very expensive one, doesn’t have feelings. People do. That doesn’t stop me temporarily forgetting some names. I know Anne is my wife and I am daily ever more grateful for that. Nonetheless, I don’t always remember her name. She has, with her usual compassion, taken to introducing herself to my friends just so that I don’t have to stress out about it and spend time saying “Ummm…” Who would want to be known as Ummm Lyle, anyway?

If I can’t always remember the name of the woman I love, what chance does anybody else have? Bugger all, really.

Having said all that, I woke up very confused one morning last week. I’d had a very vivid dream that I was married to someone else and didn’t have a clue who the woman next to me was when the alarm went off. Alzheimer’s is going to be a complete sod.

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Small Pleasures

Small pleasures are those little things which mean a lot to oneself and which probably mean nothing at all to anyone else. Some have disappeared. Kit-Kats in foil wrappers, for example, the four-fingered ones. I used to slip the red paper part off and then rub the foil smooth over the fingers so that the logo stood out. Then I’d slide my fingernail down between the fingers. I had to get the tension exactly right or the foil would tear and that would have been dreadful. They’ve changed the packaging and the four-fingered Kit-Kats come in this nasty wrapper which is doubtless more robust and keeps those little slivers of wafer and chocolate fresher for longer.

Small pleasures shouldn’t be the great big things in life. Kissing is never a small pleasure. If it is, you’re probably doing it poorly or kissing the wrong person. My advice would be to find the right person so that every kiss becomes a comma in the sentence of your life together. Who says you can’t combine romance and punctuation? Sexy times shouldn’t really be on the list of your small pleasures either. There’s a reason they call it the Big O. If you’re screaming, it’s not a small thing.

I really liked the smell of Kick the Cat’s head. Other cats don’t have the same smell. Kick the Cat was not a personable creature. She was distinctly grumpy, in fact. She hated practically everyone apart from me. Me, she barely tolerated. She was a serial sausage thief and inveterate bin diver but in her passing few adorable moments she had a sweetly-smelling bonce. When it wasn’t covered in week-old curry sauce. Tilly has even hairier ears than I do. That’s no reason to dislike her, of course, and the space between them doesn’t appear to be filled with anything more substantial than fluff and nonsense. Even though she shares none of Kick’s delinquent tendencies, Tilly just doesn’t smell as good. Bertie of blessed memory would gently chew on on of my fingers which was lovely. Mouse is an instant purrer. You just need to rub her ear and off she goes.

My last post was about the sound of leaves make as you run through them, that ship-ship-ship sound. Getting your cadence and form just right as you run through a drift of fallen leaves is definitely a small pleasure. Even better is running through a puddle. Today’s parkrun at Milton was beautiful. There were puddles the width of the path in places and you could mince round the edges or go straight through the middle. Who ever took pleasure from going round the edges?

New books smell even better than small cats. A magazine which nobody has opened before is a special thing indeed. Lighting the gas on the first click does odd things to the corners of my mouth. A man shouldn’t smile at that. A sane man shouldn’t smile at that. Then there’s the crunch on a good creme brulee when you put the first spoon in. (I can’t do the accent things on this keyboard. Pretend they’re there.) Or what about the texture of extra thick double cream? Mmmm… A spoonful of that and I’m a happy man.

Life should be full of pleasures of all sizes. If your life is like a jar – bear with me on this – if your life is a jar or a vase and pleasures are rocks then you can have two or three big rocks and an awful lot of emptiness or you can pack in more, smaller pleasures – or pebbles in this analogy – even ones as small as a grain of sand. Oooh, that reminds me, running on wet sand on a beach is marvellous, just marvellous.

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Ship, ship, ship, ship…

It’s sensory overload, really.

There’s a sound which stands out in every season. Sounds are muffled by snow in winter so that all you hear is your own breath entering and leaving your body. If there’s no snow, the muffled sound comes courtesy of your hat pulled down over your ears so again you’re left with your breathing and the sound of your feet splashing through puddles and over pavements. The colours of winter are muted greys and blues with dazzling white for a handful of days if you’re very, very lucky and live away from polluting city traffic.

In the spring, there’s the smell of new leaves and the vivid, virid new growth. Life returns with enough punch and power to drive roots downwards through the earth and branches up and out through the sky. You can feel that power, if you’re enough of a hippy. The rest of us just feel better because we’re getting more daylight. Late in spring, the yellow of rape screams across field after field like Young Farmers pissed up on cider.

In summer, you hear skylarks but seldom see them. They’re little disembodied piping voices coming out of a blue, blue sky. That green of spring gets bleached out eventually even in the dampest of dismal British summers so that by late August greens are pallid and the cereals in the fields are burnished golden by the sun. Hot tar in cities has its smell. Damp earth after rainfall is a special smell.

Autumn is my favourite time of year. I was running through the woodland belts round Wimpole yesterday. In the place of the pad, pad, pad noise my feet make on the same trails during winter they were making a ship, ship, ship noise as I ran through drifts of fallen leaves. I remember Seonaid talking about going shoof-shoof through the piles of leaves as she walked around when she was a child. I may have misremembered exactly what she was talking about but that sound is so evocative of the life lived outside at this time of year. There is also the smell of all those leaves and their beautiful colours.

I’m not sure why I like autumn so much. There are quite a lot of anniversaries marking the deaths of family, friends and even pets at this time of year. Those beautiful leaves are filled with waste products and toxins before they drop. The new academic year has always brought some kind of hope of change and renewal even as the days shorten and the calendar year draws to a close. That hope and the shoof-shoof of an autumnal walk or a brisker ship-ship-ship are what make life seem just a little lighter in the gathering dark.

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‘Morning!

I get confused when I’m running. I can only really concentrate on one or two things at a time. Today it was all about running to a pace, keeping a nice upright posture and only if I had sufficient extra mental capacity would I worry about bits of me hurting. I saw Megan for some advice and massage on Tuesday a year to the day after my last trip to Fit Again Sports Therapy and she said I could train as long as I cut back on my mileage while I was still doing the physio on my Achilles. I did a very easy parkrun at Milton yesterday and nothing pinged or went twang so I thought that a longer run today would be a good check on whether I could restart training with a light week next week. I think I’m good to go. I have an odd wee twinge from my ankle but both Achilles are fine. There was a momentary flare from the right one just at the end of the session a couple of hundred yards from home but it was so fleeting it might not have happened at all. It might have been in my head. Runhausen’s Syndrome, perhaps.

What with all that going on, concentrating on my pace and form – don’t go so quickly that you break or so slowly that your form collapses – what with all that, I didn’t really have a lot of brain-room left for other things. We were told during our CiRF course that most athletes can only cope with one or two coaching points during a session and I’m definitely one of those athletes. So, I’m moving along, glancing at my watch every minute or so but running on feel for the most part and my pace is fine. I think about a balloon coming out the top of my head to keep everything nice and upright and I find that everything else follows from there. I’m relaxed, my arms are moving easily, my knees are coming up and it’s all good. As usual, I occasionally feel my left shoe brush my right calf as it comes through but once I concentrate on keeping everything in line then that stops too. It’s all going marvellously.

Then I spot some people on the path ahead. Now, I know some of you will find this hard to believe but I was brought up to be polite. It wasn’t all “Fuck you, you fucking humpbadger!” from the age of six. I still feel the need to greet people with a smile and a nod and to say something as I glide athletically past. I don’t want to be one of those runners, the wordless ones who avoid eye contact in case they have to deviate momentarily from their course, the ones plugged into some iPod-driven hell of introspection and sweat-sodden self-loathing. You know the ones. I saw one like that this afternoon coming the other way. I smiled. I nodded. I said “Hi!” Nothing. Not a thing. The fucker wasn’t even going so quickly that he couldn’t get a word out. Headphones will do that to a man.

So, these people coming the other way. There was a family of two adults and two children occupying the width of the path. Not a problem for the considerate runner. No traffic in the road so I run along it for a bit, do the smile and nod thing as I go past and get a smile and nod in return. The positive exchange, as the Naked Runners used to call it. Next is a little old lady walking along at little old lady pace with what is almost certain to be a badly buggered hip from the way she is limping. She smiles. I smile back, nod and say “‘Morning!” It’s almost five in the afternoon. I’m an idiot. I almost run back to her and say “Sorry, I meant to say ‘Good afternoon,’ because it’s afternoon after all, isn’t it? But I’m a runner, you see. I can only concentrate on my pace and my form and I don’t have time to think about the time of day too. Terrible, isn’t it? I’m quite bright, really. Well, it’s the first time I’ve seen you today. The first time I’ve ever seen you so for some reason my brain says that I should wish you a good morning and not a good afternoon. Brains, eh? Who’d have one? Anyway, sorry to startle you coming back like this. I’m not a mugger, ha, ha. No, not me. I’m a runner. Nice talking to you. Bye!'” What would you have done?

Onwards again. My route takes me through the grounds of Cherry Hinton Hall and then out along the babbling brook where the path is very narrow. I pass a couple heading in the same direction as me by running on some grass where the path goes past some houses. I give them a wide berth. I’ve caused screams before as I’ve gone by because people can’t always hear me coming. I take that as a compliment to my form but I don’t like to cause anxiety. I wave thanks to them as I go by and wish them a pleasant evening. There are a couple of cyclists coming the other way down the narrowest stretch of the path. We each slow down to allow the other to pass. Smile. Nod. Onwards. Finally, I have to come to a stop to allow a couple of families with pushchairs past. Of the four adults, only one man returns my nod and smile. The rest avoid eye contact. I know I’m a bit sweaty by now, a bit snottery and slightly breathless but I was being polite and all I get in return was one hurried and embarrassed nod.

I can’t be the only one who’d like to build a community one exchange at a time. It’s not just about the runners or the cyclists or the swimmers. I tell my athletes on a Tuesday night to be careful when they encounter pedestrians. A group of athletes moving at pace can be a very intimidating thing for someone to encounter. They’d be alright, speeding up and buggering off round a corner. It’s me that’d be in the shite. I have the club’s name and badge emblazoned on my chest and Coach Rich on my back. I’d get the letters. So I tell them to slow down or to give other pedestrians room and acknowledge them as they pass. It’s only polite after all. I don’t want us to be one of those clubs after all. I’d like to include those of a less athletic disposition in the community even if it’s just by nodding sweatily as I go past whether they want to be included or not. I might get fewer screams that way and fewer of those fuckers with headphones instead of social consciences would irritate me.

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An Idiot Abroad

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I have a thing about new clothes. I won’t buy any. I will buy bundles of boxers and party-packs of socks from time to time but that’s about it. I haven’t bought a t-shirt since I started running because I get all the tees I need from races. I have very occasionally bought a shirt in an emergency, usually after I’ve dribbled my lunchtime soup down the one I’m wearing or I’ve been caught in one of those rainstorms which soak me so completely that complete strangers are transfixed by the sight of my nipples and chest hair through the now-transparent fabric. Generally, however, I won’t buy new clothes.

I will buy second-hand clothes. My ex introduced me to the delights of the charity shop. (Hello Jane, if you’re lurking. Hope it’s all going well.) I thought it was weird at the time but she bought me what became my favourite blue shirt in a charity shop in Oxford. I’ve worn it so much that the collar is threadbare and becoming detached and yet I can’t bring myself to throw it out. It’s just such a beautiful colour and the fabric is softer than a kitten’s kiss. I have bought a few things from charity shops myself since then but now that I’m not a fat man any more, there is little on the rails my size.

That’s the basic problem I have now. I need skinny clothes but I don’t want to shell out for them. I’m stuck with shirts I bought five or six years ago because there is lots of wear left in them. It’s a waste for me. I could take them down to charity shops and make space in my wardrobes for clothes which fit but I never quite get round to doing it. Twice in the past week, I’ve gone into shops to buy a new pair of trousers and a couple of shirts, spent half an hour carefully selecting the items I want, taken them to the till and then bottled at the last minute and left the shop empty-handed. Partly it’s the cost. Clothes are expensive. Nice clothes are really expensive. The clothes I like are really very nice indeed. I tried again at Tesco. Tesco clothing is not particularly nice but it’s not that expensive. It’s like new charity shop stuff but even thirty quid for two shirts which don’t billow like spinnakers and a pair of decent trolleys which won’t fall down is too much for me to pay. I’m too tight to pay for snugly fitting clothes.

There is a proviso to that last statement. I’m not too tight to pay for snugly fitting clothes made from Lycra. If you can run wearing it, I’m more than happy to fork out for it. I wouldn’t buy those things for thirty quid on Friday but I paid £40 for my lovely new, too sexy for slow, track spikes yesterday. I didn’t even buy them from the interwebz. I went into a real shop and talked to real people and really bought a real pair or really quick shoes. Shame I’m too broken to use them right now.

Yup, I’m on the injury bench again. I broke at mile four of the Wimpole Half Marathon Hoohaah. In truth, I shouldn’t have even started but it’s my favourite race in my favourite place. Who wouldn’t want to run around Wimpole for a couple of hours and get a medal at the end? There was the additional delicious prospect of hugs from various marshals round the course but I never got as far as seeing any of my mates who were out there. They were perhaps a little relieved not to have to deal with a sweating, slobbery, wheezing mess of a man clinging onto them in an attempt not to fall over. Social runs can sometimes be so detrimental to social relationships.

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A Men’s Fitness Body in a Moment

I’ve given up reading Men’s Health and Men’s Fitness and the like. There are all sorts of reasons for this. I’m not keen on working out for the sake of working out for a start. I’d rather go for a run or a ride or even have a swim than spend even 10 minutes pushing weights in a gym. The sad fact is though that I need to be stronger to run faster for longer so I’ll have to spend some time over the winter doing just that.

One of the more annoying things about a lot of physical fitness mags is that there is always something along the lines of Lose Your Gut in 15 Minutes, seen on the current cover of Men’s Fitness. I know that when you read the piece, the writer will outline a 15 minute workout for you to do every couple of days or so but the premise of the cover is that you can go from flab to fab in fifteen minutes and you can’t.

You don’t only find this waffle in fitness mags. I’ve seen similar tosh in Runner’s World and Men’s Running. This time you only have to do this series of workouts and you’ll have instant PBs. Want to run a marathon? Here is your plan. I know that to a certain extent that’s true, it downplays all the hard work that has to go into setting your PB or running a marathon. I don’t want anyone to think that running is so hard that they needn’t even bother starting but I’d rather people prepared themselves for the work.

I spotted Shalane Flanagan’s picture of her doing a core workout on a Swiss Ball. You’ll find it on her Facebook page and here on her Instagram feed. She’s working in the gym to be stronger to be a better runner. It’s part of a never-ending process of improvement that elite runner like Shalane have to do to be ready for competition. It’s also inspiration for those of us who will never run a 2:30 marathon or pull on our national vest because if Shalane has to work this hard and she’s already very good, then we have to do similar things to achieve our goals too.

So, if you want a six pack instead of a barrel, train hard. Alternatively, do what I did this morning and have a coughing fit in front of a mirror. As well as having the veins on your neck pop out, your rock-hard abs will suddenly appear. Sadly, this appearance will be so brief that it would take the the next generation of detectors their building for CERN to capture an image but it’s true. In a moment, I had Men’s Fitness Abs.

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