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Add A New Post

Add a new post, it says. The cursor is sitting there, flashing like a displeased cat flicking its tail while I try to think of something to write. I’m ever more drawn to the flick-flash of the cursor and ever less inclined to write anything until my phone beeps at me and breaks the spell. The first time I have ever been pleased to have a phone interrupt my train of thought.

Not that my train was going anywhere. It was stuck in a siding while expresses passed a short distance away taking passengers on their way to big adventures in exotic places. Rick’s Cafe Americain in Casablanca. Rick will give up Ilsa for Victor again and go off to have a beautiful friendship with Louis and the cursor will still flash and flash and flash. Robin Hood will fight Little John on that bridge and Marion will love him in spite of everything and together they will foil the Sheriff of Nottingham while the cursor flashes on. Luke will become a Jedi and find his real father. Queen Katherine will lose her husband, the philandering King Henry. There will be car chases and boats and gun fights, passion and love while the cursor flashes away, never faster, never slower, and my despair grows.

Add a post, it says.

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Whole Body DOMS

As a running coach, I think it’s really important for athletes to undertake a regular, moderate programme of strength and conditioning and to improve their agility, balance and co-ordination and their flexibility alongside their sessions for running speed and endurance. I would write sessions for all of these into plans for athletes if they were not already doing regular gym work, yoga, pilates and stretching.

As an athlete, I’m a lazy arsehole who will do the absolute bare minimum I can get away with. In spite of that, when Mary Twitchett mentioned her Monday circuits session I thought I would add it to my weekly plan. I had to do something, having not done anything since Andy Matson’s circuits last winter.

Those were brilliant, by the way. Have a look on Facebook for AM Active. The next set of sessions is due to start soon and if you are close to Huntingdon, I can thoroughly recommend them. Andy’s coaching is affirming and his group of athletes work very hard indeed and have the results to show it works.

So, if you haven’t done any S&C for almost a year and – this is the important bit – you’re a bit of an idiot, of course you’re going to throw yourself into the first session back with some gusto. Especially if it’s on your rest day the day after the County Cross Country Championships. Mary ran through the 20 stations, gave us a brief but thorough warm up and set us to work.

Fifty seconds per station. I can’t remember them all. I could barely remember what each of them was when I was doing them. Some of that is down to the emotional and physical pain I was going through at the time. The mind is after all merciful and will not let us relive memories which are too painful. However there are some highlights.

Leg press. It was one of those inclined plane jobs. I have no idea how much weight was on there. Probably not that much because I could move the plate well but I was feeling the effort. Mary had me adjust my foot position and keep my knees about a fist-width apart. That one went quite well.

Leg lifts. Straight legs until that became impossible, then bent legs.

Press ups and dips. One press up, then walk the legs forward and dip. Resting on a couple of kettlebells. Now, I am useless, truly useless at press-ups. I don’t think any instructor or coach would say I have done more than three proper press ups in the past 52 years. However, I grabbed onto the kettlebells, bent my arms a bit so my chest just about visibly dropped towards the floor then managed to straighten my arms again. One. I’m calling that one One. Then walk my legs forward until they’re out in front and dip. One. For some reason, I’m better at dips. That definitely counted. Walk back. Two almost certainly wouldn’t have counted for anyone else and if I were honest with myself, I would say it didn’t count for me either. If I were honest with myself. I’m not honest with myself. Two. Walk the legs through. Dip. Two. And so on.

Shotguns. On my back on the bench, med ball held out behind my head with straight arms then pulled over to my waist and sit up keeping my back straight. Once I’m upright, hold the ball out in front of myself and stretch out as far as my back and hips allow. That’s not very far but I’m a bloke and I’m a runner and all of that is tight.

Burpees. Oh God, burpees. Once, a few years ago, Ben did a fuck-ton of burpees for his birthday after parkrun. He asked for people to keep him company and I did a couple of sets with him. Not well and not for long but I did them. They are the worst form of self-inflicted pain I know. The combination of controlled explosive power and agility, balance and co-ordination you need to do them well and efficiently escapes me. They’re also a huge drain on your cardio reserves. I think I managed three last night before it all went a bit Pete Tong.

Side plank. This one had a couple of variations to wake up the glutes properly, neither of which I really had the strength to do properly.

An easy plank thing, hands on a box. Left knee to left elbow at walking pace, then the other side. Ten reps. Left knee to right elbow at walking pace then right knee to left elbow. Ten reps. Repeat all four but faster for 10 more reps each, then faster again. I thought that went quite well. It’s similar to a sprint drill I do to feel fast feet but with a bit of mobilisation built in. As long as you keep your core as still as possible and drive your legs you’re fine.

A couple of TRX tortures – a plank and a hip raise. The hardest part of those was getting into the stirrups, to be honest. Plank to pike would be a hideous progression and one I remember from Rachel’s TRX Yoga sessions a couple of years ago. They weren’t really yoga but they were excellent supported mobilisation exercises.

Deadlift. I felt manly doing this. No idea how much weight was on the frame but my technique was good and I was able to hit a rhythm and keep going.

Bouncing on my toes. Small explosive movements, keeping my feet together. Again it’s a sprint drill. If you’re an endurance runner, you think that sprint drills aren’t worth bothering about but they can help some of us when we’re tired towards the end of a race focus on staying light on our feet, balanced and poised, if only for the cameras in the finishing area.

Short rest, drink of water then round again. for 2×20 seconds.

The other athletes were a mix of runners, rowers and triathletes. They were all amazing. Everyone was good at something and some were good at nearly everything so they could concentrate on really working hard.

I now hurt everywhere. I am hearing complaints from those small interior abdominal muscles which have had to do little more than compress a belch for the past year. Those complaints are loud and they are long and they contain an impressive amount of fanciful invective. My shoulders and chest hurt from the bench press and press ups. My quads are more tender than my heart was after Il Postino. I even, for no discernable reason, have a painful hairline. Yup, horripilation results in DOMS.

Okay, I exaggerate a little but not as much as you might think. I had to can tonight’s track session in favour of a couple of steadier runs. I’ve done just over five miles in total this evening and my legs are mashed. Tomorrow really is a rest day. I’m coaching a Run For Your Life session in Sawston in the evening and I hope I won’t have to do much running around. It’s a Couch to 5k session so it shouldn’t be too strenuous for me.

I really shouldn’t leave nine months between circuits sessions. It’s really not good for me.

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Thirteenth Night

Or what you can get away with.

There is no magic left for Thirteenth Night. No more suspension of disbelief. The only magic possible is that we create between and for ourselves. Of course that’s true every day but it’s easier at some times of the year than others. All the special food has gone. There might be a handful of your least favourite chocolates lurking in the bottom of the box somewhere. I still have have half a panettone.

The Christmas bonomie has gone. Any hangover you give yourself for the next few months is entirely your own fault. Again, that much is true anyway but at Christmastime we have a kind of communal excuse for excess which dissolves after Epiphany. There is nobody to share your hangover with, nobody who will sympathise because we’re back in our little boxes until the warm weather comes back and we can have some summer picnics with bottles of fizzy things. We’re supposed now to live lives of continence and restraint.

In the old days, the best bits of the pig would have been consumed in the Christmas feast so in order to survive for the rest of the winter we couldn’t have continued to eat and drink like there was a continual glut. We’re luckier now, most of us, so abstinence is a choice rather than a necessity.

It’s strange that even in our very secular times we still depend on religion and spirituality to give our year a rhythm and pace. Our next big holiday is Easter, after all. We haven’t found an alternative in popular culture in spite of secularism and the presence of other religions. And the good news is that I’ve seen Creme Eggs in Tesco.

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Fourteen Ways Wasps Are Better Than Michael Gove

1 Wasps die off in the winter. Sort of. A wasp colony will produce a lot of horny males and females in the autumn which will mate and then find somewhere to hibernate. The rest of the buggers get old and cantankerous and really, really want your jam before they die. Michael Gove has never been known to die off in the winter. Records on his autumnal sexual appetites are blissfully incomplete.

2 Wasps are pollinators. Much as it pains me to say this, wasps do serve a useful purpose. They’re not just wee, yellow and black sacks of stinging badness. They will forage for nectar and in doing so, carry pollen around like bees with bad attitudes. I’m not completely sure what Michael Gove is for, any more than he is himself but I’m certain he has never pollinated anything.

3 Wasps eat pests. Every summer, whenever they’re not ruining your picnic, wasps eat 14,000,000 tonnes of caterpillars and greenfly which would otherwise further lay waste your garden. Where do they find the time? They’re always after my ham sandwich. Michael Gove eats things from Waitrose. He’s one of the pests the wasps should eat.

4 There are innumerable cures for wasp stings. The one everyone seems to mention is goose dung. There is no know cure for Michael Gove but throwing goose dung at him might be worth a try. Failing that, the entire goose.

5 A wasp can only hurt us one at a time. Michael Gove can screw things up for millions before he’s finished his cornflakes.

6 It’s not illegal to spray wasps with a nerve agent. While spraying Michael Gove with a nerve agent might give you a few passing moments of satisfaction, it’s only a small step from that to gassing everyone who doesn’t agree with you. Even I can see that much.

7 See also hitting wasps and Michael Gove with a rolled up newspaper.

8 Wasps cannot be expected to have empathy and are only being wasps when they sting you on the bum when you’re having a wee in the countryside. Michael Gove, while he has not as far as I am aware has not stung anyone on the bum, has shown little empathy for the communities he has fucked over in his ideological slap-fest in the Conservative Party. We’re just collateral damage.

9 There are seven species of wasps in Britain varying in unpleasantness and aggression. There is one Michael Gove and he is invariably unpleasant. I think most of us could take him if he became aggressive though.

10 Wasps harbour no ambitions to become prime minister and tell us all how to live our lives. Michael Gove slipped a bit the last time he tried to shin a bit further up the greasy pole.

11 Wasps make impressive nests out of paper. They are skilled engineers and architects. They can do it by chewing up strips of wood and then spitting it out, a bit like you probably did to make pellets for your pea shooter. Am I projecting? Michael Gove has made nest for himself by chewing up facts and regurgitating them in new, curious and not entirely accurate ways.

12 The Asian giant hornet can fly at 24mph. It’s a right bastard of a thing and you can probably never outrun it. Michael Gove can’t fly, I have no idea what his 10k time is like but you can probably outrun him. I had to get running into this somehow.

13 There are social wasps and solitary wasps. There is only a solitary Michael Gove. Nobody wants to be Michael Gove’s friend.

14 Wasps come in a wide range of colours, not only the familiar yellow and black. For example, there is something called a tarantula hawk which is not a bird but is an inch and half long and blue and orange in colour. It hunts tarantulas. Fucking tarantulas. Thank little Baby Jesus it’s a solitary wasp. Michael Gove only comes in gammon colour.

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Podcasts Are Better Than Husbands. Discuss.

I spend a lot of time listening to podcasts. Podcasts on history. Podcasts on science. Occasionally podcasts on politics. Podcasts on weird realities where nobody can pronounce Michigan. I can’t listen to the radio any more because the news makes me angry or sad or sad and angry. Is that sangry? You know, like hangry but you’ve already had your Weetabix and the European Research group are still being a bunch of cunts. So, I don’t listen to the radio but I still can spend seven hours a day in the car and I need something to pass the time while arseholes in Audis and seven year old Volvos try to kill me.

There is a point to this, I promise. It’s coming up now.

On today’s trip to the supermarket, I turned on the stereo in the car and the History Hit podcast started playing automatically and then it stopped because of something I had done or forgotten to do or because it was Saturday and something weird was going on with the moon. I have no idea why things happen sometimes. I am a constant victim of the quantum tech butterfly flapping its wings and sending out random, incomprehensible reset signals through the aether. So there was a sudden silence and Anne said “Well, we’re just going to have to talk now.”

Shock, horror.

Dan Snow was being interesting. His guest was being interesting. I was struggling to find something to say more engaging than “Cold, eh?” I am a man who knows are really tiny amount about quite a lot and a great deal about hardly anything. Were Dan Snow to run out of guests almost completely four times over and end up with me, we could just about talk for 20 minutes on the topics of minimalist running fads, Ford four-cylinder engines from 1977 to 1981, a small grumpy cat called Kick or trends in academic book publishing and how fucking awful it might get before, if ever, it gets any better.

None of these topics are fit for a ten minute journey to Waitrose. Not again anyway. Not so soon after the last time. That was awkward. Not something Dan Snow would try.

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Just In Time Blogging

Like just in time manufacturing, just in time blogging is going to be completely fucked by a No Deal Brexit. All the things which will prevent Honda from getting widgets from Belgium into its Civics rolling down the line in Swindon will prevent me from getting a blog post out into the world every day. Basically, I’m using the real misery caused by inept politicians to draw a false equivalence between manufacturing and a cack-handed attempt to write a hundred well-judged words a day and put them on line.

I’ll give this a go anyway.

Just in time logistics needs everything to work just so. There can’t be any friction in supply chain or the production line grinds to a halt. Warehousing costs are minimised because Honda – for example – doesn’t keep stock of anything much on hand. They tell their suppliers to get what they need almost into the hands of the assembly line workers just as they reach for it. If that supplier is in Belgium and they in turn want to minimise costs so they don’t hold the things they make for long. Everything depends on keeping things moving on lorries, trains and ferries until they end up in a Civic in Swindon.

Just in time blogging needs everything to work just so. There can’t be any friction in the thought train or everything just grinds to a halt. Impacts are minimised because I – for example – can’t keep a thought in my head. I need to get it out of my brain, down my fingers, through the keyboard and onto the internet with as little pause as possible or I will miss my midnight deadline and lose my train of thought. Everything depends on not having things get in the way, like a lack of tea and biscuits, or too much work delaying the start of the process. This train of thought is more easily derailed than most.

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Uncertainty

That hurt. It hurt more than it should have and it wasn’t supposed to be pleasant. Eight reps of the Fulbourn Windmill Hill which is only really a hill because the rest of Cambridge is so flat. I overcooked it just as I did the last time I did this session and completed six reps including what Strava insists is a PB on one of the reps so I was putting in the effort. I wanted to complete the session so I didn’t hit my goal, in spite of the sector PB.

I could have jogged the final reps just to complete but that felt wrong. I could have swallowed my pride and not pushed quite so hard but that felt wrong too. I could even have just set off on the final reps just to see if I could hold the pace but I bottled it. I was unsure and I wasn’t prepared to hurt myself in a training session just to see if I had enough in the tank.

I have a weakness. There is a fear attached to training sessions now which won’t go away. It’s particularly strong at the track but it also hangs around road sessions now. I think it’s a bit like performance anxiety. It’s the antithesis of that rock up feeling I was talking about the other day.

Tomorrow is another day. A recovery run round Wandlebury and along the Roman Road in the morning should help shift the negative feelings and maybe I should try a few pacing exercises over the next few weeks.

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The Application of Arse to Sofa

If you want to do a spot of regular writing all you need to do, apparently, is sit down and write. It’s a lot like running in that respect, except you’re sitting down and you can’t be too liberal with commas. Not that there are many commas in running but there are times I come to a horrible full stop.

So just like getting my arse out the door for a run, I need to velcro it to the sofa for long enough to bang out a couple of hundred words or so a day and remember how my laptop works. This might occasionally become a blog about blogging. Or nose-picking. Quality is likely to be variable at best. I’m sorry about that. I’ve posted before that I usually write something once a week but seldom post it because it’s just nonsense. Now you’re going to get the nonsense. Whatever the blogging equivalent of opening your mouth and letting your belly rumble is, well that’s what you’re going to get but with a spellcheck run over it at least once.

It counts as cross-training, doesn’t it?

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