My target is the starting line



When I think about why running is good I think first of of the direct experience but then I think of the feeling of calm you get at the end. It is one of the things I value the most and a reason I find running so satisfying. It is like yoga (the function of which is to prepare the mind for meditation) it leaves you feeling empty but attentive. To attain that state I need to run for about 90 minutes at fairly easy pace, preferably by the canal or in the woods.

For the past year that is what I have done. I have not raced since October 2004, my focus has been the weekend and the longish run.. As a soft core runner I am quite happy with that but sometimes I feel I should both challenge myself more and connect with the community - in other words I should run a marathon..

My original plan was to leave it to autumn so that I could put in the training during the longer days when the weather is warmer. But about 5 weeks ago in a moment of impulse I entered Lochaber. I did this with some trepidation as I entered the race last year but had to pull out because of shin problems. I now have a bit of a mental block and worry that I will fail to get to the start line again, especially as my leg has never really healed and needs to be nursed. Perhaps that is why I have not mentioned this before - a superstitious feeling that it will not happen if I talk about it.

But you cannot do a marathon secretly, you have to plan and train and this has what I have been trying to do. But it has not been going smoothly and the switch from just running for the sake of it to running because you are obliged to, has caused some problems. The first thing has been illness. A couple of weeks into the schedule I caught flu. Under the old regime this would not have mattered as I would just have resumed running when my strength returned but this time I felt anxious because I was missing the important base sessions. Classic error I came back too strong and can now feel more pain in my leg, so have had to back off and cross train for a week.

However I am not down hearted. In my mind I only have a picture of me on the start line. That is all I am focussed on. Nothing more - no target time. All I want to do is get there and then the rest can take care of itself.

Oh and I have a cunning plan to try to get back on track. - I am going to a running camp in Portugal for a week. From the 9th March it will be me Mike Gratton and a couple of hundred others. If I get half as much out of it as Beanz and Pixie got out of TrailPlus, then that would be just dandy.

Just a toothbrush

In the last post bread and the supermarket supply chain was just a random example of how there is something interesting and extraordinary behind the most mundane of activities. Whether supermarkets are a force for good or evil is beside the point, the way they organise their distribution is impressive. Today I came across an article that clearly shows the intricacy and interdependencies of our global economy by looking at what goes into to the production and distribution of just one product.

It gives a different perspective to my run because although the example is an electric toothbrush but it could easily have been a pair of running shoes, a heart rate monitor or a technical T-shirt.

When I run I tend to think it is just me in the landscape doing something basic to being a human animal, something done by all of my forefathers. That is still the case but I now know more clearly I am also carrying the rest of the world on my shoulders, my wrist or on my feet.

Beige People

I was listening to Julian Cope on the radio when he was asked to cast a movie about the Liverpool scene of which he was part. He did not have any good answers about likely actors but nevertheless celebrated the colourful characters such as Bill Drummond, and Pete Burns. He then said someone else had become more and more bland until he had disappeared. I was reminded of Billy Connolly saying how he hated beige people. I guess it's the same emotion - the expansive, colourful character rejecting the dull.

I always feel a bit mixed when I hear such comments because although I love the extravagance of those people, their imagination and the courage to express what they feel, regardless of consequence, I also know that from the outside I am one of the beige people. I live in an average house on an average street. Every morning, along with thousands of others, I commute into to London. I have a close family and a small circle of friends and in social gatherings I tend to be rather reserved. However I do not say this with regret or in a self depreciating way - it's just the way it is.

It is also part of my aesthetic outlook, which is to look at the ordinary and try to find the extra-ordinary. It is always there - walk down any high street and look beyond the storefronts and you will always find some interesting juxtaposition of buildings: some history, some story. Sometimes I can be doing something as routine as supermarket shopping and be suddenly struck by how many loaves of bread have been sold. My normal perspective is the couple of loaves I buy but when I start to think about the scale of it all I am in awe of the amount of material that is grown, processed, organised, dispatched so that I can easily gather what I want. The whole supply chain is a wonder of analysis, organisation and reliability - each activity in the chain might be ordinary but combined result is a marvel.

That is just a small example of trying not to take things for granted. Running is part of this exercise.

I constantly repeat a small number of routes but I never get bored because I always see something new and am amazed at how I had missed it before. It is a constant reminder of how little I take in at any one time - there is always more to see. Sometimes it something that has always been there but unnoticed like the way the canal broadens and bends at a particular point. Other times it is an event on that day. On my last long run as I passed a donkey in a field it started to bray and until then I had never realised just how much they sounded like a door on a rusty hinge. I then realised I had never noticed that field and that donkey before.

By going over the ground many times I feel I know it better and can find the extra-ordinary in the ordinary.

If it is true for the landscape it is even more true for people. Look at any group of runners and usually they don't look like a gathering of beautiful people but within that group there will be any amazing array of personal stories and qualities.

If you look hard enough people are not beige.