Janathon for the Lame

At the last moment I have signed up for Janathon - Oh how I resisted!

The problem was one of self-esteem. I did not think I could participate in any meaningful way without running and at the moment I cannot run. My knee remains totally mangled - tendons are in tatters and refuse to settle back to normal. I have the feeling it will  take a long time to heal. Nothing much can be done apart from gently working and stretching within limits of motion. It is rather pathetic, which is why I thought the idea of a meaningful amount of exercise each day was a bust.

It was Cathy, the Janathon ringmaster, who changed my mind. She suggested I could walk. Brilliant! I really hadn't thought of that as my definition of exercise is a little rigid: it should involve raising your pulse and getting breathless at some point.  Nevertheless walking might just work.

I cannot stride out in the purposeful way of an active and serious walker, because that also puts strain on my knee, but I can amble along trying to tread lightly and if I go for long enough then that can make up for the lack of athleticism and vigour.

So the plan is quite simple: every morning I will go out for at least an hour and explore my neighbourhood, starting from my front door. Each day I will try to find something interesting and take a picture and that will be the blog. 

The name  'Running Matters' should really be changed to 'Ambling About', except there will also be some cycling. 

So huzza for Janathon. Huzza getting out each day and developing good habits, and good luck to the 150 people who have signed up. There cannot be a more auspicious day for a new beginning than 1.1.11

Two Google Tools

One of the quotes I repeatedly hear is : "being a successful writer is 3% talent and 97% not being distracted by the internet". You can substitute any other occupation for writer and  it would have the same kernel of truth.

There are always reasons to procrastinate and it seems to be Google's mission to help you find more.

Their latest tool is the books Ngram viewer, which allows you to track the occurrence of words, over time, in the large number of books that have been digitised.

I don't know how how useful it is (as opposed to being an amusing distraction). I am sure someone will do something very scholarly with it at some time. I am not that person: I merely plug in a few words and phrases and then say something like "well fancy that!"

In fact, unless you are very big and clever, it is dangerous to draw too many conclusion from the occurrence of phrases or words completely devoid of context. For example 'road running' for me has a very specific meaning - it is what this blog is about; but here you cannot separate it from a phrase such as 'the road running south was impassable due to snow'. 

Nevertheless you can still have some fun. It is interesting to see how language usage changes. For example the plot of 'running form' and 'running style' shows that in the early C20 the former was predominant only to be overtaken and then show a a late usage spurt. But why has the use of 'form picked up when it was previously in decline? I have no answer. I know why I like using it (because form=shape and I see style as being about the shape you cut when you run) but that does not answer the question. As I said the only response is "well fancy that!".

But there might be some trends that are worth investigating: The occurrence of the phrase 'marathon training' seemed to peak at the end of the 1990s, since when there has been a slight decline,  as is the case with 'shin splints' (which I use because it is mostly a running injury). I had thought the past decade has been been one of expanding interest in running but now I am not so sure. I will have to do some more research. 

Another Google toy that is interesting to play with is reading level. If you go to the advanced search and put the site address in the 'Search within a site or domain:' box and then select 'annotate results with reading levels' from the reading level box, the reading level of a site will be revealed.

This site is 21% basic, 78% intermediate 0% advanced.  I have no idea what this proves apart from the fact that I am easily distracted by such titbits of information and that Google truly is the procrastinators friend.

Probably The Best Runner You've Never Heard Of

Little Wonder: the untold story of Alfred Shrubb world champion runner 

by Rob Hadgraft

My reading has taken me to strange places recently, away from books on how to train or running form to athletics history. The story of how a tradition of specialist (professional) runners/footmen/pedestrians, which had gone back centuries, was supplanted by an ideal of amateur sport, which then crumbled at the edges before collapsing to be replaced by our current system of professional athletes, is fascinating.

On its own the way the amateur sporting ideal became dominant is worth further study. I know little about it apart from it being class based, and springing directly from the ideals of the Victorian English gentleman. The idea that you should only play sport for love and honour and never for any other reward is something that only makes sense if it is seen as character building. It does not recognise sport as a worthy endeavour in its own right or a way of life, and even skirts with the notion that training properly could be a touch unsporting. Yet there is no escaping the fact that to become good at a sport (in any era) requires time and dedication. The obvious consequence of that is that those who would excel would be those only those with wealth enough to spend their own time freely.

Yet there is something about running that can escape these constraints. Because it is such a basic activity, something we all do as children and it is something that can be enhanced with other aerobic activities,  it is possible for someone how has led a hard active life from childhood to discover a natural talent, even fairly late in life.

The story of Alf Shrubb is a fascinating example

He was born in 1876 and grew up in Horsham where he started out as an apprentice carpenter and building labourer (work that would include carrying bricks up a 30 rung ladder). On top of that he liked the outdoors and the countryside and would run to follow the local foxhounds but thought nothing of it. The turning point was a haystack fire, in 1899, 3 miles outside Horsham and the entertainment, common at the time, of following the fire engine (that sort of thing just doesn't happen now, we are far too sophisticated. In the age Facebook all that is needed is for the next door neighbour to post a photo). He found himself running with the captain of the local athletics club who struggled to keep-up. He was therefore encouraged him to join the club and on joining the Blue Star Harriers  immediately started winning races.

A year later he easily won the county 4 mile cross country, where he was watched by Thomas Sinnott from the South London Harriers and the coach Harry Andrews, who later reported: "Shrubb was then a little black-nobbed fellow who ran like a startled deer and I told Mr Sinnnott, whose club he eventually joined, he was something out of the common".

I love Victorian understatement.  He was so out of the common he went on to dominate distance running and over his amateur career set world records at: 2,000 yards, 1.25 miles, 1.5 miles, 1.75 miles, 2 miles, 4,000 yards, 3 miles, 5,000 metres, 4 miles, 5 miles, 6 miles, 10,000 metres, 7 miles, 8 miles, 9 miles, 10 miles, 11 miles as well as the one hour record. I can think of no modern equivalent who has that range.

From 1 mile to 15 miles he was supreme but that didn't stop him being criticised by the previous great champion, Walter George. (in the same way old cricketers sit in the Test Match Special box and shake their heads at the modern players and say "I just don't know what's going on down there"). Alf Shrubb liked to go out fast and establish an early lead after which his pace would vary and he  would surge and relax, seemingly on a whim, according to how he felt. There was a freedom in his running that others saw as tactical naivety. Walter George was convinced that the only proper way to run was his way ie to conserve energy, run an even tempo and be fresh for the end. He therefore thought Shrubb was all over the place and lacked discipline. 

It only goes to show there is more than one way to run and each person should follow the path that suits their temperament but sometimes people who have found success with one method find it impossible to recognise that theirs is not the only way. That is still true today.

Alf Shrubb's way of training was light by the standards of today's distance runners . He mixed speed work with walking (for endurance) but importantly raced very frequently, often several races in one day. As the races were all over the country is was obvious that a builder could not afford to do this as a strict amateur (there are rumours he asked for pianos as prizes, which could be sold through a relative's piano shop).

This brings us right back to the rigid code of amateurism and how even travel expenses were forbidden. The AAA didn't want him to accept an invitation to tour Canada but negotiations over tickets still took place and so he was investigated and banned. The thing is that up to a point people would have turned a blind eye. His club fixed him up with a trainer and obviously supported him in a number of ways that were not strictly allowed. So it is an example of the tangled mess amateurism caused: athlete and club covertly against the governing body.

Such battles often leave an individual feeling aggrieved. To this day I don't think there has been a time when the people on the ground, running and coaching have felt that the administrators are really on their side.

I think I like reading these books - one can enjoy the specifics of a bygone era and look at how things have changed.

P.S. If you want more information there is a website dedicated to him here

P.P.S. Forgive the presumption of the title. It should be "Probably the best runner I had never heard of". I should never assume other people share my ignorance. Very bad form!

An Anthology of London Marathon Runners

I am a bit behind on this. Both Warriorwoman and Jogblog have long ago commented on The Official Register of London Marathon Runners , which lists everybody who has taken part in the London Marathon, with their times.

My only comment is that it sounds a lot like "The Anthology of Huntingdonshire Cabmen" :

It can hardly be claimed for the newly published Anthology of Huntingdonshire Cabmen that it is, in the words of an over-enthusiastic critic, 'a masterpiece of imaginative literature'. The Anthology consists of the more striking names (with initials) from each of the three volumes. It is a factual and unemphatic work, and the compiler has skinned the cream from the lists. Here are such old favourites as Whackfast, E.W., Fodge, S., and Nurthers, P.L. The index is accurate, and the introduction by Cabman Skinner is brief and workmanlike.

I have mentioned this before but failed to attribute the quote

It was written by J B Morton who wrote a humorous column for the Daily Express under the name of Beachcomber. I don't know how well he is remembered today but he influenced a whole absurdist/silly strand in English comedy including Spike Milligan, Monty Python and Terry Pratchett.

In a time when someone has a criminal conviction and lost his job merely for the flippant tweet: "Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You've got a week... otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!" (a fuller account of the case can be found here), his influence might be spreading wider. Absurdity seems to have escaped from the humour section into the main news pages. To use another Beachcomber quote:

Justice must not only be seen to be done it must be seen to be believed

Bradley Wiggins

There are any number of reasons for liking individual sports but one of them is that they force you to look harder and  know yourself better. After all it you control your own performance and you know if you have succeeded or if you have let yourself down.

It is the same at every level and applies just as much to me plodding along, trying to keep going, as it does to someone competing at the Olympics. There might be the world of difference in ability and ambition but each of us has a framework of what we expect. 

As I have said many times before an essential virtue of running is its honesty. The times do no lie and you cannot pretend to be faster than your actual results. However there can be a difference between a clear assessment in private and what you are prepared to admit publicly (all of us have some sort of image we like to maintain).

That is why I love it when you find sportsmen who will talk openly - I find them inspiring. 

This interview with Bradley Wiggins is a case in point. I admire a man who can own up to the failure of his 2010 Tour de France and  not try to coat it with stock excuses or phrases from the sport psychologists cookbook. He obviously likes to be grounded as shown by the assessment that his Sky team got too pompous last year and that he "ended up up my own arse a little – and it was so far from the truth it was unreal."

He seems to have realised that you can become overly professional, overly focussed, overly constrained and as a result lose your way a little.

"Widening the focus will help. I remember coming back from the national road race in 2009 and, a week before the Tour, we stopped at a service station. I had a pizza and a couple of beers. This year I wouldn't have a little glass of wine in case it ruined my Tour. But a more relaxed Brad, after a glass of wine, would've had a much better Tour. When you look back it seems so simple and you think: 'What a dick!' I've learned my lesson."

I will be cheering for him on next year's tour.

School Sports

This is not a political blog (if I wrote about what is happening at the moment I think I would spin downwards into gloom and despondency); its topic is running (and cycling).  However there is also an interest in exercise and public health - which is why I want to write about the proposed abolition of the the £162m school sports strategy. 

At a time when the public health consequences of an increasingly unfit and overweight population are well known, when the cost of diabetes is rising and set to rise much further, the government should be doing everything in its power to encourage exercise as well as a good diet. But what is it doing? What is it doing? 

Their first action was to abolish the ‘Change 4 Life’, a programme that attempted to encourage healthier living. In the past I have been critical of the tone of some of their information (though the comment of Travelling Hopefully is well worth reading as a counterbalance) but I think the intention is good. Information and encouragement are a necessary part of trying to change engrained behaviour. The job of any campaign is to try things, evaluate, develop, adapt, try again. Sometimes things are not right at the beginning and sometimes things take a long time to have an effect but you do not give up too early. If something is important (and this is) you have to keep going.

The next action was theatrically bizarre. The thing is they know that the most important element for weight is diet and they know the major problem with the western diet is fatty, sugary, salty, processed foods (that are extremely profitable for the major food manufacturers). They also know that it is hard to get these firms to change their ways (as an example you have the example of the difficulties the Food Standards Agency has had to impose a traffic lights system to indicate the relative healthiness of foods).  So the policy to diminish the role of the Food Standard Agency (after all those pesky scientists are just too bothersome) and place health policy in the hands of the big food companies was surreal.  Secretly they must believe that foxes have been much maligned are really make the best guards for  chicken coops.

And so to exercise:

There is a widespread concern about declining levels of activity amongst kids ( e.g this blog post) and school should have an important role in counterbalancing these changes in lifestyle. It can offer training, a chance to sample different forms of sport and exercise, help kids find the activities they enjoy, and provide competition to stretch abilities.  Sadly since the 1980s school sports provision  declined to such an extent that a few years ago it was little more than a token presence in the curriculum. (Some background on the ground to be made-up and how it was being attempted can be found here)

The consequence of poor PE for non-athletic kids is described in the  personal article by Johann Hari, which describes his effort to lose weight and the belated discovery that good, hard physical exercise is fun.

And then, suddenly, I felt angry. It occurred to me that what I had been given so brilliantly at Matt Roberts was a physical education. I had been taught how my body works, what will keep it in good condition, and what best fuels it. I had been taught how to exercise and stretch and eat. And I thought – why was I never taught this at school? Yes, there is a subject called physical education – but it does precisely the opposite. Just a few phrases will remind every mildly unhealthy person in Britain of what that experience is like: "All four corners of the gym – go!" "Pick a team!" "Jump OVER the horse!"

The School Sports Partnerships and the strategy that is to be scrapped tried to address this problem. Its aim was to increase participation and increase the options beyond the traditional, competitive sports. And it was succeeding. This is anecdotally reported here (which incidentally puts £162m in context - it is the cost overrun of the Olympic swimming pool). The more formal assessments are listed here 

In 2009 Ofsted surveyed the effect of the sports strategy on 99 primary and 84 secondary schools and noted the improvements. Their main recommendations were:

• continue funding the physical education and sports strategy for young people up to and beyond 2012 to ensure that schools have the capacity to sustain and build on the improvements they have introduced

• establish a post-16 entitlement to physical education and school sport, including providing access courses for students across the full range of ability levels

• enable sports colleges and school sport partnerships to be at the heart of local and regional initiatives to tackle childhood obesity and to promote a lifelong commitment to ‘being healthy’.

Their recommendations were definitely not to scrap everything and replace it with a few days of 'School Olympics' (i.e. sports days, or inter school competitions). In fact I can not find anyone with detailed knowledge of what is actually happening in our schools who agrees with this destruction.

And that is why I don't write about politics. I cannot cope with the distress of seeing evidence and reason count for nothing.


P.S This fact check show how politicians use statistics on the subject in a way that is misleading even if it is not strictly inaccurate.

A Break Can Be Good

I have now not run for a month but the leg is now OK and next week I will start again. To be truthful I probably could have started a couple of weeks ago but didn't want to.

Now there is a terrible admission for a runner. Anybody who wants to live up to the name, and certainly anybody who writes a blog about running, should be chomping at the bit - mad with frustration. Yet I have been feeling remarkably content. It is a form of heresy.

The reasons are twofold. The first is that I am following a plan and so don't feel I am backsliding. As I want to training for a spring marathon I do not want the beginning compromised by worrying about a weakness. I therefore decided to wait until there was no discomfort (rather than just waiting until the pain was dull enough to bear). There is plenty of time and I am sure patience now will be rewarded later.

The second reason is that I have been enjoying cycling. It is a weird thing but the slightly different range of leg movement has left cycling unaffected: so I have been spending my time in the country roads, looking about and noticing how the autumn colours are getting ever more interesting.

Today's picture is nothing special - I could have stopped in any number of places and shown the mixture of reds, yellows, brown and greens. But it gives a good indication of how things look at the moment.

If you think the road looks small, rural and peaceful: you would be right. The strange thing is that it is only a short distance from the MI, full of thundering cars and lorries: the epitome of hustle. Also it is not that far from Watford and the edges of London, but that could all of that could be a million miles away. I like these contrasts. On a fairly easy ride you can slip between the agricultural, the wooded, the isolated village, the suburban, and the town centre.

Cycling has its distinct pleasures and I don't want to lose them when I start marathon training. So at least two sessions a week will be on the bike.  Sorted.

I actually think this break has been beneficial.

Dave Hill Runs the South Riding

This is from Dave Hill's london Blog in the Guardian

"I've decided to run next year's London Marathon. As part of my training programme I intend to run from far west to far east London, passing through all 32 boroughs and the City along the way. I made a start a few weeks back, and already I have found that I'm on a journey of discovery - one that I'll be sharing with you in the months to come. I'm also raising money for Shelter."

This is my sort of enterprise - running as a form of exploration and I should have linked to it before. 

Perhaps though it is good that I waited because today he covers some of the ground I covered on day 1 of the South Riding: Sutton to Colliers Wood.

I am pleased he mentioned the River Wandle because it is something I forgot to talk about in my post (well actually there were a lot of things I remembered but didn't write about - I didn't want to be too self indulgent). I have memories of paper mills and factories and a filthy discoloured river covered with patches of foamy scum. Now it is amazing how such rivers were filled with the untreated effluent from factories along them because now it is so much better. It is a great example of how much the environment of our cities have improved over the last 50 years or so

In a time when the default position of people talking about the state of the country is to say the place is going to the dogs, everything is falling apart, not good enough, it's all a rip-off, it seems almost embarrassing to point to something and say "erm well actually some things are dramatically better." 

The River Wandle is a case in point and something I can point to and say: "If only you knew how it used to be!"

Trying To Be Injury Free

When people talk of running goals they usually do so in terms of targets: first to run a 10k, 12 marathon, marathon, and then to run them in specific times. I have suddenly realised that, for me, these targets are incidental. For sure they focus the mind, give training a shape and a purpose, and keep you stimulated, but they are not the most important thing. The most important thing is consistency: regularly getting out, not getting distracted, keeping going. It is the basis of everything.

So if you asked me what my running goals are, I would say I have only one and that is to keep on keeping on.

Except that at this precise moment I am not running. I have an injury that has not fully healed and so I am spending my time regretting my stupidity and fretting about how long it now takes for my body to repair itself. My Immediate goal is therefore to let the injury fully heal and then establish a routine that will allow me to stay injury free. Only then will I be able to attain my real goal of consistency.

The pathetic thing is that everytime I am injured I make the same plans but everytime I still do something stupid (my only defence is that it is often a different type of stupid). I am therefore building up a list of things I have learned. Here are my top 5

1. The most vulnerable time is when you are coming back from an injury. My injuries have certainly clustered with long periods without problems interspersed with times when everything seems to go wrong.

I think there are two reasons. The first is that there is a tendency to come back too quickly, when the pain is acceptable rather than gone. The second is more speculative but is based on my experience of back pain (when the whole of the back and shoulders freeze, not just the hurt area): when we are injured other parts of our bodies compensate and we move differently. Imperceptibly we get out of balance and when we run again our gait can be effected, which can cause unusual stresses and lead to new problems.

Lesson: come back gently. The first runs should feel easy and relaxed and you should be very aware of form.

2. Doing too much is a dangerous temptation. This is obviously related to the problems of coming back from injury in a gentle way, but it can also be a problem at other times. A tendency to overestimate ones strength and/or ability is difficult to control. It is easy to make decisions based on memories of what you could do when you were at you peak or what you wished you could do. The inevitable result is a breakdown.

Lesson: be very realistic about your capabilities. It is no use thinking you ought to be able to do something, you have to be sure you can do something. For me realism can be very painful. Sometimes I cannot bear to admit to myself that I am that slow or that out of shape - but it has to be done.

3. Be careful about training on consecutive days. This article says that the number of consecutive days is the second best predictor of running injury (however it gives no supporting reference for this assertion so I don't know how reliable it is). My experience is more to do with intensity: I have had problems with back to back hard days and so I now know variety is important and the old adage of mixing hard and easy days should be followed.

Lesson: Take rest days and make sure easy days are truly easy.

4. Be careful about changing your running style. This might be a little controversial with the current fashion for throwing away cushioned trainers and running barefoot but I believe changes can only be made very carefully and very gradually and should only be done if there is a very good reason. After all our bodies have spent many years adapting to our own way of moving and building very particular strengths. Change too quickly and weaknesses can be exposed. With me it was POSE. For some reason I thought it worth a try, bought a pair of Puma H Streets (the then fashionable minimal shoe) and Hey Presto hurt my ankle.

Lesson: such things should not be done on a whim. Only change your style if you are very sure that you need to and then do so very carefully.

5. Be careful with stretching. It is undoubtably true that running does nothing for your flexibility and a regime of stretching is a good counterbalance, which can help to maintain a good range of movement. However it is not without risk. It is possible to overstretch and cause damage. I am most likely to do this if I stretch after a hard sessions (and I think this is the cause of my current injury). I have therefore come to the conclusion that stretching and running should be separate programmes.

Lesson: not all running injuries are caused by running be just as careful with other forms of training.

Autumn

After completing my account of the South Riding I planned to have a little break before writing about the next cycle trip and get back to some running. Ha - fate has a way of chewing up my plans, spitting them out, and then laughing at me.

At the moment I am not running at all. Somehow or other I have messed up my knee and walking any distance is painful. As I am not going to run before I can walk (Yay I can legitimately use a well worn phrase or saying) I am a bit stymied.

The problem seems to be at the back of my knee, just above the calf. It feels like a tendonitis sort of pain that happens when I stretch my leg forward (as you do when you are walking). Luckily it doesn't affect the rather more limited, circular leg movement of cycling - so that is my current fitness activity.

Today I rode through the woods at Ashridge and it was glorious. The sky was cool blue, streaked with white and although the sun was clear, bright. the temperature was a little nippy but this kept you feeling fresh. Overnight there had been rain and the leaves and grass glistened as if bejewelled. As I looked at the landscape of undulating hills the wooded areas had the variegated colour of early autumn, whilst many of the fields were freshly ploughed and a rich brown that added to the colour pallet.

It was good to be out and days like this are the reason we run or ride. They pay for ll the days when it feels like hard work

Today I alsoI found this video full of lovely time lapse photography of trees and autumn leaves that reminded my of my ride. The landscape might be central European and certainly the end sequence shows a starry night we cannot match in the light polluted South of England. Nevertheless it is a celebration of autumnal beauty - exactly what today's ride felt like.

South Riding 20: The End

Diggers on the M25 and I know I am nearly home

Total: 3 Days 150 miles.

I need a final post to wrap up my journey. This has been hanging a round too long.

My initial plan was to talk about the final cycle ride and how tired I felt. So tired, everything was done on automatic. It should not have been like this as it was only a 35 mile mile day but the cumulative effect, on someone who had not been doing enough cycling before setting off, was heavy. There is not much to say about it except I got through. There were however moments of pleasure, one of which was cycling up to High Barnet and realising the hill was not as steep as I thought it would be.

Perhaps that is one of the lessons of the trip: do not over emphasise difficulties, just get on and work them out as you go along. If you are not careful pre-visualisation can be a powerful negative force.

In the end though I was happy to reach the familiar landscapes of Hertfordshire. When I finally got home a feeling of relief and happiness washed over me. After some food, I lay down and let my mind swirl with images and memories from the past three days. It had been worth doing.

This final post really ought to be a summation of what I found and an attempt to draw some conclusions. But where to start?

The answer came yesterday when I was listening to Russell Brand plugging his latest book. He was asked if he now considered Los Angeles his home. He said no and quoted a line from Howard Barker:

"In the end there is nowhere left to go than where you are from"

That is it! The summary of the whole trip.

It took me back to Colliers Wood, where I lived for my first eight years. When I stood in front of that house and walked the streets, there were a heap of memories, random events that I didn't write about:

I remembered the way my grandfather loved Music Hall and used to sing Harry Champion:

Boiled beef and carrots
Boiled beef and carrots
That's the stuff for your derby kell
Makes you fat and it keeps you well
Don't live like vegetarians on stuff they feed to parrots
From noon till night blow out your kite
On boiled beef and carrots

I have just typed that out from memory so it might not be 100% accurate (in fact I am sure the 4th line is 'makes you fit' but fat is what I always heard). It made a big impression. I can remember loving the sound of the words 'derby kell' and the idea of 'blowing out your kite'. Other, more cultured people, might cite poetry or high class literature but for me the enjoyment and appreciation of words came from Music Hall.

In the same way I was fascinated by Max Miller. My father had a record of one of his performances and I can remember playing it over and over again. Of course I didn't understand the sexual innuendo. I just loved the way he repeated things and drew you in close as if he was having a natter with the audience: "I say here's a funny thing. Here's a funny thing". I could appreciate something about the rhythm of the performance, could sense something was happening but I didn't really know what it was.

I remember my first stupid argument (not the normal tussles and frustrations but an argument about something stupid). It was with a boy at primary school who insisted the best car ever made was a Vauxhall because that's what his dad had. I got agitated because I knew it was bad reasoning but could not explain why and had to fall back on 'everyone knows its a Rolls Royce' (which is also logically weak).

I also remember something that has a link with this cycling trip. When I was seven I had a scooter that I loved to push along the pavement. One day I started out on the road to Cricket Green and just kept on going until I got there. It was not planned. I just went bit by bit. At first I was just going to one road junction, then I went to the next and then the next and so on. When I got back my mother was furious with worry and I couldn't understand why she didn't share my pride at how far I had explored (now of course I fully understand). I was not a rebellious or difficult child. I just lived in a world of my own.

Looking back suddenly understand that I am still that seven year old: I still live in my own world; I still go on excursions by bike or running; I still get frustrated by false or weak logic; I still appreciate lots of things without fully understanding them; and I still love the sound of words and the way they can be played with.

The child is the father to the man and yes - In the end I have nowhere left to go than where I am from.

South Riding 19: Muswell Hill

It is hardly worth writing about the journey from Wood Green to Muswell Hill. It is only a couple of miles and in my mind they are both part of the same area. We had a small flat on the higher priced hill then moved down to somewhere nearby where we could afford a larger flat. That was all.

So here I am in Dukes Avenue, late morning on a weekday and everything is exceptionally quiet. There is nobody  in sight and no movement apart from an occasional car. It is amazing how peaceful residential streets can be in the daytime. There are picturesque villages near me, full of people who have escaped ,the rat race of London that are busier during the day. It is just one of those minor paradoxes that you can find patches of quietness amongst the bustle. 

In the same way cities and towns can be better places for running than rural areas.  There are parks and quiet roads, and often specific facilities designed for active leisure, whilst in the country open fields are enclosed for agriculture, the footpaths are not necessarily suitable for running and roads don't have pavements. Sometimes the visual appeal of fields and landscape, whilst important and stimulating, is not necessarily everything.

So here I am thinking like a city boy and looking at another paradox: it is easy to think of cities as places of constant change but here the only thing that has obviously changed is the barriers. Just as at Wood Green, I could walk down this road and feel like I had only been away to buy a newspaper. 

Because it is the obvious change I focus on the barriers. As a generality I don't like pedestrian barriers (I often think they come from the same people who specify useless cycle paths). They herd people, make the pavement constricted, are visually ugly, and close things off.  I don't know how much they protect pedestrians from traffic and if that could be proved then I would have to eat my prejudices. This little barrier is a case in point at first sight it looks totally footling but I have a smidgen of doubt: do the flowers at the base of the tree mark an accident?

That  not a lot has changed is one of the charms of  Muswell Hill. One of the first things I did when arriving was to check how many of the local shops still survived. Many do. First I went to the bookshop, as I know the independents are really struggling, and I was heartened to see it still there, with the separate shop for children's books (something I really like). I worry though, as the fixtures and fittings look worn and this is probably a sign that there is not much money to spare for investment  Next was the cheese shop – yep still there, smelling strong. You can tell quite a lot about the character of a place from its shops and a specialist cheese shop could survive in very few areas.  

However the key shop to check was http://www.wmartyn.co.uk/">Martyn's. If my journey has been about continuity and change than what finer example of continuity than something that has been here for 123 years.  Wonderfully it still roasts its own coffee. This is one of my favourite smells, also evokes childhood memories. When I was a little boy,  visiting my grandmother in Croydon, a treat was to go to a wonderfully old fashioned cafe, Wilson's, for a doughnut (a lovely proper doughnut: round, sliced at the top, and with the gash overflowing with jam). Wilson's also roasted their own coffee. The roaster in the window and I can remember being fascinated by watching the drum rotate and its brown patina. 

This is the last stop of the South Riding and this small detail links it to the first. A tiny circle is completed

South Riding 18: Wood Green

I have had a number of discussions with people who don't like London and can always understand their point of view. They cite noise, pollution, traffic, too many people, griminess, aggression, lack of vistas, litter, lack of community and interactions -any number of things. None can be denied as the bad is inextricably tangled with the good; so I say “yes but” and point out the beauty of the view from Waterloo Bridge, buildings, history, institutions, the higgledy piggledy excitement, the variety. They respond with a “yes but” of their own and so it goes - getting nowhere. There is no right or wrong only a viewpoint but when someone doesn't like somewhere, bad is all they see and dark overwhelms the light.

I can retort by saying (as I do now when I looking at my old home) “well I enjoyed living here” but it is not an argument, it is a simple statement. I would never stoop to using the Doctor Johnson quote: “when a man is tired of London he is tired of life” not only because it is too cheap a cliché but because taken by itself, it is bollocks. It is perfectly possible to feel the claustrophobia of rush hour, long for mountains and and open space and have a great zest for life. However I might use the second part of that quote because it is far more interesting: “for there is in London all that life can afford”.

When living in Wood Green I fully appreciated the value of the diversity. Within a short distance there were all sorts of local shops, serving different communities; as if the rest of the world was just round the corner. At the time this was an enormous boon because we were changing our diet away from traditional meat based English cooking, and the supermarkets did not then stock the variety of squashes, pulses, vegetables, and spices we now take for granted. Because of where we lived we could find almost everything and freely experiment with recipes from around the world.

Changing your diet is not easy because it is an intellectual choice initially at odds with your habits and instincts. The years have accustomed you to a pattern which you think of as a natural way of eating and established scales of tastiness by which you judge and crave food. Breaking that pattern needs a lot of conscious attention and thought about recipes. We talked about food in a way we hadn't done before. For sure we had always been interested in cooking and eating but it is different when you need to establish a totally new balanced diet.

The impetus came from a realisation that methods of intensive agriculture meant that our relationship was seriously out of whack (Intensive piggeries and battery chickens are just wrong) and we were also influenced by reading 'Diary for a Small Planet' and thoughts that an excessively meat based diet was not sustainable. Although our philosophical position was actually no different to that of Hugh Fearnley Whittingstalll, we became vegetarian. When we lived here though we knew we were on the soft end of the scale. The person in the flat below was a Buddhist and therefore very strict, whilst the next door was a squat of animal rights activists who would have no truck with any animal product whatsoever and could barely walk in the garden for fear of treading on some small creature.

That's the thing about living in a place like this: you never know who you might meet. For example our Buddhist neighbour was a musician and there were a number of other musicians nearby: a hidden enclaves or network. I like this idea. In any average looking street there can be an interesting mix of people. From the outside though you would never know

As Dr Johnson said somewhere in London you can find all that life can afford.

Running Interlude: An Uplifting Story

I must remind my self that this is a running blog.

So here is a short video about the way running has transformed someones life. You can only watch and applaud.

South Riding 17: Millennium Bridge and Challenges

Source: http://www.freefoto.com/images/31/01/31_01_13_prev.jpg 

I left Bankside in good spirits, looking forward not only to the shortest day's cycling but also retracing roads I had once used regularly. The challenge was to see how well I could recognise the roads and landmarks and hence find my way. It would be an experiment because I couldn't fully picture the route in abstract, before I started, I couldn't really remember it clearly at all. All I knew was that I would start by walking the bike over the Millennium Bridge after which it would be St Paul's, then Old Street.

As I walked over the bridge I marvelled at its elegance (I enjoy economy of form and clever engineering). It is a triumph of design, never mind its troubled beginning. I was there on the day it opened, when it became famous for its wobble. Watching from the Tate Modern we were saying to each other “Surely its not meant to do that” as we saw people clinging to the handrails, looking very queasy. To my shame I didn't think there was anything wrong, I thought it might be a design feature and they had allowed from movement to add an extra bit of excitement. “Cool”, I thought (Shows how superficial I am). 

But there two related benefits from the disaster. The first was learning from mistakes. The engineers had to examine why their original design could not withstand the congruence of two exceptional circumstances: high wind and masses of people walking in file (the wobble was brought on by a charity walk). Their conclusions have added considerably to the knowledge of bridge design. The second is that they worked on the bridge until it was right and now it is great. In some ways I appreciate it all the more because of its difficult beginning.

I take a great deal of comfort from both those aspects of the story and always want to apply them to my running. The famous phrase of George Sheehan is that as a runner you are an experiment of one. It is very easy to look at that and concentrate  on the idea of individuality but to me the key word is experiment. We should approach our training with the attitude of an engineer. First we should look to existing knowledge, design a programme, and then evaluate. It is important to be able to recognise mistakes (and sometimes this is difficult because we become irrationally attached to a certain way of doing things) and then redesign, try again, and work until things come right. 

Failure is important for learning and it is one of my failures that during my life I have too often tried to avoid its lessons. This does not mean I have lead a life of smooth success (far from it). It means  that too often I have closed my eyes rather than admit something was wrong, and at other times I have gone out of my way to avoid situations where I might fail. The latter is particular grave because on many occasions I have shunned challenges and suffered through sitting on the sidelines. Only now, as I grow older, am I able to face up to this as a mental fragility. Perhaps I am a very, very late developer or maybe I just discovered running too late. 

It is through running  and treating it as a series of challenges that I have been able to find a prism through which to look at other aspects of my life and see things more clearly.

I see this cycling journey as a continuation of this process, which is why I am happy to write about it in a running blog. I am using the  physical exertion as a mechanism to look at my past more clearly. Just like running, being on a bike gives you the sense of being part of the landscape and so gives you a strong sense of place. It is this sense I want to unlock so that I can clearly picture myself as I was and remember things I had forgotten. Physical exertion also has a way of clearing the mind and helps you look at things more objectively. 

This is important because this is not a sentimental journey - it is one of discovery.

South Riding 16: End of Day 2

Eventually I will again write something about running but in the meantime I continue to try to catch up with my journeys.

End of Day 2 - mileage: 48.7 miles; total mileage 115.2

Deep into the afternoon and all that remained was the final stretch to Bankside and my stopover. But I needed refreshment before setting off, so just like yesterday, it was a fruit booster and pastry from Café Nero. On a hot day, after exertion they are a good choice.

I sat by the window, calmly watching the world go by, pleased to be here, both surprised and unsurprised by how much I could recognise. It was very easy to slip back and picture myself as a teenager walking past. The basic structure of the town was the same, as was the housing stock and all was well kempt. I could have sat there for a long time, in a state of dumb contentment but when you still have miles to ride you cannot let that happen. So I winched my limbs out of the seat (and really it did feel as if I needed to by moved by block and tackle)and got on my way.

When I said that I had had to commute all of my working life I forgot to mention that this has been the case ever since secondary school. When in Cheshire Chester was nine miles away, here I caught the train from West Wickham to Clock House and then walked along to what was Beckenham and Penge Grammar School. Today I cycled that route and passed the old school building, which is now used for adult education with what was the canteen block now a primary school. I didn’t stop to take photos. I now wish I had but at the time the need to keep going was more compelling. Looking at it I was reminded of what a strange pastiche it was - a vague imitation of an imaginary public school. In fact I can remember when I transferred I was given an interview to see if I was suitable; as my parents and I walked up the driveway my mother looked at the building and in an impressed sort of whisper said "it's very publicky isn't it?". As a building it was thus a piece of theatre, trying to suggest a grammar school ethos based on the past. At the time I though no more about it than I did about having to wear a cap as part of the uniform but I later found out it was built in 1931 and was saddened the architecture had been so backward looking. But when I went it didn’t matter – it was just a school and overall it was probably quite a good school.

After that I went along the roads behind the school towards Catford. I passed a number of roads that looked familiar and though that some friends had lived in this area but I could not remember exactly where. IIt was all a blur. So I carried on through Lewisham, New Cross, Old Kent Road, Borough High Street.

My overnight was just behind Tate Modern in one of the LSE’s halls of residence, which is available for Bed and Breakfast in the summer holidays. I knew exactly what the room would be like: student accommodation is the same everywhere. There must be a factory somewhere that makes the basic kit of small single bed, chest of drawers, wardrobe, desk and small bookcase so that every student has the same basic experience. I don’t think the designs have changed since the Sixties. Not luxurious but it does a job.

For my evening meal I went to Leon, which was next door, and somewhere I enjoy and go to regularly when I visit the Tate. After which everything was right with the world but again I was dog-tired. When I got back to my room I tried to read but my eyes were too heavy.

Unexpectedly, for this journey, my book had been a piece of excess luggage.

Another Short Interruption

I have not yet finished writing about the South Riding but already the next journey calls; so this morning I will be leaving to cycle to Chester via Birmingham.

There will not be posting for a few days but when I get back get back I will try to catch up.

When I started I didn't realise the whole process would be so long winded!

South Riding 15: West Wickham

A fairly common sight: what was a small garden front garden, now tarmac. A bit boring really. This time there has also been a growing of hedge to ensure privacy and a darkening of the front room. I prefer things to be more open.

The first thing I notice about the house is the change of windows and garage door. This is inevitable as we had the original metal, Crittall windows . Oh were they cold! No insulation at all – I can remember many a winter's morning waking up to the intricate patterns of frozen condensation on the windowpanes. It was actually quite pretty to look at (like snowflakes under a microscope) when you were snuggled under the covers; but the cold was a definite disincentive to getting up. 

The garage door is now up-and-over. When we were here there were two, traditional wooden doors, which opened out. I have recently seen adverts for the Vauxhall Meriva, which make a virtue of the rear door opening outwards from a hinge at the rear, rather than from a hinge in the mid pillar. When we lived here we had a car with a similar arrangement. One day someone left the rear door slightly open whilst the garage door was angled in a bit (i.e. not fully open), when my father tried to drive the car into the garage the two doors became perfectly aligned. The garage door stood firm but the car door crumpled badly. let this be a warning for any potential  Meriva purchasers.

Moving on from that trivial and irrelevant car anecdote. You can see from this street view that it is a quiet residential, suburban road that would have looked very similar in the 1920/30s when the houses were built.

We moved into this house when I was 13 and my sister 11 but the price meant that my mother had go to work to help pay for it. We were lucky in that we had our mother with us for our crucial young years. Lucky and, of course being children, totally unaware of how fortunate we were to have an emotionally stable and nurturing environment. Before the decision was made though there was a family conversation to check we were not upset by the idea of coming home to an empty house. We were quite relaxed (even quite liked the idea); it was my mother who needed the reassurance. 

Standing outside the house now I have a stream of memories, far more than I can report here, because I lived here at the time I developed self-awareness. But more than that, for society as a whole, it was a time of changing social attitudes and so it was exciting to be a teenager. 

The centre of these changes might have been West Central London but the suburbs were quite close and not a bad place to be. You could rub shoulders with David Bowie at the Three Tuns when he was setting-up the Beckenham Arts Lab (the picture shows how he looked then) and music was everywhere, with some amazing people playing small local venues. If I were to pick out one moment from a local gig it would be Peter Green and an intensely sad and beautiful solo on ‘tears in my eyes’. The song itself is a standard slow blues but I can remember being completely transfixed by the translucent quality of the guitar playing. George Harrison might have written 'While my guitar gently weeps' but believe me none of the guitar heroes, be they Hendrix, Clapton or Page, could make a guitar weep like Peter Green.

But it was not all 'white boy' blues, there was music of all kinds, and I was just as likely to follow the Mike Westbrook Concert Band as I was to go to Les Cousins to see Bert Jansch and John Martyn. I was far from alone in being happy to range over folk, rock, jazz or anything thing that seemed experimental - it was the spirit of the age. It somehow seemed all of a piece.

I believe that at any time there is always a dominant art form that erupts to drive and influence all surrounding creative endeavours. At that time, in the Sixties, it was music and for me it was a prism through which I saw much of the world.  Unfortunately I am not at all musical so I was forever condemned to merely appreciate, and never participate. Nevertheless I had the odd moments of insight. 

The platform for those insights was formed when I lived in this house.