Thursday, December 30, 2010

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

Sunday, December 19, 2010

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.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Probably The Best Runner You've Never Heard Of

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!

Sunday, December 05, 2010

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

Wednesday, December 01, 2010

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.