Another Beginning (Janathon 2014 Day 1)

Run - 4.8km, Time - 31m, Weather - Ha, I was out early enough to avoid the heavy rain and winds forecast for the rest of the day. It was merely grey.

It would probably be very boring to go into a long explanation as to why I stopped writing about running and abandoned this blog last June. Very boring. The gist is simple: I had a long period when running became hard and left me more tired than refreshed. Even though I kept on (in a reduced and sporadic fashion) there was little pleasure and no satisfaction and so there was nothing to write about.

But that was then. 2014 will be different as I am determined to work my way back to some sort of form. This might mean I have to begin at the very beginning and think of it as a new project, as if I had never run before. It will certainly mean I will not be hard on myself for being slow and running below the level I expect (I might be a slow runner but there are degrees of slowness and I have an inbuilt sense of what I should be doing. We all have our own internal scales). My mantra will be: regular but easy.

And so to Janathon where once again I will attempt 31 days of consecutive exercise, with 4 days a week running. It is good to have a plan.

New Beginning

Run - 3.96 miles, Time - 44min, Weather - milder but still grey and bleak

Now there are no excuses - snow and ice have cleared and the temperature has risen a few degrees. For the first time in 8 days conditions are good and it is time to resume training.

Obviously the benefits of some of January's work has now dissipated - but no matter. Always the motto is onwards and upwards. So back to the base training with a gradually build up, every other day. Sometime I will eventually reach a reasonable weekly mileage.

The trouble with base training is that there is no much to report. You chug along, concentrating on your pace to maintain easy breathing, and that is all there is.  You can look around and try to notice something about my surroundings but on many days there is nothing particular. Today was one of those days. I passed a few pedestrians, sometimes I went into the road, sometimes there was space on the pavement. This is hardly the stuff of a gripping narrative!

I beginning to wonder whether I should change my habits and run with music. As my tastes veer to the miserablist most of the songs on my iPod are probably suitable. At the moment I am listening to Gillian Welch. I don't think any of her tracks would make it onto a compilation of best music running music but in the world of base training she might just do a job. We will see.

I didn't take any photos today so I am posting the picture of the moorhen on the slushy ice as a memory of what it has been like this past week.

2011 Streak 243 (Saturday Sept 3rd): Beginnings

2011 Streak 243 (Saturday Sept 3^rd):Walk 2 miles, Time - 45min,  Weather - strange split sky banks of gunmetal grey cloud and blue sky

Short slow walk around Old Town and park. This is a very difficult time. Feeling weak but trying to carry on is hard work as I arrive home exhausted. At the moment the days are a mixture of: rest, a little activity, rest. All is hazy.

However being in the park ion a Saturday is a good diversion. Watching other people circulating, and enjoying themselves, lifts ones own spirits. When you feel ill it is very easy to direct all your attention inwards but there is stimulation in the world around  and this can make you feel better.

Walking along the footpath I glimpsed a wedding party assembling for photographs outside St Mary's church. Weddings always represent hope and the beginning of something. I like beginnings. 

I could do with one rich now.  I need to get back into training and start making plans again but at the moment that seems a strange and distant idea.

A Clean Slate With Your Own Face On

Rather shamefacedly, I must admit I have not only never read any Sylvia Plath, I have actively avoided her work. Just like the next man I am full of petty prejudices but I am quite happy to be proved wrong. This time it happened when flicking through the booklet about her given away with today’s Guardian. The first thing I read was the poem ‘You’re’ and I thought it lovely.

On first reading I thought it about a newborn infant and I related to it by remembering my own children at that age, all full of vague potential. “O high-riser, my little loaf” just made me smile. But a number of lines did not make sense (e.g.Gilled like a fish) until I realised it was about the unborn child she was carrying.

Clownlike, happiest on your hands,
Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled,
Gilled like a fish. A common-sense
Thumbs-down on the dodo's mode.
Wrapped up in yourself like a spool,
Trawling your dark, as owls do.
Mute as a turnip from the Fourth
Of July to All Fools' Day,
O high-riser, my little loaf.

Vague as fog and looked for like mail.
Farther off than Australia.
Bent-backed Atlas, our travelled prawn.
Snug as a bud and at home
Like a sprat in a pickle jug.
A creel of eels, all ripples.
Jumpy as a Mexican bean.
Right, like a well-done sum.
A clean slate, with your own face on.

Whatever its actual meaning, the poem started a train of thought about beginnings – the optimism, playfulness, and hope. The first word ‘clownlike’ made me think about how much and how easily children laugh and how we lose that giggliness when we get older and activity turns into work. We are at our best when we recover just a fraction of that delight and it is the purpose of our hobbies, pastimes, and obsessions, to give us some glimpse of it.

But even our recreations, if done often enough, can become an obligation, a pressure like work. So all the time we need to recover the sense of the new, the freshness of the beginning when every run is a discovery and hopes are ‘as vague as the fog and looked for like the mail’.

This can be done in so many ways – new routes, looking at old routes in a different way, forgetting about speed, time, distance, or trying a new training plan. It does not matter what. All that matters is keeping fresh and feeling alive, and with any luck finding some delight.