Posture - and another thing

This is a small addendum to my last post because I suddenly remembered a piece about the rehabilitation of Jonathan Woodgate, whose career has been plagued by muscle tears. The key to his improvement seems to be posture:

Woodgate was supervised one-on-one as he went through "core training". This is intended to condition the torso and improve posture so that the danger of injury is reduced. Phil Pask, as senior physio to the England rugby squad for 10 years that included the 2003 World Cup triumph, is well versed in an unrelenting sport and knows the value of core work. "We are looking," he said, "for a normal movement pattern. Physios now will have a grounding in yoga and Pilates."

later on in the article the physio used the made-up word of prehabilitation. Inspite of that it is the best idea; injury is just the worst thing and so everything possible must be done to try to prevent it. In running the most important thing is consistency and that can only happen when all work is done within the body's limits.

That is why I think core work and posture is important – it helps with those limits.

Posture

As I write this I am sitting on a new desk chair...

I cannot imagine a more boring sentence to open an post. It is of absolutely no interest to anybody else whether I am sitting on an orange crate or reclining on the sofa, but to me it is important. It is related to something I increasingly consider important – posture.

In the old twirly, leany-backy office chair, I used to be half reclining when using the computer; it was an illusory comfort. The new chair is plain, fairly firm, with no moving parts and it forces me to sit upright. My back is straighter and I feel more alert. To say I have been working towards this for a couple of months is not quite true. I haven't had a training programme of sitting a little better each day until I achieved a goal of sitting upright – that would be daft. But I have been working for a couple of months on strengthening my core muscles and trying to improve my posture.

It stems from a realisation that to run properly, with good economy whilst minimising the strain on my body, I need good posture. This cannot be switched on when I laced up my trainers and neglected for everything else, it has to be applied all the time. I have to be constantly aware of how I am holding myself because it is easy to slump, especially when feeling weary.

I have a book of yoga exercises for runners where the mountain pose is highlighted as a key pose. It looks really simple, as it does not involve any contortions or stretching, it is simply a matter of standing upright, balanced and relaxed. It is good to do at odd moments throughout the day as it makes you aware of how you are standing and it recalibrates your posture. A few moments of awareness of the body. It has changed the way I do some exercises. For example when doing lunges I stand in the mountain pose for a short while, do a few lunges on one leg, go back to the mountain pose and then do a few more lunges on the other leg. Yesterday, when walking down the street, became aware of being a little straighter, looking forward rather than slightly down. These are little things, small moments but they make you feel better balanced.

I am sure this is good for running . Everything I have read about good form says you should be erect but relaxed, but how you run is not merely a matter of what you do on a run it's a matter of what you do throughout the day.

Running in Literature: Mr Standfast

This is interesting because running was added in an adaptation rather than being in the original.


The Classic Serial, on the radio, on Sunday, was Mr Standfast. Towards the end, in the pause before the final action sequence, Richard Hannay is in hiding in a hut in the Alps. He wants to increase his fitness because he knows there are trials ahead and so has a routine of training in the night.

On the radio the routine was described with the sound effect of running footfalls and panting and the narrator saying: “I would slip outdoors and go for a run and push up through the snow-laden pines to the ridges where the snow lay in great wreaths and scallops, till I stood on a crest with a frozen world at my feet”

I thought it rather striking and pictured the scene and could almost sense the refreshment of being alone in the clear mountain air. Ah I thought this might worth checking as an example of running in literature, to see if it gave any extra insight about attitudes at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. I found instead that it was nothing to do with running at all. The actual passage was:

I would slip out-of-doors and go for a four or five hours' tramp. Wonderful were those midnight wanderings. I pushed up through the snow-laden pines to the ridges where the snow lay in great wreaths and scallops, till I stood on a crest with a frozen world at my feet and above me a host of glittering stars. Once on a night of full moon I reached the glacier at the valley head, scrambled up the moraine to where the ice began, and peered fearfully into the spectral crevasses. At such hours I had the earth to myself, for there was not a sound except the slipping of a burden of snow from the trees or the crack and rustle which reminded me that a glacier was a moving river.

Why has tramping been replaced by running? I can only think that the need to compress the text lead the adaptor to use running as a short hand to indicate a fitness regime and that to our modern ears walking would not convey the message. But the change makes no real sense because walking up mountains, in the dark, for four or five hours is very hard and challenging and you can still, legitimately use the sound effect of heavy breathing . Running up those same mountains in the dark is probably suicidal.

I can only think that the Edwardian writer understood the value of hard sustained aerobic exercise for strength and endurance, whilst the modern writer did not.

Running in Literature: Widmerpool

An occasional series that will be continued whenever I come across a character who has any sort of interesting relationship with running.

Dance to the Music of Time is a sequence of twelve novels that describes the social milieu around the central narrator Nicholas Jenkins. There two main types of reaction to it: some people reject it as just the social record of a load of toffs, whilst others make extraordinarily high claims. (There is a quote on my copy from Clive James 'I think it is now becoming clear that A Dance To The Music of Time is going to become the greatest modern novel since Ulysses'). Myself, I think it is wonderful, full of insight and wry observation, but that is neither here nor there as I am not here to write a review. I only want to highlight a small detail that in a novel sequence with a precise architecture, where patterns and symmetries are important, it begins and end with running.

Widmerpool is probably the character who looms the largest throughout the novels. Although not likeable or sympathetic, he is a force and fascinating in his strengths and weaknesses. In the beginning he is fixed as he comes out of the mist.

By this stage of the year - exercise no longer contestable five days a week - the road was empty; except for Widmerpool, in a sweater once white and a cap one size too small, hobbling unevenly, though with determination on the flat heels of spiked running shoes…Widmerpool was known to go voluntarily for 'a run' by himself every afternoon. This was his return from the plough in drizzle that had been falling since early school…As the damp , insistent cold struck up from the road, two thin jets of steam drifted out of his nostrils, by nature much distended, and all at once he seemed to possess a painful solidarity that talk about him had never conveyed. Something comfortless and inelegant in his appearance suddenly impressed itself on the observer, as stiffly, almost majestically, Widmerpool moved on his heels out of the mist.

I think this is fine writing with small details like the 'two thin jets of steam' making the picture vivid. But the point is that the character of Widmerpool becomes clear through his activity - through running, which is solitary (Widmerpool is always an outsider), determined, but pursued without any great talent. Yet despite all this there is something almost majestic about him.

I love the idea of seeing people through their actions. This may be a bit sad but all the time I am looking at runners and making judgements. Mostly they are superficial, merely being about the way the body moves, whether it is fluid or stiff, elegant or clumsy. At other times you do catch glimpses of character, though you have no way of knowing if that flash of insight is accurate or not. However the activities we choose are never neutral, they all show something about us. For example you can never take up running if you hate being by yourself, as no matter how social you might be, running is mostly solitary. You also have to have a certain amount of doggedness run consistently and so it is the perfect activity to introduce Widmerpool who forms his own life purely through the force of will.

Yes running is only a small detail in the novels but it is cleverly chosen. I will however draw a veil over the ending where Widmerpool dies running naked, part of a crank sect.

We may run but we are not mean we have to be anything like him.

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.

Humility and Truth Pt. 1

Humility and truth – as a title it sounds rather grand and forbidding, like a Victorian lecture on virtue, morals or anything else requiring a stiff backbone. But that cannot be right; I am not trying to bolster an empire or preach a normative sermon. I am only writing about running – a simple physical activity, a recreation.

But it is not so simple and I believe that anything that takes time and effort, teaches its own lessons. You not only learn the techniques of the task itself, how to run better or shape a piece of wood more accurately or solve equations, you learn about the way you approach the task. Are you soft on yourself or relentless? Will accept imperfections or only be satisfied with the best? Are you pragmatic or idealistic? These questions and more are being played out all the time and mostly there is a mixed bag of answers. However you gather them up and over time they form a pattern and you know where you have to try harder and you know your limitations

This is where humility comes in. You cannot maintain any illusion of innate superiority. There are always people who can run faster or longer, or faster and longer. There are always people who overcome more difficulties. It doesn’t matter where in the pack you are, there are always people you think should be at your level and sometimes they are running away from you. You vow to be better in future but that vow is in itself a recognition of humility – you know you could do better.

It is not just a matter of speed. There are people who are slower who show great virtue. At the moment I am using the gym a lot and I regularly see people working to overcome physical limitations. A couple of people in particular can barely walk, yet they struggle onto the treadmill, hold onto the bar and move their legs faster than would otherwise be possible. One of them has obviously had a stroke and has to use his left hand to lift his right arm into place. It takes him ages to set himself up on the various machines but he never gives up. I think about these people more than the fit and toned. I wonder if I would be as determined if I was so limited in my movements.

Yet to balance all this humility there has to be an inner feeling of satisfaction. You need to feel good about what you achieve as well as recognising the achievement of others and for this running is perfect. If you do what you can, within your own boundaries, you feel good. Each run has the potential of being a small victory.

Whenever I see someone out on the roads, running at whatever pace, I see someone doing their best. There is a community of us, all doing our best. Being part of that is a source of both humility and satisfaction.

Humility and Truth Pt. 2

In the past I have written before about running being a form of honesty. It doesn’t matter what you think of your capabilities, how fast you wish to be, or how well you know the theory, the time you take to complete a run tells you everything there is about your capabilities on the day. Of course you can plan to improve, work hard and make progress but there is always a clear measure of how you have done. You cannot bluff your way round a course.

Honesty and truth have been on my mind quite a bit recently as I have been reading Flat earth news by Nick Davies, which paints a bleak picture of the information available to us through the news media. Because of pressures of productivity, the need for speed, slimmed-down newsrooms, fewer local stringers, there is an over reliance on lifting copy from wire services and topping and tailing press releases. There is little time for fact checking and the truth of a story can sometimes be less important than feeding the prejudices of the audience. If something is said often enough it becomes the conventional wisdom and if no one checks everybody can continue to believe that the earth is flat.

This followed reading about Joseph Stiglitz's book on the full the cost of the Iraq war, which exposed a mountain of official lies by following the money. There was also interesting an article about the standards of curatorship in current art exhibitions which concluded:

The problem is not blockbusters. It's that in London we get too many exhibitions that sound big, but in reality are very small. As a nation, we've become professional bullshitters (as Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson's book Fantasy Island recently argued), and our art galleries are no exception.

All in all my head is reeling with the thought that all our public discourses and a host of consequential actions are governed by misinformation and an inability to check claims for truth.

I thus turn with relief to a run and know I can run for so many minutes and cover so many miles. It is the truth about my current condition and it gives me a grasp on one tiny bit of reality.

Away in Spain

I have been away in Spain, staying in a hillside village a few miles from the coast, something I can recommend to almost everybody.

Since I have been back I have read of a number of football teams that have gone to Spain for some warm weather training. Ha! I went for warm weather non-training. The days involved breakfast, wandering around, lunch as the main meal of the day, reading, more wandering around, supper. No television, radio, or any form of media distraction.

I am always striving to strip things back but never succeed as I have an immense capacity to decide something and then instinctively act in a completely different way. On holiday simplicity was achieved but it was only that - a holiday. The complicated bit is working out day-to-day pattern of living. However the holiday provided an inoculation of sunshine against the gloom of an English February and that is an unalloyed good.

Although there was no running I reckon there was a goodly amount of base training. The walking was all up and down hills and our cottage was at the top of these 50 leg-strengthening steps. However I have to admit that the truly committed would have been running up and down the steps every morning – ah well!

Spirit of the Marathon

This is a trailer for a film that looks like it could be good. It follows six people, ranging from top athlete Deena Kastor to a 70 year old running with his daughter, as they tackle the Chicago Marathon.

The clip opens with a Joe Henderson saying "I think we were made to run, we have these long legs for a reason". Damn, and here am I with short legs.

Elasticity

I might have mentioned before that I have a lot of admiration for Windsurfin' Susie and the dedicated, rational approach she has to running. She not only studies the physiology of running, she puts theory into practice and then passes on what she has learnt to others. She, and those like her, are the backbone of the sport in this country.

Her latest post is a clear exposition of why running fast is not the best training if you are planning to run long. I'm sure she is right with the underlying message of keeping your goal in mind and being specific in your training. I read it soon after I had posted about my current regime, which involves fairly short bursts of faster running amid other exercises for general strength and flexibility - a completely different approach. So How can I hold onto this this contradiction, i.e. believing Susie is right, yet doing the opposite?

Well actually it is quite easy - because there is no contradiction. There is a wonderful variety of reasons for running and a whole range of aspirations. Susie is a serious athlete, with a target, which I am sure she will attain, of running a 3 hours 15 minute marathon. My current aim is more vague and subjective (and is probably totally unrealistic given my age) and so I have a different plan.

It became clear to me, as these things sometimes do, when looking at a woman. I was watching some sort of aerobic, kickboxing, dance, exercise class, which involved rather complicated moves to music. My attention was caught by someone who could not get the sequence quite right. There was a bounce and elasticity to her movement and she could do all the components of the routine with ease, but she messed up the timings and because of that she was laughing and exercising. Somehow she just seemed full of life.

I thought about my running and how I felt when I was doing it and realised that although it gave me a sense of contentment and sparked all sorts of thoughts and feelings, the actual movement felt a little limited - a bit ploddy, a bit like always going along a line. There was no sense of flexibility and elasticity. In other words, to try to regain that sense of aliveness, I had to try to put more snap into what I was doing and try to exercise the whole body.

So here I am, concentrating more on form than distance, trying to run with a higher cadence with more spring, working the core to improve posture and trying to stretch out some of those gnarled muscles. Part of me thinks I am being a little ridiculous because I will never recapture the elasticity of youth but as I am writing this I am sitting up straighter and in some small way that might show that something is working.

Transmitting an Enthusiasm

The best teaching works by passing on an enthusiasm for the subject - showing that it is alive. That's why I like Beanz's latest post.

I was listening to a radio programme on fanzines where there was a nice example of how this can happen in an informal way. Dave Haslam described how he produced a small fanzine called 'Debris', which he used to sell to people queuing to get into gigs. In the mid Eighties Raymond Carver made his first visit to the UK where there was so little interest he was only interviewed by three people: someone from the Daily Telegraph, the Times and Dave Haslam (hard though this is to believe). When he was selling the issue of Debris with the Carver interview (which can be read here) someone asked him what he meant by including an article about a writer. "Read it and see what you think" was the reply. The next time he was selling the magazine the same person made a point of coming up to say how good the article was and show him the T-shirt he was wearing, which had a picture of Raymond Carver's on it. In other words Carver was his new passion. Dave Haslam thinks this is one of his finest achievements.

With running, if we can pass on our enthusiasm in the same way then we have similarly done something good. In my family my wife runs as does my sister and brother-in-law. I take no direct credit for this but my evident enjoyment of the feeling you get from running might have helped.

For Beanz, and all the other good teachers out there I will pass on this quote from John Ruskin:

There is no wealth but life. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest numbers of noble and happy human beings; that man is richest, who, having perfected the functions of his own life to the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both personal, and by means of his possessions, over the lives of others.

Unto This Last essay IV, paragraph 77 (1860)

Base Camp

By accident rather than design my current training plan might have some sort of basis in theory, as it seems to have some similarity to 'reverse periodisation'. Amazing - it only goes to show that there is a concept and name for everything and that most things have been tried at sometime. For me concentrating on gym work, trying to build up strength and leg speed is not just a soft way of keeping out of the of grey, cold, wet, windy weather - oh no it is an bona fide training technique!

I typed the phrase into Google and most of the reference came from triathlon. Quite a nice post is this from The Triathlon Book. I also found out that it is common in cycling and neither Greg Lamond or Lance Armstrong believed in bashing out the long miles in winter (probably the only thing they do agree on). However, for me, that is purely coincidental; my plan is based on observing my running and the need to try something different.

I am convinced that a large part of running is mental i.e. based on an internal sense of what you can and cannot do. There is an in-built sense of self-preservation linked to a voice wanting you to ease back, keep comfortable, keep something in reserve. This means there is an internal feel for a comfortable pace dictated both by the body's capacity and an idea of the body's capacity. The purpose of training is not only to develop muscle, sinew, heart and lungs but also extending the internal model of what you can do. For me that has half worked. I have confidence in the ability to keep going but my pattern of mostly running easy miles has reinforced my comfort zone rather than stretching it. My internal rhythm running rhythm is now calibrated at a fairly slow leg turnover.

Something needs to be done to shake this up. My plan is thus to recalibrate my sense of cadence before gradually extend distance. This is combined with the idea of improving general strength, especially of the core and shoulders, which will help the maintenance of good running posture for longer. Also I read somewhere about the need for more resistance exercise as you get older to ameliorate the natural wasting of muscles - so that is what I am trying to do.

So far this month I have been to the gym 5 times a week, alternating cv and strength days. I have not run any long sessions on the treadmill (I don't know why but I find that mentally quite hard), it has been fairly short bursts at a pace that feels slightly uncomfortable. I have also used the bikes at a cadence of 90 to try to make that rhythm feel normal.

I do not know whether this is a good plan or not - if I run better than last year it is good, if I don't it is not. I just tend to think of it as base training - i.e. building a base of general strength and fitness.

The Begining of the Year

It is odd but I never think of the New Year beginning on the 1st of January; I’m more in tune with the 12 Days of Christmas. On Sunday the decorations were taken down and everything returned to what passes for normal.

So my resolutions have begun – well not exactly resolutions, more guidelines and plans. My wife and I had one of our normal coffee house meetings to work out what needed doing over the next year (basically all the stuff we thought of last year but did not get round to), and there was something reassuring about this beginning-of-the-year ritual as there are always things we didn’t do last year.

If I am honest there is only one resolution each year and it is always the same: to keep on going, keep on trying. Everything else is orientation.

The running/fitness plans (i.e. the subject of this blog) are divided into two parts: exercise and food. All I can say is that I am three days in and that so far so good.

For exercise I am keeping to my plan of trying top build up general strength and fitness, whilst running for short distances at a higher speed. We will just have to see how this works out as it is part of a long term plan.

The food part is very simple: eat only at meal times, have three meals a day and try to eat as little processed food as possible and eat more slowly and savour the flavours. That’s all there is: eat real food but restrict the quantity. (The Guardian managed two whole articles from a book that said just that here and here). I have always wondered how people manage to write so much about diet when it is mainly a matter of eating your greens.

There again you could say that about running - it is just one foot in front of another, endlessly. But I look at this blog and realise that somehow I have managed to witter on about it for three years – so perhaps it is possible to find ways to talk about a simple basic truth.

The New year and Time for a Change

Now is the time to take stock and make plans for the coming year. I like sitting here on a grey winters afternoon, casting my mind forward, imagining the sun and longer days and things I want to achieve.

Following-on from my last post - time really is a gift.

I have been made redundant from work and I must admit that I am not at all unhappy. My lifestyle used to be stupidly wearying, as my typical day was to leave at 6.30 and come home at 7.30. It was grinding and dull and during the week there was time for little else. My whole being yearned for a break and now it has got one - so I will be taking a sabbatical for a few months. Who knows what will happen after that.

As for running, which is after all the purpose of this blog, it is all good and I can start to think long term and aim for a certain amount of consistency.

The last two months of 2007 were stressful and I managed to combine little exercise with eating too much, so my fitness level has taken a dive. No matter - even more it feels as if I am making a fresh start.

I am thus going back to base to build up my general strength and fitness. This is the reverse of base training, which involves lots and lots of easy miles. It is a matter of going to the gym - doing speed work on the treadmill and using the machines to build up my core muscles. A couple of months of this, plus a planned gradual weight loss, should put me in good shape to start building up the mileage for a marathon later in the year.

I have always had the attitude that there are no training runs, i.e. I run for the pleasure of each run, not as a means to an end. That remains, but there is nothing to stop me training for running and then following a schedule. I am quite excited by the idea of trying to improve.

To everyone who reads this I hope you are also excited by the prospect of the New Year and that your plans are fulfilled. May you all have good luck.

Time is a Gift

I found this a quite inspiring conversation:

The son of a long standing family friend was describing how he had moved from fine art to book conservation. In his graduation show he printed a dissertation about the influence of Japan on American artists as Japanese book, with traditional paper and binding. He also produced other books containing photographs, all bound in a similar way. These books were then displayed in an installation of a print works. For him the interest was in submerging himself in a traditional craft and learning how to make something carefully, accurately, and beautifully. He enjoyed the way that people instinctively reacted to and appreciated something well-made. He felt these objects communicated more than his abstract works.

I asked how this gelled with the attitude of his lecturers with their romantic idea of personal expression and individuality. By focussing on skill and producing an object in a traditional way, he was challenging this. He said that one of his lecturers had described him as reactionary but he never sought to challenge their beliefs and was always respectful and that the photographs in the books were within their tradition. Paradoxically, by being self effacing he became more of his own man. After the show a gallery approached and said that they like his work but he knew that he did not want the life of an artist and gave all of his books away. He was just grateful for being given the time and support to develop his skill.

I love the idea of craftsmanship, when something comes together well and with precision and have previously posted on trying to work out the craft in running. I don’t know if there is any, but there is a similarity of trying to do something as well as possible and continually working at it. You loose yourself in the task and in so doing express your personality more fully.

However in the conversation I was really struck by the idea of time being a gift and that for us soft-core runners there is all the time in the world. It need not be a constraint. There is no need to try an force a spring marathon if you do not feel ready. There is the time to progress as slowly as you want, try base training or any other approach, or work on your technique. You can go backwards to go forwards. You can afford to have a long term objective.

Yes time is a gift.

Stairway to the Serpies

The big cultural event of the week has been the Led Zeppelin concert. So how can I link that to running? Well actually quite easily. I don't need the full six degrees of separation just a memory from 40 years ago.

The first thing is that a huge part of my imaginative identity at that time was bound up with music. It was not only a matter of listening there were a whole range of meanings and social signifiers. Authenticity, invention, attitude, edge, were the things that mattered and reading about them was an important way of augmenting knowledge of this (never mind Frank Zappa's jibe that writing about music is like dancing about architecture).

The second thing is that I have been reading the Guardian since the age of 16 and can remember any number of their writers. One of them was Geoffrey Cannon who, amongst other things, wrote about rock music. He reviewed the first big concert of Led Zeppelin at the Albert Hall (they were always a band that started at the top) and incidentally was not overly impressed, recognising the visceral power but concluding with the line that they were 'plastic fantastic'. I don't know why I remember that but I do.

He is the link with running because he moved from music to health and especially diet. He also ran and his lasting legacy is the founding of the Serpies. To me this is a huge thing.

The following is a quotation from a speech that was published in Public Health Nutrition: 6(4), June 2003, 326–328.

My best deed in those days was to found the Serpentine
Running Club, which celebrated its first 20 years with 700
members in May last year, whose details are on info@
serpentine.org.uk; its members include world champions,
but the club remains dedicated to the absolute beginner.
Every time I come to London and stagger round
Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, I look at the
unofficial paths parallel to the tarmac, made by the
incessant tread of countless thousands of runners. Those
paths did not exist before the days of the Serpies, and I feel
proud. However, jogging goes back to the 1960s, long
before anybody dreamed that most able-bodied citizens
could run a marathon. My own inspiration was Norman
Harris, founder of the Sunday Times National Fun Run in
the late 1970s. Here is the story of the first-ever jogging
club, and the invention of the word ‘jogger’.
Norman’s inspiration was his fellow New Zealander
Arthur Lydiard, the fabled coach of Murray Halberg and
Peter Snell16, who, as Norman explained to me (Harris N,
personal communication) in 1962, “decided to start an
informal club of former runners, who would amble a few
miles on a Sunday morning and then maybe have a picnic.
As the then New Zealand Herald athletics writer, I was
asked to put a piece in the paper. They said the guys
would just be jogging, and I remember saying: ‘So what
will you call it – the Auckland Joggers Club?’ There was a
bit of a giggle. But the name stuck. So I think I invented not
the verb ‘to jog’, but the noun ‘jogger’!”
Bear Arthur Lydiard and Norman Harris in mind next
time you go for a jog. Remember too, with due deference
to Gunnar Blix17, Per-Olof Astrand18 and the other Nordic
pioneers, that it was the citizens’ running movement of the
1970s and 1980s that supplied the cohorts of tens of
thousands of enthusiastic volunteers for the experiments
of exercise physiologists that have now proved beyond
reasonable doubt that regular physical activity prevents
chronic diseases. With no funding from USAID, too!
Before jogging there were two separated populations, of
elite athletes and the sedentary masses; so researchers
could not be sure of the meaning of moving from being fat
to being fit. Now we all know.
Arthur Lydiard and Norman Harris began the movement
that led to the launch of Agita Mundo onWorld Health Day
in Sa˜o Paulo in April 2002 and the new WHO global
strategy. They are the founders of a global grassroots
movement that has improved the quality of life of millions
of people. Salutations to them. Raise your glasses, please,
filled neither with Coca-Cola, nor cachac¸a nor calvados.
Sau´de! Good health!

Victorian Virtues

Yesterday there was a Channel 4 programme on John Ruskin. I was really pleased about this and hope there will be some revival in interest in his work.

I previously mentioned that my favourite house in England is Brantwood, which used to be the home of John Ruskin. Partly this is because of the location (the view overlooking Coniston Water is sublime) but more importantly it is a celebration of the ideas of one of the great Victorian thinkers.

I can remember being told, in a school lesson 40 years ago, that the bookshelf of any educated artisan of the period would contain works by John Ruskin and Thomas Carlyle. It was a strange throw away remark, just one sentence when a lesson went off-topic, but it has stayed with me all this time. Somehow it snagged a number of romantic ideas about idealism and seriousness, the way this could be embraced through all levels of society, and faith in the possibility of change, so that the quality of life could be improved for all (i.e. a better society was possible).

When I look out from his study, over the Water, to see the fells change colour and shape with changes in the light, my appreciation is heightened by all my internal associations. One of his great ideas was that you should learn through the close and direct observation of nature. But there is more to it than just standing and staring.

Strangely this brings me back to running and the justifications I make to myself for spending time on an activity where my only realistic aspiration is to be mediocre. Part of the fascination is a slightly Ruskinian idea of exertion making you feel part of the landscape - part of nature. It happens in two ways: you can observe quite closely and notice things that might otherwise have passed you by; also you are very aware of the workings of your body. External and internal nature. The balance varies with different types of run. When you are slow and easy there is more chance to look at the landscape, more a sense of being at peace with it. When it is more of a struggle you look inward and can notice nothing about you surroundings.

Today, for me, it was all inward looking. Having had a long break, eating too much and doing little exercise I have to go back to the start and build back up. In the mean time it feels like hard work. I will just have to content myself with the idea that hard work is also a Victorian virtue.

Empty Phrases

Oh how I hate management bollocks. It is an incubus that ravages our language, inhibiting thought and shriveling the imagination. The other day I had to produce a document with the word ‘synergies’ in it. I had no choice – I was presented a template for a marketing sheet and I had to use it as a heading. Ha I thought, as I wrote my empty phrases, what can you expect from a company that is proud of its new ‘transactional input/output centre’ (I think it’s a fancy warehouse but I am not 100% sure).

A close relative is the company slogan. Mostly they are incredibly smug, as if they are trying to show they are clever. However when I see a delivery van with the slogan “Delivering Quality” I groan. My favourite might be Lockheed Martin (who produce military equipment, which they sell around the world) with their “We never forget who we’re working for”. It sounds scary and I know they are not working for me. Another arms manufacture, our own BAE, is obviously staffed by idealistic hippies because they are “Innovating for a safer world”. That is really reassuring.

I like it when a slogan has real meaning, “Never knowingly undersold” would be a good example. I also like the lineage, as a slogan is no more than the motto on a coat of arms.

I thought about this today because the guardian carried a picture of Mark Lewis Francis in his Birchfield Harriers vest. Their crest carries the motto ‘Fleet and Free’. I did not feel at all cynical or grumpy when I noticed it, instead I thought it a wonderfully neat encapsulation of what you can find in running (providing, of course, that fleet is used in a relative sense).

You see a motto or a slogan can be good. It does not have to be bollocks.

I was pleased the example I saw came from running.

For Everything There is a Season

I have not posted for a month for the simple reason that I have not run for a month. Partly this was illness - a marathon is no cure for infection and for two weeks after the race I felt really rough with coughing, snuffling and general weariness. Since then I have felt the need for a fallow period - as if my body said that it wanted some comfort and cosseting, rest and refuelling. I therefore decided to treat November as off-season. Whether this is a good or a bad thing I do not know - I will probably find out when I start running again and find out how much I need to build back up.

I hope however the rest will help this ageing body rebuild and repair niggles and strains. I am very conscious that my body lacks the recovery it used to have. Injuries go on for longer and anything to do with ligaments or tendons take forever. So a month out might sort that groin twinge and an ache in the right buttock - who knows. Both of them were/are nothing serious, just a minor discomforts, but a clean sheet would be nice.

The other reason for a break is the idea of periodisation - having some sort of seasonal rhythm of build and release - so that things are not always at the same level of intensity. However it means more than just having the occasional break. I will have to sit down and work out a plan with different patterns of activity.

I am convinced that for the past couple of years I have not been varying things enough. It is too comfortable to run at a an easy pace. Although this is good and gives the bulk of the physical and imaginative nourishment of running it is one dimensional and does not help with elasticity, agility, balance or upper-body muscle tone. So it is time for a rethink.

At the moment I haven't quite thunk those thoughts. The plan at the moment is a bit vague. December will be an easing back in month - gentle steady, much as before. The new year will be when the experimentation starts. Certainly it will involve more cycling, some weights and an attempt to make "speed" sessions mean more than just a little bit faster than normal. But at the moment I know no more.

I need to do some reading to see if I an pick up any ideas and rediscover the attitude of just trying things. When George Sheehan said that 'you are an experiment of one' the important word was experiment. I think that recently I may have lost sight of that.

Bugger Marathons

…well that was what I was thinking as I trudged my way through some industrial wasteland on the outskirts of Amsterdam. 'This is not fun', 'I am not enjoying this','This is not making me a better person', 'I just it to finish', 'I am not learning anything about myself', were the thought fragments. I actually did not mind the bleak scenery because I had retreated so completely inside myself I was paying little attention to the outside world. I was worn out and could run no further. Several times I tried to get going again but it quickly fizzled and all I could hope for was to complete the distance by walking.

Damn - it wasn't meant to be like this. The plan was to run fairly steadily for 42k and feel some warm glow of satisfaction but it is amazing how plans can unravel.

There were two main problems. The first was that I caught a cold a few days before the race and on Friday, as I coughed and spluttered, I wondered if it was sensible to start. But my record of not starting marathons weighs very heavy and I knew that I had to give it a go as long as the infection did not reach my chest. So off I went and Saturday was a good day and I felt quite a lot better with little coughing; everything now seemed clear, I would run. However I then stumbled into the second problem - my own stupidity. Instead of making allowances for the for the fact that the virus was still floating about and was probably not up to full strength, I just ran to my original plan.

Everything was fine in the beginning and I got to half way in 2' 05, which there or there abouts, but I knew I had been slowing and that my strength was ebbing away. I was like the man falling from a skyscraper who passes the 14 floor shouting OK so far. After 29k it was only about survival and getting to the end, which I did in a smidgen under 5 hours. For the last quarter of the race I felt mixture frustration, impotent rage, resignation and embarassment.

The odd thing was that when I crossed the line I did not feel down, decide I was useless and generally beat myself up. No I actually felt quite proud that I had finished and good that I had done it , even if it did go wrong. Whatever the time I had done it.

The thing is that it had been part of a good weekend. I really enjoy the atmosphere of Amsterdam and it was good to meet both Beanz and Womble for lunch in one of the grand cafes. The hotel was fine and in a good location and the meal after on Sunday night was excellent. On Monday we visited the Van Gogh Museum and saw a wonderful exhibition about Barcelona 1900, which included a couple of amazingly detailed architectural models, some charming early Picassos, a haunting portrait of Eric Satie in his bare apartment and some film of the docks and the streets.

So apart from 13k everything was just dandy. Even that 13k was survivable and there is always another day to get them right.

Sometime I will get them right!