The Runner and the Crab

Here is a fable from Italo Calvino in 'Six memos for the next millennium':

Among Chuang-tzu's many skills, he was an expert draftsman. The king asked him to draw a crab. Chuang-tzu replied that he needed five years, a country house, and twelve servants. Five years later the drawing was still not begun. "I need another five years," said Chuang-tzu. The king granted them. At the end of these ten years, Chuang-tzu took up his brush and, in an instant, with a single stroke, he drew a crab, the most perfect crab ever seen.

Although this is a story about how it takes a long time to perfect a skill, it is wonderfully condensed. It says nothing directly about how it is feat is achieved. The implication is that the final drawing is the result of all the life experiences but we don't know if he spent the time in contemplation, study, endlessly practising or getting drunk. In other words we know nothing of the training, we only know there is one final, perfect performance.

In this way the story can apply to sport as well as art because sport is also about those extraordinary moments when a lifetime of practise and trying suddenly come together in a way that transcends all previous expectations. Think of Bob Beaman in the 1968 Olympics (see the Wikipedia entry here)who in breaking the world record by such a wide margin also broke the hearts of all the other competitors. Think of Paula Radcliffe in the 2003 London Marathon, cheered on by the whole of the city. Such moments also bind the spectators in a collective euphoria. For example I can still vividly remember the mounting excitement of the closing laps as David Bedford broke the world 10,000 metres record at Crystal Palace, 35 years ago.

In the fable there is a painting that will continue to exist but for the sportsman there is only the moment. The record books tell nothing of the spirit of the moment, memories get distorted and TV pictures flatten out the physicality of the event. The moment can only be savoured and then there is the next event. Sometimes the magic can be repeated but eventually there will be decline, and that state of grace can never be recaptured. That is the law of nature.

But what of all of us plodders who will never get close to such perfection, is there anything we can take from this fable?

Actually there is quite a lot because it is not primarily about the crab, it's about time. It's about recognising things take time and that you are ready when you are ready. Before that there may be nothing - you have to be patient, have faith and keep going.

And that is all you ever need to know about running

Except its own Furtherance

Today is wonderfully warm and sunny. It is as if the weather has switched from February to June without the intervening months. As a result everybody has come out and the woods and fields are alive with people enjoying the outdoors, blinking at the unfamiliar sunlight.

I have been on the trails in the woods but instead of taking a familiar route everything was done randomly: left, right, straight ahead, all based on what the path looked like, with no idea of destination. I ended up in places I had not previously been, without a clear idea of exactly where I was. Quite by chance I came across a carpet of bluebells, a patch ahead of the rest of the woods, that created its own soft haze of violet blue.

I so desperately want this to be a metaphor for my running: I have no clear plan or any idea of where it my lead me; all I want it to occasionally discover the odd moment of peace, repose and beauty.

As for why this is important I found this is in the introduction to 'Cultural amnesia' by Clive James (there is a neat review by Nicholas Lezard here):

The usual division is to treat our daily job as the adventure and our cultural diversions as a mere mechanism for renewal and repose. But the adventurous jobs are becoming more predictable all the time, even at the level of celebrity and conspicuous material success … The real adventure is no longer in the job. In the job we can have a profile written about us , and be summed up: all profiles will be the same and all summaries add up to the same thing. The real adventure is what we do to entertain ourselves … But even the entertainment can no longer be adventurous if it serves a purpose. It will be adventurous only if it serves itself. In other words it will not be utilitarian. It has always been part of the definition of humanism that true learning has no end in view except its own furtherance.

Well that will do.

More Cheers From The Sideline

So a short time after celebrating the performance breakthrough of Plodding Hippo I really must do the same for my sister and brother-in-law. Last Sunday they ran the Vancouver Sun Run in 54 and 46 minutes. Last year they completed the run in 63 minutes so their improvement is brilliant and even more satisfying is that they did it together and could feel good about themselves and each other.

I am full of admiration because I know of their whole-hearted, honest approach and desire to do things properly. The schedule they followed was the Sun Run's run faster schedule and it shows what can be achieved by being disciplined enough to follow good advice

I am on the sidelines cheering and thinking again of that poem read out at last Saturday's wedding

All the happiness in the world is caused by wanting the happiness of others
And all the unhappiness is caused by wanting happiness for yourself

Now you could logically argue this is not totally true but it does contain a fundamental truth. The great thing about mass runs like the London Marathon or the Sun Run is that they are celebrations of endeavour. Thousands and Thousands of people are wanting or working for the happiness of others. Not only should the runners be saluted but also the supporters like Beanz, who travelled down from Derby to cheer on her Runner's World friends.

Yes it is good to cheer on the achievements of others.

Continuity

Over the weekend I attended a rather wonderful wedding in the New Forest. In some ways it was a reminder of how weddings used to be before the growth of the 'wedding industry'. A group of relatives and friends gathered for a simple ceremony before going to the pub for the reception. The pub was old with low ceilings and oak beams and outside, all around, were the trees of the forest, fresh green with the new growth of leaves, and soft with the mist of rain that had just stopped. All was continuity: a wedding, a new beginning, celebrated in a place that had seen many such celebrations through the generations, in a landscape that had retained its character for hundreds of years.

In the ceremony there had been two readings. One was a poem by John Donne, the other a poem by a Buddhist poet. As I looked out at the trees I thought of Buddhist verse.

It is difficult to cover the world in leather but if two feet can be shod then the task can be accomplished.

How many times had these paths and roads been covered in leather? I saw myself running, covering a small part of the world, leaving little trace, part of a history of animals and people who had covered the same ground. Again I saw continuity.

Continuity is not a reason for running but, if you do run, it is one of its characteristics. You are doing what your ancestors did, what you were evolved to do. You pass through the landscape one run leaving little mark but over time paths are worn. You follow the paths of those who had gone before.

Looking at the trees of the New Forest and remembering my runs through the woods of Ashridge it was undoubtedly a romantic notion. But if you cannot entertain romantic notions when at a wedding, when can you?

P.S. the quote is only approximate. I have an atrocious memory for verbatim quotes. In this case I could not check the wording as I did not catch the name either of the poet or the title of his poem

Cake

One of the traditions of cycling is the cake stop. It makes an outing pleasantly English to pop out for a nice cup of tea and a piece of cake – it gives a focus for the route.

The National Trust tea room at Ashridge is perfect as they serve the tea in a mug and their cakes are home made. The cakes are so well regarded the man who makes them was persuaded to produce a little book with all the recipes.

Although there is not the same tradition in running (i.e. you don't want to break off in the middle),this place is quite important in my training. It is the start point for one of my circular routes and when I finish I am particularly partial to their chocolate, walnut brownie.

Why bother with sports bars or recovery drinks when you can have a mug of tea and a brownie?

P.S. The cake book showed the importance of good proof reading. It had to be withdrawn and then reprinted as ingredients were missed out in a couple of the recipes (in one case it was flour!)

P.P.S. As you can see from the photo my bike is a Planet X Kaffenback. I have to make sure it lives up to its name.

Plodding Hippo is Pretty Nippy

One of the great things about running is that you can take genuine delight in the achievement of others. Because we have internal goals that are untarnished by the accomplishments of others, we can look with a clear eye at and enjoy other people's successes. From the fast to the slow there is an awful lot to celebrate.

The London Marathon is, of course, full of stories of wonderful accomplishments but the one that gives me the most pleasure is of someone who has broken her personal best by such a wide margin she will have to start a new page and look at herself as a different type of runner. Plodding Hippo had previously run over 70 marathons, not broken 5 hours and thought of herself of someone who chugged around at the back. On Sunday she not only broke 5 hours she broke 4hrs 30. Brilliant.

It just shows what determination, consistency and character can do. However I reckon the biggest challenge will be changing her self image. It takes a long time and whilst the mind is coming to terms with the new found speed it can act like a brake.

Anyway all I want to say, if she still reads this blog, is many congratulations

Proust, the Squid and the Runner

This is from a review of the book Proust and the squid.

... reading has given us "the gift of time"- time when our thoughts can move beyond the words on the page to new levels of understanding, time to think the unthinkable. Reading is not just about absorbing information and finding ready-made answers; it is thought-in-action. There are no pre-packaged answers in life. "We can receive the truth from nobody," said Proust; "we must create it ourselves."

If you just substitute the word 'running' for 'reading' this quote is a description of what I am doing plodding along in Ashridge or by the canal.

So if anybody asks you 'why are you doing running?' you can reply “I am just testing something that Proust once said”. (You will then be slapped round the chops for being a bit of a pretentious fop).

Anger and Detachment: Cycling in London

These are very small incidents and many more of them happen on every road, every day.

Last Sunday a group of us went for a walk around Lyme Park. At first we tried to park in a car park that has access to a disused railway line that is now a footpath, a canal, and the footpath up to Lyme. In other words it is a base for recreation. Lots of other people had the same idea and although it was full cars were still streaming in. As it was a bit awkward to turn round and get out cars had to make room for each other. A woman was doing this and therefore blocking the road up to the spaces. This incensed the driver behind and I watched in fascination as he gradually increased the pitch of his swearing and got redder in the face. It was a place to go to for pleasure so why was he so wound up? Sunday mornings should not be like that! It just reminded me how angry everybody seemed to be with all other road users.

There is an badly designed cycle way at the bottom of Gordon Square in London. Lots of traffic wants to turn right into the road to get to Euston but they not only have to cross the lane of oncoming traffic they have to cross the cycle path with bikes coming in both directions. It requires extra vigilance. I saw a near collision where the cyclist berated the driver for not looking and the driver turned round and yelled “ Well I would take more notice of you lot if you paid any notice to traffic lights!” The conversation was very loud.

On the South Circular Road near Kew Bridge two lanes merge into one. Instead of the orderly intertwining of one vehicle from one lane with the next from the other, one van was determined not to allow this to happen and kept as close as possible to the bumper of the car ahead. The van in the other lane was outraged and wanted its space so they both carried on in parallel, with the road running out, looking at each other swearing and gesturing. It was silent slow-motion ballet

A few years ago I was crossing the road at traffic lights, waited for the green man and set off but had to jump back as I was nearly barged into by a cyclist who had not intention of stopping at the lights. I could have coped with that if he hadn't shouted at me to look where I was going, as if it was my fault. As he disappeared out of sight all I had was the bitter taste of impotent rage. After I had stopped wanting to chin him I had one of those moments of insight and realised that over time the traffic had increasingly been getting to me.

I had been making the egocentric error of thinking people were deliberately getting in my way or being malicious idiots just for the fun of it. I used to get especially annoyed at traffic lights, when other cyclist would just cycle through. The annoyance was increased if I then caught them up between lights was then obstructed. Taxis and bendy buses were enemies and pedestrians were no better when they wandered out into the gutter without looking.

Things were getting stupid and so I decided to let go and cycle by two maxims:

The first and most important is that cycling in London is transport and not training. Getting or proving fitness has nothing to do with anything as you are only trying to get from A to B. There will be lots of obstructions and you will have to stop and start many times so don't worry and let the journey take as long as it takes.

The second is to not worry about what you cannot control. You cannot control the way other people treat the highway code so you have to become detached about their actions. However for your own safety you have to be very aware of what they do. The more you become detached the more you must increase your vigilance.

Two simple rules but the consequence is that I do not count any cycling in London towards cross training. The way things are it is more the equivalent of strolling.

Categorising my Run

How should I categorise my latest run? Usually I judge runs in terms of how well I have done, whether or not things have gone to plan, or by how I feel at the start compared to the finish, what sort of day it is, or by what I have seen. Today however it is none of the above: the run is about smell.

First off I ran through a park soon after they had finished cutting the grass and new-cut grass is the sweetest of smells. It is tied up in my memory with so many nice summer days or sports fields and the promise of a new season.

'Is it my favourite smell?' I wondered before I passed the coffee roaster's factory, by the canal. The air was full of that rich coffee smell and it made me realise how much the enjoyment of the drink was bound up in its aroma. I even enjoyed the smell before I liked the taste. I can remember, as a young child, being taken to a café in Croydon, where you could see the coffee being roasted in a small, brown stained, revolving drum. I was fascinated. My enjoyment was also helped by the fact that I loved their doughnuts, which were round and then sliced open to be filled to overflowing with jam (previously I had thought doughnuts were disc shaped with a small amount of jam hidden inside).

So I could make no decision on may favourite smell and had more or less put the question out of my mind when I passed one of the barges burning coal. This is another great smell but you only want it in small quantities. You do not want every house using coal for heating, as used to be the case. You do not want the air heavy and gagging with smoke. But here on the open water, one fire is perfect and again it takes me back to my childhood when I used to love looking at the patterns of the flickering flames.

So there you have it a run of three smells. The first I associate with optimism, hope and renewal; the second is tied to continued sensual pleasure; and the third is a link to the past and a reminder how, in some ways, things are better now.

So how would I categorise my run? I think I would say it was evocative.

Taking Things For Granted

I have been away visiting relatives and met-up with a brother-in-law who has spinal muscular atrophy, a degenerative illness that affects the link between the brain and nerve fibres so that instructions cannot be passed to the muscles. The muscles cannot be used and thus atrophy.

He can walk a short distance, on the flat, by hauling himself with the aid of stick but cannot negotiate even the smallest of steps and he can only get down stairs by sitting and then bumping himself down, like an infant. Over the past six months his condition has worsened considerably and it is very distressing because he no longer trusts himself to go out by alone and feels himself a prisoner, someone who has been robbed of independence. Everything is made much worse by depression.

We probably made matters worse by trying to be helpful - suggesting place he could go with good disabled facilities and mentioning someone with his disease who gone to the Arctic to raise money and awareness. The first topic was not too bad but the second was a mistake as his shoulders visibly sagged. Such tales of adventure were demoralising rather than inspiring.

“There are all these people who seem to be able to do all these things ......” He trailed off lost in thought about his inability to get out of the house, feeling defeated all ways round. Not only did he have his own difficulties there was the thought of other people coping with more vigour and adventurousness. It is bad enough being ill without taking on extra guilt for not doing enough.

I said something vague like 'he could only do what he could do and he should no pay attention to the achievements of others' but it sounded a bit woolly and well-meaning. I wanted to make feel a bit more real by relating it to running where I know there are people capable of times I can barely imagine and there are all sorts of people I cannot get near. But I can run a race at my own pace and be satisfied or disgruntled according to that standards. There are always little markers I can use to judge how well I am doing, little things that can be achieved. I wanted to say this but I didn't because I was self concious about talking about running to someone losing the use of their legs. It did not seem like a brilliant topic of conversation. I also did not want to talk about myself.

I hate to admit it on this blog but there are times when running just seems like a diversion; it doesn't seem that important. But having said that I went for a nice easy 10k today and felt that warm glow of satisfaction. Running still feels like a good thing to do. However I did spend some of the time thinking about how messages are sent to the muscles and how we control all the adjustments needed to keep our balance and move forward. There is no way I could make any sense of it.

How grateful I am to be able to take such movement for granted.

Hunting and Running

For the last meal in 'The Omnivore's Dilemma' Michael Pollan cooks only what he has hunted or gathered. He has thus gone back to roots of our species, back further than 10,000 years of agriculture.

Although he only learnt to hunt to complete the structure of his book, once he was in the woods, tracking the wild pig, he became entranced and revelled in the sense of heightened awareness and attentiveness. As a modern metropolitan journalist he became almost embarrassed at the purple prose he wrote about his experience, yet he could not help it - he was recording what he felt.

The writer he relies on to support his attitude is Ortega y Gasset, whose 'Meditations on hunting' is a philosophical examination of the activity. In it he talks of the state of awareness of being fully part of nature and contrasts it with people who tramp through the landscape as tourists.

As a runner one of the places I feel most at home, find most pleasure, is in the woods. Although I have written about the attraction of this as feeling you are part of the landscape; on the Ortega y Gasset scale I must be counted as a tourist. The reason being that when running you can never give full attention to the world outside, there is always a part of you concentration on your breath, your legs, your ease, your effort. In some ways you blunder along, alerting all the wild animals to your presence with the noise you make.

Yet, and yet, I still think that all of us exerting ourselves on those trails are more than tourists. We are part of nature. We are using our legs in the way they were evolved to be used in woodland that has been here for who knows how long. Although we do not need the full attention of a hunter we need to be attentive to the path to avoid ruts, roots, slippy slopes and obstructions. We must be careful where we place our feet.

Sometimes the magical can happen. My favourite running moment has nothing to do with racing or achievement. It happened early one morning, when the mist was beginning to rise on what would be a fine day and I was running along a fairly broad grass pathway in the woods. To my left, ahead I saw a group of deer. I slowed and walked carefully as close as I could, stopped and then held the gaze of the deer for several seconds before it moved its head, turned around and loped off. For one moment there had been a connection and we had been two animals in the landscape.

When I am crashing about I might not be very agile or elegant but I am at least aware of being an animal, a participant in the woods not a spectator. Not really a tourist.

Monoculture and Diversity

Mostly I think by analogy. If I read about something I tend to think of it in terms of other things, so it is natural that I would have a blog about running and talk about agricultural systems. Just too obvious really!

This all because I am reading an excellent book (The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan) which investigates our attitude to food. It is wonderful in the way it investigates different methods of food production and how we relate to them, all the time asking questions about why and how we eat the way we do. The central premise is that being an omnivore is a tremendous evolutionary advantage because the species can live in all corners of earth and survive disasters that might affect any one source of food. However the corollary is that the relationship to other species of plants and animals is complicated because there are always decisions about whether something is safe to eat or how to get the full range of nutrients. Up to now we have relied on traditional cuisine to tell us how we should eat but in western countries (particularly America and UK) that relationship has broken down. We eat from a whole range of cultures without necessarily knowing how the elements are combined, and the way the agriculture, food processing, and distribution industries are set-up exert their own pressures on consumption. It has led to obvious problems of obesity and increasing anxiety about what we eat.

To research the book he visited or participated in the different methods of food production and tried to follow the path from earth to plate. In the first section he looks at how industrialised agriculture works. He visits a corn farm in Iowa and, more disturbingly a CAFO (confined animal feeding operation), where they pen the beef cattle together and unnaturally fatten them up with corn. The point about these methods is that they increase the yield per acre but for the farmer everything is simplified down to a limited range of activities e.g. in the rich lands of Iowa the land is totally given over to corn and soya, the human input is reduced, and the intellectual effort is outsourced to the scientists who formulate the fertilisers, the manufacturers of the machines and the demands of the regulators and large firms who dominate the market. It produces cheap food but in all other ways the price of this monoculture is high.

This is contrasted in the next section with a pastoral idyll, an organic, sustainable, grass-based farm that only sells its produce locally and is so transparent it allows visitors to see everything, even the way it kill their chickens. Their website shows that Polyface is no ordinary farm enterprise. “We are in the redemption business: healing the land, healing the food, healing the economy, and healing the culture.” The article Pollan wrote for Mother Jones explains the philosophy of quality and localism but doesn't really expand on the agricultural principles, which are about diversity and using different plants and animals in mutually supportive way.

The heart of the farm is grass and the cattle are continually moved to different areas, in strict rotation, by means of mobile electric fences, so that they cut back the grass enough to stimulate further growth and improve its quality. Three days after the cattle have left a pasture chickens are brought in. They eat the fly larvae in the manure and sanitise the field, also they spread that manure and of course their own droppings are very high in nitrogen and there is no need for extra fertiliser. Trees are important in the way that they retain water, provide shelter, alter the micro-climate, provide chippings and biodiversity of the forest helps protect the farm from predators by providing other prey. Everything is related.

(If you want to listen to Joe Salatin, the farmer, the BBC made a Food Programme about him in 2006, which is still available.)


So onto the running bit.

Agricultural has no connection with running but I did wonder if there was any analogy between the differing virtues of monoculture and diversity and ways of training.

There is no doubt about the specificity of training. The way to improve your running is to run; other exercises use different muscles. You can tell this if you have a gap, say for an injury, but maintain aerobic fitness with other exercises, when you start running again it is all a bit hard. There is thus a philosophy of training that just emphasises churning out the miles. The equivalent of monoculture.

Monoculture produces the highest yields per acre and might well be the best way for a number of people to improve their times. Up to a point there is a direct correlation between the miles run and performance. However I wonder if it is necessarily the best route for overall fitness. Firstly, and most obviously it concentrates on a particular group of muscles and a limited range of movements, whilst he body needs so much more flexibility and strength. Secondly, and perhaps related, a highly repetitious load carries the risk of injury.

I am convinced that the only way to improve your running is to be consistent and the only way to achieve consistency is being uninjured. Avoiding injury is therefore an important strategy. If you can do this on high mileage, fine, but we all need to find our limits and the amount we can push yourself before breaking down. If those limits are fairly low then we need other things to compensate; mixing cycling and running for example.

Also lack of strength in other parts of the body can cause problems. We are all now aware of the importance of the core muscles but there are other areas, shoulder for example which also need to be strong. These areas all require work and an increasing amount of work as you age and lose muscle mass. They are best tackled through things like pilates, yoga or resistance training.

If you are mixing running with other things you enjoy it can also help prevent running becoming a chore. The one thing thing that is central to the soft-core manifesto is that running is play, not work; so we must guard against it feeling like a duty.

You can see I am convincing myself of the need for diversity. For some reason I do not like the term cross-training (I could not tell you why, it just sounds wrong in my ear). Instead I like to think of it as integrated training. The ideal being to mesh together activities so that you can run well but be generally strong and fit enough to find maximum enjoyment in your physical exertion, whilst feeling alert for all the other things in your life.

A sort of Polyface running.

A Touch of Spring

The weather over Easter has been terrible: cold, windy, rainy, sleety, snowy, in fact a full house of bad stuff. Yesterday the hailstones fell so heavily there was a cover of white outside my window. Yet today – well today is mild, the sky is blue and clouds are fluffy.

I went out for a run this morning and the first thing I did was smile. Suddenly it was good again. Nature felt benign and I felt part of it.

Amazing what a touch of spring can do for your spirits. Every year the hope of the new.

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.