But I don’t WANT an indication of my marathon fitness, Coach, because it might not be very good, and I don’t WANT to use my time in the McMillan Running Calculator because it will tell me that I’m rubbish and that I should run (more) slowly in training which will be discouraging and I don’t need that right now.
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My Kingdom for a Pavement, Sept 2014
I waved to him as I slowly collapsed, hoping that I didn’t look injured, because what would I be doing just lying there. But I was also hoping that I didn’t look like I’d wussed out on a run, because that would be worse. Maybe if I just looked like a guy in very short shorts who liked to lie down in car parks resting his leg up a tree, that would be OK.
Ocean City (NJ) Half-Marathon, September 2014
The bridge was also where I mercifully passed for good the man doing a passable impression of an asthmatic buffalo running for its life. Every breath a defiant snort of inhuman volume.
Canterbury Half-Marathon, August 2014
Painfully steep hills, pouring rain, narrow country roads. My third half-marathon was as different to the previous two as they were from each other but the start-line was wonderfully claustrophobic, with hundreds of runners huddled in a country lane at the top of a hill waiting for what, in the end, was more starter’s suggestion…
Er…a FULL Marathon?
Four months felt – motivationally – like a long gap between my first half-marathon and the follow-up I was champing at the bit to do. So my imagination became overactive thinking about other possibilities: whether running was now my “thing”, what other half-marathons I could maybe do during the year. I even gave passing thought…
Rumspringa Half-Marathon, April 2014
“Unfortunately the start of today’s race is delayed because I miscalculated the speed of Amish horse and carts.”
A sentence like that could only have been unwelcome if I was standing still, wearing only the thinnest clothes, in freezing conditions with a wind chill of minus 10 degrees centigrade. Which it was…
The Cayman Islands Half-Marathon 2013
Rational people do not get up at 3.30am to go running. Not unless there is a bear that has chosen that round-numbered moment of the night to come crashing through your bedroom wall. And even then, you’d want to weigh up whether being ripped to shreds by a grizzly was really that much worse than all…
My First Half-Marathon: Motivation
Writing this a year later, I’m still wondering what possessed me to take up running. Partly because ‘Marco’ suggested I could, at a time when for no earthly reason I was obviously receptive to the notion. Partly because a few others I spoke to didn’t immediately disagree, which in my mind was a sad indictment of…
My First Half-Marathon: Training begins
Nothing has really and truly happened to me unless I’ve written about it and have photos. Not because I need “the world” to know what I’ve done, but perhaps because my memory is so appalling that if I don’t write about it I won’t properly learn the lessons or enjoy the recollections that I could…
Distance running. It’s Stupid.
I have been running regularly since July of last year, and for the life of me I don’t know why. For one thing I have never been good at it – I peaked at somewhere between below average and ‘are-you-injured?’, and my times started going backwards after I passed 13 years of age. A 14-minute…
PORK ROPE 