A Year On My Feet

This post is about something that I have been interested in, and enjoyed from time to time for many years, but that over the last year has become a passion; running.

I guess that since childhood I’ve loved running. Back then it was running to school, or running to hide with my friends during the endless summer holidays. Active children don’t think about being active, they just are, and maybe my generation were the last to enjoy full freedom from the oppression of an over-protective and perverted society. More on that some other time. I didn’t like P.E. at school – was badly coordinated, so not good at bat and ball games, and by the time that I was in my teens was lagging behind developmentally, so those classes were always an unlooked-for punishment. Nevertheless, I enjoyed watching the athletics; the Commonwealth and European games were especially exciting, with local athletics stars getting centre stage.

However, aged 16, a lot changed for me. I started to catch up with the other teens, physically leaving childhood behind, and my G.C.S.E. exams were over, with the long summer holiday afterward to seek distractions whilst anxiously awaiting Results Day – So what did I do? I played tennis, grumpily conceding daily defeat to friends who graciously tolerated my Jekyll & Hyde temper, and I ran every day, not far, but a daily 20 minutes for a kid who has been entirely unfamiliar with exercise for five years is quite a big deal, and by the end of that summer I was slim, fit and the picture of youthful health.

Of course, this pattern did not continue. Aged 17 I discovered drinking and smoking, and that was that until I was 20 really. At uni I developed the common obsession with weight training, which I took to a real extreme, and following uni there were more years of drinking and smoking with many stalled attempts to get my fitness regime back on track, stalled mainly due to a lack of perseverance and that mid-20s refusal to grasp the concept of mortality in favour of outright hedonism.

In fact that was pretty much the story until suddenly I was 30, weighed 14.5 stone, was having regular panic attacks principally brought on by frequent heavy binge drinking, and more than a few twinges of depression. So I did what thousands of others do every year and joined a gym. This had limited success, as I now had an expense to justify, and enough interest to make use of it, but it didn’t really address the problem of the drinking.

It took a year. It took accepting that at times I have a bit of a problem with drink. But most of all, it took a new pair of trainers, some nice Nike t-shirts and Addidas shorts. It took the conviction to know that if I didn’t try I would never know how far I could run and how fast: I started to run again, on the treadmill and on the road.

At the beginning of 2010, an innocuous conversation with a work colleague who is passionate about mountain biking and takes every opportunity to spend some time on two wheels ramped things up a gear. At the time I was complaining that keeping a constant level of motivation when training is difficult, and I wasn’t sure how long I would be able to sustain it. He happened to mention that he’d found that entering a race the year before had really spurred him to focus on training, and made a huge difference. I thought about this, then cast about looking for events. I turned up the Sport Relief 6 mile challenge (I was already running about three miles at a steady, if slow, pace and had a couple of months before the event). I decided to go for it. It was a hugely big deal, as I’d not competed in *anything*, even casually, in years. Hell, I’m so competitive I don’t even play video games with other people in the same room. However, I gave it a shot, and got sponsored about £300, for a very worthy cause. What was lovely though, was knowing that I was an ex-smoker, and not dreadfully fit, how enthusiastic people were. It is easy to underestimate how encouraging people can be, as long as you’re not too good at what you do(!).

Sport Relief, and a personal best time down, I felt that I was on a roll, so I next entered the Bayer Newbury 10K. 6.25 miles of mixed road and track during a horribly hot and sticky May. Again, I had two months to train, so pounded my heart out, battling asthma, hayfever and heat exhaustion. Race day came, and went broadly to plan with another P.B., although being shoved out of the way by a ginger kid who can’t have been more than 13 on the way to the finish line was slightly humiliating. Next time ginger gets tripped up, no matter how many cameras are pointing at me.

Having been met with relative success thus far, and having bored everyone who’d listen with my training tales, I decided to step things up: at the beginning of 2010, I’d set myself the goal of completing my first half marathon by Spring 2011, as I knew I’d need to get my weight down by at least 2 stone in order to sustain the burden on my joints. However, upon finishing Bayer I weighed just under 13 stone and needed a challenge, so I entered the Windsor Half, set in Windsor Great Park at the end of September. It was a long summer of training. My girlfriend and I went away a couple of times, both to hotels with gyms so that I could train. By June, 6 miles was a light run, by July I’d crossed the ten mile gap, and in August I ran my first full half marathon; 13.1 miles of toil and pain, followed by an ice bath and lots of protein. For five weeks my mileage was 30 miles per week; each Saturday morning, rather than waking up to a hangover I woke up to a run. By the morning of the Windsor Half I was burnt out and wearing a support bandage as my right calf and knee were showing signs of injury.

The Windsor Half was a disaster. Aside from traffic problems getting there and back, and the first bitterly cold weekend that year, it turns out that the beautiful Windsor Great Park is full of trees. Now for any normal individual this would not even be worth a thought. Any normal individual who is not allergic to most types of pollen, grass, bark and several kinds of smoke. Having discussed this with the St John’s crew and later my doctor, I understand that the reason that my limbs swelled up, my blood pressure spiked and dipped and my skin started burning and throbbing like it was on fire was simply because the flow of blood to the skin is high when running and any allergy manifests itself there. In fact, had I taken an antihistemine in the morning, as I would have on any day in the spring and summer, I would have been able to run the last 4 miles to the finish, thus fulfilling one of my life’s ambitions.

Obviously, being withdrawn on medical instruction from the race, I was bitterly disappointed. I felt crushed, and denied the thing that I’d worked so hard for. Let down by my own body in the last 13 miles out of hundreds of miles run before I’d even crossed the start line. I needed something quickly. I needed a goal. I needed another race.

So here I am in wet and vile mid- November. I’ve been prodded and poked by the doc, who has confirmed that I couldn’t be more healthy in every respect that matters, and guess what? I have another race. In fact, so desperate is my need to do this thing, and to do it before the end of 2010, before another birthday, another Christmas, another year, that on Sunday the 21st I am going to Gosport, a cold and exposed part of the British coast, where I hope to achieve this ambition. Gosport is important, not for a personal best, not even for a medal, but so that I know that what I started in September, or in January, or when I was 16, or even when I was a kid and running down the street to get “Home” before I was “It” is something that I can finish. Gosport is the end of a chapter, and the beginning of a new one, where I can focus on new goals, new challenges and new achievements.

Running this year has taken a great deal of sacrifice: I have alienated friends who do their best to understand my level of commitment and obsession, but can’t. I have been in bed getting invaluable sleep when I could have been out at the pub. I have given up drinking for months on end, and cannot tolerate much alcohol at all now. I have declined party invitations and other social occasions in favour of keeping clean so that I can run, and will have to do all of the above over and over again. Yet I love running. It focuses me. It channels my energy. It absorbs my mind. It gives me a refuge from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. It makes me a better person. It is worth every bit of pain, toil and sacrifice, and feels like living in a way that nothing else does. I hope that I carry on running until I can’t run anymore.

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