Race Report: Dumyat Hill Race 2016

Dave: Utterly delighted to share the following race report from our Clackmannanshire correspondent and resident mountain-stomper Kat Welch, as she builds up to her first marathon later this year.

Kat: This year was my second Dumyat Hill Race, although about my eighth trot up the hill since the clocks changed and gave us lighter evenings. I’m ridiculously lucky to have Dumyat as essentially the back garden to my office, and as it’s on my way home I quite often head up there after work. The top of Dumyat is probably my favourite place in the whole world – incredible views, often quite crazy weather, and an amazing feeling of accomplishment having dragged yourself up there on your own two feet. I’d happily head up there every day.

Crikey though, racing it’s a different kettle of fish. I started training with my local running club at the beginning of the year, and Dumyat was only my second experience of a race where the Wee County Harriers have been out in force. It’s the friendliest and most welcoming club imaginable, but it’s definitely a different experience racing as a member of a club. There’s none of the pre-race hanging around on your own, lots more chat about routes and strategy and times, and a distinct internal monologue of ‘I’m wearing a club top, it’s going to look really crap if I’m last’. 

The race had totally sold out, with 400 runners (and a queue for on-the-day entries which disappeared within seconds) and slightly fancier chip timing than last year. We crowded into the starting pen, waved at a drone which was filming us from overhead, waited impatiently through the totally unintelligible race briefing, then were off. There’s a pretty short but steep hill that stops anyone getting too excited from the start line, a bit of a queue to get through a very narrow gap in a wall, then half a mile or so of flat trails, before crossing a river and getting into the race proper. After that, it’s pretty relentlessly uphill for the next half hour or so, which I tackled with a mixture of a) walk-run intervals and b) staggering upwards with my hands on my knees, staring at the ground and trying not to be sick on my shoes.

The club vest proved a massive advantage once we got onto the more open ground for the second half of the climb – loads of the club had turned out to support and many more people shouted ‘C’mon the Wee County’ as I passed, encouraging me to lope back into a reluctant jog – at least until I was round the next corner. It was an incredible sunny evening, and I tried to grab a couple of seconds to admire the view on the way up, especially the sight of hundreds of runners snaking out above me to the summit cairn. There was a rowdy crowd of marshals and runners gathered at the top, cheering and whooping as I rounded the cairn, then it was off for the return leg – a real mix of trails, slippery gravel, bog to sink into, boulders to scramble around and fences to jump over whilst trying to maintain some sort of momentum. I passed at least 3 runners who were nursing sprained ankles as they made their way slowly back to sea level, which helped keep my mind focussed on watching where I was putting my feet. Half way down I heard some banter from a marshal about ‘a good race between the Wee County runners’, and glancing behind me saw Sue - another runner from my club - catching up fast behind me. We met up for a quick photo from another club member who was out with his camera, then it was RACE ON for the finish.

The last 15 minutes were an exhausting mental seesaw of ‘I want to give up right now’ fighting for brain space with ‘there’s no way I’m going to let her overtake me’. We hurtled down the last section of ridiculously steep woodland path, then onto the final stretch, which always seems flat on the way out but is very distinctively uphill on the way back. That last 5 minutes felt like it went on forever, but eventually we slogged our way over the top and picked up pace for the finishing (mercifully downhill) straight. I could feel Sue right behind me with every step, and we both mustered up a final surge of energy for a brilliant sprint finish back onto campus. Then it was hugs all round, photos, and lots of cheering for the runners still heading across the line. I was delighted to take 7 minutes off my time from last year, putting a sub 1-hour finish just about within reach for next year.

Meanwhile, however, I’ll very much enjoy reclaiming Dumyat for my steady evening jogs, with plenty of time for photos, admiring the views and thanking my lucky stars that such a beautiful part of the world is literally right on my doorstep. I can’t wait to get back up Dumyat, but racing it once a year is more than enough for me. C’mon the Wee County!

Thanks Kathryn! Readers with long memories may remember Kathryn from my Dumyat Hill Race 2015 Race Report or even my Mighty Deerstalker 2012 Race Report. Blimey we've been doing this for a while, eh?

That time I kind of got hit by a car

I reckon that in the 7-ish years that I’ve been a regular runner I’ve run somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000 miles. And yesterday, for the first time in all those miles, I was hit by a car.

I’ll let that thought linger before I explain.

It gets a lot less dramatic from here. To be honest, it would be more accurate to say that a car was hit by me.

I was on a very slow recovery jog – early Sunday morning around the Tan Track in central Melbourne – unsuccessfully attempting to shake out some of the muscle and joint pain from my 16 miler the day before. The Tan is an almost uninterrupted trail that measures just over 5k from our front door, all the way round and back home again. I do it all the time.

To get to the Tan I need to cross two roads, both of which have traffic lights and pedestrian signals at convenient spots. So it’s probably no surprise that this isn’t where a car got hit by me.

I was on the home stretch having just left the Tan to run down a very quiet residential street, picking up a bit of speed on a downhill. I’m running on a narrow pavement – a bit unusual as this road is so dead that often enough I just run in the road itself. It would have been a better idea to do that on this occasion.

The nose of a car pulls out of a concealed lane. There’s an imperceptibly small dip in the pavement, no lines painted on the road, no visibility for pedestrians or drivers. The bonnet appears and then a door and then I’m thinking “Well, this is happening.”

The driver sees me and slams on the brakes at the point at which my chest and arms splay out melodramatically across his car’s bonnet. The car comes to a stop as my right knee connects with the wing, which buckles slightly under the impact. I’ve more or less tripped over his car and broken my fall with my entire self. I stay there a fraction of a second to check whether I’m dead.

I’m not dead, but I am immensely surprised.

In fact I’m not even winded – my arm is a little uncomfortable as I landed heavily on it, but as I take a step away from the car and lean back on a convenient tree, trying to catch my breath, I remark that I really am totally fine. I’m remarking this to the driver as he lowers his window and we both look at each other, wondering who is going to shout at who.

In fact neither of us shouts. He wants to check I’m OK because that’s a good place to start and I want to apologise because I am British.

Luckily I really am OK. Perhaps a little shocked but nothing more than that. He drives off, I wave and jog the rest of the way home. Carefully.

I’d like to thank my brain, which realised early enough that my legs weren’t going to stop in time to avoid a collision, so worked out that spreading the impact as much as possible was the best alternative. For a fraction of a fraction of a second it considered swerving me out in front of the nose of the car – but if the driver hadn’t stopped then I would surely have broken a leg or hit the pavement, maybe catching an ankle or something under a front bumper and leaving myself with a large medical bill and a severe disinclination to boogie.

So what have I learned from this little escapade? Well, not much. I learned that this particular laneway is there, and that visibility is appalling, so it’s worth slowing down for a spot of green-cross-coding. I also learned what I have long-suspected: that being run over – or indeed running into cars – is literally no fun at all. More importantly, as I trotted the rest of the way home, heartrate at 30 or 40 thousand bpm, I resolved to generally be more careful. In an abstract sense, I’d like to get to 10,000 miles, or 20,000 miles, or none at all if the mood doesn’t take me, but I’d ideally like to get there on my own two feet.

Happy running, be safe out there,

Dave
(5 weeks, 6 days to 26.2)

2016 to date: km's 442, parkruns: 6, races: 1

Race Report - Brimbank Park Trail Half Marathon 2016

“The course is marked. But not very well.”

Nothing can better sum up the glorious chaos of the Brimbank Park Urban Trail Run than this perceptive but faintly concerning observation, which was announced with a sheepish grin during the pre-race briefing.

I say ‘the pre-race briefing’. In fact I’m pretty sure I heard this during the briefing for the marathon and the 50k ultra, which were both starting 30 minutes before the half marathon that I’d entered, which was itself 30 minutes before the 10k which would be followed 30 minutes later by the 5k and another 30 minutes after that, the 2k. That’s six races and five pre-race briefings if you’re counting.

With that many races spread across the day, using mostly the same trails, some with loops and laps and switchbacks, to be honest it would have been nigh on impossible to declare the course ‘well marked’. The pre-race instructions, issued by email, contained pages and pages of almost-identical maps, with ominous instructions like ‘runners are expected to have at least some knowledge of the route’ before offering navigation advice, in intense detail, based on a number of landmarks which didn’t seem to be marked anywhere. I’d done my best to understand where I was supposed to be going, and I’m glad I did. In an event with just 300 runners divided up between six distances, there is a very real chance that one could either get totally lost, or (perhaps worse) end up following someone in an entirely different race for a potentially very circuitous diversion.

These are the hallmarks of a race series that does exactly what every runner dreams of: inviting the world to come and have a go on your favourite routes. Trails+ has a shiny website and a headline sponsor in Garmin, but in the real world it’s the mission of one bloke, Brett Saxon, who set up the franchise to raise funds for teenage cancer charity CanTeen. When I stopped comparing it to a big corporate event and start appreciating it on those terms, it suddenly made a lot more sense.

Brimbank Park is a sizable and generally rather picturesque public reserve about half an hour north of Melbourne, defined by a deep gorge and a winding river and spoiled only by the inexplicable stringing of massive pylons across it and the occasional but equally massive noise pollution from nearby Melbourne airport.

After watching the ultrarunners and marathoners set off on their hapless quest to find the right number of kilometres to run, we killed some time mumbling about the weird humidity and pointing out our early favourites (the gent in fluorescent orange taking the marathon at a stern walk was mine). As ever, all too soon, it was time to get going.

Not particularly ready for the off.

I lined up with the other half-marathoners – all 57 of us – and, panicking, tried to set my watch while a local MP started an abrupt countdown. The blasted thing was still looking for satellites when I’d completed the first 400 metre loop, but before too much longer I had it going and started to settle into a rhythm, neatly ticking off the first few landmarks at around 5 minutes/km (a whisker over 8 minutes/mile, for those of you only just keeping up at the back). Despite its tiny size, the field was comprised of a real cross-section of the running world, and in the early km’s I watched people of all shapes and sizes shoot past me along the river trail. I wondered how many of them I might see again.

After a relatively comfortable run on undulating loose gravel, sometimes slipping into fine sand and other times firming up into rockier trail, I reached a bandstand at the 10km mark where a volunteer glanced at my light-blue half marathoner’s bib and declared ‘this is your turnaround!’. I grabbed a cup of water, thanked the volunteers and did as I was told. Feeling fresh and with 11km left to go, I headed back the way I’d come and started hunting down some other runners, overtaking a couple in the next few k’s. I flew past two guys I’d seen shoot off at the start, then overtook a bloke who I’d briefly chatted to in the early part of the race. I was feeling strong and ready to roll, and delighted in the weird experience of conducting hundreds of two-second conversations with runners heading in the opposite direction, still working on the out-and-back. On my way to the turnaround I’d only seen a few, suggesting I was relatively near the front of the field, but on the way back I saw the rest of the half-marathon field plus some of the marathoners and ultrarunners. Everyone assured everyone else that they were looking good and doing a great job and we all totally believed each other. It was great.

Things started going wrong for me at around 16km. It was a humid day and I was drenched in sweat, my vest clinging to my skin and feet blistering in soaking socks. I was running low on energy and the jelly snake I’d eaten was turning unpleasantly in my stomach. Weirdly I started getting goosebumps and feeling chills as well, maybe I was struggling with dehydration, or something else wasn’t regulating itself properly. I hauled myself along on the promise that it was really only 4 or 5, or was it 6km to go? My watch was 400m short, right, but does that mean I need it to say 20.7km or 21.5km? And is this definitely 16km? Have I gone too far? I’m very tired. This would be easier in miles.

An irritatingly well-marked sign turned the course away from the picturesque river path and up a truly massive and fairly grimy hill beneath a motorway overpass. I’d been hovering on a bloke’s shoulder for a while but he pulled away on the approach to the hill and disappeared up it at a fair lick, while I slumped my shoulders and resigned to a walk. It’s far from the biggest hill I’ve ever run but it was definitely placed at the worst point for my mood and wellbeing...

I trudged onwards. Two, then three, then five runners overtook me, including the three I’d caught just after the turnaround. We swapped a few murmured words of encouragement as a weird, humid wind picked up. I shivered some more and wondered whether this whole running thing was still working for me. It used to come so easily, you see. 

By now I was at the top of the hill and intermittently walking and running not very quickly along a ridge on one side of the gorge, scanning the valley below for the event village and the finish line. Was it still 6km to go? Had to be more like 4 now, or maybe even less? I ran on, cursing the very idea of races and finish lines and hills until an aid station came into view at a road crossing, where the course dropped down into the valley below and presumably on to the finish line. My watch said 19k. “No worries, only 4k to go!” chirped the volunteer. I said a bad word and mustered some energy to ride the downhill and into the bottom of the valley.

A few more confused and faintly miserable minutes of jogging later I started to hear the unmistakable chaos of a finish line, and allowed my spirits to be slightly lifted by the noise and excitement. I picked up the pace a little and ran past a few families and couples in the 5k, but quite clearly just out for a nice fundraising walk in the park rather than a race. I envied their decision making.

Moments later I was crossing the finish line, entirely on my own, and ran directly to the Crew Chief who – unable to help herself – had started volunteering by removing people’s timing chips from the back of their race numbers. She did mine for me, and I shook hands with one of the organisers as I accepted a medal and scanned the event village for somewhere that I might do a bit of collapsing in a heap.

Crossing in 1:52:12 (the clock is from the marathon start)

I lay down on a bench, soaked in sweat and still sweating profusely. The Crew Chief found me some water, then some fruit and miraculously a hot dog, which I greedily devoured along with a bottle of Gatorade and a mumbling narrative of self-pity, which she patiently absorbed in a ‘what do you expect me to do about that?’ sort of way. I didn’t expect anything of course, unless she happened to have thought of an excuse that had managed to elude me so far. She blamed the humidity, which I laid into with gusto.

Really very warm. Is this normal, Australia?

As runners continued to trickle over the finish line we slipped away back towards the car and a change of clothes for me – I wasn’t aware how I had done overall but I was confident that my services wouldn’t be required on a podium any time soon. I tried to seek out those few runners whom I’d chatted with along the way to congratulate them on their pacing, but I couldn’t find any of them so I settled for shaking Brett’s hand and slinking off. I resolved to race a lot smarter next time.

Next time is a bloody marathon, so I suppose I’d better.

Happy running

Dave

2016 to date: Km's - 347, parkruns - 6, races - 1

What's that in miles?

Kilometres. Ask me what the main cultural challenge has been since I’ve been running in Australia and it’s kilometres. Endless calculations that start with ‘well a 5k is 3.1 miles and a 4 minute k gives you a 20 minute parkrun which is about 6:30 a mile, and I’ve run 8k in the last 40 minutes so that must be, er, 5, no, yes, about 5 miles which is about 8 minutes per k, that can’t be right. 8 minutes per mile. Ace. Wait.’ By this point I’ve run another k and have to start again.

But the cultural challenges of the metric system are nothing, nothing compared to the climactic challenges of running Down Under.

When it’s cold you can always put on another layer. If it’s raining you can just get wet, or put on another layer. But when it’s already 30 degrees at 8am and the sun wants to aggressively cook your insides for some reason and there’s not a lick of shade and you’re a pasty white Englishman who’s spent the last decade living in Scotland, you suddenly realise that there aren’t enough layers to take off before you’re calculating km splits in the back of a police van because running in the nude is apparently not allowed in city centre parklands.

Yes, I’ve moved to Australia and it’s bloody brilliant. Melbourne, where the Crew Chief and I have settled is a runner’s playground and once you’ve navigated the massive road system and waited a million years for your traffic light to change there are endless trails, footpaths, parks, beaches, rivers and roads to explore.

I’ve become a morning person out of necessity – it’s too hot to run at lunchtime and my long-held favourite after-work training slot is often the hottest part of the day – so I’m out at 6.30am two or three times a week and am practically a regular at my local parkrun (I've been five times), which starts at 8am. I’ve also revived something of my University schedule and been running after 9pm some nights to try to beat the heat, with massive bats overhead, possums scurrying into bushes underfoot and the city skyline lit up in the middle distance.

28 degrees at the start line, 30 at the finish line. An arduous 23 minutes in between.

The problem will be when I need to run longer distances, because there just aren’t that many cool hours in the day at the moment. And that time is coming.

Yup I’ve registered for another marathon. After graciously bowing out of Yorkshire this year on the grounds that I, well, left the hemisphere in which it was being held, I’ve been scouting around for another. Actually Ben did the scouting for me and now here we are – planning for the 2016 Great Ocean Road Marathon. Yikes.

Except inexplicably the Great Ocean Road Marathon is 45km, not 42.2km like you could quite reasonably imagine. Strung out on a piece of extraordinary southern coastline – next stop Antarctica – I guess the GOR organisers have limited options for logical start and finish points so 45km it is. There’s a timing mat at 42.2 so you do get a proper marathon time, but the rules are clear; if you cross the 42.2km line but not the 45km line, you get a DNF for the whole race and no times at all. Those last couple of kms are basically non-negotiable and you’ve technically got to finish an ultra to qualify as having finished the marathon. Brutal.

I’m telling you. Kilometres. Not to be trusted.

Happy running

Dave

Miles: apparently 765, Kilometres: 1,231, races: 3, parkruns: 11

Race Report - Dumyat Hill Race 2015

For the last two years I’ve been laid out with a heavy cold in the first week of May. 

I know this because during the two and a half years I’ve worked in Stirling, I’ve been out of action during the annual Dumyat Hill Race, a long-established out-and-back peak-bagging adventure of mud and rocks which I’ve felt like a fool for missing.

It’s taken an embarrassingly long while for me to get to the start line of a race whose route I can actually see from my office window, but I’m so glad I did...

Dumyat [pronounced dumb eye at] has been run annually since a £1 bet in 1972 claimed that it was impossible to run from the University of Stirling’s Gannochy Sports Centre to the summit of Dumyat, a 418m/1,371ft peak at the edge of the Ochil Hills, and back, within an hour (a distance of five miles and total ascent of 390m). The hour is the watershed, therefore, between metaphorically winning the pound or slinking off home to think again. With men’s and women’s records in the region of 35 minutes, it’s achievable, but not without a fight…

Added pressure for me came in the form of many colleagues who have raced previous years, or entered this year, or who just know more about the event than I did. I’d also recruited a pal, Kathryn, whom you may remember as Deerstalker-in-Chief and whose mountain credentials are infinitely more impressive than mine. All this conspired to an impressive amount of pre-race excuse-making on my part. I mean look at the weather. My back hurts. I’ve been sat at a desk all day. Etc.

Dumyat has always been a low-key affair but I think this year it’s edging towards more infrastructure. The race is ‘gun-to-chip’ timed, entries are managed online, marshals are everywhere and almost 300 people finished the 2015 event. We are a long way from 1972.

But once we were away from the start line we’re into a magnificently scrappy, scruffy, off-road test that feels much more like I imagine oldschool hillrunning to be. It’s crowded in the middle of the field, and we’re ducking and weaving between trees and gaps in stone walls and stiles and streams, occasionally slowing to allow the crowd to thin out ahead, tripping over rocks and sinking into watery mud. I’m grinning madly with delight.

The first half is very up. But it’s also a bit down – we’re fighting to gain elevation but then keep maddeningly losing a little on our progress to the top. After the first mile or so we’re literally out of the woods and onto a broad moor-type landscape, which allows much more room for overtaking and the field spreads out width-ways as runners choose different lines up the hill. I’m surrounded by people of clearly varying ability, but the wild spectrum of terrain and profile mean that this race demands you to be a sturdy climber, fearless descender, navigator of rocks and mud, good at choosing lines and also pretty competent on the flat. I’m confident that everyone in the race will have felt great at some points and found wanting in others.

Out of the woods and chasing down the summit.
Photo borrowed from www.scottishhillracing.co.uk

After a couple of miles the leaders fly past me in the opposite direction. Dumyat is the prototypical out-and-back, so we’re sharing a boggy, hilly, rocky, narrow route trudging uphill with extremely talented hill runners who are flying back down. It’s perilous and thrilling and hilarious. Club and university vests dominate the leading figures and I do my best to stay out of the way whilst also trying to maintain some worthwhile progress of my own.

An odd phenomenon is the peer pressure to both walk and run certain sections. Kathryn and both found that whenever the person in front of us slowed to a walk on the steepest sections, we did the same, even if we were feeling fresh enough to run. When they ran, we felt compelled to run too. This may have something to do with the narrowness of the route in places – and for me my total lack of course knowledge – but next year I’ll resolve to ignore everyone else and run my own race.

I finally reached the summit and was blown away by the view. The concept suddenly made sense. Weather earlier in the day may have been abysmal, but at 7.30ish in the evening the view was so clear I could pick out the Forth Bridges and Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh, 40 miles distant. Sadly, with no time to appreciate the full majesty of the entire Central Belt, I started a reckless, wild descent back to the Gannochy.

There’s really nothing better for the ego than being on the ‘back’ leg of an out and back race. The banter’s hilarious and you feel like a minor celebrity. I did my best to be brave and let my legs fly down the hill, moving so fast I could feel my insides shaking about with every impactful step. At points I was basically falling down a cliff and trying to keep my legs moving fast enough to keep up with my progress. Hill running – for me at least – is mostly about trying to think fast enough to work out where each foot can safely land next, and the added chaos of people running towards you makes for a major mental and physical test.

I passed Kathryn, on her way up, as we splashed through a waterlogged flat(ish) section. She howled in mock pain as we high-fived at high speed. The descent passed in a blur – although a small incline with half a mile to go almost finished me off – and before long I was back to the sports centre and accepting the incredulous congratulations of some colleagues who had come along to support. I clocked 51:19 and won my metaphorical pound.

Papped at the finish. #KeepUpLad

Kathryn beamed across the finish line a little while later and we debriefed, incredulous as to how much fun it was. We immediately resolved to be back for 2016 – and what’s more I know exactly where I can shave a minute or two off my time. A few practice runs wouldn’t go amiss either...

Happy running

Dave

2015 to date: miles run - 405.62, parkruns - 3, races - 3

Race Report - (Half) Kilomathon Scotland 2015

Blast. Race reports are more or less the one thing I can normally pull together with relative competence and now this one’s three weeks late. Cutting edge blogging going on here. What a time to be alive.

Anyway, Kilomathon Scotland. If the word ‘Kilomathon’ is flying over your head like a furious buzzard, then allow me to try to unpick what’s going on here. In 2010 GSi Events invented a new race distance – which they swiftly dubbed ‘the perfect race distance’ – of 26.2km, ie the same number of kilometres as a marathon is in miles. The idea is a step-up from a half marathon towards a marathon, I guess. I ran the first two of them, one between Nottingham and Derby (in 2:03) and the other a circular route over the Forth Road Bridge and back from Ingliston (2:05 and my god those hills). It was a pretty good distance. Not sure if it was perfect, but I enjoyed it all the same.

Since then I’ve been dimly aware that the 26.2km distance had been binned, and that a Kilomathon was now considered 13.1km, which I might have better called a half kilomathon. Interestingly, this distance is ALSO branded as ‘the perfect race distance’. Whatever.

A pal who once beat me in a terrible game of tennis asked if I was up for this event – his first ‘proper’ race – and with nothing else planned I signed myself up. What I hadn’t twigged was the 8.30am start time. In Leith. On the day the clocks go forward. Cripes.

Yes, Leith. It’s really quite nice these days, and the kilomathon route intelligently leaves from Ocean Terminal shopping centre (handy pre-race infrastructure – ie proper loos) and winds its way through a network of high-quality footpaths laid out on a former railway line. It snakes its way south west on a 99% traffic-free course  and finishes on the pitch at Murrayfield Stadium, home of endless disappointment in international rugby (I should know, I have a season ticket) but a magnificent stadium nonetheless.

James and I exchanged chilly pre-race banter on a desolate stretch of access road and before long we were away, looping behind the shopping centre past the Royal Yacht Britannia. James was looking for 75 minutes and I was hoping for 65. It didn’t go to plan for either of us. At all.

Right away I got a wiggle on. I was working hard to run the tangents wherever possible and the cold damp air on my flimsy running vest meant I was in no mood for hanging about. I shot off way too fast, but much like the time we didn’t even BQ when there were four of us, I somehow found a way to hang on to that pace and ran more or less perfect splits all morning.

I had examined the course map ahead of time, but hadn’t fully appreciated just how windy some of the loops were, at times clumsily added to make up the distance rather than to enhance the experience. I was absolutely flying by 3km but frustrated to be directed around Victoria Park on a series of tight turns which really limited my rhythm. I could tell others were annoyed too. Luckily before too long it was back on the footpath proper and steaming towards Murrayfield, and there was really only one random bit of loopy route to contend with from there...

As the kilomathon starts at sea level, the route is a gentle climb pretty much all the way and it’s easy to be caught out in those places where it’s more noticeable. I was working hard to keep my pace on track and the rise in profile did make this challenging. The Crew Chief popped up at a convenient cheering point (one of perhaps 40 spectators on the entire course – a slightly out of the way footpath at 8.45am on a Sunday is not prime cheering territory) and I cheerfully told her that I was dying but would see her at the finish. Luckily I was only half right.

I’m not good at pacing kilometres and I was even more confused as my watch was showing pace and distance in miles and the route markers were interspersed with those for the 6.55km quarter-kilomathon. I’m not joking. In fact there was even a 2.62km event for kids. I passed the start for the quarter kilomathoners around 6 or 7km, who were penned up waiting for, perhaps, a gap in the kilomathon traffic and wondered if I could keep them at bay or if the speedier ones might catch me. So anyway – there were way too many numbered signs, my own confusing watch readout and a sleepy, GMT/BST confused brain, which taken together meant that by 9km I decided to forget about digits and just put the hammer down.

We peeled off the footpath near Murrayfield and barrelled – finally - downhill towards the stadium, skirting Roseburn park. I rounded what I thought was the final corner to see a tunnel leading straight onto the pitch and prepared a last-gasp straight-line sprint. Sadly the kilomathon route instead peeled away to the left as we did a pointless and annoying fingerloop of the stadium’s car park before finally taking a few tight turns to get into that same tunnel.

Just as I stepped onto the hallowed turf – imagining just how bad next year’s 6 Nations run would have to be in order for me to get a call up –  two men flew past me at a full-on sprint. Remember that I’m running at about 7:15/mile here and that these guys blew me away from absolutely nowhere, all elbows and knees. As I crossed the finish line I got mixed up with a load of marshalls trying to hand things to these speedsters – in fact they were the first three finishers of the quarter-kilomathon, and their crazy pace was due to the fact that they got to do the arrow-straight finish into the stadium. I was a tiny bit miffed at having been jostled about by these mere quarter kilomathoners, as if that’s even a thing, but I suppose fair play to them.

Check out this dodgy GoPro video I shot at the finish:

Just as in 2010 the organisers distributed medals that just said ‘Kilomathon’ and showed the event logo – no date, no distance, no location. Clearly they’re reused at multiple events, but whatever. The finish line setup was slick and well organised, felt like a fun stadium finish and best of all was done and dusted well before 10 am.

At the finish, with a Wallace cheeser

I clocked 58:03 (half 24:25 – negative split!), seven minutes faster than I had guessed when I registered and good enough for 94^th overall out of 1,398 finishers. My splits are pretty tasty, too.

James finished almost exactly ten minutes behind me in 68:26. He had also beaten his estimated time by seven minutes. He went for the classic medal-biting pose:

For £20, this is a solid event. But next year I think I’ll stay in bed.

Happy running

Dave

2015 to date: miles run - 320.89, parkruns - 3, races - 2

Whose NHS is it anyway?

The morning after the Deerstalker I debriefed the Crew Chief. With her professional interest in medical provision at sports events I knew she’d be intrigued to hear how the organisers had managed to get first aiders and mountain rescue staff to accessible places on an entirely inaccessible course. We have pretty romantic conversations, the Crew Chief and I…

Anyway we got on to talking about the more extreme end of obstacle races, and the relatively high incidence of serious medical emergencies. This is almost inevitable as gung-ho but technically inept runners throw themselves off increasingly wild obstacles dreamt up by event organisers trying to innovate the next big thing in challenge runs. She mentioned with horror the sheer costs involved of getting ambulances and helicopters to these (often remote) events, calling out highly skilled medical professionals to airlift showboating mud runners to A&E because they’ve somehow got half a femur sticking out of their backsides. Her valid point is that this voluntary, reckless activity is a drain on resources, is unnecessarily dangerous and – crucially - is entirely preventable.

I nodded sagely in agreement because I am good at marriage.

Ambulance crew at Tough Guy 2009

Then I mulled it over for a while. Who else is using the health service’s resources? Where might that ambulance be if not responding to the self-inflicted ailments of runners so desperate to prove themselves that they’ll happily leap through flames or take an electric shock to the face? And most crucially, how many users of our beloved NHS rely on it to treat preventable ailments?

Smokers are an obvious place to start. The latest research suggests that smoking is likely to be costing the NHS between £2.5 and £6 billion every year. Preventable. It’s a similar figure for alcohol-related treatment. Preventable. Obese and overweight patients are more or less a bargain at just £4 billion every year. In many cases, that’s preventable too.

And here’s the fundamental difference; whilst puffing away on a fag, drinking 100 pints of Carling a week or stuffing your face with McDonald’s has literally no discernible health benefit to weigh against the massive cost of related healthcare, those reckless fools launching their fragile bodies off some monkey bars and into a freezing pond are at least being active. To me that really is the crux of the issue; whilst the occasional accident might make obstacle racing seem like a pointless endeavour, it’s reaching a demographic who might otherwise not engage in physical activity. And surely anything that gets people off the sofa and momentarily away from packing their arteries with Greggs sausage rolls has to be a good thing? Take this thought a step further and surely the only conclusion is that any physical activity that raises your heartrate, strengthens your muscles and improves your mental wellbeing has to be a good thing.

And let’s not for a moment discount the health charities and Air Ambulance services who profit considerably from the fundraising efforts of thousands of runners every year. I’m pretty sure that no smoker has ever used their habit as a means of raising money for a cancer charity. It would be a pretty audacious pitch on justgiving, that’s for sure…

I concede that these events are dangerous, and whilst there have been deaths in Tough Mudder races in the USA, it's worth remembering that people also die running marathons, and skiing slightly off-piste, and crossing the street, and in industrial accidents, and from diseases contracted on exotic holidays. Nothing is entirely without risk. I concede also, of course, that rescuing a daft bloke in fancy dress who’s broken an ankle by leaping off a cargo net is a less worthy use of an air ambulance’s limited resources than, say, hastening to the aid of a road traffic accident or to uplift someone suffering a heart attack.

But if ever a Health Minister decides to definitively rank the order of precedence for using our National Health Service, I would petition for the stricken runners to get a decent spot in the queue, to my mind well ahead of people who are eating or smoking or drinking themselves to death. If it’s a race for spots, we’ll probably do alright anyway.

Happy running (be safe out there)

Dave

2015 to date: miles run 234.2, parkruns 3, races 1

Race Report - Charleston Half Marathon 2015

Guest blogging and race reports! I used to do loads of these and I'd forgotten how brilliant they are until Elizabeth 'Pumpkin Square Wifey' Fitzpatrick hit the mean streets of Charleston to race her first half marathon. Given that I know for a fact that E has had an awesome running outfit waiting for an outing since at least 2007, this is both immensely welcome and long overdue. So over to our American Correspondent...

I would never in a million years have considered myself to be a runner; in high school, we used to have to run a half mile prior to the start of gym class and it was possibly the worst thing on the planet (let's be honest, I was 16 and had to wear a horrible gym costume). But when I think back on that now, I realize how ridiculous I was considering that a 5 mile run seems like a breeze and I just ran my first half marathon (12.6 miles longer than back in high school).

So why, if i despise(d) running, would I tackle 13.1 miles? It was a challenge. Back in June, a close friend moved to Kentucky and we both were lacking serious motivation. We decided that in order to get our booties back in shape we would sign up for a half and use it as an excuse to go somewhere fun. Gung-ho Sally's that we are, our credit cards were charged, motivation was high and the Charleston Half Marathon was our challenge.

What can I say, along the way life, minor injuries, school, lack of motivation, so there were a lot of starts and stops in the training process. Unfortunately my friend ended up having to pull out due to an intensive school semester. My mom kindly stepped in and decided to join the challenge, she would walk and I would run and it was a great excuse for a mother/daughter trip.

Off we went on January 16 to fantastic Charleston. We landed at the airport late in the afternoon, dropped our bags at our hotel and power walked off to the high school where packet pick-up/and the start of the race was. Numbers, timing chips, and token race shirts collected we headed off for an early dinner. Hundreds of calories consumed, what can we say, we like good food and when in Charleston you must partake.

The big day dawned a little chillier than expected but sunny and it was definitely a lot warmer than back at home in Baltimore, so who were we to complain? The masses started to congregate at the start line, music was playing, enthusiasm was high and we actually met two girls who were also from Maryland whilst killing time. There were about 4,900 participants from 49 states and 7 countries, not too shabby.

Looking not at all nervous

I am not going to lie, I was a little nervous as it got closer to 8am. I had two goals: finish in under 2 hours and 30 minutes and not to walk, and of course doubt settled in. Could I make it? Had I done enough training? But soon enough the gun went off and we were away, with a big smile on my face, what I had been planning on and working towards for almost 6 months was finally about to happen.

The race is a bit of a blur, I mean 13.1 miles tend to start to run together. But what I do know for certain, the first few miles when we were running through Charleston proper was amazing. The scenery was incredible, the route took you through these incredible neighborhoods past these gorgeous houses, by the water, and then it was back up through the city along King Street.

And the crowd, there were fans along the entire route which was amazing and they were all so enthusiastic, it definitely helped around mile 11 when it started to get a little tough. Also, the money raised by the running festival went to benefit the arts programs in the local Charleston schools. So at periodic intervals along the route, there were bands/dance troupes etc. from all the schools performing, it was such a wonderful element and nice to see what we were funding.

Nice work ladies!

So what can I say from this experience... would I do it again, definitely, in fact I told my mom the Charleston half should maybe become an annual event. Will I do a full marathon, doubtful. I will definitely be more consistent in training for my next one, have a plan and stick to it.

Would I consider myself a runner after this experience, no, but maybe I will get there. For now, it's been a few weeks off, no running, but I think it's time to get back out there. I am loathe to put this in writing (Dave knows, cause I used to give him a lot of grief and call him crazy with all his running) but I may miss hitting the pavement just a little bit.

But did you achieve your sub-2:30 goal?

I most certainly did.

Thanks E! Super proud of you. It is definitely time to get back out there...

2015 to date: miles 117.9, parkruns 2

A very ordinary superpower

Let's be honest, it's not a strong look.

I was out for a run the other night in the absolute Baltic cold of January in Scotland. Leggings aren’t a strong look for me but who cares how you look when it’s dark and you’re out running, right? 

But imagine my horror when I thought I spotted a member of my employer’s senior management team up ahead when out for a run dressed in stretchy fluorescent garb. I imagined their cheerful greeting followed by an incredulous "What are you out running for in this weather?" as their eyes scanned down to my spindly ankles, wrapped in lycra and gently steaming.

The first answer that popped into my head was “Oh I like to keep fit so I’ll be ready when the revolution comes.”

Luckily the senior colleague I spotted turned out to be a low-quality lookalike and not the real thing (it was dark and snowing) and this conversation didn’t actually happen, because if it did I feel certain that there would be some detailed notes appended to my HR file quicker than you can say “We think your talents would be better deployed literally anywhere but here.”

But this hypothetical conversation made me think about running as an actual practical skill. If I’m honest there really are few scenarios in which running would be the quickest, or the easiest, or the only form of transport left in a crisis.

We’re going to need a War of the Worlds-eque apocalyptic event in which every car on the planet suffers a simultaneous electrical fault (for example), in which every bicycle is also stolen by a marauding alien overlord (could happen), all the horses have been put into Iceland burgers (underway) and there are also leaves on the line and/or overrunning engineering works at Darlington (all but guaranteed). Seems a tall order.

Even then, the heroic task that will save the day needs to be no more than about 20 miles away if I’m to be any use when I get there to do it and ideally this cataclysmic event shouldn’t happen too close to lunch because I am really not up to much - let alone saving the world - with a side stitch.

I once read that Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond became stranded in a winter flood 16 miles from home at 3am, and rather than miss his daughter’s birthday the following day he abandoned his car, changed into some running kit he happened to have with him, and ran the rest of the way. That makes running seem like a skill worth having.

I suppose the closest I’ve ever come to genuinely using my one and only very mediocre superpower is that I’ve caught a few trains and buses that others would have missed, because I don’t mind running a mile or two flat out if needs must. I once caught a series of connections that meant a sprint to a tube station, a run across the concourse into a train station and later an amazingly long jog to an airport bus. I sweated in the queue for security then sprinted through the terminal and was the last one on the plane, which took me from London to Edinburgh. The following day I had a job interview, a day after that I had a job offer, and a month later I moved back to Scotland and into a flat with the Crew Chief.

That was five years ago, and I’m so glad I ran for it.

Happy running

Dave

2015 to date: miles run 71.59

Not another new plan

The Crew Chief keeps nagging me to register for a marathon.  This is a bizarre reversal of just a few years ago, when I wrote this blogpost about the perils of bartering with your other half about excessive race schedules. As I’ve mentioned before, in the 15 months since completing The Wall Run I’ve struggled with motivation, injury, distractions, work, lethargy, drinking too much beer and becoming a dreadful fatty. I don’t want to register for a marathon.

But I do want to be a runner again. I want to be the one who spends hours every week dashing down footpaths and hauling himself up hills and discovering secret views that folk trapped in cars don’t see. I want to be out in the cold and the rain and the snow and the heat, barrelling down wild descents and bursting through narrow gaps in hedgerows and dry stone walls. I want to buy new running shoes and pair them with ancient race T-shirts. I want my non-running friends to be a bit exasperated, and for my running friends to invite me to train with them again.

The old demons are still there. I’m at least a bit heavier than I was and the trouble in my left ankle that I’ve been carrying for four years now is still a problem. My commute still saps my energy and I still can't get out of bed in time for a run before work. I’m a hell of a lot slower than I was, too. Like two minutes a mile slower. 

But I do want to be a runner again.

The Crew Chief wants me to register for a race because she knows that in the past it’s been the main motivator for my running, which I can then legitimately call ‘training’. But more recently I’ve managed to tie myself up in knots with pre-race anxiety over even the least intimidating runs. I need to address that before I sign up to something big.

So my new plan (sorry) is to create a strong base with which to run a marathon, not register for a marathon for which I will need to create a strong base. The training, the health benefits, the sense of wellbeing and satisfaction will be the output, and a marathon might be one the outcomes. When I’m fit enough, then I’ll think about another 26.2.

That doesn’t sound like much of a difference, but trust me, it is. I want to be a fit guy who could run a decent marathon, not a guy who is fit because he is planning to run a marathon. The relief of that pressure is enormous, and I hope it will make me a runner again.

Happy running

Dave

What I did on my summer holidays

At less than three seconds’ notice, I am shoving my oversized accreditation and lanyard inside my polo shirt (bad for the TV cameras) and sprinting up the trackside access stairs – normally strictly reserved for medal ceremonies – up onto the field of play. Suddenly I am front and centre for 45,000 people at Hampden Park stadium, in the middle of the athletics arena for the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games.

“Where is he?” I have to shout in the ear of a steward over the immense noise of the crowd.

“Up there, somewhere.” She points to the stands, presumably in the rough direction that Will Sharman, the English silver medallist in the 110m hurdles who has just received his medal, has dashed off to.  My job – assigned still less than five seconds ago – is to find him, keep him in sight, and get him back down to the Competition Management area below the stadium as soon as possible.

I run off the trackside and up into the stands, looking for my missing athlete. After furtively looking up and down every aisle I find him, eventually,  on a sort of hidden platform taking photos with his partner and son, cradling his silver medal. Another volunteer, presumably from spectator services, looks very relieved to see me.

A few minutes and a few thousand photos later I manage to convince Will back down the way we came, so he can be channelled through his various press and other post-event obligations.

We jog down the steps towards the track. As I open the gate onto the field of playWill laughs;

“You could have hurdled that.” I’m not quite quick enough with a response.

But as we reach the top of the medal ceremony stairs and I am about to breathe a sigh of relief and hand Will back into the efficient stage management of the stewards, the gun fires in the women’s 1500m final, just a few feet from where we’re standing. Will looks me in the eye and asks, with a masterful balance of humility and confidence, whether he can watch the race from here.

So there I am, crouching at the top of the stairs, watching the women’s 1500m final of the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games, while an English silver medallist gives me a running commentary on his teammates’ tactics and positioning.

I have a lot of stories from my volunteering experience at Glasgow 2014, but this is definitely my favourite.

D

Race Report - Bedgebury Forest Trailblazer 10k 2014

Holy cow, a race report!  It’s almost exactly a year since my last race, The Wall RunUltramarathon 2013, so you’d be forgiven for being startled by this post. My apologies. Take a moment to recover.

But first, a quandary. What on earth do you buy for someone who has no birthday gift list and no Christmas list, but has his birthday four days before Christmas?  You’ve got to start with buying two things, obviously, one for each gift-receiving event. And they’re both for your brother.

I ummed and aahed. I rejected clothes (I don’t think he believes in clothes), I rejected DVDs (no-one buys DVDs any more, do they?) and I rejected anything that was explicitly marketed as a gift (ie a disposable thing of inflated value and limited longevity). I pondered. I almost bought things. Then I had an idea. The Crew Chief and I have a habit of buying each other weekends away, theatre tickets or other such experience-based gifts, so I applied this idea to my conundrum.

So I signed Nick and I up to run the Trailblazer.

On his/our birthday I presented him first with a new pair of running gloves (something he actually needed), then with an envelope containing a print-out of our race entry confirmations. I prepared my gracious-gift-giving-face.

He didn’t seem impressed.

But fast forward six months or so, and he seemed pretty keen as we laced up our trainers and headed down to the forest for a few miles of muddy adventure. Nick had never run a Rat Race event before and I had a feeling he would enjoy it. The only recent occasions we had run together had highlighted that he’s in much better shape than me – doubtless owed equally to his 10-mile round-trip of a commute on his bike every day and a convincingly motivated running schedule which I do not possess. I had neither of these things to boost my confidence and hoped only to be able to hang on to whatever speed he brought with him.

In fact I had even less to work with. My stomach was misbehaving and the Gingerbread Man was a nagging concern all morning in the build-up to our wave’s 11.15am start time. Perhaps my sushi-and-lager dinner the night before, hurriedly wolfed down in Edinburgh airport before I dashed to my Gatwick flight, had done me no favours. But something tells me that I’ve developed a habit of inflicting physiologically-manifesting pre-race nerves on myself which I really need to get under control…

Things started predictably in Bedgebury. I’ve never been to this particular forest/country park/pinetum (new word for the day) and it makes for a great venue for the usual Rat Race set up of beer tent, kit store, warm-up area, stage, registration tent etc. We mumbled quiet curses at the summer rain and it eventually got the message and shoved off before our start time, leaving a sunburn-inflicting cloudless sky. By the time our wave was deemed warm and ready to go we processed down a steep gradient to the start, as I mentally and with muttered curses registered the number of feet that would later need to be regained in ascent. A final briefing (‘the park is open, mind the mountain bikes!’) and we were off.

Tight early turns and a narrow course, even for our small-ish wave of runners, made the first couple of kilometres a tough exercise in positioning and finding a comfortable pace. Nick seemed to fall into an early rhythm, and I tried to slip into his step but found myself working harder than I should have. Before long I started to worry about my stomach – I was sure that I was going to vomit or do something worse at a microsecond’s notice. I tried to suppress negative thoughts and enjoy the view.

The course is set in a lovely environment, along rough, stone or muddy roads and trails through a dense forest, and a wholly pleasant place to be of a Saturday morning. As ever with Rat Race events, the marshalls were cheerful and eager and the drinks table (cleverly visited twice on the course without having to run laps) was well stocked and was staffed by smiling, eager faces attached to quick hands. If I had any criticism it was that there wasn’t enough muddy, technical trail and a little too much tarmac for something billed as a trail race, but part of the issue may have been that we changed surface so many times that it was difficult to find any consistent rhythm. I guess I was hoping for something like a chunky, entertaining cross-countryish course rather than a forest-based road race with some muddy bits, but I can hardly complain. Rat Race offer plenty of races with much more nonsense if you’re so inclined. The only ‘obstacle’, as far as I remember, was a very small ditch, but the deceptively long hills, undulating profile and tight corners were more challenging than they first appeared.

Regardless of surroundings, my stomach was wretched. Nick and I had gone through 5k together in a little over 24 minutes, but at a water station shortly afterwards I slowed to drink while Nick carried on. I fought to catch up but only to tell him to stop waiting and to go on ahead. He didn’t need telling twice.

I lumbered through the next few km’s keeping Nick in my sights, usually about 15-20 metres ahead of me. At this stage I was sustaining myself by thinking that I could still partly salvage, if not entirely save face. But just before 9km the race chucked us out onto tarmac, and Nick lit the afterburners. I had nothing in the tank to respond with and watched him go.

Nick about to finish

I hauled myself onwards and up a final grassy incline to the event village, relieved to arrive in the finger-loop which immediately preceded the finish line. I tried to pick up the pace and look a little more impressive for the only section of the course to feature any spectators (including both of our parents), but spoiled it by immediately by landing on all-fours once over the line, anticipating a return appearance of my breakfast, which mercifully never came. My chip time read 50:37, Nick’s was 49:43, which was good enough for 68^th (me) and 59^th (Nick) from a field of around 600. Not bad.

Very relieved to be done. Ace goody bag.

We hustled ourselves more or less straight into the beer tent for some pints and watched the last few waves warm up and process down to the start. My dad, who I don’t think has seen me race before, took a lot of photos and marvelled at the slick set-up of the event village. My mum cursed her hayfever and gave the bored-looking first aiders something to do by soliciting an antihistamine.  They both fussed over us with towels and spare clothes, then immediately uploaded their finish-line photos to Facebook, accurately capturing how totally wrecked we were. A classic race day.

It’s rather good, this racing lark, eh? I might do some more of it.

Happy running

Dave

Social Anthropology: The Gym

I don’t think I belong in the gym.

There are so many types of people who use my gym that I’m going to have to give you a thorough run-down. I also need to be clear that I’m pretty sure I don’t belong there at all.

The douchebags
Plimsolls. Long socks. Wife-beater vests. Slicked-back hair. Pastel coloured shorts rolled up to just above the knee. The douchebags do a few gentle weights reps – arms only – as slowly as possible so they can watch their muscles gently flex in the mirror. They are douchebags.

The footballers
A couple of very minor league football teams are sometimes based from the sports centre which houses my gym. Their squad comes in as a group of no less than 20, dressed in their full kit, to sit on exercise bikes, occasionally pedalling gently, and watching themselves in the mirror. Occasionally they rearrange their kit so the logo is more prominently displayed. After 15 minutes they start to go down to the café and ‘reserve’ all the sofas.

The wannabe footballers
As above but clearly not in the team. Desperately try to get onto machines next to the footballers. Embarrass us all.

Triangular muscle beasts
Where have these men come from? They’re huge! And genuinely triangular. They must have normal jobs somewhere, they can’t all be employed to haul tractor tyres around car parks, can they? They briefly enter the changing rooms (sideways) to take off a tracksuit – leave it on a bench rather than in a locker – and then heave their enormous shoulders off to the Massive Weights Room of Fear downstairs. I take solace in the fact that they must look ridiculous in normal clothes – perhaps this is a vicious circle that explains why they are always in the gym. When they get back to the changing rooms they chug an enormous plastic cup full of ground-up bison and girders.

Pleasingly, this is a Google Image result for 'triangular muscle beast'

Members of the Pussycat Dolls
I assume they are students. But I don’t remember students like this when I was at St Andrews. These girls are ridiculous manifestations of the Essex WAG ideal – miniscule waists, long blonde hair, leggings, immaculate pink trainers and matching sweat bands on their beadless brows. To give them their due, the dolls work out. Hard. Do not make eye contact. They will crush you in their thighs of steel or abrade your face with their abs of titanium.

The female footballers
Opposite of the Pussycat Dolls. The ladies football team are hard as nails. Running sprints on the treadmills, then annihilating the cross-trainer, then weights then crunches then something else then another thing then more sprints. They are all 5 foot nothing and wearing baggy football kit, possibly a hand-me-down from the men’s team 3 years ago. The pace is relentless. They are there when you arrive and also there when you leave. They’re there now.

The old boys
My favourites. Aged anywhere from early-60s to late-120s, the old boys do not give a damn that their saggy race T-shirt from 1989 is full of holes or that the sweat flying off them is offending the Pussycat Dolls, they’re old and working out and it’s amazing and they’re going to keep doing it. Invariably wearing way too many layers for this level of activity, they can be seen noting the figures of the machine next them, occupied by a student who is one-third of their age, doing one-quarter of their workout.

“It’s off-season”
These guys and girls do not want to be in the gym. They want to be on the hockey pitch or golf course or ski slopes. They’re only in the gym because they have no other option to vent their extreme need for sport (and they kind of want you to know it). Easily identifiable by their club kit, elderly trainers and longing looks out of the window at the lashing rain and gathering clouds. They are not at all happy about the douchebags.

Happy running

Dave

Today's lesson

Lunchtime run. Find some decent flow for the first time in ages. Get in the zone. iPhone randomly shuffles to massive tune. Lean into the hill and lift knees with determined expression and gritted teeth and flowing sweat and jubilant endorphin anticipation and…

…and spot untied shoelace. Slow down. Stop. Tie shoelace. Tie other shoelace to be sure. Feel a bit cold and tired. Rain and wind increase. Jog back. Gingerbread man.

Today’s lesson is to tie your shoelaces properly. Sigh.

Dave

2014 to date: miles run - 3.1

Remember me?

I used to do that running thing and then I’d write about it and some people would laugh a bit and others would say nice things and a few would get annoyed and faintly aggressive. It was fun, remember?

I don’t really remember. Weird.

I was at a Christmas party on Saturday with some friends whom I only see every few months. Someone said ‘no-one actually likes running, except for Dave of course!’. Everyone turned to me, expecting the usual slightly apologetic shrug and some anecdote about how I ran to Belgium and back this morning. Actually I just shrugged and said ‘to be honest I don’t think I like it at the moment either’.

Let me take you back to June 22nd and 23rd. I ran The Wall Run with three heroic human beings, and I was a fairly calamitous disaster despite having done – by some distance – the most training out of the four of us. I was sick and broken and sick and tired and battered and slow, but above all I was sick. My only redeeming feature was that I didn’t give up, and even that was only because of the immense stubbornness of Kommissar Gray.

The Crew Chief was not impressed, to put it lightly. I naively expected some sort of wide-eyed admiration at my superhuman feat of endurance. Instead she saw that I had put myself through needless, pointless suffering and that I repeatedly refused to acknowledge that I had made a foolish decision in carrying on with no food in my stomach, exhaustion, nausea, some mild hallucination and an almost manic obsession with Matt Monro. When the race was over she used her serious voice to make it clear that I would not be doing anything so stupid ever again.

Last time I was a runner

 I took two weeks off running altogether to recover. Two turned into three. In the fourth week I went for one run. I deferred my GNR place and cancelled other racing plans. The local running shops reported their worst quarters ever as I stopped buying shoes and gear every ten minutes. I started using the next notch on my belts and resenting my monthly direct debit to the gym. It is now nearly 6 months later, and I have run less than 100 miles in total since the finish line in Gateshead, compared to nearly 700 for the first half of the year.

I may have taken the Crew Chief’s reprimands too seriously.

I am further out of a training routine than I ever have been since I took up the sport in autumn 2008, when George W. Bush was still President of the USA. We were learning the term ‘Credit Crunch’ and expecting it all to blow over in a year or so. I was 21 years old and had never run more than a couple of miles.

Until recently I theorised that my lack of motivation stems from a nagging idea that, by completing an ultramarathon, I had also completed my running journey. Perhaps I subconsciously think there is little left to pursue – perhaps lowering PBs and running ever greater distances are just a pair of arduous and endless, pointless goals.

Last night all that changed. The Crew Chief suggested that her project for 2014 (following the baking challenge of 2013) is to ‘get fit’, and could we do it together, maybe go for little runs together?

And just like that, I’m back at the beginning. But this time I’ve got company.

Happy running.

Dave

2013 to date: miles run: 739.55, races: 5 and a bit, parkruns: 3, miles biked: 55, metres swum: 1850

Pay attention! I might not be completely crap!

I’ve written before about the tragicomic history of my early sporting career. As you’ll know, I never really seemed to find the same wavelength as my peers during school sports – the ones who knew things about football and seemed to drift effortlessly between a rugby XV in winter and a cricket XI in summer. I watched this happen from a distance as I erratically swung an ancient cricket bat around on the tennis courts (considered a safe containment venue for fourth-stream games lessons), or happily churned up the ‘cabbage patch’ rugby pitch reserved for the derogatively-named ‘Recreational Rugby’ group. Despite the fact that I really enjoyed (and still enjoy) rugby, was actually a half-decent runner and even showed some promise as a swimmer, I happily resigned to being in this sub-class of sporting types and found other things to focus on.  As I’ve written before, I logically settled on considering myself ‘not sporty’.

It wasn’t until my peers started becoming teachers and witnessed the factors which influence this sort of thing, however, that I realised that my logical self-labelling may have had less to do with objective assessment of ability and more to do with snap decisions, ingrained habits and good old fashioned laziness. In the wake of London 2012 and build-up to Glasgow 2014, I am frequently seeing statements from numerous female athletes professing a desire to boost participation rates among girls in PE lessons, which is doubtless a worthy cause. But my own experience makes me feel I should champion the cause of greater nurturing and support for the potential of all students. Allow me to explain.

It is the first Wednesday of the new school year at an entirely fictional grammar school in the late 1990s. 121 new boys, drawn from a wide spectrum of backgrounds and primary schools, are assembled in their arbitrarily-assigned form groups on a rugby pitch, wearing brand new and slightly-too-big rugby shirts, shorts, socks, boots and gum shields still fresh from the previous night’s moulding. A large crowd of teachers – all male, all impossibly tall and broad compared to their 11 year old charges – are corralling boys into groups and starting simple drills laid out in squares; passing, dodging, running, you know the sort.

Within a few moments it is apparent who has played rugby before. Not long after that it is clear who is a natural sportsman and is adapting skills from football or other pursuits. It is also clear who is far, far out of their comfort zone. Perhaps 70 boys are caught between these two extremes.

The following Wednesday, 121 boys are assembled on the rugby pitch again but this time in groups according to ability, which had been published on a noticeboard earlier in the week. Group 1 have important training to do – it is only a few days until the first U12 clash of the season, against another entirely fictional grammar school. Luckily they have all played rugby before and are raring to go. Group 2 likewise, as there will be a B team and probably a C team fielded for the same fixture. Some of them have some learning to do, but are fast movers and eager to pick up new skills. Groups 3 and 4 are less frantic. Group 5 doesn’t have quite enough rugby balls to complete their basic drills, and their training is naturally progressing a little slower. Group 6 are not allowed to practise full contact yet.

Fast forward seven years and it is the end of the season. The first XV, a group of strapping 17 and 18-year-olds who have recently discovered shaving, are celebrating a handsome win. They reminisce about the day they met on the rugby pitch in their second week at school. As you might have guessed, all but one or two were assigned to Group 1. The head coach pats himself on the back for having so quickly and efficiently made his selections in the last millennium.

So what’s wrong with this picture? Is the coach a visionary, a genius who can pinpoint future potential from 121 children in a matter of minutes, and therefore make most efficient use of his valuable coaching capacity over the coming years? Or is he a man of tunnel vision, who focussed on a core of 20 or 30 boys for the best part of a decade, never thinking to source and nurture talent from a pool of the other hundred?

My point is not that the other hundred were ignored because of their lack of rugby prowess – many other sports were on offer. But it will not surprise you that those same 20 or 30 sporty boys tended to also feature in starting squads in cricket, basketball and athletics – with just a few notable exceptions added to the mix. They developed relationships with the coaches and PE teachers - it was only natural that they should be called on to represent their entirely fictional school in other sports.  I used to be baffled as to how people got into teams. When were decisions made? Who should I talk to if I wanted to be considered? Was it already too late to ever get an opportunity? I fictionally discovered that one of my fictional friends at this fictional school had an hour's one-to-one coaching with the head of games every Friday night, to perfect his technique at the hammer throw. I had no idea how this came about, but I felt with total conviction that there would be no way I could access anything similar. Was my haphazard performance at my first ever rugby lesson to blame?

A few years after that first Wednesday, the winter sports options list expanded. There was tennis, judo, hockey, golf and probably some others I've forgotten, most either lightly-supervised or run by external coaches. I stuck with rugby because I enjoyed it, and thought I was reasonably good at it - perhaps a mistake as I could have taken the opportunity of a blank slate. Our sporting trajectories were now firmly set, with many still wanting for any individual attention or support to develop their athletic potential, even if some of them genuinely still harboured a desire to succeed. In this category you would have found me: a slightly-above-average rugby player, perhaps decent runner, reasonably competent with a tennis racket and vaguely committed to tae kwon-do outside of school, but never a star at anything. And staying that way.

This is the kind of thing I'm talking about.

I don’t want this post to sound like a rant or a complaint. Far from it. In rereading it I sound petty and jealous, which if I ever was then I certainly am not now. What I am is filled with regret that I didn’t do something – anything – to attract a PE teacher’s attention, although now I think about it that would have been difficult. Having been set on the path of mediocrity at the age of 11, and finding myself in low-ranked lessons, my ‘coaches’ were spare members of staff whose role was little more than to crowd-control these groups –teachers with little or no training in sport science or coaching. How are children with little or no previous sporting experience supposed to realise their potential if they are given the least-talented staff, the duff old equipment and a dozen other signs that they are only participating in sport because it is a government requirement? A useful analogy would be to transpose this situation onto any other subject: imagine for instance that the most promising English students are coached for debating tournaments and short story competitions by the head of the department, an Oxbridge graduate with decades of experience, whilst those struggling with the subject are given battered copies of Harry Potter to read under the supervision of a spare art teacher. There would be uproar. And rightly so, as no-one could justify those extra-curricular activities for the few draining mainstream resources away from the many. The same is true, I put it, for competitive sports training during school hours.

Don't believe me? Here are some examples:

• My ‘recreational rugby’ sessions were run and refereed by a man (whom I deeply respect as a teacher) who often made shocking decisions because he couldn’t keep up with the pace of the game. If a breakaway run didn’t suit his capacity to give chase and perhaps award a resultant try, he would call a knock-on or offside to bring the game back to where he was standing.
• My sixth-form swimming sessions were entirely unsupervised – we were not improving our skills in the sport or targeting progress or even measuring activity, but rather splashing about as if visiting a pool on an idle Saturday afternoon.
• Cross-country squads – to my recollection - were chosen by a simple race of all 120-odd boys at the start of the season. One year I finished 20th, a position that got me an invitation to a whole-school handicap race the following week. I had no training or advice or guidance of what to expect. I finished somewhere in the anonymous middle of the pack, having started the race eyeballs-out and faded quickly, not even knowing what distance it was or how long I should expect to be running for. That was it – I was clearly not a runner, and was forgotten about as I did not merit further attention. In retrospect, after five marathons of varying pedigree, an arduous ultra, a few decent PBs, a University vest and thousands of miles on my trainers otherwise, I dare to disagree. 

I understand that my school (any resemblance to this entirely fictional school is completely coincidental) is one of the better-respected of its kind for sports provision.

So yes, by all means, encourage girls to participate in PE lessons. But for goodness’ sake – don’t limit any child’s potential to succeed through laziness, favouritism or a resource or staff deficit. Think of all the talent being wasted, all the confidence-boosting, self-esteem raising opportunity that sporting success could offer.

All this campaign needs is a snappy name and a celebrity endorsement, but for now we'll stick with 'Pay attention! I might not be completely crap!' and, for what it's worth, the endorsement of my intense and faintly vitriolic regret.

Happy running

Dave

2013 to date: miles run - , races: 5 and a bit, parkruns: 1, miles biked: 47, metres swum: 1300