What would Pheidippides think?

Had some good feedback from readers of this inane blog in recent weeks. Apparently it is read in Afghanistan and Australia. Wonder if I can stretch it all the way to Zambia and Zimbabwe. All of those countries, and quite a few inbetween, will be represented in the London Olympics 2012 so with this tenuous link I shall continue.

The most iconic image of any Olympic Games has to be the lone figure of the lead marathoner emerging from the lonely, dark shadows into the Olympic stadium holding 80,000 cheering spectators. This is where the lonelieness of the long distance runner becomes a distant memory and a rush of adrenalin kicks in for that final 400 surge to the line and immortality. I've experienced finishing races on the track (Polytechnic Marathon at Windsor, Wimbledon 10, Cheltenham 10km and others); it is a wonderful feeling even in front of a timekeeper and his dog. But in the Olympics must be the best feeling. The only other sporting occasion I can think of that can create anything like the same theatre would be the walk down the 18th fairway at the Open Golf at St Andrews with a three shot lead.

So what is happening in 2012? The marathon will finish in the Mall in Central London. Crazy decision.

The course will be numerous laps around the iconic sites of London, incorporating lots of twists and turns in our ancient city. Seb Coe, sounding somewhat embarrassed in my view because he knows where the race should finish, was wheeled out to state that it was impossible to find a safe route taking the runners to the stadium without decimating traffic congestion. Absolute rubbish, the organisers and many corporate sponsors (yes, money dictates in this horrendously commercial Olympics) didn't want the world to see the East end of London and what that would portray to the viewing tv audience around the world.

It would have been very easy to start the race in central London, put in a few loops taking in all the sites, then direct the runners towards the stadium for the finish - by this time the race would be getting serious and cameras would be concentrating on the runners and not the surroundings anyway. But no, it will be just like any other London Marathon each spring. Very sad. At least the Queen will be able to watch the finish, perhaps she can reverse the decision made by her predecessor in 1908 and lop 2.2 miles off the distance. Those 2.2 miles have caused me an awful lot of pain over the years - in New York 1983 I hit the wall and walked a lot in the last couple of miles yet still managed 2.23.

I've joined the Tower Hamlets protest group on Facebook and would urge others to do the same but sadly the decision has been made and money talks. Not least the fact that it will cost between £20 and £50 to watch the marathon!

Still on the marathon theme, I sat up all night to watch last week's Commonwealth Games marathons from Delhi. The night was made more fun as I chatted online to my darling daughter Natalie in London (I don't think she ever sleeps) and a great old friend of mine, Paul Beauvais, in Melbourne, Australia. Conditions were tough and it was very frustrating to watch as little news filtered through from down the field, but Michelle eventually emerged and was happy with 6th in the race, despite the inevitable Delhi belly, thus ending an eventful and successful year. Great run too from Ben for which there has been little publicity.

79 is the new 39

It must be time for another posting so let's see what random stuff I can come up with - I tell you it's not easy managing a runner's blog when not running, but here goes.

A celebration of near octogenarians.
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I am lucky to know two wonderful characters who are both 79 years old. Both run and are still ambitious in the racing stakes, putting my miserable efforts into perspective. My local chum Fred Robson is 80 this Sunday (10/10/10) and will celebrate by running a charity 10km race. If he doesn't crack 60 minutes he will be annoyed with himself but will soon get over it and have half a Guinness, tend to his bees and plan his next business trip to eastern Europe. Fred never stops, in fact he has been running marathons for some 60 years. Fred can always tell a story in the pub yet doesn't go on about 'the good old days' but prefers to embrace today and the future. A wonderful man.

Ed Whitlock is a member of Ranelagh Harriers, my other club in London. He actually only ran once for the club, in the early 60's, before emigrating to Canada where he still lives. He reconnected with the club about five years ago and now runs all his races in his precious blue Ranelagh singlet. Ed ran last week's Toronto ½ Marathon in 1.34.27, a world record for a 79 year old. He is the only man over 70 to run a marathon under three hours, clocking 2.59.10 in 2003. Like Fred he is always looking forward; he stated after Toronto that the world V80 marathon record of 3.39.18 should be well within his compass next year as long as his fragile knees hold out. I met him in Rotterdam three years ago when he was over for the marathon. When I told him that I was a Ranelagh Harrier and introduced him to Wendy, who has run for the club, and my Dutch friend Alex (pictured with Ed and me) who has socialised on many occasions with us in Richmond, he was elated to meet up with us. A lovely, self-effacing character.

"The end of a race is just a temporary marker without much significance. The same with our lives. Just because there's an end doesn't mean existence has meaning. An end point is simply set up as a temporary marker, or perhaps as an indirect metaphor for the fleeting nature of existence. It's all very philosophical." Yes, another extract from Haruki Murakami's book.

A short follow up to my last blog: I spent half a day at John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford but at the end of it I didn't get the promised elixir of life, or in my case injected dose of pamidronate to alleviate my osteitis. The very friendly doctor wanted more blood tests and to analyse my MRI scan more fully. Another appointment has been made for December - will this ever end?!

Despite all the portents of gloom from the media, I've been enjoying the Commonwealth Games and particularly enjoyed watching an Indian athlete winning bronze in the women's 10,000, the first woman to win a track medal for India. I particularly liked the lap of honour with her and the two Kenyan medallists ... incongruous but also perhaps portentious. News from Doha in Qatar, where the English team's holding camp is based, is of searing temperatures of 40ºC. This makes little sense as it is impossible to train in these conditions other than on the treadmill in air conditioned gyms. It will be bizarre for the marathoners to travel to India in a few days time for (relatively) cooler temperatures, albeit 80% humidity. Looking forward to watching the marathons next Thursday even though they start at 2am UK time (day off after that methinks).

France & Haruki Murakami

A strange combination I grant but for me they came together last week. Had a lovely nine days in France, visiting family in Nantes then exploring northern Brittany, all in hot sunshine. I don't generally read running books, they are usually very one dimensional and shallow, although I have of course read the two mighty tomes that make up Ron Hill's autobiography, an anthology that should be issued to everybody who joins a running club so that today's athletes can understand what the sport should be about. Anyway, in France I decided to read Haruki Murakami's much acclaimed 'What I talk about when I talk about running.' It is a very philosophical paperback despite some dubious translation from the author's native Japanese into Americanised English.

"In each shave is a philosophy. No matter how mundane some action might appear, keep at it long enough and it becomes a contemplative, even meditative act."

In Nantes I really missed not being able to train, I have a lovely course that takes me down past the university where Claudie studied - it is normal to go to your local uni in France rather than get into massive debt just for the sake of numerous hangovers - along the river Erdre, a tributary of the Loire; up 120 steep steps to cross a bridge over the river; down the other side; a circuit of the magnificent Stade de la Beaujoire, where World Cup football & rugby has been played and where Nantes currently sadly ply their trade in the second division of the French league; a tour of the beautifully landscaped surrounding gardens; back across the river; a lap of the horse racing circuit (always loads of joggers, so good for the ego, a bit like Central Park in New York), then home. About 25km in total.

"You have to continually transmit the object of your focus to your entire body ... gradually you'll expand the limits of what you're able to do. Almost imperceptively you'll raise the bar. Repeat & repeat. Patience is a must but results will come."

In Brittany I discovered some lovely running trails, albeit whilst walking, driving and checking out maps. This was all important stuff as we hunt for the best location to buy property. A little training camp would go down perfectly. Also checked out golf courses for that rapidly approaching dreaded day (is it here already?) when I finally give in and consign the running shoes to gardening & car washing duties.

"I have only a few reasons to keep on running, and a truckload of them to quit. All I can do is keep those few reasons nicely polished."

I am still struggling badly with my Achilles. Religiously doing my eccentric exercises but struggling with the concept that pain is good, as instructed by my consultant. It feels counter intuitive to be creating even more pain in my foot in seeking a remedy. More on this next time as well as the lowdown on my visit next Monday to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. Yes, I've decided to go ahead and have an intravenous drip of pamidronate fed into me to attack my osteitis. Look out next time for all the gory details; I've been warned that there are some fairly nasty side effects.

"When I'm running I don't have to talk to anybody & don't have to listen to anybody. This is a part of my day I can't do without."

Finally, yet another tragedy has hit the running world. Steve Wheeler, a top runner for many years with Bourton Road Runners, died in a freak accident last week. He was a similar age to me and although I didn't know him that well, he was one of those guys that was always around. By all accounts he was a real character - in fact from reading some of the anecdotes on Bourton's website, he had similar oddball traits to my great friend Stephen Instone who tragically drowned a year ago. Bourton, a club with whom Cirencester has strong links (the first mob match between our two clubs took place in July) has had more that its fair share of tragedies in recent years; my thoughts go out to Steve's family but also to all at Bourton at this sad & difficult time.

One year on

A year ago I ran the classic marathon distance in the World Masters Championships in Finland. I was aware at the time that I was carrying an injury but little did I know that 12 months down the line my osteitis pubis would still be lingering on and I'd not be running, let alone racing. Add to that a badly inflamed Achilles from jogging a bit whilst carrying two stone more than my racing weight, and things are not good. So what should I do? Bearing in mind a total of 23 miles under my belt in the last 12 weeks - just under that magical two miles a week average, damn! - I decided this morning to do the Swindon Parkrun 5km, well I had to go to Swindon anyway so why not have a little potter to see how the pegs (& lungs) reacted?

I maintain a rolling average weekly mileage graph with my training diary: in August 2009 it stood at 54, today it shows 5, or to put it another way, 2,800 miles a year against 260. That's a stark statistic. It also flags up what I always bang on about to runners who want to improve but can't understand why they don't. It's not a question of banging out 10 good weeks before a big race then doing very little until the next build-up, but a lifestyle change that involves an ongoing training regime throughout the year that allows consistent, good mileage.

Anyway I thoroughly enjoyed a gentle run round at about 7.20 mile pace today although won't have done myself any good. It was a complete contrast to the last race I attended, the European Championships Marathon in Barcelona, not least because today's winner was attached to three dogs! Talking of Barcelona, my visit to that beautiful city now means I have been to 13 out of the 22 cities that have hosted the summer Olympics, only St Louis, Stockholm, Berlin, Melbourne, Tokyo, Mexico, Atlanta, Seoul & Beijing remain to complete the set. Answers on a postcard to name the 13 visited.

Footnote: when staying in Heinola, Finland for last year's World Masters, we watched the world sauna championships (see my blog 28 August 2009). The event builds up to a climax over a couple of days through eliminating rounds until the final, the winner being the last competitor left in the sauna, where temperatures are cranked up to 110ºC (230ºF) by adding half a litre of water to the stove every 30 seconds. The Championships were once again held at the same venue this year but sadly one of the two finalists, a Russian named Vladimir Ladyzhensky, died (the other, defending champion Timo Kaukonen, suffered bad burns and was hospitalised). Think I'll stick to running, or if unable to get back, perhaps bowls.

Barcelona

After long weekends taking in the remote but beautiful south west coast of Ireland, and the total contrast of a heaving but equally beautiful city of Paris, my four week July odyssey concluded with a trip to Barcelona for the European Athletics Championships.

Natalie flew down from Paris to join me and we didn't stop all weekend. Obviously my main reason to be there was for the ladies marathon but we also managed to fit in one evening of athletics at the magnificent Olympic stadium and, of course, watched the men's marathon as well. Whilst the marathoners won't agree, the hot sunshine and warm, balmy evenings helped make the championships truly memorable. After the evening session we let the crowds disperse and sat in the magnificent grounds of the complex quietly drinking beer and soaking up the atmosphere until midnight amongst spectators and competitors from all over Europe - there were flags from everywhere in abundance. We then strolled into a tapas bar at 1am for a fine meal to finish off a magnificent day. (The previous night was paella sitting outside at midnight.) Not sure that a cold damp evening in the regenerated east end of London will have quite the same allure in two years time.

The action was exciting: our ladies paced themselves perfectly in the brutal 30ºC conditions which produced carnage in the later stages. Starting at 10am was not the cleverest idea. Thanks to texts received from Claudie & Wendy, Natz and I were able to relay news to the girls that they were in with a shout of the bronze team medals and so it proved by the narrowest of margins - seeing them collect their medals in the stadium later that evening was a never to be forgotten experience. Despite my total lack of fitness I managed some good interval work that enabled me to watch the race in 13 places on the four lap course with some out & back sections. Exhausting. Michelle (14th, 2.38), who paced her run perfectly having been 27th at 5km, finished strongly, overtaking Sue (16th, 2.39) in the last 5km to lead the team home. An interesting statistic gives an indicator of how well they both ran: excluding the two Brits, only two of the top 19 finishers had pb's outside 2.30 (2.30 & 2.31), all the others were between 2.22 and 2.27. Impressive stuff and an indicator of targets ahead.

Highlight of the evening's athletics was without doubt Farah's 5000, the last four laps were superlative as he relentlessly wound up the pace lap on lap finishing with a 55sec effort amid raucous crowd noise as the Spaniard tried in vain to hold on. Ennis showed her professionalism with a gutsy 800 to win the heptathlon but she's going to have to nurse herself through to the Olympics as her opponents are breathing down her neck. We sat by the pole vault and watched enthralled as it built up over the whole evening - this is the sort of thing tv misses as the panellists waffle on inanely in the studio - it was fascinating watching the interaction between the athletes and their coaches who were standing right by us. There was plenty of other action, most notably for Natalie the men's javelin but that's a long story. Rather embarrassingly I appeared on the big screen at one stage much to the mirth of a few people back home. Thanks for the texts guys.

There were many stories from the weekend but most are best left untold for varying reasons. The whole thing finished with a function for the GB endurance squad in the 5* Arts Hotel down on the marina. I don't want to name drop so will just use christian names of some of those with whom we dined: Seb, Mo, Paula, Charles ... A nice way to end a cracking weekend.

The art of making money

Last Friday in Paris I witnessed an interesting phenomenon. One person transformed an athletics meeting as no other could. With crowds at athletics events generally on the wane, particularly in apathetic countries such as France, in excess of 40,000 filled the bottom two layers of the impressive Stade de France for the Diamond League series. The one man was, of course, Usain Bolt. Because of his participation in an event that would last for less than 10 seconds, this large crowd sat through three hours of top class athletics just two weeks before the European Championships.
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If Bolt had not been competing I doubt whether 10,000 would have turned up. The whole meeting was set up around him, with a couple of side issues in his race. His first head to head in 2010 with his countryman and fastest in the world this year, Asafa Powell, was set up to be a 'monumental' clash according to Athletics Weekly. And standing between these two muscle bound Jamaican monsters on the start line was France's new pin-up, the diminutive Christof Lemaitre, who recently became the first white man to break 10 seconds. Of course the race was slightly anti-climactic with Bolt winning relatively comfortably in 9.84, (positively pedestrian !). But that wasn't the point. The showmanship and electricity produced by Bolt (slight pun there, sorry) in the last two years has created a new audience for the sport on the back of his incredible world records, particularly his unbelievable 9.58. Yes, some people question whether he is clean, particularly given the bad press the Jamaican team are currently getting, but this guy was something special as a 15 year old and has revolutionised sprinting in the way that Dick Fosbury and Bob Beamon did many moons ago.
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The whole of Paris was talking Bolt whilst I was there. All the billboards had his familiar signature lightning bolt pose; a special Jamaican festival was set up in front of the vast Hotel de Ville the night before the race (Usain was there of course), where rum was drunk, dancing was constant and visitors were able to race a machine that ran at Bolt's 9.58 pace; Bolt was on the front pages of the papers photographed at Paris' top night club where the likes of Rafa Nadal and Hollywood 'A' listers had been in recent weeks, and most importantly, people were talking athletics.

Many sportsmen are vastly overpaid but it is easy to see why Bolt gets the big bucks: the event promoters and tv companies love him. He is single handedly keeping the sport's head above water. Just seeing the masses percolating out of the metro station towards the stadium, like oil leaking in the Gulf of Mexico, made me realise we have to be thankful for the likes of Bolt. Whether he'll ever get back to world record form I have my doubts - he's lapping up the superstar lifestyle and may struggle to sustain his brilliance, there are already signs of the actual running becoming almost an irritant.
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Highlight of the meeting for me was the women's high jump where the cloned long-legged Russian blondes gradually crashed out, leaving a great head to head between the charismatic American Chaunte Howard-Lowe and the crowd manipulator Blanka Vlasic, who eventually prevailed with 2.02, having been behind at one stage. It was wonderful to be engrossed in the developing event without being whisked away for another banal Jonathan Edwards / Colin Jackson love-in. There was lots of other good stuff to fill the evening, and some bad - the Russian Alminova storming to victory in the women's 1500 (3.57) having just come off a drugs ban - but despite my ongoing health issues, I came away from the meet feeling pretty good for a change.

To be sure

Along with an array of elite athletes from around the world, I flew into Cork last weekend. They went north from the airport to take part in the Cork City Sports, where, despite a blustery wind, some fine times were achieved. In a metaphor for my running these days, I went south in my hire car and didn't run a step for the five days Claudie and I spent in the emerald isle. We had an idyllic short break staying at my sister's remote house, Tig Na Carrige (pictured) at Toormore, near Mizen Head, Ireland's equivalent of our own Land's End. Whilst at Mizen Head we were approached by two emaciated guys asking if we could give them a lift to the nearest main town, Schull. They'd just cycled from the north of the island and in their words never wanted to get on a f****** bike again.


Despite being in an area with a low population density, I was surprised at the number of people we saw out running. Not top athletes training hard but just locals or tourists, often overweight, doing their daily workout along the country lanes. It's great to see so many people putting on their trainers and not being villified as we used to be 30 years ago. This is mirrored at running clubs up and down the country nowadays: where there would have been a hardy dozen working out at a Tuesday or Wednesday club session in the past you now see 60 or 70, most of whom will rarely or never race other than perhaps for a charity 5k or maybe the London Marathon in the unlikely event of them being accepted under the ballot system. Running clubs have changed massively and the sport has become a leisure activity for middle aged people aware of health issues, rather than in such as football, cricket, rugby, cycling where one joins a club to be competitive. I don't have an issue with this, it is merely an observation.
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I'm currently enjoying the best sport on tv at the moment: the Tour de France is a fantastic event and the production of it on tv is superb. It's a real antidote to the banal World Cup where players feigned injury at the merest touch from an opponent. Most of the riders in France appear to have gauze over arms & legs where they've fallen at 60kph and just got back on their bikes. A phenomenal sport despite ongoing drugs issues which will probably never be fully resolved. Part of the allure of the great coverage over the years has been the double act commentary team of Phil Liggett and ex-pro Paul Sherwen. They have always got the balance right between explaining what's going on, taking in the beautiful surroundings, introducing some humour and avoiding any patronising rubbish that sometimes comes with watching events like the London Marathon. I don't know whether others agree, however, but I get the feeling that Liggett is now just a bit past his best and makes a lot of mistakes. The winner? I'd go for Contador to continue the Spanish domination of sport this year (and how about Sergio Garcia as an outsider at St Andrews?).
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Blogstar this week has to be Fred Robson. Fred, who turns 80 on 10.10.10 has been running marathons for 60 years and flew out to Finland last week to run in the Parvo Nurmi Marathon in Turku (he ran this race last year and finished despite temperatures in the mid 30ºCs). "There's some decent money on offer in the age groups, David" he told me with a scheming voice, "so I think it's a good one to do, especially if it's not too hot." Unfortunately his flight was delayed by many hours and he didn't reach his destination until 4am on the day of the race. He sensibly decided just to run in the accompanying 10k, once again in 33ºC temps and won his age group. I think his secret is Guinness as he always seems to have a glass of the dark stuff in his hand. Which brings me back to Ireland last weekend ... ah the Murphys was silky smooth.