Lifestyle

My dad was a chef and concocted some wonderful meals at home (as did mum!). I love good food & fine wine but when cooking, especially if it's just for myself as was the case recently when Claudie went off to France, the pleasure gained from eating the meal seems disproportionate to the time taken preparing it (and then clearing up afterwards). It's the same in the garden: loads of hard work planting, weeding, watering, all for a plant to flower for a few days before wilting - or in my case last night when cutting the lawn, slicing the top off the tulip - and then not flowering again for another 12 months. We usually get a wonderful array of colours in early May before an Atlantic front storms in bringing wind and heavy rain and flattening everything in the garden. It all seems rather futile putting the work in.

The reality, of course, is that if you stick to the cooking and spend lots of time in the garden week in week out, year after year, then the evidence is clear for all to see beyond the occasional banquet of flowering bed of tulips or plate of fine cuisine: a consistently high quality kitchen / garden. The exact same scenario exists in running. To be successful - however that is judged - a distance runner needs to be patient, run lots of miles and think long term. How do you get to the top at snooker? Spend hours every day playing frame after frame. Who gets to play at the Masters golf? Someone who plays every day for years on end hitting thousands of shots. It's simple, to paraphrase Steve Cram: if you want to be a better runner, run more miles.

It frustrates me enormously that people profess to want to improve as runners yet are not willing to learn from what we old codgers did 30 years ago when standards were so much higher. In basic terms we all worked out what routine was best for us, stuck to that routine throughout the year (letting nothing get in the way of it), and got on with some solid consistent week on week training with lots of racing. I raced virtually every week but plenty of these were just what runners today call tempo runs. This picture is from the Ranelagh ½ Marathon in 1984 where I started very steadily, enjoyed some banter with clubmates and ran round in 71 mins, taking four minutes out of Mike McClachlan, seen here with me at five miles. As ever a few pints were quaffed in the evening.

We also all had a perception of what was considered a decent time; today's runners need to raise their own beliefs so that they can run much faster times.

Thankfully, at Cirencester there is now a group of a dozen or so runners developing quite well. We've done some winter sessions as a group and by running together and pushing & encouraging each other beyond the comfort zone, improvements are coming. We finished the winter with a tough 30 minute paurlauf on the manicured lawns of the Royal Agricultural College, it might be my last session with the club but at least it's one that gives me belief that there is hope for the future of the sport.

Last October I wrote about my old Ranelagh colleague Ed Whitlock. Last Sunday he broke the world V80 marathon record with 3.25.40 in Rotterdam, yes he's 80 years old. In London this weekend only 10% of the field will beat this time. There's no great secret with Ed, he just loves running, goes out every day (generally laps of the local graveyard rather ironically) for long steady runs. He has no special diet, never has a massage and has had Achilles problems for many years (know the feeling!).

It's a lifestyle decision.