Dylan Thomas didn't know what he was starting by penning those words. At my relatively tender age I shouldn't even be contemplating them but so many things have happened to my mind and body that there is a limit to how much fight I have in me. Pathetic really compared to some others I know, including two octogenarians who are still enjoying their running (as has been recorded on this blog), plus another friend who still runs despite the ravages of cancer. There is a limit to how much I can put up with though; my body is battered, disintegrating like a badly packed kebab.
Anyway, I've hung in there this autumn and despite my better judgement have completed and, I have to say, enjoyed, another two mob matches. Bone dry conditions clearly helped as I eased my aching body across Wimbledon Common against Thames Hare & Hounds and in Richmond Park, not chasing You Tube's famous dog Benson but as part of Ranelagh's winning team against the Heathens. I even won the handicap in the park thanks to my cunning plan of running so slowly in the last two years. Before both I ran another Parkrun in Swindon (see picture), smashing the 20 minute barrier once again!
A couple of things have caught my eye in recent weeks. Firstly, I was really interested to read in AW that top international cyclist Emma Pooley, who won the world time trial championships in 2010 and will be an integral part of the women's team for next year's Olympic road race, ran in the Lakeland Trail 14km race at Helvellyn in November. What caught my eye was that she not only won the race but she beat Susan Partridge, Britain's top marathoner in 2011 thanks to her performance in the World Championships in Daegu. That says an awful lot about the fitness levels and professionalism of British cycling right now.
Secondly, hard training sessions ... a piece in AW charted some athletes' toughest sessions; my favourite was top ultra runner Jez Bragg who cited 3 x Snowdon (yes, the highest mountain in Wales) as part of his build up to major races - that's an impressive hill session and makes my old 10 x Richmond Hill look pretty pathetic. Another set of sessions that impressed, albeit with a tinge of sadness, was that of George Dayantis: the England ultra distance international wrote about his build up to a big 100km race in a recent Road Runners Club newsletter, it involved successive long Sunday runs of 50km, 60km, 70km. The sadness is that earlier this year he died.
The nearest I got to anything like these sessions was in a Dutch race I did five times with Ranelagh. The Barendrecht 100km track relay involved a four man team each running 62 x 
400m with 3½ minutes recovery (in my best year I averaged 68 seconds). We won it four times with a best time of 4hr 46m (work it out in marathon terms, it's pretty rapid). The picture shows us winning in 1982 with, from left, Simon Collingridge, me, Simon Hedger & Steve Pautard. Our record breaking team was the same apart from Mike Riley replacing Hedger; I was slightly slower than Collingridge, my flatmate at the time - so I wasn't even the fastest runner in my house! Simon, like me, has been featured in Ranelagh's "12 of the best" link which is reproduced here (more to come, including Hugh Jones hopefully): http://www.ranelagh-harriers.com/interviews.html
More soon on my thoughts on the London Olympics ... oh dear!
