No training this weekend, so if you are looking forward to the meticulously recorded training schedule, described and analysed in painstaking detail, I am afraid you are going to be disappointed. Not for the first time. Michael told me that with just one week to go, my training should be tapering, by which I think he meant 'stopping abruptly'. So, instead of tramping determinedly around the country, I spent the weekend watching the Grand Prix, the cricket and the Tour on TV with my feet up, resting for the big one next weekend. Just one week for the remaining aches and niggles to disappear and just one week to finalise the fantastically complicated logistics exercise of getting 4 of us and our kit from A to B. One week too for the pre-traumatic stress disorder to build nicely and I have my sister to thank for her extraordinary motivational pep-talk for revving that one up nicely.
My sister, Emma, recently returned from 3 years swanning around in the deserts, shopping malls and beach clubs of Dubai, is one of the central planks of our support team, living as she does now conveniently close to the route we will travel next weekend. She has always had the ability to make me collapse in hopeless fits of giggles, even when she was a 3 year old, singing in church on Christmas day. Not during one of the noisy bits, where everyone else is singing, but one of the bits where the chap in the frock is mumbling quietly to himself and everyone else has their heads bowed in pious silence. With assistance from the perfect acoustics of the high-roofed church, her clear, piping voice rang out as she sang; 'The farmer's in his wife, the farmer's in his wife. E-I-Addio the farmer's in his wife'. I also remember trying to play the recorder as I walked towards the nativity play stage in my shepherd's dressing gown and head tea-towel as she stepped out of the audience in front of me, looking the wrong way and with the same piping voice calling; 'where's James?' You trying playing; 'while shepherds watched' on the recorder when it's all you can do not to burst you are laughing so much. On Sunday, we were talking through the plan for next weekend and, knowing my tendency towards injury, Em asked how I was. She then started telling me about a Philip Pullman story, Clockwork, which is about a clockwork man who starts falling apart. Bits literally falling off him yet he determinedly walks on. Well, thanks Em for those carefully chosen words of support. I'll remember that as I stagger across the Downs, discarding unwanted limbs! Needless to say, the phone call rather lost the focus on support teams logistics as the tears of laughter mingled with the hysteria of terror.
So, pre-traumatic stress disorder. The jury is still out on post-traumatic stress, but I think it's just obvious. If you know you are going to do something that is going to hurt, your brain does stuff to you. Once you have done something that hurts, your brain does stuff to you. The worse the pain, the more your brain has to do. Now, I have never been shot at, if you exclude the numerous air-gun shots inflicted on me by my brother as a teenager. (Henry - that's why you can't have an airgun, your brother will shoot you and it will hurt!) Nor has anything really bad ever happened to me, but on the few occasions where my body has been tricked into pouring on the adrenaline in life-saving quantities, such as when I crashed a motorbike at 80pmh, I have a tendency to relive the incident again and again in my head until I can't distinguish real memory from imagined. I expect that's not unusual.
Pre-traumatic stress, then, is just another version of this - and for the last few nights, I have been doing Trailwalker in my sleep. Not in a helpful way, because of the uncertain, meandering nature of sleep thinking and it's been more about the tortuous logistics. However, I suppose it is a form of training. All I know is that if my head is already starting to spin a week before the event, my brain already knows it has some serious motivational talks to deliver to failing bits of body next weekend and is preparing the way so that it all runs like clockwork on the day. Let's just hope bits aren't falling off.
I'll do a post after the event and then that's probably it. You still have time to sponsor us if you haven't done so already, following the link up on the right hand side of the page. If you are interested in following our progress we set off at 6.00am on Saturday and aim to arrive at the finish early on Sunday morning. Martin will be tweeting and his id is Martw00. Think of us and just be careful if Michael calls you - you never know what he'll end up talking you into!
Monday, 11 July 2011
Monday, 4 July 2011
London - love it or loathe it, it's my home
I have always had a bit of a love hate relationship with London. I am sure everyone who lives here loves it and loathes it in some way. You can't avoid the bad stuff; another week goes by and another teenager is stabbed to death for no apparent reason, the main road through Brixton is shut for the second time in 2 weeks and the assumption is that another drug-dealing, gun-toting local has cashed in his life-insurance policy prematurely. The back door of the office yet again looks like the local tramps and deadbeats have mistaken it for the public toilet and it's only 8.30 on Monday morning. Over the years I have had to cross off a number of things that I can do; shops that I am allowed to visit, roads I am allowed to use, that sort of thing. Mainly for my own protection but also for those with me. For example, I can't go to Argos in Streatham any more. Having queued there to return a hoover for the 3rd time in 1995 (actually it felt like the whole of 1995), I looked the manager in the eye and vowed never to return even if Argos was the only shop left on the planet and I was desperate for cheap electrical goods. I now can't go to Lillywhites in Piccadilly ever again. Tom is off to Canada on a rugby tour and needed a scrum cap. We sweated our way on a super-heated underground to the premier sports emporium in the capital of the country that invented rugby, but the surly and completely disinterested assistant didn't know what a scrum cap was - even though he worked on the floor that sold rugby clothing. He looked a bit bemused when I delivered the crushing news that never again would I visit this football shirt-replica swamped excuse for a sports shop.
The same is true for roads. For years I couldn't leave London on the M40 because of that idiotic junction by White City; Battersea Bridge northbound will never see me in a car again; the North End road junction with the Cromwell Road will be similarly starved of my presence - and people ask me why I cycle around London! I don't have much choice.
And yet, still I live here. Ok, so I sneaked off to Hong Kong for a couple of years, but other than that, I have now lived in London since 1986. That's 25 years. Before that I hadn't lived in a single place for longer than 2 years, if you exclude boarding school. In fact, I have lived in West Norwood for most of those years - and, if you don't know it, no, it's not an endearing and vibrant little suburban village; it's actually a bit of a dump. The high street is scruffy and full of pound and charity shops, the ratio of people to fried chicken and kebab shops is about 1:1 and the total number of bars you'd want to go to is zero.
But here's the thing; you can only really lay into something in public when it's yours. If someone insulted my children, they'd need more than a scrum-cap for protection; insulting them is my job. If someone else has a pop at London, or West Norwood, I get all defensive. So there must be some stuff about it that's good - not just the familiarity of a comfortable pair of old slippers. This is partly why this weekend, instead of striking out for the countryside to train, I decided to trade in the rolling green belt of Surrey for the urban jungle. You see, I get to the bit about training for Trailwalker eventually.
The last few weekends I have trained alone and, whilst my own company doesn't necessarily rule out stimulating conversation, I thought I'd come up with a plan that allowed others to benefit too. The plan was to leave West Norwood early on Sunday morning and walk/ hike/ jog up to Tower Bridge and then a long tour down the Thames, hooking up with some company for the last section.
I left West Norwood at around 7.30 in glorious sunshine, oiled up like a well-greased chicken with factor 175 suncream. I wasn't risking the torching I had last weekend nor the snake-like sloughing of forehead skin (don't say that too quickly!). Visitors to London Bridge last week must have assumed I was visiting outpatients at Guys for treatment on a nasty case of leprosy.
A brisk walk through Brockwell Park, home to one of the coolest outdoor pools in the world. And I mean temperature cool. Actually, it's cool in both senses of the word. Then on through Herne Hill, known locally as Col du Herne, home as it is to the single remaining venue from the 1948 Olympics, the Herne Hill Velodrome. A little delapidated it may be, but my kids learnt to ride bikes there and I now meet the Dulwich Paragon there. On past King's Hospital; very special memories there of the boys' arrival many years back. It won't surprise the fearless foursome that my chief concern, faced with a wife who didn't exactly rush herself through childbirth (I'll be ironing my own shirts tonight!), was how I would manage mealtimes during the 'birthing process'. In one of the anti-natal (yes 'i' is correct), I had latched onto the warning that the father would need a good supply of snacks to get through a prolonged period of huffing and puffing. Anxious to avoid the 'business end' of childbirth, I focused on the head-end until in complete exasperation Heledd yelled; 'Oh, for god's sake stop going on about food all the bloody time, I am trying to have a f***g baby here.' I tried not to take offence, but it was pretty hurtful.
So, on through Camberwell, past Edwards Cycles and on up the Walworth Road towards London Bridge. My commuter route in the late 90s and again now I work in London Bridge. Probably not London's smartest streets, yet on a sunny Sunday morning, Burgess Park was a green haven of tennis and dog-walking. Even the now empty tower blocks as you approach the Elephant and Castle had a quiet dignity to them; low cost replacements for the streets remodelled by the Luftwaffe, not pretty but home to many a struggling Londoner. Round the Elephant, and 2 extraordinary buildings that have changed the traditionally low-rise skyline. The 'Strata' tower or 'Razor' and the 'Shard', not yet finished but already visible from miles around.
Still walking at this point, and beginning to understand why the tramps use our office doorways due to lack of alternatives, I took a quick break in Starbucks. Then it was onto the Thames path starting at Tower Bridge, such a stunning landmark, standing out against the bright blue sky. For the next few miles, the tourist landmarks hit you one after the other; a mixture of old and new; HMS Belfast, with the wax models of the chap having his appendix out. A survivor of one of the most famous sea battles of the 2nd World War and now a floating museum and conference venue. Boris' wobbly jelly of a building, tilting to one side; Hays Galleria, Southwark Cathedral, the Golden Hinde. On past the Globe, the Tate Modern and the South Bank. Then the classics; the Eye, Big Ben, Parliament.
By this time, it was around 10.00am and the tourist numbers were swelling; I must apologise to the large group of Germans who may have overheard me deep in conversation with my camera. It had chosen this moment to stop working; perhaps the cornucopia of architectural eye-candy was too much for it. It required some firm but perhaps somewhat agricultural words of encouragement and, with my iPod blocking my own hearing, I may have spoken a little louder than I intended. A little behind schedule now, I decided to run once I had moved on from the delights of Westminster to the wastelands of Vauxhall and Battersea Power Station. That's an odd one; a distinctive but hardly beautiful fixture, beloved and hated in equal measure; abandoned and left mouldering for years whilst plans to re-build it have foundered. It sort of sums up London in many ways. Is it an iconic and historical landmark or an eye-sore occupying much needed development land in the heart of the capital? Yes to both.
Battersea Park. I love Battersea Park. When we were fed up with the manicured lawns of Dulwich and the open dog-shit acres of Brockwell, we'd go the extra mile to Battersea to wear out the boys in the zoo, or at the adventure playground, or just walking around the lake, eating genuinely good food at the cafe. I was still running, feeling no pain and doing the now traditional diesel-chug, where I break no land-speed records but keep ticking off the miles.
At this point, I diverted from the river and up to Clapham Common to meet up with the rest of my team for the latter part of the day's training. Paul, Karen, Heledd and I, post-bacon sandwich re-fuel, set off from 'between the commons' and off down to Plantation Wharf, past the old Candle factory, picking up the Thames path again past acres of new flats housing London's young professionals. Down to Wandsworth Bridge and across up the north side of the Thames, past the old power station on Lots Road that used to provide the electricity for the underground, but which now stands idle and derelict. What is it about London power stations? On past chintzy Cheyne Walk, where one posy resident parks his two cars, number plates '2 B' and 'NOT 2B' alongside the main road. Cock.
So I might moan about London; I may even have said that while I was in Hong Kong, I didn't miss London at all. But where else in the world could you see all this walking from your home? And on days like this, with the sun shining and some great company, how can it get better? Well, I'll tell you how. An enormous side of English beef and a bucket of sparkling wine. Not from Australia or France; but from Denbies Vineyard in Box Hill. Yes, Box Hill, in England. English Sunday lunch, with the Wimbledon final and the sports section of the Sunday Times. London. Home.
The same is true for roads. For years I couldn't leave London on the M40 because of that idiotic junction by White City; Battersea Bridge northbound will never see me in a car again; the North End road junction with the Cromwell Road will be similarly starved of my presence - and people ask me why I cycle around London! I don't have much choice.
And yet, still I live here. Ok, so I sneaked off to Hong Kong for a couple of years, but other than that, I have now lived in London since 1986. That's 25 years. Before that I hadn't lived in a single place for longer than 2 years, if you exclude boarding school. In fact, I have lived in West Norwood for most of those years - and, if you don't know it, no, it's not an endearing and vibrant little suburban village; it's actually a bit of a dump. The high street is scruffy and full of pound and charity shops, the ratio of people to fried chicken and kebab shops is about 1:1 and the total number of bars you'd want to go to is zero.
But here's the thing; you can only really lay into something in public when it's yours. If someone insulted my children, they'd need more than a scrum-cap for protection; insulting them is my job. If someone else has a pop at London, or West Norwood, I get all defensive. So there must be some stuff about it that's good - not just the familiarity of a comfortable pair of old slippers. This is partly why this weekend, instead of striking out for the countryside to train, I decided to trade in the rolling green belt of Surrey for the urban jungle. You see, I get to the bit about training for Trailwalker eventually.
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| Ruskin Park - Camberwell |
I left West Norwood at around 7.30 in glorious sunshine, oiled up like a well-greased chicken with factor 175 suncream. I wasn't risking the torching I had last weekend nor the snake-like sloughing of forehead skin (don't say that too quickly!). Visitors to London Bridge last week must have assumed I was visiting outpatients at Guys for treatment on a nasty case of leprosy.
A brisk walk through Brockwell Park, home to one of the coolest outdoor pools in the world. And I mean temperature cool. Actually, it's cool in both senses of the word. Then on through Herne Hill, known locally as Col du Herne, home as it is to the single remaining venue from the 1948 Olympics, the Herne Hill Velodrome. A little delapidated it may be, but my kids learnt to ride bikes there and I now meet the Dulwich Paragon there. On past King's Hospital; very special memories there of the boys' arrival many years back. It won't surprise the fearless foursome that my chief concern, faced with a wife who didn't exactly rush herself through childbirth (I'll be ironing my own shirts tonight!), was how I would manage mealtimes during the 'birthing process'. In one of the anti-natal (yes 'i' is correct), I had latched onto the warning that the father would need a good supply of snacks to get through a prolonged period of huffing and puffing. Anxious to avoid the 'business end' of childbirth, I focused on the head-end until in complete exasperation Heledd yelled; 'Oh, for god's sake stop going on about food all the bloody time, I am trying to have a f***g baby here.' I tried not to take offence, but it was pretty hurtful.
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| Tower Bridge |
So, on through Camberwell, past Edwards Cycles and on up the Walworth Road towards London Bridge. My commuter route in the late 90s and again now I work in London Bridge. Probably not London's smartest streets, yet on a sunny Sunday morning, Burgess Park was a green haven of tennis and dog-walking. Even the now empty tower blocks as you approach the Elephant and Castle had a quiet dignity to them; low cost replacements for the streets remodelled by the Luftwaffe, not pretty but home to many a struggling Londoner. Round the Elephant, and 2 extraordinary buildings that have changed the traditionally low-rise skyline. The 'Strata' tower or 'Razor' and the 'Shard', not yet finished but already visible from miles around.
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| Shard in the background |
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| City Hall |
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| Southwark Cathedral |
Battersea Park. I love Battersea Park. When we were fed up with the manicured lawns of Dulwich and the open dog-shit acres of Brockwell, we'd go the extra mile to Battersea to wear out the boys in the zoo, or at the adventure playground, or just walking around the lake, eating genuinely good food at the cafe. I was still running, feeling no pain and doing the now traditional diesel-chug, where I break no land-speed records but keep ticking off the miles.
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| Lots Rd Power Station |
At this point, I diverted from the river and up to Clapham Common to meet up with the rest of my team for the latter part of the day's training. Paul, Karen, Heledd and I, post-bacon sandwich re-fuel, set off from 'between the commons' and off down to Plantation Wharf, past the old Candle factory, picking up the Thames path again past acres of new flats housing London's young professionals. Down to Wandsworth Bridge and across up the north side of the Thames, past the old power station on Lots Road that used to provide the electricity for the underground, but which now stands idle and derelict. What is it about London power stations? On past chintzy Cheyne Walk, where one posy resident parks his two cars, number plates '2 B' and 'NOT 2B' alongside the main road. Cock.  |
| St Mary's Battersea |
Over Battersea Bridge and past the Church of St Mary's, where William Blake was married, built in 1777 and now sitting alongside the ultra-modern apartment blocks that flank the bridge, we finally stopped for the promised coffee break that had been the condition of Heledd accompanying. The continental feel of Battersea Square, a delightful pavement, thronged with young Londoners idling away a sunny Sunday morning. Then back up to Clapham Common and shoes off. 36km, feet a little sore, left shin a bit stiff but otherwise fine.
So I might moan about London; I may even have said that while I was in Hong Kong, I didn't miss London at all. But where else in the world could you see all this walking from your home? And on days like this, with the sun shining and some great company, how can it get better? Well, I'll tell you how. An enormous side of English beef and a bucket of sparkling wine. Not from Australia or France; but from Denbies Vineyard in Box Hill. Yes, Box Hill, in England. English Sunday lunch, with the Wimbledon final and the sports section of the Sunday Times. London. Home.
Monday, 27 June 2011
Tomatohead goes west.
Medium term I'll be fine. No ridiculous Rooney-esque hood wearing and forced celibacy while the implants take effect. Brushing the wiry and lightly greying thatch forward will see me through the next few years without too much difficulty, and when that starts to fail, I have reserves in the form of a pair of eye-brows that would give the Archbishop of Canterbury a run for his money. With that and the ear hair and a little imaginative topiary, baldness will only need to be admitted when I am about 60, by which time I imagine it will be the least of my problems, with the full set of real and imagined ailments that are queuing up. However, in the short term, I have a problem. Even those who barely know me cannot fail to notice my forehead. Not only is it a bit more expansive these days, but today it is glowing bright red, throbbing and pulsing like a like a dangerously over-heating nuclear isotope.
Yesterday, I was outside enjoying the glorious Somerset sunshine, listening to some of my favourite music and the big orange fella in the sky exacted a terrible revenge. I also have a lower arm and leg 'tan' and an Arkansian neck to go with it. No, I wasn't sweating around Glastonbury in the dry mud in wellies, though I was quite close. I decided to forgo the comfort of the family car in travelling from a Saturday party in Bristol to Vobster Quay diving school (on my parents' doorstep in Somerset) where Henry was getting Padi qualified. Rather than be wafted in hung-over and air-conditioned comfort, I decided to hike the 20.5 miles as my weekly long training session. I did think about getting some sun cream, but there wasn't much open in Bristol and when I got out into the country, there was nothing. Not even a village shop selling water. So I got a little 'tanned' and today it hurts if I frown. It also hurts where I got stung by stinging nettles and torn apart by brambles as I jumped into the hedge to avoid the young Sebastian Vettel wannabees. My route took me on the smaller lanes and roads, but in places a surprising amount of traffic hurtled around, making the best use of the warm tarmac and hugging the bends, little expecting a sweating, panting vision in lycra to be staggering along towards them sucking furiously on a camelback. So, somewhat de-hydrated after some vigorous partying on Saturday, hatless and without sun protection, dangerously low on fluid and with no food, you certainly couldn't accuse me of over-preparation. The good news is that I made it in a little over 5 hours with a mixture of walking and running - the bad news is that it was painful, and I can no longer con myself that I have time to gradually increase the workload in preparation for the big one. I covered just one third of the full distance and if you had told me to turn around, and do the whole thing again, twice, I wouldn't even have had the energy to hit you. So, it's time for some more sophisticated forms of self-delusion.
Last week, John, one of the fearless foursome, sent me a link to an article the Telegraph. The email didn't come with an explanation, just the link. I think he was trying to tell me 2 things; the first was to give me some handy tips on how to write a blog from someone who is clearly very good at it; the second was a reminder that whilst our challenge may seem pretty hard core and extreme, compared to the stuff that some people get involved in, ours is merely a gentle walk in the country. This screwball (the blogger - not John!) runs ultra-marathons for fun and has just set off on the epic 3220 mile race across America from LA to New York, covering around 50 miles a day every day for 2 months. Check out http://www.runningandstuff.com/ram/ if you are fed up with my whining about sunburn and sore feet and want to follow someone a bit tougher!
The point for mentioning this, and, as usual it is slightly tangential, is that the piece of mental trickery I am going to rely on to do triple the distance I did this weekend is this. Anyone who has ever done a longish run, bike ride, swim or whatever knows that the maximum distance you can ever do is the distance you set out to do. I know that sounds thick, but what I mean is if you set out to run 5 miles, you might fail and only do 4, you might succeed and finish, but you couldn't even do 5 miles plus 20 yards. I can cycle 100 miles, but if only set out to do 50, I can't do 51. So, if I set out to hike 100km, I might make it, but once I get to Brighton, I will not be able to walk another metre. Not on Sunday and probably not for a good few days afterwards. I am similarly sure that once this James Adams chap reaches New York, he will go no further.
The other thing I am going to have to do it is to convince my team that finishing as a team is more important than finishing in a 'good' time. I did 20 miles on Sunday at a pace that would have us finishing in 15 hours and I now know, with absolute certainty, that I can't sustain that pace over the full distance, and I'll need the full force of the team's encouragement to get me to the finish line. We had a team call last week to agree our 'goal' and agreed that a good time would be good; I think we also agreed that we want to finish as a foursome and this is more important that beating the Gurkhas. So, unless one of us is badly hurt and can only crawl, we help eachother through the bad patches. Guys, I think I am going to need quite a bit of encouragement.
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| Pretty village with no shop |
Last week, John, one of the fearless foursome, sent me a link to an article the Telegraph. The email didn't come with an explanation, just the link. I think he was trying to tell me 2 things; the first was to give me some handy tips on how to write a blog from someone who is clearly very good at it; the second was a reminder that whilst our challenge may seem pretty hard core and extreme, compared to the stuff that some people get involved in, ours is merely a gentle walk in the country. This screwball (the blogger - not John!) runs ultra-marathons for fun and has just set off on the epic 3220 mile race across America from LA to New York, covering around 50 miles a day every day for 2 months. Check out http://www.runningandstuff.com/ram/ if you are fed up with my whining about sunburn and sore feet and want to follow someone a bit tougher!
The point for mentioning this, and, as usual it is slightly tangential, is that the piece of mental trickery I am going to rely on to do triple the distance I did this weekend is this. Anyone who has ever done a longish run, bike ride, swim or whatever knows that the maximum distance you can ever do is the distance you set out to do. I know that sounds thick, but what I mean is if you set out to run 5 miles, you might fail and only do 4, you might succeed and finish, but you couldn't even do 5 miles plus 20 yards. I can cycle 100 miles, but if only set out to do 50, I can't do 51. So, if I set out to hike 100km, I might make it, but once I get to Brighton, I will not be able to walk another metre. Not on Sunday and probably not for a good few days afterwards. I am similarly sure that once this James Adams chap reaches New York, he will go no further.
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| Tomato-head |
Monday, 20 June 2011
I've not peaked yet
I suppose this week was always going to be a bit if an anti-climax after the taste of the real thing in the rain last weekend. For starters, I was a little stiffer and more tired than I expected to be, so getting motivated again was hard. Then there is the fact that with the team so dispersed, I train mostly alone and it's pretty easy to 'listen to your body', when it is begging for a rest. It's more than that though. I'm not much for thinking too hard, preferring precipitous and often ill-considered impetuosity as a way of guiding me blundering through life, but it strikes me that this motivation thing is quite important.
One thing that has been front of mind over the last few weeks as No 1 son has been playing GCSE catch-up, paying for his lack of diligence early on, is how you motivate a teenager. Threats of physical violence are met with peals of derisive laughter and attempts at earnest career advice with the rolling eye treatment. Incidentally, two politicians have managed to get right up my nose; first Michael Gove, with perfect timing, talks about abolishing our totally devalued exam system, where A*s are doled out like Olympics tickets to Fifa cheats. Now I know Tom is pretty unlikely to read the article in the paper and would probably not get as worked up about it as me, but that's not the point. The point is that his Mum and I have lived through the pain of these wretched exams too and I don't like being told they are worthless. Then there was Cameron, saying how he wants absent fathers to feel like pariahs. Really? We all make mistakes and when we do, is it really the best thing to do to heap further scorn and humiliation on us? If I am scared of jumping off the high board, is it better to ridicule and humiliate me further, or to encourage me to jump in because the water's lovely? Maybe I was just being a little over-sensitive on Father's day. Both of them may well have a point, but I am not sure I'd look to either for motivation.
Anyway, as I made my way to Box Hill early this Sunday morning I started to wonder about my own motivation; not just how I needed to raise myself from the anti-climax following the highs of last weekend, but the wider question of why am I doing Trailwalker and why generally do I go for these daft endurance events as I subside kicking and screaming into injury-prone middle age.
I kept mulling this over as I did 5 laps of a fuller circuit than I had managed last time I was here, two weeks ago. And I think I have reached a realisation; not some Damascene moment as I hopped across the stepping stones over the much swollen river Mole; more a recognition of something I probably knew anyway but, for me at least, seemed reasonably profound.
Obviously the whole exercise thing is just another manifestation of the 'mid-life crisis', but what does that mean? One of the proudest moments of my life was persuading my wife to let me buy an Audi TT with the line: 'Look, I am 40, what's it going to be...sportscar or mistress?' To her credit, she replied; 'Look, you're 40 - what's it to be, Soprano or Bass?' The sports car, the guitar, the tattoo; that's just displacement activity, another symptom, like doing Trailwalker. I have been trying to understand what lies beneath it. And that was what struck me; it's the need to deny that you have peaked. If you have peaked and everything you have done in life so far has been an exercise in getting gradually better, whether that is at sport, at work, at being a parent, all you have to look forward to is gradually accelerating decline.
What happened today was that I managed to pick myself up from the slightly flat feeling after the high of last weekend and show a marked improvement over the last time I was here. I ran all of the flat and downhill bits on an extended circuit at walked up the longest, steepest bit of the hill, completing a 4km circuit 5 times. And I felt like a machine. We still have a few weeks to go and I am pretty sure there is still some room for improvement too. I am in the zone now where I can pour on the effort and still get up and do it again the next day. Well, I may not dominate CS7 tomorrow, but I'll be there.
What's more, as I wobbled down Box Hill for the second time, I ran into an old cycle-buddy. Splattered in mud from head to toe, he was training for a mountain-biking tour across the Alps. 8 days of clean air, merciless gradient and endless competitive banter with a group of like-minded nutters. What's not to like about that? Maybe that could be next year's challenge. I've not peaked yet damn it! I'll show you.
One thing that has been front of mind over the last few weeks as No 1 son has been playing GCSE catch-up, paying for his lack of diligence early on, is how you motivate a teenager. Threats of physical violence are met with peals of derisive laughter and attempts at earnest career advice with the rolling eye treatment. Incidentally, two politicians have managed to get right up my nose; first Michael Gove, with perfect timing, talks about abolishing our totally devalued exam system, where A*s are doled out like Olympics tickets to Fifa cheats. Now I know Tom is pretty unlikely to read the article in the paper and would probably not get as worked up about it as me, but that's not the point. The point is that his Mum and I have lived through the pain of these wretched exams too and I don't like being told they are worthless. Then there was Cameron, saying how he wants absent fathers to feel like pariahs. Really? We all make mistakes and when we do, is it really the best thing to do to heap further scorn and humiliation on us? If I am scared of jumping off the high board, is it better to ridicule and humiliate me further, or to encourage me to jump in because the water's lovely? Maybe I was just being a little over-sensitive on Father's day. Both of them may well have a point, but I am not sure I'd look to either for motivation.
Anyway, as I made my way to Box Hill early this Sunday morning I started to wonder about my own motivation; not just how I needed to raise myself from the anti-climax following the highs of last weekend, but the wider question of why am I doing Trailwalker and why generally do I go for these daft endurance events as I subside kicking and screaming into injury-prone middle age.
I kept mulling this over as I did 5 laps of a fuller circuit than I had managed last time I was here, two weeks ago. And I think I have reached a realisation; not some Damascene moment as I hopped across the stepping stones over the much swollen river Mole; more a recognition of something I probably knew anyway but, for me at least, seemed reasonably profound.
Obviously the whole exercise thing is just another manifestation of the 'mid-life crisis', but what does that mean? One of the proudest moments of my life was persuading my wife to let me buy an Audi TT with the line: 'Look, I am 40, what's it going to be...sportscar or mistress?' To her credit, she replied; 'Look, you're 40 - what's it to be, Soprano or Bass?' The sports car, the guitar, the tattoo; that's just displacement activity, another symptom, like doing Trailwalker. I have been trying to understand what lies beneath it. And that was what struck me; it's the need to deny that you have peaked. If you have peaked and everything you have done in life so far has been an exercise in getting gradually better, whether that is at sport, at work, at being a parent, all you have to look forward to is gradually accelerating decline.
What happened today was that I managed to pick myself up from the slightly flat feeling after the high of last weekend and show a marked improvement over the last time I was here. I ran all of the flat and downhill bits on an extended circuit at walked up the longest, steepest bit of the hill, completing a 4km circuit 5 times. And I felt like a machine. We still have a few weeks to go and I am pretty sure there is still some room for improvement too. I am in the zone now where I can pour on the effort and still get up and do it again the next day. Well, I may not dominate CS7 tomorrow, but I'll be there.
What's more, as I wobbled down Box Hill for the second time, I ran into an old cycle-buddy. Splattered in mud from head to toe, he was training for a mountain-biking tour across the Alps. 8 days of clean air, merciless gradient and endless competitive banter with a group of like-minded nutters. What's not to like about that? Maybe that could be next year's challenge. I've not peaked yet damn it! I'll show you.
Monday, 13 June 2011
Dancing with the Devil's Dyke
I've never really liked dancing. There's plenty of evidence that doesn't support this statement; those that have witnessed the jogging on the spot, flailing-armed style of 'Dad dancing' that I made my own long before fatherhood, might be surprised that I don't like dancing. Those that saw me at the work Christmas party in 2000 would be surprised. (I met someone last week who had been there and the first question she asked was - 'Do you still have those yellow pants?' - and, no, she wasn't American!) Those who saw me shirtless in a Paris gay-bar sharing a podium with a man dressed only in a 'cock-sock' might be confused at the notion that I wasn't actually a raging exhibitionist. The thing is, and I am sure I am not alone here; I can only really dance when I have rinsed away the inhibitions with sufficient booze. Over the years I have perfected the ability to drink just enough - as a youngster there was only a short window between getting sufficiently loaded to pluck up courage, grab a girl and get on the dance floor before losing motor control and having to lie down and sob.
I know this is particularly long pre-amble, but I will get to the point soon. I was thinking about the nature of exhibitionism in relation to this blog - it is after all the ultimate vanity to commit words to the ether and expect people to read them with interest and it occurred to me that that I find it easier to write without really knowing if anyone is reading. Much like dancing; knowing or caring that I am being watched makes me self-conscious. The reason I bring it up this week is that this weekend saw our team of 4 meet up and train together for the first time and one thing that came out is that the guys all seem to read this blog. Now, writing this, I know they are going to read it to see what I say about the hike we did across 30km of the South Downs Way, taking in Devil's Dyke and Ditching Beacon. Suddenly I feel like I am on the dance floor without the benefit of a number of strong cocktails to get my arms waving.
I'll start with Saturday, which saw me link up with my new cycling club for the second time. I rolled into the Herne Hill velodrome at 8.30 to join the club ride, hoping to find a group I was able to stay with after the sobering experience of a fortnight ago when the steel-limbed Frenchman gave me a demonstration in hill-climbing. True to form I grossly over-estimated my own ability and joined the second of 4 groups leaving Dulwich and was forced to make a quick re-assessment and drop back to the slower 3rd group after the lung-bursting first climb over Crystal Palace hill. Thereafter, all was well and I mostly kept up through the morning as we circled the North Downs. So hurrah! I seem to have cracked the cycling club thing. It also didn't rain, which was a bonus.
So to Sunday, when it did rain. All day, sometimes quite hard, often horizontally and usually accompanied by strong winds whipping in from the south coast. Michael and I met up in Balham; he lives in North London with his wife and 3 young children, so I imagine his day ended with having to talk his wife down from the ledge and untying the children having left them all day. Like the other 2 team members, he works for IBM and is the one responsible for putting the team together. He's a runner and would love to have had us running the Trailwalker so I have had to let him down gently on this one. We drove to near the end point of the hike to meet John and Martin, the ex-army duo who also work at IBM. John had driven all the way up from Hereford with a pal who was to help ferry us around. He stayed on in Hereford after leaving the army, so I was pretty confident that if there was any need for us to get involved in unarmed combat we'd be in good hands.
Martin, from Cambridgeshire, had volunteered to be map-reader in chief and, being an ex-army officer, had the immediate trust of the civilians in the team and the scepticism of the military men. Apparently, you never trust an officer with a map. However, despite some discrepancies between the map and instruction provided by the organisers, navigation was spot on, a factor which I am sure will help us when we have to repeat the section at night having already hiked 50 miles or so.
So, one of the biggest questions for me - did we get on? The event is going to mean us going through the fire together and if we didn't gel as a team, this would make it a much harder event. Those of you who are thinking that walking is easy and anyone could do this - you're wrong. I have done lots of nutty things and I reckon this will be right up there as one of the hardest. Well, the good news is that we did get on. Sure it rained, yes it was not the ideal day to go for a hike, but I think we all thoroughly enjoyed the day. We all have lots in common - age, marital status, children; 3 of the team work in the same company albeit they don't have much to do with eachother at work. Most importantly though, and partly because of the ravages of time and an enduring love of putting ourselves through insane amounts of pain, we have a shared lexicon of injuries. Never have I spent so much time comfortably discussing torn hamstrings, prolapsed discs, heart murmurs, deep vein thromboses, sciatica and all manner of other things medical. I was amongst friends and the miles slipped by with relative ease. The only regrets were that these guys don't seem to completely share my views on the essential need to construct the day around good food stops; and that I completely forgot to take any photos until Michael and I stopped on the return journey to buy coffee in a petrol station.
The other time that I can dance without being self-conscious is when I am surrounded by friends. Now I can dance with Dulwich Paragon and with my Trailwalker team. Don't worry though, guys, I can explain the podium thing and it's not how it looks!
I know this is particularly long pre-amble, but I will get to the point soon. I was thinking about the nature of exhibitionism in relation to this blog - it is after all the ultimate vanity to commit words to the ether and expect people to read them with interest and it occurred to me that that I find it easier to write without really knowing if anyone is reading. Much like dancing; knowing or caring that I am being watched makes me self-conscious. The reason I bring it up this week is that this weekend saw our team of 4 meet up and train together for the first time and one thing that came out is that the guys all seem to read this blog. Now, writing this, I know they are going to read it to see what I say about the hike we did across 30km of the South Downs Way, taking in Devil's Dyke and Ditching Beacon. Suddenly I feel like I am on the dance floor without the benefit of a number of strong cocktails to get my arms waving.
I'll start with Saturday, which saw me link up with my new cycling club for the second time. I rolled into the Herne Hill velodrome at 8.30 to join the club ride, hoping to find a group I was able to stay with after the sobering experience of a fortnight ago when the steel-limbed Frenchman gave me a demonstration in hill-climbing. True to form I grossly over-estimated my own ability and joined the second of 4 groups leaving Dulwich and was forced to make a quick re-assessment and drop back to the slower 3rd group after the lung-bursting first climb over Crystal Palace hill. Thereafter, all was well and I mostly kept up through the morning as we circled the North Downs. So hurrah! I seem to have cracked the cycling club thing. It also didn't rain, which was a bonus.
So to Sunday, when it did rain. All day, sometimes quite hard, often horizontally and usually accompanied by strong winds whipping in from the south coast. Michael and I met up in Balham; he lives in North London with his wife and 3 young children, so I imagine his day ended with having to talk his wife down from the ledge and untying the children having left them all day. Like the other 2 team members, he works for IBM and is the one responsible for putting the team together. He's a runner and would love to have had us running the Trailwalker so I have had to let him down gently on this one. We drove to near the end point of the hike to meet John and Martin, the ex-army duo who also work at IBM. John had driven all the way up from Hereford with a pal who was to help ferry us around. He stayed on in Hereford after leaving the army, so I was pretty confident that if there was any need for us to get involved in unarmed combat we'd be in good hands.
Martin, from Cambridgeshire, had volunteered to be map-reader in chief and, being an ex-army officer, had the immediate trust of the civilians in the team and the scepticism of the military men. Apparently, you never trust an officer with a map. However, despite some discrepancies between the map and instruction provided by the organisers, navigation was spot on, a factor which I am sure will help us when we have to repeat the section at night having already hiked 50 miles or so.
So, one of the biggest questions for me - did we get on? The event is going to mean us going through the fire together and if we didn't gel as a team, this would make it a much harder event. Those of you who are thinking that walking is easy and anyone could do this - you're wrong. I have done lots of nutty things and I reckon this will be right up there as one of the hardest. Well, the good news is that we did get on. Sure it rained, yes it was not the ideal day to go for a hike, but I think we all thoroughly enjoyed the day. We all have lots in common - age, marital status, children; 3 of the team work in the same company albeit they don't have much to do with eachother at work. Most importantly though, and partly because of the ravages of time and an enduring love of putting ourselves through insane amounts of pain, we have a shared lexicon of injuries. Never have I spent so much time comfortably discussing torn hamstrings, prolapsed discs, heart murmurs, deep vein thromboses, sciatica and all manner of other things medical. I was amongst friends and the miles slipped by with relative ease. The only regrets were that these guys don't seem to completely share my views on the essential need to construct the day around good food stops; and that I completely forgot to take any photos until Michael and I stopped on the return journey to buy coffee in a petrol station.The other time that I can dance without being self-conscious is when I am surrounded by friends. Now I can dance with Dulwich Paragon and with my Trailwalker team. Don't worry though, guys, I can explain the podium thing and it's not how it looks!
Monday, 6 June 2011
The Grand Old Duke of York
When the boys were young, I used to sing to them. Not the sort of singing that would lull them gently to sleep; that sort of singing would require a slightly better voice than I have been (dis)graced with. Mostly, the singing I did was to wind them up and one of the old favorites was a variation on 'the Grand Old Duke of York.' Not the fabulously vulgar buffoon and "boorish freeloader" with the antlered daughter. The Duke of York I had in mind was the one who kept going up and down hills with his 10,000 men. The variation to the song went something like:
Oh the Grand old Duke of Pork (somewhat prescient given some of the tittle tattle)
He had 10,000 sausages
He marched them up to the top of the grill
And he marched them down again.
There is a reason for mentioning this; my cunning plan for this week has been to put aside the bicycle and to start to up the mileage on foot. On Thursday I did my best imitation of a well run-in diesel chugging into the office and then my equally impressive imitation of a slightly disabled, lumpen buffoon as I attempted to run/ walk home again at the end of the day. Still, 20km in one day is more than I have managed to date and it didn't actually feel too bad. So it was time to raise the bar again on Sunday.
Having raided the bar on Saturday, the rude shrieks of the alarm clock at 6.30am were less than welcome, particularly as our handsome and endearingly stupid cat had spent most of the night scrabbling on the radiator as he tried to squeeze through the window to do away with the insolent pigeon on the roof. Nonetheless, I set off in the car to Box Hill; site of the 2012 Olympic cycle race, which I won't be seeing because they gave all the tickets to Fifa. (Did you see that?? Sepp 'I'm not vindictive' Blather and his odious cronies are being given freedom of London, chauffeured around in limos at our expense with free tickets to all the best events)
Anyway, Box Hill, I must avoid getting too worked up about Sepp, my systolic readings are going off the scale; not to mention the tourettes. The idea was that I get in some training on hills, leaving the car at the bottom, walking up and jogging around and down back to the start. I have no idea how long the whole circuit is but I managed to do it 5 times in just under 2.5 hours. And for pretty much the whole time, that wretched verse of nursery rhyme, bastardised with references to tasty pork-based snacks, played around my head in an endless loop. Clearly, this type of event is best done in a team, where the cameraderie helps to stop you from suffering from spatial isolation psychosis. I am quite excited, for next weekend is the first time our team of four will meet up and train together. Excited, but slightly nervous. Less nervous having bested the grand old duke himself , but keen not to disgrace myself in front of my team. We are heading to the South Downs to see what's really in store for us in just over a month's time.
Speaking of which, thank you for all those who have sponsored us already; those of you who intend to but haven't got around to it yet, thank you also. Keep it coming.
Oh the Grand old Duke of Pork (somewhat prescient given some of the tittle tattle)
He had 10,000 sausages
He marched them up to the top of the grill
And he marched them down again.
There is a reason for mentioning this; my cunning plan for this week has been to put aside the bicycle and to start to up the mileage on foot. On Thursday I did my best imitation of a well run-in diesel chugging into the office and then my equally impressive imitation of a slightly disabled, lumpen buffoon as I attempted to run/ walk home again at the end of the day. Still, 20km in one day is more than I have managed to date and it didn't actually feel too bad. So it was time to raise the bar again on Sunday.
Having raided the bar on Saturday, the rude shrieks of the alarm clock at 6.30am were less than welcome, particularly as our handsome and endearingly stupid cat had spent most of the night scrabbling on the radiator as he tried to squeeze through the window to do away with the insolent pigeon on the roof. Nonetheless, I set off in the car to Box Hill; site of the 2012 Olympic cycle race, which I won't be seeing because they gave all the tickets to Fifa. (Did you see that?? Sepp 'I'm not vindictive' Blather and his odious cronies are being given freedom of London, chauffeured around in limos at our expense with free tickets to all the best events)
 |
| Stepping Stones at Box Hill |
Speaking of which, thank you for all those who have sponsored us already; those of you who intend to but haven't got around to it yet, thank you also. Keep it coming.
Wednesday, 1 June 2011
It’s not fair
This has nothing to do with training for the Trailwalker – I am just writing today because I am cross. And not in a good way.
And whilst I am on the subject of unfairness and crooked or incompetent committee men, what the hell is going on at Fifa? If it’s as corrupt as it seems to be, yet again we are being made fools of, taken advantage of as a bunch of cheats take our money and give us one solitary vote for a bid that was, by all accounts, the only one that made sense. And another thing. Twickenham and the RFU – we finally have a plan which sees Clive back in charge where he belongs and some wretched idiot goes and screws it up. Why? Is rugby going the way of football, where the lunatics take over and enrich a handful of celebrity-shagging louts whilst impoverishing the rest of the sport? All it needs is a bit of money and some catastrophically incompetent management and it has both of those.
And another thing. No I don’t want speed humps down my road. Not a single person has ever been knocked over on the road – it is a road to nowhere, a loop that gets you back where you started. I certainly don’t want speed lozenges or cycle-friendly humps even if I knew what they were. What I would like you to spend some of the remnants of my taxes on, Lambeth, once you have paid your chief exec £270,000 a year and blown £500k on that bloody awful communist propaganda newsletter, is to repair the roads. They don’t need lumps of useless tarmac to slow cars down, they need some of the mariana-sized trenches filled in so that whole families are not lost when they inadvertently try to drive down the road.
Mind you, I am not as cross as Paul, who still hasn’t got his Sky TV and Broadband he ordered a month ago and is now trying to book cinema tickets online. He’s stuck in automated call-handling hell and his bald head is now the colour of a ripe tomato. ‘I mean…why is life so difficult!!!’
I didn’t get any Olympics tickets. Not one. I applied for a whole range of obscure sports that usually play to empty rooms and I have not got one single miserable ticket. It’s not fair. If I had known about that website in Germany selling tickets weeks ago, I could have bought some. If I was a civil servant I could have just allocated myself some between moaning about my index linked final salary pension and ambling to catch the 5.00pm train home. If I was on the Olympic committee, not only would I have prime finish line seats for the 100 meters, but I’d probably have a holiday home in Tanzania and a custom built yacht staffed by impossibly athletic blondes. Not that I would want that, obviously.
At least I have the pleasure of paying for the damn things with my taxes over the next 50 years and putting up with the much overdue but shambolic re-vamping of London’s creaking infrastructure in anticipation of coachloads of foreign dignitaries, hangers on and assorted scots and northerners crowding up my city to watch my Olympics with tickets that I should have had. It’s not fair.And whilst I am on the subject of unfairness and crooked or incompetent committee men, what the hell is going on at Fifa? If it’s as corrupt as it seems to be, yet again we are being made fools of, taken advantage of as a bunch of cheats take our money and give us one solitary vote for a bid that was, by all accounts, the only one that made sense. And another thing. Twickenham and the RFU – we finally have a plan which sees Clive back in charge where he belongs and some wretched idiot goes and screws it up. Why? Is rugby going the way of football, where the lunatics take over and enrich a handful of celebrity-shagging louts whilst impoverishing the rest of the sport? All it needs is a bit of money and some catastrophically incompetent management and it has both of those.
And another thing. No I don’t want speed humps down my road. Not a single person has ever been knocked over on the road – it is a road to nowhere, a loop that gets you back where you started. I certainly don’t want speed lozenges or cycle-friendly humps even if I knew what they were. What I would like you to spend some of the remnants of my taxes on, Lambeth, once you have paid your chief exec £270,000 a year and blown £500k on that bloody awful communist propaganda newsletter, is to repair the roads. They don’t need lumps of useless tarmac to slow cars down, they need some of the mariana-sized trenches filled in so that whole families are not lost when they inadvertently try to drive down the road.
Mind you, I am not as cross as Paul, who still hasn’t got his Sky TV and Broadband he ordered a month ago and is now trying to book cinema tickets online. He’s stuck in automated call-handling hell and his bald head is now the colour of a ripe tomato. ‘I mean…why is life so difficult!!!’
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