Ho hum run – Page 5 – Not a Jogger

Waking up

I managed a 5 mile run to Muswell Hill this morning, whilst still half asleep. In my heavy lidded gaze, runners blurring past looked fresh and frightening. The best part of the run was every downhill bit, but especially Muswell Hill itself, which was half a mile of juddering joy.

After that 200ft descent, things improved and I started waking up to the day. I noticed the overblown roses in gardens, the shopkeepers opening up and Mr Notajogger running by at the bottom of Park Road. I also saw the dead fox, cradled stiffly in the gutter on Middle Lane, between two cars. He was small, like a cat, and looked oddly alert with his head at an unnatural angle. Who would pick him up and bury him? I ran past and tried to move on.

Heading up the final hill to my flat, I started thinking about the day ahead, remembering emails I needed to send and cards I had neglected to buy. The fox receded, the roses were forgotten, and the day began.

Harder, Better, Pasta, Stronger

I have eaten pasta every day this week, twice most days. Shells, spaghetti, penne, mini macaroni, the lot. I’ve scoffed so much that I’m turning into a human version of the statue Kramer makes for Jerry Seinfeld out of dried pasta -Fusilli Gina.

Magazines are stuffed with so many women claiming never to eat carbs, it feels subversive to talk about my love for pasta. I think that’s what inspired yesterday’s post and my worry over what constitutes a good motive for running.

Running to lose (or, more likely, stay the same) weight is usually laudable and sensible, but running out of guilt for having eaten a sandwich is not. This is because:

1. It turns a delicious sandwich eating experience into a crime; and
2. It turns a good run into a punishment for this supposed crime.

The obsession with being thin over being healthy is one I try my best to ignore, but it’s hard. Runners’ magazines are just as bad as fashion ones at prizing the benefits of abnormally low body fat over those of maintaining a healthy weight. Their excuse is that top athletes need to be thin to be fast, but most of their readers will never be that fast, or that thin. Are they providing positive role models or fostering an unhealthy obsession?

Today I did my bit for sense, science and feminism by eating a pile of pasta and then going to the gym.

Dubious Motives

I got up and ran 4 miles this morning, and I’m not proud of myself.

There was no need to go out less than 12 hours after I got back from a hard session at the gym. I have plenty of opportunities coming up this week to run, the weather wasn’t particularly nice and I hadn’t had enough sleep. My muscles ached throughout and I don’t feel better for having run today, I just feel unnecessarily exhausted.

When I examine my motives for running today, I don’t like what I see. I went so that I could eat more cakes and drink more booze. I went because I had put on a kilo when I weighed myself at the gym last night and I could be faster if I were thinner. I don’t need to be thinner, I am fine as I am (repeat until I believe it).

Don’t look back

More re-treading of the paths of my youth this morning. In a 4 mile circuit I ran past my primary school, secondary school, the nursery I went to once and hated so much I never went back, the pub we used to drink in aged 16 (it was so dark they’d serve anyone) and the place I stopped, exhausted, chest heaving, on my first proper run.

It was only two streets from the house, not even half a mile away. Loping easily past today, I remembered feeling like my lungs were scorched and might burst into flame any second. It was so painful, how could something that was supposed to be good for you hurt so much? Running was just another adult conspiracy, sold to teenagers on a ticket of false promises, like green vegetables, classical music or love.

I must have been about 17 years old. I went to aerobics classes and I was young, how could it be so hard to keep running for more than 10 minutes? I gave up and didn’t try to get beyond the 10 minute barrier again until I got to university and wanted to impress a boy.

Two years older and two stone lighter, I stuck out the pain of expanding my lungs purely to prove that I was as strong as any man (ok, one particular man). Four weeks later, I could run a circuit of the University Parks without stopping.

That was nearly 17 years ago, as many years as it had taken me to put on my green flash and try to run like my dad did. Is it heartening or depressing that I’m fitter now than I was then?

People Watching

I went to an amazing gig last night, but only after I had first run home from work, via Regent’s Park. As part of the run I went past the gig venue (Koko, Camden). It was a grown-up concert, featuring an orchestra, so there wasn’t anyone queuing up to be first in as I ran past at 5.30pm.

One of the many pleasures of running from my office in Kings Cross to Regent’s Park is passing Koko and trying to work out who’s playing that night judging from the age, outfits and behaviour of whoever’s in the queue. The weirdest queues are always for the most mainstream acts. The younger the singer, the older, fatter and odder the fan at the front. The best queues to watch are for ’emo’ bands – apologies if that’s not an accepted term any more. They look like they’re having the most fun together hanging out and everyone has made an effort to look different, with the result that they all look the same. When I run past them drinking vodka out of coke bottles and swearing self-consciously, it makes me wish I could be 15 and belong to a tribe that wears stripey socks.

Back to the run. There was nobody outside Koko and very few people in Regent’s Park. The half term rush had gone and the sky was glowering ominously. I cut through Primrose Hill on my way home and got a bit lost. I always get confused around there – all the rich people wearing high quality leisure-wear sitting at the pavement cafes look so similar I can’t work out which street I’m on. I don’t want to belong to their tribe.

Brain Training

I’m just back from a fabulous weekend in Cornwall for a wedding, and didn’t manage to post this while I was there due to a) the wedding, b) alcohol, and c) all the fun.

Before heading down on Friday, I squeezed in a quick 4 mile circuit of Crouch End on Thursday night. Running was just one of a long list of tasks to tick off that evening. If the ideal run is ‘free’, unbounded by time or distance pressures, then this was the opposite of that. My mind was racing over packing and remembering the bridal make-up and borrowing the video camera and buying confetti and would we get a seat on the train and what time we should leave and before my brain had started to unwind the run was over.

To make amends, and to balance all the merrymaking, we planned a 5 mile run in Cornwall on the Saturday morning from our borrowed house in Stithians. It was a glowering morning, the few splashes of sunshine chased away by swift clouds, wind bobbing the hedgerow flowers. The roads were narrow and winding and a car swerved wildly around one bend to avoid us. The greens and blues I had been expecting from the Cornish countryside were strangely leached of brightness and I couldn’t seem to fix the route map in my head firmly enough not to worry constantly about becoming lost.

We ran to a ‘lake’, which held an Ordnance Survey promise of rolling beauty, but what we found was this:

That’s me, crossing the concrete dam of the reservoir, which had turned what was probably once a charming valley into a giant grey water trough. It was a bleak sight, even in the shaft of sunlight that greeted us as we approached the shore. It might be unfair to stretch this observation into something wider, but it seemed to me, as I quaffed champagne on a deck overlooking Helford Passage later that day, that the crumbling working parts of Cornwall were bringing the manicured parts into uncomfortable relief. A drive past boarded up buildings in Redruth on the way to drink cappucinos in St Ives this morning increased my unease.

As runs go, this wasn’t free in terms of route or timing, but I can picture every corner and hill. I was free to think about the land, the houses and who might live there, the weather and the passing cars. We weren’t running fast so I wasn’t thinking about my body at all, not even my hangover. I think it was mainly an exercise for my brain.

Relapse; redemption

On Monday night I planned to run. I hadn’t eaten much lunch so I ate a banana at 3.30pm. I made sure to drink two glasses of water at 4.30pm. It was a sunny evening and I had no plans or chores to do. There was no excuse.

BUT THEN

I had to stay half an hour later at work than I planned, which meant that I had to wait longer for a bus home, which then took longer to get home in the traffic, by which point my stomach was rumbling, and the book that I was reading was so good…. that I abandoned the run, heated up some soup and sat on the sofa for 4 hours and finished A Visit from the Goon Squad with a cat on my knee.

This meant that I had to get up at 6am this morning instead to run 5 miles to Muswell Hill and back. After such a restful evening I was able to jump out of bed and bound out of the door, thoughts of time and its vicissitudes still bouncing around my brain. I was able to, in theory, I mean to say. In practice I creaked out of bed and rasped around the streets, so brain-dead that I didn’t even see my husband run past me in the opposite direction, holding up his hand in an unrequited high five.

I’ll give it all I’ve got

When I die, when I die
I’ll rot
But when I live, when I live
I’ll give it all I’ve got

I went to see Sufjan Stevens at the Royal Festival Hall last night (excellent review of it here) which simultaneously ruined, and made, my run this morning. Ruined because it was so gloriously long I didn’t get home until midnight, and made because my plodding steps were soundtracked by all of last night’s lyrics recurring in my brain like so many mantras.

It’s a long life, only one last chance
Couldn’t get much better, do you wanna dance?

It was a pretty dire run, to be honest, but my mood is still so elevated from the concert that it counts as ‘ho-hum’ rather than bad. I am not going to disclose how many times I stopped to walk. Instead, here’s a lovely photo of the playing field I ran past at about 6.45am.

if I was crying
in the van, with my friend
it was for freedom
from myself and from the land

Back to Life…

Bump. It didn’t take long to come down to earth after the race. It took two hours to get home from deepest South West London with salt still crusted on my face, by which point the joy had somewhat worn off. By the time we ate lunch I had started to feel faint and sick and my healthy glow had turned into a greenish pallor.

The week after a race is always strange, “you must be so pleased you don’t have to run now”, people say, “put your feet up!”. After my marathon, I was and I did, but a half-marathon’s just a slightly more intense weekend run. Why would i stop running afterwards? I took a day off to recover, but that was enough.

I wanted to get to the gym tonight to stretch my muscles and check everything still worked. I haven’t been there in weeks, the weather’s been so dry. It’s good to be an occasional visitor, I find, rather than a frequent flyer. Exercising on the machines still feels like a novelty and I get excited by the toys (dumbbells! Swiss balls! Lots of other things I don’t recognise and will never use!). All the music videos are new to me too, though I see Hollyoaks is still going. Watching that programme, even without sound, makes me quite depressed. It’s so shallow, meaningless and obsessed with youth, thinness and visible underwear. Perfect for the gym.

Summer is here: Happy Easter!

I’m sitting in my garden on an April evening, wearing shorts and still feeling too hot. Yesterday I actually had to go and buy an ice lolly to cool down. It’s lovely to be outside on this long weekend but it does feel wrong to be worried about your Easter eggs melting in the sun, in April, in England.

This morning, this weekend really, was all about the 12 mile “race-sim”: 6 miles easy, 6 miles fast. I took it seriously enough to forego the booze and eat a decent pasta meal last night. I even bought an energy gel last week to have on the way (I usually just stick to jelly babies). None of this helped. Or if it did, then I dread to think what the run would have been like without them. I felt exhausted from about 2 miles in, the energy gel was like sucking down half a tube of warm orange toothpaste and the last 2 miles were as tough as the end of any real race I’ve done. I guess that is the point of a “race-sim”, but compared to my lovely Dorset run two weeks ago it was grim.

Forcing myself to be positive, we managed the 6 fast miles at a pace of 7min 20 secs per mile, which was good given the temperature and fact that some of them were along the Seven Sisters Road. That road should not be part of any fast run- It was like Ski Sunday today: churchgoers with Easter baskets walking three abreast, bins, lampposts, winos and scampering pitbulls. I should be thankful we made it back in one piece.