Snowfall

12 weeks to go (27 January 2013)

Back to London and the snow continues, providing a gorgeous backdrop to an already pretty special commute.  The Italian Gardens in Hyde Park are rapidly becoming one of my favourite parts of the city and the thin layer of ice over the fountain pool adds to its charms no end.  Credit where credit’s due, you can’t get that in Queensland.

This week contains a couple of events that we use to mark time (birthday, anniversary) and it gets me thinking about aging and fitness.  Talking with friends at the weekend a lot of the chat is about cutting down drinking, stopping smoking, hitting the gym.  Lycra truly is the new rock and roll; and this from a group that used to drink Bailey’s and gin in the morning before getting a taxi to school to avoid the fifteen-minute walk.

When were you at your physical peak?  It’s a funny thing to gauge because you’re never really comparing like for like.  When I was in Italy in my early 20s I played ultra-competitive football six times a week; and also got through a bottle of wine and 20 cigarettes a day.  And in Australia regular football and yoga was supplemented by 40km cycles twice a week, surfing, rock climbing and every other half-sport the Ozzies could wave at you.

I don’t really feel as fit today as I did during either of those periods: Having said that, I can now jog to Watford.

In quite a short period of time my perception of distance has changed completely.  On Saturday morning I get up early to return furniture to Ikea and think nothing about jogging the 12 miles home (in fact, I tag a quick trip to Putney and back on the end of it to get to my week’s target of 15 miles).  I’m going back to Sheffield in one month’s time and have already checked the train times back from Chesterfield on a Sunday morning, as it’s always easier to keep jogging if you’ve got a fixed destination in mind than just looping round parks endlessly.  Even if that destination is Chesterfield, whose only significant achievement is having famously shoddy masonry.

Drawing inspiration from the unlikeliest of sources, Duane Turner, I’m not worried as much about the running side of the marathon now.  He did it in six hours, for charity and after a night on the town the day before, and I’m confident of beating that at my current level of fitness.  It sounds like it might be quite fun, too, with all the landmarks and the atmosphere, and as I’m not at the sort of ability to finish it in a competitive time anyway I may as well enjoy myself along the way.  So my attention for the next few weeks is turning to the fundraising.

I’ve launched my charity page now [uk.virginmoneygiving.com/JimmyTheWizard] and have received a massive donation from Kate and Franck Houssaye.  This has given me a huge boost – that’s already only £1,932 I need to raise, which is a ludicrous sentence to write but feels much more achievable in real terms.  If everyone I know donated the price of a Starbucks...  The old charity maxim, “You only need 200 people to give a tenner” starts to sound less tongue-in-cheek and more like a credible fundraising strategy.  Though to add to my challenge, it looks like I’ll need to acquire 200 friends.

I’ve been collecting for Diabetes UK because I know what work they do as an organisation, in terms of lobbying the Department of Health and supporting the NHS to deliver high quality care; but it’s occurred to me this week that I don’t know how they help people with diabetes specifically.  Everyone knows that £1 buys a child a goat or something from Oxfam, and £100 sponsors a lion at London Zoo; and 55p buys a packet of Smarties, which allows Nestle to entrap another African woman into a lifetime of lactose dependency.  But what does a fiver buy someone with diabetes?  If I’m going to donate £2k I feel like I should be more personally involved in what that support will bring, so I vow to spend some time with the organisation and its members over the next month so that I can be a genuine advocate for the charity.  Rather than just shrugging and saying, “You know, diabetes stuff” when people ask me what the organisation does.  “Sugar free chocolate, maybe?”

Whilst I set this up I’ll leave you with this week’s photo offering and a topical question (courtesy of Duane himself): When was the first Battle of Marathon?  The winner gets a Snickers, which will be generously donated by Davide Curtis owing to confusion over the original question.

In which we learn the importance of maintaining an accurate calendar

14 weeks to.... Ah.  Shit. (20 January 2013)
I grit my teeth, up the Ibroprofen intake and lace up my running shoes as usual, ignoring the constant searing pain in my knee.  I take it easy at football on Tuesday night and spend most of my time surreptitiously fouling the opposition to avoid having to run much about the pitch... as always.  The pain eases off throughout the week though and in spite of the severe weather warnings we make it back up north for a party and my first taste of running on snow.

Well bugger me, snow is fun.

It takes absolutely years off my age and I prance and leap over snow drifts like a small child, loving the sensation of my shoes crushing the powder underfoot and delighting in every untouched path of white.  Taking one step further along the path to becoming my father I slip on a pair of wire shoe grips under my trainers and they do the job magnificently, allowing me to pelt down the Derbyshire countryside at full speed. 

I go up to Fox House and out along the moors, then come all the way back and do a few laps of the frozen lakelets in Endcliffe Park.  The great and the good of Sheffield are out in force and even at 8am the park is packed: The appeal of the north is driven home as I am overtaken by a running group of about 30 people, all happily engaging in loud and cheery simultaneous conversations.  The park cafe is doing more trade than Harrods and with the snowball fights, sledging and snowmen it’s like an advert for a gentler pace of life.

The whole experience is exhilarating and I’m reluctant to come back to the house at the end of my training plan’s allocated distance, a mere 14km.  I’ve been quite good at sticking to the distances so far and I’m reluctant to go off piste just because I’m pretending I’m Roger Moore in Live or Let Die.  Which I’m definitely not, obviously.  That would be absolutely pathetic at my age.  Worse than wearing mini tyre chains on your shoes.

At the party that night I trade marathon stories with my girlfriend’s sister, though I’m careful not to give away too much in the way of specifics as she’s a seasoned runner and can do a half marathon in the time it takes me to do eight miles.  She talks about completing week 13 of her training plan.  I talk about completing week 14 of mine.  She talks about completing week 13 of hers.  I talk about completing week 14 of mine.

Can you see where this is heading?

We double check our diaries and count forward the weeks but I can already tell from the familiar sense of hot shame creeping down my neck that I’ve fucked up.  I can’t believe that I’ve committed such a schoolboy error as to counting the weeks up wrong and it’s a relief when I learn that in fact I haven’t.  No, instead I’ve got the marathon date wrong.

As well as being a week behind on my training there’s the small matter of my availability that date and with Sod’s law playing a very strong hand, it’s no surprise to discover that I’ve already committed to being in another place.  Two other places, as it happens, given that the marathon now clashes with an already double-booked plan to be in Budapest with friends as well as my cousin’s baby’s Christening in Durham.  Bugger.  The only saving grace is that for me the marathon was always about the day-to-day running rather than ticking the event off, so would I really be that fussed if I didn’t take part....?

There’s nothing I can really do at this stage but rue the lost week of training and postpone the decision for another day; thus liberated I jump on the nearest Jagerbomb train and enjoy myself socially for possibly the last time in three months.  The party’s a corker and it’s with only minor regrets the next morning that I drag myself out of bed to hit the snow once more, one week behind but moving fast.

In search of an honourable discharge

15 weeks to go (13 January 2013)

This is not the start I’d planned.

With the first week’s mileage comfortably ticked off, in spite of most of my calories now coming from home-made ice cream, I have a bit of a nightmare coming into week two.  Whilst jogging down the river to Barnes I take a detour over a bit of marshland and slip horrifically, smashing my knee on the floor and knocking all the wind out of me.  I lie on the wooden decking in agony as passersby enquiry after my wellbeing: I know the social protocol for this sort of situation is to jump up and laugh it all off but such is my pain that it outweighs my embarrassment.  I remain prone on the ground far longer than you’d think possible: Think Peter Griffin bashing his shin, then double it.

I’ve done myself a right mischief.

I eventually drag myself off the ground and start to hobble back to the house, half-limping half-dragging-my-useless-stump-of-a-leg-behind-me.  I’m really angry with myself (and with the Council, obviously, because I’m British and that’s who we blame for things like this) and am worried that my marathon plans are shot.  If I’m out of action for a couple of weeks now then I’ll only have 12 weeks to get ready for the marathon, and because of my festive wind down it means I’ll be coming to it after a month of inactivity and greed.  Not the ideal starting point.

Sat on the sofa being nursed by my long-suffering girlfriend the embarrassment does at least finally outweigh the pain, which I take to be a good sign.  Now I have another memory to add to the time when I failed to release myself from bike cleats at a red light in rush hour, Brisbane city centre, at the main crossroads by the train station.

My ordeal has only just begun, however, when my girlfriend reveals the reason behind her unusually sympathetic approach: She wants me to go to Ikea.  I’m all out of sorts and so hazily agree, which is how the next seven hours comes to be spent in the Croydon branch of hell.  Plenty of options for a good sit down at least when the pain gets too much.  And the Schadenfraude from watching my girlfriend burst into tears when she learns they no longer sell Dime bars is enough to get me through the awful, awful journey home. 

A marathon’s a piece of piss to a man that can get a bed home on the tube.  Knees are for wimps.

And so we begin

16 weeks to go (6 January 2013)

This is it: Marathon training official, week one.

It’s not the best week to begin a fitness regime, truth be told.  It’s got sizeable obstacles in terms of a) New Year’s Eve b) my best mate’s birthday c) the ice cream maker I got for Christmas and d) moving into a new house, as well as the extended hangover from a month of festivities and, well, extended hangovers.  Picking up the keys to our new place has a large impact on my To Do list, too, when my beloved and I discover some mild communication issues in our otherwise idyllic relationship:

Me: This house is just as nice as I remembered.  Where’s the furniture?

Beloved: It’s unfurnished.  I thought it would be nicer to get our own stuff.

And so we begin 2013 as we mean to go on, sleeping on the floor and scooping out handfuls of All Bran from the box like a health conscious Winnie-the-Pooh. 

I’m sitting somewhere between a beginner’s and an intermediate training plan and so I’m starting off at a relatively gentle pace, metaphorically and literally.  My longest run of the week is only meant to be 9.5km, which I usually cover on my way to the office, so I don’t overthink the transition from casual jogger to training for a marathon.

There is a stag in this picture.

It’s quite a nice way of easing myself back in to running as I shake off the remnants of my seasonal illness and I choose my runs to maximise the scenery and get the most out of our new location.  Richmond Park is only a few kilometres down the road and a chance encounter with a stag gets my adrenaline pumping: It’s not quite the same fear as spotting a fin in the water whilst surfing but it’s enough to bag me my fastest mile to date.

I’m excited by my new commute, too, as it takes me through nice bits of London I’ve never before had cause to explore: Fulham, Kensington, Knightsbridge.  Hyde Park still heralds the end of my run but I’ve now got river options to follow to relieve the monotony, with near direct routes to work all the way along the Thames Path south or north. It’s blissfully deserted most days and I really enjoy it: It’s helping tick off my main objective for doing this marathon, to distract myself from the depression that I fear will come from being back in the UK.

And as I slow down to watch the sun rise over Lots Road Power Station I have to admit: Depression couldn’t be further from my mind right now.

Running is SO 2012

17 weeks to go (30 December)

This is something of a week off in my mind as proper marathon training starts next week: 16 weeks, according to most plans.  It’s just as well really, I still feel dreadful and the abundance of sweets and chocolates lying around means that I won’t even consider fruit or vegetables unless they’re studded with Skittles and layered with Chantilly cream.

I replace getting into shape with a much more enjoyable pastime: Moaning.  I moan about the weather, being ill, my knee hurting, perpetual darkness, TV, popular culture in general, the youth of today, the demise of the fashion for wearing skirts and trousers simultaneously... It’s a glimpse into my elderly years as everything on earth makes me ripple with irritation. 

The future inlaws must be delighted I came.

I fit in two minuscule jogs in the entire week, both breasting the tape at a wholly unsatisfactory 5km.  Switching the Lucozade for Lemsip hasn’t really helped with my training regime, nor has the near constant rain, and so I don’t give myself that hard a time about not doing much.  This is going to be a problem over the next few months, I can tell: I’m not at all competitive and so never really put myself under pressure to drive onwards and upwards. 

Warm up 3 miles then 1 mile sprinting 1 mile hill climb 100-metre bursts interval training then 3 more miles before sprint finish? 

Shan’t.

***

That’s it for 2012 then.  Bit of an inauspicious ending, sorry. 

From nought to 450km in a little over two months though – from Heathrow to Liverpool, or the length of the A5.  I’ll take that. 

Or, as Rafa Nadal says in heavily accented English on my Nike+ after a particularly long run: “[inaudible]”.

Ladybower Reservoir: The Widowmaker

18 weeks to go (23 December)

As every year I forget that the last week of work before Christmas is one of the busiest and have a torrid time trying to juggle running with work and social commitments.  A jog down Oxford Street in rush hour is only a marginally worse idea than a jog through the Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park on a Friday night but one way or another I claw my way to a credible weekly mileage. 

I’ve never been that easily embarrassed but jogging has taken it to the next level and my hygiene absorbs most of the blow.  I happily show up at the Nutcracker or to see the hilarious Clever Peter sketch show [http://www.cleverpeter.com/] soaked in sweat and smelling of old goat, carting bags of wet pants cheerily around with me wherever I go.  Since making a conscious decision to let myself go in September I’m impressed to have pushed back the boundaries even further: With the iron stolen, the hair ever-longer and only my worst suit in London it is no surprise that I am eventually taken aside by a colleague and asked if, you know, everything’s alright at home?  “We haven’t got a fucking home”, I snap back in reply, referring to the difficulties of house hunting in London but likely confirming their worst suspicions about my recent slide in appearance.

A heavy Friday night in Brixton Academy, a panicked dash to the train back up north and a night on the tiles in Sheffield isn’t the ideal preparation for my last big run of the year.  Nevertheless I struggle out of bed first thing in the morning and arrive at Ladybower Reservoir as the sun comes up – about midday, this far north – before setting off on the trail loop.  It’s 12 miles round and buoyed by the success of last week my plan is to do one complete lap and then two smaller loops, a total of 21 miles.

It’s a nightmare. 

Less than a kilometre in I contemplate turning back.  My stomach is in agony and each step feels like I’m ripping through the lining.  I get stitch after about twenty minutes that stays with me for the rest of the circuit and the first slight incline I come across almost kills me.  I’m so tired I can’t even raise my hand in greeting to a local farmer at the top of the hill and his look of horrified astonishment will haunt me for the rest of my life.  I’ve half a mind to go back and kill his kids, in the name of science, just to see if it’s possible for his face to show any more pure loathing than he’s already bestowed on me.

I go through every album on my iPod to try to find some motivation.  Nothing works and I draw on my old faithfuls Jedi Mind Tricks and Masta Ace to get me round, but it’s still no use – exactly halfway round the loop, as far away from the car as I can get, I have to slow to a walk for a few minutes.  I convince myself it’s only psychological and plough on, vomiting in the bushes from time to time when the pain gets too bad.  I conjure up as many semi-legitimate excuses as I can to give myself temporary respite, stopping to photo uninteresting masonry just to catch my breath back. 

Somehow I make it back to the car.  I turn off my Nike+ and immediately drive home, not daring to check the run’s stats until I’m on a happier emotional plane.  Sure enough, a banana and a winding country road home eventually buoys my mood enough to check how the run went: A little shy of three hours to do 11.9 miles, averaging out slightly slower than regular walking pace.  It’s game over when I get home, too, tiredness and flu and the chaos of recent months coming to a head and knocking me sideways.  I’m wiped out.  The rest of Christmas is spent in bed, and not in a good way.

I hope no one’s got me running gear.  Fuck this.

Slam it to the left

19 weeks to go (16 December)

In preparation for a late contender for campest weekend of 2012 I frontload my week’s running, notching up 21km before work on Monday (which I hope belatedly explains my mood that day to my colleagues) and getting an impressive 31km under my belt before 10am Saturday morning.  Impressive to me, anyway.  I’m sure you don’t give a shit.

SPONSOR ME [http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/JimmytheWizard].

It’s a gorgeous run, too, one that restores your faith in everything.  I start off towards Dulwich to check out their Christmas market then carry on to the Horniman museum, then further south to Crystal Palace.  I marvel at dinosaurs there for far longer than is appropriate for a 30-year old then head out to Croydon to escape London for a bit.  Croydon is an absolute hole, like a less charming Coventry, and I struggle in vain to find something laudable to photograph.  I settle on a picture of one of their bins: It kind of cute that they brand them, I guess.

The final leg home is a killer as I forget about the existence of Streatham’s Hill and I hit the dreaded ‘wall’ for the first time, manically contemplating getting a bus for the final hundred yards and conjuring up all my remaining willpower to keep going even as I turn onto my road.  Once safely inside my satisfaction lasts all of thirty seconds before I throw up into the kitchen sink, void my bowels messily and curl up in bed with agonising cramp [Lesson seven: Hide an ensuite bathroom by the finish line].  I wake up an hour or so later to find my leg pulsating bizarrely, like a deleted scene from Aliens, and drag myself out reluctantly for festive fun and games.  After making an oversize Crunchie bar for a Secret Santa gift, incidentally.  1.6 kilos of chocolate.

And so healthy-d up for the day I head to Oxford Street for truffles, rosé and Viva Forever.  Yes, the Spice Girls’ musical.  It is as absolutely dreadful as you’d expect and I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone.  There’s more plot in a bag of Discos. 

Haagan-Dazz, Minstrels, half an oversize Crunchie and Chinatown complete the rout to undo all the morning’s work but do I look bothered?  I ran three-quarters of a marathon this morning, bitch.

Deck the halls

21 Weeks to Go (2 December)

Shit the bed, it’s Christmas.

I use a weekend in Centre Parcs to build up my training regime – starting with carb loading and increased sleep, obviously – and take a spin off road.  Caught up with last week’s 22km triumph I head to Sherwood Pines and test my resilience on the mountain bike tracks.  I plump for the black run, a short but insanely hilly 12km, and plough through mud and stream excitedly reliving that Nike advert [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ2XyttZYS8].  Fewer stags, mind.  This, finally, feels like proper running and the surprising camaraderie from the mountain bikers adds to my enjoyment.  One of them even offers me his Kendall Mint Cake.

Back at the villa I reflect on a new personal best, 24km, and spend a happy hour getting my body back to a healthy temperature in the sauna and bath.  My family return, breaking the calm and bringing with them tales of unprecedented local flooding – I’ve been so absorbed in my running that I’ve scarcely noticed the rain.  Slip in a ditch and you’d drown.

Sadly the flooding doesn’t prevent us getting back to London and work, where I’m amazed to discover it’s all gone a little bit festive.  Hospitals don’t mark Christmas with carols and decorations: Rather overtime and flu.  Everyone’s ill, the atmosphere’s foul and we gear ourselves up for a few months watching the elderly die alone and trying to conjure up spare beds.  Anyone who thinks that hospitals aren’t well managed should watch the systems kick into gear as soon as winter pressures role around.

To fight the depression my girlfriend and I go into Christmas overdrive, booking in at least one seasonal activity a day throughout December to compensate for spending last year’s on the beach.  We start things off by finally visiting Dennis Servers’ House with TL and Hol, a mere four years after it was originally mooted.  Amazing, especially when followed by a turkey roast in the pub next door.  After a quick nap on the tube I drag myself on a run to Hyde Park’s Winter Wonderland: A more sinister and phallic collection of amusements you’d be hard to find, though the kids seem to love it.

Santa's friends reassured him that he had nothing to fear from the Savile Inquiry

The temperature hits -1.  Pavements ice over.  Windows frost. 

How festive.  What a fucking nightmare the next few months are going to be.

For He has risen

22 Weeks to Go (25 November)

Don’t call it a comeback.

To my mild surprise my week off has had exactly the desired effect and I hit the road with renewed enthusiasm.  I want to do this fucking marathon now and I feel like it’s within my reach, so I shake off any lingering doubts and do like Adele does, keep chasing pavements.  [Lesson six: When you’re training for a marathon, you will happily raid anyone’s record collection for new music to stave off the monotony]  I nail my first half marathon distance without meaning too and am delighted with myself: Though mildly concerned that I’ve peaked too soon.

To keep my motivation I decide to only go to new places in London, which has the twin effects of forcing me to run further than usual to get out of my normal routes and making me look forward to each run as much for the adventure as the exercise. 

First up is Neasden, not the first area to spring to mind for a promise of undiscovered beauty but in fact the surprise source of one of the best landmarks I’ve never seen in London: The Shri Swaminarayan Mandir.  It is absolutely stunning inside and out, breathtaking and magical and filled with an aura of perfect harmony.  I feel blessed as I wander round the sacred grounds; blessed, but also more than a little self-conscious about the sweaty footprints I leave throughout the building when they ask me to take my shoes off out of respect.

My next run takes me down south to a place all Londoners know but few visit: Morden, the last stop on the Northern Line.  It’s as drab as I’ve always imagined it, a generic down-trodden London suburban high street in the rain.  Boring, dreary, unremarkable.  Yet forever linked with the grandeur of Charing Cross or Bank in the minds of most capital commuters.

I quite like its rubbish bins, mind: No moral ground too high.

Then there’s a jog along the canal from work.  And a scenic commute back home.  And to round the week off, a tour of some of the capital’s highlights one deserted Friday morning in the sun.  I have never seen so much of London and every few trips brings me into contact with something new or quirky. 

Which has planted the seeds of a little idea for a competition.  As well as Name My House - which will launch as soon as I’ve photographed all of my past England residences - comes Name That London. 

Rules are simple: Whoever can correctly identify the most London landmarks will have any donation they have made refunded.  And if anyone gets all of them, I’ll donate £500 myself.  It’ll take me a few weeks to gather enough photos to make this interesting: So in the meantime, feel free to warm up with the following...