THE RE-RE-RUN

Finally headed out for the first time since the collapse of Juneathon and the sprained ankle to restart the old 13-week programme – again. I’m becoming a cliche, a formula, an old chestnut. The Labrador came along despite the 25 degrees at 8 pm. The park was chocca with footballs and picnics and people just lolling around reluctant to admit that the weekend was, in fact, over. Ha, corporate slaves. The office bully awaits. Now get out of my way.

Yes, coz I’m on a mission. I have to crack this sucker. And a combo of Greenwich Park, ‘Stomp’ and sheer free-spirit will power is going to launch me on my way.

We’re back!

JUNEATHON – DAY 23 – YET ANOTHER DOG WALK

DAY: 23 of 30

CONDITIONS: Hot, 25 C

LOCATION: Oxleas Wood

EXERCISE TYPE: Dog walk

DURATION: 60 minutes

Oh yes, the foot still feels stiff and (the exercise part of) Juneathon is but a distant memory. Cursed days. I am also so bored, I could scream. Work and walk, work and walk, work and walk. Oh, no more walk coz the foot hurts – again. Fun summer… Bah!

A picture of Oxleas Wood – which is more of an huge open space with a cafe at the top and a bit of wood each side…

JUNEATHON – DAY 22 – PARK LIFE

DAY: 22 of 30

CONDITIONS: Hot, 25 C

LOCATION: Southwark Park

EXERCISE TYPE: Dog walk

DURATION: 60 minutes

Despite the gentle, easy, mellow exercise of last night, the ankle/lower leg now feels stiff and unwieldy again and so I settled for a walk around Southwark Park with the Entourage and the Labrador – and jolly pleasant it was too. The National Lottery did much a few years ago to revamp the Park from a downtown Kabul-style no-go area into a haven of gentility. Now the bowling green is tenderly watered by attendants, the fragrance of the blooms bounces lovingly on the summer air, the swans and cygnets run, flap, run on the boating lake, widows gaze wistfully at the bandstand from the shadows of the plane trees and… OK, OK, 2.5 million quid bought a lick of paint, a few slides, some refurbished park gates and no doubt a good knees-up dahn the old Rovverhive Mayflower – another ‘oldest pub in Britain’ – for a couple of Southwark Councillors…

But it really does look like this:

…apart from the sort of falling autumn leaves bit. I didn’t have the presence of mind to take a picture of my own today…

In honour of Juneathon we went to investigate the running track in the south-east corner of the park which is a proper old running track, but it’s fenced off and looks as though no one is allowed in. The middle of the running track (i.e. the bit the running track encircles) has a plethora of possible sports facilities. We spotted basketball and hockey and rolled up astroturf – all in a state of sort of forlorn eagerness. What a shame. Criminal, innit?

Because the surrounding area now has several tube lines and a Curry’s Digital and lots of young professionals trying to come to terms with remnants of Pearly Kings strewn about the place, the park is full of lithe runners and Birkenstock mummies walking gamely past the Memorial Garden and Albins, the famous Rotherhithe Funeral Directors, who regularly stage the old, black Victorian funerals complete with black-feathered black horses and black coaches and an authentic, Kray-twin sense of gathering doom.

And Michael Caine was born just around the corner.

Quite a lot of people know that.

JUNEATHON – DAY 21 – MIDSUMMER

DAY: 21 of 30

CONDITIONS: Warm, 22 C

LOCATION: Greenwich Park

EXERCISE TYPE: Dogjog

DURATION: 20 minutes

Yes, so here as we all turn and head towards winter again, the Labrador and I headed back to our old stomping ground for a careful dogjog. The ankle is still not entirely happy about very much at all so we pared it right down and did a very bare minimum of exercise to ensure that everything is not busted again for the rest of the month. It’s not really good, but it’ll do.

Rather than be a continual ankle and injury bore, I then zoomed into Central London for lunch – only to fail to resist becoming an ankle and injury bore over a plate of seared tuna and no, no, no positively no wine at all. On that front at least, Juneathon is proving a mighty influence. Wine bottles everywhere are provocatively calling for the disregard of Juneathon, but no. I am not going down that route.

So – the cusp of the year sees (hopefully) the bottoming out of the Juneathon effort and it’s onwards and upwards (albeit gently) from here…

JUNEATHON – DAY 14 – PEAK

DAY: 14 of 30

CONDITIONS: Evening, indoors

LOCATION: Home

EXERCISE TYPE: Weights

DURATION: 25 minutes

Well, it was inevitable. 45 minutes of pleasure yesterday – a day of pain today (set to continue tomorrow). About the ratio life offers. I’ve been hobbling around Greenwich Park on a separate dog walk and across to a marathon at the hairdresser’s (can that count as Juneathon?). My right foot has swollen to such an extent that groups of paying climbers aided by staunch sherpas and executive yaks are heading up the north face of my sprain as I write. I cannot even (well, probably could, but should NOT) go biking so did some weights under the tutelage of the Entourage. Tomorrow my arms will probably be buggered as well. The Labrador looked on with ill-disguised disgust…

On the excitement front, the postman brought these this morning:

Nifty Polaroid Peak P7010B sunglasses

from the kind people at Polaroid. I will be reviewing these rather nifty glasses tomorrow when appropriate modelling has been done. When has it ever been about getting to base camp? asks the product blurb. Indeed. It’s at least about getting halfway there and then finding your foot has conked out, but thinking it’s too much of a shame to give up – and also damn near impossible to reach the summit in the state you’re in…

JUNEATHON – DAY 3

DAY: 3 of 30

CONDITIONS: Sunny, dry, 20 C (perhaps more)

LOCATION: Greenwich Park

EXERCISE TYPE: Dogjog

DURATION: 35 minutes

What are we going to do today, Labrador? Do what we always do! Take a trip to Greenwich Park!

So – after no ill effects yesterday from having exercised two whole days in a row, we went for broke and did a third day in a row. It’s so exciting, we can hardly contain ourselves here at Shunningrunning. The car dashboard temperature indicator (yes, I drive to run – because I live in a place with minute and dodgy parks full of people with a teensy bit too much knowledge about Millwall and staffs who like to savage and rip the livers from the gentler breeds) said 20 C, but it felt like more. Yes, we did venture out in the midday sun so it was a bit hot and the park was crowded, but lovely and breezy and so we did another careful 35 minutes of experimental running and brisk walking on various surfaces – and felt fine. Tomorrow we may go wild and up the time to 40 or even 45 minutes.

Watch this space.

JUNEATHON – DAY 2

DAY: 2 of 30

CONDITIONS: Sunny, wet ground, 20 C

LOCATION: Greenwich Park

EXERCISE TYPE: Dogjog/bogjog combo

DURATION: 35 minutes

Another trip to the park – but this time for experimental and testing purposes. The programme does not really approve of running every day, in fact actively discourages it and looks down its jaunty Canadian nose at it. No beginner, or semi-beginner, or giver-upper, or charader like me should run two days in a row. Day run, day rest. Otherwise it’s injury, self-defeat, exhaustion, the four horsemen of the Ajogalypse. So what do you do when staring down the barrel of Juneathon?

Here’s what. You carry out forensic testing of the idea of running the day after you’ve just run. Yes, I even had an assistant today who could look after the Labrador (after an initial bit of dogjog) so that I could carry out various laboratory-style running experiments. So all that making grey park squirrels smoke 40 a day while looking forlorn with electrodes on their heads has really paid off. I cut down the overall time a bit – for medical reasons – but upped the actual running part and it felt good. The squelchy ground was kind. I got home and it still feels good. Haruki Murakami (for it is he) says running every day is great. He can’t get enough of it. He is also someone who openly admits that his book is about running, not about how to be healthy… Hmm. Helpful.

Yes, I know I could get the bike out of the shed, dust it down and risk my life cycling around the inner city, but that just doesn’t really ever feel like exercise – apart from that bit up Shooters Hill – and anyway I want to crack this running-outside lark. I cracked the running-on-a-treadmill lark last year, but the capabilities gained there just don’t seem to transfer very well to outdoor, hard-surface, wind-and-weather scenarios. Hence debacle in real race last May.

Anyway, Day 2 (albeit a rather tentative and experimental effort) is in the bag. Ha.

JUNEATHON – DAY 1

DAY: 1 of 30

CONDITIONS: Dust-like drizzle followed by standard downpour, 14 C

LOCATION: Greenwich Park

EXERCISE TYPE: Dogjog

DURATION: 50 minutes

Juneathon kick-off! Yes, yes and yay again! The park was clear of the usual picnicking riffraff that distracts Labradors so much, and the ball-playing folk were only represented by one hardcore family with two children who were playing football in the rain and had seemingly just decided in a sort of grim and madcap way to pretend that the weather was in fact as sunny and glorious as it ought to be at the start of half-term in June.

The Labrador usually zooms up to people like that, grabs the ball, punctures it (that morose little pffft…), runs off with it, leaves copious children in floods of tears, parents livid, owner left with embarrassment and only option to hand out heaps of cash and profuse grovelling until horrid hound is lured back with wholly undeserved biscuits and yummy bits of that sausage that’s been sitting at the bottom of my rucksack for a month. But not today. Oh no. No more. The dogjog has recently been streamlined, effectivised and its KPIs rigorously scrutinised. We now run in an orderly fashion: short lead, head control harness (this sounds horrendous, but actually just makes your dog do what you want it to do – so great! – I’m all for pseudo-sadist product designations if the goods do the job), strict no-nonsense, no-distractions discipline as we head round the park, gamely waving at those footballing friends whose balls are now completely safe.

So – Day 1 saw 50 minutes of dogjog which is really 50 minutes run/walk as I’ve restarted the run/walk programme that I completed last year (see posts passim) until I gave up running because that was the easiest thing to do. Hrmph. But I’m hoping Juneathon will help to bring back the running as a permanent feature – not just a silly little fad. The programme says rest day tomorrow as it has obviously never heard of Juneathon so not quite sure what the drill will be…

GULP – IT’S JUNEATHON…

Oh dear. TOMORROW is the start of Juneathon. I’ve never participated in Juneathon before. As I sit here smugly on a Bank Holiday Monday with a glass of wine in one hand and a DVD box set in the other – feet up on sofa – I am starting nonchalantly to assemble the essential equipment needed for Day 1 of Juneathon. Yes, I kick off with a one-hour dogjog in Greenwich Park. Here’s the dog:

I will report tomorrow on the jog.