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.

FRESH START

Well, enough of all this maudlin mopery. While wallowing in self-pity has its obvious attractions, there comes a time when one must stop believing one was the victim of a cruel conspiracy of events, the prey of pitiless fate and the sufferer of general sorcery and simply get on with it. So I have put away my tools of self-harm. I have placed the gin bottles reluctantly back in the cupboard. I have dusted myself down, hiked up my pantaloons and jolly well got back in the saddle. Onwards and upwards. Oh yes!

I obviously made the classic mistake of doing too much too soon, not preparing sufficiently well, overreaching myself, training erroneously, picking a distance that did not suit me… Yeah, right. Or maybe I’m just shit at running. Luckily, John Bingham (of No Need for Speed fame – see posts passim) has advice for people like me in a sweet little thought bubble called An Exercise in Joy on p 127: “The first time you must stop a run early, drop out of a race, skip a race altogether or end up finishing much more slowly than ever before, consider it a victory. You’re evolving as a runner. Take it in your stride – even boast about it“. So ha! Yay, people! Look at me! I’m shit!

Anyway, I ambled back to the gym today. I did 5 kilometres because that’s the arsing distance I was supposed to do on Saturday and I am actually capable of doing it – as long as it is under controlled laboratory conditions in hermetically sealed environments with only the radio tuned crassly to Kiss 100 blasting away for company. My legs still seemed to be slightly worse for wear from Saturday’s hard surfaces and nasty, nasty nature so I had a modest walking break in the middle today, but then did a sprint at the end which sort of weighed it up. Obviously, ‘sprint’ has been redefined here at ShunningRunning as meaning slightly faster than I would normally run and probably a whole lot slower than most other people move during their cool-down.

Stats

Post-race recovery. Distance: 5 km. Run pace: 6.8 km/h. Time: Forgot to look.

THE SHUNNING RUNNING LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

After the debacle in the park on Friday, I feel rather nervous about running outside and my prospects at the Dulwich Park run on Saturday. All that wind and real ground and unavailability of stats. So I went to the gym and did a distance of 5.5 kilometres quite comfortably all in one go. There is great scope for humiliation as the Dulwich run is a lap thing and family and friends have promised mockery and jeering and they will presumably have the chance of mocking and jeering on several separate occasions as I go round and round.

To boost confidence I am reading this:

John Bingham started running at 43 when he was 35 kgs overweight, a smoker, a drinker and a complete couch potato so this sounds like the kind of starting-from-minus-53-zillion that I can identify with. He spent the first year faffing about, but is now a dedicated runner and an advocate of taking it slow, but steady and changing acitivity levels for good. I dropped my pace a little today – 6.8 km/h seems to be ‘my’ speed. It seems the most effortless, comfortable and non-blister-inducing. Anyway, I was slightly put off by this book at first when it dropped through the door as I dipped into it and found the immortal advice: “If you’re going to run, you need a pair of running shoes” – but now that I’ve started to read it properly, the book seems to contain sensible advice from a down-to-earth kinda guy. For one thing, it discusses ‘sock technology’ which is a very good thing as are his checklists and little ‘Lessons Learnt’ case study bubbles with quotes from real or imaginary ‘mature’ novice runners. It also has a 12-week walk/run programme similar to the charade I’ve done – only even sissier. Not doing more than the programme says – even if you are tempted – is excellent advice and, I think, what made me get through the tough first few weeks (going into months).

Stats

Distance: 5.5 km. Run pace: 6.8 km/h.

RUNNING AND READING

OK, so it’s not a camel, but what the hell?

So – the conclusion is that the Emirates didn’t really constitute the ideal running environment. Instead, it can be fairly safely stated that Dubai and Ajman (not Sharjah which is a Saudi puppet state) do not frown on women lying on sunbeds, drinking fruit cocktails and generally failing to run very much. But to alleviate my sun-soaked guilt I bought this book – which admittedly has one of the worst titles I’ve seen for a long time. Although it quickly becomes clear that Haruki Murakami (author of Norwegian Wood) is totally HARDCORE, he does have some interesting insights that you can sort of in a small way apply to yourself – even if you are a complete charader like me. You’d think that there was only so much to say about running. Wrong. This is also about the body, the aging process, time, discipline, writing and all those quite ascetic Japanese ways of doing and making things. I stopped being able to identify with his regime after about a page and a half. So read it and feel inadequate – but don’t expect much about camels.

Off to the gym this afternoon – honest!