February 2014 – Page 2

February 6, 2014February 6, 2014

Bug

Yesterday I was sick. I was woken by my cats at 7, fed them, then wondered why it seemed impossible to climb the stairs again. It was like I had been drained of all energy, suddenly and inexplicably. I had no appetite, and didn’t want to drink. I felt vaguely nauseous and had faint stomach cramps but didn’t vomit. I got back upstairs and slept for another 6 hours – the benefits of freelance life, which will be balanced by my impending tax bill – and that was all the day consisted of. I had a headache and felt hot but wasn’t feverish. I didn’t want to eat, I didn’t want to drink, all day. Eating and drinking seemed like extraordinarily weird things to do, as if I had never done them. That was odd. But the reason I knew that I was ill was because it was club training night and the thought of running 100 metres terrified me.

My self-diagnosis: stomach bug. I had to sleep because my body needed to deal with whatever was trying to colonise it. I had no energy because I wasn’t supposed to do anything while my immune system worked. I slept and slept and lay on the sofa and watched Three Colours: Blue, which I loved the first time I saw it, and the second, though I always think: there’s no way she would find an empty swimming pool. But it’s beautiful, and it helped. I slept another 12 hours overnight, and today I feel better. I still don’t want to run, but I can climb stairs, and I ate food. And so far it seems my body has fixed itself. Of course my mother’s reaction was, “are you sure you’re not overtraining?”

There is not much reason this post is on a running blog, except I think running makes you think about how your body works. You notice its deficiencies, because you come to love its strengths. I have endometriosis, which is a chronic disease, but I am rarely ill. It gives me pain now and then, and some alarming energy and mood swings, but I usually manage to run and exercise, because that’s how I treat it. That’s also how I treat my tendency to low moods and black thoughts. I love that at the age of 44, I can run 14 miles. I never thought that possible. So when my body doesn’t work right, it’s a shock, or it would have been, had I had the energy to care.

February 4, 2014February 4, 2014

Diet

I don’t count calories. I can’t be bothered. But I do get weighed every week at my training session. And I was a little surprised to have gained 3 lbs in a week. My weight does fluctuate according to my menstrual cycle, and I can tell because a) my ring gets harder to put on my finger and b) I feel like an elephant. But this wasn’t related to that. This, I realised, was alcohol. I broke my abstinence ban to celebrate the 50th birthday of a good friend. I broke it spectacularly with nearly 12 hours of drinking. I was drinking Prosecco and Champagne mostly. 70 calories a glass. Lots of glasses. And it went straight to my waist and weight.

So I am back to the abstinence. It makes me feel better. I sleep better. I weigh better.

As for food, Jenny will give me a block diet plan. That’s “diet” as in “the kinds of food that a person, animal, or community habitually eats” not “a special course of food to which one restricts oneself, either to lose weight or for medical reasons.” I don’t diet. I follow Michael Pollan’s advice:

Eat food.
Not too much.
Mostly plants.

One block for each food group: protein, carbohydrates, vegetables. Then she will advise me what each meal should consist of, and beyond that it’s mix and match and up to me. I love food. I will not stop having treats. I would never banish cake. But I need to think about fuelling, because I need to haul my body around 26.1 miles, and at the moment that’s not something I think I can do. I have running mates who think I’m a geek and over-obsessed. They don’t run with watches. They don’t sign up for races until the last minute. They would laugh at the sight of a training plan. But they could also probably run a marathon from one day to the next. They are younger, and fitter, and though they eat what they like and it’s often crap, they have more reserves. Lucky, lucky them. For now.

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TODAY’S SPORTING ACTIVITY
ACTIVITY: TRAINING SESSION (STRENGTH, WEIGHTS, BOXING)
TIME: 1 HOUR

February 3, 2014February 3, 2014

Books

I read running books. I have a small collection of them. I’ve read Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. And I can’t remember any of it except that it felt as slow-going as my marathon pace. I started reading Born to Run, but gave up when the focus shifted to Cabellero Blanco rather than the much more interesting Taharamura tribe. I read Running like a Girl, and enjoyed half of it. I read Feet in the Clouds, by my former editor at the Independent, Richard Askwith, and want to finish it but haven’t yet. (Not because it’s bad or boring, but because my concentration moved elsewhere.) I’m now reading Scott Jurek’s Eat and Run: My Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness. So far, I like it. That could be because I like running and I like eating. Or it could be the “good lord how is that even possible?” reaction to what he does: 100 mile races in mountains or Death Valleys. But I found the accounts of ultra racing in Born to Run really dull. And I don’t know what would make them less dull. I spend probably far too much time reading running blogs and running related Twitter accounts, but when I was asked recently for really interesting Tweeters who tweet about the realities of running, I was stuck. I realised that most Twitter running accounts are about kit or mileage. They are “I did this today” rather than “this felt like this today” or “I ran today because of this..” I think my club mate Gemma writes interestingly about running. And perhaps I just haven’t found the right blogs. But I do wonder:

Is it possible to convey running in words when it’s a simple act of putting one foot in front of another? When it doesn’t really need words? I wonder the same about visual art and text. Most visual artists shouldn’t bother with text. They struggle and grope and end up using jargon: Boundaries. Liminal. Transparency and opacity. Etc. There is a fundamental problem in describing one medium with another, and hardly anyone is any good at it. I’m glad they are so bad at it, because otherwise I wouldn’t have discovered the wonderful arty bollocks generator. Generate your own artistic statement full of nonsense! Here is a sample:

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Artist Statement
My work explores the relationship between Critical theory and romance tourism.
With influences as diverse as Rousseau and Andy Warhol, new combinations are distilled from both opaque and transparent meanings.
Ever since I was a postgraduate I have been fascinated by the ephemeral nature of the zeitgeist. What starts out as yearning soon becomes finessed into a dialectic of greed, leaving only a sense of unreality and the unlikelihood of a new beginning.
As temporal phenomena become clarified through boundaried and academic practice, the viewer is left with an epitaph for the outposts of our future.
—

I think I’ll re-read Murakami. I think I will finish Richard’s first book before reading his second (which I will be reviewing for The Guardian). I think I will finish Born to Run. And meanwhile, I will wonder about the irony of writing words about running about why running resists words being written about it. Maybe.

TODAY’S SPORTING ACTIVITY
ACTIVITY: 6.01 MILES STEADY STATE (8.30 MIN MILES)
TIME: 53.36

February 1, 2014February 3, 2014

Tribes

It’s back. The love is back. I had to leave to catch a London train at 1pm today, and I also had to run 14 miles. I looked at my awful time from the Gipping 12 miles (gipping meaning vomiting, not a place in the Yorkshire Dales), and thought, it’s going to be tight. So I woke at 7, ate crumpets and drank tea, and intended to set off at 8. It was a bit later than that: a kitten sitting on my chest, warm and purring, was a bit hard to leave. And I was a bit nervous. My last long run had been so bad. But I had been careful to eat better; the sun was shining and the forecast was good, and I planned a loop up to Eccup, along to Roundhay Park, round the lake a bit and back. Reservoir and lakes.

I didn’t want any mud. I’m on a mud-break. So it was roads all the way, except for a short cut through the golf course. There was gawping to be done all along Alwoodley Lane, which is the millionaire’s row of Leeds, although it looks more occupied than Billionaire’s Row in London. No-one was about, but the sun was shining and my energy levels were good. Jenny has advised me to run for as long as I can without eating a gel, so that my body gets used to running while using its fat stores. I had some electrolyte drink, and I made sure to drink more and vomit less.

There was no nausea and no vomiting. It was just a lovely, lovely run. Even the bit down King Lane where there was no pavement and road puddles. No-one splashed me, and I arrived at Five Lanes corner thinking, how lucky I am to live a couple of miles from rolling fields, sheep, and Eccup.

There were a few runners out by now. Eccup is where you start to see them, particularly on a weekend morning. I read this very clever story yesterday, about how to write about the UK like Africa is written about, and so tribes were on my mind. And I realised, as I did the runner’s nod to yet another passing runner, and as I followed a solitary runner 300 metres in front of me, and even though I was pleased when he turned off so I didn’t have to catch him up and then speed up to keep ahead, I realised, runners are my tribe. We understand each other. We wear extraordinary clothes.

We have blackened toe-nails and creaking bones, but we can still run great distances with blackened toe-nails and creaking bones. I love that. But I love that it is not a tribe of snobs. We want other people to start running. It is a generous tribe. I love that when I went to Kathmandu last year and wanted to go running, I googled for a local running group. I contacted Richard, who runs Kathmandu trail runners, and he had read The Big Necessity. He wasn’t around but put me in touch with his flatmate, Billi. I got a taxi over to her side of Kathmandu one morning, and she lent me a bike, and we cycled a mile, over the ringroad, to the edge of the cacophonous city, and then we ran. There were rice paddies and buffalos and old women who did not bat any eyelid when two western women in tight bright clothes ran past. It was brilliant. And it was because Billi saw nothing weird in a runner wanting to run with her, because she understood about needing to run, even in a strange city that was being dug up for road construction. Afterwards she made me the best coffee in Kathmandu, and we stayed in touch, now and then, and if I go back, I would love to run with her again. I have made friends by running, and not just in Kathmandu. I like being in this tribe.

And I like running alone, too. I like listening to the playlists that my running friend and music geek Andrew supplies, and sometimes I like listening to the air and the surroundings. Halfway down Eccup Moor Lane, I suddenly remembered Jenny Landreth, a Twitter friend who writes about swimming for the Guardian (and is in the swimming tribe), had posted her lyrics to the title song of The Bridge, and suddenly I became a runner laughing out loud at nothing, at air. I’ll remember that moment, and I’ll add Eccup Moor Lane, on a sunny Saturday morning, to my mental store of running memories that soothe me when I am stressed. It’s a good one.

Oh, and I ran 14 miles, which is the longest distance I have ever run in my life. The farthest I have run is a half marathon. When I got to 13.2 miles (a half marathon is 13.1), which was on Harrogate Road just past the Sainsbury’s, I did a little jump for joy. I am proud of myself. I don’t say or feel that very often.

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TODAY’S SPORTING ACTIVITY
ACTIVITY: 14.03 MILES
TIME:2:22.18