The Running Man and Dentistry

A single inadvertent chomp on a Curly Wurly and I was waving goodbye to my two week old filling. Just a little nibble, on the other side of my mouth; what could possibly go wrong? A second’s distraction. Should soft caramel make a crunching noise? No, clearly not. Obviously my own fault, but it saddens me to know that once my tooth has been repaired, Curly Wurlys must be removed from my diet forever and onward. Likewise the two mini Chomps I had hidden for future use. If I’m honest, I do recall that the tooth made a very strange noise two days previously whilst I was eating a roast potato – yes, a roast potato; surely not the greatest of challenges for a newly refurbed gnasher. Anyway, for now, here I am, running along with every intake of cool air twanging across my recently emasculated molar like a soft pick on a detuned ukulele. It’s depressing. Of the many things I expected old age to bring to me, I did not consider talcum powder teeth.

Running does somehow attune your head to the body, meaning that you become ever more conscious of the corrosive effects that time has upon mortal flesh. I run in my contact lenses because glasses steam up, get rained on, fall off, and I dare not go ocularly commando because I cannot see beyond the end of my nose without something to enhance focus. I would not recognise a familiar face until I had fallen over the owner; would not see the bus until I had caused it to stop in the most inopportune of fashions. I am limited, even in lenses. I have to make myself stop before crossing roads as all traffic becomes invisible to me if I am moving. Joint-wise I am okey-dokey except for the hips, the knees and the ankles. Everything below the waist aches after a run but, crucially, everything aches even more if I do not exercise. Knees and ankles have long been a problem, but the hip, although late to the party, has now joined in with a vengeance. It is the only joint that keeps me awake at night these days, although calf muscles have started to ache in the wee hours in a manner that suggests that they have heretofore been somewhat left behind in the atrophy stakes, but they are making every effort to come up on the rails now.

Anyway, my dentist informs me that I cannot be fitted in for another two weeks because I need an extended appointment that is not available until that point. What a lovely, relaxing thought, that re-fixing my recently fixed tooth will require an even more extended period of horizontal panic. I would have liked to have got this all sorted whilst I was on furlough, but unfortunately I am neither bleeding to death nor unable to eat, so there is no rush in these Covid-ruled times. I am well down the pecking order and, if I’m honest, I’m not in great pain so that’s ok. Until I cannot successfully gum on a gently wilting banana, I will live. And until the body finally decides that the downward trend of bodily vigour reaches terminal velocity, I will run – and if that doesn’t prove that the brain is going, nothing does…

Today’s top plodders:

Silly Love – 10cc
It’s a Beautiful World – Noel Gallagher
Smells Like Teen Spirit – Nirvana
Supremacy – Muse
Avonmore – Bryan Ferry
All my Life – Foo Fighters
Steel Town – Big Country
Cocaine – Eric Clapton (again – time for a new playlist)

The previous instalment of the running diary ‘The Running Man and Birthdays’ is here.
The next instalment of the running diary ‘The Running Man in the Dark’ is here.
The first part of the running diary ‘Couch to 5k’ is here.

The Running Man and His Playlist

I have a playlist for running. It is full of tracks that have a steady beat – nothing with jarring changes that might confuse plodding feet – that approximate the metronomic thump of my 5k lope. It is probably because of the choice of my music that I manage to maintain such a steady pace: it does not vary by much more than three or four seconds per kilometre. Today I took a slightly different route to my normal, expecting to cross the local sports field and pub garden as a bit of a change of scenery. As I made my way across the sports field I was treated to the kind of stare that Hannibal Lecter might have stopped using on the grounds that it was too disturbing, by a man playing ball with his two toddlers. This is a big field. I must have been at least thirty yards away from them, but he clearly saw me as some sort of superbug. It would appear that whatever the chunk of atmosphere he had decided was exclusively his; I was intruding upon it and breathing out God-knows-what. I was pleased he didn’t have a dog. He struck me as the kind that might well set it on me. I was in no state by then to run away. Speeding up was not an option. When I say that my pace is steady, I forget to mention that it is only because I don’t have a second gear.

Anyway, having passed through the park without actual physical attack I arrived at the back of the pub to find the gates locked and chained, which meant that I either went back through the park or on through the churchyard. I felt a little uneasy about running through the graves, but I slowed slightly as I passed the most recent, which I’m sure the occupants appreciated. I would have bowed my head, but that would have inevitably ended up in me going full length over something stone and immovable, so I continued to look where I was going. The detour added an extra kilometre to my run although the pace remained unaltered, all down, I am sure, to the even beat of my running playlist. I really didn’t realise how many good ‘plodders’ I have.

Today’s running tunes:

Big Money – Rush
Bully – Judie Tzuke
Locomotive Breath – Martin Barre
White Man in Hammersmith Palais – The Clash
Fascination – Bowie
Action – Def Leppard
Seven Seas of Rye – Queen
Pretending – Eric Clapton

I have no concept whatsoever of time signatures, but a steady lope was maintained throughout…

The previous instalment of the running diary ‘The Running Man Fellowship’ is here.
The next instalment of the running diary ‘The Running Man and Birthdays’ is here.
The first instalment of the running diary ‘Couch to 5k’ is here.

The Running Man Fellowship

In my younger days I rode a motorbike. Outside of Shanks’s* it was the only mode of transport available to me that didn’t involve being shouted at by the bus driver because I didn’t have the correct change, and I loved it, even though it made me more familiar than I would truly like with my problematic relationship with the physics of gravity. It gave me a freedom I had not really felt since my early days of bicycle riding (heading off into the unknown, armed with nothing more than a penny packet of crushed crisps and a half bottle of Tizer). Provided I had the money for petrol, two-stroke oil and a good glug of Redex, I could go to the coast, I could ride alone and I could ride with my friends. Mostly, as adulthood crowded in on me, I rode to and from work. In the winter it got very cold and I went everywhere in multiple layers of clothing. Inner-gloves, under gloves, under gauntlets. I wore so many layers around my ‘middle area’ that I couldn’t drink anything, knowing that the peeling required in order to be safely able to pee could take hours. I have never felt so cold as during my 6am winter rides to work, but still I loved my bike and I continued to love it until a frosty morning face-slap into a tree which left me in hospital having various parts of my face reassembled (I always feel that asymmetry is desirable in a face, don’t you?) with, what on a cold day, feels like a child’s Meccano set. When I left hospital I learned to drive a car and dreamed about the warm freedom that a car would give me – just as soon as I could afford one. Sadly the heater seldom worked on my first car (a three-tone – gold, rust and filler – Vauxhall Viva) and the passenger side window wouldn’t shut properly so, more pipe dreams, except that I loved that car and my wife actually cried when it eventually went to the great crusher in the sky…

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, I was thinking about the motorbikes this morning when I ran because I remembered the ‘fellowship’ that I felt as part of the bike riding community. All other bikers waved, all other bikers spoke. Old spoke to young and passed on their bikey wisdom, the young tried to grow a beard and dreamt of losing a front tooth. If you broke down, you knew that the next bike to come by would stop to help. And suddenly I realised that my new world of running was a little the same. I cannot pretend that I love running, but I do miss it if I don’t do it. It does give me a certain sense of freedom and is one of the few times when I can step outside, anytime from September to May, without feeling cold. I smile and acknowledge everybody that runs towards me: old, young, experienced, gasping, we all share a cheery, red in the face ‘hello’ as we pass. I imagine that if I break down, the next runner-by will stop to help me and if I run into a tree, well, at least it won’t be at quite the same speed. I am a member of a new fellowship, and I now have the hi-viz to prove it.

*To go by Shanks’s Pony – To Walk

The previous running diary instalment ‘The Running Man and the Dogwalkers’ is here.
The next running diary instalment ‘The Running Man and his Playlist’ is here.
This whole sorry saga started here.

The Running Man and The Dog Walkers

I have two options as a ‘runner’: I run on the path or I run on the road. Generally I opt for the path because, by and large, people are quite a lot softer than cars. I take to the road whenever I can, to give other pedestrians space and also because it is generally flatter and less rutted than the path. At the moment the roads are also noticeably quieter than normal. Mostly runners and pedestrians co-exist quite nicely, I think. I always give as much room as I can without putting myself under a bus and the walkers do the same for me. Pleasantries are normally exchanged – although mine often arrive more as a death-rattle than a thank you. Now Lockdown 2 has started, people have fallen back on the default position of crossing the road wherever possible to avoid ‘cross-overs’ – particularly with fat, gasping old men – but in the main everybody gives one another space, everybody smiles.

There is, though, one group of people to whom this ‘rule’ does not appear to apply. Some dog walkers do not move. Not just for me, but for anyone. If I move to the left, they stay squarely in the middle; if I move to the right, they stay squarely in the middle. If I squeeze myself against the wall to let them pass, they look at me as if I am about to mug them – and stay in the middle. They stare with a defiance that shouts ‘I will not move and I have a dog!’ I have to stop, plunge into a hedge or into the road, where the users of that thoroughfare are often, rightfully, much more troubled by my appearance: nobody wants a sweating old geezer smeared all over the front bumper. The dog walker will give no ground. These, presumably, are the same people who leave their dog’s shit-in-a-bag hanging from the branches of bushes wherever they go. Whatever they think I have, they are obviously concerned that I might give it to the dog. There is clearly a rule, doubtless penned at the time of the Magna Carta and never rescinded, that states that the path belongs to the dog-walker and that they do not need to cede ground to anyone. Knowledge of this rule comes with the dog.

I love dogs – I should get that out there now – but some of their owners… These are a new breed. Today, whilst I was out running, I actually saw a dog walker stand in the middle of the path and stare at a mother who had to guide her clearly afraid toddler into the road to avoid the yapping terrier, which obviously thought the child was a cat. The tit on the other end of the lead did not pull the dog back, he did not move to one side of the pavement, he just stared and then moved off when he was quite certain that his path had been sufficiently cleared to leave him unimpeded egress.

The last few months has filled the paths with lycra and dog leads: the number of brightly attired couch to 5k’ers now being roughly equivalent to those clutching a super-expensive hybrid canine (invented by a breeder who formerly mixed two-digit cocktails in a bar) at the far end of an extending leash. Civility is all that is required. Paths are normally not one way streets. There could be confrontation, but to be quite honest, those clad in lycra are generally too knackered whilst those with the leads have the honest opinion that anybody moving at a pace exceeding the saunter (which leaves me out, obviously) has no place on the flagged sward.

I’m sure that it is probably wrong to lay blame at just one door – although I have yet to witness a runner who was unwilling to move over to give a pedestrian room to walk. Many dog walkers are happy to co-exist, but many more are not. I’m at a loss to explain it. These are perfectly normal people. I’m sure they are perfectly happy to share the pavement when they haven’t got their dogs. They will smile quite congenially as long as you move into the road to let them pass. I’m sure if you fell under a lorry they would be quite concerned – although, as they would have to leave the centre of the path in order to come to your aid, you’d never know it.

Today’s favourite running track: Alright – ELO

The previous running diary instalment ‘The Running Man Plods On’ is here.
The next running diary instalment ‘The Running Man Fellowship’ is here.
The whole sorry saga started here.

More Random Running Thoughts – Raindrops on Roses and Whiskers on Kittens…

…Bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens…

Don’t ask me why, because I don’t have the answer, but yesterday as I ran, this song kept looping around in my head. Not, in case you should wonder, because I was happy, but because, I think, I had just heard it in a radio advert and I was in a state of bewilderment. You see, I know that Maria (in The Sound of Music) is a nun, but come on: bright copper kettles? Really? What is so exciting about a bright copper kettle? At least with a brown paper package tied up with string there is intrigue, jeopardy even: what is in there – a bomb, or an unexpected bottle of Scotch? A bomb would definitely not be in my list of favourite things, but I get the uncertainty, the anticipation thing. I just don’t understand why anybody would consider a copper kettle, bright or otherwise, to be a favourite thing? Surely, even in a convent, there must be more alluring objects of desire. ‘I tell you what, Sister Maria, why don’t you just pop along and make me a nice cup of tea? The kettle is ever so bright – and copper too, by the way.’ How dull does a life have to be?

Anyway, as I know very little about the desirability of apple strudel (crisp or otherwise) and even less about Schnitzel with noodles, I devoted the rest of the run to devising my own lyrics (I didn’t mess with the chorus, which seems perfectly serviceable to me – nobody cares for dog bites or bee stings, do they?) I hope Rogers and Hammerstein will forgive me (or at least not sue…)

A fresh gin and tonic with ice and a slice in,

A hot veggie chilli with plenty of spice in,

A huge bar of Galaxy (chocolate of kings),

These are a few of my favourite things.

Bright yellow pimples on other folk’s noses,

Those who fall over while striking their poses,

Drunken hen-parties with pink angel wings,

These are a few of my favourite things.

The smell in the kitchen when pizza is cooking

The mess you can make when there’s nobody looking,

Bananas and custard and conkers on strings

These are a few of my favourite things.

When the dog bites

When the bee stings

And I’m feeling sad

I simply remember my favourite things

And then I don’t feel so bad…

The feeling you get when the guests have departed,

The smile on the face of a baby that’s farted,

The news that the old folk can play on the swings,

These are a few of my favourite things.

Repeat chorus etc etc etc.

There, that’s better. Now I don’t feel so bad…

For clarity’s sake, I think I probably should point out (for the aficionados amongst you) that I am aware I have added an extra verse at the end. It was a long run. Lord knows what will stick in my head the next time I venture out, but if it’s anything to do with lonely goatherds, I may have to reappraise my entire life…

The previous running diary instalment ‘Some Immutable Laws of Life’ is here.
The next running diary instalment ‘Yet More Random Running Thoughts’ is here.
Couch to 5k starts here.

Some Immutable Laws of Life – 5k and Beyond

Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash – Still not my own legs, but *almost* tatty enough.

Well, the strange thing is that I am still running and that I do now appear to have worked my way up to 5k, whilst still finding that 30 minutes marks the exact limit of my endurance. Now I am not listening to the nagging insistence of the Couch to 5k app, time actually does seem to pass a little easier. I am able to clear my head a little. Unfortunately, as with all voids, it is always on the look-out for something to fill it. This is the sort of stuff that floods into my brain as I run. It does at least take my mind off the running.

Despite what is said in the eulogies, nobody that is both bright and beautiful has friends.
You will always feel stupid at an interview.
You will always feel fat at a Spa.
Nothing that was funny in the pub will ever be funny anywhere else.
Bathroom accidents only ever happen at somebody else’s house.
A standard shopping bag doubles in weight for every one hundred yards you carry it.
Beyond the age of sixty it is impossible to experience any kind of pain without fearing death.
If you only want half of a Buy One Get One Free offer, no-one will ever offer you the free half.
According to aerodynamicists, the bumble bee cannot fly – these people design aeroplanes!
It is not cool to wear sunglasses indoors – especially if you walk into the hat stand.
She almost certainly is too good for you.
There are no recorded instances of anyone ever eating a jam doughnut without getting it down their crotch.
You do not get better as you get older, you simply become less discerning.
The only person that ever loves a loser is the winner.
A picture is never worth a thousand words – unless it is a picture of a thousand words.
Breakfast meets Brunch where the price goes up.
Vertical stripes do not make you look taller – although they do make the ground look further away.
If you have just won at Monopoly, you can be sure that nobody likes you.
Toast is always hot until you eat it.
No Man is an island – unless you count the Isle of Man.
There is only one Willy Wonka and that Willy Wonka is Gene Wilder.

I may collect these thoughts together and publish a book, like Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book, but with fewer jokes. If you want to add any thoughts of your own, please feel free.

The previous Couch to 5k instalment, ‘They Think It’s All Over’ is here.
The next running diary instalment, ‘More Random Running Thoughts’ is here.
Couch to 5k starts here.

They Think It’s All Over – Couch to 5k The End of the Long Run

Well, it actually is all over. I would love to be able to tell you that it all ended in a blaze of glory, but I cannot. It was more a splutter of indifference. My knees hurt, my ankles hurt, my hip ached, my calf is sporting something that looks like a huge swollen bruise, and my bladder has still not learned to cope with the amount of water I have to drink in order to deal with thirty minutes of mouth breathing. This morning I can hardly walk. Getting fit has reduced me to a physical wreck. I don’t think that I am well enough to be fit. I am at least thirty years older than when I started this, ten weeks ago.

My big question now is, will I continue running? I don’t know, there are a number of factors to consider:

Do I enjoy it? – No, I don’t. I can honestly say that not for a single moment whilst running have I ever thought to myself, ‘What good fun I am having’. Running is torture, so why would I want to continue?
Do I feel fitter? – No, I don’t. Currently I would struggle to locate a non-aching bone in my body. I can run for thirty minutes where ten weeks ago I would not have managed thirty seconds – but I’m still struggling to understand why I would really want to. This country no longer has sabre-toothed tigers, so there’s little point. If push comes to pull there is little of danger that I can’t stroll away from.
Do I feel thinner? – Yes I do.
Do I feel better for it? – No, I feel thinner.

So will I continue? – Almost certainly yes, unless I can find some way to stop without losing face.

I clocked my final ‘Couch to 5k’ thirty minute run at 4.85 kilometres, which is far enough away from 5k to make getting there a further challenge for me, but close enough to make in achievable. This week, step by painful step, I begin eeking out my misery towards that goal. An extra 150 metres (is that correct?) – I should get there in a matter of weeks – and then, I suppose, I will have to try and speed up a bit.

My last run was in the rain and I found it so much more comfortable than my plods in the sun. I have been considering taking water with me – but I think the extra weight will involve extra training, so I will stick with the chewing gum which I always regret after about five minutes. Spitting it out is not acceptable – I work in the High Street, I have to contend with an ice-rink of the stuff in wet weather – and, although I run past a couple of bins, my eyesight is by then so bleary that I could not trust my aim at all, so I chew until my jaw aches (I wouldn’t want to leave my face out of its share of pain) and drop the tasteless little bud into my bin a few minutes after I get home – just as soon as the palpitations stop.

One thing that the Couch to 5k regime has taught me is that when I publish three blogs a week, I do not get adequate time to read those of other bloggers, so, although I do intend to keep you aware of my progress – to 5k and beyond – I probably will not do so with quite the regularity or verbosity of the last few weeks. I hope that it means I can get to read a little more of what you all have to say and, therefore, bore you to death on the comments boards instead.

Anyway, this week ten post is really just to thank you for sticking with me through this – I’m guessing it was probably more painful for you than I – never forget, They also serve who stand and allow the little ginger bloke to whinge interminably.

This post will be the last outing for the unknown runner’s legs at the head of the page, but they will not be replaced by my own legs at any future point. Outraging Public Decency still, I think, carries a prison sentence and I would not be good in prison: I am allergic to woollen blankets, porridge, communal showers and dungarees with arrows on. Mind you, if I ever managed to escape, I would at least know exactly how far away I could be in thirty minutes…

The previous Couch to 5k instalment ‘Devon Loch, That’s All I’m Saying’ is here.
The next instalment of the running diary ‘Some Immutable Laws of Life’ is here.
Couch to 5k starts here.

Devon Loch*, that’s all I’m saying – Couch to 5k week 9

It’s not much of a hill, but my house is at the top of it. It means that wherever I run, the second half of that run is always uphill – or else I don’t get home. It is of no relevance, I just wanted you to know.

On my last twenty-eight minute run of week 8, I kept going by convincing myself that when I reached ‘the end’, I would continue to run for another two minutes, in order to prove that I would be ok this week. When I got there, I couldn’t do it. The problem is that I currently run until the bell rings to tell me that I am half way home, at which point I turn around and retrace my steps: I know exactly where I should be when I finish and my entire focus over those final minutes is on getting there. When I cross that line, everything collapses around me – including me. At that point, I am no more likely to run a further thirty seconds than another thirty days. I am done. It’s like asking a man who has just climbed Everest to shimmy up a step-ladder from the summit and fit a new light bulb. If you aim to make the perfect apple crumble, does anybody actually expect you to put crushed nuts on top?

I ended last week in a bit of a panic. Circumstances beyond my control pushed me from a Wednesday run to a Thursday run. This meant that in order to maintain the regime, my final run of the week had to be on Saturday. On Saturday I work all day, I have a long walk to and from, and I was due to see one of my daughters and two of my grandchildren an hour after getting home. Could I fit a thirty eight minute session (including warm up and warm down) into that gap (particularly as my getting ready/psyching myself up/drinking lots of water/going for a last minute toilet break routine takes at least thirty minutes)?

Well, I did it. The stress of the situation took my mind off the normal certainty of failure and – other than the failure to tag an extra two minutes on – I managed ok. It was earlier than I normally run and the weather was very warm. In my panic to get on with it, I forgot my knee supports, my chewing gum and my water, but I reached the end without any hint of stopping along the way. It was the work of seconds to cleave my tongue from the roof of my mouth with a screwdriver after I had staggered home. This week, I have discovered that the entire duration of a run is spent in an internal discussion with myself over the advisability of ‘just stopping for a few seconds’ and I fear that at least half of it is argued out loud. People with dogs cross the road when they see me coming. People without dogs hide behind trees…

I have now completed two of my thirty minute runs. Tomorrow I will have finished ‘the course’ and a smugger person you will not be able to find. It remains to be seen whether I will be able to gather together the motivation to keep going now. I will keep you informed.

For my run, my musical ‘soundtrack’ consists largely of tracks that are five minutes long or more: during a thirty minute run I know that I should get through six songs. There are, though, one or two shorter ones lurking therein and I cannot articulate the pain I feel when one of them starts to play. It boots my meticulous planning right out of the window. I cannot adjust the timings in my head and breathe at the same time. After a short track has played, there is no way of calculating when I will enter the last five minutes of my personal hell – other than the voice of Jo Whiley telling me that I am just entering the last five minutes, of course – but the fury drives me on, so the shorter songs stay on the playlist. I haven’t yet had a run without at least one shorter track puncturing my schedule. When I do, it will surely infuriate me further.

One further thing I discovered this week. I really should not have tracks with quiet intros on the playlist. When they play, I can hear myself breathe – and that is very bad indeed. Nobody should sound like that unless they are wearing an aqualung.

Today I met some old friends whom I have not seen since before lockdown and they commented on my loss of weight. Like an idiot I told them that I have been running (I have previously told no-one outside of my family and my tiny roster of WP readers). They were utterly appalled. They could not have disapproved more if I had wee’d in their cocoa. After we parted, I kept checking over my shoulder, in case they had reported me to the police. I anticipated disinterest; disapproval on such a grand scale left me wondering whether I really was being reckless beyond the point of criminal culpability. At least I won’t be so easy to catch in a chase now.

*Devon Loch jumped the last fence of the Grand National in 1956 comfortably in front of the rest of the field. Inexplicably, it then fell attempting to jump a fence that did not exist in the finishing straight and did not finish.

The previous Couch to 5k instalment, ‘The Look’ is here.
The next Couch to 5k instalment, ‘They Think It’s All Over’ is here.
Couch to 5k starts here.

The Look – Couch to 5k week 8

Week 8 and I’ve just realised that the photo I have been using at the top of this thread is of a female runner. I feel it necessary in these days of litigation to make it clear, they are not my legs, please do not consider approaching the person they rightfully belong to in order to discuss the content of this blog. I cannot be held responsible for any pepper-spray defence-actions should you ignore this advice. I don’t have legs like that: mine are short, very muscular and not at all something that you would wish to see in anything tight, but with only a week or two to go, I think there is little point in searching for a new image. Besides, to date, nobody has commented (meaning, I think, that they haven’t noticed or they really do think that I shimmy around on those pins) so we’ll leave well alone for now…

Well, I’m now running for twenty-eight minutes at a go, three times a week and James is right – it doesn’t hurt any more than twenty five minutes did. I don’t find it any easier but, all the same, when I set out today, it was with the quiet confidence of completing it, by hook or by crook.

It feels like a lifetime since I was able to enjoy a mid-run amble. I have quite forgotten how quickly the brain clears during those inter-lope intermissions. All that lies between warm-up and warm-down now is pain and misery: an addled brain that can think of nothing else but how much longer does this go on? My runs have settled into an unvarying routine:

Minute 1 – I’m feeling ok today
Minute 2 – I’m feeling really tired today
Minute 3 – I don’t think I can do this today
Minute 4 – I really don’t think I can do this today
Minute 5 – I can’t do this, I’ll have to stop (repeat for next twenty minutes)
Minute 26 – Three minutes left. I can do this
Minute 27 – Actually, I’m not sure that I can
Minute 28 – Don’t be so bloody stupid! (This is my reply to Jo Whiley who has just suggested that I might like to speed up for the last minute)

Next week, the last week, moves me up to thirty minute runs. It should move me up to 5k per run, but I am certain that, at my speed, it will not, so perhaps that might give me the spur to go on: to run 5k. Of course, that depends on how close to 5k I am, by then, running. If it is a long way adrift, then I clearly don’t have it in me. The question is, will I be able to motivate myself to keep running from then on? The last eight weeks have been a personal challenge, but when next week is done… I am not a runner. I don’t enjoy running, but I do enjoy proving myself wrong. At the end of next week, I hope I will have done that. What then?

Ah, but that is for next week, or possibly the week after. For this week I still have one further twenty-eight minute run to tackle before I can set about the whisky, stilton and oatcakes with a conscience so clear that not even my window cleaner could smear it.

I am still the hot and sweaty vision staggering along the village roads that I was eight weeks ago. I still do not own proper training shoes or shorts. I still set off thinking that I am going to be cold and find that I am running in the heat of Mercury by minute two. I continue to run in a ‘T’ shirt that I use for holiday snorkelling; a very old pair of tracksuit bottoms or, on warmer days, a long pair of swimming shorts, and my rescued slip-on trainers which now have one sole that has started to flap alarmingly as I run. I must do something about it.

I will buy myself some proper running garb when the present regime has finished, it may give me the incentive to continue, but it is not without risk. If I am dressed like somebody who can run, then people who see me may believe that I am, in reality, somebody who can run. They may well look at the sweating heap that approaches them at a limping lope and think, ‘Well, he’s got the garb. He obviously runs. Looking at him now, he must be in trouble. I’d better call the paramedics.’ They might be right. I am quite happy for passer’s-by to see me and think, ‘Bless, him. He looks close to death, but at least he is trying.’ Less so for them to think ‘Well look at him, stupid old fool obviously thinks that buying all the running kit is going to turn him into a runner. By the look of him he’d have done better to have bought himself a nice shroud.’ At least as I am now, it looks as if I might have set out on a whim. Nobody could guess that I have been doing this for two months without perceptible improvement.

If I do buy new trainers, I’ll just have to change my route, I guess…

The previous Couch to 5k instalment, ‘Incremental Gains’ is here.
The next Couch to 5k instalment, ‘Devon Loch, That’s All I’m Saying’ is here.
Couch to 5k starts here.

Incremental Gains – Couch to 5k week 7

James, if you are reading this, please tell me that it gets easier. I have no ducks to distract me on my run (or geese) and I have discovered what a very long time twenty five minutes is. I realise that when I started this, twenty five seconds would have found me, hands on knees, hawking into the gutter – but if I’m honest, I still feel like that after twenty five seconds, it’s just that I now grit my teeth and plod on for a further twenty four and a half minutes, hating every second and feeling like John Hurt must have done just before the Alien exploded out of his chest. Today I swallowed a fly after about three minutes and spent the next twenty two coughing. People were giving me so much space.

Jo Whiley’s voice in my ear keeps telling me that I must be finding it easier now, that I am probably running faster. No. No, twenty five minutes of running does not feel easier than the sixty second bursts I was doing seven weeks ago. In fact it seems about twenty five times as hard. No Jo, I am not running faster. I could not slow down if I tried. I would need a reverse gear and my knees would not cope with it. If I’m honest, I am beginning to regret choosing to be accompanied by Ms. Whiley. She is just too bloody cheerful. I really should have chosen Sarah Millican, but I feared that she might make me laugh – and I cannot afford to squander perfectly good oxygen on that malarkey, thank you very much.

I have developed a blind and sullen bloody-mindedness that propels me through each run, even though the attitude of ‘I’ll do it, even if it kills me,’ does not provide quite the same level of motivation now as it once did. Although I remain to be persuaded that it won’t actually kill me. At my age, death is certainly closer to being within my grasp than fitness.

In addition to the silken tones of Ms Whiley, I am accompanied on each run by the nagging little voice of my own devilish antonym-ish Jiminy Cricket repeating the words, ‘Why on earth are you doing this? Nobody gets credit for being a fit-looking corpse.’ I have always hated grasshoppers. They pretend to jump, but I think that really they fly. I find it hard to trust anything that rubs its legs together to get a girlfriend. Locusts are in no way lovable. Even with a top hat and cane. I do not need a supernumerary orthopteral conscience. I have more than enough trouble with the one I’ve got, thank you very much. Anyway, despite its chiding voice of caeliferan common sense, I will not give in. Who wants to be a real boy when the puppet gets all the laughs?

I have my Bluetooth headphones back in operation and, working on the policy of incremental gains as employed so successfully by British Cycling for many years, I figure that the loss of the weight attached to dispensing with almost a metre of copper wire must be worth at least a couple of dozen yards on my clock at the end of the run. As I explained earlier, when I am struggling, I cannot actually help myself by running slower, but there are a few things that I have learned on my thrice weekly lopes around the village that help me breathe (albeit painfully). I have learned that, if it is at all possible, it is better to run on the road than the undulating path/driveway/path route offered by the pavement. It doesn’t sound much, but the unevenness of the path is somehow incredibly draining. Besides, there’s always the chance that I might get knocked-over on the road and not have to finish the run. Driveways, however, must always be utilised when crossing the road – lifting the foot high enough to tackle a kerb is a totally unjustifiable expenditure of energy. I have discovered that whenever I think that it might be a good idea to speed up just a little bit, I am unerringly wrong. It is always a bad idea for me to speed up. I have discovered that pretending that I am not at death’s door fools nobody, but simply uses up energy: I will finish much quicker if I just give myself up to exhaustion and shame. If I can just shift this monkey from my back I should be flying…

I realise that you are in no way interested, but I have discovered that the tracks that give me a little ‘pep’ when they play during my run are:

Cocaine – Eric Clapton
Ribcage – Kasabian
Everlong – Foo Fighters
I Feel Free – Cream
Trampled Underfoot – Led Zeppelin
Survival – Muse
Fool’s Gold – Stone Roses
Sowing the Seeds of Love – Tears for Fears
Check Out Time 11 AM – Sparks (I’m fully aware of what you might be thinking. Just check it out – it’s on YouTube!)

If I’m honest, the list probably says more about the speed I run than the music I like to run to.

If you would like to suggest anything else I should try, please feel free.

The previous Couch to 5k instalment, ‘The Extreme Elasticity of the Pain Threshold’ is here.
The next Couch to 5k instalment, ‘The Look’ is here.
Couch to 5k begins here.