Blaikie

'Waaaaaaah,waaaaaa-aaaaaah Butler, oh my Gawd, I'll get you Butler, Waaaaaaah, waaaaaa-aaaaaah!'  But no, not that one.  That was Blakey from On The Buses, with Reg 'I've Never Been Remotely Funny In My Life' Varney. 

No, not Blakey, Blaikie.  David Blaikie.  Who he?

David Blaikie is a little-known Canadian who promoted ultra-running for a good few years up to around 2001.  The reason his name still crops up occasionally on runners' forums is because he came up with a wonderful quote about ultrarunning.  I think what he said applies to distance running and training generally and, the first time I read this, I had that 'Oh Yesssss!' surge of recognition you get when someone encapsulates in words exactly what you feel.  I also like it because it appeals to the hippy in me, which is never a bad thing.

Here it is:

'Perhaps the genius of ultrarunning is its supreme lack of utility.  It makes no sense in a world of space ships and supercomputers to run vast distances on foot.  There is no money in it and no fame, frequently not even the approval of peers.  But as poets, apostles and philosophers have insisted from the dawn of time, there is more to life than logic and common sense.  The ultrarunners know this instinctively.  And they know something else that is lost on the sedentary.  They understand, perhaps better than anyone, that the doors to the spirit will swing open with physical effort.  In running such long and taxing distances, they answer a call from the deepest realms of their being; a call that asks who they are.'

Beautiful!

Hanner Marathon Caerdydd

I ran the Cardiff Half Marathon ten days ago.  It's huge, 19,000 in it, and I'd go back - very well organised, nice course, happy atmosphere, snazzy t-shirt.  I've had calf niggles on and off most of the year, so was a bit short of mileage going in, but felt I was slowly rounding into some form in the couple of weeks before - maybe under 1.35 with a bit of luck, but mainly wanted to come out unscathed calf-wise. 

I was in the orange zone - it went white, orange, green, yellow on predicted time, so I had a butcher's at the runners around me as we milled about and then inched my way towards the front of the zone.  A few other grizzled veterans had evidently had the same idea and so we stood behind the tape at the head of the zone and surveyed the white 'elite' competitors 20 yards or so ahead of us, maybe a thousand of them at a guess.  Some way into this group I could see the sub 1.30 pacer and me and my fellow grizzlers' eyes were drawn to those close to him.  We exchanged 'no way, just no way' glances at the sight of a few of this number, who had clearly never run a half before and had been wildly ambitious in their predictions. 

But no time for negativity, let's be positive and calm, and look, here's Colin Jackson on an open top bus, there's a helicopter circling a clock tower, I hear the Welsh National Anthem blaring out, this is all pretty good, in fact it's lovely, a la la la la la. . . . .and we're off!  

Ok, 15 seconds or so to cross the line, I'm an old-school gun time bandido so that counts, and this feels fast, it's rammed but we're tanking along with no bottlenecks, maybe a tad too fast.  Here's the mile marker, nice and big and red, can't miss that - I likee very much, 7.07 including the 15 seconds, hmmm, maybe I don't likee quite so much, a bit speedy, but whoa, I spy the pacer up the road, rounding a corner about 150 yards ahead.  I'm not the only one to spy him either.  No, don't be silly, no, don't be silly, no don't be. . . . .ok then, be silly - me and the 40 or 50 around me have the same idea and we speed up, oh yes indeedy, very silly, and I pass the big red 2 mile marker in 13.44, and shortly after me and my intrepid, possibly foolish comrads latch on to the back of a massive group, all eyes locked on to a stick poking out of a lightweight rucksack.  At the top of the stick is a piece of cardboard.  The cardboard sayeth 'Sub 1.30'.  This is madness.  I'm sweating freely, I'm under pressure, I'm breathing like Darth Vader, I've just run a 6.37 mile, I know I can't keep this up, but this is why I love Half Marathons - be brave and commit, oh yes!

 

I can feel the exhilaration and anxiety all around me as we try to hang on at the rear of the pack, it almost makes me want to laugh out loud, but I don't have the breath to do so.  We've thrown the Even Pace Handbook out the window and we're flying. . . . . for now.  We last until the hill at 4 and a half miles, it's fairly sharp and only about 100 yards long, but it's more than enough to do for us - halfway up me and around 30 others are unceremoniously dropped straight off the back of the group in a united lump, Keystone Cops style - stopped as if shot.  There's a point in every half marathon where things get a bit grim, usually about 7 or 8 miles in for me, and funnily enough, that's the bit that appeals to me, the bit where you have to override your urge to slow right down, what the great Mark Allen used to call 'managing fatigue' - today that point has arrived way early!  Ok, stick on the cadence, chop the stride down, breathe and relax, let's get to 5 and have a look - that was the marker back there, missed it, concentration wavering a bit already but 34.20ish, hmmmm, slowing a tad, but regrouped now, feels around 7's still or just outside, let's aim for overall 7's, what would that be, mental arithmetic when you're knackered - nice - ok, about 91.45 - stay on or under 7's overall as long as I can, that's Plan B.  

Then it's just mile to mile, tick them off, chuck a cup of water over my head at 6 miles, vest and shorts soaked in sweat, feeling hot but ok, the miles coming up between 7.05 and 7.10 and I'm in a rhythm that's hard but maintainable now, passing a few which helps.  I reach 9 in 62.51 and then there's a little hill before 10, hit in 70.02, starting to unravel, calf waking up with a few twinges, feel like I'm eyeballs out now, so it's every trick in the book to get home - ok, just a parkrun left from here, easy, 11 miles, ok, just half a lunchtime run, I could do that in my sleep, 12 miles, ok, 7 minutes to the last marker, count them down, where is it, must be soon, I spy it on a corner up ahead, 91.07 when I turn, then a straight run to the gantry, surprisingly get up on my toes for that and stop the clock in 91.53.

 

91.53 - near enough - a bit of life in the old dog yet!  Maybe I can get back under 1.30 with a good winter, haven't been there since 2004, did 1.29 that year and then 1.25  a fortnight later, hmmmm, could that be possible again nearly 10 years on?  Ha ha, come on, dream big, dream big! 

Medal, goody bag, banana, bottled drinks, t-shirt, you collect all these at Cardiff as you walk through a road-wide 300 metre-long cordoned off section between the finish line and the public area - this is class organisation and handles the vast numbers amazingly smoothly with no queueing I could see.  I sit on the pavement two thirds of the way through this bit and wait for my wife Liz, who has also had a good run, sneaking under 1.50.  We're chilled and happy.  Job done.  I heartily recommend the Hanner Marathon Caerdydd!

 

Highly Unnecessary Practical Joke Postscript: I mentioned the finishing straight above and I was pleasantly surprised by the sprint finish I was able to muster over the final 200 yards.  Normally I can't sprint at all at the end of a race - we actually used to say if you can sprint at the end, you haven't run hard enough in the middle, ha ha - but it felt like a strong, powerful finish.  Picture the scene then, when I received the email link to the Marathon Photos website a few days after the event, and I saw that, in addition to pictures, there was a video clip, 25 seconds long, of that very finish, taken from two different camera angles on the line itself.  Wonderful, I can't wait to see that powerful sprint finish, reminiscent of Ovett in his prime.  Brilliant.  But what is this - what skulduggery has gone on here?  Someone has gone to extreme lengths to play a huge practical joke.  A passable doppelganger is on the screen, admittedly wearing my number and identical vest and shorts, but that isn't me, it can't be, because I was up on my toes, with high knee lift, dynamic and strong, and that character is doing what I can only describe as a lollop.  And not even a committed lollop.  No.  A half-arsed lollop.  That looks more like Paul Nihill (ask your mother or Google him) than Steve Ovett.  I, er, I mean he, might not even have been done for lifting as he crossed the line. 

I think someone is following me around doing these elaborate hoaxes, because this sent a chill up my spine as it reminded me of a very similar occurrence in 1997.  I was at college, as a 'mature student', an oxymoron if ever there was one, and we were doing a group project producing a basic animation of a folktale.  We'd filmed it and just had to do the sound, but no one wanted to do the narration.  Eventually I was nominated, somewhat against my will, and I sat in the sound studio and held forth into the mike whilst my fellow students stared at me through the glass, baring various parts of their anatomy to try to get me to corpse.  But to no avail.  I was a model of professionalism and completed the five minutes of scripted narration in a single take, emphasising the burnished, deep timbre and lush, mellow tones of my voice.  Imagine my chagrin then, when I hotfooted it next door for the playback and heard those self-same scripted words spoken, not by me, heaven forbid no, but by a Dalek giving the keynote speech through a Vocoder at a trainspotters' convention.  Despite vigorous and somewhat blasphemous questioning, no one admitted responsibility for the opportunistic mixing-desk distortion which had clearly taken place. 

But I see a pattern emerging.  Just wait until I find the serial japester.

Let's play 'Reasons For Running Snap'.

Ok, here are mine, see if any of these hit the spot with you too:

There's a clear relationship between my fitness level and my contentment.

The biggest gym in the world is right outside my door.  And I've got free membership.

I like a sport where the equation is simple, work equals reward.  When someone says 'You'll be good at this if you've got natural hand/eye co-ordination', I want to get my coat.  Conversely, 'eat training, improve', yeah yeah, where do I sign up?

Every run is a self-esteem boost.  I can and I did.  Even the bad ones are good.

Some of the very best runs I've done have been the ones where I've thought twice about going out beforehand.

Tricky situations seem much clearer and easier to deal with after I've racked up a hard six miler.

Taking that time out for me means I'll give the rest of my time and attention away to others more willingly.

And here is my Ace In The Hole, wot I fought of all by myself.  This is the reason I think all of us run, and you qualify as one of the 'all of us' if you get a little bit twitchy if you haven't run for two or three days.  Ha ha, is that you?  Without getting all George Benson (The Greatest Luuuuurrrrve of Aaaaallllll), running is the place where we express ourselves to ourselves.  (Ok, if you're not American, maybe put your head between your knees now and breathe deeply, the feelings of nausea will soon pass.)  But no, seriously now, let me expand.  We have lots of competing demands on our time and energies nowadays, and most of us end up presenting very slightly differing versions of ourselves to different people, depending on the situation we encounter and the expectations placed upon us.  We are viewed and defined differently by family, friends, work colleagues, casual acquaintances etc., but, apart from loved ones, their opinions of us don't really matter in terms of our overall happiness.  The one big opinion that counts is your own view of yourself, and whether you like what you see.  Running gives us that, it's why we go running after a crappy day, to remind ourselves we are capable, fit, strong, free and happy.  Of course, we don't actually think of those steps, but I think that's why we need to  go and why we feel so much better and calmer afterwards - because we've expressed ourselves to ourselves.

Snap?  Or crap?  You decide.