you're gonna burn, you're gonna burn....

I noticed, about halfway round my run this evening and some nine days after Bonfire Night, that the big charity bonfire in Wilford was finally out. It was still burning when I ran past yesterday evening, and if they hadn't clearly raked it over at some point today, then I'm sure it would still have been smouldering away merrily tonight.

Nine days is quite a long time for any fire to be burning, I would say, but if you factor in the fact that it has been hooning it down pretty solidly every day since the bonfire was lit, then you'll agree that this was quite a big bloody fire. It's so big, in fact, that the organisers of the event apparently have to get a structural engineer to put it all together. It's literally the size of a large house, and this year, they had to build it twice when some of the local youth thought it might be amusing to set the pile alight a week before bonfire night.

Tsk.

That pile of ashes was still smouldering sadly as the organisers somehow managed to conjure up another massive pile of wood alongside so that the show could go on.

Not that I've given this much thought, but a bonfire of that size must burn pretty hot, right? Wouldn't that make it a really good place to get rid of a body? If you could get it into the woodpile somehow, surely it would then burn so hot that nothing would remain? And even if someone did see a man-shaped silhouette in the flames, given that it's traditional to burn effigies at this time of the year, wouldn't they just mistake it for another Guy?

Just as a point of interest and as a terrible history bore, I feel I should point out that Guy Fawkes wasn't burned at all.... he was actually sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered, but was so weak from his torture that he never made it past the hanging bit, sensibly deciding to jump from the gallows, breaking his neck. Spoilsport.



It seems to me something of an overreaction that he is still such a reviled figure in this country some 400 years after the Gunpowder Plot.... perhaps he'd seen the register of Parliamentary expenses and they were afraid he'd publish?

Isn't it time we got over it?

If we must burn effigies of a catholic in a massive bonfire every year, might I humbly suggest we move on to Tony Blair?

I think the finish line's a good place we could start....

Half Marathon? Done.



My official time was 1 hour, 56 minutes & 52 seconds. All my training has led me to think that I run at a fairly steady pace of between nine and ten minutes per mile. I took that to mean that, on a good day, I would be able to complete the course in less than two hours.... although I was also mindful that basically all of my training has taken place alongside either a river or a canal, and that the race itself featured a few more ups and downs. I hoped I could beat 2 hours, but until the actual day itself, I didn't know if I was going to be able to.

I've been in various triathlons and things, but I've never actually run a race like this before. There were 12,000 runners all lined up for the start, and it took me something like 5 minutes from the gun going off before I actually reached the starting line. The first mile or so was spent weaving my way through other runners and trying to find a path that compromised my running pace the least. In spite of all the traffic though, that first mile was quite a bit faster than my normal pace... probably something to do with all the excitement of the day and being carried along by the sheer weight of all the other runners. Mind you, I ran the whole thing faster than my normal pace, as the splits below show:

mile	Split:	climb (ft):
1	8:39	11
2	8.43	69
3	8:28	15
4	8.56	48
5	9:09	12
6	9.41	97
7	8:27	0
8	9:38	65
9	9:02	2
10	9:03	21
11	9:12	2
12	7:54	3
13	9.37	0

I think you can ignore the split for the 12th mile (I had to adjust a glitch on the GPS reading on the map Runkeeper was plotting), but those splits show how much faster than normal I was running. I overtook the 2 hour pacemarker (a guy holding a red board with the time he was aiming for emblazoned on it) in the first mile, and - in spite of a vague fear that he would appear over my shoulder any minute - never saw him again. Mind you, I am told that the 2:00 pace marker was actually overtaken by 2:15, so something was wrong somewhere. I didn't actually believe that I was going to beat 2 hours until I went through the 10 mile marker in 90 minutes.

I'm very, very pleased.



Although I was very sore on the last mile, especially in my hips and in my calf muscles, I was actually more surprised at how much of an emotional rollercoaster I found the race. I seemed to vacillate wildly between feeling strong and positive, and feeling quite the opposite. I played little tricks on myself like plotting 3 miles as being a quarter of the way there; 4 miles as a third of the way there; 6.5 miles as halfway..... but it was still sometimes a struggle not to feel oppressed by the amount of running I still had to do. The hardest part of the course for me was actually the last couple of miles, even the last 400m, with the finishing line literally in sight in front of me. That was when I felt the most crippled by the distance seeming to not get any shorter. Never has 400m felt quite so disproportionately far. Other stretches were a doddle: running down the Derby Road the first time; running down through the fallen leaves of that tree-lined avenue in Wollaton Park... Indeed, the eleventh mile felt the shortest of the lot, as I rounded the bottom of Castle Boulevard and turned towards the Experian offices and the last, painful, couple of miles.

I listened to my playlist on my iPhone throughout, and also had the Runkeeper application keeping my up to date with my pace and progress. Funnily enough, although I must have listened to loads of tracks and used them to distract me from how much my legs were hurting... I can actually remember very few specific songs. "Keep On Rocking in the Free World" helped me up that nasty hill at the University, "Hiphopopotamus vs Rhymenoceros" took me around the lake, "Ace of Spades" helped me up the long hill in Wollaton, "Touch Too Much" helped me up another nasty little incline.... but generally it's all blurred into the background.

Actually, thinking back, I can't even really remember the detail of the route we ran either. I know it in outline, but if I try and think back to running the course, the details become quite sketchy. Even when I was quite fresh, apparently I was concentrating more on the runners around me and on my running than I was on exactly where I was going. That's not to say that I didn't look at the crowds and the spectacle of the race itself, because I did: I enjoyed the huge variety of other runners, with most seemingly representing a charity. There were people of all shapes and sizes, with some athletic types wheezing on the floor having a breather after a couple of miles, and other far more unlikely looking runners breezing past me with a mile to go. The crowds were brilliant too. I was cheered off at the start by our own little pack of supporters, and again at 8 miles going up a nasty hill... but the crowds lined the route throughout and it was great to be clapped and generally encouraged.

I wish I could say that I felt a tremendous rush of emotions when I finished too, but I was so physically and mentally tired that I could barely lift my leg up to have my timing chip removed from around my ankle. I had about twenty minutes to myself before I caught up with everyone else, and I was busy doing mundane things like taking on board lots of fluid, eating the Mars bar that was in my little finishing pack and trying to stay warm. After that, I was busy cheering C. and LB to the finishing line. It was only really much later on that I started to get a sense of quiet satisfaction at a job well done.

C. came in at 2 hours, 18 minutes & 41 seconds, with LB being sightly harshly - given they crossed the line together - clocked a second later. They started the race together, separated when C set off down a hill like she was on rollerskates, and came together again in the last couple of miles when LB caught up with a struggling C. and helped give her the encouragement to get over the finishing line. They did really, really well and I'm very proud of both of them. They beat the first marathon runner in, anyway, which is just as well as he sprinted / floated his way to the finishing line in about 2 hours 20 minutes. Well, he gets paid to do this sort of thing, so....



Between the three of us, we have raised (so far) a total of £2,640. On top of that, the MS Society will receive a further £480 in Gift Aid.... this gives us a grand total of around £3120. That's a fantastic achievement - especially given that I was initially hoping to raise a mere £1000. I am really grateful to every single one of you who has made a donation, however small, or offered us any kind of support at all as we've pushed ourselves through all those endless, dreary miles in training. It was a real incentive to keep on going even when every fibre of my being was telling me to stop.

Well done team!

There may be some more photos appearing here as and when I gather them all together (some are on my dad's phone, some are on the official photographer's website (here are the ones of me and the ones of C - also featuring LB). You never know, LB or Hen might put some up at their places too.

It was a good day. My legs are quite sore today (and oddly getting more sore as the day goes on), but I'm off for a curry now, so it's all good. I'm not in training any more, you see....

Not until tomorrow, anyway.

Perhaps the London Triathlon next year. That's the one I had to drop out of at the last minute in 2005 when I first started seeing my neurologist. No promises, but it feels like unfinished business.....

It's not too late to add to our kitty for the MS Society either. You can still sponsor us here.

Thanks everyone. That's a wrap.

somehow it always collects to one big melting pot....

Yesterday morning, with exactly one week to go before the start of the half marathon, I began to get myself ready for my last big training run. I'll have a couple of short - 30 minute - tuning runs before I get to the start line on Sunday, but this was one final sixty minute thrash before I rest up for the big day.

There was just one small problem: I felt terrible.

I'd woken up on Saturday morning with a headache that got steadily worse through the day and took away first my appetite and then my desire to do anything much more than just go back to bed. Now, my body is not exactly a temple, but the plan was to stop drinking entirely for the seven days in the run up to the race. I'm not sure if a total abstinence from alcohol would significantly enhance my performance - I don't drink that much - but I was pretty sure it couldn't hurt. A couple of drinks on Friday and Saturday and then off the sauce until after the race. That was the plan, anyway. Unfortunately, it didn't quite work out like that. I'd only had a couple of small glasses of wine on Friday night, so my headache surely wasn't caused by the booze. Now it was dragging out into Saturday though and I no longer felt like drinking anything stronger than water, I was starting to feel positively resentful: how unfair that I was going to be deprived of even a moderate weekend tipple before my self-imposed alcohol ban. Feeling distinctly sorry for myself, I couldn't help but wonder where the justice was in that.

Things got worse when I awoke to find the headache was still there on Sunday morning. Worse yet: now it was accompanied by a feeling of crippling fatigue that made even getting out of bed something of a struggle. Where a headache might be a symptom of MS, fatigue definitely is one of my warning signs, although I haven't worked out yet what triggers it. You might think that it would be directly related to the amount of physical exertion I put in, but actually it doesn't seem to be. I seem to be able to physically push my body quite hard, but it's often smaller exertions that seem to really clobber me: a few weeks ago it was an early start and a long(-ish) drive that had me struggling to hold my arms up straight on the steering wheel; last week it was the couple of hours I spent in one of our warehouses doing nothing more physical than observing transactions.... neither of those activities should be as taxing on the body as a 12 mile run, but both of them left me feeling bone weary and with shoulders actually trembling with fatigue. I'm fairly sure that all of this extra mileage is taking its toll on my body, but it's not a straightforward case of cause and effect, with the running being linked directly to the fatigue.

I'm nothing if not determined though - probably to a fault. Whatever was making me feel fatigued was not going to stop me getting up and going out for my last long training run. I dragged myself out of bed, got into my running gear, stuck "Death Magnetic" onto my iPod and set off out the door.

Almost immediately I knew this was going to be difficult. If you're a runner, you'll probably know this feeling, but there are some days, some runs, where everything feels great, and - more often - other runs where everything feels much harder than usual. Things often get easier after the first half mile or so as your body eases into the exertion, but it was quickly clear that this run was going to be a real struggle from start to finish: my muscles felt okay and relatively loose after a couple of days off, but my head was aching and my shoulder and arms felt weak and useless.

I ran for a little over an hour, in the end. I covered 6.51 miles at a decent overall pace of 9.19 minutes per mile... about the same as usual if not actually a little faster. But it was hard. In fact, it was a real struggle putting one foot in front of the other. I usually listen to music to help me to focus my mind on something other than what I'm doing; with each song taking me another four or five minutes down the road. Today, not even Metallica was helping take my mind away from how difficult it all felt and how much more running I had to do before I could stop. I got home okay, but I am really not relishing dragging myself around 13 miles-or so next weekend if I feel anything like that on the starting line. I also have the words of one of my MS Nurses ringing around my head: MS is not something you can just "push through" and you have to learn to listen to your body. Was I listening to my body by dragging it out for a run when all it wanted to do was to rest? No. Will I listen to it if it tells me the same thing before Sunday's race? No. When will I learn that it's not always a case of mind over matter?

Perhaps it was just a bad day; a one-off. Maybe next week I will bounce my way around the half marathon course in something approaching two hours and wonder what all the fuss was about. I hope so. I currently feel very mortal - although sadly not in the Scottish sense of being profoundly drunk, either. I'm officially off the sauce, remember... and I've still got that bloody headache too.

Pah.

----

There is one perfectly good reason to drag myself around the course next week, and one thing that makes it all feel worthwhile: all the money we've raised for the MS Society. You've all been amazingly generous so far, but there's still time to sponsor us yet. We're hoping to raise more than £2,000 overall and we're well on the way towards that target..... Click here for more details and to sponsor us.

you gotta run, run, run, run, run....

The half-marathon is now only ten days away. My training programme peaked with a 12 mile run last week, and has now started to taper down. Well, I say taper down - I still went on a six mile run this morning....but the hard work has now been done and it's now just a question of getting to race day and getting the race done. As an example of the differences in our lifestyles, my run this morning took place along the Grantham canal; C's run took place around Wenceslas Square in Prague. Not as glamarous as it sounds, apparently.

As promised / threatened, I have updated the picture on our JustGiving pages. Instead of a fuzzy picture of me finishing a triathlon, I've now put up this rather fetching picture of the pair of us in our lovely MS Society running vests.

Mmmm.

Our original fundraising target was £1000, but people have been so generous that I've now uplifted that to £1250, and we may even get beyond that. Whatever else they may be, my company have also agreed to match the first £500 that we've raised, so we should be able to donate something approaching £2000 to the MS Society by the time we're done. Not bad. I've said it before, but I think it bears repeating: I have been both touched and humbled by your generosity. A pretty hefty chunk of the money we've so far raised has come directly from readers of this blog, much of it from people that I've never even met. Thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. Without wanting to get too soppy about it, your generosity and kindness is a real inspiration.

We've also acquired a new member to our little team: as of last week, LB has entered the half marathon too and will be raising sponsorship on our behalf. He's an old hand at this kind of thing, so we'll naturally be looking to him for tips about how to get around the course, guidance on our refuelling habits, that kind of thing....

Ask me again when I'm halfway round, running up a hill into a headwind in a torrential downpour, but as of now, this has been an entirely positive, life-affirming experience.

You can still donate via our JustGiving page. Every donation, no matter how small, is gratefully received and will go to a really great cause.

You guys rock!

I am tired, I am weary...

I seem to be developing bags underneath my eyes; bruised, black smudges pointing obliquely outwards from the inside corner of my eyes towards my cheekbones. They rather serve to make me look sallow, sunken and tired. I think this may largely be because I *am* sallow, sunken and tired. They might always have been there, I suppose, obscured from my attention by the glasses that I used to wear. I rather think, however, that they're new and that they're a product of my age, my exercise regime and too many late nights.

I'm not really taken with them, but I hardly think I'm metrosexual enough for eye lotions. Perhaps I'll simply have to get used to looking tired. I *feel* tired most of the time, so why not?

Coming hard on the heels of some very late nights at the weekend, I'm sure that the twelve mile run I did last night won't have much helped, but it did include two moments that brought a massive smile to my face and a spring to my weary step. The first was when I turned around at the six mile point just as "Knights of Cydonia" popped up on my iPod. That guitar solo is preposterously joyous. The second moment came soon after, at about the seven-and-a-half mile mark, when I saw a man walking a ferret along the canal towpath. It was a perky looking thing, with bright white fur and wearing a natty looking harness. Its owner offered me a cheery good evening as we passed, and the thought of them kept me amused for at least another mile in the darkening evening.

There was a little bit of a chill in the air by about 8pm, and I'm rather afraid that summer might be over.



I was quite pleased with my splits for this one:

mile	Split:	climb (ft):
1	9:27	1
2	9:32	9
3	9:12	4
4	9:04	21
5	9:56	14
6	10:17	1
7	9:44	2
8	9:14	0
9	9:49	0
10	9:19	4
11	10:07	1
12	10:04	2

It's a very flat run, as you'd expect alongside a canal, but what stood out for me is the way that I ran at a pretty consistent pace all the way through. It certainly didn't feel like that, as for the last five or six miles, my legs felt like lead. I discovered that, even though I was feeling tired, if I picked my knees up and upped the pace a bit, it didn't make me feel any worse.... hence the slightly faster times around miles 7-10. I suppose it just goes to show how much of running is mental as well as physical. At this sort of pace, I should think I should finish the race a few minutes over two hours. If I give my body a chance to recover in the run-up to the race, so that I actually get to the starting line feeling fresh, perhaps I'll be able to run a bit quicker. Who knows?

As you probably already know, C. and I are running the half marathon to raise money for the MS Society. We're hoping to raise £1000, and any money you can spare is gratefully received. You can sponsor us here.

all aboard and we're hitting the road....

9.10 miles in 87 minutes. At that pace, the half marathon should take me a little over two hours - not that I'm aiming to do more than just get around the course. The way my legs are feeling at the moment, I'm not sure I'm exactly going to pick up speed over that last four miles or so....

C's out doing a 10km loop now as part of her training schedule.

It's hard work this, you know. Tonight I'm going to be especially dedicated if I'm going to undo all the goodness of my training at the BBQ I'm attending.....

Should you feel so inclined, you can sponsor C and me here. We're hoping to raise £1000 for the MS Society, and every penny will help us towards that target.

take it to the limit one more time....

This isn't an easy thing for me to admit, but I'm struggling physically a bit at the moment. I'm running the Robin Hood Half Marathon in a few weeks time, and I've been trying my best to keep to a training programme. After that enforced two week break where I was flat on my back and unable to stand up, nevermind to get out the door for a run, I have something of a feeling of needing to do some catching up. I'm reasonably active most of the year, but over the last couple of months, my mileage has been steadily rising. Last Saturday, I did some hill interval running: 1 minute running up a steep hill, followed by 1 minute running down the hill, repeated twelve times. This was followed on Sunday by a nine mile run. For the last few miles of that run, the muscles in my legs stiffened up appreciably, and in the last mile, I actually started dragging my left leg a bit. Not good, but probably the result of three separate factors coming together: the layoff, the increased mileage and my MS.

I rested on Monday, but went out on a five mile run on the Tuesday night. This was perhaps a mistake: my muscles were still very sore, and it was something of a struggle to drag myself around (although I did, of course... still managing to clock in at 9.22 minutes per mile, below my nominal goal of 10 minute miles). I rested again on Wednesday, but went swimming this evening. This is usually the one form of exercise that I do that keeps the muscles of my upper body moving and hopefully helps to stave off wastage. With the increase in my running, I haven't been as often recently (I only went today because I couldn't get to football), and this evening I could really feel the stiffness across my shoulders as well as the lingering soreness from my runs in my legs. It was really hard work and I think I'll have another day off tomorrow before going back through the whole cycle next week.

The half marathon is on 13th September, and I'm looking forward to it. Between the two of us, C and I are hoping to raise £1000 for the MS Society - a cause, of course, that is close to my heart. I should be aerobically fit enough (my standing heart rate is something around 40 bpm), but I'm starting to worry if I'm going to be physically up to it. My willpower is good, I know that: I'm more than capable of dragging myself out for a run in any weather and more-or-less however I'm feeling. This is different though; I don't think that this is something that I can (or should) be pushing through; that dragging foot is a sign of the physical limits of my body that I'm going to have to learn to respect, no matter how hard or inconvenient I may find it. This is not an especially easy pill for me to swallow, and it makes me feel the thing that I fear the most: lessened by my condition. It also inevitably makes me to wonder how much more of this I'm going to have to learn to cope with..... something nobody can answer simply because there are no certain outcomes.

Of course, all these things are relative, and I'm very aware that although I may be having a few problems at the moment, there are people far worse off than me. I'm worrying about the impact a 9 mile run had on my body; some people can barely make it out of the front door unaided. I'm very aware and very grateful for what I still have.

Even so.... I don't like feeling limited.

more salt and pepper in my hair....

After an enforced lay-off from all exercise that stretched out in the end to 13 days, I was naturally very keen to get my trainers back on and to resume my training for September's half marathon. It was extremely frustrating to be flat out on my back for two weekends when I should by rights have been out hill interval training and taking my longest run up to 75 minutes. Even when it was pouring with rain and C came home from her long run looking like a drowned rat, I was still seethingly envious.

As soon as the consultant gave me the go-ahead then, I was out for a run.... I was strictly limited to a half mile at first, but that first few minutes back on the road and it felt like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders and that I was finally back. Needless to say, the next day's mile became two, and the mile-and-a-half the following day became three, but I wasn't feeling any ill-effects from the exertion, and was simply glorying in being back on my feet (even though I seem to have lost something like 6kg in the week or so I was off my feet. I was still eating as normal, so I don't know how that happened. Perhaps I could sell it as a diet plan?) This Saturday, I felt sufficiently well to resume my interval training: twenty minutes on a fairly steep hill near here. One minute up the hill and then another minute down the hill. Repeat ten times. It's a lot harder than it sounds, and apparently it's good at building up your speed.

The next day, I felt strong enough to really stretch my legs out and to go for a longer run.



5.38 miles in a little over 55 minutes is not quite the 8 or 9 miles I should be doing by now, but it felt like enough to me.... I wouldn't want to overdo it now, would I? I was quite pleased with myself, and besides, my body was telling me that it wasn't quite ready to do much further. I spent much of the rest of the day staggering around on nicely stiffened legs, but with that warm glow of self-satisfaction that almost makes all that pain worthwhile. Almost.

So, clearly the obvious thing to do on the very next day would be to go running again.



I'd got home from my half day at work (which finished at about 14:30, but you get the general idea), finished off "Goldfinger" and then promptly fallen asleep. By the time I woke up, the late evening sunshine was out and I was determined to wake myself up and to make the most of the rest of the glorious day by dragging myself around a "short" run of 4.02 miles.

This one hurt (although I see I apparently ran faster than on Sunday's run, it certainly didn't feel like it). I could feel the numbness in the soles of my feet and in the muscles of my legs with each stride, and the stiffness from the weekend's running meant that I felt as though I was fighting against my body every step of the way. As I was suffering through my entirely self-inflicted misery, the presence of time's winged chariot was made even more abundantly clear to me when, at two separate points on my route, I ran past two young runners going in the opposite direction. The first one could not have been much older than twenty, and he loped past me at something like twice my pace without a bead of sweat on his brow and looking as though he hadn't got a care in the world. I generally run in sunglasses - at least partly to hide the pain in my eyes from passers-by.... A couple of miles further on, I ran past another kid, this one no more than eighteen. This one was even worse: not only was he even younger than the first one, but he was running so quickly and so easily that it didn't look as though his feet were actually touching the ground as he moved. I was having one of those difficult runs, when everything feels harder, but somehow watching these kids run effortlessly past me made my legs feel even heavier and made me feel as old as the hills.

Bastards.

The half marathon is in just under 7 week's time. Plenty of time, yet.... but I need to remember the old adage that the rest is as important as the training if I'm not going to kill myself before I get to the starting line - never mind the finish.

I'll have a day off tomorrow, I think.

bye bye blues...

I'm training for a half-marathon in September. There's still some way to go, but my weekly mileage is inexorably creeping up. I'm now past the seven mile mark on my longest run, and it will double before too much longer and as we get nearer to the big day.

My training programme last week went something like this:

Monday - 30 minute swim
Tuesday - 4.5 mile run
Wednesday - rest (day after injection)
Thursday - 1 hour of football
Friday - rest (I bottled going for another swim - too tired)
Saturday - interval running on a hill (1 min up, 1 min down x10 of each)
Sunday - 7 mile run

I'd actually like to squeeze another run in, but as you can see, there literally aren't enough days in the week. On the weeks when there's no football, that's exactly what I do.....

Until my longer run started to get significantly longer (it's up to 75 minutes this week, with some intervals thrown in), I was happily doing other exercise on my "rest" days too, but that's had to stop. I was starting to notice how tired I was; bone tired.....and so somewhat reluctantly, I've had to concede that I need to be more careful about how much I put my body through and how many spoons I might be using up. I was also, it has to be said, becoming more conscious of the wear and tear the increased mileage was placing upon my body.

So, as anyone else would do in the same situation, I bought myself some new Jimmy Choos.

OK, well not Jimmy's exactly. Hardly Manolo Blahnik's either... but do I look like Sarah Jessica Parker to you?

Actually, don't answer that.

I'm told that you're supposed to change your running shoes something like every 500 miles. It sounds a lot, but if you're doing only ten miles a week - and I'm currently doing nearer 20 - then that means you should be replacing your trainers every year. I'm very heavy on my feet when I run, and I'm a mild overpronator, which means my feet roll inwards from heel to toe as my foot strikes the ground. If I don't wear running shoes with the right kind of support, then this would place enormous strain on my joints and could easily lead to injury. I learned this the hard way by getting shin splints and tendinitis in my knees (to be fair, I was also a lot heavier at the time). Since visiting a specialist running shop, having my foot-strike properly assessed and then buying shoes accordingly, I've not had any problems. So not surprisingly, for the last few years, when I remember to replace my running shoes, I have actually pretty much bought the same trainer each time: from the Asics Gel GT 2100, to the 2130 all the way to my new pair of 2140s. Well, they do boast "IGS, an all new extended Space Trusstic System for greater stability, DuoMax Support System and Solyte Midsole Material". So there. What more could you want from a shoe? Lasers and a tractor beam? (actually, maybe that's what a Space Trusstic System is....?)

It's hardly the most glamorous purchase in the world (especially once you've put in the elasticated triathlon laces I like to use)..... but if it ain't broke..... and I don't really want to be broken, if I can avoid it.

That said, after running in my sparkly new trainers at lunchtime, I still felt bloody knackered. I was hoping they might help me with that, but it turns out that I'm still old and useless, only now I have cleaner looking shoes.

deep in the woods we're undiscovered....

There was a naked man in the changing rooms at the gym yesterday. Now, obviously a certain degree of nudity here is normal as, by its very definition, a changing room is a place where people get changed, and when people get changed, there is that inevitable moment of transition from one set of clothes to the other when you will be essentially starkers, give or take a pair of socks. There's also a certain amount of to-ing and fro-ing to the showers, although actual nudity at the showers is generally confined to the actual shower cubicles themselves, with most people either wearing a pair of trunks and on their way to the swimming pool, or firmly wrapped up in their towel. Fleeting nudity, in this context, is tolerable. Brazen nudity, however, is not. You can probably get away with walking to the showers with your towel over your shoulder, but if you don't have a towel with you, then frankly you're just walking about in the buff, and you might just as well have your hands on your hips and your foot on the changing benches as we all try not to catch your eye. Or an eyeful.

I'd just been for a swim, and was just coming down the steps from the pool and on my way into the sauna when I caught sight of this guy: he was walking down the corridor to the showers, butt naked and without a towel, striding purposefully in my direction. Even in an environment where bare flesh is fairly commonplace, his total nudity stood out a mile. Naturally, I frowned my disapproval and turned a sharp right into the sauna as he turned the other way into the showers. I was alone in the sauna, and so, without really thinking about it, I selected a seat on the topmost bench facing the glass door and the shower cubicles beyond. This ill-considered seat selection meant I had a grandstand view when the naked man emerged from his shower cubicle. He had no towel, of course, so he proceeded to attentively and unhurriedly smooth the water from his body. From his whole body. His whole body. Now, I wouldn't do this in the privacy of my own bathroom, nevermind in the middle of a busy gym changing room. Still, each to their own, I suppose..... except now he walked straight towards me and pushed open the door into the sauna.

Now, I know that in scandinavia it is commonplace for people to be completely nude in saunas. I've been to Finland a couple of times, and I know that this is the way things are done and have done it myself. The thing about that is that it is considered ill-mannered and unhygienic to do this unless you take in some paper-towelling that you then sit on. In the UK, at least in my gym, we tend to wear our trunks or our towels when in the sauna. Well, it has wooden benches, so the idea of someone's naked arse and sweaty undercarriage sat on a porous surface like that is pretty horrible, isn't it? Anyway, naked guy came into the sauna, but instead of sitting down quietly, he shut the door and then, still standing up, he pressed his back against the wooden wall next to the door. That was odd enough, but he then proceeded to move his body slowly against the wall, as though he was scratching his back, or, heaven help us, his arse. He did this for about thirty seconds, and then sat down. After another thirty seconds, he then began squirming around again, and this time it was impossible to shift the impression that he was trying to ease some discomfort by rubbing his naked backside against the wooden seating in the sauna..... After about a minute of this, I got up and left.

I don't know how often that sauna gets cleaned, but I'll bet it isn't ofen enough, and I'm not sure that my swimming trunks are protection enough against whatever is being ground into those wooden benches in the sauna. I'm also pretty sure that the shower gel in the showers is not disinfectant enough to provide any real protection either.

There are worse things to catch than swine flu, you know.

Ick.

your lovely head...

It doesn't seem quite so remarkable now that everyone wears them, but sometime around the early 1990s, I remember being struck how everybody on 'Neighbours' wore a helmet when they rode their bicycle. Thinking about it now, it was probably something that the producers of the programme made conspicuous entirely on purpose, as Australia was the first country in the world to impose uniform national mandatory bicycle helmet legislation, beginning in 1990. What self-respecting family-orientated cul-de-sac based soap opera wouldn't want to be encouraging its nation's children to ride safely?

Nearly thirty years later and still Britain has no equivalent law, and back then I had probably never seen such a thing being worn by a normal person before (if you can call Toadfish Rebecchi a normal person). Nowadays though, even though we're not obliged to wear them, it is far more likely that you will see a cyclist wearing a helmet than you are to see one without. I think I bought my first helmet because it was a pre-condition for competing in a triathlon I had entered, but I certainly wouldn't get on my bike without it now.

I mention all this because I have just bought myself a ski helmet. I go skiing every year, and it's something that has been nagging at me for a little while. If I won't get on my bike without a helmet, why am I happy to hurl myself down a mountain at speeds in excess of 30mph wearing only a beanie?



Although a helmet is obviously not a guarantee of safety, the statistics make for interesting reading:

"44% of skiers currently wear a helmet and 42% are intending to wear one the next time they visit the slopes. One reason for this growth is that out of 84,200 winter sports injuries recorded last season, 17,500 were head related. It is believed that out of those 17,500, 7,700 injuries and 11 deaths could have been avoided if they had been wearing a helmet."

To be honest, I value my brain quite a lot. Certainly enough to spend a few quid on a helmet. Did I really want to wait until I had an accident before I took the plunge? Surely every single person who skis has seen the dreadful sight of someone being taken down the mountain headfirst in a stretcher? Forget the stats: intuitively, do you reckon that it's better if you hit your head with or without a helmet? I realise it's better not to hit your head at all, but even the best skiier in the world can't do anything about someone crashing into them from behind, can they? Everyone falls over. Everyone. You might think that snow is a soft landing, but most pistes are packed pretty hard, and there are always things like trees, rocks and barriers that you could run into. Perhaps I'm getting old, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought that I should get myself a helmet.

Of course, given that I have a massive head, my next problem was to find a helmet that fitted me properly. I did a bit of research so that I had a reasonable grasp of what I should be looking for, and on Saturday, having taken the precaution of ringing ahead to make sure they had my likely size, we made the trip over to the Tamworth Snow Dome to have a look in our nearest decent skiing shop. No can do. Didn't fit. So I trooped back to Nottingham and ended up buying the first helmet I'd tried on the week before: The Red Hi-Fi. Obviously, it makes me look silly. And between now and the first day I wear it on the slopes, I'm going to be fretting if it fits me properly. I'm wearing it now to see if can tell.

So far so good.

It's quite warm, worn indoors with the heating on, anyway. No, please don't come round and look through the living room window. I know it looks ridiculous.

Reading this though, I'm fairly sure I've done the right thing. About wearing it on the mountain, that is, not on the sofa.

no more champagne and the fireworks are through....

Judging from the volume of cars crammed into the car park this evening, the credit crunch is apparently having little impact on my gym. It seems that the desire to shed a few pounds around the waist currently still outweighs the need to save a few pounds in the pocket. Only a week ago, in the gap between Christmas and New Year, I had the whole pool to myself, but tonight I was forced to share my lane with three other people. Luckily for me, they were all reasonably considerate swimmers, and I was able to snuffle my way through 42 mildly cold-ridden, ache-y lengths of the pool.

I think it's great that people have made New Year's resolutions to be healthier, even if it means that going to the gym is going to be even more of a pain in the arse for the next few weeks than it is normally. I do the majority of my exercise outdoors, either running or playing 5-a-side football, and I only really go to the gym to use the pool. I might have to wrap up warm against the cold, with a whole pile of hats, gloves, thermal tops and lycra leggings especially for that purpose (calm yourselves), but I won't be spending any time queuing up to use any of the machines in the cardio theatre with sweaty people in ill-advised, overly tight sports kit.

I hope I don't sound snobby, as everybody has to start somewhere, and not so very long ago (well, alright....a decade ago), I was several stone heavier and very much one of them.

Good luck to them, I say.

I hope that for many of them it's the start of a healthier and perhaps happier way of life. Certainly, I think, it's a healthier way of losing weight than the nasty bout of campylobacter that carried away a hefty chunk of my bodyweight inside 10 days and did something to my insides that meant that the weight never came back......

The proof of the pudding, I think, will be how many of them I'm still swimming around come March.

Happy New Year everyone.

Me? I've made no New Year Resolutions, but I have been inspired to start something on the basis of a dream I had last night that featured me having a conversation with Stephen King in my kitchen.... I woke up at 4am and knew what I had to do. It's nothing special mind, but when Stephen King visits you in a dream and suggests you do something, what else can you do? I don't even like the man's books very much, but frankly I'm scared of him and I don't want him to be angry next time he dreamwalks into my head.

how long to go until you hit the ground?

Did you see that story the other day about the lady with multiple sclerosis who was going to court to clarify her right to travel to Switzerland for an assisted suicide? Debbie Purdy was diagnosed with primary progressive MS in 1995; she can no longer walk and is gradually losing the strength in her upper body. Her condition is only going to get worse, and if/when her condition becomes unbearable, she would like her husband to accompany her to a clinic in Switerland where she can end her own life in comfort and with dignity. Her dilemma, and the reason that she is going to court, is that she would like her husband Omar to be by her side on the trip, but it is not clear in British law whether or not he would become liable for prosecution on his return to the UK for assisting in a suicide. The nature of her condition means that by the time she is ready to die, she is unlikely to be able to travel without assistance. Should she travel to die before she is ready, or should she risk her husband's prosecution by travelling with him.

Apparently the law usually turns a blind eye in these cases, but this is understandably not good enough for Ms Purdy:

"I just want clarity so I know whether or not my husband Omar will be prosecuted or questioned by the police if I decide to travel abroad to die and he accompanies me. I want to know what the law considers to be assisting suicide - is Omar open to prosecution if he helps me into a taxi to the airport, or books my flights?"

Where do they draw the line of what is and is not worthy of prosecution?

There are big issues at stake here, of course there are, and it's a horrible position for this couple to be in, but I can't tear my attention away from the specifics of Ms Purdy's condition and the fact that she is anticipating it becoming serious enough that she will want to end her own life. She has multiple sclerosis. Since August 2005, my ears have been finely attuned to any mention of that condition because of it's uncomfortable proximity to my own WTs.

Let's be clear: I have transverse myelitis - a single lesion on my cervical spinal cord. This is clinically distinct from primary progressive multiple sclerosis, where multiple lesions develop in the brain and central nervous system and cause the damage that leads inexorably to ever increasing pain and disability. I have many and widespread symptoms caused by the disruption the lesion in my neck has created to the passage of nerve signals down my body. I have weakness and muscle-wastage. I have numbness and pins and needles. It is annoying, worrying and inconvenient, but it has ultimately not stopped me doing very much. I still go running; I still play football; I swim. A little slower, perhaps, but I still do them.

Apparently it's a one in a million chance to get transverse myelitis at all, so in that sense, I've obviously been unlucky (and maybe I should have bought a lottery ticket that week, eh?). However, other people with the same condition lose the ability to walk, so in many ways I've been lucky that I've got away so lightly. I've been lucky in other ways too: although TM is related to MS, it is different. By the very definition of the condition, I will need to develop another lesion - a sclerosis - before I can be said to have MS - multiple sclerosis. As long as I only have the one lesion, then my symptoms are unlikely to get any worse. If I had MS, then I would have multiple lesions and my condition would be likely to get progressively worse as each lesion successively damaged my nervous system... as is happening to Debbie Purdy.

I am starting to hate the way that MS is covered in the press: when Richard Pryor died, he was reported to have died of MS. Well, you don't die of MS. It can make your life difficult and uncomfortable, but it's not very likely to actually kill you. In itself, MS is not a death sentence. There are also lots of different types of MS. Some people, like Debbie Purdy, have primary progressive MS, where the symptoms get worse and worse. Lots of people, however, have relapsing-remitting MS, where the symptoms come on suddenly and then recede, perhaps entirely. A diagnosis with multiple sclerosis does not mean that you will end up in a wheelchair or that you are going to die young.

What Debbie Purdy's case really drove home for me though is that, for all that, this can be a disease so horrible that it can drive you to think about ending your own life. One of the secondary symptoms of MS is depression, and frankly I'm not surprised. I don't have MS, but it's still not a very comfortable thought. You're actually, statistically speaking, far more likely to have MS (one in every few hundred thousand people) than you are to have transverse myelitis (one in a few million). In some ways it's only a transitory diagnosis: all it takes is one more lesion and TM slides into MS. Medical science's understanding of the brain chemistry involved is sketchy, but the definitions are exact. I may never develop another lesion, or if I do, I could get one tomorrow or in thirty years time. I try not to worry about something that might never happen, but sometimes a story like this makes it hard not to let the mind wander a bit into what might be.

Ah, to hell with it. As someone wise once said:

"You might be a king or a little street sweeper,
but sooner or later you dance with the Reaper.
Get down with your bad self"

With that in mind, I'm going to pull my finger out and sign up for some triathlons next year.

My last triathlon was in June 2005, just before I developed my first symptoms and started seeing the neurologist who told me to pull out of the London Triathlon I was supposed to be completing in August (my name is on the back of the event t-shirt as a competitor). That tri - at Emberton Park, was half distance: 750m open water swim, 20km cycle and 5km run. I did it in 1.23.37 and came 121st out of 190. At the time I thought that was great preparation for London, but as it turns out that was the summit of my achievements. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to get to the point where I can contemplate the olympic distance 1500m swim, 40km cycle and 10km run - I'm now no longer confident in my body's ability to handle the training (it was in training for London that I first developed the symptoms). What I am going to do though is to get back on the horse by entering a few sprint triathlons: 400m swim, 20km cycle, 5km run. I may not be as fast or as strong as I used to be - hell, I'm three years older - but I'm going to get off my arse and get busy. How will I know unless I try?

After all, who knows what tomorrow might bring?

As Vitalstatistix would have put it, tomorrow the sky may fall on our heads....

... and this way I may get to wear lyrca and model a wetsuit in public again. Times are hard enough as it is: I wouldn't want the world to miss out on a nice bit of lycra porn.

harder, better, faster, stronger....

After a month's enforced layoff, I finally got the go-ahead to resume running early on Monday evening. About an hour later, and about 5 minutes after I had arrived back home from the hospital, I was in my kit and back out through the door for a relatively gentle 40 minute jog.

It hurt.

In an effort to avoid being completely inactive as my eyes recovered (I won't pretend that I understand the science here, but apparently exercise raises the pressure inside your eyes, and when your eyes have stitches in them and are trying to heal, raised pressure is a bad thing),I'd done a fair bit of walking. I'm sure the layoff from running did my body no harm at all. Walking is nice enough, I suppose and the weather was pretty good... but I tell you what, it takes BLOODY FOREVER. Whereas normally I could nip out for a quick 30 minute run, a walk over exactly the same route would take nearly three times that long. It's as if you're moving more slowly or something. Yeah, I could drag my wife along and actually talk to her for a change, or I could plug in my iPod and renew my relationship of mutual respect and understanding with the Canada Geese and Swans that live alongside the rivers and canals of Nottingham.... but 90 minutes is a hell of a lot of time to find in your day, and it only got more difficult to find that time once I'd gone back to work. I stuck at it, though, nipping out every evening for at least a short walk and was hopeful that I'd managed to retain a reasonable level of fitness.

You know what? Walking? COMPLETELY DIFFERENT to running. It's like you're using a completely different set of muscles. No....it's like you're using a completely different set of legs. I was okay for a bit, but after a couple of miles, once I'd crossed the toll bridge over to the other side of the Embankment, my legs began to feel a bit weird. Then, a bit further down the road, they started to feel wobbly. Before I reached Trent Bridge, they just plain hurt. Obviously, I gritted my teeth and finished the run without stopping, but when I woke up the next morning, my legs weren't just stiff, they were actually painful.

Hmm.

I had Tuesday off, but decided that a gentle run on Wednesday night could be just what I needed to ease of the lingering stiffness in my legs. Perhaps it was, but if I did initially work it all out of my muscles, before long, all the run was doing was storing up a whole new world of pain to my legs when I woke up on Thursday morning. Only now, because I had resumed the exercises I do to in an effort to stop the muscles in my upper body wasting away (another happy side-effect of the WTs), my shoulders, arms and stomach were hurting now as well.

Brilliant.

You know what though? I'm going to try to sneak out of the office for a run tomorrow lunchtime, and I'm definitely going to get out on my normal Saturday morning run too. In preparation, this evening I've even treated myself to a new pair of running shoes (you're supposed to change them every 500 miles, but I've probably done at least 2000 in my old pair and I doubt there's much support left in them.... which can't be helping my aching muscles much, eh?)

Running bloody hurts, but it's good to be back.

Pain is temporary, right? Although I suppose that degenerative knee problems, tendinitis, osteoporosis, back problems and shin splints are probably forever....

king of the world...

I think it was Jean Paul Sartre who said that "L'enfer, c'est les autres": Hell is other people. On the whole, I prefer to think that he's wrong, but almost every day, my faith in people's inherent goodness is sorely tested. Of course, if we're looking for evidence of man's inhumanity to man, there's the big, obvious stuff like wars, preventable diseases, terrorism, oppression and things like that. You only have to read a newspaper or watch the news on the telly to see what a godawful mess mankind is making of the world. Actually, though, it's the little things that trouble me the most; the things that people do to each other on a much smaller scale; the small acts of rudeness or inconsiderate behaviour that slash at my optimism and slowly infuse me with cynicism. At work, it's those people who think nothing of putting other people down so that they might advance themselves. This is anathema to me. If the only way to get ahead is to climb over other people, then I don't want anything to do with it. Actually, I don't believe it's the only way, and I think one of the great achievements of C's career is that she is moving forward on her own merits. Sadly, this doesn't appear to be something that is valued where I work, and one of the things I detest most about my job is that the people who do this, the people who are clearly pursuing their own interests above anything else, are often the people who seem to be getting ahead.

It's not just the snakes in my office who get me down though. I can compartmentalise my job easily enough: work is not the centre of my life and I refuse to let it upset me. When I leave the office in the evening, I am more than capable of putting the behaviour of a few idiots behind me. Sadly, it seems that idiots exist outside the hermetically sealed world of my office too, and I can't so easily ignore them. They're all over the roads, for starters. I like to think of myself as a considerate driver: I don't drive too fast, and I try to retain an awareness of other people on the road. I let people out at junctions, I slow down to create a gap to let cars change lanes, I assidiously thank people who do the same for me. Is it too much to expect that other road users might extend the same courtesy to me? Apparently it is. I'm sure that most people are essentially considerate drivers, but it's always the other ones that stick in my mind: that guy who forces his way out of a junction; the car that pulls over a red light and forces you to brake and wait when your light has long since turned green; the person who elbows their way into the gap you have left for them and doesn't even acknowledge your presence with a simple gesture of thanks, as though that space magically and conveniently appeared just when they needed it most, and had nothing to do with my consideration for them at all. It's the air of entitlement that gets me: the road is there purely for their benefit and every other road user's needs are of secondary importance. They know when they are turning off on that roundabout, so why bother to indicate? Why be concerned that the lack of a signal has meant that other people have had to wait before pulling out? Sure, it only delays me for about 10 seconds, but it's a needless 10 seconds, and it's not the wait that's the issue for me - it's the arrogant assumption by that other driver that they are the most important thing on the road and to hell with everyone else.

I can't even escape this kind of behaviour in the gym either. I went for a swim the other night and was pleased to see that the pool was relatively quiet and I was only sharing my lane with one other swimmer. I think it's important in these circumstances to have an awareness of the needs of your fellow swimmer: if the person behind me in the lane is swimming faster than me, then I try to keep an eye on where they are relative to me and wait between lengths to let them through so that they are as little inconvenienced by me as possible. By the same token, if I am the faster swimmer, then I also try not to crowd or hurry the person in front of me. It doesn't take a great deal of energy to be alive to the other people in the lane, but because I display this consideration myself, I expect other people to do the same to me. On the whole, people are pretty good. They may not realise at once, but over the course of a few lengths, I find that I generally reach an unspoken understanding with the other swimmers in my lane as we grow accustomed to our relative swimming paces. Some people are terrible though, and the guy I was swimming with the other night was the worst of all: at the end of every length, and irrespective of how close behind him anyone else might be, he turned and kicked off. There were three of us in the lane, and both of the other swimmers were moving faster, which meant that we had to interrupt our swim on a regular basis to deal with the issue of how to get past him. The other swimmer took the approach of stopping before the end of the length and turning around before he had the chance to touch and turn. I took the approach of either dipping into the lane next door (when it was clear) to overtake him, or trying to time my swim so that I hit the end just as he did and turning and kicking off before he had a chance to react. I don't even think that this guy was being deliberately inconsiderate as he swam, but I do think he was guilty of being totally unaware of anyone else's needs but his own, and I find that kind of selfishness hard to forgive. I understand that to some extent you have to look to your own needs, and I know that I'm far from blameless myself, but don't we all have some responsibility to each other? Aren't we all in this together?

In their own way, I find each of these little slights as painful as reading about the bigger issues in the newspaper. Why? Well, there's arguably not very much that you or I can do to directly influence events in Iraq, but each and every one of us can do something to make all of our lives a little bit more tolerable. What's the cliche? Think global, act local? Be the change you want to see in the world? Pay it forward? Or may Bill and Ted put it best: Be excellent unto each other.

Whatever. If we all stopped behaving like we were the centre of the world and started showing each other a little more basic consideration and respect.... then maybe, just maybe the world might become a nicer place.

down by the river....

C. and I went out for a lovely walk up on the moors around Winster in the Peak District on Sunday. It had been pouring with rain when I first woke up, but we decided we would go anyway and, as luck would have it, the weather cleared up nicely around lunchtime. We had originally planned a pub lunch in one of those proper Free Houses that seem to abound in the Peaks, but we were running a little later than planned and decided to just grab something in one of the towns we passed through en-route to the starting point of the walk.

Ripley is a dump, so obviously we weren't going to stop there, and we didn't want to take a chance on there being anything much available in the village of Winster itself, so we stopped in Matlock Bath. This is a small town nestled next to the river in the Derwent valley, with the main street tracking alongside the river as it passes through. It's pleasant enough country, and quite pretty to look at, I suppose, but as we drove into the town itself, I was a little taken aback by what I saw there.

Bearing in mind that we are right, slap-bang in the middle of the country, I was a touch surprised to find that Matlock Bath appears to be rather bizarrely modelled on the classic British seaside town. It's like a mini-Blackpool and the high street is absolutely jam-packed with fish and chip shops (there are at least ten of them over a 400m long strip), amusement arcades, sweet shops selling ice cream, candy floss and rock....hell, they even have some illuminations and make a real thing during 'the season' of having a 'Venetian' parade of boats (which seems all the more remarkable given that the river Derwent at this point is -at most- about 10m wide and is shallow enough that you can see the bottom throughout).

I couldn't help but wonder how this had happened to this little town in Derbyshire, so I looked it up. For much of the late Seventeenth and early Eighteenth centuries, it was customary for members of the aristocracy to spend their summers on a Grand Tour of Europe's great cities. As the political situation in Europe worsened and it became unsafe to travel, it became fashionable to visit attractions within England. Warm springs had been discovered in Matlock Bath in 1698, and they gradually became more and more popular as a destination until they were finally given the ultimate seal of approval by a visit from Queen Victoria in 1831. Lord Byron was apparently so taken with them that he compared the town favourably with Switzerland, leading to the nickname "Little Switzerland". Well, the chocolate may be more Cadbury's than Lindt, but I bet you can't get a really good bit of battered cod with proper malt vinegar in Geneva either....

I think it's fair to say that the clientèle has changed a little since then: not to put too fine a point on it, when we passed through yesterday, the streets were crammed with the kind of people who looked like they might like to holiday in Blackpool with a knotted handkerchief or a 'Kiss Me Quick' hat on their heads. Even as they took in the rarified Derbyshire air in their flammable man-made fabrics, more often than not these people were simultaneously sucking the life out of a cigarette and then exhaling a cloud of smoke all over the infant they held in their arms. I know that sounds snobby, and I'm sure many of them were very nice (the guys in the chippie we went into were incredibly helpful and friendly, for starters) but I'm just saying what I saw yesterday. The famous hot springs that started it all, incidentally have long since been turned into an aquarium and the town has taken its maritime pretensions to the logical extreme by having a lighthouse built.... only in this instance it doesn't so much save mariners from crashing into the rocks as supply southern fried chicken to passers by.

Honestly, it was thoroughly bizarre.

Winster, on the other hand, was a lovely village. Not only is it fantastically situated with a view across the peaks and onto some open moorland, but it was also blessed with cluster of really lovely old stone cottages and - the jewel in the crown - a proper pub. "The Bowling Green" is a free house that serves proper beer sourced from within a 25 mile radius of the pub and serves home-cooked food sourced from local shops. Sadly, I was only stopping for a quick pint before heading home, but it was a lovely pub and I will definitely be returning to have a meal by the fire and sheltered behind those three foot thick brick walls.

I'll maybe look to miss the morris dancing though.

it's gettin' hot in here (hot)....

After I've dragged myself inefficiently up and down the swimming pool fifty-two times, I like to reward myself by flopping out in the sauna for ten minutes or so. Generally, I'll just sit there and try not to think about how hot I feel until I start to feel that sticky-outy bit just on the opening of my ear (what is that called?) starting to burn. If there's a paper in there, I'll read it. What I won't generally do is strike up a conversation with anyone who happens to be in there. If someone talks to me, then I'll answer, but to be honest, it's not really somehwere that I want to be making new friends. On the whole I prefer to make friends with people who aren't naked. Well, most of the time anyway. I am, however, quite often entertained by other people's conversations in the sauna. Yesterday was no exception.

Bloke 1 walks into the sauna and spots a guy that he knows. "Hey there, how's it going? Got a job yet?"

Bloke 2: "Well, I'm doing agency work at the moment, but I've got 5 interviews lined up next week."

Bloke 1: "That's pretty good going. You're bound to get one of those."

Bloke 2: "Yeah, finger's crossed. I tend to do pretty well once I get to the interview stage. I've got a job offer on the table already, but I'm holding out for one of these other jobs."

Bloke 1: "Yeah? More interesting are they?"

Bloke 2: "Yeah. I want a job that doesn't have any responsibility at all, if I can help it. I want to enjoy what I do, do my hours and get home. I don't want to get wrapped up in any politics."

Bloke 1: "I know what you mean. So what have you been doing then?"

Bloke 2: "Agency work for Derby Council. Last week I was out cutting people's grass. It's tiring work, but it's a decent job."

Bloke 1: "Right"

So far, the conversation was only mildly interesting, mainly in the sense that it took my mind off the fact that I was slowly cooking myself and that the rotator muscles in my right arm were hurting from the swim. We were about to take a conversational left-turn though.

Bloke 2: "Mind you. You do meet some funny people on this job."

Bloke 1: "Yeah?"

Bloke 2: "I knocked on a door the other day, and this woman opened it wearing only a bra and knickers."

Bloke 1: "How old?"

Bloke 2: "Well, that doesn't matter as I wasn't interested anyway"

Bloke 1: "Yeah, but how old was she?"

Bloke 2: "Mid-Forties maybe. No - late thirties."

Bloke 1: "Okay then!"

Bloke 2: "She asked me in for a cup of tea"

Bloke 1: "And you said.....?"

Bloke 2: "No thanks love, I'm here to cut the grass."

Bloke 1: "Well, you are taken I suppose"

Bloke 2: "It was the first cut of the year though, and it was a bit damp, so I had to tell her that I wouldn't be able to cut the grass back too much. You know what she said to that?"

Bloke 1: "....."

Bloke 2: "Oh, I know what it's like when it's all wet down there. Are you sure you don't want to come in for a cup of tea?"

Bloke 1: "Bloody hell"

Bloke 2: "I know. No thanks love, I'm only here to cut the grass. You get loads like that."

So apparently things like that DO actually happen. Perhaps in the best traditions of Monty Python, she has a spare room filled with council workers who came to mow the lawn....

My ears were starting to burn, so at this point, like all good reporters, I made my excuses and left.

push it real good....

I went to the gym this evening.

I suppose this isn't really all that remarkable an event in that I go to the gym at least two or three times every week, but this was different: I didn't just go for a swim, oh no. I went to the gym and I got changed into some lycra and I went upstairs and I actually used some of the scary machines.

I used to do this all the time, and in fact I have been member at this gym for something like seven or eight years. I've never been particularly into weights (as witnessed by the punyness of my arms), but for at least the first five years of that time, I could regularly be found in what I believe is called "The Cardio Theatre", thrashing my heart and lungs and generally dripping sweat onto some of the expensive machinery. A couple of years ago though, I started making a real effort to go running outside (an activity that had previously been confined to Saturday mornings). As the climate in this beautiful country usually means that it is either dark or pissing with rain or both when I leave the office, I took to getting away from my desk in my lunch-hour and running alongside the river Trent. As I was now getting my exercise outdoors, I only needed to go to the gym for a swim....and the pool is nice enough that I still consider the membership fee well worth paying. The cardio theatre kind of went by the wayside and wasn't really missed at all.

On the whole, I much prefer running outdoors. It's much less boring, for starters, and it somehow feels as though it's doing me more good actually running properly and not pretending to run on one of those spongey machines. I now go whatever the weather, and although it's sometimes a bit of a struggle, I love the righteous feeling I get for having done it and I relish the chance to get away from my desk to blow all the cobwebs away.

For one reason or another though, I found myself back in the main section of the gym this evening........ Oh my goodness, how things have changed. I felt a bit as though I had been taken out of cryogenic freezing and brought back to life at some point in the distant future. The machines have all changed. I just about recognised the bikes, but even then the controls had changed to an extent that I sat there for a good 2 minutes trying to look like I knew what I was doing before I actually started to pedal. The running machine and the elliptical training thing were basically the same I suppose, but the steppers now have people moving their knees at really weird, wonky looking angles that make them look like they're mincing (well, they are on a stepper, for heaven's sake....). As for that odd stepping/walking thing that looks a bit like it has a mini treadmill for each foot that moves independently of the other.... well, I was curious enought to try that one out. It seemed simple enough, but as I confidently upped the speed, I nearly went flying off the back and had to press the emergency stop button. Hmmm. I decided that discretion was the better part of valour at this point and beat a hasty but (I trust) dignified tactical retreat.

Some things never change at the gym though, and as I headed down to the changing rooms and a well earned sauna, I was very pleased to see those tubby looking blokes with moobs and fingerless gloves still desperately trying to lift weights that are clearly far too heavy for them.... yeah, best have a rest for a moment and a sip of that protein shake as you've clearly not had enough calories already today, and that curry is still an hour away in the future.

Anyway.

I think I'll go to the gym again tomorrow, actually..... but I reckon I'll just slink off back to the pool this time.

hot, hot, hot, hot stuff....

I quite like this time of year. I know that it always seems to be dark, miserable and wet, but even in a horrible stormy week like this one, you sometimes get those beautiful clear, crisp days that really seem to lift the spirit. The sun didn't quite make it out through the clouds today, and it wasn't frosty, but it was still a nice enough afternoon. Certainly nice enough that I took the opportunity to escape from my desk to go for a run, anyway.

I took my normal route out along the canal and back along the river, and as I headed back into the changing rooms, I was very much looking forward to my lunch. The changing rooms were now quite a lot busier than before, filled mostly with guys who had been working out in the on-site gym. I've been running at work now for a couple of years, and I've got to know some of the faces quite well: there's the funny looking guy who is pretty ripped and who clearly looks after his body but who never, ever showers.... preferring to get straight out of his gym kit and into his suit; there are the two older guys who are probably both in their sixties but still go running about three times a week; there are the two miserable looking chaps who spend the whole time they are getting changed arguing whose turn it is to buy lunch. None of this lot were in the changing room today. Instead, I was treated to the hardcore gym-bunnies: these are the guys who spend a lot of time in the changing rooms drinking protein shakes and discussing their various exercise programmes at great length.

"Yeah, I've had a 5% dip in performance, but I don't think that's too bad for the first session back after a two week holiday."
"Yeah? Not bad, not bad at all. I've been working on some gluteus presses at olympian intensity in supersized squat intervals."
"Sweet. What did you do?"
"About 1231. Funny thing is that the machine told me that this only just put me into the demi god category!"
"What? What the hell does that make most of the lard arses sat at their desks?"
"Yeah, exactly.
"Exactly".

What is it about men and their constant need to talk utter rubbish whilst simultaneously comparing the length of their genitalia? Why can they not just exercise and be done with it? Working out in the gym is not a competitive sport, is it? Am I missing out on something by going running on my own? The thing that amuses me the most, I think, is that none of these guys is particularly well-conditioned. They are just 40-something year old blokes with paunches and silly fingerless weightlifting gloves.

They appear to have a project: a new guy joined their team a few weeks ago, and they have clearly managed to talk him into coming down to the gym with them. He's a fairly normal looking guy. He's not fat or anything, but he's perhaps let himself go a bit in the last few years and is trying to put a stop to that incipient middle-aged spread. The gym boys have got him on a programme. When I first saw the new guy with them in the changing rooms, they were talking him through his first 5km run on the treadmill and asking him how he felt. Knackered, by the looks of him, but in a hurry to get off to a meeting. Once he had gone, the gym boys discussed their pupil:

"What did he do again?"
"35:23"
"35:23? Bloody hell"
"Yeah, but first time"
"Fair enough. How old is he?"
"About 43. He's in reasonable shape, I suppose, but he's what? 95 kilos? He's carrying a bit of weight"
"Yeah"
"Once he works that off, his performance will really hit the up-curve"

...and so on.

I suppose their intentions are good and -- bless him -- he's as keen as mustard, but I can't quite get over the fact that these chubby, middle-aged guys are offering another chubby, middle-aged guy the benefit of their dubious experience and expertise over a completely superfluous protein shake after a short workout. Haven't you had enough calories?? Do you really think you need more?? What's for lunch??

Not long after I had arrived back into the changing rooms today, I was joined by their protégé. He looked dead on his feet. Absolutely dead. He sat down on the bench, and put his head between his knees trying to catch his breath. About five minutes later, he was joined by his advisors:

"You alright?"
"Yeah."
"Sure?"
"Yeah. Just tired. That was hard. How many more did you do?"
"Oh, only another 345"
"345? Really? Christ."
"Yeah. But I've done more before. I usually do more"
"Yeah?"

etc.

Jesus Christ. Get a room so you can compare properly, why don't you?

As if that wasn't enough excitement for one day, Darren was also in the changing rooms today. You might remember Darren as the guy who insisted on engaging me in conversation whilst he was stark bollock naked.

He topped that today.

When I first came in to get changed, he tried to make small talk with me whilst he was wearing the most ridiculously skimpy pair of running shorts I have ever seen. That was bad enough, but when I came back in from my run a bit later, he was just on his way to the shower and decided this was a great time -- naked, of course -- to exchange a few words with me. To complete the set, he then decided to wander across the room for a chat after I'd had my shower. Not only was I only wearing a towel and wanting to get dry and back to my desk, but he was also wearing nothing but a really tiny pair of pants and a winning smile. A really tiny pair of pants.

Tiny.

Three great looks, I think you'll agree. Sadly, every time I shut my eyes, I now find one of those three unforgettable images of Darren burned onto my retina.

Brilliant.

I think he waxes his chest.

of recklessness and water....

I know there are probably worse things going on in the world and everything, but in my comfortable middle-class world, the clearest demonstration of man's continuing inhumanity to man is to be found in the swimming pool.....

There are only so many lanes in a swimming pool, and there are often lots of people wanting to go for a swim at the same time. If we all want to swim - and we do - then we are forced to share. If we want to swim, we must coexist with our fellow swimmers, sometimes crammed many to a lane.

In a harmonious world, a world where people gave a damn about their fellow man, this would not present any issues. Every swimmer would have an instinctive understanding of the space that their fellow swimmers required and would show some simple consideration: faster swimmers would be allowed to pass at each end, and slower swimmers would pause to let the quicker swimmers through. Nobody would have to feel rushed, or frustrated or angry.

Everything would be just peachy.

But we don't live in a world like that. We live in a world where, if they think of anyone or anything at all, people think of themselves. We live in a world where a swimmer will think nothing of pausing for breath at the end of a length, putting their arms behind them and generally taking it easy as the person behind them swims towards them. Their only concern at this time will be that they kick off for their next length at the last possible moment before the other swimmer arrives. It doesn't matter to them that they swim considerably slower than their fellow in the lane; it doesn't matter to them that they also did this at the other end of the pool too, that the other swimmer was forced to wait for half a length to give them enough room to kick off, and will now be forced to wait another half a length before kicking off. Hell no, the important thing here is that this person has the best possible swim that they can. To hell with anyone else.

If we can't coexist in a swimming pool, what damn chance do we have anywhere else?

---

Creepy boss update: C. had a meeting with the new boss and a number of other people today. C's current director was sitting between them, but new boss kept leaning behind his back to wink at C. during the meeting.... about 8 times in all.

I think the new boss likes C, but it's kind of hard to know for sure, isn't it?