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.

the echoes they surround....

Swimming is pretty tedious. The best thing that can be said for tonight's swim was that, by the time I got to the gym after leaving the office, I virtually had the pool to myself. In fact, about the only other people there were two girls having a good old natter as they swam up and down in the lane next to me.

The thirty of so minutes I spend at the pool, two or three times a week, is about the only time that I am alone with my thoughts and without any kind of external distractions. They play music around the pool, but as my ears spend almost the whole time below water, I don't hear a damn thing. I'd love to be able to say that I spent this time productively, and that as well as exercising my body, I get some quality thinking done. The sad truth, however, is that I either spend the whole time trying not to forget how many lengths I have done ("twenty-two, twenty-two, twenty-two, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six .... shit ....um .... twenty, twenty, twenty, etc.") or I find my brain gets stuck on a single thought that I just can't seem to shake off.

Today was little different, although at least I had a lane to myself for the duration and didn't need a battle of wills with anyone over their lack of end-of-lane courtesy.

As I surfaced at the end of my last length, I was just in time to catch a snippet of the two girls in the next door lane as they made their leisurely way back up the pool:

"Oh my God! Leanne had an orgy when she was 20!"
"No!"
"Yeah. She told me herself!"
"Really? Oh my God!"

Diverting though Leanne's dalliance with "Jonathan, Jonathan's dad and Lee" sounded, it wasn't quite enough to make me wish that I could hear underwater.

Perhaps it's just as well that this is one of my (soon to arrive) birthday presents from C. Maybe a waterproof MP3 player is just what I need to take my mind off the things I'm not thinking about whilst swimming.

I feel like they're talking in a language I don't speak....

I received a letter from my neurologist today. At first glance, it looked as though it was written in English. I really should have known better, and a closer look revealed the magnitude of my mistake:

"I saw [ST] in a follow up about two years after he was last seen by me. In the meantime, he has noticed his symptoms are more prominent and he has had a few events that could qualify as relapses, in particular, an episode in which he fell over, he has stumbled a few times before....he has paraesthesia in the hands and numbness in the feet. He has a reverse Uhthoff's phenomenon and that the cold tends to accentuate the symptoms....his EDSS is between 2.5 and 3.

"I think we are dealing with more than random fluctuations in the old established symptoms and I think we are dealing with clear cut, albeit mild, relapses. This would in principle, therefore, fulfill criteria for dissemination in time and in order to get a better idea about dissemination in space, we obtain a repeat MRI scan.

"Regardless of that, he does fulfill the ABN criteria for disease modifying treatment despite the fact that the previous demyelinating pathology is related to the spinal cord only. We will therefore put him in contact with our MS Nurses for a discussion about available disease modifying treatments and we will give him an appointment in the Disease Modifying Drugs Clinic....."

etc.

That clears that up then, eh?

To be fair to him, given that it's actually a letter to my GP, my dad (who is a doctor and asked to be kept informed), and the MS clinic people at the hospital, then perhaps I should forgive the use of the medical jargon. After all, I'm only the patient, so I've been copied in as a courtesy. Still, I'm not altogether sure what I'm supposed to do with this information, as it doesn't really tell me anything at all. Certainly little that I can understand (reverse Uhtoff's Phenomenon you say? An EDSS score of between 2.5 and 3? Hmmmm. Interesting).

I know he's waiting to see the results of the scan I'm having on Friday, and I know that I'm a lot less in limboland than I was a week ago, but still..... it's not exactly crystal clear, is it? Perhaps it never will be.

I've actually been feeling the symptoms a lot more heavily since I saw the neurologist last week, but I'm fairly convinced that it's my brain playing tricks on me and not anything new. I don't know why this would be the case. Perhaps I was in denial before; perhaps there's a part of me that has heard the diagnosis and wants to give in to it. Whatever, I'm nothing if not stubborn and it's going to take more than this to get to me. I was tired at work today, and my left shoulder was really troubling me, to the extent that I actually found typing uncomfortable. So what did I do when I got home? I went out running.

It might sound counter-intuitive, but I find that the best cure for this fatigue is exercise. It's getting physically harder to go out running, it's true, but - now more than ever - I really cherish the feeling of freedom that it gives me. I'll not give that up without a fight.

Besides, I've got a lycra fetish and I'd hate to get all dressed up with nowhere to go.

don't stop moving....

After 11 consecutive days of exercise and something like 6250m in the pool, 17 miles running and around 3 hours of 5-a-side football, I finally gave my body a break and had the day off yesterday. I didn't set out to do that much in a row, it's just kind of the way that things worked out. I actually find it really difficult to do nothing, but I was absolutely worn out after my swim on Sunday night, and I knew I really needed to force myself to rest for at least a day. As it turned out, it was easy to take the day off, as I was at work until well past 7pm, then on the phone to some friends organising a birthday party in March and then straight out to the pub quiz until gone 11pm, so I hardly had time to catch my breath, never mind worry about whether or not I could have gone out for a quick run.

I wasn't sure how much room I had in my diary today, so I loaded my car with both my swimming bag and my running gear. An appointment tonight at the osteopath ruled out the former, so I squeezed in a quick 4 mile run by the river in my lunch hour. It was really, really hard work. My legs were heavy and I could really feel the WTs in my feet, thighs, shoulders and hands. The weather was almost spring-like, and I dragged myself around okay, but it certainly wasn't much fun. Perhaps my body is still telling me that I need to rest, but there's a part of my brain that is whispering insistently to me that if I don't keep going, then I'm simply not going to be able to get started again. One day off and I'm already struggling to get back into the swing of things. One week off and I might find myself without the energy to go running at all.

I'm sure that sounds like nonsense, and I'm fairly sure it is mostly nonsense... but there is a grain of truth: I have been told that I need to regularly exercise the muscles in my upper body to prevent them wasting. The WTs have caused a weakness in my upper body across my shoulders and down my arms; a weakness that means I can't do as much with them and so they don't get as much exercise as they might, and if I'm not careful, then they will wither away. Once they have withered away, that same weakness will make it almost impossible to get back to they physical capability I had before. Luckily for me, my osteopath noticed the changes in my physique and presented me with some specific strengthening exercises that I religiously carry out three times a week in addition to upping the amount of swimming that I was doing. Those two activities, the swimming and the upper body exercises, have helped to arrest - if not reverse - the decline in the muscle power in my upper body.

The rest of the exercise that I do, the running and the football and so on, are mostly cardio-vascular or work the muscles in my legs. Although the WTs have affected the sensation in my legs and the way I 'feel' some of my muscles, they don't appear to have impacted upon my lower body strength. Not yet, anyway. I instinctively feel as though my overall physical capability has declined since my diagnosis in 2005, but that may be as much due to my advancing age as it is to anything else. I know it's not entirely logical to equate a day's rest with a sliding feeling of declining physical prowess, but I definitely have to fight the urge to feel that once I stop, I will stop for good. It drives me to keep exercising even though I know that sometimes a rest is the best thing for me.

I might try and have another rest day tomorrow.

Or I might try and squeeze in a quick swim before the Leftlion quiz.

Oh, who am I trying to fool? The swimming kit is already in my car....

frozen

Shortly before I left the office to play football, it started to snow again. By the time I was in my car, the traffic was already well backed up and the snow was really starting to come down. The game was still on, but even as I ran out onto the pitch, there was already a fairly thick covering and it was still coming down pretty hard. I was wrapped up pretty warm, as you might expect from a man who runs in a long-sleeved Helly Hansen thermal base layer even in the summer: hat, gloves, a merino wool base layer, two other layers of football shirts. I draw the line at playing football in my running tights, but even though I was wearing shorts, I still thought I was wrapped up well enough.

Apparently not. After about twenty minutes, the snow was easing up a little, but now little crystals of ice were falling from the sky and the temperature was dropping. The game continued regardless, but I could now feel the cold starting to seep into my extremities. My neurologist told me in one of my earliest consultations after being diagnosed with Transverse Myelitis that the temperature could have a big impact upon my symptoms. He actually meant that most people find that their symptoms worsen as they get hotter. Personally, I've never really found that to be the case, but I have discovered that I am really affected by the cold: I lose all of the sensation in my arms from my shoulders and my fingers become extremely unresponsive; my feet rapidly become completely numb and then begin to really hurt. Although I'm generally okay when I go out running in the cold, and I have very few problems when I go skiing, for some reason football is the worst. In winter, I quite often find that I am really struggling to fumble for change at the end of the game when I collect the money from the team to pay for the pitch.

Today was the worst yet. We played for about ninety minutes in all, but after that first twenty minutes, I felt my arms and my feet slowly beginning to shut down, and I felt myself getting less and less effective on the pitch and more and more miserable. I played abysmally, of course, and I'm sure that was as much because of my state of mind as it was down to my symptoms, but by the end of the game, I was hobbling around and starting to actual think I might cry. I probably should have stopped at least thirty minutes earlier, but had decided to play on regardless. Ninety minutes after we stopped playing, and after a long, hot shower, I still can't feel my feet, my thighs feel a bit dead and my fingers are still numb and clumsy.

My symptoms have been a bit worse over the last two or three weeks anyway - since I fell over, actually - and as it's been two years since I last saw him, I was wondering if it might be time to go back for a checkup with my neurologist to see if anything has changed inside my head and around my spinal cord. My shoulders, especially my left shoulder, have been weak; my fingers have been buzzing and tingly; and my feet, especially my big toes, have been numb. I have found myself stumbling a few times when I miss my step or when my leg muscles don't quite hold my weight for a fraction of a second. I don't know if these are new symptoms, exactly, or if they're just a transient worsening of the symptoms that I already have. What I do know though, is that although I do my best to ignore my condition, when it makes me feel like I felt tonight, I'm reluctantly forced to acknowledge that I am being physically impeded by this thing, and I wouldn't be human if I didn't allow myself a moment to wonder if this is going to get any worse. It's not going to get any better any time soon, that much I do know. God forbid if it ever slips into self-pity though.

I'm going swimming tomorrow, my ninth consecutive day of exercise. That'll show my damn body who's boss.

the death of all the romance...

In case you hadn't noticed - and actually, it's pretty much passed me by this year - it's Valentine's Day on Saturday this week. You can almost see the restauranteurs rubbing their hands with delight, can't you? I imagine that they'll have been calculating for months exactly how little time they can allow each dinner shift to wolf down their overpriced set menus before shoving them out into the street and warmly and sincerely welcoming in the next bunch of suckers in for service. Waiters will have been practising clearing tables so that they can have the next course down almost before you've finished putting your fork down....

Ah, but surely not everyone is as cynical about this horrible commercial travesty as I am? Surely there are some young lovers out there who are looking forward to spending a special evening with their chosen one? There must be at least one or two lovelorn mooners hoping that they will catch a sympathetic eye, ear and heart with a well-chosen card, poem or maybe a heartfelt compilation CD whose tracklisting will, with hindsight, reveal far more about their state of mind than they had intended (we've all been there, right?)

Well, if the following conversation that I overheard at the gym this evening is to be believed, then romance isn't dead. I was minding my own business in the privacy of my shower cubicle, when two voices caught my ear and I couldn't help but listen....

"So go on then, what's her name?"
"I'm not going to tell you. You don't know her anyway."
"Did you....you know?
"Yes. Last night. But you don't know her, so there's no point me telling you who she is"
"I'll find out, you know I'll find out. I'll ask Benton".
"He doesn't know her either. He didn't even know about me and Liz"
"You and Liz?"
"Yeah."
"When did you knob her?"
"Just before I went on holiday."
"Nice one."
"Yeah. It was definitely a one off though. I was wasted, totally off my face and next thing I remember we were waking up together...."

etc.

"Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs,
Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes,
Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers' tears.
What is it else? A madness most discreet,
A choking gall and a preserving sweet. "

Truly, we are living in the new age of chivalry.

(but baby you'd freeze out there)

It was the unnatural glow that made me open the bathroom window to have a look outside. I knew what it was even before I opened the window, but I had to see it with my own eyes. Snow. Bollocks. It's great when you're a kid and you might get a day off school mucking about on a sledge, but when you have to slog your way to work, it seems to be not much more than an inconvenience that makes your feet wet, your car journey to work a nightmare and the cancellation of your football game that evening a certainty.

A little later on, as I opened my car door to reach for my scraper to remove some of the snow, a little fluffy bundle fell off the roof and landed squarely on the driver's seat and began to melt. My hands were getting cold and I was not in the best of moods as I contemplated the almost virgin snow still sat on the road.

Brilliant.

And then, completely unexpectedly, somewhere along the way to work, I had a total change of heart about the whole thing. Traffic was moving slowly and carefully on roads still slick with snow and ice, and my usual ten minute journey to work was taking far, far longer than usual. I was running late, but for some reason I began to enjoy the weather. After all, surely anything that can enliven an otherwise mundane Thursday in February, the first week back in the office after a lovely holiday, is surely to be embraced?

The roads were busy, but they were also blessedly silent, with the usual noises of traffic hushed by the snow. There was an air of camaraderie amongst the rush-hour drivers too: we were all in this together. The car park at work was oddly quiet too, with people apparently marooned in their lovely houses. You couldn't see the parking spaces either, so people were just doing the best that they could. It was nice.

I left the office fairly early and, in lieu of my cancelled football game, I decided to go for a run. It was dark, and the slightly warmer temperatures meant that the snow was rapidly turning into slush, but I loved every moment of that 4 miles, even though the icy water quickly turned my feet into mobile blocks of ice. As the relentlessly random DJ in charge of my iPod took me from Jeff Buckley to AC/DC and from Scott Walker to Iron Maiden, I admired the slightly sagging snowman in the doorway of a house with his parsnip prick still standing proud; I smiled at the huddled couples walking their frolicking dogs alongside the pond; I weaved my way through the forest of waterfowl footprints in the snow along the Trent Embankment; I ran down the slippery green trails left by the first beginnings of snowmen; I tipped my metaphorical hat at the snowman and the snowdog sat on one of the benches by the river. Above all, I enjoyed the fresh air and the sense of quiet. Thursday evenings around rush hour are not normally this peaceful.



Robert Frost springs to mind:

"Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep."

We might get some more snow tonight, although I think it might be too warm now. I actually hope that we do. Perhaps I'm still suffering the aftershock of a happy week spent in the snowy alps, but I could swear that the world seems a slightly nicer place with a blanket of snow.

....and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.

because the night....

How can it be that we're barely into October and the clocks haven't even gone back, yet I find myself having to put on my fluorescent vest before I go out on a run this evening? It was only just gone seven by the time I got out of the door, but it was already properly dark. It had been raining as I drove home from work a few minutes before, so as well as my bright yellow vest, I was wrapped up in full-length running leggings, a long-sleeved thermal top, a hat and a pair of gloves. This is pretty much the running gear that I will be using in the middle of December, and I'm not quite sure that I'm ready to give up on the fairer seasons and move straight into deepest, darkest winter just yet.

It was a fantastic run too. The rain had just stopped as I stepped out of the door, so the world was clean and fresh smelling, my legs were feeling fresh and I barely bumped into a soul as I negotiated my way around sleeping geese nestled up on the path against the river Trent. I was sealed in behind my headphones as usual, and my iPod managed to kick up a selection of tunes that really seemed to suit my mood, including "Mr. Brightside", "The Queen is Dead" and the Nirvana version of "The Man Who Sold the World". If there's a better way to put the frustrations of another day in the office behind you, then I'm not sure I know what it is (although I will be having a nice cool glass of refreshing beer in a minute....).

You know what the absolute highlight of my run was though? It was the dawning realisation, about ten minutes in and as my body began to throw off heat, that my running top smelt really strongly of goulash. This is not in the least bit surprising, really, given that the top has been hanging in the kitchen where for much of the last twenty-four hours I have been stewing up a huge pot of the same. 800g of beef; 800g of finely chopped onion; three or four heaped tablespoons of sweet paprika, some garlic, a splash of vinegar, some water and a lot of pleasing simmering and stirring.

My running tops have certainly smelt of worse things, that's for sure.

If winter heralds in the arrival of hearty stews for supper, then perhaps it's not so bad after all.

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....

like a coin that won't get tossed....

Although I'm only thirty-four years old, some days I feel as old as the hills. I went for a run during my lunchbreak yesterday, and it was fantastic. I was feeling a little bit tired from a game of football the night before and from my mandatory 3 times a week anti-WT upper body strengthening exercises, but within minutes of getting out of the door, it was obvious that this was going to be one of those rare occasions where a run feels great. Usually they just feel like a bit of a slog, a means to an end, but yesterday was great. It was a beautiful day, not too hot and not too cold, with just enough sun and barely a breath of wind. It felt as though spring was really just around the corner, and I found an unexpected bounce creep into my stride as I ran down by the river. It was great.

This morning though, I felt sore. The still-damaged ligaments in my ankle were stiff, my knees were a bit sore and my legs appeared to have seized up. I used to embrace a bit of after-exercise muscle pain as a welcome sign that I must have been working hard enough. Now though, it just feels like a window into my old age. Not that it's enough to stop me exercising so obsessively, mind you, and I played 90 minutes of football this evening. I feel worse doing nothing at all than I do flogging myself into the ground, I know that much. The physical discomfort is a whole lot easier to deal with than the psychological discomfort I inflict upon myself when I don't exercise. Ask me again when I'm a bit older though, eh?

I've been getting used to what cosmetics companies call "the visible signs of ageing" for some time now. I first noticed that I was losing my hair when I was in my middle-twenties, and I've been going grey since not very long after that. I imagine that the wrinkles around my eyes are coming along nicely too, although I've never really studied them with any great interest.... besides, what exactly am I going to do about it? I'm not bothered by wrinkles, so I'm not about to start using Protect & Perfect, nor am I likely to start having hair replacement therapy or get a weave done any time soon. I don't think I'm vain enough. It's not that I'm claiming I have no vanity, because I do, it's just that I'm not vain enough about my appearance to be interested in doing anything much about it. Grey hair simply doesn't bother me.

Well, I say that..... but in the last couple of years I have started to notice the odd grey hair appearing in locations. You know....other than on my head. On the whole, I can ignore them. For starters, I'm not an especially hairy man, and they're still pretty isolated, in the main, and clearly nothing very much to worry about. Yes, even down there. For some reason though, I seem utterly unable to tolerate grey hairs appearing on my chest. I simply can't stand the sight of them. No matter how much I try to leave them be, once I have spotted one of these interlopers, I have to pull the little bastard out. I'm aware that this is neither rational nor sustainable in the long run. As time goes on, there are only going to be more greys appearing, and before long I know that they will have a clear numerical superiority. Am I going to persist with my zero tolerance policy to its logical conclusion, or am I just going to get over it and learn to live and let live?

Who knows? For now I think I'll take it one day - and one hair - at a time.

It's just not logical. Why just the chest? Why care here but nowhere else? Call yourself clever do you brain? Well where's the consistency? Tell me that.

So yeah. I'm maybe a bit vain. Just in a slightly offbeat way. I may be ageing, but boy, do I take pride in the consistent colour of my chest hair.

Come to think of it, I'm not overfond of stray, Denis Healey-like eyebrow hairs either.

Especially not the ginger ones.

they do run run...

On Thursday, I received a hefty blow to my ankle.

By Friday, my ankle had blown up and I could barely walk. An X-ray revealed that it was not broken, but ligament damage would mean that I would have to rest it up for a week or two.

I'm due to go skiing at the end of January, and because I'm obviously going to need my ankle in full working order for that, resting up and giving it a good chance of a full recovery seems like simple common sense to me. Why on earth would I want to do anything that would slow down my rehabilitation and might jeopardise all that outlay on a skiing holiday? Why risk it?

So why was it that by Sunday I was chafing at the bit to get out and do some exercise? My ankle was still bruised and pretty sore, but I was now able to get around quite a lot more easily, and my attention inevitably began to focus on wondering whether or not I could get away with going for a swim or something. Thanks in the main to a series of extremely disapproving / withering looks from C, I somehow found the strength to resist that urge and spent the day sat on the sofa watching the telly and reading the papers. I know that's how Sundays are supposed to be spent, but I really found it a struggle. My weekends are generally planned around my exercise routine: a run on the Saturday and a swim or something on the Sunday. Everything else is worked out around those two immoveables. This weekend was different: the last proper exercise that I have done was that game of football on Thursday evening. Under normal circumstances I would have done another 3 sessions since then (swim - run - swim). I'd probably give myself Monday evening off, but would be back out again over lunch on Tuesday for a run, another swim on Wednesday, football on Thursday, swim on Friday.... and so on.

I may have got a perfectly sensible excuse for not doing all this exercise, but the net result of missing out on those 3 sessions is that I feel fat and lazy. It's ridiculous, I know, but that's absolutely the way that I feel about it. I look at myself in the mirror and I imagine that I can see myself getting heavier and I'm desperate to do something about it.

By almost anyone's measure, I'm pretty skinny already, and my metabolism is stoked up so high that I could presumably stand to rest for a few days without putting on so much as an extra pound. For whatever reason though, I do not see it like that: when I look in the mirror I do not see the thin, bony man with the sticky-outy veins and the hollow cheeks that everyone else seems to see. When I look at myself, even though I can easily count my own ribs, I only ever see the bits that wobble and I imagine them getting bigger and bigger the longer I look at them and do nothing. As a result, I feel compelled to exercise, and when I do exercise, I feel compelled to flog myself. I don't like to weight train, I like to run. I only swim because I need to do something that helps to stop the muscle wastage in my upper body that the WTs are causing and because it stretches my back out; it always feels like a fairly gentle form of exercise to me, and is therefore a bit unsatisfying. Only running really gives me the feeling that I am working hard enough - nothing else makes me sweat so much or makes my muscles ache so much. That's the one exercise that really feels as though it's doing me some good. It hurts, and pain is good.

I haven't exercised since Thursday and I'm facing up to the fact that I realistically won't be able to anything much until next Saturday at the earliest.

The very thought of it is driving me mad with frustration.

Crazy, I know, but that appears to be who I am.

I think maybe I might try a swim tomorrow night.

is that the kind of thing that you think you might be into?

Well, it's been a great day for me so far. I can trace my woes back to that innocent moment in last night's game of football when I put my foot down to block a shot. Unfortunately for me, instead of putting it down between the ball and the goal, I actually put it down resting against the side of the ball just as my opponent kicked it. The result was that the power of the shot passed straight through the ball and into my ankle. I hopped around for a bit, thought idly that I'm supposed to be going skiing in January, went in goal for a bit and then played the rest of the match trying to "run it off". I iced it when I got home, but it basically felt alright.

Sadly, when I woke up this morning, I could hardly walk. My lovely neighbour Hen was kind enough to drive me to the doctor who took one look and referred me for an x-ray at the hospital. At the hospital, I was informed (after the x-ray) that I would get the results from my doctor in the next seven to ten days. Pardon? Now, so far today, all of the healthcare attention I have received today has been free at the point of access, which is the brilliant part about the National Health Service, but I can't walk, so a ten day wait isn't going to be much good to me. Right. Hm. You'd better go to Accident & Emergency then. More waiting. It's not broken. Good news. Apparently I've torn a ligament, most likely the anterior talofibular ligament. That all sounds very serious, but I think the nurse was being nice to me and tarting it up a bit. If you call it by its more common name, it's a sprained ankle. Not such a big deal. The treatment? Ice it up baby, rest it up and don't do much on it for a few days, perhaps a week or two... maybe even three months. Skiing should be alright, but odds on when I can get back out running? I'm going to target next Saturday and see how I go. A week without exercise? I think it will be the death of me.

I'm also supposed to be day-tripping to London tomorrow for some shopping. I'm planning on going, unless something equally serious like a hang nail or a particularly painful spot persuade me I should just stay in bed....

Anyway. To more important matters: this week's Guest Editor has graced this spot with his tuneless dirges twice already, but I just can't get enough of him. Fresh off the back from the qualified success of his shuffleathon disc.... ladies and gentleworms, without further ado it is my great pleasure to introduce for your earworming pleasure.....

Earworms of the Week - Guest Editor #74 - Ben

My third bite at the Earworms cherry. Thanks for inviting me back, Toni – very kind of you, given that what usually happens is I turn up, wax lyrical about some bands most of your readers have never heard of, drink all your wine, steal all your Twiglets and make off into the night…

10. ‘Bend Over Beethoven’ – !!!

Not happy with choosing a name that makes their albums harder to find in your local record shop than Osama Bin Laden (if that makes sense – I’m not suggesting that the Oxford branch of HMV is the nerve centre of Al-Qaeda’s operations), mischievous gibbons !!! – the commonly agreed pronunciation is “Chk Chk Chk” for ease – here shamelessly steal part of the bassline from The Killers’ ‘Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine’ and the “Don’t stop!” mantra from Junior Senior’s genius pop hit ‘Move Your Feet’ for an eight-minute-long punk-funk odyssey that’ll have you shaking parts of your body you didn’t know you had. Note: I do not condone the necrophilic sodomising of German composers.

9. ‘Sweet Love For Planet Earth’ – Fuck Buttons

Aww! Fuck Buttons – don’t they just sound cute? Don’t you just want to pinch their cheeks and ruffle their hair? And ‘Sweet Love For Planet Earth’ certainly starts off cute – but then the celestial twinkling of the keyboards is buried beneath an avalanche of noise. Truly the loudest thing I’ve ever heard live. I still have no idea how it didn’t blow out the glass wall of the room they were playing in. What’s that? It’s not music? Sorry, I can’t quite hear you…

8. ‘Blue Line Swinger’ – Yo La Tengo

Last time round I’d not long been blown away by my first experience of Yo La Tengo live, but it wasn’t until a couple of months ago that I finally got round to investing in Electr-O-Pura, the 1995 album thought by many to be their best. ‘Blue Line Swinger’ is the luxuriant, sprawling wig-out that brings the record to a close – and it was also the song loudly requested by Tom of Los Campesinos! (there, you knew I couldn’t get through without at least one nod in their direction) at the Cardiff gig immediately after they’d played the equally lengthy and blissfully noisy ‘I Heard You Looking’. Ira Kaplan’s response? “Are you fucking insane?!”

7. ‘Paradise City’ – Guns ‘N’ Roses

Up until last weekend, I’d never seen anyone attempt to breakdance to ‘Paradise City’. That said, it wasn’t really recognisable as such – more like a couple of fully-grown men rolling around on their backs on the floor like oversized, disoriented, very drunk beetles. Seasoned Rock City goers are used to that kind of behaviour, though, so no one batted an eyelid.

6. ‘Red Weather’ – The Duke Spirit

Everyone always bangs on about “that difficult second album”, but an attendant problem is that difficult second set-list. When everything has been pretty much set in stone for maximum tried-and-tested impact, how exactly do you then go about rearranging it, dropping some songs so others can be inserted, rejigging the running order? It’s a problem scuzz-fiends The Duke Spirit are currently grappling with. When they played in Oxford on Monday, traditional set-closer ‘Red Weather’ found itself usurped – but, as if taking on a life beyond the control of those busy playing it, nevertheless asserted itself as the rightful monarch, showing up the songs that followed as mere pretenders to the throne.

5. ‘Mason City’ – The Fiery Furnaces

Last Friday night, I saw The Fiery Furnaces put being rudely snubbed by Birmingham behind them and set about showcasing their brand new album. Over the course of an hour and a half they probably played in the region of fifteen or twenty songs, some mashed up and spliced together. At no point, though, did they play ‘Mason City’. So how on earth did I end up earworming it for days afterwards? These things move in mysterious ways…

4. ‘Johnny Cash’ – Sons & Daughters

Judging by their gig at the same venue a week and a half earlier, Sons & Daughters are going the same way as The Duke Spirit – more “streamlined” and less “rompy”, as the editorial team of Plan B magazine put it in their recent review of new single ‘Gilt Complex’. For all the charms of the new material, with its 60s pop influences, debut single ‘Johnny Cash’ was what people really wanted to hear: the sound of a bar brawl between pissed-up Midwest hillbillies and Glaswegian crackhead punks. On this occasion, they slowed its rambunctious broken-bottle-to-the-neck thrust to slip briefly into ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ – an unexpected treat.

3. ‘If You’re Into It’ – Flight Of The Conchords

I’m hardly watching any TV these days, but if I was I’d be taking in a lot more of these two. ‘If You’re Into It’ is a romantic duet / serenade of sorts – with the emphasis on the “of sorts”…

2. ‘Chinese Rocks’ – Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers

The DJ at the Duke Spirit gig on Monday seemed to have a CD to play between sets which was comprised of a grand total of five songs. One was Dylan’s ‘Highway 61 Revisited’, another was ‘Doggie Where’s Your Bone’ by The Eagles Of Death Metal – and a third was this gem. Written by Dee Dee Ramone and then-Heartbreaker Richard Hell but made famous by ex-New York Doll Johnny Thunders (much to Dee Dee and Hell’s annoyance), in my book it’s as compelling a piece of evidence as there is for American punk’s superiority over its transatlantic cousin. It’s very openly about smack, of course (that was the reason The Ramones decided not to record it themselves), and is also notable for being one of only two songs I can think of that refers to things being “in hock”. And the other is?

1.‘Sweet Girl’ – Ringo Deathstarr

In many ways youthful Texan quartet Ringo Deathstarr (see what they’ve done there?) are entirely redundant now that both The Jesus & Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine have exhumed themselves. But come now, don’t be so curmudgeonly – you can never have too much of a good thing. Especially when that good thing is screamingly loud blitzkrieg pop and laser-guided shoegazery melodies, brought to British ears by Simon of Spoilt Victorian Child. (There’s no YouTube footage but you can hear snippets of ‘Some Kind Of Sad’ here and ‘Swirly’ here.)

Thanks again for having me back Toni.

---

It's always a pleasure Ben.... especially when I think you may have dropped in a reference to the mighty Jovi in there somewhere. Am I right? Nice. You've also made me think that I haven't been clubbing at Rock City for a long, long time....and I knew there was a reason why. Anyway, thanks for playing. Oh, and you know I was joking about the whole dirge thing, right? Right?

Next week: we'll see.

Have a good weekend y'all.

Incidentally, in spite of the best efforts of my ankle to block the shot.... it went in. Pah.

[Previous Guest Editors: Flash, The Urban Fox, Lord Bargain, Retro-Boy, Statue John, Ben, OLS, Ka, Jenni, Aravis, Yoko, Bee, Charlie, Tom, Di, Spin, The Ultimate Olympian, Damo, Mike, RedOne, The NumNum, Leah, Le Moine Perdu, clm, Michael, Hyde, Adem, Alecya, bytheseashore, adamant, Earworms of the Year 2005, Delrico Bandito, Graham, Lithaborn, Phil, Mark II, Stef, Kaptain Kobold, bedshaped, I have ordinary addictions, TheCatGirlSpeaks, Lord B rides again, Tina, Charlie II, Cody Bones, Poll Star, Jenni II, Martin, Del II, The Eye in the Sky, RussL, Lizzy's Hoax, Ben II, Earworms of the Year 2006, Sarah, Flash II, Erika, Hen, Pynchon, Troubled Diva, Graham II, Cat II, Statue John II, Sweeping the Nation, Aravis II, Olympian II, C, Planet-Me, Mike, Michael II, Eye in the Sky II, Charlie III, The Great Grape Ape, asta]

six foot six and a hundred tons

I think I might be addicted to exercise.

It's not that I particularly enjoy exercise per se, it's that I feel so awful if I don't exercise; if I don't get my fix. A typical week for me has six days of exercise: a rest on Monday, a run at lunchtime or a game of football on Tuesday (and sometimes a run after football), a swim on Wednesday, football on Thursday, a swim on Friday (the pool is pleasantly quiet on a Friday evening), a run on Saturday and another swim or run on a Sunday. If I miss any one of those days, then I feel fat and lazy.

In spite of my bad neck, I've managed to play a game of football and go for a couple of runs so far this week, but because I've missed a couple of days, I feel fat and lazy. I was actually away in Telford today and there was no possible way that I could have done anything, but in my head this is no kind of excuse - it's just a day missed.

Like I say: it's an addiction. Or is it an obsession? Or is it both?

Missing a day's exercise also seems to leave me feeling a bit tense: it's brilliant for clearing the mind. No exercise equals a cluttered mind. It's surprising the things that work themselves out in your head when you are trawling up and down a swimming pool or running alongside a river, not to mention the number of earworms that drift onto my internal jukebox.

So it seems I depend upon exercise psychologically and psychiatrically as well as physically.

Frankly I'm amazed I give myself one day off a week.

It hasn't always been like this though.

I know you might not think it to look at me, but I eat like a horse and I feel that somehow if I don't exercise hard, then I will stop being able to eat what I want. This is partially true: after a very active life at school, I slowed down a lot when I was at University and - when an increased beer intake is factored in - I put on quite a lot of weight. I'm tall and have broad shoulders, so I carried this pretty well, but the simple truth is that I was about five stone (70lb) heavier than I am now. I never really set out to deliberately lose all that weight, it just kind of happened. I started to exercise more and to eat better (I think mainly because I began to cook for myself a lot more and discovered that I liked fruit and veg more than I liked a burger and chips). The final clincher was a nasty bout of bacterial food poisoning that seemed to affect my body's ability to process some types of food.... add it all together and the weight just fell off.

...but somewhere along the way I got hooked on exercise. It's not a habit I want to kick particularly, it's just that I'm not sure it's healthy being quite this obsessive about it.

It's in my nature, I suppose, and there are certainly worse habits I could have acquired.

Soap operas for starters.
Meteorology.
Chess.
Blogging.....

That kind of thing.

and it's surprising how quick a little rain can clear the streets...

This has been one of my best months ever personally, but it's also been one of my worst.

Today was a really bad day, and at one point I was shaking with anger and frustration and close to tears. When I got home at a little past 7pm, all I wanted to do was to get out and work some of these frustrations out on a run. The weather didn't look great and it was starting to get dark, but I really needed to get outside into the fresh air and punish my body. Admittedly, part of the reason I wanted to do this is because I am now hopelessly addicted to exercise and need the endorphins to maintain my mood....but I also like it because it gives me time to think and to work issues through in my head.

I won't say that my 35 minute run alongside the river has given me all the answers or completely turned around the way I'm feeling, but it has definitely picked me up. When I was a little over halfway around, the heaven's opened and it began to absolutely pour with rain. I absolutely revelled in it. The feeling of the rain on my skin thrilled me and made me run faster and harder. It was brilliant.

I don't know if my iPod has a sense of irony, but it was at this exact moment that it started to play "Dry the Rain" by the Beta Band..... and it was perfect. I picked up my knees, picked up my pace and kicked for home. I still have problems that I need to deal with, but I feel as though I've been given another burst of energy to try and work them through.

Isn't it funny how little things like exercise and music can affect your mood so much?

Perhaps it's just as well that I don't have any Joy Division on my iPod shuffle, eh?