Week three – Eye of the Tiger!

Days to New York Marathon - I don’t know because they haven’t said how many on their website, and anyway I don’t know if I am going to run it. Funds raised – no more so far, but then i haven’t asked anyone for any, especially since you gave me all that money last year and I didn’t run.

Distance run this week: about 7 pathetic miles; Weight this week: lets just call it high shall we. Enough that I need to lose at least 12 kilos. However, I had a medical for BioBank last week and I can reveal that I have 25.7% body fat, which is roughly equivalent to a Peanut M&M, apparently (but less than a Reese’s Cup).

Thanks for the kind comments on my last blog to:

• Delilah, my daughter, for taking LOLBACALI into her lexicon and her world
• Andrew, my dear friend, for posting a link to Caitlin Moran’s much funnier writing about running (thanks, Andrew)
• and my friend Kathryn for suggesting that if I decide not to do New York this year I could do the Robin Hood Marathon in Nottingham because I could do a fast time. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. He he he he. The idea of me doing a “fast” marathon! Thanks, Kathryn. LOL. (Or LOLBACALI.)

The idea for this week’s post is shamelessly stolen from my blogging heroes, The West End Whingers, from whom I have learned almost everything useful that I know about blogging – namely that comedy is much more important than facts.  So, a very long time ago the whingers did a piece based on the statistical data you get when you write a blog  which includes the very interesting list of words that people have typed into Google to find you.

So here are some of the funny, sad and frankly disturbing search engine terms that were typed in that led people to RunAllanRun:

• most big mushroom  
• kid walking up hill
• postmodernism temporary permanent
• how to afford stomach cramps while train
• raising children and running bus
• “how to play eye of the tiger” piano  
• “tristram shandy black page”
• haruki murakami smoking
• i don’t like murakami
• wooly foot numb nhs
• haikus about new york being upbeat
• iceland + rainwear  
• mr men mp3

I read many of these phrases and simply think, “What?!”  and then I think how very disappointed they must have been when they came across this blog.

Anyway, what about the running, Allan? I hear you cry as one. (Probably because there is only one of you reading this.) Well, I continue to stagger around north London like a wounded water buffallo. (Rather like the way this blog lumbers its way to you once in a while.)  Last week I had a run so bad, so short, so slow and so interrupted by stopping and walking that I was embarrassed to be wearing running shoes. If anyone from Asics had seen me they might have paid me to wear someone else’s brand. But I am running – sort of. And I intend to reduce my fat content to a more acceptable snack food equivalent, that’s for sure, maybe a sesame snap. Because it is back to that never fail formula for losing weight for me: burn more calories than you consume!  Eat less; do more. It really does work!

However, this week’s haiku is a tribute to my google searchers:

iceland plus rainwear
raising children running bus
eye of the tiger

Speak to you soon.

Week ZERO – it starts all over again!

Firstly. Apologies for the last blog.  By way of explanation (not excuse), I had just had a flu jab – so was probably a bit feverish or something. But China Cat Collection indeed! What was I thinking of? or WTF (which my three teenage children (actually Mathilda is now 20 so not a teenager any more) reliably inform me is young person shorthand for “What the flip!”). OMG (Oh My Gosh!) Hilarious! or LOL (laugh out loud). Or were you perhaps LOLBACALI (Laughing Out Loud But Actually Crying A Little Inside).

But TBH (To Be Honest), the problem is that there was no focus!  What is a running blog with out running! Without a run to train for. A goal to aim for! (BTW (By The Way) that’s nearly a haiku(TNAH) .) (ITTEN – I Think That’s Enough Now!.)

So what to do?

Well as chance would have it I recently had an outpatient appointment at the hospital at which we discussed my condition and the continuing lack of an obvious cause of the problem. So the upshot is that the doctor and I discussed the possibility of me training to run another marathon while they monitor me a couple of times during the training to make sure nothing weird is happening.  I imagine this is partly because I may be something of an “interesting” case. But hey, if that means I am monitored and so feel a bit more secure about training then I am up for it!

So after these winter months of inactivity and near hibernation where I have put back all the weight and more that I shed last year I now have something to aim for. A  goal. A focus. A marathon. New York? I don’t know but a marathon in the autumn is what I am planning.

And with the days getting longer I am looking forward to getting back out there and learning to run again. The few weeedy runs I have done this winter have been absolutely rubbish. I am an embarassing, shambling, wounded water buffalo of runner at the moment. But that will change. And, you, if you want, can follow my progress all over again!!!

So, once again you can share in my rubbish runs, my “hilarious”  musings on postmodernist signage on the London Overground, my trashing of other more famous writers who write about running and of course the poor quality weekly haikus:

days are lengthening
running is back in my life
my blog’s back in yours!

Ah, it’s good to be back. Speak to you soon.

Week minus seven – collecting cats

“I hate china cats, but that one is actually all right.” Those were the fateful eleven words I said to Helen, my wife, some years ago.  “Why fateful?” you ask. Because ever since that day I have been a “collector” of china cats whether I like them or not (and it really is not).  Helen and our friend Suzanne delight in finding china cats in charity shops to add to my “collection”.  Helen recently returned from a trip to Cornwall with eleven of the little lovelies which she had found. There were tears in my eyes that day, I can tell you. 

So over the years I have built up a couple of bowls full of them, which I mostly put under the bed. So this year to ensure my collection was taken to the next level, as it were, Helen bought me a display case and this week after months of avoiding it, the case was put on the wall and the cats finally put on display for all to see.  And do you know what? Hideous as they mostly are, put on display like that I actually find myself having a little look in the case as I go past and smiling at the amazing weirdness of them. People sat down and designed an produced these extraordinary things.  And I feel a little bit pleased to have them out there now.

“That’s all terribly interesting, Allan,” You may (or more probably may not) be saying, “But what the devil has it got to do with running or fundraising?”  Well not much really.  But last weekend I went running and I had one of the worst runs of my life.  I ran with speed and general demeanor of a wounded Water Buffalo.  This weekend I went running with Helen and we ran together and talked and I ran better than I have since the operation. It was a very short run but it was one that felt OK.

And I have had a lot of support from lots of people during my training for the marathon and since. And people have helped me to get back out there running and encouraged me to stick with the blogging.  So that’s a bit like the cats really.  You know, something terrible surprising you by getting a bit better after all.

Clutching at straws really, I know.  But at least I’m blogging. And I bet you can’t wait to see pictures of the cats! (Next time maybe.)

Hope you all have a great festive season and holiday if you are having one. 

I’ll be back in 2009, hoping to run for NCT again!

This week’s haiku:

“I hate china cats.”
But the cats kept appearing.
Now I quite like them.

Week minus five or something – what next?

Sorry for the delay in writing this.

I have been struggling with what to write. I went to New York with Helen, my wife, anyway, even though the marathon was off the agenda. And I had a fantastic time. Saw Paula Radcliffe win the New York Marathon again. We were there for the election and it was great being there for what felt like a very historic moment. I met an old school friend, Nick, who I haven’t seen for 25 years or more (the wonders of facebook). And of course ate at Balthazar more than once. But as we all know from the infamous “mushroom” blog my enjoyable holidays tend to make for a dull post.

I could go into further detail about my medical situation, but I thought that might be too gruesome, as Daffy Duck would say.

And then I read an article about Slow Blogging . Which is a “movement” whereby a blogger only blogs when they have something interesting to say – which seemed to fit my blogosophy (yes, blogosophy). Or is that just an excuse for laziness?

I was finally spurred into action for this blog by the fact that someone left the RunAllanRun facebook group – presumably due to the lack of activity. And why does that matter?  Well many of you have been kind enough to say that you enjoy reading my blog, and well gosh darn it, I rather like that appreciation.  So as you can already see, of course the solution was obvious – a blog about the blog! That old post-modern standby that has served me so well!

So it struck me that I have lost the blogging spirit while I have not been able to run while recuperating from the surgery. However, I am now starting to run again. A little light jogging – but hoping to build up. I also weighed myself for the first time since the operation and was shocked at the amount I have put on in these two months of inactivity. And all of this has got me wanting to blog again. (That and the terrible vanishing facebook group.)

So it seems that blogging and running/training are now linked in my mind in some Pavlovian way. Which is quite interesting really because the blog was not really about the running as far as I was concerned.

One thing in particular about New York and being there on the day of the marathon this year that was “difficult” for me, was being on the Subway with lots and lots of people who had finished the marathon. They were wearing their medals and T-shirts and wrapped in tin foil blankets and I thought that it should have been me! And it made me think, “Well why not next year?”. And then I was able to reply, “Because of the artery thing, you idiot!” To which I could say, “But that’s better now. And anyway it will give me something to blog about for the next 12 months!” To which I was again able to reply, “Yes, but what about the whole artery/surgery/scary death thing?” To which I reply, “But I want to run the marathon…”

So there you go – a bit of internal conflict again. (Still under control, though, no “Kill. Kill. Kill ” voices, you’ll be glad to know.) Looks like I am getting the blogging mojo back!

The couple of runs I have done have been rubbish – like I am starting all over again. You may think the same about the blogging. I agree this is not the best blog posting I have ever done.  (I personally like the Green Eggs & Ham vs Mr Men one.) But like the running, it feels like I am starting again. So maybe next year, if I am still running and still blogging (and you are still reading) you will be able to see a different picture of me at the finish line of the New York Marathon than the one below. (I mean one which shows me having run the marathon, rather than just standing at the finish having taken the subway there.)

NY marathon finish line

I want to write blogs
I want to run marathons
Let’s see what happens.

Week 18 and beyond – Catastrophe!!!

I will not be running the New York Marathon this year! I may never run a marathon!

Since I last wrote I have had emergency surgery to remove a blood clot from an artery in my leg. This was really very serious and quite frightening.   It started with a sudden cramp like pain in my leg which prevented me doing my training run a couple of sundays ago.

When the pain continued through to the next day and my foot started to feel numb and tingly with cold toes I phoned NHS Direct. They told me to get to my nearest A&E. The A&E Doctor at Hammersmith Hospital looked worried, used phrases like “circulation compromised” and sent me to Charing Cross Hospital with a note saying he couldn’t find a pulse below my right knee!  At this point I was getting very worried indeed. At Charing Cross Hospital I was given a scan and then a Doctor called me into a room to discuss the scan. His first words were:

“It is not good news.”

I thought, “Aaaaarrrrrrrggggghhhhhhh!”, as you do when a doctor says that sort of thing.

He then said, “You certainly won’t be running a marathon in November.”

At this point I started to see myself like the piano that the jazz cats in The Aristocats are playing when they sing “Everybody Wants to be a Cat” when it goes crashing down through the building…

“it’s not good news” CRASH through the floor.

“You certainly won’t be running a marathon in November” CRASH through the next floor.

I wonder if I will ever run again. CRASH through the next floor.

Or walk? CRASH through the next floor.

Or live?!! CRASH!  “Aaaarrrrrgggghhhh!!!”

Anyway the upshot is I had a blood clot blocking the artery in my right leg. It was successfully removed in an operation the following day. The top theory for the cause of the blockage is that there was a kink in my artery near the back of the knee and the “huge muscle build up” (honestly, their words not mine)  I developed from my marathon training pounded against the kinked artery during my many miles of training.  Although not common, this does have a name: Popliteal Artery Entrapment Syndrome. (So there is a medical term for the back of the knee!)

So you could say that I was having my own credit crunch crisis (which all went crazy while I was in hospital). A “liquidity” problem in my right leg caused the muscles to “go bust” which could have led to a serious physical “meltdown” if the “Darling” team at Charing Cross hadn’t “bailed out” my failing vascular “banking system” with a “multi billion” something “rescue package” to “pump liquidity back into the system” and prevent “Icelandic”[that's enough now].

I am feeling very lucky to be alive and walking and in one piece after this experience.

However, I am very disappointed about the marathon. In fact, it was all so distressing I tried to pretend that it was not happening to me by growing a beard to make me look like someone else:

me trying to look unlike me

But it didn’t work.

And apparently, I was also thinking about you all. Shortly after my operation, I said to Helen, my wife, “I’ve got an idea for the blog. I’m going to go all Tristram Shandy. Black Page.” (Helen says this hilarious idea was made even more hilarious by the fact that I was attached to a number of machines which were inflating and deflating various pads and bags around my body in amusing ways and (because it was so soon after the operation) that it took me five minutes to say those 16 words because I fell asleep twice during the telling!):

Tristram Shandy

 

Later as lay in my hospital bed and I stared at the clock on the wall opposite as it ticked slowly slowly slowly round to 3.10 am (I didn’t sleep well in hospital) and the wind whistled round the building outside and I thought about not running the marathon and all the work I had put in to the training, I thought that tumbleweed across the desert might be a more fitting image.

tumble weed

 

Yes, self pity, I’m afraid. But overall I am feeling very lucky to be alive and walking and in one piece after this experience.  Life is very wonderful.

And many of you will now be thinking, “Gosh, that sounds like a very frightening ordeal, Allan”. Yes, it was thank you. “And I am really pleased that you seem to be OK after all that.” Yes, me too, actually. “But can I ask about the sponsorship money I gave you through justgiving? Now that you will not be running the marathon I sponsored you to run, what happens about my money.” Ahh. Yes. I’m glad you asked me that. Because I checked up that situation. And here is what the justgiving FAQ page says:

“I’ve pulled out of the event – can my donors get a refund?I already have donations on my page…

We can’t refund donations made to your fundraising page because they’re processed immediately and paid directly to your charity. It’s what makes Justgiving so efficient!

If your donors would like a refund, please ask them to contact your charity. We give refunds only in exceptional circumstances, with the charity’s written approval. “

For some, I guess, that will be “not good news”, as a doctor recently said. So it seems to me that the very generous and kind people who donated money to NCT for my marathon have a few options:

1. Ask NCT for your money back.
2. Leave your money where it is but insist/encourage me to do something else, eg, reach my weightloss target of 73kg (which would be about 26lb down from when I started so those of you who sponsored me £1/mile could now sponsor me £1/lb!)
3. Leave your money where it is in the hope that I will be able to run the New York marathon next year instead (I would like to run the marathon next year, but not sure it will be medically possible – the doctors weren’t encouraging on that point.)
4. Leave your money where it is because it is really quite impressive that I have run 356.81 miles (574.23 km), (most of them before 6.30 in the morning!) including a couple of runs of 18 and 20 miles,  since I began keeping a record 18 ish weeks ago. And NCT is a very worthwhile charity.

You can vote on your preferred option by adding a comment below.

So this may well be my last blog posting. Unless I (or you) can think of something useful I can do (over and above the 350 miles of running) to justify the sponsorship. So thank you for reading. I’ll let you know if there is more to say…

I have run a lot
I have written a lot too
I hope you had fun.

Week 17 – In which Allan is hit by a squirrel, given “evils” by a gangster fox, runs even further and discovers “existential running”

This week:
Weight: once again, still at about 76kg! (target: 73kg) but I don’t really care at the moment; Miles run in the last seven days: 35.92 (57.8077 km)
Total funds raised up quite a bit: £376.79 (including Gift Aid) Only £623.21 to go. Sponsor me at my Justgiving page by clicking here.
Days to go to the New York Marathon: 39 (oh my!).

I think the change of season is having an effect on the wildlife of North London. It is very noticeably darker when I do my early morning runs. So, for example, one morning last week as I ran on to Hampstead Heath, two geese flew (heading south?) picturesquely (majestically, even) across a very bright moon shining in a dark night sky. 

Another morning as I left the house – again in darkness – a fox which was a few metres down the road gave me an aggressive and arrogant stare, as if he were in a Guy Ritchie film, and was about to say, “This is my manor, son! You’re only here right now because I let you. You remember all those rabbits and guinae pigs your kids used to have that disappeared? I had them. Understand. So naff off.” (Actually that sounded more like Fletcher in Porridge, but you get the idea.) “Gangster fox terrorises Tufnell Park runner shock!”

And on another morning  run – yet again in the dark – a squirrel ran into me.  I thought squirrels sense of self preservation was such that they were pretty good at avoiding humans, but it seems not. I wasn’t trying to sneak up on it or anything (because that would be quite odd in a man of my age), but as I was running along this squirrel didn’t seem to notice I was there until I was right next to it at which point it panicked and ran straight into my foot, then bounced off and ran away.

The point of all this being that this equinochial period is a time of change. Days get visibly shorter each week. Temperatures drop. Animals change their behaviour – flying south for the winter (birds), being bolder and more aggressive in their foraging for food (fox) or stupider (squirrel). And I have been thinking about some changes too.

I have done some very long runs recently. Longer than I have ever run before. Last week I ran 18 miles (29.1291km) and, the weekend just gone, 20 miles (32.2030km). This has helped me to turn a corner in my thinking about the marathon.  Having done these runs, I now know I can finish the marathon. Even if I have to walk the last six miles, I can do it. This is quite a profound change from the way I felt a few weeks ago when I was panicking about it.

One of the things that has changed is that I have been making sure I eat my porridge before long runs and I have been drinking energy drinks and energy gels during the long runs.  Energy gels are absolutely disgusting – “The great taste of vomit with the texture of wallpaper glue!” -but they do seem to give me the energy I need to run a very long way. (Be warned Nestle makes one brand of energy product called PowerBar.) So I am not so worried about the 3kg I still need to lose to reach my target at the moment. I am making sure I have the fuel I need to run a long way.

I have also been reading a book called Running & Philosophy: a marathon for the mind, edited by Michael W Austin. Which is ”a unique anthology of essays exploring the philosophical wisdom runners contemplate when out for a run. It features writings from some of America’s leading philosophers, including Martha Nussbaum, Charles Taliaferro, and J.P. Moreland.” (Thanks to Kathryn of the Bradford chapter of the north of England regional branch of RunAllanRun readers for recommending this to me.) It features such exciting chapter titles as “Chasing Happiness Together: Running and Aristotle’s Philosophy of Friendship”, “John Dewey and the Beautiful Stride: Running as Aesthetic Experience”, “Can We Experience SIgnificance on a Treadmill?” (to save you the effort, the answer is “not really”) and the surprisingly upbeat “Existential Running”. Some of it is a bit forced but there are some really interesting essays which are helpful in linking some of the feelings of elation and struggle involved in running to some established theories about life and happiness. 

So, since I have after all chosen to do this marathon and this training ,when I get up and go running in the dark or run a “challenging” 20 miles it can be useful to think about freedom and choice and all that sort of stuff . Or I can just enjoy the amusing antics of my local woodland creatures!

Birds are flying south
I am running in the dark
But still enlightened!

Week 16 – “Why New York, Allan?”

This week:
Weight: once again, disappointingly still at about 76kg! (target: 73kg); Miles run in the last seven days: 30.02 (48.3125 km)
Total funds raised up a bit: £319.10 (including Gift Aid) Only £680.90 to go. Sponsor me at my Justgiving page by clicking here.
Days to go to the New York Marathon: 48.

Helen, my wife, who has done two marathons, warned me that I would become a marathon bore about now. (Actually, Helen put it much more nicely, saying “Your thoughts, actions and conversation will be dominated by the marathon and we’ll all have to get used to it.”)

This past weekend we looked after our friends’ two children while they (the parents) went away for the weekend. We also went to another friend’s very enjoyable 50th birthday party. Stanley, our youngest, learned how to play Eye of the Tiger on the guitar (with appropriate irony, I think, but I’m not entirely sure).  Delilah, our younger daughter spent a lot of the weekend working on her personal statement for her UCAS form and recovering from the party she went to on Friday night/Saturday morning. Our elder daughter, Mathilda, came back this weekend from Moscow where she has been attending a drama course at Moscow Arts Theatre for the last two weeks. However, when people at work (NCT) asked me about my weekend, I said “I had a successful 18 mile run on Sunday, thank you for asking.” And went on to explain to anyone who was in the same room about how I ran from Angel to Stonebridge Lock out past Tottenham Hale on the canals and then back again. How I drank energy drinks and “ate” energy gels to help me on the way and how encouraging for the marathon it is to have run so far. And their eyes start to glaze and writing that report on membership attrition and retention rates data for the year end accounts seems a lot more interesting to them than it did five minutes ago. And do you see what’s happening here? I am doing the same to you, dear reader.  Blah blah blah 18 miles. Blah blah blah marathon. Etc. So Helen was right.

Now 18.1 miles (29.1291km) is a very long way and I have never run that far (in one go) before in my life.  So I think it is OK to be quite pleased with myself at this turn of events. And for your info, as I am sure you will be as interested as me, it took 3 hours, 14 minutes and 22 seconds, an average of 10 minutes 44 seconds per mile, my average heart rate was 154 bpm (sorry, are you finding this boring?) and I burned approximately 2,154 calories (which is, incidentally, equivalent to approximately 850 g of raccoon meat- which must be about all the edible meat you could get from the average raccoon, I imagine).

Anyway, after very patiently listening while I droned on about my 18 mile run, our friends’ young daughter (yes, be warned that the listener’s age, relevance to the current conversation and likely potential interest to the listener represent no barrier to my ability to launch into riveting descriptions of the pain in my foot between 6.3 and 8.2 miles – which, I’m sure you want to know, was rather like someone shooting a rivet into my foot every time I stepped on it)  asked me why I am running the New York marathon rather than somewhere else (closer to home).  Which is an interesting question.

After I had been running a few years and Helen and other friends of mine had run some marathons I thought I would probably like to do a marathon at some point, too. And if, as is very possibly the case, I only ever do one marathon, which marathon should that be? Why not make it somewhere I would really like to visit as well.  Given that I have two degrees in American Studies (a BA from UEA Norwich and an MA from Birkbeck, London) and had always wanted to visit America but, rather embarassingly now that I was over 40, never had, New York seemed an obvious option.

Of course this also meant it was easier to put off!  I could say, wittily I thought, that I didn’t want to do the London Marathon because I had been to the Isle of Dogs and it was closed. (Ignoring the fact that there is at least one marathon in the UK every week that I could choose to run instead.) New York offered that classic excuse in that it was the one I was holding out for, therefore I didn’t actually have to do it. And, even better, I said to myself that I would give up smoking when I was definitely going to run a marathon. So, being rejected for a place in the New York marathon every year meant I could continue smoking as well!

In the meantime I visited New York, without a marathon, first with my daughters, Mathilda and Delilah and then with the whole family. And I absolutely loved it. Having seen it a million times in film and TV, the best things turned out to be the smells and the tastes of New York which I couldn’t predict. So now I can, hopefully, enjoy running a marathon there, knowing that I will enjoy being in a wonderfully exciting city which I love.  (I also love London too, I hasten to add, and wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.)

So this year I got my guaranteed place in the New York Marathon. (If you apply and are rejected three years in a row, you are guaranteed a place in the fourth.)  So it all got rather real. And quite scary. But, joy of joys, it has made me give up smoking. It has made me run and feel good about running again. It has already helped me run further than I have ever run before.  And it has, and this could be the most scary bit in some ways, meant I am taking a risk or two.  At least 30 friends, relatives and colleagues have read this blog and are expecting me to run that marathon. Many have sponsored me. Some, it seems, have even been inspired to do a little bit more exercise. So actually, that 18 mile run is quite important, because it has made me feel a little bit more secure about running the 26 miles in November.

And to answer Amy’s question about “Why New York, Allan?”, the answer would have to be that originally it was probably an excuse to postpone doing things I said I wanted to do, but now it is an exciting and frighteningly real adventure in a city I love to visit. So sorry if I corner you somewhere and turn into a marathon bore in the next few weeks, but it really is very exciting for me.

New York’s exciting
Twenty-six miles is quite far
I am nearly there.

Week 15 – Conflict

This week:
Weight:still at about 76kg! (target: 73kg); Miles run in the last seven days: a hefty 37.23! (59.9159 km)
Total funds raised up a bit: £257.56 (including Gift Aid) Only £742.44 to go. Sponsor me at my Justgiving page by clicking here.
Days to go to the New York Marathon: 59 (oh lordy! Less than two months!).

Firstly, my apologies for the last blog which I think was a bit boring. The picture of the mushroom got the most positive feedback so I think that says it all. I think I was too happy and relaxed after my holiday trip to Cornwall (Kernow) to write the edgy, “out there” blog posts you are used to. Because, as we all know, there is no drama without conflict. Which is why Mr Men books are so dull. (Except Mr Nosey, who is taught the lesson of minding his own business by being smashed in the face with a hammer by his friends and neighbours while they stand around pointing and laughing at him(?)! This is how I think it happened:
Roger Hargreaves (Mr Men author) [talking into telephone]: Hello, this is Roger Hargreaves, author of the Mr Men Books. Is that Mr Puffin, my publisher? How are sales of my Mr Men books going?
Mr Puffin the Publisher [talking into his telephone]: Hello, Roger. Yes it’s Jim Puffin, publisher, here. To answer your question, sales of your Mr Men books are OK. But they’re not as good as Dr Seuss’s. Did you know his Green Eggs and Ham is the third biggest selling book in the English language ever? And it only uses 50 words! But what it has is conflict, Roger. Dramatic conflict. Sam-I-Am wants the other bloke to eat Green Eggs & Ham, and he doesn’t want to. Do you see? Conflict. And that’s got the reader hooked so that he (or she) wants to know if (and how) that conflict is resolved.  Does Sam-I-Am persuade the other bloke to eat the green eggs and ham? If so, how? Does he like it? Why are they green? Do you see, Roger, the conflict creates drama and interest. So, what we’re thinking here at the publishing house is that maybe Mr Messy getting his house cleaned by Mr Neat & Mr Tidy doesn’t quite have the same level of dramatic conflict that can hook the reader. And that perhaps, Roger, you could make the next one a bit more edgy. Throw in some conflict. What do you think, Roger?
Roger Hargreaves: Hmmm. Conflict, eh? Dr Seuss, eh? Think you know more about writing children’s books than I do, eh? Well why don’t you just mind your own business (publishing) and I’ll mind mine (writing children’s books)! You want conflict? I’ll give you conflict! [Slams down phone.]
And so, Mr Nosey was born!) (Or probably not.)
Anyway, I digress.

This week I have had some internal conflict because I am feeling quite unwell with headache, stomach cramps and, well lets just call it “bathroom unpleasantness”. So on my run this morning (5:49 am; 4.83 miles (7.77313 km); 50 minutes, 35.49 seconds, a disappointing 10.28 minute miles, and burned 595 calories – equivalent to approximately 1lb (453 g) of topically tasty Alaskan caribou meat) I was constantly in danger of puking or doing a “Paula in Athens 2004″. But the thought that I am behind on my training schedule kept me going. I had a terribly difficult “long” run on Sunday – running out of energy for the last four miles. And I am not doing the speedwork my schedule suggests I should. And I am back at work and the mornings are getting darker. And there is less than two months and I only have a quarter of the fundraising target and I have lost my blogging mojo and and and…. There goes that doubting voice in my head again… (Still not saying “Kill! Kill! Kill!”, you’ll be pleased to hear! but a clear example of some internal conflict none the less.)

So I have had a look back on some of the previous blogs (am I going all postmodern again?) and thought I would try to look at some of my achievements. And they are worth mentioning, I think (with thanks to all those who have supported and helped these achievements):

• Weight is down 7kg in 14 weeks from 83kg to 76kg.
• Weekly running mileage up almost 100% from 19 to 37.
• Blog readership up nearly 900% from 3 to 26!
• Funds raised up from £0.00 to £257.56.
• The sport of Competitive Postmodernism™ invented
• 8 haikus written
• one picture of large mushroom uploaded.

Which makes me feel a bit better about it all again. And now *stop press* stop press* stop press* someone out there has created a link to my blog!!! It is from a New York blog called Brooklyn Running, which says:

“Here’s a blog entry from a guy in the UK (I think), who just spent some time in Cornwall, clocking down the time until New York (62 training days from today).
It features a photo of a mushroom (or is it a toadstool?) Nuf said.”

It then includes a quote from my Week 11 post about the wonder New York and of Balthazar restaurant. I feel so proud and excited – my reference and quote in another blog. Thank you, Brooklyn Runner. (And yes, I am in the UK.)

So all of this has made me feel a bit more positive about things again. Taking a pause and looking at what’s going well is a really useful thing to do. So my inner conflict, though not entirely resolved, is at least somewhat mitigated. And has hopefully made for a more interesting blog?

Thanks for reading. Please send a link to anyone you think might enjoy this and (really importantly) might sponsor me… This week’s haiku:

Drama needs conflict
Haikus need seventeen sounds
I need your money!

Weeks 12, 13 & 14 – Holiday

This week:
Weight:down 2kg at 76kg! (target: 73kg); Miles run since I last wrote: 101.41!
Total funds raised exactly the same: £217.82 (including Gift Aid) Only £782.18 to go.  Sponsor me at my Justgiving page by clicking here.
Days to go to the New York Marathon: 62 (frighteningly few!).

Apologies to my loyal readership (which if the facebook group is to be believed, numbers 24 people!) for the long delay since my last posting but I have been on holiday.  And I had a lovely time despite the weather, thank you for asking. I was in Cornwall (or Kernow, as  it is spelled in Cornish) and decided not to spend any time in the interweb cafe in Bude. I was too busy enjoying myself to write about enjoying myself (not very postmodern of me, I know!).

Anyway, three weeks is a long time. Importantly I have done a lot of running. As you can see above, in the three weeks I have done 101 miles (162.554km)! That is 33.803 miles (54.3958km) per week on average. Which is a lot more than I was doing.  The reason is I have been following “The Murakami Method” as I call it. Which is to run six days a week, with a longer and longer run once a week (up to 14 miles/22.503 km today). And while I was away I was running up some pretty steep Cornish (Kernowish?) hills!  I imagined that running up these hills would help me run faster and longer when I got back to the flatter running routes of north London. (But it seems not!)

And thanks to the fantastically seasonal rainfall, they were slippery hills too.  Here is me (left) on one of the slippery hills (walking rather than running that day)

Summer 2008 in Cornwall!

Note wooly hat and rainwear!  So I think there are two questions for Kernow (Cornwall): why so hilly, Kernow? why so wet this year, Kernow?

Here is another picture of me with a giant mushroom. Or is it a toadstool?

Me (left) with big mushroom

I will leave you to make up your own fun guy joke.

Anyway, this is all very interesting, I’m sure. But I have been away for three weeks and run and run and there has been absolutely no increase in funds raised which is pretty poor.  This is, I assume, because I have not been putting in the hours blogging, so readership loses interest, finds another blog about training for a marathon, gives money to different fundraiser! I think it goes back to the marketing thing again: I have to keep the blog posts flowing to keep people’s interest. No pressure then, given that I also have to run 26.2 miles (42km) in two months!

Oh, and by the way, I didn’t see a single minute of the Olympics.  But from what I heard and read there was plenty to fill a competitive postmodernism event (see earlier post). Russia & Georgia kept on meeting each other in competition while being simultaneously at war. Paula and Kelly both did me proud by losing splendidly and as one would have scripted it. But Team GB overall seemed to surprise everyone by being genuinely quite good without the need for any irony at all! So in honour of them an irony free haiku:

I had fun running

on holiday in Kernow
but did no blogging!

Back to work tomorrow, and more regular blogging.

Week 11 – Why I am like Haruki Murakami

This week:
Weight: Down 1kg at 78kg! (target: 73kg); Miles run this week: 24.78!
Total funds raised up only £5 this week, but others have promised to “when I get back from holiday”: £217.82 (including Gift Aid) Only £782.18 to go.  Sponsor me at my Justgiving page by clicking here.
Days to go to the New York Marathon: 83 (not many).

This week I started reading What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A Memoir by Haruki Murakami. It is very interesting. It is a book about how important running is to him; how he runs and why he runs.  He does this very eloquently and it is very inspiring to read someone write so well about running.  I am as a result of reading the book looking at increasing the number of runs I do in a week and this week I did five runs (including one of ten miles) and got up t 24.78 miles for the week. (For my growing number of metric readers that is 39.87954432 Kilometres.)

So, like me, Haruki Murakami, runs and wrtites about it. He does running to keep his weight down, to keep fit and because he likes doing it.

However, he runs a lot more than me (six miles a day, six days a week, usually) but then he has more control over his time (he can have a nap in the afternoon). And he is a much faster and more experienced runner than me. Though he describes himself as a “mediocre” runner he has done lots of marathons in times which I can only dream of.

And of course there is a difference in the way Haruki (I feel I can call him that now I’ve read 60 pages of one of his books) and I write. I hope he will take this in the spirit in which it is intended, but I think he could put a few more laughs in there. And not a single haiku so far!

So maybe this blog should be called Week 11 – Why I am different to Haruki Murakami!

Murakami talks about eating and food and losing weight. He says the more he runs the healthier he feels and the healthier he eats – he doesn’t want to eat anything but fruit and fish. Again, I am slightly different.

Earlier this week I found myself in the car park of the Crown Plaza Hotel in Marlow, Buckinghamshire (for work reasons, I hasten to add) surrounded by three smoking men. It is now 8 months since I stopped smoking. And I felt quite pleased with myself, even allowed myself a smug little smile. An interesting (interesting to me anyway) effect of the healthier lifestyle I am now leading (don’t smoke, don’t eat so much, don’t eat stuff between meals unless it is fruit and such like) is the fact that I have started treating myself to swanky meals out.  I used to read the restaurant reviews in The Guardian and enjoyed reading them. But now I think, “Oh that sounds great, and since I am saving so much money by not smoking I can go to that restaurant if I want”. So I do.  And I look up the restaurant on the Interweb and hopefully look at sample menus and think about what I would like to eat and drink. Which I know is sounding a bit obsessional and potentially unhealthy.  Salivating over the thought of a big blow out meal when I am limiting myself to leaves and fruit. But I do eat well – just less of it and no crap. And I go with Helen, my wife, and or the children and we generally have a great time.

So this year I and one or more of my family have eaten some very good food in some very interesting restaurants. Like Belga Queen in Brussels, Rick Stein’s Seafood Restaurant in Padstow, Maze Grill in London (where I declined the opportunity to eat a £120 steak) and Le Cafe Anglais in London to which I have been twice now. Once with both my daughters, Mathilda and Delilah, and once with just Delilah. Both times it was great.

However, my “I’ve not smoked for eleven months and I’ve run a marathon” treat will be at Balthazar in New York, which is my favourite. (”Ooh, look at Mr Smartypants with his favourite restaurant in New York,” said a voice in my head when I wrote that. But actually it is because it is in New York and therefore something extraordinary and part of the whole experience of being in New York that makes it my favourite. (And by the way, I don’t get lots of strange voices in my head arguing with me all the time, in case anyone was wondering, and they don’t say “Kill, kill, kill” or anything like that.)) Anyway, although eating in a good restaurant is not the main reason I am doing all this, it can help sometimes (like on today’s 10 mile run) to imagine myself sitting there in Balthazar with my wife the day after the marathon and smiling smugly.

Despite appearance
Haruki Murakami
Is not much like me.

See, Haruki, not that hard is it?