An Accidental Eighteen Miles

Here's the first non-running post. It's from an email that I received yesterday
"Building the Creative Business Graduates and Friends

I am pleased to tell you of a new two-day executive education programme at London Business School called Growing Your Business. Modelled after the award-winning course we run annually for the Young Presidents’ Organisation, this programme assists entrepreneurs and executives running fast-growing businesses in managing the challenges that rapid growth always brings. Designed for entrepreneurs (attending solo) or their top management teams (attending as a team), the course will send participants back to the office on the following Monday with a prioritized growth plan in hand.

Growing Your Business will bring together entrepreneurs and executives from around the world to wrestle interactively with real-world case studies dealing with the challenges of high growth. Meeting the protagonists in some of these cases – live, face-to-face – will bring to life the issues they faced and how they addressed them. And building new relationships with others on the programme will extend your global network as only London Business School does so well.

With big companies likely to scale back in the face of today’s economic turmoil, the stage is set for entrepreneurs to take advantage of a less competitive marketplace. My London Business School colleague John Mullins and I hope many in the BCB community running fast-growing businesses, and/or their teams, will join us in February at the School."

I received this because of the course that I did at the London Business School at the end of 2005. I'm not going to do this course - it costs nearly three grand. But it's the sentence at the end of the last para that really intrigued me.

And in the meantime, while I haven't blogged, I've been a lot better at running. Eighteen miles on Saturday, then another six on Monday. I've got 16 miles lined up with Thom Bunting for this afternoon.

CBA

7 miles. Should have been 13. Got cold and bored.

Compromise

I've got myself tangled up here.
I'm in London Tues and Weds next week, the days of my long run. And the kids are with me this weekend.

I'm supposed to have done 4 miles yesterday and 6 tomorrow. So instead I got up early, while Rona and Paddy were able to provide babysitting cover, and ran 5.

5.2 miles at 9.11 a mile.

I found myself at Morrisons at 8.02am, buying dog biscuits.

Now there's a first.

Running Into The Dark

12 miles tonight.

First time that I've run with Thom Bunting. He's the guy whose idea this was in the first place.
Great. Like sitting in the pub chatting.

And when I told my mum I was doing this marathon, her line was
"Why are you doing that?"

22nd September

This evening I ran 4.01 and then did a bit more.

This was to make up for last night when I was supposed to run 6 and I ran 5.8.

5 miles

So much for writing about stuff other than training.

Out to The George in the autumn sunshine. 5 miles

Tuesday

First say to yourself what you would be;
and then do what you have to do.

Epictetus

I don't want this blog simply to be a dry account of pratice runs completed. I was standing in Waterstones looking at a triathlon book. Next to it was a training diary with a number of quotes in it. This one really sprang to my eye. I'm writing this before I head out for this week's long run - 11miles due. Now, once upon a time, six months ago, that was a huge distance. It still is. But it was also far beyond my ken. The first time that I ran 11 miles was the Bath Half marathon. Somehow, it doesn't seem quite as daunting as it once did. There's another quote, a Japanese proverb that I grabbed out of this morning's Times newspaper - "Giving birth to a baby is easier than worrying about it." I'm not going to pass judgement on whether giving birth is easy or not (from first hand experience, I'd say that it isn't.) But I think I get the point of this.

(Update)
Back in.

11 miles done. Slow tonight, 10mins 20 per mile average. REALLY hurt.

4 miles plus, avg 9 min miles

I left the house just after the headlines about the collapse of Lehman Brothers on the evening news. Within minutes of starting, the story seemed so far away.

I still struggle with the beginning of each run. The first mile or so always feels like impossibly hard work and I wonder whether I can continue or not. Then the rythmn appears and I can keep going.

I reckon that there is a base level of fitness that people start to acquire when they want to get fit. Above that, there is a really high degree of almost superhuman fitness that is a mixture of genetics and way above average commitment (remember the morning at Bath University pool where I spotted the size 14 green flip flops that had been left by the side of the pool by someone who'd been training since 6am).
And in between those two points, it's all down to the mind.

Walk Of Shame

Out the door at 7.45 this morning, ran 5 miles. Just me and a whole bunch of people going home after a Saturday night out.

I'm running 9 min miles at the moment.

I Had That Tiger Woods...

In my ear yesterday afternoon. He said to me "Congratulations. You've just done your fastest ever mile."

And I managed to fall off my bike. 

And today I walked into town to buy Jamie's new football boots. On the way I saw Rachel and mark with her children from another life following on behind, their mum and new dad arm in arm in grim silence. 

And the photo that I took of the two girls in Allsport. 

9/11

I wrote a long post earlier today. I've deleted it to replace it with this.

I found myself standing in the queue in Greggs waiting to buy a pasty and a sausage roll. When it dawned on me that, seven years ago to the day, I returned from buying a sandwich in Goodge St to the offices of the Travel Channel. And saw the plane fly in to the second World Trade Center tower.

A lot's changed since then. Both in the world and in my life.

Back On Track

Two runs today. 

The main one, 10 miles, 9min miles all the way round. 

And earlier I couldnt' wait to get out of bed. So I did the three that I was supposed to have done last Friday.

Why Are You Doing This?

Before the Bath tri, Margo asked me one evening "Why are you doing all of this?"

That's a slightly difficult question to answer. But it's part of the feedback that I've received a great deal.

After I'd finished one long run, I had a shower and then went to the pub to meet some people. When I arrived, the first thing that happened was the people asked me if I'd just been for a run. The feedback was pretty unanimous. "utter madness" said one. "So how far can you run now?" said another with a sick look on her face. "How fast are the Africans at running the whole thing?" said a third in a "well you're not very good, are you?" sort of way.

This kind of reaction is no different from that that I've had from pretty much every quarter this year. The only person who has consistently and genuinely seemed happy at what I'm doing is my pal Paul Beddoe.

And to lots of other people's reaction, I'm tempted to say "What's it like being unfit?" but that might hurt people's feelings, mightn't it?

Awesome

That was the description use by the guy standing next to me. And he was right.

I spent yesterday afternoon at Sherborne, watching a chunk of Ironman UK. 2.4mile swim, then 112mile bike ride. Topped off with a full marathon. And nearly 1200 people finished it within the 17 hours from the 6 o’clock in the morning swim to the cutoff point.



Anyone uninspired or unmoved by just how long people keep going and their effort on the day and the knowledge of how much training must have gone in just to get people there has got a hole where their heart should be. And they’d have also missed the humour of it – like the guy who arrived at a feeding station and asked if there was any cheese on toast to be had.


By the time I took this photo, the competitors are running by floodlight. And that’s not the odd straggler. Of the 1196 that finished, nearly 500 people finished in more than 13hrs 30. In other words in the dark.

A number of people have asked me if I went along because I was planning to attempt it. Well, when I once asked my great friend John Tomnay whether he’d ever do anything longer than an Olympic distance, he said “No…I like to be able to hold my beer steady at the end!” I reckon that, not only would I be unable to hold my beer steady. I’d be unable to see it.

Back On The Air

One of my September resolutions was to keep to the training schedule. Another was to write about it every day. 

So much for both of them. Weds I was supposed to run 8 miles. And...well, I drank too much the night before with a friend of mine who came round for supper and really didn't feel like it. Thursday, Jamie and Eleanor were with me so that precludes any training. And Friday it rained so much that I had no appetite whatsoever to get out on the road. 

So that brought me to Saturday already two runs behind at the end of the first week of my training. 

I filled in a lot of the deficit with 8 and a half miles yesterday. And I'm just back in from another five this morning along the canal towpath past the George pub (which I've now measured at exactly two miles from my front door). 

So that puts me three miles behind where I'm supposed to be at this point. 

End Of Week 4

Here's the table of training runs for the plan to which I'm working.
What that means is that I'm going to do my long run on a Weds.

Working it out, that means that I'm running on Monday, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays.

So no run today but 8 miles tomorrow.

I can't wait.

Three Months And Counting

Three months to go before I'm on the start line in Florence. In the last couple of weeks before the Bath tri, I was conscious of not having trained enough. I'm not going to feel like that again.

There's a start of term sort of feel to the day. For me, this morning was the first time that I've stuck to the schedule outlined in the book. Out of the door this morning at 7.30am, out along the canal towpath to the stone bridge and then back again. So I reckon that that's about four miles - more than I'm supposed to have done according to the training program.

For me, today feels like a fresh start, a bit like New Year's Day is supposed to feel. So in that spirit, here are some resolutions that I'm going to stick to during the next three months

1. Only buy stuff of a shopping list
2. Only supermarket shop once a week
3. Never take the kids to a supermarket
4. Make a list of expenditure

During the course of the day, I've already been to Morrisons twice. So that's one resolution down within the first 24hours....

Sunday

This is the book that I'm using as my training guide for the next three months. In a nutshell, it lays out a sixteen week schedule.
My only problem is that the schedule started on August 7th and I haven't done anything at all.

So this morning I got on the canal towpath and headed out. All year I've been using a Nike+ device that plugs into my iPod. Thom B. has just borrowed it and I didn't recalibrate it. On my return about an hour and a quarter after I'd started, the iPod informed me that I had run about a mile and a half.

In fact, I'd run down the canal towpath as far as something called Harding's Bridge. Which I know for a fact is three miles along the towpath.

So I reckon that I ran between six and eight miles this morning. Which gets me back on schedule.

Target Times

Back in January when I first started running, my aim was to complete the Bath Half Marathon within two hours. On the day itself, I stood in a marquee sheltering from the rain and listened to two women talking about how they'd both run sub-two hours the previous year.

I completed in 1hr 45.

If I'm honest, I was slightly disappointed that I completed the triathlon in 3hrs 8. I'd read somewhere that 3 hours is the target time for a beginner. But I never let anyone know what my target would be.

So for Florence, my target is to complete in under 4 hours.

Big News

I' m now registered to run the Florence Marathon on 30th November.

This is something that came out of a quiet drink in a pub one summer evening about six weeks ago with my friend Thom Bunting. In the run-up to the Bath Tri, Thom told me about a book he'd got that outlined a plan to train for a marathon in sixteen weeks. I said that I'd be interested to read it. Later that night he sent me a text message. It's dated 12/07/08 and the message reads "Hi Ian, Found marathon training book. Wonder if you are interested in Florence marathon 30th November? Thom." And that was the beginning of that.


Here's a picture of my friend Gordon Plant. When I announced back in March that, having run the Bath Half Marathon, I was now going to attempt the Bath Olympic triathlon, Gordon's response was typically muscular. He wrote that "You must be f**king insane. But we all knew that, anyway."

I suppose the jury's out on that one. What's indisputable is the fact that, the day after my registration has been accepted, I'm already two weeks behind schedule. According to the sixteen week plan, I was supposed to start running a fortnight ago. I'm not too worried about that. A month ago I ran six miles after cycling more than twenty. But I can't leave it too long. Which is why I stuck on my running shoes this evening and ran another 2.3 miles. Each week, I'm supposed to do three runs of four or five miles plus one long run which builds up from eight to eighteen miles. So today's run - and yesterday's - are getting me ready for a long run that I'll put in on Sunday morning.

One Month On

I completed the Bath triathlon on July 27th.
And for the last month I've done nothing. I swam every day when I was away on holiday with the children. And for the last couple of weeks when I've been staying in Upton Cheyney I've been riding into and back from the office whenever the weather has allowed. And that's a round trip of about eighteen miles.But I haven't run once.

And I can feel it. There's something missing. I'm not that keen to get out of bed in the morning and I can feel myself wanting to get out and do some exercise that gets my heart going and forces me to push.

So tonight I put on my running shoes and headed off. The Simpsons was just starting on C4. It had just ended when I came back in through the front door. 2.3 miles according to Google Maps.

Shake 'em out

Here's another photo of me from Sunday. This was just as I was leaving T2. I know that because I've got a water bottle in one hand, a carbohydrate gel in the other. Since I ditched them both within the first mile of the run, I can timestamp this photo pretty accurately.

Frankly, in my 43 years on the planet, there are times that I have looked better than this. I think also that in this photo I bear more than a passing resemblance to Fernando Alonso. Only my neck's not as thick as his.

As this week has gone on, there are more and more details of last Sunday that have returned to me.

One of my favourites was the guy manning the Bike In section. As I got off the bike, he said to me "Shake 'em out".

Now three months ago, that would have meant nothing to me.

And in the intervening period, I've discovered that one of the things that inhibits your run off the bike is the blood pooling in the hams of your legs.

And one of the ways of overcoming that is to shake your legs out to get them to start working again.

It was just a small sign that I know what I'm talking about in all of this.

Photos

I don't know how to incorporate photos into a blog. So this is work in progress. Once upon a time, I didn't know how to swim 50m. So it's relative

48hrs later

I'm still aching after Sunday's exertions. But I really want to start exercising again. I'm currently casting around for a next target.
There's the fact that the triathlon season in this country effectively ends in eight weeks time.
Add to that the fact there don't seem to be that many Olympic distance events which are pool-based and the fact that I don't feel ready yet to go Open Water and my choices are relatively limited.

Monday Morning Metro Racer

Years ago, a journalist called Peter Windsor wrote for Autocar. After that he worked at the Williams F1 team, but this story comes from before that.
And he wrote an article about what it felt like on a Monday morning to experience the down after a weekend of racing.
And that's how I feel today.
I started training for the Bath triathlon on Monday, 17th March. And that's only three months and a bit ago. So it's not like I've invested a huge amount of time in this undertaking.
But that day I didn't own a bicycle and I couldn't swim front crawl more than two lengths of the (25m) sports centre pool without stopping.

And this morning I didn't have anything at which to aim.

And I will always remember the period on the bike yesterday morning on the ride into Norton St Philip. There was me, number 250 and a guy who'd been in my swim wave who let me go past him in the pool and who caught up with me at the bottom of Dunkerton Hill who spent a long time swapping places on the ride.

And it was a glorious summer morning and I knew that I had energy in reserve and that all the training had been worthwhile and the swim was behind me

Why the name?

As I was pushing my bike into transition this morning, I heard the question a couple of times - "Are you racing today?"
And I would have said yes. Because I've spent three months getting ready for this. And I'm ready for it.
So yes.
I am racing today.