Category: Crazy thing to do!

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Short d-run-ken

Nick and I went to an (er…) interesting networking event in Spitalfields on Friday night for entrepreneurs in the social digital space.  If that term makes no sense to you, don’t worry, as most of the people there were making it up as they went along.  We went for two reasons.  Firstly, to chat to other like minded people about our idea and second, to enjoy a publicised free beer.

It got off to a poor start, as when we arrived half an hour after the event commenced, the music was too loud to talk to people inside, the free beer was gone and the Sol was £3 a bottle.  Whoever was coining it in did not appear to be among the bulk of the people that we talked to, or who spoke from the rostrum in a series of short presentations (against an increasing groundswell of bar-room chatter).  Whilst the general ideas presented were interesting, there tended to be a lack of thought given to the business model… as in, er, how does this make money?

Leaving after the presentations and a few bottles of (captive?) beer, we strolled past the cafe culture of Spitalfields until we realised what the time was.  Twelve minutes to train o’clock.  I remember some time ago Nick mentioning to me about running after a few beers before and I also remember reminding myself not to try it myself, but here we were, of a sudden, running down Bishopsgate like a couple of bag-snatchers.

What was quite surprising was that the beer made little difference to our progress and we ran effortlessly down Gracechurch Street, avoiding the myriad pedestrians, over London Bridge, in to the station and right up on to the platform.  We even beat the arrival of the train by a minute or so.  Probably not our fastest run, not our longest at just over a mile, but definitely the funniest!

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No?

The other guys, the ones who said yes, must think I’m completely crazy, huh? 

Alas, they are right and I am crazy!  For the lowdown on the morning, click here.

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Yes?

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Do I look crazy?

Yes, I guess I do, and as you know, I am!

I have to confess that the motivation to run came from Kim this morning.  I was contentedly supping on my quad-spresso this morning, tucked up in my reading chair with a truly excellent book (The Lost Village, by Richard Askwith – more of which later, I’m sure) when she announced that she was going for a run.  Despite the fact that she drove to the gym to do this, I still felt I couldn’t just sit there and relax.  Although it was a close run thing!

The only additional bits of kit that I took with me this morning were a neckie to keep my nose warm and Kim’s warm gloves, both of which were needed.  The other things that were very welcome were my Gore jacket (with only two layers underneath) which was toasty and my Thurlo woolen socks, without which my feet would have fallen off several times over the last few months.  The really great thing about the Thurlo’s is that even when you splash through a muddy puddle and your feet get an ice cold blast, they warm straight back up again.  Totally priceless!

So, the going was a little slippery on the pavement as I set out, but once I got out into the country the going was… a little more slippery still!  Not from the snow, you understand, but from the mud.  Oh glorious mud!  It rained a lot yesterday before it snowed today, so there was lots of it, with a covering of snow to disguise it for the unwary.  It even caught me out once or twice, giving me a good excuse to laugh out loud as the icy cold enveloped my feet!

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My route this morning took me across the common, past the Royal Oak, up through Hundred Acre Woods, right across to the water tower, the railway and the then home.  Unusually, I met three other runners out enjoying the conditions… well two of them were anyway.  One lady was wearing her brand new trainers and was clinging to the foliage along the edge of the path in a vain attempt to keep them dry.  To be fair, she and her husband had run six miles and the trainers were no longer particularly clean, but there was a stark difference between her progress and mine, as I sploshed down the middle of the path!

Back across the common, the snow was in abundance, as can be seen in this short video video000a.mp4 (and note that it’s quite difficult to press the off button wearing gloves on cold hands) while beyond the water tower some snowmen and their dogs were out playing with the locals, which you don’t quite get to see ahead of me in this short video video001a.mp4.

It was a joy to be out in the weather and my run lasted one hour and five minutes. covering 6.4 miles… a speed of around 5.9mph or 10.15minute miles.  Ironically, about the same time and distance that Kim covered in the gym and strangely, she felt colder than I did by the time she got back!

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Windblown eyes

After running on Friday morning and the torrential rain of Saturday night, I didn’t feel a burning desire to go out running yesterday morning.  Which has made me feel slightly guilty, as part of the reason for running is so that I have something to write about.  No run: no blog.

But I had a cunning plan.  This morning I called up Cliff to see if he wanted to run… maybe do a re-run of the route we ran a week or so back.  Now, if you know Cliff you’ll probably be somewhat amazed at the fact that he wasn’t really keen to run today, no thank-you. 

Over the last ten or twelve years I have employed thousands of freelance staff and one of the things that you quickly get used to is the excuses as to why they cannot turn up on time.  Or at all.  Or even why it is that you can’t see them with your own eyes at the place where they say they are.  People often call me cynical, but I’m rarely surprised by excuses.

Which makes Cliff’s excuse of, and I quote, ‘windswept eyes’ all the more amazing: I’ve just not heard it before: it’s an original. 

Sadly, Cliff is not prone to exaggeration, so if he has windswept eyes, there are probably salt stains extending past his ears and onto to the expanse of his shoulders.  Saxo is probably considering sponsorship, or negotiating extraction rights.  As the reason for the windblown eyes begins to unfold in front of you, I should like you to ponder what Cliff, the man who has climbed the tallest mountains (yes, including Everest) on each of the seven continents, means when he says the weather was ‘so bad’.

The Jurassic Coast Challengeis held on the Dorset coast path and consists of a marathon on Friday, a marathon on Saturday and a marathon on Sunday.  I still remember how I felt after my one flat Berlin marathon, so you’ll excuse me if the prospect of running one the following day and one the day after that does not fill me with desire.  Let alone on a path that is as steep at the path across Beachy Head but twice the height and never-ending.

But for people like Cliff and Pete, numbers one and two on Daren’s fit list, there is no challenge in that.  Oh no!  Fortunately Votwo, the organisers, also cater for crazy people like this by holding a race called the Oner… essentially the opportunity to run all three marathons back to back, through Saturday night and into Sunday morning.

Cliff, Pete and their friend Kevin duly started the Oner at 7pm on Saturday night.  But they had only managed to reach the first checkpoint, some 8 or 9 miles, before the organisers pulled the race.  Cliff said that they were out in the worst part of the storm and that the weather was ‘so bad’ that they were just slipping everywhere in the mud while being inundated with sheets of water.  In the pitch dark. 

Not that that had daunted them.  This is a training run for a serious race (it has it’s own Wikipedia entry!) later in the year and I have no doubt whatsoever that they would have continued, given the chance.  But after a night in the backroom (beer cellar?) of a pub (beer seller?) the race was restarted at 5.30am.  In all, 20 of the original 35 starters decided to continue and whilst the race was shortened to make account for the missing hours, the day was still some 50 miles.

The race last year had 20 entrants in total and the word used by the organisers to denote people who retired is ‘broke’.  Starting a race at half past six in the evening, one can only imagine what ‘breaking’ at 1am or 3am the following morning feels like.  You’ve put six or nine hours into a race and you have to give up.  Gutted!  Only five runners finished.

But this weekend, with Kevin’s wife Lydia in support, our three intrepids (should that be extra-peds?) made surprisingly short work of the serious hills, glorious sunshine and stiff wind, coming in joint 8th or 9th (results not yet available) in 11 hours.

So if Cliff is not keen to run because of windblown eyes, I understand.

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The smell of candles burning at both ends

I thought that I’d better check in lest you’d all think I’d been abducted by aliens, which would of course be most unfair on them: They made me very welcome and I was free to leave at any time.

Apart from a modicum of proper thinking work, most of the hours from my last post until 10pm on Saturday 26th were spent finishing Kim’s flat.  With a lot of help from some friends… thank you Cliff and Nick!  As of yesterday I understand that it had it’s first tenants and having met them a couple of times in the lead-up to finishing, I hope that our effort translates directly into their comfort.

Slightly after 10pm then, two totally wired people arrived home with a car-load of tools & stuff, hungry from not having eaten since breakfast and with one or two things to do before bed.  The tools got dumped unceremoniously in the garage and the door closed firmly behind them.  The leftovers from the previous night’s takeaway were microwaved and scoffed to the soundtrack of Kim saying ‘slow down!’  The sweat and tears from the day were showered off with the paint & dust and only then did we started packing.

My head hit the pillow at 2am, with Kim’s head about half an hour behind that and the alarm another two hours behind that.  Nasty alarm!  The driver of the car that collected us at 5am did his best to chat his way past my glazed expression and more or less the next time I woke up we were in Meribel.  Which can only mean one thing…

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Nick’s runners… by special request

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Nick took this photo of his runners when they arrived back at the house the other morning… some minutes after he did: that’s how fast he was running!

I had to clean the photo up a bit as you couldn’t see the trainers for all the smoke that was coming off of them.

I’ve just been reading about how the Inuit in Greenland used to hunt Whales in the 12th Century from kayaks and umiaks (small, skin boats).  They clearly couldn’t kill a whale with a single hand-thrown harpoon, let alone hang onto it on a rope afterwards, so they developed a harpoon that released itself on impact leaving behind a barb with an air-filled bladder attached.  As the whale tired of this extra drag, so it would surface and the Inuit hunters would repeat the exercise, and again, until the whale was so exhausted that an umiak could pull alongside and a hunter could kill the whale.

This puts me in mind of a sea anchor, designed, I guess, to float upstream or upwind in a driving sea and slow the craft down, making it more stable in otherwise difficult conditions.

Where I’m going with this is, well, think of a bath towel, rolled lengthways, with the ends secured to stop it unravelling. 

Now think of a cord, say a metre in length, at each end attaching it to one of the trainers pictured above. 

I reckon this kind of contraption might just slow the Bok down sufficiently for me to keep up.  What do you think?

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Losing sleep

Why, oh why is it so confusing?  Spring forward, fall back.  Nice & simple.

Of course, if it’s late and you’re tired (and having watched the film Babel, emotionally drained!) and you have it in your mind that you’re due to lose an hour’s sleep, it’s a simple mistake to make.  Going the wrong way. 

Compound this with presumably having nudged the alarm to 6.20am in the process and you end up waking up at… er, 4.20am instead of the intended 7.30am!

Only the fact that it is dark gives the game away.    Trying to explain that gaining an hour involves putting the clocks back is oh so difficult too!

 I’m not a popular bunny!

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Old news

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Our good friend and Italian walking guide Lorenzo Gariano sent an email around today with some photo’s from our summer jaunt to Italy… La Via Marenca Ultra Trail.

It’s fair to say that Dai and I only did the half marathon (you might have read Dai’s comment that it was actually around 25km long and about 1km in height gain), but Cliff, Pete, Lorenzo, Steve and Colin all completed the Ultra at around 99km!

Anyway, the photo is me finishing in a relaxed 4 hours 13 minutes or so (good for a half marathon, no?) and you can see all the other photos at the site of Adolfo Ranise.

I feel exhausted just remembering!

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One-upmanship

My parents dropped in for a cup of tea this morning and we sat in brilliant sunshine on the micro-climate of my deck, fearful of moving too far in case the first bitter breeze of the autumn discovered us.

I was reminded of Iain Banks brilliant book The Crow Road and the famous line about his grandmother that hooks you expertly into the plot. All four of my grandparents lived into their late eighties and nineties and were cogent and active most of the way. One grandmother even fell down a perilous flight of stairs when in her eighties and broke her arm: the doctors warned that at her age it was probably shattered but were stunned when the x-ray showed a neat, clean break that went on to heal in under six weeks. Good genes.

This time last year, my mother, doing her bit for recycling, was busy flattening a milk carton, by rigorously jumping up and down on it (as you do?), when it tried to escape by running away. 

Alas, this left my mother suspended in thin air like an outwitted cartoon Tom.  The animators made the most of the scene as her downfall moments later was accompanied by a huge CRASH and a loud THUD!  In finest Tom & Jerry tradition it upset the nearby chair and table, my father, whose dinner landed robustly in his lap and my mother whose arm had, until then, managed to remain break-free for 77 years.  

Time is a great healer, but I have to confess that I was unable to suppress a childish snigger when my mother announced this morning that she had fallen out of the cupboard. 

Now I could leave it there and let your imagination play with this tidbit on its own, but I feel that I should add her own clarification, that she had slipped and had actually shot out of the cupboard backwards! 

I should also mention that the doorway through which she so gracefully sailed is eighteen inches above the floor… I can almost imagine Tom, Jerry and all of the animators jumping visibly at the THUD! when she hit the floor!

Suffice to say that resilience is in our genes and my mother, although slightly tender around the shoulder-blades, is undaunted by the experience.  I do hope that they’re not playing a game of one-upmanship though, exploding onto the pages of my blog with each new and more daring exploit!