Tom Roper's Running Training

The seventeenth day of Juneathon: in which I muse upon mind and body

Today I went to the gym. I ran on the treadmill, did some rowing, did something on a machine whose name I can't remember, and then used some of the weights machines.

I'm not sure I like being indoors. There's not much to look at, apart from television screens and one's fellow exercisers. I feel something I have't felt since school, shame at my thinness, combined with contempt for people who have nothing else to boast about but muscles. Mens sana in corpore sano, as I've said more than once.  I value the mens over the corpus. I am taken back to so many school changing rooms, to mud and blood baths on the rugby and hockey pitches, or even to the filthy world of playground fighting, in which I was always a victim, never a victor.

 

Juneathon's sixteenth day: a storm in an espresso cup

There was no sea-swimming to be had today; as I sat on the front drinking an espresso I admired the waves, and the wind wipped the crema around the cup. So I took myself to the indoor pool where I swam thirty lengths, 750m. Afterwards I wondered how my father would have advised me, if he were still alive. He read extensively, the book I remember being Counsilman's Science of Swimming. This text is probably old hat, but I still have his copy.

 

Half way

It was what the Irish call a soft evening; in other words it rained persistently, gently. I ran with the Seaford Striders, once more to Friston Forest, but this time with a faster group. It was hard to keep up, and for much of the time I was at the rear. 6.8 miles (or in reality 7.6, as the Garmin failed to work for the stretch from home to the Downs, where the Striders runs start).

Day fourteen of Juneathon

Another four-miler over Seaford Head. Am I getting into a rut? Perhaps, but today's hot conditions were in contrast to the cloudy, wet and windy ones of the other day. The hills were alive with language students/

I have been misreading the leader-board. In truth I am on 35 miles which, as we approach half-way, is not too shaming.

Day thirteen of Juneathon

Today I swam, stiffly, alternating lengths of front crawl and breaststroke, a greater proportion of crawl lengths than ever before. I have been set various exercises, some to make my ankles more flexible (here I borrow some of those set for the memsahib who is recovering from a broken ankle), and others to give my shoulders greater range of movement. I sometimes remember to do them.

I also, thanks to advice from Jog Blog, Ms Juneathon herself, discovered the secret of viewing the leader board for Juneathon. It seems to think I've only run seven miles: shome mistake shurely? By my reckoning I've run about 23.

Day twelve of Juneathon: in which nothing very much happens

I ran, a windy but not too wet four and a bit miles over Seaford Head. The chief point of interest was that, while my upper body was stiff and sore after yesterday's swimming lesson, my legs were fine. There were few others out. Then I restored myself with roast pork, followed by an apple, apricot and almond sponge at the sailing club.

Day eleven of Juneathon: in which I kill my father and sleep with my mother

Today I had a swimming lesson. I started these in January, indeed they formed part of my Janathon effort. The purpose, for I have swum quite well all my life, a sedate breast-stroke that has seen me through a swimming marathon, is to learn front-crawl. My father swam a fine crawl, indeed after retiring from work as a general practitioner became a swimming teacher. An analyst of the Freudian school might have some disturbing insights into my desire, at an advanced age, to start to learn the stroke at which he excelled.

The lessons have diversified, to take in elements of butterfly and all manner of other things. My front crawl remains problematic, though there are times when I think I've got it.

Today's session consisted of the following:

2 x 50m front crawl
4  x 50 m legs only
3  X 100 m front crawl with flippers and paddles
25m back stroke
25m scull

At the end of this modest session, I felt more exhausted than I have at the end of a marathon.

The tenth day of Juneathon: the lark in the morning

I ran early today, at 6 am, with dark clouds all over. Nevertheless, on the top of Seaford Head, larks were singing. It does me good to run early in the morning; I should do so more often.

The ninth day: Miss Peabody (gym) is both strict & tall!

Ho for Bat & Ho for ball
Ho for Lax & Lat & all,
Miss Dennis is strict, Miss Hamilton fair
But Miss Peabody (gym) is both strict & tall!

I thought I should put the lessons learned at my induction at the hands the Gym Mistress to use before I forgot them. so I took myself to the gym. I last used a gym over ten years ago, when I worked in Westminster. It was expensive, and though I went regularly for three or four years, it did me little good, while running on the Sussex Downs worked wonders in no time. Nevertheless, I wanted to add another arrow to my Juneathon quiver, and I'm keen to improve my upper body strength for swimming and sailing.

I'll spare you the details of the apparatus I used. It was around 45 minutes worth. The main feature of interest were my fellow gym-goers, chiefly shifty-looking young men with bulging muscles who monopolised the more-fearsome looking equipment.

And, fellow Junathoners, which of you has a sufficiently wide frame of cultural reference to be able to identify the poem which forms the epigraph to this post? Answers in the comments, please.

The eighth day of Juneathon, in which I am melancholy

I am predisposed towards the black bile; but then I've been reading a great deal about medicine in antiquity lately. For this reason, when I went to the Seaford Striders club night this evening, and the leader of my group announced, as we debated the route for the evening, that, 'it's all downhill', I instantly thought, 'what nonsense'. Too many geography field trips as a boy left me with the painful understanding that, when planning any route, the ascents and descents are going to cancel each other out, unless one walks or runs round one of M.C. Escher's pictures.

Similarly, when a well-meaning marshal tells me, towards the end of a marathon, 'not far to go now', I immediately look at my Garmin, and see that in truth it is five miles to the finish, and I instantly know how painful and hard those miles will be, and I think, with the greatest respect (for I marshal myself), marshal, that is untrue and does not help me. But that is my melancholy humour.

In the event, on a sunny windy evening, the first parts of the run out to Friston Forest were indeed downhill, the tour of the forest pretty, and the inevitable uphill on the way back strangely enjoyable. It's a long slow grind, against the prevailing wind, but I did it with a certain panache.