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My Government is Oppressing Me.

Bastards! Yeah, bunch of bastards! That’s what they are.

I had a close encounter with bureaucracy last week and I didn’t enjoy it at all. I need to renew my passport and it wasn’t a straightforward process. It’s not a long or complex form which is just as well because I’m not a complex man.

I got a form from the Post Office, followed the instructions in the little booklet thing that came in the envelope with the form because I can read and used a black pen. I even used my neatest block capital handwriting so that the nice people in the Passport Office wouldn’t have to struggle to decipher my usual illegible scrawl. It took 20 minutes and then I signed the form. That was my mistake.

I broke the margins of the little box. You are not allowed to do this. Now, I’m quite an expansive man. I have an expansive signature. It sprawls but it has a certain style, a bit like a Brazilian slum. I took the form back to the Post Office to use their Check & Send service. They took the form, advised me it would cost £8.75, checked it and then didn’t send it. The Passport Office wouldn’t accept my form with the straying signature. They gave me another form.

So, I filled in a second form. It took 20 minutes again. Neat handwriting takes time. I may have stuck my tongue out a little while I was doing it. I got to the end of the form, dated it, signed it and broke the margins of the signature box again. Shitsticks.

The third form took 15 minutes to complete. I signed it first. It was a cramped, crabby wee signature but it didn’t break the margins of the box. I turned to the first page and wrote my first name in the surname box. Turd junkies.

I signed the fourth form, sighed in relief, completed the front page and got my date of birth wrong. Who gets their date of birth wrong? A man who is sitting in a Post Office getting increasingly distressed by his own stupidity and the obduracy of people who process passport applications, that’s who.

I completed the fifth form in a bit of a rush. It took five minutes. Some of the block capitals had a certain angry feel to them by now. There was rage on that page. And then the signature broke the box.

I took a deep breath and a sixth form. By now I’d seen three different counter clerks. “You know it will cost £8.75 for Check & Send?” Yes, yes, yes, I’m only too fucking aware of how much it’s costing me. It’s costing my soul, I tell you. It’s only my whole fucking soul… I got to the end, signed the form and got the date wrong. I checked the notes, saw nothing against the rules, scored through the incorrect date and redated it correctly.

“The Passport Office is funny about dates,” said the fourth counter clerk. What, like Tommy Cooper was funny? Or maybe Franz Kafka? I took a seventh form and left the Post Office in search of sanity and sanctuary. I found it at The Afternoon Tease where I had a very nice coffee and some of their gorgeous cake. Seventh time lucky. The cake gets the credit.

 

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A Rant for a Wednesday

I came across this post on the Ladies Who Run website last Friday via Sandra McDougall’s Facebook page. I promise I wasn’t being all weird and lechery, hanging around with the running ladies, Not this time, anyway.

I agree wholeheartedly with Helen’s post. She right about thigh gaps and bikini bridges, although the latter seems to have been a hoax. Women do face huge social pressures to conform to a look or to a way of behaving. I’d have thought that we’d gone beyond that now it’s 2014 and not 1914. Or 1314 come to that.

I have little enough control over my own body. It aches like a bastard all the time. I have a hernia, bits of my legs would much rather I fucked off all this running nonsense, my lungs hate me because I abused them with tar and carcinogens for twenty-odd years and now make me suffer when I ask them and my heart to put in some effort on race day. Given all of that, how can I be expected to take part in the patriarchy’s millenia-old war on women by controlling their bodies too?

I hate that someone, anyone, is expected to conform to a way of looking or a way of behaving. In particular, I hate that someone is led to believe that they are somehow not quite good enough. It’s corrosive to self-belief. It’s usually because someone, somewhere wants to sell you something. There are potions and pills, soaps and powders made for pennies in some chemical plant, sold for pounds in pretty packages on High Streets and in shopping centres because you’re worth it.

Of course you’re fucking worth it. You don’t need that shit and you’re worth it anyway.

The thing Helen mentions in her post about strong being the new skinny is interesting and depressing in equal measure. I like running around and I enjoy the company of people who run around too. We come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Nobody is really fat, nor even all that plump but some of us are carrying a few pounds around that we’d rather weren’t there. Athletes are subject to all the same pressures as everyone else.

Jessica Ennis, of all people, was told by some bufty in a blazer that she could do with losing a few pounds during the run up to the London Olympics. Jessica Ennis. She has abs you could grate cheese with and yet some anonymous twat thought that she was too fat to compete. And if Jess is too porky, what chance do mere mortals have?

Images of athleticism have become as pervasive in the media as skinny porn partly because of Jessica’s success during London 2012. It’s one more way in which we’re made to feel that we’re less than we are. it’s worse for women, much worse. Nobody asks Mo Farah for his diet tips or how to get great abs. Well, really obsessive coaches might and I might too but I’m interested in his training regime. Nobody is all that interested in publishing photos of Mo in his budgie smugglers on a holiday beach. Dual standards. Mo has his own problems with some sections of the British press and public but they’re not about how he looks, how much he weighs or what he’s wearing when he’s not on the track.

Men are not objectified in the same way as women are. It’s not fair and I know I’m guilty of it and I’m really, really sorry.

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The Sixth Week Biteback

I don’t have a left calf muscle any more. I have a tight wee ball of pain and spite. I’ve given it love and care. Well, I’ve thrashed it to bits running a hundred miles so far this year and then tried to make amends by rolling it and stretching it. My calf and I are in a mutually abusive relationship. I took it out for a few miles on a cold night at the beginning of the week without socks or calf guards and it’s been moaning and sniping at me ever since.

My Monday night group started again this week so I ran into town for some extra miles. Coach B and I split coaching the session between us and I ended up running 1k reps far more quickly than I’d intended then ran home afterwards.

Tuesday’s session turned into a bit of an ordeal. I ran to the track just in time to take the session. That was a bit of an effort, leaving home just a few minutes too late for an easy run. The session was long hills on Storey’s Way. I did the first rep up the hill, 600m of lung-racking, heart-tormenting, snot-churning nonsense. It was stupid. It was also good fun. I was coaching with Neil who started the athletes off in groups of four or five at the bottom of the hill. I was waiting at halfway to offer words of advice and encouragement. I ran in with the last group and while the very quickest of them scorched past before I could get going, I was able to chase in the last two or three in the group. I was pleased to be able to do it but more pleased that the athletes responded when I asked them to kick on. They just dug in, found a bit more and caned that bloody hill.

I got cocky. I did another rep towards the end and went off with the second quickest group and ended up getting spat out the back quite quickly. They opened a gap of about 15m but I held it at that and then began to close it down over the second half. I hadn’t done all the hill reps but I had done quite a long run on the way to the track. I still had tired legs and sore lungs but I wasn’t completely destroyed by the group. I paid for it on the way home.

I still had to run home and I had no gels or water. I did 14 miles in total on Tuesday night without a safety net and it really, really hurt. Runner’s pride got me through the worst of it and I found some more pace over the last couple of miles.

Wednesday was my first rest day for ages, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I didn’t go to the gym. I didn’t run. I didn’t swim or cycle. I sat on my arse and vegetated. I massaged my calf and tried to pretend it wasn’t that sore, really. I did five easy miles on Thursday night and the calf was fine when I was moving quickly. I had to move a lot more quickly towards the end of the run when my need for a serious loo visit became quite urgent. I did more stretching and rolling when I got home and then again in the steam room at the gym.

I went out again with Julia on Friday for my long run. I’d intended to do 21 miles but I had to stop at 17. The calf had cramped completely. The run was bitty. Mostly, it was lovely but I had to stop for a loo break and to take on gels and water in places. The pain in my calf was there all the time because I never really got going quickly enough to move easily. Maybe I never really moved easily enough to go quickly. Once I’d decided to stop at Julia’s I found enough energy to have a bit of a sprint finish. When I was pushing on, the pain in my lungs overcame the pain in my legs.

I did 4k yesterday and 4k again today. Today’s run was truly horrible. I was too late getting to March to run in the Frostbite round there this morning but I was wearing my C&C vest, a pair of arm warmers and my new ashmei gloves, racing shorts and compression socks. I went for a run round Milton Country Park, using the long loop from the parkrun course. I wanted to do about 5 miles at marathon pace and managed less than two and a half before my calves, hips and determination gave out. I thought I felt some stabby groin pains as well but that might well have been my imagination.

So, I’m not completely happy at the end of Week 6. I’m going to take it easier this week. I need to give my calf a rest and I’m due to race in the Folksworth 15 next Sunday. I enjoyed this race last year but it was just a jog round. I want to give it a good, solid go this time. i ought to be able to break two hours. It’s slightly quicker than my proposed marathon pace and slower than my half marathon PB pace. I’m in decent nick so it’s eminently doable as long as I’m in one piece.

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New Year, New Stuff

Young Neil Tween, for it was he, speculated on Twitter what a cheery blog from me would look like. Pay close attention, Mr Tween, because this is probably as close as you’re going to get to a cheery blog.

We have a new dishwasher. The old one gave up the ghost just before Christmas. I don’t think it could face another one of my tea mugs. They tend to get a little stained with whatever it is that makes tea brown. Tea, probably. Or tannins. Does that sound right? Tannins don’t have anything to do with tans but have something to do with wine and that’s always confused me. It’s one of the many reasons I never took up a Master of Wine qualification. More important at the time was the whole spit out the sample if you don’t want to get rat arsed at eleven in the morning on a work day thing.

So yes, we have a new dishwasher. Actually, can we go back to the tea mugs for a moment? I hate washing tea mugs. They never, ever get properly clean. I’ve often wanted to sit and sulk in a corner having failed to get all the brown gunk from the inside of my favourite tea mug. It doesn’t stop me using the mug because what you need after that sort of failure is a nice cup of tea. You don’t need to spit anything out when you have a nice cup of tea unless you are a tea taster. Imagine going to work as a tea taster and spending all day tasting tea and not getting even so much as a digestive with any of the dozens of cups of tea you have to spit out each day. I suppose you could chew the biccie and then spit it into a bin without swallowing it but that sounds like a waste of a McVitie’s to me. And then there’s the noise! The man from Dynorod made fewer slurping noises when his machines were clearing the drains last week.

So, this new dishwasher. I didn’t realise that you could get cups and glasses and plates and knives and forks and spoons and even pots and pans so clean. I take things out of it when it’s done its thing and I half expect to hear a ting, like in the adverts. I actually thought I heard a voiceover yesterday; “But everything sparkles!” it said, just a little too exuberantly. It’s only clean cutlery and glasswear after all. Consumerism, eh? It’s a sod. I need to salve my conscience a little so Water Aid is going to get a donation from me soon. I feel awkward about my shiny tablewear when there are people who still need to walk to a well and carry dirty water home with them.

And I have new shoes, New running shoes, anyway. They’re the same as my old running shoes, just half a size bigger because my feet are bigger now and you know what they say about men with bigger feet.

It’s true.

We do need bigger shoes and new socks. I’ve lost all my good running socks in the last couple of months. I need to break the new ones in because the chafing on my big toe on this morning’s run was a big of a bastard. Maybe fourteen miles in new shoes and socks was a bit of an error but I wanted to have a play in them. The shoes are good. They’re very light for a road shoe and I like them because of that. I spite of being light and exceptionally cheap, they’re very durable. These are in the Union Jack colours and I hope I’ll be able to do most of my road miles in them in the run up to Manchester. I might get another pair to race in on the day if they work well on the long runs.

So, there you go, Neil. One blog post from a cheery Rich. Will that do?

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Marathon Training, Week 4

The miles are piling up, but slowly, too slowly. I canned Tuesday’s run because I couldn’t fit it in during the day. That was 11 miles gone from the plan. I had a very lovely 14 miles on Christmas day, out to Coton Country Park via Grantchester and Barton and then home through the city centre. It was calm and peaceful. People were emerging from the churches in Trumpington and Grantchester and milling around Great St Mary’s in the city. Mass on Christmas Day was always one of my favourite occasions. Even if I’d been to Midnight Mass, I would get up and head out to church again in the morning. Sometimes, I’d have to because I was serving on the altar but there were times I didn’t have to be there and went anyway.

I pegged a quickish 4 miles in the C&C Boxing Day fun run. My 28:18 was just under a minute quicker than my time in the same run last year. I didn’t go off too quickly for once. In fact, my legs were heavy and I didn’t really get going until the halfway mark. I pulled in a man pushing a buggy in the first 800m back from Trumpington. I saw Margaret Phillips and Chris Hurcomb ahead and thought they would be too far ahead. I pushed a bit harder on the gentle downslope and reeled them both in. I caught Mags with a mile to go and Chris a bit after that. I pushed on again after that because Kris Semple was another few metres ahead and passed him just before we crossed the narrow bridge over the stream on Lammas Land. There was a man pushing a bike onto the bridge just as we passed. I think he held Kris up. I didn’t look back. If you look back you slow down and it gives then man behind hope. I had about 400m to go at that point. Julian Hardyman was ahead and I set off after him but couldn’t close the gap. Each time I kicked, he kicked harder and he beat me home by 4 seconds in the end, accelerating away from me all the while. It took a good 10 minutes to stop feeling ill so I must have given it some in the second half of the race.

I had 9 miles on the plan for Friday. I thought I’d do 5 instead. What with one thing and another, I didn’t really eat all day. Breakfast was late and fried and then I got distracted writing a couple of blog posts and then it was dark and I was grumpy and my blood sugar was through the floor so I didn’t run. Again.

I did my 5 mile recovery run on Saturday in spite of not really having anything from which I badly needed to recover. I had just enough in the tank to take a Strava segment in slippery conditions. I find pushing hard on my own quite difficult and I didn’t want to check my watch while I was running because it might slow me down too much. I just hit a pace which felt quick but sustainable in the conditions and kept going from one end of the segment to the other. There is more to come along there because I wasn’t running anywhere close to flat out and it was very slippery. I think on a spring evening I could take another 20 or 30 seconds off my time along there, especially if I have someone to chase. I could get some clubmates out on a Thursday night and have a good, square go at it.

Today’s run was lovely. The conditions were perfect for a nice, long, steady run. I had 18 on the plan and very good intentions. I ran 13 in the end and it was a real struggle towards the end. The climb up the hill out of Stapleford towards Gog Magog Downs was horrible. I’d wanted to run to the Gogs to meet the others, run a loop with them then run home. Snuggling up next to Anne and the cat seemed like a better thing to do than getting up in time to have breakfast and then heading out the door when it was only just light. Had I done that, I would have done the 18 miles easily because basically I was being a wuss.

I also think that I run better on my own sometimes. I finished my solo Christmas Day run on a high and today’s run in a funk. I don’t always go out unless I have company but then I don’t complete my session if nobody else is doing the same sort of distance. It’s a bit of a sod. I’m sure I’ll be able to come to some sort of compromise where I meet people to start the run but do more of it on my own. I don’t want to sound graceless because I did enjoy everyone’s company today. I need to fix my motivation to the sticking place and complete the sessions the way I need to. It was just too easy to stop when everybody else did today.

Week 5 starts tomorrow with a rest day. The weather is supposed to be foul anyway. It’s nice to have a proper excuse for once.

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Running Tech Sucks Donkey Dong. Official.

I love my running toys but they have drawbacks. The chest strap for my Garmin leaves a welt across my chest if I forget to smear Vaseline across it. When I take my top off I look like the victim of an unusually precise sadist. Sexy. That’s when I can find the strap in the first place. I’ve wasted hours over the last couple of years searching for it. Then there’s all the time standing around waiting for the watch to get a signal from passing satellites. I’d be as well waiting for pigeons to evolve vocal skills and have them read a map to me.

It’s not just high-tech that causes problems. Compression gear is supposed to reduce injuries and improve recovery. You’ll find all sorts of advice about that all over the web. What nobody ever tells you is that you look like you’re dressing yourself for the very first time every time you pull it on. There are photos on the Skins and 2XU websites of toned athletes running and posing with their musculature barely contained by straining supportive and elastic technical fabrics. There are no film clips of them flailing their arms like willow branches on a windy day when they’re trying to pull on their compression tops. It takes me fully five minutes to pull on a pair of compression socks. I know I’m weak and physically unco-ordinated but that’s just silly.

Then there’s taking the bloody things off again. You’ve worked quite hard so you’re knackered. In these circumstances getting off a normal t-shirt can be a challenge. It’s stuck to your skin for a start and your arms don’t bend well enough and you’re tired and your brain doesn’t work and you’d like a drink and maybe you’ll just lie on this bench for a while and… And then you’re shaken awake by the cleaner in the gym because he wants to go home and you only have one arm out of your tee. It’s worse in compression gear because it welds itself chemically to sweaty skin and you need to be even more bendy to take it off afterwards. Ordinary socks are easy to take off as long as you can still bend over. Compression socks require special tools and the help of a blacksmith or other sturdy chap.

There’s a lot to be said for naked running. Not running around with your bits flapping in the breeze. That’s probably an arrestable offence in most places. I mean running without the distractions of GPS watches, iPods or any other bits and bobs. It means you avoid some of the issues I’ve already mentioned. See the The Naked Runners website for more information and inspiration.

You could even try barefoot running. If you’re not up to that, pull on a pair of Vibram Five Fingers to protect the soles of your feet. You should manage to get each toe into its little pocket in the shoe on the thirteenth or fourteenth try at the very outside. You might not swear violently and throw them across the room when they fail to go on easily. Even if you do hurl them away from you they should do little damage because they’re quite light.

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The God of Small Joys

There must be one surely? I’m not talking about those major events in life like the birth of children or falling in love. I’m talking about the little things. Finding a fiver you didn’t know you had in a pocket when you really need a coffee and a cake. A smile from your beloved when you wake up. That sort of thing. They deserve to have a god. If love can have a god, then so can smiles from loved ones and children.

This came to mind because I had a really rubbish run yesterday. I had no energy, no vim or vigour and I worked really hard to post a 26 minute run around Wimpole Estate parkrun. It was a bit muddy and sticky but it shouldn’t have been so bloody hard. I’d spent the week on the road in Manchester and Yorkshire meaning lots of miles, hotel nights, unfamiliar beds and crappy food on my own. I hadn’t run since Sunday’s St Neot’s Half in spite of taking all my kit and shoes with me. My lack of energy and oomph has been hanging around for a while.

So I ran flat out and slowly round parkrun on Saturday morning and crossed the line feeling a little meh. However, it wasn’t a crap run. It was a beautiful morning – really, really cold. It took the best part of twenty minutes for the feeling to return to my fingers even though I was wearing my best winter running gloves. It’s definitely winter again and that makes me happy. I was running among friends. I saw familiar, smiling faces everywhere I looked. I know lots of them now but even more of them know me. There were runners of all ages out on the course yesterday and they were by and large giving the absolute berries. Afterwards I had a very nice mocha, one of Cambridgeshire’s better sausage rolls and a slice of Bakewell so sexy I wanted to call it Joan.

My parkrun is so much more than the run and that’s just as well. Running in general is like that. My St Neot’s Half was an hour and three quarters of socialising and partying. I ran the last mile quite hard and it took a good five minutes before I stopped wanting to throw up but apart from that I was chatting and laughing. My time wasn’t dreadful, less than three minutes slower than my 2011 PB on the same course and it was a happy, happy day.

Small joys are important. They keep us going and give us something to rely on when small sadnesses creep up on us and the god of small joys knows there are enough of those around.

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The Moaniness of the Long Distance Runner

I’m injured again. Again, I’m injured and I tell you what, it’s a complete pain in the arse. Except that it’s in my right foot, and up the outside of my right leg and ultimately in my groinal bits. A physio would probably say – has in fact said – that it’s because of weak gluteals but that’s by the by. It’s a pain in the arse foot. I should probably try to have Anne massage my intimate areas. It wouldn’t be any sort of cure but it would definitely cheer me up because there’s nothing quite as mardy as an injured runner.

I’ve had a couple of weeks off now ever since having to stop at 8 miles in the Wimpole Hoohaah Half Marathon. I shouldn’t really have run there, just as I shouldn’t really have run at the Bourn to Run 10k the previous week but having got away with it once, I thought I’d get away with it again and I really, really didn’t. Coming downhill at speed resulted in stupefying pain and I ended up gingerly walking down the hills and caning it up them. I was climbing at better than 8:00 per mile and descending more slowly than 10:00 per mile and the whole thing was a mess so I’m moaning about it now. I finished, by the way, in a PW of 1:55 something, jogging in while people frothed and foamed and sped and sprinted past me. Well done, them.

I’ve been moaning about it quite a lot to anyone who’ll listen and it’s a testament to my friends and clubmates that they will listen to me. Endurance runners all know what it’s like to be on the bench. They will lend an ear to one of their own in pain because they know, know in their super-stressed ligaments and bones that they will hurt too soon. Perhaps “moaning” is the wrong word, at least for what everyone else does. We swap stories of our aches and pains. We get help and advice and support from one another. Positivity comes but first there’s the grouchiness and ouchiness and just the faintest tangs of whine. “Oh, it’s nothing really but I’m slightly fed up…”

The thing about not being able to run is that nothing else is really the same. I wanted to take my bike out today but it rained off and on all day. Running in the rain is a joy. Cycling in the rain is misery cubed. I hummed and hawed and bumbled round the house not doing any chores until I dragged my weak glutes to the gym for a stint on a rowing machine. I lasted all of fifteen minutes. Fifteen miserable minutes or miserable misery. Chris said on Facebook that I should have taken my bike out in the rain. He was probably right. I’m going to try again tomorrow. I’ll take my headphones and listen to some music or a podcast and maybe I’ll last longer or maybe I’ll just break down.

I have another week of Not Running. I’m being good. My foot feels okay with just a hint of tighness across the top when I dorsiflex my toes. I’d like that to be gone before I try again. Patience is a virtue, quite an old fashioned name for a girl and something with which I am usually completely unacquainted. It’s so tempting to join in with tomorrow’s session running the triangles on Parker’s Piece or the mile time trial on Tuesday night at C&C. I need to be sure that I’m back properly before I start training again so the idea is to have a bimble round a parkrun on Saturday and if that goes okay to do five or six miles on Sunday. Please God, let it go well. I can’t cope with being this grumpy for much longer.

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On The Drowning Of Rats And Nakedness In Toilets

Went for a run this morning with Paul. It was pissing it down when we set off just after nine. I love running in the rain; it keeps you cool when you’re working hard. We weren’t working all that hard today. It wasn’t that sort of run. We were trotting along through the wind and the rain, ticking off six minute kilometres. The wind made things a little more difficult than they ought to have been.

There is a particular combination of wind and rain which can make running a complete misery. We were lucky today in that the wind and rain kept just missing that particular combination. It was a damn near run thing at a couple of points. There was a moment as we were running back along the top of a ridge just the wrong side of a hedge line for about half a mile. The wind blew the rain across us and just for a few seconds straight through us in a denial of the laws of physics and common decency. it was easier for us to keep going in one another’s company. I don’t think I would have gone out on my own in those conditions.

I had an equipment failure too. The zip on my rain jacket kept sliding down without me noticing. It’s not a great piece of kit, if I’m honest. It’s barely showerproof so today’s conditions were always going to test it. I’d be running along and glance down and the zip would be almost completely undone. I have an ongoing problem with zips. I’ve turned into one of those men whose flies are continuously undone because I forget to do them up in the morning when I pull my trousers on. I don’t notice until I head for the loo. No matter how many times I say “Oh fuck” to myself when I discover that, I never remember to check before I have my coffee.

My foot began to hurt again after about four miles so we cut our run short. It’s frustrating. I can run more quickly uphills than down them just now. The braking forces through my right foot cause me to slow down. too much. I don’t trust it enough to run hard downhill and going slowly causes even more pain. We looked like drowned rats when we arrived back at the stable block. It’s a funny phrase that. I’ve never seen a drowned rat. I’ve seldom seen a dry one either. I know they’re around, like paedophiles or UKIP councillors but we have little to offer one another so we seldom encounter one another. Paul said he would take a photograph to mark the moment but he set off to do a little more running while I headed to the loo to get changed.

I found myself naked in a public toilet (not for the first time but I’m not ever going to be drunk enough to tell that story.) I had a change of clothing in my bag. I headed for the sole cubicle in the gents and began pulling layer after sopping layer off before I started to chill and shiver. I was quickly naked in the loo, rummaging through my bag looking for a pair of boxers. Happily there were two pairs in there, alongside two pairs of socks, my jeans, a t-shirt and a jersey. There wasn’t a shirt but that wasn’t a problem. There wasn’t a belt for my jeans and that was more problematic. I will happily contemplate spending ninety quid on running shoes or two hundred or more on a new Garmin but baulk at the thought of blowing £20 on a pair of jeans from Tesco. As a result, all my trousers are too large for me now I’ve lost weight. It’s been three years and I don’t think I’m going to put that weight back on now. Even so, I’m not all that keen on throwing the baggy trousers out and buying more. I have only one belt which is small enough to hold them up now too and that was on my bedroom floor and not in my bag.

Paul and I had our sausage rolls and hot drinks in the restaurant when he returned from his extended trot. My foot stopped hurting quite quickly which was a relief. It’s sore now, as I write. When I flex my toes up, there is a tightness across the top of my foot. I need to get rid of that before I run again. I’m due to race next weekend in the Fenland 10 in preparation for the St Neots Half Marathon next month. I don’t think that’s going to happen now. I’ll probably rest my foot now for two weeks and cycle instead to keep my fitness up while my foot heals itself again.

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Boston

I’m trying to make sense of things, so this is going to ramble even more than normal. When I became interested in running marathons, I heard about Boston. It has a mystique, a reputation beyond other mass-participation races. You need to qualify for it and the qualifying standards are high. You need to be a very good club-standard runner to get to the start line. What happens then is up to you. The course is net downhill and very quick on a good day. You run past Wellesley College and I’m told there is nothing quite like a Wellesley girl. You need to cope with Heartbreak Hill towards the end of the course when you’re really beginning to feel it. It’s the oldest marathon race in the world and it’s on the bucket list of lots of us who run marathons.

And now it’s changed for ever.

A cunttard or cunttards unknown have attacked the Boston Marathon. Cowardly cunttards. Cunttards with access to pressure cookers, nails and ball bearings. Cunttards who can follow a schematic  downloaded from the internet. Hateful and hate-filled. Weak, pathetic little cunttards who can’t attract attention for their cause. Ineffective cunttards, incapable of persuading people by the force of their argument so he or they build a couple of bombs and left them in black holdalls to detonate near the finish of a race. A race. In spite of it being the Boston Marathon it was just a race. And it was the spectators and supporters who took the fullest force of the blast.

As runners we rely on our family and friends for all sorts of support. We shouldn’t have to rely on them as shields against bomb blasts. It’s all just so fucking horrible and pointless. There is nothing, nothing which warrants such an attack. It’s affected me more than other attacks because it was at a race. I suppose that from the point of view of cunttards, that’s job done. Except they haven’t claimed responsibility or tried to explain their fucked up reasoning. They lack even that little confidence in their convictions.

There is a problem in all this, apart from all the obvious ones about blowing people’s legs off with bombs made from pressure cookers and nails just to make a point. If these bombs had gone off in a market in Pakistan, we wouldn’t have heard quite so much about it. And I’m not going to go into state violence because frankly, the whole thing sickens me and I can no longer bear to think about it. I run in part to escape from the dark thoughts and the anger which used to drive me. At the moment all I feel is sadness.

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