I'm going to Switzerland. I may be some time.

Injury crisis

All apologies (as Kurt Cobain once said). The truth is, I was too depressed to update last week.

What? Andrew - that embodiment of happy-go-lucky, elfish optimism - depressed? Unbelievable it may seem, but it's the truth. And this depression was nothing to do with ending up at the "Reflex" in Bristol on a Friday night. Though that was trying in itself, I must admit...

The fact is this: I've injured myself. It's my ankle. It's swollen and it hurts. I've done the frozen peas. I've done the lukewarm baths. I've done the lying about in bed most of the day (lucky it's been a bank holiday this weekend, then).

As of yesterday, I've got one of those elastic support things that you see greying, overly competitive five-a-side footballers wearing all the time. Thinking about it, it's like I blinked and then suddenly that person was me.

I think it's getting better, slowly. I think I'll pull through. Right now, though, I think I'll put my feet up...

A.

Week 3 of "New dawn":
Outings: 3
Miles: 25
Alcohol intake: too much (note to self: no more visiting school friends in Bristol before the race)
Bananas: 8 (count them)

Week 4 of "New dawn":
Outings: 0
Miles: 0
Alcohol intake: 2 pints, 1 glass sangria, 4 glasses wine.
Bananas: 5.
Teeth grinding: excessive.

Lost in Lewisham

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm not overly interested in the Olympics. Quadrennial celebration of the greatest sportsmen and women on the planet it may be, but does that make archery a gripping televisual event? I think not. Cycling? Certainly not. Horseriding? Just inbred posh types sitting on horses and whipping them occasionally, isn't it? Are there even any foxes to chase down and dismember in Hong Kong?

Instead, I've been concentrating on a new era of sporting excellence closer to home. Maintaining the momentum of last week, I've been cutting down on the booze, ratchetting up the lentil consumption, and pounding those South London streets (paved with gold as they are).

Things were looking grim on Monday when, after the optimism of the previous weekend, five miles of toiling around the windswept open ground of Blackheath left me broken, disheartened and not a little tired. I was in bed by ten.

On Tuesday, things were looking up. Nothing to do with running, though. More a spectacular pub quiz victory in the heart of upper class Hampstead. And a very tasty meal. And three most enjoyable, if drunk-in-moderation, pints of beer.

On Wednesday, I swear I had a minor hangover.

The good lady accompanied me for another ambling jog on Thursday night. Neither of us felt great enthusiasm as we set out, but heading out towards North Greenwich my spirits lifted as we hit the Thames path. It was good. It drizzled a bit. We had to divert through a building site at one point. By the time Claire decided to head off home, I was feeling rather spritely. Passing through Greenwich park, I headed out to the scene of my pain on Monday: the heath. Across it I ran, and down a side street, intending to curve round into Blackheath village and then home.

Unfortunately, I then got lost.

Forty five minutes and a detour along Lewisham High Street, past Lewisham station, and along a ridiculously long road where the signs started off indicating "Greenwich, this way" before rather worryingly transmogrifying into "You're practically in Peckham: have you got any idea where you are?", I stopped at a bus shelter to consult a map. An old woman with a tartan shopping trolley regarded me suspiciously.

I got home, eventually. A little later, an interesting thought occurred to me: I'd just run a very long way, and being totally lost had clearly been very efficient in making me forget my legs were hurting.

No such luck the day after...

Week 2 of "New dawn":
Outings: 3
Miles: 26
Alcohol intake: 3 pints bitter, 2 glasses wine
Bananas: 6
Hampstead pub quiz victories over loud, rich Americans: 1

The New Dawn

Fickle, uninterested (and principally imaginary) readers: it's been a while. No, more than that. Two months, and some. When I logged on just now, the date of my last entry shamed me almost as much as its content.

Well, that will change right here. And why? Because now is the time that Andrew gets down to business. It's time to get serious. It's two months until the big day. A mere two months!

The truth is, I didn't do much running in June. I didn't do a whole lot in July either. I'm not sure exactly what I was doing. Not a lot, as far as I can recall. I think I need to get myself a diary and make sure to keep it updated. That way I can check back on my activities periodically, just to satisfy myself that I haven't been hibernating. Anyone seen me in the last two months? No, I mean, anyone remember seeing me in the last two months? No, thought not. Is this a part of getting old? I can barely remember what I was doing yesterday.

Well, diversions aside, things are, as I said, going to change. First of all, I'm going to ensure this page is supplemented regularly. Weekly. That's right. Once a week - unless I come across something particularly interesting, in which I case I might even do it more often. (I'm reading a book of English history at the moment - did you know the venerable Bede had a monastery in Sunderland? A place steeped in history, if ever there was one.)

I'm also going to be running a lot. Outside. In fact, I've started that already (of which more later). And I'll be cutting down my alcohol intake. And eating healthy food. For example, I've recently broken the habit of a lifetime by starting to eat bananas. At the moment, there's something strangely pleasing about the peeling of them in particular, though I'm sure the novelty will wear off sooner or later.

All these things I'll be doing. And I'll be keeping records and writing them down. Why not? If I can't cave to these obsessive-compulsive urges at the mature age of twenty-eight, then when can I?

Oh, and I suppose I should start hassling people for money, like the desperate bore I've always really wanted to be. Go on, you miserable buggers.

So. Running. After four days of horrific three mile sprints around Greenwich and then Bromley a couple of weeks ago, I went for a change of tactic. Hesitantly, I allowed the good lady to escort me out for a jog on Thursday night. Hand in hand, we ambled into the dusky sunlight of Greenwich park at 6.5 miles per hour (so my swanky new watch tells me). We hit a mile without difficulty. I gave her a rakish wink. Two miles. Still no problems. Three miles: I still hadn't died! At this point, the better half retired to a dark room - my manly musk had made her come over all a quiver. But I felt okay, and so I continued. It turns out that I was probably trying to run too fast on my previous forays...

Well, two further jogs later have ratcheted up over 15 miles this weekend. Marvellous. I'm feeling more positive now, that's for sure. Yes, we'll see how things pan out next week...

Week 1 of "New dawn":
Outings: 3
Miles: 20
Alcohol intake: 1 pint lager, 1 pint bitter, 1 half-pint Leffe, 1 bottle of wine (approx.).
Bananas: 4.

Sitting in front of the computer, at my desk in the spare room, I watch a jogger sprinting up the road. In his sunglasses, bright orange t-shirt and cycling shorts, it would be hard to miss him. Perhaps in the coming months, people will be sitting listlessly by their own windows, watching me tearing along the road. Perhaps they'll marvel at my finesse, my quite unnatural levels of fitness and self-discipline. Perhaps they'll think, I wish that I could be that man. That man looks like a real champion. And if I can't be him, perhaps I could just know him, perhaps I could go for a beer with him. I bet he's dead witty, amiable, self-deprecating company, they'll be thinking. Perhaps.

Perhaps I'll take to wearing bright orange t-shirts...

Hypotheticals these may be, but one thing is certain: in June, I will be transferring my jogging outside. The treadmill has been tamed. Armed with an unfeasibly large bottle of water and an oft-used hand towel, I completed a full thirteen miles yesterday. Admittedly, I didn't feel good by the end of it. Not at all. In fact, I felt bad. Nonetheless, thirteen miles is a long way and I managed it. I could almost have felt proud, had the sweat patches on my shorts not shaped themselves to look so convincingly as though I'd "had a little accident".

It's been my plan for some time to start "running proper" (in other words, running outside) when June begins. That'll stop those "running proper"-type friends of mine smirking knowingly when I say, "No, I've not run outside much yet, but I'm doing okay on a treadmill". That's what I've been thinking. Yes, that'll stop them. Well, perhaps.

In preparation, I have for some weeks been observing these running types under cover. On my way to work, or to the pub, I have been watching them. I have been studying their faces. Alas, there is something discouraging about their faces, in general. Sometimes a pained grimace is evident. With others, the mouth is wide open, the gasps for precious air clearly audible. But with all, even the most dedicated, the most muscular, intimidating and freakishly athletic characters, you can see it: that fatalistic despair in the eyes. I can hardly wait to join them.

Perhaps it won't be that bad really. The list of things I've dreaded long in advance is almost as long as the list of things I've actually done in my life. Piano exams, BCG vaccinations, airplane flights, job interviews: all of these things spring to mind as worse in expectation than reality. Things usually aren't as bad as you expect them to be, are they? The exception, of course, is this diary: infrequent, half-hearted, but at least reliably disappointing. Perhaps it'll improve with time.

It would, almost certainly, be a long time to hold your breath.

My May bank holiday weekend:

Left work at half five on Friday night. Ended up drinking coffee and eating baklava outside a deserted café on Old Street, wiling away the hour or so until it was time to play football on the 5-a-side pitches at Finsbury leisure centre. The game unexpectedly went on for three hours.

Spent the rest of the weekend mostly sitting down.

I'm sure there was a time when a social kick-about would have had less extreme consequences.

7-Up

Trees don't blossom in the Autumn.

I write with reference to the dream described in my entry of 31 March. It was when this minor revelation struck me that the fraudulence and naivity – indeed, the sheer witlessness – of my imagined version of running a half marathon began to become clear. A beautiful sunrise? Happy runners? The difficulty is this: if I was assuming there would be tree blossom in October, perhaps there would be no limit to my self-delusion. Will there even be trees up there? The course winds its way along a motorway somewhere outside Gateshead, doesn't it?

I felt like a greedy young boy who, perhaps just after reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, had been taken out to the country by his parents and thought he'd stumbled upon a field filled with the stuff. Only to discover he was in a cowfield. And it was, well, yes.

In truth, this sudden feeling of pessimism probably has less to do with running in general and more to do with the black dog that's been pursuing me over the last week or so. Don't panic, though, non-existent readers. It's okay. It happens sometimes. Is twenty-eight too early for a mid-life crisis? Depends how old you live to, I suppose. I hope I'm not at the middle of my life already.

I think my mid-life crisis started about the time the adolescent crisis finally, somewhat apologetically, petered out.

How did people get by without Wikipedia? I now know that the black dog was a term coined by Winston Churchill, not to mention a "ghostly dog in British folklore" (perhaps an inspiration for Hound of the Baskervilles?), a 1998 film starring Patrick Swayze, a Led Zeppelin song and a fully self-containing Linux computer with a built-in biometric fingerprint reader. I guess it can refer to an actual dog that's black, too.

The point is - even in times of listlessness, Wikipedia can provide some interesting trivia.

In case this entry wasn't already too unfocussed for words, there is one other thing that's been bothering me today. That thing is 7-Up. I was reading a book today that mentioned the stuff, and right at the same moment a song came on the radio that mentioned it as well. It was actually a bit of a moment. It made me stop and think – not clearly, clearly, but it made me think. Is 7-Up lemonade, or is it something else? I wasn't sure. I expect an American would know immediately. Would they order a vodka and 7-Up like we'd order a vodka and lemonade?

So, what did I do? I looked it up on Wikipedia.

It's been that kind of a day.

Birthday

Thursday was my twenty-eighth birthday. The thought struck me almost as soon as the alarm clock woke me. It's now a full decade since I turned eighteen – a diffident, poorly coiffured and over-sensitive young thing. A lot's happened to me in ten years. In some ways, I've changed, grown up. I'm not a young thing any more, certainly.

This was clearly an apposite time to take stock, to reflect on the way of things. Instead, I went to the pub, drank too much beer and yesterday celebrated being in my late twenties with a manageable, but staunchly persistent headache.

This sunny Saturday morning, I'm not too concerned about taking another step to the intimidating "thirty". Twenty-eight actually has a nice ring to it. For a start, my age is now both a perfect number and a magic number. But that's not very interesting, really.

I did think of a bad running joke last week.
Why did the woman go running when she lost her keys?
To jogger memory.

I'm going on the treadmill now. I may be some time.

So, it's confirmed: I will be competing (or at least participating) in this year's Great North Run.

But why? Isn't that the sort of thing that runners do?

Well, yes, in truth the prospect of just over thirteen miles of solid jogging is not one that has often crossed my mind. I've jogged to catch a train from time to time. I remember running home from the pub one night while I was still at school, convinced my bladder would burst if I didn't reach a toilet before the clocks struck midnight. I once even sprinted around five-hundred yards from a car stuck in traffic to Charlton's football ground, so as not to miss the kick off (we lost three nil, so it possibly wasn't worth the effort). But "real" running? No. A bit of football, yes. Tennis, badminton, squash: maybe, now and again. But, it's not really for me, is real running.

So why now? Perhaps I could put it down to an odd dream I had while on holiday in Hong Kong a few weeks ago. In the dream, someone was asking me what the point was of what I'd done in the last year. How sanguine I was in response! You fool, I said. Can you not see I'm at the starting point of the Great North Run? I'm going to raise a thousand points for a charity and how's that for actually doing something constructive with my year? And then a pistol fired, and I started my ecstatic progress through throngs of happy, smiling fellow runners. The trees were blossoming, and an elegant late Autumn sun was rising up over the hills.

And then the cramp in my calf muscle woke me up.

It's not all down to a dream, of course (I had a dream last night that I was going out, actually romantically going out, with Jamie Theakston, but I don’t intend to follow that one up). It's more that when I woke up that morning in Hong Kong, it still seemed a good idea. It was a beautiful sunrise in that dream, and particularly lovely blossom. And, well, why not?

One good reason, the brain says: you haven't actually run thirteen miles before. Fair enough: until a few months ago, I hadn't in fact managed more than three in one "sitting".

But, the heart says (a glutton for punishment, apparently), there are a full six months in which to get fit. With a bit of training and discipline, your fitness will surely be of Olympian levels by October (darts is not an Olympic sport).

A second good reason, the brain says: of the people you've mentioned this idea to who actually know a bit about running, the response has been the same. A quiet, pensive sucking in of the cheeks. Pfft. Like a kettle in reverse. And then, "You do know it's quite hilly, don't you?" Of course I do, I lied (the first time) or muttered touchily (the times after that).

Hills shmills, the heart says.

Then the brain plays its trump card. The most obvious good reason, of course, is that you don't like running very much. And nor are you very good at it.

Ah, but you will like running once you actually run, the heart says. Once you don't get a stitch and sore legs after ten minutes. Once you don't sweat so much you look you've arranged and starred in your own, rather wrong, wet t-shirt competition every time you finish.

It's this thought – the one that I'll get better, that I'll feel better – that's the most alluring mantra, and it's one that I'll be sticking to for the time being.

The training will be starting in earnest very soon. Tonight, however, it's mental exercise all the way: burger and chips, a few pints of London Pride and a pub quiz. And this week I'll know Madonna's first UK number one…

Next time: A poor literary metaphor comparing a long distance run to the futility of life (and perhaps a bad, running-based punning joke).