I don’t have a leg to stand on

I am carrying two injuries at the moment. The first is a ligament injury in my left knee, brought on by playing football, and the only cure is to run regularly and often, which seems to alleviate the pain.

The other is shin splints in my right leg which is a pretty painful muscle condition and the only cure is complete rest.

My legs are in a Catch 22 situation.

The obvious solution would be to go out for a long distance hop, leaving my right leg tucked up in bed, but the practicalities have proved too challenging to overcome. Instead I am letting them take turns at being the injured party.

When I first set out, my left knee feels like it has a knife inside it and is going to collapse but after about three miles or so the pain wears off. I enjoy the next half mile or so and then the shin splints on my right leg become more intrusive. It feels like I am wearing a shinpad inside my leg.

The curious outcome of this is that I lurch to the left for the first three miles, then run normally for half a mile, and then start lurching to the right. Before my weight loss I would have put this down to movement of the onboard ballast, but that is no longer an excuse.

But the good news is that after ten miles or so I get terrible back ache and I forget all about my legs.

The doubt creeps in

Actually doubt isn’t so much creeping in as galloping in on a thoroughbred stallion with steaming nostrils and straining sinews. Just over two weeks to go and I definitely don’t feel ready.

My training runs have been too infrequent in recent weeks and too short in distance. And to compound my lack of preparation I have developed shin splints.

But on the positive side, all the advice is that it is better to be under prepared than over prepared so on that score I couldn’t be more ready.

I am planning a 20 mile run this weekend, the furthest I have gone to date, and I think that will give me a good indication of whether I am going to make 26 miles or not.

I can’t imagine not completing the course, but I also can’t imagine completing it either, so come what may I am in for a surprise on April 13th.

The pies have it

The day of London Marathon reckoning is ever closer but the ‘what happens next?’ phase that begins immediately afterwards is posing more of a dilemma.

Turning myself from a 15 stone lardy lump into someone who looks like they might be remotely capable of running a marathon has generally not been a lot of fun, involving loads of healthy unpleasant stuff like fish, fruit and vegetables, and of course, hundreds of miles of running.

But the one saving grace has been the kind things people have said: ‘I can’t believe you’ve lost so much weight’, ‘you look so different’, ‘I hardly recognise you’ (although the latter was said by someone I barely know so doesn’t really count) and this has nearly made it all worthwhile but then they all ask ‘what happens next?’. What they mean is are you going to to revert to your fat git on a sofa ways or is this the dawning of a new you.

Now while I can’t deny I feel full of vitality and life, and that hangovers are but a distant memory, the truth is that the actual healthy living bit ain’t a huge amount of fun. For God’s sake I don’t even like running. And of course, there is only so much weight one can lose. Once people are used to me being human shaped and relatively fit the only comments they will pass will be about me looking older or fatter. Not a comforting thought. And even to stay in this health hinterland I will still have to forgo beer and chips, and it will undoubtedly require more bloody running.

So there has been reward in getting into shape, but staying in shape sounds like purgatory in trainers.

On balance I think I’ll let myself happily go to seed. After 30 years of sedentary living it has taken me three months to get fit for a marathon, so I plan on another 30 years of pies, pints and chocolate, and then I’ll think about doing it again.

Gym-nasties

Yesterday I was staying in London and on a whim decided to undertake my training run in the hotel gym rather than pound the streets.

After an hour of the most profoundly depressing experience of my life I could only ask: why? Why does anyone subject themselves to this horrendous activity?

I spent an hour opposite another fat man, an excessively sweaty fat man, and despite running for an hour neither of us moved, and consequently never got further away from each other. The room stank of bodies, the noise was horrendous and the atmosphere grim.

When I jog outdoors, I travel. I hear the birds in the trees, I splash through puddles, the wind blows on my face and I feel alive. In the gym I just ran and ran in the same place with my eyes focused on the seconds very slowly ticking away on the LED display in front of me. The only puddles were caused by other people’s sweat on the floor. The only wind… well you get the idea.

And we spend millions between us for the privilege of enduring this torture?

Show me another gym and I will run a mile – or maybe 26.

The trainers of Damocles are hanging over me

Just four weeks today until we come under starter’s orders at the London Marathon and I’m in a race against time – a race to be ready to race – or at least a race to be ready to run.

The good news is that I’ve just undertaken two back to back 15 mile training runs, but the bad being that due to various other time constraints, I did nothing in the week between the two.

In the next four weeks, I have to run at least one 20 mile run, and preferably two, and train nearly every day, if I’m going to stand a reasonable chance of completing the course come April 13th.

Today I faced a new challenge. I got out of bed and set off without paying much attention to the weather. During my slumbers, there had been very heavy rainfall, which had flooded the course I take along country lanes. I turned a corner some 10 miles into the run to find the whole road covered in 18 inches of water.

Too late to go back I splashed on and over the next five miles, the water got steadily deeper and for one 200 metre stretch was actually above my knees.

I suppose it was all good training for the Marathon. Running through deep water takes considerable effort, and will no doubt come in useful should I take a wrong turn in April, and find myself jogging down the Thames.

A picture’s worth a thousand pies

A photoshopping competition on the web has linked this image to my blog. I’m not sure whether to be flattered or outraged but the likeness is uncanny – now that I’ve lost weight.

Beware of Greeks bearing news

Pheidippides has a lot to answer for. He is the Greek soldier who was despatched from the town of Marathon to Athens in around 490 BC to announce that the Persians had been beaten in battle.

In a foolish show of bravado Pheidippides ran the whole distance to break the news before keeling over and dying.

Now call me a cynic, but the whole marathon running phenomena seems to have been spawned by one of the most pointless acts in history.

If Pheidippides ran to Athens because he had forgotten to put the cat out, or because everyone in Marathon had run out of milk for their cornflakes, you could see the logic in remembering him. But to literally run yourself into the ground to say: ‘we won, no action required’ seems somewhat misguided.

But this 2,500 year old foolishness is compounded by the fact that when 50,000 or so of us emulate Pheidippides’ less than heroic achievement by running the 26.2 mile London Marathon the only message we will have to impart at the end of our run will be: ‘Ow, that hurt!’

A weighty problem

This week someone asked why my blog was called One Fat Man 08. I explained that it was rooted in bingo callers’ rhyming slang for 88 being two fat ladies. As there is only one of me I am obviously One Fat Man 08.

‘But you’re not fat,’ she said. And there is the not unpleasing dilemma. Through a diet of pavement pounding and broccoli, I have managed to shed just 3lbs short of 2 stone since January 2nd and while I’m still in no position to show off a six-pack,  I’m a lot more human shaped than I used to be.

I have two choices: I either go back to the bingo callers’ lexicography and find a more suitable sobriquet: One Man 31, for example, meaning Get Up and Run, or perhaps more aptly One Man 43 meaning Down on Your Knees or even One Man 75 meaning Strive and Strive.

Or there is always the second choice which is to is to eat lots of pies and drink lots of beer so I fit my name again.

I think I know which I prefer.

Guilty thoughts

The endless endless running that is required to prepare for a marathon provides plenty of time to think, ideally about anything not related to jogging.

Over eight miles of painful terrain today, I was pre-occupied with DNA evidence, which seems to be the cornerstone of every major crime trial today.

And whenever there is a trial, there seems to be an expert saying that the chances of the recovered DNA having come from anyone other than the accused, are about one billion to one.  Fair enough; bang them up for life.

But hang on a minute; there are more than six billion people on the planet so statistically the chances of having the right man are slightly less than one in six.

And if you are a mass murder living in India, then there is every likelihood that someone with matching DNA lives in the same country as you. In fact if you are a mass murderer living in Bhopal there is a good chance that someone with matching DNA lives less than 600 miles away.

That’s almost an alibi.

I think my brain is being over-jogged.

Wait for me

OK, ok I know it’s a few days since my last update but remember it’s a marathon not a sprint.

Keeping a blog about jogging going for three months saps the creative juices. I get changed, I go out, I run, I come back, I shower. That’s it.

In fact having thought long and hard I can’t recall one interesting thing has happened to me while I’ve been out running. Given that I am now spending at least 12 hours a week plodding around the countryside you might expect I would have chanced upon some incident or object of note. But no nothing, nada. Not even an oversized rabbit to tell my grandchildren about.

Actually that kind of sums this whole experience up. Large distances covered, little purpose served.

Yes, I know that at the end of it, charity will have benefited and I will have lost weight, but next year I’m going to have liposuction and write the RNIB a cheque instead.