If

Having read Kipling's famous poem on many occasions over the last 30 years or so, it's surprising that I never consciously noted the somewhat unmissable running reference in the final 4 lines:

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

Nowhere to hide

One of the fascinating aspects of running for me is that there is absolutely no room whatsoever for bullshit, ego and self-delusion. Unlike life, it's impossible to hide from the truth. You either did the miles you set yourself to do, or you didn't. No grey areas. It's impossible to delude yourself about your capabilities half way through a ten mile run on a cold night with miles to go and every fibre of your body hurting: you either stop, or you carry on. No gray areas.
Humility also comes quick. It's strangely vivifying to be overtaken during what you think is a decent paced run by a vastly overweight 50 year old, a skinny little rake of a 17 year old girl or a 6ft 4" monster bloke with the most horrendous running gait - and I've been overtaken by all of these and more. You just learn to live with yourself and your abilities, and you get a little closer to being happy in your skin, accepting your limits.
And what I'm finding out about myself is interesting to me. My mind and as a result my body have evolved a lot in only a few months of comparitively hard running. When I first set out on this whole running thing a couple of years ago, I struggled to continue moving forward after just a few minutes, the urge to stop almost over-powering. Chest thumping, legs shaking, sweat blinding me. By mentally forcing myself to keep going, my body has apparently learned over time that putting up huge resistance is futile. So now it doesn't complain nearly so much and is learning to work with me rather than against me. Or at least that's how it feels.
In fact, having done a 10 mile run on two separate occcasions within a few days this week, at no point did I feel under pressure to simply stop.The massive, almost irrestistible urge to just stop running I once felt no longer crops up. Now I can feel tired (and frequently do), listless sometimes and just plain beat up now and again but I experience very little mental or physical pressure to stop.
It's an odd thing to almost stand back and objectively watch my body deal with the increasingly strenous demands I'm making on it - and see it take them all in its stride, quite literally. My resting heart rate is lower, the time it takes my heart to recover after a run is shortening rapidly, I'm running longer, faster and more comfortably and I no longer get sore knees or hips, even after long runs. (Well, sometimes my knees get a bit creaky after a very long run but only for half an hour.)
I have a new found respect for this remarkable little body we all have.

Outrunning an antelope: the stuff you learn training for a marathon

Been reading a great book called Why We Run by a guy called Bernd Heinrich which is a sort of natural history of human beings running (well worth buying if you're interested). One of his arguments is that human beings evolved as runners - it's their most defining trait. It's what kept them alive, he says. He gives the very engaging example of humans catching antelope to eat by running them to exhaustion. Very counter-intuitive, obviously. Hence why it's such a good example. But turns out that antelopes can only run fast for very short distances. Like all animals. So as long as humans can keep antelope physically in sight, it only takes about 2.5 to 3 hours to run the antelope to complete exhaustion. The distance the animal can run before overheating, especially in hot sunshine, gradually gets shorter and shorter. (2.5 hours is 3 hours is also the time it will take a fit human to run a marathon. Coincidence?). This theory has also been successfully tested. So is this how humans caught their food? Seems sensible to me.
The scientific and intriguing explanation is that human beings are the only animals whose breath patterns are not tied to their strides. Cheetahs, for instance, have lungs that work like bellows work like belows. When they stretch their front legs forward and back legs back when running, their lungs suck in air, then whey they pull their legs back towards each other their lungs expel the air. And they heat up to potentially lethal temperatures incredibly quickly. Which makes them very, very quick - but only over short distances. As they stand upright, humans can breath in and out at any rate that suits them, within reason, regardless of what their legs are doing. And critically, they sweat profusely which lets them lose heat quickly and keep going even in midday desert sun.
So deep down in us all is the desire and need and ability to run.
The stuff you learn...

Fave running quotes #375

Actress Kristen Bell, today's Metro: "I only started running about two weeks ago and I hate it. I think it's the worst activity you could possibly do."

Haile unlikely

Unreasonably sad today after reading that uber-runner Haile Gebreselassie has chucked it after having to pull out of the NY marathon at mile 16 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/athletics/9165068.stm). He's one of the few runners that lots of non-runners would recognise, if only by name, and he's about the only distance runner on the planet who starts and finishes every race with a smile. He just seems like such a lovely little dude and he's clearly one of the best runners that has ever lived - and that is not hyperbole. He has 27 world records and countless winners medals to his name over distances from 1,500 metres to the marathon. Freakish. Nobody else would even contemplate trying to be competitive over both the 1,500 and the marathon. And he's been on top of the world since 1992 when he won the 5k and 10k golds at the Junior World Championships in Seoul. That's almost 20 years at the top!
In both 2002 and 2005 he went through the entire year without losing. Not even once. And this isn't a Joe Calzaghe-style undefeated claim - he wasn't up against yesterday's men and second raters - he was up against world record holders like the legendary Paul Tergat and other awesome athletes in their own right.
His marathon record of 2hrs 3mins and 59secs remains unbeaten and he added the Great Northern Run half marathon title to his list of victories at the first attempt this year in under an hour. That's a few months after winning the Great Manchester 10K in well under half an hour. Unless you run a bit, it's hard to appreciate just how fast these records are - but his marathon record breaks down to about 4.7 minutes per mile. Non stop. For more than 26 miles. That's a full-on sprint for me and you. In fact, go and try to run one mile in 4.7 mins one Saturday morning, next time you're feeling a bit fresh. And even if you do manage to complete a mile in under 5 minutes, imagine what that pace would be like if you had to do it 25 more times. Christ, it wasn't that long ago that Roger Bannister managed to break the 4 minute mile and he was breathing through his arse by the time he finished. That was over a single mile. Wee Haile managed to keep up a pace not that far behind for over 2 hours. Just plain awesome.
Gebreselassie is a loveable wee smiley, once-in-a-generation freak and I hope he changes his mind because everything about him is inspirational for a pavement plodder like me. His running style is awful (he breaks all the rules set down for 'the perfect form'), he has asthma (unbelievable, but true), he is really quite short for a runner, he is humble and he is happy. What's not to like?

Why don't runners smile?

Something I've been wondering for a while now is why runners never smile at each other, or even acknowledge each other's presence. For an activity as unrelentingly difficult, essentially pointless and frequently unpleasant as running, you would think that those that do it would recognise something in their fellow runners, some sort of bond that unites them in this pursuit that is unfathomable to those that don't do it.

I've tried to get the ball rolling. I've nodded and hello'd and thumbs upped for miles but to no avail. Mostly what you get back is nothing. Sometimes disdain.

The way I see it, running is hard but nobody is forcing you to do it, so you must be getting something out of it, you must have some reason for doing it. And if you're going to do it, why not try and enjoy rather than just endure?

I would start a facebook campaign if I knew how. You might be able to get Rage Against The Machine to number one, but can you get that jogger to smile?

Another lesson learned

Turns out Newell, a client of ours, was a fell runner. A proper one. Ran for his country. 20 miles up and down mountains in the snow and pissing rain in January in under 3 hours. And we're talking real, proper mountains here. Ben Nevis and the like. Which explains the blank expression on his face when I explained how fast my 5km times were coming down and how pleased I was with my progress. He did marathons in about two and half hours "usually", but didn't like road running because it wasn't challenging enough. I changed the subject.

It's only 26.2 miles. How bad can it be?

My initial plan, you see, was to run my first ever marathon alone over the original course in Marathon in Greece. But I understand that most of that original course is now under a dual carriageway and the fumes would kill a Chilean miner and it's normally about 100 degrees, even in winter, so I guess it wasn't a great idea after all. Still fancy it, right enough.
While I was pondering that, however, I was asked to join Team HIM at next year's London Marathon by a friend of mine, Mike Greene. As Mike was kind enough to join me last year on the London to Paris cycle, I decided to return the favour by signing up for the Marathon. And I did it quickly before I had the chance to change my mind.
I'm running it for VICTA, a great charity that supports blind and partially sighted kids. Fundraising is their only source of income so hopefully I can do my bit and help the charity help kids that could really do with the support.
So I figure, after all that, how bad can 26.2 miles be? Not that I've ever run that distance. Nothing even approaching it. In fact, until about two years ago the longest I'd run in my life without stopping or being sick was approximately 3km. And I've learned that measuring runs in kilometres rather than miles to make it look like you've run longer is for wimps. Wish me luck.