It's time for another thrilling issue of .... Runner's World!

Runner's World is THE publication for runner's everywhere. It's like the runner's bible. 

There are several things to love about Runners World (all of them unintentional). Every time i get a new issue an image springs to mind of some very frustrated journalists in some crappy office somewhere struggling to find enough stories to fill the next issue.

"How about we do a feature on 'get in shape now!'"

"But we did that last month"

"Oh... how about 'Conquer any hill... 13 tricks to reach the top!'"

"Nope, did that last month too"

"oh. damn... how about 'Pimp my Running route'?"

"done it"

"Damn. Pass me another doughnut Jack"

Subsequently, the best thing about Runner's World, and the bit which makes me snort into my coffee, is the wonderful headlines on the front cover, blatantly designed to attract as wide an audience as possible, convert as many non-readers as possible and make the world of runners somehow interesting enough to make you fork out your £4.50 for exactly the same publication you got last month... Fab!

Here's a sample of April's issue:

A better way to breathe! - page 41

Guilt-Free Eating Plan! - Fuel your run with fish n chips! (for lard arses like me)

Do You Tie Your Laces wrong? - You might be surprised! (indeed, i think might be...)

But none of these beat my two favourite ones from march's issue:

The Road to Romance - find your perfect running partner! (for Bridget Jones's)

49 Brilliant reasons to run! (this must've taken the struggling journalists weeks to come up with a total of 49 'brilliant' reasons to run)

I like this last one, coz to be honest, i can think of 250,000,000,00000000000000 reasons not to run. 

They are as follows...

a) It hurts

b) it's knackering

c) it's takes up vast amounts of your time

d) it's makes you eat more (afterwards), not less

e) you have to eat sensibly before every run (booooo) and cut out alcohol (BOOOOO)

f) you have to brave the elements and run no matter what the weather

g) you have to embrace wearing embarrassing clothing in public

h) your friends start to avoid you coz all you do is bang on about how many miles you can now run

i) you become the most smug individual in the world every time you beat a new distance / time and discover another new muscle in your legs

etc etc

PS. Did i tell you that I did a half marathon in 1hr 53? This is pretty damn good, and my legs are SUPER-toned.

Smug smug smug. Oh, and I nearly forgot to mention the ridiculously toned topless hottie they put on every front cover (see below).

their audience clearly breaks down as follows: a) Straight men who want to look like this b) Straight single women who think they're going to bump into a man running the same route who looks like this and c) gay men who probably already met a man who looked like this on their running route, but didn't get around to asking for his number.

www.justgiving.com/jameswatts 

The runner's world

As I’ve previously alluded too, the runner’s world is a slightly mad one. 

Full of things which – in the normal world – are completely taboo.

These include inappropriately tight shorts, inappropriately short shorts, stretching limbs into weird poses in public, voluntarily getting up early on Sundays to run (madness), choosing cereal and bananas over 3 cups of coffee as a suitable weekend breakfast (complete madness), Vaseline-ing nipples/inner thighs (on long runs) and emptying ones nose in public.

It’s all very wrong.

Some of these things you have no choice but to buy into. The stretching limbs bit is unavoidable, especially when all the energy is running out of your legs. It's amazing how much you can get a sudden release of extra energy from pausing for 2mins to stretch your hamstrings out. Although I have learnt that using a park bench for this is acceptable, but people tend to give you looks if you use tombstones in a churchyard (which is annoying because the one's in Putney Bishops Gate Park church yard are perfect).

Voluntarily getting up early to run is also unavoidable, as it's the best part of the day to run and allows you to get on with the rest of the day ahead, with the added bonus of feeling very smug and virtuous.

Ditto re the cereal and bananas over coffee. I don't think there's any need to dwell on the vomiting-coffee-on-a-memorial-statue-of-Queen-Victoria incident in Berwick over Christmas.

The one I refuse to buy into are the inappropriately tight stretchy short shorts. Wrong Wrong Wrong. I don't care if they support your hamstrings, keep you warm, allow your skin to breath and reduce chaffing, they should still be illegal. Or at the very least they should legislate that if you are going to wear them, you should have to wear baggy shorts over them to hide the detail. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

And don't get me started on the runners who decide to clear their noses with the ol' thumb-to-one-nostril-and-blow technique... in public. Whilst running. And with little regard for anybody in the near vicinity. Gross and wrong. 

Although i did see a sunday walker's little dog be on the receiving end of this technique and the look on the owner's face as the runner flew by was enough to make me laugh. So maybe there is an upside to it.

It did occur to me afterwards that this was intentional by the runner. Runner's tend to fall into two categories: polite runners and rude runners. If you're polite, you let people know you're stuck behind them / their prams / their dogs with a polite breathless 'scuse me' and 'thanks' as you puff by.

Rude runners grunt loudly to announce their presence, push through anyway, sometimes swear at the the walkers, splash in a puddle as they pass and - if the walker has a cute fluffy little dog - evidently clear their noses on it for good measure.

I'm only a rude runner during the last 15mins of a run when my sense of humour, patience and energy has gone AWOL. I'll admit to grunting past people coz the thought of finding the energy to actually pronounce a word is impossible and have occasionally 'accidentally' splashed the odd puddle which will hopefully remind them to move quicker next time, but i draw the line at the nose clearing thing. So far anyway.

Maybe that'll change when i have to do my first 20k run a week sunday.

So if you're intending to go for a nice gentle walk on Sunday 8th Feb, you might want to avoid the west london Thames pathway. Or at least leave your dogs at home...

And the Award for "Best Song to Run To ever" goes to...

Now that I've done a couple of longer runs (i.e. over an hour / an hour & a half) I'm starting to notice that there's a certain process you go through on every run.

First 5 mins - feel v proud to have left house and hope you warm up soon

5-15 mins - hate it, wish you'd never left house and wonder if there's any way you can justify going home for a nice cup of coffee

15-30 mins - wonder when your legs will stop feeling so heavy

30-45 mins - constantly think about how much further you have left to run

45mins - fall into a stride, start to enjoy it, realise you might be able to actually do this

It's actually rather strange how I seem to go through this process of every single run. Having spoken to a couple of friends who also run, it encouraging to know that I'm not alone in this.

And from the 45 min point onwards, the run suddenly seems do-able and you feel quite proud to be out and running.

But there are still some things that you can count on happening at some point during the rest of your run.

1) You'll get trapped behind 2 or 3 people who are doing a spectacular job of hogging the entire pavement / pathway and are completely oblivious to the world around them or the red faced puffing runner trapped behind them

2) Despite having watched you run towards them for the last 30 seconds, a bunch of people at the bus stop will make zero effort to move or make any space to let you through but instead will stand gormlessly in your way.

Let's take a few moments to consider how annoying these people are. Look; here are some specimens:

Moving swiftly on...

3) a dog will chase your heels (sometimes embarrassingly)

4) you'll get distracted by a fellow runner coming towards you who's much faster than you, has a bigger stride, looks like they have run further, has snazzier running gear and is generally finding it all much easier.

5) As aforementioned runner passes you, you will trip and stumble. (This is the law of Sod, and is particularly applicable if the runner is a hottie)

6) You iPod shuffle delivers a spectacularly awful 'running song' your way and all of a sudden the ache in your butt, back and feet is worse, your lungs are tighter and your legs feel like jelly

7) Your iPod shuffle delivers Your Disco Needs You (live in London) by La Minogue, and all of a sudden you could run for another ten miles, no worries.

Think I'm going to officially submit this track as Best Song To Run To ever.

Or is that just me? Suspect it might be...

Either way, I'm now doing just over 10 miles in 1hr 50, and I'm pleased with that.

It's all about the view...

The advantages of training for a marathon is that it does force you to get off your butt and discover the great outdoors.

Unfortunately, if you live in W3, the great outdoors resembles something much like this:

Fortunately, just a small hop, skip and jump (or jog) away is the lovely Thames pathway.

Much nicer...

I'm learning that that runners are an industrious little bunch of people, and there's a whole online community where people share top running routes and favourite training areas.

So following a short dig around on some nifty training route-plotting website, I found a recommended running route which followed the river from Hammersmith Bridge to Barnes Bridge and back again (that's 12k, or 8.5miles if you please... Can i get a whoop-whoop?).

Although it was a freezing cold winter day, running through good ol' ancient west London along the river was pretty inspirational. It was almost enjoyable.

The Barnes stretch of the river is -for those not in the know- where the Cambridge / Oxford boat race takes place and the river is lined with many rowing clubs. Even in minus-C conditions there were some rowers out training.

They were the first people I saw during the entire hour-and-a-bit long run that I didn't envy.

It was bloody cold.

But the sight of them puffing along the river with bright red faces and very raw looking arms / hands did inspire me to a) keep going and b) get off the bridge ASAP coz there was a distinct wind chill factor.

But it was the furthest I've run so far and the truth is I could've kept going for a bit longer. And, most importantly, there was no further hamstring trouble thanks to three cracking (pun intended) trips to the chiropractor.

I'm taking this as a good sign... Here's to beating the 1hr 30min barrier.

But for that I'm going to have to find a longer route with an equally inspiring view...

Just call me Igor...

So the plan for the latest thrilling installment was to bang on about how pleased I was that I managed to run 10k in under 55mins (in the gym of course. Yours truly wasn’t brave enough to venture outside... there was a distinct winter nip in the air).

The first thing I’ve learnt about running for nearly an hour is that it gets boring very quickly. And the best you can hope for is that either your iPod keeps you entertained, or that you just completely zone out whilst turning into some sort of huffing and puffing red-faced zombie on the treadmill. (Maybe the advantage to running outside is that you don’t have to run in front of a wall of mirrors?).

Anyway, my attempts to stride off the treadmill looking macho were somewhat scuppered by my right leg refusing to work and a short, sharp restricting pain at the back of my leg which caused me to limp across the gym rather pathetically whilst feeling rather lame.

Cue a trip to physio.

The good news is I apparently have 'incredible natural muscle strength'. Ha! Knew it… Rock hard, me.

The bad news is I have to stop running for 10 days, see a chiropractor and be snapped back into shape (boo) followed by lots of ‘soft tissue therapy’ i.e. massage (hoorah).

Diagnosis is as follows:

1) I have “very interesting biomechanics” (loosely translates as ‘you’re screwed’). 

2) Apparently there is pressure on my siactic nerve (what?) and lumbar lordosis (hamstrings to you and me).

3) I need to strengthen my transverse abdominal muscle (stomach muscles – i.e do some sit ups and cut out the KFC)

4) My sacroiliac joint (where?) is ‘restricted’ and needs ‘mobilizing’

5) Last, but certainly not least, all of this has resulted in a hinge type joint in my upper back around my ‘thoracic/ lumbar joint’ (do what?).

6) Which in turn is having an effect on my neck and shoulder posture.

Joyous. So basically, i failed my MOT. If i were a car, i'd need 4 new tyres, gear box and steering column. Harumph.

My physio must have seen the look on my face because he told me to not be 'dramatic' about it, and said all i needed to do was 'hit the reset button', which actually comprises of learning how to run using your 'glutes' (butt) first, rather than your 'hams' (hamstrings) when running.

Or alternatively I can get a job in my local bell-tower where I can hop around all day ranting about my hump.
Yours, Igor.

Good gate, bad gait

Some one did say that when you start training for the marathon, you learn lots of new things about yourself.

So far i have learnt the following:

1) I don't like running outdoors (damn)

2) I need more music to run to

3) I need new trainers

The good news is that two of these are damn good excuses to go shopping. Cue a short trip to Nike Town in Oxford Circus and a slight disturbing conversation with local shop assistant 'Dwayne' ("Buy the blue ones mate, they're cool man,").

Fortunately my friend K, who knows what it is to run properly (i.

e. not for a bus), told me about the wonderful Marathon Shop in Covent Garden where you can be measure for a proper pair of running trainers, specifically selected to match something called a 'gate'.

I have since learnt that this is in fact spelt 'gait' and not 'gate'. (Figures).

A short visit to The Marathon Shop later, and after 5 mins running on a swanky computerised treadmill-type thing, i learnt that i have a pronated gait. At this point i was forced to admit i didn't know what a gait was, let alone a pronated one, and did i have to go to the doctor?

For those not 'in the know' this is not a pronated gate:

This, however, is a pronated gait (apparently you can have supinated gait as well, which actually sounds better, and less like it can be treated with natural yoghurt):

Apparently running 26miles on a pronated gait is slightly difficult, so the options are:

a) hop my way around it

b) spend a shed load on some swanky new trainers.

I went for option b. 

And also threw in a new running shirt, new socks, running gloves (v important) and running hat for good measure.

Hoorah. Who knew training for the Marathon could be so much fun?

And so it begins...

Yes, as you've all heard by now, yours truly is running the London Marathon 26th April 2009.

The news has been met by much merriment from my friends, a smattering of support, one or two "good for you"s, and more than a little cynicism. 

To quote one friend in particular, "Have you ever heard anything so funny, he's a lazy git, he'll never get round,". 

Bless. Love my friends.

Anyway, seeing as this promises to be one hell of an adventure (or alternatively just 'hell'), I figured I would share my adventures with all and sundry. 

I'm already discovering the world of marathon running is a strange place, full scary myths, contradicting advice and expensive training gear, so there should be plenty of amusing fodder to report during the next 5 months, 4 days, 16 hours, 44 minutes and 44 seconds.

It's worth pointing out at this stage that I can currently run for only 30mins. 

At 11.5 klm/h.

Max. 

In the gym.

And that's with Kylie on full blast. (It's v important to run to quality music).

And so it begins...