Don't Stop Me Now

by Vassos Alexander

  But what is it they say comes after pride?

  The results started churning from her computer, and immediately my mood darkened. I’ll spare you the details (I don’t really understand them) but suffice it to say my knees were all over the place and basically, I ought to have been injured.

  As I headed home through the Oxford rush-hour, I racked my brain for a solution.

  Somewhere near High Wycombe a solution came to me: custom-made orthotics. Expensive, yes, but critical. I’d heard miraculous stories of people running injury-free for life in orthotics. Former England cricketer Ronnie Irani swears by orthotics to such an extent that he’s now selling his own. Very good they are as well.

  But I hadn’t met Ronnie at the time, so soon I could be found on another treadmill in another lab, 2D this time, surrounded by more cameras and being fitted for some extremely expensive, bespoke orthotics, imported from Canada.

  They also told me about a new method of sweat analysis they were working on. An athlete gets the salt content of his or her perspiration analysed, then an isotonic drink is created to exactly replicate the minerals lost during exercise. Perfect, I thought; where do I sign?

  So – in between gait analysis (in however many dimensions) and perfectly balanced recovery drinks, just the run itself, right? Wrong. I had the insoles and I had the shoes, but I’d barely started.

  First of all, I needed more shoes, at least another pair and preferably a different make. I’d read somewhere that it was a good idea to give the shoes (the shoes!) time to recover between runs. So the thing to do, according to the article/blog/forum I’d been reading, was to alternate trainers from one run to the next. And the change of make was to (minutely) adjust the foot strike, thereby (minutely) lessening the chance of an overuse injury. £130 to Asics and £130 to Brooks later, and I was ready to start getting dressed.

  But before any outer clothing, come the base layers. As I learned through voracious reading, these are not just to keep you warm. They also, according to the blurb:

  Deliver optimal flexibility and movement

  Support forearms, triceps, biceps, pectorals and deltoids

  Reduce muscle fatigue and damage

  Promote increased circulation

  Reduce soreness

  Enhance flushing of blood lactates from exercising muscles

  Offer core body support

  Are suitable for any athletes with upper body demands

  UPF50+ Sun Protection

  Antibacterial

  Moisture wicking

  Oh, and they also cost £60 a pop. Not a problem, I’ll take two (please don’t tell Caroline). Then there are compression tights. Apparently ‘injury-reducing, temperature-controlling and moisture-managing’. Clearly completely vital. Also £90, but hey – look at all the added value I’d get from each run. Next, socks. Another £40, but that’s money well spent when you consider that the ones I chose were ‘not only the result of tireless research work, they were also the subject of a doctoral thesis’. How could anyone go running without them?

  Next, the shorts – ‘lightweight, breathable and fast with 4-way stretch, offering the ultimate in comfort and protection’ – at £55. A running T-shirt designed to have ‘a natural odour-inhibiting characteristic so you can focus on your performance’ as well as ‘Next-To-Skin-Feel’ and a ‘Short Sleeve Design’ – £50. Also, for winter runs ‘the world’s first waterproof venting jacket, designed specifically for the serious multisport athlete’ – £270. Making a total of £885, and that’s just for the absolute essentials.

  If you fancy, you could also own a hydration backpack ‘with integrated back protector’ (£120); ‘insulated waterproof ’ running hat (£32); sports laces to ‘improve competition’ (£8.50); compression calf tights ‘for extra power’ (£35); phone-carrying, warming arm sleeves (£30); gloves ‘with enhanced visibility and targeted protection against wind and rain’ (£40); head torch ‘with constant lighting technology’ (£70); and a reflective ‘see and be seen’ vest (£20).

  And what about the watch? The £2.99 ebay number was of course no longer up to it. You see a watch doesn’t just time your run. It measures current speed, average speed, distance covered, it beeps every mile, tells you how hard you’re working, and even congratulates you if you achieve a personal best. So a built-in heart rate monitor is utterly critical, with GPS a given. I found one ‘sleek enough to wear all day whilst qualified to guide the training of elite and amateur athletes alike’. Just the £390.

  So I may have been £1,630.50 poorer (I may also be exaggerating a little; I didn’t buy absolutely everything), but I was finally ready go to running.

  Except I wasn’t, because the watch which cost me almost £400 was still searching for a satellite signal five minutes after I turned it on. As I soon discovered, this a common problem if you live anywhere near buildings. Or trees. Or basketball players. And for a while, every run would begin with me impatiently waving a watch at the sky before setting off towards the river decked out in ludicrously expensive gear.

  And far from enjoying it, every run became stressful.

  A sports scientist will tell you that to improve, you need data to set goals, review progress and analyse performance. And they’re right – but only, in my opinion, up to a point. I’m no elite athlete. I did by this stage have the tangible goal of running a sub-three hour marathon. But did I really need a £400 watch to help me achieve that? And a base layer, compression tights and £40 socks?

  Trouble was, even during a supposedly easy run, I’d check the watch every few minutes to discover how fast I was travelling – and all too frequently the answer would disappoint. This resulted in very few of my easy runs actually being easy, because I’d pressurise myself into believing I had to achieve a certain pace. And however ropey I might be feeling, I would force myself to comply, mentally beating myself up if the miles weren’t ticking by as quickly as I’d planned.

  In the end, as I prepared for my run wearing every conceivable bit of kit and waiting aimlessly for my extravagant watch to find a signal, I would secretly be dreading the hour or so that lay ahead of me.

  Eventually I realised that running stops being pleasurable – and stops being a release of tension, stops being an escape, an act of discovery and self-discovery – if you’re constantly stressing about how fast you’re travelling, what socks you’re wearing and how your heart is coping.

  Of course it’s information elite athletes need to know. Running is their job. But for the rest of us, whether we’re nipping out to burn some calories, enjoying a moment to ourselves or even preparing for a race, there has to be an element of pleasure, of diversion. And whichever way you look at it, whoever you are and whenever you’re running, the fact is that you could be walking. But you’re not. You’re running. Running when you could be walking. It’s simple and child-like and brilliant. The watch and the gear were keeping me away from that. They had to go.

  As Leonardo da Vinci once said: ‘Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.’

  Nell McAndrew

  Model, reality TV star and author of Nell McAndrew’s Guide to Running. She has an outstanding marathon PB of 2:54.

  I’ve left the house in tears sometimes, literally, and come back from my run smiling and thinking, ‘Right, that’s how I’m going to handle this,’ or, ‘Here’s how I’m going to deal with that.’ I’ve left completely overwhelmed or totally frustrated, with a family situation say, or a relationship problem, and it’s as if running unravels everything and puts it into perspective, gives me that thinking time so that when I get back, I’ve got that strength to cope with everything the best that I can. I love that. I just love it! I want to be running when I’m 80. I don’t see age as a barrier.

  I remember when I first started running outside. Before that, I used to do my workouts on the treadmill, setting it on an incline, but a similar, soft workout – treadmill, exercise bike and weights. I always exercised, but it wasn’t until I started running outside that I
really discovered that it’s actually harder, because you end up running further.

  There was a guy I used to train with in Huddersfield who encouraged me to run more outside and less on the treadmill. He used to say to me, ‘You need to get outside and you’ll really benefit more.’ And I remember being dropped off miles away along the canal and then we’d simply run back. That was just to get used to running over eight miles for example, to see how your legs would feel.

  The first time you do more than eight or ten miles or even a half-marathon, it takes a lot out of you and your muscles and hips feel tight. But it’s amazing how your body starts to adapt the more consistently you run. And then with experience, it all begins to slot into place and you become more relaxed with your running.

  Then the distance. I remember thinking about a marathon after my first half-marathon in Reading. I remember thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, a marathon is twice that distance.’ Now the miles don’t scare me. I think initially if you tell someone who’s a non-runner to go out for three miles or five miles, they’ll say, ‘Oh, I can’t do that. I can’t do that.’ But once you get into it, six miles is nothing really. You can go out and run 10km without putting in too much effort.

  Later I joined a running club, the Thames Valley Harriers. It was really nerve-wracking as it was an unknown. I drove there round the North Circular and I remember I was so nervous, because everyone seemed to look so fast and knew what they were doing. And I pretty much turned up in my jogging bottoms the first time; I didn’t even own any running pants then. But before you know it, you get yourself all the right kit and you start to feel more part of it.

  What I’ve also realised over the years is that every single person I’ve met through running has been really nice. That’s the wonderful thing about it. I think it just strips down the barriers. So somebody’s background, or what they do for a living, nothing like that matters. It’s just really lovely, how running allows people to be themselves.

  Whenever the London Marathon comes round, if I’m not running it, I’m always really excited for everybody who is. I start to wish I was doing it too, and start to feel the nerves for everybody. And chatting to different people, because you’ve been there and experienced these events, you can understand what they’re going through. It’s really exciting, but you’re also apprehensive. It’s just a brilliant feeling. And with me it’s still always there, bubbling away inside me, and as I get older I still want to get faster. I want to pick up where I left off. To me, running is everything. It’s everything.

  At the moment it’s just time to think, to give myself that freedom. I ran around Richmond Park recently; I haven’t been there in such a long time and it felt good to be back and to be surrounded by so many other people out running and on their bikes. It gives it a real boost and there’s a real atmosphere. I just love how that made me feel.

  Also, it’s really nice when somebody says, ‘You’ve really encouraged me to start running,’ or, ‘You’ve really encouraged me to step up my distance and I’ve entered my first marathon.’ When I used to go out and volunteer to be a pacer at Bushy parkrun, having somebody come up to you at the end and say, ‘I smashed my PB, thanks so much’ gives you the same high as achieving your own PB. It’s really fantastic.

  So yes, running is just good all around, for your mind and your body. I hope to be running for many years to come.

  14

  Scissor Sisters, Running Out

  ‘Outlaw’ Ironman Triathlon, Mile 14

  Nearly there now... almost... wait for it... wait for it... here it comes... closer... closer still... just a few more strides now, and... Yes! Done it! Half way!

  13.1 miles completed. Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?

  Actually, who am I kidding? That was brutal. Beyond brutal. And this is only half way. Which means I’ve got it all to do over again. Another 13.1 miles. And each mile, I suspect, no I don’t suspect, I know, each mile will mature into more and more of a nightmare as I grow more and more knackered.

  And reaching the halfway point is meant to be a win.

  It all began in a moment of outrageous optimism after a few glasses of wine. A little the worse for wear one evening in early December, I came home from the pub and decided to devise a training schedule for my next marathon. An actual training schedule rather than some haphazard 800m repeats on Mondays and the odd long run. It was borne of an ill-advised determination to compete with my crazy cousin, and also to test my limits a little.

  So on the back of a letter from my accountant (Hi Hugo, I do file them away too you know) I concocted a training schedule comprising one gym session and five runs a week: a long run, two fast or interval runs and two easy runs. I never thought I’d stick to it, but basically, miraculously, I did.

  Official training run number one: Monday December 12th: a trot round several bends of the River Thames to Richmond Park, followed by as many sprints up the big hill at Pembroke Lodge as I could manage (six, since you ask, though my record is 30). Then back home the quick way. Just over two hours in total.

  Fantastic, I thought. What a great run. I should make a note of it, stick it in a training diary so I can see how I get on with my training week by week. And that’s exactly what I did: I simply noted down that first run in a computer file imaginatively entitled My New Training Diary. Then I made a note of the 40-minute easy run the following day, and the 30-minute tempo the day after that, the intervals after a rest day and the gentle hour which rounded off my week. On Sunday evening it was positively refreshing to look back through and see a semblance of structure to my running. So I noted down the following week’s efforts, and did the same the week after that – in fact, every run throughout that drunkenly devised, somewhat arbitrary 12-week plan was noted down. I’d look forward to my Sunday perusal of my weekly athletic achievements. A little pitiful perhaps, but I found there was nothing like seeing your best sweaty efforts written down in black and white to motivate you to do better the following week.

  And so began a mild obsession with writing down the details of every run I’ve completed ever since. I honestly don’t know why I bother – until I checked a few details for this book, I don’t think I’d read back through them beyond looking up an old half-marathon or cross-country time to give myself something to aim at when I ran the same race another year. But somehow, a run doesn’t now feel like a run until I’ve carefully added it to the relevant file in the Notes section of my phone. It’s now called All Runs, by the way. I’m still as creative as ever with my file names.

  They have evolved, these lists. At first I would carefully note down the time of day for each run, but after a few months I started to wonder why that was relevant. What lasted longer was my inclination to describe in detail which bits of my body hurt before, during and after each run, and how much they hurt. The early run list basically became a diary of my aches and pains. But as the years went by and the legs became more used to the daily pounding, I slowly stopped bothering noting the niggles. These days, it takes some serious pain somewhere worrying (knee or ankle mostly) to merit inclusion. Usually, each entry merely commemorates the length of a run (in time), its intensity (easy, hard, tempo etc.), any intervals, and occasionally how I was feeling or a mention of an unusual event.

  My favourite runs to add to the list are the ones when I’ve explored new places. If I’ve really got a kick out of a particular expedition and if the mood takes me, I can almost become poetic. I’ve recently returned from a holiday in Dorset:

  Saturday 14/2

  Upwey, Dorset. On the downs, 97min hard – chilly, hilly, muddy, ruddy, lively, lovely! Had that marvellous bionic legs feeling. Valentine’s Day and I just love running!

  Yes, yes, I know... Reading that back, I can see how corny it is. But I relish the fact that the mere act of running can inspire such elation. And anyway, you know what? I really do love running. I sometimes wonder what my life would be like without it. Simultaneously less strenuous but more stressful, if that makes sense. And
worse. Definitely worse.

  Running seems to centre me, and reminds me how lucky I am. Nothing like a 40-minute blast round the river to clear your head. Conversely, if I ever go a day or two without running, I tend to become somewhat grumpy. Unbearably so, my family might tell you. I like to think I’m generally quite a cheerful soul, but whenever I’m not, it’s generally because – as my kids put it – I’m either ‘hangry’ (with low blood sugar level) or ‘runpy’ (lack of a run-grumpy).

  So as the Valentine’s Day entry suggests, I do love my running. And I also love my lists. I’m a bloke, after all – and what bloke doesn’t like a list. Especially a ‘top five’? Top five Bond films, for instance, or top five sporting moments, cars, holidays… And now, thanks to my meticulous lists, I can look back at over a thousand carefully logged runs and start to think about my top five runs of all time.

  Many were simply awesome: a sunny day in the Peak District, skipping up and down tors like some maverick mountain goat. A friendly cross-country race in the Surrey hills with a few pints at the end of it. The occasional jog round the river gossiping with a pal. And looking back, some runs were just horrific, at least on the face of it: forcing myself out of the front door onto icy pavements into a headwind so strong you barely feel like you’re moving forward, fingers freezing, legs heavy, ankles aching. Yet even those have their charm. And there they all are, four-hour epics and track sessions, tempo runs and easy canters, all carefully noted down by date and timed only to the nearest minute (except when I’ve been trying to break some record or other).