Author Archives: Roads

47. A taper text

Posted on 7 April, 2004 | 1 comment

green-park-london-daffodils-spring.jpgIf marathon training is full of contradictions, then it should be no surprise that rather than building relentlessly towards race day, the last three weeks actually comprise a taper of easing training levels, designed to build up strength before the race itself.

It’s certainly good to take things a little easier after the exertions of some tough training weeks.

But sometimes I feel that it’s taken fifteen weeks to get progressively fitter, and that these three weeks will simply be enough to lose all that fitness again.

Fortunately, I know that this feeling places me right on track. The taper may not be the hardest part of a marathon training programme, but the experts say it is definitely the most important. Continue reading →

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Posted in 2004, training

45. T-I-R-E-D

Posted on 24 March, 2004 | 1 comment

My computer hard disk crashed yesterday, which seemed appropriate. It wasn’t the only hardware that was suffering.

papercourt-lock-river-wey.jpgThe Bath Half Marathon last week gave me a useful opportunity to experience the thrill of racing again, and to assess my fitness levels.

The appalling weather also offered a good ‘dry run’ (if that’s the correct word) for running a race in the wet, if that’s the weather which should be served up by the London Marathon. 

A successful day, but I’ve paid for it since. My legs have been stiff and heavy. My motivation’s been tested, and found wanting. Hell, I felt tired. I still do.
Continue reading →

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Posted in 2004, A1 - the best of roads of stone, the marathon journey, training

44. Bath Half Marathon: Minerva’s revenge

Posted on 18 March, 2004 | Leave a comment

bath-spring-rain.jpgWelcome to Bath – UNESCO World Heritage Site‘ – reads the roadsign, rather incongruously greeting the weary traveller at this dull spot between the railway line and the Texaco garage. Four miles have gone by in the lashing rain and there are another nine to go in the Bath Half Marathon.

Bath is famous for its hot springs, and there is no doubt at all that the aquifer is being fully recharged in the foggy hills around the town. The goddess Minerva presided over the Roman baths built here, and the weather she’s organised is extracting a bitter revenge on the runners gathered for the race. Even the glorious pale gold of the Bath stone mansions in Great Pultney Street had looked a bit drab as we’d shivered back at the start line, waiting for a delay just long enough for the rain to arrive.

All that Georgian architecture is far behind us here, and a third of the race is already run. Continue reading →

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Posted in 2004, history, racing

43. A sense of time – Earth history and the London Marathon

Posted on 12 March, 2004 | 6 comments

grand-canyon-a-sense-of-time.jpg

In geology, you learn about time. About a lot of time.

As I look from my window upon the Surrey Downs, I see the Chalk and Greensand hills, walked by pilgrims heading east to Canterbury for eight hundred years and more. That seems a lot of time.

But to the Earth, it’s nothing. Our planet is around 4.6 billion years old, give or take a few. That IS a lot of time.

A new perspective is required, so let’s imagine the Earth’s own lifetime as a marathon course. The longest journey, but even in this unimaginable race, every 100 million years meant just one kilometre en route from Greenwich to The Mall.
Continue reading →

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Posted in 2004, A1 - the best of roads of stone, environment, evolution, geology, science, the marathon journey

42. Twenty six times two – marathon dreams in the Surrey Hills

Posted on 4 March, 2004 | Leave a comment

A familiar sense of anticipation, and a race at last. The last few weeks of training have gone by in a flash, and it’ll be good to see how I fare on the road again. After weeks and weeks of running into the dusk, at last a bright and sunny morning. I’m feeling pretty good today as I open the curtains and look out. Spring seems to have arrived at last, and I can feel it in my step as I bound down the stairs for a big breakfast.

sunken-lane-surrey-hills-and-st-johns-church-wotton.jpg

My mother makes me a mountain of toast and marmite, the sun streaming now through the kitchen window of my youth. It’s a perfect day, and time to get ready. I pull on my favourite racing kit and try to imagine the race, how it will feel. I focus on the good feelings – calm, cool running through the early miles, feeling the distance kick in, but staying with it. For as long as it takes.
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Posted in 2004, Shakespeare Country, Surrey and Sussex, the marathon journey

41. A Lincolnshire legend – Sir Isaac Newton

Posted on 27 February, 2004 | 2 comments

sir-isaac-newton-woolsthorpe-lincolnshire.jpg
Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night
God said “Let Newton be!”
And all was light.
Alexander Pope

A hundred miles north of the capital, the A1 London – Edinburgh road crosses a forgotten and largely empty swathe of farmland. Forgotten because today it’s on the way to somewhere, but at the centre of nowhere. And empty because of what happened here more than six centuries ago. The Black Death arrived suddenly in Lincolnshire, in September 1348, but, within a few weeks, a third of the population was dead, and this once prosperous and populated piece of agricultural England lay devastated.
Continue reading →

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Posted in 2004, A1 - the best of roads of stone, heroes, history, science, the marathon journey