Category: Running

I’m like a John Deere tractor…

~ kevinrevell ~ Leave a comment


Here are two things that happened to me on a run this morning.

It was a reasonably early start, the temperature was about -3, and I wanted to get 20 miles in, ideally before the family had started missing me. For anyone who has met my family, you’ll realise that this is veering into the realms of self-aggrandisation; no member of my family admitted to missing me, has ever pleaded with me to stay at home rather than go out, and none of them has ever been in the least bit pleased to see me on my return from a run.

Anyway, it was really cold. If I’d not been reading Mark Beaumont’s excellent book about cycling around the world the night before, I would have started feeling a tad sorry for myself. If you get a chance to read this, do. Once you get past the rather graphic descriptions of open saddle sores, it’s an amazing account of self determination in the throes of a real physical test. And the bit I’d read the night before included him sleeping outside in sub-zero temperatures, and getting back on the bike just to keep from freezing, so a frosty run around the French countryside didn’t actually seem so bad.

I was in a vaguely grumpy mood, partly as I found my ipod had lost its charge again. Normally I’m accompanied by Simon Mayo, Sandi Toksveg or Danny Baker on these runs, but no luck this morning, so, I was going to have to do 2.5 hours alone with my thoughts. And again, as my family will testify, that’s a dangerous amount of time. If you spend that amount of time just thinking, you can a) solve the riddles of the world, or b) let your mind wander around in a random collection of vaguely connected and surreal thoughts. I tend to opt for the latter, not least as my normal long runs with my friend G are more constructive, generally trying to ease him from his lofty political position just to the right of Ghengis Khan, to something a little more liberal. Occasionally I get him just this side of Lord Tebbit, but then we get to the end of our run, and he reads another week’s worth of the Daily Mail and by the following Sunday we’re back to square one.

But I digress. There I was, alone with my thoughts, and two things happened.

Running along a frozen track, with fields either side, three deer ran across in front of me. Not for the first time in this situation, I wondered why on earth I ever bothered with this running lark. To see an animal as graceful as that, running across ploughed and frozen fields, and springing along just…well, naturally, was fantastic to see, but a bit of a contrast to the rather ambling shuffle that I was effecting. It did make me think for a while about human form – other than the absolute top athletes, do we ever look at each other (or ourselves, for that matter) in awe at our grace, or naturalness, when moving? Have a look at a really big event like the London Marathon, next time you see it – after (say) the first 100 finishers, who looks like they’re naturally running? Or better still, if you’re a runner, take your next run through a town centre and sneak a glance in the shop windows when you go past. That, ladies and gentlemen, is you, and it’s exactly why kids point and laugh at you.

So, this thought kept me going for a couple more miles, during which, of course, I tried, remarkably unsuccessfully, to adjust my form to that of a graceful and stylish athlete. And then the horror of the Smurfs struck. If you’re a runner, you may recognise this phenomenon. You’re rattling along, alone with your thoughts, and suddenly, you run out of thoughts, and a song comes into your head. And not just any song, often the most irritating song you’ve ever heard, and you just can’t shift it. Sometimes I give up on the ‘trying to shift it’ bit, and start singing it to myself. Which is why, for the last 4 miles of the 2004 London marathon, I ended up singing verse one of The Smurf Song. Constantly. And, I’m pretty sure, audibly. Fortunately for me, the song that came into my head this morning was slightly less painful. It was the first verse of The Judds’ “John Deere Tractor”. I first heard this in the mid-80’s and the sheer C&W-ness of the lyric has been a benchmark for me ever since, describing a country girl’s adventure into the big city leaving her alone, vulnerable, and fed up with not getting anywhere. Has anyone ever crammed so much good ol’ boy emotion into a metaphor?

I’m like a John Deere tractor in a half acre field

trying to plow a furrow where the soil is made of steel

Oh I wish I was home, where the bluegrass is growin’

and the sweet country boys don’t complain

And, as I went trough this verse for the umpteenth time, I looked to my left onto the field. Which was about half an acre. And frozen. And the John Deere tractor on it was definitely struggling with the plough.

Spooky, huh? Thanks goodness I’d lost the Smurf song by then, otherwise I really would be tripping…

No cortisone, leglift, talk or whine

~ kevinrevell ~ Leave a comment

Tony Cascarino was a journeyman footballer, occasional Irishman and writer of the excellent ‘Full Time’ – one of the few readable footballing biographies around. In Full Time, he describes the process of going to training, towards the end of his career. He struggles to get out of bed, finds his legs completely seized up, hopes against hope that the next cortisone injection will free up his frozen joints, and all the time tries to keep his team-mates and coach in the dark. I remember reading this a few years ago, and thinking how I never wanted this decrepidness to happen to me…

So, I woke up on Sunday to go for the traditional long slow run. Running to my training partner’s house (about 3 miles), then an hour with him, then another 3 home. No problem at all, until I tried to get out of bed. A small pixie with a good supply of drawing pins had installed himself inside my right achilles, and every time I tried to move my foot, in went another pin. Managed to get downstairs to put the kettle on. Despite the early hour, Mrs Emu would be needing tea. Hobbled back up the stairs, and about half way up, my right knee locked, so had to travel the rest of the way on all fours. Finally got out the door, and slowly made my way along the ring road to Glen’s house. After a mile, I figured that it would be more hassle turn back than to carry on, so I carried on, although it felt like a shuffle more than a run, as my legs just didn’t seem to be responding. And so went the rest of the run, which was conducted largely in silence – Glen seemed to be suffering just as much after 2 weeks out with a virus.

So, between the silences, the conversation you’d expect would be a series of whines and complaints, but that’s not what happened. And I put this down to the fact that I read books about Glenn Cunningham, and my training partner reads books about Ranulph Fiennes. Now, most people know about Fiennes – 7 marathons on 7 continents in 7 days, regularly leaving bits of his body behind on arctic explorations, fretsawing his fingertips off in the garden shed because he was annoyed by the pain of frostbite, that sort of thing. And as a result, Glen never complains about the cold, or the length of time we have to spend dragging our sorry carcasses around the Norfolk countryside.

You may be less familiar with Glenn Cunningham though. You can read more about him on the net, and I really recommend his autobiography, appropriately titled ‘Never Quit’. The summary of his story : Cunningham used to run with his older brother, Floyd, to their one-room schoolhouse in Kansas. Floyd’s responsibilities included getting the kerosene stove started in the morning to heat the school for class. When Glenn was eight years old, a delivery truck inadvertently left petrol rather than kerosene at the building. Consequently, the stove exploded into flames, killed Floyd and left the younger Cunningham in critical condition for six weeks. His injuries were horrendous – he’d lost all the flesh on his lower legs, lost all the toes on his left foot, and his left foot arch was destroyed. Doctors were planning to amputate both legs and, after deciding not to, concluded that he would never be able to walk normally again.

The rest of his story reads like a Hollywood screenplay. In the film, Cunningham would probably be played by an overweight Michael Douglas (ever seen the film ‘Marathon’?). So far as I know, there’s never been such a film, but the key parts of the story are about Cunningham teaching himself to walk, then to run, to run competitively, and, astonishingly, to compete twice in the Olympics, and each time with the support of his parents, who would spend hours massaging his legs just so that he would be pain-free enough to put one foot in front of the other. There’s a lot more to this story than I can do justice to here, but suffice to say, it’s an absolute inspiration.

And my personal lesson out of all of this, is that it’s an excellent story to think about when your legs are getting a bit tired or your knees start misbehaving. We can’t all have the talent, the perseverance and the pain threshold of Glen Cunningham, but maybe we could all use a bit of ‘Never Quit’ now and again.

More blimmin’ training

~ kevinrevell ~ Leave a comment

13 miles on Sunday, not too bad but my legs ached all Sun pm

4 miles Mon am to get moving again

4.5 miles Mon pm as Achilles sore and wanted to know that it would bear a run – reasonably ok after 3 miles but really sore after

5 miles Mon pm – hills x 10 (1min) achilles sore but good to get the smell of London off

So, this is the sort of thing that a blogging runner ought to put into his or her blog is it?

I do find, 10ish years after I started this running lark, that it’s harder and harder to get all the bits working at the same time. I live about 2 miles from work, and get marginally more comfortable as I get to the office in the morning, and just about moving properly as I reach the door – which means that I end up putting a couple of extra miles in to prove to myself that I can still run.

All of which is fine. Really.

However…where I do have a bit of a problem is in hearing some of the things that people say for why they don’t run*

“Terrible problems with my knees”

“Tried running but had to give up after a few days”

“It hurts my legs to run”

This probably sounds a bit too alpha-male, but the whole point of it, is that it does hurt.

That’s why it’s called training. It’s training your body to deal with exertion which either you’ve untrained it to do over the years, or, if you’ve kept yourself clean, is at the extremes of your capability. So of course it’s going to be uncomfortable, especially at first. But then it sort of becomes a (good) habit. Even if your achilles aches all the time.

*or cycle, or swim, or whatever