Been Down Too Long

I feel like a penitent Catholic returning here. I have sinned and not blogged for some time. I seek forgiveness. There’s not much deep wisdom in this post. Well, to be honest, none at all. It does, however, serve to plug a bit of a gap.

Truth is, for some of the time since my last proper chapter, I really didn’t have much to say, nor much inspiration to say it with. I wasn’t racing. Training was progressing, though running seemed some way off. That was three months ago, I now realize, and water has flowed under the proverbial bridge.

One promise I have made to myself in recent years, since my dalliance with depression, is that I will not beat myself up in training. At least, if I realize it’s happening again, I’ll back off, or change my routines. I realized also that progress was made from the accumulation of small gains, so I set myself small targets.

I took stock in early April of where my winter of steady but less than earth-shattering training had got me. I had none of my usual benchmarks, you see. I’d raced no indoor events. I’d had some very low moments mentally mid-winter, and had many times asked myself whether the injury to my left foot’s medial arch was “the one” that would eventually end it all. I speak as someone who had serious and persistent back trouble in his 30s, following quite severe trauma, and was obliged to be a non-athlete for almost 15 years, until the age of 46. You’ll maybe understand that I’d faced that thought before, though in those days there was a certain amount of youthful optimism that seems hard to replicate now.

I began, very tentatively, to run on the gym treadmill in April, just five minutes or so at a time, increasing slightly each session in distance and pace. The aerobic/anaerobic work I’d achieved in the winter on a static bike held good, and that little amount of running felt a bit pathetic. I almost seemed to be teaching my body again what running felt like. My strength training regime, attention to diet, sleep, etc all seemed to have served me well too. I was reaching each training session rested and recovered. I thought (and was being told) I looked well. My daily “ithlete” HRV figures were also a very positive mirror of my feeling of well-being.

The temptation to rush things was there. I’m a sprinter, after all. But I held back. My first proper track training session, in late April, was pretty modest, but without mishap and I committed to such races as I’m going to do this summer. However, I really had no idea whatsoever how I was going to perform. That hadn’t been the case for many years.

Cutting a long story short, I lined up on a cold, damp evening in mid-May for a local League 200m race. I was running below my age group, to fill a team vacancy and, if I’m honest, also so that I could hide somewhere where a poor performance would to some extent be masked by the youthful vigour of my competitors. Hey, but I came third! It wasn’t fast, and it wasn’t pretty. My racing brain only woke after about 50 metres, and as I came off the bend, my left ankle tightened. I was happy to stride most of the rest of the way, but with enough speed to maintain a top three place. It was really only when I crossed the line that my ankle reminded me that adrenaline can often mask pain in a race. I was hurt. Again. Oh, not again.

Ice is great. I got some on my soleus muscle very quickly. That’s the bit between calf and ankle, to save you looking it up. Next day I hurt. Two days later, Mike, my sports masseur supported my opinion I had a small tear, and he worked around it to disperse the bruising etc. Very successfully, as usual. The following week, I seemed to have function restored, and had another race looming in ten days. I had no plan to really test the leg out before then. I hardly gave my troublesome arch much of a thought. It had held up in the race. It was the next-weakest link in the chain that had failed this time

Last Friday, then, I found myself in a 100m race. I was properly warmed up, but nervous as hell. Telling myself that the worst that could happen would be that something would fail again was no comfort. I got a great start, led the race at 60m and finished third scorer. I’d run at about 90% for most of the way – and at the end, nothing at all hurt. It wasn’t hurting either when I took the baton for third leg of a very competitive 4x200m relay later that evening. We were leading at that point, and this was a crack at a decent Club and League record too. Only 100% would do.

100% it was. It felt wonderful. I can think of only two or three prior occasions where my running has flowed like that. We still led at the end of my contribution, we won the race convincingly, though we missed the record.

And I had no hurt the next day, or the day after that. I think I have a basis for progress now, though it remains one training session at a time, one race at a time and no counting those chickens.

New web material – Masters Athletics

I don’t know why I’d never thought of it before, but someone recently suggested I put out a very short blog each time I upload new material to my web site. Good idea.

I’ve just finished covering most of the top indoor events for Masters athletes in the UK this winter. A tough job at times!

The photos are here.

On a non-sporting front, I also got around to posting a gallery of 100 shots of Venice, here.

Work on The Great Dolomite Road website has come on apace this winter, after much success hunting down old postcards from online sellers. See here.

“Will Ye No Come Back Again?”

The British Masters Indoor Championships this year, at Lee Valley, in March were very hard for me.

I began racing indoors in the far-off days of the Open Competitions at RAF Cosford, in the Midlands. In those impecunious days of the 1970s and early 1980s, it was just possible to get a day return on the train from home, in the South East, all the way to Cosford and arrive in time for one’s first event. It meant getting changed on the train on the branch line to Cosford, and sometimes even doing some warming up exercises on the train! I usually did a 60m and a 200m before having to hurry off to catch the train back to London, and onwards to Kent before the day was out. I very much doubt that the journey could be done any more like that, but no matter: it’s many years since indoor athletics at RAF Cosford ended, sadly.

My first British Masters Indoors was in 2006. If I recall correctly, this was the last time they used Cardiff’s answer to the fairground “wall of death” – the little 4 lane track at the University. I even put some noses out of joint by getting a bronze medal there on my first indoor appearance as a Master. Not long after, I ran in my first Masters International event, the World Indoors, in Linz, Austria. Two semi-final places and a silver medal in the 4×200 relay there were an encouraging debut, I thought.

I’ve had mixed fortunes at the British Masters Indoors the last few years, courtesy of injury, though winning both of the “B” final sprints last year wasn’t too bad, I guess. This year, however, I didn’t even get that far. I was completely sidelined as an athlete, and had to make do with seeing the whole championships down the barrel of a camera lens.

The reader of this blog will already know that I’d ruled out any indoor competition this winter, in an effort to mend my damaged left foot. Well, happy to relate, that is all going pretty well. I’m up to some light jogging on it again, although still some way off being able to sprint. However, even if it had been well enough to race on, my often unpredictable back chose two weeks before the Championships to play up badly again, and at one point I thought it was touch and go that I’d even be there as photographer.

The weekend was a physical marathon. I covered every event in the arena with my camera, save for a few of the age group competitions in the shot and the jumps, and one race on the track, which happened ahead of time while I was making a pit stop. I was on my feet, moving round the stadium and trying to be both technically competent and creative with the camera for more than nine hours on the Saturday and a further seven hours next day. That, plus the small matter of a 120 mile round trip home and back again overnight.

Most previous years, I’ve also competed at least once over the weekend. I’ve decided that actually makes things easier, not harder, because time spent warming up, waiting to race, racing and warming down is all time not spent leaping about taking photos. OK, I got to see races and age groups this year in events I’d normally have missed, but when my own age group was on the track, there was a huge feeling of “I ought to be there doing that”, tinged with a little voice of doubt that said “Well, I hope I still can”.

I was delighted to see friends doing well, especially those notching up national, European and World age group marks in their events over the weekend, but seeing them and capturing their moment of glory on camera was simply no substitute whatsoever for being there as a competitor myself.

The ache in my legs, back and hands from shooting more than 2,000 frames that weekend had faded within days. Not so that other, deeper ache of the frustrated competitor.

Every Beat Of My Heart

An overdue blog.

It’s almost the end of February and I’m trying to become accustomed to not racing indoors this winter. I recently went as photographer to an event I’ve competed in for many years, and it was pretty difficult. Not just watching everyone else, and wanting to say to myself “I can do that”, but also wondering when the next time will be that I get my chance to prove it. I’ve got several other photographic commitments coming up, at events I’m usually also racing at, so for a few weeks, things won’t get easier in this respect.

Elsewhere, there’s good news and not so good news. I’m feeling very fit and well – see more below – but my injured left foot is only showing slow signs of improvement. It’s a lot better than it was, say three months ago. I’ve done a little gentle running on it (and on the other one, of course) and this has been enough to convince me that there is still currently no way I could sprint on it without considerable pain, and setting back such recovery as I’ve achieved to date.

One thing I am proud of, given that I’ve had a pretty bad time with depression this winter, too, is that I’ve got into, and pretty well stuck with, a solid training routine. When I was working for a living, training was often thrown in around evening meetings and stuff. I did the training, but almost always skimped on proper recovery afterwards. I seem to have got that sorted. My current routine is all gym-based, but I’m training there at a quiet time of day, when I have plenty of space, and getting good time afterwards to eat and relax. More than anything, I think it’s the routine that has been holding me together and the routine that is largely responsible for the progress I’ve made.

But I’m not racing, so how do I know I’ve made progress? Well, every three weeks or so, I have a session I do which I regard as a benchmark. It’s never fun, because it requires ten tenths effort, but it has shown me I’m moving forwards. I’ve also been far less prone to the dreaded DOMS – delayed onset muscle soreness – this year. When it strikes, this usually hits me 24-36 hours after training, and can last until the next session is due. It’s seldom something you can “train your way out of”, so it can inhibit the subsequent session. Initially I worried I just wasn’t training hard enough in the first place, of course. The old tendency to beat myself up every session dies hard. I blogged about that stuff not long ago, of course.

My other benchmarkers are digital aids. I’ve used the “ithlete” iPhone app for quite a while now. All it demands of me is one minute each morning, shortly after waking, to take a measurement of my heart-rate variability. Look on the website for the science around this. My figures from last spring and into the summer were very disappointing. By the time I left for my long stay in the Alps in the autumn, I was showing “ithlete” figures as low as ever I’d seen. While in Chamonix, and, of course, away from training and racing, things made a pretty major recovery. I’ve always believed that my “ithlete” figures are also a pretty good guide to my mental state. Thus, they rose in Chamonix as the pressure came off, and dipped when the inevitable “post holiday blues” crept up on me. However, despite some evidence of an up and down cycle through the winter, my overall graph from the system has risen to what I know to be at least very satisfactory levels.

The other aid I use is also iPhone based and is made by the same people. It’s called Precision Pulse, and it’s basically a very good heart rate monitoring app. It measures, and charts, heart rate, calories burned, progress towards anaerobic threshold and things like that, and can immediately display a work-out as a graph including a personalized “TRIMP” (Training IMPulse) setting, which is a recognized measure of training lead stress imposed on the body. The TRIMP figures will show me when I maybe thought I was working hard, though actually not, for example.

I owe a lot to ithlete and Precision Pulse this winter.

Making Your Mind Up

Time for an update, I think.

A couple of blogs ago, I said I’d make no quick decisions about my racing in 2013. I’ve made some decisions after a lot of thought, and quite a lot of trying to put off the need to make those decisions. The passage of time was inevitably a factor, given the need to put in entries for upcoming track meets, commit to travel and accommodation for overseas events, and so on.

The modified training I’m doing to work around the pain in my left foot, caused by medial arch problems, is going well. What’s really going well is my training routine. I’m fortunate to live ten minutes walk away from a well-equipped and relatively spacious gym. I’ve been a member long enough to know some of the staff quite well, and it’s a good, supportive environment in which to train. Right now, it is the core of all my training; because there is simply no point in me trying to train on a track (20 miles away) all the while running is so painful and counter-productive.

I’m fortunate these days to have great power over my diary, and I have managed to stay in a very regular routine which gets me three good training sessions each week, and enough rest between each of these. I’m also able to train at quiet, off-peak times of day, albeit that the price is training alone almost all of the time. Previous blogs refer.

If there was ever “a plan”, it was sort-of a hope that as I got fitter and stronger during the winter, I’d a) cope better with the problem in my foot, b) realize that the indoor track season was imminent, and c) somehow turn up ready to race, come the day. However, it’s a plan full of holes and by mid January, it was really only part b) that was coming to fruition!

There’s no doubt I’ve made some very good progress in terms of fitness. I’ll blog sometime about the two iPhone apps I’ve used for quite a long time to track this. I’m seeing objective evidence of progress, and the subjective evidence matches it! But I’m a sprinter, and sprinters race.

Deciding to skip all indoor competition this winter was quite easy. I’d only have entered something like four meets. I’ll actually still be going to them all as a photographer. As I write, the start of the stuff I normally do for my summer track season is more than four months away, and I remain optimistic that I’ll be racing then. However, the extent and the level of that racing is the issue.

This year sees the World Masters Championships taking place in Brazil, and not until October. Several issues I’d cite, even before the matter of sheer cost: I’ve never wanted to go to Brazil. I’ve never been convinced by the assurances from those hosting these championships that they will be able to put on a good show. And I’ve certainly never wanted to drag my competitive season out until October.

Because the latter is pretty much what would be involved. Nothing in my domestic racing calendar is due to start later than usual. The national Masters championships, which are usually in late June or July aren’t going to happen until mid September this time. There is no mid-season lull, either.

Factor in my plan to spend another month or more in the Alps this September/October, following the success of the trips in the last two years, and my decision became quite easy. I will only be doing local races in 2013. That means the Kent Masters League. It might mean nothing else.

It’s the end of January. That is the plan. I am content with it. At this point, I don’t see it being likely to alter much, although if it did, my concern is that the alteration would be towards even further reductions in my racing plans.

And sorry, real music lovers, but that Eurovision song was really the only choice for my title this time.

Thanks for the Information

I heard a great interview on the radio this morning with the great Dr Steve Peters. Sadly it won’t be there any more by the time you read this, so I haven’t posted a link.

Readers of this blog will probably know Steve. He’s a great guy. He’s THE sprinter in my Masters age group. I’ve raced him many times, and spent hours with him in places like call-rooms, waiting to race at championships. I handed him the baton for the final leg of the World Masters 4x100m relay in Finland in 2009. I’m proud of that gold medal, one of three relay golds I’ve won alongside Steve.

4×100 relay 2009 (by Lesley Richardson)

I was also struck that in the interview, Steve’s World Masters wins at 100m, 200m and 400m in 2009 were picked out as his big year. Why did this strike me? Because two of these races – the 100 and 200 – were probably also the high point of my own track career to date. I was 5th in that 100m and 4th in the 200m. I blogged about these races at the time and have mentioned them since.

That 200m final. Steve centre. (By Ken Stone)

The pressure I also heaped upon myself in life and training after those results was, again as I have said before, what I believe to have been one of the defining factors in my slide into depression. Put simply, in the pursuit of even repeating that sort of result, and possibly improving on it, I beat my self up pretty mercilessly. Physically and mentally. No, I didn’t reach the point of actual, commonly understood, “self harm”, but I hurt my body and my mind nonetheless. Steve Peters would fully understand if I describe it as having totally lost any sense of perspective about what I was doing. To the extent I would have described as obsessive? Maybe, but it would have been called sadistic if someone had inflicted it on me. To call it “masochistic” almost seems to suggest I might occasionally have enjoyed it. No. My mind saw it as a necessary evil, not anything to be savoured.

When you train alone, as my lifestyle then and now tends to dictate as necessary, you inevitably spend far too much time looking inwards at yourself. I used to say that I could never be bothered anyway with other peoples training problems, such as you’d encounter working as part of a group. But what you don’t get, training alone, is some of the necessary challenge and comparison. Solo, looking inwards, you can kid yourself you’re progressing. Maybe by comparing how badly something hurt the last time you did it, for example. The only way forward from that becomes doing it again until the same distance, time, weight, etc, hurts more. That, or you continue to do it in the hope that, by the time it hurts less, you’ll have made the progress you were seeking. That’s all folly, of course. You’re more likely to have burned out a few fuses in your physical and mental systems instead by then.

At the time, I felt I was fortunate during that period of late 2009/early 2010 to have remained relatively free of injury. Looking back, of course, I can see that, while an injury might have been frustrating, it might also have been exactly what I needed to regain some sense of perspective. As it was, staying free of significant strains was just part of the mix that was convincing me I was doing things right, or at least, doing the right things.

My blogs from those days are not on this site, but here. I switched to the site you’re reading this on in early 2010. As I read them now, I can spot clues in what I wrote. It’s clear that kidding myself was occasionally part of the game. I’m particularly struck by my apparent fear that my training was “behind schedule”, though I’d be hard pressed to say what the schedule actually looked like!

I’m not qualified to say whether the pressure I imposed on myself, coupled with other things going on around me, over those months, was itself the trigger for the resulting damage. It seems such a short period. However, I can also see it in the context of pressure that had been ramping up for maybe a couple of years previously. I’m coming to see these as “dark days” containing memories I seldom revisit, and I’m not about to start.

But back to Steve Peters and the interview that triggered off this blog. At one point, talking about sport and sports-people, Steve said “were just entertainers really”. We’re what? “Entertainers”? I’ve just had a huge dose of perspective poured over me.

Go well, Steve.

British Masters 100m 2009 (by Lesley Richardson)

Yes, my title’s a music reference again. It’s a track from Van Morrison’s fabulous “No Guru, No Method, No Teacher” album. Sort of ironic, that album title, eh?

Late November

No blogged a sporting blog for a bit. There’s a reason for that. I’ve been putting off putting some difficult thoughts down in writing.

To be very honest, my injured left foot is not really getting better. It’s nearly six months now since I started getting significant pain in the ball of my foot and my first two toes. This was traced to a failure of my medial arch. Kinesio taping provided temporary relief, and insoles with a high arch provide relative comfort when standing and walking. I survived six weeks walking in the Alps, during which time the pain didn’t increase, but didn’t go away, either.

I made a tentative resumption of training a couple of weeks after returning from the Alps. I saw this as “training for training”, and began quite gently. However, running still hurt. I worked around this, doing some good aerobic work on a static bike, and beginning some promising weights sessions. But what good is it if a sprinter can’t run?

It’s also reached that time when I need to set my strategic targets for 2013. That tends to be dictated by the need to arrange flights and accommodation for any major international events in the year. For 2013 these are the European Masters in San Sebastian, in Spain, in March, and the World Masters Games in Turin, Italy, in August. My problem is that I simply cannot envisage me being at either event.

I mean that literally. Part of the preparation is being able to “see” the event in the mind’s eye, and then to work towards it. I can’t. The image won’t come. Bottom line is that I’m just lacking the confidence or the drive to mortgage money and time on another event I fail to get to. That’s “another” on top of the World Masters Indoors in Finland last Easter and the European Masters outdoors in Germany in August. Failure to turn up is becoming a habit.

My priority, of course, is to repair my foot. Nothing happens anyway unless that happens. I get more advice on this shortly. Finding that where it hurts is probably not where the problem resides has made me very cautious about jumping to remedial conclusions.

I’ve already begun thinking in terms of a 2013 season built around just local competition. Possibly not even national championships. On one level, it makes sense. Masters athletics is based on five year age bands. I will be in the top year of my current age group in 2013. That will make it tough to do well, in terms of positions and wins. That’s not a disincentive as such, but objectively makes it a good year to step back from things, perhaps.

And that’s as far as I’ve reached at the moment. No decisions, no solutions, though I am acutely aware that if I just sit on my hands, the passage of time will rob me of some of my options. And writing it down is maybe a way of me coming to terms with the inevitable.

Tom

(ps: The title is that of a haunting Sandy Denny song)

The Party’s Over

Sunset on the Chamonix Aiguilles

I’ve rediscovered what Welsh-speakers call “hiraeth”. The word has no direct translation into English, but “homesickness tinged with grief or sadness over the lost or departed”, or “a mix of longing, yearning, nostalgia, wistfulness” are definitions I found on the web, and both convey it well.

I’d literally just returned home from six weeks in Chamonix, in the French Alps, when I penned my last blog. I’ve now been home a week. I need to write this piece to help me settle, because it ain’t happening of its own accord at the moment!

There was a time when I did this fairly often. At least twice a year. I had a routine, and a proper job to return to, which was sufficiently manic that it helped make my trips away become distant memories very quickly. Life is different now. Up to a point.

The idyll of several weeks galavanting around the mountains is great for getting you fit. Carrying a rucksack full of camera gear is great for getting you strong. But if you have my half-a-lifetime of back trouble, there’s often a payback. Mine came a few days ago. I got out of the car and suddenly realised my back had gone into serious spasm. No sudden thunderbolt; I just seized up completely. I was fortunate to get an early appointment with my good friends the chiropractors at Southcote Clinic (thanks, Ben) and functionality has been restored, though I am “fragile” and aware that my new-found fitness is ebbing away. This isn’t how it should be after six weeks of the very best kind of altitude training.

I grew to like the apartment in Chamonix a great deal. It was simple but adequate and unlike a room in a hotel, I could close the door at the end of a long day and really sink into my own thoughts. Routine was simple: up early (very early a few times!), eat etc, and out. I’d be home by late afternoon most days, which always gave time for a quick stroll through Chamonix. If the weather was up to it, and it usually was, I’d end up in the japanese garden above the town. This is a superb spot to watch the changing light on the Chamonix Aiguilles as the sun sets. Right now, I miss those peaceful twenty minute breaks on my wooden bench possibly more than anything else.

I’ve started work sorting and editing the 6,500 or so photos I took while I was away. Hmm, more than 1,000 a week doesn’t sound many when I reflect that I regularly shoot 1,000 a day and more at a big track and field meeting. I have the tough job coming up, which involves scanning more than 200 large negatives from my big old film camera. I saved that camera for some of the best stuff, on days with a guaranteed good weather forecast, and the negatives look great. I’ve not started, though, because we have the bathroom fitters in at home, and it’s amazing how much dust there is. I’ve put the film scanner under cover and will fire it up next week, I expect.

The digital shots I’m two-thirds of the way through sorting have been trial enough, though. I have an interim “100 best photos” from the trip here on my website. As I was working through the shots, every so often, memory would transport me right back to the moment the shutter was pressed. These feelings were vivid, believe me. Even if I was left with a heavy heart when the feeling passed, I hope the ability of these photographs to do that to me never fades.

Having the builders in has required me to be at home almost all week. That too is about as different from time in Chamonix as it’s possible to get, and I feel really rather imprisoned. It’s helped me focus on getting the photo jobs done, though. I’ve used the Pomodoro Technique to get me through. This has helped my concentration, but has also been vital in ensuring I don’t spend too long sitting down. Thus it helps prevent my back from locking up. I’ve become a very adept tea-boy, too.

In theory, I start training again next week. Or at least, I start that little, very useful phase of training for training. It’ll be the opportunity to see how/if my foot is recovering, and it’ll get some dust out of my lungs. Somewhere deep down inside them is the fresh air from Chamonix….

Tom

(And once more, the title’s a song track. This time from the Albion Band with John Tams)

The View From The Top

Well folks, I seem to be back and home from my 6 week sojourn in France. Time for some kind of reflective blog.

My regular blog reader and my handful of Twitter followers will know that I had an abrupt end to my racing this summer courtesy of persistent problems in my left foot. This didn’t really cause me grief, because I’d planned, in any event, to up sticks and go and live in Chamonix, in the French Alps, for a decent period of time. There was a time, before I returned to running seriously again, that I frequently did quite long stays in the Alps. However, this was always working for the holiday company who entrusted me with a regular supply of new clients to take out in the mountains each week. I’d been musing over that piece of my past a few months ago, and realised how long it was since I’d spent a really significant chunk of “me time” in the mountains.

I also felt I had unfinished business with Chamonix. I was there at what became the end of my big trip away to the European Masters Games, Venice and the Dolomites etc, last September and October. I arrived last year just as almost literally everything was closing for pre-ski season break. Having to eat in McDonalds in the evening because nowhere else was open didn’t seem the right way to enjoy the place. So I left.

To pick up again from there, after a fashion, turned out to be easy. At first go, a few months previously, I’d found a really good apartment that was available to me for the whole of my stay, at a very reasonable price indeed. Save for a bit of accommodation on the journey out, and the machinations of packing, the trip probably involved less pre-planning than any I have ever made. I had a good, quite leisurely journey out, arrived, moved in, sat down, and said to myself “What the hell do you do next?”

Those who know my habits will know I travelled out on my trusty BMW motorcycle, and that I took a whole bundle of camera gear with me. Add in mountain clothing, boots, at least one change of socks, maps, etc, and I was really rather heavily laden. I was glad not to be fitting in any running to this year’s trip like I had last year, so needed to carry none of that stuff.

Chamonix is quite a big place. When I arrived, the tourist season was in full swing. Within days, however, I could see the pace slowing down, the crowds (such as they were) visibly thinning out, the end of season sale signs going up in the shops, and the autumn colours beginning to appear on the trees.

I became a bit of a man on a mission. I really only had a fortnight from arriving until the major cable cars and other lift systems closed for autumn pre-skiing refurbishment. The lifts were key to many places I wanted to visit, and the first part of my stay was quite frenetic. My other half came out to join me for a fortnight over this period, and I guess we ticked most of the boxes in terms of seeing the best sights before getting out in the mountains generally came to require more effort and cunning.

However fit I’d got for the summer’s track season (in truth, not very, and eroded by time off with injury) was definitely not “mountain fit”. There was a time when the gaps between my trips to the Alps were small enough that I never really lost that ‘diesel engine” that would propel me up hill and down dale for weeks at a time. This time, I had to rediscover it after several years as a sprinter. That hurt. As did my poorly foot. However, both improved gradually, though I suspect I had some days that did the foot no favours.

By the time I left for home, I’d taken 6,500 frames on my digital camera, and shot 21 rolls of medium format film in my delicious (but deliciously heavy) Bronica GS camera – another 210 frames. I tried to stay on top of what I was shooting, too, by sorting and editing almost every evening, and on the few wet days that I had while there. A sample of the best of what I shot went straight on to my gallery at 500px. These plus a lot more will be going on a gallery on my web site before very long.

Being self-contained, I always had the option of doing very little when it rained. I think in the whole trip I had five separate but continuously wet days (as opposed to nights). I never once in the trip needed to put on wet weather gear out in the mountains, barring one day when the sudden onset of the Fohn wind necessitated wearing goretex jacket and over-trousers as a lifesaver against that violent and invisible foe! I imagine that’s not a bad record for a long stay in Chamonix in the autumn, either.

A panorama of the Chamonix Aiguilles and the Grades Jorasses from early one morning

I always find leaving places hard. Same this time. I ditched plans to have a week travelling home, and was glad in the end I did it with just two stops. Right now, my head is full of a swirl of recollections, images, sounds, tastes etc. These will fall into some kind of order when I sit down and start editing the photos, I’m sure….

Oh, and the Bear had a good time too, thanks for asking.

Tom
(and in case you wondered, the title is another song track. Cat Stevens circa 1968.)

Irish Boy

Yes, 50% of me, and proud of it, too.

I’ve not dropped my habit of titling my blogs after music. “Irish Boy” is the opening track of Mark Knopfler’s soundtrack album to the movie “Cal”. It’s a piece of music I have loved for many years now, and I have “history” with it. It surfaced today while I was sitting editing photographs from my day out in the Alps (I’m still in Chamonix, as I write). I have it as the ringtone on my ‘phone, but I have the whole album on there, too.  It’s also the piece of music I want to be played out to at my funeral, though (you’ll be glad to know) that’s not what hearing it again brought to mind.

There was a time when I supplemented my meagre salary by touring a tape/slide show based around my regular trips to the Italian Dolomites. Tape/slide stuff was expensive. Two projectors (at least) and a music player that would syncronise the pictures with music and change the photos as it played. Plus loudspeakers suitable to the venue, and occasionally a screen, too, though I eventually insisted that this be provided by my hosts. The artistic opportunities were huge, especially for fade/dissolve transitions between shots. I’ll openly admit I was hugely influenced in what I did by seeing several shows by photographer and writer, and all-round very good bloke, John Beatty, who I was once honoured to host at a local fund-raising event. Tape/slide is also now pretty much dead, I guess; overtaken by laptop and digital projector-based evolution.

Not only was the stuff expensive, it was heavy and cumbersome. Mine fitted into three large cases and several carrier bags full of leads and plugs. Setting up would take ages. I usually had help to cart the stuff about. One evening my sherpa moaned “I feel like we’re moving mountains”. The first seeds of the name of my website were thus sown. A few months later, I showed a set of photos I was very proud of, at a show in an upstairs room of a pub, and a woman came up to me afterwards to say “Those mountains were very moving”. What else could I now use as a title. “Moving Mountains” was born.

One of the things about my shows I know (‘cos they told me) people found really drew them in was my choice of music to go with the photos. Very often, I’d use all or most of the “Cal” album. Even when the shows were based around a medly of all kinds of tracks, they’d invariably end with the album’s final track “The Long Road“, and always, but always begin with “Irish Boy”.

Therefore, it’s become a piece of music I relate to in a very visual sense. I have little difficulty recalling many of the images that went with it. I am also one of many people blessed with sound-colour synaesthesia Basically, hear sound, see colour. It’s had me wondering whether there’s a form of the condition where you can see sights and hear music. Now, that would have been a really useful thing back in the tape/slide days!

I have just over a week left here in Chamonix. I was going to have an extended trip home. I’ve just decided against it, and booked my return journey accommodation. I really just felt like this stay here would be too tough an act to follow. If you want to see what I mean, have a look at the most recent dozen or so photos on my gallery at the 500px web site. I can’t match that on my homeward trip!