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!

Brothers In Arms

I have just been spooked half out of my life. Really and truly. Like this:

As I write, I am still in Chamonix, where I’m taking an extended break. Chamonix is a bit of a gathering place for people of all nationalities, and one of the local sports – for me anyway – is to sit taking coffee outside the patisserie in the main street, and to see whether you can work out the nationalities of those walking past. It can be quite hard to do with fellow mountain-lovers. The gear tends to be pretty similar wherever you’re from,, although a few nations have more fashion-victims than others.

Sometimes the Brits are unmistakable, and this was the case this time. Down the street came a prematurely grey-haired guy, wearing an old blue Berghaus jacket and blue jeans. His slightly shambolling walk, one hand in one pocket, the other tucked under the strap of his rucksack was that of climbers and walkers hanging out in a mountain town on a wet day anywhere in Europe. And this was a wet day that could have been anywhere in Europe. What really caught my attention, though, was that this was a familiar figure. It was the walk that gave it away. Forgetting I’d not yet paid for my coffee and bun, I shot out into the street and greeted him: “Hello Steve!”

And as soon as the words had left my mouth, I knew I was wrong. This wasn’t Steve (name changed). Steve had been a work colleague the best part of twenty years ago. He was, I think they’d have said then and now, a “singular” individual. An amazingly talented guy, hugely well read; the first person I ever heard talking about what we’d now call open data (yes, even in the 1990s); gifted with a mathematical brain I could only wonder at. He’d built his own house, travelled all over the world. And, if you had the knack, he was a wonderful conversationalist. Not many had that knack, so most found him taciturn and remote. Happily, he and I hit it off greatly. It was a time when I was spending several months each year in northern Italy and the Dolomites, and I know Steve was envious of my opportunity. He joined me on one of the hut touring/via ferrata climbing holidays I used to lead, in a small group of a dozen people, but such was his experience of other parts of the world, that I actually think he was a bit non-plussed with the Dolomites. One of very few I can say that about.

No, this wasn’t Steve I met this afternoon. Because Steve had been killed in about 2001 in a stupid minibus accident somewhere on the other side of the world. There was no UK funeral, and no service of remembrance. Those who knew Steve never really had a chance to grieve for his passing. To me, his life has always been the epitome of the Dr Seuss saying “Don’t be sad because it’s over. Smile because it happened.” I actually only came by that quote a couple of years ago, and it filled several gaps in my emotions. The one relating to Steve in particular.

I was immediately prepared to die of embarrassment in the street in Chamonix. I could see now that the face and hairline were slightly different. I’d made a classic gaffe, and was hoping the guy was also Brit, so that we could laugh it off together with no language barrier. I was singularly unprepared for what happened next.

“No, I’m not Steve. I’m John. Steve was my brother but he’s been dead a few years now. Who are you?”

I think I almost forgot who I was. I felt like someone had just hit me with a hammer. I gabbled out a semi-coherent apology-cum-explanation. We looked at each other, and then both exploded into laughter, with me also trying to fight back some very genuine tears.

“Steve would have loved that just then” said John. “You know, there’s not a day goes by when I don’t miss him? He was ten years older than me, but we were very close.”

Steve had been the sort who had never let on that he had a brother, close or not.

We sat and had a brief coffee. Brief, because John was on his way to catch a train somewhere, and we did what you do in such circumstances, and shared some tales of the guy we knew. Then John left for his train. I walked back to my apartment, numbed beyond belief by what had happened.

It was only when I turned the key in my front door that I realised I’d not swapped addresses with John. I’d no idea where he was living and no means to contact him. I began to feel that I’d had an encounter with a ghost, and that the whole thing hadn’t happened. But it did, just over an hour and a half ago.

Here Comes The Sun

Forgive me blogsite, for I have sinned. It has been one month since my last blogging.

Actually, there wasn’t all that much to say about most of that time. “Ouch” would just about cover it all. My injured foot continued to plague me and make training if not actually impossible, at least very difficult. At the beginning of September, I was down to race three times in a day at the Final competition of the SCVAC Masters Leagues. Bit optimistic, but as team manager, I couldn’t really say no. Probably needless to say, my foot failed in the first race, and I spent the rest of the day as a spectator. A noisy one, mind. And we won the match, so I don’t feel too bad about asking a colleague to stand in for me at very little notice.

I left for Chamonix, in the French Alps, the very next day. Part of me couldn’t wait to leave the country. Another part of me wondered whether this trip was going to be a good idea – nearly 6 weeks in one place (not my style) and loads of temptation to do further damage to my foot while walking in the mountains. I took it very easy travelling out. Two overnight stops was overkill, but as I slept 12 hours both nights while travelling, I think it was a good idea. Both days were pretty similar to the first two days of my trip out to Italy this time last year – one day basically blatting down motorways, and one seeing France from the back-roads. I reached Chamonix on a glorious afternoon – a complete change to the rather indifferent weather I’d had here a year back, on the homeward leg of my 3,500 mile journey to celebrate leaving “proper work”.

So, as I write, I am firmly installed in a rather nice apartment in a pleasant and very quiet block, about four minutes walk from the centre of the town, 30 seconds away from the Aiguille du Midi lift system, and so on. My other half is here at the moment, staying for a fortnight in all. But what is really good is the weather.

Septembers in the Alps can be very good indeed. In my time, I’ve spent many happy weeks in the Dolomites between August and October, and my brief visit there again last year reminded me how great it can be. I’ve been far less fortunate with Chamonix up to now. I’ve often arrived and left in bad weather, and remember not a great deal else in between. It was that feeling that I had “unfinished business” with the place that brought me back here, and a persuasion that being here for a decent length of time might give me at least one weather break.

I wasn’t prepared for the sheer brilliance of my first few days, though. No way was I going to watch that weather from the valleys. I had three days out, armed with an over-heavy rucsac full of camera gear, convincing myself that it hurt because I was acclimatising. Of course, it really hurt because I was being a prat with a bad foot and I was carrying far too much. But oh, the weather. Chamonix at its best, even if its best often is several hours walk above the valley floor. Forgove me if I immediately felt sort of “vindicated” in making this my destination.

The weather stayed fine for my first week here, then became seriously “orageuse”, as the excellent local weather forecasts have it, for 36 very wet and stormy hours. They’ve done a lot in the Alps to harness water power and the wind. Surely someone can do something with the lightning? Then, it cleared up overnight, and the sun came out again. The scenery was even better, because the storms had brought the first of the autumn snow everywhere above 2,300 metres high. We spent several days walking at around the new snow-line while I pigged out with the camera. I’ve posted some of the best on my gallery at the wonderful 500px photosharing site

And for now, that’s the shape of it. Might be more words soon. Certainly going to be more photos, so keep an eye on that site.

Simple Twist of Fate

So, as I write, today sees the start of the European Masters Athletics Championships in Zittau, Germany (with bits and pieces being held in Poland and the Czech Republic too). The Opening Ceremony was yesterday evening. And I’m not there.

I’m sad about that. My previous blog describes what led up to the decision not to go. Sad or not, I think it was the right decision, because my injured foot is still very painful. There is no way I could have raced on it, or spent any length of time standing around with my camera, as part of the media crew. I’ll keep an eye on the results, of course, but I do feel very detached from events this time. This is the third major Masters athletics event I’ve missed in the last two years, and I was pretty much good for nothing except taking photos at a fourth event too.

I do wish there were some easy lessons to take away from this. It might help my state of mind at the moment. Actually, I think there probably is a lesson. It’s along the lines of “Life’s a bitch”. Maybe that’s just too easy, though.

I have a friend who is convinced that life works on “yin and yang” principles – night follows day, for everything good, something bad happens, and so on. I could be persuaded at the moment. 2006 to 2009 were great years for me on the track, 2010 to 2012 have so far been the exact opposite. It just seems a bit random to see it all that way, though. I trained and worked every bit as hard the whole time, but sometimes the results came, and sometimes they just didn’t. Maybe it’s just as relevant to see life in terms of “today you’re the fox, tomorrow, you’ll be the chicken”? Perhaps that’s just “yin and yang” described another way? Personally, I’m more of a Tao-ist, and I’ve referenced Tucker Zimmerman’s excellent song “The Taoist’s Tale” previously in my blogging (words here) Do read these. You’ll see what I mean.

Anyway, I’ve got to be optimistic, either way. Perhaps some good’s going to come my way.

It’s also exactly a year since I left “real” work for the portfolio of things I now do to fill out a day. It was important to me to take a solid and very significant break from my “old world” before embarking on the new one. My blogs in September and October last year record the ups and downs of doing that (mostly ups, save for the lonely bits), and guess what? I’m going to do something similar again quite soon. This might be the final blog before that happens.

I have rented an appartment in Chamonix, in the French Alps, for almost all of September and on into October. My wife will be joining me for some of that time. It’ll be a very different break to last year’s however. Then, I really did have a sense of “escaping from it all”, albeit with a sense of purpose attached to travelling out to compete in the European Masters Games. Lonely or not, I also needed some solid time in my own company, I think. And I don’t suppose a day has gone by since I returned home from that adventure when I’ve not thought about it, re-lived bits of it, looked at the photos, or mentioned it in conversation.

Chamonix became my chosen destination because I feel I have “unfinished business” there. I’d planned to stay a little longer last October, until heading into the town one evening for a meal, I realised everywhere (and I mean everywhere, except a kiosk selling chocolate and stuff) was closed. It was the loudest possible message telling me it was time to go home. I was extending my hotel day by day, and I left for home the very next morning. There was no wrench of leaving, as a result. It just seemed the obvious thing to do. You could build good philosophy around that. The “yin” of being there, the “yang” of leaving. The “Tao-ism” of not knowing what was coming up.

Apart from a Tunnel booking, a couple of overnight stops on the way out, and the appartment booking itself, nothing of the rest of the trip has been pre-arranged. That’s not to say I don’t have a “wish list”, of course….

Feet Don’t Fail Me Now

I learned a lot about feet yesterday. I didn’t know that (depending on who you ask) your feet have two (or three) arches, all vital to movement. The transverse arch – across the foot – is one I really knew nothing about. Turns out mine has failed a bit, and is the direct cause of the excruciating left foot pain I have experienced for the last couple of months. My pain was in the ball of my foot and my toes. Understandable that, given the inflammation there too, this was where I was getting and applying treatment, seemingly to no effect.

Symptoms! Symptoms! My chiropractor spotted the cause quickly. My transverse arch had begun to fail, and the metatarsal bones (the ones down to the toes) were being called on to do work they were not designed for. A few uncomfortable manipulations of my foot and a snug band of tape around it and Jesper announced I was probably sorted. As miracle cures go, it was quick and convincing. I need to get the inflammation down and give the foot good time to rest and recover, but already I’m walking with far less pain.

The bigger problem is one of timing. I raced at the British Masters Championships last weekend. With my running spikes done up tight, I could cope with 100 metres, and was flattered by fourth place in the A Final. 200 metres was another thing altogether. I’ve been running rubbish times all year, and only got seeded to the B Final. I could run the bend hard. Bend running places more stress on the outside of the foot, where I was having no pain. Thus, I hared off from the gun. However, after the bend comes the straight, and with maybe 30 metres of the race to go, my left foot was making itself known in no uncertain manner. You might think that the adrenaline of racing would mask this. Well, if it did, I didn’t notice then. I was overtaken by two others and finished third, glad to stop and rest my foot. I did get a season’s best time from that race, but I could have been a whole lot faster without the pain. I think the time was largely down to it being the first occasion in the year that I had raced on a dry track, and not into a howling gale either.

So, foot pain right at that moment was bad timing. However, the British Championships were supposed to be a final building block in my preparation for the European Masters in Germany, in August. The thoughts had been around in my head for a while: did I want to travel all that way for what might amount to failure in two painful qualifying races and a lot of standing around taking photos? Well, no, I didn’t. My foot now needs rest and some gentle rehab. That’s completely out of line with the build up preparation and speed work I’d expect to be doing and need to be doing, before a big championship. There were a few people I needed to talk it through with, but basically I knew the answer; I was going to have to withdraw from the Europeans. Going there just to be a photographer was an option, but I’m an athlete, and I just could not see myself being there in a non-combatant role.

So, I cancelled. I’m not going. Definite. I missed the World Masters Indoors in April too, owing to my calf injury. That’s now almost totally sorted, by the way. I guess I just need to see this as one of a sequence of bad years, and bounce back from it. I’ve got one more competition, but not for about 6 weeks. I shall build for that and then pull the plug on 2012.

I’m sad about it. It’s been basically bad luck and bad timing.

Who was that Masked Man?

That title (a hat-tip to the 1960’s Lone Ranger tv series) might date me, of course!

I spend breakfast-time most days listening to music and reading up on the latest on social media, plus links stored up from the previous day. It kickstarts the brain. Well, it does mine, anyway. However, today, my reading was tinged with sadness.

Out of the blue, the bloggers at We Love Local Gov announced they were closing the site down. No more will there be piquant, thought provoking, occasionally hilarious daily chapters from people who have always “got it”, to send me on my way once the final dregs of tea have been drained.

The news came just hours after the end of the #lgovsm tweet up about encouraging more blogging in and about local government. Particularly from within it. That made the We Love Local Gov news all the more of a shock, though I have to say I was quickly in agreement with this blog post from Dave Briggs of Kind of Digital.

I posted on the final WLLG blog my thanks to them for setting what I described as “the gold standard”  Three years of a solid, well-written and well-argued daily blog is one hell of a legacy. I hope that, as Dave Briggs said, they do end up being an inspiration and encouragement to others, and that others will want to, as it were, carry the torch from here. That is, of course, what the WLLG bloggers hope for, too.

The #lgovsm session suggested that although there are many local government bloggers, there are even more would-be ones who are being held back, or are feeling held back, by poor IT infrastructure at work, or (more commonly) by fear of what senior management might think, say or do, the moment the blog goes in some way “off message”. This is desperately sad, of course, especially as the view is often based on an un-tested assumption about that management reaction.

This is leading many to blog anonymously and outside their work context, but is leading many more to conclude that blogging is just too risky at a time of highly politicised, cash strapped local government. I understand that, of course, having been on the receiving end of my fair share of idiocy and knee-jerk reaction in my time. WLLG contributors remained anonymous, of course, but in their case, it enabled them collectively to convey a far broader context and content than any one blogger doing one job in one local authority could ever do.

So, thank you WLLG. All power now to the likes of Comms2point0  and Weekly Blog Club and a gauntlet thrown down to the rest of us.

…with a little help from my friends.

Hello. Have you missed me?

That seems a better way to start than with another grovelling apology that it’s been a while now since my last blog. To be honest, there’s not been a great deal going on in my sporting life that I’ve felt much like writing about. However, for the sake of continuity, and in order to get a particular issue off my chest, here’s an update.

I started racing again in May. I’ve run about six times in all since then, including a couple of relay legs. The news is good and bad.

The good is that my troublesome right calf now seems much more stable. I am taping it with kinesio tape each race, but it has stayed in one piece so far. Thanks are due in huge measure to Mike Fossett, my sports masseur at Southcote, for persevering when I was, frankly, close to giving up on it altogether. Also good is that I’ve finished in the top two or three in every race I’ve had, so far. Important, because it confirms that my relative performance is generally ok.

Why is that important, you ask? Well, it’s because the clock will show that, so far, this year’s times have been simply awful. I am a full second down, at least, on where I’d want to be over 200m and half a second at 100m. The reason is basically the weather. Every race I’ve had has been severely affected by headwinds and crosswinds. I was delighted a few days ago to be warming up for a Kent Masters League fixture where the wind was, if anything, coming from behind. Five minutes before the race, it swung a full 180 degrees the other way…

The bad? It’s between my ears mostly, I think, although Jesper Dahl, chiropractor sans pareil seems to have found muscle and bio-mechanical issues for me to work on in training. My calf  hurt when running pretty much without major relief, from January 2011 until recently. The pain and frustration was huge, and I’ve written about it in previous blogs. Now it seems to be, at very least, on the way to mending, yet I appear to be unwilling or unable to trust it and really put down the power when I sprint, for fear it will once again let me down. The slightest twinge in it had me backing off in a recent 100m race, where a win and a season’s best time was a likelihood. Not being prepared to push it that little bit further lost me a 200m League race the other day, too.

Answers on a postcard to the usual address….

I was due to race in the Southern Counties masters championships at the beginning of June. As it happened, it would have been a filthy cold, wet day to do any sort of sport (remember the day of the Queen’s Thames Pageant? It was that one) but it never actually came to it. Not just for me, but for everyone else who was entered. The Championships were cancelled a few days before the first gun was due to be fired. Reason? The organisers were simply unable to get a complete or in any way adequate team of officials, marksmen etc, to allow the event to go ahead.

In all the years I’ve been competing, this is, I am sure, the first time this has happened at an event I’ve entered. I was quite shocked, too. Not in the sense of being annoyed that I couldn’t race. Certainly not in the sense (particularly with hindsight) that I couldn’t get out there with my camera and record the event. No, I was shocked because it really brought it home to me how completely reliant my sport, and doubtless many other sports too, are on volunteers who give up their time to skillfully administer our competitions. From the bloke who takes the entries right through to the lady who makes the teas, we athletes could not do what we do without these selfless helpers, many of whom have amassed great skill at how Masters Athletics meets should work and what Masters Athletes are like. OK, some might say that holding a championships in the middle of an extra-long bank holiday weekend was not a good idea, though I am sure that the decision was not taken blindly. And it does not alter my key point, that my sport is dependent on the officials who give their time freely and voluntarily.

Fire!

I’ve not blogged for a few weeks. It seemed a bit like tempting fate. To begin with, training was going pretty well, and I just wanted to get on with it. Easter gave me a break in Paris, mostly spent on my feet, but the return to training after that was when, in the current vernacular, it all began to go “tits up”.

Like most Masters athletes, I lead an occasionally very busy “normal” life when not pretending to be a superstar. That means that I have to juggle commitments to stick to a regular and planned training schedule. I’m not always successful with this, and my routine gets compromised, leading to days when a planned session gets missed, or two are crammed in close together. I also know the importance of rest, and often nag others about the simple equation that says training + recovery = progress.

My problem has been that these factors have been in tension lately. There’s also an equation that says (sense of obligation to train hard + diary) >;;;= (training + recovery). Or, at least, there is now. I just invented it. In other words, I missed some sessions, overcompensated (or so I saw it), to “make up for lost time”. The lost time relates to my calf problems (see earlier blogs), which at least seem under control at present. Time being finite, and continually subject to the real world, meant the perceived returns on that training without adequate recovery were poor. Obligation seems to be the enemy of rest, and therefore, one falls into a spiral of training when less than properly rested, not progressing, and kidding ones-self that keeping the training intensity high will break the spiral.

It never does, and it is always a downward spiral, too.

I returned to using the ithlete app on my iPhone. Only reason I stopped was that the battery on my wristwatch heartrate monitor and its chest-strap I use when training both ran out, and I took so long to replace them that I just got used to training without heartrate feedback etc. Ithlete uses signal from the chest-strap, so I stopped using that, too. The ithlete information seemed to be suggesting I wasn’t recovering very well from some sessions. I promised myself a few “easy” sessions that probably weren’t when I did them, and I began to see my ithlete graph steadily declining, and hitting the red zone too frequently.

This is a bad position to be in, just days before my outdoor track season for 2012 begins. My current strategy is to persuade myself there is no training gain towards next week’s races to be had from any session I put in this week – adaptation takes longer – and that I’ll cope by just keeping loose and well-stretched. Immediate signs are that this is working. The slight head-cold feeling, which I was writing off as the start of hay fever, has faded. I also got my first green (recovered well) line on the ithlete graph earlier this week. I think I may be sleeping better too.

Burnout is probably too strong a word for where I’ve been, but I certainly think I’ve put my fingers in the flames recently, and need to be vigilant.

Don’t Look Back!

So, my indoor track season is over. Blink and you’d have missed it this year. Just three race meetings, and a total of six races. Did I really train that hard just for them?

I guess that, given the persistence of my calf injury through the winter, I should be pleased that I’ve come through it nearly unscathed. I needed to tape my leg for each race, but I didn’t do it any greater harm. I was, however, SLOW! OK, I got two medals at the Southern Counties Championships (silver and bronze) and I won both “B” finals at the British Masters Championships, ending up 4th overall on times in the 60 metres. But I am rather disappointed with the times I ran. Over 200 metres, make that “very disappointed indeed”.

My winter’s training has left me strong and (by my own standards) pretty agile. That’s great, given that strength and agility were two of my winter targets. However, being regularly unable to run in training at little faster than a jog has meant that I’m just not in the groove when it comes to running fast. And that’s a bit of a drawback for a sprinter, especially one who reckons that 200m is usually his best event.

I think it was my friend and track maestro Steve Peters, amongst others, who said “you’re only as good as your last race”. The wisdom of that is only now dawning on me. That’s because, far too often this winter, I’ve been telling myself things like “Hey, you almost won a World Championship 200m medal in 2009” and “Remember when you raced three great rounds of 200m in a day at the World Indoors in 2008?” The thing is that, while thoughts like this might console my ego, living on past glories tends to make one flabby in current training.

Me, flabby? What I mean is that there have been far too many occasions where, on the pretext that I was protecting my injured leg, I’ve looked back and said something like “Yeah, well you don’t lose the ability that got you [A, B or C] overnight, do you?” I’ve allowed a bit of nostalgia to take the place of ambition, targets and so on. No, that’s not correct. Actually, I’ve allowed a LOT of nostalgia to do that.

It isn’t an “age thing”, even though it’s obvious that the older you get, the more you have to look back on. I have a friend who is very focussed on a world age group record in his own event this August. This is motivating him hugely, and the training sessions he’s putting in literally put mine to shame. And what are my own ambitions for the upcoming summer track season? Erm…ummmm…weeellll…..I guess if I am honest, they involve words like “survive”, “get through it”, and so on. Of course, I’m the first to admit that this isn’t how it ought to be.

I guess what I’m lacking is a decent set of benchmarks. My indoor times were, as I’ve said, slow and unsatisfying. Even when I got those two medals, I couldn’t help looking on the times as so far adrift from much better performances that had won me nothing at all in past races. What I mean is that they were “OK” times for that competition – after all, I finished up near the sharp end of the field, didn’t I? See, there’s that nostalgia thing lurking in there all the time, isn’t there? I’m wanting to be as good as races I ran a couple of years ago, or more; I’m finding the reality difficult.

Now, that might be an age thing. Maybe I’ve just reached the age where performance on the track starts to decline more noticeably than before? I’ve been unusual in that respect. I returned to sprinting aged 46, after 15 years away from it. I didn’t run my current Masters 200m best time for another 8 years, and my 100m best 9 years after my return. I am also firmly convinced that depression, and anti-depressant medication, in the last two years has robbed me of vitality. I’m not bitter about that. Depression is a bastard, but it’s a bastard I’m coming to terms with, and one that hasn’t managed to rob me of most of the things I hold most dear. You’ll never get me to say that I’m glad for my depression, but it has changed me, and made me a stronger person – that I do believe. Just not a faster one!

I now have about a month before the outdoor track season begins. I am nervous about the month. I want to use it to build on what that modest set of winter competitions has shown me is still lurking in the machine, but I am really keen to do that without triggering more hurt, which in turn will trigger more under-performance, and disappointment.

What I do need to do is take some of my own advice. So often, I’ve found myself saying to other athletes suffering far worse hurt than me “Always remember: in Masters athletics there is always next year.”

An evocative drawing by my clubmate Paul Ross-Davies