How I Don’t Choose Events…They Choose Me.

Posted on January 28, 2013 by James Clay

I was thinking on the walk home from the office about choosing events. It was a pleasant distraction from thoughts of “bloomin’ heck it’s chilly” and “how can wind be so constant”. Sadly nothing could completely divert my attention from the sideways rain but you can’t have it all…

Anyway, my daydream was something like this. I imagined getting all my athletic friends in a room on January 1st, with a large wall calendar and some coloured pens. There was also cake and hot chocolate, and some calorie free cider – that’s the beauty of daydreams. Anyway, some of my friends were poring over the free events guide from Outdoor Fitness, whilst others were armed with ipads searching the Runner’s World events page. My oldest friends were there to remind me of our annual commitments and Jess Ennis offered to help me with my training. (daydream, remember?)

My new training partner

My new training partner

So after lots of suggestions, arguements, counter arguements and choosing the right coloured pen depending on event type, I had a full events calendar. It was organised around a realistic training plan of steady improvement throughout the year, split between running, mountain biking and combining the two. There were two events each month, I knew who I’d be doing each event with and my entire year was planned out ahead of me.

It was terrifying.

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My daydream had become a daymare of organised fun and serious planning.

Luckily that isn’t how event planning happens. It happens much more organically, as it did today. I got a message from someone who said they couldn’t do an event we were considering because they were doing two others instead. I looked at the two others. I mentioned them to a friend. That friend was interested in doing one of them. I put something on Facebook, found two friends already doing it. Another friend saw the conversation and said they’d be interested…and somehow by the end of the day I’d signed up to another 10k, a 10 miler and am considering a few others events. I’m running with old friends, new ones and people I’ve never met. I wasn’t planning to do more trail runs, they don’t fit neatly in to any training plan and I haven’t thought about travel arrangements, my only consideration was “am I free that day” and now I’m not.

I now have 9 potential race numbers booked already, not a bad haul for the year but I’m by no means finished yet! I’m still on the look out for more events to enjoy, but I won’t need to look too hard because I know these things just have a habit of finding me…

(You can see the events I’m doing here)

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Operation Boy Racer

Posted on January 22, 2013 by James Clay

VROOOOM vroom vroom vroom vroom!

Nope, not a Crazy Frog impression, but the noise I’m going to make whilst I’m running around the track at Silverstone in 40 days. I’ll probably add some screeeeeeech in the corners too, just for effect.

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I’m gonna run so fast I leave a smoke a trail too.

The eagle-eyed blog readers amongst us may have spotted the entries on my “upcoming events” page rapidly increase in number. It’s race booking season, and there’s still plenty more to choose from and add in when finances allow. (I distinctly remember when running was considered a cheap hobby!)

Loadsamoney!

Loadsamoney!

The first big challenge in the diary is the Silverstone Half, which happens to fall the day before my birthday. Some present I’ve given myself there, right? My birthday party will involve carb loading and an early night. With that in mind I had developed a vague plan to reward myself by working EVEN HARDER and pushing for a personal best over 13.1 miles before crawling in to my 35th year. Things haven’t quite gone to plan in January though, and now I have 40 days to get up to distance never mind speed.

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So, I’ve developed, written and printed my training schedule for the next 40 days. I started following it last week but the snow has obviously ruined everything, or at least that is my excuse. So, whether you’re interested or not, I will be reporting back weekly on how well I’ve stuck to my schedule in the hope that the public confession of any failings will make me think twice about ditching a run. If you see me making any more excuses over the next 40 days then please give me a verbal kick up the arse!

Plan your work, work your plan.

Plan your work, work your plan.

As well as the running and weekly circuit session I’ve planned, I’ve also included either abs or PUC (Push Up Challenge) in the equation. I’ve devised 3 abs routines I will alternate and the PUC should see me doing 100 push ups a session by my birthday…should!

So, with the plan in place, success is guaranteed yeah? I mean, what can possibly go wrong?

I guess we’re about to find out…

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Running With The Pack…

Posted on January 18, 2013 by James Clay

I have less friends now than I did in 2011.

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I think when I was training for the marathon my mates assumed it was a whim, a one off, to be tolerated then quickly forgotten. I’d not long had the running bug, I was still in that honeymoon stage, flushed with pride that my own legs that I’d had for 32 years were suddenly capable of propelling me for miles at a time. I told people this,  a lot, repeatedly. I told them distances, mile splits, I shared my new found knowledge of what an iliotibial band was, I responded to invitations to the pub with phrases like ” Soz, gotta bang out a 14 miler tomorrow so no booze for me”. I was changing, but that’s okay because on the evening of April 17th 2011 I could burn my trainers and get royally drunk because I’d have “done” running then and could go back to normal…

I tried that. Okay maybe not burning my trainers but that was primarily because I couldn’t find them, I was too busy having fun! You know fun, that’s when you spend £60-£100 over a weekend getting drunk, battling a hangover, getting drunk again, succumbing to the hangover and spending Sunday comatose, being depressed Monday and Tuesday then spending three days planning how you’re going to do it all again only to discover that you’re in exactly the same places with exactly the same people come Friday night and maybe all that planning was a touch unnecessary. Fun.

Except it wasn’t fun any more. Something inside me had changed, and it was all running’s fault. I missed it, the sweat, the pain, the preparation, recovery, fuelling, route planning. I missed talking about it with people who understood my burning desire for burning calf muscles…and so I found my trainers again.

With that second foray in to athleticism came a change of social circles. My boozing mates couldn’t understand why being drunk for 48 hours wasn’t the best thing in the world and so I put out the call for anyone with trainers to come with me, even forcing some people to go buy their first pair, and like the Pied Piper of Cheltenham I led a merry band through a year of slow plods in local events. ( I’ve just read that back and realised how terribly narcissistic it sounds, but I love the idea too much to delete it, sorry all!)

High knees = great technique

High knees = great technique

But over time even those friends have moved on. Not because of my actions this time (at least I hope not!) but thanks to career progression, finding love, become triathletes, emigrating. I like to think that the running we did together in some small way contributed to their future happiness. We’re still friends, and our shared experiences have bought us closer together, but we rarely pound the same pavements now. It’s good to know that news of a PB or exciting race entry will be greeted with enthusiasm by people who understand, but nothing replaces putting the world to rights in short, gasped sentences when the pavement is wide enough to run side by side. There’s also no motivation like the knowledge that someone is waiting for you, or that you have someone to run with who is sharing the crap weather/being tired/niggly knee injury with you but is still putting in the miles. Many people enjoy running on their own, prefer it even, and occasionally so do I. But most of the time I would rather have an arduous conversation than an ipod when I run, I’d prefer to argue about a route than beat myself up for not going far enough. I need to run with people.

And that is the story of how running cost me mates, but found me friends, and now needs to find me more.

So I have gone back to my local running club. This time on my own. Not necessarily with a friend, but to run with hundreds of potential new friends who are happy to talk about mile times, know what a foam roller is for but also enjoy a social life. I’ll let you know how it pans out, but for now I’m loving my running again and sharing it with people makes that love 10 times stronger.

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Click to access the club website

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The Resolution Revolution

Posted on January 1, 2013 by James Clay

Making New Year’s resolutions is easy.

Once a year we look at the things we aren’t happy with, or would like to change. Then we decide we’re going to change them, make a list of new rules to live by and Bob’s your uncle, resolutions done. Classics include giving up smoking, drinking less, exercising more…all things that make perfect sense.

The problem is, you then wake up on January 1st and all of a sudden these resolutions look much harder to keep. “There’s still 8 Marlboro Lights in the pack, so I’ll give up when they’re finished”. “No more wine through the week, but it’s Dave’s birthday on Saturday so I have to get smashed for that”. “I’m not fit enough to run so maybe I’ll try going for a walk, tomorrow”. Excuses are all too easy to find and resolutions too simply broken and all too soon forgotten.

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So what’s the answer? Well for me it’s about more than making a set of rules and attempting self governance. I don’t smoke, nor do I drink as much as I used to. I definitely want to make changes around my health and fitness though, including my mental health, and have them impact positively on as many areas of my life as possible. So how does that translate in to resolutions? Well I started by writing down some of the things I wanted to change; weight, fitness, speed, and other things not exercise related including diet, motivation at work, how I spend my spare time (when I’m not training!) etc. Breaking them down in to the things I need to change resulted in a long, long list! I’d have to commit more to things, change routines, shop differently, avoid distractions that have become as much a part of life as breathing is…big scary changes. But you can’t start the year with thirty resolutions and hope to remember them all, let alone keep them! So I started to deconstruct what I’d written, see if it could be melted down in to just a few choice phrases to live by. As I worked it became increasingly obvious that what I needed was less of a resolution and more of a mantra. Something I could turn to every day, in every situation and be sure I was working towards my ideals for 2013.

And so, every morning of 2013 and any other time I feel the need to hear it, I will say out loud to myself…

“Today I will make positive choices for my physical and mental well being”

It really is that easy. Any time a decision is to be made I will think to myself “what is the positive choice?”.

Do I sit on the sofa watching reruns of Cheers or do I go for a run to cheer me up? What is the positive choice?

Do I order a take-away or do I go to the shop and buy something cheaper, fresh and healthy? What is the positive choice?

Do I spend the evening watching Facebook and Twitter on the laptop with junk telly on in the background, or do I put on some music and read? What is the positive choice?

There will be times when watching Cheers whilst eating a pizza and tweeting will be the positive choice, but they will be few and far between compared to the times I do something more beneficial for my physical and mental health.

The first choices have been made, I’m off for a run and then I need to sit down and make plans for training over the coming month. Looking forward to sharing the progress with you, and as always thank you for your support and feedback.

jkhgg

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That was the year that was.

Posted on December 31, 2012 by James Clay

It’s that time again. It’s the end of this year, tomorrow is the start of a new one, 365 days have passed, 365 days await, and most people will mark this by getting exceedingly drunk at great expense and having a snog at midnight before writing off tomorrow with the worst hangover of the year…and maybe they are the people getting it right.

Because tomorrow will be no different to today, 2012 no different to 2013, at least not unless we make it so. As Big Ben strikes midnight there is nothing more than a metaphorical bringing down of the curtain, shutting the door or drawing a line under whatever worries, disappointments and issues you were dealing with in 2012. There are no clean slates when we wake up in the morning, no “new you” overnight, so you may as well start the year pissed and horny I guess.

Except, well just maybe, something as simple as the changing year could be the catalyst for great change? Is it possible that when throwing an old calendar in the bin you can throw some of the you you don’t want with it? Perhaps the white blank pages of 2013 that are yet to be written could be different to 2012, if you really want them to be.

And so it is on this, the biggest night of the year for parties and pints, that I am sat soberly in quite introspective retrospection and looking ahead at who I want to be tomorrow.

I said to someone recently that after 2011 I felt I’d let things slip in 2012. It’s true that 2011 was an exceptional year including my first (and so far only) marathon and finally nailing a start in the career I wanted. It felt like in 2012 nothing was quite firing the same. This isn’t the place to be discussing work but I will say I felt stifled, I lost the self-confidence of 2011, with it the motivation and that crossed over in to my exercise. I honestly thought this morning that I hadn’t done enough this year to warrant writing about it…and then I looked through my race numbers and medals and realised that actually I’ve a lot to be proud of and grateful for!

Not a bad haul.

Not a bad haul.

I’m not going to list all the things I’ve done, that would be more egotistical than even I am comfortable with, but I definitely want to pick out some of the highlights…

(clicking links will take you to relevant blog posts should you want to know more about my experiences)

  • Starting the year feeling fit! Sounds silly, but it was nice to start 2012 knowing I could run a 10k or spend a few hours on the bike. So I did lots of both in the first few months of the year! Spent my birthday riding in Wales followed by climbing Snowdon, which is perfect.
  • Bikefest in June was my first real big test of the year. Riding solo for 12 hours is one of the toughest things I’ve ever done, physically and mentally. It was this year’s marathon and an incredible experience. Very pleased with my 12 laps. Also really enjoyed my first Mud Runner experience, so much I ran it twice in 2 days!
  • The Fan Dance Challenge in September was an incredible experience, one I will never forget. It was marred by injury but the fact that I ran through the pain to beat the clock is something I will remember whenever the going gets tough.
  • For 3 wonderful weeks in October I lived the kind of challenge life I wish I could manage all year! Over three consecutive weekends I ran the Bristol half marathon, Men’s Health Survival of the Fittest and did my first duathlon, the Runrider in Bristol. I wish I could afford to keep that pace up all year!
  • I managed to get a few trips to the mountains in there too. The birthday trip, a few days in the Brecons, the Lakes, exploring new mountains in the last few weeks of 2012 and finding new friends to go climbing with. One of the best days was taking a vertiginous mountain virgin up Snowdon for the first (and last!) time. Love taking people for their first mountain experiences!

And so, after a heartwarming look back on 12 months of endeavour and achievement, thoughts turn towards 2013 and new challenges. I haven’t decided what those might be yet (apart from Silverstone half in March) and I’m still working on my resolutions (more on that in a few days I’m sure) but one thing I do know is I will definitely be starting my 2013 with a run and not a hangover, and I couldn’t be happier about that!

Happy new year.

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