There are posters floating — well, not literally floating, that would be some impressive piece of poster technology, and not just pisspoor attempts to get me to whiten my teeth while studying for an MBA and watching The Transporter IX — this time it’s a Leyland Daf) — around the tube network advertising _that_ Murakami book as a kind of tie-in to FLM. Which made me think about what I thought about when I think about running while I’m running. If you follow. I mean, you can follow without running, or at least not running with me. But as the things I’m about to describe are in the past, you’d struggle. Although if you could invent the kind of technology that makes posters float I dare say you could travel back in time to this morning and join me on a cold and rainy Thames Path.
But I digress. This is a post about coping strategies. Most of us on the site will have stories of how we persuade our bodies to push itself further or harder than we’d really like. I thought I’d share some of mine.
*1 Pretend you’re still asleep and this is all some kind of dream. Make sure you are not in the vecinity of excitable dogs, Peckham or tooled-up ramblers for this one. Narrow paths are also best avoided unless you want to end up in the nettles or dive into six inches of Thames from 20 ft up. Unless that’s your thing. In which case, knock yourself out. Literally, probably.
*2 Listen to Underworld. If there is one piece of advice I could share with the entire running fraternity it is that King of Snake is possibly the best running tune in existence. Admittedly, you will have to refrain from throwing ‘shapes’ while you run, or throwing your arms in the air like you just don’t care. You also have the pay-off chuckle at the end of the song of the Japanese man hirariously not speaking Engrish proper. Although Mr Murakami would disapprove. Sake. Velly strong.
NB Method 2 will not work in races where iPods are banned. Solution — drink sake and sing all the way round.
*3 Race the mad people on the river. By which I do not mean Helga, or Mad Mark Morrigan or Captain Beelzebub, who like to sit on the bench near the Bandstand and cackle at you. I mean those poor unfortunate souls who think that propelling themselves backwards in a fibreglass shell while on a dirty body of water is in any way, shape or form fun. I found myself racing a single sculler today. And I pwned him. Totally. My reward was a ladies coxless four. If I were religiious, I would hope that lady angels all crewed. Or at the very least had bunches and wore wellies. Phwoar. Ok. TMI.
*4 Wiggle your toes. This amused me for a good half mile. I had never tried wiggling my toes while running before, and was somewhat surprised to find that I could. I mean, I can’t be sure, as I couldn’t physically see my toes wiggling, but they felt like they were wiggling and this is the kind of stalwart neo-Grecian thinking that made this country great.
*5 Talk to your injuries. I’ve waxed lyrical about this in the past. Pretending that you are a school teacher and your blister / patella / stitch / back spasm are all naughty school children is strangely comforting and occasionally effective. He’s not a twisted ankle, he’s just a very naughty joint. (And we’re back to the mad people).
*6 This was a new one on me. My iPod had shuffled off into some kind of ‘well if you’re not going to recharge me then I’m not going to play’ kind of teenage bollocks tantrum, so I was left to entirely my own devices. So I wondered which bit of the armed forces represented each bit of my body:
In my case
* legs are definitely Marines. They don’t give a fep. Point them and off they go. Even when they’re told to stop they sometimes keep going for the sake of it. This quite often leads to casualties in the toesies platoon.
* lungs. Easy — they’re the RAF. They kind of remain aloof to all the effort until it’s too late and occasionally go awol to have fun with some pollen.
* stomach is the intelligence unit. Occasionally useful but frequently feeds (no pun) you duff information and leads to all sorts of complications.
* heart. Scottish Engineers. Smooth as a buckside banjo until you need more power and it starts whinging about sequel rights.
* arms. Probably a marching band of some sort. Of no use while running other than decoration. Let’s face it, if we could strap our Garmins to a head mount and run with it in front of us Gobi would probably cut them off to save weight.
* head. The top brass. Often entirely oblivious to what’s going on in the trenches or thinking about ladies fours when they should be calculating mile splits and planning energy gels.
And last, but not least. S has already shared her ‘Get in rhythym, stay in rhythym’ mantra. Well. Frankly that’s too complicated. I would suggested mere mortals start with a simple ‘1, 2, 3, 4, 1 , 2, 3, 4′ bellowed at the top of your lungs.
And remember, FLM is a race. You need to demoralise your nemesis. Confuse them by occasionally shouting ‘1, 2, 4, 8′ or even better, ‘1, 2, hate your socks Hendo’. But do it in rhythym.
There. My coping strategies for long runs. Hope they help. Good luck with your various runs tomorrow.
