Wimbledon Common Dash for the Splash 10km race review

We’ve all seen that bit in a BBC wildlife documentary where the herds of wildebeest frantically scrabble their way down a steep river side, before wading across and emerging on the other side, unless the crocodiles get them.

Well, on Sunday at about 930, on a cold, hard but bright morning, I and 199 hardy soles went through our own river crossing on Wimbledon common. Down a slippery mud bank, through 2 feet of freezing water, and up the other side. Feet sodden, socks soaked through, and still 9.5km of hard, muddy, slippery running ahead. Brilliant.

The Dash for the Splash 10km was my first race for over two years, which is appalling, but it was certainly one to remember. The course not only involved the above water crossing, but numerous sections filled with grey, gloopy mud that weighed you down and long rising hills that dried your feet out. Then there was a middle section where we ran through saturated common ground, filled with water from the recent storms, forcing you knee-deep in freezing water to find the path again.  

As such it wasn’t a course for a personal best but a time of 45 minutes and 31 seconds was one I was very happy with. It would have been quicker but for the fact the final kilometre was on unbelievably slippery grass across a playing field.

I was overtaken by about five runners in spikes, while my old trainers (thankfully chosen over my shiny, clean news ones) just failed to gain any traction at all, forcing me to run like Bambi and focus more on staying upright than putting in a hard kick for the finish.

Still, even losing those places I came 37^th, which wasn’t too bad. Now, the next time I do a 10km (possibly next weekend) the lack of mud, water and river crossings should make it seem a doddle.

London locations

Ah an office move, the first in my long and distinguished career. This means the joys of ‘crating up’ your kit and then finding it waiting for you in a shiny, new office space about 800m away. I’ve gone from the bustling streets of central Soho to the bustling streets of the Haymarket.

Head in one direction its Piccadilly Circus and the flocks of tourists eating lunch on Eros, while head in the opposite direction and you enter the supposed-razzmatazz of Leicester Square. Head in another direction, though, and I’ve found the streets become rather quieter, with imposing streets that sort of peter out into nothing as they reach St James Park. This is quite nice really and brings another insight into the unique landscape that is London.

Wandering the other day I found a beautiful arcade, the Royal Opera Arcade, with high white arches and little boutique shops. I snapped a picture, included below.  I also found the hiding place of the Number 22 bus before it begins its slow, winding journey to Putney Heath. The driver looked a picture of contentment sat on the back seat of the lower deck, paper in hand and a Pret cup of tea in another.

So, I’ve now taken in Pimlico, Soho and now have the Haymarket and its surroundings to explore and work within for who knows how long. London, what a wonderful city.

In print

Despite being a journalist for almost seven years (!) I rarely see my name in print. As such, on the very rare occasions when it happens I can't deny getting a thrill that was one of reasons I was drawn to writing for a living.

So, when I was asked by London's free paper of choice the Metro if I could offer some comment on the success of the iPlayer, I jumped at the chance, although not literally. The fruits of my waffling can be seen below. For those of you that like it online, you can read it here.

Kew Gardens

I've lived within 30 minutes of Kew Gardens for about four years and never once headed to its leafy environs - until now! (Well, yesterday).

What a lovely place. I highly recommend it - lush and verdant and full of lovely little hidden treats such as a Japanese pagoda or a bamboo hut that had been shipped from Japan. Huge greenhouses full of exotic plants (as you'd expect) and lovely rolling grasses and trees that you can wander around without over-zealous staff or officious signs directing you.

All in all, lovely, and worth a day out. And no queues either!

Morning blues

I love endless skies of blue, so blue they seem to shine. This morning was one such example, with East Putney's ancient red-brick facade a brilliant and stark contrast to the backdrop.

In fact it was so good I actually stopped to take a picture, aware people walking past would be casting quick glances my way. They should have joined in.

Empty roads

The London cycle event over the weekend left Putney devoid of traffic for almost the entirety of Sunday. It was an odd sight and experience, to be able to wander down the high street that is so usually packed with buses and cars and instead hear nothing but the regular passing of cyclists wheels  - ssshm, ssshm, ssshm - zipping past. 

It reminded me slightly of the moments you get at crossroads with traffic lights where there are no cars, or you're the only car, stuck at red while the other lights change for nothing, as if allowing ghosts to proceed on their way. 

The ups and downs of escalators

I read an article the other day about the etiquette of standing or walking on escalators - let's not call it 'riding', it's not a roller coaster or a whale is it?. Apparently, in some cities, hardly anyone walks on the escalator while go-getter Michael Bloomberg said he walks up and down escalators at every opportunity.

Well, being financial titans isn't the only thing I and MBB (as his friends call him) have in common, as I too am a committed escalator walker. I love the double rising sensation of your legs being given a boost by the endlessly revolving loop of an escalator's giant silver steps. Twice as fast and half the effort. Of course sometimes I don't (see: hangovers, very early mornings) but this is rare as even in poor states I find a bolt up an escalator does you a world of good. 

It's also great free exercise and whenever escalators are out action on the underground, forcing commuters to trudge down and around spiraling staircases, it must make London a much fitter city. There should be a No Escalator Day. 

Two fun things: 1. In tube stations with two parallel escalators, take a different one each (if with someone else of course, or do it secretly with a random) and stand on steps opposite one another. Then watch to see if one goes faster than the other.  At Angel tube it used to be that one escalator was considerably faster so I'd give people six or seven steps head start and still win

2. When going up, stand (yes yes I know) and look straight up. If you do it right it gives the sensation you're at 90 degrees and the people above should be tumbling through the air towards you. It's worth practicing as it's a brilliant sensation. Waterloo is good for it. 

Of course the most importance thing in all this though is, while there is nothing wrong with standing, if you're going to, please stand on the right. 

Resolution

Hey, hey, two blogs in under a week – what is this, some kind of record? (No, obviously not).

However, perhaps I will reconnect with the blog, as I miss updating it and enjoy having it as a location of digital whiteness for brain thoughts and book opinions and whatnot. I've experimented with other platforms – Posterous, Tumblr, Wordpress, and all that – but I do like Blogger – plus I've been using it since 2006 so it has all my posts and stuff on it.

I helped a friend move house yesterday – he still has his CDs – and it was sort of fun. I don't know why I find helping people move house oddly enjoyable. I think, perhaps, it just comes from the sense of easy completion – move this, to there, by this time, done. Easily quantifiable success.

It was a lovely sunset yesterday too, followed by hazy summer rain and glorious rainbows. Got some great pictures, as you can see below.

 

Putney Bridge at sunset

Through the hoop in Fulham

Weary words

Oh weary worldly traveler of the internet. How did you come to these shores? How long has it been?

The internet has too many words on it. Everyday we make it heavier and heavier - it must be sagging - especially around the Facebooks and BBCs of this world, where all the news and photos sit. It'll be fine, though, they'll just keep propping it up. 

I read Revolutionary Road earlier this month as the temperatures soared. It was a strange book, I feel as though I read it as it dates, like fruit turning moldy. Some of the characters were hard to relate to, and the story line seemed laboured. Yet, there was a horrible reality to it too, the easy-to-relate-too failure of relationships and the terrible ways people get entwined and entangled without being able to unknot themselves without severing something of themselves, and the other person, in a way that'd can't be undone, or fixed.

I've now started reading The Sea Inside by Philip Hoare. Regular readers (anyone?) will remember my love of Hoare's Leviathan (stop sniggering at the back) from 2009 (was it that long ago?) and this book has a similar style, with the love of wildlife, sea, sky and, of course, whales, all thrown together in a lyrical, poetic pot of simmering beauty. I'm only a third through but already I love it. You could hate it if you dont' care for over-the-top rhapsodising but for myself, it's a joyous read.

I went to Lords for the cricket just over a week ago. I sat in a corporate box, I drank Pimms, I ate cucumber sandwiches, the English team batted wonderfully, a century was made, the Queen came for goodness sake - it was the most English day I've ever had. I rewatched the Olympic Opening Ceremony over the weekend. Ah, This Sceptered Isle.

I'm so sorry this blog is updated so irregularly an so erratically. Then again, does it matter, does anyone notice? It appears not. The internet is heavy enough.

Walking for miles

I did the 45 miles Ten Tors challenge on Dartmoor ten years ago (yeesh, ten years). It was hard but a lot of fun and I definitely developed an appreciation of the simple pleasure of walking. Some mornings as I walk to the tube I get an itch to just walk straight past the station and keep on going, just to see what's around the corner (I know what's there, it's Wandsworth, but you know what I mean).

I never do, though, I turn into the tube and stand with all the other travellers staring out the window as we rattle into central London. It was with a mix of envy and awe then that I read The Places In Between by excellent person Rory Stewart who walked straight across Afghanistan a few weeks after the fall of the Taliban in 2002 (the same year I walked 45 miles on Dartmoor).

Of course such a walk is sheer madness, except Stewart can speak the dialect and had already walked across Iran and  India and Nepal and other nations before this leg of his adventure, so he had a bit of advantage over the wanderlust of a South West London walker.

Furthermore, the book is a brilliantly vivid, engrossing account of a trip few would ever take, or want to take, and has a lovely mix of hard, straight talking language about the people he meets and the difficulties he faces, and descriptive brilliance of the strange and inhospitable nature of the walk, the weather (lots of snow) and the sights he encounters, such as the Minaret of Jam. Even better, though, is the mix of history he weaves, revealing fascinating insights into the cultures that have shaped a nation that remains so utterly unknowable to the west.

Even better, he buys a dog to walk with him, pictured above, who proves as much as a character as any of the Kalashnikov-touting, religious zealots he meets along the way. A much recommended book. And don't just take my word for it.

Night buses, men in boats and toast-munching toads

I read Three Men in a Boat last week. It was written in 1889 and yet remains genuinely funny and relatable all these years later. There’s a bit at the start when Jerome Klapka Jerome wonders if people in the year 2000 will find their everyday trinkets of interest, value and worth. Which we do mostly. Just struck me as interesting. Apparently the book sold so well and was so popular people in other countries would put his name on books to trick people into buying them. 

Another nice aside, his publisher said, with reference to how much in royalties the book was earning for JKJ: "I cannot imagine what becomes of all the copies of that book I issue. I often think the public must eat them." Which I think is almost as funny as some of the lines in the book. The book is up there with Lucky Jim, also hilarious. 

I was sat on the night bus last night, somewhat drunk, and fell into that maudlin state of staring out the window as raindrops rolled down trying to reach some great thought, or insight or revelation that I was sure was lurking in the dim recesses of my brain. Something about life, or love or work or the like. Of course, I never captured it, if it was there at all: I think the revelation is there are no drunk-night-bus revelations to be had.

However, the event put me in mind of this wonderful excerpt from The Wind in the Willows, a far better book than any dramatisation has ever managed to capture, they all seem to cheapen and ruin it. 

“But Mole stood still a moment, held in thought. As one wakened suddenly from a beautiful dream, who struggles to recall it, but can recapture nothing but a dim sense of the beauty in it, the beauty! Till that, too, fades away in its turn, and the dreamer bitterly accepts the hard, cold waking and all its penalties.” 

My other favourite line in WITW is: 

Toad sat up on end once more, dried his eyes, sipped his tea and munched his toast, and soon began talking freely about himself, and the house he lived in, and his doings there, and how important he was, and what a lot his friends thought of him.

All the books I read in 2012

Regular readers (hello Mum!) will recall I write a post at the end of each year reviewing all the books I read in the past twelve months (2011, 2010, 2009). It’s an annual tradition up there with the Queen’s speech or X-Factor. For me at least. 

They're not hugely insightful or long or clever reviews, more just quick observational thoughts on each book as I go. If you have questions, ask below!

So, here we go - in chronological order:

Dark Star Safari - Paul Theroux: A great start to the New Year of 2012, as Theroux heads north to south across Africa encountering interesting people and places, moaning and evangelising in equal measure about what he finds on his way. 

His past life in Africa as a lecturer in Uganda helps, as he can access numerous high-ranking people and knows local dialects too. His disdain for many of the aid organisations he meets is also interesting; some don’t like Theroux for his moaning while travelling but I love it - it’s far more realistic than the endlessly upbeat schoolboy excited TV presenters we get these days who find everything and everyone just wonderful.

The Wonderboys - Michael Chabon: I’ve seen the film a couple of times and finding the book for £1 in Brighton thought it was worth a go and I was right. A great tale of drunken lecturers, the difficulty of writing and the idiocy of love. Recommended.

Watching the English - Kate Fox: A nice little observational non-fiction about the peculiar mannerism and social mores of us mad English people. Tad dry in places but interesting mostly.

The Tiny Wife - Andrew Kaufmann: A short, odd novel about a man’s wife shrinking. It was ok.

A Week at the Airport - Alain De Botton: I bloody loved this; a quick, light yet insightful meander around Heathrow airport by the people’s philosopher (yeah right). As someone who wanders through the bright concourses of Heathrow every so often I enjoyed learning a bit more about the people that keep the big ol’ place humming.

A Visit from the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan: Thought this was a bit overrated but enjoyable. Never a huge fan of 'linking stories' that fuse different characters together, either subtly or obviously, but it was easy to read and better than most stabs at this type of fiction I’ve read.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Moshin Hamed: Enjoyed this a lot; a terse, tight novel about the growing disillusionment of a high-flying western financial expert from India who turns his back on it all for, maybe, more nefarious activities.

Jupiter’s Travels - Ted Simon: Around the world on a motorcycle is always a good premise for a book and Ted Simon’s account is excellent as he makes his way here and there across Africa, South America, North America and onto Asia and so forth. The people he meets make the book, as well as some of his excellent descriptions. He repeated the trip again later in life, although I’ve yet to read that. I may, though.

Engleby - Sebastian Faulks: The more I read of Faulks the more I like him, after finding Birdsong quite disappointing. A dark, somewhat comic novel about a disturbed chap going through life and odd events happening around him, OR DO THEY!

The Case for Working with Your Hands: Or Why Office Work is Bad for Us and Fixing Things Feels Good - Matthew Crawford: Read this on a previous blog.

A Short History of Tractor Farming in the Ukraine - Marina Lewcyka: Terribly written story-by-numbers tripe that aspired for comic-thoughtfulness but was just crap. Hey ho.

Americana - Don DeLillo: I started reading this flying back from San Francisco and fell asleep about 30 pages in so it dropped on the floor. When I awoke the woman next to me said “no good then?!” But actually it was very good. The first 100 pages or so are the clear inspiration for Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris but then it veers off into some mad road-trip novel which isn’t as good but the writing is engaging and different and kept me hooked to the end.

Cosmopolis - Don DeLillo: Inspired by the previous novel picked this up (from HMV!) but wasn’t as enjoyable as Americana. They made a film of it with Robert Patterson. Somehow sums up my criticisms.

The Reader - Bernhard Schlink: I really enjoyed this (I’ve not seen the film). A beautifully constructed tale of (too) young love and the inability to escape ones past, it had that rare ability to linger in your mind long after you’ve read it. It did this with simple, plain yet highly engaging language that I found completely beguiling. Highly recommended.

The Stranger - Albert Camus: I didn’t really enjoy this; a bit too short and the main character is a strange lad.

The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins: Popular but not all that great. A page turner but dour writing and boring characters. Still, it sold gazillons, so what do I know.

Empire - Niall Ferguson: Ferguson is a contrary character it seems but I really enjoyed this thorough exploration of the Empire from its inception to its demise. It was great to learn so much more about a period of history that looms so large in the past of us Brits but yet we (for the most part) know so little about.

One Day - David Nicholls: Someone lent this to me to read and I can’t deny it had a certain basic charm but why it proved so popular is beyond me. Quite boring characters act idiotically for years on end blatantly in love but without ever acting upon it. I could believe this if we lived in a world without alcohol.

The Crow Road - Iain Banks: My brother lent me this and I really enjoyed it. Lyrical, insightful writing and an engrossing story with nicely realised characters with engaging personalities. I watched the BBC adaption afterwards but it wasn’t as good.

Last Orders - Graham Swift: I bought this book for 20p from the Putney Scouts outdoor stall (oh how we live in south west London) and being a big fan of Swifty I was expecting good things and I wasn’t disappointed. A moving tale of misdirected love and wasted lives. There’s a film but I’ve not seen it yet.

Touching the Void - Joe Simpson: ARGH MY LEG, he screamed as he fell down the mountain. Well, I’m going to die, he thinks. But then the triumph of the human spirit overcomes ridiculous odds and he makes it back to base camp. What a guy.

I, Partridge - Alan Partridge: Funny throughout although the jokes wears thin after a while. A-HA!

Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck: Lenny you idiot! Poor old boys, struggling for a living; a bleak tale.

When We Were Orphans - Kazuo Ishiguro: A disappointing effort from an author I usually love (The Remains of the Day) which starts off promisingly but ends poorly.

The Revenge of Gaia - James Lovelock: It’s enjoyable to read a proper rant sometimes and this is most definitely that as Lovelock has clearly had enough with our inability to accept the damage we’re doing to our planet and railing against it all.

Lucky Jim - Kingsley Amis: One of the my favourite books of the year with Dixon a truly brilliant character who gets involved in some hilarious scrapes surrounded by a rag-tag bunch of awful people. A treat.

Sunset Park - Paul Auster: Same old Auster - people living on the fringes of society, somehow not wanting for money, and hiding damaged pasts. As always he does a lot of Telling rather than Showing which I always thought was a big no-no in the writer’s world but he gets away with it. I got this from Putney library for free when it would cost you £17 in hardback. Libraries are great.

The Family Arsenal - Paul Theroux: A bleak, grim tale of 1970s London that I struggled to get into until I just sat and read 100 pages plus when at an airport and then suddenly really started to enjoy.

Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut: A very odd novel but one of the best I’ve read this year. Vonnegut was actually in Dresden when the bombs fell and survived and this novel was his response to that but it also includes time travel, aliens and lots of death. So it goes.

A Week in December - Sebastian Faulks: Didn’t expect to like this as it does that interweaving character thing I don’t usually like (see A Visit From the Goon Squad) but actually I found very enjoyable and when it hit its satirical targets was bang on the money.

London Under - Peter Ackroyd: There’s a whole world beneath our feet in London and Ackroyd does a great job of telling us about it all in lyrical detail.

A Touch of Love - Jonathan Coe: Very odd this as it was written very basically, almost badly, but I think that was the point. It was too short to really care about the characters that much but it kept me hooked.

No Easy Day - Mark Owen: An account of the raid on Osama Bin Laden. The first 150 pages just covers Owen’s (Not his real name) time in the SEALs and other missions leading to the Big One. This was all quite boring but the raid chapters are pretty good and it was interesting to get a first-hand take on the raid. Terribly written, though.

And that’s it: well done if you made it to the end. If not, I don’t blame you; it’s hard to review 33 books in one sitting and make it interesting and insightful throughout. Bring on 2013...

The Olympic Flame

Well there you go, I saw it - took me an age to find through the thronging crowds but nice to have final seen the thing, even if it was only for 10 seconds.

Boating to work

All this talk about the Olympics causing travel chaos - I decided to take the boat to work. It was bliss. Even get free tea and toast thrown in.

Tumblr and Bruce Springsteen

The trouble with all these new media platforms is that I have no idea whether I should post stuff to here or there (Tumblr) or go somewhere else entirely - Pinterest I guess.

Anyway, I do like the quick share functionality of Tumblr, so I've started using it, which you can see here, and recently included a post about Bruce Springsteen and Racing in the Street, which you can read over there, but I'll add the video here, because it's worth sharing widely.

The endless advertising dystopia of Waterloo Station

I know complaining about advertising is dull, and unoriginal, but I feel I’ve reached a threshold, a limit, a breaking point, with it all. It’s all the fault of Waterloo Station.

Every day I wind my way in to the station and on arrival head down into the underground walkway that links the train platforms to the underground’s maze, and along this concourse I am visually assaulted by an almighty slew of adverts that line the passageway for its entirety.

I’ve walked down this section probably 250, 300 times in the last two years or so and, suddenly, I’ve become absolutely sick of it. I actively try to stare directly ahead, or keep my eyes cast down, so as to avoid the gaudy, idiotic text and images bearing down on me. I feel a personal sense of desire not to succumb to the incessant dross, as we all march our way to work, no doubt many of us all caught up in the creation, display and measurement of advertising.

It’s not just the adverts existence on its own that frustrates me, as adverts are everywhere, but what’s being advertised too: it all reeks of the lowest common denominator, of treating us with contempt.

There are always several books being touted with tag lines like, “A dead child, a missing mother, a killer’s revenge – read the stunning new thriller from Steve Smith”, often proclaiming this chap “The new Stieg Larsson”.  And it makes me think, why on earth would anyone want to read that, it sounds horrendous, I’d rather read nothing.

Then there’s always a bunch of adverts for the DVDs of Jimmy Carr and Russell Howard and Lee Evans and all that and again, almost for no reason, I just want to tear them down: can we not go five minutes without endless plugs for more merchandise from tired old comedians who spend every spare moment on panel shows rehashing mean or lame gags? Does it have to be everywhere?

Then there are cookery books, the worst of which is The Hairy Bikers Pie recipe book from Christmas, with the unbelievably pathetic line of “A pie is not just for Christmas but for life”, which every time I mistakenly see I think; Who came up with that, who approved that, who got paid for that, what does it even mean?”

But this is the odd thing, when I have negotiated this Versailles of adverts, and reached the underground, where the adverts continue to come thick and fast, I just don’t feel so frustrated. I still role my eyes at the lame puns, the clear attempt at trying to make you believe you need something in your life that you don’t, but I just don’t feel the same animosity, the personal affront that the Waterloo adverts draw out of me.

Can they not just give us fifty metres of architecture, of nothing, of walls? When are we going to stop and decide we don’t have to plaster every empty space with posters for crap? We can just let a wall be a wall?

Complaining about adverts is, as I have said, a pointless thing to do, like trying to catch the wind in a sieve, but there we go.

A key decision when shopping for a piano

Not what I bought, but maybe one day...

Having survived the first few weeks back of the New Year after a relaxing, enjoyable and pleasingly economical Christmas it seemed appropriate to head into London and reward myself for working for three weeks in a row by making a purchase on the trusty credit card.

The object of my desire was a keyboard – a piano keyboard, not a computer keyboard – in order to help continue with my efforts at home over Christmas at trying to learn the infernal instrument some eight years after I gave up lessons while living at home.

My brother being a bit of a whiz on the old Joanna meant I had free tuition for several days and many aspects of the instrument that had always confused me before – what’s different about the black keys (answer: nothing), how do you make minor chords (answer: invert the 4/3 finger pattern for major chords to 3/4 (simple right?)) – I thought I should give the thing another shot.

So I wandered into Denmark Street – the music shop district of London – and this left me facing a bewildering array of choices at all manner of price points and styles. Some with light up keys, some with terrible tinny soundings keys, some with stands, some without, and prices from £50 to £300 for “beginner” models.

In the end I went for…nothing, as I was so overcome with choice I didn’t know what to do and thought I should check with my hermano (that’s Spanish for brother, I don’t know why I know that I studied French for four years) to see what he thought.

His answer: have my old keyboard. Ah, well, that’s an idea that should have crossed my mind when I was at home, but didn’t. Still, never look a gift-horse in the mouth, especially one that can play the piano – imagine that, a piano-playing horse.

So, now I am the proud owner of a second-hand keyboard and can happily tinkle away learning tunes such as Mary Had a Little Lamb and other nursery rhyme classics. What?

Still, at least my credit card survived a hit: well it did until I ended up splashing out on a new blazer instead for about the same price. It was in the sales, though, so was a bargain really…

Weekend Waterloo trains

Most days the train from Wimbledon (which I like to pronounce Whim-bley-don) to Waterloo is nothing but a commute.

An early-morning jamboree of tish-tish headphones, pushing-people and Metro readers, all weekday morning indicators, while the evening is much the same, although you may see the odd loosened tie.

However, take the train on the weekend, and rolling up to Waterloo takes on a completly different air: it's relaxed, almost like you're going on holiday such is the change in atmosphere from the weekday. Where normally the train is taking you to offices, computer screens and sandwiches eaten Al Desko, the weekend train holds the promise of the theatre, friends, galleries and other fun.

It's almost enough to make you forget the prices went up again and twice in the first four days back the trains were affected by various delays.

Wimbledon skies

I moved to Wimbledon at the start of October from Putney. It's a very nice area (although no The Thames running through it, shame) and it has some ridiclously massive houses which all have four cars in their gated-off driveways: one 4x4, one sports car, on estate and one "runaround", which is mostly a very new Mini.

I quite enjoy wandering around the streets, just to nosy around the area and discover any shortcuts and while doing so snapping some pictures.

This leads me to the chance to post this picture up that I took which I was quite pleased with for capturing the multitude of colour Autumn always presents.

Clapham Common 10km post-race thoughts

Long, long time readers will remember in 2009 I ran the Richmond10km in 42:20 minutes, setting a then personal best for my 10km abilities. Since then I’ve always wanted to try and go sub 40 minutes - you know, just because.

I entered the Clapham Common 10km, which was promised as a fast, flat race, perfect for breaking your PB by a friend, and after my entry in March was delayed due to a broken toe, I finally got back the fitness and stamina to  use my deferred entry for October’s race. 

So, last Sunday, while Australians and New Zealanders drunk themselves into oblivion in bars around the Clapham area, I and some 400 other fitter souls took to the start line at the Clapham bandstand. 

My attempts at sub 40 minutes were easily out done by the chap at the start line promising to go sub 34 minutes and within 100m he was storming head and eventually broke the course record in 32 minutes something or other - terrifyingly impressive. 

Me, though, I pounded on and kept up the pace I needed to hit to break my target, although by the fourth kilometre was conscious I was falling ever-so-slightly behind too, so kept having to ramp up my speed, before easing off, which isn’t the best way to do it really.

The course itself was not actually that conducive to a fast speed, either,as it was  annoyingly twisty and turny, and filled with stragglers from the 5km that set off before the 10k runners, which led to some annoying moments trying to pass on the corners. 

The fact it was two laps of the same course was also irritating as psychologically you know there’s nothing new to look forward to and you have the same dull course to do as you start the second lap.

I came through half way at almost dead on 21 minutes, one minute off the pace, and not looking forward to my second lap, especially with the heat of the day now bizarrely hot, considering it's October.

I tried in vain to make up that errant minute but it’s very hard to run the second half of a race faster than the first and although I managed to about break even and I only managed a disappointing, but respectable, 42:52 to finish 26th. Not even a PB.

I think I needed to have done more speed training around the roads of Wimbledon and it shows that perhaps my performance at the more hilly Richmond course really was at the height of my fitness, some two months post London marathon.

Still, it was fun to do and now I have the latent fitness for 10kms I can train harder specifically for the sub 40 minute barrier, rather than the distance of 10km first and then hope the speed is there afterwards.

While writing this blog my girlfriend asked me why I wanted to write a blog about running a 10km – the answer is that I don’t really know, I just find it interested to document the experience of the race. 

I know not many people read this blog really, but hopefully those that do, or stumble across this post, might find something to interest them – the internet is too big anyway, so one more blog entry hardly matters anyway does it?