Still Running (weakly). Issue 46

PAST – inspiration – Many of you will have heard the very sad news that Wally Thorpe died on 7th April. I have waddled on with Basingstoke clubmate Wally many a time, once practically dead heating with him in the club’s Dream Mile. He was a man without pretensions. He would be the first to claim that he was nothing special as a runner, though he was proud of consecutive RED (Run Every Day) years and his number of parkruns – exactly 600, all at Basingstoke!

But he was special as a man, his self-deprecation and unfailing good humour enlivening any race start or finish that he graced. And I hope that his message – to just keep going, to waddle on, as he put it – can inspire you when the going gets tough. I know it will inspire me. As a friend put it, he’ll be at your shoulder, Steve, on a bad day up Dragon Hill (a feature of Alice Holt parkrun!) Rest in Peace, my friend, waddle on up there……….

PRESENT – perspiration – We don’t do Dragon Hill anymore – sad face! Work in Alice Holt Forest has meant the parkrun being rerouted. But the new course has got people’s approval – including mine. Especially as I set a new post-operation personal best there on Saturday!

I don’t suppose that my 35:03 will have many potential Olympians worried, but it cheered me. Coming back from a serious injury – a total knee replacement, in my case – can seem endless. The rehab is tedious at times. You can’t run as much as you’d like. The rewards are reluctant to show themselves and improvement can be negligible. So it’s good to celebrate definitive advances when one can.

If you are in a similar position, keep the faith, keep doing what you know is right – and when you do get a little win, relish it!

FUTURE – suggestion – Whether you’ve got a marathon in the near future, or any other race for which you’ve been training for a while, don’t bugger it up in the last week or so!

The last piece of your carefully assembled jigsaw of long runs, stretching, nutrition, tempo runs, recovery, hydration, speedwork, hill-work and gym-work is no work!

It’s hard to taper, I know. You feel like all of that lovely fitness is slipping away, but you will not lose anything – or gain anything – in the last two weeks. What you can do is undo all of the good work by rearranging the loft, relandscaping the garden, playing football with the kids on the Friday before the race, or simply by failing to plan for race day and having to dash to make the start.

A really good race needs a hundred things to go right; a bad race needs only one to go wrong.