The thought in my mind was “the hard miles” but I wasn’t
sure if “Les miles durs” worked as a literal translation…
No matter - whatever language barriers may have existed,
I’m sure anyone who saw me on one particular January evening would have been in
no doubt about my frame of mind!
It was one of those joyless January evenings – dark, cold
and windy and as I stepped outside it even started to rain! Moreover, my purpose in going out was another
training run!
My GPS watch appeared to be as lethargic as I felt as the
bar indicating the search for a satellite connection was particularly slow in
creeping towards the fully engaged position.
Worse still, after hovering for minutes, frustratingly just short of the
full position, the bar indicator dropped back to nothing and the process
started all over again.
There is only so much purposeful warm up activity one can
do in a situation like this and I was conscious of becoming an ever more bedraggled
sight – not that there appeared to be anyone else among my neighbours as mad as
me in being out on a night like this!
Such is the lot of those who are training for a spring
time marathon! However, despite the
increasing temptation to take the hesitation of my watch as a sign that I
wasn’t meant to go running on this particular evening, I just about held my
resolve and started the run. As I’m a
bit of an “obsessive” this was actually very difficult to do without the
satellite being fully engaged… a whole quarter of a mile of my run ended up not
being properly recorded! [Obsessiveness is something I have witnessed in a lot
of runners I know… but I’ll leave those stories for another time!]
The happy ending to this particular tale is that just
over an hour later I had completed my 7.6 mile run, ticked off another part of
my marathon training regime and moved closer to the 100 miles in a month target
that I and a lot of my running buddies had set ourselves.
Following a run in the snow on the last day of January (shame it doesn't look too obvious in the picture - and certainly nothing like the conditions up north, let alone New York and Boston) - heading into February, I am now well into my training
for the Paris Marathon. In hindsight this
started earlier than I had specifically planned for. Having taken a much needed rest after my autumn
events, in early December I thought it wise to start building myself up towards
running again on 4 to 5 days per week.
With the injuries I’d had over the last year or more this seemed a
fairly ambitious aim but, starting off with relatively shorter distances,
before long I found myself able to reel off a regular succession of 5 mile runs
and occasionally push the boat out to about 8 miles. 
I was particularly pleased that in the time
off from work around Christmas I was able to run on 6 days in a week,
completing over 30 miles in total. This
included the inspirational experience of running with Robert Young (aka
MarathonMan). This was on a particularly
cold Boxing Day morning in Richmond Park – though I had no cause for complaint,
considering I only joined him from 7.30am for the last 7 miles of his marathon
for that day. Goodness only knows the
sheer guts it takes to run a marathon distance on a daily basis through such
weather conditions and worse! [And, due to an injury that meant he missed
some weeks of running, Rob has scheduled some days of double marathon running
to get back on track in his aim to run 367 marathons in a year! He is currently running in a coast to coast event
in the USA but will be back to run in the London Marathon].
On New Year’s Eve I went out on what has become a
traditional training run for me of about 13 miles. On this occasion I stopped to take a photo
from Teddington footbridge and a passer-by commented that the sight of my bare
legs was bringing tears to her eyes! I
think she was referring to the temperature rather than the look of my legs!
Returning to work and having to shift most of my training
sessions to dark evenings after a day’s work has been a challenge but I’ve met
this head on and managed 4 or 5 sessions per week throughout January. It is such a relief to have some daylight
runs at the weekend but even then it is still dark when I start running on a
Sunday morning! The last few weeks I’ve
broken things up a bit by doing one session per week of cross training work at
the gym.
So far so good, particularly that I have significantly
fewer aches and pains compared to the same stage of my training last year. Strangely, having had a year of problems in
various parts of my right leg, this is now working just fine and my current
niggle is in my left calf. Having had
the difficultly earlier in the month of forcing myself out on the night time
training runs, I found myself last week having to force myself to take an extra
rest day!
So, sometime in the last few weeks my mind condition
seems to have reversed and I now find myself very much engaged with a focus on
completing 26.2 miles in Paris on 12th April. Once into it, there is something incredibly
compelling about a marathon training regime!
It is amazing how the building up of the long runs through a month and
then month to month takes you up to distances that at the beginning of the
training schedule appeared to be ridiculously long and unattainable!
February will be about consolidation but also something
of a break as Lesley and I head out to The Gambia for a week to support
Carmella in the last week of her current project work. As I reported last month, in the first two
weeks of her trip she was joined by over 30 scouts from Hampshire. I mentioned last month of how they had worked
with local scouts on painting the interior and exterior of the main mosque in
Soma. As well as this Carmella’s
newsletters report of further work undertaken by the scouts of building walls,
painting and refurbishing, decorating classrooms, block making, gardening and
helping to build a new roof for a family in crisis.
Carmella mentioned in particular about work at one
school:
Along
with the Kaira Konko carpenters and Scouts, we have been working to remove the
termites and re-decorate/refurbish the library.
After several days of working on this project, the ceiling has been
replaced and painted, the floor has been tiled and the walls have had a first
coat of paint. Our next steps include
painting learning aids on the walls, organising the books, training some
librarians and listening to some of the children read. 
Upon finishing this job, we handed out some pencils to the children and, once again, I was reminded about the difference just one pencil makes. Mr Seine (the headteacher), who was extremely grateful of such a seemingly little contribution, said ‘a pencil is so small to us but it means so much to them’. Just one pencil, the equivalent to less than a penny, can be a big expense to some families and all too often I have seen children turning up to school without pencils to write with or exercise books to write in.
After the scouts returned to the UK, Carmella’s work has
shifted even more to working with various schools in Soma, for example through
providing training to their teaching staff.
In my next post I anticipate writing about my own
experience of supporting the project work made possible by Kaira Konko Scout Active Support and, as well as this, I hope to
report on some warm weather training runs!
Further details about Kaira Konko Scout Active Support can be accessed through the following link
through which donations can also be made to my fundraising:
Many thanks to the generous donations already given, the support
has been amazing and plays a huge part in keeping me motivated through the
cold, dark evenings!
Very best wishes…
John
