First 100 miles

Or to be precise: I've run 102 miles since I decided to run the Marathon.

That may sound quite a lot, but it's 50 days since I jogged my first slow, wheezing steps back at the end of November. (That long? How time flies when you're having fun!)

That means an average of just 14 miles per week which isn't actually that much at all. But I started from a low level of fitness and have had a couple of setbacks on the way which have slowed me down - most recently a calf strain, which I decided not to bore you with.

Still, it's a milestone to celebrate.  I feel a lot fitter now.

And with 98 days to go until the Marathon I've still got two thirds of my training time left. I'm over the calf problem, the work I've done so far has put a spring in my step, and I feel ready to increase the mileage now.

Booze and fags: update

A confession: I haven't been completely booze-free since 4 January. There were a couple of family get-togethers, at which it would have been just plain rude to be drinking orange juice...

I haven't had any whisky though, and I've stayed off the fags.

Days nicotine-free: 14 days
Days since last whisky: 14 days
Days since alcohol last imbibed: 3 days

Blogging as displacement activity

I'm feeling a bit reluctant to start my Insanity workout this morning. So I'm lying in bed with a coffee and updating the blog, as a way of putting it off. You mustn't rush these things.

UPDATE 11:40: the deed is done.
One good - and bad! - thing about Insanity as an exercise routine is that it never really gets any easier. It helps you to build fitness quickly, but as your form and fitness improves, it simply means you are able to put more effort in.
(But at least there's no nausea any more. I'm very happy about that.)

Lunchtime run

At lunchtime I varied my basic riverside route by running the wide pavements of Pimlico and Belgravia to Hyde Park Corner, then back via the Parks.

Palace of Westminster

Lambeth Palace, entrance tower built 1490

A Sphinx on the Victoria Embankment

Embarrassing photo no.1

I promised when I started to write this blog that I would regularly add new embarrassing photos to my fundraising page.

Here's one I posted up earlier. On the back of the photo is written "Bangkok January 1965" which, if correct, would mean I was almost 3 when it was taken. My parents were working in Thailand, and we lived in a house that was then in the outskirts  but has since been swallowed by expanding urban sprawl and is now pretty central in the City.

I don't remember much about Thailand at that time, just isolated memories such as when a cobra was found and killed in the garden. Another time the khlongs (canals) flooded in the monsoon and left fish stranded across our lawn. I remember, too, family holidays to Pattaya - now a centre of the sleazier side of tourism, but then an idyllic beach fringed by palm trees and wooden bungalows.

I'm told - but don't actually remember this - that around the time this photo was taken, I somehow became separated from my parents during a visit to Bangkok zoo. Lost and increasingly desperate, I was found by an American soldier (who must have been on R&R from the Vietnam War) who picked me up and put me on his shoulders, then walked me around until I spotted my parents.

I wonder who he was, and what happened to him.

Dawn run, Southwold harbour

The puddles on the bunds were frozen over and there was a strong cold wind from the north-west. It was bloody parky, actually, but worked to blow out the cobwebs. 

Nicotine Withdrawal Day 3

How times have changed

This is my last post about stopping smoking, I promise. Just a couple of observations:

1. Apart from my good friend C, who is also giving up smoking - and putting me to shame with her cheerfulness while doing so -  everyone I have encountered this week is happy, healthy, laughing, relaxed...and smoking. I've not seen so many people smoking cigarettes in my entire life as I have over the last 3 days. Where on earth have they all come from..?

2. Contrary to the impression given by my last 2 posts, giving up smoking is not all plain sailing. The "cravings" sneak up on you: in the middle of doing something, you forget you aren't smoking any more, and just have time to think: "mmm, time for a cig" before a hollow and needy desire to smoke fills your being.

The best thing about these cravings is that they are fleeting - gone in a few seconds, especially if not accompanied by alcohol - and become less and less frequent with time.

So, I stand by my earlier statement: giving up smoking is easy, if you really want to.

Newington Green, and Victoria Park

This morning I ran for 9 miles to Victoria Park and back. My route took me south through Newington Green, on the west side of which London's oldest surviving terrace of houses stands. They're dated 1658. 







On the south side of Newington Green, Henry VIII had a hunting lodge, which he and the royal parties used as a base for forays into the surrounding woods and forest to hunt stags and wild boar. 

It's quite a bit different now. 

From there I ran south through de Beauvoir Town to Regents Canal, turned left and ran along the towpath to Victoria Park, which I looped before heading home. 

I'm quite pleased I managed to squeeze a picture of HenryVIII into a blog about marathon running.

Nicotine Withdrawal Day 2

Oops, quite rude.

Thankfully the little bouts of irritation I feared would continue through today have actually been few and far between. And when they do happen I've kept them to myself, not snapped at people. Phew.

My ability to concentrate is shocking though. Mentally I'm very vague.

Tomorrow will be better.

Nicotine Withdrawal Day 1

Current symptoms:

• An increase in energy levels - slightly edgy energy
• Inability to concentrate
• A feeling of being somehow separated from the world
• Occasional little bursts of irascibility or grumpiness 
• Enhanced appetite

It isn't actually all that hard to give up smoking once you've made up your mind to do it.  But oh dear me - my peevishness makes me utterly unfit for civilised company just now.

From past experience the first 2 days are the worst - and aren't actually all that bad, really. It's harder for those around you! After the first couple of days humanity returns.

I'm so happy not to be smoking!

2015: Year of... Less Whisky

In February 2014 a good friend and I went on an ice climbing trip to Central Norway. The trip was marked by temperatures that averaged well above zero at sea level. Where we were based - in a fjord-side village a couple of hours from Bergen - all the low-level icefalls slowly turned to waterfalls before our eyes. 

It was colder, up high

Undeterred, we went higher and higher in search of good ice: driving further up the fjords day after day, until in the last few days we were climbing in valleys up in the great high plateau-wilderness that extends across much of central Norway. We found plenty to climb in the end.

All of the above is just by way of scene-setting for the true subject of this post: whisky.  On our way out to Norway, at a duty free shop at Gatwick airport, we bought a bottle of whisky,  a 12-year-old Japanese single malt.

Sipping it slowly in our fjord-side cabin each evening after the day's climbing, we began to understand why Japanese whisky is now considered an equal of Scotch. I'd always enjoyed the odd dram but this was something new: a beautifully balanced product of Japanese whisky-making craft.

To cut a long story short, that bottle of Japanese whisky sparked an interest in me - bordering on obsession - to learn more about this varied and complex spirit. And yes, to taste a lot of it. 

In the months after our return from Norway I tasted whiskies from Sweden, South Africa, Canada, the U.S., India, England and Ireland as well as a wide variety of types of Scotch. 

Thalassa

At the height of my obsession, in June, I sailed around the western islands of Scotland in the 3-masted sailing ship Thalassa with a group of slightly mad, mainly Dutch whisky enthusiasts, having a whale of a time and stopping at the distilleries of Islay, Jura, Arran and Campbeltown. 

A bewildering variety of whisky was tried: peated and unpeated Islays, sherried Speysiders, whiskies from the Highlands and Lowlands and the Islands. We tasted a 1970s Ardbeg, and a rare and beautiful 1979 Dallas Dhu which we drew straight from the barrel in a dunnage warehouse at Springbank distillery on the Kintyre peninsular.

I've bought quite a lot of whisky this year, too. Really quite a lot. Enough to keep me in drams for some considerable time. 

Why mention all this in a blog that purports to be about my preparations for the Marathon? The reason is that, partly to help me stop smoking and partly to give my liver a well-earned rest, I have resolved that from tonight I will not drink any whisky or any other alcohol for a month. 

So the next post will be written by a non-smoking, non-drinking James. 

Another low-mileage week

I managed to give myself food poisoning on New Year's Eve. I'll spare you the details, but it took me out of action for a couple of days.

Miles run this week: 12.57 miles
Total miles run to date: 68.6 miles

I'm off work next week (hoorah!) and will be upping the mileage.