Simon's Training (and i say that without a hint of irony..) Blog

I ache all over.

So there's this clever little on-line feature which enable us Marathon runners (!) to accurately measure on a map the distance between point A and Point B. If you use it properly, you can add in all those wrong turns you took, detours, short-cuts that ended in dead ends inhabited only by demon dogs from hell (or at least the Isle of Thanet)etc etc. So after a momumental, epic, Scott of the Antarctic type march yesterday I had mentally convinced myself that the distance from Whitstable to Reculver and back simply MUST equate to well over 20 miles...

And no matter how hard I try, no matter how many twists and turns in backstreets of Herne Bay I add in, I only get to a maximum of 17.87 miles and that makes me REALLY hacked off.


I mean, I can barely walk now, and its 2 pm on Monday. Whats more, i did half that walk carrying a rucksack with 15 kilos of driftood, much to the amusement of locals out having a stroll on Sunday afternoon, just to get used to walking with a weight on my back. The donkey costumes (arriving this week!) are not only going to be heavier that that, but I've also got water to carry...I have to say i am beginning to get a bit worried.

And whats more, the helpful magazine produced for all Marathon participants plopped smugly onto my doormat last week. It says, to my horror, that in the final few weeks participants should begin to "taper" their training. Eh?! Thats when i thought I'd begin to really crack into it.....

Right now I'm facing another dilemma. With London, and in particular the City, set to be inundated with G20 protestors on Wednesday, some firms are advising their employees to "dress down" lest they be targeted for being a moneyed capitalist dog. This means I am covered, since with my battered bicycle, frayed fleece, muddy rucksack and general unkempt demeanour, there's no way anyone will suspect me of being a bank employee.

Except that means the police will inevitably arrest me as a potential anarchistic. The wardrobe dilemmas will have to wait until Wednesday...

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Training & Jordan

I thought I’d managed to wheedle out of any major effort this weekend, what with going off to Jordan on Sunday morning, but I’d reckoned without the punishment regime put in place by the camp guards.

Apparently, there is a need for some old bricks for some terrifying future project in the garden, so I was promptly told “You can run round to that pile of rubble on the other side of the airfield, and bring back a ruck-sack full of nice whole bricks. It’ll be good training for you”.

By the time I’d staggered back with a full load, I could hardly walk. So just out of interest, I weighed the pack on the bathroom scales. THIRTY BLOOMING KILOS !
Of course, I got into trouble for that as well – apparently, although the bricks are just the job for the garden, that’s where they should have stayed and not on the bathroom scales.

So it was quite a relief to get to Jordan to help with a couple of teacher-training courses, thinking I might escape further punishment for a while.

Oh, foolish me.

After the first minor cock- up, presenting the Royal Prince with an award, that I should have given to the University Dean – honestly, how was I supposed to know ?
I then found out that I’d been volunteered to escort groups of teachers round the livestock units in the university farm – in the pouring rain. It’s rained on exactly five days there this winter, and we have to pick two of them.

And if that wasn’t bad enough I had to give a demonstration of clipping sheep’s toe-nails. Not only have I not done that for twenty years but they wanted the tups or rams done. Great big, fat, horned so and sos.

They were not keen on the idea either – one of them socking me in the mouth with his head.

So frankly, it’s been a pretty grim few days . And to cap it all, Simon says the Marathon literature has just arrived, with terrible news – no alcohol whatever is allowed inthe final weeks and days of training Oh, what fun these athletes do have.

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I Only Wanted A Nice Pair of Plimsolls

The bitter March wind swirled amongst the gravestones, as three Black Watch pipers played the sad lament ‘The Flowers of the Forest’. I was charged with laying the wreath of poppies against the headstone, and then taking three paces smartly backwards and saluting.

Now, they teach you many things in the army. Marching. Saluting. Even marching and saluting at the same time. But marching backwards doesn’t seem to be in the curriculum. Added to the fact that it was the day after my latest little ‘training jaunt’, so could hardly bend my knees or move my hips – I came smartly into contact with an errant gravestone that somehow happened to be in my backwards path – and was only saved from falling by my old Company Sergeant Major. And he’s nearly eighty!

When I looked around, I was the youngest there. (We hold this little ceremony every March at the graveside of a Black Watch Victoria Cross winner, who was buried in a pauper’s grave in Chigwell Church. Something of trying to make amends, I suppose.)
At the obligatory beer-fest afterwards, all the old fogeys fell about laughing at the idea of me trying to run the Marathon.

‘We remember you, you coudnae run across the road!’, was one of the more hurtful comments, amongst many others. Very encouraging.

Then yesterday we had a marathon ‘strategy meeting’, planning the route and all that.
Silly me, I thought it was all done for us. But no, we have to decide where the ‘support team’ are going to be, what we’re all going to wear etc etc.

I was constantly chastised for not appearing to take it all seriously enough.

So, today I went to buy some running shoes. EIGHTY FIVE QUID !!

When they revived me, I said I’d only wanted a nice new pair of plimsolls – the sales assistant seemed bemused. Then they talked of special running shorts. Apparently, they have to made of something called ‘velour’* or whatever – it’s revoltingly shiny anyway. It stops ‘chafing’, they said.

Then there is another – ahem – somewhat embarrassing problem to be addressed.
Because we are likely to take around twelve hours to complete the course, there will, um, be a need to, er, ‘make oneself comfortable’.

“Doing a Paula Radcliffe” is apparently one solution.

I think that is quite enough detail for a Family Website – but I will clearly have to give it all some thought.

Jeremy Hulme

(*We think Jeremy means Lycra…but if he wants velour running shorts it can be arranged. Ed)

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