Parklife

Sunday morning and as I look out the bathroom I see the scudding clouds hanging heavy in the sky  - at least they would be if I were pretentious enough to ever describe clouds as scudding.  As is is they are merely busy ominising (if there IS a verb version of ominous)

I spend a minute or two remembering on which particular radiators I left a) my tracksuit bottoms and b) my long sleeved running top (thin but breathable), get some breakfast and jump into the car.

Most mornings, if I'm running before starting work, I just go around the local streets - expanding or reducing the length of the run dependent on the variables that most of us face in the morning which are best defined by the mathematical formula S x Ci >= Tm (sleep multiplied by coffee intake is greater than or equal to the time of morning) however, on the weekend I go to the local park.

The park is mostly flat with only minor incline or declines, paved and lit all the way around the perimeter and with ample parking.  This is what makes it popular with runners, cyclists, people doing army fitness regimes (of their own free will and actually paying for the privilege of being shouted at as far as I can see), sunday league footballers, people with dogs, obnoxious children (there is a specially bred obnoxious child whose sole role in life is to hang out around the swings and yell smart mouth comments like "you need a sports bra mate") and, of course, squirrels.

So I park, lock up the car and do my stretches before walking to my regular start post.  My route is a complete circuit of the park and then back down the central path to the first path back, running until I need to walk, walking until I feel able to run again - for approximately 2 miles if you believe my pedometer

Today though there's a background sound, somewhere from the grass beneath the trees - the sound of drums.

I forget about them for the moment and set off on my jog - doing pretty well considering its been a few days since my last run (usually every 2 days) and some weeks since I was last here: my times for running without stopping are longer and my rests to recovery from the impending coronary are shorter - and it's only as I return towards the car park for the shorter lap that I remember the drummers.

I can hear them quite clearly as I jog down the path and over the small bridge (refusing to stop until I've got past the little old lady with the tiny dog incase she thinks I'm completely feeble), breaking into a walk.

And the great thing about running is that for a brief period your brain stops working.  I mean clearly, it keeps on pumping the instructions to your legs and hands, but for the most part the little monkey with cymbals that lives inside your head and constantly needs entertaining is silent - but of course the second I start walking it kicks in.

Who are these people?  Why are they drumming?  Why are they doing it in a public place?  The thoughts all barrel-roll out like a badly designed game of Donkey Kong and I decide that the only type of people who drum in public on a Sunday morning are the type of people who are either a) very committed or b) need to be committed.  If it's the former then usually the type of people who are very committed to something are religious types.

There you go then, the monkey in my head says, they must be Drumming For Jesus, or Khrishna, or Buddha, or some other deity that decided drums were dutiful to their cause.

Of course I don't actually go up to them to ask what possible reason could bring them to a public space on a Sunday morning to bang their bongos: because mostly in life the myth is better than the reality - and so I leave them be.  Whatever reason has brought them to this place on this day it seems to be making them happy and that's good enough for me.

I climb back into the car and drive slowly towards the exit.  As I leave I catch one last glance of them through the autumnal leaves: still happily drumming away.  Drumming For Jesus: or not, as the case may be.

Can You Sea Me Running?

For a brief introduction as to how this all started visit Weekends Collected for this related post, Rainy Days And Sundays.  You might even want to leave your own posts whilst there

It's four a.m. when the alarm goes off and I crawl out of bed.  My body goes through the motions of getting ready whilst my brain plays catchup, but by five a.m. I'm ready, after the usual visits from Captain Paranoia, to head off.

The sat-nav is switched on, with its heavy New Zealand accent forever telling me that there's a Bear left ahead: although for the life of me I never see the creature for myself.

I'm heading for the coast, for a meeting in one of our larger offices with a colleague and our clients.  If I were to go via train I would still have to leave this early, but wouldn't arrive until at least 11am - most likely missing the meeting.

After an hour and a half on the road, and just before I leave the motorway onto the smaller roads that will mark the rest of my journey, I realize that I am dangerously tired and stop at a soulless service station for a cup of bitter coffee served by an ever-so-slightly more bitter employee.

I sit in the car sipping the resultant brew and thinking about the Bruce Springsteen CD I've been listening too (Wrecking Ball - definitely a return to form, I decide) and briefly about the meeting ahead (like most sane people I try to spend as little of my free time thinking about work as possible) before finally switching Mr Sat-Nav back on.  The New Zealand accent is Herself's choice and is no more grating than any of the other options.  I've never really been tempted to change it, for example, to Mr T forever telling me to "turn left sucker" as I am under no illusions that such an option would cease to be funny after two junctions, leaving me forced to leave it switched on or admit that it really was a stupid waste of money.

The rest of the drive goes well and I arrive at the office in good time for the morning calls and meeting preparations.  It's a pretty enough site, set in a small town that could only be described as "pretty" if it were in comparison to a boil.  The grounds are big, with a huge lake built for natural coolant of the immense IT infrastructure stored inside.

At 10am when there's still no sign of the man I'm here to meet I venture downstairs to the other room we use and find that a) I've walked straight into the middle of a very important meeting and b) he's been there all the time.  We spend the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon discussing the tasks ahead and finally meeting with the client.

Finally the day draws to an end and I pack up my computer and head for the little treat that I have promised myself.

Five weeks ago, as evidenced in the related post linked above, I took up running.  To be honest: progress has not been good.  I had been trying to follow a regime that I have downloaded from the internet, but have had several set-backs, including some trouble with my knees.  The upshot of all of which is: I am nowhere near as fit as I had hoped to be by now and still barely able to do more than 20 minutes worth.

Still, with our office so close to the coastline I haven't been able to resist the temptation to recreate a scene from Chariots Of Fire and go for a run on the beach.

I change into my running kit (grey shorts, grey vest-top, super-dooper expensive running shoes) turn the vehicle away from the route home and drive the extra five miles or so that it will take and soon enough I can see the pier and find a place to park.

The first problem with my vision of empty sandy beaches is that for the first time since I was last down at this office three months ago: the sun has come out.  This means that the walkways are full of young people who really should put a T-shirt on (please - no one wants to see an exposed beer gut, it puts you right off your stick of seaside rock), who seem to have reverted to the childhood communication method of forever shouting at someone standing less than three feet away.  This means that whenever I start running I am unable to continue for more than thirty seconds without risk of knocking someone over.

The second problem is even more vexing: no beach.  The sea is almost entirely in to the storm wall and where it has condescended to leave an open spot it does so only to reveal not the golden sands I had hoped for, but pebbles.

And so, having been forced to turn in-land from the coast, I give up running after less than five minutes and settle for a leisurely walk back with my camera

In the harsh light of the sun, and using my mobile phone, it's hard to frame a picture properly -hence the above "Wall With Thumb"

However - I did uncover evidence of the imminent return of Jesus, as evidenced by the man walking on water below...(erm...ok, so he was jumping off the landing bay, but that's what it looks like, OK??)

And of course, I got to see a hovercraft taking off - so the trip wasn't a total loss.

Silent Running

Not for the first time in my week away from work I wake and think: Shall I try and start jogging today? Nah.

From about March/April to September/October I cycle a lot - often on a Sunday morning or as a less stressful way of getting to and from work than public transport - but once the nights draw in it becomes far to dangerous: most car drivers will happily kill a cyclist to shave thirty seconds off their journey as it is, so the danger of the darkness is just too much for this frail Pixie to risk.

I try and walk at lunch times, or sometimes I walk the three miles or so from my house to the minibus for work - but the truth is that it's during the winter that I miss Gym membership the most.  The grim feeling of wanting to be anywhere else when you go in slowly being replaced by a feeling of achievement, the regularity of exercise, the amusement of not being able to get on a machine during January-February whilst the New Years Resolutioners slowly fade away: the whole man thing of never, under any circumstances, meeting the eyes of anyone else in there (in much the same way as we would never start a conversation at a urinal)

And yet every morning I have woken and thought "nope,  not today" when it comes to running - and the only reason I can give you is the embarrassment factor.

The truth is that I'm just too self conscious to run in public.  In the gym there are lots of other flabby blokes desperately trying to persuade themselves that an hour in the gym once a week will miraculously rid them of their food baby.  Out in public - well, that's a different thing.

For one thing: anyone who has ever run on a treadmill and then run on the street will  be able to tell you that it is an entirely different thing - the impact of the street is much harder for one.

Secondly there is the issue of the local wildlife: the Greater Spotted Pillock (latin name Moronicus Stupidicus), known to all runners by its mating call of "Oi mate, don't have a heart attack" - that person who has never done a day's exercise in their life and yet still feels able to comment on your fatigue when you return from a forty mile bike rid covered in sweat.  As anyone will know it is completely impossible to stop running in front of one of these creatures, and equally one will always manage to appear at the moment where you most need to stop for fear of puking up your lower intestine (IE forty yards outside your front door in my case)

Running in a group or with someone else might be a solution - but the only person I know that might be interested lives too far away to be practical and then there comes the problem of what happens when they are able to keep up running and you are not. 

Also my experience of cycling with others has not enamoured me towards group participation.  Some years ago I joined a group that I still affectionately refer to as The Nutters - who would think of nothing more than cycling a round trip of sixty miles every Sunday morning to a grim tea shop that served scum laced hot beverages before cycling back at a steady pace just faster than most people find comfortable.  Don't get me wrong: it was good training and I got very fit as a result, but it wasn't my idea of fun.

So I guess my options are to get over my feeling of self-awareness or take up some other kind of exercise where I am able to feel less self aware.

Rock climbing anyone?