the marathon and TV don’t mix

I was flicking through the channels last night, trying not to watch Australia losing the Ashes, when I was pleasantly surprised to come across the women’s marathon from the Berlin IAAF World Championships. What’s more, the leaders were about 30km into the race, meaning I had an hour or so of good, if sweaty, competition to take in.

It didn’t take me long, however, to remember just why I don’t like watching marathons on TV. Don’t get me wrong, it was quite a good race and the women were doing well. But the coverage! How irritating.

It didn’t help that the German TV kept interrupting the telecast with “educational” inserts showing the local uni, statues and a sequence apparently showing a German chorus line girl getting dressed up (or down?) to go on stage.

That last one caused a great deal of sniggering between the adolescent male dickheads they had doing the commentary. “Ooooh, this one’s my favourite (snigger, snigger).” “I’m going to the Jamaican party tonight, I hope she’ll be there!”.

Whatever….

Then they seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time talking about Kara Goucher. She’s quite a good runner, and ended up coming 10th, but she never really looked like winning. She did, however, look quite attractive, or at least as attractive as you can 35km into a marathon….

Then there was the endless oh-so-amusing and not-at-all-patronising talk about people from Bhutan and other small countries who were way behind. Geez! They were all running sub-3 hour marathons. Have some respect!

With about 5km to go, the commentators finally, and with a note of disappointment in their voices, conceded the lovely Kara wasn’t going to make a heroic sprint to the lead, and decided they had better concentrate on a pack of 4 who were going to win. They were being led by a Russian woman, followed by runners from Japan, China and Ethiopia.

The stage was set for a good finish. Cue ad-break.

When we got back from the ad-break, the Russian leader was nowhere to be seen. Literally. She had been dropped and was fading fast. What a time to take a bloody ad-break!

What made it worse was that every ad seemed to be from some people exhorting me to “Go veg, save the planet”. No thanks. I’ll only go veg if I’m allowed to eat pork chops.

Running
No time for a long run over the weekend, so I did shorter runs on Saturday and Sunday. About 27km all up.

liberation

It’s been almost a week since I last inflicted my blog posts on you. Looking at it now, the last post contained one of the worst examples of an analogy of my experience: “the marathon is like a crockenbouche”. Ah well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

In the interim nothing much has happened. I’m another week older and deeper in debt, no doubt. I’ve applied for, and got, my current job (don’t ask) but, almost in the same minute, the department I work for was split into two. So, while I have a job, I’m not sure exactly who I work for. Ah well….

So, is it liberating having finally made the decision to call a halt to the marathon this year? Not really. I’ve been too busy to think about it. Curiously, I seem to have lost overnight about 90% of what little fitness I had, and gained about 5kgs in the process. For the third time in as many paragraphs, ah well….

Running
14.9km yesterday lunchtime. 29.3km this morning, taking a longer way into work. I ran in via Canterbury Road, despite knowing in advance I wasn’t going to like it. There are a couple of nasty hills, and it’s not at all scenic. There’s something disheartening about passing Elgar road after well over an hour of running, getting to the crest of a super-size hill to discover the city in the distance looking a LONG way away still. Anyway, I mapped it out on mapmyrun.com, more for an example of what not to do than anything else. Consider this a warning….. www.mapmyrun.com/route/au/Melbourne/775125020300156050

no melbourne marathon this year

Running a marathon is kind of like making a crockenbouche. (Before you say anything: I know it is NOTHING like it, but bear with me, I’m going somewhere with this.)

The first time you make a crockenbouche, it’s a bit daunting and all you’re really hoping for is to get the thing done and looking vaguely like it should. The second time around you do a better job, and by the fourth or fifth time you should have it down pat. Then you can start doing variations, or trying to beat your time or whatever.

The thing is, if all you ever do is make crockenbouches, one after the other, it’d quickly get to the point where it’s just about how fast you can make it, or how tall, or whether you can make it better than someone else. It becomes about ego, and after a while, you’d even lose your taste for custard, pastry and caramel.

I think that’s happened to me today, although it had been coming for a while. I was running along the Dandenong Creek Trail and it occurred to me: I don’t want to do the marathon in October.

I’ve done 2 marathons pretty much in a row and spent most of the last 10 months thinking about little else. It’s gotten to the point where I’m losing the enjoyment of running, and I really love running normally.

If I ran in Melbourne in a few months time, it’d be about redeeming myself for the Gold Coast marathon performance: about ego. I don’t think that’s a good enough reason.

Then there’s the toll on my body and my relationships, and the sheer time involved.

I will run another marathon or two, but not this year.

Instead I’ll just run 4 or 5 times a week, and try to fit in a couple of swims as well.

Running
15km on Friday and 20km today.

le marathon

I did momentarily consider composing this post entirely in la langue d’amour, but a few stunted sentences proved it would be trop difficile. Like it or not, my high school days are lost way back in a particularly deep fog of time and high school french lessons, while I’m pretty sure they existed, are lost in an even thicker, more impenetrable fog.

Although, given today’s subject matter, I should probably call it un brouillard impénétrable.

Anyway, this is rapidly becoming tres ennuyeux, so I’ll get to the point: I think I’ve found the marathon for me. It’s called le Marathon des Alpes-Maritimes. It’s in France, obviously, and runs between Nice and Cannes.

Here’s a link to the course description: http://www.marathon06.com/parcours.htm

And if your French is as poor as mine, here it is in English: http://www.marathon06.com/AN/parcours.htm. Some of the instructions haven’t held up too well in translation, but you’ll get the point.

Anyway, I think it would be quite nice, in a way, running along the Mediterranean seaside, running myself progressively uglier amongst le beau monde.

Here are some pictures, from les Galeries photos:

It looks nice. Also flat. I can’t seem to see any femmes in the photos, but I assume they’re in there somewhere, unless they’ve left it up to Triple J to organise.

The setting makes the event a little more attractive then, say, the Traralgon Marathon, which I’m told is a nice run but lacks a certain je ne sais quoi.

Le Marathon des Alpes-Maritimes is positively brimming over with je ne sais quoi. In fact, I can’t be sure but it seems likely that, somewhere among the page on inscriptions, there isn’t a requirement to have both un certificat médical and to be de rigeur.

So, it’s in November and I don’t have anything pressing planned for that month. Work can wait.

The only problem is finding beaucoup euros to fly myself over there and accomodate myself in the style to which I would like to become accustomed, or even the style to which I have become accustomed, which is considerably more modeste, worse luck.

Now would be an excellent time to discover an extremely frail, impressionable, long-lost multi-millionaire uncle. Either that or a winning lottery ticket.

just like clockwork

Just like clockwork, the post-marathon blues have kicked in. This dose seems particularly bad: I’m feeling grumpy and short tempered, and my sub-conscious now thinks it is amusing to wake me repeatedly in the night with vivid nightmares of the final 10km of the marathon.

The nightmares suggest to me that the whole marathon thing has become too much of an obsession. It suggests the “get straight back on your bike” approach might not be the way to go.

I’m torn between running Melbourne Marathon in October as some sort of penance, a chance for redemption, and just having a rest for a while.

What to do?

The answer, in the immediate term, is nothing. I’ll just take it easy as I recover from GC, and think about Melbourne in a few weeks.

Running
An easy 9km this morning. Nothing felt broken or seriously problematic.

Le tour
My opinion – based on a few blurry moments watching the SBS telecast last night and little else: Cadel Evans is cycling’s answer to Peter Costello, destined always to come second. If he was really serious about winning the thing, he would have jumped teams last year or the year before.

Also, Alberto Contador made a serious error of judgement allowing Lance Armstrong to join his team. I can’t see LA ever playing second fiddle to anyone.

roller coaster

The emotional roller coaster that is the week before the marathon continues apace.

If you’re one of those people who have high “emotional quotient”, you might have detected between the lines, a touch of grumpiness over the last week. In fact, it was a lot more than just a “touch”; I was about as low, emotionally, as I go.

Today, however, I’m happy and bouncy and generally chipper. The antibiotics I started taking last night would seem to be extremely fast acting. Last night I had something close to a good night’s sleep – only the one early morning coughing fit. Today I’m feeling even better.

News from the Gold Coast is helping the state of mind no end. The weather forecast is for a low of 9 degrees and a high of 19, sunny and no mention of significant wind. Touch wood, that’s good news.

In amusing news, according to the Pat Carroll website, Lee Troop will be pacing a 2 hour 20 minute group. Phew! What a relief! I bet there’ll be hundreds of people lining up for that.

The 3 hour pacer, who I’ll hopefully be hanging with, is Steve Monaghetti. Assuming it’s the same guy, that’ll make things pretty cool. Though, in a way, it’s a bit intimidating, as I still have vivid memories of running a 10km PB at a fun run a few years back and feeling pretty chuffed with myself, only to learn SM finished 10 whole minutes faster than I did. And I’m running with this guy??? I might have to beg him to go easy on me.

Running
An easy 9km today over lunch-time. Easy, but odd. I headed north, and it was like running into a hurricane. Then I turned back and almost achieved unassisted human flight heading down Royal Parade into town.

Celebrity crap
Apparently we’re all so obsessed with Michael Jackson that we have to endure almost a week of breathless commentary over his life and death. At one end of the spectrum are people who seriously consider him to be “up there with Mozart and Beethoven”. By the way, if you do meet someone like that, please be so good as to call your friendly local mental hospital: there are plenty of nice white padded rooms just crying out for these sorts of people.

At the other end, you have people, mostly those who actually knew him, who have been rude enough to mention some of the nasty stuff about him. You know, his peculiar sex life, physical deformities, drug addictions, questionable approach to fathering children and immense debt. How can you possibly be 500 million dollars in debt and not be considered bankrupt?

An interesting life, I guess.

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes have apparently arrived in Melbourne, to make a fillum. I’m a bit disappointed about this. How is it that relatively innocent drug couriers and terrorists are given a hard time coming through customs, yet Tom Cruise, responsible for such horrors as Valkyrie and Mission Impossible 2, is let in without a question?

blasted bronchitis

A trip to the local GP this morning confirmed what I already suspected: the little cold from a fortnight ago has developed into bronchitis.

Leaving aside the sleepless nights spent hacking up my lungs, I also have the Gold Coast Marathon to run this Sunday and I had my eyes fixed on a fast-ish time.

Sigh.

I’ll give you a tip: if it turns out this bloody bronchitis means the months of training were wasted, give me a wide berth for a few days. I will not be a happy boy.

Anyway, I told the doc to hit me with his most potent drugs, and I must have looked fairly frazzled. He obliged and I’m now full up to pussy’s bow with various types of antibiotic. Cross your fingers, that will hopefully do the trick.

The question is: is the coughing going to stop enough by Sunday to let me finish the marathon? Am I going to be able to run sub 3 hours? Am I going to be able to do that without having a heart attack?

Question, questions.

Running
On doctor’s orders (no kidding) I took a nice easy 9km run this lunchtime. It didn’t feel too bad at the time, but I was a bit short of breath afterwards.

race guide arrives

Things proceed apace with the Gold Coast Marathon. Just recently they emailed out a race guide. To be accurate, they emailed a link to a bloody great big PDF file (6mb) which I had to download and print.

I have to say, I kind of prefer races when they send you out an actual pack with the race number and stuff, like in Run for the Kids.

Never mind. The race guide didn’t have much new to say.

I’m still feeling good about the race, which is now just under 3 weeks ago. I ran 3:06 in Hobart in January and felt at the time I could have run a bit faster. I feel in better shape today than at the same point before Hobart.

So, we’ll see.

Running
None today, a rest day.