all downhill

Hills are a bit of a bugger really, aren’t they? I mean – you work your guts out, running, walking, staggering, crawling to the top of the things and when you get to the top you justifiably feel as if the worst is over.

After all – they’ve even invented a saying for this very situation: it’s all downhill from here. As I understood it, that’s supposed to imply every thing’s easy-street from here on in.

In reality, going down is about three times as fast, but it also takes your quads and bashes them with a meat tenderiser. And not gently, either.

The family members are not exactly brimming over with sympathy either. They seem to feel that if I choose to run up a mountain then I deserve whatever I get.

Sigh.

Leonard Cohen
In all the excitement I neglected to mention the Leonard Cohen concert on Saturday night. I’m a bit of a fan – no, make that a FAN – so I’d probably pay to watch him snoring, but he was surprisingly entertaining. He was in fine voice – for him – and the band was great. He played for an astonishing 2 and a half hours plus interval, and skipped on and off the stage like some bizarre 75 year-old leprichaun, even in the 5th encore.

And the music was great. Bird on a Wire, which I’ve never really liked, became a really cool blues number. Hallelujah, which probably everyone was waiting for, was also inspiring, completely different but on a similar level to the Jeff Buckley version.

A very happy JH left the Yarra Valley on Saturday night. Little did I know what the morrow would bring, mountain-wise.

leonard

I’ve spent far too much of my tender years listening to an assortment of dead white singer-songwriters from the 1970s. Nick Drake, Tim Hardin, John Martin, Tim Buckley, Joni Mitchell: you name it, I’ve bought the record, memorized the lyrics and played the tunes on an acoustic guitar.

Now, before you say anything, I know some of those people aren’t actually dead per se, but they probably should be.

Of them all, Bob Dylan’s probably the best, but Leonard Cohen’s the one I’d like to meet the most. Not just because I spent most of 1996 with Songs of Love and Hate on repeat. It’s because he’s the most insightful one of the lot.

If you can manage it, get a copy of a book called Book of Mercy. It’s possibly my favourite book of all time, which is strange seeing it’s a collection of contemporary psalms and I’m about as much of an atheist as is possible on God’s earth.

Anyway – I’ve got tickets to see Leonard Cohen at some winery in the Yarra Valley in January. Hooray!

Running
Just got back from 15.2km this lunch-time, taken at just over 4 minute/km pace and topped off with a cold shower. I’m right at the peak of the post-run buzz as I write this. I can feel my pores tingling all over my body.

Nice.

sweat and Leonard Cohen

I have a bizarre, some would say unreasonable, aversion to losing more than 7 percent of my bodyweight in sweat at any one time. Call me crazy.

On weeks like this one here in Melbourne, this tends to limit the amount of running I can do. The long-range weather forecast reads like an infernal tale of doom.

Thursday: 36 (Boom)
Friday: 37 (Boom)
Saturday: 30 (Boom)
Sunday: 35 (Boom)
Monday: 35 (Boom)
Tuesday: 33 (Boom, boom, boom)

What a god-awful mess. I really don’t see how I’m going to get any running done at all!

Actually, I do. I have a plan involving my house, my work, about 27km of road in between the two, and some running gear. I intend to put this plan into action tomorrow morning.

Running
A nice easy 9.6km this lunchtime, just to get out of the office.

Leonard Cohen
Congratulations to the old man who was today inducted into the Rock ‘n roll hall of fame. Apparently he recited the lyrics to “Tower of Song” as part of his acceptance speech. I doubt it went down well, given most of the audience were there to see Madonna, god help them.

queen victoria

It may come as a surprise to you, but I’m a bit of a fan of Queen Victoria, mainly the Leonard Cohen song, but also the historical figure.

Queen Victoria, my father and all his tobacco loved you.
I love you to in all you faults.
The slim, un-lovely virgin floating among German beer.
The mean governess of the huge pink maps.
The solitary mourner of a prince.

This is the word of Leonard Cohen, thanks be to Leonard.

If old Queen Vic was to set out for a Sunday night run, I imagine it would be a fairly unique affair. I see something rather stately, dignified and above all SLOW, with black petticoats, a couple of carriages in attendance and possibly a crystal palace hastily erected along the route.

My run tonight was quite like that, except with neither the stateliness, dignity, petticoats of any colour, carriages nor a crystal palace.

That’s my way of saying it was SLOW. But it was a run, and for this I suppose I must be thankful.

Reasons to be thankful
You know they have those “open garden scheme” things? Some uber-green thumb with a gee-whiz garden invites all and sundry in for a squiz one weekend and everyone is dead impressed.

Well, there’s a reason they’ve never held one of those things at my place. I have what’s known in the trade as a black thumb. Everything I touch turns to ash, weeds and bitter dust.

So, to say I’m a bit chuffed to see my pumpkins growing is something of an understatement. First they sprouted, then they spread, taking over the rest of the vegie patch, and now there are ACTUAL pumpkins. They’re little, to be sure, but they’ll grow. Hooray!

the lurgy is over

Ahh, “lurgy”. It’s not the nicest word is it? There’s something about it that reminds me of that instant just before vomiting.

Lurgy

Still, it’s appropriate.

Thankfully, last week’s sickness has more or less departed the scene. The chest is back to normal and the nose has resumed normal service. Thanks to all readers who left messages of support through my ordeal.

Yesterday I even went as far as a long run, taking in such local sights as the Arndale Centre Video Busters, the back of Bunnings in Bayswater and a good portion of Dorset Road. Lovely.

As I was still in the tail end of the aforementioned cold, there seemed little point in pushing the pace. The whole thing was done “on feel”. Not surprisingly, my body “felt” like running fairly slowly, especially at first. 31k in 2hrs 20. The route is on Mapmyrun.

Poetry
I haven’t jettisoned my new-found interest in poetry, despite the above lapse into prose. During the run yesterday I amused myself by trying to pick out the metre in the various song lyrics on the old empythree player.

Leonard Cohen has some good stuff, as one would expect from a singer who was originally a published poet:

If by chance I wake at night and ask you who I am,
Oh take me to the slaughterhouse, I’ll wait there with the lamb

And Dylan:

At dawn my lover comes to me and tells me of her dreams
with no attempt to shovel a glimpse into the ditch of what each one means

That last line gets a bit out of hand. That’s okay, it’s Dylan, and Dylan can do whatever he likes.

Albert Park

In recent weeks I fear I may have been a wee bit disparaging about Leonard Cohen, particularly with regards to his music’s usefulness while running. Probably too disparaging.

Now’s the time to set it right.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a reason they don’t play Leonard Cohen in gyms. There’s a reason your local “pump” class plays amped-up, dumbed-down “commercial dance” without the good bits, and it’s not just because they want to insult your intelligence.

No, high energy music is usually pretty good to get you going and low energy introspective stuff isn’t.

But not always! No, sometimes, when in the early to mid stages of the weekly long run, when staying cool and restrained is of the essence, what you need is calm, calm, calm music and something to take your mind off the relentless thumpety-thump of rubber on bitumen.

Doesn’t this get you thinking?

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel
You were talking so brave and so sweet
Giving me head in an unmade bed
While the limousines wait in the street.

Or this:

Great Babylon was naked
oh she stood there trembling for me
and Bethlehem enflamed us both
like a shy one at some orgy.

And when we fell together
all our flesh was like a veil
that I had to draw aside to see
the serpent eat its tail.

This is the best one for me though, from the end of a song called “Queen Victoria” an otherwise incredibly urbane and literate song from Live Songs:

Confusing the star-dazed tourists
with our uncomparable sense of loss

Shouldn’t that be “incomparable”? Shouldn’t it? It bothers me.

These are the things that run through my head during running.

Running
A vomit-free run this lunchtime. You know things aren’t going well when the best thing you can say is you kept your lunch down. Today was helped a little by not having any lunch at all.

Anyway, it was a quick brief jaunt from my office in Lonsdale street down to Albert Park, around the lake and back. I pushed the pace a bit as I had a 2 o’clock meeting in a very confined space and I felt a preparatory shower was a good policy.