Time to end the madness

You might think, given its title, that this piece is about Brexit. Truth is I'm a bit bored by all that at the moment, and to coin a phrase, just want to get Brexit done. So no, this post is about running, cycling and me - its original purpose, going back the eight or so years to when it started.

It's never wise of course to make hasty decisions after significant moments or events, but what I'm about to describe has been coming on for a year, and was cemented by what happened at the weekend, which I'll cover in a moment. The basic point though is that I've decided to give up challenges that are hard and painful, merely for the sake of being hard and painful. 

To go back to August/September 2018, I did the 'Cent Cols', multiple days of very hard riding in the Pyrenees. By day 8 or so, I was so tired, it was hard to even get out of bed in the morning, though I did, and carried on riding. But the exhaustion was great and one particular saddle sore painful, both of which took the edge off the magnificent scenery and great overall experience. It was then that a few things dawned, or at least became more sharply into focus: first, these 'leisure' activities should be enjoyable. Some people talk about 'Type 1' enjoyment (experiencing pleasure in the moment something is happening) and 'Type 2' enjoyment (experiencing delayed pleasure after the event).  Some folk are happy to get very little Type 1, providing Type 2 compensates, which for me, for many years, it did.

But then it stopped compensating, or largely did. Type 2 enjoyment can come through either or both of a self-contained feeling of achievement, or the kudos you get with others. I didn't get, or felt that I needed, either any more. I wasn't going to shun them of course, but I wanted more Type 1 - enjoyment in the moment itself.

The next thing I realised is that I'm lucky to be blessed with a fairly efficient aerobic system, and certainly one that's enough to make me reasonably competitive generally, and pretty good for my age. And the last thing came to me was that I find it easier to be competitive, than to pretend that finishing places and rankings are of no importance.

Despite all the above, after good reports in October last year from a guy at work, I still entered - along with my son - an event called the Atlantic Coast Challenge; 3 marathons in 3 days down the south west coastal path in Cornwall, finishing at Land's End. The event was last weekend. I didn't finish it. In fact, I didn't start day 3 at all, as all the above dominated what was going on in my head the whole time.

What happened was as follows. Day 1 was horrendously windy; brutal, battering gusts that could - and did - stop you dead in your tracks, make you have to battle merely to stay on the path, and at one amusing point support me leaning forward over 45 degrees. It sapped your strength just as much as the running, and Seb found it unbelievably tough. The alternately rocky, sandy, sharp, and soft terrain, and the near 3000 feet of ascent contributed to that as well of course. It took Seb and me 2 hours 45 mins to get to the halfway point, at which juncture he decided that he was to have any hope of starting Day 2 he should withdraw at that point; it was a wise decision, as cramp and blisters had already set in. Meanwhile, I cracked on with the second half, moving up from 101st position on the day to 35th at the end, out of 190 starters. My second half-marathon time was top 10 on the day.

On Day 2 Seb and I decided that he should start with the earlier group, and me with the later group of starters, and we calculated I should catch him around mile 20, and we should finish together. I decided to race the day as quickly as possible, and catch him up as quickly as I could. Unfortunately there were several on beach/off beach options around the mile 20 point, inevitably we opted for different ones, so we didn't see each other. That meant however that I completed the run in 4 hours 40, enough to make me 15th on the day, and first UK over-50 finisher (I was beaten by a very tall Dutch policeman in the overall over-50 category!).

I paid a heavy price for that though. There was another 3000 feet of climbing on Day 2. The going up isn't the problem though, it's the coming down. I'm sufficiently confident and light on my feet to descend really quickly, no matter what the surface is, including rocks. That's great, but a) one day I'll be too cocky and fall and hurt myself, and b) your legs generally, and quads in particular, take massive impacts, which you get away with in a one day race, but not more. I woke on Sunday barely able to walk because of muscle soreness, and Seb, who heroically finished Saturday despite doing 1.5 miles more than he needed to because of a routing error (he got lost for a bit), was similarly broken. If our lives had depended on it, we could have grovelled our way through the 30 mile course, which had even more ascent and descent than the previous two days, but I suspect it would have taken 10 hours, as it did a good number of the participants.

So we packed up and left Cornwall, and I spent my birthday driving from Cornwall to Macclesfield via Shrewsbury. It was ok as it happens - the sun shone, there were no hold-ups, we had some good chat (and part of the point of the weekend had been to spend some father-son time), and we had a well-deserved lunch of the unhealthiest things we could find on the McD's menu.

I'm sad we didn't do all three days of the event, but I don't regret Sunday morning's decision at all. I genuinely don't think it would have been much fun, either Type 1 or Type 2.

Which brings me back to the point of this post: time to end the madness. There'll be no more daft events for the sake of it; there's nothing left I want to prove to myself in terms of my ability to either take pain, or to keep buggering on. There'll be plenty more road and trail half-marathons and 10k's I hope, and probably the occasional marathon too, but my aim is to approach them more competitively than in the past. It's time to stop the mindless slog, dismiss the fantasy of running a 100 mile ultramarathon, and try to do as well as possible in my age category for shorter events. And the cycling will continue too. That won't have any competitive element, but the prospect of seven days of hilly riding next September will be enough to keep me focused through next summer.

There we are then; me, me, me. Sorry. I want to finish by going back to the weekend, and acknowledging the guts it took Seb to get through Saturday. He still looks like the American footballer he was at university - muscled and powerful; to get his 90kg frame round over 27 miles of that course was a sterling effort. However, next time he and I hit the countryside together, I think it'll be for one of our traditional two-day hikes with a decent pub and B&B in the middle...altogether more civilised...