Peering at the seabourne military

Normally when I start to write these posts I have a vague idea in my head of what I want to say. Today, however, my thoughts are a jumbled mush of confusion, less coherent than an inebriated baboon. So at the risk of this becoming a non sequitur-laden stream of consciousness, off we go.

Well, it's a beautiful morning here; the fields are white with frost, the sun is up, and the fact it's still September means the leaved-trees take away some of the bleakness that's there on a frosty January morning. A fantastic morning for running, so up I got and off I went. I only ran 3 miles; one of the the two reasons I haven't posted for a fortnight (I'll come to the other in a bit) is that after the last run my left Achilles bruised and swelled very impressively; in the language of Formula 1 I've had to take a drive-through penalty, coasting through the pit lane when I should have been out on the circuit. So today I just wanted to get my legs used to running again.

But, bugger. I'd like to use a stream of invective at this point, but we're before the 9pm watershed, so I won't. The sciatica has raised its ugly head again. Not dramatically so, not enough to not be able to run 3 miles, but enough to have the random right leg pain that stopped me in my tracks earlier this year.

The worst of it is, both the Achilles and the sciatica are my own fault. I shouldn't have run 28 miles on a slightly sore Achilles, that was simply stupid. And in the last fortnight I've spent many, many hours sitting badly in cars, on trains and at desks that weren't my own, in all cases not giving two hoots for posture. What was the last thing the Physio said as I walked out of his door in June? Ah yes, "make sure you sit properly or it'll come back".

The Achilles problem was pure idiocy. The sciatica problem is neglect. Both are lifestyle-driven. Trying to do a job as a management consultant in the south of England but living in the north means a lot of travel and a lot of sitting at desks. These things restrict the number of days I can train, or to be more accurate at the moment, take exercise (training implies a planned and considered programme). In turn, when I do get the opportunity to run or get on my bike, I seem to massively over-compensate and try to do something really challenging. Here's the news; at the age of (nearly) 46, you can't, simple. Bad things happen. If you have a good base of fitness, you might be able to get away with it. For the last couple of years I've subscribed to the theory that targeted high impact sessions can produce good results. And so they can if you've got that good base. But after 12 months or so, it begins to diminish, and then you're exposing yourself to trouble. So whilst trundling round on a bike for 15 hours a week, or jogging 30-odd miles, without really breaking sweat in either aren't going to improve 'event' performance, regrettably it seems that you need to do those things to build the foundation for those days when you see stars, get pins and needles in your hands, and sweat explodes out of every pore.

Looks like I've got a choice then - change lifestyle (job), or be condemned to spending my life as 'trim', but not properly fit, like I was from 2005-11.

Anyway, before I get too self-comtemplatory, let me get on to the second reason why there have been no posts for a couple of weeks, and why there might be a similar gap after this. Without going into the detail, my mother-in-law is very, very ill, to the extent that Mrs Monmarduman is spending all her time in Plymouth looking after her at the moment. I was down there too last weekend, and am likely to be there next weekend as well. Clearly it's not a great situation for anyone, though mainly obviously my mother-in-law, who's bearing her obvious suffering with her customary cheerfulness and robustness. She's an object lesson in not-feeling-sorry-for-yourself, and one I suspect I should emulate a bit more.

Anyhow, it's probably now late enough for me to be able to start using a variety of noisy garden tools without irritating the neighbours too much, so off into the chill morning air to murder some lawns and hedges.

By the way, 2 points who solves the crossword clue of the title...

Sore nipples

The title of this post is, I confess, a shameless attempt to boost my viewing figures. Pregnant women, mastitis sufferers and the plain perverted will stumble across my humble blog, and to a man and woman, be roundly disappointed. But if that's you, read on! You never know what you might find.

Actually, the title isn't completely gratuitous. I was standing in the shower earlier today with the warm water coursing across my body (steady, this could get a bit 50 Shades...), warming me up after my cold bath - the reason for which will be revealed later, not that it's especially exciting to be frank - reflecting on the differences in injuries, pain and discomfort you get between running and riding a bike. I can honestly say that I've never had sore nipples after a bike ride, whereas after any run over 20 miles or so, even when they're dosed up with lashings of vaseline, ooo, they do tingle a bit.

In fact, I apply so much petroleum jelly (I'm too tight to buy vaseline when Bodycare do a bumper-size jar of the generic stuff for 89p) to my feet, ankles, hips, war wound (big scar on my waistline, dating from 1977 when an inch-wide drain was installed to siphon pus out of my peritonitis-afflicted stomach cavity), perineum, and of course, nipples, that I do wonder what the nice lady in that very Bodycare shop thinks I do with the stuff.

I'm not sure there are a lot of common injuries for cyclists and runners, at least if I take myself as an example. OK, it's a sample of one, but that's all that's to hand. Cycling generates stiff hamstrings and back, particularly if it's been a big uphill day, tenderness in the undercarriage of course, and, well, assuming you don't fall off, that's about it. Running, on the other hand - well, everything below the waist (plus nipples of course) is a bit sore. Left Achilles tendon is especially troublesome tonight, and indeed was so when I was out running this morning....

.....the soreness came on at about mile 10, but it wasn't till I stopped on the canal towpath just past Little Moreton Hall, in the shadow of Mow Cop, did I realise quite how sore it was. It made the return 13.5 miles quite a trial. I should have felt fantastic out there today - after the early mist had burned off the sun came out; dog walkers were minimal as I was out so early; there was nothing pressing to get home for; nature was rampant with spiders' webs as far as the eye could see, and countless herons fishing for their breakfast in the canal; and the countryside was idyllic. However, the reality was the Achilles wrecked, I sweated something rotten in the morning sun, and I ran out of energy - baked beans on toast the night before a big run probably not the best thing to biggest boost your glycogen stores. But I still bagged just under 27 miles, a decent training run, and that cold bath helped ensure that I haven't started hobbling around the place just yet. I'm aiming to do marathon-plus distance every couple of weeks now till my ultra-marathon on 20th October. I have no idea whether that's a sensible training strategy or not (I am doing other, shorter runs) - time will tell.

It always seems a bit odd writing the kind of nonsense like that above when there are bigger things - much bigger things - going on in the rest of your life. They all affect others much more than me, but you're not normal if you too aren't touched by those things. So in case any of them read this, I hope you don't think it's crass or insensitive, it's certainly not meant to be. And if this has been even mildly diversionary for a couple of minutes, job done...

And finally, the Tour of Britain comes to town on Monday. Actually, it turns off the main road just before it reaches Macclesfield, but I've managed to organise things to work at home, and I've got a top secret place which probably only a couple of hundred others will have thought to stand to get a great view of the riders. Should be good.

Synchronous

If I had more time to think about it, or was getting paid to do it, or was just generally wittier, I'm sure I could come up with a Private Eye-style mixing-them-up joke about the two Armstrongs, and the fact that each of them made big news on consecutive days; both for wrong, but different reasons. You know the sort of thing: "Armstrong says 'I didn't dope....I walked on the moon using only adrenalin'", or perhaps "It's one small step for man...because the rest of the peloton were at it already..."

I'm not though, so I'm going to have to content myself with a paragraph on Lance. What's my angle? After all, everyone else seems to have one. Well, my angle is that I think this is a bigger issue to the wider sporting but non-cycling public than it is to cyclists. There are certainly the die-hard fans and the Lance-haters in the latter, but I don't think most of us care that much. Why? A few reasons. First, it doesn't surprise us that much, if you take his refusal to defend himself against the charges as a tacit admission of guilt. So many of his competitors failed doping tests and/or were banned for that and other reasons, it doesn't astound us that he was at it too. Second, it already feels a long time ago now. He and his competitors were the last generation of cyclists; we've got a new bunch to excite us now, and quite a few of them are British, which might create a parochial reason for our apathy. Third, although there are a few pro-wannabees out there, I would say that the majority of us aren't inspired to ride our bikes because of what we see any particular pro doing - yes, we admire them, yes, we want to ride the roads and classic climbs they do, but not because they in particular have done those things; we know we'll never be as good as them, and we know that where they ride are some of the best places to ride. Ultimately, we ride because we love it, not because we're trying to emulate someone else, so if they're proven to have cheated, particularly if it was a long time ago, well, so what?

Not that I'm riding my bike very much at the moment - I've got a week pencilled in at the start of October in Brittany to ride and run, principally to build fitness for my ultra-marathon later in October, the training for which is going ok.  The bank holiday weekend has helped of course, plus an unexpected day working from home on Friday, which has meant I've been able to train 4 days on the bounce for the first time in ages. Over the 4 days I've run 42 very hilly miles, without too much trouble. I did discover yesterday however when I was out on some rocky trails that I probably need some appropriate running shoes for the trails - road shoes felt a bit flimsy, comfortable as they are.

And finally.......the latest in my series of rants against misuse of the English language. I let the odd faux pas slip past uncommented on, but when I see something 3 times in the media I can't help myself. The latest abomination is saying/writing that something is "imminently sensible" (as opposed to eminently of course).  Grrr - it's like saying something isn't sensible at the moment, but hold on a sec.....just wait a moment....here it comes.....it's sensible now...hooray!

Curate's egg

Writing a blog increases your knowledge about things you didn't realise you needed to know. Take this week for example. It's been a bit mixed, as I shall describe in a moment, hence why its title is curate's egg; we all know the line that follows someone's description of a thing being like the curate's egg is 'good in parts'. What I didn't know, however, until I wikied, was that the term derives from a Punch cartoon from 18 hundred-and-a-long-time-ago, the purpose of which was to to suggest that some things simply can't be partly good or partly bad, a bit like you can't be partly pregnant, and thereby expose the obsequiousness of the eponymous curate. So if my interpretation is right, when we describe something as a curate's egg we're misusing the term; it's not good in parts, it's unequivocally bad. Which wasn't my week at all, which begs the question as to whether my title of this nonsense is right. But it's there now, so away we go...

Good things first. Offspring #2 got straight As in his As, meaning he gets to go to Exeter Uni to do History & Philosophy, his first choice of place and subject. Phew. He worked very hard and deserves his success.

Second, the boy and I celebrated by a weekend of walking in the Shropshire hills, along Wenlock Edge and up and over the Long Mynd. This is becoming an annual trip for the two of us; we park in Church Stretton and walk a 30 mile circuit, staying somewhere near Craven Arms overnight. We walked clockwise rather than anti-clockwise this year by way of a change, which meant Saturday was the shorter leg, walked in warm weather. We had half an hour or so of rain on Sunday, but it didn't dampen our spirits - we had a great couple of days. Well I did anyway, you can't always tell with 18 year old boys can you? We drank beer, ate fish 'n' chips and ice cream, and watched Match of the Day though, so surely it can't have been all bad?

And then to complete the hattrick of son-related good things, he worked like a demon in our garden on Monday, clearing a massive, unkempt border. What a star.

Other good things have included HMRC cancelling a fine for late submission of a tax return (which wasn't justified in the first place, but that's not the point is it?), finding out just how close Brad and Cav will come to my house on the Tour of Britain (very), and the Vuelta being covered on poor person's telly (mine).

However, all that has been tinged with a bit of worry and sadness, nearly all of it involving the older generation. Howie Johnson wasn't that, but there's still something shocking about the premature death of someone you've known, even only slightly. Mendip Rouleur has blogged about his mum's circumstances. My mother's digestive problems don't compare to those, though we are waiting to establish the results both of her invasive medical tests, and the seriousness of my mother-in-law's liver problem. The next couple of weeks should tell us. Those are the worries.

The sadness concerns my stepmother, who, I learned, seems to be conducting a campaign among her and my father's friends to badmouth the conduct of my sister and I since our father's death couple of years ago. Ho hum. All the earlier things put that kind of pointless, destructive behaviour into context. I haven't the slightest intention of responding to it, and I'm not quite sure what she hopes to achieve. Learn and move on.

I can't end on that note though. The sun is shining, cycling is on tv as I write this, and a Bank Holiday weekend is imminent. The silver linings are re-asserting themselves.

Tom Kenyon

People with far more time, ability and insight than me have written countless column inches in the last few days about the wonderful Olympics that finished yesterday, so I don't intend to try to add any more thoughts. Not least because my involvement has been peripheral at best; I've watched it on TV of course, I've been in and around London whilst it's been happening, I know lots of people who've been to events (including the Murray and hockey finals), a gold medallist lives a mile or so from our house in France, and a good ex-Lloyds colleague was a Games Maker, but these are piffling things compared to being there in any form.

Well, go on then, perhaps just a couple of thoughts. First, a spectacularly banal one. I was struck by just how damn nice most of the Olympians were. There was no grunting, no obviously media-trained inanities, no avoiding the question, and no blaming officials, the weather or the price of cheese in the Congo for sub-standard performances. Just direct, simple, humble answers full of gratitude and in the case of the winners, joy. It was wonderful to witness, and I confess to having tears in my eyes and sometimes on my cheeks more times than I can recall in the last couple of weeks. In the first week of the Games I was in France, and in our little hamlet one of the TVs was always on, and we'd dash from house to house to see the latest triumph as roars erupted out of our open front doors. Cue kissing, clapping and celebratory curries. A small part of Bretagne was Grand Bretagne.

The second thought. Tom Kenyon. I was at school with Tom till we finished A levels. Tom read Physics at Oxford. He was an intellect, a radio ham, an eccentric. I've no idea where he is now or what he's doing. I do remember however than he hated football. A less obvious sportsman you couldn't wish to meet.

And yet he had a talent beyond his academic gifts. He could spin a cricket ball. He would never, and did never threaten to trouble the scorers when it came to representing his school at any sport other than cricket, and yet for 5 years he was a mainstay of the team I was proud to captain and take to the final of the county competition in 1982. We were the first comprehensive school to achieve that in Cheshire, and whilst we lost, our presence there alone was a massive triumph. And Tom was one of the factors that got us there, spinning his way through opposition batsmen. And had it not been for the fact that he and I sat next to each other in maths lessons he probably wouldn't have come to the nets where his talent was discovered. I scoffed when he first told me he was coming to those nets when we were both 13. I was wrong to of course, and it was my then PE teacher (Mike Brown; isn't it amazing how you can remember the names of influential teachers?) who observed that nearly everyone had a talent for something, which could blossom if it was nurtured and developed. That talent might not make us an Olympic champion, but it just could be a massive source of pleasure and sense of achievement.

And that's what I thought as I watched some of the Olympians in the so-called lesser sports; how did you get into that? How did you discover your talent? In some cases yes, money and privilege. But in Nicola Adams' case and countless others, I somehow doubt that. Most of us, I suspect, could find our own little niche if we wanted to, and I am talking about physical endeavours. So whilst it's brilliant that Team GB won so many medals, I really hope that one of the Games' legacies is that grassroots mass involvement sport develops, as well as the elite programmes being maintained. Those who are never going to win a medal need to be welcomed and encouraged just as much as the worldbeaters.

I'm in the no-hopers category of course, but I still love doing it. On Saturday I got up and out running for 7.15, and the canal towpath was finally dry enough for a decent run. And the weather was superb. I hadn't really done a meaningful distance for a good few weeks, so when nothing started hurting, and the weather held good, and the water supplies were still there, I just kept running, eventually running 25.5 miles in 3 hours 40. Ie just under a marathon, just over 40km. And after a cold water bath when I finished, and some quality protein in the form of homemade turkey burgers, I managed to do another 6.5 hilly miles on Sunday. Still I wasn't lame, so I've entered my first ultra-marathon, a 50km trail run in the Lake District in October. The distance isn't that much further than a regular marathon, but there's 2000 ft of climbing and some pretty tough surfaces. Time to step the training up, as far as work allows anyway.

That'll give me something to talk about over the next couple of months...

Coming very soon...

...to a computer / tablet / smartphone of your choice, a 'proper' blog entry.

This one is just to say I'm cranking back into action after a wedding, a quiet week in France, a busy week at work, and lots of Olympics watching.

I've got a barbeque to prepare, packing to do, and much, much more fun right now, but with 3 nights in a hotel this week and no Olympics to distract me there's no excuse for not getting back in the swing of things...

'ere wiggo, 'ere wiggo, 'ere wiggo

Was there ever a more apt marriage of moronic English sporting chant and the affectionate diminutive of our latest sporting hero? Probably not. But that, along with cow bell, whistles and cheers, was pretty much all you could hear in the English enclave that was the exit of the hairpin at the top of the Champs Élysées today.

I'm not going to produce a blow by blow account of the weekend I've spent in Paris with t'eldest, and still less our day on the Champs today. Last time I was there/here was last September, celebrating my own personal and team achievement of riding from London to Paris in one piece without any terminal arguments, and today I was celebrating someone else's personal and team achievement of riding from Liege to Paris in one piece (pretty much anyway) without any terminal arguments. But then, we had to take our own pictures; today, there were hundreds, thousands of others doing it for them. And their arguments weren't about route finding or letting their drying pants drip on the bunk below (unless there's a Sky documentary exposé down the line), but who had the right to stand on top of a podium in Paris. Mr Froome will tell us there were no such arguments, but don't you just wish you were a fly on the wall of his and his girlfriend's room? And I mean that in a completely non-pervy way.

Talking of the Froomedog, as David Millar seems to have christened him, check this out (taken by aforementioned eldest) in case you missed it on Twitter:

So no, there'll be no dull narrative about our "I was there" story. You know where we were. It was fun. I had tears in my eyes at times - though slightly oddly, it was the publicity caravan that inspired that; the unalloyed joy of those on the back of the crazily swerving motorised water bottles and loaves of bread somehow captured the essence of the event even more than the racing itself.

Two last words. When the teams did their lap of honour, the British fans, who I feared were going to lapse into the kind of booze-fuelled partisanship of their footballing compatriots, heartily cheered all the teams, regardless of their nationality or levels of success. They added colour, atmosphere and laughter. Just for a day, we were the fans everybody liked.

And finally, I lapsed. I sold out. I thought I'd never do it. I bought some Sky merchandise...shame on me. But you know, when the greatest sporting show on earth (and I brook no argument on that, regardless of anything that might be happening dairn sairf next weekend for a bit), is won by an interesting and seemingly decent British fella, what can you do?