Love, Reinvention and Loss

Christmas morning saw me leaving the home of my upbringing and running down to the lake grounds in Portishead.
I had decided that daily running may just build up my pathetic ankle, hence setting out when everyone else is at the breakfast table sharing smoked salmon with blinis.  I was keen to act out childhood journeys as I don't really engage much with the environment that shaped me.
A keen air raked me as I ran through Eastwood down to the royal hotel and on to the beach I spent a long time playing on as a child.  The beach part was pebbles; in the past ships from the West Indies would jettison their ballast prior to entering the port of Bristol and as a result it is possible to find an extraordinary mixture of geology.
Bedrock rises from the shingle like the ridge of a dragons back and pushes out into the mud of the estuary. I jogged over to where there once was a heavy concrete structure that we would crawl into, and once sheltered in when caught by a sudden rain storm. To my surprise the entire platform had tilted so much that the tunnels were raised to the sky and were full of stones.  Thinking about when I played there (forty years ago); no matter how massive and unmovable a structure is, the sea will gently upend and bury it if it has enough time. Nothing is permanent.

Feeling looser than I have recently, I ran along Woodland road, one of the main first roads in Portishead, built to transport tourists who had travelled on the steamer from Bristol.  Crumbling houses are evidence of previous opulence but now divided into flats and family apartments; manicured gardens are hidden under tarmac for the BMW, or the kids' trampoline.
On the other side of the road are the Eastwoods; apparently the site of an ancient hill fort, but also the site of our explorations as kids.  We would climb around in there for hours, only returning home when called for lunch.  Amazingly, the lack of traffic meant everything was so quiet that Mum could bellow for us and her voice would echo round the hill to our den or swing, and we would respond by scuffling home for sandwiches or beans on toast.
I used to run down here when a teenager, floating along with a feeling that the running was so natural it was permanent.  This time I was made very aware that this sense of immortal fleetness is not only ephemeral, but largely absent now. I seem to have replaced the glide with gritty determination.

To my pleasure there was a runner ahead who unwittingly provided competition for me and I ran him down as we approached the sailing club.
Along the cliff path, up onto Nore Road, and back around to the Lake Grounds. I glanced up at the window of one of the houses that had been built on Nore Road when I was a boy - a family were sat at the table with the children swinging their legs in their pyjamas.
The ducks were making the only noise on the Lake Grounds; gabbing away at each other.  The wind streamed off the channel and made me grateful for my windproof top.  The recent rain had overfilled the lake which then flowed over the path causing me to splashily tip-toe along the edge.  I stopped at the cricket pavilion, remembering the hours we spent there watching Dad playing hockey and wallowing in the responsibility of taking the orange segments onto the pitch at half time.  I could almost hear the clacking of the hockey sticks.












I ran past the swimming pool- again a place I spent countless hours in as a child. It belongs to a voluntary group now; they rescued the pool when the council decided to close it.  It seemed smaller than when I was a boy: it always felt so adventurous with high diving boards, the torturing curves of older girls and women in bikinis, and a balcony that was home to breezes from the sea. They have painted it now in Mediterranean colours that jar with my memory; of bleached white steps, a little booth for the guards that contained a tannoy ('NO DIVE-BOMBING'),  and a shelter to store your towel when swimming in the rain.

The path in Eastwood was coated in damp leaves with a silence that sucked up all my footsteps. Brittle twigs reached to the sky like angular fingers.  I love running in these conditions as I feel like the only animated thing: a splash of life in a dormant world.  A solid grind up the hill I used to plod up with my towel and trunks rolled up under my arm, and then a quick bounce down into South Road.

I walked up to the drive, only to see a bunch of irises that had decided to flower out of season.

Bookends

Two runs back to back, on the Roseland Peninsula this weekend.

Sandpiper

Bright sun, clean, sea stretching out like a plateau; I ease out my sore ankle, rolling down the road.  Past white houses, Agapanthus celebrating the climate, sharp gradient sharp bend, level.  
Down onto the beach over the sinuous stream filing its way across the sand; everything finds its own level, flat, smooth.

Footsteps pocked across the beach I spread out over the open space; waves like teeth in the mouth of the sea.  Things seem easier now when in my cadence and the warmth seems to seep through and around; elbows sharp bent, flicking the heels back.  
I step up out of the beach and into the folds of the fields running along tight brown paths scarcely room for one foot let alone two.

Rolling back down into the littoral domain my feet sink; the sand sucking the action from my foot and removing the spring.  
Sting taken from my stride I move with effort toward the rocks and then up, calf push, and over the dark hard; mussels crunching.  There is a man ahead, just by the tight gap in the rocks and I curve round him so he hears me coming, steps back, and lets me jump up and into the next bay, all change.

Boat moored, dragged like a carcass onto the track; past another person's domain. 

I stop, climbing onto the rocks and squat, sun warmed.  
Two sandpipers mechanical prodders crank along the beach, excising worms.  Unaware of my presence they stab closer to the rocks until I stand and send them panicking along the shore.

The warmth connects me to the land.  Space defined by sound and wind I hear the waves.  Shirt off I feel muscular, sinuous; organic movement contrasts with the immutability of the rocks as I retrace my steps, follow the path, leave it all behind.





Lighthouse
Jenny and I ran the other way the next day.  The path follows the curve and curl of the fields, and we found ourselves alternately climbing and dropping, and then sweeping round and over each hill.  Moby ran behind, ahead, and mostly in the way of us as he picked up smells and looped through bushes and routes that we couldn't fit through. Stiles and gates appeared to be placed in the most awkward places - at the top of a slippery path or pushed in the end of a bramble bush.  
Cows stood still in the calm of a windless day; lumbering out of our way as we approached. They have trampled parts of the path and must be cautious of the cliff with little protection from the drop.

The sea sat limpid until we broached the estuary where it gave us a sharper view of sky, rocks and trees on the opposite side.  

Back to Portscatho, and back into the people sorting out breakfast or planning the day.  Some just sat, sucked out to sea by the vertiginous flatness.  We made an effort to catch two bikers yards from the house, and triumphantly burst in on the peace.

The Land that Crest Nicholson forgot

The ground was icy in patches as, buoyed up by a slightly looser ankle than normal, I headed off to Dundry.  For non-Bristolians, Dundry is perched on an escarpment peering down at the city; the weather is always colder and wetter up there and the village has an atmosphere of isolation.  I can see it from our kitchen window, and so it often becomes an aspirational target when heading out for a run.

The land between Long Ashton and Dundry has been the subject of much planning debate - it seems that developers want to coat it in tarmac and erect the sort of houses that have a 20 year shelf life.  The fields have a sense of history about them and the prospect of 24,000 houses taking up my running territory is hardly going to fill me with pleasure, regardless of a stated need for so many more dwellings.

I ran under the bypass and along the side of the golf course down an ancient-feeling path with some reflection that I should enjoy this land before it is lost.  Up the steep climb to Dundry and onto ground that I imagine won't be built on for a very long time - Dundry is so steep that any pavements would have to be steps - it just isn't practical to build there.  For now.
I curved past Castle farm.  I have no idea whether there once was a Castle there and wasn't really fussed about asking the resident there - a man repairing the roof on top of some scaffolding.  He was dropping planks down as he dismantled the scaffolding and his skittish dog kept getting in the way.  Past the house and on to the top.
Over the ridge and I was presented with a view of Chew Valley lake gently glinting in the late afternoon sun.   A field of cows were rather startled by my presence and I took advantage of their presence to draw breath as I reached out to stroke them; their hides always being just out of reach as they cautiously stepped back.

 I love the time in the winter just before it gets dark; things feel expectant with the only sound being slightly hysterical blackbirds clucking warnings to each other.  They seem to be attempting to shout the dusk away with their voices echoing in the hovering silence.

I then dropped down Elwell Lane; surely the rockiest, steepest most challenging track in the area.  At the best of times a stream runs down the middle, and there is no level surface anywhere.  You have to carefully pick your way down one step at a time and this time I was joined by fallen leaves as they were washed down the hill by the stream.  I once found a load of hair care products up there - shampoo, hair spray and some brushes.  There is no way a car can get up the track and I couldn't imagine the owner of so many beauty products being up for a strenuous scramble and so the mystery remains.

Across the road, onto Rock Lane and out on the A38 by the house with loads of dogs.  There were so many border terriers in a pen, all barking at me, that it sounded like pebbles rolling down a beach after having been thrown up there by a wave.  One much larger black dog was also barking, but its lower-toned bark and the fact that it was much taller than the terriers gave it a sense of being the school teacher amid a rabble of small over-excited children.  I rolled on past the dogs, crossed the main road and then ran alongside the pig farm, enjoying a scramble of hyperactive piglets.

It was starting to get darker now, but I had my headtorch if necessary - past Jubilee Stone, through Barrow Gurney and up to the hill we call Elly's field.  I could see our house at that point but I couldn't see my feet any more, so I had to return to Long Ashton cautiously.

I don't know if town planners can feel the atmosphere that rolls through the country at dusk, or the pellucid summer mornings where every sound seems to travel further.  I don't know if they give value to sloppy deep mud by a stile or the vivid yellow leaves clinging on to trees in the Autumn.  Or holes in the hedge where a fox habitually passes through, or the sudden reward of an opening vista on rounding a corner.  But I do know that these pleasures are removed when the land is built on, never to be brought back.  There is some debate about whether we actually need all the houses that are claimed - if that is the case we should hold out until we know.

Holiday running

I had ninety minutes to run today - on holiday just outside Hay on Wye.  Ninety minutes for a lollop across new countryside armed with a map in a waterproof case, my OMM jacket and an eye on the scudding clouds. I needed all of those things within ten minutes of setting out as a filthy black cloud tore into view and enveloped me in a wild drenching storm.  I climbed up the lane by our holiday cabin through trees and leaves bearing the mark of the season - glowing light green and yellow with the road a carpet of fallen leaves. Irritatingly I lost my way the moment I left the road, as the path was marked by a post that was on the ground with no indication that it was in the right field let alone pointing in the right direction.
I finally worked out the way, only to enter a field full of a dangerous combination of chest-high bracken and brambles that knitted the whole layer together.  Ten minutes later and I had scarcely moved forward, so I decided that the best thing was to enter some woods and try to find another path.  I carefully eased my way over a barbed wire fence and into a remote and green world that sloped steeply down to a racing stream.  The only way across it was to walk, Bear Grylls style, along a fallen tree trunk that straddled the stream, so I inched along rather feeling as if I was in a documentary about some idiot who has decided to run across Borneo or some such place.  Over the stream, up a slippery slope and into a field - freedom!
Some poor path signage finally led me to Offa's Dyke which at least had the benefit of being well way-marked, down to the River Wye, and along the bank to Hay.  Resisting the urge to make crappy jokes about making hay while the sun shines, I squelched back to our lovely cedar cabin accommodation.

A crappy run, or an adventure?  My legs seethed with nettle stings and the map case needed a wash.  However, I had got outside when I suspect most of the country were holed up by their log burners; I saw some buzzards at close quarters; but the strongest echo in my mind is the ferns in the wood - stately shuttlecocks that provide a warm green against the backdrop of mud and sticks.  Their rotational symmetry gave order in chaos - a geometric shape sat among mud.  They were beautiful, and worth the soiled socks to go to see.

Headtorch running

After a long period of inactivity caused by my foot deciding that it needed a rest, I have been popping out for a canter in the evening.  A headtorch is needed now that the Autumn has well and truly displaced the Summer - I have a very nice Silva one that seems to run for ages even when the batteries are low and a small Petzl in my pocket as a backup.
Anyway, I went out last week for an hour or so in Ashton Court, looping across the fields and alongside the deer enclosure.  There is an odd isolated feeling of running in dark that is accentuated when running in a place that is usually quite busy in the day; it seems as if you are in a silent alternative reality - same place, different light, animals instead of humans.  The moon shone through the dampness and my torch picked out features that were insignificant in the day .  Grasses were given haloes that made them resemble lamp posts and tiny shreds of foil from dropped sweet wrappers glowed like pin-prick lamps.  I was startled by something that shone up at me from the ground and when I picked it up I was surprised to find a Nike tick - presumably it had peeled off a running shoe or jacket.  Testament to the value of reflective elements on sports clothing.
I ran alongside the deer park and climbed steadily toward Clarken Combe.  The mist and darkness conspired to close in on me in a welcoming shroud so that my world shrunk down to the ten foot circle around me.  I was lolloping quite gently, scarcely out of breath, and enjoying the movement of my body.
My torch picked out a pair of eyes in the undergrowth, just through the railings of the fence, and I found myself a few feet from a couple of deer.  For some reason they were either unaware or unconcerned about my presence.  I was shining a bright light in their direction and not more than six feet away but they continued grazing around the edges of a fallen tree trunk.  One had a good set of antlers and up behind us in the woods a crashing indicated battles for supremacy were taking place.
After a good couple of minutes I drifted off and continued my run - a memorable encounter that suffused the run.  I regretted not taking my phone as I could have taken some pictures - maybe next time.

It's difficult to run while fighting off tears

Sometimes things don't go to plan, but instead they offer a new way of thinking.  I was due to go out for at least 6 hours today, but Karin has been knocked down hard by her chemo and I was very reluctant to leave her.  She has been unable to even get up out of bed even for something small like getting a drink of water and the thought of her laying there for 6 hours without being able to get what she needs put me off running at all.  I then came up with a plan; I would run for about 2 hours then go back and make sure she is OK.  As soon as possible I would go out and have another run, and so on.  This was quite exciting - she would be looked after and I wouldn't need to carry a days worth of supplies.
I hadn't reckoned on the difficulty of leaving the house again and again - it was so tempting to give up. However, I managed 30 miles in 3 legs, and actually I think that stop-start approach was good training:  I certainly have tired legs.  I also managed to make sure Karin was OK throughout the day and even prepared her a very quick lunch.
As I ran I pondered the natural extension of this type of running - how long could you sustain running for 2 hours, returning for 30 mins, then repeating?  I reckon I had one more slow run in me, although each run was getting shorter.  I must do some research on this as a training method.  I know back to back runs are popular for developing stamina - either two runs on the same day or one late one day followed by the other early next day - but does it compare with continuous running, which after all is what I do when racing.

Going back to the title, I also took my phone, some headphones, and a load of radio 4 podcasts.  I got used to listening as I went along; something I have avoided over the years.  Having speech was loads better than music as I could still hear environmental sounds through the words.
As I ran towards Failand on leg 3 I put on a podcast about Robert Wyatt singing Shipbuilding.  That song catches me every time, but hearing how it was written with some passionate analyses from a variety of people really pulled me up.  What a beautiful and profound song.  Elvis Costello said that when he finished the lyrics he knew it was the best song he had ever written.  So, I ran, sniffing to myself, and occasionally warbling to the snippets of the song they played.  Good job no-one was around.

Just to lighten things up I listened to Desert Island Discs with Stephen Pinker and some excellent debates about social policy - I do lead an exciting life!  My first day of running using podcasts was great - if I am in terrain that I don't know or in company I won't need any entertainment, but when on my own on familiar trails it was very welcome.

I am still a bit cautious about the 10 Peaks 40 mile race in 4 weeks, mainly due to not knowing how things will be at home, but I have had a good days running, and there is nothing wrong with that!

Running in the sun

 As part of our planning for the 10 peaks in September, four intrepid TACHers met in Talybont a few weeks ago for a 20 mile run on the route.  As we climbed out of our cars it was obvious that the day would be a hot one - it had been sunny all week.  Now, this is the weird thing- how do you plan for a run up in the Brecons?  No matter what the conditions are like at the car, there is no knowing what it will be like up in the hills.  I found that out during the Brecon 40m when I stood on the start line in my shorts, looked at what everyone else was wearing and quickly popped my tights on.  Very glad I was too; the horizontal rain was freezing.

Anyway, as we climbed it was clear that the day was a scorcher.  I was very glad of the 2 litres of water I took, as well as the fact that we would be stopping at the Storey Arms mid point to refuel.  Chris and Graham decided to cut their run a little shorter, leaving David and I to sweat away on the full route as planned.  We noticed a lot of soldiers on the hills - mostly solo and carrying massive bergens as well as a rifle.  We said hello to quite a few but very rarely got a reply.  David said that they didn't look the ideal types to be up there in full uniform; they looked young and not as craggy as you might hope.  We advised one to get into a stream as he seemed rather bewildered.

A surge of testosterone on the first big hill established me as the fittest, but also the one with the most sore legs for the rest of the run - do I never learn?  David was stronger than me on the second half - although his recent return from Hong Kong hinted at acclimatisation to the heat.  At Storey Arms I took my shirt and shoes off and sat in the stream - bliss.

A horrible crawl back up to Corn Dhu and we were well on route back to the car.  I was very happy at this stage to walk anything that veered from horizontal but unfortunately my plans for strolling were scuppered by a chance meeting with the race organiser for the September race.  He had run the whole 58km in that weather!  He was very pleased to run and chat with us, which of course meant that I had to pretend I wasn't falling apart.  Luckily I am a demon descender and made good use of gravity to pretend I could still run at a decent lick.
Back at the car I was finding breathing difficult; very odd.  David suggested exercise-induced asthma as a cause.  I found it easier to breath through my nose - maybe something to do with controlled breathing - so with me remaining uncharacteristically silent we headed to The Star for refreshments. One pint of coke and ice and I was restored to my usual voluble self.  So, either the cold drink relaxed my pipes or I was suffering low blood sugar I don't know, but it was a relief.

The following day we found out that two of the soldiers on the exercise had died, with another in intensive care.  It seems they weren't prepared for the weather up there, and the Army's response was that the process needs to be tough to select the best soldiers.  I don't know how to respond to that, other than to remind myself of the importance of careful planning.

So, a great run that was very challenging due to the conditions, with a chilling reminder of how easy it is to get it wrong up there.