Dib dib dib, dob, dob, dob

The motto of any self-respecting Cub Scout is to ‘be prepared’. This motto transfers nicely to marathon running, as you also need to be prepared for every eventuality. Which shoes don’t rub, which kit works, which gels you can take, which drinks help and which hinder etc etc. So a schooling in Cub Scouts ought to be a big help, not least if you picked up the athletics activity badge. Unfortunately for me, I gave up cubs after a few sessions because I found it deathly boring, and that came back to haunt me in a very, very bad way on Sunday morning.

We had friends due for lunch at 12.30 so we had lots to do in the morning - the house needed tidying, the food needed to be prepped and Evie needed looking after. So I felt incredibly bad about upping sticks and going out for a run for an hour and a half. So much so, that I managed to get out of the door at 8.20. We’d realised when cooking dinner on Saturday night that we’d run out of black pepper, so I took a fiver and left the house with the express intention of running a bit quicker than I should do, picking up the pepper and returning home early to pleasantly surprise Clare. So far, so good.

What I forgot to do, was to check a map, and to see whether the 10 miles I thought I was going to run was, in fact, actually 10 miles. I decided to do a route I’d never done before - heading up to Ickleford, Henlow, chucking a right, and then heading back through Arlesey. I hadn’t ever been around the second half of my route (by car or by foot), but I’d done the first half a while ago and from memory it didn’t seem too far.

I set off, and started pretty quickly. I hadn’t done any exercise for a week because of Christmas parties, and given the temperature was just above freezing, it was good to get moving. The first four miles passed by without incident, and I felt surprisingly good. I got to Henlow and turned right as planned and was expecting the road to head off at a right angle to the last one, to start the turn for home. Unfortunately for me it didn't, as after turning right immediately, it then started to head diagonally further away again. I went past RAF Henlow and saw a few planes coming into land, which took my mind off of things, but by the time I got to the signpost to turn right for Arlesey, I’d done 5.9 miles (instead of 5) already.

Be prepared Wood, you idiot

In my head I’ve got two options. I’ve never been down that road to Arlesey, although my guess is that if it isn't too far from here to the town centre, I'll probably end up doing 11, or 12 at a push. I’ve been running a minute a mile quicker than I should, so all in I’ll end up 5 minutes late if I don’t run out of steam, which isn’t too bad. Or, the second option, admit defeat, turn around, and at least then you’ll know it’s just under 12 miles. My first mistake (or second, if not looking at a map before going out was the first), is that I decide to carry on.

I follow the road to Arlesey but, having never been through the town, I don’t know exactly what the layout is. The only time I’ve ever been there was when I fell asleep on a train and missed my stop, but I got a cab back and wasn’t paying attention. After 6.75 miles I see a sign for the station – but it says ‘Set down only’, not a sign for Arlesey itself. As I don't know the way, I decide I’m better off following the main road as Hitchin is bound to be signposted a bit further down. Mistake number three.

I carry on along the road, picking up a sign for Arlesey and think ‘great, I’m back on track’. I go around a roundabout and head straight back to whence I came. After a further 1.5 miles (now up to 8.25) I’ve just done a massive loop and am back at the train station. The reason it’s 'Set down only' is because there is a train track in the way of the road, but as a pedestrian there’s a handy footbridge, which would have saved me a quarter of an hour and, more importantly, a stack more effort. I’m getting increasingly annoyed. And it’s at precisely this point that it starts to snow.

I’m trying to keep a cool head and my thoughts are as follows…you were due back at 10 o’clock, and it’s currently 9.40. You know you’re at least 5, maybe 6 miles, from home but you don’t know the way. You are tired because you’ve run too quickly. So even if you decide to plough on, there’s no guarantee you’re not going to blow up and end up walking. It’s snowing heavily. Best case, you’re going to be 20 minutes late, worst more like 40. This isn't good. It’s at this point I remember I’ve got a fiver, so I run into the station to see what time the next train is. 10.24 – gutted! No good as even if I run the rest of it, I ought to get back earlier.

I leave the station and carry on running and, after a detour through an estate, I find Arlesey High Street. There must be a bus stop somewhere. Find bus stop. Next bus, 10.24. Would you believe it! And it’s slower than the train and doesn’t even get to Hitchin until 10.45, and then I’ve got to get home from there. I’ll be an hour late and time is really of the essence! It’s about then that mild panic started to set in as I still didn’t know how far away I was, and because I was worrying I’d stopped paying attention to my running and was now doing 90 seconds per mile quicker – totally unsustainable and only a matter of time before I’m dead on my feet.

I carry on some more, and spot a payphone. Thoughts = find a shop, change up your fiver, and hopefully, just hopefully, this can be rescued. I find a Londis, and I can pretty much guarantee from the look on the shopkeeper's face, that he’s never seen anything like it before. I’m dressed in running tights, shorts, luminous green coat and a luminous wooly hat, and am covered in snow. I stride nonchalantly up to the counter, “Excuse me, do you have any black pepper?” I ask. “And also, I don’t suppose you’ve got the number for a local cab firm too have you please?” He did a double-take, tried to work out whether I was being serious or not, and led me off to find a pepper mill.  He dug me out the number of a cabbie, and I trudged off into what was rapidly turning into a snow blizzard.

I go to the phone and the cab number rings off. Great! That happened when I ended up stranded there on the train too – don’t think they answer phones in Arlesey. Next plan, let’s try our house phone.  I call Clare, who is extremely surprised/shocked it’s me on the phone, and wonders what's gone wrong and where I am. After a random and vague effort at an explanation (I was mindful I couldn't do it justice before the pips started beeping) she agreed to order me a cab. I then spend 10 minutes huddled in a telephone box whilst snowflakes the size of 50 pence pieces drop all around me.

The cabbie turns up (see shopkeeper above for initial reaction), and proceeds to drive me home. It’s another 4.5 miles, and Clare pops out to give me some money. The cabbie charges me £16.50 for the pleasure, and I refrain from calling him Dick Turpin for his highway robbery as I shut the door.

I walk in the house and Clare just bursts out laughing at the state of me. I’m freezing cold, feeling mildly ashamed at my incompetence, and my daughter wants a cuddle but I can’t pick her up or she’ll catch hypothermia. But on the plus side, I’m only 10 minutes late and I proceed to pull a pepper mill out of my pocket for comedy effect.

On the bright side - if there is one - I never, ever go out running with money or a phone. So, bizarrely enough, the fact I had a fiver for some black pepper saved my bacon. And going forward, I think it'll probably make sense to carry both items from now on.

The only thing that remained was to look at a map and realise that my gentle 10 mile run, if completed, would in fact have been 14.5 miles. As the nation’s favourite Captain never tired of saying - you stupid boy!

Not a great start to my marathon training, but hopefully a painful lesson learned early on…

And I’m telling you this because…

I’m running the 2012 London Marathon for the Hertfordshire Community Foundation (HCF).

If you feel inclined to sponsor me to help the Hertfordshire Community Foundation continue their great work, you can do so here:  http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/BenWood2 

The joys of avoiding the Drunken Express

As mentioned in an earlier post, one thing I won’t miss during my training is the wonderful journey on the late night ‘Drunken Express’ – AKA the scourge of all Londoners.

I had barely a night out last month, so I was pretty unlucky to have encountered the following trip, which I’m sure many of you will be able to relate to in some way, shape or form.  Having had a few beers, I got myself on the 10.23 from Kings Cross to Hitchin. I was aware of a girl sitting next to me who was on the phone, but all seemed well as we pulled out of the station. Little did I know…

I had my headphones on and thought she was having a barney with her bloke. It quickly became apparent, primarily from the expression of the people sat around me, that she was actually completely hammered. In what is every late night ‘Drunken Express’ customer’s worst nightmare, after hanging up the phone she then tried to engage me in conversation. I politely refused, which obviously wasn’t acceptable, so she started punching me in the arm to get me to speak. It was at about this point that the two people sitting opposite me got up and left.

Now, I should say at this stage that I am a bit of a stoic bloke, and as such getting up to leave would make me think I was being rude. After all, despite her punching me, the girl is in a right state and more unscrupulous characters have been known to prey on them. So if my arm taking a battering is the worst that can happen, then that’s not actually that bad a thing. In fact, the other passengers should be grateful to me for keeping her preoccupied.    

Having decided to sit tight and grin and bear it, I proceeded to take a punch to the arm about once every two minutes, in line with her goldfish brain’s pattern of remembrance. After about fifteen minutes of this I struck lucky. One of the other passengers knew her but had obviously sat tight, hoping she’d fall asleep or something. She obviously began to feel sorry for me and sheepishly came over to start talking to her. She looked very embarrassed but my arm is eternally grateful that she did.

I thought that would be the end of it, but unfortunately the fun didn’t stop there. I got up five minutes before my stop to stand by the door for some respite, but it was just my luck that she was getting off at the same station. And it was highly symptomatic of the journey I’d had when the train ground to a halt 300 yards outside the station. It was absolutely pitch black outside, so it’s obvious we’re not in the station. Obvious, that is, apart from to my lovely friend, who started shoving me in the back and into the door, shouting ‘open the doors you t*at, I want to get out’.

It was all I could do to stop myself saying, ‘we’re parked outside the station but if you insist, I’ll happily open them and shove you under a train you moron’. But as I alluded to earlier on, I’m far too polite for that. So I just ignored her, whilst hoping that I would bump into her on the platform the next morning to get my revenge – you know the deal, loud headphones, bacon sandwich, phone keypad sound on, rustling newspaper etc, the tools of the annoying commuter are endless.   

Her friend spent the next couple of minutes whilst we were stopped trying to distract her. She phoned her brother, but that wasn’t spectacularly successful as drunken moron insisted to be put on the line to him. ‘Have I ever told you how wonderful you are Dave? I really love you, you’re a great bloke. You are. No really, you are. I love you’. I was beginning to wonder how much more of this I could take which, evidently, was more than him as he hung up having no doubt witnessed it countless times before. Fortunately for me, the train started moving shortly afterwards and my ordeal was over.

I’d like to say this was an isolated incident, but then I spent the entire train journey back from a Christmas party last week listening to three different people ralphing their guts up in the toilet. So it really isn’t. Other wonderful things I’ve encountered over the years are a tramp that actually had a whole Piccadilly Line carriage to himself going through Covent Garden at 10 o’clock at night. How did he manage that I hear you wonder? Well, let’s just say he was so drunk he wasn’t entirely in control of his bodily functions. At either end. We all think tube drivers are overpaid, but whoever had to wake him up and get him off of the train at Cockfosters that night would have earned every penny.

My particular favourite however, just for sheer visual excellence, had to be an incident at Farringdon station in the middle of the rush hour six or seven years ago. It was Christmas and I’d crammed into a train as you would on any normal working day. I could see a bloke a bit further down who’d obviously been to his office party and who looked a bit worse for wear. He’d been given an exclusion zone of sorts, but as the train was packed, it was reasonably small.

I was only on for one stop, but it was one stop too far for this guy. He started retching before throwing up all over four or five seated rush hour commuters, who had absolutely nowhere to go. It was the retching that did it as it made it like a slow motion picture in a film – everyone knew it was coming, but they were trapped, and couldn’t get away. If they hadn’t been so covered in sick / horrified, I’m pretty sure one of them would have punched him. As it was, he fell out of the train at Kings Cross and probably awoke the next day oblivious as to why he had sick down his trousers and all over his shoes. It wasn’t a particularly edifying sight, but it’s not often you see a gaggle of suited and booted commuters covered in someone else’s sick. A Christmas I’m sure they’ll all remember.

I can never work out whether stories like these are a) funny, b) character building, or c) an indictment of society. In truth, they’re probably a mixture of all three. And they’re exactly why everyone steps aboard the Drunken Express with a heavy dose of trepidation. So next time you witness something similar, I’d definitely recommend engaging a bit of stiff upper lip as you’ll have a cracking story to tell everyone when you get to work in the morning.

And I’m telling you this because…

I’m running the 2012 London Marathon for the Hertfordshire Community Foundation (HCF). They help all sorts of vulnerable people in the county.

For example, last year they paid a £5,000 grant to help decorate / kit out a room in the style of the 50s for people with mild dementia in Welwyn Garden. I watched a programme on the Beeb a few weeks back which highlighted exactly the same thing, and it really is amazing how well it works. I'm no expert, but I do know that your long-term memory is different than your short-term memory - so for mild dementia sufferers, transporting you back to the great times you had in your childhood is a proven technique to put a smile on your face.

If you feel inclined to sponsor me to help the Hertfordshire Community Foundation continue their great work, you can do so here:  http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/BenWood2 

November – the month in review

I was thinking that it would be good to give you a nice little monthly review, just in case I forget to post anything during the month. Obviously when I say forget to post, I actually mean run out of anything even remotely interesting to blog about (and yes, I know you could argue I ran out ideas a few articles back).

So anyway, here are a few stats about my running in the past month…

Miles run in the last month = 117
If you’re unsure of how far that is, it’s basically step out of the office at Piccadilly Circus, chuck a left and go all of the way along the M4 until you get to Bristol. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t impressed at myself with that. It’s just a shame I didn’t actually run to Bristol as then I could have taken in a game under the McInnes revolution, but there you go.

Time spent running = 13 hours and 43 minutes
That translates to the time it takes to fly from London to Hong Kong, with an hour of faffing either side. It's fair to say that I’m no aeroplane me, as you travel 6052 miles on that trip, putting my paltry 117 to shame.   

Pre-6am starts in the name of running = 8
I am a loser for this, I know. But early starts are a necesity, hence the blog name. It’s a straight choice between hauling my arse out of bed to go running in the morning versus not seeing my daughter if I wait to do it after work. So there’s only one winner really. 

Night’s out sacrificed = 5
This is slightly subjective but as it’s Awards season at work and I haven’t been to a single one, I think I've sacrificed 5 which is a very noble effort. I can only hope I’m able to say the same in my December review, although I have a feeling it'll be a big, fat zero and my training will be seriously off track.

Some of the things I’ve learnt from my running this month:

• The first rule of running. I will never beat my brother
• Whichever way you look at it, getting up at 6.30 on a Sunday morning is a really stupid thing to do
• If running keeps me off of the late night ‘Drunken Express’, then running is my friend (I will tell you about a comical recent experience in a future post)
• It never ceases to amaze me just how rude some people are
• To nail a PB you have to be both brave / stupid and give it some welly from the off. This is a very dangerous game, as I discovered the last time I did the marathon. I went off too quick, died a slow and very painful death at Canary Wharf, and the next 9 miles were agony. Once bitten, twice shy and all that, which I think is why I was so happy that St Neots didn't blow up in my face.
• It’s impossible to run a race as a training run because your competitive instincts take over – if they didn’t, you wouldn’t be there in the first place. These competitive juices are never far from the surface, and tend to boil over when people annoy you. In football you can kick them, in cricket you can try and smack them for six (and invariably get out), but in running you have to try and beat them which, if they're better than you, can be a bit of a problem. 
• It’s starting to get really cold, which in turn begs the question - at what point are gloves acceptable? (i.e.they’re never acceptable on a football pitch)

And I'm telling you this because...

I'm running the 2012 London Marathon for the Hertfordshire Community Foundation (HCF).

If you feel inclined to sponsor me to help the Hertfordshire Community Foundation continue their great work, you can do so here:  http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/BenWood2