Distractions

I realise I have not been particularly blogtastic recently. Writing time is tight right now, what with half-marathon training plans, house-hunting and flat-selling and having the workload from hell.

My training has not been particularly inspiring. I run, it's cold, I come home, I shower and eat. Yadda yadda yadda.  My calf still hurts, my ribs still hurt. But I'll get round the course. It'll be fine.

I'm feeling particularly chastened today though after watching the BBC documentary about comedian Eddie Izzard's multimarathons last summer in aid of SportRelief. This amazing feat has been totally underpublicised so has not raised nearly enough money as it should - for guilty donations now, visit http://www.comicrelief.com/donate/eddie

Basically, Eddie ran 43 marathons in 51 days. He ran 6 days a week for 7 weeks in a row, covering England, Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland and finished in Trafalgar Square in London on September 15th. He ran over 1100 miles as part of this mammoth fundraising effort. In virtual secret.

Now is not the time to go into the lack of publicity these efforts received, nor to wonder what you have to do to get Cheryl Cole's private life off the front of the UK press . It's more to marvel at the fact that Eddie is not an ultrarunning stalwart - he is a comedian who decided to tackle something huge. Something that he had not trained for and was not particularly fit for.

Last night's documentary (not shown in prime time or on a mainstream TV channel either, to continue the veil of secrecy) illustrated the whole project, from conception to execution, in all its blistered glory.

There was a lot of the programme I didn't really enjoy. I will retain the mental image of a member of his support team extracting the liquid from his blisters for years to come. I would like to also point out to the scaremongering BBC that people with flat feet can run without it being life-threatening (Izzard just wore orthotics in his trainers, like every other runner with flat feet). And there was absolutely no footage of him having an emergency toilet stop, which is not very realistic.

On the other hand, there were so many brilliant moments in the programme, mainly due to the personality involved. Izzard started off running his 30 mile a day in 8 hours, getting it down to nearly 5 hours by the end of the 7 weeks. But the programme showed just why Eddie took so long at the start. Because he is a mental fidget.

Wandering into shops to buy ice lollies, stopping off to give out free ice-creams to wellwishers for an hour in the west country, generally wandering off track (both mentally and physically) - at first Izzard just can't concentrate on the job in hand. Despite his trainer telling him to finish as fast as he can, to give him the maximum amount of rest, Izzard meanders all over the place, on some occasions only get 4-5 hours sleep in between runs.

What is really fascinating is watching him develop the running mentality from scratch - he goes from the sheer boredom to that weird obsessive focus you get after running regularly for a certain amount of time.

In the early stages, he runs much better on the sections where he has company. I suppose as a performer he needs an audience, whereas running is primarily a solitary activity. But, where the BBC and sport relief have bothered to tell people what he's doing, Izzard gets a good level of support from the locals on his route.

God knows what damage he has done to his mind, muscles and joints - probably not as many as the BBC would like to frighten people into thinking - but he certainly did me a lot of good. I was just pleased to see someone else get so distracted - some days I can run  for miles and not be able to remember my route at the end of it, I've been so switched off. 

And it reminded me that, in the scheme of things, 13.1 miles isn't really all that, is it?

LON