Running riot

Wow, it's been a while, hasn't it? Seem to spend so much time tweeting about my marathon training, I forget to blog. But it's been an eventful few weeks, so much to capture.
I went through a brief period of non-dedication to the cause, mainly due to a few days away in Norfolk/Suffolk. I defy anyone to carry on their marathon training while stuck on a boat in the Norfolk Broads - I would have had to do 200 laps of the tiny deck while wearing a life preserver. Luckily, it was a low mileage week, so I was able to do a couple of landside maintenance runs at least.

Since I got back, I've had to start doing the really long runs - 17 miles, then 18 miles and now 2 weekends' worth of 20 milers to look forward to. The long runs just mess with my head - it's not really about training your body to be out there for hours, is it? It's about training your head to be out there for hours.  It's about keeping yourself motivated even though you know you have been running for ages and you haven't even made it half way through yet. It's about keeping going, even when you think 'oh sod it, I could just turn right up here and head home, not bother'.

I'm counting on Berlin being like New York, with lots of support and distractions all the way round, so that I don't have to deal with this kind of negative thinking. It's not going to be like the towpath along the Thames, where it's a constant battle to stay out of the river while the population of West London tries to knock you over on a bike, bite you with a dog or just generally push you out of the way by walking 4 abreast and not sharing the towpath with other users (or do the people of Chiswick just not know how to share?). I'm not going to have to make regular stops in newsagents to pick up Powerade or water refills, the lovely organisers of the Berlin Marathon have sorted all that out for me. I'm also assuming that at no point I will have to witness a squirrel being hit by a car, which is surprisingly stressful. Who'd have thought?

I'm also hoping that Berlin is like New York in that it will all fly past. I even remember at one point during the NYC marathon that I thought 'oh, this is all going to be over so soon' with a sense of disappointment. You might argue that this is a classic case of insanity kicking in mid-marathon but, if it is a fantastic experience, I do think a (very) small part of you doesn't want it to end. I keep reminding myself that the training is the hard part, the race is the fun part, but it's quite a difficult psychological trick to pull off.

The training was definitely the hard part on Tuesday morning of this week, when I took to the streets at 7.15 to survey the wreckage of Monday night's riots in Ealing and West Ealing. Two burnt out cars at the car hire place at the top of my street were just a taster of things to come, as I picked my way through a sea of discarded jewellery boxes and broken glass on the Uxbridge Road. Virtually every window seemed to have been hit by a brick, with many shop windows destroyed. The poor old electronics shop, Seba, has been there for decades - my best mate from school had a part time job there when we were teenagers - and has survived the competition of the internet and bigger chains. Now he's been looted by a bunch of kids and I hope he can recover. Ealing itself had borne the brunt of the arson attacks, and shopkeepers were lined up along the high street surveying the damage to their businesses. Photographers, tv cameras, fire engines - it was not your normal Tuesday morning run. And I can only hope I never again have to run past a total of 7 burnt out cars on a run ever again. The smell was awful, and the sadness was palpable - the streets were lined with disbelieving residents, trying to work out if what they were witnessing was actually real or just some horrible, daylit, nightmare. It is the single worst run I have ever had to do.

By the time I got back to West Ealing, the streets had been swept clean, and the police had moved on. Businesses have repaired damage and reopened where possible. But today a man has died as a result of injuries sustained during the attacks - not all damage can be repaired or insured. I think it's going to be quite a while before people get over what happened here on Monday night and Tuesday morning.