For the last shall be first

It's a phrase that until now has always puzzled me.

Yes Tor Great West Fell Race - race report.

It is six weeks on from the LAMM now and I am in that fallow period with no Races in preparation, with nothing beyond the force of habit coupled with a reluctance to lose the fitness so arduously won to fuel the runs. (I mistyped that funs, I was somewhat inclined to let the typo stand.)  Happily it is sufficient. There is a whole-body memory of what preceded this running incarnation, and as motivation to get out there with religious dedication, there is little that can compete with that memory.  It is not a memory of words or thought, but it doesn't need to be.

But even I profit from a sharpener, and I have been aware that it has been too long since I pinned a number on my front.  Time to do it again.  Yes Tor fell race, advertised as short and steep.  Five miles, not intended to challenge navigational powers.

I don't know if I will ever get used to the start of races. The prelude always makes my mouth go dry and my legs ache even before I start running.  The sight of hard-core lean and grizzled men evokes unfavourable comparisons.  There is not much hard-core here.  I feel an imposter, on site under false pretences, a perennial newbie laying false claim to experience.

The fact that I was wearing the LAMM t-shirt may have aggravated this.  The t-shirt evidently commanded Respect, respect I felt was misplaced.  Naw, I didn't really. We were last, five hours behind the previous finisher.  I'm not really a mountain marathoner.

But that is untrue; we did it, and the course was no easier for us (rather harder, given our navigational errors) than it was for any other competitors.  I felt myself standing that little bit straighter, quite ready for the next difficult bit of a race, the start itself.

I liked this start.  There is only a handful of runners, maybe 60?  I can stand at the back and hear what is being said at the front, no mics.  The difficult bit is 30 seconds after the start, when all (not a careless generalisation, I do mean all) of the competitors are already significantly in front of me, and I know that in this case, that distance is unlikely to shrink.

But I am good at this bit.  I know why I am running and I want to be here.  There will be people who get home faster, all of them, in fact, but there will be few who enjoy it more.

Dartmoor on a benign day is a joy.  The turf feels good underfoot.  The wind feels good on my face, even if it is in my face.  The clouds are there only to give some shelter from the sun, it just doesn't get better than this. I am entirely on my own, the others have disappeared around the side of the hill, and Dartmoor is mine, all mine.

First checkpoint at Longstone hill and I can again see the others, like so many party coloured sheep, moving humps among the lumps and rocks of Yes Tor.  The majority have clearly taken the direct route.  I will not.  That involves going down, which is against my principles when running up anything.  I am more than content to put in the extra distance, dilute the slope to one I can trot along in comparative comfort.  

There are many little animal trails, and the going is easy.  I am no longer alone by now; I have the company of the fell version of the sweeper van; one dog (rescue dog, name of Dave) and his man.  No horrid diesel fumes, just jubilant tail wagging and the occasional backward glance over his shoulder, tongue hanging out, enjoying the day as much as I am.

Don't get the idea that Yes Tor was an easy run.  It wasn't, but I knew it wasn't going to be and I got the pacing right.  Check in at the checkpoint and on along a short ridge to High Willhays.  This is a broad and well used path, but rocky, which I don't find easy.  It is too easy to catch a foot, and the thought of a tumble is not attractive: the rocks look too much like teeth.  Slow down, think about picking feet up.

High Willhays to Black Tor is a lovely patch.  Easy running through calf height grassy tussocks for the most part.  Again, there were plenty of little trails to follow, many made by those who ran before me.  From time to time the going was good enough to let rip a bit, knowing that a tumble would probably be on soft ground.

Black Tor back to Longstone was again along a path, and stony to begin with.  At one point the path became a stream bed, but one with good footing that was on the whole a pleasure to share with the water.  Nonetheless, I did keep eyes on the path, or stream, to avoid the worst of mud or rock.  In doing so, I spied a fish.  Not a very big fish; hardly an inch long I guess, but a fish for all that.  In a stream.  On a path. On top of a hill.  A more highly implausible concept I have rarely considered.  There were to be other implausible experiences in connection with this race.

From Longstone to the finish was the reverse of the route up, with gravity helping all it could.  This was a track through closely cropped turf, a joy to run, and I let the legs do their best, no holding back.  Dave lolloped on ahead, following his man who was pulling up way markers as he trotted down the hill.  A short pull along a gravel road and the finish.  Last, as I knew I would be, but the marshals were still there, it had been a beautiful run, there was a Kitkat and a bottle of water, son and daughter-out-law waiting, and generally things couldn't be improved on.  We set off back towards the car park carrying the extra water bottles, the rubbish bag and such like.  The others were chatting behind me.  I overheard some of it.  ...first in age-group.  I wasn't paying much attention.  

Back to the cars, and I turned to thank the organisers again for a super afternoon - and found myself presented with a bottle - the first in age-group was me!  I've never been first in running in anything as far as I can remember.

It's in the fridge.  I'm looking forward to that bottle.  Birnham wood may come to Dunsinane, pigs may fly, fish may swim on a path on a mountain, the last may indeed come first.  Be it known that I am not one to grow sheepish, to apologise that I didn't really win it, it was just that no one else showed up.  I won that bottle.  These old legs got out there and did their stuff.  They did the homework too. I ran up Madingley rise Wednesday on Wednesday, I ran the long slow miles along the river on Sundays, and the old legs did not let me down today.  Won it indeed. 

The LAMM

This is it folks.  The LAMM, 2011.  We did it.

Dale (son 3) and I arrived in Inverness by train, and we met up with Will (son 1)and LJ (partner), who had flown up from Bristol, and headed off west to the base camp, six miles west of Ullapool.  The scenery did nothing to reassure, huge mountains with spiky teeth crowned with an impressive variety of cloud.  The camp site came on us suddenly, an abrupt turn into a field already filling with cars in one half and tents in the other.  A remarkably simple and fuss-free registration process, where dibbers were fastened onto our arms with the sort of wristbands used as labels in hospitals.  We were issued with our start times: 8:59 for Will and Dale, and 9:01for LJ and I - Team Outlaw - mother-out-law and daughter-out-law.  Our company milling around the site looked Scary. There was a notable absence of fun-runners, no fancy dress, unless you count the high-tech lycra running gear.

We set up the "big" tents - two two man tents, one for LJ and Will, one for me and Dale, roomy things that could accommodate kit and two people without having to use the kit (or the other person) as footrest or pillow. We solemnly divided the kit, food, medical supplies, emergency rescue bags, torches, batteries, apportioned tents, gas canisters and stoves, balancing the packs.  Scott's Event catering dished up a baked potato heaped with chilli by way of supper, and very welcome tea.  There was, after that, not a lot that attracted one to staying up any later.  Morning would come.  Early.

Which it did, of course, heralded by a piper marching amongst the tents at 6am, advertising in this way that Scotts was available for breakfast.  I resisted the bacon and egg butty, grabbed a full tray of porridge and took four beakers of tea for our two teams.  We met up over breakfast with other acquaintances of Will's, some of whom had had seriously bad car rides from the south, spending long hours in traffic jams trying to escape Edinburgh.  Packed, saddled up, there was little to do but wait for our appointed start time.

For those unacquainted with orienteering, the game is to find a series of controls - small orange and white half box kites which indicate the presence of an electronic check point, into which you insert your personal dibber, which indicates the time you reached the control.  The whereabouts of these controls are clearly marked on a map, together with helpful comments such as "re-entrant", "north side of lochan".  The controls must be visited in a prescribed order.  Clock in at each of these, run home to the finish line and bob's your uncle, job done.

This is a grand game on a brisk Saturday morning, when the course may last an hour or two and takes place in a relatively confined relative flat space.  Even on such a Saturday morning frustration has moved me to tears, crossing and recrossing my path, each diversion diminishing any confidence I had in my whereabouts, hunting for the small, well-hidden kite that hides the control. The distances to be covered this weekend (23 and 18 km on Saturday and Sunday respectively) and the heights to be climbed (1300 and 800 metres) took the frivolity out of frustration, rendering it into an experience new and strange.  Moreover, we were foolish, if not perhaps young, and inexperienced in the art of finding these electronic needles carefully tucked into their (rather large) haystacks.  There are many skills involved; we were experienced in very few of them.  And we knew it.

But back to the day, warm, sunny, midges hard at work as we transferred our route information - the order in which controls were to be collected - onto our maps, and set out, up a well-metalled land-rover track in bright sunlight.  The word that counts in the last sentence is up. About 600 metres of up.  Training error number 1: running up Castle Hill several times is Not enough.  I had thought of putting bricks in my back pack, and running up stairs for an hour a day.  It would have been wise.

So running did not come into the first part of day 1.  Actually, it didn't often play any very great role.  If the gradient wasn't awful, the footing probably was.  Never mind, I was not the only one running.  Anyway, up on to the ridge, gasping, sticks in use to compensate for lack of leg strength.  We were in fine company - a long string of hard-core whippet like runners leaping over the ankle high heather streaming before and behind us (others started later; no we overtook no one).

One thing we did right: we had invested in an altimeter.  This gorgeous device is to your average runner's timepiece what a swiss army knife is to a table knife.  I had rather thought it a luxury; it turned out to be on a par with our compass (ok, it had a built in compass too) as mission central kit.  If the control was at 580 metres, there was no point wasting time looking for the thing at 550 metres, no matter what the lay of the land.  Thus we ran pretty much straight too the first control. 

To our quiet satisfaction, others hadn't, and more than one set of leaping gazelles came bounding back to collect the control that they in their energy and enthusiasm had missed.  It had been tucked in a re-entrant - a hollow - quietly keeping a low profile.

Control 2 was easy to find.  It was on a summit.  Ok, we went to the wrong summit first, but not far wrong, and a cluster of runners a few hundred metres away identified the location of the checkpoint for us.  It was clear.  The day was warm, we could see the way to where the next control must lie - in the bottom of a valley, the bend of an attractive stream.  We ran right to it and refilled our water bottles.

From the bottom of a valley there is no way but up.  The next control was a summit, again not a desperate challenge to find.  We were getting good at this game. Slow, yes, but good.  A long drink, two and a half bites of Cliff bar, a long drink.  A long up.

I have never been very good at technical foods. I believe in them.  They work. But swallowing them, and keeping them swallowed always presents a problem.  Some present no problem on the way down. Others are rather harder to get down, but on the whole, I consider that fault preferable to the other.  Two and a half bites of Cliff bar is about my record.  I needed as much of it is as I could possibly manage, washed down with SiS, which, if I carefully didn't think about it, stayed. 

A long up, and we were beginning to feel a little lonely by then.  It was not hard to find the top.  On the top we met two hapless walkers.  They had selected an idyllic remote area to contemplate the mysteries of nature in isolation.  They were disappointed, but gracious about their unexpected company.

Some aspects of nature are no mystery, but a locally predictable consequence of physics.  The sun of the morning had yielded to a majority of cloud, rolling in, rolling lower, and beginning to spatter. This was a greater worry than the mere inconvenience of damp.  The next control lay reassuringly at the bottom of the next summit, at the far end of the ridge, with two possible routes to achieve it.  Route one, the obvious one, and, as it happened, the one the inventor of the trail had in mind, involved contouring around the next summit in an anti-clockwise direction, before dropping gracefully onto the control just over the far side of the ridge, at its very end. The hitch was the crag on the other side of the ridge, waiting evilly to catch the unwary who, led on by false hopes of having covered more distance than they actually had, might attempt to drop down to the control too soon. Option two involved bailing off the ridge down a slope that stopped barely short of being classified as a crag.  We looked at the cloud muffling the summit.  We looked at our map, at the inviting landrover track marked at the bottom.  We knew our navigational competence or lack thereof.  We opted to bail out.

It was a scary lumpy slither down, profiting from the rocky bed of a promising young waterfall at times to afford an alternative to shuffling bottom first.  We made it.  There was no friendly track however.  The map had told fibs, the first of several we were to discover.  

Safe, yes.  Drenched, yes, but hey, only two more controls before - before pitching tents in the rain and enjoying the best of boil in the bag cuisine.  Ah, lovely image to look forward to.  Only two more controls, the next just tucked into a re-entrant, just a hundred metres on the crag side of the road.  Once we found the road.

We found the road, in the nice level stream valley, but not a nice level road, but one that bucked and reared, hugging the bottom of the crag, leaping from hump to hump, every hump disguising a potential re-entrant.  We were overtaken in our searches by another team of straggle haired increasingly desperate "runners".  We teamed up and scoured the area, cursing as each hump revealed nought but the next hump.  We found it, eventually, after some communal cursing, and proceeded as a foursome on towards the next and final control, at a stream junction not two hundred metres from the midway camp.  We slogged through the wet, half blinded by the midge repellent washed into our eyes, but the path clearly trod by many feet.  One last control, the finish line, and Will's friends already had a pot boiled, and instant tea in a plastic mug.  I will recognise heaven when I see it,  It comes in a red mug.

We had rehearsed the procedure of getting the tent up and getting the dinner cooked.  Our minute stove perched like a dragonfly on its canister - the little stove that could.  300ml of boiling water poured into the bag of dried chilli with rice, resealed, made an admirable hot water bottle for the duration of the eight minutes required for rice and beans to soften.  I think I could probably enjoy boil in the bag chilli even at the end of a day that had not involved 23k "running" and 1300m ascent, but the course and conditions certainly lent an extra something to the meal.  The packet once empty served equally well to soften up a second course of supanoodles (and offered second service as hot water bottle as well).

Did I tell you it was raining?  We had practiced setting up and striking the tent in the rain.  We had avoided practicing sleeping in it.  These tents are lightweight, with no second skins to defend against the wrath of the heavens.  The wet is within and without. Within the confined space intimacy is inevitable.  Packs can be left out in the rain, or else they can be brought in and used as a footrest, or a head rest. I had allowed myself the luxury of a basic sleeping mat - easily a centimetre's worth of mat. Useful.  It may not have been raining hard, but it was persistent. My mat was on the lower side. Happily, the depth of water in the tent by the morning was less than a centimetre.

The night was cold.  Soggy sleeping bags are not all that warm.  We shivered, we made a virtue of necessity and lay half over each other.  The cramps from hades struck, fortunately early in the night, fortunately only from the knees southwards, and my teammate spent an anxious five minutes trying to pound the knots out - "harder?""yes, harder, they're not shifting".  It works. It just takes time.  I just wish it weren't necessary. I'm just grateful it was only south of the knees.  In the middle of the night I woke up breathless, gasping, and terrified that I had strained my heart somehow, until I noticed my partner panting similarly - no choice, cold or not, the ventilation panel had to be unzipped, we shivered but breathed easy.

The morning came with an announcement that the sun was up and so should we be. I regretted an absence of tea.  Two packets of oat cakes three mini pepperami and two Tracker bars make a less than perfectly satisfying breakfast.  The inner man was not fed.

Fed or not, we set off as early as we could in the hopes of finishing in time for the organisers to pack up and get home for their well-earned teas.  

An unwise choice of route led us along a delightful track - unfortunately at the top rather than the bottom (as it appeared on the map) of the the ravine we would have to cross before scaling the opposite side to control 1.  I am not sorry, it really was some of the loveliest running of the race, in beautiful setting under brilliant blue skies.  The stream at the bottom, when we finally found a place we dared descend and ascend, was as appealing as any stream I have ever crossed.  We even found the control in the re-entrant.  Without tears.  But we had spent a lot of time having fun getting there.

On to control two.  This involved some up, some lovely down, and crossing a significant stream.  We achieved this immediately below a picturesque waterfall, with no dither, and no falling over.  The control appeared right on cue, in the stream bend, as specified.  We were getting good at this, yes? Two lochans, and one more re-entrant, we can do this, yes?

Innocent we were indeed.  Not hard to find a lake, but in that patch lakes abound.  Moreover, the number of lakes on the land exceeded the number of lakes on the map.  I am told that it's not a lochan unless it satisfies some minimum depth requirement.  Was swimming required to determine which puddles qualified and which didn't? Worse, with so many promising bodies of water to choose from, it did not occur to us for some considerable time that we might be way off course, that there were even more lakes hidden above and beyond where we could see, and that we had strayed nearly to control 4 in search of control 3 before recognising the error of our ways.  I doubt we would have found control 3 had it not been for another pair of stragglers looking in a very different direction.

Having found control 3, it should have been an easy matter to retrace our steps towards control 4, yes no? Except that what we had thought might have been the lochan hiding control 4 was not the lochan hiding control 4, while the lochan hiding control 4 was yet further up, and out of sight.  My partner was very persuasive.  Had she not been, we would not have achieved control 4.

So be it, with very very little time to cover the distance, control 5 lurked to the south, not so very far as the crow flies.  We are not crows, nor have we wings of any description.  It was a long way down, and a long brutal way up, and time was ticking.  The control was set to close at 15:00.  It was only the north side of a lake.  Again.  But we had begun to distrust lochans.  Our fears were entirely justified.  We visited lots of lakes.  The rain began to spatter.  The time ticked on, 15:00 came and went.  Well, we had tried.  We really had tried.  Nothing to do but head south and strike for home.

We headed south, and stumbled on the north side of yet another lochan, the control sitting there trying to look innocent.  Words failed me.  Words still fail me.  We both punched the control with an unwonted degree of savagery.  And headed south.

It was easy running from there on, providing that one did not get caught in the occasional mires of peat.  The navigation was a doddle, the rain had stopped, we had signal for the telephone, we rang Will to pass on the message to the organisers that we had fallen down no crags, and would be returning to base tardy but unharmed and in no need of assistance.

The gentle slope turned into a landrover track, and then a foot track-cum-stream bed (did we care about sharing the track with a stream by then? not a lot) and then a very respectable road.  One last control, at a bridge.  Dale met us at the bridge, and we sauntered back to the finish, trotting the length of the final field to the energetic cheers of the few who had not yet packed up and departed, before clocking ourselves in.

The wonderful organisers had very kindly kept the clock ticking. 79th, final finisher, and five hours after the preceding finisher (gulp). For our part, sure, I would like to have navigated better and run faster, but honour is satisfied.  Well satisfied.  We did it.  We got round. 

Is it possible that the organisers can imagine how much it means to me that they did not time us out?  I am aware of the strain a team like ours places on the organisation; a hugely slow and inexperienced team, at best a worry and a delay. I am aware of a degree of presumption on good nature in signing up for such an event.  In this, as in other challenges I have taken on, the generosity and good nature on the part of the organisers in making me, us, very much more than welcome defies description.  What a privilege to have taken part.  Thank-you is hopelessly inadequate, but for lack of any others it will have to do.  Thank-you thank-you thank-you organisers, thank-you LAMMers, one and all.  I sincerely intend to be back, although, in spite of all we have learned about how to train and how to navigate, I suspect it will be in the role of marshall next time, if I may.

The light in the valley

 - an apology for silence.

Many bloggers fail to carry on.  The blogging stops, the followers hang around a bit and then disperse.  I am one such lapsed blogger.  The LAMM is now four days away, close enough for the weather reports for the region to be a source of anxiety, close enough for further training to be at best decorative rather than functional.  The preparation is past, now it is time to play the game.

So what's with the silence?  For several months my thoughts were hijacked by the crab.  My brother-in-law was diagnosed with and shortly thereafter died of a particularly unpleasant cancer.  For several months the awful possibility that his cancer had been a hereditable one pre-empted all thought, before the evidence was gathered that gave us the confidence that his was the sporadic version, that our kids would not be faced with that threat on their horizons. For that time, I could not write, I could only trawl the web hopelessly, searching for answers that didn't exist, reading and rereading in many forms the same empty content.  

That time is over.  Strands of abandoned thought resumed, the normal chafing and irritation almost welcome as the greater worries recede.  "Me" didn't come into the story much during those months, nor did Parkinson's, nor did running, or did it? 

I'm not so sure now.  The quality of light is different in the valley of the shadow of death.  The small and insignificant shows up bright and of great value.  Watching my bro-in-law revise and abandon his goals as the crab bit deeper raised the value of my own.  Was I getting a tad discouraged with 15 minute miling? 15 minute miling is fine, thank-you. It's a sodding busy time of year to go gallumphing off to the northernmost parts, taking a weekend off to run the LAMM, is this sensible? Yup. 

It's not about Parkinson's, or is it? However crocked the PD will leave me, I get to see the sky, watch the clouds, feel the wind.  And now, while I can still get out and run, challenge the hills, feel the rain on my face and the icy wet of peaty bog numbing my feet, I will cherish it all.  I am alive, and PD or no PD, will live it to the limits.  I will do it for H. and I will do it for me.

I have, temporarily at least, stopped grumbling.  The light in the valley is the consolation we are given, the ability to see the ordinary as precious, to value minute by minute the gift of time.  Open eyes, seize the chance, be grateful, and run.

May I borrow your wall, please?

My best mate at university was a highly suspicious lady.  Her father worked in intelligence.  She had achieved a very creditable fluency in Russian.  She was (anathema!) a practicing Christian.  She was acting as nanny for the family of an influential diplomat in the US embassy in Moscow.  As such she merited a greater degree of attention from the Russian intelligence service than your average nanny. Such attention, though flattering, had its drawbacks, one of which was that items of personal property at times went "missing".

During her stay her address book went "missing" in this way. She never misplaced items.  If it wasn't where she expected it to be, it had been moved.  There was a well-known method of recovering such items.  You lamented aloud the loss: "I need my address book. It will be my Godmother's birthday in three weeks, I must write her a card; she will be terribly hurt if her birthday comes and I appear to have forgotten it. You see, she has no child of her own.."

Then you waited. At times this did not work, particularly if you were only a nanny, even a rather Interesting nanny.  But no cause for despair.  The next step was to borrow a more influential wall.  Thus she approacher her employer,  "Please sir, may I borrow your wall?", and repeated her lament.

The address book returned.

Please sir, may I borrow your wall?

I wonder at times whether my Parkinson's is a late addition to ongoing struggles to keep in motion.  I allow for the possibility that Parkinson's is the newcomer in an already complicated plot.  But even allowing for that, even if there were only the ghost of a chance that PD is the culprit, I think people should be studying me, because the quality of my life has been going up rather than down for the last nine years.  I think that those who are trying to help people with Parkinson's should listen.  I have a lot to say on the subject. There may be something to be learned from my experiences which could help others.  

I have a very diligent guardian angel. It nudged me in helpful directions long before I got any diagnosis.  In my opinion, my guardian angel is nothing short of inspired.  In these ways it guided me, make of it what you will. 

For a start, two people I respected suggested I cut wheat and dairy out of my life.  I was desperate enough to try it.  Two weeks later I walked.  Without sticks.  For the first time in 18 months.

Second, once walking, there was the obsession about running.  It had to be an obsession; no rational motivation could have generated the will to keep focussed on running through the frustrating years when three days of running would be followed by a week back on sticks. 

Third, there was the happenstance of a bad case of plantar fasciitis coinciding with a time when the illness was obviously active.  My lovely running GP prescribed celebrex for the pf, and, simultaneous with improvement of the pf, the fog, the twitchiness, the headache dissolved.  A useful lesson learnt.

Fourth, I can't quite remember how I got involved with Pilates, but I did.  My lovely Pilates teacher (also a runner) was very much into the Franklin method, and the role of the much underrated psoas muscles. She taught us their function in our lives and how to access them deliberately, how to stretch and strengthen them. (What muscles do you think are contracted to produce the characteristic PD stance? Given contracted psoas, is any form of ambulation other than the parkinsonian shuffle even possible?)   I began to think analytically about running, about moving, and to consider which muscles needed more strength, more flexibility, and how to achieve it.  I'm still learning.  Lots.  There seems to be a whole chain of "anti-Parkinson's" muscles.  Twitch one, they all respond to counter the stoop.

Fifth there is the matter of sports massage.  No feel good stuff this.  I am not sure I am going to call my massage practitioner lovely.  He isn't a runner, although he is a champion race-walker.  I will at some point tell you how I got into this, because it is an entertaining tale.  Particularly when preparing for a running event, I see him on a regular basis.  I scream. I shout. I swear. Tears start in my eyes, I bite my lip, I sweat all over.  But I stand tall and run freely.

Sixth, I suppose there is also the matter of the viola and the work.  I will never know how much worse cognitive function would be if I didn't play, if I didn't struggle on a daily basis to impose discipline on the chaos of ideas that bounce around my brain.

Even if mine is an isolated and idiosyncratic case, and others will not get similar benefit, people need to hear this.  There are things to try. People who get the diagnosis and get the pills should also get the advice, the training, the massage, the education, and the viola lessons, if it takes their fancy.  It takes time I suppose, and time is money, and money there is none.  But honest, during my time on sticks I would have sold my ears for the pleasure of running. If money could have bought it, I'd have paid.  If the lovely NHS can no longer provide such costly measures as advice, education and training, then at a minimum we need to find some way to get the message across that there are things that could be tried.   It might cost effort, it might cost money, but we don't have to sit back and wait for pills and immobility and a cure that might come too late for us.  It might not "work" but I'd far rather try all sorts of things than wait patiently (ha ha, get the pun) for the men in white to fix it please. Maybe others would too.

I got a lot of questions too, but one rant at a time.  I will wait, and see what ears this wall might have.

Exercise? Pah!

Exercise? Pah.  I don't Do exercise. "Do you take exercise?" suggests a medical prescription, a pill of bitter taste and evil side effects. Exercise, the word itself conjures a slideshow of unpleasant recollections.  I am thirteen, standing at one point of a lattice while my classmates in identical jaundice yellow gym tunics  stand at others and fail to do star jumps or windmills or whatever other penance on the instruction of our mousy haired gym mistress.  I am eighteen, flute in hand, hands shaking, eyes watering, trying to keep blowing, playing finger twisting exercises out of an evil book labelled Ejercios diarios (it doesn't sound any better in Spanish), the flute teacher looking out the window, not troubling to disguise her contempt. I am 28, and the sergeant major i/c  frightening pregnant women at the maternity hospital has us all on the floor doing something or other which was supposed to be useful, but I can't remember why or what.  I don't do exercise because I don't like exercise.

Sport, now, I have time for sport.  As a kid I wished I was a boy so I could play football.  Girls didn't play football in those days. At school I played field hockey in a spirit of vengeance, a stick being an expressive tool in the hands of an angry teenager.  Mostly I hit the ball.  Not perhaps tennis - we played on clay courts; I spent too much time picking gravel out of my knees to enjoy the game.  Sport can still stir my spirit.  I can watch rugby with admiring horror.  The sight of eight strong men in a boat can bring tears to my eyes. These days, my place in most sport is on the sidelines.

But running, now that's the stuff.  Exercise is to running what Complan is to the finest of high table dining.  Running has infinite variety.  It has low cloudy days, when you have the fen to yourself and the gulls because no one else is daft enough to be out there.  By the river in the morning the eights are sweating, reminding me that I could probably try a little harder.  Or there is the changing life of the kingfisher stream - the curious purple flowers in May, the grasses that grow tall in summer and seed as the days grow shorter again.  Autumn turns summer's canopy of green to a tea-scented carpet of browns and yellows.  On winter days I scan the framework of empty branches for the low-flying streak of luminous blue. Mostly it is only there in my memory, but one day I will see it again.  It is quite true, I never run by the same stream twice.  I never know what I'm going to see.  

And that's just the entertainment laid on.  Then there's the running itself.  Long slow run?  How far?  What direction?  Run/walk? If so, what run/walk ratio? Intervals? How long?  How long a recovery? How many repetitions? Concentrate on core. Concentrate on not tensing muscles that don't need tensing.  Concentrate on glute media.  Let psoas stretch.  A bad run is the motivation for a more carefully planned and executed outing the next time.  A good run is gold.

A good run is so much more than gold. I will shortly be shedding the clothes of respectability and heading west from work to run to the hill that overlooks half of Cambridgeshire, to watch the sun sink beyond the land. I can see it now, already in my mind's eye, as I have run that way many times before.  From the top of the hill, with the American Cemetery quiet behind me, the roar of the motorway, the day's frustrations and aggravations alike muffled in the evening mist and faded in the dimming light.  A separate peace, accessible only through the effort of the climb, visible only through salt-crusted eyelashes in the fading light, durable enough to guard the spirit through the day to come.

Running is the motive as well as the means, the goal as well as the discipline to achieve it.  It is a belief, a healing force that has given me back the ability to walk, to work, to live as fully as any other.  Exercise - the word shouldn't even share the page with running.  

Have fun out there.

An apology to a guardian angel

I am beginning to realise that I have been lucky.  My guardian angel is a generally a conscientious and energetic spirit but at times I admit I have been rather short and sour with it, and quite failed to show the respect due to guardian angels.  Perhaps never more so in the years living with an unnamed illness.  I have described before the bitter frustration of the bland reassurances that my increasing problems with mobility were "nothing serious".  So often was I thus "reassured" that I christened the illness Nothing Serious, or NS for short.  The frustration was acute in the early years.  I would have mortgaged my ears those days for a label, anything I could present to family and colleagues to explain and excuse my failing abilities.  I was inclined to feel Hard Done by, and regarded my guardian angel somewhat coldly in those years.

The diagnosis of Parkinson's, after fifteen years of NS was abrupt and unsought.  I had been having increasing difficulty  running.  I had even written before the consultation to suggest that we dispense with seeking a diagnosis, as all prior attempts to arrive at a diagnosis had resulted in fruitless frustration after tedious tests and outpatients exams. Perhaps we could just talk about strategies to help muscles adapt.  The consultant however did not appear to have any doubts in his mind.  The consultation had not lasted many minutes.  He sat down briskly and started writing.  "I can tell you what you've got. If you want to know, of course."  Er, come again?  Please sir, no sir, I don't want to know anything sir, or why I have come to see you sir? The end of man is to know (Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men).

The years of NS undoubtedly cushioned what might otherwise have been a severe blow.  It was a shock even so.  I had to go straight back to work that day and host a farewell party for some two hundred students.   I got a colleague to see to setting out the nibbles, and took a turn around the grounds, three deep breaths, and then pretended (with indifferent success) that no thoughts beyond the future careers of our students troubled my mind.

Having a diagnosis brought advantages  A diagnosis made chemical assistance of a specific nature available.  When I finally got the stuff, it worked a treat; my running speed improved by two minutes/mile overnight.  There were social gains as well.  I had an explanation.  I had been acquitted of all the charges implicit in the diagnosis of Functional disability.  I could plan.  I had a rough time-scale, and the chance to think constructively about how I wanted to spend my likely allotted span of active life.  

I was, I am, grateful for an answer. But the double-edged nature of having a diagnosis gradually became apparent over the summer. Benefits that I had imagined would follow in the wake of a diagnosis proved hollow.  In the early days of NS I had been desperate for a support group.   I made one rather desultory visit to the Parkinon's UK forums.  It didn't feel like home.  Nobody wanted to talk about running.  More sinister, Parkinson's the Explanation began to transform into Parkinson's the Excuse.  The drugs enabled me to run faster, but the diagnosis made it harder to get out the door.  Why bother?  Does it matter whether I hang up the trainers now or in 2016? What's the point?

It took a couple of months to pull out of that slough of indifference.  I was lucky (I told you so), in that during the years of NS I had learned an elementary truth.  There is one, and in my experience only one, effective alchemy capable of transforming the bitterness and leaden despair of misfortune into the 24 caret consolation of enduring satisfaction.  That is to give.  

You can't be really poor so long as you can give.  During the years when I generally got up, saw the kids to school, walked the dog and then came back and went to bed until the kids came home again I spent many of my waking hours  playing string quartets and chamber music with school kids.  As honorary teenager in the viola section of children's orchestras I had a privileged position; part of their music, part of their lives, caught up in their exuberance, excitement and energy.  Honoured indeed, and soul made whole through their generous spirit.

In running too, the great reward had little to do with speed. (I still quite fail to see the point.)  My first post-sticks half was run in honour of a young friend of mine, ten years old when she was diagnosed with a brain tumour.  She endured two brain operations, radiation therapy and two interminable years of savage chemotherapy. For a while we both used sticks.  When I got rid of mine, I made her a deal.  She was to choose the charity, I would run the half marathon and do the begging.  She chose Clic, I and a dozen sailors from the sailing club to which Lizzie's family and ours belonged trained over the summer.  We netted over £3k for the cause.  I ran in grand company that day.  The race was in the same village as the club and sailors who weren't running turned out at strategic points to cheer, and a hearty tea was available at the club following the race.  

So I knew what was required to burn off the fog of indifference.  Phil, one of the sailors who had run for Lizzie had himself come down with leukaemia, and was having a rotten time with the chemo.  I made him the same deal I had made Lizzie, thinking to run London marathon for the charity of his choice, Leukaemia Research.  Slight hitch, I didn't get a place, not even a golden bond place.  Knowing that I was not going to finish in under six hours, entering a different marathon was not really an option.  Most marathons have six hour cut-off times, which I respect, out of respect for the marshals.

Nothing for it, I measured out 26.2 miles along the banks of the Cam, beginning and ending with our own club waters, extending up to Ely with a loop around the city to fill out the miles. All last January and February I practiced, running the river banks at their very muddiest, learning all parts of the route, taking photos and preparing a guide for the sailors and friends who were to join in running all or part of it.

It was a magic day.  Over 45 sailors and friends took part one way or another, running, walking, swimming, sailing or climbing (on a climbing wall).  Toddlers and octogenarians joined in, slogging around the two mile loop including Bottisham Lock and the bridge at Clayhithe.  The clubhouse was bursting with over 60 people eating all day, and yet the supply of sandwiches, cakes, quiches, pies, crisps, sausage rolls, pasties, salad and trifle never failed, such had been the industry of those who supplied the galley.  And Phil was there to see every runner home.  Running doesn't get better than that.  Alchemy effected.  The fog dispelled.  There will be a day when I hang my trainers up.  But it's not going to be a day earlier than it has to be.

Did I tell you I was lucky?  The years of NS were a severe but effective apprenticeship.  It wasn't a matter of learning to live with the disease, it was a matter of learning to live.  

I had a very sobering weekend not long ago, when I joined for the first time in a Parkinson's UK Working Age group local meeting.  There were three of us, together with three professionals, meeting to discuss the annual Event.  One was a woman who had been diagnosed about ten years ago, apparently coping well with the disease, and the other was a man newly diagnosed.  Difficulties with running had led him to seek advice.  He had given up running.

I wanted to shout, tell him No No No do Not stop running.  Learn how to stretch the psoas so that they don't double you up and make running (and a lot else) impossible.  You can, you can, you can!  But my story is not his story, my illness not his, and the assumption that my experience qualifies me to advise (and implicitly to judge) is inexcusable arrogance.  I kept (mostly) quiet.  

But I began to understand how much I owed to my guardian angel, who withheld the diagnosis until I had learned how to live.  If I had had the label of Parkinson's from the start, would I have had spirit enough to defy the diagnosis and try and run?  I don't think so.  I would have found a home on the Parkinson's UK forums, not on the Runners World UK daily training thread.  At best I would have felt gently sorry for myself and tried to put a cheerful face on a life of limitations, contenting myself with the consolation of sympathy.  Gratias ago tibi, guardian angel, for teaching me the lessons I needed to learn before shouldering the label.  

But I still want to shout.  There is so much that I have learned, that might be of use to others should they wish to try it.  Go google Parkinson's and Psoas.  A paltry 200,000 some hits.  Not one of them appearing to recognise the enormous benefit to us pd peeps in understanding the role that muscle plays, and how to stretch and strengthen it.  I reckon we have something we can teach runners too, about the nature of Hitting the Wall, and something to learn too, namely that just as runners who train adequately for their marathons do not hit the wall, so adequate training might also help us avoid such painful encounters with the unmoveable.

I want to shout.  I want to share what I've learned, grace to the good offices of my guardian angel.  There must be others who might find as I did a second life through better understanding.  And a lot of hard work and determined training.  But it's worth it.  It's worth it for every day that I can run that I might not have been able to.  To me it's worth it.

Others will have other priorities and other enthusiasms.  I know that muddy trails are not for everyone. Just, please folks who share the illness, whatever it is that you love, let that define your life, and not the label. 

sticks

"What, lost our skis, have we?" "Bit warm for that, isn't it" It's odd that I can't remember more of the taunts from the days on sticks. It was a daily experience for nearly two years.  I clanked. There was a time when I thought I would never forget, for the simple reason that the days of clanking along seemed to unroll endlessly before me, without hope or explanation or variation.  I don't give it much thought these days.  I step out the door and down the street with my mind on other things.  Even once the sticks were history, it was a long long time before I turned my back on the front door without some small half surprise to note that my hands were free and empty, free to carry the groceries home, free to shove in my pockets, free to flag down a taxi or a bus without accidentally poking a passerby in the eye.  It is entirely correct and right to forget those times, but it is also right for me to tell you some small bit about them so that you can also forget them.  Somehow, it is better that you should join me in forgetting them than never know whence came my forum name of Stickless.  

It is ten years since the husband read about Les Foulees de la Soie. It puzzles me still what attracted him to the trip.  He was the runner in those days, though in earlier years I had trotted around a few half marathons.  But he hated running in the heat, or up hills.  So why go all the way to China in search of those conditions?  And what was I supposed to do while he was trotting around the desert or the mountains?

Those familiar with domestic negotiations will recognise all the symptoms: of course we signed up.  Alan got stuck into an impressive training routine, and I, with doubt in my heart, bought myself a book entitled "Learn Chinese in Three Months" - complete with tapes. That was fine, it was January that we signed up, the trip was not until the beginning of August, twice the required amount of time, should suit even a slow learner.

The snowdrops came and went, the crocuses followed. I could say my name and say that I was a student/translator/secretary in Chinese, which wasn't quite the truth. The broadbeans got their heads up, the potatoes grew, and as they grew, so did my misgivings, thriving in the rich soil of my gloomy imagination, bursting full flowered into troubled dreams by night and royal Worry by day.  

What, you may ask, could be so terribly worrying about a holiday, even if it was a running holiday, and I was not a runner, even if it was to a foreign land, where I spoke all of six words of the language, even if the tour company spoke another language (French), that I had not thought about since I left university.  Well maybe there is a little to worry about there.

But the greater problem was the sticks.  Sticks per se are not so bad, it's what the sticks stood for, what the sticks meant, and what they meant for me.  In spite of extensive testing, no organic explanation for my deteriorating mobility had been found.  The medical euphemism of the day was that it was a "functional" problem.  "Functional" has a variety of translations into plain English, for the layman, for the colleague, and worse, for myself.  It gets translated as "malingerer" or "idle" or "pity-seeking" or "neurotic" or "doesn't want to walk".  I could have lived with others thinking this of me, but so often had the verdict been given, that however solidly I believed myself innocent of these charges to begin with, the years of testing and null results had forced me to consider the possibility that the accusation was just.  The sticks had malingerer printed in large letters on them, and I couldn't walk to the post-office without them.  I had to grab them in both hands and accept the implicit accusation.

Moreover, sticks in and of themselves have an effect that goes way back in time, to the days when we ran about on all fours, chased our lunch while others chased us for lunch. Those with visible infirmities were first on the menu.  The instinct Not to be seen as easy meat is a strong one even after millennia of civilisation has made such fears no longer a realistic threat.  

Oh yes.  I was looking forward to my holiday.  With considerable trepidation, which grew as the inverse of time till departure.  Ten years have kindly erased the details.  I do remember that there was a system go slow that resulted in half of the flights from London to Paris being cancelled, including ours.  I remember seeing another man - large, grey haired and kindly looking sporting a Foulees t-shirt - and then lost sight of him as we galloped through the airport catch the earlier flight which was not cancelled, and which was in its final boarding.  I remember struggling through Charles de Gaulle airport, minus our luggage, and trying to explain that others of the team would certainly be delayed.

Shanghai was a thunderstorm, that much I do remember.  Our view from the 30somethingth floor was of a city obscured in mist, only fellow skyscrapers rising above the fog, superior to the obliterated city below.  The thunder growled all night, was still growling at 4:30 in the morning, when the call came to rise and shine, to pin a number on our fronts, and join in the race - the Prologue - through the city streets, at the fashionable start time of 5:30.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to pin a number on your front, when you're an unnatural quadruped in competition with greyhounds?  I can't believe I'm doing this.  I'm not doing this. This is absurd.  People on sticks don't take part in races.  Yes there were others walking, not many, but there were no others clanking. This isn't happening.  I'm not doing this.

I did it.  I really did pin the number on my front.  We got down to the lobby late, and I found a dark corner until we all moved outside to meet our day's running companions - members of a senior citizens running club.  I cowered at the back.  It was conveniently dark, and most of my European colleagues were at least at the front, and only Chinese runners were milling around where I was.

Then one ancient Chinese man came towards me, a tiny shrunken man, who came up to perhaps my shoulder - I could easily look down on his silver head.  He pointed to the sticks.  I pointed to my legs.  "Bu hao."  The little man leapt up and down with delight, gesticulating wildly thumbs up.  The horn went and called us to order.  I was last and lost within three minutes, alone to wander the streets of Shanghai unfolding in the rain.  

Somewhere inside me an ice-block of accumulated resentment cracked and the thaw began. To that little man I was a runner.  He saw the sticks and didn't see the evil writing on them.  He saw the number on the front and saw the runner.  Because he could see the runner, I too glimpsed that other image of me, as if in some mirror that reflected the runner and not the sticks.  Or, the sticks were there, but were no longer the emblem of shame; the number on the front transformed them into a symbol of defiance.  It was a beginning.

Over the fortnight we travelled together, little things happened which were Big things to me.  It was from the start the habit of the walkers to stand aside on narrow paths and cheer the runners as they passed by us.  Within days, the runners were yelling encouragement as they passed me.  At the end of the races, there was a podium for those who had placed in the day's race, both for the runners and the walkers.  Towards the end of the week one of the runners came to me and said "if there is a podium today, if I am on it, you are coming with me."  There wasn't one, and she wouldn't have been on it had there been one, but that didn't matter.  I required no further proof that I was a runner,cast in the same spirit with all the others who pinned numbers on their chests.  It was enough.

The story should go on to read that from that day forth I got rid of my sticks and walked, but of course it didn't happen that way.  It was another four months of steadily decreasing powers before a radical change of diet and the right anti-inflammatories set the course for physical improvement.  But my head was free of the curse of sticks even as I grew more dependent on them over those four months.  It will come to you as no surprise that my resolve to return to run Foulees de la Soie dated from the first day I walked without the sticks, which (you will not be surprised to learn) was also the first day that I ran.  It took three years to get there, but I got there in 2004.  It will also not surprise you that even now I have very little difficulty finding the motivation to lace up the trainers and get out there and run.

Mathematical daisies

Mathematical daisies.

I am having a bad week.  This is not on account of a vicious encounter with plantar fasciitis, and not entirely to be blamed on the spirit of doom and gloom that pervades every department of every university in the land, though it is not unrelated to work.  It does indeed have a great deal to do with work, but to understand the subtleties of present evil temper, something must be understood about the nature of mathematical research.

Few people outside of mathematics have any very accurate idea of what mathematical research entails.  I've always rather wanted to have a secondary school work experience kid posted to tail me in my days activities.  I would like to observe him or her observing me.  What would she make of the long hours staring at a blank blackboard?  The corridors in our shiny new department have thoughtfully been made circular, presenting the pacing mathematician no obstruction and no need to reverse direction.  If I please, I can be counter-clockwise all day (actually, I prefer clockwise).  I believe they design homes for the demented on the same plan. Would she follow me loyally through the day as I pace out the circumference, many times, as if to multiple check its measure?

What would she make of the hours of feverish excitement, when she is pressed into service as listener, who understands nothing, not that that would reduce the effectiveness of her role, of sympathetic ear that doubts nothing of what it hears.  The celebratory mug of tea, with extra chocolate biscuits, when the conclusion has been reached that the last link in the chain of logic holds firm, that the theorem which depended on the proposition which depended on the lemma is intact, proven beyond reasonable doubt (subject to re-checking the calculations of course).  A fairy pink paints the sky of the late afternoon winter sun, surely there must be a god in his heaven as all is right with the world.  That last lemma effects a deification: god-like I see the shape of the mathematical universe spread out below me as from satellite height, each bend and ripple according to the laws which I have just demonstrated on paper.  I am not totally devoid of earthly ambitions too, I must acknowledge.  The clarity of my vision and the elegance of my arguments, the wit of my prose will certainly win me the honours that have been so curiously lacking in my career.  I will accept them, though tardy, with gracious magnanimity.

What would she make of the following morning, when, shaking the rain off my coat, I come in, late, moody, uncommunicative.  These days come with the predictability of Singaporian thunderstorms; you don't know when, you don't know where, you just know for sure it's going to happen.  The hapless work experience student must imagine me crossed in love, so evil is my temper.  It is not an inapt metaphor; we understand what we see from the point where we are at; we go further, the view changes, understanding grows, sometimes bringing delight, sometimes distress. We are no more able to guess what tomorrow's understanding will bring than sweethearts are able to see tomorrow's heartache on the horizon.  He loves me, he loves me not, it's true, it's false it's true.  How many petals does a daisy have?

But today's vile spirits arise from a source beyond the spectrum of true or false.   The pernicious daisy representing the elegant theory I have laboured long to describe possesses yet another petal that has no parallel in the annals of the affairs of the heart: a deformed brown and shrunken petal labelled Useless.  The whole of the structure is built upon a dream, an M.C. Esheresque contradiction in spite of the local elegance, and the dream itself without point or conclusion, the So What? of judgement without reply beyond the query's own echo.

The wise work experience student would best model her behaviour on that of the hound, who observes with one raised eyebrow and then quietly slinks off to a distant room to wait until the atmosphere has cleared. The student should perhaps consider seriously a career in the City.  Perhaps the hound does.

Today, banned even from venting my temper on my trainers by the pernicious PF, I can only scowl in stationary silence.  But this is our life.  I'll be back at it tomorrow, sifting through the shards of my elegant but shattered structures, trying again and again, most patient of suitors, to win the way to the heart of the matter.  I've done this all my adult life.  I can't see me stopping now, but shall persevere until the mathematical daisy bald of petals proclaims my day is done.

I've known runners like us.  From this perspective, the training schedule stretches invitingly before me.  Plantar fasciitis is but a minor complication which will melt away like last year's snows.  The long runs marked in pencil on the calendar I imagine to be as good as run. Shedding the extra weight is easy - just exercise restraint.  It's as good as done. So my grand theory looked in its youthful stages, the lemmas obviously true just needing careful statement, the whole standing up clear, bright, evident, and above all, important.  Just waiting for the passage of weeks to proclaim it so.  And then it fails.

But we're runners.  Put yesterday's defeat in the past, and find the trainers.  Begin again.  It's what we do.

Training today? No way. Foot not right.

Eye to eye with my running partner.

Alright.  I was an hour or so late.  She can't entirely blamed for indulging in a mild revenge.  We have also only been running partners for a month or so.  She hardly knows me well, I must allow that she might well have felt anxious.  Nonetheless, I was not in a mood to cope with petty vengeance.  The rights and the wrongs of the occasion escaped my notice. This was an offence I did not intend to overlook.

I eyed her coldly and deliberately. Neither of us spoke.  It may have had something to do with her mouth being full at the time - of my hands, as it happens, along with the as yet unidentified hostage.  I was going to win this battle.  I had to win this battle.  She looked directly back at me, not a twitch of remorse, not a second thought in her mind, but that my tardiness fully justified her pique, that I had earned the consequences and must pay the price.  I looked directly at her, tight lipped, and said nothing. I could surely outlast her, couldn't I?

Ok, I didn't. How long it would have gone on I don't know, but I have to acknowledge her the winner.  In the end, after perhaps five minutes, I resorted to force majeur, and let it be known that I was not pleased.  There were harsh words (on my part). And then I felt bad.  The disputed property? An unmatched pair of socks.  Did a pair of socks matter so very much? And holes - as long as they don't occur where toes might peep through, or where a heel might rub, do they matter so very much?  (And they weren't my socks anyway!)

It was a shabby way to reward a near ideal mate.  She lets me choose the route, whether we walk or whether we run, whether we go fast or slow.  She has been ever willing to head out the door, neither rain nor cold diminishing her enthusiasm.  And I quibble at a pair of socks?  That are not even mine?

We have made up.  There have been hugs and kisses both ways.  I have played toss, and she has played fetch, and I have even stooped to her favourite game of tug of war.  Lumps of cheese have fallen from the table, and there may have been more of interesting bits in her dinner than is normally included the ration.  She is now having a carefree woof outside, and I shall not chide her.

She won indeed, and I, chastened, but in possession of a slightly moist un-pair of socks, have received her unqualified forgiveness.  I have also forgotten what I was cross about.  It can't have mattered, no more than an un-pair of socks at any rate.  We have, in past engagements disputed more coveted items: a hat, a sports bra (which stood up remarkably well to the teeth and the rough and tumble), two rather expensive pairs of eyeglasses (which did not), and a five pound note.  But even these were but a small change to pay for the companionship beyond price of partners in training.

Today: another 40 minute run with the beast, the last until after the weekend, and then only if she comes back to lodge with us again.  I have a fear that after a weekend back at her real home, her people may not wish to be parted from her.

Meditations on a double bass

The thing to remember about a double bass is that it is big.  We had one in residence one summer, for a fortnight.  Its case lay in a vagabond way over the armchair in the front room, while the body stretched like a somnolent teenager occupying the whole of the settee.  Every time I entered the room I half expected to find a selection of empty beer cans on the floor beside it.  Watching television became impossible; I could hear it snorting its disapproval at my choice of entertainment.

I am reminded of this fact (that a double bass is big) every time I resume work on the instrument.  Work began 18 months ago, and I am slightly vain about its progress.  The body is now complete, and it is safely resting on high (of course, the best place to store a double bass body is on a high shelf requiring one to stand on a high stool to get it up there) awaiting the union with neck and fingerboard.  The scroll and pegbox are very nearly complete.  The fingerboard, nearly a metre of it, is in place, and the task of Tuesday was to ready the neck for joining to the body.

Did I say a that a double bass is big?  So, proportionately is the neck and fingerboard.  I can look over at other makers on other benches doing the corresponding job for a violin, or even a cello.  It seems but the work of an hour to flatten the bits of the neck root that need flattening. No need to finish the neck; that can all be done after neck and body are one.  Things are different with a double bass.

I look at my lump.  There are three hours of gouging to remove excess wood before final flattening with a plane can even begin.  But the time is not the issue here, it is how to hold so large a beast.  Gouging is a whole body experience, legs arms braced, the gouge itself merely held by the hands, but driven through the wood with body and soul propelling it. The minimal vices that suffice for the smaller instruments are not really up to securing this lump immobile while I attack it.  Even the bench need be firmly anchored to the spot.

I should not complain of the neck and fingerboard being unwieldy.  For a start, it was worse.  The neck arrived in the shape of a young railway sleeper.  Lifting it was done only after careful thought, and after a place to put it down again could be guaranteed.  Secondly, it will be worse.  Once neck and body are united..

Hence the need to proceed to the final finishing of neck and scroll before that union takes place.  Even so, the task is fraught with awkwardnesses.  One stage of the finishing process is best done for the smaller instruments (yes, even for cellos) by slinging the body of the instrument over your shoulder, holding the scroll in one hand while wielding the knife with the other.  Er, I think, in this case, not.

And so a happy hour or five is passed, finding ways of supporting/restraining carving the neck as it increasingly resembles that which should be attached to the top of a double bass body.

Does this, you may ask, have anything at all to do with running the LAMM in June of this year?  No.  Not really.  I just thought you'd like to know about it.  It does, perhaps explain why long training runs don't happen on Tuesdays during term time.

Or maybe it does.  The LAMM is itself no small matter, not something that can be tossed over the shoulder of a runner's year, details to be worked on at a later date.  On announcing at the workshop that my intention was to make a double bass I was given plenty of (unsolicited) advice, mostly variations on the theme of "don't", most particularly and emphatically from some who have themselves previously made double basses.  They have watched surreptitiously as I slogged through the desert wastes of gouging and scraping front and back, and thicknessing these.  The pleasure of completing these tasks receives a dash of spice through proving the doomsayers wrong. So eyebrows rise when I reveal my intention to run the LAMM.  I know there are watchers..

More parallels appear.  I made five cellos, if you like, by way of apprentice pieces.  I have run five marathons, if you will credit the Run for Phil unofficial run as a marathon (it was every bit as long and rather more muddy).  And I find the same calm of purpose in approaching the task.  Yep, it is a big one.  There's a lot to be done.  But I have learned, from those five cellos, those five marathons, the rewarding discipline of doing the training, one run at a time head down, secure of purpose.

Enjoy the run folks.

Today's training: 2.5 miles with the beast - a rangy golden retriever on loan for a few months.  Just ticking over, out of respect for a poorly foot.

First day on the blog

You've got to start somewhere. Hi. I'm new here.  I'm having a look around the space, hoping that I can remember how I got here, hoping that when it comes to logging in again, I will be able to find my way.  I must remember to leave some crumbs as I go, and hope the birds don't peck them.

This is to be the story of preparing to run the LAMM mountain marathon, six months from now, somewhere in the northern parts of Scotland.  It will be a story about training, for sure, but I will have to tell you some stories about what happened before, before what is happening now makes any sense.

For starters, the picture is me, enjoying a highly non-standard half marathon recovery routine.  The place is the Teng Ge desert, north of Zhongwei, in Ningxia Province, PRC. The race occurred half way through the 2004 edition of Les Foulees de la Soie.  I didn't actually finish that half marathon.  I was ignominiously scooped into the sweeper van.  But the honour of leading the dragon dance was a delight no placement could have brought.

Foulees de la Soie of that era was an eleven stage race held in half a dozen cities scattered along the course of the Silk Road.  I went as a walker, with my husband, in 2001, when I could walk only with the help of a pair of sticks.  Recovering the ability to walk, the aim of repeating Les Foulees de la Soie as a runner became an obsession; a really useful obsession.  The return from sticks to running was a sequence of progress and regression that cycled the spirits: one day I could run, the next I couldn't walk without the sticks.  The neighbours were puzzled to see me thus; so was I.  The only constant was the obsession to run Les Foulees, a daily whispering imperative, ever the more insistent on days when I was back on sticks.

I got there in 2004.  You will almost certainly here more about it.  Since then, lots has happened.  I have run a total of five marathons, if you count one unofficial one that I measured out along the banks of my home river. I've got back to work. And I've kept on running. I have made a number of stringed instruments. And I've kept on running. I've spent almost every summer since 2004 in China, working with the mathematics department at a university in Shandong Province. And I've kept on running. I've studied the language. And I keep on running.

The running is both the goal and the therapy that allows me to reach the goal.  Leave home, out the door with reluctant legs grumbling at each step.  It might be a mile or five, and if I'm lucky the magic moment will come when whatever is locked releases and my feet come alive again.  And if I'm unlucky, the magic moment may not happen at all, that outing, but there is the consolation of knowing that it's one or three or five miles banked, and muscles still strong against the day when it does all come alive again.

It is essential to have a goal to set against all the tough locked leg miles, just as the 2004 Foulees shone as lodestar through desperate moments in the return to running.  This year it is the LAMM, 11-12 June, the D course.  Those hills, somewhere up in the north of Scotland.  I will lift mine eyes up unto those hills.  That'll do for now.

Today: 40 minutes run with the dog on leash.  She doesn't like it much, but she's really a very good training partner.  Suffering with foot problems at the moment.  Massage man suggested that trying to run London Marathon in April would jeopardise running LAMM in June.  So we don't run London in April. We can live with that.  More important, we can run with that.

Now to do the homework: s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g.