The point is, the Outlaws are running again. Daughter-out-law and I have signed up for the LAMM again. I promised the organisers I wouldn't, and now I have.
You'd have thought we might have learned. Read back. It wasn't easy. It hurt. I can't put it down entirely to a short and faulty memory. There is too much that reminds me of aspects of that event. Every stairs session reminds me how very painful even a short ascent can be (basement to top floor of Oriental Studies is near enough 25 metres of climb). Do that fifty times and hey presto, it's about a day's ascent on the LAMM. Do it five times on the way in to work and I am aware that I have done it, all day long. The mix of wind, hail and rain - Chaucer's sweet April showers that pierce the drought of March to the root (Did Chaucer really live in these parts I wonder) - remind me that even in June running up and down mountains in Scotland may not be an unmixed pleasure. A run of more than double digits in miles is quite sufficient for me for a weekend. Now double it, add a couple extra, and a couple extra again for incompetence in navigation, and that's the LAMM for you.
Nor can I pretend that I have done such stunning training that I am much better, and that I have been orienteering all winter and so will hit every control just right, and be speedier and better and the Outlaws will be more like any other pair, not the pair that limped home last, five hours after the preceding finishers. Parts of the past year, to put it bluntly, have been a pig. Orienteering did not feature as I hoped it might have.
But training now, that's the nub of it all. Not the cause for this year's entry into the LAMM, but the effect. After much consideration, looking at the problem from all available angles, I arrived at the inescapable fact. I have yet to find an event with similar attributes of attraction and terror which might serve to frighten me out of the house. Whatever the weather. Whatever delight - stairs, hills, or up the interminable guided busway - has been marked in for the day's session. The memory of the LAMM gets me out the door. Every day recalls some aspects of that effort, with appropriate Respect. No, I have definitely Not forgotten quite how hard the LAMM is.
But nor have I forgotten those two years on sticks. Not only my mind remembers it, my whole body remembers it, and is very quick to remind me, if some morning I don't exactly feel like getting out there and doing It, whatever that day's It might be. I don't want to be There again. The medicine makes the training possible, but without the training, the freedom of being able to run and even to walk, stickless, is unlikely to last long. The day may come when this alliance of medicine and sweat no longer suffices, but mind and body both are of one accord, that that day be postponed as long as possible.
As I said, it has been somewhat of a pig of a year. Even that mind-body memory, even the fear of the LAMM has not always succeeded in propelling me out the door. But it has been overall effective. Hey, I'm still walking. I am still running. With luck the Outlaws will not come home disgraced, and we will not keep the organisers waiting unduly long for our return. Hope springs eternal. As it should. The Outlaws run again. May the gods be kind, and heap rewards both in heaven and on earth on the orgainisers who give us the chance.
