Author: Moobs

First, thank you for the comments you left after my last post. As will have been apparent, it represented something of a low in the Moobs household and your support was both welcome and comforting. You are special people.

Secondly, many thanks to those of you who sponsored my latest assault on the London Marathon. Set out below (within hours of the finish) is my report.

For the first time I ran the race with a target time in mind: 4 Hours 30 minutes. Those of you who have run marathons will know that that represents a sedate meander around the course. Nevertheless, it was intended as a challenge to myself. A goal I kept in mind during the long and boring hours of training.

Things looked very good. I had managed 4 hours 38 in Dublin last October, despite having walked the last 3 or 4 miles as a result of cramp and had run the Silverstone Half-Marathon in 1 Hour 53. As a result of a case settling I had had plenty of sleep, no stress and an ample opportunity to cram my face with enough carbs to cause the late lamented Dr Atkins to rise like an Apollo rocket from his grave and chase me down the street awaving lo-carb snacks in his grisly skeletal hand.

This just left one factor to be dealt with: The Marathon Curse of Moobs. Every time I run one wholly unseasonal weather settles in. It is always ridiculously hot when I run. To give you an example. I set off to run the 2004 New York Marathon in thermals only to have the temperature rise to 70 degrees: the result was that I got cramp. Those of you who know New York will no doubt be thinking: “Ha! that is not an unusal temperature for NYC”. Well, smartypants, it is IN NOVEMBER. I ran London in 2005 and baked and sizzled as I staggered home.

Today the temperature reached 23 degrees c (or 74 degrees farenheit) – in April?!. Oh and the wonderful British climate chucked in, as a little bonus, some high humidity.

If you are Paul Tergat, the great Kenyan Marathon runner, or if you live on the surface of the Sun, that is not a particularly troubling temperature. If you are, let us euphemise, a “larger gentleman” it is freaking hellish. I set off at a decent pace and at 30 k (about three quarters of the way through the race) I was running a 4 hour pace which, allowing for the tendency of portly gentlemen to slow over the last 10k, equated to about a 4 hour 15 finish time. So chock full of carbs was I that my fuel tank was telling me I had plenty left. I did stop to have a pee, reasoning that as I had drunk 6 litres of fluid there must me something to come out only to find that my bladder as as dry as blotting paper. This should have been my warning; as, indeed, should the salt.

As I ran my body tried to deal with the heat by making me sweat like a plough horse. Slowly my clothes began to stiffen with crystallised salt. By mile 20, tiny saline stalactites were forming on my running vest. There were visible salt tidemarks on my hat and shorts and wiping my brow caused a rapid exfoliation. I was turning into Lot’s wife.
I knew full well where this was headed. Shortly after the 20 mile mark I felt a twinge in my calf. I slowed my pace. 200 metres later my left foot, calf and thigh went into spasm. The only way I could deal with the pain was to kneel on the road and making little yelping noises like a highland terrier. From then on the race consisted of me staggering from one St John’s Ambulance tent to another and having them massage the leg out of spasm. The last attack was with just 400 metres to go.

So I finished, I have a medal and a time, just shy of 5 hours, which is 20 minutes off my PB. A time so embarrassing I can barely make myself type it. I am, ladies and gentlemen, a loser. However, I comfort myself that charity has benefited from my pain and, tonight, I intend to reacquaint myself with the taste of Belgian beer.

Once again, thank you to those who sponsored me.

When P told me that the pregnancy test for this, our final, round of IVF would be on Easter Saturday I was secretly delighted. P felt things were going well: we had two embryos survive the thaw and all the indications from the scans were good.

P is not religious so she thought my own cheerfulness was as a result of the feedback that she was giving me from her trips to the hospital. That was not the only reason for my good humour. The great feast of Easter is a feast of hope and, most importantly, of new life. I felt God was winking at me, nudging and hinting that finally he would do for us what he had done for Sarah: He would give us hope in our despair and the gift of new life.

Of course God was not winking at me. Often the answer to even the most desperate prayers is “no”. P stood in front of me holding out the plastic stick on which God’s will was written in the form of a single blue line. 

The night before my eighteenth birthday I stood on the beach in Frinton, feet dipped in the surf at the edge of the North Sea. It was a warm evening in early July and the dusk was slowly deepening. Save for the gulls I was entirely alone. I felt a profound peace.

But finding myself about to teeter from childhood to adulthood who wanted peace? Not me. I reflected that far too much of my youth had been spent being very sensible. This moment called for a gesture. Something liberating. Something that tore up my childish reflex obedience and sent it fluttering away on the offshore breeze.

What was called for was a streak. It was going to be a very Moobsian streak. There was absolutely no-one around to see me and it was nearly pitch dark but if I was going to be reckless I wanted to set about it in a sensible way.

I took off my clothes and stacked them neatly by the seawall and then walked, shivering slightly, back to the water’s edge. I toyed with shouting “woohoo” but it seemed somehow undignified. Less dignified even than shrivelling away in the increasingly stiff breeze. I turned to face the South and jogging away from my starting point began my first streak.

Several things had not occurred to me. The first was that every 10 yards or so was a barnacle-covered groyne that I was going to have to clamber over without undue damage to my own groin. The interval was just enough to allow you to build to a sprint before having immediately to stop again in order to climb, ooing, ahing and ouching over the great slime-covered planks from which each groyne was constructed.

The second thing that might have occurred to me is that growing up on the English Coast does not leave you with the deep mahogany tan of David Hasselhof and his life-saving workmates. Dark though it was, my pasty white physique was glowing like a harvest moon. I should not, therefore,  have been quite so surprised to hear a voice say: “What the heck is that? Is there someone down there do you think?”

Instinctively I froze and then began to squat so as to make myself as small as possible. About 50 yards away, up on the concrete seawall,  were the silhouettes of two men. 

“Maybe it’s a seal”.

I decided to wait till they walked on. I kept my breathing shallow and tried to be quiet. After 5 minutes or so, they apparently lost interest. They did not, however, move on. Instead, they began to set themselves up for a night of fishing. My thighs were now beginning to cramp and it was dawning on me that I could not stay there forever not least, as my increasingly wet ankles were telling me, because the tide was coming in. Still in a squat I tried to shuffle backwards up the beach, pausing every time the fishermen made a noise. I made good progress and after just 5 minutes I had moved as many yards and the saltwater was half way up my shins.

I decided to make a dash for it; stood up, turned and ran. In order to move more quickly I ran up towards the seawall a little so that the rake of the beach meant the groynes seemed lower and I stood a chance of hurdling them. The third thing that might have occurred to me is that at the top of the beach, sand gave way to shingle. This meant three things: First, my progress slowed spectacularly as the shingle shifted under every despairing step. Second, it was extraordinarlily noisy, rousing the startled fishermen. Thirdly, it was very painful on my feet. At the first groyne I launched myself about 3 inches into the air from the unstable platform of the pebbles and cracked my knee on a wooden support post. “Ow!” I shouted, remembering to try and make it sound like a seal.

The fourth thing that should have occurred to me was that I really should have been counting how many groynes I had gone over on my way down the beach as that would have been a great help in assisting me find my clothes which were now, I realised,  lost in the darkness.