Author: Moobs

In a kafkaesque metamorphosis I have woken up as someone else. The body I now inhabit is that of a 70 year old. It took me 15 minutes to get out of bed, 15 minutes to get downstairs and the exercise of bending over to pick up my mail had ultimately to be abandoned. I am walking stooped over and mumbling constantly under my breath about aches and pains.

Disturbingly, this physical transformation appears to have been accompanied by a psychological one. I find myself craving cups of tea, unable to work the TV remote control and becoming firmly convinced that children these days are insufficiently disciplined.

I’m not yet sure whether or not to expect incontinence – I’ll keep you posted once “Meals on Wheels” has been.

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.