Hi Blog, (as they say)
If you were stood outside my mansion just now, I would not be able to see you because the fog is so thick …. of course the supposition is purely hypothetical because my gate keeper would not let plebs of your ilk onto my estate. No way, matey boy. However, let me repeat my advice to you of many moons ago … if it is foggy beware when you run, especially in the city because of the dangers of all those particulates getting into your lungs and causing damage. My old friend, Wilf Paish, and I discussed this at some length about fifty (!) years ago in preparation for a camp he was running in York for senior school athletes. I remember it particularly well, because he was to do the introduction and I was to come in with a couple of feed questions to get the kids thinking and to stimulate a bit of discussion because this was part of their first session. There might have been 70 or 80 kids, I forget, as it was a long, long time ago .. and I can’t remember when …. We were in a gym, probably at the St John’s College York. Wilf was at the front next to a slide projector, which was plugged into a socket at the back of the hall / gym near where I was seated. The electric wire from the projector to the plug snaked across the floor, underneath where all the kids were seated on wooden gym benches. Wilf had got into the swing of things and pressed the button on the projector to show the first slide. All had been well in the set up earlier in the evening. The slide had been on the screen for a few minutes as Wilf explained the oxygen conversion in the lungs etc. when there was an almighty bang from the projector followed by a series of smaller explosions along the length of wire beneath where the kids were sat with sparks flying and black smoke starting to billow. It was like watching an elongated jumping jack firework in slow motion!!! Wilf saying to the kids to stay calm and file out, woke me from my reverie and I had the presence of mind to pull the plug from the socket; a live electric wire erupting in a series of mini explosions ….. a stupid thing to do with hindsight but it seemed the obvious preventative measure to take at the time! An automatic reaction more than sensible considered response I assure you Blog. Things quickly calmed, the smoke cleared, the offending wire moved out of harm’s way, and the lecture continued. Can you imagine the Health and Safety consequences now, the report filling, the committee investigations, the blame game????? We all just settled down and got on with an enjoyable weekend. Oh yes, and my fingers soon healed!!!!
So back to the fog …. to prevent damage to lungs, train with a scarf covering the mouth and nose … it restricts breathing and you have to work harder. But then some well-known blond athletes live in their posh houses at altitude to achieve such an effect, or if you are a cyclist or an athlete in times of yore, you have a pint of blood or a couple of pills, or so I am told. Don’t know if it is true??? But would I lie to you Blog??? Mist is a different matter however. It may chill the lungs but mist contains no carcinogenic particulates. A long run in the mist on the moors of God’s own county might give you a cough and cold later in the week whereas a long run in the fog on the paths of a city street might give you something far worse in the years to come.
After last Saturday’s Birmingham and District League race at Leamington, watching the underfoot conditions deteriorate from grassland to mud and bog, Blog, I questioned how many of the thousand competitors ever bothered to do specialised training for championship cross country races where, inevitably, the ground turns into a quagmire. Try plough running Blog. At this time of year, the ploughed fields are just about perfect. Newly ploughed harrowed land with the winter wheat just poking through the top soil and the damp in the air means the mud clings tightly to your shoes and gets heavier and heavier and heavier with each step. EXCELLENT. Just what the coaches ordered. Avoid the soft option of running on the country footpaths, run on the plough, round and round the fields. You may get lucky and break eight or nine minutes for each mile. Time doesn’t count. Time stands still and waits for this man. Running in ultra-slow motion. But regular sessions during the winter will pay ample dividends in the area and national championships next year!!! Remember you heard it first here Blog, and next month in the mags no doubt???
And just as I wrote in my last letter to you last week about arm use, it is just as important to consciously use those arms and exaggerate the leg lift on plough as it is in running up hills. You train and strain to race at pace as that well know coach Phillip Hades said after a night out in Athens!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Have to stop now Blog … I can’t remember what I did with my scarf last February.
Colin
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