Poetry in Motion

Okay, I'm going to try something different for this post...a little poetry. The words are all mine, inspired by the beauty of some of our recent group runs in Canberra.


Autumn Morn', a Runner's Dream

To run is to live, a Lover’s delight
At dawn, with the sun and morning’s first light
Friends hear the call during the frost coloured Fall
Amid the tint and the texture of leaves that enthral

It’s love at first sight, this runner’s dream
Of a long and lone road, across valley and stream
Back to Nature most virgin, our souls running high
She’s a beauty this morning gal, our hearts just sigh

And then there’s the breeze, Nature’s breadth as a truce
Her sweet and svelte touch, a ruse to seduce
She consorts with our senses, “Oh Nature you’re a tease”
“Run, run” she whispers, playing us with ease

The friends in our group, some run and some walk
We’re all a little different, but we all like to talk
What bliss, what joy, what indescribable glee
To run, at one, with Lady Nature most free

Tuggeranong Don
© 2006

What's next?

I had another nice run with my Saturday running group this morning. It was about a 16k effort from Mt Taylor to Oakey Hill and return, along gravel roads and tracks. It was good to get out with the group as I had been feeling off-colour and run-down since last Sunday's SMH half. I was certainly feeling a bit fragile before the run and only wanted to take things very, very slow. But just being with my friends in the fresh air was a great tonic for clearing the cobwebs. I really needed the run.

Since I started with the group earlier in the year, the Saturday runs have become very important to me. After being a solo runner for a lot of my running career, I find the social side to running fantastic. It's not only a way to meet new friends who share the passion, it also makes me a better runner. Like so many runners, my Saturday group are a great bunch, always supportive and friendly. I treasure my time with them.

Jorex, Eddie, Portrunr, and 2p have all asked me what's next on the running agenda and actually it is a good question.

The Boston Marathon, April 2007 is my main goal, albeit still a long-range one. With my 3.16 at the recent Canberra Marathon I achieved an age qualifying time for Boston. I am determined to be there in Massachusetts on Patriot's Day next year. The Boston Marathon first caught my imagination after reading Jim Fixx's classic, The Complete Book of Running. I first read that book well over twenty years ago and have ever since been fired with the dream of running there. I visited Boston in September last year during our family holiday and liked what I saw. I want to go back.

In the immediate future, I've got a series of races coming up: the off-road half-marathon (1 July), ACT Cross Country Championships (22 July), Bush Capital Marathon (29 July), Vets Half marathon in August, the Sydney City to Surf in August, and the Canberra Times fun run in September. One exciting feature is an almost-confirmed trip to Europe for work in mid-June. I am kinda cherishing the thought of running in Switzerland and Austria in a few weeks. Hope it comes off.

Sydney Half Marathon

Just finished my third SMH Half. I came in with a 93.00, which is not a PB and not even close. It is, however, my fastest half marathon for a year and I'm happy. I had limited prep and next to no speed work since the Canberra Marathon five weeks ago.

I paid the price for dithering too much with the first 10k, going out in a very ordinary 45.30. But I did a satisfying negative split to come home with a 43, for the second 10k. I felt strong throughout and my hill work paid off with Hunter and Argyle Streets posing no fears for me this time. As always, my pacing needs work.

As usual a great atmosphere out on the course. Despite predictions to the contrary, the weather, too, behaved itself. A lovely pleasant sunny morning greeted the runners. The SMH Half could learn from other races and introduce the Jackel drink sachets that are now appearing. Cups are ancient history I think. I also have queries over the distance markers, they are hard see and I am not sure of their accuracy.

I had the special pleasure to have a pre-race dinner with the famous Lucky Legs, along with Ewen and Bruce. It was a very nice evening and great to compare our various running experiences.

Overall, race wise, a good day but not a great one. Enjoyable nonetheless.

Canberra Half Marathon

It's been a hectic week to date and finally I've got a chance to post my report on Sunday's Canberra Half Marathon.

Sunday was a beaut day, perfect for kindred spirits to get out and do their thing. I am tempted to say it was another one of those 'great to be alive' days but all of Canberra's days are like that for runners. The day opened with a beautiful blue sky, no wind, and a little morning mist rising from Lake Burley Griffin. The autumn leaves were everywhere, multi-coloured rose pedals that us runners would soon be sending into little eddies as we trounced and shuffled along on the bike track around the lake. Even the ducks that I noticed in Lotus Bay near the start seemed to be in duck heaven. Their cute paddles stirred the water just enough to break the trance the water seemed caught in. Ah Mother Nature, you've done it again.

Watching Mother Nature was all very nice but it was not what I was here for. My main goal for the Canberra half was simply to get in a training run as I prepared for one of my favourite races, the SMH half in Sydney on Sunday. As it was a training run, I was not going to bust a gut. I decided, instead, to do what others have done for me over the years and that was to be a pacer and supporter for one of my running friends, Michelle. She had a tremendous race. In only her second half marathon she took five minutes off her PB to do a sub-1.50 finish. She showed great restraint in the early stages, not going out too hard. She then maintained a good consistent pace throughout to finish strongly in a sprint. I ran beside her the whole way and it was great to see her run well. I remembered what Horrie and Speedy Geoff had said on the pleasure they had received after they helped their friends achieve their goals in similar situations during the Canberra Marathon.

Running with Michelle in the Canberra half gave a new dimension to my running. Previously I had only to think of myself. Now I had to think of someone else's running needs, and helping them achieve their goals gave me enormous satisfaction. Congratulations Michelle on a wonderful run.

It was great to catch up with Speedy Geoff, Griffin, Maria and Jim, Natasha and Oliver, Aki, Jen and Julien, Marg, Peter, Neil and Kerry. My virtual friends, you too were there in spirit.

The run itself was very well organised and it is a credit to all those involved. The supporters too, were fantastic. They seemed to be everywhere, including one lady I noticed who literally was just about everywhere. It was almost as if she had levitated from one spot to another, as I didn't see any visible form of locomotion. A bit freaky, but nice just the same. Then there was the toddler we saw with the bare bum. She definately wasn't levitating but was waddling around like the ducks I saw earlier. She was almost stripped down to the core essentials, the way Nature meant it to be. Apparently oblivious to the temperature still in single digits, she too was a kindred spirit in her own little way.

Next report: Sydney Morning Herald Half Marathon.

I'm in China

I'm in China!

It's hard to believe that less than a week ago I was running with my Saturday group in the cold at the Cotter. Today, I finished my second run along the streets of Beijing in the world's most populous country. It's just a short work trip. I flew up on Wednesday and arrive back in Canberra on Saturday after the red eye special from Beijing, via Sydney. To complete the surreal experience, I will be running in the Canberra half on Sunday.

My two runs in Beijing were along the broad avenues of this massive city, amid the multitudes, bikes, cars, taxis and the city's smog.

Ah the smog!

I don't know what I have been breathing in since I arrived. My throat certainly feels a little gritty. I read in one of the newspapers that the air is especially bad at present because of dust storms in Mongolia. That's Genghis Khan territory. Think I will blame him for the way my throat feels.

I was talking to some Beijing-based diplomats about Beijing's bad air and my early morning run here. Of course, they had their horror stories. One told me about a friend who was zotted off to hospital with some severely polluted lungs. They said he must be a smoker; he said no, he had simply been gulping in the crappy air during his morning run. I felt the grit in my gob get a bit lumpier when I heard this! I also noticed some dirty blobs on my running shirt and shorts. This was a bit strange as I don't remember running through any puddles. I was told I probably didn't. The little dirt bombs more likely came down with the light rain that fell during my run. Umm....thanks. Are they really going to hold the Olympics in this place??

Still, life's too short to get hung up over Beijing air. I was really pleased with the two runs that I did in this place. I felt strong and relaxed and enjoyed the jaunts. Beijing's streets are very flat, with never a hill to be seen. I tried to get the heart rate going by running the rise to a pedestrian overpass. I also had some fun stepping down off the footpath and mixing it with the bicycle riders. Must have been a million or so of them on this particular street. I'm sure they thought they were seeing things, this tall white guy - with a gritty throat - amid a cocophony of wheels and other moving things. I got a real buzz when I outran one lady on her bike. She tried to keep up, but I was too quick. Yeeha! I got some really strange looks for doing that. (I'm modest, REALLY! I do try and keep my competitive instincts in check. I just can't help it sometimes).

Think I have some new visualisation techniques to try out during my run on Sunday. I will imagine all the runners are little old Chinese ladies peddling furiously on their bikes, trying to keep up with this mad white barbarian! (I've enclosed a picture of that mad white barbarian just after he had finished this run).

The Age of Aquarius

I experienced something supreme with my Saturday running group this morning. It was one of those runs you just wanted to bottle, mark 'vintage', and place on your top shelf - rarely if ever to be opened.

Picture this. We all assembled before dawn in the car park of Canberra's Cotter Reserve, alongside the creek by the same name. It was cold, and the temeperature hovered around zero. I think we all felt like race horses. We were standing there in the dark, bouncing around, waiting for the call up for the first at Flemington. It was simply a pumping morning for running.

The task: a roughly 20k, 2 hour jaunt along gravel roads, up and down hills (big ones too!) and gullies, across creeks, around bends, and over fences. To Canberra's west and badly damaged by the 2003 fires, the area is a Canberra Mecca for distance runners. It's huge. From the air (as Google Earth also shows) it is a maze of crossing tracks, paths, and roads. It's the classic out and back course and never once would we have to retrace our steps.

The fresh chill air does wonders for the soul and a few k's into the run - and several of us had never done it before - we realised this was going to be something special. High into the hills, we all experienced a magnificant sun rise. There it was, this fantastic golden disk throwing shadows across the hills and gullies. There were blankets of fog in those gullies and we were above it all, watching nature come alive. It felt like we were at the dawn of creation and I thought of the funky hit song Aquarius from the 1970s muscial "Hair". Who remembers the lyrics?

This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius
The age of Aquarius
Aquarius! Aquarius!

As our hearts go beating through the night
We dance unto the dawn of day
To be the bearers of the water
Our light will lead the way

We are the spirit of the age of Aquarius
The age of Aquarius
Aquarius! Aquarius!

We had started this run virtually in the dark....I felt our hearts did go beating through the night.....we were doing our own special dance unto the dawn of the day....bearers of the way....with our light (the Sun) leading the way. At least this is the way it seemed to me this morning. And I promise, I wasn't smoking anything strange and the only thing I had had to drink was a swig of Gatorade shortly before the run started!

Are we an arrogant lot, we runners? There's a passage from Tom Wolf's book The Right Stuff where he talks about the fighter pilot's massive ego when he/she looks down from high on all those below:

How can all of them down there, those poor souls who will soon be waking up and trudging out of their minute rectangles and inching along their noodle highways toward whatever slots and grooves make up their everyday lives-how could they live like that...if they had the faintest idea of what it was like up here in this righteous zone?

Yes, exactly! How could they?

And yet it's not the fighter pilot saying that, it's me, the runner. How could 'they' - those in their slumber sleeping off last night's indulgences - not know the indescrible joy of being healthy, fit, and free. Being at one with the sights, smells, and texture of nature. Being on her turf, on her terms, seeing day replace night, seeing the same sun replace the same moon that our ancestors first saw when they climbed down from the trees...and yes, say it...started to run...and I think too, started to run for fun.

But back to the future, and us in the early dawn at the Cotter, sharing the spirit. This is what made the morning so special. We were runners and walkers of varying ages and gender, and of different standards. In my little group we had the injured Linda leading the way on her bike. There was Elle with her relaxed and efficient running style, working back into things after the Canberra Marathon. There was Michelle and Natasha, both looking great preparing for the Canberra Half Marathon in a week's time. And there was Leah and Emma, both looking superbly fit, with beautiful relaxed styles. Finally, there was me, simply trying to keep up. We ran, we walked, we talked. We had fun. Later we caught up with the rest of the group for breakfast. Very nice. Maria, thank you so much for bringing us together to experience all this.

Is this the dawning of a New Age? Is this the Age of Aquarius? For runners, does it get any better than this?

Unwrapping the dork

Lucky Legs asked me what a dork is. Well I checked with dictionary.com and was surprised to find a listing. I found out that a dork was a silly, foolish, or inept person. I certainly felt like that after my weather forcasting efforts last Saturday.

Responding to my post on creative running Tesso asked if I started running when I resided in southern Africa. In fact, that is exactely the way I started. In 2000, I was in the third year of my three year diplomatic posting, in Zimbabwe to be precise. In September of that year, a very home sick Tuggeranong Don watched the Sydney Olympics on South African cable television and felt very uncomfortable. There was me: in excess of 90kgs, a sloth who breathed hard just thinking about exercise. There was them: these incredibly fit, superbly toned athletes, who seemed to epitomise perfection in the human form. Yet we are really all the same aren't we? Why can't I be like them?

And so it began.

One step at a time, one kilometre at a time, I started running. At first all I could manage was a short 2km puff, nothing more than that. But I kept going. The next day I pushed a little further, and then a little further the next, and so on. I had tried running before but no matter how hard I tried my efforts seemed to fail amid lack of motivation, injury or illness. This time, however, I introduced my two golden rules of running. Rule one is I never run on Mondays. Rule two is I never run the same course for two days in a row. I would always run a different route for each day of the week. Five and a half years on, these rules remain central to my running creed. I am not sure why these rules worked; perhaps it has something to do with variety being the spice of life. I don't know why; I just know it worked for me.

Anyway, nine months after taking up running at the age of 40 I had reduced my weight from 90 kgs to 64 kgs and was back home in Australia preparing to race in my first half marathon. In October 2000 soon after I started running I entered in a 10k race and my flat out best time for it was 59mins. Nine and a half months later as a much trimmer and fitter Tuggeranong Don I had lowered my 10k PB by almost twenty minutes to 41.30 (it is currently 40.09).

At an age when many guys are confronting widening girths and mid-life crisises I was becoming reborn. Aside from family issues, this was the most exciting thing to happen to me in my life. The angels started singing, manna came down from heaven, and the trumpets heralded my metamorphisis. This was my moment. I had arrived. I was a runner.