Long And Winding Road

7 O’clock in the morning has never really been in contention for the award of favourite time of day. There were one or two occasions where I’ve been heading back from a very late party and stopped to watch the sunrise and 7 a.m. has taken on a much more pleasant hue. That was a lifetime ago though, and the 10,000 early mornings that have passed since then have been pretty poor by comparison. 

The dislike for early mornings has been compounded by the fact that I’ve spent the last dozen years working with companies in California, which, as I’m living in Northern Ireland, has inevitably meant a few conference calls at 1 a.m. my time. When I initially started working remotely for a Californian company the time difference, oddly enough, was an attraction. When our youngest was born he had a pretty rare condition, congenital hypoglycaemic hyperinsulinism, for those who understand these things. In the end we were extremely lucky, as Great Ormond Street Hospital had just made a breakthrough on the condition and were able to come up with a treatment plan that eventually resolved the problem with no ill effects. What it did mean though, was that he spent quite a while in an incubator in the hospital and could only be fed intravenously. When he finally got home we still needed to check his bloods once an hour throughout the day. That’s when working California time became invaluable. I could start work at 7 p.m. and work through until 4 a.m., taking his bloods every hour, before handing over to my wife who’d start the day shift at some point after that. You don’t realise how noisy the quietest place is during the day until you do shift work!! 

Up until this point my job had involved lots of international travel, which was great as there’s nothing better than travelling on somebody else’s dime. It also transformed me into an uber travel nerd, joining every hotel and airline scheme and working out every way to play the system. United’s open jaw route pricing was a particular favourite. At my peak I managed to get a return flight back from DC to London that went via Puerto Rico but was only $2 more than flying directly – not a bad price for a weekend in the sun. I recently had an e-mail from Hilton pointing out that I only needed 10 more nights to achieve Lifetime Diamond status, which you get after 1,000 nights. 990 nights in one hotel chain, not quite sure if that’s indicative of a life well-spent or a life misspent!! All good things come to an end though, and my life of never having to clean a bathroom or make a bed was quickly replaced with having to stay up all night sticking a needle into a small child who, understandably, was less than happy with the arrangement.

So, circumstances were now dictating that I needed to be at home. What this meant was that I was able to live pretty much anywhere and ended up in a house that was walking distance to sand dunes, beaches, mountain ranges and forest parks. I’d spent half my time previously living on the outskirts of London and spending up to four hours a day commuting to client sites, and paying a large sum for the pleasure. Now the nearest thing that I had to a commute was the quick walk to the school across the road. This all seems very relevant again with the unprecedented level of upheaval in the job market that we’re seeing during the pandemic. Many will struggle to hold onto their jobs or find new ones and others will gain flexibility from new working from home options. For us good fortune was definitely forged in the fire of adversity and I only hope that it works that way for others. However bad it may seem, don’t give up and look at ways that you can reinvent yourself to make the most of the world as it is today. 

With this rather tangential background I can get back to the fact that I grudgingly crawled out of bed at 7 this morning to make sure that the kids headed off to school without inflicting injury on each other or damage to the house in general. After such a poor, i.e. early, start I was then faced with the prospect of doing some exercise but the spirit and the body were both totally disinterested. A couple of days previously I’d managed to drag myself out to do an 8 mile run and I was keen(ish) to keep up the momentum. As a background to this, I started the year as a fat, old man and 10 months later was now facing the fact that I was a fat, slightly older man. When the schools first closed we went on lots of long walks to get fresh air and exercise but, given that a 5 mile walk is the calorific equivalent of a pint of lager, it never really gave seismic health improvements. If nothing else, Coronavirus has given a shot across the bows for anyone old, fat and unfit.

Prior to everything closing down we’d started doing quite a few Parkruns (timed 5k weekly runs, for those who haven’t had the pleasure). These were a great way to get a bit more exercise and there’s always the sense of competition to push you harder than you’d go on your own. The plan was that I’d get fitter as the kids improved their times and would be able to run along with them offering encouragement. This was great in theory and one day everything came together perfectly and, after initially taking 28 or 29 minutes for the Parkrun, I managed to smash my Personal Best and finish in 23:50. This is the point at which the plan veered slightly off course. I’d peaked too soon and dropped back to 25 minutes while the 13 year old dipped below 19 minutes. I had roughly 5 seconds per race in which I was actually close enough to offer support and encouragement before the kids disappeared from view. At this point I realised that running as fast as possible for 25 minutes followed by a week of limping around before heading out again, possibly wasn’t the best fitness strategy for me.

This was time for a new regime. The objective was to go slower (easy) but go further (not so easy). Chipping away incrementally is always a good option, so I did 5 miles and then 10k and then 8 miles and last week up to 9 miles, all with no obvious injuries or ailments. The one thing that I found useful was to have a rough plan and stick to it. There were days when I really didn’t feel like doing anything but I knew that if I didn’t get up and get going then I could easily slip a few days. Inevitably those days were the best ones once I got going and that made it easier to get started on the other days where stomping the streets didn’t seem like such a wise move.

That’s pretty much how it played out this morning. Kids out the door and then sat on the sofa watching the news. I’d planned to run this morning, partly because I didn’t have anything else on but also because the weather forecast was good. It just wasn’t happening though. What I wanted to do didn’t seem to reconcile with what I’d planned to do. After an hour or so I finally talked myself into heading out, on the basis that I could just plod along if I felt OK but stop if there were any issues. Things improved dramatically as soon as I started. Having lower expectations removes any pressure and I was slowly but surely beating out my 8 mile route. After about 6 miles everything seemed to be going good, so I slowed a little with the intention of going further, possibly pushing up to 10 miles. Once you think that 10 miles is on the cards though you have to start thinking about a half marathon and that’s how it worked out. One foot in front of the other until I’d clocked up 13.1 miles. It wasn’t fast and it wasn’t pretty but the job got done nonetheless. It’s a relatively arbitrary distance, but with plenty of significance for those of us with little prospect of clocking up a full marathon any time soon.

So, there we have it. A simple running story or a metaphor for modern life? Set goals that mean something to you. Break them down into achievable milestones. Don’t be downhearted if someone does better than you, but celebrate their achievements in the same way that you celebrate your own. There will be days when it simply all seems more hassle than it’s worth but get up and get going, as that may be the day that if finally all comes together. And overall, if what you’re doing just doesn’t seem right then it probably isn’t and you should take a chance to start afresh with a new plan. Alternatively, it could just be the musings of a fat old man who’s simply happy that he can still waddle his way around 13.1 miles.