nav[aria-label="Primary Navigation"] { padding: 0; & ul { list-style: none; width: 100%; display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: start; align-items: start; gap: 30px; padding: 0; & li { margin: 0; } & ul li { list-style: none; } } }

Child Item

The Running Master

Stazza

I’ve decided to have another crack at keeping a log. As I’ve publicly announced that I’m going after the Irish M45 5k record of 15:22, I thought it only fair that I document my training and hold myself to account – publicly; at my age I should know better, especially given the current state of my fitness. Oh well.

So, I was out for about 4 weeks during December – small problem with my achilles, peroneals, soleus, and a bit of P.F. to boot. Although it’s all pretty much sorted, there is some residual discomfort. So I need to be careful.

Rather than just log the boring running stuff, I’m hoping to drop in a few accounts of some of my interesting life experiences. I’ve worked in the UK and Kenya as a physical therapist/business owner looking after many household names. I’ve also worked as a journalist, sub editor and editor on a national tabloid in Southern Africa – some great stuff from those days; I spent a day with Nelson Mandela. I went on to own a rather unsuccessful national tabloid in Cyprus – some great stories from my time there, especially concerning The Cypriot Mafia.

To keep things from getting stale, I’ll drop in some anecdotes. Starting next week with, Linford Christie, Doping, The Banana, and Me - Nuff Respect!

The running this week:
Sunday – 8 miles; last 3 miles picked up the pace.
Monday – 6 miles easy with 8x100m pick-ups
Tuesday – 6 miles easy
Wednesday - a.m. 6 miles easy p.m. 6 miles, incl 4 @ LT
Thursday – 6 miles easy with Paddy the Kenyan – PtK’s training for the Tralee Marathon;)
Friday – a.m. 6 miles easy + p.m. 6 miles moderate progression – picked it up from 2.5 miles to 5 miles. Felt laboured.

Find more posts tagged with

Quick Links

Comments

Stazza

woodchopper wrote: »

Im afraid the race marshals were a pucking disgrace that day.

PS: Beware TRR is perhaps jealous of the blossoming bromance between yourself and Ecoli and perhaps will try to ostracise you from his Tallaght clique!

Haha! That comment about the marshals wasn't from me. I felt sorry for the lady who organized the race. Just one of those things - Poop happens.

TRR

woodchopper wrote: »

PS: Beware TRR is perhaps jealous of the blossoming bromance between yourself and Ecoli and perhaps will try to ostracise you from his Tallaght clique!

It's true woodie. Young ecoli won't even return my texts or emails now. I am the forgotten man now he has found a man with more years of experience

Stazza

ecoli wrote: »

Now, now, you wouldn't be trying to stir the pot by any chance would you?

You have us all wrong, we are all welcoming, the more the merrier (unless your one of the Sister's Pearse clan of course )

Sweetness(AKA ecoli) do not be drawn into the murky world of middle aged men and their empty lives - allow our pure and beautiful love to blossom.

Soon I will to the shower take and soap my soft skin with asses' milk and return fresh to this seat where I pine for you and your fevered pain. You do realise I am your Fanny! As Fanny Brawne was to John Keats - oh that I could come to you and mop your fevered brow and fawn over your pulchritudinous body. Oh my sweetest Sweetness, I bleed tears when we are apart. Hurry to health.

But do remember as Johnny Keats said, "Though a quarrel in the streets is a thing to be hated, the energies displayed in it are fine; the commonest man shows a grace in his quarrel."

So yes, watch these mannequins quarrel and display their false braggadocio in public, enjoy their energies, but refrain from allowing the veracity of your soul to be tainted by the falseness of these cruel 'men'.

I miss you at the very thought of leaving you...Latersxxx

Sweet cheeks (AMK) - do not let the green worm gnaw at your little heart - I miss you too - As Shakey said in Romeo and Juliet,
"That birds would sing and think it were not night.
See, how [he] leans [his] cheek upon [his] hand!
O, that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek!"

Too much drama... I must lie down...

AuldManKing

Jaysus :eek:

Mad as a box of frogs. I shudder to think what the Stazza training plan is like.

career_move

AuldManKing wrote: »

Jaysus :eek:

Mad as a box of frogs.

It's great isn't it ..... makes me look almost normal

blockic

career_move wrote: »

It's great isn't it ..... makes me look almost normal

I almost collapsed at the thought of a career_move/Stazza combination! :eek:

Gavlor

blockic wrote: »

I almost collapsed at the thought of a career_move/Stazza combination! :eek:

So many jokes

Pacing Mule

Gavlor wrote: »

So many jokes

Too easy to go for the history of collapsing

SamforMayo

Too much drama... I must lie down...[/QUOTE]

Do, good man, and wait for the men in white coats.

Gavlor

Pacing Mule wrote: »

Too easy to go for the history of collapsing

Not exactly what I was thinking to be honest!!

Pacing Mule

Gavlor wrote: »

Not exactly what I was thinking to be honest!!

I am trying to keep my posts in logs clean so am refraining from the other obvious side of things - it's my (new) New Years resolution.

Stazza

Sunday 19th Jan

13 miles relaxed. Picked up the pace from 9 through 12 and then eased off for the final mile. Good run in the rain.
AIS before and after.

Pacing Mule

Hi Stazza

When are you planning to post part 2 of Good Christie Hunting. I am intrigued

Stazza

Thursday evening - Thursday's will be Bedtime Story With Stazza. There will be some teasers before then...

wrstan

Is it Thursday yet?

This is worse than waiting for Christmas

Stazza

Monday 20th Jan

7 miles easy with Paddy the Kenyan. Great chat about the what, where/when, why’s and how of super-compensation blocks within the specific phase of marathon training and how to execute the perfect taper.

As well as chatting about the fine art of managing the training process, we touched on the fine art of the literary pastiche (The pastiche of Keasts’ letters amused him).

PtK’s keen to see how I carry-off the Frame within the Frame in Bedtime Story With Stazza – he’s expecting something along the lines of Heart of Darkness. Now how can we transition from Oxford to the Kenyan coastal town of Malindi, capture the savagery that occurred there, and then bring it back?

And after all that chat about the fine art of managing the training process and the execution of the frame within the frame and the literary pastiche, I decided to ease back from what I planned for the week and allow the body some time to adapt to the 70+ mpw before moving on to 90 mpw. Prudent move, me thinks.

Did all that AIS stuff before and after.

conavitzky

Stazza wrote: »

Monday 20th Jan

7 miles easy with Paddy the Kenyan. Great chat about the what, where/when, why’s and how of super-compensation blocks within the specific phase of marathon training and how to execute the perfect taper.

As well as chatting about the fine art of managing the training process, we touched on the fine art of the literary pastiche (The pastiche of Keasts’ letters amused him).

PtK’s keen to see how I carry-off the Frame within the Frame in Bedtime Story With Stazza – he’s expecting something along the lines of Heart of Darkness. Now how can we transition from Oxford to the Kenyan coastal town of Malindi, capture the savagery that occurred there, and then bring it back?

And after all that chat about the fine art of managing the training process and the execution of the frame within the frame and the literary pastiche, I decided to ease back from what I planned for the week and allow the body some time to adapt to the 70+ mpw before moving on to 90 mpw. Prudent move, me thinks.

Did all that AIS stuff before and after.

Im off for a dictionary! Ya header!

woodchopper

wrstan wrote: »

Is it Thursday yet?

This is worse than waiting for Christmas

Alright keep your knickers on!

PS: Well done Stazza, I used to play similiar tactics when I was a young fella with the opposite sex although I didnt have it down to the fine art you have. Always leave them wanting more and all that other malarky. Your suspence wont fool Woodchopper however.

Stazza

woodchopper wrote: »

Alright keep your knickers on!

PS: Well done Stazza, I used to play similiar tactics when I was a young fella with the opposite sex although I didnt have it down to the fine art you have. Always leave them wanting more and all that other malarky. Your suspence wont fool Woodchopper however.

Go on, admit it... you're wetter than a brass on a Saturday night.;)

wrstan

Stazza wrote: »

Monday 20th Jan

7 miles easy with Paddy the Kenyan. Great chat about the what, where/when, why’s and how of super-compensation blocks within the specific phase of marathon training and how to execute the perfect taper.

This may have prompted your discussion on super compensation blocks, but there's an article on the very subject in this month's Running Times

Stazza

wrstan wrote: »

This may have prompted your discussion on super compensation blocks, but there's an article on the very subject in this month's Running Times

I hadn't read the article, so I appreciate you linking it in - I'll come back to it in a minute. But for now, the article is way off the mark and if anybody were to follow those guidelines they would, I'm pretty much sure, end up injured or sick. That is not what supercompensation is about. The writer misunderstands the concept/process; a little knowledge is dangerous.

The reason PtK and I were chatting about the fine art of supercompensation was because we were examining how his training was progressing and how he was 'feeling'.

If you look back over my log, you'll notice that I mentioned how he needed his recovery runs - that he was mullered etc. This wasn't because of some sudden increase in workload. It was down to a gradual and purposeful cycle of appropriate stress, recovery, and adaptation, only these cycles were nearing the point (scheduled for next week) where he would take a week of much easier training to allow his body to super-compensate for the 'weeks' of training. This would then trigger a small breakthrough that would enable him to cope with the next phase of training. The 'easing off' period would also give him an opportunity to refresh the mind: forget about the watch etc.

The fine art comes from listening to the body. It was clear that he needed to bring forward the easy week, which we have done.

Now, an important part of this process is understanding and managing the immune system: when you ease off/step back from hard training (like in a taper) the brain thinks, here we go, happy days and the immune system suddenly thinks, we don't have to be on full alert. It switches off/tones down the whole battle stations thing and bang, you get hit with the sniffles. I bet this has happened to many on here when they are tapering. It can be really annoying if you do a mini-taper for a race that is part of your build-up prep etc. There are ways to deal with this challenge...

Anyway, irony of all ironies, I'm supposed to be meeting PtK in a min for an easy run, but I've got the sniffles and I'm jacking today so I'll be ready to go again tomorrow. Better go and let him know I can't make it. I'll come back to you about what's wrong with the article. It's all good stuff:)

Stazza

Ok - I'm back. PtK appreciated the irony that I have succumbed to a lurgy. I could probably go out today and be ok but I'm playing it safe. When the body is under attack and the battle is raging, it's better to support the body rather than assist the enemy. I want to get out there tonight , but I'll refrain and wait until tomorrow.

So, the article. It's weak on so many levels that it hardly warrants analysis. I will, however, explain why 'you' shouldn't follow the examples outlined. Most of 'you' have busy lives, - work and family etc - and 'you' probably fall into one of the sections highlighted (30-80 mpw).

First off, soft tissue adapts quicker than bone - sudden and drastic increases in either volume, density, or intensity, will more than likely result in structural problems - the examples given don't detail the correct methods of transitioning into harder training: they don't allow for skeletal development nor for that matter, soft tissue development, or connective tissue adaptations.

There's more to it than the aforementioned reasons associated with sudden increases in stress: you probably don't have the luxury of being able to take naps after training (I do and will start again this week), you probably don't have time/energy/inclination to fuel the body adequately to cope with the increased overload, you probably don't get effective massages and so on and on and, well, you get it. Even it you were in a position to benefit from these little extras, you'd still, more than likely take a tumble if you were to take the approach evinced in the article.

You are far better off tweaking your training and gradually and carefully increasing the stress loads over 'proper' cycles of training (6 months - 12 months).

Rather than dive in with special blocks of training, it might be prudent to start off by, well, let me see now, yes... maybe if you were to start off by looking at your training schedules and seeing if every time you get out there, if the run has a purpose...Does it? Are you sure?

TRR

OK, this might be a stupid question, but is Paddy the Kenyan a bona fide Kenyan or a skinny Kerry farmer who is as fast as a Kenyan?

Stazza

TRR wrote: »

OK, this might be a stupid question, but is Paddy the Kenyan a bona fide Kenyan or a skinny Kerry farmer who is as fast as a Kenyan?

No questions are stupid, least of all your question about PtK. PtK is merely a sobriquet for a shy and humble man of great intellect and talent. He's new(ish) to running and is hoping to run well in the Tralee Marathon.

It would be unfair of me to publicly state what I think he'll run etc. But, all things being equal etc, he should have a substantial PB at the end of it that most on here would be proud of...

No pressure PtK - you're as famous as I'm infamous. :mad:

TRR

Stazza wrote: »

No questions are stupid, least of all your question about PtK. PtK is merely a sobriquet for a shy and humble man of great intellect and talent. He's new(ish) to running and is hoping to run well in the Tralee Marathon.

Ah right so, I had visions of some poor Kenyan freezing his arse off in Kerry training for the Tralee marathon!

Stazza

Good Christie Hunting cont...

…When my sphincter ceased gnawing itself, I thought, there you go again, when will you ever learn to think before you, and then, like a bullet in the head it came to me: I’d been in worse situations than this - there was the time when I was boxing in the Abingdon Town Hall and I dropped under a left jab and delivered the sweetest uppercut I’d ever thrown and the fella merely stepped away, nodded, and then set about destroying me.

But that didn’t compare to the incident that occurred in the mansion near the golf course on the Kenyan coastal town of Malindi.

In the morning,we’d been to meet a traditional doctor, a man that A. referred to as The Teacher – a man with incredible powers. The purpose of the meeting was to get The Teacher to persuade the Two Fat Arabs to sell us their dhow.

I carried the four quarters of the chicken’s heart, wrapped in a sheet of newspaper, in the pocket of my shorts. Gazungo, our houseboy, had slaughtered the chicken minutes before we set off to meet The Teacher. I could almost feel the chambers of the heart beating against my thigh.

The Teacher wore a sarong and a blue Lacoste T-shirt. Mouth full of crumbling teeth. Breath like a camel’s fart. We dropped out the perfunctory Jambos and habari ganis and all the usual palaver. A. and The Teacher chatted away in Swahili while D. and N. and I stood waiting for the magic to begin.

Soon enough, we were sitting in the blistering heat outside The Teacher’s shack. Kids running through open sewers. The sweet smell of bananas baking on an open fire. A cocktail of banana, wood-smoke, and sewage. When I handed The Teacher the parcel containing the chicken’s heart, he beamed like a druggeh who was about to get his first fizz of the day. He unwrapped the parcel, and without any fuss, he took two quarters of the heart and placed them under his tongue. He stared at me hard - like he wanted to see the stains on my soul - and then he uttered some mumbo-jumbo in Swahili.

We all looked at each other and wondered if the rock was going stop spinning. The Teacher handed me the parcel with the two quarters of chicken’s heart and said something in Swahili and acted out a little routine that suggested I put the quarters of heart under a front door mat.

A. told me to pay The Teacher. I handed over some US and gave it the old, ‘Asante sana.’ When he smiled at my fluency in the old tongues, I tried my luck with some big city Nairobi vernacular, ‘Sour sour rafiki, ki-box,’ which translated means, ‘all right, my man.’

The Teacher and A. laughed hard at my Swahili patois.

A. told me that he’d hit the Fat Arabs’ yard and drop the two quarters of heart under the front door mat. The idea was that this would make them agree to our request to buy their dhow, at a steal – and a few days later we did. It worked.

After A. headed off to do the chicken business, N. went to meet a local brass he’d fallen in love with and D and I headed to the bockety pier that jutted out from the beach into the Indian Ocean. We sat there all day chewing miraa and hardly said a word. Just chewed miraa and Big G Bubble Gum, and enjoyed the magic as the rock did its thing. Sweet and sour.

As the sun set on the Indian Ocean and the fishermen cut across the horizon in their dhows, searching for the perfect spot to cast their nets, D. and I rose from our perch on the pier and made our way to one of the local bars. We linked with A. and N. and started on the Tusker. A. was a good few sheets to the wind. I’d dropped him a few shill’s and he’d spent the day on the tembo. His breath stank of baby sick.

At some point before the bar shut, we headed back to the run-down mansion, which we had ‘occupied’ soon after we arrived in Malindi. It belonged to some big-wig politician who spent his days up in Nairobi. A. sorted it for us.

The moment we stumbled through door, I spotted a man waving a John Wayne. I knew immediately that this wasn’t a game and if I didn’t want to leave Kenya in a casket, I’d need to sober up and do something. I knew the John Wayne was full of caps and that somebody was going to die…

See ya Thursday folks…

PaulieC

savant or loolaa, I can't decide, but it's mighty esoteric which is a fine thing to have in a running log...

theboyblunder

This log should be called 'when lactate met LSD'

I have the nagging feeling that posters are unwittingly taking part in some elaborate Turing test, and that stazza is really a room-sized teraflop computer (run by google types in glasses and 'mathematicians do it correctly' t-shirts) lashing disparate pieces of text together trying to convince us that its human.

I still havent hit 'unfollow' yet though...:)

(PS put some paces in there please

)

Stazza

Wednesday 22nd January

7 miles ez with Paddy the Kenyan. Great to be back out after a day off – felt good and fully recovered. The Stazza machine is ready to go again. Could go out again tonight but I’ll wait until tomorrow before re-introducing the doubles. What, with chasing national records and all that, it’s going to be a tough and long year. For the tick-tock boffins – not sure about the pace, probably high 7’s. My normal ez pace is around 7:30 pace. I don’t wear a watch/Garmin unless it’s to measure a run or record a session. There’s plenty of time for the associated pressures that the watch brings into play…

For the afflicted – try leaving your watch/hrm at home and just go out and enjoy the run. You’ll know what effort to run at and you’ll find it liberating. Then, when you’ve got a session to do, use the watch. Just by putting on the watch, it’ll give you that little bit more of a buzz and add that little bit of something special to your workout. Go on, try it, I dare you…

Usual AIS stuff before and after.

Stazza

Part 3 Good Christie Hunting

Because it happened so long ago, it’s difficult to recall with accuracy the exact details, words, and thoughts. But in my mind’s eye when I freeze frame the scene and step out of myself, here’s what I see and, as much as possible, remember:

Darkness. The sweet and overwhelming scent of midnight jasmine. The clank and whirr of a ceiling fan. The door slamming behind us as we stumble into the hall. The click of a switch followed by an explosion of light:

‘American f*ckers.’

We all turn towards the door and there he is - the intruder with the John Wayne. He’s tall. Maasai tall, only he’s not wearing the tribal robe and carrying a spear; he’s wearing white Nike trainers, jeans, and a white T-shirt. Sweating like a priest in a crèche.

This is real, I think I thought. This guy’s here to end us. No messing. I catch A. and he’s right on it. In a split second he too has sobered up and understands that somebody or everybody is going to die in the next few minutes. D. and N. are slowly beginning to comprehend that this little venture into the Kenyan tourism market has soured.

The guy with the John Wayne waves it to usher us away from the hall and on into the living room. The lads walk and I wait. Your man points the John Wayne straight at my face and grunts something in Swahili. I take it to mean follow the others.

I drop my right shoulder to suggest I’m going to turn and follow the others. His eyes come off me. I suspect he needs to watch the others as they move away from him. And then snap. I grab his wrist and pull him towards me and in less than half a second, I’ve nutted him and we’re both on the deck. The John Wayne slides across the floor towards the door. Me and Maasai are now clenched in a fight to the death. Arms wrestling for control.

He’s too strong for me and I can feel him overpowering me. But he stops and rolls off me. A. reacted quickly and picked up the John Wayne. My forehead aches from the head-butt. A. starts shouting in Swahili. He waves the gun around like a looper might. I get up.

‘Easy A.,’ I say. ‘Easy lad.’

I take the John Wayne off him and point it at the Maasai lad. I whisk it, suggesting he stands. Up he comes. The Johno’s cocked. It’s heavier than I thought it would be – like a small dumbbell.

‘Do you understand English?’ My voice sounds clear and in control and remarkably I feel relaxed. There’s no panic.

‘Yes,’ he says. Blood’s trickling from his nose and his teeth are stained with smudges of blood. His top teeth are broken, probably from the head-butt. He’s shaking.

‘You need to see a dentist,’ I say.

‘What?’ The tip of his tongue races across his top teeth and he winces.

‘A dentist.’

‘Funny. You’re very funny,’ he says.

I cock my head to the right and say ‘Toodle-pip.’

‘What?’ he asks.

And before he has a chance to understand the magnitude of the moment, I squeeze the trigger and watch the magic of death. He shoots back across the room and slides down the wall leaving a trail of skull and brain and tissue and shards of what appear to be teeth, to trace the beginning of his journey into the nothingness.

‘Kill the dentist, kidda; make it a gravedigger.’

All hullabaloo breaks out and after a few seconds I wave the Johno. Everybody shuts up. And right there, in that moment, seconds after one of the most amazing things that a man can do, I realise just how insignificant and meaningless we all are. God is dead.

‘Why did you shoot him?’ D. asks.

‘He called us Americans.’

Silence.

‘A.,' I say, handing him the Johno. ‘You and the lads take the Maasai fella and get rid of him. Take him a good way out along the Lamu road and throw him in the ocean.’

To this day, it surprises me that the lads did exactly what I asked. No questions. No nonsense.

When they left, I sat out on the balcony and chewed some miraa. Miraa is great for helping you to put things in perspective. When I ran out of miraa I just sat there thinking about everything. And then in the sobering quarter light of morning, it dawned on me that I’d killed a man. I hadn’t even bothered to check his pockets to see what his name was. Did he have a family? Maybe he had children. A tear rolled down my cheek and plopped on my hand.

‘There’s no need to cry.’ Bernard’s voice invaded my thoughts.

‘What?’ I said, wiping my eye. ‘Oh, I’m not crying, I’ve got oil in my eye.’

‘I thought you were crying,’ he said. ‘Anyway, you’ll get a chance to tell Linford exactly what you think.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

‘He’s addressing the Student Union next week. I’ve told him you and S. will meet him with me at the cocktail party before he addresses The Union.’ Bernard’s face lit up. ‘I’ve told him all about you. Best behaviour. Don’t let me down.’

To be continued…