My ankle seems to be over its recent trauma. I managed a four mile run on Friday and 11.2 miles today with no repercussions. Having a week off had noticeably set me back though: the last couple of miles were quite hard going. I passed a couple who stepped aside to let me pass and the woman encouraged me, "Keep going. Don't give up." Even though I suspect that she was slightly taking the piss, this small gesture was surprisingly helpful; it's amazing how much of long distance running is down to mental attitude and getting support from other people really makes a difference to me. So I hope some of you will come down on the day of the race and shout stuff at me. I don't mind what you shout, there will be dark times in the race, where even an acknowledgement that I am a fucking cunt will help me on my way. What I will really like is people yelling ten year old catchphrases at me. I love that when that happens.
As my legs started to protest beneath me, and still some two miles from home I tried to bouy myself along. "Don't give in," I thought, "Slow and steady wins the race."
I carried on running, slow and steady and it suddenly struck me what rubbish that was. There is no way if I ran at such a slow and steady pace that I would win the London Marathon. At that current pace the race would take me five hours, which barring all the other runners being struck by a meteorite (which I'm not giving up hope of) or deciding that they were all so far ahead of me that they could afford to have a little sleep under a tree (again, it's a possibility) would put me squarely in the "not having won the race" bracket. Slow and steady was only likely to beat slow and unsteady (and possibly fast and incredibly unsteady, if this unsteadiness causes the fast person to run from side to side and every twenty steps he takes only results in one step forwards). If you want to win the race then my advice is to run fast and steady. Going fast and remaining steady is a sure fire recipe for victory, which I think would only be surpassed if someone else had the idea to run very fast and steady. The success of Paula Radcliffe clearly demonstrates the veracity of this remark (although she could perhaps do even better if she kept her head a bit steadier; at the moment she is very fast and slightly unsteady).
What this all boils down to is that when you're trying to win a race then you should really go as fast as possible. Make sure you take into account the distance of the race and vary your speed dependent on whether it is 100 metres or 26.2 miles, but once you've trained a bit you should work out how fast you can realistically go, then try and keep that pace up, or maybe go a little bit faster if you feel that someone else looks like they might be going a it faster.
I was trying to work out why anyone would ever come up with such a rubbish and untrue statement as "slow and steady wins the race" when slowness is only going to win in the event of a meteroite strike or unrealistic cockiness/sleepiness ratio of several thousand other runners. Surely the saying should go, "Slow and steady would probably mean beating people in funny costumes and diving suits and personages of over 70 years of age, as well as the people who are slow and unsteady, but I'd give up any realistic notions of victory with this strategem, meterorites and comfy looking trees not withstanding."
Though people might have trouble remembering that. But it is true.
Then it struck me, "Slow and steady" does win one kind of race: a slow bicycle race. That's when a group of cyclists try to cycle as slowly as possible, without falling off their bike or putting their foot on the ground, and the last person over the line (or left on their bike) wins.
I can only imagine that the world champion slow bicycle racer was once asked what it was that made him so good at winning slow bicycle races and he replied (and for some reason I'm pretty sure he would be French, which might explain his strange and simplistic language), "Slow and steady wins ze race."
Then some stupid journalist took this correct statement out of context, thinking if it was true for one world champion it must be true for all and somehow it has slipped into commons usage, despite its almost universal incorrectness.
This was what I was thinking about around the ten mile mark. I'm looking forward to getting up to 17 or 18 miles and finding out what hallucinogenic effect that will have on my brain.
