Book review - 1001 Walking Tips by Paul Besley

The walking stereotype?

Or "hitting the trails"?

This is the second of the Vertebrate Publishing "1001 Tips" series that I have read, and like Robbie Britton's superb running tips book, this is one I know I will be dipping back into regularly.

I was initially quite surprised at how much of the book was relevant to the long distance trail or hill runner. In fact many hundreds of Paul's tips are snippets of advice for the runner that I haven't come across in any running book. I have encountered lots of adopters of trail running, sometimes out in the wilderness of Dartmoor, who have little to none of the knowledge necessary to spend a few hours in the hills safely. Walking and running are not different worlds, but just different ways of making forward progress, and even the elites of the trail running world are as adept at the walking part as the running part. I have always felt that many of us middle of the pack trail runners don't train the walking part enough. It can be a different mind set, and I'm pretty sure that Paul's book will inspire many a runner to take a few slow days that will ultimately improve their race performances, as well as developing skills that they may otherwise neglect.

Certain sections of the book were particularly good: the whole of the 220+ tips on walking (read running if you like) environments; 100 odd tips on gear; 100+ on long distance and multi day trips; and perhaps most of all the essentials of navigation.

The book is, like Robbie's, absolutely full of nuggets of advice that can only come with years of experience. Gear is expensive and Paul will save you lots of money by offering advice untainted by brand sponsorship. And all of it done with a degree of humour that keeps the reader engaged.

No real spoilers here as you should definitely buy a copy if you are "outdoorsy", but just a couple to tease maybe:

"When trying on clothing, leave optimism and self image at home."

"If you aren't carrying some form of chocolate, this book was wasted on you."

"The best walking companion is a dog."

Hear, hear!

Evolved to run. Born to run. Older, greyer, still running. Follow @Nariokotomeboy

A big move and a running evolution

Although it became a pretty protracted process in the end, the second half of 2021 brought an end to 6 years of living, as well as running and hiking, in the Dartmoor National Park. We have now settled in Oakham, Rutland, 30 miles from where I was brought up in Spalding, Lincolnshire. Although the hills have not totally disappeared from view, around here is more "rolling countryside" than the "moors and tors". Trails are at once better defined but also more heavily frequented. However they are certainly more "runnable".

During the six years in Sticklepath my elevation "stats" were pretty consistent. Week after week I would log over 2000 metres of ascent (and by implication descent) in my running. Once or twice in the last 2 years, I "binged" with weeks of over 6000m and nearly 9000m as a part of lockdown challenges. Neither of these, nor the several hilly / mountainous races over distances over 50 km, gave me any serious effects of fatigue. I "bagged" local tor tops after steep climbs as a matter of routine. I became accustomed to the continual gradients and in the parlance, I undoubtedly became "hill hard".

From Summitbag.com

Looking back now, a three month house sit at the foot of the Chiltern Hills over the middle of winter gave me some hope of continuing to embark on the type of hilly training run that was my regular fare on Dartmoor. But gradually the realities of the change in terrain seeped into my stubborn runner's brain. I entered 3 road races; I started running more road miles (sorry Cocoa); I started going to Parkruns on fast, flat courses and I began to re-evaluate plans for the summer of 2022.

At the start of the year I had the following in my calendar:

LDWA 100 mile in the Peak District at the beginning of June.

Eiger Ultra Trail 35 km +2300m ascent in mid July

UTMB / CCC 100 km +6300m ascent in late August

I have now withdrawn and been partially refunded for all of these events, as I just could not imagine how I could prepare properly for any of them. DNS (do not start) has always been way preferable to DNF (did not finish) in my eyes. I like to feel I am competitive, at least against my own age group, in anything I undertake, and all of these events incur varying amounts of peripheral expenditure that becomes hard to justify when the chance of a result dimishes. To fail to prepare is to prepare to fail, as someone wise once said, and how do you prepare for hills and mountains when your nearest hill, and the local high point, is just 60m of elevation above where you live?! And it is no surprise that I have not had an outing, run, hike or walk, with more than 300m of elevation this year. For much of the last 6 years, that was almost a minimum.

I'm going to deal with the road races in another post. I've tucked those away. They served their purpose.

So what now? First of all I think I can still train and race for events up and around 50km in English "undulating countryside" conditions. We have that here and its just a matter of agreeing with my coach how best to approach that. But as for the mountains, British or elsewhere, I've decided that I'm going to get my pleasure there from hiking in them, non-competitive but "challenging". I've tested the driving distance to the Peak District (Hathersage) and I'm sure I can work on some great days out. Cocoa and I made a pretty good start about 10 days ago up on Stanage Edge.

So, for some of us, it's just like Dartmoor!

Evolved to run. Born to run. Older, greyer, still running. Follow @Nariokotomeboy

Book Review - "Running for our lives" by Rachel Ann Cullen

It's fair to say that I struggled with this book somewhat.

The sub title held a pretty good hook to make it stand out from most books of the running and endurance genre that I have read before. "Stories of ordinary runners overcoming extraordinary adversity" suggested an anthology of case studies. What I had not expected was that a recurrent theme would be the author comparing the experiences of her subjects with her own, when this "journey" into running had already been dealt with in her previous work, "Running for MY life", which I had not read at that point.

After a subjective preamble, the book does partially develop in the manner of a series of case studies. After writing her first book, Ms Cullen was contacted by many people who had struggled with mental and physical health issues and many of these felt that taking up running had been instrumental in changing their lives for the better, or by allowing them to cope with other challenges. The book tells the stories of 17 of these, 13 women and 4 men, but also constantly relates back to the author's own lifetime struggles with her mental health, self esteem and severe body dysmorphia. At times I felt that these other subjects were being used purely as props in the  self-depicted drama of the author's own life, but nevertheless found these individual accounts to be poignant and thought provoking. But I became convinced that their stories would have benefitted more from an objective dispassionate narrator.

Before writing this review I felt I ought to read "Running for my Life", and I have just completed it. Like the subject of this review the book is quite readable, is easy to follow, and is well edited. It is purely autobiographical, but is full of judgements about other people's intentions and motivations. The men in the author's life do not get a good press, it is fair to say, but after all the title does make it clear it is really "all about Rachel".

I think that if you enjoyed "Running for My Life", and were drawn to the author's own struggles, you will find a place in your library for this obvious follow up. The perspective on different types of struggle with a common theme of running as redemption or compensation is an interesting one. Perspectives will differ on whether "Running for our lives" is truly a book about running, and, in any case, dealing with 17 "cases" in around 200 pages demands the type of superficiality that I am not personally attracted to in a book. The author's insights are from an observer who apparently has no professional qualifications as a counsellor or mental health practitioner. The resulting superficiality and subjectivity were at the root of my doubts about the value of the book. The underlying theme of "running as therapy" would really benefit from the insights of mental health professionals. 

The book is available direct from the publisher, Vertebrate Publishing, on the following link

Running for our Lives

https://www.adventurebooks.com/collections/running/products/running_for_our_lives

Evolved to run. Born to run. Older, greyer, still running. Follow @Nariokotomeboy

Another summer of Adaptation. And some big decisions!

Half way through 2021 and I had to absorb the chastening experience of nearly 11 hours out on the SWCP on the Pure Trail Tsunami course. It wasn't what I planned and I didn't think it represented where I was, fitness wise. But, truth be told, the ankle I injured has been a physical weakness throught most of my running life. The "original" injury took place playing rugby when I was at university in 1976. In all places it was in Boston, Massachusetts on a tour. With a tour group of only 19 players for 7 matches in 18 days we were somewhat stretched! But as my injury was one of the minor ones, or so it seemed, I was patched up to play again just 4 days later against Amherst College. It didn't go well, and I never played a competitive game of rugby again.

I've twisted, sprained and gone over on it with regularity ever since. At times it has received expensive attention from physiotherapists, podiatrists and even Simon Costain had a look at it in the mid 80's. It actually looks deformed with a big lump on the side these days. It doesn't help that my gait is irregular (like most of us), one leg is 2 cm longer than the other, and I apparently over-pronate, but only on one leg!

Given all of this, I had actually had a pretty good run (!) since 2015, training regularly with only the occasional injury blip. Running on the mostly soft ground on Dartmoor had, I believe, an overwhelmingly positive effect on maintaining a good range of motion in the joint. I seemed to be able to wear most types of offroad shoes, and although I am always extremely reticent on uneven downhills, I got by. Coming out of the Tsunami, it settled down, but now I started to have difficulty on any left to right downhill camber, where the tendency of the ankle to collapse inwards (downhill) gave me discomfort and I felt pretty unstable.

Around this time, with uncertainty still surrounding the Covid pandemic, UTMB offered all those registered for their races in 2021 the opportunity to cancel or defer their entry. So I decided to defer, as did several of my other Devon running friends. I decided right there and then that I needed another challenge! A solo project.....

So I set my alarm for 3 am on Friday July 9th, headed up the M5, and saw the dawn over Winchcombe in the Cotswolds. I was taking on a 50 mile 'anytime challenge' of a route called the Cotswold Ring, unseen, unmarked and totally self-supported! A verified completion of this would also act as a qualifier for the LDWA Trans Pennine 100 mile in 2022. I even logged the route for a Fastest Known Time to give myself some extra incentive!

I had a really good day - well nearly 17 hours of the 24 spent on the route - encountering some great variety, and coping with some overgrown paths, a shortage of water and "on the fly" fuelling in some of the tourist hotspots of the Costwolds. The ankle held up pretty well, and I used my trekking poles throughout. There were some great views.

Just 5 days later I lined up for a 10km road race on the totally flat paths in Exeter along the River Exe. It was a sweltering evening, and probably way too close to my 50 Cotswold miles! But somehow, with another vest from my club in my sights in front of me I managed to sneak home a couple of seconds inside 50 minutes. Sore legs obviously followed!

We also took the decision in the summer to sell our Dartmoor home, which really was too large and expensive to run and maintain for us. Initially we hoped to move to a new house in North Devon but eventually this didn't work out, and we changed plans and location.

I had one last "fling" on Dartmoor, completing the 50 km Chagford Challenge with some of my Devon running friends in late September. We were blessed with some really good weather, on terrain we were all pretty familiar with and made pretty good progress without ever pushing in just over 7.5 hours. LDWA events are invariably very friendly, give you great support at checkpoints and are cheap to enter. The very non-commercial ethos is in tune with how I feel about my runnjing these days. Walking and running when youy feel like it is very much the way to go, and although you normally get a memento and a time, it is never really a race.

Evolved to run. Born to run. Older, greyer, still running. Follow @Nariokotomeboy

Book Review - "Failure is an Option", by Matt Whyman

Matt Whyman's book falls loosely into that category of "my running journey". Some in this category are classic must-reads, and are treasured members of my library: Markus Torgeby, Dean Karnazes, Boff Whalley, Mike Cudahy, Charlie Spedding. And, latterly, Damian Hall. Their books are all about more than the running, and often, in differing ways, get to the heart of the somewhat obsessive, sometimes self-destructive nature of the activity. There are many others, of course, some of which are ghost written or highly edited accounts by "elite athletes", which can be a fascinating insight into the elevated world of elite competition. But there's also a fair amount of dross out there, occasionally self-published accounts of what might have been an interesting tale by an amateur runner, or hastily written accounts by a "celebrity runner". They are best not named and shamed, particularly by a very occasional running blogger such as myself, who doesn't even edit his posts seriously.

So where does "Failure is an Option" fit into the pantheon, and is it worth a read?

It's fair to say that, like myself, Matt Whyman is essentially a running "nobody" who has wandered through life with running as a constant thread from a relatively young age. Big goals get set and obsessed about. Relative failures and successes follow. Lessons get learned or they don't when they should have been. The book has it's central theme an audacious attempt to complete the Dragons Back 6 day Mountain journey across Wales. It is extremely topical as Matt was a starter in the latest, infamous, heatwave dominated, edition of the race. This is just one of many challenges in running that Matt has set himself and prepared poorly for in decades as a runner. (Hint: Matt, if you ever get to read this, just get yourself a coach, and stop being so stubborn. It took me 33 years, but now, 5 years later, it seems so obvious.) Throughout the book, Matt weaves his running story into his private life and he gives a feel of how his family and professional lives interact with his running. There are few traumatic incidents, with one notable exception (no spoilers!), and Matt lives in "comfortable" South East England. So when I got my review copy a few days ago, I immediately suspected that the book might be "one of those".

Happily it is not, and I whizzed through it in little over 24 hours, much as I would a short novel. And therein lies the secret as to why Matt's story is well worth a read. Matt's day job is as writer, a novellist in fact, and his obvious skill in making his running book flow is to leave out much that the rest of us would include. Also his prose is sharp, and some of his insights from "middle of the pack" are thought provoking and very relatable to my own experiences as an aging (more ag-ed these days) runner. For me the book was very easy to pick up and actually quite hard to put down. I thoroughly enjoyed it and needed little time to marshall my thoughts before posting this review.

Available direct by pre-order from the publisher with a nice little discount on 14th April.

https://www.v-publishing.co.uk/books/books-new-and-coming-soon/failure-is-an-option/

Evolved to run. Born to run. Older, greyer, still running. Follow @Nariokotomeboy