Running is the route map

THE rain was lashing down on the promenade at just after six 'o clock this morning.

It was still warm enough to wear shorts for the gentle four-miler out and back to Sovereign Harbour, a neat development of luxurious studio flats which sits on the eastern edge of Eastbourne - tennis champion, Martina Navratilova apparently has a pad there overlooking the tiny harbour.

This was my first run-out for a couple of weeks and the beginning of a new training programme building towards a couple of half marathons in the autumn and then, if I'm fit enough by Christmas, a tilt at a sub 3 hour 30 minute run at the London Marathon next April.

When the black clouds hover over the stresses and strains of life, running should be the cathartic pressure release. Running alone, running free, running without pressure. It's what I was writing about only a month ago with the spectacular rave run over the South Downs.

But these past few weeks, with the pressures of moving home and dealing with life's various tricky travails, there has been little incentive to get out and pound the country lanes. In fact, the mood has been one of a reluctance mentally to run alone for fear of being overwhelmed by negative thoughts as your body reaches for another running gear. Running is a confidence thing - when you're floating, your running on gas; when you're struggling, especially inside, it's like tripping through treacle.

How easy it would be to exist in this vortex of running despair; one week's procrastination turns into two, turns into a month, before the spell is broken. Maybe I should have taken my iPod to dance away the demons, to have mask those undermining thought .

For me, the spell was broken last Saturday when I attended a charity curry night out for some of the London Marathon runners who completed the race on behalf of the Hampshire Autistic Society, raising more than £18,000 in the process. I had held a couple of sessions with the runners to guide them through their training and race preparation. Yet to hear their war stories last Saturday evening in Southampton, to understand their sense of single-minded achievement, was hugely uplifting.

Each one of them had worked hard over the winter with their training, on the day they had gone through the pain barrier around the streets of the capital to realise their gutsy goal. Anyone who has ever run 26.1 miles will know the feeling of ecstasy they shared and would have relished what they have done.

I've now set out a programme, borrowed from the American coach Hal Higdon, which will take me up to the Swindon Half Marathon in October when I'm one of the pacemakers at 1 hour 50 minutes. Five runs and more than 30 miles a week, mixing tempo runs with speed sessions and one long weekend outing.

This morning along a relatively deserted, rainswept seafront, I ran four miles in a very sluggish 34 minutes, roughly what I'll have to run in Swindon this autumn. Back home, I was straight on the scales to measure body fat and water mass, so I know I've got plenty of conditioning work to do over the coming months.

The first run was good and enormously energising. Now I know I should have set out these goals earlier when I would have simply run away from the hovering black clouds, instead of trying to hide beneath them.

The tough training schedule, which is now Sellotaped to the plain wall by the side of my bed, would have given me the route map I needed. So it was four miles today, five tomorrow morning and then two long runs over the weekend.


Sometimes in life we need a route map or two when the path ahead seems unsure. I can't wait for tomorrow.