Rant 107: Luke

Luke, Luke, Luke, Luke

Wanted to be a cook

His folks didn't give a fook

So he shot himself by a brook

Sad, Sad, Sad, Sad

To see a scene so bad

The rabbits, they nearly went mad

The vultures, though, were quite glad

Eat, Eat, Eat, Eat

All that fresh meat

That brain was a special treat

Don't let it stink up in the heat

Cry, Cry, Cry, Cry

But never see why,

Luke's soul was a lie

All he needed was a reason to die

Luke, Luke, Luke, Luke

A moment was all it took

Now inwards you must look

Do you really give a fook?

Rant 106: Hell and back

A school teacher once said to me, "I don't like it if I see you quiet. You're not one of those who's meant to stay quiet."

She was quite right. At the risk of beating my own trumpet, I am a firm believer in not staying quiet; in making my mark wherever I go and in whatever I do. A former boss - when discussing my enthusiasm and professional desire in a not-very-positive light - said once, "don't try and run before you can walk". I firmly believe he was full of s***.

On 31st March, I ran for 9 hours. I covered 58km. Prior to that day, the most I had run was 30km (3 hours). I had never run a marathon, not even walked 42km. And yet, at 08:50am, with rain and wind sweeping through the Humber Bridge Country Park car park, around 40 of us gathered for the pre-race brief for Hell On The Humber - Mad Hatter. A 9-hour endurance event on the Humber Bridge. At exactly 9am I began my quest to be an ultrarunner. Running has become a passion for me over the last 18 months, and like anything else I take up, I want to leave my mark on it. HOTH was just the start of it, but it's a pretty solid mark! I had well and truly run before I could 'walk'.

I do not underestimate the achievement. I am bloody proud of it. In no way was the event easy, in no way was it taken lightly. My thighs hurt, though mentally I felt fine. I was cold, my fingers were numb, but I motored on. Churning out the laps was pure pain, but time actually passed by fairly quickly. I was lucky to be helped for a good few hours in the morning by Tom Fitzsimons, who I met earlier this year and who has been a great inspiration for my running - more on that in a previous blog post here - and who gave me some invaluable tips on staying hydrated and fuelling. It was so good to see someone like Tom, who has achieved so much with running, come out in support of me. 

The first two laps (each lap being 4 miles of a round trip back and forth on the bridge) I knocked off in 1h 20mins. It wasn't the smartest strategy - going out too fast - but even by the 7th hour I was still pulling 50-min laps. Everything hurt; there were many points where I was walking for 5 mins and running for 2; many stages where I wondered whether with every passing minute my sanity was slowly floating away on the river 30 metres below my feet. As is the case with a laps-based event, I was passing other runners all the time, and it became second nature to say "well done, well done" to each one - a kind of tribalistic, almost cult-like exercise. It did not matter whether you were walking, jogging, or running - you said it, and got one in return. The winds from the North Sea blow your ego away quicker than you can say "I'm too pro for this". But such was the state of mind and body by the 8th hour that I'm sure I said "well done" to pretty much every passing person - didn't matter if they had a race number attached to their clothing or not. Sanity was three laps behind me and didn't seem all that bothered about catching up.

At approximately, 4:10pm, I was hoping to put in 2 more laps, but as soon as I started lap 9, the legs just refused to go at beyond walking pace. Even a slight jog would set off my thighs. Halfway across the bridge, the realisation hit that I wouldn't make my goal mileage of 64km. Perhaps out of sheer exhaustion, my ego didn't have the strength to battle anymore. I accepted the outcome and decided the best thing would be to jog/walk the 9th lap and finish with a smile, which I did at 5:20pm. At 5:30pm, we were allowed to sign-off from the race - race officials deemed 8.5 hours as the good-enough cut-off for a 9-hour-finisher cert.

Far from being disappointed at my failed lap, I sat in my van with a big grin, thinking "I've just run 58km. F*** me, that was brilliant!" Or as the great Bruce Dickinson would say, "Hell ain't a bad place. Hell is from here to eternity."

Rant 105: Into the void

Remember that feeling you get when someone asks, "describe yourself in one sentence"? You know, that sinking, shameful feeling, that you've lived for so long on this Earth and yet have never stopped to sum yourself up in one bloody sentence. You falter, string a few 'uhmms', 'ahhhs', 'wells', and 'you knows' together and then go blank. Yeah, I kind of had that today. Only difference is the question was, "tell me why you run".

09:40am: I'm sat in a cafe in a park in Wakefield, in front of a guy who has done quite possibly some of the most amazing running adventures imaginable - 155 miles across the Sahara desert, coast to coast in the USA in 100 days, marathons galore, you name it. I've just finished a 5k parkrun event. Yep, there's no comparison. The person in question is Tom Fitzsimons, and I've been reading his book about that USA run - "It's not about the beard" - and I have been really inspired by it. Tom's story, detailed much more in his book of course, is really good to read and hear about. A former alcoholic, who gave up the vice to begin a journey of sobriety that has lasted more than 10 years. Included in that journey were various running achievements. How could I not be inspired?
Cue, a link up on twitter and soon enough we'd arranged to meet up. On a cold, damp morning in West Yorkshire, with a couple of americanos in front of us, we chat about running and life.
"I'm running for all those alcoholics who can't, or who haven't done yet," he tells me, and adds later, "you've got to ask yourself, and tell me, why you run. Why do you want to run this marathon?"

And that's when I struggle. There are two answers in the back of my head. I'm scared of one of them. The first one I explain to Tom. "I'm running because I want to inspire my two boys. I want them to think that they can overcome anything." It's a bit vague - and I think even Tom guesses that - but I genuinely want to be the best man in the world for my kids. Like, if they're given an essay question in school titled "My Hero" it should either be me, or Batman!
For the second answer, we must go back to October 2016. I was sat down by my editor in the super swanky offices of BBC Sport in Manchester and told that my contract would not be renewed. Three months prior to that, I had left a stable job with the Press Association to chase my sports journalism dream - I was given a three-month BBC contract with hope that it might be renewed. When that dream came crashing down, in my head I'd let down my wife, my son (at the time I had just one!), my parents, and my brother. All of these people had always put their faith in me (not to mention time and resources) and all these people had been so happy when I'd got the initial contract. I'd been so happy to see them happy. And in one swift moment, it was gone. I was that person who couldn't provide for his family, who couldn't make his parents proud, who had failed at his job. So here's the second answer - and I've never been brave enough to say this to myself until today - "I'm filling a void".
Perhaps the phrase "filling a void" has gotten a bad rep in this world. Probably because it's largely associated with things like alcohol, drugs, and food. I've used all three to fill various other past voids in my life. As far as void-fillers go, running ain't the worst of the lot! So far, I've filled the void with half-marathons, 10Ks, and 33 parkruns. For 2018 I will be running a marathon in a place beyond the arctic circle, and before that I will be running for 9 hours straight on the Humber Bridge. I've thought of myself as a fighter all my life. My ego will not let it go if I'm beaten at anything. I'm pig headed in that respect. Sometimes that's good, sometimes not so much. But if my current enemy is this void, then running is as good a sword as any. The journalistic pen-is-mighter crap can go f*** itself.

I've lost track of time in the cafe. There's a biscuit in front of me - came free with the coffee - but I've not bothered with it. I've enjoyed the chat with Tom. He's told me about his sons, his family, about his struggles with addiction, about his run through the States, about other runners who had overcome similar and worse addictions. Strangely, we've not chatted so much about running as about life in general. To prove that point, one of the things I remember most is a story, a parable, he tells me about a Chinese farmer. This farmer loses his horse, and his fellow villagers all gather round to say "isn't it terrible you lost your horse?". And the farmer says, "maybe". The next day his son goes looking for said horse, finds it, and then finds 10 other horses with it. All the villagers go, "isn't it great you found all these horses?". "Maybe", says the farmer. The next day, his son breaks his leg training one of the newly found horses. "Isn't it terrible?" say the villagers. "Maybe," says the farmer. The day after, the king comes looking for army conscripts and the son gets rejected due to his leg. "Isn't it great?" say the villagers." I think you can guess what the farmer says...

Life happens for a reason. Life will take me places good and bad. For now, I've got my family and my running shoes. I'll be fine. 

Rant 104: Running for tech's sake?

I took up running in October last year. I know, right? I, who was agile on a tennis court but who would struggle to jog for 20 minutes without wheezing and panting, was suddenly putting one foot in front of the other on a road and just running for the sake of running. As my dream job lay in pieces, as I lost confidence in my professional life, as I lost confidence in general, I somehow pulled myself up to go from fearing running to running a 10K recently. I'm aiming for a half-marathon in June. I've come quite far. And I didn't need a fitness tracker to tell me that.

Enjoying the scenery at my local Parkrun in Goole

I enjoy most aspects of running, and not just the exercise bit - meeting new people, bettering myself every time, finding new limits to my physicality and so forth. But I do notice a lot of people in the running community are obsessed with the technology that goes with it. The sheer number of fitness watches, for example, in the market today make my head spin. Not to mention all the apps that allow your phone to become a fitness tracker. Garmin, Strava, Nike, Adidas, Map My Run, and the thousands of others, all seem to cater to one taste or another. And they all let you post to social (obvious eh?) which is nice if you're in a group and want to keep each other motivated.
But do we really need all of this technology? I can see the need for elite runners to be hooked up to all sorts of devices, sure. But does Joe Bloggs? (or me who isn't really training for the Olympics anytime soon)
As we go out on a practice run around the block, do we really need a fitness watch, a mobile app, a heart-rate monitor, headphones, then music as well? (By the way, this is not to single out those with health conditions who genuinely need to monitor their heart rates when running) This gear doesn't come cheap either. Fitness watches are anything from £50 to name-your-price. Plenty of apps are free but if you want to "geek out" as one manufacturer says on its profile why not pay for the premium version to get all sorts of stats and details that even Usain Bolt may not have access to (he probably does, but you get my point)?

I have a digital watch, it cost me £7, and it has a stop watch. If you think back to when running probably became an Olympic sport, that's probably all that athletes had (swap digital for analog watch, of course!)

A kiss for my son before the Huddersfield 10K

But here's my chronology and how I came to my decision to run relatively "off-grid". When I started running back in October, I had my phone with Google Fit on it, kept in my left shorts pocket. I had music on with a set of wired headphones but I didn't have a watch. The reason I describe my get up in detail is because I came to realise I was concentrating more on the tech not hindering me than I was on things like my breathing, my gait, or my general state. Phone in the pocket jangles, accidentally swipes my workout shut; headphone wires get tangled in my hands, unit falls to ground, me frustrated, the right song doesn't come up on the player, mood deflates; constantly checking Google Fit for distance run, so not concentrating on running itself. One day in December, I cast it all away and bought the £7 watch. My next Parkrun was, for that time, my best ever. It was a defining moment. No longer was I obsessed with my distance, my average pace, my steps, my heart rate, my music, or wires. I was running, my feet were moving, and I was enjoying the scenery. (Case in point, my recent 10k in Huddersfield which is a supremely picturesque part of England so I really didn't want to miss the views. As opposed to a few runners who literally had their phones in their hands and in front of their faces! That's a safety issue to begin with.)
I know roughly what the distances are around my house so short runs are sorted for. And if I do find myself mentally drifting because there's no music to listen to, I solve math problems. Yep! I pick two random numbers and do basic arithmetic. Sometimes I get the answer right, sometimes wrong. It tells me a lot about my mental state during running, though, which I feel no app or fitness watch can ever do. Another way to keep mentally fit? I try and remember where I'm running to - especially on long runs - then I can "make" that route on Google maps on my return and see how far I've run. It's not an exact science but I don't need that much detail for what is essentially the world's oldest and simplest form of exercise.

In a similar way, my legs will remember the stress of a 10k longer than an app can. Cost: Zero, Results: Priceless.

PS: I'm raising money for Macmillan Cancer Support ahead of this June's Humber Bridge Half Marathon - also my 30th birthday. This is a humble request for donations which you can make by clicking here.

Rant 103: Let's all take a step back on Jose Mourinho

It could be the biggest signing Manchester United ever make for the new season. It could be the worst. I'm not here to lay down stats, or argue about formations, or debate where Wayne Rooney should play under Jose Mourinho.
But a feeling in me says I cannot automatically tag trophies onto Manchester United just because we have Mourinho at the helm. Sure, Mourinho's track record is brilliant - well, that is if you don't count his last season with Chelsea, who were in relegation danger no less.
Mourinho is a big club man through and through. I can't ever see him doing a Rafa Benitez and taking on a Newcastle-esque challenge. Mourinho moves to a big club and makes them bigger, of that I have no doubt. But the clubs he has been at have always had to reconcile their own style and personality with the professional ego that Mourinho employs. It is an ego that has served Mourinho well, but has also caused conflict.

Louis van Gaal, after United's defeat to Boro

Examples?
His first spell at Chelsea - won titles, but rumours of player unrest, player power in the dressing room, battles with the owner
Inter Milan - again, titles won but more player unrest, including with a certain Samuel Eto'o
Real Madrid - good times, but further battles with players, eventually leaving on a sour note
Second spell at Chelsea - well, you can probably see where this is heading. Although to some credit, it wasn't so much player unrest as much as Chelsea's bad performances that led to his eventual exit. However, not sure how much the controversy over Eva Carneiro helped.

Don't get me wrong. I have every reason to believe we at Manchester United will win games under Mourinho. He gets the results. Whether or not we will suddenly remember to play with style and flair is a doubt. Louis van Gaal's tactics left me bored, but I liked the man. He knew he was in a tough environment and he fought back. He also knew what the limitations were. I remember being in the press conference after United lost to Middlesbrough in the League Cup in late 2015. Van Gaal walked in, sat down and was asked his first question. His response began with a heavy sigh. Here was a man trying to employ his style, but which didn't quite work. To his immense credit, he left with FA Cup glory, and with the legacy of bringing several youngsters into the first-team fold. Also, don't forget he signed Anthony Martial not for himself but for "the next manager" - read story here . So if Martial continues to fire, Mourinho will probably be saying several silent "thank yous".

But coming back to Mourinho the personality. Indeed, the best word is perhaps 'character'. For that is what he is, and in all honesty that is what the Premier League needs, more characters. They liven up the game, they bring their own views and opinions to the fore, and they provide their own form of entertainment. Sometimes, that can go horribly wrong, as Mourinho has proven with a few PR mistakes from last season - Carneiro controversy being one of them. I could feel the Chelsea fans cringing - possibly - every time you heard of a fresh incident/controversy/PR nightmare involving Mourinho. Backed up by some disappointing results, it was not a good reflection on the club.

Characters are important for a club like United

Character is good for a club like Manchester United, who have always employed an amazing cocktail of style and substance. Think Sir Alex Ferguson, think George Best, David Beckham, Cristiano Ronaldo,
It's whether the character that Jose Mourinho brings is a good fit for Manchester United. Mourinho described United as a 'monster club'. Mourinho himself is a 'monster' of a manager based on his track record. Who consumes who will be a good question to answer.

Rant 102: Walking away - A short story

They had not spoken in two years, not in real life anyway. She spent months agonising about whether to see him again. Then months spent imagining this day, she had hoped to see him for longer. The meeting lasted 10 minutes.
He looked to have much to say, or did she wish it were so? Perhaps it was his stare. He sat calm and composed - seemingly not aware of the people around them. People generally seemed lost in their own little world.
"Would you like to sit down?" he at last said.
She shook her head. His appearance had changed much, but his voice still had that quality of making you feel wanted.
"Have you been doing well?". Another general query. For god's sake, I wish he'd ask me something real.
"Yes, I'm alright," she heard herself say. "A bit tired, but otherwise good." She had driven three hours straight. She felt like she had been driving all day. The sea air was doing her some good so far. She hoped he wouldn't be able to smell the alcohol on her breath.


A bird cried out, the pitch straining her ears. She winced slightly at its last shriek. He smiled. She wished she'd accepted his offer of a seat.
"I've missed you," he said. At last, something real. This was the first real thing she had heard him say in over two years. She nearly burst into tears. She nearly hit him.
But all she could do was say, "So have I."
"I was hoping we could meet up," he began again. "But I don't really know where I want to go from here."
I know, it's my fault. It's always been my fault, and I can't begin to say how sorry I am.
She said: "To be honest, I wasn't sure what today was going to be like. I'm still afraid of how this looks. I've not told my parents about this, of course."
"I understand."
"To be honest, I don't speak to my parents much."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
He had maintained his voice thus far. She marvelled at his composure. Then again, that night two years ago as well, he had seemed composed, nay, resigned to his fate. Her own shrieks were entrenched in memory, not so much of his, if any.
They had left him for dead, on the steps leading up to the railway station. Did they intend for her to find him? Face down, and lying on his right cheek, he was conscious as she helped him to a sitting position. Unrecognisable, but that had much to do with the blood from his head wound. She cried for help. He told her not to worry. Then he passed out. The doctors had been a godsend.
"Your parents must be worried about you?" he continued.
"They always worry about me. Mostly about who I'm seen with." Now she could feel her strength returning. The large whisky she had drunk earlier in the morning had helped - not to mention the refill - but the anger at her own flesh and blood now brewing inside her was the real fuel.
"Then perhaps today was ill-advised."
"No!" she retorted. "I wanted this. I wanted today to happen. It was a choice between this, or another day without saying what I really wanted to say that night."
"Which was..."
"I'm sorry. I fucked up."
The words seemed to echo inside her own head. She felt relieved, almost happy, at having finally uttered them.
She felt him walking away. "It's okay," he said. After a pause he added: "I suppose I needed to hear an apology of some sort from someone. But really, I never held you responsible for anything. Apart from stealing my heart, of course! And in any case, I'm in a much happier place now. So all is forgiven."
I know. And I'm happy you're happy.
Slowly, she laid the flowers near his headstone. There was nothing left to do but walk away.

Rant 101: Plane and simple - the story behind the picture

It's funny how many of my pictures that evoke emotion in me are actually tapping into emotion from my childhood. A previous story-behind-the-picture piece I wrote for this blog looked at my childhood love of playing tennis alongside a photograph taken more than two decades on. You can read it here.
Today, I talk about aircraft.
My wife, son and I visited the Yorkshire Air Museum today. It was my son's first visit, though Kirstie and I have visited several times before. It is a fascinating place full of history, and filled with winged technology to enthral people of all ages.

Gritty, robust, and classy - all at the same time

This picture you see on the right was taken in a huge hangar at the air museum complex, and is of an
aircraft propeller. It looks antique, some would say ancient! But that's exactly what attracted me to it. The elegance, the craft, the engraving on metal of "Scott" filled with blue, the wooden blade with their own two respective markings at either end, the metal bits stained by years of being worked on, repaired, used, and then repaired again. It was as if whatever workshop this aircraft came out of, I could smell the hard work and effort that went into making one of these. Then again, perhaps this "workshop" I speak of is not too much in the realm of fantasy.

And this is where my childhood comes in. As with many children, I too fell in love with aircrafts and the wonders of flight. I never took my first flight till the age of 16 but as a child, I had a friend from school whose family were big into aircraft. They owned several businesses, and had interests in the aircraft business as well. What that translated to for my friend was that he and his brother were huge fans of model aircraft. Not the frilly, dime-a-dozen, plastic-feel kind you get these days. His were gritty, robust, and classy all at the same time. They made a lot of noise, sometimes emitted smoke (which we all agreed was both a good and a bad thing) and when they flew my heart would leap with them. Funnily enough, I never saw their planes actually fly more than a few times. In fact, my best memories of them are just all of us sitting down and watching my friend's brother work on it, fix things little by little, add a bit of fuel here, tighten a screw there, and just focus all of his energies for that period on this model aircraft. It was like watching an artist at work.

So, in a very simple way, when I saw this propeller set at the Yorkshire Air Museum, I was - as with my tennis session - taken back to a simpler time! I must apologise as I don't actually remember what kind of aircraft this belongs to. Reason being that I was so taken in by the propeller and its looks and the memories that I forgot to have a read of the information board.