Today started with something free which is unusual in this world. I went to our soon to be not local coffee shop. Translated our order into hand signals and gestures and the woman told me that my coffee was free today. Isn’t that nice. A very nice way to start the day especially with the Milka chocolate muffin that I enjoyed with it.

Today we hired bicycles and thought we’d get to a few sights which were slightly out of our walking reach. The bicycles were initially hard to get used to with their curved back wide handlebars. There is one other main consideration as well, people in Germany drive on the right and not on the left so you have to recondition your brain to work the opposite from what’s its used to. Thankfully the majority of our trips were on bike paths and we probably only hit the main roads for maybe 10-15 minutes out of a couple of hours of cycling.

 Our first stop was the East Side Gallery. A section of the wall where artists have painted. The stretch may have been a kilometre long with the back end of the wall showing photographs from Syria and the effect of the war there. The art was nice and there were lots of people looking. At the end we found the Pirate bay and stopped for some light refreshments and an ice cream.

Our cycle from there was into the Tiergarten. A giant park in the west of the city. We cycled up and down the tree covered avenues whilst cycling one handed, trying to take pictures of each other. We had a tip the Monkey Bar was good so headed over there for our afternoon sojourn. The bar was on the roof of a hotel. The bar itself was packed but we noticed a restaurant next door, Neni. The view was the same (over the monkey enclosure at the zoo) and we pretty much had the best meal we’ve had in Berlin. The cuisine was Middle eastern mixed with German. A few beers later and we cycled back to our place to refresh before our evening adventure. On the way we cycled under the Brandenburg gate, which was quite impressive in itself. 

The evening we spent at the Berlin Philharmonic. Research told us it was one of the best orchestras in the world so the thinking was, in case we don’t return again it was too good of an opportunity to miss. The concert we watched was John Adams conducting John Adams. To give a bit of background, John Adams is an American composer who most famously probably wrote the theme for Game of Thrones. The concert was a couple of pieces (no GoT though). We didn’t think to pick up a programme on the way in but decided to pick up one at the break in English to understand why he’d written the pieces and what they were about. The difference for me between the first and second half were stark.

I often think that art is very individual. Take looking at a painting, for some people it talks to them in one way and for others completely another. I think the more open to interpretation a piece is, the more it speaks to an individual. Back to the concert, the first half not understanding what the music was about and the motivation, I really enjoyed. The second half supposedly composed after going to a gallery in France and reading ‘Arabian Nights’ not so much. I put this down to the above, it wasn’t able to speak to me in a way I wanted because I knew what the artist had intended for it, saying that I did enjoy the spectacle. 

Concerts and any live music events aren’t just about the music. It as much visual as well. Watching the bows from the string section raise into the air in unison, the soloist jump about the stage and the percussion jump between instruments, for me, is as much the concert as the actual music.

A good and tiring day, only a couple left before returning to Melbourne.

IJS

Day 5
  
Well a rest day has been coming for a few days. Since I stepped off the plane from Melbourne with a couple of hours sleep, we haven’t really stopped. With our intensive schedule of doing as much as we can, rest really isn’t ever part of what we do.

Today it was. We laid in late and waited for Claire’s friend to arrive and join us for the last few days in Berlin. She arrived shortly after 11 (from the UK) and we started a nice easy day of drinking and eating in pavement restaurants, today Vietnamese made a come back to the menu. However my peanut beef tasted suspiciously like beef penang, some reckon this Vietnamese restaurant dabbled in a bit of Thai food as well. Saying all that, the meal was delicious and I had no complains there at all.

From there a leisurely wander down the river, the Spree and then another stop for a couple more drinks (and a couple of new beers) by the river. We actually stumbled on a bar that was recommended to me, the broker bar, which has the price of drink fluctuate with supply and demand. Quite novel eh? But not exactly new, when I first moved to Melbourne many years ago there was a similar bar called something like the Stock Exchange with exactly the same concept.

A short stop at our now local supermarket meant us buying a few snacks for tea. Most of the products are quite easy to distinguish from the pictures on the labels. One proved a bit more tricky, looking like a weird variety of cat food but reassuringly turning out to be a pork pate. 

And so onto our evening. A night at the B flat jazz club. We’ve enjoyed live music in recent history and have been to a few jazz clubs in Melbourne. So we thought why not try one in Berlin. The night was a big band night and had a 15 piece orchestra. The place was hot with no air conditioning but it seemed to enhance the atmosphere, the sound was loud and the club was tiny. You could literally touch the performers. It was nice to see so many talented musicians and one guy with a headband on who was really getting into it, moving with the beat, smiling and clapping all his fellow performers and on his solos moving around more than Kenny G. The service was good and attentive (something I find lacking in many places here). We wandered home through this historic city past many significant sights. The warmth providing us comfort from a normally inclement weather in our homes.

IJS

Our first trip of the day was back to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. We’d seen the memorial on our walking tour but had been recommended the information centre and exhibition, we queued briefly to get in, interestingly the first time we’ve queued for anything. The exhibition was as sad as you can imagine from listing the numbers of people killed at the hands of the nazis to some boards following individual families and what happened to them. A very sobering experience for our first visit of the day.

After that we decided it was time to do something a bit more fun to lighten the mood, a brewery tour. On the way it was brought to our attention a strange phenomenon over here. We’ve begun to notice when you cross roads over here, cars seem to deliberately speed up and even swerve towards you. I’m not truly sure why but our guide on the walking tour said jaywalking isn’t encouraged in Berlin and you can be fined 10 euros so maybe it’s that.

The afternoon’s plan was a brewery crawl around Berlin. I have to admit of what I’ve seen so far, most German beers taste pretty similar. And there isn’t much experimentation at all. I think the explanation behind this is the German Purity laws but it can be a pretty bland beer scene. I did find one place that was a little different though, Brauhaus Lemke. Had an IPA, Imperial IPA and an Imperial Stout. It was one of three breweries we tried today, the others were percuilar for a couple of reasons. At our first one Brauhaus Georgbraeu we saw someone vomit after finishing their dinner, and then impressively finish their beer (I haven’t done that since my uni days). At our second, Brauhaus Marcus Brau they had some fake beers in the window that were some sort of yellow liquid with cotton wool on top. A bit strange and I didn’t really see the point when they had a brewery in the window too. The tour finished after three breweries, unfortunately we had planned four but one was closed. Nine new beers tried.

A nice way to see the city though and a few beers in between is always a treat. 

We discovered a real diamond in the rough tonight. A couple of days ago we noticed a concert hall just in the area we’re staying, Gendarmenmarkt. We thought it might be nice to see something while we’re here so popped into the box office to see what was on. The lady behind the counter ran through a series of performances but then mentioned the orchestra were performing with a rapper. We instantly said ‘that one please’. It’s been very much a feature of our time together that we’ve managed to discover some weird and wonderful stuff and we both enjoying seeing or trying something different.

The rapper was MoTrip and the orchestra was conducted by Jimek who seemed to be a star in his own right, he was dressed in a very casual outfit, no socks, longish hair and looking pretty unshaven (for weeks). The orchestra played all the rapper’s songs whilst he sang with a couple of guest stars. It was all in German but in a way that makes you appreciate the music even more and especially the interaction between the orchestra and the singer. The performance was enthralling and the different range of instruments used from the xylophone to the organ, strings to wind and the drummer at one point using an empty drink bottle with ice in it was pretty amazing to watch.

The singer went off for a while and the orchestra recreated excepts from a variety of hip hop songs which was a joy to watch. Only after returning home and looking up Jimek did we learn he is a famous composer from Poland who won the Beyoncé remix challenge in 2012 and went on to become a star in his own right, adapting different types of music to a classical orchestra. A real rare find and an amazing night.

IJS

  
Day 3 commenced in a cafe that has fast become our local one for coffee and cakes. They don’t speak much English, we don’t speak much German but we are good at pointing at things (I’m sure this talent is learnt in supermarkets when as a toddler we go shopping with our mothers). We did however manage to teach the lovely woman there what cinnamon was when Claire asked for some. At first she looked blank, then she got a shaker off the shelf behind her and gave it to Claire to smell. The nod and the smile was reflecting by the woman and I guess now whenever someone asks for cinnamon they should actually get. I dread to think what they’ve been giving people before.

This was the day of our only booked tour, a lecture tour at the Reichstag ( which we learnt isn’t in fact called the Reichstag anymore) and a trip up to the dome to look at the view of the city. The building understandably had very high security and was akin to an airport rather than a building. The parliament wasn’t in session so we got to sit in the public gallery and listen to a lecture from there. The talk was on the history of the building, the design (by the British architect, Norman Foster). The talk went for an hour and was very informative. At one point our guide asked where everyone was from, Claire mentioned she was from New Zealand, the guide looked confused and a group of Australian schoolboys in front of us sniggered.

We then took a lift up to the Dome to look at the view from the top. The dome itself is made out of many pieces of glass and features a sail cloth that moves as the sun moves during the day. The dome sits right atop the Chamber and let’s light into the room. The view was amazing over the city of Berlin and looked right across a mass parkland (tiergarten). However the structure of the Dome itself was probably the highlight rather than the view itself.

From the Reichstag we walked across the park towards the Gemaldegalerie. This holds quite a few important works of arts from Vermeer, Rembrandt, Steen, Velazquez and Holbein. However we heard the cakes were rather nice in the cafe hence our visit. The works of art were amazing though and covered many periods and historical themes with a definite lean towards religious themes. 

On the way across the park to the gallery, I was carrying an empty drinks bottle and a teenage girl walked up to me and took it off me. It struck us both as a bit curious however afterwards we decided there must be a monetary reward for recycling, hence what happened. In fact we saw more people with bags stuffed full of empty bottles as our journey continued.

We’d heard the Berlin Philmonic was one of the best in the world and as we left the gallery we noticed it was across the road. We popped in, in hope of getting a ticket in the next few days, luckily they had seats available on Friday and we booked three (Claire’s friend arrives in two days) to a John Adams concert. Where supposedly he conducts himself. 
We then wandered back to the Gendarmenmarkt (the area where we are staying) to get an evening drink and some food. I’ve noticed a couple of things over here, first is that everybody smokes outside which we both find a little unusual. Secondly although beer is served in big glasses (half litre or lite), it is almost impossibly to get drunk because everywhere you go it’s table service and it tends to be very slow. Dinner was a sausage mix on a bed of roast potatoes which was served in a frying pan. The kitchen must have been short on plates that night. The bill came and as usual, I refused to tip (which I do wherever I go). I was passed the credit card machine and he explained I could enter a tip, I just pressed the green button. I didn’t see the look on his face but Claire did. Supposedly he didn’t look happy.

Three days in. And enjoying as much as Berlin has to offer.

IJS

  
Day 2 started well, for some unknown reason I managed to go to bed a normal time on the end of the first day and wake up pretty much in the morning. Jet lag seemingly sorted after one night. Although ask Claire about my snoring and you may get a less positive reaction about my first nights sleep,

After such a good kip the decision we’d held off making the night before to go on a walking tour or not was made and we headed off to meet our guide and walking group after quickly picking up a hat after I’d decided I didn’t really need one when I left Melbourne. The most annoying thing about this is I do have about 20 hats, oh well I now have 21.

Our walking guide was a very tall man called Barnaby, and when I say tall I mean over 2 metres too. Originally from London, he’d been in Berlin for nearly 12 years and had a background in political science so he definitely made for a good guide not only of the sights of the old East Berlin but also good at explaining the political situation too.

The tour took us 4 hours and my feet definitely knew it by the end. We took in a few sights we’d seen the day before but it was quite an impressive range of things to see. We saw Musuem Island, Lutheran Cathedral, Brandenburg Gate, Checkpoint Charlie, a section of the Berlin Wall and stood on top of Hitler’s bunker.
Probably one of the most interesting sights was the ‘Memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe’. A large expanse with different rectangular sized blocks throughout. We were told the design was particularly controversial for a number of reason. Firstly the memorial only recognises one group of people persecuted by the Nazis, secondly there is no graffiti on it which is unusual for Berlin and thirdly the company that provided the anti graffiti surface on each block had direct links back to the Nazis. The memorial itself was interesting (the picture is above) it definitely sums up a graveyard on a hill sort of feel. For me and I don’t know why, I imagined those graveyards in western films with a little white church and graveyard on a hill. But the memorial spoke to me of hope to, the pathways through the middle sunk quite deep but the deeper you went the higher the blocks were. So if you look from the outside the memorial peaks in the middle when it’s at its lowest. It’s definitely quite a solemn place but one I’m glad I’ve seen.

After our mammoth walk we decided a beer and a bit of food was in order. And what better than my favourite food, a proper German pizza. Beer is ridiculously cheap here, but then again maybe it’s crazily expensive in Melbourne. Even our tour guide mentioned this when we were wandering around. He thought it was a bit funny I think that the two people from Melbourne were actually a Kiwi and an Englishman.
We were started to run out of puff after the meal and the 30c heat for the second day running. However a pop to the supermarket and my new favourite soft drink, Spezi, a lemon Caffeine drink soon perked me back up and off to the DDR museum we went. A very well done museum with lots of interactive opening of draws and recreations of things from East Germany. The highlight for was probably the fully recreated East Germany apartment with original fittings.

Our evening ended at Monsieur Vuong, a very highly rated Vietnamese restaurant. The food was fresh and tasty and the beer was cold. What more could you want.
IJS

  
So day 1 in Berlin done and dusted. I must admit my first impressions of the city weren’t all that good. Our route from the airport was via a bus and a train. Surely the best way to see any city is via public transport. To say the system was antiquated would be an underestimation. The underground trains rattled along and were extremely square in design, not like the beautiful curves you see to most modern form of transportation these days. The subways were clean but very concrete and drab, nothing to liven up the walls, I suppose in many ways a hangover from a soviet era of functional building. The impression it left me was of a city that was badly run down and need of repair.

Arriving at the area in which our accommodation was in, was completely different though. We came up from the drab subway into a square (or a platz) with a giant ornate building in the centre, surrounded my roads with an amazing number of cafes and restaurants on them. People were flocking around and this seemed a world away from the city we’d just experienced. The area was quite obviously touristy but was a welcome relief. 

We were a little early for our check in so decided to pop to the local beer cafe/restaurant to sit down for an hour and pass some time before our airbnb host arrived. We chose a spot we could see down the street so would know exactly when he turned up. The 500ml stein of beer was good and ridiculously cheap to someone who comes from Melbourne (4 euros, around $6).

We saw our host arrive on his bicycle and finished up and came to meet him. Lennard was a nice big German chap. Took us up to our sixth floor apartment in a lift that I wondered if it would get there. With just three of us in it, there was no room to move. The apartment itself is large and will be functional for us for the week, although the IKEA furniture, Lino, hard wearing carpet and rundown fixtures don’t so much shout ‘homely’ but more so practical.

After an hour or twos rest we headed out to explore the surrounding districts and wandered down to Checkpoint Charlie. Not that there is much to see of it left. The place was swarming with tourists, and in spite of taking a few pictures I don’t really think I got too much of an understanding of the significance of it and the gravity of the wall in the post war period.we wandered a bit further to find the old secret police building and a number of government buildings before heading back via one of the only open supermarkets (most shops don’t trade on Sunday’s).
Our evening meal was out at a restaurant called Madami, we both fancied something a bit different from the German fare because it was quite filling and we’d already had some for lunch. The meal was good, the food was tasty and we did wonder when we paid on credit card how come the bill went up 20% but we’ll test that in the coming days by using a variety of methods of payment.

We walked back home on a balmy night over the river spree and caught some beautiful shops of the building that almost seem to float on it. Once home, sleep came fast. My first really since leaving Melbourne. 

IJS

“Arriving at one goal is the starting point of another” (John Dewey)

What really matters?

I mean if you stop for just a second and consider it. What really matters to you? Family, friends, your job, your hobbies, your passions, others, the sports you do or the world around us.

It’s in no way an easy question. It could be one we spend a lifetime pondering.

For all of our other thoughts, our lives our linear, they start, they flow and then they end. That is the nature of our lives. All that seems to be important in that equation is what we do in between. Putting it in such a stark terms makes you realise for a second how hopeless people can get in viewing this world. How they could potentially see that nothing is really worth it.

What is the point? Well someone made a good point to me the other day, that is that it’s all about legacy. She told me it was something that I taught her, I wish I could remember teaching her that. It sounds important.

So let’s talk about legacy. What is it? The nearest dictionary definition I think I can get to is, anything handed down from the past, as from an ancestor or predecessor. It’s something we protect, something that we grow, improve, make better and then hand over. It’s about making something better than how it was when we found it. It could be a variety of things, it could be a person, it could be a process, it could be an object or it could even be us, ourselves.

The quest for self-improvement or maybe self-fulfilment is one that has obsessed the human race for centuries and maybe something that is the drive for most of us to get up every morning and get on with our days.

There must be some incredible power in learning and what that knowledge brings to us. I feel it must fuel an amazing feeling of self-worth. Our capacity to absorb information and retain it is pretty amazing. Statistics would tell us that we only remember about 10% of what we read. Whether this just be a figure plucked out of the air, I suppose remains to be seen. The conversation about retention of information is a highly contentious topic. My personal thought would be we remember what is most important to us.

To limit our discussion of self-fulfilment purely to knowledge though seems a little shallow. How do we decide what we want to do? What our goals are? What factors influence us in these choices? If I look at one simple goal I set for myself, one that I thought was out of reach of mere mortals as a child, running a marathon. What drove me to want to achieve this. What told me I wasn’t able to do it for years and what gave me the final push to get there. And then, once that goal is complete, is it very much a part of the human condition that we move onto the next goal?, much like we do with our worries, switching from one to another as achieve them.

What drove me? I suppose to answer that you have to understand what a marathon actual is? If you lived on your own in shack in the woods and had never met anyone who had run a marathon, read any books about the marathon or watched any media showing marathons then this could never be one of your goals or aspirations. So the first ingredient in this mix has to be we must have been exposed in some way to the goal in our lifetimes.

But that in itself is only part of that equation. We see a thousand things a day now and we have the ability to talk to lots of different people. We open ourselves up to hearing about a variety of different experiences so what exactly makes us hone in on this one particular achievement or goal?

We must on some level develop a connection with it. It must speak to us of what we consider heroic, of what is good, it must in some ways align with our personal value set. Achieving the goal must compliment the person we wish we were or it must challenge parts of our lives that we wish to change.

The marathon for me is a particularly lonely experience. That may come to some as a surprise. You may watch marathons on the TV or stand on the side of the road watching them and think how it’s almost a group event with so many people doing them, the crowds clapping, the colours and the sounds. However, to be on the road for 42.2km is an intensely lonely experience. Talking personally, I very much disappear inside myself, I enter a room in my head and lock myself in and begin to talk to myself. Not in a hairs on the palm of my hand, crazy way, but in a battle of wills kind of way. We all have self-doubt however confident we think we are. In fact I should imagine most of the people we believe are the most confident people in our lives are those that are surrounded by the most self-doubt. Locking yourself in that room is a challenge, although you realise very soon that you’re not quite alone. Your self-doubt is there with you. Wittering away, filling those peaceful serene moments with an ever chattering increasing noise. It’s very much your job to quieten it.

What makes me think the marathon was/is a feat I’d like to complete? Well I suppose it’s pretty much universally held as a great achievement. From the story from Greek mythology of the run from Marathon to Athens, to the present day athletes we see on the TV competing what is billed as the ultimate running challenge. We all want to be recognised for doing great things, we all want something to hang our hats on and maybe we all need one great achievement. Maybe some of us need more. Maybe some of us are never satisfied.

Picking the goal and visualising the achievement is only part of achieving the goal though but in many ways that may well be the hardest part. Or maybe it’s not.

Once the challenge has been picked we then need to develop a certain staying power, the staying power that says, we’ll stick with this however hard it is as we get closer and closer to the point of achievement. The achievement itself and the rewards it brings will be worth it. I don’t know how many people fall by the wayside once they’ve picked a goal, how many people think it’s all a bit too hard but I should imagine there is a fair proportion that do.

But what keeps the others going? To someone like me it may be speaking about the goal, the goal being put into the public domain and linked with my name. I’ve long considered myself someone who likes to be true to their word (whether I achieve this is questionable) and it’s the type of role model that appeals to me. Once I have linked a goal to a public statement it is very hard for me to wriggle out of it.

What makes us believe the reward (especially if we don’t know how it will feel) will be worth it? This has to be purely a leap of faith, a judgement call. I suppose we could base this on how people talk about the achievement after they have it. But isn’t that extremely subjective? What one achievement means to someone is completely different to what it means to someone else. We must form a vision in our heads and in the main part adhere to that thought throughout the process of getting there. Imagine at all times how it will feel to finally reach it.

What does achievement feel like once we’re there? In my opinion, the achievement can rarely feel like what we imagine it to be. If I take the marathon again as my example. After hours and hours of training, and years of building up, upon completion of it, I had the jubilation, the euphoria and in fact I just sat down and cried for over an hour afterwards. I couldn’t really explain what those tears were about, perhaps relief, perhaps the emotional draining a marathon puts your through or perhaps a by-product of the euphoria. I suppose the point is to me, the moment passes fast and although it’s a story we can potentially dine out on for the rest of our lives, it becomes just that. A memory. A story we tell a hundred times, embellish it, make it sound more heroic, make it either sound like we struggled heroically to get there and achieved it or make out it was nothing, it was easy. I feel for most of us the truth lies somewhere in between.

Maybe though there comes a point when we’ve achieved all that we want. And maybe one of life’s greatest challenges is understanding when we’ve got to that point. Understanding we don’t need to set ourselves continuous goals, that we should settle back and enjoy the fruits of our labour.

I envy the people who can be happy with what they have. Who are satisfied with the world around them or have no inclination to seek bigger challenges to outdo the ones they’ve achieved before, because in my eyes, that in itself is the greatest achievement. To be happy and truly appreciate what we already have, what we have achieved and what he hold.

Perhaps reflection is a long lost art. Something we do not give enough time or consideration too. Perhaps we fill our lives with so much noise that it blocks out what is truly important.

IJS 2/8/2016

The kilometres tick by, has it really been five minutes since the last one. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 all gone before I even really think that I’m running a half marathon. Looking down at my watch, wondering how I’m managing to keep up this fairly impressive pace. Talking to myself, telling myself that I’ve done it for the first ten and that’s pretty amazing considering my current form.

11,12,13,14 I’m still running the same pace, in fact I just ran a 4:19, my fastest kilometre of the race and for a while in general.

15,16,17 I’m still running sub 5 minute kilometres and there is only 4 left before I hit the finishing line. I might as well give it a go.

18, 19,20 still going, it’s easy from here regardless of the hill they’ve managed to put in the way of me. I follow the 1 hour 40 minute pacer up the hill, he draws ahead slightly but as we descent towards the finish line I overtake him. It doesn’t matter though, I know I’m ahead of regardless, he started 3 minutes before me.

I begin to check my watch for the first time in the race, only 400 metres to go, I start to speed up. 400m, 300m, 200m, I notice the course bends sharp right and I shuttle into a tunnel of sorts. I see the finish line, this is always my prompt to sprint. Its long been a tactic of mine to get the crowd on my side as I finish a race. I’m overtaking 10-20 people on the run in. People are clapping,, I go under a bridge just before the finish and hear people commenting at the speed I’m finishing at.

I cross the line, I put on the breaks and I pull up. An hour and 36 minutes worth of concentration is over.

I look around, I know there is someone waiting for me at the finish, someone cheering me in. I look around, I can’t see them. Where are they? Time seems to stand still for me, as though I’m frozen and all the other runners finishing seem to whizz past me. Then I spot them, time begins to tick again and my world returns to normal.

Euphoria, jubilation and someone to share those feelings with.

Running is a mental thing for me more than something physical. My body can be driven to great lengths by my mind. It all depends if you are willing to accept the consequences for it. It’s a big equation I suppose, is the pain and exhaustion worth those few minutes/hours of euphoria. The feelings of a job well done, of being able to do something not that many people can do. My answer to this question has always been yes.

My focus in races is an interesting one, it’s a quest to quell the competitive streak in me and resist the urge to actually race other people. My focus is on what feels good and right for me. To run with what I’m comfortable with. I readily admit I still run too much within my boundaries, even today when I’m only two minutes off a PB I set two years ago, I only take a couple of minutes to regain my breath after I cross the line. I wonder what I could achieve if I was willing to push myself harder and faster.

I sometimes wish I could say I ran for the fun of it. In fact at times I do, sometimes on a training run, my mind will drift away and I’ll blissfully enjoy the repetitive motion of moving my legs and arms.

I’ve always found that in races, I need a strategy to somehow to distract the mind. I’ve got this down to a fine art after these last few years of running. My initial tactic has always been to break the race up. Standing at the start line in the cold waiting for the gun can be a daunting experience. To think you have 21.1km ahead and maybe 2 hours of running.

However when I hit 2km I start to do the sums. I tell myself that is a tenth of the race already done. I hit 3km I tell myself that’s a seventh. I hit 4km I say that’s a fifth and when I hit 5km I tell myself that a quarter. At 7km it’s a third and then at 10.5km its half. From 11km I begin to count down the kilometres, constantly reinforcing to myself that I’ve covered 10km in training easily and I’m feeling good.

The last few kilometres of course are always the hardest. Its seems whatever the distance of the race, the last 3-5kms are where the real effort is required. To push on, to resist the voice. That talk that says, “you’ve done enough”, “even if you slowed down by a minute a kilometre you’d still run a good time”. You begin to feel like you are running through mud and your only validation that you aren’t slowing down is your watch beeping the ‘k’ times ever kilometre. I’ve never stopped in a race or training for the fear that once those voices have a hold, they will increase their volume and my running will never ever be the same again.

Two and a half months out from the Marathon and training appears to be going well.

IJS 26/07/2016