Heading for the Undiscovered Country? Take water

Hamlet described death, or rather the place after death, as "the undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns". (Let's not go into the fact that Hamlet's murdered father actually does return, albeit briefly, from such a place and gives a pretty hair-raising eye-witness account of it.) I myself used the term somewhat inaccurately in my "Meeting Yourself" blog entry in February to describe the experience of running beyond your limits and getting to know a new aspect of yourself.

Well, yesterday I felt as if I really were venturing into the undiscovered country, as I neared the end of my third ever 12 mile training run (in preparation for my first half-marathon - the Lichfield Half Marathon in May) and felt as close to weary death as I've ever got. The cause? Undoubtedly dehydration, stemming from:
(a) the 'dodgy tummy' (for want of a better euphemism) I had suffered off and on all morning prior to the run.
(b) the steadily increasing heat of the day (hardly the heat of late summer but I was slightly overdressed for the occasion).
(c) my stupidity in not carrying any fluids with me for drinking en route.

As a type-1 diabetic I always carry plenty of glucose tablets with me when running. I can just about stuff what I consider to be a life-saving amount into my belt before undertaking a long run. However, I hate carrying extra weight, especially in my hands. Also, as I'm now so used to running shorter 10ks, wherein fluid replacement is not usually necessary, I unthinkingly figure that a drink can wait till I get home. And yesterday's run must certainly go down as "unthinking".

I still maintain that long runs, fast runs, and races are ideal for 'meeting yourself', but I have no desire to meet myself as I was yesterday, especially at the Lichfield Half (luckily, at such events drinks are almost invariably provided). One's dehydrated self is no fun to be with. He or she takes no interest in the surrounding area; seeing only a pair of plodding feet and experiencing the outside world only as a distance to be traversed in order to get home. Conversationally, even with yourself, you're a write-off. All interesting problems and moral dilemmas are reduced to the desire to reach home.

If it happens to you, just get home and learn your lesson: next time you venture to the undiscovered country, take water.

Meeting Yourself

"I read about the deep mystique of road running, the soul searching and the fact that you meet yourself out on the road - I've never met myself anywhere, let alone on a stretch of road in the middle of Brighton."
(Ovett: An Autobiography, Steve Ovett with John Rodda, Willow Books, 1984, pg 35)

I picked up Steve Ovett's very entertaining autobiography in the Cats Protection charity shop recently. A quid for pure gold. As I remember from his occasional television interviews at the time, he comes across in the book as knowing exactly who he is and exactly what he is capable of. His bloody-minded refusal to 'play the game' that was English Athletics back in the 1970s and '80s made him appear arrogant, but also gave him his victories, his records and his gold medals. Unfortunately, such fierce independence can also blind you to other possibilities, as the quote from Ovett's autobiography shows. It may be that he was so self-sufficient that he needed no one else, not even another version of himself.

I'm no hippy, but I disagree with Steve. It is possible to 'meet yourself' when out for a run, insofar as human beings have always experienced new facets to themselves whenever they have put themselves to the test, and sought out new experiences and explored new regions. The men who walked on the moon came back different people; those who partake of social revolutions also feel transformed. Running can sometimes give you a taste of the same.

I'm not talking about the mere act of putting one foot in front of the other. Nor do I think that running simply 'to get away from it all' necessarily puts you in touch with your inner self. You don't get privileged access to yourself just by trying to escape from the real world. But you can see a new side to yourself when you're wrestling with a new object, never before encountered. In some cases that new object is the moon; in others it might be society itself; in the case of running it is your own body.

Unless we are ill or exercising hard we rarely think of our bodies. To the sedentary, academic intellectual our bodies are simply a precondition for having grand and abstract ideas, which may or may not be true. It's amazing what the mind can think up when not physically tethered. But the mind can be more creative when it is tethered to something real, out there, objective. And when the runner begins to push himself or herself beyond previous limits we have a situation in which a mind is grappling with an object under wholly novel conditions. Under such conditions our inner selves need to be able to 'read' our bodies and interpret their messages; we need to be able to place our bodies in the positions we want them to be in, and try to work out why when this proves not to be possible. When Hamlet coined the phrase 'the undiscovered country' he would have been better applying this to the final furlong of a 5k road race than to the afterlife.

Running round the block without breaking a sweat is not going to do this for you. But enter a race, and I guarantee you'll meet yourself.