Sorry Luv, but It is a man's world

As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.
E.H.

Marriage is a series of compromises, it is often said. This sage advice is most helpfully given at weddings by which time it is too late and serves only as an omen for the future. The more recently married man will chuckle this advice to the recently initiated, as though it really isn't so bad, and sometimes the little things don't amount to anything, even though he now sleeps under a pink floral bedspread at night, it does at least smell nice. Married men of many a year, grizzled veterans of the deadly conflict of marriage will growl this advice to you as though it means in the absolute biblical sense, the end of days as you know it. Again rather unhelpful at the wedding stage. 

Last night I found myself rather comfortably reposed in a bath drawn by my infinitely more worthwhile half. Why I was clutching a bottle of Green Tea shower gel in my hand I was unsure. It even had moisturiser in it. Not that I have anything against green tea or moisturisers or in any other combination, it was just something I would never have considered buying or using unless there was nothing else to use after Windolene. I like my bar of soap. It may just be me and five other gentlemen in some forgotten Welsh valley that still like to use soap in its clearly dated compact bar form. I wondered how it had come to this. I liked the smell but it didn't seem a scent I should have. Change is always more stiffly resisted in the beginning. I like my soap white, hard, slightly caustic and it should sting one's eyes. Steve McQueen used a bar of soap for heaven's sake. 

A bar of soap (for those unaware)

My soap went the path of most unwanted items by my wife, in the bin. As I sat there glumly sniffing the shower gel but reluctantly enjoying how smooth it felt on my skin, I remembered a vague discussion about bits of soap, something of a mess and me agreeing to not leave a mess. Of course I wanted to seem reasonable and so now I smelt of a tea of sorts. Despite the new fragrantly smoother me I felt a small sense of loss. Perhaps it wasn't the soap. 

It is also said over a drink, once more unhelpfully at social gatherings, usually several years post the wedding that a compromise is where two people don't get what they want. That is essentially untrue as there is always a tipping point in interactions where favour is leant more towards one party. It is never fifty-fifty and the law of averages has absolutely nothing to do with the outcome and even less so if you are a man. Any compromise I feel I have won, I am quite sure it was a tactical loss on the part of my wife and the object of said compromise was a puny pawn sacrificed for some ultimate check-mate of which I haven't an inkling of the very nature thereof. Perhaps it is a floral bedspread. 

To be honest though most men's decisions without the compromise or advice sought of a women are ill-thought out anyway. The last time a man made entirely their own decision, Poland was advised that bratwurst would henceforth be on the menu and well,  Putin is having a rather good year it seems. Never mind his little annexation, it is the bare-chested man-boob on a horse photo that is clear evidence is that he is in dire need of a female guiding hand. He is sucking in his gut so hard his left pectoral is in a state of semi-permanent spasm. Who else other than his all-male Kremlin think-tank think he is the man? 

One, two, three...hold your breath!

Or maybe Old Spice is really to blame for all this

Compromise is the mark of civility. It doesn't hep that the compromise decisions are fluffed up orders from someone infinitely more attractive and nicer smelling that you. Biologically, we don't stand a chance. You just will never know it until it is too late, and by then you probably don't mind anyway. 

Frankly my dear, I give too much of a damn

Guidance or compromise, however you wish to call it, does a man changeth as so it is writ on a wall somewhere, and usually it is for the better. Still, the quiet exit of my soap seems to mirror a larger change in the world of man. Remember the word metro-sexual? If you do, it sets you quite definitely within a certain age bracket. If you haven't you are either old enough to still shun the world of fragrant shower gels, or young enough to be one - you just don't know it. Men initially scoffed at the term 'metro-sexual', defining a male that took undue care and attention to their appearance. Then the word fell out of usage and became the norm which is probably why you are wondering whether a metro-sexual is someone that enjoys riding the metro more than most. The problem is men desire to be desired. Not much wrong there, it is how we were programmed and it has done us rather well up to now, but perhaps we are going too far?

I read about a worryingly new fashion trend. Male leggings. 'Meggings' are about to become main stream, possibly. Firstly, why on earth are they called meggings? What is wrong with leggings, other than obviously they ought not to be worn by men? But besides that, calling them meggings does not make them any more acceptable. By that reasoning, should all male goods start with an 'M'? Marley Davidson and for the ladies a Farley Davidson. But back to the meggings...where is the self-respect? 

Not even little aeroplanes can save you...

The Hipster Beard seems rampant at the moment, and really I think it is quite good and a throw back to when the world was quite exciting. Kind of the sort of look of someone about to walk to the North Pole or disappear into some wild hinterland. So much so that I would like to grow one, but due to an over abundance of grey hair I think I have missed the boat. All I might end up looking like is a rugged Colonel Sanders or Father Christmas.

But the man look is only from the neck up. Man-scaping also seems to have become normal. The Hipster Beard may very well be the last hurrah for Mandom, although I fear it too will no longer smell of smoke and fried whale fat the way a good explorer's beard ought to, but will be silky soft and smell of rosemary and some type of fragrant tea.

  

Below the collar has become a rampantly profitably marketing area. I base this on no evidence other than a very confusing encounter with a dizzying array of electric shavers on a recent trip to the store. All I wanted was a regular electric shaver. I was faced with a range that was available for lengths and usages in areas I was not aware needed strimming. It is not often that the men's section is larger than the women's. In terms of female grooming appliances, all the women seemed to have were epilators designed by some former East German shotput hurling female scientist. Waxing strips and some sort of nuclear dissolving creams are really the only other options available. The options for women would have made Stalin proud. 

We men on the other hand have any range of instrument desired to fulfil whatever exciting topiary dreams we may harbour. Odd. I have not seen the inside of a gym locker room in years, so my research is really not that extensive. But I do know several swimmers and triathletes that have made me look like the missing link with bits of dead animal glued to my chest and er..other regions beyond the elasticated snatch of a Speedo. 

If you really want to see how far men have gone... #cockinasock. You may not be the same afterwards. In a new trend to promote awareness of testicular cancer, men are quite literally almost showing you what matters most to them. Men now drape themselves in a member covering sock and... that's about all there is to it. The Spectator has called the digital-age male, and I agree, a pathetic creature and this latest idea is nothing more than exhibitionism wrapped up as charity. What would Steve McQueen do? Probably pour a stiff whisky for charity and jump over a barbed wire fence on a motorbike. Dong in a sock, I don't think so. 

  

Where #unmentionableinasock differs from Movember's hairy top lip is that there really is no hair at all to be mocked at. Below the belt territory now has the minimalist aura of pre-puberty. Nevertheless, I am a generation too old to understand and then one does what the dating pool does and since the whims of conformity no longer apply, my chestnuts can remain the way evolution intended. 

I shave therefore I am...a man

Hairlessness doesn't always denote narcissism. For many years as a cyclist I shaved my legs. I was under no illusion of any time savings, or whether it would be a whole lot easier to clean road rash if all those unsightly hairs were nicked away beforehand. You do it because everyone else does it. Peer pressure or herd mentality you may want to call it if you feel uncharitable towards the practice. It is a I am part of the club announcement. And if you think that is just narcissistic exhibitionism put a sock on it. The longer you are a road cyclist the further down a very dark path do you go. Cycling really is quite a strange sport in that despite its tough no nonsense blue collar origins, appearance is taken care as fastidiously of one's equipment. The devil lies in the detail. Small things begin to matter, whether your bar tape and saddle colours match, do the spoke nipples accentuate some other part of your bike? You may think that none of this matters but it does. When all the little things in you and your bikes appearance do not add up you are a leper. This growing awareness of the details is a sort of apprenticeship to the sport. It is not something quickly picked up. It is a schooling that happens over many many group rides. It has its benefits too, as they are an outward sign to other cyclists of your dedication and indirectly of your ability. I would avoid riding behind anyone with hairy legs because it was a sign that they didn't spend enough time riding a bike and if they didn't spend enough time riding a bike they are a road hazard and are dangerous when riding with in a group. Cyclists are notorious for being stand-offish. Polite comments are really shared between different riding groups. There is very little communication offered other than a 'one your right, or left'. In this icy silence you are being appraised. Your spoke nipples are being appraised, and how neatly your gear cables are routed. It is a funny game, notoriously bitchy but enormous amounts of fun. 

Man Country - Cycling's roots are as hard man as you can get.

Gino Bartali, the rider following in this photograph was recently honoured for helping hide Italian Jews during the war. He rode ridiculous distances with letters and plans concealed in the tubing of bicycle to save lives. Tom Simpson rode himself to death on Mount Ventoux. Despite him taking an impressive cocktail of substances, he too is an endearing hero of the sport. 

Even with copious amounts of drugs to help get through the insanely long distances, it was an era of heroes on the bike. Despite there being more drugs then that would have killed Keith Richards in a fortnight, cycling has an image problem now and its not the drugs. The suffering of an epic sport is now not quite there and it just not the same. The modern heroes are just too clean and smooth to be of any interest at all. 

Definitely not Man Country

Where have all the men gone?

Perhaps it is a tough world to be a man in. It is a far less exciting place than it used to be and much much smaller. No longer can you trek to the Poles and eat all the dogs on your return journey the way Amundsen did. Shackleton's disastrous but epic journey is something now that would be impossible. Thankfully so, but the room and the need for ingenuity and courage to survive something like that are no longer needed. So what is a man to do? What else is there to do other than resort to our evolutionary salmon like instinct to try appear attractive to women. If our deeds no longer do the job, we now spend a good deal of time in the bathroom and snap a selfie with a rugby sock. 

So where does one find Man Country nowadays?

Perhaps you might think of a ranch somewhere. But with one of the last Malboro ad men dying of cancer recently and with cowboying actually being outsourced to tougher and cheaper vaqueros from down south it appears that Dorothy has settled in Kansas or Wyomming or wherever. You may even think it might be wherever Vlad Putin lives and wrestles bears, tigers; all this without a shirt and smelling Old Spice but you'd be wrong. It's Greece. 

Greece, the home of democracy and pederasty (what did you think would happen when there was naked twister Graeco-Roman wrestling). I don't think Greek men are particularly more manly than others and this is partly because of their overbearing mothers. Nevertheless, I have never come across such a male dominated society. So much so, that if I ever were to be offered the opportunity to get to do it all over again, my first choice would be to do it as a Greek man. Not for either of the two reasons just mentioned mind you. I used to toy with the idea of being either Heff or Richard Attenborough in terms of an interesting life if I would have the choice, but really being a Greek man must be what it must like to be one of a chosen people. 

Greek men are treated as god-like by their womenfolk. Greek mothers start the process by treating their sons as though they really are. Getting cooked for, cleaned and really with no real expectation to just breathe until they are 40 is quite an amazement to consider. The exception of course was Alexander the Great who it seems to had to escape his mother and went as far away as possible, conquering the known world on his way. But he was the exception and most Greek men don't venture too far away from their mothers. Coming between a Greek mother and her child is infinitely more dangerous than straying between a bear and her cub. The baton is passed onto a Greek woman who marries the son and consequently will and unavoidably always fall sort in her mother-in-laws opinion on how to care for the golden child. It is only in his death that a Greek woman may have any respite from the constant coddling of a man. 

At the end of it all, I am not sure there is much room any more for the archetypal man's man. I hope there is, because the world is an infinitely more interesting place with them. There are too many of us and not enough room to go and do interesting things we have lost a sense our sense of purpose. Idle hands and a razor is what it has come to. A good friend recently wrote about why we do the things we do. Nowadays we need to look within to find the windmills to tilt at. This is a process of finding ways to push ourselves to the limit. How far can we run, the biggest waves to fling ourselves down. What drives us, what gives us a sense of purpose, what makes us feel alive. 

These are the corners where you will find the men with hair.

The madness in the forest

The ecstasy of the start. 

Start lines are my favourite part of any race. It is the time when the excitement or dread broils in your belly. If you are well prepared the gun is something you look forward to. If not then it probably accompanies the hope that somewhere along the trail it will get better. I love the feeling, the excitement, the electricity of the moment. On another level there is a secret thrill in checking out your competitors and at least marking one other person out that you just have to beat, usually someone with lots of compression gear. It could just be me, I am a little immature that way.

Racing or at least caring about racing on an amateur level is as self-interested a first world problem that you can get. If you have ever known anyone that has tried to qualify for ironman Kona, you know the obsession that goes behind that journey. But racing is a luxury and its fatuousness at times, it is something I love. And besides which, it is far more socially acceptable than dressing up as a grown man in fatigues shooting animals or paintballs at other people. Although given the current trend in trail running fashion it might be debatable seeing how many shaved and compressed legs there are at the start line.

I remember the starts of all my races but not all the finishes. I do know that I will always at some stage during the race question why on earth am I doing this, usually when the pace starts to hurt or the fatigue begins to grip your legs. It was even worse during my triathlon days as I always had a paranoia attached to the swim. In fact I always viewed triathlons as a good bike and run race ruined by a swim. I always wondered why I was flirting so needlessly with death. Regardless, racing is always that way too, trying to resist the little voice that tries to distract your focus, entreating you to throttle back a little.

This last weekend I had entered my cross country kids in a short trail race. I was going to run the longer race which would follow the same course except for an extra loop on one end that would make up the extra distance. We had recce'd the course a week earlier with my kids and knew that we had a long section of undulating dirt road before we disappeared onto narrow single-track. I wanted to at least get ahead of the main pack so I would have a little space on the technical sections. So I set off, a bit quicker than normal, following the main group. I almost ran over one of my school kids getting to the front. But hey, it's every man for himself and you need to lead by example when dealing with women and children in dire situations. And so with a short sharp shoe I flung the 12 year old off into the bushes. No I didn't but it was a scenario that flashed through my mind.

Amateur racing is a luxury and in lives of comparative first world comfort we seek out these moments of hardship and challenge. I know that at certain times of the school year I just do not have the surplus energy to race or even train well. Forget about it if I had had to toil over a field for 10 hours a day. But at others, when there is more of a balance and I have the energy, the challenge of the races fulfils a strange need in me. And I am not alone. Dean Karnazes put it rather nicely:

Western culture has things a little backwards right now. We think that if we had every comfort available to us, we'd be happy. We equate comfort with happiness. And now we're so comfortable we're miserable. There's no struggle in our lives. No sense of adventure. We get in a car, we get in an elevator, it all comes easy. What I've found is that I'm never more alive than when I'm pushing and I'm in pain, and I'm struggling for high achievement, and in that struggle I think there's a magic. (for the full interview)

Start lines might be the closest we get to feel an inkling of what it must have been like to stand before a charge at the enemy. Recently I was reading Polybius's account of how Hannibal routed the Romans at the

battle of Cannae. There must have been a great deal of excitement and certainly an even greater deal of apprehension than what we face now in our tightly compressed limbs. But that start still must have a similar sense of the 'fuck it' feel of off we go. Your legs feel light and you spring forward. Those perhaps are the most glorious moments of the race. There is no pain, and now thankfully no prospect of having a digit nicked off or of a piercing of anything in your gut.

Get 'im

So back  to the charge of the foolish brigade. After disposing the child discretely into the bushes I was in the pointy bit at the front of the main group. I was following a few good runners who were following Greece's foremost mountain runner, a Salomon ambassador athlete and a sub 2.15 marathon runner, and even an all round nice guy to top it all off. More distressingly, my wife was a national level rower with him in the squad and she told me once that as a training exercise he had run up a hill with her in his back. I resolved to hear no more rowing camp stories after that one, but I knew full well what he was capable of and so the illusion of following him for very long was never a serious consideration. Nonetheless it was an interesting experience. It made me think briefly of the marathon - that sustained and brutish race at the elite level. Amateur marathoners have a different ordeal to run through but the speed that the top field runs at for a full 42km - and a wholly unnecessary 195 more metres - is a whole new realm that I think we would rather not experience.

For a brief moment I had a taste of what it must be like to follow a top class runner and it wasn't good. The initial euphoria of the start began to wear off quickly and all sorts of warning signals appeared that things were going wrong. If you were unfortunate to pay good, or even bad money to see the Gravity movie with the oh so reluctant astronaut played by Sandra Bullock (NASA surely would have weeded out the candidates who were Oh I am not really sure what I should be doing with my life). Still, if you managed to sit through it all to almost the ridiculous end, it is a little bit like the part when her soyuz capsule enters earth's atmosphere at wholly the wrong speed and things start burning up, tiles fly off and the whole thing is just a shaken tin can. Or what a Martini must feel like but boiled and shaken (if it takes off - you heard it here first). Eventually you implode and it feels like suddenly you have my wife on your back.

Despite how haphazard Hollywood  usually makes re-entering earth's atmosphere seem, astronauts have to read Cyrillic and learn to fly the capsule with Russian instruments - makes sense doesn't it? Because the ultra NASA nerds, they don't like to leave anything to chance, they actually even learn to fly the capsule, something Sandra must have missed on a duvet day. They can land anywhere on earth with a 15km margin of error. Quite why Sandra Bullock lands in some marshy graveyard in only her underpants kinda says it all, or that the writers built a movie around a plan to see Sandra in her underpants. Smart guys come to think of it...

If you want to hear what it is really like from a real astronaut...

Trail or mountain races in Greece are quite like walking into the bar of Cheers. They are generally small and charming and most people do end up knowing your name. The problem when you do start to know everyone's names is that you can spot the opportunities that arise when some of the familiar faces are not in attendance. This happened to me, and I saw the chance to get a good result. I'd like to say it was because I wanted a good result for the kids, it was but mostly I wanted it. Competitiveness can bring out strange beasts such as the ones that fling aside errant 12 year olds. So being of competitive bent I made it to the trail head in third with the all-round-wife-carrying good guy disappearing like a wraith into the forest. Single track is where it goes all wrong for me. I am a big guy that is not able to nimbly dance my way along the path. Too many years of being a rugby forward and the mindless linear running from triathlon mean I take everything wide and end up going through many a bush. At the end of a race I often look like I fended off the only the bear on the hill. Slightly bloodied with bits of flora wildly attached to various parts of my clothing.

Of course when your blood is up there is no way you backtrack if you think you have temporarily lost the trail or will wait for someone else so you can both get lost, which has happened before. Such was me today. After crossing a stream I was faced with several paths to choose from with none offering a hint of a race marking. I heard twigs crack behind me, or at least I imagined I did and then hared off down the most middle looking path of the selection in front of me. For a long time I thought I had somehow crossed over the course loop and rejoined the original outward going path, just now I was going in the wrong direction, covering all the ground that I had run on before. Everything looked the same - I swear I had seen each and every log, rock and stream before. I stopped hearing the twigs snap and all the other usual sounds of people on the trail behind you. It tuned out that it wasn't the case and running alone makes paranoia in the woods is an interesting thing.

Last year I visited Addis Ababa and I had a moment of clarity so crushing that it has remained with me ever since. I was in my marathon taper and was in the best condition I have ever been in to tackle a marathon. Happy with my form, I went to a local gym to run a few easy km on the treadmill. On the treadmill alongside was a small wiry man, in most anyone's rough estimate he would have been a third of my height and weight. He ran so lightly and with such coiled energy that it was breath taking to watch. More alarming was my reflection in the mirror. I thundered along next to him like a huge, lumbering sweaty white buffalo. It was good to get a dose of reality. There are real runners and then the rest of use are just visitors.

And that is how the afternoon ended, I had somehow stayed ahead of the guy behind me and was inside the final kilometre which helpfully as it turned out was all uphill. There really is nothing worse than feeling as though your kidney may have moved to the wrong side of your rectum. All I wanted to do was stop until I could see straight again and that is when I heard the little voices cheering me one. There was nothing sweet and angelic about it, the mean little wretches had hiked down the last 600 metres to wait for me. It felt like little vicious bats where looping about, screeching at me to keep moving or they would feast upon my body. And the little bats followed and harried me until I crossed the line. Needless to say their cheering was effective and I did not get caught. It must have looked lovely to all the spectators. A coach being cheered on by his proud runners. And it really was, my race didn't matter at all, they had had a fantastic day and loved every minute of it.

Hunted

My kids were amazing and had one of those defining days in the mountains that I know they will carry with them always, at least until they forget it during the beer blaze of college. Later it will re-emerge I hope. I pushed myself to the dark side, I found my inner big sweaty white buffalo and made it run up a hill around the trees and clumsily through small and badly placed bushes. And really, sharing a race with young runners, there is nothing better. It is a finish I will remember. 

Nike Free 3.0

Nike Free 3.0 v5

No matter how you feel about Nike running, they are an innovative company. Sometimes they are too innovative. Sometimes they get it right and then sometime they discontinue those great ideas. The Mayfly is one such example that flew too close to an idea. Change and innovation. One of the times that have got it right and stuck with, sort of, it is the Nike Free.

The Nike Free was one of the first shoes incorporating the concept of barefoot running. However, it was never going to be near enough for Malcolm McDougall's new-age minimalist cohorts because it was unforgivably a shoe. Nevertheless, it brought flexibility never quite seen before with enough padding for it to catch with more than a small cache of runners. With the minimalist movement falling away slightly now, Nike may we have been right all along. 

I have used the Nike Free 3.0 v5 for the bulk of my marathon training. They are my favourite training shoe for up 15km and whenever I run on the track. They feel responsive during speed work and padded enough for your easy recovery runs. 

The upper 

The upper is made of two parts. A stretchy outer mesh and an inner mesh that is like a sock liner. The upper is clearly cut and your foot is well supported and fits snugly into the shoe.

Slide your hand into the shoe and you'll find an absence of seams. It really is like sliding your hand inside a sock. The only loose item to be found is the tongue guard. This is attached to the top of the shoe and then is loose all the way down. As the upper wraps around your foot completely the tongue ends up being extra padding as at no point can the laces come into contact with your foot. It is the only inconsistency in the shoe where the upper is generally a one piece affair. The tongue can slide around and bunch. 

The lacing system consists of wide stiff plastic eyelets glued down the side of the tongue. Because the eyelets are 1 cm wide and lie horizontally to your foot there is too much friction for the laces to tighten and loosen effectively. I also found that the stiff rubber of the eyelets especially towards where your foot flexes is very noticeable given the soft upper upper and it was the only part of the shoe that rubbed when I ran. The lacing

Tears in the outer mesh

system in the Nike Free 3.0 Hybrid is far better. 

The upper in the v5 is a vast improvement on the v4 NanoPly which was by far the least breathable shoe I have ever encountered and was about as breathable as a Wellington boot. Even walking around I found the shoe too hot. The upper in the v5 is much improved and is a lot more breathable. However, they are still warmer than most other shoe offerings on the market and on hot training days it is very noticeable. 

The stretch outer mesh is not that durable and I found that the mesh began to tear. 

The Sole

The sole is the core concept behind the shoe and it delivers - it is flexible. It has diagonal cuts which are a departure from the earlier versions and are meant to encourage a natural foot motion. Whether this is the case is debatable, especially as the new v6 will have a honeycomb slice pattern in the sole.  Either way, it is a sole that works. With a 4 mm offset, it really does encourage a natural gait and with the padding allows you to run in comfort on the asphalt. 

What I like

• The flexibility of the sole
• The amount of padding 
• 4mm offset

What I don't like

• The upper - I feel that this version still is not quite right
• The lacing system - if you are lookign to use this shoe for running, look at the Nike Free 3.0 Hybrid

Wish List

• The sticky rubber - the sticky rubber should be extended to the ball of the foot. Adding the rubber

  

  Adding the more durable rubber to the forefoot area would
   provide better grip and prolong the life of the shoe. 

  there will not only prolong the life of the shoe but make it far more suitable for road training. Racing on damp streets aren't very slippery, but the sticky rubber grips the road like crampons on ice. 

Long story short

• 242g for a US 12
• 4mm offset

This is one of Nike's best shoe offerings out there that has stuck with the barefoot concept. The 4mm offset might not be enough for some folk but it's compromise allows you the comfort of road running that often with other minimalist shoes begin to bite you back if you take them off the trail for more than a few kilometres. it is a big improvement on the previous version and with a few changes it is a shoe I would buy again and again. 

Spring Cleaning as though nothing matters the way you thought it did

I see old people

Apart from making the difficult choices of what not to eat during lent I decided to get a jump on the Vernal Equinox and get a head start on the Spring cleaning. There are a host of websites crammed with pretty much the same advice on how to have an effective cupboard that speaks to you in a German accent.

Teaching despite its blatant lie of keeping you young, quite literally sucks the life out of you until those blessed days called the holidays. Despite me loving my job I can't fathom why at the end of each term I look a little more like Benjamin Button at the start of the film. But then again, being able to dress up as Ernest Shackleton in order to drive home how tough the life of an explorer was and how eating Happy Feet was an acceptable choice - nothing does quite beat that. Even if it is accelerating my walnut-like appearance at warp speed. Teaching is also refreshing in that no matter what you do or how you dress you are always old to your kids. Just varying degrees of oldness that ranges vaguely from their parent's age right up to death. It is a cruel and blunt view from their little worlds, but it is the perfect way to look at your cupboard.  

The ties and memories we attach to clothing is interesting. After rummaging my way through to

You don't say! You ran how far?

a back corner on a high shelf I came across items so archaic that I felt briefly like Professor Leakey did. Initially I was thrilled. But then quite why I needed to keep a t-shirt from a skiing trip when I was a sweaty 20 something or the diving trip in Thailand is beyond me. If you have something similar and if you have any friends, you would already have told them about the trip - several times. Wearing the same Thai Divers Do It Better t-shirt 10 for years should be ringing some alarm bells anyway. Athletes are even worse hoarders than the common man. Not only is it a way for our clothing to say what we have done but also what we like to think it says about us.

Ménage a trois much?

I finally decided to chuck out all of my carefully collected ironman branded clothing. I have been far too embarrassed to wear any of it for several years anyway. Nothing puts me off triathlon more than seeing other triathletes nowadays. Do you really have to look as though you are going to Kona every Saturday morning? I see them every weekend, primped and preened, deep sections and every now and then an aero-helmet makes it on to the group the ride.

I like to think that I was there before the whole thing became so gloriously self obsessed  and it was about surviving an event so epic that one day a fairy tale would be written about you. I am deluding myself of course because it was a pretty wanky thing to do back then. But if you are a triathlete and you haven't already inked yourself declaring yourself one then at the very least every item of casual attire requires the holy trifecta of some sort. 'Swim, Bike, Run' or 'eat, sleep, tri' or 'tri tri tri', anything that has a number of three in is acceptable. All logos also have to incorporate three squiggles that denote the three sports that mean you devote a third of your income to your obsession, a third of your waking hours are spent doing these three sports and finally that you are most likely the third person in a relationship because your other half is seeing someone else whilst you slavishly keep something made out of carbon more company than you are them.

Tight like a tiger

Trail runners are a different breed too. At least the European version. They are quite easy to spot. They are the only people wearing more Lycra than a cyclist but with no bike.  Quite why everything needs to be compressed and wobble free is beyond me. Calves, thighs, arms, torso. Trail runners from outside Europe have that troubled Neolithic look of not quite knowing how to deal with the latest step in the trail running evolution because looking good in the woods never used to matter. Mention 'Banjo' and 'Woods' to anyone and you'll understand why folk instinctively try to not look appetizing on trail. I used to clomp around in the heaviest of trail shoes ever because they were comfortingly similar to my hiking boots. I know my cheese when it comes to shoes now, but I draw the line at white compression lycra.

Looking a little loose, retro and puzzled. 

Getting a WODy on

Crossfitters too have their own clothing tribal rules to follow. Whether people really do wear the workout clothes that ones sees on Facebook I am not sure. With Amazonian women wearing a mix of Japanese school girl outfit yet more figure hugging than a cheerleader's outfit then I can see why it is one the fastest growing 'sports'. I went to a crossfit training session once.  I made the mistake of commenting that Crossfit was just like what they used to call circuit training in the old

Adding a caption is unnecessary I think. 

days. I can still hear the hush descend on the room. As a foreigner and a redhead I often feel very conspicuous living in Greece. If my blasphemous comments didn't help I clearly didn't get the clothing memo either. Compression socks are de rigeur, compression tights under loose shorts denote a higher level of commitment. Whatever shirt you wear has to show off the guns and if you have no guns your t-shirt has to at least have the the words 'sweat' and 'swing', 'iron balls' and 'WOD' and maybe 'hard' emblazoned somewhere. It all makes the volleyball game in Top Gun seem very butch.

See what I am talking about? If you want to do less and suck more go buy the t-shirt

Sometimes your clothing says too much about you. If you are faced with a cupboard filled with memories and can't bear to part ways with anything - always remember; you look old no matter what you wear.

Taking this cleaver-like approach to your clothing is the only way. Empty your shelves and go buy that bow-tie that you have always wanted.

Is it because I is...

We are what we eat. Diets, fads and super foods. 

Because this post is about sensitivity, people's feelings and the choices that we make that other people will ultimately judge us upon. The following people should stop reading here: Vegetarians, fans of Disney, the French, JZ (the one with the Nkandla crib), Daisy the cow, lovers of digestives and my mother. 

Time for change, at least for a bit. 

Spring is here and that means it is time to out with the old. It is also the start of Lent. Symbolically people nowadays try to give up such gentle vices like chocolate digestives or beer for the period of Lent. In the Orthodox tradition one has to give up eating certain foods and the list gets prescriptively stricter the closer you get to Easter. Whilst I like the idea of a gradual weaning process, the habits are not lasting and at the end of it all you eat an entire (inside and out) lamb over two days. So you are right back where you started, in need of another detox. 

Preparing the lamb for Easter. Innards first and
 then the roast the next day. 

I have been wondering what sort of changes I could make to my eating habits. What changes would make a meaningful difference? What would make me healthier and could possibly better me as a runner? A tall order, but there is no shortage of advice out there to help you, some are pure snake oil, others too selective, some emotional, some that have just been done before and are now repackaged as new and improved.

On the dietary spectrum, athletes are probably the most neurotic and are also usually amongst the earliest of adopters with any new diet. Californians follow closely behind. The more we research about what not to eat there is the converse proliferation of choices of how to eat out there. Hi-Lo, Vegetarian, Mediterranean, vegan, anything but sugar, Paleo, Atkins, 5:2 fasting, slow carb diets, or Prof. Tim Noakes' full-on-full-fat gravy boat. The list goes on and on. What path does one follow? I can see the merits in each one, but do I have to just pick one to find my dietary salvation? A new study reported in The Guardian explains that a high fat and high protein diet generously provides with you a fourfold chance of cancer or diabetes if you are under 65. Oddly if you make it past this watershed age, the same diet cuts your risk of dying of cancer by 60% and if not cancer, everything else by 28%. I also read about a four-day ice-cream detox...but diabetes just sprang to mind and I stopped reading. 

Mention to someone that you do such-and-such for a living or even that  do a particular sport for pleasure, people immediately jump to conclusions. People like to say they don't but they do - a profiling begins almost immediately and you are fitted into a preconceived pattern. It gets even worse when you tell people what you eat or if you really want to go down a dark alley with no hope of return, state unequivocally what your eating beliefs are. 


You are what you say you eat. Or don't eat. 

I am a huge fan of the bovine. I love steak, and if I were ever to be given an opportunity of requesting my final meal I would unhesitatingly request a thick slab of its rump, briefly scorched and lain upon my plate. So if I am what I eat then clearly I am not a very nice person. But then, on the other hand I feel profoundly sorry for all animals aquatic that end up on people's plates. Somehow being trapped and then scooped up and then dumped on a deck somewhere to suffocate seems unpleasant and a little fishcist. Frozen octopodes, calamari or hacked up tuna fill me with guilt. Quite why minced beef doesn't warrant a second thought is not clear and not something I wish to explore further here. David Attenborough and the Blue Planet documentary probably has a lot to answer for though. I absolutely have no qualms about poultry either. As absurd as all this sounds, it could be worse - I could be French. They as a nation have practically eaten every animal that has ever walked, galloped, bounced, flapped or slithered across this earth. 

  

Perhaps now that I am older I can sort of see that being a vegetarian is the most sentient life friendly option out there. On a cerebral level it makes the most sense. It is enlightened, you are taking responsibility for your eating habits and with the power of being at the top of the food chain can to make a respectful decision regarding everything else that so desperately tries to avoid ending up next to some fries and a bit of garnishing. It is an occupation of the moral high ground. But perhaps the most difficult part of adapting to this lifestyle change, aside from contemplating a world without bacon, is vegetarians. They are the Jehovah's Witnesses of eaters. Even if you wanted to believe in what they had to say you still just can't bring yourself to let them in the door. Just the mere thought of being congratulated by one of them for making the right choice will make you go right back to Daisy the cow followed by Bambi's grandchildren for dessert. Forget about the more orthodox of the set; vegans, or the other sub-cults: ovo-vegetarians or lacto-vegetarians or ovo-lacto-vegetarians. I am sure there are even more derivatives. 

In ultra-running circles there is now a Vegan only trail run in Wales. You don't have to be a vegan to be able to enter, though you do need to commit to the vegan lifestyle for the day. Now I hadn't really thought it would make a huge difference and they have said they will be offering vegan 'bacon' and 'sausages'. Fine. I don't mind doing that for a day. But if something were to happen up there and a vegan sausage was my last meal I would be most upset. It also means that I would have to think about what I eat very carefully. Do I really need to worry in a race whether my gel may have some bits of some unfortunate cane rat that got scooped up by a combine harvester or if I should be suspicious about why the bonding agent in my jelly beans is just so jelly like? If this sounds ridiculous, the innocent world of beer is tainted too with animal substances - which completely ruins what was a seemingly simple and innocent self-congratulatory pleasure. I only know this because of a website called Barnivore. It is a blacklist of sorts detailing which beers are fraught with little bits of animal inside. It just means that the whole thing becomes too much work if all you want is a guilt free cold one after surviving a day of vegan sausages. 

Vegetarians also tend to look like vegetarians, quite why wild and errant facial hair or a skin allergy to anything that is not hemp or reconstituted plastic bag seems to be a price they have to pay is beyond me. Scott Jurek seems to be the only one who is actually getting younger and younger. Perhaps I'll think about having what he's having. 

Meanwhile, In the other hemisphere though, Professor Tim Noakes might actually receive a Sainthood, if only South Africa's constitution will allow it. His book, Real Meal Revolution is whipping up fans and detractors in equal measures. Stranger things have happened and unlikely individuals can go on to great things that you would never have dreamed possible in a country with a constitution.

For years South Africans have been forerunners in the high-protein-high-fat diet. 

The principle is the same. Although 

nowadays men have grown soft and 

 braai with gas. Photo courtesy of a

 lazy mate (Thanks Norm).

Special occasions involving rugby or just about every day that isn't a weekday, and even those days are not safe either, meat is grilled on an open flame. Despite being world leaders in clogged arteries we still can't stop. Now Dr Tim has come along and said it is okay, we were on the right track all along with just a few minor tweaks required. Now there are few academics that have researched and influenced athletics more positively than Tim, and I am not going to go into the intricacies of how you need to balance the high fatein diet. But I have had more than enough family members clutch their chests and collapse to be a tad weary of it all. Strangely as a family we prefer to do this chest clutching in airports. It is hard to discern which is more dangerous for a my clan - an airport or too much red meat, but on this occasion I am not blaming lost luggage. 


When in Rome

One of my absolute favourite things about Greece is its food. I have lived in both Vancouver and London, and besides both cities boasting an above average annual rainfall they also offer a varied and worldly cuisine. Yet nothing has been as good or as tasty as the food I have encountered in Greece. The Mediterranean diet is famed for its sensibility, varied and natural foods. Unfortunately modern Greeks now eat far more junk food and far more meat than they ever used to which is why they don't live to 170 any more. Greek children have the second fastest expanding waistlines in the world and whilst obvious modern changes to the diet are blamed, it really just goes to show how dangerous Greek mothers are if they go unchecked. There is no such thing as a child that says it's too full. 

In its purest form, the paleo Mediterranean is really nothing special. A little bit of this and a little bit of that. Everything is eaten, moderation and freshly grown produce are its cornerstones. Legumes are welcome, olive oil applied liberally.

Who knew lentils would taste so good?

Home made pita

I have never quite enjoyed food like this before. There is a darker side too with its feast days, quite how many lambs and goats are eaten at Easter or how severely the octopodes population is dented on Ash Monday or at the star of Lent is enough to make the quantities consumed during Oktoberfest seem miserly. I have never eaten less red meat than I have now and neither have I eaten more good fats that I have now. Processed foods are a rarity and most vegetables are locally grown. Perhaps I am at a good place right now with my eating. It has everything good from every diet. It doesn't occupy the moral high ground (sorry Daisy) but you also don't have to consume massive amounts Daisy either. 

So perhaps I am happy with where I am. It may look like a cop-out or that I lack commitment or that I am cherry picking or even just hedging my bets trying to avoid the cardiac arrest bullet with my name on it. In closing, perhaps Gaury Taubes, author of Why We Get Fat and Good Calories, Bad Calories puts it best - It is really just a system of personal beliefs and untested hypotheses, given a veneer of scientific respectability, when in actual fact it’s more like a religion – replete with irrational fanatics, money-making frauds and devout lemming-like followers. 

Regardless, while I try navigate what sensible changes to make, maybe all I'll do to make the world a better place is just give up chocolate digestives and animal enriched beer this Lent. 

Tough sacrifices to make

Credit is due to my wife, who is responsible for most of the good things in my life. She is a firm believer in the adage that 'to have a happy marriage one must have a good wife who is a bad cook'. It is for this reason that my red meat consumption has dropped so dramatically.