Fail again, fail better

I ran again on Sunday. 17.1 miles. Except that when I got to almost sixteen miles, I simply could not run any more. I suddenly felt that I was floating away from the road, and that if I kept running, I would end up horizontal. I walk the first ten minutes of a long run, and at this point I was running more slowly than I'd walked at the start. So I gave up running, had two jelly babies and walked the last mile and a bit. Every time I tried to run, I got that light-headed, fainting feeling and had to walk again.

So it may have been 17.1 miles, but it was three hours and forty minutes.

And the pavement keeps running out. On Sunday, I ended up running along something which had been signposted as a bridle path, but which actually ran round the edge of an incredibly muddy field. I gave up when I realised I was carrying my own bodyweight in mud on my trainers. Then I found a footpath. Which was all very well until the path started being marked with signs saying, 'Beware - dangerous wild animals.' I felt like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz saying, 'Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!' over and over again. Then I realised I was being watched intently by a flock of ostriches.

They're bigger than you think they are, ostriches.

Sir Colin Davies collapsed on Wednesday night, just as he was walking through the orchestra pit at the Royal Opera House to begin a performance of The Magic Flute. I know, I was there. I was in the front row. If I'd reached out my hand, I could have stroked the curly bit of a cello. One moment, I was drawing breath in anticipation of the overture, the next, I was exchanging terrified glances with a cellist. We take music for granted. It comes to us so easily - the purchase of a CD, the touch of a screen, even the sliding of a lift door, brings us music, music, music. Sir Colin was fine; he recovered quickly. But when he fell, the skill, training, effort, dedication, the years and years that go into creating a musician, condensed into one brief heartbeat that said, do not take this sublime human expression for granted.

It's easy to think that running is just running. That seventeen miles is nearly eighteen, nearly twenty, and that twenty's not so far from twenty six, and that a marathon's only 0.2 miles more than that. But every little gain in the product of work, of training, of determination. And each step is hard won.

I didn't manage 15 miles last week. I didn't manage 17 on Sunday. If I can just keep on not managing a little more each week, I might just make it.