A Brief Essay About Male Friendships

Right – big subject…

…and one which I more than most could write for hours about. Not because I am male and have friends, helpful though that is, but because I can always write for hours…

…so I’ll try to be succinct, if only by my standards.

In early June, I wrote quite candidly about how I find it hard to talk about ‘friends’ in my new neck of the woods. I say ‘new’: I’ve been here since 1999 so maybe I ought to rephrase that. Only… well exactly, that’s half the problem…

…anyway, I acknowledged ‘guilt’ and a tendency of mine to ‘overthink’, although I don’t actually recognise the latter as a downside. So let’s take my relationship with Jon Bonner as an example: I’ve known the guy for five years now, we’ve spent many Sunday afternoons in one of our church’s House Groups discussing both personal and biblical matters, he’s helped me out with lifts on several occasions… and yet I found it hard to refer to him as a ‘friend’ (in the word’s real meaning, not the Facebook sense). Why? What was blocking me?

I think I may have figured it, folk! And I am unashamed to list this as a predominantly male feature. Apologies to any ladies (or indeed men) who may feel offended, I just think it’s a fundamental component of the dynamic of male friendships that is not always present between women. And that’s not a judgement: it’s not about good or bad, just fact. As subjectively perceived by me, anyway.

When I think about the guys whom I consider true friends, they all have something in common. I could bump into them tomorrow, having last seen them either today or thirty years ago, and begin a conversation with those famous words:

“Do you remember when we…?”

* sits back and awaits mixed bag of head-nodding and head-shaking *

Male friendships are, in my opinion, based on shared experiences. Some good, some bad, but all shared. Not all involve alcohol, though if I say ‘Prague’ some friends will smirk. My best and oldest friendships are founded on shared concerts, matches, trips, school years… on something visual as well as emotional, on something that, whether it was a single instance or something that was repeated over time, means we can look each other in the eye and think “Yes, we shared that”.

I should at this point stress that, in saying this, I wish not suggest that all female friendships are based on gossip and idle chat. But, whereas I see Karen build friendships at the school gates, I struggle to do that. I build relationships, yes: but when I apply my own F-test, they often fail. Unless… exactly, unless there is a “Do you remember when we…” moment.

What about male-female friendships, I hear you clamour. Good point, I say. I am blessed with cross-gender friendships that go back decades, so I will give it some thought…

 * thinks *

…and do you know what, when I think of those friends my mind does not instantly seek to pick out specific moments. When I see them, conversations are far less likely to begin with the “DYRWW” question. So in my own personal, unscientific, not statistically significant experience, the “DYRWW” factor is one fer t’blokes.

With Jon Bonner, pace-setter and friend,
after the 2012 Bristol Half Marathon.

This brings us back to Jon. On September 9, we ran a half-marathon-matching (in fact, -exceeding) 22.24km. The run came to an end with a sprint down Portishead High Street and subsequent high fives. For me, that did more to cristallise the friendship than all those previous conversations, enriching as they had been, could do. Then, three weeks and two further training runs later, we ran most of the Bristol Half Marathon together and Jon, having paced me to my sub-2hr target (1h49’54”, since you ask) was there at the finishing line when I crossed it a few minutes after him. As well as the hugs and high fives there was an instant and unspoken shared appreciation of what we had achieved, of what it had taken and what it meant to us. And, whereas a friendship needs words and discussions to embellish it, to keep it fresh, those original foundations are unspoken.
Well that’s my take on it, anyway! I actually wrote this post a couple of months ago. I didn’t realise I’d finished it but when I revisited it there wasn’t anything to add. So I hope you enjoy it: me, I’m leaving the country for the day tomorrow, so I’ll miss the backlash. Just… please let me back in, eh? Or I might have to tackle the follow-on consideration (along the lines of “can you have a true friendship with someone you’ve met on a Social Media site but never seen in the flesh?”) from far, far away…
…then again, physical location hardly matters in this day and age. Or does it?

Christmas Cracker - Follow The Man in... er, Blue!

Right – time to tell you how I got on!

I ran the Wyvern Christmas Cracker 10k yesterday – which starts and finishes on scenic Weston-super-Mare beach. You may recall (if you ever read the post in the first place) that I was aiming for sub-50’. Did I achieve my goal? Hmmm… let’s find out…

I headed down to sunny Weston-super-Mare with Simon From Church (Simon Faulkner), getting there in good time. As avid readers of this blog (of which there are none) will recall, my only previous 10k had been The Sheffield TenTenTen, with a few hundred runners registering and getting set in Endcliffe Park. So Weston was a shock… all that stuff was indoors, in the comfy, almost luxurious surroundings of Weston College! Changing facilities and everything! They even had a crèche!

There was just one thing I needed to check: whether there’d be distance markers. To achieve my goal I knew I had to pace myself: start off around the 5’/km mark and ensure I had enough left in the tank to up the ante during the second half. Next year I plan to use a GPS watch for this purpose but Father Christmas hasn’t done the 2012 rounds yet! Anyway, so long as there were markers in place I could make do with my stopwatch and my perfectly decent mental arithmetic skills: alternatively, I’d have to strap my smartphone to my arm. Something I do on every training run, something which I’d never done in a race: it’s harder to hear the phone’s voice reading out distance and pace and I dread it coming off in the crowd. But there was an over-riding goal here… not for the first time, fashion was not the issue! Not to worry, anyway: promptly assured kilometre markers were in place, the phone went into runner 2505’s bag which was duly handed in.

We walked across to the beach and lined up for the start just before 11:00. Out of the corner of my left eye (you know, the one where my vision might be impaired) I spotted a runner sporting a… Sheffield Wednesday hat!

There you go. You train hard, you put in the hours and the miles, just for some muppet to turn up in something like that. Not quite as bad as when I went to the top of the Empire State Building and saw a family of Tesco-bag wearers there, but still… a Blade’s gotta do what a Blade’s gotta do!

That’s right – introduce himself. “Look, if you’re going to be wearing that I must tell you I’m a Blade!”. He suddenly went on the defensive, claiming he was a Rotherham supporter and he’d just borrowed this off his son. I instantly believed him, purely because you wouldn’t claim to be a Rotherham supporter unless you really had to. We exchanged best wishes and got our minds back into The Zone…

…shortly afterwards, the gun went – and the crowd of 2,000 set off! There were meant to be 2,000 of us, anyway – although the results page ‘only’ shows 1,604 and I doubt there’d have been 396 DNFs*! And no, you’re not having the link to the results just yet…

…as I set off, I felt good. I didn’t place myself too close to the front and it’s really true, it does feel good to overtake other runners rather than starting off too ambitiously and watch others fly by you. My mind felt I’d found the right pace and my legs felt they had the challenge in them. A glance at the watch at the first marker confirmed I was right about the former. As for the latter… well, it would take another nine kilometres to find out!

And I wasn’t particularly keen on running those 9km on my own. I wanted to find someone to follow, someone who might pace me to sub-50’. I eventually settled on a guy wearing a blue vest with “Minehead” on the back, just because he was running pretty much at my pace and so it seemed fair enough to assume he was aiming for a similar goal. Again, you train hard for weeks, you spend time planning your race… and then put your fate in the hands of a complete stranger. Makes sense, right?

Actually, it does. You’re using him or her as a marker but you’re still keeping an eye on your watch and leaving yourself time to take remedial action. But Mr Minehead and my watch got on just fine as we wove our way through the flat roads of Weston-super-Mare. Around the 7km mark, and still feeling I’d not been overtaken by many, it felt safe to see whether I could stretch the contents of the tank, so I upped my pace slightly and hung onto the back of someone else. A kilomentre or so later I wondered whether I’d regret this, as my legs found themselves having to counter the fresh sea breeze of Weston-super-Mare beachfront: but I coped just fine until, with a few hundred metres to go, I even managed to put in a bit of a sprint… and crossed the line in what my watch stated to be 47’05” only for the chip to shave off a couple of seconds for an official time of 47’03”!

Cracking cracker! 3’42” inside my Sheffield TenTenTen time of 50’45”. I’m not surprised I set a PB: I’m fitter than I was in September, I had figured I needed to pace myself better – and, most importantly, the Wyvern Christmas Cracker is virtually flat! But I did exceed expectations with how comfortably sub-50’ I was. Back in September, my TenTenTen time was 5.7% better than any training 10k I’d run in the build-up. Yesterday’s 47’02” was 5.27% inside my training best of 49’40”. Thanks adrenaline – and thanks flat Weston sand!

Last but by no means last, thanks Mr Minehead! As he crossed the finishing line shortly after me, I felt compelled to go up and thank him for pacing me to a PB! He’d put a hat back on, one he’d taken off around the 4km mark. I tapped on his shoulder but wasn’t prepared for what happened next…

…as he turned around, he became Mr Wendy hat! I’d seen the hat before the race and the Minehead top during it… and not made what is hardly the most obvious connection! [says Giacomo Squintani, born in Sheffield and now residing in Portishead having grown up in Italy]

He again apologised for the hat. I obviously checked the timings online later in the day but scrolled a little further down: I wanted Mr Wendy Hat / Mr Minehead Vest to have a proper name. I duly found it on the results page and got in touch with him. He enjoyed the post but has chosen anonimity. He also enquired as to what a “Wendy hat” may be. One oft forgets that there are people not caught up in the United/Wendy banter out there… so here’s hoping the context of that comment clarifies it without me having to spell out that name!

There you go: the secret to a PB is following a a stranger sporting the hat of a team you loathe! Just as well I didn’t realise that was the other side of Mr Minehead or I’d have felt an irrational need to overtake him earlier – and believe you me, I did so just at the right time. And before any Blades start lauding me for the 54” I finished ahead of Mr Minehead – his result stands proudly in the MV50 category, far more so than mine in general Male one! Still, much as these (few) races I run are against myself and the clock, not the rest of the field, coming in 253rd out of 1,604 doesn’t sound too bad for a fat lad from Sheffield!

Simon and I were both in a good mood on the way back to Portishead. He’d claimed on the way down to be nursing a slight twinge and to not having trained as much as he’d like, though his time of 40’48” hardly suggests that! And me, I had my PB. And trust me, I really enjoyed that little sprint along the beach!

Next up for me: well, in 2012 a bit of a rest! From ‘racing’, anyway – this morning’s 12.5km marked day 60 of my runstreak, which I shall endeavour to keep up over Christmas (albeit on reduced mileage)! As for 2013…

…it will feature the Bath Half Marathon, 03/03/13, followed by the Greater Manchester Marathon (28/04) and the Sheffield Half Marathon (12/05). As for 10ks in 2013, I will probably stick to the TenTenTen (13/10) and this here Christmas Cracker (I’m guessing 10/12). Cousin Natalie is suggesting the BUPA Great Yorkshire Run instead, which takes place on September 29: far flatter and more suited to a PB. Having looked at the course, I can see why! But I’m not setting out to record a PB every time: besides, I can wait till December for that. I feel indebted to the TenTenTen and genuinely want to make it a fixture of my running calendar, even if it were to become the only fixture on it! And I don’t mind that hill: it’s what makes the race. And a good race it is, too. Hopefully in 2013 I can record sub-50’ there, after September’s 50’45” – sounds a reasonable goal. What about Christmas Cracker 2013? What do you reckon – sub-45’? A further two minutes off this year’s time?!?

Sounds good, eh? Well, let’s see. There could be another couple of thousand miles between now and then. Who knows.

* Did Not Finish. Jeez, am I starting to use jargon and TLAs under the assumption they are universally known?!?

Respect The 10k!

Right, quick one today. Honest.

I’m running the Wyvern Christmas Cracker on Sunday (December 9). It is only my second-ever 10k but my feelings are oh so different compared to the Sheffield TenTenTen I ran on September 23, all of 75 days ago…

…that was my first ever ‘race’. It could have taken me three hours and it would still have been a PB and a milestone achievement. Completing a 10k was the goal I set myself when I started this running thing back in April, a goal I duly achieved in Sheffield. You may think that completing the Bristol Half Marathon was a greater achievement and in terms of what I achieved on the individual respective days I would have to agree. But if we look at the bigger picture and the journeys upon which I embarked to get to those two days, I’d argue differently – and win!
Why? I shall explain!

I signed up for the TenTenTen on May 25, when I would still have been around 14st. I have to guesstimate here as I only started weighing myself a month later: I wanted to feel I was around the 13st7lbs (or 85kg, in my mindset) when I’d first see those LCD digits again so kept off the scales during the early stages of exercise. Even more critically, my longest run up to that day had been 5.2km, in around 33’. Completing the TenTenTen was going to require me to double my longest ever run and to achieve some serious weight-loss / fitness-gain…

…now let’s look at my status ahead of the Bristol Half. I signed up on August 13, by which time I’d got down to 12st – only slightly above my current weight, as that was pretty much my weight target. More importantly, by then I’d introduced weekly long runs into my training schedule and had, for two Sundays running, run 18.5km. A decent distance for someone training for a 10k! Both those runs had taken me 1h53’ at the unspectacular pace of 6’09”/km, but I felt fairly comfortable about adding an extra 2.6km to convert those into a half marathon. I had plenty of work ahead of me if I was going to crawl under the two-hour mark and that work paid off with my 1h49’54” time. But signing up to bridge that 2.6km gap having been in training for sixteen weeks didn’t feel as daunting as doubling my distance when I signed up for the TenTenTen just five weeks into finding my feet (and it would have been after only a couple of weeks had the site taken registrations earlier!).

Since then, I have run longer than half-marathon distance on seven occasions, in four different countries. My level of confidence is significantly greater than back in the Spring: I don’t question my ability to finish a half though of course I acknowledge plenty of scope for improvement as far as time is concerned. I am confident of completing the Greater Manchester Marathon providing I keep putting in the effort in training over the next 142 days. I am not confident of achieving my target time, but that’s fine: balancing confidence and fear is a skill that any performer, amateur or pro, on whatever stage needs to master. Because the trouble with confidence is that if you’re not careful and allow it to grow beyond healthy limits it turns into arrogance; and we all know where that can bite you…

…so I’ve had to teach myself some respect this past week. Respect for the 10k! Yes, of course I can run 10k – but that is no longer my goal, having achieved it in September. My time in the TenTenTen was 50’45”, which by far exceeded my ambition of crawling under the hour mark. Which was great… only it sets expectations for Sunday! I am no longer in a situation where any time is my best ever time!

My goal for Sunday is to break the 50’ mark. Easier said than done, of course. I have run three flat 10k training runs this week in 51’02”, 49’55” and 49’40” respectively, whereas after 10 of today’s 11k I was at 49’30”. So I am frightfully close to the mark: I could be on track only for one person to step out in front of me to take me over it!

However, when I look back to September I see that my best pre-race 10k practice was 53’48”. Come race day, adrenaline and being part of a herd helped me shave 3’05” off it – or 5.7%, if you prefer. I’m no expert, as you well know, but I wouldn’t have thought the TenTenTen route, with its grassy bank and narrow woodlands, was designed for PB-seekers. Now, 5.7% off yesterday’s 49’40” would equate to 46’50”. That sounds great, doesn’t it?

Sure does. But I’m realistic enough to not expect such a great improvement on race day, partly due to the law of diminishing returns and also because 5k and 10k are the two distances that hurt me the most in training. By that I mean spleen pain: I’m obviously going for pace rather than distance and my body seems to cope better with the latter. Which is why I pulled up when running 5k on August 24, for example, whereas I’ve never pulled up when running 20k+. Hence my need to respect the 10k: of course I can finish it, but I mustn’t get arrogant about times. I must respect the distance and my spleen!

Sunday’s race should also be the last one I run without a GPS watch. I’ve asked Father Christmas for some vouchers to spend on one of those and I’m already looking forward to better pacing my runs, both training and races. Nor will I have Jon to pace me through it: I wouldn’t have held him back anyway (and by that I mean I’d have let him do his own thing, not that I’d have kept up with him!), but today he’s finally decided to pull out as his hamstrings are still recovering from the Shakespeare Half Marathon and his current panto commitments mean he needs to be as fit as possible for the day job. Unless I wear my phone around my arm, as I always do in training but didn’t do on either of my September races, I won’t have much of a clue about pace, although my legs and brain have synched up well this week and I’ve not been too bad at figuring out how fast I’ve been going… And that, my friends, will be the key to a sub-50’ time on Sunday: I can do it and I know I can do it, but I need to pace myself right. Whereas in most sports it is doing the unexpected, something different, being blessed with a moment of genius, in running being as regular, consistent, predictive as possible seems to be key. Fortunately I’m getting better at it, as my average pace varies increasingly less during runs. Just as well: my spleen can’t cope with me shooting out of the blocks on a 5 or 10km run. Furthermore, I don’t know the route for Sunday: Simon (another GVC member and one whose pace I can but dream of) has said it’s flat and with sections on sand (a sharp contrast to the hilly grassy bank of Sheffield!)… but racing on sand will be a new experience for my feet and, indeed, my mind.

So… respect the 10k! I’ll let you know next week how I got on.