Running with Rage…

I was born with music inside me. Music was one of my parts. Like my ribs, my kidneys, my liver, my heart. Like my blood. It was a force already within me when I arrived on the scene. It was a necessity for me-like food or water.
Ray Charles

The pavement vanished under foot, trees and fields blew past me in a hazy blur, passers-by, fellow joggers, dog walkers, curious onlookers were left to eat my dust.

I was running. Not just running, but racing, tearing up the track beneath the feet, blazing a trail, doing it.

This was my best run so far, I was ecstatic, euphoric, and certainly not exhausted. I’d reached the distance I’d planned to run that morning, and I’d kept on going. I ran back home. I turned around, and I ran some more.

A small voice in the back of my mind suggested I might want to think about what I was doing.

‘Steady on, son, you’ve still got a lot of training to complete.’

I listened, but ultimately chose to ignore it. I was running harder, better, fast than ever and, best of all, I felt good, real good, doing so.

Minutes flew by, miles clocked up as my body flooded with a blissful and my mind created bright, vivid images of the London Marathon finish line hurtling towards me.

The scenery changed, from red brick houses and chugging motor cars to an empty road lined at either side with lush fields and grand trees which swayed in a gentle breeze and back again.

My pace varied, from a slow, careful plod to a desperate sprint before settling somewhere in the middle with a comfortable steady jog.

Yet one thing remained constant; a beat.

It was a hard, pounding beat, a heady concoction of sweltering bass and belligerent drums that perfectly matched the rythm of my footsteps as they tore up the pavement and the beat of my heart as it pumped adrenalin through my system.

It was by a band called Rage Against the Machine and it was awesome.

I’d always ran to music. I’d always done most things to music if I’m being truthful, but there was something about the act of training for a marathon that just seemed as if it couldn’t be done without a pounding beat and nihilistic guitar ringing through my ears, blocking out all sounds and driving me onwards.

I needed that. I needed an angry, pissed of vocalist to become my own personal heavy metal drill sergeant and yell down my ear hole words which, whatever they might have actually been, seemed to cry out ‘Oi! You! Keep running! You’ve gotta prove to everybody that you can run this marthon! You WILL prove to everybody you can do it. Now stop slacking and MOVE IT!’

I’d tried different bands to find this perfect mix of pumping beats and motivating screeches.  German group Rammstein had served me well l for my first few runs, Metallica, despite being one of my favourite bands of all time, just didn’t quite cut it, and an eclectic playlist mixing Nine Inch Nails, Rob Zombie, Pantera and Machine Head, whilst fun to listen to, just didn’t quite provide the drive I needed.

To be perfectly truthful, I didn’t really think I’d find what I was looking for in politically-savy rap metal outfit Rage.., but I saw no harm in giving them a shot.

And so I did, and I found everything I was looking for. Their rhythm and tempo seemed to match my running pace perfectly, often inspiring me to push it that little bit further, and even if the vocalist was really urging me to rise up and give the middle finger to The Man, all I heard was that much-needed drill sergeant willing me on.

Ever since then, I’ve stopped looking for other bands to accompany me on my run. Rage have done it every time for me since, and ever since my training has only continued to improve.

Bring on this marathon, I’m more than ready for it!

There are three months and two days until the 2012 Virgin London Marathon and I am £1,345 away from my goal of raising £1,500 for Terrence Higgins Trust. Please consider donating anything you can to help at http://virginmoneygiving.com/chrisskoyles - your support is greatly appreciated. 

“Giggin’ for Higgins”

“I try to use my music to move these people to act”
- Jimi Hendrix

Music is a beautiful thing, a powerful thing. It also happens to be the one thing I know more about than probably anything else.

I’ve already talked about how it was my love of music that, in a roundabout sort of way, turned me onto the idea of running a marathon in the first place, and so, with the knee currently out of action, I thought I’d tell you about how I’ve used music to help with my fundraising effort for Terrence Higgins Trust.

It should be a given that, above and beyond my own personal goal to complete this marathon, what’s really important here is that we generate some much-needed funds, and raise awareness, to support the work done by the great team at THT.

That’s why, last weekend, I promoted Giggin’ for Higgins, an all-day music marathon featuring eleven of the hottest up ‘n’ coming bands I could find, with every penny going towards my fundraising total.

I’ve organised gigs, some very big gigs, some quite small ones, for a number of years now, and was thrilled to be able to put those skills towards something positive by putting on this fundraiser.

I won’t deny it, it was a very long day, these things always are, but it was worth every single moment of it.

From the second opening act Skive took to the stage for their short acoustic set to the closing chords of reggae stars Jeramiah Ferrari’s headline set, myself and my small team (Colour Me Blind’s Danny on sound engineering duties with band mates Stew and Sam manning the stage) worked hard to pull off one of the best events I’ve managed in a long time, if only in terms of how fun it was.

We had a solid line-up featuring some of the best bands currently doing their thing in our local music scene.

Alongside Skive and Jeramiah, my good friend Olly Squires, 80s-style rockers Smitten Kitten and St. Helens’ indie rock giants Titors Insignia added to a double-helping of acoustic pop from Rescue the Eskimo and In Blue Skies, some sweet-sounding covers from Cautious Retreat and Colour Me Blind, along with the debut performance from Little Sister and a storming show-stealer from one of the best young bands around in Junction 23.

Between them, the bands helped raise around £300 for Terrence Higgins Trust, a great achievement in itself given that the event was two weeks after most people maxed their credit cards out over Christmas.

An even bigger achievement though, for me personally, was simply raising awareness about THT and the work they do.

‘So why are you doing this?’
‘What, you’re running a marathon?’
‘For an AIDS charity?’
‘But, why?’

Questions like that came at me often throughout the day, and it was great to stop and talk to people about HIV, the work being done by them with people living with HIV, and what we can all do to support them.

And that, more than any amount of running or rock and roll, is what’s really important here.

*As a side note, there’s a full transcript of an interview I did with our local paper about the gig featured on my other blog.

There are three months and four days until the 2012 Virgin London Marathon and I am £1,345 away from my goal of raising £1,500 for Terrence Higgins Trust. Please consider donating anything you can to help at http://virginmoneygiving.com/chrisskoyles - your support is greatly appreciated. 

On my knees…

If I could change on thing about myself, I would: Have better knees. Mine are shot because of injuries. You’re only as good as your legs.
- William Petersen

It probably goes without saying that if you’re planning to run any length at all, it helps to have legs that are at least in some kind of working order.

Unfortunately, mine never have been. Not since I was a kid anyway.

A youth spent falling off skateboards and getting the snot kicked out of me in rugby left me with less-than-perfect pins, not to mention a left knee joint that feels as though it’s held together by slowly-setting jelly.

Even long after I gave up sports as a bad idea, the knee never healed and would literally ‘go out from under me without a moment’s notice.’

Often times I wouldn’t even be doing anything particularly strenuous; a casual stroll down the street could suddenly find me screaming like a five year-old girl and cursing like a sailor as I hear that initial pop of the kneecap and topple to the ground like the proverbial sack of spuds.

It hurts like hell, but more it’s the shock of suddenly not having use of both my legs that causes such a over-the-top reaction, and I’ve actually taken to warning anybody I spend any amount of time with that should they suddenly see me fall over and cry out like I just got shot in the balls, not to panic.

‘It’s just my knee.’ I explain, ‘usually it pops back into place as I’m heading floorwards. Just stay calm, help me up and let me lie down for a couple of hours with an ice pack.’

This is usually followed with a grave look and a somber tone in my voice as I add:

‘It’s when the knee locks and *doesn’t* fall back in place that we have a problem.’

When that happens, my options are either to push the thing back in by myself, or have somebody call an ambulance so a paramedic can do it for me. Out of the two, I always prefer the former; the latter usually results in the paramedic needing to cut my jeans open, and I am quite fond of my jeans.

So yeah, my left knee is pretty much ruined, and over the years I’ve learned to reduce some of the pressure on it by over-compensating with my right leg whenever I move around.

This, of course, has led to that leg suffering its own problems. Nothing as serious, just annoying aches which sometimes make even walking a bit uncomfortable, but enough to ensure that whenever somebody asks me how my bad knee is doing, I can joke and ask them which one.

So you can imagine, as December turned to January and my marathon training went up a gear, clocking more and more miles by the day, I wasn’t too concerned by a few aches and pains around the knees.

These are my knees remember? They hurt. That’s what they do.

And so onwards I would plod, day after day, mile after mile. The knees would hurt, I’d stretch them out, rest up with ice and get back out there.

More miles. More pain. More ice. More miles more…ow, that really bloody hurts.

I remember one particularly bad run, or should I say, one run that turned particularly bad.

It should have been a nice easy workout; a couple of slow miles up to the nearest town and back, a warm-up to a longer, much more challenging jaunt later in the week.

Things started well.

Rage Against the Machine were driving me a long with a thick beat and a heavy rhythm, the pain began to slowly sink into my knees and I kept on going, hoping the pain would dissolve much like it had bee doing on the last couple of runs.

It didn’t. Instead it throbbed, it tore up my bones and spat them down my shins in disgust, it ripped into my muscles and scorched the flesh and..

OK, it didn’t…but it did hurt more than my knees have hurt for many years.

Dejected, I limped back home and turned to my old friend Google for some help.

I wasn’t looking to find out what was wrong, partly because I assumed it was simply my knackered old knees having a tantrum, but mostly because I’ve long felt that searching the Internet for a medical diagnosis makes hypochondriacs of us all.

More, I was looking for some advice on what to do to get rid of the pain, or at least make running more comfortable.

Instead, I found something known as ‘Runner’s Knee.’

For the unitiated or simply curious, I’ll leave most of the explanation of Runner’s Knee to this post from Runner’s World (http://www.runnersworld.co.uk/beating-injury/bodyworks-runners-knee/229.html) . To be honest, even though the description matches the sort of pain I was feeling, I was still more convinced that the pain was due to my previous troubles than anything else.

Still, I tried some of the self-healing techniques I’d found online hoping they’d cure whatever the problem was.

Some sites suggested taking a break from running, even for a few days. I knew I couldn’t afford do that.

The London Marathon is getting closer and closer, and despite my training going better than I could have imagined, I’m still a long way off the level I’d like to be at come April 22nd.

I iced, I stretched, I tried everything else, but the running was becoming increasingly intolerable.

There was no choice, it was off to the doctors.

My GP was as useless as ever, and despite my insistence that I couldn’t stop running, told me that really it was the only option I have.

And so it is that, for no longer than a week, the running shoes will remain in doors.

Gutted? Yes, but I have to remember that this is a marathon, I’ll have quite a considerable distance to run, and to do so I’m going to need legs that are at least in some sort of working order.

If that means missing a few training runs, then sadly, that’s what I’ll have to do.

There are three months and nine days until the 2012 Virgin London Marathon and I am £1,345 away from my goal of raising £1,500 for Terrence Higgins Trust. Please consider donating anything you can to help at http://virginmoneygiving.com/chrisskoyles - your support is greatly appreciated. 

The One Hour Mark: A load off my mind

 

To keep the body in good health is a duty… otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear.
- Buddha

It’s wonderful isn’t it, how the brain can sometimes remove itself from the body?

I don’t necessarily mean in any kind of New Age spiritual way, more the way that your mind can completely wonder off course into all manner of thoughts whilst your body stays firmly committed to the task at hand without putting you in any great danger.

I realised this myself back in December when I completed my first big Marathon Goal of running for one complete hour.

That might not sound like much to some people, but given that my disastrous first eight minute run was such a trauma for me, keeping it going for a solid hour seemed like a good goal to aim for.

After that, things started to get a little better, and when I eliminated alcohol from my life, things got better still.

Within a week, that eight minutes became twenty, a week later I was hitting thirty. Things were going well, those little improvements were really starting to add up.

There was still one problem though, even though I didn’t quite realise it at the time; I was always very conscious of the fact that I was running.

Every splash of cold water against the back of my throat stayed on my mind, every footstep pounded against my brain, every corner I turned lingered in my thoughts for many moments after it was long out of sight.

My inner-monologue at once acknowledged the difficulty of the challenge ahead and encouraged me to keep going as the entire run turned into a taxing work out for the mind as well as the body.

Then, something happened that wasn’t quite what I’d expected.

It was during what I’d assumed would be a standard run; push on, one step at a time, one foot in front of the other, one lingering thought, one inner word of encouragement after the other, turn that half an hour I’d been doing for the last couple of days into forty and call that a success.

No matter how much those footsteps pattered against my brain or those heavy breaths blew against my mind, I was going to push on, hit forty minutes. I’d be ready to nail that one hour mark next week if I could just reach forty today.

And so I set off, and things began pretty much as they always did.

Feet hit the ground and off I went, running through some kind of self-diagnosis in my mind.

OK, legs a little stiff today, they’ll be fine…. Heart and chest feel fine…. Is that a stitch already? Meh, that’ll soon pass..

On it went.

… OK, body’s fine, where am I going?.. Reckon I get to that church? Why not?

And then

..Hmm, seem to running in time to the beat of this song…What is this? Rage Against the Machine…Remember when I saw them live at T in the Park? That was a good gig…gigs,…that gig I’m organising is coming up soon….what’s left to do?

And so on, until all of a sudden, my mind was a million miles away from the task at hand.

I thought about work, I thought Stace, I thought about anything other running.

My body was on autopilot, my mind was enjoying a much-needed moment of clarity to sort out all the many jumbled thoughts going on up there until I spotted a familiar sight; my own house.

Man, how did I get back here?

I looked at the stopwatch, fifty eight minutes.

Somehow, I’d been running for the best part of an hour without really being conscious of what I was doing.

I pushed on, past the house, down to the bus stop, turn round and back again until I hit that one hour mark dead on.

Ever since then I’ve found my running has dramatically improved. Though I’m still listening to my body, checking everything’s in order and that I’m not likely to damage myself, but I’m quite happy to admit that for the bulk of most runs, I switch off and let my mind deal with other things.

Now, what began as an incredibly taxing challenge for the mind and body has become a wonderful way to distress and think clearly about life’s bigger challenges.

There are three months and three days until the 2012 Virgin London Marathon and I am £1,125 away from my goal of raising £1500 for Terrence Higgins Trust. Every penny we raise goes to reducing the spread of HIV in the UK and supporting people living with HIV. If there’s anything at all you can give it would be very much appreciated.

Donate online at http://virginmoneygiving.com/chrisskoyles 

On the Wagon

“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.”
Maria Robinson

With just over three months to go until the 2012 Virgin London Marathon, I’ve been cranking up the training regime over the last few weeks and working harder than ever before.

With an old friend in 2009

Thankfully, I’ve come a long way since that disastrous first run back in October (though it may have been September, I forget).

As the weeks went by, eight agonising minutes turned to sixteen slightly-less-agonising minutes to a somewhat-testing-yet-still-manageable half an hour and beyond.

Improving my endurance a little each week was, and continues to be, hard work, but it hasn’t been the hardest part of this marathon challenge.

No, that honour goes to the complete change in lifestyle I’ve found necessary to get anywhere close to the levels of fitness needed to run this marathon.

As I mention on my About page, I was never the most healthy or physically active chap before that confirmation letter from Terrence Higgins Trust dropped through my letterbox.

20 Richmond Superkings, Jack Daniels whiskey and a big, fat donner kebab drowning in chilli sauce have been at once both my closest allies and biggest enemies for as long as I care to remember.

That’s not to mention a growing dependency on coffee to get me through even the easiest of days and that most alluring of mistresses, the Huge Bar of Chocolate, always managing to tempt me with her sweet, sugary embrace.

I don’t mean to suggest that I’ve lead a completely sedentary, slobbish lifestyle over the years; I’ve always at least been conscious to try and get some healthy food into my body and walk everywhere as much as possible as a way of getting exercise.

Hell, it hasn’t been unknown for me to suddenly start grappling with the cross-trainer my ex-wife bought many years ago or to lift the occasional dumbbell for a few weeks before deciding that I really couldn’t be doing with that sort of thing.

But even with that in mind, in a list of my priorities, taking proper care of my own health and well-being used to rank somewhere on a level with taking that book I borrowed in 1998 back to the library; probably should get round to doing this but not right now, I gots stuff to do.

So when it came time to start training for a marathon, changes had to be made.

Of course, the training itself did make things a little easier as I found that, the more I ran, the less I wanted to consume a bunch of junk. As the miles piled up and the pounds slowly dropped off, my body cried out for better fuel.

Naturally, I had to give it what it wanted.

First to go was the booze.

I’m not trying to suggest I was an alcoholic, or even a particularly heavy drinker, but I suspect like many people, if an opportunity to go to a pub, club or gig with friends presented itself, I was hardly the model of restraint when it came to my round at the bar.

Even then, I knew drinking wasn’t the most enjoyable past times out there.Worse than the physical effects of a hangover, there was always this underlying sense of guilt, shame and self-loathing that came the morning after the night before, even when I’d had a perfectly pleasant evening with nothing untoward happening at all.

To be perfectly honest, I was glad to be getting rid of the stuff.

Slowly but surely I began to reduce my alcohol intake last year, and after one last hoorah on New Year’s Eve, I cut it from my life completely.

I realise it’s still early in 2012, but I feel good for having quit drinking altogether. actually feels good to go celebrate a friend’s birthday or watch a local band ply their trade, sip a couple of orange juices and wake up in the morning feeling healthy, alert and ready for a big run.

What’s more, one unexpected benefit of training for this marathon is that some bartenders take your request for a soft drink to mean that you’re the designated driver for the evening and supply your drink free of charge. I’m certainly not going to argue with that!

Cutting alcohol from my life was a big step towards making the lifestyle changes I need to complete this marathon successfully, and though I’ve been cutting a lot of the other stuff to, we can talk about that another time.

‘Til then, have a great weekend.

There are three months and eight days away from the 2012 Virgin London Marathon and I am £1,335 away from my goal of raising £1500 for Terrence Higgins Trust. Every penny we raise goes to reducing the spread of HIV in the UK and supporting people living with HIV. If there’s anything at all you can give it would be very much appreciated.

Donate online at http://virginmoneygiving.com/chrisskoyles

That First Run

The beginning is the most important part of the work.
Plato

The filthy black sky loomed large on that ice cold Autumn morning back in 2011.

Yanked violently from my slumber by a shrieking alarm, I paced around the house to the beat of my own optimism.

The world outside seemed dead, lifeless, but I felt more alive than I had in a long while.

Earlier that week, I’d sent off all the paperwork and officially accepted the challenge to run the 2012 Virgin London Marathon.

That was the easy bit, but now there was work to be done.

Even though I’d applied to run the marathon way back at the start of the year and thought about it often since, there was still a doubt in my mind; not that I wouldn’t be up to the challenge should it present itself, but that it would never present itself in the first place.

Alas, it had, and I was wonderfully underprepared.

Fashioning a makeshift running kit out of a pair of sweatpants, my least-battered looking trainers and a t-shirt, I limbered up with some all-important stretching, flicked on the MP3 player, set a stopwatch on my Blackberry and left the house.

My feet pounded the cold, uneven pavement before me as the sound of German heavy metal merchants Rammstein carried out a similar assault on my ear drums.

“Du!”

This didn’t seem so bad. One foot in front of the other, one small step at a time.

“Du Hast!”

The end of my street approached and then passed by me, a middle-aged woman in a heavy coat shuffled towards the bus stop. The beating of my heart became heavier, harder.

“Du hast mich!”

My lungs throbbed in my chest, pushing out a sharp air which scratched against my throat before squeezing through panting lips.

“Du hast mich gefragt!”

Got to keep going. One foot in front of the other. Push on, push forward. My legs ached, my head brain swirled inside my skull. Keep going, almost back home now.

“Du hast mich gefragt und ich hab nichts gesagt!” *

There it was; the finish, my house.

I heaved through the garden gate and collapsed through the front door, staggering slowly into the house as my chest heaved with heavy breath and a heart which beat as hard and heavy as the thumping music in my ears.

I’d done it.

That was my first run over with.

My heart and lungs seemed ready to burst out of my chest like that weird little creature in the Alien film, but my mind felt good.

I’d run hard, and I must have for quite a long time, right? After all, why would I be so exhausted?

Moving over to the table where my phone lay idle, I hit the big “stop” button on stopwatch.

My eyes widened. I stared, just for a moment, at the time on the screen.

Eight minutes, 24 seconds.

Uh oh. That wasn’t good.

If I was ever going to complete this marathon in April I’d have to work even harder than I thought, but at least I’d taken the first small step, at least I’d begun, and beginning is the most important part of the work.

*Random German taken from the song ‘Du Hast’ by Rammstein

There are three months and eleven days until the 2012 Virgin London Marathon and I am £1,345 away from my goal of raising £1,500 for Terrence Higgins Trust. Please consider donating anything you can to help at http://virginmoneygiving.com/chrisskoyles - your support is greatly appreciated. 

Basically, I’ll just put one foot in front of the other

“There are no great people in this world, only great challenges which ordinary people are forced to meet.”
Admiral William Frederick Halsy, Jr.

For those of you who know nothing about me, please allow me to introduce you to a very important person in my life:

Her name is Stacy.

Stacy is my best friend, my soul mate and my most valued source of never-ending encouragement and unwavering support in all that I do.

Yet when I told her I’d signed up to tackle the 2012 Virgin London Marathon, her face softened and a deep look of concern drifted before her gorgeous green eyes.

“You don’t have to do this, you know.” she said.

“I know,” I replied. “But I want to.”

Elsewhere, the reaction wasn’t too dissimilar.

My parents’ first words when I told them the news?

“How on earth do you plan to run a marathon?”

“Basically, I plan to put one foot in front of the other for a while until I reach the finish line,”  I told them, only half joking.

“So you sure you’re not just gonna say you’ll do it and then not bother?” asked my oldest, dearest friend Dave.

“No Dave, because that would just be silly.”

Though it may sound like those closest to me aren’t exactly supportive of my marathon mission, that isn’t exactly true.

If I told Stace I wanted to climb a ladder to the moon, not only would she be right behind me, but she’d probably be on the phone to her local hardware store trying to find me a ladder big enough, and since I convinced her I was deadly serious about this challenge, she’s been nothing but her usual awesome ever-encouraging self.

My parents have been as supportive as they can be and are paying a keen interest in my early training efforts, and Dave also wishes me the best of luck, even though he’s still not entirely convinced I’ll cross the finish line.

No, the reason those first reactions to my news were not exactly what you might expect is simply this:

The guy they know isn’t the sort of guy who goes off running marathons.

He’s the sort of person who, until he decided to run a marathon, would rather spend his disposable income on cigarettes, Jack Daniels and take-away pizzas than running shoes and gym memberships. The sort of person who badly injured his back in 2008 and has suffered the kind of crippling back pain that makes it difficult to walk some mornings.

The sort of person who’s knees are prone to blowing out from under him on a whim, the result of too much rough play as a young lad. The sort of person who wouldn’t even run for a bus if he could help it.

Yet if you asked them truthfully, I’d like to think that Stace, mum, Dad and Dave would also tell you that the guy they know is the sort of guy who isn’t afraid of a little hard work if it means achieving something big and contributing to something as important of the work done by Terrence Higgins Trust.

They’d also tell you (because I’ll ask them to) to follow this blog closely over the next couple of months as I document my mission to meet the great challenge of running the 2012 Virgin London Marathon by simply putting one foot in front of the other for a while.

There are three months and thirteen days until the 2012 Virgin London Marathon and I am £1,425 away from my goal of raising £1,500 for Terrence Higgins Trust. Please consider donating anything you can to help at http://virginmoneygiving.com/chrisskoyles - your support is greatly appreciated.