NORTHERN PLANNER

Mark Foster will be swimming at the Olympics at the grand old age of 38. As someone beginning to grudgingly give in to the gradual, inexorable decline of his body, I find this inspiring. Not least his assertion that you should stick to what you’re best at.

On the other hand, this is an article about running a 100k race. Profound in many ways, it suggests that the author only had so much running in him. This kind of thing always makes me wonder, is this the case for all of us? And how much is this psychological v physical.

Thinking about creative people, there seems to be a pattern where they burn brightly for a period, before going into a gradual decline- still brilliant but never matching the heights of their pomp.

As far as the physical stuff goes for me, I bitterly regret the things I’ll never know about. The cartilage in my left hip has worn away, so I can’t run for more than twenty minutes these days. I’ll never know how a marathon feels, how I could handle an iron man triathlon,  I can’t even find out if I can beat my 10K best time. This means sticking to swimming, tennis and cycling, which isn’t too bad I suppose. I’m thinking of trying some cycling challenges next year, 50 mile races or something.