The delights of being a father

I have spoken in the past of my delight at becoming a father for the first time, but I have so far held back from a regular blog or even just a small update.  The temptation to write a cliché filled “new dad” blog, full of stories of being pooed/puked/peed on (or all three) and suffering with sleep deprivation could be too much.  This has been done countless times.  But, becoming a parent is a unique and different experience for each person.  Ultimately, parents to be will always appreciate any helpful advice – I know we did.

Rhys is now coming up to 7 months old and after appearing 5 weeks earlier than planned, he is showing no signs of being a premature baby.  In fact he probably looks a bit older than his age!  A gardener doing work for my in-laws commented that his dad must be a rugby player.  That’s his five foot six inch, nine and a half stone dad.  I would be torn apart if I attempted a game of rugby.  So must be something he has got from his mummy.  I gave him my looks - the poor little thing.

With this size, comes a large appetite.  He definitely doesn’t have a problem eating and is now enjoying solids.  As parents, the wife and I have agreed to a healthy and less lazy option.  He doesn’t have baby food jars, we cook meat and veg and are trying to instil a healthy lifestyle in him.  In fact, when we were in Manchester for the marathon, we gave in and used jars as we couldn’t cook fresh food for him and won’t trust restaurants to leave added salt and sugar out.  Problem was, Rhys has become used to good fresh food, and actually turned his nose up at the goo we tried to feed him.

What shocks me is that there are parents out there who don’t care what they feed their babies.  Laziness takes over, which is pointless as we just cook a little extra for Rhys when cooking our own food (remembering to leave out salt when boiling pasta, rice and veg). I know of one parent who, in the last couple of weeks, has fed their 11 month old baby a MacDonalds and a Chinese take away!  Now I know being a runner I can be a bit “over the top” with eating healthily but common sense tells you that isn’t good for a baby.

Now, what I am about to write, we make us instantly hated by a lot of other parents.  Rhys sleeps through, and rarely wakes up.  I know, it’s just not fair.  He usually settles down about half seven and won’t wake us up till around half six in the morning, when I am just going out for a morning run.  Occasionally, if he is suffering with a cold, he will wake up in the middle of the night and come in with us, but this is very rare.  And he doesn’t scream or cry, just baby talks - which is very cute, just not so much at four in the morning!

My favourite moments are when I come home from work, or from a run and his face lights up. He smiles at me and holds his arms out for a cuddle from daddy.  Of course, the flip side is when I leave for work and he looks quite sad to see me leave.  At that age he can’t even begin to comprehend the importance of working to feed and keep a roof over our heads.  But as other dads will testify, it still makes it very difficult.

Now though, it is all about movement and exploration.  He can roll on to his tummy and has started to try and crawl.  To be honest, he hasn’t quite grasped the art of crawling as he uses his head and not his arms to drag himself along.  But he doesn’t get upset, so we leave him to develop the skill himself.  Until frustration gets the better of him and he has a small temper tantrum.

Being a dad is a very rewarding experience.  It is a challenge trying to juggle work, running, writing and being a husband.  But I have the greatest wife, who makes it work for us.  Though I always have time for my little “baba”, which is why I will be posting this blog with nothing more than a quick glance, so I can go and feed him!

The Greater Manchester Marathon

Last weekend saw the culmination of two stories of blood, sweat and hard work.  One personal, and the other from the wonderful, over the top pantomime like entertainment that is WWE wrestling, which I will talk about in a later blog.

My story is one that in some ways was 20 years in the making.  As I finished the Greater Manchester Marathon in a time of 3 Hours 4 minutes 22 seconds, and in doing so recorded a, to be confirmed, “good for age” marathon time for London, it was as much a victory for me as it was the 14 year old me, who was unfit, physically lazy, picked last for sports at school and couldn’t run more than 50 meters without dying of exhaustion. 

Even after completing a fair number of triathlons since taking up the sport in 2009, including the toughest of them all, Ironman, I see this as the greatest sporting achievement.  A triathlon friend of mine once pondered, what is more difficult – the marathon at the end of an Ironman or a standalone, ran as hard as possible, marathon?  I tend to say the standalone is harder. 

An Ironman marathon is pure survival and you run it at a gentle pace.  You are only concerned with finishing (unless racing).  Whereas with a standalone marathon its all about time (quick disclaimer, I appreciate most marathon runners only care about finishing and not what time they finish as they run to raise money for a charity or to just do a marathon, but this is aimed more at “racers”).

Last September I ran my first standalone marathon in Wolverhampton in a time of just under 3 hours 26 minutes.  I was pleased, but felt I could get faster with some good training.  I targeted a sub 3:10 at Manchester and trained for it, running 50-60 miles per week, all at varying intensities.  But 4 weeks ago, during the Ashby20 mile race, I realised I could go faster after running at marathon pace, but discovered I went faster very comfortably.   Having figured I would need a year to get to GFA (good for age) pace, I had a decision to make – stick to the original plan or take a gamble.  I went with the gamble thinking to myself you only live once!

The race strategy was simple; run at 7 minute per mile pace for as long as possible, and see how long I can hold on.  This is not the correct way of pacing a marathon.  You should hold back a little, run comfortably, and then if you can, increase the pace at the 20mile mark where the race starts.  However, I know from experience, a set pace is going to be ok after one mile if I am feeling comfortably and not working hard.  This was very true at the marathon so I carried on running at that pace. 

At the halfway point I was starting to tire a little, but physically felt ok.  I think my baby boy waking us up at 4:30am may have been the reason for this!  I even posted a PB for a half marathon.

It was mile 22 where it started to get hard; it is a running cliché, depending on who you talk to, but the marathon either doesn’t start until mile 20 or is only halfway at mile 20.  I was fine at that point, still running around 7 minutes per mile, then mile 22 hit and the last 4 miles suddenly became absolute torture.  Perhaps my pace had been just a tad too hard, maybe my inexperience at the marathon came into play (this was my second standalone and third in total) or maybe it is always hard at mile 22! 

I had to dig deep, I had to work very hard and I could only really afford to drop to 7:20 to 7:30 min per mile pace to get the GFA time.  I was over taking a lot of people, so the drop in pace wasn’t as bad as I thought – in fact I believe taking over people so easily had a adverse effect on me as I wasn’t “racing” anybody to keep my pace up.

The last half mile was unbearable but having seen my family and then having complete strangers cheer me on, I managed to drag my sorry ass to the finish seeing the time on the line and knowing I had done it.  Echoing my favourite wrestler Daniel Bryan, I side stepped to the finish line, arms pointing skywards, shouting YES repeatedly.

This would mirror Wrestlemania in the early hours of the following morning when the very same Daniel Bryan achieved his goals (in both storyline terms and probably real life terms too).

Post race I was knackered.  I had left everything on the course.  I could hardly walk and felt sick.  Racing a marathon is very demanding, both physically and mentally.

In fact 5 days later, I have a cold.  Undoubtedly due to having a weakened immune system but I am also thinking about the future. 

My time is good enough to get an automatic entry to next years London Marathon in their “good for age” entry system.  However, last year they changed the entry time from 3:10 to 3:05 after Manchester meaning a fair number of people missed out.  So hopefully they don’t do that a second year running!

I am planning to run the Robin Hood marathon in Nottingham in September, with the aim at present to pace it better and get another marathon under my belt.  I am tempted to go for a sub 3 hour time, but we will see.  I have a fair number of shorter races with my club this summer which should help get me faster.

But for now, it’s all about recovery.  And rest, plenty of rest.

changes....

Writing has seemingly taken a back burner these past few months.  Becoming a father, changing jobs and training for the Greater Manchester Marathon have all been a factor – but ultimately I feel I lost my mojo a little.  I don’t think it was recent knockbacks, more a case being not really sure where I wanted my writing to take me anymore. 

This blog has always been focussed on science fiction writing due to this being the genre I wanted to write.  But I have started to wonder if I am actually suited to it.  I always feel forced when writing science fiction which is not a good thing.  At first I thought it was that I started writing for all the wrong reasons.  Being unhappy in my last job pushed me into writing.  I had always wanted to write, but being unhappy in a job meant I probably saw writing as my “meal ticket” out of a boring, stressful job, instead of writing for enjoyment and seeing how it went.  But now in the new job, which is less stressful and more enjoyable my writing cut back. 

However, I fell upon an article.  I can’t remember where I read it and how I discovered it.  Twitter or a writing magazine I assume.  I will even be honest and admit I only half read it and it was only digested a few days later.  The gist was simply saying that if you are stuck in a rut, maybe a change of genre or market is the answer.  Bingo.  Or Eureka.  It came to me; maybe science fiction isn’t for me after all.  So I started thinking of other genres to try like horror, mainstream or contemporary? 

I had read some Stephen King in the last year or two and used to love Nick Hornby.  I know they are two very different writers, but also two authors not writing science fiction (well in Stephen Kings case, not SF in the classic sense as some of his stories may have SF in them). 

So I started to experiment a little.  There is a competition in the latest SFX magazine where you enter a 1500 word zombie short story and I wrote a first draft in an hour or two.  It wasn’t great, but it seemed easier and more natural to write.  A rewrite has brought about a short story I’m rather pleased with.  It is raw and needs tidying up, but it isn’t far from being a finished story and one I am happy to send in.

Last weekend, I sat and simply wrote what would be the opening chapter to a novel.  No planning, just an opening scene to an idea I have had for a while now.  I again felt a natural flow to my writing.  It was again more horror based with a brutal scene.  I’ve kind of worried myself that I have a bit of a sick mind to come up with this scene, but maybe that is a good thing, my imagination is better suited to that than a future history or SF in general.  But it has potential and when reading it back last night, it doesn’t need much of a rewrite – which I was very pleased with.  I need to plan a novel before I actually carry on writing it, but as an experiment it worked.

Finally, I also got round to carrying on with the writer bureau course.  I will admit that I am finding non fiction tedious and in hindsight should have done the fiction first, but felt non fiction would be easier to get published.  With some help from a Triathlete buddy of mine, I have done a first draft and a rewrite.  Its almost there, but the by having lots of projects I can keep writing regularly – whist I give is a day or two before checking, I can work on something else.

I feel now, my writing mojo is back and I’m doing it for the “write” reasons (sorry, poor pun!) – For enjoyment.