Terrence Oblong's blog

Running season is here, the parks and public pathways are beginning to fill with the wannabe-fit, time for me to slip on my running blog slippers, park myself in front of the computer with a nice hot cup of Sunday afternoon tea, and get writing. I’ve been running throughout the winter, of course. I always run, I have a ‘have legs – will travel’ mentality, and have been running at least once a week for thirty years now. But there’s not much to...

Over the past two weeks I’ve been writing a series of short stories about running, six so far with another idea scribbled down in my notepad. I don’t know whether it’s because I’ve had to dig deep to find so many stories on the same theme, or simply because of the special relationship I have with running, but the inspiration for many of the stories comes from way back. My story about a presidential guard charged with protecting him during his...

I didn’t go for a run over the rest of the bank holiday, as I developed a cold. I am, let me repeat, a fair weather runner. Though I’ve run pretty regularly my entire adult life, but I do not run if it’s raining, in the snow, in the ice, or if I have a cold. My running is affected before I’ve any idea I’ve a cold coming on, it’s the first symptom. As you can see from my previous blog, I found the run a struggle, I was stiff, uncomfortable and my...

A fortnight's break from running because of the snow. Mrs Oblong comments that I write about running more often than I do it. Whilst this is true (a couple of running-based short stories this week) it's not exactly fair. My body is stiff and the wind is icy cold, I struggle to find the inspiration and can't get beyond a slow trudge. I feel my age. Not just the body feeling crap and frail, but some unstoppable part of my brain wants to complain...

Okay, this is a possibly the most boring idea for a blog ever. This is my running blog. And, just to be clear, I’m not one of those runners who does exciting things like triathlons and marathons all around the globe, across deserts, over oceans, through mountains. No, all I do is toddle down to the river and back a couple of times a week. Today I did my bog-standard winter run of 6k. My minimum distance used to be 4k, but that got me from my...