David Aaronovitch - Times Online - WBLG

On not running

As the London marathon runners set off this morning from Greenwich in the unhelpful heat, I was walking the dog on Hampstead Heath. 26 miles is a slightly silly distance and you shouldn't do it unless you're really fit. I wasn't, as became obvious to me about six weeks ago. So I flunked. I hope to try again next year, but I do feel a bit jealous of the 36,000 men and women, who even now are strung out between Woolwich and Tower Bridge. 

Aaronovitch yiddos (Jewish Chronicle)

Somewhere I still have the programme: blue and white with black print, 1974/75 season, Division One, Tottenham Hotspur versus Coventry City, my first Yiddos home match. At which someone may now demand, in a voice like thunder, “Your first WHAT?”

There are some things that you never quite get round to asking: did your mum and dad have a satisfying love life, how is it possible that my socks never come back out of the wash in pairs, and why did my fellow fans, among all those other arcane customs and tribal chants, ever begin to call themselves “Yids”? Why, even in those Donny Osmond days — I didn’t try to find out from my fellow standers along the half-way line — would there be an Israeli flag flying among the cockerels and the Union Jacks?

We were some of the first fans to be fully anti-racist. The National Front soon gave up trying to leaflet around White Hart Lane, and I never once heard the monkey sounds being made by Spurs fans. Even “black bastard” soon died out as an item of abuse, deterred by the reactions of the supporters all around. Yet we called ourselves Yiddos, chanted “Yid Army” (which meant us) and had a man bang a drum, bom bom bom-bom-bom bom and then — like the Zulu army in the movie — we’d go, “Yids!” In fact, we still do. I say “we”, but now my daughter Rosa, a fanatical Yiddo at 16, does most of the chanting for me.

4 hours 24, and I can hardly move.

I'll be writing about the marathon for the Times health section (Body and Soul) to be published on Saturday, so more then. In the meantime a very big thanks to those of you, not always fans of my views, who sponsored me and who'll be helping the Anthony Nolan Trust. I promise to do the same for you. 

PS. Norm posts that I was seen, looking knackered but running, at St Georges Shadwell (incidentally, not yards from where my dad was born). I was indeed bit knackered there, at about the 22 mile mark. I was even more knackered a mile later, and a mile after that. Sorry for not returning the salutations. Oh, I dug deep.

Decrocked

It was wonderful running on the Heath this morning. One those early days when everything is half shade and half sunlight, and frost in the ruts. I found myself thinking about Linda Smith, who I knew, and who died this week at the age of 48. She was as lovely in private as she was warm in public.

The entry below...

Appeared in The Times today, but was written 10 days ago. Since then I have got the distance up to a half-marathon. But more advice is needed, after some brilliant ideas for running music. I have two pairs of specially commissioned running shoes, which have an extra rise in the inside insteps to take care of my pronation. They had begun to blister my instep, but the long run took the skin off about six inches of white, pristine foot. Otherwise the shoes are great (you know, except for the blood, pain and spectacular UGHs from the family on removal of socks). Any podiatrists out there, or people who have had the same problem? Should I persevere, let things toughen up - or chuck 'em?

Change one thing: running the marathon

It was like one of those parents who, instead of telling expectant friends about the joys of child-rearing, takes them through the sleep deprived early months, the sore nipples and the unfeasible expense. My colleague, a former marathoneer who once ran the thing faster than an Ethiopian on speed, explained to me that the second half of the run wasn’t so much hard, as mind-destroyingly appalling. “And the slower you run it,” he added, looking me up and down, “the worse it is”.

Running music

The trouble with preparing for the marathon is that the long training runs can be extraordinarily boring as well as tiring. So I bought myself an I-pod nano and started to put together a running list. After the Stones and Iggy Pop and The Doors were downloaded I realised that I had practically nothing from the modern era (i.e. post 1985).

Any suggestions? Do you run yourself and have any music that keeps those legs moving?