Marathon: Ouch!

My blog gets encumbered with my occasional running notes, because I haven't got a better place to put them yet!

Today I ran the Portland (Dorset) coastal trail marathon (http://www.endurancelife.com). This means lots of steep climbing and descending - some bits quite technical and tricky - and on the exposed coast mostly. This was my 2nd marathon (the first was a road marathon in 2007). Great day, lots of fun, especially so because lots of family were there too. It didn't start so well; I woke coughing at 4.49a.m., and when I eventually turned on the light to get up I found there was a power cut which also meant there was no heating - Brrrr! The briefing took a long time and I had to queue for the toilet, which also meant I set off having done no stretches and was beginning to feel as if my cold had spread out of nose/throat into my head at large. But on the plus side, the weather was basically perfect for January: mild, no rain and as little wind as you can get when running on the channel coast. My Runner's Knee from 5 weeks ago (the last run of more than 7 miles) did not make an appearance, and the trail running kit all worked really well.

After coming off Chesil Beach

The first mile includes a 500ft climb. Not too long later there's one so steep that I did it hands-and-knees when coming up the second time. The course is the half-marathon course done twice, each of which is basically a lap of the "Island" of Portland in Dorset (including round Portland Bill at the tip), and then 1.5 miles on Chesil Beach. 200 entrants. Chesil Beach is excrutiating - it's large pebbles which give way under foot; very heavy going, and murder for your quads. After coming round the first time (2 hrs 15 mins), I thought I had bitten off too much by not entering the half marathon. But gratifyingly those around me were now slowing down too. After the first 3 miles of settling down, I was overtaking someone each mile or so - but from half-way someone was overtaking me about every 400 metres until I stopped the rot!

When 20 miles came I felt pretty finished; this is at Portland Bill and precedes 4 miles of climbing, the first of which is steep. It was refreshing to see so many beefy looking men reduced to staggering - it wasn't just me the first-timer! Once I'd got up the first mile (and through the mud-bath-like bits of the next section where running seemed pointless; as bad as Chesil Beach it was so sticky!), I resorted to running 0.2 miles and walking 0.1 in repetitions. Eventually I got up to running (well, jogging) continually again; then came Chesil Beach. Here, the method of 0.1 running/0.1 walking meant that nobody overtook me on the section, and I overtook about 5 or so; they were running less! One of my support party did comment that they had tried and it was really hard/painful work running on the beach, and that was without running 23 miles beforehand!

Chesil Beach - how your quads feel after this is indescribable... first time, 16 miles to go!

After that second encounter with the beach, there was only perhaps 0.5 miles towards Weymouth, then the turn around and about a mile back to the event HQ/finish line. Adrenaline and will-power (please please let me finish asap!) was enough to run this all the way. And eventually, the finish line:

About to finish

26.88 miles by my watch - the organisers do say that their courses can go over the 26.22 standard. All in all, it took me 5:06:33. I thought I might be near 4:30, but I had not appreciated just how gruelling such a marathon is. The results aren't out yet; this would have got me 66th last year though I'm not sure if there were 200 starters then like this year. The winner was in an awesome 3:27 - 7:42 minutes/mile is one thing on flat roads, but with huge climbs, twisty-turny technical sections and Chesil Beach it's pretty amazing.

Great day. I'm not sure I'd have entered if I'd known what a big step up it was from a road marathon, but as I finished it of course I'm really glad I did - a unique experience and fun to share with the family.

As you'd expect, marathon running is another of the great proofs of the reality of God. Ontological argument, teleological argument, marathological argument, 1 2 3. No species that could have evolved on a Darwinian basis would seek personal challenges to stretch himself, taking it on "because it's there". Running round in large circles has no point in itself. Neither is the ability to do such things of any particular value for surviving as the fittest - the couch potatoes live and breed just as much as the hill-runners. Trail marathoning is an activity exclusively for human beings made in God's image. And it was thrilling to enjoy his creation whilst doing so - especially seeing the vast ocean, the dark clouds and the intrusions of bright light through them. This was all in the first few miles, of course. After that my brain was not processing much more than "Mmmm, Lucozade." :-)

Anyone for a bit of Swastika?

In our part of Africa, the unusual is routine! Sometimes I think, "hmmm, let me take a photo of that, as my friends/family will never believe me if I don't." But then I think, "Not now... there'll be another one along tomorrow." Well, I got round to snapping one today, from the shelves of the supermarket... 


Anyone for a bit of Swastika-brand Sat-Isagbol? I'd be surprised if they sell this in the West. Let me know if you see it in Tesco. It's a fiber dietary supplement; yours for just 185 shillings.

(The Swastika was a symbol used in the East for many years before the Nazis commandeered it - it can be seen round here on lorries belonging to Indian-owned transport companies too).

Meet The Twin

A few times around Eldoret we've spotted our car's twin - same make and model from the same era, same colour scheme (resulting from its history as a pick-up later converted for passenger use). But yesterday we managed to park right next to it!

It's a beauty, or at least it is if you think 1970s Land Rovers are objects of beauty. I do, as long as it doesn't break down. Otherwise it's an "ARGH! JOLLY USELESS PIECE OF OLD JUNK! GAH!". Up until the point it gets fixed and I learn something new about the internals of cars which makes it all seem so simple, then we're friends again. Ours had a thorough overhaul a couple of months ago and has run smoothly since (apart from when the fuel pipe started leaking - again (again (again))).

I heard about the famous "Hummer", the gas-guzzling monster from GM. A quick few calculations show that... moving to a Hummer would improve our fuel economy (8mpg - count 'em! Though since the overhaul it looks like we're getting 20% more). In the new green religion, does this make us eco-heretics, or does keeping an old car on the road rather than junking it and spending all the resources on building and shipping new ones make one an eco-hero?

Nod to Stephen Dancer - this car was put together in Solihull (when you were beginning at primary school!) Reminds me of the work there every time I see the "Manufactured at..." plate. (It was then exported and sold in the French market, but this is getting to be a long story for another time... if you look carefully at the photo you'll see the "twin" is a right-hand drive, whereas ours is left-hand, so they're not quite so closely related...)

Linux to the rescue

If you go here you'll see that Stephen Dancer has been using his fancy Mac to improve his appearance.

So that the world's not fooled, and for those who've never met the good Doctor, I've performed a public service by using the power of Linux to restore the photo to its original appearance. Believe me, that super-nova above his right shoulder is really distracting when you're trying to listen to the fellow preach.

I Was Here...

Here's a couple of photos of the place I've been the last week or so. Here you can see some scattered buildings; grain stores, and in the top left a school and church:


A "shamba" - someone's agricultural plot:


Here's a tragic technology-dependent white man hunting hopefully for some spot of mobile signal said to exist if you stand in just the right spot whilst walking down the right hill:

To God Be The Glory!

The above picture is of 39 MP3 players. A few more were missing from the picture. Each was loaded with 160 sermons preached by English Baptist preacher Dr. Stuart Olyott - some of whose work you can find at http://www.knowyourbiblerecordings.org. Dr. Olyott kindly gave permission to copy these - around 7000 sermons in total!

An MP3 player was given to around 40 pastors. Many of these men live in remote areas, and rarely get the chance to hear anybody else's preaching than their own. They generally have good books, because they've been given those in past years. But it's one thing to have Calvin's Institutes on your shelf - it's another to actually translate that solid theology into something digestible by your fellow mud-hut dwellers. Stuart Olyott can help them here, because his sermons are models of presentational clarity in preaching the Reformed faith clearly, fully and directly. He doesn't have many applications suitable for people who look after goats all day, but you can't have everything. The truth is preached in these sermons with passion and power, and I've already received back many comments on their helpfulness.

One pastor with his MP3 player

Many of these pastors live without electricity, and we were able to give many of them a solar-powered charger too to keep the players running. I hope they'll be able to work out all the various leads and connectors!

We have wonderful opportunities now because of modern technology. The money for the players resulted from an informal e-mail appeal sent across the oceans. The players are Chinese and very cheap. Solar panel technology has also come down in price a lot in recent years. Pastors in the remotest places can now listen to dozens of sermons by a man they've never met - and their churches can be helped. Living today, we have an immense opportunity to do good in the furthest-flung places. One session this morning was on the importance of local churches helping each other. The MP3 players were an example of that - churches in foreign countries gave the money, and the Nairobi church was then able to help the rural churches in Kenya. Praise God for what he has made possible to bless his people today! We have an immense opportunity: which means an immense responsibility. The master who gave his servants the talents required something back from the; God who has given modern Christians such immense opportunities will also ask us what we did with them.

The pastors were here in Nairobi for an annual conference. Our preacher was Conrad Mbewe of Zambia - a very gifted preacher known in the UK because of conferences taken there. We were very blessed as he (and others) preached various messages concerning the local church.


The question for you, dear readers, to try and answer is: Why does this renowned Reformed Baptist preacher have 3 lit candles at the front of his pulpit, whilst the listening pastors look benignly on? Answers in the comments!

Reformation needed!

Today contained a first (look away now if squeamish) - I killed a chicken!

It wasn't personal, though it has been waking us up the last couple of weeks at 4 a.m. or so...

The two cockerels had grown to full size, so it was time to put them in the pot. The place that sold them to us falsely told us they were layers - of course you can't tell until they grow! I was shown how to do it with the first one, and did the second myself.

As I watched the "poor old" thing wriggling a bit (without its head!) whilst the life went from it, I confess I felt a bit guilty. Was that right? I don't think so. We're brought up in the West almost from birth to think of animals as if they were just like us. Darwinism tells us that they're our cousins, on the same tree of life, from whom we differ just by some lucky mutations. Cartoons and children's toys impress on us the ideas of cute talking creatures with emotions and feelings. The devotees of the Mother Nature goddess, in their guise of the animal rights lobby, are always in the media, encouraging us to sympathise for the poor wee things in their pains and sorrows in the same way as we do for humans.

Biblically, though, there's nothing to encourage this way of thinking. To be sure, wanton cruelty is the sign of a twisted mind that is far from pleasing God. But the Bible never betrays the slightest bit of sentimentality for cute little bunnies in the way that we do. There's a talking donkey in the Bible, but it was a real one and not a story-telling device. It's interesting to me that the Bible uses talking plants in a story, but not as far as I can remember any talking animals (can you remember any?). Is it the Lord's wisdom to avoid the kind of thing used by Aesop in the world? Sure, bunnies are cute - but they're not human, being separated from us as divine image bearers by an unbridgeable gulf. Their lives have no ultimate meaning or significance; Fido will not be appearing before the judgment seat as you and I will. It seems to me that in order to help my tiddlers think biblically, I should make sure they're around next time the cockerel's head gets sliced off, lest the twee little story books they read lead them astray!

Pastor caught kissing giraffe shock!

Allegedly a video exists, but sadly Blogger Video didn't like the format and wouldn't accept it. Hence we must make do with the above grainy photo.

Giraffes have very long necks. This means that when they raise and lower those necks, there are dramatic changes in the pressure in their necks and head. That pressure would be fatal for them without special mechanisms in place. Happily, though, they possess a number of special valves to control that pressure - without them they'd die every time they raised or lowered their necks.

The blurb on the wall said that the giraffe's neck was a "classic" case of the results of selective pressure (i.e. natural selection). The idea is that giraffes developed long necks, because it gave them a survival advantage: they could now reach food that other animals couldn't.

The fossil record, though, shows no evidence of giraffes with anything other than lock necks: the gradual elongation of their necks just isn't there. More than that, without the valves they possess, they wouldn't be able to survive with the length of neck that the have. No long necks means no need for valves; no valves means that the longer necks would be fatal.

That's a real chicken-and-egg problem for the idea that giraffes could have evolved by natural selection. The valves could not be selected for without the increased neck-length, because they would give no advantage without it. On the other hand, the increased neck-length without the valves would be fatal - they would be wiped out. The two features are inter-dependent, so the whole system could not have arisen in a piece-by-piece fashion: both have to come at once. The idea of a longer neck being advantageous is a nice story, even a "classic"; but it provides no explanation of how such a mechanism could develop by a natural process. The fact that the essential features had to come at the same time, and the lack of any evidence for a lengthening neck in the fossil record, is a clear testimony to a supernatural creation.

For the record, a giraffe kiss is a rather slobbery affair.

Mud, mud, mud

These are two photos on the way to the Friday morning Bible study, if it's rained (it's presently the long rainy season):

Stepping-stones to get down the passage-way:

It's Friday...

It's Friday - time for another photo or two of the weird and wonderful sights to be seen on the way to morning Bible Study!


By the side of the road: a car yard full of VW Beetles, and VW campers. My camera isn't wide-angle - there were plenty more than in the above shot. In the bottom-left of the picture is the rickety bridge/smelly ditch to cross to get into it. The tracks on the mud seem to indicate they drove at least one across it!

What makes this sight so striking is that round here isn't a place full of rich car hobbyists. It's a place full of 10-year old Japanese imports being shaken to pieces on baaaaad roads. On the other hand it is a main road from the airport, so lots of people have to come through at some point. It's a place where people rent road-side space to scratch out a living. Whatever, then, was this collector of VW Beetles doing? Where do they go when he's finished with them? Who pays him? Does he renovate them and export them to collectors in the West? I couldn't figure it out. I'd never seen a Beetle being driven here on the road...

... until now!

More sights you've never seen on the way to your Bible study...

It's Friday again, which means I was going to preach at the early morning Bible study. And along the way, this:

That's the "Household of Faith International Church". Absolutely fantastic. I could never attend it though, as I simply don't have sufficient faith to believe that the building isn't going to collapse on the floor if I enter it. There appear to be about a dozen rather thin branches holding the entire thing up. I hope there are no termites around!


Well, I suppose that if other people go to this church then it's at least reasonable to believe that the whole kaboodle won't topple to the ground. I'd like my faith to have slightly more solid foundations, though. You know - reasons to believe.

The thing I haven't worked out yet is why they chose to elevate this church ten feet off the ground. If it floods that badly that it needs to be off the ground (though it was the only building off the ground I could see), wouldn't just one or two feet be sufficient? Why ten? Did they figure that if the rapture comes on Sunday morning, they'll have a head-start?