on the run in stockholm

In a little under four hours' time, the 31st Stockholm marathon will begin under sunny skies in the Swedish capital. 364 days ago, I was about to begin the 30th such event, and I have some wonderful memories of a truly magical trip.


As excuses for a lads’ holiday go, running a marathon was a pretty radical one. Surely Darryl, Christoff & I could have hit on a less demanding option for quality time together (dry-stone walling or pot-holing, perhaps?), but the decision was made and we found ourselves in the Swedish capital laden with glucose tablets, energy bars and blister plasters.

The weather was perfect. For visitors, that is; not for runners. A steady 26 to 28 degrees meant torture out on the course, but the sun-starved tourist in me was secretly delighted - I would see this beautiful city at its best and, hey, I might even get a tan!

Only the combined terrors of the following day’s race and the intimidating price of beer kept us from a wild first night on the town. Instead, we were happily tantalised by a city which, in spring and summertime at least, radiates all that is good about the civilised world. In Stockholm, everything works, everything sparkles, and everything looks fantastic.

The promised views with which I had lured my mates to this corner of Europe did not disappoint. As a city built on 14 islands, with a further 24,000 close by, Stockholm is notoriously easy on the eye. The same can be said of its inhabitants: after lurching around like zombies with our eyes on stalks for the first few hours, it soon became apparent that the slavering Brits-on-tour look just wouldn’t cut any ice here. By the time we left, we had become nonchalantly blasé about the swathes of fresh-faced and gorgeous bombshells around us.

One memorable day was spent travelling on a hundred-year-old wooden ferry to and from the small island of Grinda. This is a tiny gem in the treasure trove that is the Stockholm Archipelago (inexplicably called ‘Archie Capello’ by my mate Chris - owing something to the new England football manager, perhaps?). If Stockholm in summer is reminiscent of Sydney - all broad smiles, lapping water and long, tanned limbs - then this pure, natural paradise is a European version of the South Pacific: we chugged between rocky outcrops with wind in our hair, sun on our faces and beer in our hands to arrive at a tranquil, pastoral idyll. On Grinda there is nothing to do but stroll, slowly, to the island’s only restaurant for the best seafood lunch you could wish for, served by ever-smiling staff (the island’s only residents) on a wooden terrace with unimaginably perfect views. The Grinda Wärdshus is surely, I thought afterwards, the answer to everything.

And what of the race itself? The sun beat down mercilessly, but the city’s beauty won the day and cheered us home, as did the many thousands of locals lining the route and filling the Olympic Stadium, where a magical last few hundred metres around the track brought the walking dead back to life. Such was the sheer pleasure of taking part in all this, the recurrent thought afterwards was not, as I had expected, ‘never again!’… Instead, I was thinking ‘where next?’

more than a club

FC Barcelona's website proudly proclaims: més que un club (more than a club). Perhaps this doesn't sound like an unusual boast: I'm sure the supporters of Manchester United, Liverpool, Real Madrid, Juve, Benfica and others would stake a similar claim. But in the case of Barça, it happens to be true.

Founded in 1899 by a group led by Joan Gamper, a Swiss footballing pioneer who eventually committed suicide after a period of depression, the club was to become a Catalan institution. It is also the largest club to be wholly owned by its fans (over 150,000 socis, or members), and refuses to carry a commercial sponsor's name on the club shirt, having signed a five-year deal with UNICEF to donate 1.5m euros per annum to the charity.

As a symbol of Catalan pride, FC Barcelona became inextricably intertwined with the region's struggle for nationalism and with Spanish politics in general. A month after the Spanish civil war began, Barça's left-wing president Josep Sunyol was murdered by Franco's soldiers near Guadarrama. Soon, the city was under fascist occupation and, following the war, the Catalan language and flag were banned. Consequently, one of the few places that Catalan could be spoken freely during Franco's dictatorship was within the club's stadium. Even today (especially today, one might say), its two most revered figures are firecely proud Catalan 'nationals': defender Carlos Puyol and new manager Josep 'Pep' Guardiola.


In 1973, a Barça legend was born with the arrival of Dutchman Johan Cruyff. Already an established player with Ajax of Amsterdam, Cruyff won over the Barça fans by revealing that he chose Barça over Real Madrid because he could not play for a club associated with Franco. He also christened his son Jordi, a Catalan name, and inspired his team to an historic 5–0 victory over Real Madrid at the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu in the Spanish capital. In 1988, Cruyff returned to the club as manager and began to assemble his celebrated Dream Team: Bakero, Beguiristáin, Goikoetxea, Hagi, Koeman, Laudrup, Romario and Stoichkov were the stars. Under Cruyff, Barcelona won four consecutive La Liga titles, as well as the 1992 European Cup, defeating Sampdoria in the final with El Gol de Wembley, a bullet-like free kick from Dutch international Ronald Koeman.

Another member of Cruyff's dream team was 'Pep' Guardiola, who, this season - during his very first year as manager - has further cemented his legendary status at the club by winning an unprecedented treble (un triplete historico). By comfortably winning La Liga (including, along the way, a sensational 6-2 thrashing of Real, again at the Bernabeu), and by humiliating Manchester United in the final of the Champions League, he has already emulated Cruyff's greatest achievements in a matter of months. Add another trophy in the form of the Copa de Su Majestad El Rey Don Juan Carlos I ('Copa del Rey' to you and me), and this all amounts to more than a job well done. Small wonder that the celebrations along La Rambla were both wild and exuberant, and that cries of 'Viva Catalunya!' echoed long into the night.

mad men

Mind Week 9 to 16 May 2009

Men and Mental Health

The man every woman wants, we are told, is the ‘strong and silent type’. When we appear weak, we are told to ‘be a man’. If our emotions get the better of us, we remind ourselves pointedly: ‘boys don’t cry’.

Despite increasing encouragement to ‘open up’ and recognise our true feelings, there is still an alarming and widespread stigma attached to all aspects of mental health. People don’t know how to deal with it, so they pretend it isn’t there and hope it will go away. They don’t know how to help and, if they are a sufferer themselves, they often don’t know how to explain it - either to others or to themselves. This ignorance is accompanied by its four ugly sisters: doubt, guilt, shame and anxiety. This, of course, only makes matters much worse and makes us hide the truth at all costs - ironically, the one thing that could really help us.


When it comes to the male of the species, this 'doom loop' can take on another, hellish dimension. The notion of being ‘one of the boys’ defines our interactions more than most of us would like to admit, and we play along with a surface level of machismo and bonhomie. While often perfectly harmless, this can also act as a real barrier to getting our true feelings across, or even recognising them in the first place.

As far as mental illness is concerned, many men simply don’t want to 'go there'. Even if such problems are staring them in the face, they will do anything to avoid them, frequently resorting to violence, alcohol or drugs. The lucky ones are people like me who have been able to find help and deal with their illness in a supportive, caring environment. But there are others with chronic addictions or who lead lives of crime as a futile attempt to escape their own self-destructive thoughts. Thousands more suffer in silent terror, frightened to death of facing the contents of their own heads.

This is why Mind is telling men to ‘get it off your chest’ for their forthcoming campaign. If we can find ways of getting rid of the stigma around mental health in general, and men’s mental health in particular, this will be an important step. Important, too, is the openness with which some are prepared to share their difficult experiences.

Marcus Trescothick, the former England international cricketer is one such example. Having initially put his sudden return home from a Test match tour in India down to ‘personal reasons’ and a ‘stress-related illness’, he was eventually much more candid about his battle with clinical depression. Trescothick released his autobiography - Coming Back To Me - last year, admitting that, in doing so, he wanted to get things ‘out in the open…there have been so many questions left unanswered and I've not helped that process’. In this book, he writes:

‘My mind was pulling itself apart in a hundred directions. Then came the pictures in my head; specific, enormous, terrifying images… I couldn't distinguish between what was real and what I imagined to be real... things, beings, beasts, bastards... attacked in waves, one after another, each worse than the one before. “Oh God, please, make it stop. Please make it stop.”’

Like all other sufferers, Trescothick asked himself why he should have depression. ‘What did I have to worry about? I had always been someone who coped. But depression doesn't care who it attacks; if it wants you, you cannot beat it off with a CV or a bank balance.’

It surely must be one of his proudest achievements that he now appears to have his illness under control. ‘While there may never be a cure’, he says, ‘I have built up strategies to deal with my depression and understand it better.’

The only way to achieve such a breakthrough is through facing up to the truth and being honest with ourselves. Even though men and women experience mental health problems in roughly equal numbers, the tragic truth is that men are much less likely to be diagnosed and treated for it. One in three men with depression and anxiety feels embarrassed about asking for help, and the suicide rate among men is much, much higher. This is why it’s so important for men to ‘come out’ about their mental health and seek the support they need.

running up hill and down dale

York (where I live) is lovely but it is undeniably flat. In this sense - as well as in many others - it's no San Francisco, Porto, Caracas or Rome. While the absence of seven or more hills from the local topography can be a little uninspiring, it's great for views of York Minster... and for running. In fact, you can run all day around York and never encounter so much as an elevated mound. If you feel the need to do any proper hill training, on the other hand, you have to drive halfway to the coast to encounter any serious kind of gradient (which my running club plan to do tomorrow night, the masochists). So why, of all the 10k races to choose from, did I go for Kirkbymoorside? The views, of course: I can't resist a good view.


As the name suggests, Kirkbymoorside grew around a church on the edge of the North York Moors. The moors, being lofty and wild compared to the pancake-flat Vale of York to the south and west, require a bit of getting to. Pretty simple by car, but not so easy by bike or on foot.

So the ten kilometres began with an unforgiving, unremitting pull for a mile or more out of this charming little North Yorkshire market town, winding steadily up to the village of Gillamoor on the very edge of the moors. It was a beautiful day, if a little fresh, and the views were indeed wonderful (yes - all the way back to the Minster!). By this stage, the men had already been firmly separated from the boys and I, along with the rest of the 'boys', continued onward to the equally pretty village of Fadmoor to be cheered onward by a clutch of farmers' wives, a rabble of dogs and a few stray chickens.

From here, it was a glorious descent back into 'Kirby' (or KMS, if you prefer), with the odd cheeky little hill thrown in to dispel any misplaced tendency towards enjoyment. The final, invigorating sprint brought me, red-faced and thoroughly out of puff, straight down the main street amid cheering locals, welcoming pubs and the brassiest of bands. Once greeted by a suitably impressed wife and dog, I downed my sickly-sweet 'recovery drink' in order to counterbalance the dehydrating effect of a couple of pints of Jennings, which were soon to follow.

So that's two of the year's four races out of the way, and with reasonable success (19min 37sec for the 5k; 42min 24sec for the 10k). 'All' that remains now is the Half Marathon across the Humber in June, and then the biggie... along the shores of Loch Ness in the autumn.

...and the power of choice

By coming to terms with the ‘shoulds’, ‘oughts’ and ‘musts’ in our lives and by learning to ignore the insidious voices within, we open up the ability to choose for ourselves, rather than feeling as though we are being channelled along a single-track railway to nowhere.

In order to do this, our thoughts should (‘should’!) reflect reality as far as possible, so we can take responsibility for the consequences of our choices. Sounds easy, eh? The trouble is, we - like everyone else - don’t so much reflect reality as interpret it. As we often discover - either to our amusement or our annoyance - the same event can have completely different meanings to different people, even if their circumstances are the same.

What’s more, the meaning we attach to things is extremely important in determining how we feel about them. So the most powerful and influential way to exercise choice is in our ability to choose how we view reality. Perhaps the most extreme example of this is expounded by Viktor Frankl, the celebrated Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, in his book Man’s Search for Meaning. Despite the unimaginable suffering endured by Frankl and some of his fellow prisoners, they were able to find personal meaning and growth, and a way of seeing the world that created value from their experience:

‘…everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s way.’

This powerful, but extreme, example can be applied to any situation in which we find ourselves, but this requires us to slough off the burden of expectation, habit, conditioning and history. It requires us to live in the present moment and view the reality of a situation as it exists in the here and now. Nor is it mere ‘positive thinking’ (there is something to be said for that too, although I am naturally quite sceptical of the concept). Instead, it involves cultivating a sense of open-hearted acceptance of each and every situation as we encounter it. Only by accepting how things actually are can we remain conscious that we have a genuine choice, and choose the attitude with which to make it.

We are also free, moreover, not to choose. In the medieval paradox of Buridan’s Ass, the animal is located exactly halfway between two equal piles of hay. In being unable to choose one over the other, the ass fails to recognise that he is, in fact, making a third choice - to starve to death.

the tyranny of expectations...

Expectations have a lot to answer for, especially in a society as developed as ours. We are positively encouraged to nurture expectations that are unlikely to be fulfilled, while living in an environment which ensures they will be unattainable.

We expect to be happy, but are fed on a diet of transient, short-lived and addictive pleasures. We expect to be valued, but are treated like numbers in a game and talked to like idiots. We expect to be in control, but we feel like puppets, manipulated by politicians, bosses, bankers, even friends.

Even if we are more realistic in the demands we place on ourselves, society is not. We are expected to be brainy, slim, sexy, thoughtful, eco-friendly, ambitious, healthy, wise, kind, wealthy, brave, strong, smiling, positive, sensitive and fair. It is not clear whether we ought to be all of these things at the same time, although this seems to be the implication. I guess it depends which magazines we are reading or TV stations we are tuned into. And if, by some superhuman miracle, we manage to embody an approximation of all these qualities (as one lovely woman I know does), might that be enough? Of course not! After all, we could always be brainier, slimmer, sexier, more thoughtful… and so this woman suffers from depression and dissatisfaction, just like many others.

As if this wasn’t enough, there are the expectations we carry with us from early childhood into adulthood. Whether we felt the urgent need to ‘be good’, ‘be loved’, ‘be happy’ or ‘behave’, these are the expectations which exert the tightest grip over us - after all, our very existence depended on exhibiting these behaviours when we were small and vulnerable, and when pleasing others was our very means of survival.

So we live under nothing less than a tyranny. I recall that, in my very first therapy session, I attempted to visualise this terrifying burden of expectations in a drawing. I’m no artist, but it was like a huge dark cloud bearing down upon my body with unbearable weight and crushing force. I felt empty and abandoned inside as I finally gave up struggling against the unstoppable tidal wave of domination which had pulverised my spirit. I felt empty, but I also felt a desperate sense of enormous relief in finally being able to give expression to how I felt.

The only way to free ourselves is to slowly and inexorably become aware of these silent imperatives and the contexts from which they emerge, and so to release ourselves from them. We need to be on the lookout for the ‘shoulds’, ‘oughts’ and ‘musts’ in our lives, and listen for the insidious, domineering voices within. Only through this painstaking process can we cast aside the fear of living under tyrannical rule, and enjoy the sense of liberation we deserve.

in the loop

In The Loop is a film which carries a serious message through adopting a frequently hilarious tone. I can't remember laughing at a film so much for ages, but was all the while painfully aware that its creator - Armando Iannucci - knows exactly how the powerful elites manipulate our world, and that, instead of creating a pure fiction, he has chosen to exaggerate a scary reality to comic effect.

There are many great characters in the story (including a brilliant cameo by Steve Coogan as a disgruntled constituent) , but my favourite is Simon Foster (played by Tom Hollander), the gaffe-prone Minster for International Development, who reminds me of Harry Enfield's memorable creation, Tim Nice-but-Dim. The most ingenious line in the film also belongs to Foster when an aide unintentionally interrupts him in the Meditation & Prayer Room at the UN, of all places:

Aide: I’ll leave you alone with your thoughts, Minister
Minister: I haven't got any thoughts. I'm just staring into space while a voice in the back of my head goes 'Oh shit', like a car alarm going off in the middle of the night

the joys of spring

1) New-born lambs in the Dales. I love mint sauce as much as the next man (in fact, I'd wager I love it considerably more than the next man), but seeing the little darlings bleating and frolicking in Swaledale is another matter entirely. Isn't it?

2) Longer evenings. At least when I finally return to work after my illness (later this week), I will be coming home in the daylight

3) A cacophony of birdsong in the trees

4) Feelings of optimism and growth

5) Flowers in the local park

6) The warmth of the sun's rays on my face

7) Running in shorts

8) The sweet smell of newly mown grass

9) Summer is yet to come!

10) Digging out the old Birkenstocks (even if it's not really warm enough to wear them yet)