Crikey, Blog of the Week

How did that happen? You can't keep a little diary these days without someone getting hold of it :-)

Better write something about running then. I've never run in the US of A. Indeed I've only visited once. That was with the family a number of years ago. We went to Orlando and the Keys. I don't think I could run in the temperatures we had for those two weeks.

But with the vastness of that country must come many and varied running opportunities. I know many trails exist which, if not laid out specifically for running can be utilised by runners. And despite the predominance of the car you will certainly not have the invasive sense of traffic everywhere that there is in modern Ireland.

Things have changed in that regard. Ireland has changed from being a rural, slightly backward country and fairly traffic-free to a cosmopolitan, prosperous and materialistic land in less than thirty years. These changes have not been runner-friendly. Despite the still-rural nature of the countryside there are few quiet, winding lanes. And there is far less access to the countryside itself compared with mainland Britain where this battle was fought and won by walkers and hikers in the 1950s.

However you make the best of it. And you relish any opportunity to run in traffic-free environments.

And of course it's not as bad as Los Angeles where I hear that anyone not in a car is automatically labelled a suspicious character!

And finally, for any North American visitors, try to get hold of a copy of Four Million Footsteps by Bruce Tulloh. Bruce, a very good former British Olympic athlete, was the first to run the breadth of America, west to east, in 1969. This book is his record of that run.