Hot and sweaty

Every now and then the thought flashes through my mind that one injury or accident could scupper this whole book thing. Me going to Kenya to watch the Kenyans running just isn’t as exciting. A couple of times recently I’ve nearly gone head over heels and have just managed to save myself. Each time my entire career passes before my eyes. So I’m trying to be safe, as much as I can. But all the running I’m doing also carries the risk of injury. According to Runner’s World magazine, 66% of runners got injured last year. That’s a lot. I can’t afford to be one of them. But I have a secret weapon. Yoga.

Now I know stretching is apparently over-rated, but the yoga I do – Bikram yoga – is as much about strength as flexibility. I started doing it about ten years ago after failing to shake a persistent knee injury. Someone told me that the originator of this particular yoga, Choudhury Bikram, devised it after hurting his knee in a weightlifting accident. So I tried it and my knee got better. It was a miracle. (Call the pope!) Ever since then I’ve been doing it once in a while. I really hate it, and I never get any more flexible, but I know it’s good for me. You come out of the class feeling as though you've been ironed. All the little creaks and aches are gone.

I went to Bikram tonight, in Old Street, London. It’s a strange place. Unlike the jolly banter of a running club, at Bikram everyone is extremely serious. People rarely talk or even risk eye contact. When someone does say something, I’m always surprised. It’s like they’ve bravely broken the pious spell that hangs over the place. For a few seconds people start talking. The odd joke gets muttered. There’s even a smile or two. But then the eerie silence descends again, and we move around without talking, slipping on our shoes, checking our phones, zipping on our coats and heading off without saying goodbye.

The most striking thing about Bikram yoga is the intense heat. The room is always heated to 106F. You’re sweating just sitting waiting to begin. The class attracts a lot of beautiful people who obviously love their bodies – you can see them admiring themselves, as they limber up, in the huge mirror along the front wall – and because of the heat, people don't wear many clothes. At the start of the class it can be hard to keep your eyes to yourself. By the end, however, everyone looks terrible. Red faces, dripping with sweat and exhaustion.

The heat was so intense tonight that water was literally pouring off me like Robert Hays in the landing scene in Airplane. The room was really beginning to stink and you could see why Bikram apparently calls his yoga studio his torture chamber.

It’s not all pain, though. A couple of the postures are quite amazing in the way they make your head feel light, as though you’ve just inhaled some drug. The teacher always points out how fast your heart is beating – pounding like crazy – while your breath is still slow and calm. It’s true. How does that work?

I was so spaced out after tonight’s class that on the way home I went in to a shop to buy some food, took my iPod out of my bag, and left it on the counter. Luckily when I rang the shop up later, they still had it.

Yoga: good for preventing injuries, but can leave the mind befuddled.

It's official

My book was officially announced to the world today, in a small corner of Bookseller magazine. Sarah, my editor at Faber, was quoted as saying the book will be “captivating”. All I've got to do now is move my family to Kenya, run faster and further and more often than I ever have, and write about 80,000 words of captivating copy. Easy.

18 mins 19 secs

So I looked up my time for my first ever 5K last night: 18 mins 19 secs. Is that any good? It was fast enough to impress a few of my colleagues at work today.

First ever 5K

I ran my first ever 5K race tonight, along the river in Exeter. Bizarrely, David James - the goalkeeper - came to watch. I think his wife was running or something. All the kids from the skate park were circling around him and calling each other over.

I started off the race at a bit of a charge, but before I knew it we were 3km in and I just had to hang on for another 2km - I love the way kilometres skip by compared to miles. I finished in 8th place but don't know my time yet. One runner was telling me the story of the day he was racing against a top athlete in a cross country race and the guy turned to him on the start line and said: "I can see you're a real runner, you don't wear a watch. You run on instinct." That made me feel better, as I never wear a watch. I think I would get too fixated on the times and lose the joy of just letting myself run as fast as I can. Though it may stop me going off too quickly in races.

Halfway around tonight's canter I almost fell in the river laughing. I was about ten metres behind a group of four athletes when one of them started farting uncontrollably. None of them said anything, they all just kept running, staring ahead as though nothing was happening. I'm sure the distraction added a few seconds to my time.

Lady on the train

I started reading Just Another Mzungu Passing Through on the train up to London today, a rather clunky account of a Welsh school teacher's two-year stay in Kenya. Anyway, it obviously wasn't holding my attention as I found myself waking up from a disorientating slumber just as the train pulled in to Paddington. The lady sitting next to me - she must have got on the train at Reading (ironically) - pointed at the book and said: "That's a swahili word [Mzungu]. That's my language." Turns out she was from Kenya. As she was standing up to get off the train, I discovered that her mother lives in Iten - the epicentre of Kenyan running. I was still just waking up. People were reaching for their bags, getting off the train. She gave me her email and said to contact her when I was out there. And then she was gone.

On track

I did my first run with a running club and my first track session in over a year tonight. I took a drive out to the Exeter Arena on the other side of town for the South West Road Runners club night. I had planned to go out on their steady nine-mile run - out across hills and fields - but at the last minute decided to stay and join the track session.

It was a lovely, still evening, and it felt good to jog around on the red tartan surface. The track always feels like the domain of the most serious runners. The same gladiatorial circuit the world over. From Kenya, to Jamaica, to Exeter, runners following the same curves, striding up and down the same straights, preparing themselves for battle.

Our session was 6 times 800m, with a short walk recovery between each one. I was the youngest runner in the group (four men roughly aged between 40 and 55, and one woman in her late 30s). The guy taking the session told me to take it easy and to sit at the back for the first one, as it was my first night. I wanted to tell him it wasn't my first night running, but I did as he said. By the third 800m, though, I was itching to go faster and I started passing people like I was Seb Coe making a move down the back straight - well, it felt like that, in reality it probably looked like one tired, middle-aged man edging his way past an even more exhausted, red-faced man whose legs were struggling to move beyond a laboured shuffle.

Still, by the end I was pushing the pace up at the front, to the obvious surprise of the rest of the group. "Very impressive," the man taking the session said afterwards.

I doubt the Kenyans will be so easily impressed.