Hopping Mad

I've always been suspicious of professional sports people and 'injuries'. I'm a fairly cynical and sceptical person anyway, but there are situations where a sudden and non-specific ailment can be conspicuously convenient.



I remember seeing a sprinter stop with a 'pulled muscle' many years ago during a race in which he was clearly miles behind. For fear of libel I'm not even going to speculate as to who it actually was, but I do remember feeling that this particularly mouthy individual got his dues and may even have goaded him via the television. A bit like if Cristiano Ronaldo had missed his penalty against England. He didn't of course, because it was England, but if he had every pub in the country would have reverberated to that guttural sound of contempt that just escapes in such high tensions situations. You know the one. It's impossible to put into type, but in boring games when goal kicks are heckled it comes after 'You're sh*t' and in some grounds can rattle on for a while. Aston Villa's away support, a very merry bunch indeed, use it a fair bit. They also do something which completely cracks me up and which I haven't noticed any other fans doing, which is to greet any handball claim from the opposition with a similar cry for about the next five or six touches of the ball, regardless of whether they're a goal kick, header or throw-in.



Injuries-wise, I don't begrudge someone getting hurt and trying to run it off. Or getting absolutely, horrifically pole-axed like Eduardo. I'm not going to launch into a political tirade in favour of or against the two-footed tackle ( I love Dion Dublin) or players 'leaving the ground'. Martin Taylor was on loan at Norwich this season and was titanic (as in like a titan, not running a long way then sinking. Andy Johnson was titanic like that when Palace were trying to stay in the Premiership though). If anyone's to blame it's Karen Brady. She could have flogged him permanently for a very fair price but chose to hang on for a bit more. I suspect his price may have reduced somewhat simply because of the stigma now attached to his name.



My long-standing problem has been with players who repeatedly ham it up but never seem to show the signs of injury when it really matters. Until now, when I shall become largely repentant and may even stretch as far as a qualified apology.



Training for a marathon obviously involves a commitment to put in the miles, on the whole, even when you can't really be arsed. People who know me will appreciate that when I can't be arsed I largely don't bother, so should be even more impressed with my arduous and unforgiving regime. This includes running, or at least exercising, even when suffering from 'twinges'.



In the early days it was largely my calves that suffered. Try walking or running with calves that don't move. It's not easy. They weren't so much strained as incredibly tight (this should always be said like Goldmember). I managed to to sort these out by getting regular rub-downs from a professional. There's a guy who comes into our office and does massages in one of the rooms in the basement. He's brilliant and he doesn't even remark on my hairy back or disproportionately hair-free legs, which is very kind. I'm sure he was originally called PJ but he seems to have graduated, via CJ (which I think was Pamela Anderson's character in Baywatch - come to think of it wasn't she called Pamela Denise Anderson? And what's the deal with Morten 'Gamst' Gamst Pedersen?) to DJ. I still giggle at the very rural image of a footballer 'straining a calf' however.



More recently, I've suffered with a hip complaint on the left side. It left me struggling to walk but also in the unique situation, to me, of still being able to run. After a day of, as Herr Flick in 'Allo 'Allo would have it 'walking rather gingerly', I dragged myself to the gym to try to do some sort of exercise. Once on the treadmill I found that at running speed I was fine.

This left me with a moral problem relating, in particular, to Didier Drogba. I'm not the only person who considers him to be prone to the odd bit of over-exaggeration when tackled. He even, if you'll pardon the pun, tripped himself up in an interview when he admitted as much himself. Even the citizens of You Tube have attempted to provide proof:



However, having discovered that it is possible to be able to run but not walk, not only did I disprove a popular phrase (although if we're being pedantic it doesn't) but it also takes away the miracle of the 'Drogba hop' and makes it a lot less sinister. Having said that I did try to hobble, then hop into a sprint as Drogba does, but it didn't quite work as smoothly as that. Equally when I stopped running the hobble was worse, meaning the ability to 'run off an injury' comes into question. Far more likely, even with my increased empathy, is that it's possible to 'run off the memory of having pretended to be injured'. But I'm naming no names.

The future is here!

Using the latest technology, you can now run your mobile phone camera over the bizarre-looking icon below to access this blog. This may sound like a slightly pointless exercise, but if we follow the lead of the Japanese (which we often do, if considerably behind), we'll go QR crazy in the next few months.

QR stands for Quick Response and works in a similar way to barcodes. You'll soon be seeing these on adverts and, if people here go as far as our Oriental cousins, on clothing or even in the form of body art.

If you want to see how it works, access http://www.i-nigma.com/ to download the software to your phone, then hover over the image below to see what happens. It works, trust me.

Fat Frank's dirty little secret

We've all done it. You might reveal a secret that you didn't know was a secret. You could inadvertantly let everyone know that you are incredibly gullible. People might eventually find out that you're just an idiot.

I know someone who is friends with a primary school teacher who openly admitted to thinking that lions and tigers were the male and female versions of the same thing. If this is news to you, keep it to yourself.

Anyway, my father has dropped me in it somewhat. Obviously I'm incredibly grateful to him for being the first to sponsor me for my Marathon effort (shameless plug time - www.justgiving.com/lambontherun). However in classic 'dad' style (not just mine, it's a recognised phenomenon. If you don't believe me, watch American Pie) Dr Lamb added a comment about nipple grease.

What sort of pervert is he, I hear you ask? He's not. He's an upstanding member of the community. He just assumed, as I did, that people are aware of jogger's nipple. Apparently they aren't, at least not everybody is.

During the process of training for the Flora London Marathon I'm obviously running for pretty lengthy amounts of time. Last weekend being a bumper football weekend of FA Cup action I managed to get a lot done.

I'm really feeling the benefits of having packed in the booze and fags since New Year (I'm back on the booze for February because of my birthday, Valentine's Day and as a reward for managing January) and last Saturday, during the sporadically entertaining Mansfield against Middlesbrough match on the sporadically entertaining BBC I have never felt as capable on a long run.

Around 80 minutes and just short of ten miles into my run (and the match. If you haven't worked out that this is a football-themed running blog because I'm running while watching football yet then you really should pay more attention) I happened to glance down and something caught my eye.

There was a sort of rusty mark on my new white adidas top. On closer inspection there were two. On further examination they extended from a near perfect circle into a downward smear. My nipples were bleeding.

The snap above, taken after the shirt had been removed and had festered in my bag on the way home, doesn't really do it justice. I considered taking a snap of my actual nipples but realised that would have been hideous. They don't actually look that bad to be honest. They just sting.

Anyway I've mentioned my plight to a couple of people as it's quite a light-hearted response to the inevitable 'how's the training going?' queries. Not everyone, I'm quickly discovering, gives a tinker's cuss whether I've shaved a couple of seconds off my 10k time.

Similarly, even fewer people seem to know about jogger's nipple. The looks I've had when routine questions about training have been answered with 'yeah, it's going well although my nipples are red raw' have been many and varied. Few have been anything but confused or slightly disgusted in nature.

The upshot of the actual incident has been to realise why so few people wear white tops to the gym or when you see folk out running. It also gave me an interesting theory. Certain players in the past couple of years have been accused of failing to perform as well for the England football team as they consistently do for their Premier(ship/ League - I know it's League but if I'm talking about the past few seasons do I have to say Premiership? Quite a few pundits haven't noticed there's been a change. They're the ones who still refer to League One as Division Three and talk about teams 'getting the three points' in cup games. The inconsistency is blinding. If they're that opposed to change, it should surely be two points for a win) clubs.

The theory is pretty rudimentary, but basically rests on the premise that certain of said players are routinely, rightly or wrongly, derided for being of a rotund build. Very few clubs play in white (although some of the big clubs have or have recently had white away strips) but England do. Surely a maligned player would do anything in their power to avoid giving fuel to their detractors by running around sufficiently for their bouncing busoms to create sufficient nippular friction for claret to be spilt?

It should be interesting to see how Fabio Capello deals with this. I notice yesterday's kit launch was of a deep crimson second strip, and that all the cold weather training this week has been in maroon gear. Clearly the Italian has left nothing to chance. He could even call up Dean Ashton now, thus adding a considerable footballing brain to his squad and hopefully adding a few quid to the bank account at Carrow Road, should Neil Doncaster and the money men at Norwich been shrewd enough to include a clause of extra payment in the £7million fee they negotiated with West Ham.

As a tangential aside I have recently been reading Russell Brand's autobiography as well as a compilation of his columns from the Guardian. If you don't read the Guardian, I'd recommend searching them out on t'internet as they're very enjoyable. Anyway, in the foreword for the football book, Irons in the Fire (he's a West Ham fan is Russell) he talks of being on the pitch having his photo taken and seizing the opportunity to have a snap with Dean Ashton, one of his new heroes. I've warmed to Brand through finding out more about his life (I've no idea why I was marked out as needing to read more of the works of Russell Brand. We don't have huge amounts in common although I am a closet fan), but no single occurence throughout both books brought us closer together.

On the subject of forewords, Sir Alex Ferguson wrote the foreword for Bryan Gunn's book In Where it Hurts. He talks about Gunny, another of my all-time top three Norwich heroes (Ashton and Efan Ekoku being the other two) and at the end says 'I'm sure it will be a great read', implying he hasn't read it as it presumably wasn't finished. The publishers, however, took this as a quote and put on the front and back of the book 'A great read' - Sir Alex Ferguson. Shameless.