Gladiators: Rediscovering the Joy of Saturday Night TV

I don’t tend to watch that much TV these days. Anything I do watch tends to be related to my niche interests, like Race Across The World or new wildlife documentaries. My childhood days of looking forward to The Simpsons at six o’clock on weekdays, or Robot Wars on Friday evenings, are long past; and with the long gaps between new (shortened) seasons and specials of Doctor Who, that currently doesn’t have the power to excite me as it once did (though after the latest trailer, I am looking to the upcoming season with cautious optimism). Recently, however, there came a show that got me properly invested; a show that successfully reawakened happy memories of relaxing on Saturday night, knowing there was still another day of rest before heading back to school, and sitting down to experience pure, exciting entertainment. I am referring, of course, to the BBC reboot of Gladiators.

My family all loved the original 1990s series of Gladiators. Everything about it just clicked: the presentation, the variety and spectacle of the events down to the unique music for each one, the pleasure of seeing ordinary (albeit very physically fit) people taking on such intense challenges, and the distinct characters of the central figures, the Gladiators themselves. My dad even tried out to be a contender – afterwards, he reckoned that what let him down was a lack of facilities to practice rope climbing.

A previous attempt in the 2000s to reboot the show wasn’t very successful; not much about it has stuck in my memory. This latest incarnation, however, definitely works – mostly because the team behind it clearly understood what was appealing the first time round and set out to replicate it as well as they could. Judging by the ratings, it has certainly managed to click with the British audience of the 2020s. There’s plenty of flamboyant spectacle and intensity, and a mixture of both old (e.g. Duel, Powerball, The Wall) and new events (e.g. The Edge, Collision). Once I got used to the presenting style of Bradley and Barney Walsh – which meant understanding that the jokes are meant to be terrible – I didn’t mind them. The Gladiators try to set themselves apart with distinctive personalities, and it works better for some than others: the massive ego of Legend, the dance moves of Nitro and the feline ferocity of Sabre – down to letting out a leopard-like yowl of frustration in the dressing room after one defeat – are all enjoyable to watch, but Viper’s attempts to be the Wolf-style bad boy came off as more pouty than intimidating.

There were a few nitpicks that I’d like to see get addressed in any future seasons. A few more different events would be good; and some, like Gauntlet and The Wall, seemed a bit too easy, with contenders beating the Gladiators far more often than not. While each event had its own unique and instantly recognisable background music in the old series, the reboot’s music is just generic with the exception of the classic opening theme. The Gladiators themselves didn’t seem to get an even distribution of events; this was just bad luck in the case of Comet, who was injured early on in filming, but throughout the series, Athena and Electro, say, somehow got far less screen-time than Sabre or Fury. Also, with multiple contenders having to drop out due to injury, the system for replacements seemed rather random; perhaps it was just a matter of availability. After Chung – whom I had been expecting to be male champion – went out in the semis after a bad tackle in Powerball, a contender who went out in the heats rather than the quarters came to fill in; and it didn’t feel quite right that one of the male finalists, Wesley, had come into the quarter finals as a reserve and skipped the heats altogether. (The other finalist and eventual champion, Finlay, had lost his quarter final but still went through as a fastest runner-up.)

If anything about this reboot did feel lacking compared to the original series, it may be due to the BBC being cautious with the budget; or it could be that, ultimately, nothing nostalgic like this is going to arouse exactly the same passions and excitement as it did when you were a child, no matter how it’s presented. But Gladiators certainly comes as close as it can; overall, I absolutely loved it, and I was very happy to see confirmation this week that it will be returning for a second season. In the meantime, at least there’s a new David Attenborough documentary to keep me occupied, I suppose.

Short Story: Scale

Scale

Wyoming, USA, 150 million years ago…

Waking from a fitful sleep, Hesper realised that the sun was peeking through the fronds of the cycad leaves above her. She was aware of a persistent drip-drip-drip close to her head, and as much as she had tried to make a bed of the ground ferns, she could still feel the damp earth beneath her claws and belly feathers. Warily, she raised her head, and confirmed the good news: it had stopped raining.

At first glance, any time-travelling human observer would have been forgiven for mistaking Hesper – or, as she would later be dubbed by palaeontologists, Hesperornithoides – for some kind of ground-dwelling bird. And to be fair, they would not be far wrong. She had a short head, a long stiff tail, a two-legged stance and a thick coat of russet feathers – the elongated feathers along her arms made them look like wings, though she could not, in fact, fly. Closer inspection, however, would reveal the mouth of sharp teeth in place of a beak, and the sickle claw on each foot, which betrayed her true nature as a non-avian dinosaur.

She was about two months old, and at less than two feet long, only half of her eventual adult size, assuming she made it that far. With a relatively short lifespan ahead of her, her mother and her siblings were a distant memory in her mind, though she had only parted ways with them a few days ago. At this stage in her life, her focus was on continuing to eat and grow; others of her kind were only competitors to be avoided, until she reached sexual maturity, when she could mate and produce a clutch of her own.

At the proper time, instinct had led Hesper away from her family; she had no particular end in mind, only to find her own safe space which would still provide all the food and water she needed. She had travelled through a low forest of ferns that gave her shelter, but also blocked her view of her surroundings. Sometimes a shadow had fallen over her, and she would crouch and freeze; memories of seeing her siblings being plucked from the ground and carried away by giant monsters did stick in her mind, by necessity. In the event, the shadows she had encountered had passed by quickly, and she had progressed unharmed.

For now, she had made her home in a grove of cycads, some distance from the flooded areas of the plains where adults of her kind tended to cluster. The relatively tall plants towered around her; she had been born in a place like this, and it gave her a comforting feeling of security. Tired of her trek, Hesper had taken a few days to shelter in this place, snapping at the insects that buzzed and crawled around her; the passing lizards that she had managed to catch had also gone down very nicely. It was yesterday evening when the heavy rain began, and the cycads had given the additional advantage of shielding her from the worst of the deluge.

The rain was never pleasant, but the aftermath always brought one highlight: the moist soil was much better for digging. Indeed, insects and worms seem to positively spring out of it. It took only a few scrapes for Hesper to find some juicy worms and crunchy beetles, and start snapping them up. Getting to her feet and shaking herself, she prepared to circle her grove in search of enough prey to fill her stomach.

But something stopped her in her tracks. She wasn’t sure what it was at first; there was just a general sense that something was different.

The first thing she registered was the noise; a far-off rumble, accompanied by the rustling of the ferns. As the noise grew louder, Hesper also recognised that the ground no longer felt stable.

Before she could work out which direction to flee in, one of those ominous shadows fell over her shelter, and something enormous descended from above, tearing the leaves asunder and sending fragments raining down around her.

Hesper shrieked in alarm, as her moment of peace was shattered by a terror that weighed nearly thirty thousand times as much as she did.

***

Super’s life was a simple one.

It hadn’t always been that way. When he hatched out of his egg ten years before, he was faced with the constant problem of a wide variety of predators, any one of which would happily eat him and think nothing of it. At the time, all he could do was keep as low a profile as possible. But his long-term – and unconscious – solution was to grow, and fast. 

Through constant eating and successfully avoiding danger, Super – or rather, Supersaurus – was now eighty times his new-born length; and the reward was that, for the most part, he could live his life in peace. As long as he remained healthy, only the biggest carnivores could hope to touch him, and then only if they attacked in a group. Before long, he would be turning his attention to females, and tussling with other males for access to them; but until then, all that really mattered was fuelling the gigantic engine that was his body.

His head contained only slow thoughts, all that were needed for a slow life. He was not a curious beast; he liked certainty and the familiar, from the rumblings of his herd, to the sight and scent of a fresh source of food.

Super was on the edge of the herd at the moment; the biggest adults – their bodies the same colour as the soil they churned underfoot – were working their way through the ferns and other greenery that covered the plain, reaching out with their long necks and stripping the leaves as they went. With no room in the middle of the crowd, Super was left to look for suitable sustenance on his own – which was fortunate, as he spotted a very tempting patch of cycads about a hundred metres away. He cast his eyes to either side; there were no predators in sight. It was safe to move a little distance from the herd.

One squelching step at a time, Super plodded forward, his eyes fixed on the cycads. His relatively tiny head stretched out, and he began to feed: stripping and swallowing, stripping and swallowing. He pressed forward to get more, crushing one of the plants he had already fed upon.

There was movement down there – something moving quicker than Super could properly process. But a creature so tiny was of no consequence to him. You had to be of a certain size – say, an eight-metre-long Allosaurus that might try for a bite out of his flank – to really register on his radar.

He felt a small prick on one of his front feet, which merited only a low grumble of irritation. Such bumps and scrapes were an inevitable consequence of walking around on an uneven plain all day.

Mechanically, he swept his neck back and forth, hoovering up all of the luscious vegetation, all of his senses assuring him that this was a high-quality meal. Finally, he reached the opposite end of the patch, and all of the cycads sat stripped and trampled beneath his feet.

Super turned to re-join the herd, with a feeling akin to satisfaction. He could take a few moments of contemplation before moving on to the next meal.

***

A chunk of bark came flying at Hesper and struck her just as she was raising her arms in defence. It was enough to knock her over; waving her legs in the air as she tried to right herself, she saw the thing – like the bough of a tree, swaying from side to side –decimating the cycads. She couldn’t stay here.

Getting to her feet, she put her head down and fled – but as soon as she was clear of the cycads, a new obstacle appeared right in front of her: a thick tree trunk that hadn’t been there moments before. Before Hesper could fully process its sudden existence, she jumped back as it shifted towards her, ploughing up the soil before it – something tree trunks never did in her experience.

In her confusion and desperation to get to safety, Hesper leapt at the object, sinking her needle teeth into it. Her bite barely penetrated the tough skin, and failing to gain a purchase, she fell on her back.

As the object she had attacked flew upwards and away, she found herself directly in the shadow of the doom-bringer, as it shut out the sun more suddenly than any storm. Hesper heard mighty but indecipherable gurgling and rumbling sounds emanating from the scaly ceiling above her. The sun blotted out, the ground shaking, a cacophony in her ears and danger seeming to appear from every direction – how could the world have shattered so quickly?

Seeing movement out of the corner of her eye, she realised that another of the great tree trunks was swinging in her direction, and was going to come down right on top of her.

She flung herself forward with her arms and managed to get to her feet, darting away just quickly enough to avoid her tail being crushed. She felt the impact behind her, and only just succeeded in keeping her balance.

Now Hesper ran. It was all she could do, earth tremors be damned. She plunged through the foliage, keeping her head down as she sprinted. She bore no mind to what direction she was going in; all she cared about was putting distance between herself and the source of her terror. The possibility of running headlong into some other hostile monster never crossed her mind.

Finally, when her breath became too rapid and the pain in her chest too great, she brought herself to a stop to get her bearings. The sun was back, its light bathing her feathers. The ground was stable again. The ferns surrounded her protectively. Hesper thought she could make out quiet rumbling from far off, but it no longer posed an immediate threat.

She was safe again.

She did not dare settle down, but remained upright as her heart rate slowed, still anxious and poised to flee. It was still early in the day, after all, and more danger could appear at any time.

But Hesper couldn’t let that distract her from her priorities. She needed to refill her stomach after that expenditure of energy, and then find a drink of water.

A lizard scuttled across the ground directly in front of her. Instantly forgetting the horrors of a few moments ago, she lunged after it.

Looking Back on 2023

It’s only now, looking back on everything I’ve been able to do in 2023, that it really comes off as a positive year where I’ve moved forward in multiple ways. For the first half of the year, at least, it was feeling decidedly mixed; I was experiencing some difficulties that impacted my mental health and left me feeling very negative about the future. Some good did come out of this, however: it led to me revisiting the topic of personal development (particularly Stoicism), which in turn led to some re-evaluations that have given me more motivation and optimism for the coming year.

I’ve managed to establish some positive habits: making notes on new things that I’ve learned, adjusting my diet to be more healthy and contain more whole foods, and regular strength training. Partly as a result of the last two, my running has just gotten better and better. This year, I’ve smashed my previous PBs with 19:13 in the 5K, 42:21 in the 10K and 1:41:35 in the half marathon. I completed my first marathon in Manchester – without wrecking myself, as my dad pointed out – and I’ve already got my second one lined up, in Edinburgh next May. I also joined a running club, which has not only contributed to my performance and opened up new events, but has allowed me to make lots of new friends.

As well as continuing to regularly volunteer at parkrun, I’ve also been giving back by becoming a Municipal Liaison for my NaNoWriMo region. On the subject of writing, I won an online short story competition, for which I was awarded a personalised mug. I went on another solo holiday to the United States where I was able to fit in many things on my to-see list; there was also a recent day trip to London where I saw the Patagotitan exhibition at the Natural History Museum and the Tom Hanks-narrated show The Moonwalkers at The Lightroom near King’s Cross.

So yes, this reflection has shown me that I mustn’t let some particularly low moments spoil the whole year. Overall, it’s been a good one.

Favourite movies I saw at the cinema
* Oppenheimer
* Godzilla Minus One
* Killers of the Flower Moon
I haven’t actually been to the cinema all that much this year. The only superhero films I saw were Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem – after last year’s disappointments, I’m rather disenchanted with the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Favourite fiction books I read
Fire and Blood by George R R Martin
The Trials of Apollo by Rick Riordan
The Running Grave by Robert Galbraith

Favourite non-fiction books I read
The Endurance Diet by Matt Fitzgerald
Be Useful by Arnold Schwarzenegger
A Brief History of Black Holes by Becky Smethurst
Running with Sherman by Christopher McDougall
Endurance by Alfred Lansing
Apollo Remastered by Andy Saunders
The Rise and Reign of the Mammals by Steve Brusatte
50/50 by Dean Karnazes
The All American Boys by Walt Cunningham
Mother of God by Paul Rosolie

With regards to 2024, I do have some specific targets – I want to run a sub-4 hour marathon and a sub-100 minute half marathon – but a lot of my plans are simply to keep up my good habits, continue growing, and see where that takes me. Here’s wishing all of you a Happy New Year!

Reflecting on NaNoWriMo 2023

With another National Novel Writing Month come and gone, I’m taking some time to reflect on this year’s project, which proved to be hard work but a great deal of fun too.

In the early stages, things were progressing so well that I set myself a bonus challenge: achieve the NaNoWriMo badge for writing at least the daily par (1,667 words) every day of the month, something I’ve never done before. I achieved 50K on 25th November – a new record for me – but in the final days of the month, I was rather worn out with this particular project and the words came more reluctantly. Still, I managed it, and acquired a full set of badges for my NaNo dashboard! I’ll have to see if I try that again next year.

A definite advantage this year was putting my project document online so I could update it on my phone, which gave me much more flexibility. It’s much easier to hit the daily par when you break the writing into chunks throughout the day, rather than having to do all 1,667 words in the evening. At weekends, the evening writing becomes positively refreshing when you’ve already hit the quota during the day and are just adding to your cushion by doing more.

This space travel-themed alternate history project felt especially enjoyable as I was being really self-indulgent with what I wanted to include, in terms of particular scenes, characters and space vehicles – I think that’s a good approach to take with NaNoWriMo where maintaining speed and enthusiasm is of the essence. The research side of things was good fun: I ended up learning a lot that way. I enjoyed writing about the scientific and engineering details so much – similar to how Chris Hadfield writes his novels – that it’s given me an idea or two for future projects. One small downside was that when I was at write-ins, writing on my phone, I had to reserve myself to scenes I could write off the top of my head, rather than ones where I would have to check my research notes.

I was generally pleased with how I managed to balance NaNoWriMo with my other commitments across the month, particularly with regards to exercise – it’s not just the creative muscle that needs taking care of. I was able to handle my duties as Municipal Liaison pretty well: writing email updates, providing encouragement across social media, and organising write-ins. There were some times when I experienced a little anxiety from how much I needed to juggle, however, so that’ll be something to bear in mind for next time.

Even after 58,815 words, the story itself is nowhere near complete – there are plenty of gaps where I skipped around – but I’m definitely ready to take a break from it for a while, and write about something else while I still have momentum. I’m also thinking a little about next year’s NaNoWriMo: based on the two-year pattern I’ve established, it will most likely be the next instalment of my historical series, which I last wrote about in 2022. I know this one will be set in the early years of World War Two, but I haven’t figured out the story yet – well, I have eleven months to work on that!

Film review: Napoleon

Napoleon Bonaparte is a fascinating and extraordinary historical figure, whose life provides plenty of fodder for books, films and television. So I was certainly intrigued when I heard that Ridley Scott was directing a film about him – certainly Scott has plenty of experience in historical epics. Unfortunately, in contrast to the other big historical films that came out this year – Oppenheimer and Killers of the Flower Moon – Napoleon is a major disappointment.

The film’s trailer actually highlighted one of its big problems: by depicting scenes recognisable as the siege of Toulon (which took place in 1793 in the early stages of Napoleon’s career) and the Battle of Waterloo (which took place in 1815), it made it clear that this film was going to basically cover Napoleon’s whole life. That’s a big ask even for a 3+ hour film, and this one is 2 hours and 38 minutes. Inevitably, a great deal of history is either left out or rushed: for instance, an important scene which took place in 1814 is depicted as happening shortly after Napoleon returned from Russia in 1812, with no mention of the many significant developments that led from one to the other in-between.

The main focus appears to be the relationship drama between Napoleon (Joaquin Phoenix) and his first wife and empress Josephine (Vanessa Kirby), which certainly has potential; but as we hop between the historical highlights of Napoleon’s life, as it were, we just don’t see enough of any one aspect to really care about it – it feels too disjointed. We aren’t shown how effective Napoleon was as a ruler and administrator, and his military genius doesn’t get much more coverage; he refers to Tsar Alexander I copying his battle tactics, which means little when we don’t see most of his battles and have no clear idea of his favoured tactics. In fact, Napoleon doesn’t come off very well at all in the film, spending the majority of his scenes being awkward, emotional, or acting like the “Corsican brute” he is described as, such as having his way with Josephine under the dining room table while growling like a dog.

The battle scenes we do see – Toulon, Austerlitz, Borodino (briefly) and Waterloo – are easily the highlight: immersive, thrilling and utterly brutal (even though what we see of Austerlitz isn’t an accurate reflection of the actual battle, which would have been a great opportunity to really demonstrate Napoleon’s strategic savviness). What makes the amount that gets left out even worse is that a lot of what gets left in serves no real purpose to the narrative; for instance, about two minutes are devoted to Napoleon silently observing a mummy during his Egyptian campaign. Apparently a four-hour director’s cut of the film is due to be released on Apple TV; one wonders how meaningful the added scenes in that are going to feel.

Napoleon is a perfect demonstration of why this man’s life needs an entire TV series to do it justice – what we get here is sadly dissatisfying on almost every level. Rating: 2.5/5.

NaNoWriMo 2023: New Project, New Responsibilities

This year’s National Novel Writing Month – my fifteenth – comes with an extra twist: this year, I am co-Municipal Liaison for my region! After so many years taking part in NaNoWriMo and gaining so much from meeting others in my region, I felt it was time to give something back and put my own experience to good use.

ML duties include managing online socialising platforms and organising in-person write-in events; the latter has been a particularly worthwhile learning experience, as I’ve needed to consider choices that would satisfy the most people – running a Facebook poll provided useful information – and decide where to exercise my initiative. So, we’ll see how the rest of the month proceeds in this new role.

So what about my story? Well, I knew I wanted to do something outside of my historical series which I had continued last year – the next instalment of that will be saved for NaNoWriMo 2024. I decided I would write a story about one of my big interests that I haven’t covered in a novel yet: space travel. The next stage in the process was trying to think, “I want to write about both Apollo and the Space Shuttle, so how can I have a story that features both?” Eventually, inspiration hit: what about an alternate history where the USA successfully launched a human into space before the Soviets?

The driving force between John F Kennedy’s decision to have NASA put a man on the Moon before the end of the 1960s was that the USA desperately needed a win after being beaten by the Soviets in the space race once again – so what if that impetus was absent and NASA could just proceed with its own plans, at its own pace? What kind of long-term space-based infrastructure could have been built if they weren’t putting all their efforts into getting to the Moon? What about the projects being conducted by the US Air Force, which ultimately petered out in the real world?

Once I had my central concept in place, a whole wave of ideas started coming. As preparation, I’ve been researching what the U.S. space program’s plans were before Kennedy laid down his lunar goal, and various abandoned space concepts which I could potentially play around with – that’s the beauty of an alternate history. I think this particular project is going to be a lot of fun.

Since 2020, the members of our NaNo community have met each other in person sparingly, but today we got together again for our kick-off party. It was lovely to see both old faces and meet new ones who may be coming to the write-ins throughout November; I also learned quite a bit about self-publishing from the people who have already gone down that road. Next time we meet, we’ll all have our writing implements at the ready and be prepared to crack on with our projects – so here’s to another thirty days of chaotic creativity!

Thoughts on Running: Strength and Food

How do you get good at running? Well, obviously, the actual running plays a significant part: get plenty of miles in, practice good running form, and build up a strong aerobic base by running most of your miles at a low effort instead of going all out on every training run. You can get fairly fast on that approach alone – but as I’ve been appreciating more this year, there are other things you can do that will make you even better, and improve your health in general too, working together to improve your running ability synergistically.

The first thing is strength (or resistance) training. Armed with a pair of dumbbells that I got for Christmas, I’ve been doing strength workouts twice a week (recently, as I’ve adapted, I’ve upped this to three times a week). With so many different possible exercises and sources of information, it can be difficult to determine what the ideal workout looks like; I’ve pieced together a regular workout routine from places like the NHS website, parkrun magazine, and this video on dumbbell exercises by Ben Parkes. Whether it’s an optimal combination or not, it certainly seems to be working.

I never look forward to the strength workouts the way I do with the runs, and sometimes it takes effort just to summon the motivation for them. But the results of turning them into a consistent habit have definitely been worth it. Having stronger muscles not only makes you run faster, but also makes you less susceptible to a runner’s greatest fear: injury. I myself haven’t been injured at all so far this year – apart from the time I fell over during marathon training, which doesn’t really count as it wasn’t from overstraining myself – and I’m sure that this is down to my strength training, and doing more runs at easy pace, helping my body to adapt.

The second – and more fun – way I’ve been improving my running is through my diet. I admit that I’ve been one of those people who sees running as a convenient way to compensate for eating whatever I like. During lockdown, I allowed myself to get heavier than I ought to be from overindulging in comfort food, until I started being more mindful and cutting back on the junk. Naturally, when my weight decreased, my running ability increased. This year, however, I’ve been delving deeper.

Warnings about eating too much ultra-processed food have been prevalent in the media lately, and with that in mind, I’ve been upping the proportion of whole foods that I eat. But what really changed things was reading The Endurance Diet by Matt Fitzgerald. I can’t recommend this book enough; it’s given me a far better understanding of the best sort of diet for a runner. Fitzgerald describes clearly the six food groups that runners ought to eat regularly: fruits; vegetables; wholegrains; nuts and oils; lean meats, fish and eggs; and dairy. Based on his years of studying the eating habits of elite endurance athletes, he lays down the dietary habits that bring them the best results: eat everything (as in, all the above food groups); eat quality (as in, not too many of the less healthy options); eat carbohydrates; eat enough; and eat based on your own individual preferences.

The important thing to bear in mind – which I’ve learned from both Fitzgerald’s book and other sources on fitness – is that changes to your diet only work if they’re sustainable. If a diet isn’t enjoyable, it will be easy to slide back into your original habits. Rather than spelling out a precise menu of what you ought to eat, Fitzgerald provides some effective guidance and lets you figure out how best to apply them to your own life. I’ve subsequently taken some time to break down my dietary habits, and identify elements that I can switch for something healthier which I still enjoy, incorporating these new ingredients gradually if necessary. That way, mealtimes are still pleasurable, and it’s even been quite fun to search for new possibilities and experiment with finding satisfying substitutes for what tempts me the most; I also have a variety of snack options available if I feel hungry during the day, preferring the approach of listening to my body rather than counting calories. (One thing I’ve learned is that whole foods really are more filling than their ultra-processed equivalents.) And if you’re eating healthily most of the time, there’s room to have a favourite treat every now and then, which actually makes you more likely to sustain good habits than if you try to cut out sweets and processed food altogether.

The results so far are very promising: I’m both running faster and getting more toned. This is probably the first time in my life that I’ve looked in the mirror and felt actively pleased, not merely contented, with what I see. I definitely haven’t become an expert on what I’ve described; I’m merely reporting what I’ve learned so far and what appears to be working well for me at the moment. Getting better at running has been a learning process, and I don’t doubt that I still have a lot more to learn.

Thoughts on Running: How Important are PBs?

Last weekend, I was preparing to run the City of Preston 10K for the fifth time. Despite my past experience and the fact that it was “only” a 10K, I was still feeling nervous – because I was really desperate to get a PB.

For me, the most important things about running are still the physical and mental benefits that it brings me. I don’t go all out every time I run at parkrun; sometimes I just keep a steady pace and enjoy the atmosphere. Signing up for longer events can be more about the challenge and experience of a different course, and the pleasure of running in a crowd, than setting your fastest time. At the same time, however, when you’re improving at running – and especially if you’re reaching an above-average level – it’s natural to take pride in that and want to test yourself. In the last few months, I’ve been seeing some major improvements in my running – I’ll get into what’s led to that in another blog post – and with that came the urge, not only to see just what I am now capable of, but to make the improvement “official” by setting a new best time at an event.

This summer, I had signed up for two 10Ks and two half marathons. The first half marathon was the Windmill Half Marathon in Lytham, the event where I had set my current PB the previous year. With a good idea of the required pace, I was reasonably confident I could set a new PB, and I did: 1:42:25. This meant that for the second half marathon, which took place in Garstang a month later, the pressure was off. And there were other factors that made me think I wouldn’t be at my fastest: I hadn’t bothered to taper; I had run a fast parkrun with my running club the day before; and the course was a hilly, rural one. What this meant was that I could just have fun, and I did. While I spent much of the race running at what felt like a comfortable pace, I freely slowed down for the water stations – it was a hot day – and even to take a picture of a particularly lovely view at the top of a punishing hill. It was only when I was nearing the end, and realising that I was somehow on track for a PB anyway, that I properly turned on the afterburners – sure enough, I finished in 1:41:35. Maybe it was being so quick on the downhill stretches, or maybe my relaxed attitude did me good.

On the other hand, the first 10K of the summer, in Blackpool, hadn’t gone so well. It was a very windy day at the seaside, and as the course took us straight up and down the promenade, parallel to the sea, I was getting buffeted no matter which direction I was going in. As if that wasn’t enough, I abruptly had to stop not far from the finish, because there was a tram in the way – not the sort of obstacle you encounter at most running events. My time was 44:39, twenty-seven seconds slower than my PB – which meant that I “had” to do better at the Preston 10K.

Based on my performances at parkrun, I felt that I should be able to do it, and maybe even set a sub-44 minute time. But anything can happen on the day, and I knew that if I didn’t do it for whatever reason, it would feel like a letdown; it’s one thing to fall short because you’re not quite capable, and another if you should be capable but you somehow get it wrong. There was recently an episode of the Running Channel podcast – which I’ve gotten into the habit of listening to on my Sunday long runs – where presenter Sarah Hartley talked about her DNF in a 5K race, having lost the drive to finish when she knew she wasn’t on target for a PB. I now understood that feeling better than when I had first listened to the episode.

But if I let these thoughts get out of control, it would spoil the event for me; so when the day arrived, I tried to put them aside as best I could. (I’d also been nervous as the forecast had been predicting rain for that morning all week – yet, as it happened, it actually stayed dry.) I told myself, “You know what your 10K mode feels like. If you can keep running at that pace throughout, you’ll know that you did your best, whatever the final time.” And that was what really mattered.

It seemed to work. I hardly looked at my watch through the race, instead trusting in the feel of the run. A lot of the course was hard work, with some steep hills, but at other times, I felt like I was cruising. When I crossed the finish line, I quickly received a text giving my chip time as 42:21 – nearly two whole minutes faster than my PB!

This summer’s events have served as a helpful reminder that PBs can be a good motivator for running, but it’s still healthiest not to lose sight of your other reasons for doing it, whatever they may be. I still want to improve, especially over longer distances where I’m more wary about pushing myself too hard and exhausting myself before the end. But while running is a part of my life now and I want to keep doing it for as long as I possibly can, I know I can’t keep getting faster forever. Eventually, hopefully many years in the future, I’m going to have to slow down. And when that happens, it will be the bigger benefits keeping me going, so best to keep them in mind now.

So if you happen to be running an event in the near future, don’t forget to enjoy yourself – but when conditions are right, having fun and performing well don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

Prehistoric Planet: Everything a Dino-Nerd Needs

Back in 1999, twelve-year-old me was extremely excited when a new series called Walking with Dinosaurs came out. What made this series special was that instead of having a presenter walking among museum displays, with the occasional animated reconstruction here and there, this one would work like a nature documentary, with dinosaurs living their lives in their natural habitat as if through time travel, through a combination of CGI, animatronics, and carefully chosen real-life environments. Today, Walking with Dinosaurs is rightly regarded as an iconic piece of dinosaur-related media, leading to various direct spinoffs or similar documentaries utilising the same concept.

The latest of these is Apple TV+’s Prehistoric Planet, which got dino-nerds’ attention not just because it would be using the most up-to-date knowledge to portray its prehistoric animals accurately, but because it would be narrated by the universally recognised king of nature documentaries, Sir David Attenborough (whose brother Richard, of course, had his own part in iconic dinosaur media, playing John Hammond in Jurassic Park). Despite so many people talking about it, I was late to the party with this one as I was taking a break from Apple TV+, but I recently went back on and caught up on the two seasons that are currently available on there. And it was definitely worth the watch.

Walking with Dinosaurs, along with the Discovery Channel series Dinosaur Planet, took a story-telling approach, focussing on particular individuals and their lives. Prehistoric Planet, on the other hand, takes the more detached but wide-reaching approach of the typical BBC wildlife documentary narrated by Attenborough, switching from subject to subject along a particular theme for the episode. It’s certainly no less engaging for this, however, and this format provides room for more variety in each episode, as well as justification for only featuring a few particular animals in each scene. (Walking with Dinosaurs only featured around six named species in each episode, considerably less than you would expect to see in each respective ecosystem.)

Both seasons produced so far focus on animals living during the Late Cretaceous Period – not at all at exactly the same time, but within a window of about 70 to 66 million years ago. There’s certainly plenty of interesting wildlife to choose from in this timeframe: familiar species like Tyrannosaurus rex, Triceratops and Velociraptor make appearances, but also plenty of obscure or recently described animals. It’s not just dinosaurs or other reptiles, either: various birds, mammals, amphibians, and even ammonites all get their moments in the spotlight. The series also makes sure to include variety in what behaviour is depicted as well; for instance, in T. rex‘s two appearances in the first season, we don’t see it hunting, but swimming, scavenging meat, and engaging in mating and parental behaviour. Meanwhile, a Mosasaurus is serviced by cleaner fish, a Deinocheirus relieves its itch on a dead tree, and a herd of Triceratops go spelunking to take advantage of a clay lick. This all adds to the realistic, three-dimensional feel of the series, as well as providing opportunities for humour; from a male Carnotaurus trying to impress a female by waving his puny arms, to a group of Ornithomimus stealing nesting material from each other, in a scene clearly inspired by Adelie penguins doing the same thing in Frozen Planet.

The overall production values are top-notch, with the realism of the animals showing just how far computer animation has come since Walking with Dinosaurs. Subsequent advances in palaeontological knowledge are on display, too, with appropriate dinosaurs sporting feathers and lips. Since there’s so much that fossils can’t reveal, Prehistoric Planet also takes advantage of the room available for speculation – for example, male Dreadnoughtus are given expandable throat sacs to show off to females and rivals. Generally, the series succeeds in striking the right balance between being creative and being grounded; just about everything feels at least possible.

Prehistoric Planet marks another landmark in dinosaur media, and anyone of any age who is interested in prehistory should check it out if they can. Hopefully future seasons will take a look at other windows of time within the Mesozoic – certainly, the possibilities are endless.

Film review: Oppenheimer

I went into Oppenheimer expecting that I would get something out of it; I like historical films, and occasional frustration with sound mixing aside, I generally like films directed by Christopher Nolan. When I left the cinema at the end, I knew that I was happy with what I’d seen, but I also needed time to process exactly what worked about the experience, and what other people might think as well. When you go to see a film like Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One and you find it satisfying, it’s easy to recommend to other people: great thrills, cool action set pieces, definitely worth your time and money if you enjoy that. Oppenheimer requires a bit more internal processing, as Nolan’s films tend to do.

With the film being three hours long, and Nolan applying his typical quick edits to create a sense of speed, there’s certainly a great deal to take in. It’s clear early on that this is a multi-layered film: the main story of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s life is set within the dual framing device of his governmental security hearing in 1954, and the 1959 Senate confirmation hearing of Lewis Strauss in which his dealings with Oppenheimer play a significant role. Still, the central story through the first and second acts generally follows the pattern of a typical biopic, covering Oppenheimer’s initial successes in physics, his difficult love life, his involvement in left-wing politics, and his all-important role in the Manhattan Project to build the first nuclear weapon.

While I found that there were rather too many characters to keep track of in the whole thing, I never felt completely lost, and I was certainly never bored. Given my own interests in science and history, I found the parts involving the development of the bomb – as well as Oppenheimer’s early physics work in the first act – to be the most interesting. (I certainly feel inspired to read more books on the subject.) Watching this film may not help your understanding of quantum physics, but it does give a basic idea of the principles behind the bomb. One minor disappointment I had was that we didn’t see very much of Richard Feynman, the scientist involved with the Manhattan Project whom I knew the most about going in; only people who already have some background knowledge are likely to recognise him playing the bongo drums, or watching the first test explosion from inside a truck.

It’s in the third act – after the bomb has been completed and used – that things start to get deeper, with Oppenheimer now unable to ignore the morality of what he has done and what it will lead to, and the focus on the security hearing bringing an element of courtroom-style drama. Perhaps the film intends to make the audience feel the same way as the scientists: the technical, goal-oriented side of things is over, and now uncomfortable reality sets in. We never actually see the bomb being dropped on Hiroshima, because we really don’t need to; Oppenheimer doesn’t witness it, after all, but for both him and the audience, imagination fills in the gaps. The film pulls no punches in emphasising that having brought the bomb into existence, its creators have little to no control over what happens next.

At this point, it’s worth talking about the use of sound: as you might expect in a film involving atomic bombs, this element is key. Thankfully, Nolan seems to have learned from Interstellar and Tenet, and we don’t have background music constantly drowning out the dialogue. However, said background music taken by itself is frequently intense and shrill, and apparently intended to generate anxiety in the audience, which is not inappropriate given the themes. If you’re sensitive to sound in the cinema, the film can reach the point of being overwhelming; in the scene depicting the Trinity test when the first atomic bomb is detonated, I was less able to appreciate the apocalyptic visuals of the explosion as I had my fingers in my ears, bracing for the blast of noise that I knew was coming. Still, it certainly contributes to making a memorable experience.

Cillian Murphy is obviously a favourite of Nolan’s, having become a regular in his filmography; here, he finally gets to take the lead as Robert Oppenheimer, and he makes the most of it. It’s one of those performances where you’re so absorbed by the character that you’re not thinking about the actor at all; even as you piece together the different aspects of Oppenheimer’s neurotic and tormented character, Murphy’s acting presents him visually as a man for whom the drive to do his job and pursue his passions is a higher priority than his own wellbeing. All the other actors similarly inhabit their own roles perfectly, including Matt Damon as General Groves, who appoints Oppenheimer to the Manhattan Project; and Robert Downey Jr as the antagonistic Lewis Strauss, the chief architect of Oppenheimer’s post-war problems. Florence Pugh doesn’t get much screentime as Oppenheimer’s lover Jean Tatlock, and Emily Blunt has to wait until the third act to get some proper material as his wife Kitty, but they both also do excellently with what they have.

So, who should this film be recommended to? The car park at my cinema was as full as I can remember when I was leaving, and even if the majority were probably there to see Barbie, the audience for my screening of Oppenheimer was very respectable too. People certainly appeared to be engaged: when Oppenheimer has a meeting with President Truman that doesn’t go well, and Truman is overheard saying afterwards, “I don’t want that crybaby in my office again,” one man in the audience let out a low whistle. Still, it didn’t feel like the kind of film with universal appeal: the best film I can think to compare it to is First Man, in that they’re both biopics that deviate from the straight and narrow and will likely leave the audience not immediately sure what to make of them. In the end, I’ll say that Oppenheimer is definitely a very well made film, and if you’re interested in the subject matter or know that you like Christopher Nolan’s directing style, you’ll be in safe hands. Rating: 4.5/5.