First, celebrate the fact that in these uncertain times running is one of the most proven and cost-effective methods of stress relief. Whether it’s getting endorphins pumping round your body, clearing your mind of clutter or encouraging better sleep, there are myriad physical and mental maladies that can be eased by the simple act of going out for a run. Running is also great for losing weight and stretching your muscles. Add green tea for weight loss to your diet and you have the perfect result. And in case you find it hard to find the time, we speak to two people in high-pressure jobs and discover how they incorporate running into their ultra-busy routines.

Then enjoy a warm glow of satisfaction by reading accounts of those special races when everything goes right (page 58). You’ll find out exactly how it feels to outrun a horse, propose to your loved one at the finish or win because the people in front of you ran the wrong way (well, they all count). Once you’re suitably chilled-out, find out how trying disciplines such as yoga, Pilates and the Alexander Technique can improve your balance, coordination and posture to benefit both your running and general health.

Finally, how about some motivating music to speed you on your way? We investigate what makes the perfect running song. It’s an eclectic journey that begins with the lead guitarist from Survivor and ends at Dolly Parton, going via the construction worker from the Village People. It’s fair to say this will be the first and last time I mention those three together in my editor’s letter.

(ITB) Syndrome

You’ve got it if you feel a dull ache on the outside of your knee after about 10 minutes of running, which gradually becomes stronger. Running downhill and walking downstairs also hurts.

You’ve tried rest, stretching, ice.

So try this Trying to stretch your ITB at home is rarely effective, so visit a physiotherapist for trigger point massage — a type of deep massage on ‘trigger points’ in your gluten and quads that helps to release tension in the ITB. They can also help you stretch the ITB using massage. When the pain has reduced, try strengthening your gluteus medius, muscles that help to stabilise your pelvis. To do this, lie on your side against a wall with your injured leg on top. Slowly raise your heel along the wall to about 30 degrees; hold; and lower. Repeat 10 to 20 times.

Runner’s Knee

(Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome)

You’ve got it if you feel a sharp pain directly below the kneecap when you

run. It tends to be caused by weak inner quads, which can allow the kneecap to wander out of alignment.

You’ve tried ice for the pain; strengthening your quadriceps using squats or the leg press in the gym.

So try this In one study from Ball State University, USA, gelatine supplements were found to reduce knee pain. The researchers believe the protein may help repair cartilage. Strengthening your inner quads may help too, as they help to keep the kneecap in place. Try this exercise: lie down with your legs straight on the floor and a rolled-up towel under your knees. Press down on the towel with one leg, keeping the heel on the floor; hold for five seconds, release and repeat 10 times.

Achilles Pain

You’ve got it if you feel pain in the back of your heel, which is worse when you first wake.

You’ve tried rest, ice, calf stretches and heel-lowering exercises.

So try this: Tendon problems are one area where ground-breaking work is being done, according to Wilde. One alternative treatment is autologous blood injections: a sample of blood is taken from the patient and re-injected into the Achilles tendon. “The idea is that it will stimulate a healing response,” says Wilde, who has seen it work for some of his patients.

Plantar Fasciitis

You’ve got it if the underside of your foot feels tight and painful, especially first thing in the morning or at the start of a run.

You’ve tried stretching your calves and Achilles tendon; wearing a night splint to stretch your foot.

So try this Some studies have shown that acupuncture might work on stubborn plantar fasciitis problems. “The type of acupuncture used by physios is different to traditional Chinese acupuncture,” says Wilde. “They’ll put needles in to trigger points in the muscle, rather than on traditional meridian lines.” Extracorporeal shockwave treatment — applied to the affected area using a small machine, and designed to trigger a natural healing response — has also gained popularity, but is expensive and research has shown mixed results.

Heal thyself

The latest medical insights into smoother running and better health

RUNNING CURE

Running could help to kick-start an ageing immune system into health. According to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, completing a moderate amount of exercise such as jogging can help offset the effects of ageing. In the study, mice who had exercised before catching flu were more likely to survive. Researchers said the crucial finding was that exercise reduces inflammation, a dangerous factor in many diseases.

TRY HARDER

Half-hearted training at the gym isn’t worth the effort, a recent study has found. In the two-month study published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, subjects performing just one set of resistance exercises twice a week showed barely any improvement in strength. In contrast, those completing three sets, twice a week boosted their strength significantly.

GIFT OF SIGHT

Next time you’re struggling through a gruelling run, think of Lance Armstrong. That’s the advice of American researchers, who quizzed college athletes on the mental imagery they used while training. Appearance-based imagery was used mast often and was most effective. The research, published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, also found that visualisation was more common in male athletes, and in more confident individuals.

REST PRACTICE

Resting between sets at the gym and the usage of resveratrol will keep you going for longer, new research has found. According to the study published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, resting for three minutes rather than one between sets significantly increased the total number of reps performed.

Adrian Brett blends old and new with Cavatina, Morning Has Broken, Autumn Leaves, Send in the Clowns, Meditation, Forgotten Dreams, Annie’s Song, Greensleeves, Bright Eyes, Serenata, Clair de Lune, and Summertime. The orchestra is conducted by Brian Rogers.

Send just £5.99 for your set of Golden Dreams today—and you’ll fall in love all over again! Simply fill in both parts of the coupon and send it, with your remittance, to the address given. If you would like to pay by Access or Barclaycard, just fill in your account number where indicated.

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This indeed is so. The unprece­dented post-war growth in Britain’s prosperity has transformed the liv­ing standards of ordinary people. When the Queen celebrated her Sil­ver Jubilee last year, each of her subjects on average enjoyed in­comes commanding about four-fifths more goods and services than their parents. Whereas the father of the average British worker drove a motorbike and took the family each summer for two weeks in Black­pool, his son runs a new car and flies with his family on a three-week package holiday to Spain.

Britain has become a cleaner, sun­nier, brighter place in which to live.

Thanks to greater output, the na­tion has been able to spend re­sources cleaning up rivers and lakes. London’s famous pea-soup fog has disappeared. True, the Brit­ish air is now more sulphurous, but this is another sign of increased affluence : the emissions come from cars. Their numbers have swollen from one for every six households to three for every four.

If Britain is so well off, why do so many voices—intellectuals of the left, right and centre—sound like mourners at a wake? The Cassan­dras are talking about that slippery concept of relative growth and pros­perity. Although in 195o output per person in France, for example, was 17 per cent behind Britain’s, by 1973 it was 32 per cent ahead. Even more startling has been the rise achieved by Italy. A Briton pro­duced three times as much as an Italian in 1900, but by 1973, and de­spite the great gains registered in Britain, the Italians had drawn even. In other words, while Britons have got richer, their neighbours have got richer faster.

Neither statistics nor economics will answer the question why Brit­ish workers push themselves less than their counterparts in Europe and the USA. Britons, to the dis­may of the textbook writers, do not appear to be optimizing. Workers and managers do not seek the great­est possible income; they seek in­stead an adequate or satisfactory level of income. They prefer tea breaks, long lunches, slower as­sembly line, longer weekends to strenuous efforts for more money.

This, to be sure, is a sweeping generalization that obyiously does not apply to all Britons. It does not cover the keen-eyed soccer and cricket stars, leaving the country for richer rewards elsewhere, or the countless craftsmen and artists, pro­fessionals and artisans for whom work is a joyful, creative form of expression.

The preference for leisure over goods applies chiefly to those toiling in mines or on assembly lines, labouring at routine tasks in huge white-collar bureaucracies. Their work does not, cannot, enlarge per­sonality. They work because they must, to earn enough to support their wives and families. It. is these workers who have decided that there are limits to how long and hard they will labour to buy a sec­ond television set or earn the down payment on a bigger house.

This preference for leisure can be measured in several ways. The Brit­ish have chosen to spend more and more on the arts, for instance-with astonishing results. Taken as a whole, London is the acknow­ledged world capital for drama. The heavily subsidized National Theatre is the envy of the West. Moreover, London alone boasts five world-class symphony orchestras, all receiving state funds that could have been invested to increase pro­ductivity in chemicals or ship building; British society, through budgets adopted by elected govern­ments, has chosen differently.

Britain has frequently been held up as a horrible example, a warning to others. With an inflation rate above its industrial homologues, an unemployment level close to the highest in the West, it is hardly the New Jerusalem. Neither is it the chaotic, miserable swamp de­picted by the gloomier analysts.

Calm appraisal suggests that Brit-

ain       at least a Britain somehow
shed of its running sore in Ulster-is a comfortable, decent, creative place, burdened with problems as are all industrial societies, but mov­ing hesitantly towards a more civil­ized life. Its lack-lustre perform­ance in what Blake called “these dark, Satanic mills” may be less a symptom of sickness than of health.

Western countries are looking for ways to make work more human, exact less of a toll. It is conceivable that in time they too may find that some jobs can be humanized only by doing less of them, either by working at a slower pace or aban­doning them entirely. As these rich societies insist on more satisfy­ing work, they are likely to look towards Britain. Then, instead of being a warning, Britain will serve as a model in tomorrow’s world.

AFTER Britain’s voters in 1974 had twice rejected Edward Heath’s claim that the Tories alone could save the country from its unions, distinguished com­mentators pulled long faces. Sam­uel Brittan, resident economist for the Financial Times, warned that the demands of voters in general and unions in particular “risk straining liberal democracy to the breaking point.” Two Oxford lec­turers, Robert Bacon and Walter Eltis, pointed to “a collapse of Brit­ain’s economic performance.”

Eminent American commenta­tors were just as gloomy and de­cidedly more blunt. Morley Safer disclosed on CBS television that Britain had endured “two decades of decline … culminating in a kind of anarchy.” The American Hud­son Institute of Paris then produced the report, The United Kingdom in 1980, which began in almost Or­wellian tones : “The outlook for Britain is sombre . . . the economic crisis is linked to a severe deteriora­tion in the country’s social and political health.”

The consensus among observers was so widespread that Vermont Royster of The Wall Street Journal could write confidently : “Hardly anyone needs to be told now that Great Britain is the sick country of Europe.”

One thing is conspicuously absent from the diagnoses of the pundits: evidence. Almost to a man, they fas­tidiously eschew hard, verifiable fact to support contentions that the causes of Britain’s “sickness” lie in conventional areas.

1. The Unions. Writes R. Emmett Tyrell Jr in The Future That Doesn’t Work: Social Democ­racy’s Failures in Britain, “The most grasping interest group has for years been the trade union move­ment.” But the unions showed ex­traordinary restraint in their wage demands during the three years after 1974. They demonstrated that, in a nation believed least amenable to such devices, an incomes policy is workable, helping reduce a terri­fying inflation to a tolerable level.

The Welfare State. Britain, as many commentators have observed, squanders its resources on the weak, the lazy, the old and the young. Cool evidence, however, draws the heat from this thesis. Britain spends 7.7 per cent of its gross domestic product on social welfare—con­siderably less than the 10.6 per cent spent in the Common Market countries as a whole.

Strikes. The economic patholo­gists generalize about Britain’s end­less, exceptional industrial strife. Again, their grim prognosis is un­done by facts. Since 1974, British workers have been no more strike-prone than brethren in Canada, Italy, Australia and the USA, ac­cording to International Labour Organization figures.

Government Spending. Every­body knows that Britain is over­whelmed by the burden of support­ing an army of civil servants—and once more, what everybody knows has little basis in fact. EEC statistics indicate that, whereas the outlay on government expenses is a striking 46.3 per cent of the total domestic

output, the average for all Common Market countries is almost the same : 46.5 per cent.

Taxes. Surely The Wall Street Journal and the rest of the experts are right at least in asserting that taxes drain Britain’s energies. Yet there is nothing peculiar in the Brit­ish performance according to a 1976 survey. In Britain the taxman took 36.8 per cent of everything pro­duced—about the same as in France (36.9) and Germany (35.2).

Loss of Empire. As US states­man Dean Acheson put it, “Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role.” Divorce from posses­sions that once gave maps a reddish hue has somehow devitalized the nation. But there is no known method of calibrating a national psyche, and it is not clear that the Lancashire millworker, the Welsh miner, the London shop assistant or Coventry car worker felt depressed when Kenya, Nigeria, Jamaica and others followed India and Pakistan.

Whatever the commentators say, the fact is that during the imperial era 1855-1945, British output of goods and services grew each year on average by 1.7 per cent; in the 30 post-war years without empire it grew annually by 2.5 per cent, a gain of nearly half.

All in all, a dismal picture had been painted of Britain in mid-1977. And the futurologists’ crystal ball failed completely when it came to North Sea oil. The prize for cloud-cuckoo analysis goes to the Hudson Institute’s claim that “by 1980 no appreciable difference will have been made to Britain’s financial standing” as a consequence of the oil. A more inaccurate guess could not have been made. A Treasury study in 1976 concluded that the oil would add L1,050. million to Brit­ain’s balance of payments in 1977 and L5,400 million by 1980, going an important way towards paying off the debts the country has con­tracted during its hardest times and helping to wipe out deficits in trade accounts with other nations.

376 Strand, London WC2R OLQ. An ideal location for pre or post theatre dining. Three course gourmet meal at £14.95 or two courses at £12.95 for dinner. Rooms available for private parties for up to sixty people. Wild Hen Parties and Stag Parties….anything goes! They cater for small wedding receptions.

THE LAVENDAR

Warm, informal and inviting, with a rustic feel. Daily changing blackboard menu consisting of modern and eclectic European dishes. Wines from France, Italy and the New World. Average spend between £18-625 per head.

VANILLA POD

Marlow’s new destination restaurant, has already attracted attention for its unique ‘tasting menu’ in which each item contains an element of vanilla. Michael McDonald’s smart yet welcoming eatery is well worth a visit!

BIBIS CRITERION

In the heart of Leeds, Bibis Criterion usually celebrates its 30th Anniversary in its stunning new’ 1920s art deco style venue. With a vibrant atmosphere and superb Mediterranean and Italian cuisine, Bibis is a truly unique dining experience. The proud owner, Mr. Oliver Teodorani, takes pride in letting his staff take the limelight in this buzzing restaurant and cocktail bar. Mention this feature and Bibis will happily give you and a guest a glass of their much-recommended house cocktail! Cocktail bar open all day from 12 noon until late. Restaurant open for lunch and evening meals, bookings taken (excluding Saturdays).

            A word of warning for all those who, from time to time, enjoy a little posing with the latest teeny-weeny mobile phone: the stakes have just been raised. Considerably. Nokia’s latest assault on the mobile market comes in the form of its new company, Vertu, which is pitched at a level several leagues above anything you can experience at a High Street phone store. Let’s start with the nitty-gritty. If proof were needed that a Vertu phone is no ordinary phone, the price tag alone should do the trick. The starting price is £4,000. And should you so desire, you can spend up to £15,000 – that’s if you simply must have it in gold or platinum.

The irony is fairly obvious: as we teeter on the brink of a recession, with mobile phone theft hailed as the latest urban crime epidemic, the concept of a super-luxe phone in hallmarked precious metals may at first seem a little bewildering. But the creators stand firm. “The time is right for this phone,” claims Vertu’s chief executive, Nigel Litchfield. “Other companies have attempted to introduce high-price phones, but only by taking a standard product and changing its packaging. We’ve started from scratch to produce something really special.”

But if you are expecting a life-altering new gadget for your money, you are missing the point. “This is not about function,” states Giles Rees, Vertu’s vice-president for Europe. Rather, it’s the traditional craftsmanship, the quality of the materials and the level of service that are the phone’s real selling points. Vertu is hoping its handset will be viewed and coveted in the same way as a beautiful fountain pen, limited edition Louis Vuitton bag or a classic Rolex watch. Ruby bearings mean the buttons last 10 times as long as the keys on your average phone, a 16-amp speaker means that your exclusive ring tone is perfectly polyphonic and that hands-free calls are positively spooky in their clarity, and every chip used will be x-rayed for fractures to ensure that being cut off unexpectedly is kept to a minimum. Extra-large sapphires have been specially coconut oil hair growth grown for the scratch-resistant face, and the leather-goods company Connolly (responsible for Rolls-Royce interiors) is producing an ultra-fine case and trim. In fact, all told, the Vertu phone has 20 new patents and 418 working parts, where most phones have about 70.

In a market where mobile phones are essentially disposable, being periodically outmoded both by new technology and new design, it is undoubtedly a gamble to create a phone that is designed to last a lifetime – and a move that will change the boundaries of the market completely. With its sleek shape and slick design, he hope is that, rather than looking old-fashioned two years down the line, the design will become a classic. And despite the giant leaps that look set to be made with the introduction of third-generation technology, Vertu is confident that, with its fully modular system, the phone can be updated to incorporate any new technology: “We will collect the phone from the customer, update it in a matter of days and deliver it back to them, wherever they are. It’s all part of the continuing service we will offer.” There’s also a built-in concierge service – at the touch of a button, you’ll be connected to the members’ club Quintessentially, whose team will be ready and waiting to organise everything for you, from a table at Nobu to a holiday in St Barts.

Equal care has gone into creating just the right image in preparation for the launch – for, as every successful player in the luxury-goods industry knows, image is everything. Vertu has commissioned artists, including James Turrell, Ron Fricke and Christopher Buck-low, to create work for the gallery-style, appointment-only sales suites It’s produced one of the subtlest advertising campaigns ever seen, featuring Christopher Bucklow’s luminous silhouettes — an entirely missable “V” is the only clue to the identity of the product. And, more importantly for Vertu, it’s created an image for itself as at influential and knowledgeable curator modern art. As Christopher Bucklow puts it, “It’s cool by association.”

Whichever aspect makes the difference – the experience of the ultra-chic sales suites, the slick design and service, or simply the prospect of buying into the most exclusive communications device around – it seems we’re witnessing the birth of another “ultimate” item.