Chariots of Fire

For a little dog, whose idea of an energetic afternoon is to watch the winter Olympics on the television with my head on a nice comfy pillow, the concept of training is rather alien. In fact, I wasn’t really quite sure where to start.

I began thinking of all the nice and unshocking films I like to watch. You know the ones where you can just relax and watch it without that concerned feeling in the back of the mind….. no naughty words, nothing that should be confined to ones private life, no bloodshed. I was hoping for inspiration… my first thought was “My Fair Lady”… not very helpful… and I would be affronted if I suddenly heard a yell from the side-lines of “Come on Dover, move your bloomin’ a...se” I have developed an elegant walking gait over the years…. and comments on my derriere are not welcome….

So then I thought about a number of others… and do you know films aren’t really about sports training… well lets face it, its not much fun doing it, let alone watching films about it. One did come to mind though….”Chariots of Fire”…. that was all very moral and lovely… and it was about running. The image of them running along the beach…. with that motivating music….such lovely imagery.

One of my favourite places to go for a walk is East Beach in Southend. It isn’t all about the tea wagon that sells banana and walnut muffins, but they do help. It has the closest that the area gets to sand dunes…. If that means grass running down to the beach… the grass bits aren’t very well mown so I can run through it and pretend I am in the wild….with the wind blowing through my ears….

So of we went (by car) for the next bit of my training….

 

Isn’t it beautiful: the sea is like a millpond. A little bit more sun, and it could have been almost tropical… Southend does have palm trees, some real and some plastic…

And then it was time for me to limber up and make the clip…. Fundamentally we needed two Steve’s: one to run with me, and one to take the shot. There was a little bit of debate around which David was worse at: running or working technology. Well, on the fifth take I was thinking… “well if the film making is anything to go by, I am surprised he can walk, let alone run”.  Anyway, I decided enough was enough and on the final shoot, I continued on, until I was sitting on his lap: that was enough of sand flying about.

 

Steve says its extra fun if you keep pausing it, because you can see my ears flapping about…. how personal!