My life is fast becoming a series of fascinating cognitive experiments.
In the week leading up to last weekend I spent 53 hours researching an alien (to me) commercial sector, first trying to gain a working understanding of it and later attempting to elicit valuable insights and present them in a coherent narrative.
My approach to the fascinating project was based on one of my creativity hypotheses and whilst some time needs to elapse for the client to be able to measure the real value of the exercise, one thing was abundantly clear: it left me mentally exhausted! Such that I wasn’t even able to contemplate a run last Sunday.
A contributory factor might have been a generously hearty dinner at Cliff & Nessie’s… where the combined testosterone from that many serious ultra-runners in one room was probably exhausting in itself!
This week has been fascinating for different reasons. Tuesday I was a participant in a Phd neuroscience experiment into pain at Kings College. This involved surprisingly little pain allied to the interesting experience of being scanned in an MRI machine, twice.
As I have aged so the subject of pain has become more interesting. When I was young I remember my father periodically yelping in agony at various twinges brought on by the gardening which he used as a means to relax. Now I understand those twinges first hand and the only evolutionary modification is that I try hard not to yelp!
Later in the week I had the privilege of helping Brighton Business School to review their new MBA syllabus. It seems to be an increasingly common theme for me to help people look at challenges from a different perspective, even when, as in this case, the people concerned are consummate specialists and way more learned than I.
So after another thought-provoking week and with a fresh back-ache to ignore (brought on by gardening yesterday) I decided that I really must get a run in.
My aim today was simply to run for an hour, so I set the speed to 6mph, covered the distance indicator with a towel (and later the clock too) and just got on with it. 6mph is a great speed for thinking, hence the myriad thoughts above, whilst it is also not too draining on such a gloriously warm summers day.
6.07 miles in one hour, 6mph average.
And now on to my next experiment. My sense is that I either need to strengthen my back by doing more gardening, or avoid aggravating it by doing less… no guesses which one I’ve chosen!
PS congratulations to my niece Kate and her beau Alex, who got married yesterday!
An idyllic setting for Kate and Alex’s wedding, and an idyllic setting for the reception too. The sun shone for them and the organisation was outstanding from start to finish. Congratulations to them both and to their families and friends for all that hard work.