Author: FosterRuns

It’s been a really interesting week with two student business pitch events at Brighton Business School and a day spent at TEDx LBS, held this year at the Royal Geographic Society.  Whilst the former are always brilliantly thought-provoking, the latter was really excellent brain food.

The speakers are generally talking about really challenging subjects and the fascinating conversations with the other delegates between sessions are icing on the cake.  I could happily spend a day every month at one of these events!

You can see the talks from last year on the site at the moment and I’m sure that in due course they will add the ones from Friday… I can highly recommend listening to Shoshana Clark talk about her work in Kabul which I found incredibly inspiring!

I was immersed in an HBR article this morning, sitting in the sun on the deck and could happily have stayed there reading the whole day.  But a run was needed to stay in shape and to keep the writing here going, so on went the running shoes and off I ran.

It was a beautiful sunny day but there was a distinct chill in the wind… not enough to make me regret wearing shorts and a tee-shirt, but enough to give me painful ears and make me fantasize about ear muffs!

To start with I wasn’t really sure where I was going, so I followed my nose out onto Folders Lane, across the common and down the Sussex Border Path to Ditchling.  When the ground is wet, this path is a quagmire but the recent dry weather made it a really enjoyable route, along behind the garden centres and right into the middle of the village.

Even the route South across the fields here was firm going, which is rare indeed and then I was faced with a choice.  I could turn left or right and still do a lovely loop, but instead I chose to go straight on and up the Beacon… there’s something about the lure of a steep hill!

I reached this halfway point in 57 minutes and set about retracing my steps.  With the chilly breeze now behind me and the sun higher in the sky, my ears started to warm up, though I now noticed that many of the walkers I passed were wearing jackets and trousers.

 

I found the return leg to be harder work, despite the absence of a big hill.   I’m definitely fitter than I was (maybe last year) as I was still able to keep pushing ahead, but there was nothing left to really push hard over the last quarter-mile.

Surprisingly this route is slightly longer than the one via Oldlands Mill, so I ended up running 10.5 miles in 1:53… averaging just over 5.5 mph… and I’m definitely going to run this way to the Beacon again as the weather warms up.

Finally the wind blew from Southern climes and after a day of rain yesterday, Spring sidled in and made its mark on the weekend.

And what a day it has been… windows open, sitting outside to eat, car washing, grass cutting and prefacing all this, the first run of the year in shorts and a tee-shirt.

In a nod to those friends who were running in the Brighton Marathon today, I took to the pavement for a 10-mile run down to Hassocks & back.

The first couple of miles were hard going and then I started to run into a warm southerly wind which meant that it didn’t exactly get easier as I warmed up.  Somehow I managed to reach the turn-point in 46 minutes, just outside of a 9 minute per mile pace, which gave me an incentive to push a little harder on the way back.

Out of interest, you’ll note from the pictures above that the hedgerows and trees and all still brown… the photo in my post from the same run on April 15th last year shows a thick green hedge!

With the wind now behind me I did my best to make up for the lost minute as I retraced my steps.  A quick glance at my watch with one mile to go showed that I was back on track, but alas not ahead.

That meant that I had to push really hard up the steep part of Junction Road and keep the pressure on when I reached the flat part at the top.  Knowing that I couldn’t possibly do it, my subconscious was telling me to slow down and take a breather, but I pushed on through regardless.

And somehow I managed to do it!  10 miles in 90 minutes… a full 10 minutes faster than that same Brighton Marathon-day run last year!

One thing was clear though… I would never have been able to run the other 16.2 miles!  Congratulations to all those who did!

I’ve had a really interesting week, but it’s been infeasibly cold for April… bleak grey skies, snow flurries, Siberian winds.  In fact it was a great week to have good excuses to be inside… and I was particularly glad that a walk down amongst the Seven Sisters was postponed at the last minute!

Yesterday we were treated to a sibling visit, with Debbie and John arriving in style… on the back of a low loader!

It was really nice to see their smiling faces emerging from the truck… they took the whole incident very well, despite a two-hour delay to their arrival and a £200 bill for emptying £20 of petrol from the diesel tank!

By the time we woke up this morning the sun was well in control of the day and though it was still chilly, I couldn’t resist a run outside.

Two layers was not really enough, though I’m not sure whether this was for the obvious reason, or because I was sweating and the cold wind was supercooling me as a result.  Either way I resisted the temptation to don the jacket I took along for spare.

I headed out to Oldlands Mill along a path with mud the consistency of chocolate icing.  The lovely panoramic photograph I took is unfortunately too big to upload to this site… you’ll have to take it from me that the white windmill looked beautiful, while the view to Jack & Jill across the Weald was lovely in the sunlight.

From there I ran down into a bustling Ditchling and up towards the Beacon track.  The track itself seemed really steep after so long away whilst the top layer of permafrosted ground had melted to make the surface very slippery in places.  Despite this it was great to be back and I managed to reach the Beacon without stopping.

Running back down the track was harder work in some ways, since the brakes had to be full on to offset the questionable grip, but I made it down without incident.

As I retraced my steps I reaped the benefit of all those recent magic carpet sessions… despite the additional distance, gradient and rough ground, my legs felt really good.  I even managed to increase my pace towards the end.

So 10 miles in 1:44 (53 minutes out, 2 mins taking photos on the trig point and 49 minutes back) gives an average of 5.77mph.

One odd aside… I’m not sure when I last had a pair of scales in the house (at least 20 years ago), but our new scales show that I lost 2 pounds during the run, despite drinking half a litre of water en route… no wonder my shirt felt cold!

As a further sign that Spring is nigh, Kim and I then sat outside to eat brunch… it wasn’t spectacularly warm, but warm enough while we ate.  Though as I write this we are admiring the sunlit garden from inside with the doors closed!

I’m inclined to make the most of it as the forecast for the rest of April (starting Tuesday) is for as much rain in three weeks as we normally have in four!  Spring ahoy!

It may seem an odd thing to say, but if you have about 20 minutes (or more) to spare right now, I suggest that you click the link below rather than reading my blog.

http://www.ted.com/playlists/60/work_smarter.html

My week started with a little snow, though come Tuesday when I checked to make sure some London meetings were still on, this fact was met with more than a little surprise… as was the snow gear I was wearing when I arrived!

Thursday found me back in London for meetings and an interim event, after which I stayed in my old Earls Court stomping ground.  It may sound slightly kooky, but I slept right under the bed in my old flat!  Before you get the wrong idea entirely, I was one floor down, staying with friends.

 

The next morning I was reminded why it was such a great place to live when I was able to walk to a meeting near Olympia!

All week I had slowly been coming to terms with the change from Blackberry to Apple.  Frustrations abounded to start with, but these lessened as the week wore on and I discovered simple work-arounds… such as, for example, how to set the alarm so that it only vibrates on the bedside table rather than blasting you awake.

Last night I had a comparative epiphany… I had read poor reviews about the various TED apps on offer, but clicking on the play-list above brought me a series of phone-sized TED talks with no app required.

I think I have just sold myself on the Apple thang in one easy step.

Recalling my running machine experiments with the Kindle as I prepared for my run on the machine this morning (it was raining outside) I found a safe place for the iPhone to sit and wired myself in.

Because the link above is a playlist, there is 165 minutes of material available with no digital input required… digital, in this case, pertaining to my finger.  Trying to control any tiny technology devices whilst running is generally a little hit & miss… as in miss step, hit floor.

Suitably wired for brain food I did the normal 7mph run with occasional 0.1mph increases.  Trying to concentrate (on TED for example) requires a generally slower pace, which meant that I found it hard going towards the end.

Several things would improve the experience further: an iPad so that the screen is larger, a bracket to hold it higher and further away and a set of Bluetooth headphones to remove the wire tether with the associated risk of catapulting the devise off into oblivion.

I ended up completing 7.35 miles in 60 minutes.

Spring now seems to be back on track after it’s brief winter sojourn and with a little luck I’ll be back outside next weekend.  In the meantime I have another fascinating week of discoveries ahead, including lecturing at both Brighton Business School and UCL.