Please forgive me reader, for I have clearly lapsed since the last time I wrote here at the start of February 🙁
Life and work got in the way of running, though that’s not much of an excuse given that I walk right past a running machine on my daily commute from the kitchen to my office!
Thanks to Suzie, a fellow runner who cut my hair yesterday, for encouraging me to simply put my trainers on again… today!
And it seemed a shame to pass on the opportunity to use the title that occurred to me last night 🙂
My one mile on the machine may slower than ever, but it’s another step in the right direction… and I’ve felt great today as a result 🙂
Actually, whilst the run last Friday was slower (and the writing about it clearly yet slower still as I’m only doing it now), this morning’s run was marginally faster… though there’s not enough difference to call either run anything other than 2 miles in 20 minutes.
However, there were two dimensions where there were differences between the runs. Firstly the weather warmed up a little, from frozen-solid puddles last week to the removal of my hat & gloves this morning through being too warm. Secondly, the after-effects of the short runs this year, including last week, had been minimal, but I’ve really crashed today & feel quite tired. Though, of course, it may also have something to do with having to compile my quarter-end VAT return!
I think that my aim in February will be to add a one-mile run on the machine each week… watch this space 🙂
I had a busy day lined up for Friday, but much of the work that I do requires creative problem solving (hence my paper and videos on the subject) so I used a run as a way to think about a new task.
Before the run I spent half an hour immersing myself in the task. This allowed my subconscious to work on the problem in the background whilst I was running. Then later, when I returned to the problem, I was more productive though I ultimately didn’t make as much headway as I would have liked during the day.
The run itself was pretty much a repeat of last week’s 2-miler, with a very similar time of 20 minutes, similarly chilly yet calm conditions and a similar approach to the dirty laundry 🙂
For clarity, I’m not talking about my running kit, which simply got dried, aired and returned to the kit draw unwashed after my New Year run 🙂 but rather that I simply ran the same circuit again.
I’ve had a really creative week as, aside from working on an interesting commercial cognitive challenge, I’ve returned to the amazing Lucas Cook for another round of guitar lessons.
I first met Lucas 11 years ago, at the start of January 2010, having decided that I would work to improve my guitar playing after 35 years of playing badly. Our collaboration started as an experiment, based on the writing of Julia Cameron, and aside from the development of a treasured friendship, has proved to be a very good investment in time! More recently Lucas has developed an online tuition model, which has opened up all sorts of interesting possibilities.
This week we had three short Zoom sessions where he essentially worked as a producer to help me develop a new piece of music. This time last week it didn’t exist in any form, but this morning I was comfortably playing a composition that I had not only developed, but is really ear-catching… the kind of music that never dared dream that I would be able to play, let alone compose.
So it was with this tune running around in my head that I set out into a one degree Celsius world outside.
I’ve definitely felt more cognitively and physically alive this last week and I attribute a good proportion of this to my New Year’s run, so my aim was simply to run the circuit again to start to rebuild muscle tone. I used to occasionally run a mile or two in my work shoes if I really wanted to catch a train, so there’s nothing to write home about the distance, but it’s a dramatic improvement given my declining mileage and physical form over the last few years.
Last week the circuit was 1.99 miles, but at one point today I decided to divert rather than wait for a covid-19 standoff to resolve itself between a lady with a dog and a man with a toddler. The lady had pinned herself up against one side of the path, the man had the territory on the other side and the toddler, oblivious of current social-distancing etiquette, happily occupied the centre of the path in his toy car… it looked like they might be there for a while!
The diversion took my mileage to 2.04 miles and at a very slightly faster pace than last week, but we’ll call it 2 miles in 20 minutes for ease. I’ve since dried & aired my running kit and once again returned it unwashed to the kit draw… in the hope that I will get it back out again at some point next week.
Getting back to running outside has been a while in the coming… and the New Year seemed too good an opportunity to miss to make it happen. I had done some yoga and then played guitar whilst supping my quadspresso and saw my slim chance to run before we got into breakfast.
It was a deliberately short pavement run and somewhat uneventful as a result. However, it was interesting that people were greeting me with ‘Good Morning’ rather than ‘Happy New Year’, which possibly hints at a general mood of resigned normality… it’s just another day in this locked-down world.
The weather was flat grey with no wind and a temperature hanging around zero, and though I ran just 2 miles in 20 minutes (pretty much the same as my last run on the machine) I had an ice-cream-head by the time I got back. After a lukewarm shower (with freezing cold water on my legs at the end) and some breakfast, I was starting to feel like myself again.
First run of the year, tick. Outside, tick. Cobwebs cleared, tick. Good start Foster 🙂
It was the message that I’ve been looking forward to for months… a sociable run with friends on the Downs. However, the decision was more complex.
The plus sides were obvious: running outside on the Downs, with a bunch of people who I like more than most. However, the furthest I’ve run in an age is one mile on the machine, which took around 10 minutes, and Andy was proposing a 75-90 minute run.
If I were to keep up with them across this time, then I would not be able to walk on Christmas Day, for sure, and probably not for several days afterwards. If I were to favour my legs, then I would have to bail out after a couple of miles & run back on my own.
On top of this, the forecast was for heavy rain and (of course) there are always concerns about catching bugs (you know what I mean) when you are desperately gasping for breath in a group of people.
Sadly my risk averseness carried the day.
But it was too good of a call-to-action to ignore, so I felt that I had to at least climb on the machine and show willing. I gave myself a slight head-start on the group and ran for two miles, during which time they would have started and probably caught up with me.
At their allotted start time the sun broke through the clouds to shine on the righteous and the day brightened up… so much for the forecast and I hope that it was the same where they were too!
At the point that they were probably finishing their run, an hour or so later, I was still walking around sweating from my brief run… it would have been a sofa afternoon if I’d joined them!
So 2 miles run in 20 minutes 30 seconds… nothing momentous, but yet another step in the right direction 🙂
I was up & about, having done my short yoga routine and played my guitar. In fact, I was feeling pretty normal (well, as normal as it’s possible for me to feel :-)) and I thought I would squeeze in a quick run on the machine before breakfast.
There’s a difference running in the morning vs the afternoon, in terms of how warmed up the body is, but I had clearly forgotten this. The run was okay, but it left me feeling leaden legged and then leaden headed.
In fact, my brain has been working on treacle-speed ever since, evidenced by the fact that it’s almost midday and I’m not yet in work mode… in fact I’ve only just finished my first cup of (cold) tea, which is pretty-much unheard-of!
One upside however… my office has felt freezin’ most of the week, even wearing several layers and with the heater on under my desk. But right now there’s no heater on because I’m still feeling centrally heated from my run 🙂
One mile in ten and a half minutes is no news really, but all these little leaden-headed steps are building in a good direction… towards a run outside at some point.
Two years ago I delivered a significant strategic project in Asia (designing a 2,100 sqm regional office, project managing the build-out, overseeing the growth of a team from 11 to 211+ and managing sentiment for the project in the existing, geographically-spread workforce) from a desk in London… using Zoom.
This year almost everyone seems to be working in a similar way and it’s common to have meetings via all the main platforms in any given week… Teams, Skype, Slack, Whatsapp, FaceTime, Google Hangouts and of course, Zoom.
In the first half of the year I was forced to use Teams when teaching or facilitating large groups, but Zoom is my clear preference from a capability perspective as well as clarity, usability etc… not to mention that they acted quickly to extend time limits & make it easy for people to stay in touch with each other using their free option during the lockdown.
However… spending time teaching, facilitating or attending meetings online is really cognitively taxing and today I ran a 2.5 hour Zoom workshop and then went straight into a 90 minute Zoom meeting, with no break between… a total of 4 hours staring at my computer screen. Ugh!
On the plus side, although the rain was literally tipping down outside, I didn’t get soaked through, had no challenges regarding travel, and managed to escape for periodic cups of tea (and a corresponding pee) with ease.
I may not have had to run for a train when I finally turned Zoom off, but I did feel the need for a run… to clear my crowded head and especially to warm up from my chilly office 🙂
One mile on the machine, in just over ten minutes, left me glowing with body heat and with the satisfaction that the running seems to be getting easier.
Not that I don’t have a way to go… Mini-me Mark ran around the short and spectacularly bland Shoreham Basin road for a total of 60 miles last week! Zoom-zooming mad as I am, I’m still not that crazy! 🙂
