Magic carpet – Page 2

December 3, 2020

Zoom-zoom day

I am a passionate advocate of Zoom.

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! 🙂

June 21, 2017June 13, 2017

180 mile runs

It’s fair to say that I didn’t run at all between the beginning of June and the end of August last year, but by that time I was starting to suffer from the lethargy that creeps up on you when you’re not doing enough exercise.

As I was updating materials & content for new second-year students joining my Creativity in Enterprise module at Brighton Business School, it occurred to me that I could use the same approach that I was advocating to them… doing a little each day, rather than trying to do a lot once a week.

Going for a long run once a week is really lovely, but the ‘getting ready, running, recovering and writing’ process is invariably more than three hours, even for a relatively short run… or four hours if I ran to the Beacon and back. In September 2016 I didn’t have the time or the motivation… and even five miles is a long way when you’ve not run for three months.

The sustainable alternative was to run one mile each day instead.

Obviously it helps a lot if you have a running machine in the house, which we do. Then it’s about creating that impetus to run a short distance each day. I achieved this by targeting myself to run at 6mph, so 10 minutes per run… knowing full well that I would otherwise compete with myself to increase the speed, which would not be good over such a short distance with no warm up.

In September I clocked up 20 miles, then monthly totals of 27, 27, 29, 23, 24 and 25, which was in March when my module came to a close for the year. April and May were then not so impressive at 3 and 2 miles respectively, but the total was 180 miles in under 30 hours. A worthwhile amount of exercise to have notched up, and analogous of a considerable amount of additional learning for my students.

Of course I didn’t entirely manage to remove the competitive urge. Where I would normally run on a gradient 2, to represent the effort required to push the world round underneath me outside, I slowly suckered myself into running at gradient 3, then 4. I even managed a week of runs at gradient 5 before I backed off again… 5 is really effortful, where what I needed was simply a little exercise!

Why stop? You may well ask. I normally do ‘stuff for me’ in the mornings, because this is the only part of the day that is relatively consistent. However, the combination of some qigong stretching, 15 minutes of yoga, 15-30 minutes playing the guitar, 10 minutes running, 10 minutes cooling down in the garden, breakfast, shower etc meant that by March it was taking me 2 hours to get ready for work each day. It’s a lot of fun (great me-time), but at that level not sustainable… something had to give.

It was the running that quietly dropped off the agenda.

My mornings are still fun, but at the moment that extra slug of lethargy-reducing exercise is coming from other interesting activities… like gardening. But more about that in another post sometime. 🙂

December 14, 2014

Target 40

After a lovely dinner with Stuart & Grace last night, we had a lazy start to the day… in fact, I only just got up in time to load Kim’s car so that she could go off to London… and this before I’d even had a cup of coffee!

Since then I’ve had an atypically lazy day… hmmm… well aside from cleaning the shower room, doing the laundry, sorting out some bits in the garage etc. I do find it difficult to sit still!

Though I was too lazy to go out for a run, I did manage to do a quick five miles on the machine… though I regretted setting myself a target of sub-40 minutes. It would have been nice to have just plodded along, but this self-enforced time constraint meant that I had to crank up the speed beyond comfortable.

The music on the stereo today was Dire Straits and though the beat was good enough to keep me spinning along nicely, there were none of the spine-tingling musical moments that helped me sprint out last week.

So 5 miles in 39.42, an average of about 7.6 mph. No photos… too lazy!

June 15, 2014July 6, 2014

Infill 3

Not really up to much, but managed to run on the machine for half an hour and covered 3.54 miles… a shade over 7mph.

I had dropped in to see my folks the day before… it’s not hard to see where I get my interest in gardening from…

April 27, 2014April 27, 2014

Running in the rain, protected by a house

Apologies for no run last weekend… despite the Bank Holiday weekend I managed to only have one day of rest when I took the opportunity to go to see my folks. I was also catching up on work and studying most of yesterday, but finished around 6pm and cut the grass as well as the green opposite… I love this time of year!

By the time I emerged from my head this morning (which had been buried deep in Source, by Joseph Jaworski) I had missed the best of the sunlit morning and it was throwing it down with rain.

I contemplated putting on my wet-weather gear… well, not really. Actually I jumped on the running machine and set it to 7 mph and decided to do 5 miles, or maybe 45 minutes.

After half a mile I increased the speed by 0.2 and carried on increasing each half mile until I had run for three miles and reached 8 mph. Then I reduced to 7 mph again and increased each quarter mile. After a final quarter mile at 7 mph I increased to 10 mph in order to sneak my 5 miles in under 40 minutes… 39.51 to be precise, an average of 7.5 mph.

I then cooled down by walking until the 45 minute mark, when my average was still just above 7 mph. The rain paused just in time for me to go outside to stretch and I’ve spent most of the rest of the day studying… at least I’m enjoying it!

April 2, 2014

Running, but largely out of time

Please forgive me reader, for I have sinned… I’ve not come to confession for 24 days!

I have a vague excuse, with eight 5am starts (two of which I got home circa 11pm), ten 6am starts and way more than half of the daylight hours of the three weekends spent working at my desk. This is an excuse mind, not a complaint… it’s been a generally fun, engaging and challenging few weeks!

And I did manage to fit in two runs, although one was only a mile and took me more than ten minutes, if the hieroglyphics on my whiteboard are correctly interpreted… average 5.88 mph. From memory it was an early Monday morning antidote to the lethargy that not running creates. I think that it did its job, though I clearly didn’t hang around afterwards for long enough to record this fact.

The other, last Sunday morning was more energetic though, alas, still on the machine. I set the speed to 7 mph and ran for 45 minutes, clocking up 5.28 miles. The average works out to something like 7.04 mph, as I increased the speed at the end to compensate for the time that the belt takes to get up to speed at the start… and I got a bit enthusiastic!

There, that’s my confession. Now for some photos:

March 2, 2014March 3, 2014

Clean car

After a busy and interesting week, I hit the pause button this weekend. My Mum & Dad had sent me a book about three men driving across England in a 1958 milk float so I deliberately put aside some time to really get started on their journey.

It was also another of the 50th birthday parties, this time Steve’s, so we spent a lovely evening catching up with old friends. Bizarrely, some guests, Rick & Sam, recognised us from Nick(aka the Bok)’s fancy dress party several years ago (well, we were dressed fairly conspicuously as monks) and it transpired that they are also good friends with Daren. Separately, Maria’s parents know my Mum… I forget how small the world is, or maybe how well connected my Mum is!

It being the 1st March, the Kojo was evicted from it’s hibernation in the teahouse and I’ve already seen a bee making good use of its blossom. I was tempted to do more gardening but the ground is still too sodden to make it an appealing prospect. Instead I turned my attention to the cars… unwashed since last year.

Despite living outside, Kim’s car was not too dirty on account that I sluice the water off the top half of it each morning. This is ostensibly to make it easy for her to see out of the windows, but it also means that it looks fairly clean despite not having been washed. The inside was a different matter though, as the cherry tree came back in it the other weekend.

My car was caked, inside and out, the final icing (right colour, right texture) being the mud from my run with Daren last week. I actually really like cleaning cars and I worked happily outside for more than two hours washing and hoovering… and then went back out there again today to put a coat of polish on my car while it’s still clean.

My run today was back inside on the machine again and really only counts as ‘keeping my hand in until the weather warms up a little more’. I started at 7 mph and raised the speed by 0.5 mph each quarter mile for the first mile and then just repeated this for a further three miles. In the last quarter mile I ramped the speed up a little more and completed 4 miles in 31.01, an average of 7.73 mph.

This week I started some little experiments to figure out how I could utilise a new social media platform called Niume. It’s a young London-based start-up (which I like) and the idea is not so much to connect people as to connect ideas in the form of conversations (which I also like).

My FosterRuns experiment on niume is a relaxed conversational circle for occasional runners and my hope is that some of my readers here will feel more inclined to engage in dialogue in that environment. There are also many more interesting conversations going on there, so it’s worth taking a peek.

February 23, 2014February 23, 2014

Working downstairs

Another post containing two runs, this time because out of the last ten days, I have spent two days lecturing or in meetings and eight days working at my desk marking (fortunately really interesting) strategy papers.

On average I spend twice as long marking each paper as I’m paid for (to reach the standard required by my client), but it’s at least pushing me slowly up the experience curve. HA… of course I’m not always as upbeat as this, but my current task is now complete so I’m currently basking!

Last Sunday I was basking too, this time eating breakfast in the garden for the first time this year… fine weather indeed for the middle of February and all the more so bearing in mind that in the deluge two days earlier, the stone garden had looked more like a river bed!

On the sunny Sunday though I had decided to run a for a little longer and push through to 45 minutes. I had clearly expected to write my blog post later that same day so I made no notes on the board… and thus, other than vaguely remembering that it was hard work, I have little to say about it. I covered 5.36 miles, an average of 7.14 mph.

I saw this excellent example of positive PR in the paper this week… it seems like a visit to the cafe at South Downs Nurseries Garden Centre in Hassocks is to be recommended if you’re looking to shed your walking stick!

I’m feeling more generally upbeat this week because, for the first time since the autumn, there was a glimmer of light in the sky when I got up at 6am. I love the speed that the mornings lighten from here as Spring hastens to take hold.

I’ve been waking up with a painful leg for the last few mornings, probably because, despite being disciplined about getting up to walk around between papers, I have sat at my desk for something like 50 hours in the last week or so. I really pity office workers… at least I generally get a real mix of working environments.

So today, having completed my mammoth marking task, I was happy to take to the machine once again. Not wanting to overdo it I started at 7 mph and increased by 0.2 each quarter mile until I had completed a mile. Then I returned to a base of 7.2 mph and repeated, all the way through to a final quarter mile at 8.2 mph.

Nothing strenuous, but good ground-floor foundation reinforcement!

4 miles took me 31 minutes 38 seconds, an average of 7.58 mph and because I worked up to it slowly, I was not exhausted at the end. However, with my leg in mind (only painful laying down) my legs got an extended cold shower for their effort!

February 9, 2014February 9, 2014

Hard going four me

It would have been really easy to have skipped my run today as I was enjoying reading and also had a crick in my neck, but I managed to usher myself onto the machine before I had the chance to escape.

I started at the same speed as last week, 7 mph and 7.5 for the first two quarter-miles, but then increased to 8.5 and 9 mph After the first mile I was 17 seconds off the 8 mph pace and after repeating it a second time, whilst making the speed increases a little early, I was only 13 seconds adrift.

Then my subconscious started to pull rank and I soon found myself running at 6 mph. It’s a funny thing, that energy-preservation override and more than once I pushed the speed up a little, only to find it come back down again.

4 miles took me 31.29 in the end, an average of 7.6 mph, which is actually not so bad. I just need to remember to start more slowly next time, whilst Kim pointed out that I had no fuel in advance of the run, so I really was running on empty.

So far I have managed to curb the urge to sleep this afternoon, first by going shopping for a Japanese cherry blossom tree and later by putting some vibrant music on whilst we prepared the stew for tonight.

In the end I didn’t get as much reading done today as I would have liked and the neck crick is still there, albeit less prevalent, but it was really nice to have a more relaxing Sunday after missing all those ones in January.

February 2, 2014

Short

I seem to be short on time, all round, at the moment… but correspondingly high on frustration for some reason.

Hmmm… I can’t help feeling that there’s a link there somewhere…

Anyway, I did manage to fit a run in earlier today, albeit on the machine again. Starting from 7 mph I increased the speed each quarter mile… 7.5 to 8 to 8.5 mph… before going back to 7 mph and repeating for the next mile. In the final quarter mile I slowly ramped up to 10 mph before finishing, exhausted.

As a result I managed to complete 4 miles in 31.03, an average of 7.74 mph.

The picture above is a neat guitar pedal that my big Bro sent me. I haven’t managed to figure out how to use most of its features, but it has a very simple 40 second recording facility that allows you to either play along to a riff that you’ve played into it, or record further layers on top.

What this really means is that I have been driving Kim mad playing short melodies again and again and again and again and.. well, you get the picture. Thank you Bro!