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Running, skipping and jumping

More running, skipping and jumping at Denise’s Monday Circuit session last night, although I’ve managed to tweak my back or neck in the process.

Tony & Lee were absent so there was less mirth than normal, so instead Daryl kept pushing me into using heavier and heavier weights… it always makes me smile when you go to pick up a weight and it stays resolutely glued to the ground.  More work required then!

AND, Breaking News!  When I woke up this morning at 6am, there was light in the sky for the first time this year… it may not have been very much, but it’s still a red letter day to my mind… Spring is coming!  YAHOO!

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Chubby rides again!

Slightly unfair, I feel, the comment from Cliff on last Monday’s post, but the least I can do is to roll with it when I’ve blatantly blanked his excellent advice for such a long time.

This week I had a moment to celebrate.  In the past I have, on possibly two occasions, half-heartedly set out to write something longer than a post… and even longer than a letter to the Right Honourable Nicholas Soames MP containing yet more of my ideas that he really doesn’t want.  On each occasion my effort has fizzled out and quite rightly so.

However, at 3pm on 10th February, I set fingers to keyboard to write the inaugural words of my first proper book, on a subject that I have been teaching and writing about for a couple of years.  I know how long the book will be (thanks to Aidan Berry, Dean of Brighton Business School), have created the structure of sections and chapters, and in a little over 11 hours writing, over the last three days, have already clocked up 3,419 words.

I have also already had half a dozen helpful tips from my fellow alumni at London Business School, having replied to a fortuitously-timed post from someone else in the community who also just started writing a book.

There’s a long, long way to go, and writing it is only a small part of the challenge, but it feels great to have finally reached clarity about this project… I’ve effectively been preparing myself from it since 2007!

So my run this morning had to be shoehorned into a busy day, which is why (here comes the crux of the excuse that you were waiting for) I chose to run on the machine again rather than facing the seemingly sub-zero temperatures outside!

Based on my experience last Sunday, I didn’t bother to even put a tee-shirt on today, but I equally didn’t open the door either.  It’s FAR too cold outside!  I set the fan to blow air at me, filled a bottle with water and set off in the general direction of the cheese plant.

My approach mirrored that of last week, starting at 6mph and increasing by 0.5mph every quarter mile until I reached a mile.  Then I reduced by 1mph and repeated, eventually reaching a terminal speed of 9.5mph as I ran towards the 5 mile mark.

 

The Monday circuits have definitely improved my footing and although the last half mile was undoubtedly hard work, I was quick to feel a sense of recovery afterwards… albeit through a thick layer of sweat that even a shower couldn’t abate!

So 5 miles in 39.28, an average of 7.6mph.  And if nothing else, all this exercise is at least increasing the speed of my writing!

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InDolphin Rush

Monday saw Kim and I brave a chilly night to attend Denise’s circuit class at the Dolphin Centre again.

Last week didn’t seem to have a lasting after-effect in my muscles (yes yes, I can’t say what I mean without saying the word stiffness, which I’m sure will elicit a good snigger), so I upped the ante this week by trying a little harder, lifting heavier weights etc.  I’ve certainly been feeling it this week!

Daryl, Tony and Lee helped offset some of the pain of the session by joining in my laughter… they’re great guys to work out with!

I’m reminded after each session we’ve attended that Cliff has been trying to persuade me to get back to all-round exercise for what seems like years now… and I now even remember why I stopped in the first place.  Following my skiing accident, where I broke a collar bone, I was having trouble with the other shoulder and the physio suggested I let the muscle reduce to try to resolve it.

It’s definitely time to move on from that and get fit again and I’m also following the Cliff & Nessie diet at the moment… eating a more hearty lunch every day and, well, generally just eating more!  The endorphin rush after each circuit session is palpable and I feel SO much better generally!  If a little stiff this week!

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Observations of a cheese plant

I always love the way that a covering of snow on the ground outside reflects the day onto the ceilings inside the house and enhances the quality of the light. I would be a very happy guineapig for a dimmable ceiling full of LED lights, but in the meantime I enjoy our occasional snowy days all the more for the change in light.

I’m not averse to running in the snow, but only if it’s off-road. There is far too little traction on snowy pavements and the risk of injury outweighs any other considerations… including any adverse comments from my more… er, manly friends.

So instead I put on my shorts and climbed aboard the running machine. I’m sure that visitors think it’s an odd piece of furniture to have in the middle of an otherwise Zen-ish environment like ours, but I think more houses should have one… in fact, one of my neighbours clearly agrees and has recently bought one, albeit a bit flashier than our rather purposeful machine.

The downside of its location is that it faces a wall with only the leaves of a cheese plant to break the view. Two winters ago when I was training for the Brighton marathon and the world outside was deep with snow, I clocked up a number of long runs including one at 20 miles. It seems odd in retrospect that the subsequent marathon would break my mind in under two hours, when my mental muscle was strong enough to keep running whilst staring at the leaves of a cheese plant for three hours!

Today my aims were much more modest… a mere five miles. The machine shows progress around a quarter-mile track of LED lights and I decided to change the speed at each completed circuit. Starting at 6mph I increased through 6.5 and 7 to 7.5mph, before dropping back to 6.5 at the start of the next mile and repeating the process again.

This meant that at the end of mile four I was running at 9mph. In the final mile I reduced to 8.5, then to 8 and 7.5, but realising that I had the opportunity to run a sub 40-minute time, then increased the speed to 10mph to sprint to the end in 39.47, averaging just over 7.5mph overall.

Early on, Kim had noticed my get-on-and-run lack of preparation and had opened the door to the snowy garden, turned on the fan and had brought me a bottle of water… just as well since I had shed my shirt within a mile and by the end was dripping as if I was in a sauna.

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Exercising those big L muscles

It was back to Denise’s Dolphin Circuits Class tonight, with seemingly even more people than last week and certainly more whose names I knew.  Last Tuesday I sat down right next to Sharon, a lady at an event I was attending, who said that she had followed me around the circuits class the night before!

There seemed to be more activities tonight too, but there were actually 18 last week as well… it’s just that we couldn’t remember what the missing activity was (oblique curls, of course).

I almost joined the two affable guys (who turned out to be Tony & Lee) who Daryl and I had followed round last week, but at the last moment I joined Daryl and new guy (to me) Al on the basis that I could then more easily bridge the gap between the two groups and have a little fun with all four of them… it felt a little like being in the back row at school at times, so a pretty good choice then!

Kim was working her way around on the opposite side of the hall and we kept exchanging Wallace & Gromit grins through various levels of pain, while Sharon and her friends generally had more serious looks on their faces!

Overall though, thanks to the guys in the naughty corner, my laughter muscles got such a great workout that I might even find it difficult to pull a smile tomorrow!

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An Almost Perfect Seal Launch

I took a drive down to my folks this morning and ran down the valley to Rottingdean and the sea, sparkling in the chilly sun.  I had already got the stitch chasing down another runner on the way down the hill and had all but run out of puff, but since it’s only a couple of miles I pushed myself on a bit.

By the Ovingdean steps, around the 3-mile mark, I really wanted to turn around but figured that it wouldn’t make much of a post (Ran to Ovingdean, got tired, turned around and ran back.  The end) so onwards I continued.

As I ran along the next section along the cliff-top to the Marina I saw five kayaks paddling on the flat calm sea towards Rottingdean.  I stopped to wave heartily just in case it was someone I knew from Martlets… I was too far away to be noticed.

I ran on and pushed myself past Penny’s to approximately the mid=point of the Lewes Crescent gardens – I recall that that’s around the 5-mile mark.

I finally started to retrace my steps towards Rottingdean, but this time along the Undercliff Walk…

…and at Ovingdean I caught the kayakers returning to their boats after a much-needed hot chocolate.  I ran over to find Nikki, Paula and Martina with two guys I didn’t recognise.

Whilst we had a quick chat one of the guys performed a perfect seal launch into the sea from high up on the single (reminding me of this clip of me a couple of years ago).  As his kayak came to a gentle rest about 15 feet out it was clear that something had gone amiss… on account of the fact that he was still standing on the beach!

The girls kindly came to the rescue and he got away without the swim that he probably deserved!

I ran on, energy continuing to escape me but not in a tired legs way… more in a burdened body & mind way… hence I was not looking forward to the run back up the hill from Rottingdean!  When I got there however, it was no worse than the rest of the run had been… though no better either, alas!

So 10.3 miles in 1.46, average 5.8mph including stopping for the mid-run chat.

I collapsed in an uncharacteristic heap at my folks’ and again when I got home and I’m only just starting to recover now… with Jackson Browne, Running on Empty, BLASTING out into an otherwise empty house!  Now THAT’s a record that should be on Stuppsy’s Desert Island Running Discs!

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Conversational pace

Whilst I am generally up at 6am weekdays, I was clearly out of practice for early morning running, since Nick was gently tapping on the front door before I had even finished getting ready on Friday morning.

We took a road run around Burgess Hill that started at a pace that I had also forgotten… fast… such that I had to quickly deploy the sea anchors to slow us down to to a more conversational pace.  It was cold enough for longs, two layers and a jacket, hat and gloves… but of course the irrepressible Nick was wearing shorts!

After an enjoyable run we stopped for a brief chat before we went our seperate ways for breakfast and I then ran on back to the house.  A total of 5.2 miles in 46 minutes including our stationary chat, 6.78mph.

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Going round in circles again

After last week’s re-acquaintance with circuit training, and with the whole-body aching which chased it through the days that followed, Kim and I returned for a further endorphin rush last night.

The Burgess Hill session was fully booked so we took our custom to the Dolphin in Haywards Heath where the trainer, Denise, had assembled a veritable torture chamber of activities… 17 in all.

The warm-up alone had me gasping for air but with a group of around 37 people we were left a little to our own devices on the activities themselves, so I was able to decide my own limits.

Thankfully I was also able to copy my training partner for the evening, Daryl, otherwise I would still be working out the exercises now.

I say copy, but in fact he chose double the amount of weight than I did each time… strange that!

Overall a great workout!  Probably not as hard-core as Burgess Hill, though maybe that’s because I actually re inflated some old, forgotten muscles last week!

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Five miles at a time

Joe Jaworski, son of the lawyer who indicted Nixon, suggests that by opening ourselves to the possibilities in the world around us and responding to the subtle signs we then see, we can induce predictable miracles to happen around us.  That’s how I felt this week.

Having written about the power of smiling and then the benefits of focus over the last couple of weekends, I came across a significant piece of research which links the two.  Admittedly there is research and there is research and it’s often difficult to tell which is which, but this has the appearance of the latter, with half a million data points gathered from 15,000 people over the course of more than two and a half years… thus far.

The main findings around the subject of happiness are very interesting, but there was a side bar which suggests that, on average, we allow our minds to wander half of the time.  The percentage varies between certain tasks (for example it’s only 10% during sex!), but the crucial working day mirrors the overall average at 50%. It may be worth repeating that, in case you were thinking about something else.

Our minds wander HALF of every working day!

More interesting still is the correlation between focus and happiness.  When daydreaming, we can drift onto positive, neutral or negative subjects…mostly personal concerns.  Positive daydreaming has a largely neutral effect on our happiness, but neutral and negative daydreaming cause us to be less happy and downright unhappy respectively … and this results in decreased productivity, which I suspect is likely to reinforce the effect.

It is actually when our minds are focused on a task that we are at our happiest and, er… productive too!

With all this going through my mind this morning I can’t say I had a particularly happy run (in running terms), but it was at least a pleasant day… and a fitting close to the mild-mannered Year of the Rabbit which ends today.

I followed the same route as the last couple of weeks… I suppose I should name it my thinking route.  The first five miles were relatively hard going and the thought of cutting it short did cross my mind, but at the turn point I was one minute up on last week at 44 minutes.  The second five miles were equally tough but I managed to hold a faithful pace and returned another 44 minute time.

So ten miles in 1.28, average 6.8mph.

Lots of chores to do now to get the place clean in preparation for Chinese New Year tomorrow… it’ll be a miracle if we get them all done!