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Thinking about terrible days

I’ve been having a terrible day… which got me thinking about what that actually means, while I pounded out a single lonesome mile on the running machine.

At least I made it onto the running machine (after missing my intended run last week) so it’s not all bad, and I can clearly still run (and think clearly enough to write about it) so I’ve already got quite a bit to be thankful about.

It’s been a miserable grey day outside (and now it’s dark), but I’ve not been outside to be really affected by it, and the sun did break through when I was in a zoom-meeting earlier, making me seem momentarily a little brighter than the others… that made me smile to myself.

There’s also the more holistic litmus test… how would my current malaise seem to someone in, for example, the third world, or in a hospital bed… or someone in a hospital bed in the third world? No, I suspect that I’ve not yet experienced days that they would consider to be terrible… one day I might, but not today.

Part of my malaise today came from realising that I couldn’t deliver a particular discreet writing project to a level of completeness that I had hoped… and that every further hour that banged my head against it’s metaphorical wall, would probably require more of someone else’s patience to unpick. Better to admit defeat, and feel foolish, than to make the overall task more difficult than it need be.

In the midst of this internal discourse, my amazing Mother emailed with an uplifting synopsis of her day… she regularly makes me feel very thankful for life in general.

And, of course, as someone with blood type B Positive, it’s difficult to stay in a fugg for long.

So maybe when we think we’re having a terrible day, sometimes it’s just our mind being lazy in the choice of adjective… maybe quiet or slow or frustrating would be more appropriate (I’m much happier when I’m busy trying to solve problems for people… and being successful at it).

So I had a quieter and more frustrating day than I would have liked, but life is pretty amazing overall… and I’ve not yet hung up my running shoes 🙂

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On the blink

After a morning spent in meetings on Zoom and MS Teams (and thanks to a helpful reminder from my Mother) I just managed to jump on the running machine for ten minutes.

There’s nothing here to really write home about (one mile in 10 mins, 20 seconds), but it hopefully builds on my run last week.

It is worth reflecting on the side effects from the run last week. For sure, I knew that I’d been for a run, physically… that feeling lasted several days despite the tiny distance covered… but I’ve been cognitively more alert this week. I think that it’s too easy to end up breathing in a more shallow way when we’re just kicking around the house. We really need some hard physical exercise to inflate the alveoli in the lungs and get proper oxygen into the bloodstream. Which in turn helps us to think more clearly.

I’ve often thought that I get more lethargic when I don’t exercise, but of course a sleepy brain isn’t going to allocate much cognitive bandwidth to solving the problem… a physical intervention is required, such as being metaphorically dragged, kicking & screaming, to the running machine.

Of tangential interest today was that each time I took a photo, the display seemed to blink before my eyes, with the camera catching only a partial image. In the years of taking photos of this display, I’ve not before noticed this quirk… maybe someone can offer a plausible explanation?

Either way, I hope to show may face again here next week 🙂

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A step in the right direction

Do you ever have those moments where you start to write something simple, but where this inadvertently provokes a thorny philosophical deliberation that causes all forward textual progress to cease?

I’ve been writing and speaking a lot recently about noticing and solving complex problems. So whilst I was just about to write in simple terms about the steps that I have taken towards restarting my running (again), I feel obliged to set this in the correct context.

Russell Ackoff said that ‘reality does not consist of sets of independent problems, but a system of interacting problems’, with overall performance depending more on how the parts fit together than how they perform separately. My own Curious Cloud methodology suggests that before I start acting to solve one node of the problem (in this case, getting running again), I should first try to understand the holistic context and at least attempt to state the problem that I’m trying to solve.

So the holistic problem relates to health (body & mind) and its impact on longevity… I’d quite like to live well into my old age and be physically and cognitively active throughout. But I seem to age a little every day and these days have been clubbing together recently into months and years… if I’m going to act to stay healthy, I really need to be doing it today.

One of the nodes of this relates to maintaining a healthy microbiome (healthy, varied diet, getting hands dirty in the garden etc); another to a good range of cognitive input (new learning, challenging problems to solve etc); yet another to emotional support (nurturing relationships, in both directions, with family & friends). In amongst the nodes is the one that I initially started to write about… keeping fit.

Back in 2007, life seemed to be simpler… in order to ensure that I gained both cognitive sustenance & regular exercise I simply decided that I would ‘run to write’, which allowed me to run hundreds of miles a year and maintain a healthy flow of blog posts. I consider myself to be a better running partner than drinking companion, so a fair proportion of this time was spent running with friends & maintaining social ties.

Regular readers of this blog will realise that the flow of runs has dwindled to an intermittent trickle over the last few years, with my fitness suffering along the way. It’s difficult to run out with friends if they can rock up to complete a marathon at a moments notice (more likely an ultra marathon), whilst I puff out after a few miles.

There’s no cognitive benefit to berating myself for running less (not to mention eschewing exercise, beyond energetic gardening, since the start of the lockdown) so I thought that I would just start again (again).

And, coming back to where I started this blog post, the first step in this turned out to be simply moving my indoor runners from the shoe-pile near the front door, to the floor adjacent to the running machine. Oh yes, dear readers, we have a running machine, and I really do have no excuses for not running more frequently!

So with the runners more tactically placed, a sudden urge to run resulted in both one mile covered and some more words written. The running was easier than I expected, but the writing turned out to be, er, somewhat more complex… thank you for sticking with me (if you’re still there at all 🙂

If not then we’ll end to the sound of just one hand clapping 🙂

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Occasional running during an occasional run

So, to get my excuses in early, it was 24 degrees when I got up at 5.30am this morning, with maybe 70% humidity making it feel yet warmer still. It also had taken me around two weeks to be able to even walk properly after our last run a month ago and the recent, er… warm weather has not inclined me to starting a serious exercise regime. Let’s face it, I’ve been fitter!

But it was a beautiful morning and it felt at least slightly cooler than the last few days, so 7.00am saw Daren & I setting off along the bottom of the Downs from Clayton rec (aka downstairs) for the bottom of the Tank Tracks.

The running was slow & easy along the lane with a good flow of conversation to distract us from the heat or the effort. Daren was super-kind to my state of general unfitness and we walked up the Tank Tracks… I always feel guilty when we do this ’cause I know that he would happily have run the whole way.

Then we turned left rather than right and ran along to the Beacon and on along to the top of the next rise. By this point my legs were already starting to flag whilst my head, under a mop of unresolved lockdown hair, felt almost superheated!

The return along the top to Jack & Jill involved a fair amount of walking on the uphill sections and one or two pauses. The final hill down to the cars is a steep one that I used to feel comfortable careering down (the record on Strava for the ‘Clayton Hill Descent’ currently sits with Jonny Crickmore at 1:53) but even here I slowed to walking pace several times to favour my legs & knees and only managed a rather sedate 6:19 🙁

Overall our run was 6.46 miles in 1 hour 21 minutes moving time (90 minutes in real money).

According to Strava, Nick (the Bok) was also running this morning & put in a somewhat less pedestrian 7.22 miles in 60 minutes (‘gentle’ for him), despite facing the same heat & humidity! Maybe we need to start comparing stats on the profundity of the conversation, where I feel that ours would have scored highly 🙂

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Starting over

The last 7 years has seen me increasing the amount of part-time teaching that I’ve been doing within University of Brighton, Business School, whilst my ‘day job’ as an independent consultant has taken a back seat. That’s about to change. I’ve been performing a fascinating but complex role as Interim Course Leader for the MBAs since the end of last year, but once I’ve handed over to my replacement at the end of July, I will be leaving HE to focus full time on the consulting (oh, and given my ‘senior lecturer’ teaching skillset, probably running some commercial workshops).

I say full time… One of my role models is Charles Handy whose year broke down as follows: 50 paid days; 25 days spent doing the same kind of work but working for free for good causes; 100 days marketing, 100 days researching, to stay at the bleeding edge of his field; 90 days of weekends and holidays. If you are observant, then you may think that 90 non-work days is a little mean, given that normal employees work around 225 days a year and have in the order of 140 non-work days. However the Handy’s took every Sunday off and had four ten-day holidays each year, which suddenly makes a lot more sense!

After a few years of rather occasional running, my aim is also to increase the frequency of my runs & get back out to see what has happened in some of my old running haunts.

This regime has yet to start properly, but Daren happened to suggest a run this week so I already have one run under my belt. More of that in a moment, but first I want to ‘fess up to how unfit I am, having sat at a desk working (virtually) since the start of lockdown and having not engaged in the government’s suggested daily walks. I have been gardening at the weekends, which has often been energetic, but it’s clearly not enough exercise.

On Wednesday, with two days to our planned run, I did five minutes of exercise, comprising a very mild HIT (high intensity training) session. 20 deep breaths running gently on the spot; 10 breaths of faster running, though still pretty gentle (first phase); 10 breaths of gentle recovery running; 10 breaths of faster running (second phase); 10 breaths recovery; 10 breaths of faster running, but still not exactly hard work (third phase); 20 breaths of gentle running to recover and stop. It was clearly more effective than I expected given that I could hardly walk the next day, my calves were so tight!

So this morning, as Daren and I ran down the lane from Clayton rec., I already had tight calves and we still had more than 5 miles to cover! It was a stunningly beautiful morning though and we had lots of conversational catching up to do so the discomfort was easy to ignore. We had already agreed that we would walk up the hills this time, so the Tank Tracks was not it’s usual cognitive challenge… and the views behind us were amazing.

From the top of Home Hill we ran all the way down to Pyecombe and then walked and occasionally jogged up to the top of Wolstenbury Hill. From there it was pretty much all downhill back to the cars, making for a very relaxed end to the run.

5.82 miles covered in 1 hour 14 minutes (moving time, though I’m not sure how we managed to rack up a further 15 minutes of non-moving time)… it’s not a great time, but it was a great run to get the endorphins flowing again after all these months.

Of course, I can now hardly walk again (even after a cold shower, the use of an ice pack and a very rare Nurofen tablet) but I feel great and ready to start to take on the world again 🙂

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Missing runs

Yes, for sure, I’ve been missing runs, but not as many as you might think. Here’s what’s missing:

27sep19, run with Daren, starting downstairs at Clayton rec. The Tank Tracks must have been hard (or maybe we were mindful of the threat of heavy rain, that produced an amazing rainbow 🙂 because from the top of Home Hill we ran half way along to Ditchling Beacon and then returned back to Jack & Jill & straight back down the hill to the cars. 3.74 miles, 44 minutes.

28jan20, run with Daren, starting downstairs again. This was a full loop and I remember that, to make up the full distance (starting downstairs is shorter than upstairs) we ran around the playing fields at the end. That part nearly killed me, so it must have been a hard run! 6.01 miles in 1 hour 27 minutes.

The end of January is is less than six months ago, but the world has fundamentally changed in the interim. During this time I’ve not only not run, but I have rarely even been out for a walk. Thank you goodness for the gardening that I do to keep me active… although, as you’ll find out shortly, avid reader, this is clearly not enough!

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Hilly loop with Daren

Sharp-eyed readers may have instantly spotted from the title that I didn’t manage to get out for any more practice runs before I attempted a challenging hill run.

In my defence, it has only been 10 days and most of those have been rather painful.  On the day after my last run I casually leaned down into the fridge (to get the OJ) and tweaked my back, which elicited some (probably quite shocking) screams.  This led to a week of moving carefully (certainly no HIT exercises) and stretching gently, followed by a session with Paul Harmes, osteopath extraordinaire and I am now well on the way to full recovery.

Just as well, because I had already agreed to meet Daren on Monday morning for a run.

It was a glorious day, albeit with a chilly edge and as we set off, up the hill, the run seemed like a really bad idea.  Fortunately the uphill stretch is short and we were soon relaxing into a pleasant downhill lollop… more a ‘conversation on the move’ than a run.

Paraphrasing Nietzsche, you can have as many downhills as you are willing to endure uphills and our next uphill took us from Pyecombe all the way to the top of Wolstonbury Hill.

Given my recent musings about fitness, it’s interesting to consider that over the last four years our times on one stretch of this hill have varied from 8 minutes 5 seconds to 11 minutes 22 seconds, with the slowest being our recent January run (second slowest was our February run).  The HIT exercises must have made some difference because our time was 9 minutes 7 seconds, although I was a little pooped when we got to the top.

The next uphill was at the bottom of Wolstonbury: it’s a really sharp slope with a mix of steps and (often slippery) path.  I can confirm that Daren ran gently the whole way, although, whilst I also micro-ran on the path, I chose to walk up the tricky steps.

That just left another downhill and then a long jog along the bottom of the Downs to the foot of my nemesis, the Tank Tracks, the final uphill that beat me in January and February.  Hill running requires a mix of cognitive strength, good leg muscles and good lungs, all of which seemed to desert me in these two runs.

We agreed that Daren would simply keep going (he’s a lot fitter than I am at the moment) and that I would follow along in my own time.  He inexorably pulled ahead, but I simply kept putting one foot in front of the other… at least until I dropped my bottle cap, which caused me to stop.  I caught my breath for a minute or so, then continued running slowly to the top.  Success 🙂

Over the last four years the times on this stretch have varied from 10 minutes 37 seconds to 14 minutes 45 seconds (again, the latter was in January, with the second slowest in February) so my time of 12 minutes 49 seconds was at least a step in the right direction… and Daren must have easily beaten this by 60 to 90 seconds.

Sitting here I’m reflecting that in 2009, when I was super-fit, it once took me more than 15 minutes to reach the top… you might enjoy reading the reason for that in the archives at http://www.fosterruns.com/2009/07/the-blighty-grouse-grind/

The reward for our final challenging uphill was a long gentle downhill back to the cars and a final time of one hour 18 minutes for our hilly 6 mile run.

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Good Friday to get out for a run

So, two months have passed and it’s April already. In fact it’s Easter and the weather outside is glorious! As I sat in the teahouse this morning with my quadspresso, a crazy thought kept returning to my mind… maybe I should check whether I’m ready to run with Daren… by going for a short run?

I had a few problems finding shorts & t-shirt in my kit-drawer, as they were hidden below all the cold-weather gear, but I eventually managed to get out the door wearing something appropriate for the day.

It was only a short run out to Ditchling Common & back but it was lovely to be out… it really was gorgeous out there!

Sadly, where once half of this journey would have been in open countryside, now there are rabbit-hutch houses almost right up to the common. Architectural merit = nil. Solar panels = nil. The number of deep dykes with emergency flotation devices suggest that this land is not ideal for building, whilst the houses themselves are jammed in with only one clear aim… maximise profit for the housebuilder.

These thoughts were a useful distraction from the other things going on in my head, such as: OMG why is this such hard work! It’s not that I have done no exercise in the intervening two months, but I have certainly not run anywhere. Exercise has consisted of gardening (much more focus on upper-body strength) and a series of short HIT exercises… 16 in total spread across the time.

The HIT exercises had given me the impression that my cardio fitness was improving… they were at least slowly becoming easier to do and to recover from. However, it is clear that to be able to run, I actually need to run.

So, I ended up dispatching a massively ambitious 2.4 miles in 23 minutes… average 6.25 mph… which is not so bad for a first gentle run. Now all I need to do is to get back out there a few more times before we next run the hilly loop. Watch this space… maybe on Faster Monday 🙂

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Catching up… again

Over the last 14 months of absence from this particular writing chair, I have been only participating in ‘occasional running’.

More specifically this has been the circa-quarterly runs with Daren… 4.6 miles at the beginning of Apr18, 6.5 miles at the end of Apr18, 6.5 miles in Sep18 and most recently, 6.5 miles in Jan19.

This last circuit, a few weeks ago, was the first time that I had not managed to run up the Tank Tracks to the top of Home Hill. This was momentous for all the wrong reasons, though we had often discussed that this day would come (though maybe in our sixties or seventies). When it did, Daren kindly walked up the hill with me… though I’m pretty sure that he could have run it, given that he completed an ultra marathon a week later.

It might seem odd that, in my mid-fifties, I should think that I am still able to run up & down the Downs (more than 1,000 ft in height gain) on the spur of the moment and with no training! No wonder that over the last couple of years I have gone from having stiff legs on the second day after a run, to hilariously walking around like I’m on stilts for three or four days from the first morning after.

Irrespective, we agreed that by Apr19 we should have worked on our fitness levels (the royal we = me particularly) so that we can resume running up this hill.

Clearly, April was a long way off and I had yet to start even thinking about ’training’ when two things happened this last week.

First, Daren asked if I wanted to run again , with 2.5 days notice. Second, Mini-me Mark completed his 174th marathon by running on a treadmill for a few hours.

It took me half a day to think clearly about training ahead of our impending run. But then I designed a simple high intensity training (HIT, ignoring the simple for obvious reasons) programme, each one consisting of a warm-up and three cycles of exertion & recovery… with each segment lasting ten breaths through my nose.

OMG!  This circa-5 minutes of exercise left me gasping for air!

I managed to persuade myself to inflict this horrible medicine on myself a further three times in the two days before our run and the initial gasping receded to merely being exhausted.  I’m not sure that it did a lot for me, except maybe to tighten my calves to at least give me a mild foretaste of how I feel as I sit here now on the day after the run.

Meanwhile, Mark’s treadmill marathon reminded me that in 2010 I completed a 20-mile training run on our treadmill. I went back to the post in this blog and realised that my writing was actually worth reading (I should highlight that I have a conflict of interest in making this statement 🙂 ) which made me think that I should start trying to contribute to the blog again. Especially given that the original aim involved a cyclical motivation: run to write, write to run.

Yesterday dawned frosty with a sultry sun behind a thick mist, all of which made for beautiful scenery when viewed from above.

We enjoyed our normal ‘deep in conversation’ run down to Pyecombe, up to the top of Wolstenbury, down to Clayton and along (gently up really) to the bottom of the Tank Tracks. Here we walked the hill again, a full three minutes faster than three weeks ago (yippee), but with a greater degree of felt-pain at the top (ugh). Then we ran back to Jack & Jill, down the hill.

It was a truly joyous run on a beautiful day and it reminded me that, though unfit based on previous levels of fitness, I’m still in pretty good shape for a middle-aged bloke.

This said,  I am now motivated to work on my fitness level and in April I hope to be able to write yet another post, this time attesting to the fact that we are once again ‘running the hill’.

In the meantime, happy running 🙂