Those of you who know me will know that I like to read, especially in the morning at the start of the day, feeding my mind in the same way that a subsequent breakfast will feed my body.
This habit used to lapse each winter, when I prefer to sit in the emerging gloom rather than put any electric lights on. However, last year I inherited a Kindle and I have found this perfect for providing those few pages of insight in a backlit format. It’s also more discreet than the kind of chunky books I often read and doesn’t stand out in our pleasingly-minimalistic sitting room.
Later this week I’m running a workshop on Change to the wider Sussex Projects team and whilst I’ve already done the heavy lifting of designing the session and the slide deck, I do like to flip through the slides each day, in the run up to workshops, to ensure that I’m really familiar with the flow.
Reading before a run is always helpful to help my mind using the exercise time to assimilate and throw out new ideas, so this morning I chose to read my slide deck rather than the Kindle.
It was only a short 1-mile run on the machine before work, taking just under 9.5 minutes, but mind and body are now both ready for the rigours of the rest of the week 🙂
Shortly after my birthday each year there is a slow process by which each of my treasured schoolfriends in turn becomes a year older than me, until I finally catch them all up again… ever the laggard! Actually, whilst it wasn’t always fun being the youngest in the year, now it’s a pretty cool gig!
The Bank Holiday in honour of my friend Squiffee’s birthday today dawned bright & sunny and I felt the need for a celebratory run.
The distance was only a token gesture, using the same circuit as my recent runs, but it was great to be outside (in shorts and a t-shirt) and thinking about my friends.
Bizarrely, whilst I’ve not run for more than a month I was reasonably quick on the outbound leg (for the recent me), whilst the return leg was exactly the same pace as my last three runs.
So 2 miles in 19 minutes 30 seconds and a great start to the New Year 🙂
With three weeks since my last run, I decided that it was more important to take it steady today and enjoy myself… which I did!
Whilst it wasn’t so warm wearing shorts and a t-shirt, a weak sun was pushing through the greyness which, along with a hat and gloves, made the temperature bearable.
I focused on flowing along gently and had none of the heavy footedness that I was experiencing a few months ago. In fact, I could easily have run further… although I can’t deny that it was a relief to get back in the warm 🙂
So, a smidge over 2 miles (I ran to the door and the warmth behind it 🙂 in just under 20 minutes. That’s not as fast as the last couple of runs, but only on the outbound leg, running up the hill… on the way back I actually matched the pace of the last two runs, which is pretty amazing given that I thought I was taking it steady!
Life is about to change here to some extent with both a new role and house guests imminent. New constraints always help to shine a light on the old routines and drive creative thinking about new ways of doing things, making for both exciting and daunting times ahead 🙂
No pictures of the run today, but enclosing one of my Mum’s Jade plant / Money plant, which has suddenly decided to flower. This is a really rare event, so I’ll take it as a good sign 🙂
I’ve spoken many times about motivation in this blog (across 14 years… yikes!) but it’s worth reiterating here.
A simple aim drove me back in 2007, relating to running and writing, where one drove the other in a virtuous cycle. Preparation for the occasional race or longer run (or even fast walk, as in the Tour du Mont Blanc in September 2011) helped me to push to increase the mileage in some years. More recently there has been a health aspect, where I really need the aerobic exercise. But the other thread that has, er, run through this blog is my desire to be fit enough to run with friends. The one-mile runs on the machine are fairly minimalistic, but the fact that I’m running means that I’m at least able to run.
That’s the theory, at least.
It was nice to be able to test the theory yesterday with a run with Daren on the Downs. I must confess that I felt some trepidation, given that even when I’m fit I find it hard to walk for a couple of days after our very hilly 6-mile circuit. But Daren had a plan, which started with us meeting downstairs (for any new readers, downstairs = Clayton rec, at the bottom of the Downs, by comparison to upstairs = the Windmills at the top of the hill).
We ran along the lane, deep in conversation, to the bottom of the Tank Tracks, the half mile track that goes directly up the 500 ft scarp slope. We love this hill (I once ran up and down it seven times in one go, for fun) but there was a point last year where I could no longer run up it. However, the runs on the machine had clearly had at least some effect and we managed to run to the top without stopping… and even managed a bit of a sprint across the grass at the top 🙂
I know when I’m exhausted at this point in our runs because it’s hard to run down the hill to the Windmills, but that was not the case here. We had already decided that the run would be half of the normal circuit, but we put an extra short loop along the lane and back before dropping down the steep hill back to the cars.
Finishing without being in a state of exhaustion was a real result and the combination of shorter run and base fitness meant that I could still walk the morning after. Even when I’m fit, it can be sometimes difficult to walk on the second morning, but last year my legs were stiffening later on the same day as the run, making walking difficult for a couple of days!
So 3.2 miles and 600 ft height gain in 38 minutes… not fast by the Bok’s standards (he ran 6.7 miles with 445 ft height gain yesterday in 52 minutes) but fast enough for a moving conversation 🙂
I’ve been holding out for a couple of weeks to be able to use that title… simple things like this make me smile, which is never a bad thing!
This said, whilst I have been managing to complete two machine runs each week, my cognitive bandwidth has been too stretched lately to come up with anything of real interest to write, so holding out was no real chore! Having said this, it is possible that my head has been so crammed-full of other stuff that I have too much of interest to share.
I’ll give you just one example.
Have you ever reflected the amount of control that Finance teams have within organisations, by comparison to say HR or Marketing? Measuring the quantitative stuff (time, money, material quantity etc) is so much easier than measuring all that other messy qualitative stuff (happiness, satisfaction, experience etc) and this means that the Finance agenda tends to dominate decision-making.
As a result we tend to ask ‘Which of these strategies or new products shows the greatest return on capital employed?’ rather than ‘which strategy is going to give employees a bigger smile… leading to more discretional effort, greater customer satisfaction etc?’ Like the inebriated man searching for his keys under the streetlamp (where the light is better than where he actually dropped them) we tend to default to the quantifiable measures.
(I feel the need for a disclaimer here… I’m not saying that we should ignore the quants, just that we need more balance)
The same sort of challenge exists in management. We know that the most effective teams have members with diverse perspectives, alongside psychological safety so that each person’s voice is heard and considered. However, the task of managing this type of team requires much greater skill… not to mention a higher salary. It’s so much easier and cheaper to resort to some version of ‘command and control’, even though, aside from making the team less effective it directly affects the life experience of the team members and indirectly affects their families and communities.
We stick with all this quantitative stuff because it’s easy, or because it’s always been done that way, or because everyone else does it this way… but in the process we ignore the huge opportunity costs.
I was told last week that Brighton City Council had decided to stop treating the weeds in the local pavements. I’m sure that, aside from saving them time & effort (well maybe not that much effort, if you’ve ever seen the guys driving the mini tractors or grass cutters around), they can now justify their decision on environmental terms.
I’m not immune to the environmental argument, however a more balanced decision might factor in the needs of small children wanting to learn to roller-skate, or elderly parents and grandparents trying to stay active outside without tripping over. It might also consider the messages that we’re sending to young people about attention to detail and the frustrations of house-owners (aka voters) trying to get the best price for their house or simply feel safe in their home when the neighbourhood looks increasingly shabby.
Finance drives the agenda, but at great cost to everyone else.
From this one example of something on my mind (which isn’t even anywhere towards the top of my cognitive priority list), you may be able to see why I’ve not had the headspace to write lately.
I will endeavour to post on topic next time… and in the meantime I will try my best to keep up the running 🙂
It’s Saturday again and I find myself sitting to write about another pair of short runs on the machine, one on Tuesday and the other earlier today.
I felt comfortable running at 7mph for two minutes at the end of the session today, and whilst that’s not really anything to write home about (I’m sure that I remember being able to sprint at 14mph for a couple of minutes in years gone by), I feel that I’m progressing simply by turning up and putting one foot in front of the other, one run and then another.
I’ve been pondering the time aspect of habit maintenance… two minutes brushing teeth twice a day is easy, as is a five-minute shower… perish the thought that either don’t happen.
Amusingly, as these words tumbled out I realised that I didn’t actually brush this morning, because I jumped into housework mode first thing. I immediately felt the need to rectify the situation… my teeth are now sparkling clean, as I continue to write 🙂
My one-mile machine runs and blog posting, on the other hand, take more than 10 minutes and 20+ minutes respectively and despite the tremendous benefits of both, I’ve been finding them really hard to maintain recently.
It wasn’t always so. Several years ago I would spend a couple of hours running maybe 10 or 12 miles at the weekend, then spend most of the rest of the day recovering and writing… and then repeat the exercise with shorter runs during the week. I don’t feel the need to return to that at the moment, but it would be nice to be able to get back into the habit of doing at least a couple of short runs each week. Preferably outside.
Thanks to my hairdresser’s chiding I did actually manage to do two machine runs this week, but, as is clear from the title, only one piece of mediocre writing. Ho hum! Maybe it will be a little easier again next week.
What you might notice from the two photos below is that at least the time is slowly coming down. 🙂
After my run earlier in the week I felt cognitively and physically revitalised, so I thought I would at least try to keep up the momentum. I was more mindful of the time today so ramped up the speed to a greater extent and could easily have got under 10 minutes. However, the main aim at the moment is to gently build back up so I can run a longer loop outside… there’s no point if I injure myself by being competitive!
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 🙂
