A post around three quotes

This is really a follow on from my last post about turning my back on technology – to get back to basic training.

Its not base training – I am not bothered about trying to go long at a steady 70% of MHR – I rather like mixing up pace. All I seek to establish are good habits – a regular pattern of exercise rather than the erratic boom and bust that has characterised my progress up to now. But consistency is always difficult.

“I ache in places where it used to play” (Leonard Cohen – Tower of Song)

Everything has to be done within the constraints of a crumbling body. At the moment I have rotator cuff tendonitis, my shin is still a weakness and cannot be pushed to hard, my left hamstring is sore and my right quads do not feel too clever – oh and the plantar fascii of my left foot ache a bit as well. All of these things are niggles rather than big flaring injuries but I do not want them to get worse. They are constantly in the back of my mind and I do not think I can do heavy mileages at the moment. I can only try to establish a pattern that is sustainable and then gradually take it from there. Its not bad and when I run things are fine but I am a bit fed up with listening to my body - I wish it would just shut up for a bit.

“Out of the crooked timber of humanity nothing straight can ever be made” (Kant - Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View 1784)

One of my personal weaknesses is an inability to stick rigidly to any plan. Everything I do has to take account of the way that the grain of my character is warped in this particular way. I am always tremendously impressed by people who can see clearly what needs doing and then do it. I wish I was more like that but I am not. I have to work by indirection instead.

So my only objective at the moment is just 4 exercise sessions a week. 3 of them can be anything but the long (or longish) run is fixed.
If I do this I will be able to congratulate myself on some consistency.

“All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.” (Kant, Critique of Pure Reason)

My basic training is an attempt to understand the sensations of running and the way my body reacts. With that I can start to apply reason and become more structured in my approach. But at the moment running is for me mainly sensation i.e. the base level.

That is why I have to do basic training.