A Sunny Autumn Day

September might just be the best month for running as there is always the chance of perfect weather. Today was spectacular: sunshine, deep blue sky, a very slight breeze, warm but not too hot. Nothing could be improved. On such a day it very easy to remember the joy you felt when you first took up running and it was new and fresh.

It was an easy paced session, which meant I could be relaxed and look around, even smile at people as they passed (within reason of course. This is Southern England and a number of people will pass you with their eyes fixed firmly on the ground). The aim was just to be outside, how long it took to complete the route was irrelevant.

My usual habit for this route is to stop at half way, sit on a wall, drink some water, and then set-off back again: a break of a couple of moments. Today however I felt very relaxed sitting in the sun and a wave of contentment swept over me. I just wanted to sit still and look at the yellowing colours of the trees against the blue of the sky. The Old Nash Mills paper factory is decaying, the demolition on hold because of the economy, and I looked at the rust on the chimney and thought it matched the season (rust a sign of autumn in a mechanical lifecycle?). The elderberries have now gone but the hawthorn berries are fuller and deeper in colour. People were strolling and chatting, getting out before the weather turns.

I then wandered around taking photos, concentrating on what I was seeing, not thinking I was meant to be running. (Today's picture shows a tree stating to grow from ducting around the Mill. It is amazing how life can take root in the most unlikely of places). All in all I had a break of twenty minutes.

I cannot claim an 11km run, just two shorter runs, very close together, but I can claim that it felt the right thing to do.

Visualising Information

This is a bit off topic but I am going to recommend a blog/website that has very little to do with running. It is called Information is beautiful and it shows ways that data can be visualised to clarify meaning, increase its impact and aid understanding. Partly I think it is because if something looks pleasing you will want look at it more closely and when you are drawn-in you will start to ask questions. Take the example of Twitter stats and look at the comment (eg if the sample size is 100 how do some people have more than 100 followers?).

But this is a running blog so I want to draw attention to something that has some relevance. This diagram shows the calories of things in a coffee house (something that interests me as they are my second home). The drinks are surprisingly calorific and yet I barely pay them attention when I think of my total food consumption.

So now I can clearly see that 30 minutes running only equals a frappe latte, or more likely a croissant and a large cappuccino. How easy is it to run for 5k and eat for 10? Answer - very.

Why is it so difficult to loose weight and thereby become a more efficient runner? Answer - just look at the data.

Listening to Your Mind

My previous post about listening to your body had at its core the idea of the separation of mind and body but this quote from Michael Woods in the current London Review of Books makes that relationship far more interesting by pointing out the separation of mind and brain.

We could drop the metaphor of the brain or mind as a computer. This is what Aamodt and Wang recommend, because it’s ‘not really accurate . . . the brain works more like a Chinese restaurant that we know in Manhattan; it’s crowded and chaotic, and people are running around to no apparent purpose, but somehow everything gets done in the end – and efficiently too.’ What’s most interesting in this image is that we are the customers in this neuro-restaurant, not its owners or managers or waiters; and the same little allegory is at work in the conception of our brains and ourselves being different moral entities (‘Your brain lies to you a lot’).

So now when I go for a run I will picture it in terms people rushing around in a crowded restaurant giving out orders for more speed and receiving demands from more oxygen. Somehow, and I don't know why, I feel strangely happy with this idea of barely contained chaos.

Listening to Your Body

Runners talk far more about injury than they do about health.

This is almost inevitable because one of the attraction of running is the way it tests the body's capabilities. Slightly faster or slightly longer the ratchet is moved upwards to see if we can adapt and become stronger. This happens but there is always the risk of misjudgement (call it a training mistake or just plain stupidity) and something, be it knee, foot, ankle, calf or hip, breaks down. Sometimes something damaged in an instant can take an awful long time to repair, especially as there is uncertainty about the precise cause. But at other times pain and discomfort signals show us the boundaries of our capabilities and warn us that we need to back off. If we listen we can escape with a near miss and continue to get stronger.

Injury or the risk of injury is ever present but luckily damage usually not debilitating and can be repaired. With care and attention we can be better again.

'Listen to your body' is the easiest advice to give but the most difficult to follow. Within the advice is a sense of otherness: that you are different from a body, which has its own limits that have to be discovered. The problem being that the messaging systems are limited and vague. Pain is certainly the most insistent and the one that grabs our attention but even then there needs to be sifting to see whether it is a twinge that can be treated as noise or whether it is a clear signal. Listening to your body can be very confusing.

So the emphasis has to shift from the difficult 'listening' to the almost impossible ie understanding your body. Where to start?

For me it is perhaps a two pronged approach. The first is to accept that my body is governed by the normal laws of physiology and learn from the experience of others (this might seem blindingly obvious but there is still a small part of my brain that hopes it can bypass the normal course of ageing). The second is to switch my focus and look more at what makes me feel good rather than what gives me pain. For example one hill session can leave me feeling tired but satisfied whilst another can leave me just feeling weary, when comparing them I should look more at what went right rather than what went wrong.

Perhaps I should start talking more about health than about injury

Interruptions Welcomed

We spent the weekend in Manchester but getting there was something of an ordeal as we were caught in not one but two tailbacks caused by multicar crashes. A three and a half hour journey took five and there was nothing that could be done, except listen to the radio and look at everyone else as we inched our way along.

So it was back home and out into the open for the freedom of a run. No hold-ups no limitations apart from the frailty of my body. But then I came to this sign on the canal. Traffic control - what is this?

Beyond the sign were two men sat a couple of hundred yards apart, each dressed in a high viz yellow suit and each holding a long stop/go lollipop pole. They were just waiting for any passing barge to stop it whilst other people were working on the overhead electricity cables. I stopped and had a brief chat with one of the men, commenting on what seemed like a pretty stress free job. Controlling a boat travelling at walking pace is just a little less fraught than the M6 on a busy day. "yeah" he said "it is a bit of health and safety gone mad, though if one of those cables did slip it could whiplash back and kill you." I took my chance and passed underneath - nothing happened.

Except that in a way that interruption and a later attempt to take of photo of a heron saved my run. Before then my legs had felt very heavy. I don't know why but everything was an effort and all my attention was focussed on the struggle to keep going rather than the pleasure of being out and the beauty of my surroundings. After the first stop a I smiled internally and remembered my road trip and compared it to my peaceful surroundings. I stopped worrying about my aches. After I saw the heron I stopped and tried to stalk it. It flew away a couple of times but I eventually got a picture. I then realised that I was having fun being outside and the run was just a means of getting me there and so I looked around with more attention. Later on a jay flew across my path and my enjoyment meter ratcheted up a little more and so all in all I had a good time.

It just goes to show how much of your running is done in your head.

The Stuff that Doesn't Happen

"You ought to get a life. You know - the shit that happens while you're waiting for the moments that never come."

You have to love The Wire; it is full of such nice, shiny, nuggets of dialogue. This one makes me think about my running life - the things that never happen and what I do in the meantime.

The major thing that never happens is becoming any good - in the sense of being relatively fast, doing well in races and being able to hold my head up in age-category rankings. I could wait forever but it is not going to happen. It was never a hard objective anyway. When I started running I had vague thoughts that it would be nice if it happened - if I discovered that I had some innate ability, which could be uncovered but I soon realised that was not the case. My object has therefore never been to be a competitive runner.

This leaves the scaled down objective of trying to get better. Now this should be easy to measure by inching down personal bests. But it is not going to happen either. I was faster four years ago and nothing I do seems to change that.

So I now have to play games by making up new categories such as running more easily ,going slightly longer being slightly faster at a lower heart rate, conquering steeper hills, or running over different terrain, whatever. And now I realise that this is the shit that happens - it is my running life.

I spend my time regularly going over the same routes but always introducing subtle variations. Each week I introduce a new challenge - something to focus on. From the outside you might not even notice the difference because it looks so similar to normal, for example it might involve running to different heart rates, adding a further hill before having a breather or putting in little sprints. It might be extending the days I run consecutively or any other little plan. Sometimes it is even to do things more easily - slow down and let the world float by.

For some reason these little changes keep me disproportionately amused. I am wrapped-up in them and pay no attention to those other things, the big moments that never come.

Seasons

I have lived for most of my life in towns of varying size and my main occupations have kept me indoors for most of the time. It is possible to live my life with only the vaguest sense of changes of the seasons and life cycles. Even the weather can often be ignored as one need never be far from building or car. Some people can go through the year without needing an outdoor coat. It is possible to become almost completely disconnected from the natural world and to barely notice the horizon. It is possible but not desirable.

One of the reasons I run is to make sure this does not happen. Keeping in touch with my animal nature is more than just trying to be fit in both body and mind, it is an effort to use all the senses to feel part of the surroundings. I need to get out to see the wider sky, feel the shade or shelter of trees, be surrounded the colour green, see animals, and feel the weather on my skin. In some way it is important to notice all the subtle difference from week to week as the seasons change.

I was thinking this on yesterday's run. It felt so damn autumnal - the air, the leaves, the berries all spoke of the season. I stopped to take a picture of elder and hawthorn berries intertwining and then looked around. For some reason, in that moment, I felt more alive.

Running Barefoot - But Not On A Treadmill

This is a very small story, just an application of 'rules is rules', but it is interesting in the way shows how things are justified and how fragments of ideas can float around.

It really started with my recent post about running styles and the realisation that although I naturally midfoot/forefoot strike and I have in the past discovered the pleasure of running barefoot, I spend all my time in standard, neutral, cushioned shoes. I was thinking about this when I was pushing some weights and looking at other people of the treadmills. There was quite a lot of heavy thumping and some of the runners really slapped their feet down and my thoughts wandered to what it is that makes some people lighter on their feet than others. It has nothing to do with actual bodyweight, as the person with the loudest foot strike was quite slightly built, but must have something to do with trying to force things too hard. The essence of good style I thought must be to move along the surface as lightly as possible not to drive the feet into the ground.

I then thought it would be fun to try a little barefoot running so I left my shoes by the side of the treadmill and started running just wearing very lightweight socks . I had forgotten how good it is to feel the foot moving freely - the way the forefoot spreads-out when it lands and then how the heel lightly touches the surface before it is lifted-off. I was quite enjoying myself, feeling a little bit looser and playing about running at different speeds, when one of the members of staff came over and told me to stop as it was mandatory to run in trainers.

"Why?" I asked
"Health and safety" was the reply
"What am I being protected from?"
"Things falling on your feet and you could catch your socks and be thrown off the machine."

But I think he was a bit embarrassed about these reasons and his heart was not into trying to describe the scenarios where these things might happen. He then shifted ground and suggested that running barefoot was not good for you.

I was both a little shocked and really interested by this because he was one of the trainers whose job is to advise on exercise. He ought to know better or at least have some good reasons to back up such a statement. He didn't and so I said a little about how you absorbed the forces when you landed on your forefoot and how lots of people think it is a good way to run.

"Ah forefoot running. That's Pose running and a bit different" he said
"No, all Pose runners land on their forefoot but not all forefoot runners are Pose runners."

This is really quite interesting because it shows the power of a brand name and the way it can become fixed in the mind of someone who only has a peripherally interest in the subject. I am sure that this trainer was expert in all of the machines in the gym, weight training and general fitness regimes but probably for him running is only another form of cardio vascular exercise. If so he would not pay close attention to issues within the running community but he would be aware of things that impinged on the fitness industry , so obviously Pose has a profile and has made some impact. It is more widely known than I thought. it is amazing how things can ripple out.

Anyway we started to talk a little about running styles but that was not really the point so we reverted to the main topic of me running without shoes.

I had no problems with stopping. The man was doing his job and I had no desire to give him a hard time or mount any sort of high horse. It is one of the rules of the gym that you have to wear appropriate footwear at all times (probably to stop people exercising in boots or flip flops) and that is all there is to it.

I wonder though about the thinking behind such rules. Probably it is something along the lines of:

Trainers are designed to cushion the impact of running
Therefore they are protective
We need to do everything we can to protect our customers from injury
Therefore protective footwear must be worn.

The logic might be totally flawed but at least it is coherent in an institutional sort of way.

Luckily outdoors none of this matters and running is not about thinking in an institutional way. It is about listening to the best advice you can find, hearing from other peoples experiences and then trying things out for yourself. It is about not being proscriptive.