Not The Perfect Doughnut - But Good Enough

Juneathon day 7: run 7.16km time 42min

Geoff Dyer is one of those authors I like and admire without feeling passionate about. He manages to be very artful, write well and make a number of acute observations (that you wished you could have made yourself), whilst giving the impression he is merely knocking off some thinly disguised diary pages.

Today he has an article in the Guardian about living for a short time in New York, finding the perfect cup of coffee and doughnut, and how important they were to his daily routine.

“Nietzsche so hated what he called "enduring habits" that he was grateful even to the bouts of sickness or misfortune that caused him to break free of their chains. Unlike Nietzsche I succumb all too easily to enduring habits. I like to go back to the same few places all the time – then, as soon as I break free of the prison of routine, I am left wondering why I kept going to a place I had stopped enjoying years earlier.”

I can relate in many ways, except many of my habits tend to be self limiting as once I realise I am doing things out of routine rather than real desire, I will stop - for example I had a period of really liking the almond croissants from Cafe Nero but I have not now had one for a couple of years. However in matters of running routine is important.

I have a small number routes I like and I tend to run them again and again. Occasionally I will make a point of trying-out different places, and I enjoy doing that, but most of my runs are meat and potatoes - standard fare. In fact it is all a lot like food. Most of the meals we cook at home come from a fairly standard and often repeated repertoire but every so often we make a conscious effort to try something new. Most of the time we don’t want to think too much about cooking, we want to eat. It is the same with running most of the time I don’t want to worry about it I just want to get out.

So today was along the Nicky Line.

“Delectica had been my base, it was the point from which my sense of familiar and localised happiness had spread. It was the epicentre of my wellbeing – what Marx, in a non-pastry-related context, termed the heart of a heartless world. I've always been dependent on places like this wherever I've lived.”

For me the heart is more the canal than the Nicky Line but the principle is the same.

Juneathon statistics
run 5/7
distance 36.62km

time 3hr 36min

Cycle 1/7

distance 21 miles

time 1hr 32min

Gym 1/7

time 45min