Janathon Day 29: I don't want to think about cold feet

Janathon Day 29: Cycle - 24.6  miles, Time - 1hr 52min, Weather - Oh so very cold (and grey of course).

I think the temperature today has hovered between 0 and 1. When it is cold my big problems are feet and ears; other than those extremities I can cover-up pretty well.

Although I wear two pairs of socks, in the end they don't work and my feet gradually get numb. The colder they get, the more I think about them and this can translate into questions about how much I am enjoying myself. Questions I need to protect myself against. So I have to resort to mental tricks - setting little targets,  focussing on something else, or best of all concentrating on maintaining a rhythm. 

It works but in some way I am hunkering into myself and not feeling expansive, not looking round, not savouring the surroundings.

Many times on this blog I talked about joy I find in looking around, trying to see things afresh, picking up details that previously I had not noticed. Today there was little of that as my eyes were mostly fixed on the tarmac in front of me.

However I was thinking about the idea of looking because of an article by Oliver Burkeman in today's Guardian. Apparently the latest trend for business gurus is to advocate looking at things as if for the first time, something they call 'vuja dé'. Really I can hardly bring myself to type those two words, they fill me with so much revulsion. I hate it when these shamans get hold of a single idea from common practice and package it as a commodity by use of a name.

My instinctive reaction is rejection. I do not want to believe anything said by someone who can use the term vuja dé, with a straight face. But I cannot do that - the whole idea is to precious to me. It is one of the reasons I run, walk cycle: I want to look around and see my surroundings. I want to see something surprising, not something I expect to see.

That is why the focus of my Janathon is not so much the exercise as taking a photo each day. When I set out I really do not know what I will find.

Today's photo is the latest in a series of strange warning signs. As you can see the area is fenced off and defended by barbed wire. People are not meant to get in. If they do there are other dangers, like the twisted shards of metal and contaminated land (it is the site of the Buncefield explosion 5 years ago), so why concentrate on a small, deep reservoir? Not only that the sign is only visible no because all the vegetation has died back, for most of the year it will be covered-up. Is there any purpose to a sign that cannot be seen?

There is no end to the questions you can ask yourself when you are out for a ride. And for a time they will all keep you from thinking about your cold feet.