Reduced by Boredom (Janathon Day 7)

Run (treadmill),  4.3km, 25 minutes

Another rain lashed morning and another indoor run.

Sometimes treadmills are good. If I want to do a little speed work they help in keeping you to your selected pace. You can also leaven the prospect of boredom by frequently varying the tempo and you can play games by either running pyramids or intervals. At the end if it all works out, and you think you have done yourself justice, it can be quite satisfying. On the other hand there are times when it can be hard, very hard. I don’t know why but on some days it just seems tedious. You look round and know that all you are doing is running on the spot. You really are that mouse in a wheel.

Today was a tedious days, when the more you looked at the timer the slower it went. It was very hard to keep going. I had planned 30 minutes but after only 5  I was debating  the minimum I could get away with. OK I had to do more than 6 but how much more? In the end I decided I had to do at least 20 minutes. When I got to 20 I raised it to 25 but when I got there that was it, I had had enough. And so it ended.

I do not think Day 7 of Janathon will go down as a favourite, except that I did it and I suppose that in itself is a good thing

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.

Still at the Gym

It is strange not to be running outside and restricting myself to maintenance runs on the treadmill. It seems more like work i.e. having the objective and carrying out a plan in a prescribed manner rather than an act of enjoyment (gyms are, after all, fitness factories). But it is not all joyless:

Any exercise makes me feel better. If I don’t do something to raise my heart rate and pump blood around the body, my mind tends to get sluggish and muzzy.
There is satisfaction to be had from the quantification of effort – i.e. know you are maintaining a steady, known speed for set amount of time. (When I run outside my speed tends to go up and down quite a bit).

It is easy to gradually vary the effort of each session, either speed or time, and set yourself little challenges – much more easily than outdoors.

However the major benefit is the result of a treadmill’s major disadvantage. It is dull and time passes more slowly so you have to work harder on strategies to keep yourself going. It is mental training, which I hope makes me stronger

The other good thing is that you can people watch. I have written before about people with disabilities determinedly trying to improve -they always make me feel humble. But there are also other people who make me think about what I am doing.

Perhaps because I am fairly stiff, I am unduly impressed by those who are flexible but watching them reminds me that even if I have no natural aptitude it is an area I ought to work at. I am convinced that most of the injuries I have had have been the result of stiffness in my calves and hamstring and they have always happened after I have neglected my stretches for a period. For some reason I am better able to discipline myself to stretch properly at the gym than at home.

So there are advantages to gym sessions but they do not give me a feeling of deep enjoyment. That comes from being outside where there is fresher air and a sense of freedom. There is no sense of freedom in a gym – perhaps that is another way in which they are a bit like work.

Treadmill Tips and Alpacas

That's something you don't see from a treadmill - alpacas! I actually had no idea there were any in the neighbourhood until I passed this field on my run yesterday. There they were, three of them. I then did what I always is always possible on a long slow run: stop, look more closely and take a picture.

It is one of the thing that makes running outside more satisfying than the treadmill: you are in charge of the rhythm and can slow or stop at a whim and pay attention to your surroundings. There really is a sense of freedom. On the treadmill, although you can set the tempo and duration, there is a sense of being controlled by a machine. It is a relentless.

Having said that, and in a slightly perverse way I quite enjoy them as a part of my training, even if it is mainly when the weather is crap (pace JogBlog). However I have had to find ways to break up the time as an hour on the treadmill at constant pace can seem like an eternity.

The answer is to not run at the same pace but to make regular changes. I run in sections of 5 or 10 minutes and then change something, which means I only look ahead for those 5 or so minutes. My routine is usually one of three basic shapes. The first is the step, where I gradually increase the pace until I stop. The second is the pyramid where I symmetrically increase then reduce the pace. The third is the wave, where the pace goes up and down ( but not as dramatically as it would for intervals).

The important thing, simple games, have mini challenges and always do things slightly differently. I suppose that applies to all running but it is more important for the treadmill because you just don't have the chance to see the unexpected - like an alpaca.

Disassociation: Music and Memorials

Because of the weather I have been using the gym and running on the treadmill. In some ways it is good training because it forces me to trundle along at a set pace without slacking, and with no chance of being diverted by cows, swans or boats. The downside is that there are no diversions like cows, swans or boats and the treadmill is dull. I can only survive for any time by listening to my ipod.

I still have no favourite running tracks and no idea whether one type of music or rhythm is better than any other. The only thing that matters is that it offers some sort of amusement as its job is disassociation i.e. to keep your mind occupied away from the effort of running. For example by all objective criteria Nico's 'Frozen Warnings' must be one of the most useless running tracks, just about one rung down from John Cage's 4'33": it is slow, dirge like, no strong rhythm, with little tonal variation in her voice. It is, as the title suggests bleak, but haunting and somehow appropriate for the weather and so I think about the weather. Also one of the strange things about Nico's life is that this glamorous figure, ex-model, German exile, part of the Andy Warhol entourage, singer on the first Velvet Underground album, spent her last years sharing a house in Manchester (or Salford to be more precise). I then think of Manchester, which is good because I like Manchester. My daughter is at university there and I think of her. So everything is good and the song did its job - it kept me occupied. Next time it might just sound like a dirge and be totally useless.

The gym is OK but it is important to get outdoors. I still don't want to run because although some of the paths are now clear others are still icy or slushy, so I have been out walking. Although it does not give me the same sense of satisfaction it allows more time for looking and even more disassociation.

I have run past the object in the photo countless times, known it was there, thought of it as just some ornate street lamp, but paid it no real attention. Yesterday I stopped to look. The first surprise was that it was built as a drinking fountain. The second was that it had an inscription saying that it erected in 1835 to commemorate 300 years since the printing of the first English Bible. How wonderful is that? How many memorials are there to the Coverdale Bible in this country? I don't know but I now know we in Hemel Hempstead have one of them