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.

Out with the Garmin! Out with the HRM!

It is not quite as dramatic as that. I have not done some extreme life-laundry and thrown away all of my clutter. In fact I have not so much abandoned these tools as they have abandoned me. The first to go was the Garmin - it would not stay on for longer than 30 seconds. A couple of months later I broke my heart rate monitor, or rather broke the fixings that hold the watchstrap in place.

Although the Garmin has now been replaced, it was away for about six weeks and during that time I got used to running without it. Similarly with the HRM, my first instinct was to buy a new one straightaway, but I hesitated and now I am wondering if I need it at all. I am quite happy running by how I feel and only measuring the time I take. It is not just that it is simpler - I don’t really need the extra information.

The Garmin, for example, never changed my training. I just looked at the results, and although I was impressed by all the figures and thought it was fun, that was all. The HRM did change my behaviour as I used it on long runs to keep my heart rate below a certain level. However I now find it much easier and more direct to use my breathing as the guide.

If I were a finely tuned athlete trying to run to the absolute height of my powers, then close monitoring of every session, an accurate assessment of every variable and a comparison with the training plans would be appropriate. Lance Armstrong treats his body like a precise piece of machinery and wants to know everything about the way it performs. His results show the benefits of that approach. However, even if I was younger, never by any stretch of the imagination could I be like him. And as I am there is just too much fat, both literal and metaphorical, to cut before precision has any meaning.

All I need to do is go back to basics and establish a regular routine and carry on doing this until I feel I am ready for more structured training. Then I might want the toys again but until then all that matters in time on feet and for that a watch is good enough.
In fact it is better that that - it is liberating. No more spitting on the strap and adjusting it so that it has proper contact and then fiddling around when the heart rate gets random, no more waiting around for the satellite signals to lock. All you have to do is put on your shoes and run.

Simple - and afterall this should be a simple sport.