Monoculture and Diversity

Mostly I think by analogy. If I read about something I tend to think of it in terms of other things, so it is natural that I would have a blog about running and talk about agricultural systems. Just too obvious really!

This all because I am reading an excellent book (The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan) which investigates our attitude to food. It is wonderful in the way it investigates different methods of food production and how we relate to them, all the time asking questions about why and how we eat the way we do. The central premise is that being an omnivore is a tremendous evolutionary advantage because the species can live in all corners of earth and survive disasters that might affect any one source of food. However the corollary is that the relationship to other species of plants and animals is complicated because there are always decisions about whether something is safe to eat or how to get the full range of nutrients. Up to now we have relied on traditional cuisine to tell us how we should eat but in western countries (particularly America and UK) that relationship has broken down. We eat from a whole range of cultures without necessarily knowing how the elements are combined, and the way the agriculture, food processing, and distribution industries are set-up exert their own pressures on consumption. It has led to obvious problems of obesity and increasing anxiety about what we eat.

To research the book he visited or participated in the different methods of food production and tried to follow the path from earth to plate. In the first section he looks at how industrialised agriculture works. He visits a corn farm in Iowa and, more disturbingly a CAFO (confined animal feeding operation), where they pen the beef cattle together and unnaturally fatten them up with corn. The point about these methods is that they increase the yield per acre but for the farmer everything is simplified down to a limited range of activities e.g. in the rich lands of Iowa the land is totally given over to corn and soya, the human input is reduced, and the intellectual effort is outsourced to the scientists who formulate the fertilisers, the manufacturers of the machines and the demands of the regulators and large firms who dominate the market. It produces cheap food but in all other ways the price of this monoculture is high.

This is contrasted in the next section with a pastoral idyll, an organic, sustainable, grass-based farm that only sells its produce locally and is so transparent it allows visitors to see everything, even the way it kill their chickens. Their website shows that Polyface is no ordinary farm enterprise. “We are in the redemption business: healing the land, healing the food, healing the economy, and healing the culture.” The article Pollan wrote for Mother Jones explains the philosophy of quality and localism but doesn't really expand on the agricultural principles, which are about diversity and using different plants and animals in mutually supportive way.

The heart of the farm is grass and the cattle are continually moved to different areas, in strict rotation, by means of mobile electric fences, so that they cut back the grass enough to stimulate further growth and improve its quality. Three days after the cattle have left a pasture chickens are brought in. They eat the fly larvae in the manure and sanitise the field, also they spread that manure and of course their own droppings are very high in nitrogen and there is no need for extra fertiliser. Trees are important in the way that they retain water, provide shelter, alter the micro-climate, provide chippings and biodiversity of the forest helps protect the farm from predators by providing other prey. Everything is related.

(If you want to listen to Joe Salatin, the farmer, the BBC made a Food Programme about him in 2006, which is still available.)


So onto the running bit.

Agricultural has no connection with running but I did wonder if there was any analogy between the differing virtues of monoculture and diversity and ways of training.

There is no doubt about the specificity of training. The way to improve your running is to run; other exercises use different muscles. You can tell this if you have a gap, say for an injury, but maintain aerobic fitness with other exercises, when you start running again it is all a bit hard. There is thus a philosophy of training that just emphasises churning out the miles. The equivalent of monoculture.

Monoculture produces the highest yields per acre and might well be the best way for a number of people to improve their times. Up to a point there is a direct correlation between the miles run and performance. However I wonder if it is necessarily the best route for overall fitness. Firstly, and most obviously it concentrates on a particular group of muscles and a limited range of movements, whilst he body needs so much more flexibility and strength. Secondly, and perhaps related, a highly repetitious load carries the risk of injury.

I am convinced that the only way to improve your running is to be consistent and the only way to achieve consistency is being uninjured. Avoiding injury is therefore an important strategy. If you can do this on high mileage, fine, but we all need to find our limits and the amount we can push yourself before breaking down. If those limits are fairly low then we need other things to compensate; mixing cycling and running for example.

Also lack of strength in other parts of the body can cause problems. We are all now aware of the importance of the core muscles but there are other areas, shoulder for example which also need to be strong. These areas all require work and an increasing amount of work as you age and lose muscle mass. They are best tackled through things like pilates, yoga or resistance training.

If you are mixing running with other things you enjoy it can also help prevent running becoming a chore. The one thing thing that is central to the soft-core manifesto is that running is play, not work; so we must guard against it feeling like a duty.

You can see I am convincing myself of the need for diversity. For some reason I do not like the term cross-training (I could not tell you why, it just sounds wrong in my ear). Instead I like to think of it as integrated training. The ideal being to mesh together activities so that you can run well but be generally strong and fit enough to find maximum enjoyment in your physical exertion, whilst feeling alert for all the other things in your life.

A sort of Polyface running.

A Touch of Spring

The weather over Easter has been terrible: cold, windy, rainy, sleety, snowy, in fact a full house of bad stuff. Yesterday the hailstones fell so heavily there was a cover of white outside my window. Yet today – well today is mild, the sky is blue and clouds are fluffy.

I went out for a run this morning and the first thing I did was smile. Suddenly it was good again. Nature felt benign and I felt part of it.

Amazing what a touch of spring can do for your spirits. Every year the hope of the new.

Posture - and another thing

This is a small addendum to my last post because I suddenly remembered a piece about the rehabilitation of Jonathan Woodgate, whose career has been plagued by muscle tears. The key to his improvement seems to be posture:

Woodgate was supervised one-on-one as he went through "core training". This is intended to condition the torso and improve posture so that the danger of injury is reduced. Phil Pask, as senior physio to the England rugby squad for 10 years that included the 2003 World Cup triumph, is well versed in an unrelenting sport and knows the value of core work. "We are looking," he said, "for a normal movement pattern. Physios now will have a grounding in yoga and Pilates."

later on in the article the physio used the made-up word of prehabilitation. Inspite of that it is the best idea; injury is just the worst thing and so everything possible must be done to try to prevent it. In running the most important thing is consistency and that can only happen when all work is done within the body's limits.

That is why I think core work and posture is important – it helps with those limits.

Posture

As I write this I am sitting on a new desk chair...

I cannot imagine a more boring sentence to open an post. It is of absolutely no interest to anybody else whether I am sitting on an orange crate or reclining on the sofa, but to me it is important. It is related to something I increasingly consider important – posture.

In the old twirly, leany-backy office chair, I used to be half reclining when using the computer; it was an illusory comfort. The new chair is plain, fairly firm, with no moving parts and it forces me to sit upright. My back is straighter and I feel more alert. To say I have been working towards this for a couple of months is not quite true. I haven't had a training programme of sitting a little better each day until I achieved a goal of sitting upright – that would be daft. But I have been working for a couple of months on strengthening my core muscles and trying to improve my posture.

It stems from a realisation that to run properly, with good economy whilst minimising the strain on my body, I need good posture. This cannot be switched on when I laced up my trainers and neglected for everything else, it has to be applied all the time. I have to be constantly aware of how I am holding myself because it is easy to slump, especially when feeling weary.

I have a book of yoga exercises for runners where the mountain pose is highlighted as a key pose. It looks really simple, as it does not involve any contortions or stretching, it is simply a matter of standing upright, balanced and relaxed. It is good to do at odd moments throughout the day as it makes you aware of how you are standing and it recalibrates your posture. A few moments of awareness of the body. It has changed the way I do some exercises. For example when doing lunges I stand in the mountain pose for a short while, do a few lunges on one leg, go back to the mountain pose and then do a few more lunges on the other leg. Yesterday, when walking down the street, became aware of being a little straighter, looking forward rather than slightly down. These are little things, small moments but they make you feel better balanced.

I am sure this is good for running . Everything I have read about good form says you should be erect but relaxed, but how you run is not merely a matter of what you do on a run it's a matter of what you do throughout the day.

Running in Literature: Mr Standfast

This is interesting because running was added in an adaptation rather than being in the original.


The Classic Serial, on the radio, on Sunday, was Mr Standfast. Towards the end, in the pause before the final action sequence, Richard Hannay is in hiding in a hut in the Alps. He wants to increase his fitness because he knows there are trials ahead and so has a routine of training in the night.

On the radio the routine was described with the sound effect of running footfalls and panting and the narrator saying: “I would slip outdoors and go for a run and push up through the snow-laden pines to the ridges where the snow lay in great wreaths and scallops, till I stood on a crest with a frozen world at my feet”

I thought it rather striking and pictured the scene and could almost sense the refreshment of being alone in the clear mountain air. Ah I thought this might worth checking as an example of running in literature, to see if it gave any extra insight about attitudes at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. I found instead that it was nothing to do with running at all. The actual passage was:

I would slip out-of-doors and go for a four or five hours' tramp. Wonderful were those midnight wanderings. I pushed up through the snow-laden pines to the ridges where the snow lay in great wreaths and scallops, till I stood on a crest with a frozen world at my feet and above me a host of glittering stars. Once on a night of full moon I reached the glacier at the valley head, scrambled up the moraine to where the ice began, and peered fearfully into the spectral crevasses. At such hours I had the earth to myself, for there was not a sound except the slipping of a burden of snow from the trees or the crack and rustle which reminded me that a glacier was a moving river.

Why has tramping been replaced by running? I can only think that the need to compress the text lead the adaptor to use running as a short hand to indicate a fitness regime and that to our modern ears walking would not convey the message. But the change makes no real sense because walking up mountains, in the dark, for four or five hours is very hard and challenging and you can still, legitimately use the sound effect of heavy breathing . Running up those same mountains in the dark is probably suicidal.

I can only think that the Edwardian writer understood the value of hard sustained aerobic exercise for strength and endurance, whilst the modern writer did not.

Running in Literature: Widmerpool

An occasional series that will be continued whenever I come across a character who has any sort of interesting relationship with running.

Dance to the Music of Time is a sequence of twelve novels that describes the social milieu around the central narrator Nicholas Jenkins. There two main types of reaction to it: some people reject it as just the social record of a load of toffs, whilst others make extraordinarily high claims. (There is a quote on my copy from Clive James 'I think it is now becoming clear that A Dance To The Music of Time is going to become the greatest modern novel since Ulysses'). Myself, I think it is wonderful, full of insight and wry observation, but that is neither here nor there as I am not here to write a review. I only want to highlight a small detail that in a novel sequence with a precise architecture, where patterns and symmetries are important, it begins and end with running.

Widmerpool is probably the character who looms the largest throughout the novels. Although not likeable or sympathetic, he is a force and fascinating in his strengths and weaknesses. In the beginning he is fixed as he comes out of the mist.

By this stage of the year - exercise no longer contestable five days a week - the road was empty; except for Widmerpool, in a sweater once white and a cap one size too small, hobbling unevenly, though with determination on the flat heels of spiked running shoes…Widmerpool was known to go voluntarily for 'a run' by himself every afternoon. This was his return from the plough in drizzle that had been falling since early school…As the damp , insistent cold struck up from the road, two thin jets of steam drifted out of his nostrils, by nature much distended, and all at once he seemed to possess a painful solidarity that talk about him had never conveyed. Something comfortless and inelegant in his appearance suddenly impressed itself on the observer, as stiffly, almost majestically, Widmerpool moved on his heels out of the mist.

I think this is fine writing with small details like the 'two thin jets of steam' making the picture vivid. But the point is that the character of Widmerpool becomes clear through his activity - through running, which is solitary (Widmerpool is always an outsider), determined, but pursued without any great talent. Yet despite all this there is something almost majestic about him.

I love the idea of seeing people through their actions. This may be a bit sad but all the time I am looking at runners and making judgements. Mostly they are superficial, merely being about the way the body moves, whether it is fluid or stiff, elegant or clumsy. At other times you do catch glimpses of character, though you have no way of knowing if that flash of insight is accurate or not. However the activities we choose are never neutral, they all show something about us. For example you can never take up running if you hate being by yourself, as no matter how social you might be, running is mostly solitary. You also have to have a certain amount of doggedness run consistently and so it is the perfect activity to introduce Widmerpool who forms his own life purely through the force of will.

Yes running is only a small detail in the novels but it is cleverly chosen. I will however draw a veil over the ending where Widmerpool dies running naked, part of a crank sect.

We may run but we are not mean we have to be anything like him.

A Clean Slate With Your Own Face On

Rather shamefacedly, I must admit I have not only never read any Sylvia Plath, I have actively avoided her work. Just like the next man I am full of petty prejudices but I am quite happy to be proved wrong. This time it happened when flicking through the booklet about her given away with today’s Guardian. The first thing I read was the poem ‘You’re’ and I thought it lovely.

On first reading I thought it about a newborn infant and I related to it by remembering my own children at that age, all full of vague potential. “O high-riser, my little loaf” just made me smile. But a number of lines did not make sense (e.g.Gilled like a fish) until I realised it was about the unborn child she was carrying.

Clownlike, happiest on your hands,
Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled,
Gilled like a fish. A common-sense
Thumbs-down on the dodo's mode.
Wrapped up in yourself like a spool,
Trawling your dark, as owls do.
Mute as a turnip from the Fourth
Of July to All Fools' Day,
O high-riser, my little loaf.

Vague as fog and looked for like mail.
Farther off than Australia.
Bent-backed Atlas, our travelled prawn.
Snug as a bud and at home
Like a sprat in a pickle jug.
A creel of eels, all ripples.
Jumpy as a Mexican bean.
Right, like a well-done sum.
A clean slate, with your own face on.

Whatever its actual meaning, the poem started a train of thought about beginnings – the optimism, playfulness, and hope. The first word ‘clownlike’ made me think about how much and how easily children laugh and how we lose that giggliness when we get older and activity turns into work. We are at our best when we recover just a fraction of that delight and it is the purpose of our hobbies, pastimes, and obsessions, to give us some glimpse of it.

But even our recreations, if done often enough, can become an obligation, a pressure like work. So all the time we need to recover the sense of the new, the freshness of the beginning when every run is a discovery and hopes are ‘as vague as the fog and looked for like the mail’.

This can be done in so many ways – new routes, looking at old routes in a different way, forgetting about speed, time, distance, or trying a new training plan. It does not matter what. All that matters is keeping fresh and feeling alive, and with any luck finding some delight.

Humility and Truth Pt. 1

Humility and truth – as a title it sounds rather grand and forbidding, like a Victorian lecture on virtue, morals or anything else requiring a stiff backbone. But that cannot be right; I am not trying to bolster an empire or preach a normative sermon. I am only writing about running – a simple physical activity, a recreation.

But it is not so simple and I believe that anything that takes time and effort, teaches its own lessons. You not only learn the techniques of the task itself, how to run better or shape a piece of wood more accurately or solve equations, you learn about the way you approach the task. Are you soft on yourself or relentless? Will accept imperfections or only be satisfied with the best? Are you pragmatic or idealistic? These questions and more are being played out all the time and mostly there is a mixed bag of answers. However you gather them up and over time they form a pattern and you know where you have to try harder and you know your limitations

This is where humility comes in. You cannot maintain any illusion of innate superiority. There are always people who can run faster or longer, or faster and longer. There are always people who overcome more difficulties. It doesn’t matter where in the pack you are, there are always people you think should be at your level and sometimes they are running away from you. You vow to be better in future but that vow is in itself a recognition of humility – you know you could do better.

It is not just a matter of speed. There are people who are slower who show great virtue. At the moment I am using the gym a lot and I regularly see people working to overcome physical limitations. A couple of people in particular can barely walk, yet they struggle onto the treadmill, hold onto the bar and move their legs faster than would otherwise be possible. One of them has obviously had a stroke and has to use his left hand to lift his right arm into place. It takes him ages to set himself up on the various machines but he never gives up. I think about these people more than the fit and toned. I wonder if I would be as determined if I was so limited in my movements.

Yet to balance all this humility there has to be an inner feeling of satisfaction. You need to feel good about what you achieve as well as recognising the achievement of others and for this running is perfect. If you do what you can, within your own boundaries, you feel good. Each run has the potential of being a small victory.

Whenever I see someone out on the roads, running at whatever pace, I see someone doing their best. There is a community of us, all doing our best. Being part of that is a source of both humility and satisfaction.

Humility and Truth Pt. 2

In the past I have written before about running being a form of honesty. It doesn’t matter what you think of your capabilities, how fast you wish to be, or how well you know the theory, the time you take to complete a run tells you everything there is about your capabilities on the day. Of course you can plan to improve, work hard and make progress but there is always a clear measure of how you have done. You cannot bluff your way round a course.

Honesty and truth have been on my mind quite a bit recently as I have been reading Flat earth news by Nick Davies, which paints a bleak picture of the information available to us through the news media. Because of pressures of productivity, the need for speed, slimmed-down newsrooms, fewer local stringers, there is an over reliance on lifting copy from wire services and topping and tailing press releases. There is little time for fact checking and the truth of a story can sometimes be less important than feeding the prejudices of the audience. If something is said often enough it becomes the conventional wisdom and if no one checks everybody can continue to believe that the earth is flat.

This followed reading about Joseph Stiglitz's book on the full the cost of the Iraq war, which exposed a mountain of official lies by following the money. There was also interesting an article about the standards of curatorship in current art exhibitions which concluded:

The problem is not blockbusters. It's that in London we get too many exhibitions that sound big, but in reality are very small. As a nation, we've become professional bullshitters (as Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson's book Fantasy Island recently argued), and our art galleries are no exception.

All in all my head is reeling with the thought that all our public discourses and a host of consequential actions are governed by misinformation and an inability to check claims for truth.

I thus turn with relief to a run and know I can run for so many minutes and cover so many miles. It is the truth about my current condition and it gives me a grasp on one tiny bit of reality.