Off Season

This is the last day of the year and I notice that just one more post will bring the annual total up to the nice round number of 90. Hmm so now I must think of something to say.

I could of course write about all the running I have been doing and exercise I have been taking but there would be no words – only a blank page. I have been doing nothing. Christmas has been a period of eating, drinking, people coming, more eating and drinking, more people coming, etc. Although there have been times when I could have gone out a combination of physical lethargy and bad weather meant I really did not feel like it.

Surprisingly I am not beating myself up about this because I have classified the time as ‘Off Season’ – and I am sure it is a good thing. The balance I am always trying to strike in running is between consistency of effort, the necessity of running regularly, and keeping fresh, maintaining enjoyment. I know I have a deep need to exercise: to feel alert and well but I do not want it to be merely functional and feel like a chore. I want it to be enjoyable.
The best way to achieve this is to be smart with my regime and plan for variety. There should not only be a mixture of activities to cover strength and flexibility as well as stamina, within the single discipline of running there should also be changes. There needs to be different challenges to keeping things fresh: new routes, hills, more speed, slower and longer, arbitrary targets. (My resolution for 2010 is to be better at this).

But I also think there has to be a pattern of peaks and troughs of intensity and sometimes there needs to be a break: hence the idea of an off-season and Christmas is a good time for this.

Some of my Christmas reading time has been spent flicking through my collection of running books: picking up the odd idea, reinforcing my belief that what I do is worthwhile, reaffirming myself as a runner, and most importantly letting my imagination roam. When reading these books I picture myself running freely and easily, and feel the sensation of possibilities. It whets my appetite makes me keen to start the New Year with a new programme and to look forward.

The break has reminded me that the imagination needs as much attention as physical mechanics. After all, in the words of Yogi Berra, 90% of what we do is half mental.

My Own Little Running World

Although I was surprised to see someone running on the snowy, icy roads I don’t think I should have been. There are many people far more dedicated than me, with an iron resolve to keep to a schedule and not let a little bit of bad weather get in the way. Some enjoy the clear crisp air and the challenge of running through snow and find the same joy we had as kids tobogganing down the slopes or throwing snowballs. Others, to whom a run is as fixed a part of the day as eating or drinking, just go out of the door because that is what they always do.

I am not in the first camp. Although I love snowy days, their beauty, the stillness and the way they bring people together, I am cautious when moving around: very aware of the dangers of falling. I prefer to be in my walking boots with their ridged and grippy soles.

As for the second group – I have never been on a streak. I think the highest number of consecutive days running is five. (A pathetic number perhaps but inevitable because of my belief in rest: even at my highest level of training I want two rest days a week.) So I am deeply impressed by those who run every day. I admire their discipline and sense of purpose, even their eccentricity.

A prime example is Ron Hill who has run at least a mile a day for the past 45 years, whatever the weather, whatever the injury or illness (famously he ran after a car crash with a cracked sternum or after a bunion operation using crutches). Now there might be a fine line between self-discipline and nuts but he is still a hero. I look upon such people as if they are a slightly different species: near enough for me to be able to recognise what they do but far enough away for me to know I could never do the same.

I know the area where I operate – keeping going, pushing myself a little but not to the extremes. Others go further and faster, others can endure more hardship, and others have better balance and can run on snow and ice. Good luck to them I like to celebrate their achievements but I have my own running world and with that I am content.


HAPPY CHRISTMAS.

Snow Day

Not a day for running. I thought this self evident and had not a flicker of interest in putting on trainers.

Putting on walking boots and taking snow pictures was a different matter and I loved being out. The air felt clear and crisp, roads had very few cars, and people were talking to each other. I don't know why it takes snow to make us all more neighbourly but it does. It seems natural to talk about the weather when you pass someone in the street ("not at all like June is it" said an old boy, as he carefully watched every step in case he slipped), it is fun to help to push cars that are stuck and there are also little stories ("we would not have come out if we didn't have a sick rabbit we need to take to the vet").

But then something strange: there in the distance was a man with a hat, tracksters, and sweat-top jogging slowly and deliberately along the pavement. Why would you do that? I could not work out the benefit: you cannot move very fast or easily because you have to be very careful not to slip and the underfoot ice is rutted and uneven, your feet get raw and icy, and the routes are limited because the side streets are too deep in snow. Also the training benefit must be extremely marginal.

But there is no escaping it - this has me marked down as a faintheart.

A Matter of Definition

This past year a common pattern for Saturday has been: breakfast, a bit of faffing, then out of the door for my standard 10km run along the canal. I then, red-faced and rather sweaty, buy a paper from the shop at the bottom of my road. When I hand over the money I will be asked if I have been jogging and I will smile say yes and add something like 'got to keep at it' and then leave.

I like this interaction and I am quite happy to describe myself as a jogger. It doesn't bother me at all, yet some people I know get a bit upset in an "I am a runner not a jogger" sort of way. They want to make a distinction of commitment. To them a jogger is someone who runs as part of a mix of keep-fit activities. Their aim is health rather than the run itself, whereas for the runner improved health is merely a by-product. You run because you are absorbed by the whole experience and it brings insights you would not otherwise find. Somehow 'jogger' doesn't convey this sense of purpose. It is not a serious label.

I can understand the sensitivity as we all liked to be defined in a way that matches our internal image. On the other hand a dispassionate observer, looking at me pass, would know nothing of my commitment or purpose; they would see someone moving at a fairly easy pace, someone for whom the word jogger would seem appropriate.

But words are important and their definitions can be contentious. I thought of this when reading the story of a jazz fan wanting a refund because he thought Larry Ochs played contemporary music and not jazz.. In all sorts of ways this is wonderfully bizarre (the idea of people wanting their money back if they didn’t like what they heard would be a hugely subversive change to the normal ticket contract). What sort of health warning could you put on your posters for someone who says:

The jazz purist claimed his doctor had warned it was "psychologically inadvisable" for him to listen to anything that could be mistaken for mere contemporary music.

And what sort of trauma could result from exposure to the wrong kind of performance? It makes no sense but I am amused by the agonizing: “Even if I could listen to Andy Shepherd when he plays with Carla Bley, could I still listen to him when he plays with Joanna McGreggor? Hmmm”. (Actually the answer is probably yes because he is always an inventive, lyrical saxophonist whereas the psychologically fragile man is probably scared of a rumbustious, disintegrating form of free jazz - and Larry Ochs does sound like this)

The funniest thing though is calling-in the police to adjudicate – not the obvious the place for music related problems or any adjudication on arts policy and I can’t believe contemporary music is part of their basic training. It would be like me calling a local park keeper to decide if I was running or jogging.

Sunshine and Mood

Oh what a pleasure it is to be out and feel the wind on your face and see everything illuminated by a clear bright light. After so many days of heavy grey skies and seemingly endless rain my spirits are quite lifted.

I don't know how much a feeling of well being is linked to the weather (it is certainly possible to run on miserable days and enjoy it) but I know I feel better if the sun is shining. Light has a big effect on my mood and I can feel low if there are too many overcast days. So it is important to grab those moments when it is bright and get out there.

I posted today's picture because I like views where the land opens out and you can see patches of light. At the bottom, on the path you can some standing water, of which there is plenty as it is still very wet underfoot. Further along one of the tracks usefully illustrated a geography lesson on how rivers form the landscapes. The fallen leaves initially formed a soaked mushy top layer but with the heavy rain the water flowed down the track in a stream and cut the mulch into channels. You could clearly see how, even on a fairly uniform surface water meanders. Soft geomorphology. If it had been a grey day perhaps I would have been irritated by the splashy, sloppy wetness of it all but in the sun I just saw water at play and my mind played as well, remembering my own lessons of getting water to run down a sheet of glass.

I often wonder what I think about when I am running or cycling. I am slightly jealous of those people who say they get their best ideas when running or the journalists who say they use the time to plan their next article. For me it doesn't work like that as mostly my mind is blank with interruptions of random observations. But I like the periods of nothingness - when the rhythm takes over and you get lost in the steady repetitive pattern.

There are of course all sorts of things that crop up and require immediate attention, like how to avoid the dog which seems determined to block your path or how to pick your way amongst the potholes and puddles but these come and go quickly. It is a continual process of tune-in, tune-out (or wax on, wax off). All my thoughts come and go when I am running and nothing stays in focus for very long. Even if I have something on my mind I do not think of it coherently, fragments float in and out in a distinctly non-linear fashion.

But this is why running is refreshing: the mind freewheels , loosens up and escapes its normal channels; which brings me back to the weather. When it is bright everything feels just that little bit freer

Running to Bookshops - No More

And so it has finally happened Borders UK has gone into administration and the options for those of us who like browsing in bookshops will be reduced. I am saddened even though it is odd to be writing this about Borders, who, when they first came to Britain, were seen as part of the problem: a big pile-them-high merchant who would squeeze the life out of the small independents. Now they in turn have been squeezed by a bigger pile-them-high merchant in Amazon … so goes life.

I started to like Borders from 2000 when I realised that Waterstone's had radically changed. This was symbolised by the sacking of Richard Topping, their Manchester manager, for refusing to reduce the number and range of titles he carried. Previously I enjoyed Watersone's and thought it had improved the standard of bookselling in the country (I am old enough to remember when the only place to buy books in some towns was W H Smith and if you ordered a book it took weeks to arrive) but I then started to think of their dark-wood shelves and subdued décor as an affectation: a self-conscious referencing of a gentleman's library, whilst the brasher blond wood fittings of the Border's shops, with books piled everywhere seemed more honest. Yes we sell in bulk, it seemed to say but there is a lot of stuff here and we have chairs and a coffee shop so you can take you time sifting through it.

My lingering affection for Waterstone's was then further frayed in 2005 when they sacked a senior bookseller for some fairly mild comments in his personal blog. So it happened that I preferred using Border's (there are no independents in my area). But over the past few years you could see things were not going well and stock started to reduce. No longer were there piles of stuff, shops were rearranged and shelves disappeared. This has been particularly marked in the last year where there has been more space devoted to the offers ( 3 for 2, buy one get one half price, 2 for £10) and non-book items whilst the stock behind has become thinner and thinner.

But why am I writing about bookshops on a running blog?

The answer is that, as unlikely as it might seem, Borders in Watford is a significant part of my running landscape. From my home, along the canal it is about 10 miles away, a nice distance for a longish run, along a route I never tire off. I have been doing it regularly for 5 years with the affection that can only come from familiarity, especially as it is associated with another institution: the family meeting. I meet my wife at the in-store Starbucks (she goes by car and brings me a change of clothes) and we discuss our joint projects and plans, and check off our progress. A lot of it is mundane such as jobs that need doing so the list could be something like downstairs blind - fixed; treating the garden fence - still outstanding; but sometimes we talk more speculatively about what we should be doing and where we should be going. On these topics we rarely reach conclusions but they need to be discussed because the real topic of these meetings is to try to work out how we can support each other better. And that is very important.

Borders brings three things together: browsing, running and relationship maintenance - a strong combination. However things always change and there are many other good locations (pubs for example). Borders might be soon be no more but the meetings will continue and I still like the idea of running to them.

Shiny, Shiny Things

My bike is nothing exotic as it is neither super fast, feather light nor made from carbon or titanium. The paint scheme is pleasantly retro and the material is old-school steel and as such I think it rather nice. It is designed for hacking about and it suits me fine. There are details that make it interesting, for example you can see that the designer came from mountain biking and the wishbone seat stays make it look like an overgrown mountain bike frame from about 1990. But that is not important - all that matters is that it rides quite well.

The only reason I mention this is that last week it sparked an interesting conversation. I was cycling through the industrial area, near the end of a ride when the driver of an Audi slowed down and indicated that he wanted to ask me something.

“I see you are riding a Plane X bike” he said “How do you find it? Only I am going up to their place at Doncaster today and was thinking of getting one of their bikes”

So I told him about the bike and what I knew of the company and then we started talking more generally. He had recently come back into cycling and wanted the excitement of some new equipment. His existing bike was custom made steel but he thought it a little large and it was old and he was tired of it. Sometimes I think when we go back to a passion after a break we need the stimulus of the new, the sense of a fresh start.

“You know that ever since I decided to get a new bike I am always looking at what people ride and noticing.” I could relate to that because the same thing happens to me: if I am buying a new toy one of the pleasures is the anticipation stage when you look and compare and gather enough information to allow your heart to make the decision.

We then moved moved from equipment to more general things like motivation and objectives. As he had just started back he was full of the enthusiasm that comes with rediscovery but what was keeping him focussed was a challenge. He wanted to cycle, with a friend, from their home near Newcastle to Edinburgh and back in a day; approximately 230 miles, with hills. A serious enterprise that made me realise how limited my own ambitions, or capabilities, are -if I did the trip one way, in a day, I would be extremely happy. But we all have to have our own horizons.

We then parted ways, him to Doncaster me to home but it had been a cheery conversation, all the more enjoyable because it had been unexpected and random. It left thinking that the big difference between running and cycling is the enjoyment of cycleporn, ie an obsessive interest in well designed objects, a hierarchy of desirability and a susceptibility to brand image. There is both good and bad to it. The bad is consumer ism, whilst the good is an aesthetic sensibility: the appreciation of the beauty of something that works both well and elegantly. No matter how hard running magazines and manufacturers try to push the latest developments it is not the same. The kit is still no more than: shoes, shorts, socks and a top. A bike can look stylish all by itself but a runner….Well actually I prefer not to look at my reflection if I happen to be passing a shop window.

No one has ever stopped me and said “I see you run in Asics, how do you find them?” and no one ever will. The manufactures might claim the all sorts of technological advances for their trainers but the main criterion is whether they fit. In other words it is all about the human body and how it moves, not how well the equipment works. In that there is a sort of purity and that is why I run.

But I like shiny things as well - so I also cycle.

A Feeling of Space

A postscript to my last post about the restorative powers of landscape: you do not need imposing natural grandeur for it to be refreshing, sometimes the domesticated views of the Home Counties can work their magic just as well. The view does not even have to be of natural features, small picturesque villages can also lift the spirits.

Today I went for an meandering cycle ride, with the only plan being to loop around some nearby villages. In every case I found something pleasing, whether it was a pond, a green, a cricket pitch on the green, or just a churchyard. The heart of each village had open space, old buildings, a human scale and felt restful.

The picture comes from the churchyard in Flamstead, a village listed in the Domesday Book. All was quiet and it was hard to believe that only a short distance away was the M1, heavy with traffic. A neat contrast as one space invites you to wander and contemplate and is thus refreshing, whilst the other demands concentration and has constant pressure from people in all the other vehicles.

This started me wondering whether one of the key issues for mental recuperation , as well as the beauty of natural landscapes, is the feeling of space and not being crowded or rushed. Sometimes in urban areas one can be hemmed by all the other people, wrapped-up in their own worlds, not interacting but intruding. One can be deprived of clear sight lines and subconsciously this feels pressurised. In such circumstances it is difficult to clear the mind

Today I had no problem with crowds as it was on small lanes and it always surprises me how it takes only a short step away from the beaten track for crowds to disappear. I find this when I run. Around Ashridge the parking spaces can be full and there can be quite a few people on nearby paths, strolling, walking their dogs or just messing about but a short distance further in people melt away and you feel you have the woods to yourself. Selfishly I'm actually quite pleased that many people do not want to move far from their cars.

Looking at nature

Most of the pictures on this blog are of canals and trees, in other words natural surroundings (even if canals are man made). It is the way I think of my runs - chugging along looking at trees and water, passing people who are outside to enjoy themselves. I think of my standard run as 1 hour along the canal but in reality less than half the time is spent on the towpath as I have to get there and it is 16 minutes away. But the streets on the way tend to pass in a blur and I think of them as a preamble (word chosen carefully to reflect my running speed) that has to be got through. It is a bit odd as it is all running and everything should be of equal value.

Now I find there might be a good reason for this: nature is better for your state of mind.

"Attention restoration theory" is the current rebranding of the idea that a walk in the woods can help refocus your thoughts. Think of the Romantics tramping the Lake District or Thoreau at Walden and know the idea has been around for a long time but to be contemporary it has to have a three letter acronym so it is now ART. ART hypothesises that nature engages our attention and our sense of beauty in a way that places no load on the prefrontal cortex. In other words the mind can freewheel and give our directed-attention faculties a chance to recuperate. In contrast a walk in an urban environment is full of stimuli that require immediate attention and is therefore not so restful.

Last year this was tested in an experiment at the University of Michigan. A group of people were given some backwards number tasks that required a deal of concentration. After the first session they took an hour walk either in an arboretum or along the streets of Ann Arbor, after which they took more tests. Whilst everyone's scores improved those of the nature walkers improved significantly more than those who had gone downtown. A second experiment cut the walking, instead the participants looked at pictures of either nature or urban scenes in their break. Again those who had looked at the nature scenes improved more.

So there you have it. If you want your run to have the maximum restorative effect you should search out routes containing natural beauty. Any run is obviously good but some places just make you feel that little bit better.

Scientifically proved!

I Used to Enjoy Reading Julie Welch

If you asked me a couple of days ago to name my favourite running books 'Long distance information' by Julie Welch would have been on the list. It starts with her, at the age of 48, discovering she is capable of completing a long distance cycle ride, without much preparation. After that adventure she embraces the idea of a physical challenge and takes up running culminating with a long distance run in France, retracing memories from her childhood. It is mostly a memoir, both amusing and touching, but framed by the run. As such it successfully illustrates the way that running by a mixture of rhythm and steady exertion can liberate the mind and help us see things more clearly and it speaks to me of things I value in running.

But my good will to the author is now shattered and I am totally baffled that someone who wrote so convincingly about the way running could transform the life of a middle aged woman could write so spitefully about middle aged men who jog. Admittedly it is part of the press campaign to ridicule Gordon Brown in every way possible(and she does spend an awful lot of words mocking the way he looks when out for a run) but the conclusion is that middle aged men should not run. They should stick to the traditional, more dignified pursuits of bridge, gardening or a bit of bowls and she describes jogging as a modern plague brought to us by the Americans before delivering this dire health warning.

But Gordon Brown is in his late 50s - not an age to hurl yourself into a fitness regime from scratch.

It isn't good for the ageing knees, it will inflame sciatica and it risks bringing forward the date of a hip replacement.

Most worryingly, the sudden strain on ancient heart valves can occasionally be fatal.

The implication is that after you have reached a certain age you should fade away to gentle irrelevance and not strain yourself too much because it might be dangerous. I can almost feel the metaphorical pat on the head and the "there, there dear. Now you mustn't overtax yourself" (plus of course concern that you wrap up warmly and wear a vest).

This is so wrong.

Every time I see someone out on the road, man or woman, young or old, struggling with their run but still trying, I want to offer support. Every time someone manages to break a personal barrier and for example manages to run for fifteen minutes without walking, they are right to be proud. Every time anybody makes the effort I think their achievement should be appreciated.

The most important thing is to continue to try. It doesn't matter what at, it just matters that you continue to strive. Running is good, people should be supported and Julie Welch in this one mean spirited article has undone much of the good of her other writings.

It is such a shame.

Sports News is Always About Football

I was going to start this post with: "I am in despair" before I realised I was 'in despair' only two posts ago. Damn, I really am turning into a grumpy old man. I must either try to control this and make a deliberate effort to see the sunny side or take my miserablist self outside for a walk and tell him he will only be allowed back if he is clear eyed and sharp, not at all if he is merely gloomy. As one of my core beliefs is that running lifts the spirits and helps you connect with the world in a more positive way, I cannot constantly be holding my head in my hands.

Anyway back to today's peeve and just like two posts ago it is not about running, or my own experiences; it is to do with the way sport and exercise is talked or written about. In this case the way football dominates the airways and sucks the oxygen away from other, more interesting, topics.

This morning the sports bulletin in the Today programme carried a piece about the UK Sport’s World Class Performance Conference, which brings together top coaches from all disciplines so they can exchange knowledge. Fair play to Today for picking up on this item but the interview with the representative was lamentable. He was allowed to state the purpose of the meeting but after that he was only asked about Rafa Benetiz and how it might help him with his bad string of results or what it would say about his decision to field a weakened team in one competition. It was very, very strange, as if the only purpose of the item was to make back-handed, and unrelated, digs at the Liverpool manager

All the time it was frustrating because I really wanted to hear what they would be talking about, what would be the focus of the presentations, and who would be talking. (It is now even more frustrating because the UK Sport website only provides the marketing blurb and no programme).

I am sure I am not unusual in being a back-pack runner who is interested in how the elite reach their high standards and the latest developments in coaching and sports science. There must be many of us who participate in all types of sport, who know how difficult they are to master and are in awe of the top performers. We are curious about how they became so good and want to know both about their methods and the capabilities of the human body. It is a far more fascinating subject than the endless speculation on the current status of a various football manager.

Official Advice on Exercise Pt 2

Official advice on the amount of exercise needed is quite simple:

■ Children and young people should achieve a total of at least 60 minutes of at least moderate intensity physical activity each day. At least twice a week this should include activities to improve bone health (activities that produce high physical stresses on the bones), muscle strength and flexibility.
■ For general health benefit, adults should achieve a total of at least 30 minutes a day of at least moderate intensity physical activity on 5 or more days of the week.
■ The recommended levels of activity can be achieved either by doing all the daily activity in one session, or through several shorter bouts of activity of 10 minutes or more. The activity can be lifestyle activity or structured exercise or sport, or a combination of these.
■ It is likely that for many people, 45-60 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity a day is necessary to prevent obesity. For bone health, activities that produce high physical stresses on the bones are necessary.
■ The recommendations for adults are also appropriate for older adults. Older people should take particular care to keep moving and retain their mobility through daily activity. Additionally, specific activities that promote improved strength, co-ordination and balance are particularly beneficial for older people.

That’s all there is.

When I first read them I thought they were very soft. There is no mention of vigorous, nothing about raising the pulse rate or breathing heavily and nothing about being able to gradually do more with practice. As for breaking it up into 10 minutes units I thought it was the slippery slope to counting any slight movement as exercise.

But I was probably being a bit snooty because I run and know the feeling of wellbeing that sweeps through you after a good session. I therefore know in my bones that exercise is good for you. So my viewpoint is distorted especially as I have little understanding of the general level of inactivity in the population as a whole or how hard it is to start from a low base.

Reading the 2004 report by the Chief Medical Officer changed my mind (it can be downloaded here) as it shows the evidence base for the recommendations, which can be summarised by this quote:

The World Health Organization has reported that physical inactivity is one of the 10 leading causes of death in developed countries, producing 1.9 million deaths worldwide per year.21 It estimates that physical inactivity is responsible for the following proportions of ‘disability-adjusted life years’ in developed countries:

■ 23% of cardiovascular disease for men and 22% for women
■ 16% of colon cancer for men and 17% for women
■ 15% of type 2 diabetes
■ 12% of stroke for men and 13% for women
■ 11% of breast cancer. Becoming more active can bring substantial benefit.

There is a clear dose-response relationship between physical activity and all-cause mortality, and between physical activity and diseases such as coronary heart disease and type 2 diabetes: greater benefits occur with greater activity participation (see Figure 1). From a public health perspective, helping people to move from an inactive level to low to moderately active levels will produce the greatest reduction in risk. A physical activity energy expenditure of 500-1,000kcals per week (about 6-12 miles of walking for an average-weight individual, compatible with the current physical activity recommendations for adults) reduces the risk of premature death by 20-30%. These considerable health benefits hold for both women and men and are evident even up to the age of 80 years.

This is clear. If more people adopted this regime of moderate exercise there would be dramatic change. However in the back of my mind is the quote from Jerry Morris saying that vigorous activity was necessary and his survey of civil servant showed gardening was not enough. I presume later surveys have different results but is vigorous exercise really unnecessary?

It seems that there is might be some debate. In 2007 the American Heart Association modified its advice by incorporating vigorous exercise and resistance training. The base recommendation was still 30 minutes of moderate activity 5 times a week, but 3 sessions of vigorous exercise could be substituted, if preferred, or moderate and vigorous sessions could be mixed. The Guardian report of this change was exaggerated and had the headline “The era of gentle exercise is over: it’s official you’ve got to work up a sweat”, which is a complete misrepresentation (the NHS Behind the Headlines response is here). Although the American report was merely an enhancement of the existing recommendations, it did acknowledge that there were still some people who believed that only vigorous exercise had a health effect and that recent evidence gives some indication that vigorous exercise is more beneficial for cardiac disease.

However in terms of a public health message the last thing you want is debate. It is important to stand firm with advice and only change it when counter evidence is very clear. Any sign of confusion is an excuse for people to do nothing. You need only look at diet, where there is a perception of scientists always changing their minds (even if this is not the case) to see how that works.

Additionally getting people to move from nothing to something is very difficult and you do not want to make the task seem daunting. (Again diet is the example ‘5 a day’ for fruit and vegetables was chosen as a target that would not be too off-putting; it is not necessarily the optimum).

So I can now see why the current advice is good. It has a the maximum chance of making an impact but it needs to seep into the general consciousness in the same way as '5 a day'. If we walk on average only half a mile a day and 38% of adults have less than 30 minutes of moderate activity a week. There is a long, long way to go.

Official Advice on Exercise Pt 1

The example of exercise advice given from the health perspective was randomly chosen: I searched Google, found the recommendations from an NHS website and the job was done. It was the only article I read and as it lived up (or down) to my expectation by advocating a gentle approach that almost suggests you can exercise without any great effort, I looked no further. But this is not good enough because: 1) it goes against the principle of always trying to disprove your own assumptions; 2) it is only fair to look further.

So here is a record of my search for official advice on exercise to see whether it is clearly presented and easy to find. I will do this in two posts. The first will look at the sources of information on the Web; the second will look at the content of the advice and its consistency.

Sources of Information

1) Directgov is designed to be the citizens portal for government information and advice and is the obvious place to start. The front page has a link to a index page on 'health and wellbeing', where there is a section for 'healthy living' but this doesn't have exercise as a subheading so the only option is a click to another index page: 'more about healthy living'. Here again there is nothing about exercise I can go to 'Change4life' but there is also a heading 'sports facilities and events', which seems at first to be unlikely. Strangely it is what is needed as it contains links to:
keeping fit (young peoples section);
staying physically active (pensions and retirement planning section);
fitness advice on NHS Choices.
At last some information!

There was of course no need to go through the linky links, there is a search box. The search term 'exercise' threw up the 'sports facilities and events' page as the first hit but I ignored it because, at the time, I thought the strap line 'Find a local gym or sports facility and look up local and national sporting events' made it seem irrelevant. However I did strike gold because the next hit was a newslink to the 2004 report by the Chief Medical Officer's on exercise, which I was able to download from the DoH site.

(Totally by the way their search engine is a bit weird. The results for 'exercise recommendations' or 'exercise guidelines' offered 'NHS to offer acupuncture for back pain' as the first result)

2) Change4life. Apparently the Government is spending £75m on this campaign to encourage us to eat more healthily and exercise more. So surely this must be the place for good advice. It is aimed at families so presumably it's written to advise parents on what's good for them and their kids, ie its supposed to be read by adults.

Oh the bright colours! Oh the perky language! It makes you feel like you are being talked at by the presenters of Playdays. Here is the introduction to 'Why Change4Life?'

Well done! Visiting this site is your first step in making a Change4Life, and you're not alone. Lots of people like you are already enjoying making a Change4Life! The way we live nowadays means a lot of us, especially our kids, have fallen into unhelpful habits. This means all of us need to make small changes to eat well, move more, and live longer.

There is so much I could say about this but I will restrict myself to one small question. Why 'unhelpful' when the obvious word is unhealthy? Sometimes a single word can show a rottenness of thought behind the writing. Here is how they explain why we should encourage our kids to be more active:

Activity raises kids’ heartbeats and helps pump blood around their bodies. It’s like a mini workout for their lungs and muscles! It also decreases their chances of getting life-threatening diseases.

I am comatose with despair!

3) NHS Choices LiveWell. This fitness section is a proper grown-up site and actually quite good. The information on the why and how of exercise is clearly laid out and there is a good range of side links to supporting information (eg a link to Sustrans to help people get cycling and a video wall of tips from Olympic athletes). This is the place to find the Government's advice but this is not the end of the story because there are always other places to look.

4) More from NHS Choices. Entering the term 'exercise' in the search box brings up many more pages of advice that are not linked-to from the fitness site. A lot of them are plain pages of text and are thus probably excluded for looking a bit dull but they contain good, solid information. This on what type of exercise? is a good example. ( on a side note this page is not only dated it shows when it will next be reviewed. I wish this practice was more common)

5) Department of Health. This has more background information to support the exercise campaigns. From here you can Chief Medical Officers report as well as the NICE guidelines for health professionals on increasing physical activity. There is also the action plan published february this year, which brings together both the advice and plans to increase activity. This has to be done because the shocking statistics found in these documents show that:

Around 65% of men and 76% of women are not physically active enough to meet national guidelines (to be at least moderately active for at least 30 minutes on 5 or more days a week). 30% of boys and 39% of girls aged 2–15 years do not achieve the recommended physical activity levels for their age (at least 60 minutes of at least moderate- intensity physical activity each day).

Between 1995–97 and 2005, the average distance walked had dropped from 200 to 197 miles per person, per year. The average distance cycled fell from 43 to 36 miles per person per year.

6) Behind the Headlines This is a brilliant NHS site that looks at the actual research findings behind health stories in the news and puts them into context and assess how significant they might be. Although this is not the place for the official government advice it is worth checking So far they have analysed 243 stories related to lifestyle and exercise. If searching for articles about exercise it is important to remember that the search engine covers the whole of the NHS Choices site and so the phrase 'behind the headlines' should be included in the search.

7) NICE. As well as the guidelines for health professionals I mentioned earlier, NICE have produced a report on creating physical environments that support increased levels of physical activity. It can be downloaded from this page, where you can also have access to their background information. This is one of the fundamental issues and shows how any attempt to change peoples pattern of behaviour has far reaching ramification that reach into many other areas of government.

8) NHS Evidence In my rather sad way I got quite excited when I found this search portal for health information that covers published, research, grey literature, guidelines and reports. The results page gives the option of refining by type of publication.

9) Other Bodies. There are all sorts of other bodies that have some sort of stake in physical activity from the well known such as Sports England or slightly more esoteric like the Outdoor Health Forum but I feel that I am wandering away from the core subject of official advice into a thicket of bureaucratic bodies and background information and I know that madness lies there. However I must pass-on my favourite line from the website of the Physical Activity Alliance "Currently, the Alliance has no formal status; there is no legal entity; there are no staff, no premises, no agreed strategy or delivery plan/programme."  Brilliant!

More Jerry Morris

I have been thinking more about the article about Jerry Morris I linked-to recently and realise that I need to explain why I found it both interesting and uplifting.

The main reason is a straightforward admiration for anybody who has spent his life trying to make things better for others. Such people, who try to solve problems practically, based on knowledge and understanding, are the backbone of the country (compared to most of the people in the media who seem to float on clouds of opinion). Jerry Morris was a high level example and, from the evidence of the article, it looks as if he led a virtuous life.

Times Past

Another reason is probably nostalgia. When I read it I could almost imagine a black and white film of the forties with the central character calmly displaying determination in the face of adversity, moral strength, and practical intelligence (he would probably have to be played by John Laurie because I think it was the law at the time that all Scotsmen had to be played by John Laurie). But deeper than an internal cinema is the attraction of looking back at what has changed and what is still the same.

He worked when we were changing from a physically demanding life to the more domesticated, sedentary world we now inhabit. To be able to compare bus drivers to bus conductors was a wonderful opportunity because class, background, lifestyle, diet of both was very similar and it was possible to isolate the differences caused by exercise. This is no longer the case: there are very few conductors; there are far more differences between those who take exercise and those who don't and there are far more confounding factors.

I also found his regret at the passing of the can-do attitude of the 40s to be poignant. i am sure that it is not that we are any less practical or enterprising now but rather we have lost faith in the idea that national plans and initiatives can make things better. Our default position is cynicism and it is a shame that it is so. The post war period, up until the mid 70s, was probably the high point of optimistic thinking, ie a belief that life could be made better, planning could improve the lot of everybody and the application of science would be beneficial. It is not easy to recapture that mood but I still think there is a lot to recommend in the idea of rounding-up all the experts on a subject, sending them away to the Hebrides and not letting them back until they come up with a workable plan.

Applying the Lessons

Although he made is discovery a lifetime ago, there is now a general understanding of the importance of exercise, I am not sure the full message has been accepted. He is very clear that there needs to be vigorous exercise (gardening by itself is not enough) but a lot of the health advice offered today tones that down. We pussyfoot.

I looked at the exercise recommendations on the NHS Choices. Although it contains some sensible advice, nowhere does it mention the need to raise the pulse rate. Vigorous? The word is shunned as we cannot make even the tiniest suggestion of effort in case we scare people off. I understand the motive, and we certainly don’t want to make things seem overly forbidding, but our bodies were evolved for exercise; there is pleasure in breathing heavily. More to the point vigorous exercise is necessary and we are diluting what we know to be true in an effort to make it more palatable. That does nobody any good.

“Exercise normalises the working of the body”. I like that quote. I think it should be at the head of all the health advice.

The Necessity of Exercise

This quote says it all:

“For the first time in history,” says Morris, “the mass of the population has deliberately got to take exercise. It’s a new phenomenon, which is not appreciated.” For decades he has tried to persuade governments to make exercise easier. He was involved in the pioneering English National Fitness Survey of 1990, which found that half of women aged 55 to 64 could not comfortably walk a mile. These people were in effect disabled. The government ignored the report. Since then, British exercise levels haven’t changed much. His voice becomes high-pitched with outrage: “Just imagine, what historians in the future are going to say about the way we’ve allowed this epidemic of childhood obesity. ‘Disgrace’ is a sort of mild word.”

Embodied

Reading an opinion piece about dictionaries in CIF I found this paragraph:

There's more. We humans are embodied creatures. As philosophers put it, we are extended in space and time. That's no humdrum observation. Our intelligence depends upon it, for we feel our way through the world. Moreover, the same embodiment is intimately linked to our capacity for imagination which, in turn, has much to do with the growth of knowledge. The material world we inhabit nurtures our ability to think, as some of the synonyms used for intelligence themselves suggest: we say, "she's bright", "he's sharp", "they're quick" – metaphors all derived from the physical world.

I need add no more. It is the reason I run.

A Sedentary Life

It was a tiny moment. In some ways like glimpsing a passing reflection of yourself, in a shop window, and seeing yourself as if you were a stranger and realising you look slightly different than your normal self image.

I decided to clear my desk. Not a momentous event, just something that has to be done periodically when my effective working area becomes too reduced by piles of stuff I accumulate. Then everything has to be swept away as I have an overwhelming desire for open space. Yesterday, after I had finished, I looked with satisfaction at a worktop with only a computer screen, keyboard, mouse, notebook and pen. I sat down and felt happy. It was then that the tiny moment of insight and realised how much of my time is spent sitting down. Damn I thought, there is no way round it, I lead a sedentary life.

My self image is of being quite active, someone who enjoys a certain amount of physical challenge and the satisfaction that comes from justified tiredness. In short: someone who runs. But in terms of time this is small beer - most of the time I sit.

I don't know what to do with this insight. I don't know whether I ought to spend more time on easy runs, cycle rides or just being outdoors or whether I ought to be more generally active. At the very least I ought to be aware of my posture, because what you do for most of the day is bound to have a great impact on you body form. I will have to look afresh at the physical component of my whole day, rather than focusing on the bits I enter into my running diary. In other words think about health in general.


Postscript

Whilst I was sitting around thinking these things I came across this article on Jerry Morris. It is based on an interview given a shortly before his death and is quite inspiring. He is an obviously great figure (though perhaps little known outside his speciality) who is important to all of us mid-pack runners and general exercisers because he was the first person to show the link between vigorous exercise and a reduction of heart disease. The piece is titled 'The man who invented exercise' and so we obviously owe him debt.

An Unexpected Reminder

Last Sunday was really dark. As everything was falling away I wondered why I spent so much time not only running but thinking about running. It was all a waste as I was achieving nothing. How could I say it was good when there was only struggle?

These thoughts were worst around half way, when it would have been easy to abandon as the course is a squashed figure of eight, and the end seemed a long way away. But as one foot followed another the distance gradually reduced and I knew I could finish and by doing so find some consolation: prove to myself that I could at least carry-on. Important because I have always believed that all the benefits of running flow from the simple act of keeping going. Consistency is everything.

So I finished and rested and as the feeling of physical weakness receded my spirits started to lift. On Saturday I read this poem in the Guardian and for some strange reason they lifted even more. I know that the metaphor of the marathon is one of the most common in the language (and applied to almost everything) but as I read it here it became inverted: I was the marathon man and the metaphor was the ageing poet. When I thought of 'the first flower in the world' or the 'original bird' I thought not of verse but of the excitement of those early days of running when everything seemed fresh and clear.

My continuing project is to try to maintain that sense of clarity. And this poem brought me back to my purpose. It also reminded me that the only way to see the flower and hear the bird is to be outside, with your senses opened up.

Oh and I also like the idea of being a rowdy at deaths door for whom the last moment is not too late

Some Older American Poets
Borders Bookstore, White Plains, NY


Tired of the accomplished young men
and the accomplished young women,
their neat cerebral arcs and sphinctral circles,
their impeccable chic, their sudden precocious surge,
their claims to be named front-runner,
I have turned to the ageing poets – the marathon men,
the marathon women – the ones who breasted the tape
and simply ran on, establishing their own distance.
Home after another funeral they walk by the pond
with a sense of trees thinning and cold in the air,
yet thrill to the dog's passionate slapstick,
his candid arse-up in the debris of last year's storms.
You sprightly mortals, you rowdies at death's door,
for whom the last moment is not too late to begin!
I can't get enough of you, bright-eyed and poetry mad
in the fields next to the cemetery, where you drop to your knees
before the first flower in the world, where you lift your heads
to that bare cry among brambles, the original bird.

Frank Ormsby from Fireflies.
Published in the Guardian 17th October

Henley Half

Enough time has passed since Sunday's race to allow me to develop a certain amount of detachment and not dissolve into a puddle of damp-eyed self-pity.

It was bad and most of the time I was my mind was completely filled with thoughts like: 'I am not enjoying this.' 'This is not fun.' 'What am I doing?' 'When will this be over?' For me the race was about survival and not quitting; rescuing a certain amount of self respect through stubbornness. It shouldn't have been that way but sometimes things conspire and all you can do is just get through.

The background is very simple. I made a late decision to run the race and although I had not trained specifically for it I was in fairly good shape and was confident I could give it a good crack. I completely ignored being surrounded by sickness and people coughing and spluttering: why should I catch anything?. On Friday I was not at all worried; in fact I so relaxed I wanted to find a butcher's dog just to compare fitness levels. However by Saturday the outlook changed as I started coughing.

I had a decision to make. Things were not too bad, I wasn't dying and I do so few races I didn't want to abandon. Once signed-up that's it. On the other hand what is the point if you are unwell? It does no good and nobody is let-down if you don't turn-up. What is more the time, if you do run, is meaningless. Common sense says no, stupidity says yes. So I, of course, went with stupidity.

Once that was decided everything else then fell into place by going wrong. All the little things multiplied until nothing was right. It started with being a little late leaving and getting stuck in the frozen traffic of Henley. Nothing was moving and it was getting nearer and nearer start time and all the time I was getting anxious so that my judgement was completely clouded as I rushed to the start to collect my number and so left the safety pins in the car and had to go back. The toilets, of course had huge queues and I was desperate for a pee but there was a hedge, so that was OK. (One of the interesting differences between races in England and Canada is that in Canada peeing outside is seen as anti-social, but they provide a lot of portable toilets. In England there is always a line of men peeing I a hedge). Anyway I managed to get to the start but found I had left my heart rate strap at home - not an essential but I like to use it in the first 20 minutes to make sure I start at an easy pace. Just another indication that it was not going to be my day.

The race started and immediately I knew it would be difficult. Although I could keep my legs going, they had no strength. Right from the beginning I started to wonder whether I could finish. In one ear was the siren voice telling me to give up and in the other was the voice of duty telling me to resist temptation and not give in. My only tactic was to keep a rhythm but not push anything: circle the legs and just keep moving forward. This worked for the first half but at 8 miles there is a hill that goes on and on and on. It is tough and I could not run it at all. I knew it was beyond me and so I had to trudge slowly to the top. After that the downhill was fun and the run to the end flat but all my energy reserves were completely spent.

It was a slow time, slower than the halfway point in any marathon I have run but at least I finished. In terms of my self esteem that was ridiculously important. I had to prove to myself that I could finish what I had started. I took consolation from the fact that I did.

Since then I have been ill, coughing continually, throat torn and sore, head achy and dull, with time passing in a muzzy haze (which is the main reason I haven't written this report sooner). I think it will be a couple of weeks before I attempt any type of exercise. I will ease back with some slow easy runs to remind myself that running can be enjoyable and life enhancing. Then I will take myself to one side to tell myself that just because I run it does not mean I have to be stupid as well. After which the experience of Sunday will then have been assimilated and I will move on.

I might even do the race again next year because, paradoxically I would recommend the Henley Half. It might not be a course for a PB, because of the hill, but the scenery is pretty, the course interesting, I love the river and the challenge of the hill is character building.

Waiting for the Weekend

At the moment I am busy doing almost nothing, or to put it another way: I am in the middle of a half-arsed taper. Yes I have a race coming up, with little or no sensible planning and certainly no schedule to bring me to a peak of physical perfection, I can at least I can do the right thing and take it easy in the last week.

It was ever thus with my races: either a total lack of planning or schedules falling apart due to injury or illness! Sensible people plan their racing calendar, know well ahead where they are going to be so that they can train properly and perform at their best. Others are less disciplined and wake up one morning knowing that if they don't do something quickly the year will disappear without a single medal or memento. Dear reader that disorganised person is me.

Last week I decided it would be a nice idea to try a race on the same day as my sister, the 11th, when she is once again running the Victoria Half Marathon (my account of running that marathon last year are ,here, here, and here). The Henley half marathon had places available and so with a click of a button I was in, on a whim. Apparently it is mainly flat but with a hill at mile eight. Hmm that will be interesting. I have not been doing much hill training: another example of being slightly under prepared.

My sister and brother-in-law, on the other hand, are both very methodical in their training, know what they are doing and encourage each other to keep on track. They will run well and I am sure they will feature well in their age categories. Alongside them I feel rather haphazard but not at all downhearted. I run fairly consistently so should not be in too bad a shape (even if not in tip top form I should be able to get round OK) and there is something about doing things on the spur of the moment that I like.

So bring on Sunday and good luck to anybody else doing a race that day (especially the Royal Parks half).

The House as an Expression of Identity

Yes I know that we all display our identity in all sorts of ways: the clothes we wear, the products we buy, the places we go; and I also know that most of us devote a lot of time to fixing up our houses so that they reflect our tastes and aspirations. But you have to tip your hat to someone who will boldly decorate the outside of their house to demonstrate their interests to the passing world.

Yesterday I discovered this rather wonderful house when out cycling. I love the moulded panels. They look so much like illustrations from a Victorian comic I can imagine the way a line drawing would be embedded in a story of sporting valour (probably involving a public school and self sacrifice for the sake of the team). I have no further information about them - there was no one about to ask and I have found nothing on Google. I don't know if they are original or added more recently. I don't know if they were a one off or there are more houses like this. I know nothing apart from what I can see from the road.

It is however something I can add to my list of Hertfordshire curiosities. I can put an X on the map at Bricket Wood (which deserves another mention because it is the home of the UK's oldest nudist resort: Spielplatz).

P.S. Until I wrote the last sentence I had no idea I had a list of Hertfordshire curiosities but if I worked on it, such a list might even bare comparison the Anthology of Huntingdonshire Cabmen

It can hardly be claimed for the newly published Anthology of Huntingdonshire Cabmen that it is, in the words of an over-enthusiastic critic, 'a masterpiece of imaginative literature'. The Anthology consists of the more striking names (with initials) from each of the three volumes. It is a factual and unemphatic work, and the compiler has skinned the cream from the lists. Here are such old favourites as Whackfast, E.W., Fodge, S., and Nurthers, P.L. The index is accurate, and the introduction by Cabman Skinner is brief and workmanlike.

A Sunny Autumn Day

September might just be the best month for running as there is always the chance of perfect weather. Today was spectacular: sunshine, deep blue sky, a very slight breeze, warm but not too hot. Nothing could be improved. On such a day it very easy to remember the joy you felt when you first took up running and it was new and fresh.

It was an easy paced session, which meant I could be relaxed and look around, even smile at people as they passed (within reason of course. This is Southern England and a number of people will pass you with their eyes fixed firmly on the ground). The aim was just to be outside, how long it took to complete the route was irrelevant.

My usual habit for this route is to stop at half way, sit on a wall, drink some water, and then set-off back again: a break of a couple of moments. Today however I felt very relaxed sitting in the sun and a wave of contentment swept over me. I just wanted to sit still and look at the yellowing colours of the trees against the blue of the sky. The Old Nash Mills paper factory is decaying, the demolition on hold because of the economy, and I looked at the rust on the chimney and thought it matched the season (rust a sign of autumn in a mechanical lifecycle?). The elderberries have now gone but the hawthorn berries are fuller and deeper in colour. People were strolling and chatting, getting out before the weather turns.

I then wandered around taking photos, concentrating on what I was seeing, not thinking I was meant to be running. (Today's picture shows a tree stating to grow from ducting around the Mill. It is amazing how life can take root in the most unlikely of places). All in all I had a break of twenty minutes.

I cannot claim an 11km run, just two shorter runs, very close together, but I can claim that it felt the right thing to do.

Visualising Information

This is a bit off topic but I am going to recommend a blog/website that has very little to do with running. It is called Information is beautiful and it shows ways that data can be visualised to clarify meaning, increase its impact and aid understanding. Partly I think it is because if something looks pleasing you will want look at it more closely and when you are drawn-in you will start to ask questions. Take the example of Twitter stats and look at the comment (eg if the sample size is 100 how do some people have more than 100 followers?).

But this is a running blog so I want to draw attention to something that has some relevance. This diagram shows the calories of things in a coffee house (something that interests me as they are my second home). The drinks are surprisingly calorific and yet I barely pay them attention when I think of my total food consumption.

So now I can clearly see that 30 minutes running only equals a frappe latte, or more likely a croissant and a large cappuccino. How easy is it to run for 5k and eat for 10? Answer - very.

Why is it so difficult to loose weight and thereby become a more efficient runner? Answer - just look at the data.

Listening to Your Mind

My previous post about listening to your body had at its core the idea of the separation of mind and body but this quote from Michael Woods in the current London Review of Books makes that relationship far more interesting by pointing out the separation of mind and brain.

We could drop the metaphor of the brain or mind as a computer. This is what Aamodt and Wang recommend, because it’s ‘not really accurate . . . the brain works more like a Chinese restaurant that we know in Manhattan; it’s crowded and chaotic, and people are running around to no apparent purpose, but somehow everything gets done in the end – and efficiently too.’ What’s most interesting in this image is that we are the customers in this neuro-restaurant, not its owners or managers or waiters; and the same little allegory is at work in the conception of our brains and ourselves being different moral entities (‘Your brain lies to you a lot’).

So now when I go for a run I will picture it in terms people rushing around in a crowded restaurant giving out orders for more speed and receiving demands from more oxygen. Somehow, and I don't know why, I feel strangely happy with this idea of barely contained chaos.

Listening to Your Body

Runners talk far more about injury than they do about health.

This is almost inevitable because one of the attraction of running is the way it tests the body's capabilities. Slightly faster or slightly longer the ratchet is moved upwards to see if we can adapt and become stronger. This happens but there is always the risk of misjudgement (call it a training mistake or just plain stupidity) and something, be it knee, foot, ankle, calf or hip, breaks down. Sometimes something damaged in an instant can take an awful long time to repair, especially as there is uncertainty about the precise cause. But at other times pain and discomfort signals show us the boundaries of our capabilities and warn us that we need to back off. If we listen we can escape with a near miss and continue to get stronger.

Injury or the risk of injury is ever present but luckily damage usually not debilitating and can be repaired. With care and attention we can be better again.

'Listen to your body' is the easiest advice to give but the most difficult to follow. Within the advice is a sense of otherness: that you are different from a body, which has its own limits that have to be discovered. The problem being that the messaging systems are limited and vague. Pain is certainly the most insistent and the one that grabs our attention but even then there needs to be sifting to see whether it is a twinge that can be treated as noise or whether it is a clear signal. Listening to your body can be very confusing.

So the emphasis has to shift from the difficult 'listening' to the almost impossible ie understanding your body. Where to start?

For me it is perhaps a two pronged approach. The first is to accept that my body is governed by the normal laws of physiology and learn from the experience of others (this might seem blindingly obvious but there is still a small part of my brain that hopes it can bypass the normal course of ageing). The second is to switch my focus and look more at what makes me feel good rather than what gives me pain. For example one hill session can leave me feeling tired but satisfied whilst another can leave me just feeling weary, when comparing them I should look more at what went right rather than what went wrong.

Perhaps I should start talking more about health than about injury

Interruptions Welcomed

We spent the weekend in Manchester but getting there was something of an ordeal as we were caught in not one but two tailbacks caused by multicar crashes. A three and a half hour journey took five and there was nothing that could be done, except listen to the radio and look at everyone else as we inched our way along.

So it was back home and out into the open for the freedom of a run. No hold-ups no limitations apart from the frailty of my body. But then I came to this sign on the canal. Traffic control - what is this?

Beyond the sign were two men sat a couple of hundred yards apart, each dressed in a high viz yellow suit and each holding a long stop/go lollipop pole. They were just waiting for any passing barge to stop it whilst other people were working on the overhead electricity cables. I stopped and had a brief chat with one of the men, commenting on what seemed like a pretty stress free job. Controlling a boat travelling at walking pace is just a little less fraught than the M6 on a busy day. "yeah" he said "it is a bit of health and safety gone mad, though if one of those cables did slip it could whiplash back and kill you." I took my chance and passed underneath - nothing happened.

Except that in a way that interruption and a later attempt to take of photo of a heron saved my run. Before then my legs had felt very heavy. I don't know why but everything was an effort and all my attention was focussed on the struggle to keep going rather than the pleasure of being out and the beauty of my surroundings. After the first stop a I smiled internally and remembered my road trip and compared it to my peaceful surroundings. I stopped worrying about my aches. After I saw the heron I stopped and tried to stalk it. It flew away a couple of times but I eventually got a picture. I then realised that I was having fun being outside and the run was just a means of getting me there and so I looked around with more attention. Later on a jay flew across my path and my enjoyment meter ratcheted up a little more and so all in all I had a good time.

It just goes to show how much of your running is done in your head.

The Stuff that Doesn't Happen

"You ought to get a life. You know - the shit that happens while you're waiting for the moments that never come."

You have to love The Wire; it is full of such nice, shiny, nuggets of dialogue. This one makes me think about my running life - the things that never happen and what I do in the meantime.

The major thing that never happens is becoming any good - in the sense of being relatively fast, doing well in races and being able to hold my head up in age-category rankings. I could wait forever but it is not going to happen. It was never a hard objective anyway. When I started running I had vague thoughts that it would be nice if it happened - if I discovered that I had some innate ability, which could be uncovered but I soon realised that was not the case. My object has therefore never been to be a competitive runner.

This leaves the scaled down objective of trying to get better. Now this should be easy to measure by inching down personal bests. But it is not going to happen either. I was faster four years ago and nothing I do seems to change that.

So I now have to play games by making up new categories such as running more easily ,going slightly longer being slightly faster at a lower heart rate, conquering steeper hills, or running over different terrain, whatever. And now I realise that this is the shit that happens - it is my running life.

I spend my time regularly going over the same routes but always introducing subtle variations. Each week I introduce a new challenge - something to focus on. From the outside you might not even notice the difference because it looks so similar to normal, for example it might involve running to different heart rates, adding a further hill before having a breather or putting in little sprints. It might be extending the days I run consecutively or any other little plan. Sometimes it is even to do things more easily - slow down and let the world float by.

For some reason these little changes keep me disproportionately amused. I am wrapped-up in them and pay no attention to those other things, the big moments that never come.

Seasons

I have lived for most of my life in towns of varying size and my main occupations have kept me indoors for most of the time. It is possible to live my life with only the vaguest sense of changes of the seasons and life cycles. Even the weather can often be ignored as one need never be far from building or car. Some people can go through the year without needing an outdoor coat. It is possible to become almost completely disconnected from the natural world and to barely notice the horizon. It is possible but not desirable.

One of the reasons I run is to make sure this does not happen. Keeping in touch with my animal nature is more than just trying to be fit in both body and mind, it is an effort to use all the senses to feel part of the surroundings. I need to get out to see the wider sky, feel the shade or shelter of trees, be surrounded the colour green, see animals, and feel the weather on my skin. In some way it is important to notice all the subtle difference from week to week as the seasons change.

I was thinking this on yesterday's run. It felt so damn autumnal - the air, the leaves, the berries all spoke of the season. I stopped to take a picture of elder and hawthorn berries intertwining and then looked around. For some reason, in that moment, I felt more alive.

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.

Get Out of Jail Free Card

Whenever I have a day that is mostly futile, when everything is a bit hazy and I don't think I have achieved anything worthwhile, I often find that a run sorts me out. It is not that it clears my mind so that I return with the answer to a problem that previously had me stumped - rarely do I get any magical insights. It is something far more direct: when I am out of the door I am putting in effort and because of that I feel I am doing something good.

In a way it is my 'get out of jail free' card. The simple act of exercising, outside - seeing the world pass, looking at new things and interacting (in a limited way) with other people makes me feel better. Because of that I feel the day has not been wasted, no matter how little is done during the rest of it. But the knock-on effect is usually I approach other tasks with a renewed concentration.

If there is something in the idea of redemption through personal endeavour, the obverse is also probably true in that you slump if you don't do enough.

I recently came across a phrase that tickled me because it so precisely describes one of ways we might not do enough: 'social loafing'. It describes many group situations where people don't give of their best because they think that others will pick-up the slack and anyway everyone else is probably easing-off a bit as well. It explains why work groups are often surprisingly unproductive and brainstorming sessions are mostly futile. It might also contribute a little bit to something like Brook's Law, which states that adding manpower to a late software project makes it even later.

Just discovering the phrase has made me examine my own behaviour and it gives me no great pleasure to admit that I am also prone to a bit social loafing and there have been many occasions where I have not given of my best.

This is not the case when running. When I am out of the door there is no loafing and I am fully engaged in the activity. Whatever distance I run is the distance I run, whatever time I take is the time I take, there can be no short-cuts or cheating. I do what I can to the best of my ability and my diary is a record of honest endeavour.

That is why running is my 'get out of jail free' card - it shows me that I can be honest.

More Than Just Socks

I was looking for a new pair of socks on Wiggle and clicked on the 'Nike elite run cushion socks' and read this description of their properties:

Enhanced Stability-Nike Sensory Enhancement Technology heightens awareness of foot to help pronation and promote neutral landings

"Nooooo" I cried "you are socks, you cannot do these things. You cannot heighten my awarenes of my own foot. This is gobbledegook! How can I buy something that makes such a ludicrous claim?" So I clicked through to the 'Bridgedale X-Hale Speed Demon Socks' only to see:

The hard-working feet of distance runners taught Bridgedale how to create a sock that offers the best of two worlds: the feel of an ultralight, rapid-drying synthetic sock and the cushioned comfort of a Merino wool sock.

Hard-working feet taught?!

I must stop this and get a grip. I must not worry about the way marketing people fulfil the rquirements of their job by talking nonsense. It is what they do and I am only buying socks. It really shouldn't be complicated. But it is.

This is because everything concerned with running is sold on its technical properties and the promise of superior performance yet there is not one of those claims we can test in any meaningful way. Only a textile scientist can judge the comparative virtues of the different materials used by the different manufacturers. The rest have trust that at least some of the claims are true and that products from trusted manufacturers will do their job. Then we somehow make a choice.

I have no idea how I make purchasing decisions. I am pretty random and perhaps more influenced by image and style than I would like to admit. Am I influenced by the performance claims? - Probably quite a lot. But am I put-off by inflated claims and stupidisms? - Almost certainly.


P.S. As a complete aside (but related to the use of language). I recently listened to someone talking about the disappearance of the Russian cargo ship after it had passed through the English Channel saying that it might represent a modification of the pirate business model.

"Pirate business model!!" I spluttered "They are PIRATES" I then remembered a comedy sketch from the 1990s, from the Million Pound Radio Show, about pirate training days. You can listen to it here if you want

Running Styles

'Can anybody tell me how they run?' asked Hauling My Carcass in a post about running technique but the more interesting question is 'should anybody change the way they run?'. More specifically sould they attempt to change their footstrike?

Do I know how I run?

To answer the first question: yes, or at least I have a fairly good idea. I like to monitor myself when running , checking my balance, sense of muscular movement, ease of movement, breathing etc, etc, and so I think about my footfall moderately frequently. One of the attractions of running is the feeling of physicality and the sense of a working body and to get this I like to pay it some attention to how things are going.

I know for example that I land on outside of my midfoot, roll over to the ball of the foot and then push off. That is what it feels like and also what it looks like on the treadmill when buying new shoes but the best evidence is the wear pattern on old trainers. They can never lie because they show the results of all your miles - the actual physical evidence. The picture above is the sole of one of my current shoes. You can see the main area of wear is (A) , where the rubber on the bottom outside-edge has worn right down to the level of the hard-plastic midfoot bridge. The outside of the front of the heel (B) also shows wear because it gets in the way as my foot comes down at a shallow angle (I do not land on my toes) and area (C) shows wear from pushing-off. The heel at the back looks almost untouched.

I did not choose to run this way, like most people when I started running my only concern was how far I could go and I certainly did not think about how my foot should land. I ran the way that came naturally and I continue in the same style. As I am not particularly injury prone (though not injury free) my attitude is that it works well enough and so there is nothing much to worry about. But if I were to worry I would not start with questions of heel strike versus forefoot strike because I think that is determined by the rest of my form (e.g. I think I land on my midfoot because I take short strides and land under my body). I would start by looking at balance.

I made this point in an earlier post about watching two people in the gym. They both had good form, were fluid in their movements, compact but relaxed they were running easily and well but one landed on the heels the other on the forefoot. Their good style had more to do with being upright (i.e. not bending from the waist), having a relaxed upper body (i.e. their arms moved easily without tension), and not landing too heavily (their leg turnover was quite high).

The thing is that all of these components of good style can be worked on independently, without having to dismantle everything and start again in a very self-conscious way. For example I think shoulders are important for your whole posture and when they are relaxed everything moves more easily. If you feel your shoulders are too tight when you run you can work on them, over time by making them your run-thought, every time you go out and gradually changes can be made. If you feel you bend at the waist, similarly you can work at keeping your hips in a straight line. You can also do strength exercises for the upper body and core to help with these two areas. In this way changes can be made to the running style - incrementally

Should runners change their style?

This brings me to the second question should you change your style? My answer is perhaps but not necessarily. If you are running injury-free and are happy with your progress then there is no reason to change. The idea that there is one perfect style is a snare and delusion. We run the way we do because of all sorts of adaptations our bodies have made over a long period of time and all of us have different relative strength in the different muscle groups. The way we run reflects that. If it is working don't mess with it.

However if there are problems with injury or lack of progress you can look at the general principles of good form and gradually work at things and if necessary switch a few running sessions to build general strength or flexibility.

But what about Pose?

But should you make a wholesale change and do something like Pose running? Of that I am less convinced. Going right back to zero and becoming a beginner once again is a hellishly difficult ask and it might not deliver what is promised. As far as I know the only systematic testing of Pose running was done at the University of Cape Town under the aegis of Tim Noakes. Conclusions from the study can be read here and here (they are part of a series of blog posts about running style (front page here), which are full of good observations). One of the more interesting findings is that Pose running does not reduce forces on the body, instead it transfers them to different parts so that whilst heel strikers typically have more knee injuries, those trained in Pose had more ankle problems.

The problem with Pose is that it promises to reduce injuries and so evidence to the contrary is significant. A common response is to suggest that it is not the technique but the implementation i.e. the poor, injured runner was not up to the task of running properly but this causes more problems than it solves because it means the demands of the style are so high you can never be sure you are doing it properly. That uncertainty must put an almighty dent in the simple pleasure of getting out the door and running.

For many people though Pose obviously works and the sincerity and zeal of its advocates cannot be doubted. For that reason I would not want to dismiss it, I just don't think the advantages are as clear-cut and inevitable as those advocates suggest (otherwise everyone would do it and looking at the runners in the World Athletics Championships this definitely not the case). Like every other intervention related to the human body there is complexity and the outcomes are not necessarily homogenous.

The trick for all runners is to find out what works for them personally. This involves learning from the experience of others, reading, and finding people whose judgement they trust but most importantly trying things out. Running is empirical and theory is only meaningful if it shows results on the road. That is one of the reasons I like it - everything is there to be tested.

As for Pose - it seems a long haul before it is perfected and you could evaluate the benefits. I am not sure I would have the patience