2011 Streak a slight pause

Although I will continue to exercise and take photographs everyday there will be a slight pause in blog posts.

 I will be on holiday for 3 weeks and  out of contact with the Internet.

When I get back I will try to catch-up

2011 Streak Day 201/365: Nash Mills

2011 Streak Day 201/365: Run - 7.11 miles, Time - 1hr 10min, Weather - coolish, overcast. (July has not been at all summery)

After the laziness of the day before socks had to be pulled up and sinews had to be tightened.  Time for a longer run. (Not a really long run, you understand, just something long by my normal standards).

I eased back the pace and concentrated on keeping my breathing easy, and lo and behold I enjoyed myself. Once more I rediscovered the obvious - running just below the level of heavy breathing, is more comfortable and far more sustainable.

It was my traditional canal route down to what was the old paper mill at Nash Mills. As you can see all that now remains is a heap of finely ground rubble, behind which they are building houses and apartments (in the now familiar style of narrow town houses with pointy roofs). 

Although the paper mill had to go once it became empty and useless. I am sad it has gone. The old brick factory walls and hulking shape dominated this stretch of the canal and was a reminder of both the original character of the waterways and our industrial past. 

But we cannot keep things just out of nostalgia.

However we can hope that the land is then used imaginatively. From the houses they have already built and the drawings I have seen, this looks unlikely.

Nevertheless as this is one of my stock routes I will keep on taking pictures and keep track of progress.

2011 Streak Day 200/365: Feeble

2011 Streak Day 200/365: Walk - 2 miles, Time - 40min, Weather - wet at first then just overcast

Wooh! The 200^th day and what do I do to mark this milestone? Yes you are right - probably the weakest day of exercise of the whole lot. A mere 2 miles out and round the park.

I don't even have a decent excuse except for feeling weary. A bad case of CBA and the desire to get away with the very minimum. My only object was to keep the Streak ticking over, otherwise I would have done nothing.

Today's picture is of the walled garden in the park. It is actually inside the ruins of what once was a large house, hence the rather strange doorway. Every year it is planted in this colourful way and it is often used by visitors to the old peoples day centre, next door.

All very nice and exactly the sort of thing you would think everybody would want in their municipal park, except that is not true. Apparently vandals have at times made a mess of the planting causing the gates to be locked  at certain times and cctv a camera to be installed.

It is a sad day when you have to protect park flowers

2011 Streak Day 199/365: Wisley

2011 Streak Day 199/365: Wisley 

Walk - 3 miles, Time - 2hrs 30min, Weather - showery but mostly dry

If you look at the distance walked and the time taken you will be amazed that anybody could go so slow. So what was my excuse?

Simple - it was my wife's birthday and we spent the day at Wisley looking at things horticultural. Our walking was extremely leisurely, interspersed with stops to look at thing or take refreshment.

It was a good day but it would be stretching it to say that it contained much in the way of exercise. Nevertheless it will have to do.

Rather than a picture of another plant (I took quite a few), I have selected a cat asleep in the alpine greenhouse. I just thought he looked very comfortable

2011 Streak Day 198/365: Ageing and belated caution

2011 Streak Day 198/365: Run - 3.11 miles, Time - 30min 41sec, Weather - more scudding clouds and periods of rain

This is the first time I have run for three days in a row for ages and I am not sure it is a bright an idea. At the end of today's short outing I began to feel a twinge in my knee and retired to treat it with ice and rest. Luckily it is only a twinge but these days I take no chances.

I have lost all faith in the ability of my body to heal itself.

When I was younger I had an unthinking faith that if I sprained, twisted, strained, bruised or in any other way knocked my body about, it would only take a short time for everything to be put right. All my body needed was a bit of rest and protection and then, as if by magic, it would restore itself to working order.

Silly and unthinking I know but that is the way I thought - and mostly it was true. However now I have learnt one of the sad lessons of ageing: the ability of the body to regenerate slows. The worst things are tendon strains - Oh My! do they take a long time to get better; but they are just the most extreme examples, everything else takes time to heal as well.

The result is that I am now much more cautious. My running mileage is still low and I will only build it up if I feel I can.

Although I have just run three days in a row, the distances were short. It should not have caused any problem. But just to be sure I will be going back to a maximum of every other day for a couple of weeks and then build again.

As I have said many times before the greatest virtue in running is consistency  and that can only happen if you always operate below your breaking point

2011 Streak Day 197/365: Pine tribe

2011 Streak Day 197/365: Pine tribe

Run - 3.36, Time - 32min 29sec, Weather - another changeable day of scudding clouds

On day 172 I quoted William Cobbett, describing the area around Hemel Hempstead:

"Very fine oaks, ashes, and beeches … make the fields look most beautiful. No villainous things of the fir-tribe offend the eye here."

Oh dear! I don't think he would like the way the fir-tribe are now found everywhere. I saw this example of their pushiness on todays run

2011 Streak Day 196/365: On Englishness

2011 Streak Day 196/365: Run - 3.32 miles, Time - 31min 46sec, Weather - mostly overcast, patches of sun

 I have mixed feelings about the English Flag.

I understand that flags are meant to be a symbol to rally around, a way of displaying pride in your own country. In most countries this seems to work well in binding people and giving a sense of identity in a benign way.

However, although I am English, I do not feel this about the Cross of St George. For too long it has been appropriated by the far right, nationalist groups and as such it makes me feel queasy. Except during World Cups, when I see the flag I see a symbol of aggressive defiance. I fear the hatred of outsiders and immigrants and I worry. 

I would be happy if England had a flag everybody had a flag they could rally around but I fear that is not the case. 

This flag was put-up overnight on the park railings and I wonder about its message.

In the photo though the counterpoint to the flag is poster for Carter's Steam Fair, which represents a different strand of englishness: love of a particular tradition, the technology from a past era, and the desire to preserve it. It celebrates both an age when machines were direct and physical and could be maintained and fixed by hand (i.e. they were not controlled by an electronic black box) and the skills of decoration and sign painting by hand

I actually think it is represents more of England than the flag

2011 Streak Day 195/365 (July 14th): Feet

2011 Streak Day 195/365 (July 14^th): Walk - 6.03 miles, Time - 2hr 5min, Weather - mixed cloud, breezy

If you look at any running site it will tell you there are three types of foot: flat, normal, and high arch. Not only that there are three types of landing when the foot is in motion: over pronation, neutral, and supination (under pronation). There is never much discussion of the actual shape of the foot (perhaps it is not relevant). But there are also three of those:

Peasant foot - the toes tend to be short and at least 3 are the same length. The heel tends to be medium to wide.

Egyptian foot - The toes slope down from a long big toe. It tends to be a narrow foot.

Greek foot - The second toe is longer than the big toe. The foot is often narrow to medium and there might be a big gap between the big toe and second toe.

Obviously these shapes make a difference in ballet where it is all aesthetics and getting up on their points, but do they have any affect at all on the grinding, repetitive act of running? Does shape have a biomechanical impact?

For all peasants and egyptians (the majority) everything seems to be fine but unfortunately the greeks have all the problem (Ah those Greeks not only is the country bankrupt, their feet are wrong). 

According to the Wikipedia page this sort of foot is present in under 50% of the population but seen in over 80% of people with musculoskeletal help seeking medical assistance. I am a bit skeptical of those figures as even if it is the reported comment of a respected physician I can find no back up evidence. I have found no survey giving a base figure of the number of people with different types of feet and no figures about the proportions seeking medical assistance.

Nevertheless an impression gained by someone working in the field can be a good insight. However I do worry about the determinism that sees the greek foot as a disability with inevitably bad consequences for legs and posture. How could this be when in classical times it was seen as the ideal?

Every classical statue will show a foot with the second toe longer than the big toe and that ideal was continued in the Enlightenment, so that, for example, the Statue of Liberty also has that foot.

But the fact it was once an aesthetic ideal does not mean it cannot have undesirable physical consequences; after all many dogs bred for aesthetics don't function very well. But I am struggling to find the evidence base. In PubMed there are only 21 articles on Morton's Toe (aka greek foot) and none of them cut to the chase of cause and effect.

Nevertheless, as can be seen from the Wikipedia article, the received wisdom is that the greek foot causes problems.

Oh dear! It is at this point that I have to declare an interest and say that my own foot shape is very similar to the one in the photo.

P.S. The photo was taken in the British Museum. My day was spent in London and as I now walk everywhere, whenever I go south from Euston I always walk through the British Museum and spend a little time looking at one gallery. It lifts the spirits.

2011 Streak Day 194/365: Tourist season in Cambridge

2011 Streak Day 194/365 (Wed. 13th July): Walk - 5.62 miles, Time 1hr 55min, Weather - showery with bright periods

Another Cambridge day and another use of the Trumpington Park&Ride as a Park&Walk.

It is now the high tourist season in Cambridge and it is difficult to walk at any pace once you are in the centre. The upside is that it is even more fun watching the punting on the river it becomes even more chaotic. I like this spot on the terrace of the Anchor - every so often I can look-up from the conversation to watch inexperienced punters bump into each other.

I am amused by small things.

2011 Streak Day 193/365: Today I ran

2011 Streak Day 193/365: Run - 2.93 miles, Time - 28min 12sec, Weather - cooler and changeable

After the hiatus it is time to ease back into running. 

Yet another new beginning; yet another climb towards improved fitness. But I am tired of all the stopping and starting, and despair of my ability to regain any level of constancy. 

No self pity though; that is the worst possible emotion. I have to remain dispassionate and work within my limitations; tell myself to look at what I can do and not become deluded by what I want to do. But it is not easy as I have to keep-on reminding myself to be mindful.

Even though today's run felt harder than it should, I tell myself it is at least a run and that is an improvement.

As my last post was about public art I decided to take a picture of the town's war memorial as it struck me that the most common sculptural form in the country was the war memorial. They are in most villages and towns and almost every one is unique. Most are a pillar with a cross but there is a huge variety in the type of pillar, cross and plinth.

I think the Hemel memorial, with its setting and simple planting, is rather fine. 

2011 Streak Day 192/365: Public art

2011 Streak Day 192/365 (Monday 11 July): Walk - 3 miles, Time - 1hr, Weather - hot and sunny

Today was a Winchester day and the walk was around the city centre. In the grounds of the cathedral I saw this sculpture. 

At a distance I thought it was a De Stijl sculpture and as I did not know any De Stijl sculptures (except of course Rietveld's chair, which is much more a sculpture than a chair) I was intrigued.

It is in fact a representation of the Crucifixion by Barbara Hepworth in the style of Mondrian, made in 1966 and is rather fine. If it has a front and a back the other side is the front but I took the photo from here because it shows the way some public sculptures can enhance their space. I like the way the two families with their push chairs are moving into frame.

What a pleasure to come across a piece of public sculpture that can be enjoyed. Most of it is dull enough to pass unnoticed, which is surely the reverse of its purpose.

Looking at this piece reminded me that the Barbara Hepworth studio in St Ives is one of my favourite galleries because it is suffused with the personality and taste of the artist. It has that in common with Kettles Yard in Cambridge, which was once the private house of a collector

It is not at all odd that I think of favourite places walking round Winchester. It is a city of which I am becoming increasingly fond.

2011 Streak Day 191/365: Tough and tougher

2011 Streak Day 191/365 ( Sunday 10 July): Walk - 1.5 miles, Time - 30min, Weather - mixed cloudy sky but overall warm and dry

Today the main picture is obviously not one of mine. It is from the Tour de France (source: Velonews ), but I needs to be at the top because, like nothing else, it illustrates the physical resilience and hardness of professional cyclists.

On a Tour that has been characterised by crashes, this one on today's stage 9  was the most egregious. A TV car tried to rush past the 5 man breakaway group, driving half on the verge, half on the road until it came upon a tree.  It swerved but in so doing took-out Juan Antonio Flecha, who in turn crashed into Johnny Hoogerland, who was catapulted into a barbed wire fence. All at high speed, it was stupid and dangerous, and could have been fatal.

If I had been one of those cyclists I would have gone to hospital, hobbled around for many days after and not go back on a bike for ages (or even ages and ages) but these men are made of a different material. They both remounted and completed the day's ride. Afterwards Johnny Hoogerland needed 33 stitches. Can you imagine riding for several miles with wounds needing 33 stitches? I do not understand how it is possible.

I cannot think of any other sport where such endurance would be accepted so matter-of-factly and I do not understand how their idea of pain is so different from mine.

I write this with some degree of self-awareness as I creak with back ache and limit my activity to the barest minimum (I hardly dare admit that the walk was to a pub and back). Boy do I feel inadequate!

P.S.  As the terms and conditions of the 2011 Streak require me to take my own photo I offer another in my series of flower pictures. This time it is a dianthus. The colour was so attractive and the shape so compact I though I just had to take it. For me one of the surprises of this year has been how interested I have become in taking pictures of flowers.

2011 Streak Day 190/365: Canal Gates

2011 Streak Day 189/365 Walk - 2.36 miles, Time - 50min, Weather -still changeable

Today the photo is a cheat. I have gone back 5 days to when I was last by the canal to use this picture of swans diving for vegetation near a lock gate.

I know the plan was to take a picture on every outing but today there was a snag: the camera battery was flat. I could do nothing. At any other time when I would have gone out again and found something else to photo but today I did not feel like it. All I could do was an easy canal walk and that felt plenty hard enough.

However the picture does give me the opportunity to talk about V shaped canal gates, which are kept closed by the force of the water. When you see them in operation the principle looks so obvious that you imagine lock gates have been like that since the very first canal (longer ago than you think: 930 CE, in China) but no. The first locks had vertically lifting gates.

The current design is credited to Leonardo Da Vinci and can be seen in this drawing from his notebook. (This is the source of the illustration).

I really like the idea looking at the gates and thinking that they came from the same mind as pictures I can look at in art galleries.

2011 Streak Day 189/365: Back pain revisited

2011 Streak Day 189/365: Walk - 1.95 miles, Time - 45min, Weather - Changeable (wet in morning)

This was the most difficult of days: my back ache meant that every part of my body was being held in tension and moving was laborious.

The need to continue the streak forced me out of the house for a minimum distance walk but it was hard.  I felt every step and when I got home I did not feel any satisfaction, I just ached.

This is not going to be good: I had hoped that the back ache would disappear quite quickly but there is no sign of that. I will have to limp on for a few days more and hope it doesn't last too long and eat into half marathon training programme. We will see but at the moment I cannot imagine how I could do any meaningful training.

I feel a bit like Owen Hargreaves who in 4 years made 27 appearances for Manchester United. First it was the knees, then the hamstrings - one injury seemed to lead to another. For a sportsman the body unravelling must be the most dispiriting thing in the world. I can afford to be more philosophical because nothing depends on it apart from my own sense of wellbeing  - I just have to adapt. 

Nevertheless on some days it is not easy.

2011 Streak Day 188/365: Back pain

2011 Streak Day 188/365

Run - 2.67 miles, Time - 27min, Weather - showery

This is going to be a problem - I have put my back out and am finding movement a little bit awkward (especially dressing).

Working on the assumption that the best treatment for a bad back is to keep moving, as much as possible, I went for a gentle run. 

More than at any other time my sole aim was to make it as easy as possible - no speed, no jarring, no twisting, no sudden adjustments. I ran like a little toy train. It was simultaneously very hard to maintain a style that did not jar, and easy because the running effort was not too great.

In the end I felt a satisfaction that I had kept the streak going but an anxiety that the next few days are going to be a tricky. My experience is that bad backs take time and it is not so much the initial pull that is the problem but the way other muscles freeze in compensation.

Ah well! we will see.

2011Streak 187/365: Bowls

2011 Streak Day 187/365: Walk - 4.23 miles, Time - 1hr 23min,  Weather - cloudy but mostly bright

I'm a sucker for any sporting event. There is something about a group of people, with a common interest, getting together to test themselves, that I find appealing. I will watch almost anything and find enjoyment, even if I don't know much about the game.

Bowls is like that. I have played it before, in the same way as I have played crazy golf at the seaside: as a social activity, a bit of fun, with other people who also did not have much of a clue. However I know enough to appreciate how much skill and cunning is required to be good and I always enjoy seeing them being practiced. That is why I enjoying being in the park when there is a club match - I can stop for a few moments and try to appreciate what is going on.

I never know whether I am surprised or not that the average age of club members is so high. Everyone knows this is its reputation but at the same time it is a game reliant on hand/eye coordination, which is better when one is younger (i.e. it is inevitable that eyesight and balance decline with age). I would therefore have thought that the top players would be younger.

The very best players are younger but clubs like this are a home for people who take-up the sport later-on because it is something they can still do. The predominant hair colour is grey. It is very good that there are games like this that can be played into later life but the same could be said but golf. However on a golf course there is a different, and younger, age distribution.

When lawn bowls was codified into a proper sport at the beginning of the Twentieth Century it was not so much an old man's game. The first bowls club in Hemel was founded in 1913 but soon closed because most of the members went off to the war, which indicates they were in their physical prime. I wonder when the nature of the game changed?

2011 Streak Day 186/365: Dr Dolittle

2011 Streak Day 186/365: Cycle - 19.33 miles, Time - 1hr 25min, Weather - morning was sunny and warm

My route took me past the alpaca farm and so I stopped to look. 

They are amusing furry bundles, who, today, felt the need for shade and a number of them were sitting-down under the trees, resting. I liked these two, sitting together to make a pushmepullyou. It confirms my opinion that Dr Dolittle is really non-fiction.

Although it was not part of today's route Hemel boasts a small business park with a brilliant name: Doolittle Meadows. If I ran a business I would love to have that address (but that probably tells you more about my lack of business acumen than the appropriateness of the name).  Although I am rather surprised that some bright spark in marketing has not already tried to rebrand it, I am glad they have retained the traditional name for the area.

It goes back a few centuries to when the Abbott of St Albans sent some monks to the corn mill as a break from the ecclesiastical rigours of their life. Apparently the concept of break was stretched to mean rest and a reputation was established. It is nice to know the name was literal. (Nowadays, of course, I am sure that it is deeply, deeply ironical).

2011 Streak Day 185/365: Canals vs Roads

2011 Streak Day 185/365: Walk - 6.38, Time 2hrs 10min, Weather - overcast but warm

Although I have taken a picture of this swan family before they are worth revisiting because they have the same regular route, up and down the canal, as me. They are obviously monitored by other people because we had a conversation with someone who recounted the time he saw them at a lock with two of the little ones trapped upstream. He said they all patiently waited and were later reunited when the boat had gone through.

There is something very calming about watching them glide past. A a contrast to driving on the M25, which I had been doing a couple of hours previously. There is absolutely nothing lovely about four lanes of traffic, stopping, starting, and inching forward

However by the canal, stopping, starting, inching forward as you look at the wildlife or examine the individuality of the boats - well that's a completely different matter.

2011Streak 184/365: Fly Tipping

2011 Streak Day 184/365: Cycle 14.92 miles, Time 1hr 54sec, Weather - pleasant but a little overcast.

This could be in my series of warning notices. It is actually a small notice telling people not to fly tip but it has been sprayed over and someone has pasted a picture of someone in a hood with a mask like face and the name Ultraviolence underneath. Industrial techno in rural Hertfordshire|

It would seem more anomalous if this wasn't a regular spot for fly tipping and even worse, a couple of months ago I saw a burnt out car. So it is a spot for nefarious activity.

As you can see someone has just dumped some builders rubble and out of shot there is a bed frame and mattress. I really don't know what can be done to stop it. I am sure the next time I pass here it will have been cleared by the council and the time after that something new will have been left.

It depresses the hell out of me.

2011 Streak Day 183/365: Sports walking

2011 Streak Day 183/365: Walk - 4.13 miles, Time - 1hr 22min, Weather - pleasant

Today I hit on the rather brilliant scheme of combining the weekly grocery shop with a walk. The Sainsbury's we use, at Apsley, is next to the canal, so it made perfect sense to park the car, go for a walk, come back and do the shop, especially as, following a cycle and two running days, my legs needed a recovery walk. It is the nearest I will ever get to time efficiency.

whilst out I saw someone in training for athletics walking (if there is technical term for the walking done in track and field events I don't know what it is).  She came towards me at high speed , legs straight, hips swinging, arms pumping and I couldn't help but think how weird it looked.

When you watch top athletes running it looks like the running most of us do, except faster, more economic, and usually much more elegant. Sports walking however is not only disconnected from what we do it lacks grace.

I think it is unnatural. As human animals we are designed to walk up to a certain pace, after which we begin to jog and then run. Trying to keep the walking form beyond that pace is just a distortion. There is, of course, always a sense of wonder that someone can go that fast in that way but fundamental point is: why? 

But who am I to question someones sport? The whole point is the mastery of a particular skill and then competition against others of similar level. it doesn't really matter what that skill is.

Anyway the walk was very pleasant and I took a number of photos but as I was in a fairly whimsical mood I post one of a lump of polystyrene floating downstream. I imagined it as an iceberg gradually disintegrating. I'm sure it is all that remains of a much bigger lump I saw last week.

2011 Streak Day 182/365: Faint signs of moral fibre

2011 Streak Day 182/365: Run - 2.01 miles, Time - 17min 49sec, Weather - lovely mild summer's evening

Today saw a small victory.

It had been a Winchester day, without anything that could in all honesty be classified as exercise (a half mile amble?) and the journey back had been tedious (it's the M25, it's friday evening, what can you expect). I arrived home sleepy and lethargic, and tempted to trick-out the amble into something resembling strenuous activity. In a word: cheat.

But no! my conscience would not be quiet. After a fortifying glass of sherry (one does after all have to maintain one's standards of an evening), I changed and headed out for a couple of miles.

When I got back I felt rather pleased to have shown a little bit of determination, a hint of rectitude. But as I rather deprecate smugness, I soon put those thoughts aside and concentrated on the restorative powers of sherry, which I think you will all agree has now been proved, beyond doubt.

Today's photo comes from my short amble in Winchester and should be classified in a new series: "Things you don't see in Hemel". I can honestly say I have never seen anyone paint a piano on a Hemel pavement.