Photothon 13: Rain

Today's run was in the rain, so instead of looking around for an object to photograph I thought I would show the wettness. The first idea was just the obvious one of rain spattering the surface of the canal but water droplets on leaves is more fun.

However there is nothing to stop me putting both pictures in the one photothon. So here you have it two for the price of one.

Photothon 12: Kodak town no more

This is yesterday's photothon. I went to the gym for a bit of strengthening and resistance training but I have no interest in presenting a photo of a weight machine. They are dull and cannot lift the spirits but I still use them once or twice a week. As you get older you have to work harder. on muscle-tone.

I have mixed feelings about gyms and, referring back to my last post, they are an example of the way you can split what you think and what you do to contain a degree of conflict. I do not like the way they are activity factories and institutionalise fitness. (It really annoys me when people conflate getting fit with going to the gym and when you hear people talking about them as the default solution to problems of lack of exercise and obesity. They are not, they might help,but getting out and about more, for longer periods of time is likely to have a much greater effect). But they are a convenient way of doing certain exercises and I use them for that..



Anyway along a bit from the gym is this.

It used to be the Kodak Building, which loomed tall over the entrance to Hemel Hempstead, guarding the Magic Roundabout. At one time Kodak was important to the town. It was their European marketing headquarters and there was a big film processing plant in the industrial area. Film processing, of course, has long gone and a few years ago they closed their offices, which are now being converted into flats.

So what you see is a skeleton that at some time in the future will have a shiny new skin. Gradually they have reduced the height, so it is not so out of scale with the rest of the town. It will be interesting to see what this development will look like, especially as the market for this type of accommodation has gone haywire.

I hope it turns out well and the project is not frozen. The entrance to any town is an important site and should not be marked by a skeleton.

More Gardening, More Running

I have a great admiration for the journalism of Michael Pollan and have written about one of his books before.

His book, In Defence of Food is nicely summarised in an article he wrote for the New York Times. It is well worth reading and contains his famous motto that tells you everything you need to know about diet: “eat food, not very much, mostly plants”. To make those shelves of diet books redundant with just seven words is genius.

This ability to get to the heart of an issue that has been overlayed with too much conflicting information is again displayed in an essay about what to do when faced with a problem as overwhelming as global warming. Would changes in individual behaviour make any difference? If so what would be the best things to do? The helpless logic that says that any carbon reduction I make will be nullified by other people is potent and there is truth in the statement that such a big problem needs to be tackled by national and global institutions. However to get political change in our societies it needs to be shown that the mass of the people are willing to change. It is impossible for political leaders to go too much out on a limb. They can cajole and persuade but that cannot fully act without demonstrable support.

That is why it is important for us all to do something and through that action inspire other people to make changes. Momentum will come through aggregating all of our actions.

One thing he suggests, which can have a big impact, is for us to grow more of our own food. Dig up lawns for vegetables, take on an allotment. If we all did it , it would have a profound effect as it did in the last World War. (Monty Don is saying similar things here and here).

This makes a lot of sense but this is not a gardening blog, it is a running blog and there is something in the essay that I can relate to running

He talks about the mindset which has been formed by 250 years of cheap energy. The industrial model, which has lead to specialisation in work and then in our homes, so that we now outsource many areas of our lives. This leads to internal uncertainty, dependency and the breaking of the link between actions and consequences. Things become the responsibility of others and there can be conflict between underlying beliefs and actions

He cites Wendell Berry:

Nothing was likely to change until we healed the "split between what we think and what we do ... Once our personal connection to what is wrong becomes clear, then we have to choose: we can go on as before, recognising our dishonesty and living with it the best we can, or we can begin the effort to change the way we think and live."

Now this is profound and difficult. Consistency in thinking and doing, and changing the way we live are difficult and daunting projects So difficult it is easier to park them in the 'get round to it when I feel stronger file'. This is where running comes in. Now I am not going to make grand claims that running of itself can heal the soul and solve our problems. No it is just one thing, a little thing that can help put us on the path of looking at such issues.

When we run we directly respond to our own body. We are the only ones who know how it is feeling and what it is capable of doing. We look for advice from others (that is only sensible) but we test it out and either accept it or reject based on our own evidence. After all it only takes a couple of weeks to show that a plan is beginning to work and we can evaluate our own evidence. We are not outsourcing, we make our own decisions and we see how good we are at following-through. We learn more about our body and how it works, more about our motivation and what makes it work. It involves our mind as well as our body and it extends us. In so doing it brings together number of fragments of our personalities. In one small, discrete area it gives us the opportunity of being a complete person

I do not claim uniqueness for running in all those things – there are all sorts of activities (such as the gardening Pollan talks of) that can have the same effect. But they are all activities that need to be done regularly - an occasional run, or an occasional dig means nothing. The continuity means there is a thread that runs through our lives. That thread can make us more self reliant and help us organise the bigger stuff like the coherence (or lack of it) between what we think and what we do.

But then of course it is back to the important question of what we do in the face of climate change and expensive energy.

Photothon 11: island ornaments

The hedgerow alongside the canal is usually overgrown and raggedy. Sometimes behind it are houses this tremendously neat gardens. The glimpse through a fringe of nettles can be a pleasing contrast. This bit of garden is interesting. They have a wonderful feature of their own private island but they have filled it with a miscellaneous collection of objects. It includes a rather nice stone. If everything else was removed and this was put in the centre with the gravel raked around it, it would make a nice Zen garden.

Photothon 10: Sunday morning

I remember a time when Sunday mornings were like this: getting up fairly late, down to the newsagent for the papers and then a leisurely read before lunch, dinner, the pub, whatever.

Now it is possible to revive that pattern – I don’t. I don’t even buy Sunday papers (I prefer the Saturday Guardian to the Observer). Instead I am out on a longish run, trying to build up my stamina. It is mildly paradoxical that when I was at, what should have been, my physical peak I enjoyed those lazy days, now I am past it I am engaged in this futile quest for lost conditioning. Ho hum, never was that good at timing.

But I like this picture because it reminds me that we all need days where we are at our ease.

Photothon 9: just slightly odd

When I am running I like to be aware of my surroundings and pay attention to the world. Before this photothon I used to think I looked quite closely at what was passing but I now realise that half the time I did not see too much at all. Partly this is because I switch between inward and outward looking, i.e. some of the time I pay attention to how I am feeling, how the muscles are moving, my gait, and my breath. At such times I know that my eyes are open but I see very little. At other times when I get into a rhythm and stare straight ahead and only really see what is in front of me – mostly where I need to put my feet.

With the photothon I get to the furthest point, pause my watch and then wander around – just looking. Everything is focused outwards and it makes a refreshing break because it makes you appreciate what is around you just that little bit more.



You never know what you will see. I think I would have missed this is I had been running up the lane as I would have been looking straight ahead.

It just looks ever so slightly odd: a chair and a funny roller contraption in the middle of a field.

I have no idea why the chair is there but the contraption is a scrummaging machine and therefore belongs on a rugby ground. I looked it up on the internet and was told that 'The company prides itself on designs of unchanging superiority'

Somehow it adds a pinch of absurdity to think that this is a picture of unchanging superiority

Photothon 8: model (wind) farm

In my last post I mentioned that I seemed to be a bit fixated on nineteenth century engineering, so today I ran to the future. RES is an engineering firm concerned with wind farms and other green technologies. Its headquarters are Beaufort Court, in what was the Ovaltine model poultry farm.

Model farms were farms designed by architects rather than built in the vernacular style. You can see how splendid these chicken houses were from these photos on the Beaufort Court website. The aim was to be an example and it is hard to imagine anything further from the huts in which we intensively rear chickens now. Similarly RES have wanted to make their offices an example of environmental engineering. The aim is that all of its energy needs are met from on-site renewable installations and the offices have won a number of awards. The architects have a nice aerial shot of the complex here.



Today was fairly windy so I expected the turbine to be turning round at a good speed. I was a bit puzzled when I saw it was still. As I got closer I could see it was undergoing maintenance. My you need a good head for heights to do this

Photothon 7: Dark Elf

It is quite common to see graffiti written on bridges. I still don't know how they do it. Dark Elf, Dark Angel - probably a pair of the graffiti goths.



This is another example of me looking at two things: transport as this area is on the main routes between London, the Midlands, and then the North West; and the nineteenth century lagacy. This is the land of the Grand union Canal and the West Coast Mainline - infrastructure that was started 200 hundred years ago

Most of the photos are pastoral, as if I am editing out the new town. Perhaps that is true but the fact is I prefer to run where there are trees, grasses and water. It may be psychological but it feels like you open your lungs more and it feels fresher. You feel more connected.

Photothon 6: iron sundae

The photothon is having an interesting effect on my runs. I no longer head straight back when I reach the furthest point. I take a few sips of water and start to look around, wandering up and down seeing what takes my attention. It is very relaxing, my heart rate drops and I love paying a different type of attention.

The break has also made me more aware of how a run by the canal is broken into bitesized chunks. There are bridges, roads, and of course locks. Sometimes I use these breaks as target and speed up to reach them, other times I just carry along in my own sweet way. The bridges and roads are clear dividers that I tend to walk. The bridges have steep gradients I used to treat with bravado but they knackered my knees, so now I am cautious and cross them slowly. The little break is a nice change of rhythm and a small recovery.



Anyway to this picture. I like the heft of nineteenth century engineering and there is something wonderfully tactile and solid about these mooring posts. The other important thing with is that you can see how things work. You only have to look at a lock gate to know how it operates With modern engineering this is gone. So much is hidden inside chips and black boxes there is little left you are able to fix. If it goes wrong you throw away and replace. Perhaps that is what I like about bicycles: they a still, basically nineteenth century machines. They are open and you can tinker with them.

Photothon 5a: Boxmoor

This would have been yesterday's photo if I had not been distracted by the dog club - hence the strange numbering.



Just look at this path. Doesn't it look as soft as an Impressionist painting? Doesn't it invite you to put one foot in front of another and run?

If it doesn't go very far and it is not a route in its own right, then that doesn't matter. It is a section and a place to make you feel good.

For this we have to thank a quirk of history and the generosity of someone in 1594 who bequeathed this area of land around the Bulborne and Gade rivers to the 67 inhabitants of Hemel Hempstead and Bovingdon. The aim was to preserve grazing and fishing rights on land that was once part of the Monastery at Ashridge. Since that time it has remained Common Land administered by a trust (now governed by and Act of 1809) and used for the recreation of the people, a wildlife sanctuary and the grazing of some rare breeds.

Over the years it has adapted and changed, taking on a farm and a disused brickworks here, giving up land for the railway and canal there, yet it always maintains its character. When you arrive at Hemel Hempstead station and beyond the forecourt it is the first thing you see.

Parts of it are given over to sport: there is a golf club, rugby club and two cricket pitches. So it is entirely appropriate to run. It is part of the spirit of the place

Photothon 5: Boxmoor Dogs

This was not quite the furthest point of my run, so I have cheated a little, but this was very strange and so I wanted to record it.

A group of people were standing around watching their dogs (and there were a lot more dogs out of shot) run around, chasing each other and jumping in the water. Thats all, they were completely oblivious to other people passing. They obviously have their own Sunday morning rowdy dog club

Photothon 4: Winkwell

Instead of turning left and going to Nash Mills I turned right and ran to Winkwell, to the pretty pub by the canal.



I can remember sitting here with my neice, when she was younger. We were talking about the canal and how barges used to be pulled by horses. She thought hard and said that the water must be very shallow for the horse to be able to walk along the bottom. Perfectly logical.

In the same spirit you can see that the bridge is very low and a barge would have to be very flat to get under it.

Although it is pretty I tend not to run this way so much because the tow path is quite rocky, uneven and harder on the feet. Last year a sharp flint, shaped like an axehead, worked its way into the grooves of my trainers and punctured right through the midsole.

You see running by the canal is not all about tranquility there are hazards as well, even if they are very, very tiny hazards.

Photothon 3: Nash Mills

This is pretty much my stock run, down to Nash Mills and back, so on other days I will have to seek out different things to photograph.

This shows that not all of my runs are rural loveliness, yet these old works are what I like about canals. They show their history and function. John Dickinson was important in the history of paper making and he made paper here.


The barge in the forefront is loaded with rubbish. I saw it on Wednesday, being used by men from British Waterways who were cleaning-up rubbish from he side of the canal. It is amazing how much there was. I had never before thought of the effort involved in keeping the canal in good cosmetic condition as well as structurally sound.

I really hate all the litter that is thoughtlessly left around.

Photothon 2 - Limehouse

Today I was in London and my furthest point was Limehouse. It was remarkably peaceful, like a Sunday, with a few people jogging by the river and others just looking at the water. But presumably a few minutes away in the glass towers of Canary Wharf there was the cut and thrust of all sorts of financial activity.


This is a rather fine herring gull by Jane Ackroyd.

It is in Narrow Street almost opposite an old pub: The Grapes. In 'Our Mutual Friend' the pub is called the The Six Jolly Fellowship Porters and is the location of a number of important events, including a coroners inquest. It is strange to think of holding an inquest in a pub but apparently it used to happen. (By the way fellowship porters were regulated porters who carried measurable goods like grain or coal).

The novel contains some of Dickens' bleakest descriptions of London and of this stretch of the river he said:

...where accumulated scum of humanity seemed to be washed from higher grounds, like so much moral sewage, and to be pausing until its own weight forced it over the bank and sunk it into the river. In and out among the vessels that seemed to have got ashore and the houses that seemed to have got afloat...

Things are not quite the same now.

Photothon 1

A number of very fine people have decided to run every day in June i.e. participate in the Juneathon. I'm not sure I am up to that as I believe in rest days. However I feel I ought to do something and so have decided on a photothon. At the furthest point from the start of my run/walk/cycle I will find something to photograph. With any luck this will help me to look around with more attention.



I had not looked closely these lock gates before. They are almost like giant, overgrown filing cabinets. So, if you like, this is a picture of my outdoor office.

Going Slow

Today was a day to celebrate slow and for this I have to thank my wife.

We don't usually run together, differing schedules, and programmes get in the way but today was an opportunity we could take. We ran the canal tow paths around Berkhamsted, which are nicely surfaced (i.e. like a clay tennis court rather than flinty and uneven), as well as being flat, and we ran at a very easy pace. In fact it was all very pleasant: the vegetation was verdant, ducklings were little bundles of fluff bobbing around on the canal, barge owners were fettling about in their boats, carrying out tasks of minor maintenance. The weather was overcast but was warm enough and carried the atmosphere of calm mistiness. In fact if you asked me to present a picture of England in repose I would give you this canal, right here.

We ran at a pace to talk easily both to ourselves and some people on the barges, or stop to help a lady get her pushchair up some steps. We could take time to look at the passing scenery. I ran a bit longer but the combined result was that we both felt refreshed after we finished.

It was especially good because I had quite forgotten about the virtues of the recovery-run. They seem to have dropped out of my repertoire and I tend to do too many runs at the same sort of middling pace. I always remember Mike Gratton saying that he thought most people ran too fast on their slow runs and too slow on their faster runs; and I know I that is me. Things seem to bunch up in the middle and almost all runs are steady.

Sometimes I just have to step back and relearn the basic lessons - again and again. Today was such a day and I will now do more of this type of session. However they are easy. The other side of the bargain means I will have to do other sessions at greater intensity. Gosh that is almost getting a bit hardcore.

I will console myself with something I learnt from Joe Beer at the Algarve training camp two years ago. He said you don't need to do too many hard sessions. Research with successful athletes showed they did a surprisingly high proportion of their mileage at an easy pace. If you think of an 80:20 distribution and you do 30 miles a week then you should only by doing 6 miles hard (and even that was not strictly necessary – and certainly not at my standard).

Back On My Feet: a running charity

The one thing I did not do in my last post was talk about the underlying truth of the differing attitudes to running. I found the fragment of dialogue entertaining enough on its own. However it was interesting that the son had a very good case and was solid in his attitude that exercise helps prevent illness and thus saves lives, and that preventative medicine is the medicine of the future. However the emotional weight in the play is with the scepticism of the father, who comes across as intellectually sharper and funnier. It is a good example of how a person can be put on the defensive by tone rather by through logic.

However in real world things are changing. I had a doctor's appointment yesterday and on the video screen in the waiting room were images of healthy people running with encouragements to exercise to help prevent a number of illnesses. It is amazing how you can write something one day and then coincidentally see something else that is related (actually it is not that amazing but that doesn't stop you thinking 'what a coincidence!' every time it happens).

I then came across something far less trivial:an example of how running can be used to turn round the lives of homeless people. Back On My Feet is a charity in Philadelphia that uses running as a way of building self esteem. The website clearly states its mission and is well worth a visit. I will just reproduce a couple of quotes:

To solve any problem you have to get at its core. We have all been on rocky roads in life and some people have unfortunately found themselves on a road without a home. BOMF does not provide food for the homeless nor does it provide shelter. While those are very important basic needs that all human beings deserve, we provide a program that teaches people to believe in themselves because it doesn't matter if you have 20 homes or 0 homes; if you don't have confidence in yourself it's very difficult to move forward.

We use running as a vehicle to show individuals they are capable accomplishing goals...but it's not going to happen overnight - it takes hard work, dedication and perseverance. BOMF focuses heavily on teamwork - when we run, we run as a family and we support, encourage and motivate each other every step of the way. No one ever runs by themselves because life is a lot harder when you go through it alone.

The rational is supported by a quote from a paper from the American Heart Association about the benefits of exercise:

"...compared with sedentary individuals, active persons are more likely to be better adjusted, to perform better on tests of cognitive functioning, to exhibit reduced cardiovascular responses to stress, and to report fewer symptoms of anxiety and depression.”

Running in Literature iii - The Vertical Hour

The vertical Hour is a play by David Hare concerned with the relationship between private attitudes and public events. It starts with a definition of politics being about ways to reconcile the differing desires of people and then shows how the failure to do that in the character's personal lives has led to a certain amount of wreckage.

The bulk of the play involves three people talking. The son is a capable person, a successful physiotherapist, now living in America. His girlfriend is an academic,who had previously been a war reporter, supported the war in Iraq (which was one of the topics). The father used to be an eminent doctor in London but now lives in isolation in Shropshire and practices as a GP..

The father has an unsettling, clear eyed intelligence, whilst the son's temperament is more ameliorating and he is therefore more easily put on the defensive.

About half way through there is a nice exchange about the medicalisation of exercise, and in particular running

S - There is a fine line between formal physiotherapy and providing a client with a sense of well being

F - What does it mean?

S - I've just explained

F - Its not strict medical practise you say, its not orthodox medicine what is it? what do you offer? give me examples

S- Well I've got people on my staff: therapists, osteopaths, personal trainers

F - Personal trainers! Jesus Christ what do you do? do you send people out for a run?

S - Dad!

F - I was just asking a question.

S - What's wrong with running what's demeaning about that?

F - Nothing. Do you go running?

S - No not me personally. I employ people
...
F – If you want to know what I think. Well, I've done lots of interesting things with my patients but I've never sent the fuckers out for a jog. . I mean are you serious? ..putting in all that effort years of study , hard work , what do you do? Handing out those ridiculous little bottles of water and lifting weights?

S - You know as well as I do there are cultural factors in medicine You yourself used to teach me there is no such thing as pure medicine.

F - No but there is such a thing as charging 25O bucks to take obese Americans for a spin in the park

S - You think that's what I do?

F - And there's a word for it too

S - Jesus do you really think that's what I get up to?

F - I don't know what you get up to I'm a doctor not a personal healer

S - Personal Trainers Dad! Personal trainers. Not personal healers. Dad look, I take on people. Ordinary people. You say tell them the truth and stay with them to the end well what about delaying the end. What's wrong with that? Its not ignoble is it? Put off the end why not? Get fit. Feel better. Sort out your problems

F- Sort out your problems? Good God don't tell me you talk to the bastards as well

PS The dialogue is a bit approximate as it was taken down from listening to the radio

At the heart of this is the scorn of a medical man for an industry which charges a lot of money for feelings of well being. The word 'running' is voiced with such a mixture of incredulity and contempt, it is funny (as is the last line). Alone this is enough to make this snatch of dialogue noteworthy.

I must admit it adds nothing to our understanding of running as thats not the really the subject (illustrating the differences of outlook, the relationship between a father and son, and the mixing of medicine and the treating of illness with the vaguer concept of wellness, are the main topics). However it serves to remind us that, from the outside, what we do can be open to a certain amount of mockery.

From the inside though, running has more in common with the rather neat aphorism of what it means to be a doctor: ' tell the truth and stick with them till the end'. Running is a way of learning about our limitations, accepting them and then carrying on.

You Can See Running Everywhere

Adidas branded water

Ice Baths, Placeboes and Culture

Sometime ago I wrote a post on ice baths, happy with the idea that the idea had been tested and there seemed to be no great benefit. What pleased me was not so much the question of whether the ice bath was effective or not, but the demonstration that the plausibility of an idea does not necessarily make it true. It is something we have to be very careful about in running because there are plausible explanations for everything from the design of running shoes to the mix of training sessions, to the sort of food we ought to eat. The trouble being that many of these explanations are inconsistent and some advice comes from a limited evidence base (I am particularly suspicious of nutrition advice recommending particular foods).

It is up to us to test all of these things and find what works for us. It really does not matter if research finds, for example, the ice bath doesn't do what is claimed. If it makes us feel good - it is good, and we should persist with it. I really do believe that the most powerful training effect happens when the physical training is combined with a fundamental belief that we are doing the right thing and we will therefore continue to improve. In other words the belief in an action makes that action potent.

This is the placebo effect and it is incredibly powerful. However there is an evil twin brother: the nocebo effect, where if you think things are going to get worse the probably will. This means that if we think we are in a rut and will never get faster then the training has a double load to carry and it becomes more difficult to maintain a schedule.

We therefore have to believe in what we are doing. But the placebo effect is also mysterious (for example the colour of pills affects their effectiveness) and cannot be easily and directly summoned up. In part it is built on our underlying cultural attitudes, which would explain the meanings attached to colour. It would also explain some of the attraction of ice baths, because there is a long, deep and conflicted attitude to bathing.

I have been reading Clean by katherine Ashenburg, that relates the story of something we take for granted, i.e. washing, and its cultural meaning.

I liked this passage about the gymnasium in ancient Athens:

Greek athletes, who exercised in the nude – gymnasium literally means “naked place” - first oiled their bodies and covered them with a thin layer of dust or sand to prevent chills. After wrestling, running or playing ball games, the men and boys removed their oil and dust, now mingled with sweat, with a curved metal scraper called a strigil. After using the strigil, athletes could wash, either standing up at a basin or in a shower or a tub. Although hot water would have made their oil and grit much easier to remove, there is no evidence that the gymnasiums offered hot water before the Roman period. The manly rigour of cold water bathing suited the gymnasium's spirit and reassured Athenians who brooded about the weakening and feminising effects of hot water.

She goes on to say that the attitude of equating hot water with softness and decadence is very persistent. The British Empire was built on the rigours of a cold morning bath and a modern German expression for a man short on masculinity is warmdusher, or warm shower.

So there you have it: those who like an ice bath after a run are as much following the tradition of the gymnasium as they are acting on an understanding of physiology.

Me I still like a tepid shower but having read this book I realise that I ought to keep quite about this if I meet anyone from Germany.