Still at the Gym

It is strange not to be running outside and restricting myself to maintenance runs on the treadmill. It seems more like work i.e. having the objective and carrying out a plan in a prescribed manner rather than an act of enjoyment (gyms are, after all, fitness factories). But it is not all joyless:

Any exercise makes me feel better. If I don’t do something to raise my heart rate and pump blood around the body, my mind tends to get sluggish and muzzy.
There is satisfaction to be had from the quantification of effort – i.e. know you are maintaining a steady, known speed for set amount of time. (When I run outside my speed tends to go up and down quite a bit).

It is easy to gradually vary the effort of each session, either speed or time, and set yourself little challenges – much more easily than outdoors.

However the major benefit is the result of a treadmill’s major disadvantage. It is dull and time passes more slowly so you have to work harder on strategies to keep yourself going. It is mental training, which I hope makes me stronger

The other good thing is that you can people watch. I have written before about people with disabilities determinedly trying to improve -they always make me feel humble. But there are also other people who make me think about what I am doing.

Perhaps because I am fairly stiff, I am unduly impressed by those who are flexible but watching them reminds me that even if I have no natural aptitude it is an area I ought to work at. I am convinced that most of the injuries I have had have been the result of stiffness in my calves and hamstring and they have always happened after I have neglected my stretches for a period. For some reason I am better able to discipline myself to stretch properly at the gym than at home.

So there are advantages to gym sessions but they do not give me a feeling of deep enjoyment. That comes from being outside where there is fresher air and a sense of freedom. There is no sense of freedom in a gym – perhaps that is another way in which they are a bit like work.

The Mystery of a Grade 1 Injury

Mostly I think running is simple: out the door, run about a bit and then return. You can mix things up by going faster or slower, longer or shorter, but that is basically it. When things are going well (i.e. you are running comfortably and there is a feeling of progression) it is the most natural thing in the world. However it can become very confusing when a period of steady running is disrupted by an injury with no definite cause. You know there must be a cause because things do not happen without reason but sometimes it is difficult to identify any changes that would have made the difference. All the obvious suspects are lined up: worn out shoes; you went to long, too fast, the ground was too hard, soft, or uneven; your muscles were too stiff. But sometimes there is no obvious answer.

I hate it when I don’t really have a clue and all I know is the symptom. The injury might not be a big deal, it might be easily worked around, but the fact that something has mysteriously gone wrong really bugs me.

At the moment I have a grade 1 injury ( i.e. “an injury that causes pain after exercise and is often only felt some hours after exercise has ceased” , Noakes, Lore of Running, 4th ed 2001, p749). About an hour after my run my left foot becomes painful, especially the heel, and I can only hobble around. The following day it is usually back down to a residual tenderness that is not a problem. The injury happened out of nowhere but it has been like this for three weeks.

It is not bad and doesn't really get in the way, but my main concern is for it not to escalate up the scale to grade 2, 3 or 4. So at the moment I have put my running into a maintenance phase, where the objective is to not lose fitness, whilst trying to find out what is happening (and of course hoping it gets better). I have thus cut back on long runs (because the heel hurt more after a long run) and run mostly on a treadmill ,to reduce the impact. This of course coincides with the weather getting better and almost inviting you to get outside for a long run. Never mind I can get my outdoor fix by going for a cycle ride. There is always a way round things.

I have to remember that and not get too hung up on any particular plan. I have to adapt to what I can do and acknowledge there is a problem. This is in itself a departure from my normal practice of thinking there is nothing wrong, or it is only a twinge, or t will go away; followed by ‘ this just could not have happened’, ‘why me?’, and then beating my tiny fists on the ground in frustration.

I am determined not to become glum - not to worry about it too much. I am heartened by what I read in the ‘Lore of Running’ which says that “the athlete with a grade 1 injury does not have to be excessively concerned as long as it does not progress…Runners need not fear that a grade 1 injury that has existed for some time will suddenly deteriorate into a grade4.”

Also I rather like the paragraph at the end of the section about the grades of injury:

“The grade of the injury helps the doctor define each athlete’s pain or anxiety threshold. The athlete who seeks attention for an injury only when it reaches grade 4 clearly has a different anxiety threshold from that of an athlete who seeks urgent attention for a grade 1 injury. Obviously the advice given for each type will also differ greatly: a runner with a grade 1 injury requires substantial psychological support; a runner with a grade 4 injury requires psychological analysis of why running is so important that the athlete will only stop when forced to do so.”

I will immediately search for some psychological support – or failing that some chocolate.

This week I learnt to tie my shoe laces

No it is true.

In my sad little way I was really quite chuffed to learn a new and better way to tie my laces. My family, of course mocked. ‘Well I could tie my laces when I went to primary school!’ or ‘ you just have too much time on your hands!’ or ‘brilliant another useless solution to a non-existent problem!’. Well let them mock. There is still pleasure in breaking a habit and doing something in a slightly different way and even if the problem solved is microscopically small, it is still a problem solved.

Like most kids I learnt to tie my laces before I went to school and have been using the same method ever since. When I tie my trainers I want to be sure they do not come undone so I cludge it with a messy double knot, which works fine. The laces stay tied but they do not come undone with a simple pull of one lace – you have to untie the knot. Mostly not a problem except that at the end of a race my fingers seem to be uncoordinated and freeing up the Champion Chip takes longer than it should.

The solution is this secure knot. It really works. The trainers feel nice and snug throughout the run but when I get home I only have to tug one end and they untie. A very tiny thing is done ever so slightly better.

This may seem like an April Fools post but it is not. I leave those to the Guardian, who do them better than most. This year’s is particularly good. It may not be as elaborate as Sans Serif or as horribly plausible as the EU directive on decimalising time but it has some funny news items as Tweets. I particularly like "JFK assassin8d @ Dallas, def. heard second gunshot from grassy knoll WTF?”.

On Choosing a Speed, Distance, Heart Rate Monitor

One of the disadvantages of a Polar HRM is that you cannot replace the battery yourself. So when mine started to die I took it as a sign to buy a new piece of kit and try a HRM with speed and distance. A simple idea I though but oh dear how it led to a prolonged bout of mental dithering! My mind filled up with stupid as I looked at all the options. It would have been much better if I had just said to myself ‘I need a new Polar’ or ‘’I’ll just get a Garmin’; bought it and then thought no more about it. But no!

The Difficulty of Choosing

I lined up all the usual suspects: Garmin, who seemed to have nailed GPS training; Polar, who are untouchable for heart rate training; Timex, who make the neatest watch and have a modular approach that looks like a good idea; and Suunto, who also seem to make good, nice looking training tools. The problem was they all had different strengths and weaknesses and I couldn’t work out what I really wanted. I changed my mind so often that at different times I decided each one was the one and almost placed an order.

Even the fundamental choice between GPS and footpod, was not clear once I had been convinced that the footpods were accurate. (At first I was a bit sceptical because I thought they would be affected by inconsistencies in my running style and variations in my gait. But all the reviews said they were accurate and I was further reassured when I read the whte paper from Dynastream, the company who developed the technology, which explains how they measure the acceleration through each stride, compute the foot angles and then calculate speed and distance.)

If I had no preference for GPS or footpod, what chance did I have in choosing between the different features? There are an awful lot of them and each model had a different mix. Anyway how would I know if something was really useful if I had never used it before? Aarggh thee was too much confusion. I needed to look toThe paradox of Choice to explain explains my pain. Its central thesis is:

“When people have no choice life is almost unbearable . As the number of available choices increases, as it has in our consumer culture, the autonomy,control, and liberation this variety brings are powerful and positive. But as the number of choices keeps growing, negative aspects of having a multitude of options begin to appear. As the number of choices grows further, the negatives escalate until we become overloaded. At this point choice no longer liberates but debilitates. It might even be said to tyrannize”

I realised my error. I was trying to find the perfect speed/distance/ heart-rate monitor and that was silly. I was only looking for a tool and all I really needed was something that was good enough. Instead of looking at every possible feature and thinking ‘how neat is that!’ I needed to think only about what I really needed. As I am not a finely tuned athlete with an intricate training schedule these are fairly basic and every single model was more than good enough. So price becomes a factor and the cheapest by far was the Garmin 50 (i.e. the one with a footpod) and so that is what I bought. It cost £80, including the data transfer stick, which is quite remarkable. I bought it on Amazon and for some strange reason, at the time, it was cheaper to buy two units, one watch and hrm, the other watch and footpod, than the pack with watch, hrm and footpod. As a result I now have a spare watch. 21st century commerce can be really weird.

Was It A Good Choice?

Yes

The footpod is light, fixes easily into the laces and feels so unobtrusive that, when running, I completely forget it is there – a relief because I had been worried that I would always be aware of it and react like the princess to the pea. The advantage of the footpod is that if you leave it on the shoe, you only have to tie up your laces and you are ready to go. There is no waiting for a signal.

Its accuracy it is certainly good enough for my needs. I have checked a few runs against Gmap Pedometer and they are within 1% each other and when I have repeated routes they have recorded the same distance. I can thus be happy with the information it gives me.

There is not much to say about the heart rate monitor except that it seems to work. The readings are in line with those from my Polar so I assume they are accurate. The strap is a strap but comfortable enough. A major plus is that so far I have not noticed any phantom readings so the watch is very good at blocking interference.

The watch display is a weakness. You can only see two types of information at a time, which is a shame because 3 would be better. if I could see heart rate, speed and elapsed time I would be happy for most of the run. As it is to check the information you need you have to cycle through the displays by pushing a button. You get used to this but it is a bit fiddly

Downloading the information to the computer is easy as the wireless USB works well and the software presents the information well so that I can easily track my progress. However I find it a bit rigid. There seems no way of adding information from other (non Garmin)sessions and it doesn’t export in a csv format for use in a spreadsheet.
But these gripes are minor compared to the pleasure I having something that is easy to use gives me graphs to study.

Overall the Garmin 50 works as it is meant to. I can now forget about it and just get on with running - but of course with the fun of extra information. I am very pleased.

Slightly Old Fashioned

I do not use my blog to record my runs; instead I prefer to write out the details in a notebook. There is something about the act of hand writing my diary whilst still in the post-run, relaxed frame of mind, that is pleasurable. In saying this I am admitting that I am not part of the modern world ( illustrated by this piece by Tanya Gold about giving up technology for a week , where she found out she was unable to write using a pen ) but sometimes we just have to own-up to things.

One of the advantages of have the diaries is that I can easily look back, year on year, to compare. When I do I realise two things. The first is that there is a recurring pattern of stop start i.e. I will establish a routine for only a short time before something happens to break it; the second is that it is almost written in code, with my own names for different section ns of the runs. They are of absolutely no use to anybody else. Nevertheless it is useful to have the books on the shelf, especially on winter evening when I am planning what I will be doing in the upcoming year. They earn their shelf space.

I have been thinking about this quite a lot recently as we are in the middle of an exercise of going through our possessions, trying to reduce the amount of clutter. To be kept, something should be either useful, beautiful or have sentimental value. Sometimes it is a hard judgement to make but the question must be asked.

Recently we emptied the loft, to insulate it to modern standards, which has led to an enormous amount of sorting. Stuff kept there is either sentimental, or of very occasional use (otherwise it wouldn’t be in the loft) and because it had been out of sight for a long time much of it had been forgotten. The process is therefore slow as everything has to be looked at carefully and memories are stirred.

Sometimes there are discoveries. Amidst some of the memorabilia from my father I found this telephone contract from 1907 (the signed contract is on the other side of the charges). Where it came from I don’t know, except I have a vague recollection that he found it in the loft of one of our houses. He would have kept it out of professional interest (he worked in telecoms all his life, as did my grandfather). Certainly none of my ancestors would have been wealthy enough to own a telephone in 1907. According to this site the annual fee of £17 would today be worth £1,236 in terms of increases in the retail price index but if it was looked at in terms of per capita GDP it would be worth £7,571. That is an awful lot of money to talk to a small number of people.

It shows how much things have changed in 100 years and I will think of that when I next take out my fountain pen to write in my notebook. A very tiny anachronism.

Childlike (or even childish) Delight

The last post was all about how you see things you are primed to see. Another small example is the way I unconsciously look-out for diggers or other engineering works on my runs – all because of Adele. Rather heroically she is preparing for the London Marathon by pushing a running buggy and keeping her son amused at the same time. Spotting diggers is obviously the thing to do as it is well known that kids love diggers. But what is my excuse?

This picture from my last run has no digger but is the result of engineering work. They are replacing some lock gates and have thus had to drain a section of the canal to enable them to do the work. As I have never seen the canal empty of water, I found it quite exciting – in a distinctly childish way. I was surprised at how shallow it is and it shows why, every so often, they will need diggers to remove silt. Also you can see more clearly the wear and tear of a couple of hundred years.

If I ever needed a reminder of what is good about running, this picture provides it. It shows me that no matter how often I run a route there is always something new to see and that looking more closely at something increases your understanding. It brings you closer to the landscape and whether you see interesting new things or not, just being out on a sunny day, by the water (well for most of the run) and under trees lifts the spirits.

Freewheelin' Mark Rothko

The idea for this post has been hanging around for a few weeks. I have hesitated because it seems a little self indulgent (or more accurately a little irrelevant) to describe some of my thoughts whilst looking at paintings in the Tate’s Mark Rothko exhibition. However the thread of ideas eventually led to some thoughts about running and so the inclusion in this blog can just about be justified, even if it is a little longwinded.

It was the last week of the Rothko exhibition and I decided to go again. It one of my personal quirks that I like to look at the Seagram Murals fairly regularly and this exhibition had the full set, not just the ones in the Tate’s collection. My fondness for the paintings dates back to when I was about seventeen or eighteen and for the first time felt the emotional power of abstract art. I don’t think I had looked carefully and for a long time at any single painting before that moment but in that sombre room I sat very still and just looked and stared. Afterwards I felt a mixture of elation and puzzlement. How would have believed that that such a thing was possible?

It could be that I like to revisit those painting just to remind myself of that moment and that time in your life when you are more open to such flashes of insight, it could be that I like to see them because every time I do they look a little different, or it could be that I like to be reminded of their seriousness of purpose. Whatever the reason I like looking at them.

Before going to the exhibition I had been reading the memoir of Suze Rotolo, who was famously on the cover of ‘The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan’. She and Bob Dylan were lovers and for both of them it was their first serious relationship. Their youth, affection, and ease with each others just shines out of that photo. The memoir tells of both of the family background that helped her find the strength and independence of spirit to feel at home in Greenwich Village (communist immigrants, low on wealth but high on culture) and the folk and art scene of the time. (There is a good article about her and the book here).

The epigraph in the book is a quotation from Italo Calvino (“Who are we, if not a combination of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined? Each life is an encyclopaedia, a library, an inventory of objects, a series of styles and everything can be constantly reshuffled and reordered in every conceivable way”) from Six Memos for the Next Millennium. This is a book I know (and even referred to). Each section deals with a literary quality but the ones I always think of are lightness and quickness (these are after all the qualities which should be associated with running!).

Without knowing it I came into the exhibition primed. The first thing I noticed was the audience. In small second room, where there was just one painting, resting against the wall were three middle aged men (myself included), looking at the work. Sitting on the ground, raptly studying the picture was a man in his mid sixties, grey hair tied back in a pony tail, wearing a green shirt with red patterned trousers. I easily imagined him as an art teacher still embodying the ideas/dress of his youth. Although I had no reason to think he had spent time in America (or was American) I began to picture him in the New York I had just been reading about. I then looked at all the other people and wondered how many of them would have been of the right age to see these paintings as new and fresh, when they first came out. I then started to think of the intellectual excitement of those times, what it would be like to see these paintings fifty years ago and what the audience would have been like.

When sitting down looking at the Seagram murals. I was again struck by how the simple shapes shimmered and changed. Also be their weightiness - they emerge from mist like the stones of Stonehenge. The person sitting next to me had an audio guide that carried an image of a Warhol Campbell’s soup can and this made me think further of opposing traditions in art: the heavy and serious vs. the light and witty. I enjoyed the few moments I spent thinking about this and looking at the paintings from this perspective but I’m sure it only occurred to me because I had been previously thinking about lightness and Calvino.

Outside, on the riverfront, I was passed by any number of runners and thought nothing of it until I heard someone coming up from behind. KerSlapp, kerslapp – each footfall was very loud, very heavy. This man has to be I big and heavy, I thought, a mighty oak of a runner, but when he passed he was just average height, average build. I suddenly realised that lightness was a quality, a matter of style. It was not necessarily related to physical weight. This man was punishing the pavement with an earnest determination but it shouldn’t be that way. I had come from imagining the time when those paintings were fresh and new. Now was here thinking how running ought to feel fresh and new not a grim duty

I had also been thinking about wit and profundity, lightness and heaviness, in art and how both had their virtues and both could be appreciated. Running though is very different – it is much simpler. The only way to run is to be as lightly as possible – you cannot be a profound runner. You can only try to be as fluid as possible and do as little damage to your joints and ligaments as you can. “Run easily, do not frown, don’t be too serious, lift your head up.” I suddenly saw what I had to think of on my next runs.

These resolutions would not have come to me with such clarity if I had not read a book about the New York folk scene before going to an exhibition of abstract expressionism. It is amazing how the mind gets prepared by random events. It is also amazing how once you start running you find yourself thinking about it in the most unlikely circumstances.

How Old?

How do you notice you are getting older?

It could be the increasing creakiness of the body and the way that aches and pains mysteriously appear. You go for a fairly standard run, everything is OK and then sometime afterwards there is a pain in your foot or leg. How did that happen? You have no idea as there was no warning on the run and nothing unusual to link it to. It is difficult to know if it is a minor inconvenience or something more serious. It is all very well trying to listen to your body but as I get older I increasingly find I haven’t a clue as to what it is saying. It’s as if it has started talking in a different dialect

Yes definitely those aches and pains come more frequently, randomly and stick around longer. In general recovery takes longer so you have to be more flexible in your scheduling. It is not that you necessarily cut back on the number of your session but that you must pay attention to how you feel and adapt your session accordingly. A piece of advice I read said you should run one mile to warm up and then decide how hard the session should be. If you feel like you are running through treacle then cut it short and don’t feel bad. This advice works for everything except the long run which requires more time, equipment and drinks. You have to plan your long run and then do it regardless.

But having to adapt your schedule is the same at every stage of your life: studying, working, socialising, and children affect the training of everybody apart from professional athletes. So adapting for age is nothing special. Neither is adapting to your level of performance as speed becomes harder. Whatever your age or level of fitness you are always pushing against your own limitations. Those limitations might expand with increasing fitness or contract but you run according to your capabilities at the time. Ageing makes no difference to your perception of effort and the basic classes are still slow, steady, and threshold.

When running I do not think of age. Running makes me feel more alive. It helps me connect with my surroundings and the seasons. That is all and that is enough. However I run at a relative exertion level and mostly do not know my speed.

That last sentence should now read ‘did not know my speed’ as I have bought a speed and distance monitor and can now see how fast I am running. Oh dear! I can now see that my internal judgement of how fast I run at different levels of effort is, to put it mildly, optimistic. Bugger! There goes another comforting illusion and I now have to readjust.

So in answer to my initial question the answer is – objective measurement. It does for you every time.

Post Run Routines

What to do after a long run?

If you do something often enough you form habits and the routine takes over. When that happens you cease to pay full attention and you just get on with doing what you always do. For that reason habits are very useful – they allow you to do things efficiently, but sometimes they get in the way of appreciating what you are doing.
One of the reasons I run is to help me look at things more clearly – blow away some of the fog that is always drifting around my mind. When you stop there is a chance, jus a chance, that you might have some moments of mental clarity. However after a long run things can be a little tricky if you have gone a bit too far and taken a bit too much out of yourself you might end feeling hazy. Post run recovery then becomes important for both body and mind.

The first thing I always do (apart from taking off the trainers, towelling away some of the sweat and swapping my t shirt for a fleece) is to get some food. I have read that eating within an hour of exercise is important for replenishing your glycogen and improving recover but that eating sooner is better. (There is a good brief summary about post run eating here and an article here that quotes Troy Flanagan, head of sports science for the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association: "When our athletes reach the finish line, they're trained to go right to the feed bag. They can take sports drink, a milk, or yoghurt drink, the feed bag is right on the hill. They will eat straight away."). My usually choice is a bowl of nutty muesli with a chopped up banana and a big mug of tea. Never does tea taste quite so delicious as it does after a run.

I like to consume this meal (more accurately my second breakfast) quite slowly and deliberately – relaxing. Music is important. I am not too bothered about listening to music when I run, sometimes I do, mostly I don’t, but after the run it helps set the mood. There are a number of albums that sound particularly post-run (almost anything from the ECM label works). They have to be slightly contemplative and have holes to give your mind scope to wander. This week I listened to The Blue Nile and thought about productivity as they are a group who have managed to produce a grand total of four albums in a career stretching back to 1984. Perfect music for a slow runner I thought.

After that it is time for a tepid shower. The thing I resist is having a warm bath – although it is tempting, after exercise I know they make me feel very dopey. After that I will make a decision about stretching. If my legs feel too beat-up I will not stretch, as I have an intuition (as far as I know it is not supported by any research) that if the muscle fibres are too frayed stretching might do more harm than good. Stretching can always been done later in a separate session.

Anyway that is what I tend to do after a run. I am sure all of us do things slightly differently as, like everything in running, it is a matter of experimenting until we find something that works. I am sure I will try other things in future - I might even try mince pies.

The Bridge Is Less Pretensious Than The Prose

I ought to pay closer attention to the different types of bridges that cross the canal. Mostly they are of a plain, functional design but every one is slightly different(unlike today’s motorways where the bridges seem to come from the same concrete mould). This one is Palladian and also a Grade II listed building. I find it quite pleasing and every time I run under it I think I am passing through a film set. It is part of the driveway to the Grove, which used to be the home of the Earl of Clarendon but is now a swanky hotel, much used by the English football team.

When I got home I had a look at the Grove's website to see if they said anything interesting about the building or the bridge - they didn't. But I did find this sentence: Our unique style is a mix of traditional elegance and hip, contemporary design which we call “groovy grand”.

You have no idea how much my head ached after I stopped banging it on the desk - it hurt more than the running.

Treadmill Tips and Alpacas

That's something you don't see from a treadmill - alpacas! I actually had no idea there were any in the neighbourhood until I passed this field on my run yesterday. There they were, three of them. I then did what I always is always possible on a long slow run: stop, look more closely and take a picture.

It is one of the thing that makes running outside more satisfying than the treadmill: you are in charge of the rhythm and can slow or stop at a whim and pay attention to your surroundings. There really is a sense of freedom. On the treadmill, although you can set the tempo and duration, there is a sense of being controlled by a machine. It is a relentless.

Having said that, and in a slightly perverse way I quite enjoy them as a part of my training, even if it is mainly when the weather is crap (pace JogBlog). However I have had to find ways to break up the time as an hour on the treadmill at constant pace can seem like an eternity.

The answer is to not run at the same pace but to make regular changes. I run in sections of 5 or 10 minutes and then change something, which means I only look ahead for those 5 or so minutes. My routine is usually one of three basic shapes. The first is the step, where I gradually increase the pace until I stop. The second is the pyramid where I symmetrically increase then reduce the pace. The third is the wave, where the pace goes up and down ( but not as dramatically as it would for intervals).

The important thing, simple games, have mini challenges and always do things slightly differently. I suppose that applies to all running but it is more important for the treadmill because you just don't have the chance to see the unexpected - like an alpaca.

Disassociation: Music and Memorials

Because of the weather I have been using the gym and running on the treadmill. In some ways it is good training because it forces me to trundle along at a set pace without slacking, and with no chance of being diverted by cows, swans or boats. The downside is that there are no diversions like cows, swans or boats and the treadmill is dull. I can only survive for any time by listening to my ipod.

I still have no favourite running tracks and no idea whether one type of music or rhythm is better than any other. The only thing that matters is that it offers some sort of amusement as its job is disassociation i.e. to keep your mind occupied away from the effort of running. For example by all objective criteria Nico's 'Frozen Warnings' must be one of the most useless running tracks, just about one rung down from John Cage's 4'33": it is slow, dirge like, no strong rhythm, with little tonal variation in her voice. It is, as the title suggests bleak, but haunting and somehow appropriate for the weather and so I think about the weather. Also one of the strange things about Nico's life is that this glamorous figure, ex-model, German exile, part of the Andy Warhol entourage, singer on the first Velvet Underground album, spent her last years sharing a house in Manchester (or Salford to be more precise). I then think of Manchester, which is good because I like Manchester. My daughter is at university there and I think of her. So everything is good and the song did its job - it kept me occupied. Next time it might just sound like a dirge and be totally useless.

The gym is OK but it is important to get outdoors. I still don't want to run because although some of the paths are now clear others are still icy or slushy, so I have been out walking. Although it does not give me the same sense of satisfaction it allows more time for looking and even more disassociation.

I have run past the object in the photo countless times, known it was there, thought of it as just some ornate street lamp, but paid it no real attention. Yesterday I stopped to look. The first surprise was that it was built as a drinking fountain. The second was that it had an inscription saying that it erected in 1835 to commemorate 300 years since the printing of the first English Bible. How wonderful is that? How many memorials are there to the Coverdale Bible in this country? I don't know but I now know we in Hemel Hempstead have one of them

Snow Again

Another snow day so another picture.

It is just a record of something in my garden and cannot really compete with Fit Artist who built a couple of beautiful snowmen. If I was going to give a prize of snow person of the week I would give it to her and use her picture to illustrate this rather silly article on snowmen fashion.

The weather makes me think of another thing I never quite got round to: increasing the insulation in my loft from 100mm to 270mm. So instead of running I will be doing something far more useful - scrambling about on my hands and knees trying to lay a carpet of insulation. Not so much cross training more a case of 'bolted horse door stable'.

Snow Day

On Monday the snow came and as this picture, from my window, shows the conditions for running were not good. However there were plenty of opportunities for fun. I could for example watch cars trying to struggle up the hill but there was not a lot of that as most people realised it was a waste of time and did not go anywhere. In some way it was as if people had been given a licence to relax and go-out and enjoy the conditions. The atmosphere was different from a normal weekend day, there was a greater feeling of camaraderie.

A very small example: I was walking down to town and clumping up the hill was a boy of about twelve, we were the only people on the street, and when we passed he looked up and said "wonderful weather isn't it". There was such enjoyment in his voice it made me feel good for the rest of the day.

Coming back I passed a gang of youths on a corner, hoods up, occupying space in a way that can look threatening. Except that when I passed they had sledges and plastic snow shovels and were reliving their tobogganing exploits. Again there was enjoyment in their voices. Again the world felt good.

Inside I listened to the news and everybody was talking about the weather. There were, of course, any number of miserable voices lamenting the lost hours of work. The most predictable, and depressing, comments were along the lines of: ' We are no better than a third world country', 'this is pathetic, a little bit of snow and the whole country seizes up', 'I travelled from Stockholm to the Artic and that train was five minutes early', 'it's the same every time why can't we cope?', 'when I was young we didn't close schools I can remember trudging across the fields', etc, etc, etc.

If something only happens once every 18 years (and with global warming, probably, less frequently than that, in future) it is not worth building the infrastructure to cope with it. Canada is a good example. Most of the country knows it will get snow, prepares for it, and can cope. Vancouver though has a climate like ours and this winter they also had heavy snow and just like us things got gummed up.

But it is no use arguing. If people want to be miserable, they will be miserable. Me I prefer to think of that twelve year old boy and how his eyes sparkled.

Next time I am out running I want to remember that joy , as a reminder of the excitement that comes from being outside and being active.

Giving Blood and Training

I have not given blood for about 10 years and I don't know how so much time has passed. In spite of moments of guilt and self-flagellation I never organised myself and, like so many of my good intentions, things never got done. This year is going to be different though. This year one of my resolutions is to take good intentions seriously and either make a plan to do them or a conscious decision to do nothing. I will try not to carry around a cloud of vague wishes.

So on Monday I gave blood. However I did not ask or even think about whether it would affect my training. I knew I would have to take things easy for a little bit and as Tuesday was always going to be a rest day I thought this would be enough. Yesterday I went to the gym as normal and oh my, was it hard! I felt I was being flogged and afterwards I just felt very, very weary.

In my time honoured tradition of doing research after the event I have now found some information. From the blog Fitness & Health with Dr Gabe Mirkin I found that:

Following a donation of one pint, blood volume is reduced by around ten percent and returns to normal in 48 hours. So, for two days after donating, you should drink lots of fluids and probably exercise at a reduced intensity or not at all. Donating blood markedly reduces competitive performance for three to four weeks as it takes that long for blood haemoglobin levels to return to normal.

Also there was a thread on the Cycling Weekly message board which contained this information form their fitness consultant Hannah Reynolds

"We asked the Blood Donor agency for their answer for that particular feature. They recommended not training for the day you gave blood and to stick to very light training for another week. It will take several weeks to re-build your blood levels. While it won't affect your training too much in the off-season, as long as you follow guidelines and take care of your diet, it is best avoided during race season."

So it looks like I will taking it easy for the next few days.

Sad Songs

My daughter wanted to listen to some music on her run and asked to borrow my Ipod. Scanning through the contents she soon came to the conclusion that I had nothing suitable for running. She pointed out, quite accurately, almost all my music is miserable, I listen to very little that is bouncy and virtually nothing that has the driving beat found on most tracks recommended for running

I thought about this when reading I run because I like food's list of favourite running songs and realised I do not have a single song I would recommend as good for running. At the same time, when running, I enjoy almost everything on my Ipod.

It is a real pleasure to put it on shuffle so that you never know what will be next. Songs can sometimes seem fresher when heard against something unrelated. Seeing how long it takes to recognise a new track can be diverting, as is the game of trying to make associations between each piece of music. It does not matter if the music is fast or slow as it's function is to take attention away from the state of your legs and this is how I use it. I take an Ipod on long runs to make them just a little bit easier.

The effectiveness of music in increasing endurance and lessening the perception of pain has recently been tested (an account can be found ,here). It involved 80 people plunging their hand into icy water for as long as they could up to a limit of five minutes (for some reasons ethics committees seem to baulk at the risk of inflicting real physical damage). They did this first looking at a blank wall, then a piece of art, and then some music of their choice. The visual stimulation of art did not affect the length of time people kept their hand in the water (although they said it helped them distract themselves from the pain). However music had a significant effect and pain could be endured longer and felt less.

This is directly applicable to running. Music can help, all you have to do is choose things you like, whatever that may be - even miserable stuff.

How Far?

Numbers can be very harsh. There is no room for negotiation or special pleading. It is what it is.

Traditionally I have never worried too much about mileage and mainly measured by time and heart rate and have a rough idea of the length of most of my routes. That is not good enough if I want to increase my E number as I have to know my mileage on my longer runs. In the absence of anything else, the Gmap Pedometer is really good but I use it after a run, to measure where I have been. I like to set out with only a vague plan of where I am going, with the option of making changes – either shortening or extending, trying somewhere new or even adding a hill (I can imagine all the serious athletes with their strict schedules shaking their heads with pity at someone who always builds in latitude).

This week’s longer run was a good example: all I knew was that I wanted to run about 11 miles so that I could start to raise my E Number above 10 but I did not know whether I was going to do an out and back along the canal or loop back over a ridge. As I felt quite strong when I reached Berkhamsted I thought a bit of hill work would be OK and so went up to the Common and enjoyed a section running through the trees. All in all it was a good day. Except …

Except that when I measured the distance it was 10.96 miles. Only 0.04 short of 11 but by the rules it still counts as a 10 mile run. Damn, if I had known I could have easily run the extra couple of hundred yards.

A speed/distance device would have sorted me out and I am thinking about buying one. The trouble is I cannot decide what I want: footpod or GPS, Garmin, Polar, Suunto or Timex. It is all so damn confusing. In the grand scheme of things it probably does not matter - choose one, for whatever reason, and go with it. They all have different strengths and weaknesses but will all do a job. However I can be paralysed by choice and spend ages wallying around thinking: Do I need more than the cheapest option i.e. the Garmin 50? I like the Timex as a sports watch and would also wear it all day. The Suunto display is really neat and it looks good but I think Polar have heart rate information really well sorted. There is no functional reason to prefer the more expensive Garmin 405 over the 305 but the 305 does look a bit of a lump. Etc, etc, etc.

So there you have it – the numbers might be clear and absolute but how you arrive at those numbers is far from straightforward.

The HK Book of Tips No 1: Look On The Bright Side

PositiI have a shelf full of running books – I don’t know why. All the basic information I need could be contained in one small volume. Nevertheless I enjoy reading them and each of has its own insights. They are a bit like cookbooks where some are a history of the food and culture of a region, whilst others are just lists of recipes but whatever the type of cookbook you tend to make only a few recipes from each book.

Cooking and running are both applied skills, so what you are ultimately looking for are instructions and practical tips you think you can apply. For example a tip that says the motivation for getting out on a cold winters night is the thought that competitors will be out there training, is meaningless for me as I am not good enough to think of racing other people. It stays on the page. However a simple statement saying it is important to train consistently and have goals is appropriate. It gives me a framework to examine what I do and think more clearly about it. (Both those tips were in a surprising good guide to getting fit for running in last Saturday’s Guardian, which also available online).

Sometime I think that what I need is a book of tips, small nuggets of advice that can be tried out and adopted if they work or tossed aside if they don’t - the equivalent of a book of aphorisms.

Perhaps I should collect some for this blog and make it a weekly feature. In which case, I will start with one from Andy Vernon (Runners World, November 2008, p67) who said that he had been advised, by sports psychologist Dave Alred, to keep a daily dairy in which to write three good things about his training and racing. At the end of the week he had to ask himself how he thought he had become a better runner in the past seven days. This made him more aware of his training, why he was doing it, and different types of improvement.

I think I could adapt this. It would not be daily but I could think of something good about each run and note it in my training dairy. I don’t think I could stretch to three good things but even on a bad day there must be at least be something. Also I like the idea of trying to recap the week and think of improvements. I never ask myself how I have improved (probably because I never think I have) but if I force myself to look I am sure I will be able find something. Surely there will be something – even if it is only a little thing. Finding it will help me be more positive (perhaps).

New Year Resolutions

The beginning of the year and time to think of hopes and objectives.

On Sunday I sat down with my notebook and thought of all of the things I ought to be doing in 2009. The list contained jobs that had been hanging around (in some cases for years), areas of personal development, resolutions, and objectives. At the end I couldn’t decide whether I was impressed or depressed at reaching the bottom of the second page. The only definite conclusion was that there was plenty of room for improvement.

So here are my six running resolutions:

1) First and most important is that I will keep running. This may sound a daft thing to say but I think it is important to examine the reason for spending all this time and energy and consciously decide whether it is worth it or not. In this case the answer is fairly obvious as I have only to compare the satisfaction I find on runs with the lassitude that descends when I stop. As long as running makes me feel more alive and alert I will continue.

2) Improve my annual E Number, as explained in this post. I aim to raise it from 10 to at least 12. This resolution has an important consequence for my record keeping as I will have to be more accurate about my mileage as up till now I have only really bothered about time and heart rate. It could be that I will have to succumb to wearing one of those GPS thingies after all, either that or be a bit more assiduous with Gmaps.

3) Lose a stone in weight. I am probably making the same resolution three quarters of the population but I have a practical reason: excess weight makes running long distances much harder. The Jeff Galloway Marathon book contains a chart of how much older your legs feel if you are 10-20lbs overweight – think 5- 10 years. Now these figures can only be conjecture but I had never thought of weight in that way before. I am old enough as it is so those extra years make me decrepit.

4) Run at least one marathon and three half-marathons and a 10k. As yet I have not decided which races or even whether I should try for a spring marathon or leave it till autumn. I have never started a spring marathon and so part of me thinks this is something I should do but it is balanced by the fact that I prefer to run in clement weather and September is a better month for long runs than March. Whatever, it is a decision I need to make quickly. For the half marathons I notice a number of fine bloggers are doing Reading, so that might be a possibility.

5) Be more upright. I do not think there is a correct style for running. Within certain parameters I believe we all have our own biomechanics and evolve a style to accommodate our particular imbalances. However there are some basic principles, among which is that the upper body should be relaxed and upright. You should not bend from the waist, which is what I tend to do on longer runs. This year I will make a conscious effort to work on this particular element of my style.

6) Write 104 blog posts. I was very impressed that last year I wrote precisely that number i.e. two a week. I want to see if I can maintain that average.

Not Running on Ice

The sun is out, the sky is blue, the air is clear but I am not out running. I am not ill or injured, there is no other reason than the fact that it is bloody cold, or more the point very icy.
I took a walk along the canal to test the conditions and found it more dangerous than I imagined. The picture in this post is taken from a bridge whose footpath is covered with a smooth sheet of ice. When walking off it I could not keep my footing at all and so just slid down the slope. On the path you can see there are patches of pure ice. Trying to run would make me very anxious, especially as my left-hand has still not fully recovered from being smashed in a fall in September.
Now some people say that with good technique you will keep your balance and running on ice is a good test and there is a video from the Pose site of Dr Romanov running on ice but he is running on a smooth flat surface. Running on an icy uneven or sloping surface is much more tricky and I see no virtue in trying to test the limits of my technique.
You can call me a wimp or a fair-weather runner, I don’t mind - because it is true. On the scale between intrepid and soft I hover just above the comfort zone. So on days like this I am happy with a slow walk.