Janathon 2013 Day 9 - Peace of Mind

Run - 6.5km, Time - 36 minutes

“What we are seeking, then, is how the mind may always pursue a steady, unruffled course, may be pleased with itself, and look with pleasure upon its surroundings, and experience no interruption of this joy, but abide in a peaceful condition without being either elated or depress: this will be ‘peace of mind’ (Seneca, On Peace of Mind)”

This is not my default state of mind but I can sometimes feel like that and it can be induced by a run. I know nothing that beats the feeling of earned rest, when the body feels slightly tingly and the mind is alert but empty. After your stretches, you can drink your tea and eat your banana (or whatever else you do) and sit, or lie, in a state of quiet contentment. Sometimes I like to put on some music (usually something ECM ish) and it often seems clearer and more coherent than normal because it is all there is. I am thinking of nothing else. 

It is possible to run your worries away - at least for a short time andI think this little interlude is as good a reason for running as any.

Janathon Day 8 - Just enough is enough

Treadmill - 4km in 20 minutes + 20 minutes stretching

“If you seek tranquility do less. Or (more accurately) do what is essential. If you can eliminate it, you will have more time and more tranquility. Ask yourself at every moment ‘is this necessary?’ But we need to eliminate unnecessary assumptions as well. To eliminate the unnecessary actions that follow.” (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4)

Further to yesterday’s post on the desirability of rest days I am posting some training advice from Marcus Aurelius. On first sight it might not seem the sort of thing any leather skinned, granite jawed, hard as nails,  coach would spit out but it is exactly the same as Tim Noakes’ 6^th law of training: achieve as much as possible on the minimum of training.

It is easy to be seduced by the idea that if something is working and making you a good runner then a little bit more will make you even better, then a bit more and a bit more until ... well until things fall apart. You will either get injured, ill, or your legs will become heavy and lifeless. The point of training is not to try to prove how hard you are by showing you can cope with monster mileage. The point  is to do enough to fulfil your ambitions, whatever they may be. Training to finish the course has a very different load from training to win the race and the two programmes might look very different but they both share this aim.

It might take some experimentation but the ultimate aim for all of us is to find our optimal level. As I run mainly for my own satisfaction and sense of well-being, my optimal mileage is probably quite low. I have to find the amount and type of running essential to keeping my interest and enthusiasm high. That is all.

Janathon 2013 Day 7 - Could do better

Walk - 3 miles, Time - 50m, Weather - damp cold, and grey

Last night my plan was to go for a run before breakfast but sometimes good intentions are only that: intentions. I woke up feeling headachy, low, not quite the ticket,  and far from the picture of an athlete at the peak of his prowess (disclaimer I have never looked like that). I really didn’t want to do anything much in the way of exercise but I had a get out. I am a firm believer in rest days and taking things easy on at least two days a week. So going for a walk was just fine.  I would like to report that as soon as I got out and felt the air on my cheeks my spirits lifted and a spring returned to my step - but that would not be quite true. It wasn’t bad but neither was it good. it was merely mechanical.

However I carried on with my reading of the Stoics and today’s quote emphasises something common to any activity, any skill that needs mastering, and certainly to Janathon: the need for consistency. It is as true of running as it is the study of philosophy.

Yet this conviction, clear as it is needs to be strengthened and given deeper roots through daily reflection; making noble resolutions is not as important as keeping the resolutions you have made already. You have to persevere and fortify your pertinacity until the will to good becomes a disposition to good...although I have great hopes for you, I do not yet feel quite confident about you. And I should like you to adopt the same attitude: you’ve no grounds for forming a ready, hasty belief in yourself. Carry out a searching analysis and close scrutiny of yourself in all sorts of different lights. (Seneca, Letters XVI)

No grounds for complacency there and it is something we should all heed as well as Lucius. I have said many times: running is about honesty. The time you take and how far you can go shows you exactly your level. There are no excuses and your level is exactly as high as it deserves to be. In other words you must always look at what you achieve with a clear eye.

For myself, today, I need to look closely at my change of plan and be honest with myself whether it was acceptable or whether it was backsliding. I will only really know tomorrow.

Janathon 2013 Day 6 - Negative Pre-visualisation

Gym - various weight exercises, Time - 50m

In some ways Day 4’s post about staying in the present was a bit of a tease because one of the key techniques of the Stoics was pre-visualisation: they anticipated the future in order to prepare for it. This is the same as rudimentary sports psychology, the thing most players do before they set foot on the pitch, but there is a slight twist. The sportsman imagines themselves succeeding: the striker pictures themselves scoring a goal and the  the runner sees themselves crossing the finishing line strong and triumphant. However the Stoic technique turns this on its head and imagines the worst. It has another name: the premeditation of evil and it is done by imagining the things you hold most dear being taken away from you. 

There are three reasons for it. The first is basic honesty. All things are temporary, everything comes and goes and it is an undeniable truth that at some time you and I will both die. It is foolish to close ones eyes and try to forget it will happen as sooner or later you will have to face up to these things. This leads on to  second reason: by mentally preparing for loss you are better able to cope when it happens. The third reason though is not about the future it is about the present and is perhaps the most important reason of all: if you think something might be gone you are likely to appreciate it more keenly. If you were given a good bottle of wine told “After this you will be giving up alcohol for good.” The chances are that you would savour the drink, stretch it out, try to taste every drop and remember it. In other words you would closer attention than if it was just another bottle with just another meal.

“As you kiss your son good night, says Epictetus, whisper to yourself, “He may be dead in the morning.’ 

 Don’t tempt fate, you say.    

By talking about a natural event? Is fate tempted when we speak of grain being reaped?” 

(Marcus Aurelius, Meditations XI 34)

This might sound a bit extreme but the important thing is that it should not mawkish. It is an exercise in appreciating what you have, not an excuse for sentimentality and it should not be a cause of worry and anxiety, i.e. an unreasonable fear of imminent disaster. We not want to end up like Private Frazer of Dad’s Army.

But what is the relevance of this to going to the gym?

It is that, along with a number of other things, I take it for granted. I do it because it suits my purpose and think of it in functional terms. I give no thought to the fact that I am able to run on the treadmill and lift the weights. In this respect I am careless and instead of thinking I should be faster or stronger, I should appreciate what I can do. Being healthy is a colossal blessing and something that should never be underestimated. I once read of a survey  which asked two linked questions: what would make you happy and what would make you unhappy.  The answers for the first was the usual mix: more money, better car, house, holidays,love, job etc however what almost everybody thought would make them the unhappiest was illness. Nowhere on the list of things that make you happy was health mentioned, yet it was the thing you would miss the most. It is not a mistake a stoic would make as they would have already pre-visualised its loss and what it would mean.

In the gym I have reminders to help me. For example a man, partially paralysed down one side, who is constantly working building on the strength he has. Another man who can hardly walk and is helped onto each machine by his wife, will still smile and there is a lady who can barely shuffle but keeps plugging away on the treadmill. I am in awe of all them, as I am of anyone who keeps going in the face of great difficulty. In an instant, by a stroke of fate I could be struck down and face the same battles. Would I be as strong? 

I don’t know. It is something I would have to face if it happened. In the meantime it behoves me to appreciate what I have. 

Janathon2013 Day 5 - Not too much exercise

Walk - 3 miles, Time - 50m, Weather - grey and overcast.

Sometime in the past 3 months I might have moaned about the miserable weather, complained about the dreariness of the light and suggested that we have had enough rain already. How boring - complaining about the weather is one of the more useless types of conversation you can have and it is not anything a fully paid-up Stoic would do. Nevertheless it has happened and in my defence I post this picture to show how dull, waterlogged, and grey everything is. It might prove a point but it also shows you how far I am from a practicing Stoic - but there again I make no claims to be one.

As if to prove the point I will give you a quote from Seneca (Letter XV) contra to my current endeavours:


"For it is silly, my dear Lucilius, and no way for an educated man to behave, to spend one's time exercising the biceps, broadening the neck and shoulders and developing the lungs. Even when the extra feeding has produced gratifying results and you've put on a lot of muscle, you'll never match the strength or the weight of a prize ox. The greater load, moreover, on the body is crushing to the spirit and renders it less active. So keep the body within bounds as much as you can and make room for the spirit."

So there we have it. Seneca believes that you should do the minimum amount necessary to keep the body healthy and devote your time to the pursuit of wisdom and seemed to think there was a degree of conflict between body and mind. But you should never believe anything just because it was said by someone with a reputation for wisdom. In some cases it is possible, just possible, that a Japanese sports goods company  has a better idea.  A sound mind in a sound body - yes indeed!

Janathon 2013 Day 4: In the moment

Cycling - 15.5 miles, Time - 1h 11m, Weather - cloudy

The weather today would have been unremarkable if it hadn’t been for all the other days but at the moment no rain or heavy grey skies should be celebrated. So I took to my bike along the country lanes, up and down a few hills, and enjoyed the views and the feeling of hard work going up before the release of going down. It was fun;  not highly charged as if suddenly everything felt alive and full of zest but more restrained in an english  “you know this is really quite nice” sort of way.

When going down hill along twisty lanes with hedges that obscure the view I go much slower than is possible. All the time I am thinking ahead, wondering if there is a car behind the next bend, keeping to my side of the road and preparing to take avoiding action. It kills the freedom of sweeping descents where you can use the apex of the corners and go for the best line but it seems like the best thing to do.

It got me thinking about whether I was actually living in the present or the future because I was thinking about nothing else other than the descent and handling my bike but at the same time I was thinking ahead, even if the time frame was short. It is rather academic because all that matters is that I was concentrating and fully absorbed however it does lead me to the Stoic quote of the day about the living in the moment.  It is from a letter of Seneca where he talks about fear and hope being bound together because we project our thoughts forward instead of adapting to the presents. In other words  although forethought is one of our greatest gifts it can also be a curse:

“Wild animals run from the dangers they actually see and once they have escaped them worry no more. We however are tormented alike by what is past and what is to come. A number of our blessings do us harm, for memory brings back the agony of fear while foresight brings it on prematurely. No one confines his unhappiness to the present.”

On my ride I was really like that animal (though not at all wild I hasten to add), I reacted to potential dangers but once past I forgot them. When home all I was left with was a tingly feeling on the skin  from exertion in coldish air, and the memory of the muscular pleasure of turning the pedals.

Janathon 2013 Day 3 - The medium on which you practice

Gym - various weights + 17.5m running, 3.5km, Time - 1 hour, Weather - irrelevant

Last year I toyed with the idea of base training and limited my speed to stay below a specified heart rate. It was slow and frustrating as I kept on having to slow down or even walk but the idea was that the training effect gradually increase the speed I could run at that heart rate, as I gradually became more efficient. It never happened. The only result was I got used to running slowly and anything else felt like an effort. In other words it was boring and it messed up my head. From this I will not say base training does not work, as many other people have used it successfully and it could just be I didn't run enough miles or gave up too soon. However I will not be trying it again.

Looking back at the year when I ran at my easiest my approach was completely different. During the winter months I combined strength work with running short distances (2-3 miles) at varying speeds, on a treadmill. I then moved outdoors for the endurance training, with a weekly long slow run and other runs at mixed pace. I have no clear idea why I abandoned this approach. Perhaps I fell prey to a false idea that real runners had to keep up a higher weekly mileage, or perhaps I just wanted to try a different approach. In the end  I forgot what had worked.Now though I am now back with the old way and we will see if it still works.

There are a couple of lessons in this. The first is the famous quote of George Sheehan that "you are an experiment of one". In other words try things out to find what works for you, which might well be different to what works for your neighbour. But do not do this haphazardly, give each method a fair go and learn from the experience. The other lesson is related (or perhaps a different way of formulating the same idea) and is my Stoic quote of the day (again from Zeno):

"The goal of life is living in agreement with nature."

I will amend that slightly for the purposes of this blog and make it 'living in agreement with your own nature. You should not try to fight yourself, force yourself to cut against the grain, instead you should be trying to reveal yourself.  Or in the words of another Stoic quote, this time from Epictetus:

"Just as wood is the medium of the carpenter and bronze is the medium of the sculptor, your life is the medium on which you practice the art of living."

Janathon 2013 Day 2 - Little and Often

Cycling - 11 miles, Time - 50m, Weather - mizzle

I thought it was just going to be grey and overcast today and so a rare chance to go for a ride without getting soaked. But what do I know? After I had been out for a short while dampness descended like a blanket and the cold, steady, drizzly rain never let up. It didn’t stop me enjoying the ride but I did shorten the route. I had planned about 15 miles but cut a corner so as to come home not quite drenched.

In the end though I thought the distance perfect: long enough to work both muscles and lungs but short enough to leave me feeling fresh at the end. I must remember this as a lesson: there is no great virtue in going further than you need. Obviously if you are training for a marathon your need is to prepare  for that distance and you need to go long but otherwise little and often, including a bursts or two at higher intensity, is a good way to build fitness. 

This brings me to my Stoic quote of the day, from Zeno of Citium, who founded the school:

Well being is attained by little and little, and nevertheless is no little thing itself.

Perfect. I told you Stoicism was a neat fit with running.

Jan(quote-a-day)athon 2013

Run - 4.7km, Time - 26m 30s, Weather - there was an unfamiliar yellow object in the sky and the sky was blue! 

So another Janathon has arrived and this time I am not sure how I will manage. It is not the daily pressure to exercise that worries me so much as what to write - because frankly a lot of what I plan to do will be rather dull. My main running goal for 2013 is not until  October so I am using the winter to build up my strength with the hope that this will allow me to run injury free for the rest of the year. A lot of this will happen in the gym and try as I might I have little to say about lifting weights. I need an additional theme.

As my running is rubbish at the moment and 2012 was a year when everything fell to pieces. I feel that I must learn to be content with where I am and rebuild from there. In other words I must be stoical in outlook - not in the generally accepted “mustn’t grumble” meaning of the word but in the more precise way of following the advice of the Stoic philosophers of Greece and Rome. Perhaps I could write about that. Each day I could find a quote and make some tenuous connection to running and my current situation as half-arsed addendum to Stoic Week (recently organised from this blog)

I might be wrong (and I probably am if the reaction of my sister is anything to go by) but I think there is growing interest in ancient  schools of philosophy, especially the stoics. Instead of authors like Epictetus or Seneca being seen as a bit esoteric, the preserve of the minority with a classical education and therefore brushed away with the put-down of elitism, it is now recognised that they can still speak clearly of the human condition. Our way of life may have changed drastically over the past two and a half thousand years but the underlying psychology, drives and desires are the same; so their advice is still fresh. Modern academic philosophy may be arcane and highly technical but many of the ancient schools were concerned with how to live a good life and thus have much in common with modern self-help guides. This quote from Epicurus (who founded a competing philosophical school to the Stoics) shows, philosophy of that time was not for the select few but something that could be widely grasped and applied:

"Vain is the word of a philosopher that does not heal any suffering of man. For just as there is no profit in medicine if it does not expel the diseases of the body, so there is no profit in philosophy either, if it does not expel the suffering of the mind."

Strangely it reminds me of running because I believe that, for us non-competitive  runners, there is no profit in running if it does not expel the suffering of the mind. This overlap gives me hope that some sort of Jan(quote-a-day)athon might not be impossible. On the other hand it might end up being a bit silly and I abandon the idea. 

We shall see.

Keeping Active Pt. 1 - The Olympic Legacy

The leaves are gone, it is dark early in the evening, and cold has now given way to rain, and in other parts of the country, flooding. It is winter and the glory of the summer Olympics already seems an age ago. When you are hunkering down against the weather it is hard to remember the feelings of warmth an openness which characterised that time. The reviews of the year remind us what happened and show many glorious moments but the hoopla has now over and it is time to look what at what was promised as a legacy. No not whether West Ham take over the Olympic Stadium (an issue on which I have vanishingly small interest and absolutely no opinion) but whether the population will become more active and participate more in sports. The slogan was: "inspire a generation" and the hope was that a festival showing the limits of human physical performance would seize our imaginations and encourage us to do more ourselves.

I have always been sceptical as to whether watching elite sport spurs many people on. Supporting a team is as much about identity as anything else and ou only have to see the number of beer bellies wearing team shirts to know that not all spectators are as active as they might be. A problems is that top sportsmen are so much more capable than the average person they might be a different, but closely related, species (how can someone sustain 5min miles for 26 miles?). What they do is outside normal in all honesty we cannot say to ourselves “I can do that”, instead our response is “Wow!”. It is possible that instead of inspiring imitation all the exceptional performances reinforce the idea that sport is for other people. 

Running is the sport with the lowest barrier to entry: anybody can buy a pair of trainers and get going but I would guess the London Marathon is a far bigger inspiration for participation than Usain Bolt. Seeing people of all shapes, sizes, ages and abilities, who each in their own way achieve something personally significant does make you think: ”I could do that!”  We are all more likely to accept a challenge if we think it is achievable and when there are people we can realistically measure ourselves against. After that it is a ladder: if we find we have some talent then we compete against better people, and so on, and so on. What this requires is an infrastructure of grassroot clubs with the coaching to encourage us all to give of our best. This infrastructure is ultimately far more important than a huge festival (no matter how great it  might be)

Don’t get me wrong I thought the Olympics were brilliant and also important in an unexpected way: like nothing else in my lifetime it showed us we were a cosmopolitan nation with a sense of identity more vibrant than is usually allowed.  The efficiency of the building, planning, and running of the games combined with the high spirits of the helpers and good nature of spectators showed we are not a broken society. After so many generations of politicians and news commentators telling us that we are failing in every conceivable way and all is rubbish, it gave everyone heart to see this big thing being done well. Self esteem is not only important for individuals it is also important for nations and for this reason the Olympics were a wonderful thing but that was not their intended legacy.  There is a big difference between the short term emotional release and the day-to-day work of getting more people permanently active.

 Evidence from previous Olympics is not encouraging. Perhaps this time will be different but as I have already said mass participation in sport requires infrastructure: playing fields with changing facilities, running tracks, cycleways, all-weather tennis courts, outdoor gyms, gyms, parks, all of which have to be maintained as well as built.  Clubs and leagues have to be staffed, volunteers have to give of their time, knowledge and enthusiasm and dreams have to be kept alive. In the summer, in a beautiful Olympic Park, surrounded by happy people, dreams are easy. In winter on a badly drained, muddy field with no working showers in the changing rooms it is more difficult. 

Perhaps it is now time to put aside 2012 as a marvellous year of elite sport and look at how well the rest of us, the sub-prime physical specimens, are doing at keeping active.

Transforming the Ordinary

Picasso - The Old Guitarist, 1903
Source: www.pablopicasso.org

As is my habit I was reading the saturday paper at a cafe, with coffee and a bun. Sometimes I was drawn to an article and absorbed, other times I watched the crowds and listened to fragments of disconnected conversation. It was a day when everybody had a business face as they sorted out presents and got ready for christmas. Brows were furrowed, lips were pursed, discussion carried an edge. I sat and thought, as I often do, about how little people look around. This room, in this town centre, was full of people not interacting, all were within their own world, physically sharing a common space but looking inward. 

How do we all sense the world? All of use with our own concerns and experiences, doing the same sort of thing but are we seeing them in the same way? How many of each person’s thoughts are commonplace, hardly worth remarking upon, and how many exceptional? In this room what were the unusual insights I was missing?

These are questions I often ask myself, especially as I continue this blog about a common activity where there is little new to say. So many people run in a similar hobbyist way and so many experiences are similar, I sometimes wonder whether they are worth talking about. But (and this is my excuse) they are felt differently, not only from person to person but in the same person from time to time. One day the ordinary is just that - ordinary, but on others it is transformed. Super good days may be rare but when they happen they offer up moments of clarity and contentment that are almost magical.

I thought of this when I read the article by Giles Fraser, which quoted a poem by Wallace Stevens. As is his wont he took a theological message, whereas I take it as an affirmation of the way the ordinary can also be something else. Never mind music and the arts, we can also run to find those moments.

P.S. The poem is said to be a reaction to the Picasso painting, which may be true but for me a key word is “shearsman” which is used to describe a tailor, a craftsman. To me is is not a poem just about art, it is about any craft - the practice of any skill. In this respect running, if done seriously enough, is also a craft.

The Man With the Blue Guitar 

One
The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.
They said, “You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are.”
The man replied, “Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar.”

And they said to him, “But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,
A tune upon the blue guitar,
Of things exactly as they are.” 

Two
I cannot bring a world quite round,
Although I patch it as I can.
I sing a hero’s head, large eye
And bearded bronze, but not a man,
Although I patch him as I can
And reach through him almost to man.
If a serenade almost to man
Is to miss, by that, things as they are,
Say that it is the serenade
Of a man that plays a blue guitar. 

Three
A tune beyond us as we are,
Yet nothing changed by the blue guitar;
Ourselves in tune as if in space,
Yet nothing changed, except the place
Of things as they are and only the place
As you play them on the blue guitar,
Placed, so, beyond the compass of change,
Perceived in a final atmosphere;
For a moment final, in the way
The thinking of art seems final when
The thinking of god is smoky dew.
The tune is space. The blue guitar
Becomes the place of things as they are,
A composing of senses of the guitar. 

Four
Tom-tom c'est moi. The blue guitar
And I are one. The orchestra
Fills the high hall with shuffling men
High as the hall. The whirling noise
Of a multitude dwindles, all said,
To his breath that lies awake at night.
I know that timid breathing. Where
Do I begin and end? And where,
As I strum the thing, do I pick up
That which momentarily declares
Itself not to be I and yet
Must be. It could be nothing else.

Is Running Bad For Your Heart?

Now here’s a funny thing: I was about to write a few linked posts about the importance of exercise for health and the difficulties of changing habits and persuading  adults to make even a minimal effort, when I came across an article warning that exercise might have dangers. (Not that there's anything in it to change my plans as only good things can happen if someone moves from inert to 150 minutes a week). No the dangers are for those who are are worried about their health but for those who become intoxicated by the challenges, the idea of pushing back physical limits, and addicted to the feeling of being both physically empty and extremely satisfied.  Doing too much, or more specifically taking part in endurance events like marathons, triathlons, or ultramarathons might not actually be too healthy. There may be some unwanted adaptations to the heart and it is possible there is a dose effect so that just as too little exercise is bad for a body running too much might not be so good!

The origin of the concern was a paper has been published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings entitled ‘Potential adverse cardiovascular effects from excessive endurance exercise’ and many of you might not want to read any further than the title. Feel free to close your eyes, put your fingers in your ears, say “I am not listening!’ or ‘this cannot possibly be right because I don’t want to believe it’. If you write for a newspaper you can do this at slightly greater length. That’s OK as long as you are clear in your mind why you run and know that if you run for more than about 30 minutes a day you do so for reasons other than health.  However although we might want to continue doing what we do we should not treat unwelcome sounding research like and leave it unopened like an unwanted bank statement. We must face it dispassionately to see what the researchers actually say and be prepared to put aside our preconceptions. Before doing so though we can be strengthened by the thought that what is actually proved in any scientific papers is usually very specific within precisely defined limits which often do not bear the weight of the more generalised (and lurid) headlines.

So what to make of the Mayo paper?  Well from my lofty position of a non-expert it looks like a good survey of what is known about the effect of extreme exertion on the heart. It shows evidence that the hearts of highly trained athletes can enlarge and thicken in a way that would be seen as worrying for a normal person and there can also be scarring and other damage. However we don’t know enough about what that means for overall health and longevity, as the authors recognise in the abstract: 

However, this concept is still hypothetical and there is some inconsistency in the reported findings. Furthermore, lifelong vigorous exercisers generally have low mortality rates and excellent functional capacity.

Nevertheless there is enough in this paper to get one thinking. But it must be emphasised that the authors are not warning about exercise of itself, instead they are raising the question as to whether there can be too much of a good thing. They explicitly offer no excuse for the couch potato to remain inert as their opening sentences make clear:

Regular exercise is one of the cornerstones of therapeutic lifestyle changes for producing optimal cardiovascular (CV) and overall health. Physical exercise, though not a drug, possesses many traits of a powerful pharmacological agent. A routine of daily physical activity (PA) stimulates a number of beneficial physiologic changes in the body and can be highly effective for prevention and treatment of many of our most prevalent and pernicious chronic diseases, including coronary heart disease (CHD), hypertension, heart failure, obesity, depression, and diabetes mellitus.¹ People who exercise regularly have markedly lower rates of disability and a mean life expectancy that is 7 years longer than that of their physically inactive contemporaries.

The point needs to be emphasised because there is no way you want a simplified message that running is bad for your health to seep into the public consciousness. It shouldn’t from this paper, which is a restrained academic review that does not editorialise. However that is done by the authors in the BMJ journal Heart, where they are clearer in describing the effect of exercise as a U curve where too much high intensity work loses some of the gains of a more moderate regime. (It can be found here but unless you have a subscription or access from a library it is not worth the £24 they want to charge. Instead watch the TED talk that covers the same ground). 

The article has caused more controversy because it inspired the article in the Wall Street Journal I previously mentioned. As is common for newspapers the headline and opening paragraphs were overly alarming, even if there was more balance further down the piece (as is also common in newspapers). This has been a push back with some people to contest the conclusions (e.g. here and here) and a little flurry of concern.

My take (for what it’s worth - and that is very little because it is just the intuitive response of someone who runs about a bit) is that I am very ready to believe that there is a sweet spot for exercise to offer maximum health benefits, which might not accord with the amount of work needed to fulfil other ambitions. It is very likely that more might not mean better especially for those of us over 50. But I am not sure if I have to worry too much. I may be old but the amount of running I do faster than 8 min miles is vanishingly small. I, like most people, am probably well within the boundaries of exercise being a good thing. However the problem is we cannot precisely define where those boundaries are. Take for example easy exercise: apparently we can walk as much as we like without hitting  a point of diminishing returns but does that also apply to slow, low intensity running?  If so the majority people who run marathons have no worries because, from the middle to the back of the pack, the long slow running dominates training (and the race). For most people the debate about a U shaped exercise curve is irrelevant because we don’t run hard or fast enough to reach the bottom of the U. The people at risk are the seriously competitive and they are the very people whose motivation has nothing to do with wellbeing or health. But the amount of that risk, if at all, is not yet known. 

It is all neatly summed up in an article in Outside about the original Mayo review: “high-intensity, high-volume exercise is really, at this point, a black box in terms it what it does for you over the long haul.”

The Mystery of Motion

One of the reasons for writing this blog was to try to make sense of the mysterious way running, a simple, repetitive activity, can be both immensely satisfying and mentally stimulating. Sometimes I still thinks it might be a dull grind (usually just before I leave the house on a mucky day) but experience has taught me otherwise. I know it is not true and running can make you feel more alive. But I don’t fully understand why and I don’t think I ever will. The best I can hope for is to be able accumulate fragments of evidence puzzle over the fact that even the simplest human movement can be a thing of wonder.  I was reminded of this in a startling way by an article in the Observer. It might not be about running but it is about the mystery of movement and the complexity of the interaction with the brain.  Anyway cycling is also a topic for this blog so it is right that I share it.

Apparently the video of the man with advanced Parkinson’s riding a bike has been around for 2 years (when a paper was published in the New England Journal of Medicine) but I knew nothing of it until now and so the surprise was complete. The only reaction is “Wow!”, “How can this be?”, “This isn’t right.” “It’ impossible!”. I was stupefied as I just could not compute what I was seeing and I still have no idea about how it is possible.

Riding is a learnt skill (obviously as nothing in our evolutionary history could have prepared us for a bike). It is therefore remarkable that this acquired ability can be embedded deeply enough to survive whilst the hard-wired capability of walking is attacked by the Parkinson’s disease. The suggestion that the pedals coming round act as a constant unconscious reminder of what to do is an ingenious idea but it is just a guess and anyway what happens if you freewheel? The other explanation that our base skills (like walking or running) have different neurological pathways to acquired skills and can be selectively targeted by the disease, seems to need a host of complicated proofs before it can become a solid hypothesis. We really have no idea about how and why.

I am both baffled and in awe. It has left me even more convinced of two things: the first is how unfathomable we all are as animals and the second is what a wonderful invention the bicycle is.

No More Heroes

Since the USADA report on Lance Armstrong it has been impossible to open a paper, listen to the radio, or go online without reading something about him and the cycling culture when he was the capo dei capi. It is as if a dam has been burst and all the cycling journalists have at last been been given opportunity to vent what they secretly knew and other journalists, with little specialist knowledge, have leapt aboard feeling they must say something. There is now no need to say any more - and I don’t want to. Except ... except the story is so fascinating there are always little strands hanging out, tempting you to pull and I want to tug at the idea of the hero.

There was a good interview on PM with Paul Willerton, a former team mate of Armstrong, who had been publicly protesting that Nike should withdraw their sponsorship. At one stage, after some sympathetic questioning, he got slightly emotional as he thought about the bullying Greg Lemond received and in that one small moment gave a little insight into how tough it must have been to live through the era and question the prevailing culture. The ability of someone (it could be anyone but in this case it was Lance Armstrong) to have enough power to be able to mobilise overwhelming force and relentlessly pursue anyone who got in their way, is one of the aspects of the affair that deserves further exploration. Perhaps a full analysis will be done but a part of the answer is related to something else Willerton said:

Nike wanted to create a Prefontaine figure; a legend out of someone who was merely a man. Nike didn’t care about cycling what they really cared about was taking someone like Lance Armstrong and moulding him into a marketing machine.

This is spot on. The whole story of the recovery from cancer and  the determination and raw sporting ability required to come back and conquer his sport is definitely the stuff of legend. Inspite of anything else it is a story of resolve and mental and physical strength. Obviously it has now been invalidated by the industrial scale of the drug taking (i.e. cheating) and his behaviour to others but while that was under wraps his profile was, in a sporting sense, heroic. This was exploited by Nike and Trek to shift huge amounts of product and build the brand in the public imagination. As they wanted to be associated with greatness so that a little bit of it could rub off on anybody who bought their goods, it was in their interests to build-up the extraordinariness of their champion. In doing so the attention and money they gave to Armstrong enhanced his stature, built and then reinforced his power. How could the UCI remain uninfluenced by a man who had presidents in his phone address book and was iconic in the American market? How could foot soldiers in the peloton, or others associated with the sport, stand-up to his might?

It is an illustration of the trend in modern capitalism - the concentration of power and wealth into fewer and fewer hands, whilst the rest of us are given the opportunity to bathe in pool of their reflected glory. In this case though it was also allied to the way our appreciation of sport has evolved from recreation, to support for the local team, to an industry built on celebrating champions we are encouraged to identify with. In such a system the ones at the top really do have all the power and the status of Lance Armstrong meant  he could control his world.

The question is though not whether he was or was not a hero but why we need such figures at all. For sure we all need exemplars and people who can embody our human potential but what forces so many of us to invest so much of ourselves in the impossible virtue of our champions? What is our hunger for myths?

Perhaps I should repeat these famous lines of Brecht:

 Andrea: Unhappy the land that has no heroes
Galileo: No, unhappy the land in need of heroes

Honesty in Sport, Drug Taking in Sport

When I recently wrote recently that running was essentially honest, i.e. the figures did not lie and your times tell you precisely how good a runner you are, I was not talking about high level competition where money and prestige hang on racing results. Sport really is two different things: there is the recreational activity, where you challenge yourself and hope to find out more about your own nature. In the fullest sense it is amateur (no matter how methodically the task is approached) - it is done purely out of love and a sense of personal satisfaction. Then there is elite sport, which is a profession. People obviously come into it from love but once they reach a certain level it becomes a job and the results matter to other people as well as themselves. They become part of a system which exerts its own demands

In professional sport there is an ethos of doing all you can to develop an edge over other competitors and if there are not strict rules and adherence to those rules the line between right and wrong, honesty and lying can become blurred. If the main criteria is any advantage you can gain and you think other people are getting away with things that are not right what is there to stop someone going over to the dark side?

These questions are now as pertinent as ever. A couple of weeks ago came the news that Kenyan athletes were being investigated for doping. No! I reacted. I just did not want this to be the so. I had bought into the idea that Kenyan dominance of middle and long distance running was a mixture of genetics, a life time of running to get around, plus diet and good coaching. I really wanted to believe that it was all a combination of talent plus people like Brother O’Connell, who coaches David Rudisha. Nothing else. I wanted and still want the good story - but who knows if that is now the case.

What is no longer in doubt though is the sorry state of cycling during the reign of Lance Armstrong.  The USADA has finally published its case and fully exposed the culture of systematic doping and deceit.The reasoned decision and supplementary material are available here and the case is overwhelming. I have already spent too much time reading it with a sense of fascinated horror. Even though I already knew the broad outlines of what had happened, even though I have assumed for years that Armstrong must have doped to win seven Tour de France titles (think about it - if he was beating people who we know were taking drugs, either he was a different species of being or he was taking the same, or better stuff. None of his physiological test point to him being superhuman), there are still revelations and human stories. Stories about how nasty, vindictive and bullying Armstrong was and stories of the toll on other members of the team.

Take this excerpt about  David Zabriskie:

Bruyneel was respected by Zabriskie whose father had died a few years before, his life shortened by drug addiction. Zabriskie had sought refuge in cycling. Long hard training rides were cathartic and provided an escape from the difficult home life associated with a parent with an addiction. He had vowed never to give in to the temptation to use, never to end up like his father, furtively using drugs to feed his dependency and eroding his physical health.Barry was about five years older than Zabriskie; however, Zabriskie had been on the USPS team a year longer. The group met at or near a café, and the conversation proceeded in English. Bruyneel got right to the point. He and del Moral had brought two injectable products for Zabriskie and Barry, something known as “recovery” and the banned oxygen booster, erythropoietin (known as “EPO”). Zabriskie was shocked.This was the beginning of David’s third year on the team and he had not realized he would be required to dope. He realized, of course, that some cyclists in the peloton and likely some teammates fueled their success with banned substances. However, until now he had been largely shielded from the reality of drug use on the U.S. Postal Service Team.Zabriskie began to ask questions. He was fearful of the health implications of using EPO, and he had a slew of questions: would he be able to have children? would it cause any physical changes? Would he grow larger ears? The questions continued. Bruyneel responded, “everyone is doing it.” Bruyneel assured that if EPO was dangerous no professional cyclists would be having kids.David was cornered. He had embraced cycling to escape a life seared by drugs and now he felt that he could not say no and stay in his mentor’s good graces. He looked to Barry for support but he did not find it. Barry’s mind was made up. Barry had decided to use EPO, and he reinforced Bruyneel’s opinions that EPO use was required for success in the peloton.The group retired to Barry’s apartment where both David and Barry were injected with EPO by Dr. del Moral. Thus began a new stage in David Zabriskie’s cycling career – the doping stage. Cycling was no longer David’s refuge from drugs. When he went back to his room that night he cried.

When I read testimony like that I think of the cyclists as the poor bloody infantry. They have taken all the heat and guilt and been the ones who have been punished. In the meantime the team managers and doctors carry on as normal. It was the system which was corrupt. Cyclists believed there was no other way (sure they could have walked away from the sport but that is very difficult if you have staked everything on being a top professional).

We might think top sportsmen are at the apex of achievement and satisfaction (and surely some are) and they are to be envied and emulated (and again surely some are) but the are just as much a part of a system, with its own pressures and responsibilities as anybody in any other line of work. Their highs may be more dramatic and the requirements more intense but they are still bound by a culture and responsibilities. Sometimes those demands are just too great, as I believe they were for cyclists in the Armstrong years.

We tend to view sports individualistically i.e the way a person performs and the choices they make and then investing some of ourselves in our favourites and then make black and white judgements. But we only see half the picture if we ignore the context and don’t recognise the system. In cycling I do not think everyone who doped was a despicable cheat. Instead I think some good people got caught up in something beyond their control. All sport should be simple but sometimes things can be complicated, especially if money is involved.

Which brings me back to the difference between recreational and elite sport. the tremendous privilege we have as amateurs is that it is actually us as individuals. We do what we do for our own satisfaction and for no other reason. We can choose how much we want to be part of a system e.g. if we join a club and what type of club, or we can run on our own. We are honest because it makes no sense to be otherwise. All that matters is a sense of achievement and increased self-knowledge. 

We should constantly celebrate our freedom

Zebra Finch

This is an inconsequential little post but I wanted to show one of the strangest sights I have come across on a trail. It was on a walk in a small nature reserve in Saintes and I was so busy looking up and around that I almost missed this tiny bird burrowing into the grass of the path. A tiny zebra finch, completely unfazed by the presence of people. We got close but it was not at all agitated. It carried on so calmly i began to wonder if it was incapable of flight but after a time it hopped up and flew to a nearby branch. So it was just used to people. It must have been a household pet escaped from its cage. I wonder how long it will last i the wild? 

Back from Holiday

Back from holiday and it is  time to get back to some blogging.

We went, as we do most years, to a small village in south west France not far from Cognac. and it is the best running country I know. A rolling, open landscape with few hedges but an occasional lines of trees and small areas of woodland. You can see for miles, the sky is big and the light wonderfully clear. Criss-crossing are plenty of small, empty roads that make planning a route of any distance a doddle. As the land is undulating there is always some challenge so you know you have done some work but without the grinding intimidation of really steep slopes. 

In the height of summer you have to get out early before it gets too hot but nearer to autumn there is more latitude. Getting out at 8 - 8:230 was just fine. Once out the feeling is one of peace. Obviously the landscape is highly cultivated and everywhere there is evidence of people and  their work but with hardly anybody about you can feel you are on your own. You can stretch out without any sense of being crowded, and it encourages you to look around. Overhead there are birds and I am particularly taken with a buzzard who patrols the area - it is his. But you don't have to look at anything in particular: the sense of openness is enough.

The picture shows another feature - the allotments scattered around all the villages. This is a reminder (even if this particular allotment has mostly been harvested) of what I like about France - the food. Not the most unusual of insights perhaps but nevertheless true. Whether it is the restaurants or the riot of colourful vegetables in the markets, there is much that tastes good. 

So there you have it, my holiday defined in one short sentence: run a bit and eat a lot. Perhaps not a recipe for tip top fitness but as a holiday plan there is a lot to recommend it.

Running is Overwhelmingly Honest

It's one of the things I keep repeating: "running is honest', "running is honest", "running is honest". (Imagine I am panting this as a sort of mantra). It is all about personal truth and recognising that whatever dreams you may have about your own special qualities you are never any better than your time. The clock tells how good you are and how you compare with others and it is not susceptible to special pleading. There are no excuses - that is exactly how good you are. How you react is different and a matter of temperament and priorities. You can believe you are capable of much more and so train harder and smarter to improve, or you could accept it and say that you don't (or can't) spare any more time or energy and are happy to be as good as you are within the constraints you have imposed on yourself. Both responses are good, both are honest.

What you cannot do is lie. You cannot make up your times and pretend to be speedier and more athletic than you actually are. It not only goes against all morals and cuts against the reason for putting in the miles. Real runners should not lie. Running is about proving things to yourself. There might be an element of display, talking to others about your times and what you have done, but that happens out of obsession rather that boastfulness. In essence you are trying to find-out your capabilities and that is all that matters.

Running is honest and humbling. You know where you stand in the order of things, The shape of achievement is like a teardrop with most of us in the middle or bottom. For some people, with an inflated opinion of their own abilities (who believe that are born to be special) or a deranged need to be seen by others as exceptional, this is a problem. They might like running but find it is hard to cope with being demonstrably average. So some (I am sure it is a very, very tiny number) are tempted to lie and cheat, ignore the morality of the sport and move to the dark side.

There is a fascinating piece in the New Yorker about a middle aged dentist, Kip Litton, who has gone to enormous trouble to create the persona of a very fast masters runner. Many sub 3s marathons complete with intermediate chip times. However there are few race photos and little corroborating evidence from other runners. There have been doubts and  after investigation disqualifications.The evidence is overwhelming that his times are fictitious but there is still a mystery as to how he did it. He went to enormous trouble to pull off the illusion and even created his own race with other imaginary competitors. But why? I can only guess that he  had some pathological need to be seen as more than a small town dentist leading an average life. I suppose every activity will at some point attract such fabulists.

So what of politicians why would they lie? (Sorry if that seems like a dumb question). They deal in images and pictures, in describing a world that is all sunshine (if their policies are fully implements) and broken and rusting (if the policies of their opponents are implemented). Speeches are full of generalities and suggestion, with the aim of emotional connection rather than reasoned, evidence supported argument. Not quite telling the full truth is a stock in trade. However there is a line between that and telling an outright lie, which is usually observed, even if things are sometimes a bit blurry and sometimes it is difficult to tell the difference between a misrepresentation and a falsehood. It is all part of the game. But there seems a chasm in integrity between fudging policy details  and telling a flat-out lie about yourself and your personal history.

Paul Ryan is the vice-president running mate of Mitt Romney and obviously wants to present himself as fit, energetic, and eager. In an interview he was asked if he still ran he replied: 

"Yeah, I hurt a disc in my back, so I don't run marathons anymore. I just run ten miles or less." When what his personal best is, Ryan replied, "Under three, high twos. I had a two hour and fifty-something."

Any runner knows this is just not credible. It's not that he might not have been capable of running sub 3 (who knows? He looks very fit) but that if he had done so he would know his precise time. it is not something you forget. You can only run a marathon that quickly after a lot of high quality training. It doesn't just happen. It is the culmination of years of work that dominates large parts of your life and becomes an important part of who you are and how you see yourself. After all that effort as sure as hell you remember your time.

No wonder Runner's World were suspicious and tried to check. In the end they found he had run one marathon in 1990 in 4 hours, 1 minute and 25 seconds. Now that is not bad at all and is a time many people (including myself) would be happy with but it is a world away from sub 3. It is not even the same type of race. It is not fudging your time with a bit of haziness. It is an outright lie

The thing I can't understand is why would he make something like that up. Saying you have run a marathon gets you enough brownie points why would you feel the need to pretend something more? My guess (and it is only a guess based on absolutely no evidence) is that he could not admit to being merely an average runner and was compelled to present himself as super fast. It also suggests he is a fantasist with an inflated idea of his own capabilities. In his dreams he would like to be that quick. So would I but the difference is I know it could never happen. He thinks he can pretend it already has.

I began racking my brains for some British equivalent of a politician who would lie about themselves and thought of Jeffrey Archer and the way he embellished his own biography. The difference is Jeffrey Archer was a genuinely quick athlete who represented Oxford University (although, of course, he was probably not entitled to).

Panorama Part 2 - shoes

Source: http://www.hgtv.com/landscaping/pretty-pots/index.html

The second part of the Panorama programme was about the claims of the running shoe industry. 

I don't want say anything about the barefoot vs cushioning debate (that ground has been well tilled in every runners forum for the past few years). Instead I want to mention one of those coincidences that can happen when you are thinking about one subject: something totally unrelated can become relevant. In this case an article in the latest London Review of Books about D H Lawrence's attitude to products of the modern world, the organic vs inorganic, the authentic vs inauthentic.

A world away from the claims of  Adidas and Nike you would assume, even if the essay title was 'Lady Chatterley's sneakers'. But no! Connie wore tennis shoes to meet Mellors in the woods and tennis shoes had crepe soles, which are at a less processed type of rubber product, i.e. not vulcanised, and at an interesting point in the continuum between natural and synthetic.  It is therefore obvious that any literary scholar worth his salt would discuss the efforts of the Rubber Growers Associations to promote the use of crepe shoes in the 1920s (oh do keep up!).

Some of their advertising was quoted:

‘The cushion of “live” rubber lessens fatigue and makes walking a pleasure,’ the advertisements claimed, ‘adding hours to endurance and a spring to every step.’ For nothing had been done, chemically or otherwise, to ‘impair the natural live quality and nerve of the virgin product’.

When I read it I was taken right back to the Panorama programme and the realisation that in essence the sales pitch of sports shoes has hardly changed. It might have added a sciency gloss but we still want something to help our endurance and give us more spring and if the current promotions for barefoot running shoes are about anything they are about being more natural.

The companies are still selling the same dreams.

Panorama on sports drinks

A month or so ago Panorama ran a programme on sports products (drinks, shoes, supplements) and really I had no intention of writing about it. The conclusion that we are oversold the benefits of these products is not startling and the style (which now seems to be the default for factual programmes) of having the presenter as an active participant, undergoing test, whilst making dramatic statements was a little tedious - so I didn't feel like saying anything.  But that was before things warmed up with a bit of academic venom.

Mark Burnley wrote this response and his lack of regard for Tim Noakes is quite obvious. Tim Noakes has replied and so we have a dispute about hydration and reputation that has a certain amount of animus but leaves me, as an outsider, feeling there is something else going on and I lack a bit of background. It probably relates to claims by Noakes that his work on the dangers of over drinking were suppressed by people and organisations in thrall to the sports drinks industry (in other words a conspiracy) and people on the other side thinking their integrity had been impugned. As they are all big boys and can take care of themselves they can get on with their fight. I'm not too interested in their relative personal honour, my concern is with the advice given to and the understanding of mid and back of the pack runners. This subject the Panorama programme addressed.

It was not "one of the most biased programme I've ever seen" neither was it a hatchet job on sports science. It was about the marketing of sports products and the way exaggerated claims might create a false impression of what was necessary for exercise. It stated quite clearly in the introduction that ⅕ of us go to the gym and 12 million take part in sport so their is an eager market for sports products and so they wanted to examine the claims made by companies. It was not an evaluation of sports science as a subject but about how science based claims were over leveraged.  In the case of sports drinks, the fact that they are sold in supermarkets and shifted in quantities far in excess of the number of endurance sessions suggests a number of people either like the taste (and are therefore drinking too much sugar) or believe they are necessary when they are not. In that context the programme's message that unless you are going long water is fine seems uncontroversial. Use of the drinks was not dismissed out of hand (they said they worked for athletes like Mo Farah and were good for endurance) but there was a concern that an exaggerated impression of their effectiveness and an overemphasis on hydration might lead to over drinking.

This is important because hyponatremia has caused death in some marathons and it has been the case, in the recent past, that marathon runners have been encouraged to drink as often and as much as possible - advice that cause this condition. (I have been to a marathon training camp where such advice was given). Although the official guidelines are much more conservative, old ideas can be persistent, especially if they are simple and to the point. 'Drink as much as you can' is easy to remember and act upon in a race and so hangs around. The importance of 'drink according to your thirst'  is not only that it is safer but also it is just as simple and easy to act upon. It therefore has a chance of replacing the older message. I thought the programme got this across quite effectively.

One of the Oxford scientists made an important point. The claim that performance deteriorates significantly if you dehydrate by 2% of bodyweight ("just" 2% in the Powerade literature) is widespread and oft repeated but in a marathon you can't action it. You cannot know how much you have lost at any one time, so out of fear of losing too much you will overcompensate. When you are running you work on simple rules of thumb and if you believe not drinking enough will be bad you will do all you can to make sure that doesn't happen. The operational understanding should be reversed: if you drink too much bad things could happen with the consequence that errors would be on the side of caution. A different mindset and one counter to a deep-seated cultural outlook: that if something is good then more is better (which is perhaps why drinks companies are so successful).

I'm sure there were some contributions to the programme that were edited out, perhaps they talked about optimum levels of hydration and and conflicting information. I don't know. I'm sure they would have been interesting if it had been a Horizon on the current state of scientific knowledge (and that would be a programme I would like to see) but this was Panorama. It was primarily about marketing distortions or myths and the way big companies can influence  our attitudes. Sometimes it doesn't matter very much but sometimes it does; but as information transfer is increasingly mediated by corporations we need to be ever more vigilant of the consequences. It is an important subject.

So there you have it. I saw a different programme to Mark Burnley. I saw something aimed at the more casual exerciser and general public. It looked at the science but only to the extent it was used to justify marketing claims and it was not about the overall state of that science. I didn't think it was great but neither did I think it terrible. I would however like to give this assurance as an outsider: I really did not come away with the impression that "sports science research was being conducted by either clueless muppets or industry shills"