Since I will now be participating in the Eye to Eye run next weekend (rats!) I thought I should keep up the mileage, though how exactly you train for a 64 mile run I have no idea. In 1976, as my brother and his friend Geoff prepared to kayak the 1,500 miles circumnavigation of Iceland, a local reporter asked how they had been preparing. His answer was something along the lines of beer and large meals, which I think was lost on the reporter. My best preparation is probably to get some pounds on too.
In the meantime though I went for another run on the machine.
Eager to find a way to make use of the Kindle I decided to listen to the book again, though since the earphones were a pain last week I just put it on speaker. Unfortunately the volume doesn’t extend far and the magic machine drones at an equivalent level, but I found that I could read the text and listen so could get a sense of what’s going on… I know the book quite well anyway!
As part of my experimentation last weekend I went to sleep wearing the (uncomfortable) headphones to continue to listen to the book, though the scientific evidence is stacked against it being likely to make a difference to my understanding. You have to give these things a try though, especially on a long bank holiday weekend.
I’m on firmer ground in my understanding that the mind takes in less information as the intensity of exercise increases and I demonstrated this effect to myself today. I had started at 6mph for a mile and increased the speed by 0.2 each mile until I reached 7mph.
My intention then was to reduce back to 6mph and increase the gradient from it’s normal 2 to a more hilly 4. Instead, however, I only reduced the speed to 6.8 and within half a mile I had realised my error. My concentration suddenly lapsed on the book and despite reducing the gradient to 3, I still struggled to complete that mile at 6.8mph. My subconscious also threw me a curve-ball by giving me motion sickness, presumably based on the fact that I was looking down whilst running rather than at the wall.
Either way I stopped reading and when I completed that mile I dropped the speed to 6.2mph for the final three miles.
The final result was 10 miles in 93 minutes, 6.45mph average. I could have increased the speed at the end to keep the time to 90 minutes, but the aim for next weekend is to keep moving at a walking pace (even if I end up doing only a couple of the legs) so there is no point in exciting the fast-twitch muscles!
