The last 7 years has seen me increasing the amount of part-time teaching that I’ve been doing within University of Brighton, Business School, whilst my ‘day job’ as an independent consultant has taken a back seat. That’s about to change. I’ve been performing a fascinating but complex role as Interim Course Leader for the MBAs since the end of last year, but once I’ve handed over to my replacement at the end of July, I will be leaving HE to focus full time on the consulting (oh, and given my ‘senior lecturer’ teaching skillset, probably running some commercial workshops).
I say full time… One of my role models is Charles Handy whose year broke down as follows: 50 paid days; 25 days spent doing the same kind of work but working for free for good causes; 100 days marketing, 100 days researching, to stay at the bleeding edge of his field; 90 days of weekends and holidays. If you are observant, then you may think that 90 non-work days is a little mean, given that normal employees work around 225 days a year and have in the order of 140 non-work days. However the Handy’s took every Sunday off and had four ten-day holidays each year, which suddenly makes a lot more sense!
After a few years of rather occasional running, my aim is also to increase the frequency of my runs & get back out to see what has happened in some of my old running haunts.
This regime has yet to start properly, but Daren happened to suggest a run this week so I already have one run under my belt. More of that in a moment, but first I want to ‘fess up to how unfit I am, having sat at a desk working (virtually) since the start of lockdown and having not engaged in the government’s suggested daily walks. I have been gardening at the weekends, which has often been energetic, but it’s clearly not enough exercise.
On Wednesday, with two days to our planned run, I did five minutes of exercise, comprising a very mild HIT (high intensity training) session. 20 deep breaths running gently on the spot; 10 breaths of faster running, though still pretty gentle (first phase); 10 breaths of gentle recovery running; 10 breaths of faster running (second phase); 10 breaths recovery; 10 breaths of faster running, but still not exactly hard work (third phase); 20 breaths of gentle running to recover and stop. It was clearly more effective than I expected given that I could hardly walk the next day, my calves were so tight!
So this morning, as Daren and I ran down the lane from Clayton rec., I already had tight calves and we still had more than 5 miles to cover! It was a stunningly beautiful morning though and we had lots of conversational catching up to do so the discomfort was easy to ignore. We had already agreed that we would walk up the hills this time, so the Tank Tracks was not it’s usual cognitive challenge… and the views behind us were amazing.
From the top of Home Hill we ran all the way down to Pyecombe and then walked and occasionally jogged up to the top of Wolstenbury Hill. From there it was pretty much all downhill back to the cars, making for a very relaxed end to the run.
5.82 miles covered in 1 hour 14 minutes (moving time, though I’m not sure how we managed to rack up a further 15 minutes of non-moving time)… it’s not a great time, but it was a great run to get the endorphins flowing again after all these months.
Of course, I can now hardly walk again (even after a cold shower, the use of an ice pack and a very rare Nurofen tablet) but I feel great and ready to start to take on the world again 🙂
