FosterRuns – Page 18

February 23, 2014February 23, 2014

Working downstairs

Another post containing two runs, this time because out of the last ten days, I have spent two days lecturing or in meetings and eight days working at my desk marking (fortunately really interesting) strategy papers.

On average I spend twice as long marking each paper as I’m paid for (to reach the standard required by my client), but it’s at least pushing me slowly up the experience curve. HA… of course I’m not always as upbeat as this, but my current task is now complete so I’m currently basking!

Last Sunday I was basking too, this time eating breakfast in the garden for the first time this year… fine weather indeed for the middle of February and all the more so bearing in mind that in the deluge two days earlier, the stone garden had looked more like a river bed!

On the sunny Sunday though I had decided to run a for a little longer and push through to 45 minutes. I had clearly expected to write my blog post later that same day so I made no notes on the board… and thus, other than vaguely remembering that it was hard work, I have little to say about it. I covered 5.36 miles, an average of 7.14 mph.

I saw this excellent example of positive PR in the paper this week… it seems like a visit to the cafe at South Downs Nurseries Garden Centre in Hassocks is to be recommended if you’re looking to shed your walking stick!

I’m feeling more generally upbeat this week because, for the first time since the autumn, there was a glimmer of light in the sky when I got up at 6am. I love the speed that the mornings lighten from here as Spring hastens to take hold.

I’ve been waking up with a painful leg for the last few mornings, probably because, despite being disciplined about getting up to walk around between papers, I have sat at my desk for something like 50 hours in the last week or so. I really pity office workers… at least I generally get a real mix of working environments.

So today, having completed my mammoth marking task, I was happy to take to the machine once again. Not wanting to overdo it I started at 7 mph and increased by 0.2 each quarter mile until I had completed a mile. Then I returned to a base of 7.2 mph and repeated, all the way through to a final quarter mile at 8.2 mph.

Nothing strenuous, but good ground-floor foundation reinforcement!

4 miles took me 31 minutes 38 seconds, an average of 7.58 mph and because I worked up to it slowly, I was not exhausted at the end. However, with my leg in mind (only painful laying down) my legs got an extended cold shower for their effort!

February 9, 2014February 9, 2014

Hard going four me

It would have been really easy to have skipped my run today as I was enjoying reading and also had a crick in my neck, but I managed to usher myself onto the machine before I had the chance to escape.

I started at the same speed as last week, 7 mph and 7.5 for the first two quarter-miles, but then increased to 8.5 and 9 mph After the first mile I was 17 seconds off the 8 mph pace and after repeating it a second time, whilst making the speed increases a little early, I was only 13 seconds adrift.

Then my subconscious started to pull rank and I soon found myself running at 6 mph. It’s a funny thing, that energy-preservation override and more than once I pushed the speed up a little, only to find it come back down again.

4 miles took me 31.29 in the end, an average of 7.6 mph, which is actually not so bad. I just need to remember to start more slowly next time, whilst Kim pointed out that I had no fuel in advance of the run, so I really was running on empty.

So far I have managed to curb the urge to sleep this afternoon, first by going shopping for a Japanese cherry blossom tree and later by putting some vibrant music on whilst we prepared the stew for tonight.

In the end I didn’t get as much reading done today as I would have liked and the neck crick is still there, albeit less prevalent, but it was really nice to have a more relaxing Sunday after missing all those ones in January.

February 7, 2014

Research mode

I’m in research mode today, reading reports on strategy & change management in large and unionised organisations to help inform a potential project. My mind needs space and time to digest the information, so I thought I would try an experiment.

Last year I met the guys from Armadillo Merino, who shared the merits of the merino wonder-material… aside from its lightness, wicking ability and natural odour resistance, what really appealed to me was the idea that I could compost it when it was finally of no use to me as clothing.

As an experiment I bought three t-shirts from Armadillo, giving one to my brother Nigel (kayaker), one to Kurt (runner), the owner of the brilliant running shop Run, and kept the third for myself (lazy oaf?).

Since then, aside from wearing formal shirts for work, I have worn either the Armadillo t-shirt, or another similar merino one, pretty much non-stop. It really is an amazing material! Reports from Nigel at Christmas were that, despite already being a merino fan with a large number of garments, he too had worn it a lot because it was so lightweight and comfortable.

Sitting, working barefoot in the sun this morning I became aware that my t-shirt was just starting to pong… I hasten to draw your attention to the ‘starting to’ preface to ‘pong’, lest you think that I’m a slob.

The proto-pong was no real surprise as I had been wearing the shirt on and off since Sunday morning. Hence, in a break between articles, I quickly hand-washed it, loosely wrung it out and, being in an experimental mood, put it back on. Wet.

It’s certainly more comfortable when it’s dry, but it was no so uncomfortable in its wet state that I felt the need to take it off.

After about 15 minutes the sun went in, which meant that the temperature dropped, my socks and shoes went back on and my fleece too. I was aware that the shirt was wet, but it wasn’t cold and I was able to carry on working.

In all it took about 45 minutes for the body to become dry with the remnants taking another 15 minutes or so. Not bad!

While Armadillo’s core target market is service personnel (army, police etc) I can’t help feeling that this is actually a backpackers dream garment too! And if I still ran an agency I would definitely specify merino for riggers, event managers etc. Hey, but that’s a whole different experiment!

February 2, 2014

Short

I seem to be short on time, all round, at the moment… but correspondingly high on frustration for some reason.

Hmmm… I can’t help feeling that there’s a link there somewhere…

Anyway, I did manage to fit a run in earlier today, albeit on the machine again. Starting from 7 mph I increased the speed each quarter mile… 7.5 to 8 to 8.5 mph… before going back to 7 mph and repeating for the next mile. In the final quarter mile I slowly ramped up to 10 mph before finishing, exhausted.

As a result I managed to complete 4 miles in 31.03, an average of 7.74 mph.

The picture above is a neat guitar pedal that my big Bro sent me. I haven’t managed to figure out how to use most of its features, but it has a very simple 40 second recording facility that allows you to either play along to a riff that you’ve played into it, or record further layers on top.

What this really means is that I have been driving Kim mad playing short melodies again and again and again and again and.. well, you get the picture. Thank you Bro!

January 26, 2014January 26, 2014

Two more runs

The recent inconsistency of posting to this site reflects my sense that the current working week, consisting of consultancy, lecturing and all the necessary background preparation that goes with both, started on the 1st January… and that I’ve yet to encounter a weekend.

Not that I’m complaining, as the work is challenging, varied and fascinating. It’s just not conducive to a serious blogging proposition with its requirement for a predictable flow of posts… not that FosterRuns.com is a serious blogging proposition, despite its six+ year history!

Since I’m only pausing before the next pressing task on the desk, I’ll be brief.

Last weekend I opted for some intervals. Working from a base of 7mph I managed to cover 4 miles in 31 minutes 38 seconds, an average of 7.65 mph. I clearly could have gone faster as I ramped up the speed to 10 mph towards the end.

This morning I followed the same basic pattern but shortened the 7 mph rest periods and generally got the speed up earlier on in the run. As a result my conscious mind kicked in and I struggled towards the end, limping through the final mile at 7 to 7.5 mph. Despite this I was only 5 seconds behind last week, with a time of 31 minutes, 43 seconds, at the end of 4 miles.

That’s all for now folks! Normal service will hopefully be resumed next week… whenever that happens!

January 12, 2014January 12, 2014

Two runs

Between imbibing brain food (aka reading), writing an article, preparing lectures and marking papers, I’ve managed to have a busy couple of weeks. Such that I ended up deciding not to try to write a speech for a conference, despite it being a really interesting opportunity. The amount of creative thinking and writing has probably had an impact on my motivation to write this blog, hence managing to skip it last weekend.

We’ve had a period of breakages. After one particularly windy night, I woke up Christmas Eve to find the fence in tatters… so much for giving the myriad visitors over Christmas a Zen garden to look out on.

The fence has been replaced, but the old bamboo front panels that I made won’t work with it so my mind has come up with a new idea to integrate the new fence into the garden… it’ll have to wait for the Spring though as it’s low priority! However, the ideation process threw up a great solution for a completely different problem… I now have more than one reason to learn some joinery skills.

I then smashed a salad bowl by clipping it with the cupboard door, our cleaner managed to smash a vase, and I cracked a piece out of my favourite pasta bowl in a drying-up accident.

As an incredibly versatile 15 year old ceramic bowl, used at least three or four times a week, it has survived more than 3,000 outings to the table and back to the cupboard via the sink. If I can manage to glue the fragment back on, it might even see a few more!

What amazes me is how fast accidents happen (in the blink of an eye)… and how much they affect other things when they do. Even when they are not health-threatening, they still affect our mood.

My commercial background means that I automatically do a lot of risk mitigation (which must surely be a bore to those around me) but even with this it’s not possible to account for all eventualities or else we’d be living in flame-proof, hypo-allergenic cotton wool.

So, two machine runs to report:

Last week I optimistically started off at 8 mph, but was forced to reduce this to 7 mph after a mile as I just couldn’t hold the pace. I completed 3.67 miles in 30 minutes, an average of 7.34 mph and was exhausted afterwards.

Today I was more circumspect and started running at 7 mph, but then increased the speed towards the end. At 30 minutes I decided that I might as well run for a little longer to make the distance 4 miles, which I reached in 33.17, an average of 7.2 mph. I even wondered about running further still… maybe another time.

I quite often walk outside to stretch afterwards, which I see as the English version of jumping out of the sauna into a freezing lake. This morning there had been a really heavy frost so I was looking forward to a chilly cool-down, but by the time I got outside, maybe around 10am, the temperature had zoomed up and it was in the ‘cold for a summer day’ category. England really is the place to go for changing weather!

Time to get back to the brain food… maybe prefaced by lunch!

January 1, 2014January 1, 2014

Call options

2014 has now dawned and thus far it’s an extremely wet and windy year! A run outside would have been a lovely idea under normal circumstances but, with the weather SO inclement, I chose to run on the machine instead of braving a cold shower outside.

To celebrate the New Year though I decided to go a little further than normal. Initially I thought that 7 miles would be appropriate, but as the run progressed (hard work at 7 mph) I thought that maybe five miles would suffice.

We’d had a series of house guests from the 18th December onwards, across what turned out to be a truly FAB Christmas!

Nigel & Kristin flew in from Seattle and stayed right through, my Mum & Dad for almost a week, Debbie & John for five nights (Debbie being my ‘knight in shining armour’ on the catering front!) and Kate & Alex drove down from North Wales to stay for one night. In addition to this Michael & Jenny came from Wiltshire on Boxing Day and brought Christopher, Philip, Cherry & Helen with them. Much fun was had!

We ate and drank really well but not to excess, except in the tea department where we eventually ran out of Twinings Earl Grey, something that has probably not happened in my household for 20 years!

We played a lot of guitar too! My guitar experiment is just coming up to its 4th anniversary and the cumulative effort really paid off over Christmas.

The house finally emptied yesterday morning, when I took Nigel & Kristin back to the airport, and I spent the rest of the day tidying up and washing linen. Ordered calm (and fresh supplies of Earl Grey) only returned yesterday evening!

Back on the running machine, in one of my rambling cognitive excursions, I started thinking about ‘call options‘. This is essentially a financial instrument used by City folk, but I quite like the general idea behind it.

In my version, the effort put in to learning and honing a new skill allows you to use that skill at some point in the future, thus exercising the option. You don’t have to use it, but you have essentially bought a call option which means that you can, if you choose… your time and effort was the price.

For example my daily effort in developing my guitar-playing skills over the last four years allowed me to play properly alongside my brother (who is a totally amazing guitar player!) for the first time ever in the 38 or so years I have played… I didn’t have to (and I’m still not brilliant), but it was fantastic to have that option.

Likewise, by designing and running short training courses over the last few years I essentially created a call option that made it possible for me to lecture at UCL and Brighton Business School last year… whilst the Fellowship of Higher Education course that I start in January buys me further options down the line.

In running terms, by putting in the hard work to run five miles I was essentially buying a call option to run a little further, say to seven miles, if I were so inclined. Two miles is a short run on its own, but tacked on to five miles it makes for a decent run for New Year’s Day.

In the end the lure of being able to write about this slightly tenuous argument was really what finally persuaded me to exercise the call option and run the additional two miles.

So a great start to 2014 with 7.1 miles in one hour… I sense that this year is going to be pretty hard work all round, but hopefully more rewarding as a result.

Of course, having put in more time and effort on the running machine than normal, I then needed to at least try to alleviate the potential after effects in my musculature… thus I didn’t manage to avoid the cold shower after all!

Happy New Year to you all! I hope that it’s a FAB one!

December 28, 2013

More fast tempo

Before I forget, Sunday 22nd saw me doing yet another fast tempo run on the machine.

Once again I completed 4.01 miles in 30 minutes, adding to the time I have spent running at 8 mph lately. I’d write more but I’m working on my iPad at the moment which is driving me nuts by not allowing me to select any of the words in the last sentence written. Oh for a back button and some arrow keys to move around with ease.

December 15, 2013

Ambivalentempo

I can’t quite put my finger on why, but a slightly odd week and weekend made for a somewhat ambivalent attitude towards my Sunday run today… as in, there was no reason not to run for a change!

Taking full advantage of this ambivalence, I set the machine to 8 mph and sought to repeat the fast tempo run I did two weeks ago, hoping that my legs would get used to this new pace.

It was hard work, but as before there was no single part of my body or mind which stood out to make me stop, so I completed 4.01 miles in 30 minutes.

That’s all for now folks! Have a GREAT week!

December 11, 2013December 11, 2013

Playing catch-up

I’ve had a day of playing catch-up… slowly clearing the office white-board of to do items. What has been interesting is that as fast as I have completed tasks and removed them from the board, so new (and generally more complex) things have appeared to take the space.

I’m now working to clear a note that says ‘3.51 miles in 30 minutes’, my short run on the machine on Sunday.

One of the challenges with setting a high bar (8 mph last two weeks) is feeling the need to compete with yourself to better it. I just wasn’t in the mood so I set the machine to 7 mph and had an easy session.

’nuff said?

Now, I wonder what’s going to come in to take that little space?