Films & plays – Foster Runs

January 1, 2013

Happy 2013

Happy New Year!

We’ve had a great Christmas break with a restorative balance of quiet reflective time and really fun time spent with friends and family.

We took in the amazing Lost and Found Orchestra which is a riotous kaleidoscope of percussive sound and vision. Originally designed by STOMP for the 40th Anniversary of the Brighton Festival in 2006, it has since toured internationally to wide acclaim. Brighton is home to co-creator Luke Cresswell (who I went to school with in the late seventies & early eighties) so the performances here hold special significance!

We also saw the amazing film Life of Pi which is a beautifully produced and really thought-provoking tale of survival.

After days of dark, wet weather, 2013 dawned bright and clear so it seemed only right and proper to get out for a run. I quickly realised that the rain had left its mark with puddles and fluid mud everywhere.

I first headed out to Ditchling via Oldlands Mill, which sat facing the Downs in almost springlike sunshine.

Normally dry paths were waterlogged and those that are often wet were completely under water… there was little point in shirking the mud, though I kept generally to the edges.

One garden I passed en route had filled up to become a small lake… maybe a 150 feet long and easily 20 feet deep! The water sometimes fills the width of the garden but I’ve not ever seen it this high and close to the path before.

The normally slippery chalk up the Beacon path had been washed clean and was abnormally grippy, especially compared to the slippery ground around it.

As I neared the top of the path, the view to the left was more warm March than soggy January… apart from the extent of the midday shadow!

The top had a range of similarly beautiful views accompanied by a chilly breeze, especially where I was standing… on the trig point at the highest point in Sussex.

After slip-sliding down the Beacon again, I ran past Sporting Cars, admired the beautiful houses through Ditchling and then climbed back up to the Oldlands path at the end of the village.

Where I had been relatively circumspect on the outbound route, I now just headed through the middle of most of the big puddles… and there were a lot of them! By the time I reached the Keymer road again I was dripping wet and coated in mud.

My first task upon returning home was to stand in the garden and wash off the worst of the mud with a scrubbing brush and hosepipe… which also usefully cooled down my tired leg muscles.

So ten miles in a sploshy 1:55 and a GREAT start to the New Year.

July 29, 2012August 31, 2012

A faster tempo hour

Sitting in the tea-house this morning deep in thought thanks to HBR, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to allocate any time to running.

I was still a little shell-shocked from having watched The Dark Knight Rises, the latest Batman movie, last night. Whatever my expectations, I was stunned by the scale of this film… if you like fast-paced action films, then this is a must-see. I really enjoyed it, even though we had somehow managed to miss the film that precedes it in the story… DVD being sought as I write this!

The highlight of my (already interesting) week was attending the Brighton Business School student awards on Friday and presenting Charlotte Horwood with the prize for Best Strategy Student, along with (appropriately) a one-year subscription to Harvard Business Review. This was especially well deserved as she worked hard enough to graduate with a rare First!

I would encourage other business folk to engage with their local universities (not to mention schools and higher ed colleges)… it really is very inspiring! Add to this the myriad ways that business and academia can collaborate to drive collective value and I’m surprised that more organisations don’t do it… though the 50 other organisations sponsoring prizes on Friday would seem to agree with me.

Despite the stuff buzzing around in my head this morning, I eventually reasoned that I needed to get on and run, so I climbed aboard the magic carpet with another tempo session in mind.

One of my curiosities at the moment is to what extent the conscious and subconscious can collaborate to good effect, so rather than trying to trick myself into running further that I initially planned, I simply decided to run for one hour at 7mph.

I covered the distance readout with a towel again so that I could focus purely on time-to-go and then set off. My expectation was that the faster speed would preclude any deep thinking, but this was not the case at all. In fact, at the end of an hour I had planned out two potentially interesting cognitive experiments.

With just over a minute to go I sneaked a look under the towel to make sure I was ahead of my 7 mile target, but found I was behind, so increased the speed to 9mph to catch up.

Overall, the run was relatively easy (as evidenced by the deep thought) including the short sprint and I could probably have run further if I had been in the mood. This might well have had something to do with the mid-week run (from which I had tight calves for a couple of days).

Now I’m sitting back in the tea-house with my copy of HBR waiting patiently by my side… while I hurry to finish this post before my lap-top battery runs out! Have a great week peops!

May 8, 2010May 8, 2010

Sharing

I was disappointed this week that I not only didn’t manage to run, but that I also didn’t manage to run with Daren on Thursday morning… because I had a scheduled a meeting earlier than I had remembered. I’m hoping that he’s going to share the route with me though so that I too can run it… it sounded gorgeous from his description.

In the spirit of sharing and in the absence of running to write about, I thought that you might like to see the photo below. The quality is not to Karen’s standard by any stretch of the imagination (her site is still under construction but will be worth revisiting in a few weeks), but there was no tripod or medium format camera here… just my point-and-shoot, taken through the dining room window, steadied against the window frame. Please click on the image to see it more clearly.

While I’ve got my wallet out, so to speak, I’d like to recommend the film that we chanced upon last night.

Moonlight Mile is a really thoughtful portrayal of loss and Jake Gyllenhaal, whilst finding his own way, takes the hands of both the viewer and his fellow characters, played by Dustin Hoffman, Susan Sarandon and Ellen Pompeo, and leads them on a journey to acceptance. This beautiful film from 2002 will probably bring a tear to your eye whilst the underscoring soundtrack will have your foot tapping merrily away, and I think you’ll be left feeling the richer for having watched it.

March 7, 2010March 7, 2010

Sociable Sunday

Kim and I saw Tim Burton’s film Alice in Wonderland last night, which was very strange. Having seen Avatar a few weeks ago, I am already captivated by the whole 3D experience and physically ducked or flinched several times during the film and the 3D adverts that preceded it. But there didn’t seem to be sufficient development of the characters involved , as typified by the Mad Hatter’s occasional lapse into a broad Scot’s accent, which kept leaving me with the feeling that I had missed some important bits. Was there a prequel that I should have seen? Overall, worth seeing, but slightly, er… vacuous. Sorry Tim!

This morning dawned sunny and COLD! Rather than run from Woodingdean, I had arranged to meet Cliff at Falmer and run off-road and since there was virtually no traffic on the road for either of us, we were both standing shivering by about 8.45am… as was the pond, which you can see below was partially frozen.

Pete then turned up in his car (a double surprise!) and I was then treated to the spectacle of two grown men comparing their prototype appendages ahead of the Brighton Marathon… if this sounds a little vague, then it’s supposed to, as I am sworn to secrecy. I did get a photograph of one of the said items…

… although whilst Cliff is holding it, he is also carefully hiding it behind the black fabric. Designers eh!

Since none of the others deigned to turn up (very sensibly, in view of the temperature) we set off up the Falmer Road, around to Newmarket Copse and then up to the top of the ridge. The wind was fweezin and comments were passed the couple of times I snuck into Cliff’s slipstream, so I had to grin and bear it! We went along as far as Swanborough Hill before heading south, down towards Balsdean pumping station.

At the bottom I suggested that we run up to the reservoir on the top of the hill before returning and continuing on our way, but was vetoed by my older friends. I’m sure that I saw the sheep, with their newly-born lambikinis in tow, smirking at this display of wimpishness! Mind you, neither I nor the sheep have a 50-mile race coming up in less than two weeks time… on that basis maybe they should be given the benefit of the doubt!

We took the path affectionately known as The Snake, for all its twists and turns (and today slightly slippery top layer), up to the top of Woodingdean and from here we doubled back up to the radio mast, Pete insisting on racing a cyclist up to the top of the hill.

For all you bottom fetishists out there, the following photographs are purely designed to illustrate that I’m a messy runner… that can be the only explanation, because we ran along exactly the same paths!

From the top of Castle Hill we dropped down to Newmarket Copse and then back to Falmer, which we reached at the one hour 40 mark. Alas, I was certain that I needed to do more, so I left the others next to the cars and pressed onwards.

I ran over the A27 and up the road towards Mary’s Farm, cutting off left on the other side of the hill to reach the back of the University of Sussex… where I was frankly disappointed by the amount of rubbish laying around where the students presumably had held a party (what a grumpy old man I am… but clean it up guys!). I ran through the campus and then across the bottom of Stamner Park before running to the bottom of Coldean Lane.

I crossed under the road and ran through the housing estate and then through Falmer School grounds, memories flooding back from the years I spent there as a child… although I have to confess mixed emotions about the evocation that has been placed over the doors, which read ‘Welcome Proud of Falmer‘. I think I get what the authors were trying to say, but I bet this was designed by committee and I’m sure my old English teacher would have put a red pen right through it with a comment to the effect of ‘could do much better‘.

I continued on towards the football stadium, but just past Falmer Station was forced out on to the main road when the path ran out. I carefully snuck along the side of the road, took my chances with the traffic at the junction and then ran into the tranquillity of the old village (well, half of it, since the planners long-ago cut it in half), going all the way around the pond to add a few minutes to my time… and hence getting a rare shot from the other side of the pond.

The time was 2.32 and with a distance that I’ve just worked out as 15.5 miles, the speed averaged out at 6.12mph. Sad to report that the initial 10.8 miles, completed with the guys and hilly as it was, was much faster at 6.48mph and the balance a tardy 5.87mph, but the distance was the overall aim today so I’m happy with that. I have another 20-miler planned next week, so watch this space!

February 11, 2010

Ten on the tenth… part two

So far this week we have seen three very interesting movies: Synecdoche, New York and 500 Days of Summer thanks to Karen and Avatar thanks to Jason. Synecdoche was supremely hard work to trawl through, but highly rewarding in that the point is worth getting, even if, as in my case, it was right at the end! 500 Days of Summer, which could easily have been a trite chick-flick but thankfully wasn’t, also had some worthwhile points to make and in a surprisingly similar vein.

Meanwhile, Avatar… well if you are not at all bothered about seeing this, as was I, you should just go see for yourself. It was not at all what I expected and aside from this… well let’s just say that the days of 2D films must surely be numbered.

I did manage to get my planned longer run in yesterday and it was reassuring to see progress in at least some areas since the same time last month, not least that whilst both days had snow on the ground, it’s at least a lot thinner this month!

January 10th: 10 miles in 82 minutes, heart rate sub 175, slight post-run staggering, upstairs bathroom in progress.

February 10th: 10 miles in 79.35, heart rate sub 170, scant post-run staggering, bathroom complete.

The increase in speed was due to 1) not waiting 800m to increase the speed to 7.5mph and 2) running a slight negative split by increasing the speed to 7.6 for the second 5 miles. 40.11/39.25. The decrease in heart-rate is the exciting thing for me as this seems a better indicator of fitness.

As to the bathroom, where once it was Orange:

Now it just is: