Category: Great things to do!

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Last weekend you trecked

You may have gathered from my post earlier this week that we disappeared off to Holland last weekend to see our friends Adam & Sandra, celebrate their son Thomas’s second birthday and deliberately surprise Thomas’s grandparents, Tim & Anna, who were also visiting.

 The outgoing leg was really straightforward, with great roads right up til about half a mile from their place.  The we spent a frustrating half hour following Tom-Tom as it tried in vain to get us to the new-build on roads that have either been abandoned in a large area of development, or have yet to be built!

Utrecht is a really pretty place, with a deep set canal winding through the town with its cobbled streets and wonky houses.  The weather was gloriously bright & sunny and perilously cold, but it was a great introduction to what is probably well off the tourist trail for most people from the UK.

Adam & Sandra were generous hosts, putting us in mind of our friends Scott & Carolyn in Seattle.  In fact both Adam & Scott LOVE their coffee, but while Scott has a really smart stainless steel cafetiere, Adam has an espresso machine that grinds beans at from the top to make totally amazing and pretty much instantanteous coffee.

Their house backs on to a canal that was frozen the whole weekend, to such an extent that Adam had been walking on it the previous week.  THAT’s cold!

Most of our return trip was straightforward and we pottered back to the tunnel via some very quiet seaside villages along the French coast – one can imagine that in the summer, the glorious sandy beaches will be heaving with holiday-makers.  As soon as we unloaded in the UK we realised that the weather had changed, hence the previous pictures and the additional two and a half hours it took us to get home.

But Utrecht is well work a visit!

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Exercise

Nigel & Kristin, as our lovely house guests over the Christmas break, may well report me as being a lazy git.  And they would be right.  The only time I went into the great ‘cold & wet outside’ during the three weeks they were here, was to paddle up the River Cuckmere with Debbie, Kim and them on New Years Day… a really still, flat grey day.  This was the first time my little Kendo had seen the water for ahem… years, but start the year as you mean to go on… that’s what I say!

Since they returned to Seattle on the 6th, I’ve been hard at work catching up.  The first thing I did was to go wimmin (that’s swimming for those of you unaccustomed to my obtuseness) for half an hour… although Kim swore that I was only in there for 20 minutes before I dragged myself out like a jelly.  Since then I went a further two times, for 30 minutes and 40 minutes, with my muscles starting to remember the strokes that I worked on before my collar-bone was so rudely broken whist skiing three (?) years ago.  By the way, does anyone else think that the lane-swimming at the Triangle is slightly over-priced, with the evening sub-one-hour sessions being priced at £3.80?

And since this is a running blog, I thought it would be remiss of me not to do some of that too.  Last Sunday I ran out into the remnants of the cold weather and returned an hour and ten minutes later in the start of the warm spell.  I did the 7.1 mile loop out past Ote Hall, the pyjamas, Wivelsfield village, Hundred Acre Lane & woods, Ditchling Common industrial estate, the Magical Path and back across the Common.  It was delightful running weather and I even had to wear my shades.

Yesterday morning was so beautiful, it was almost spring-like here and we made the most of it by doing all our outside chores… although by the time I had washed the cars I was pretty much done in and the weather had turned cold.

It chucked it down with rain last night and I was not looking forward to running in a storm, but this morning dawned bright and clear again and it was a pleasure to don my running gear on and get out into it.  Despite the ongoing twice-daily chi-kung exercises and the swimming, I wasn’t sure that I felt any fitter than last weekend, so I ran the same route to see whether there was any time difference.  Alas not… the same 1 hour ten as before… 6mph.  Although, to be fair, the ground was a little more, er, liquid than last week.

The sun was streaming into the house when I got back and I just had to sit and soak up the rays.  Inside, of course!

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Women!

What a gorgeous day it was!  Mighty cold mind, but beautiful!

It was a real shame that I was favouring my ankle, as it would have been a great day to have run up on to the Downs.  Still, not one for shirking the fitness regime (which basically involves trying to staying fit), I tagged along with Kim to the pool.

I think that I am right in saying that the last time I went swimming was in a rather exclusive pool in Thailand back in the spring.  2007.  And even then I was more interested in keeping cool, occasionally swimming to the in-pool bar for another G&T.

So I was slightly worried that I would swallow loads of water, get cramp, feel exhausted etc.  Actually it came back easily and I had little trouble breathing the air and though Nick or Cliff might smirk at my style, I had a really positive half hour.  

Even then I wasn’t tired, but I’m now old enough to know that my body is able to do a whole lot of amazing stuff, if I ask it to, but it can be really painful after the event.  Such insight!

I quickly lost count of the laps, so I can’t even give you an approximate distance, but having swum and then also cleaned the insides of all the windows in the house, I do at least feel exercised.

And both Kim and I agree that, even after only one week of doing the chi-kung exercises each day, we really do feel great.  I doubly recommend it!

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Shaolin Cosmo Chi-Kung

Do what?  I’m not sure exactly what I have done to my foot, but I decided not to run this weekend.  Instead, after dropping in to see Kurt at Run yesterday to buy some warmer gloves, my exercise consisted of attending a Chi-Kung (or Qigong) course with Kim.

Chi-Kung (pronounced jee-gung) is a combination of simple motion and gentle breathing, performed in a meditative state of mind.  It is hard to imagine it being prescribed as a restorative by a UK doctor, which is a great shame, but in China it has been a key part of medicine for the last 5000 years.

If you’re wondering why western doctors might tend to be dismissive of Chinese medicine, I have just formed a (clearly over-simplistic) hypothesis:

From my personal experience, western medicine seems to be based loosely on cure, whereas eastern medicine appears to focus more on prevention.  

This may be because, historically, Europe and north America have been comparatively wealthy for the size of population and thus able to afford to develop a good ‘health system’, seeking to ease the symptoms or eradicate specific diseases and creating a range of drugs to this end.  

In China by comparison, with traditionally difficult terrain, poor infrastructure and 20% of the global population to look after on a relatively shoestring budget, a system of self-help augmented by locally available herbal remedies makes much greater economic and political sense.

As a result of its focus on cure, western medicine now often involves some kind of medical distress purchase whereas eastern medicine focuses more on promoting the health of the mind and body on a daily basis.  

Since a higher price can be charged for a distress purchase, western medicine has more budget not only to spend on the research of new compounds, enabling it to make technological advances, but on PR, which enables it to undermine its less costly competition.  Furthermore, since revenues can be taxed, it is presumably likely to find strong advocates in government.

In case anyone finds this even remotely contentious, please excuse me and remember it is only a humble hypothesis… said he, quickly returning to the chi-kung lesson.

Sifu Robin Gamble, our tutor, was English and younger than I had expected, but also had far more vitality than I generally see in the people I meet.  Bearing in mind the number of highly competent business people and talented entrepreneurs I mix with from around the globe, this is genuine praise.  His earnest approach quickly drew the students together, despite their different skills and levels of experience.

He had chosen some simple, memorable aspects of Chi-Kung to teach us in this introductory session, aiming to send us away more interested in the art and with the ability to replicate the patterns and derive genuine benefit from only a short intervention.

He showed us how to achieve Standing Zen and Swaying Willows Floating Clouds and the forms of Lifting the Sky, Pushing Mountains and Holding the Moon.  He also mixed in Punching with Wide Eyes and some other elements to add some fun and interest.

Held in the calm of the studio at the Acupuncture Clinic in Hove, the session was refreshing and energising, both for body and mind.  I don’t want to gush about it, but if you’re looking for a great way to spend a grey Saturday afternoon, it doesn’t get much better.  Or more restorative.

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Next project please!

Summer gave us a really warm goodbye last weekend and I was determined to make the most of the fine weather by finishing the teahouse.  On went the sliding door that Kim had specified and up went the edging boards.  There are still a couple of internal tasks to do, but that’ll give me something to do while I ponder the next project.

There was just about enough time on Sunday to transfer my gardening junk from the garage to the teahouse and then tidy the garage ready to take my car back in time for autumn.  Kim’s car even got henry’d and washed, but the strength in my arms gave out before I had a chance to do mine!

I would like to thank all the folk who gave help and advice, but especially Andrew from Transformations who helped me make sense of my own design and understand what woodworking joints to use, Cliff who suggested less expensive solutions for my various crazy ideas, Nathan & his team from Upstairs Downstairs who kindly treated me as if I knew what I was doing and Kim for her invaluable design inputs.  And endless cups of tea!

taa-daa! Cup of tea anyone? 
Taa-daa!  Cup of tea, anyone?
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The evolution of a Tea-House

Construction in the garden continued unabated this weekend, hampered only by the available hours before darkness.  It has started to take on a slight post-modernist Japanese Tea-House look, although across the whole weekend, the most enjoyable drink of the day was my morning coffee.  Although that might have been because the myriad cups of Twinings Earl Grey I consumed  were largely snatched whilst juggling tools & materials.  

By the way, Earl Grey is the post-modernist Japanese Tea-House builders tea in this house-hold!

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First anniversary

This blog is officially one year old today and I thought it might be interesting to reflect briefly on what my aims were in starting it and what I have achieved.

I’ve long wanted to write, although not quite known what to write, which has always made it rather difficult to get started.  Having read Julia Cameron’s The Sound of Paper last year, I had come to realise that to be able to write you had to just get on and do it.  Regularly.  It actually doesn’t really matter what you write, so long as you do.

So the idea behind this blog and my other site to a certain extent, was to give me a reason to write.  But blogs are notoriously difficult to keep up, with many people writing a few inspired entries and then petering out when they can’t think what to write about.  Therefore I needed a subject that would keep me engaged.

Making it a blog about running meant that I had to run in order to write, which served two good purposes at the same time.  Run to write, write to run and it’s been a great year for both.  Including this one, I have published 156 posts, an average of 3 each week. 

In addition to attending 5 training sessions like the one on Tuesday, I have also run more than 538 miles, or around 45 miles per month.  Some months such as February were light, where skiing and ice driving meant that I only managed 22.3 miles.  By comparison I managed 66 miles in October, 67 miles last month and 69 miles in November.

As Clustermap shows, I have also somehow managed to notch up readers from around the world: in the US & Canada, Brazil, South Africa, Western Europe, the Middle East, India and China.  Despite this, it is clear that there are only a few of you who are more regular… you know who you are!

So, a hearty thank you to all the readers of FosterRuns.com and to all those who have commented to boot… you have made both my writing and my running much more enjoyable and I hope that you will stay with me as I run headlong into a second year.