Category: Magic carpet

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Pain relief

My overarching reason for running this morning was to relief the muscle pain created by washing the cars & gardening yesterday.  My shoulder particularly had reminded me that I had overdone it every time I turned over in bed last night!

A run seemed like the best way to loosen up.

I dialled in 7mph on the machine and after each five minutes I took a couple of sips of water and increased the speed by 0.1 mph.  There was an ongoing conversation in my head about whether to run 5 miles or for an hour.

I settled on 45 minutes, after which time I had run 5.5 miles, an average of 7.3 mph.

My shoulder is still painful, but the muscles are a lot looser so it’s not grabbing my attention so much.  More gardening required methinks… just not today!

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Cloud Atlas for real

Last night we made it to the flicks to see Cloud Atlas.

I read the book a couple of years ago and the film invokes the same initial confusion as your brain tries to make sense of the different strands… it’s challenging, especially in full and rather graphic technicolour.

The fact that this is not a film for everyone was evidenced by the few people who walked out part way through, though it had a tidy resolution that would probably have given them more peace than they would undoubtedly have been left with.

My own vague malaise bottomed out yesterday and the film was then great healing material.

Despite my improved countenance this morning dawned grey and cold again, so I opted for another run on the machine, setting the speed to 7mph and increasing it gently as the distance increased.  In the last ten minutes I increased the speed more progressively, reaching 8.5mph at the close.

I remained calm and relatively unhurried throughout, staring at the white wall in front of me with an empty mind.  It was undoubtedly hot work, even with the fan blowing air on me, but it was not hard work and at the end of 60 minutes I had covered 7.25 miles.

As I have been writing the sun has made an appearance, giving a more hopeful hue to the colours outside… Spring is almost here and a new cycle is about the start.

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Of wise men

One of the benefits of running on the machine is the amount of thinking that I do.  Towards the end of my run I started thinking about what made the archetypal ‘wise man’ wise?

On a Strawbs album when I was growing up there was a quote from the Buddha:

As a man of discernment, standing on a rocky eminence, boholdeth those who are below and in distress; so doth the sage, who by his wakefulness hath put to flight his ignorance, look down upon suffering mankind from the heights of wisdom that he hath attained.

It’s from memory, so it might not be strictly accurate, but the question remains: how did the sage put to flight his ignorance?

The curiosity to observe what was going on around him and the humility to do it without judgement?  The perception to see behind the obvious and the flexibility of thinking to embrace this new information.  The courage to challenge dogma and the resilience to keep going when this got hard work?

These are all relevant sterling qualities, but is there also some reason they often seemed to favour living in the wilderness… even if it was only for 40 days and 40 nights?

I think the reason has to do with the way that blue sky thinking comes to us.  To my mind the sky is on the inside, held as one of the millions of life-inputs captured within our subconscious.  It is within this entity that ideas happen and all that is required to access them is a quiet conscious mind.

You’ll have to forgive this slightly kookie subject… it’s the kind of thing that happens when I stare at a white wall for half an hour. Along with myriad ideas for how to easily suspend an iPad in front of the running machine to give me something to think about while I’m running.

I ran 5 miles in 42.40, an average of 7mph and I’d like to leave you with something else that has been running around in my mind… if you have time to watch it?

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Warm up

After eighteen days away working in warmer climes (we won’t dwell on the international news stories about the attendant cyclone and the flooding it generated in the local area!), the UK was a COLD place to return to.

The hot and humid weather on the other side of the world was not conducive to any exercise other than the occasional evening dip in the swimming pool so I have no running to report during that period.

As a result of these two factors, exacerbated by jet-lag, my run last Sunday was in the warm embrace of the running machine and at a gentle 6mph warm up pace.

I have nothing much more to report, other than my memory remains as fickle as ever… even five days after the event, I’m struggling to remember the myriad thoughts I had.

I’m not even certain about the time & distance, but I’ve decided the most likely combination is 5 miles in 49.5 minutes.

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The snow thickens

The teahouse in the snow, again

With the snow following me back from Scandinavia this week and without the benefit of Martin’s running spikes, I opted for a run on the machine this morning.

On a scale of enjoyment, running on your own on a machine compares poorly to running with friends in interesting places, so my aim today was to get on and off as quickly as I could.

I set my goal as 45 minutes, dialled in 7mph and got on with it.

What can I say?  The cheese plant waved gently at me as my head bobbed up and down.  I got the stitch after about 25 minutes and I couldn’t shake it.  I needed my mental stamina to finish.  I counted down the minutes rather than watching the distance increase, amusing myself by trying to do mental arithmetic to see whether I needed to increase the speed to get an average of 7mph… the machine takes long seconds to get up to speed initially.

And failing at the arithmatic:  60 minutes divided by 7 is…?  The seconds make it a complex calculation to do… and to then compare with the current time/distance equation, especially when you’re running… and especially when your body is rebelling.

I was about 6 seconds adrift at the 45 minute stage, covering 5.24 rather than 5.25 miles and thus averaging 6.98mph.  But who cares… I was just glad to have finished.

It’s still snowing outside, harder now and I’m hoping that trains, planes and automobiles will all be running on time as required this week!

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Reluctant tempo

We went to an awesome party at Clive & Nats last night, with an excellent live band and lots of interesting folk to chat to.

If there was a Mens’ Sussex Fitness Party League, then Clive and Nat would consistently be at the top… both in terms of quality and quantity.  Meanwhile I can count the number of parties we’ve held recently on no hands at all!

After such an excellent evening this morning was flat and grey and I had little inclination to run.  However, I know that in order to be able to have the occasional run like last weekend, whilst also keeping this blog trickling along, I need to keep my running going.

So I reluctantly climbed aboard the magic carpet machine, dialled in 7mph and set off in the general direction of the cheese plant.

One hour later, having covered, er… 7 miles (but strangely not yet reached the aforementioned plant) I went outside to stretch and cool down.  By that time the sun had come out and it was relatively mild… just as well as I was standing there steaming in shorts and shoes only!

So a good tempo run and a few more words to the wise: all worthwhile stuff, reluctant or otherwise.

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Amnesia

Short of time to run on Sunday before we went out to lunch, I took to the machine for a 7mph tempo run.

At that speed the conscious seems able to detect thoughts bubbling up from the subconscious and I managed to find some really inspiring ones before I finished.  These I captured briefly on the white board in my office as: Emotion -> Problems, conscious/subconscious.

Alas, I now seem to have amnesia about what those ideas were… somewhat frustrating as I was clearly excited about them!  My memory is not my strong suite though so there’s no point in beating myself up… hopefully I can rediscover them on a future occasion!

5 miles in just under 43 minutes.

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More workshop material

A damp, grey morning did not inspire me to want to run outside.  I knew that my favourite paths would be ankle-deep in cold and watery mud and running on the road didn’t especially grab me either.  Instead I headed for the machine.

After a half mile warm-up at 6mph I jumped to 7mph and then increased by 0.2 each quarter-mile until I reached 8mph.  I returned to 6mph for a quarter mile and repeated the exercise before returning to 6mph and running the final mile at 7mph.  This may seem a little convoluted, but I saw it as a mild form of interval training.

Though I focused my cognitive resources on the mechanics of running for a change, I also alighted upon an interesting exercise for a workshop later this week.  It’s amazing how similar the approaches for training people to run faster is, to helping people to think more creatively.

5 miles in 42.35, a little over 7mph average.

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5 mile breakfast

After a couple of weeks off (read whatever poor excuse you like!), I broke my fast this morning with a five mile run, performed in 42.41, an average of 7mph.

However, while Mark chose to get his legs shot-blasted with the first heavy rain of the autumn, I chose to run indoors on the machine… call me what you like, so long as it’s prefaced with ‘sensible’!

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Spectator sport

I sat reading in the tea-house for the duration of only one cup of quadspresso yesterday morning, before climbing about the magic carpet for a run.  I was due to attend a quiet ceremony to inter the ashes of John Brooks and was expecting my eldest brother to collect me.

I continued the 7mph tempo theme of the last two weeks, this time counting down twelve five-minute segments… which strangely varied in perceptual length from ten minutes to only a few seconds depending on how deeply engrossed I was thinking about something else at the time!

I was about fifteen minutes from the end when there was a knock on the window and I turned my head to see my brother running on the spot outside, bobbing up and down neatly in time with me.

He graciously allowed me to continue and stood chatting while I finished the balance of my seven miles and allotted one hour.  I probably wasn’t the best conversational partner though since I was dripping with sweat and was more than a little breathy!

We continued chatting while I tried to cool down outside, but to little avail… in fact, even after showering and changing I still felt like I had just climbed off the machine.  Thank goodness for the aircon in his car!