Category: Other thoughts

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Showing the outgoing year a clean pair of heels

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It was a really good start to the year… waking up about 30 seconds before my alarm went off at eight.  Not that early I know, but too early for most and a great time to go for a run.  

The morning was mild , quite still and slightly misty and sound seemed to be deadened, which meant that I probably scared the tails off about 20 squirrels.  As I ran out towards Ote Hall there was no-one around and the first person I saw was a farmer going about his chores.  There were a couple of cars on the main road at Wivelsfield, but I could have crawled across on all fours with no danger.

The Alpacas eyed me hungrily but I made it past both them and the sheep in the next field without becoming a tasty new year snack.  I passed a cheery family out for a walk as I dropped down into the village centre and then I headed out onto Hundred Acre Lane where I saw the bunny-rabbit tail of a red deer bounding into the undergrowth… clearly a relative of the Bok.  Down through the wood, a slight detour around a field looking for the exit and then back up into and through the wood along to the end of Spatham Lane.

From here I cut across the Common, over the railway line and down to Wellhouse Lane, past the water tower and over to the other railway line.  There I following the path alongside it to the station, stopping en route to take the weird photo above, before pushing up the last hill to the top of town and back down to home.

In all, I was out for one hour twenty-nine, covering 9.125 miles (or so!) at a speed of 6.08mph.  I was very happy with this, despite the fact that Nick had emailed me to quite frankly, er… gloat, that he had run nearly 6 miles in 45 minutes… a speed of 8.57mph.  I always said he was faster!!  Way to go Nick, although that was technically last year!

The rest of the day was spent relaxing in front of the… that’s rubbish, of course… we’ve been working our little socks off lately doing up Kim’s flat and today was no different: cutting down an old cupboard-side that I just cannot remove as it’s had the gas pipe and the dist-board for the heating system carefully woven through it; cutting the kitchen worktop (and pulling the muscles in my back trying to test it for size… which I didn’t manage to do!); working out where the tiles will go in the bathroom and fixing the first couple of rows; getting the bathroom door-frame ready so that I can hang the door on the other side; failing to remove the skirting and having to rebuild it (work in progress… sorry Kim!); drinking tea and occasionally swearing… though these latter seem to be the only aspects of being a builder that come naturally!

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Walk to work

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I’m sitting here basking in the rays of sunshine beating (weakly) on my desk and thinking about my Australian friends (hey y’all) sitting on their various East coast beaches eating turkey salad, washed down with Pimms, for Christmas. 

We’ve already had our now traditional early Christmas lunch and food-fest weekend, pictured serenely above before the action got started, and we get to celebrate Christmas all over again tomorrow!

I’m actually sitting here trying to get my head around a new concept from America that my brother has alerted me to in the I.D. magazine.  I often encourage my clients to stand up to have meetings (it helps people to keep to the point), walk around the block (to clear their minds before a brainstorm session, or to have a confidential one-on-one meeting with someone, which helps promote consensus and beats sitting across a desk) but this takes the idea in a different direction: walk while you work!

The idea is that your desk is a high-tech piece of gym equipment, designed to allow you to walk (at a sedate 2mph) while you work.  The desk curves at the front to hug your stomach, while the desk whirs into place to allow your hands easy access to your keyboard with your wrists resting on a thick pad.  It took the writer around 15 minutes to come to terms with the new arrangement and zone in on his work, which I think is pretty good, all things considered.  He even felt productive when staring off into space!

Priced at between $3,500 and $4,500 (from Steelcase’s Details subsidiary if you’re interested) I think the Walkstation is going to be next years hot corporate toy, although I suspect that, though they may be used to intimidate visitors (the possible permutations for calculating CEO’s are wonderful!!), they will otherwise sit forlorn and idle like so much other gym equipment after the month of January.

Hmmm… wonders… how much of your power cost you could save if all your employees were walking their working week?  Not only would they feel warmer (lower heating costs) but you might be able to power their laptops.  And think of it, no need to shut down your machine at the end of the day either, just get off and go home.

Heck, why stop there?  Why not make these things mobile so that you can work as you walk home?

Walk as you eat in restaurants.  Walk as you watch TV in the evenings.  Walk as you sleep… you may think that’s daft, but some people do this already.

Next thing you know, there’ll be some whizz-kid working out how to speed the process up so that you can run while you work and then they really will have reinvented the wheel. 

The hamster wheel, that is.

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Happy Birthday Big-Big Bro!

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I posted an early photo of my other brother, Nigel, on his birthday a couple of months ago and Kim suggested I do likewise for Michael, above… please note the subtle shifting of blame here after the threats of sibling retribution I received before! 

As a Queen’s Scout with an MA in Pure Physics from Oxford, Michael is a really bright guy and well deserving of his place as first child.  And as you can see from the photo, he’s a good looking chap too. 

Although if I’m honest, he’s a touch older than this photo, taken by Peter Foster in [I daren’t say!] suggests…

Happy Birthday Bro!

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A Bok in sheep’s zimming

Public apology: It has been pointed out to me that the reason for Nick slowing down prior to the final hill last week was not, as I had guessed, to gather his energy, but rather for my benefit, ungrateful sod that I am. 

Oh, and to make sure that his heart hadn’t exploded… more of which later.

Meantime, please bear in mind that one of the things that I really love about running is getting out into the fresh air and allowing my mind some space to think.  In my work I occasionally help teams to be creative and one of the easiest ways to facilitate this is by getting people to leave the office, with its myriad distractions, to go for a walk around the block or into a park.

This morning was overcast but relatively warm and whilst it threatened to rain, it actually held off until we were back.  We took a different route out and having warmed up gentle-like, bowled along at a quite reasonable pace.  Behind the Royal Oak there’s a most beautiful and ancient church and this morning we ran past this way, up the driveway and across the main road into the back of Wivelsfield.  From here we followed my Sunday route for a while and it was on this uphill through the wood that I first realised something was amiss.

I was undoubtedly on good form, probably due to my shorter-and-faster-than-normal Sunday run, whilst I suspect that the Bok had spent most of his weekend ambibing incohol and being deprived of sleeping it off by two inquisitive sons.  As we pushed heartily up through Hundred Acre Wood, my inner peace was disturbed irrevocably by a recurrent beeping.  The Bok looked sheepish, which was a sight in itself, confessing that his nuclear-powered externally mounted satellite global heart position monitor was warning of impending disaster, with threat to life and limb. 

I think I preferred it sans power… it was more peaceful.

At the top of the wood the Bok started to gallop again, only to refuse at a small brook.  If there had been a rider on his back, they would definitely have got wet.  If I had’ve been behind him at the time, then he’d have found out how deep the brook was, head first.

Ho hum.  Next time!

We eventually worked our way, beeping and gasping, across to Ditchling Common and it was when we were crossing the next road that I first realised there was a second, more subtly irritating noise.  This clacking disappeared once we were back on the muddy stuff, only to reappear at the bottom of the hill as we ran along towards Wellhouse Lane.  The unmistakable sound of a Zimmer frame dragged my mind back, kicking and screaming, from whatever peaceful haven it had found.

We slowed for the Bok to regain his composure whereupon he amazed me utterly by sprinting forward 100 feet, leaving meto carry the Zimmer.  And good job that I did, because he promptly collapsed back onto it when I caught up with him.

My prognosis of alcohol abuse linked to sleep deprivation was confirmed a couple of minutes later when he saw me take a swig of beer from a can of Grolsch: I actually took a swig of pop from a bright blue bottle as I passed a discarded beer-can laying in the grass… I can only rest my case!

And back again we were at the gentle uphill and the fast rise past the Station, me being admonished for misrepresentation to the beeping soundtrack of his exploding heart. 

I was determined to finish gently, but he dumped the Zimmer outside Daren’s place and started to motor down the hill, me tagging along in the wake of his testosterone.  As with last week I tagged along behind down the last 400m, but this week he increased the pace to try to shake me.  As with last week I gently closed the gap and out-sprinted him to the finish.

The run was done and the results were in: and they were not pretty!  We had covered 6.8 miles in 1 hour and 50 seconds… a mere 6.69mph compared to last week’s tantalising 6.99mph and my triumphant, if damp and windy Sunday 7.07mph.  But still better than the race-off-as-quick-as-you-can-and-then-collapse-in-a-heap 6.63mph on Wednesday 21st.

I’m sure the Bok will back at fighting weight next week and ready to mete out some much deserved punishment, but in the meantime I shall have a well deserved bask in the warm glow of his discomfort.

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Driving nuts

For those of you who share my passion for driving, I’ve noticed some excellent videos on Don Palmer’s website that might whet your appetite for a day spent on one of his limit handling courses… which are top value, believe me! 

Please note that, with Christmas fast approaching, these also make AWESOME presents for boys who you may think have everything!  [please also note that’s not a (n un) subtle hint from me, in case anyone thought it was!]

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Nick’s runners… by special request

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Nick took this photo of his runners when they arrived back at the house the other morning… some minutes after he did: that’s how fast he was running!

I had to clean the photo up a bit as you couldn’t see the trainers for all the smoke that was coming off of them.

I’ve just been reading about how the Inuit in Greenland used to hunt Whales in the 12th Century from kayaks and umiaks (small, skin boats).  They clearly couldn’t kill a whale with a single hand-thrown harpoon, let alone hang onto it on a rope afterwards, so they developed a harpoon that released itself on impact leaving behind a barb with an air-filled bladder attached.  As the whale tired of this extra drag, so it would surface and the Inuit hunters would repeat the exercise, and again, until the whale was so exhausted that an umiak could pull alongside and a hunter could kill the whale.

This puts me in mind of a sea anchor, designed, I guess, to float upstream or upwind in a driving sea and slow the craft down, making it more stable in otherwise difficult conditions.

Where I’m going with this is, well, think of a bath towel, rolled lengthways, with the ends secured to stop it unravelling. 

Now think of a cord, say a metre in length, at each end attaching it to one of the trainers pictured above. 

I reckon this kind of contraption might just slow the Bok down sufficiently for me to keep up.  What do you think?

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A heavy frost but no show

At 6.40am when I dragged myself out of a warm dream, there was a heavy frost on the world outside. 

As I supped my morning coffee in my reading chair, there was a tinge of regret at having agreed to go running again this morning with the no doubt suntanned Nick, freshly returned from Oman.

There was a rush of joy then when I received his blow-out text a few minutes later. 

But don’t tell him yet… let him wallow in the guilt of crying off for a while longer!

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Motivation

I’m sure that people start writing blogs (or anything else for that matter) for any number of reasons, but for me it was to create a cyclical pressure to both write and run.  I want to write, so I have to run, even on mornings when I don’t want to, in order to have something to write about, even on days where I don’t feel like it.  Shall I give you a moment to absorb that?

Today was one of those mornings where, having returned to a warm bed after working out where the alarm noise was coming from, I really did not want to run.  Sitting here now, I can also tell you, I would rather be sinking into the sofa than trying to muster the energy to write.  But run I did, so write I must!

It looked like rain, but within ten minutes (the time it takes the body to warm up to running temperature) I was regretting wearing two base layers AND my Goretex jacket.  By the time the second runner passed me in the opposite direction wearing only shorts and t-shirt, I was feeling pretty silly  It was milder than I had anticipated but I was only going for a slow run around the block, so to speak, so no worries.

You may already have realised that I’m fascinated by the power of the mind and its internal dichotomy – the conscious and unconscious.  The writer Julia Cameron calls her unconscious inner critic ‘Nigel’, creating a persona for what the rest of just know as the thing that tries to stop us achieving our goals.  The way to get around our inner Nigels’ is to creep up on them with practiced stealth, which is why I had decided to do a 45 minute circuit this morning… and why the run took me steadily away from the house.  I could turn around at any stage, but all the time I felt okay I could also keep going.

When the rain finally came , I was already running through Ditchling with (half) a mind to go to the bottom of the Downs and turn around.  The Gore jacket is such an effective bit of kit that it was a real pleasure running in the rain and this, ably supported by my iQ beanie, helped me run on until I found myself on the path that leads to the top of the Beacon.  How strange.

How strange also that, despite not feeling at all like running, I would not allow myself to pause or walk in the ascent, so I just plugged away up the hill until I got to the very top.  I note with interest that Sri Chinmoy, the Indian spiritual guru who passed away recently, believed in hard physical exercise as a route to enlightenment.  Nietzsche similarly encouraged his readers to scale the peaks, physically and mentally (have you ever tried to read his work?!) and it’s true that there is a special draw about attaining the very top of a hill.  As a man of discernment standing on a rocky eminence beholdeth 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 he hath attained.  The Buddha.

These guys must have been fit, because I was knackered and standing there it was as much as I could do to take a photo… which I’ll upload when I have worked out how to email pictures from my new phone!  Daniel? Tina?

So it was that I found myself slip-sliding back down the Beacon and retracing my steps, back through pretty Ditchling, back past the horny goats, back through the chicken pen, back past the horses and through the electric fences, back past the farmers with their shotgun (a bit too close for comfort on the way out!), back across the common and back to the house.  Back to stretch out my tight muscles and then flat on my back with knackeredness.

The surprising things:  my short run was two hours on the nose and 11.25 miles (18km) in length; including the climb I reached the Beacon after 1 hour and three minutes and it took me 57 minutes to get home again; three hours later, I’m still knackered!

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Thanks Nessie

We spent a really lovely evening yesterday eating, drinking and making merry with Cliff & Ness, June and Penny.  And I made the error of showing my new phone to Nessie who is well known to be an errant prodder of switches and buttons.  Which is why the alarm went off at 8.50am this morning. 

So this is a quick note to Ness to say thank you for your hospitality, a most delicious meal and for not setting my alarm any earlier! X