Photos – Page 10 – Foster Runs

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 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 1, 2013

Fast tempo

I remember being in Mrs Simpson’s class at Woodingdean Primary School, which would make it the early seventies, when I first tasted a Kiwi fruit. The combination of this memory and the fact that I’m a Chinese Wood Dragon meant that Waitrose had a pretty much guaranteed sale when I saw this Pitahaya or Dragonfruit on the shelf. It’s actually the fruit of a cactus called Hylocereus and it was such a new line that the staff hadn’t even had a chance to try it, so we had to look on-line to see how to prepare and eat it.

It is full of vitamin C, antioxidants etc (that is, it’s healthy, so long as you don’t eat the pink outer skin) and is a little like a Kiwi in both taste and texture… close enough in many regards to make the less expensive Kiwi a more appealing prospect. Nice to try though.

I’ve had a couple of manic weeks and didn’t get around to writing last weekend… more specifically as a result of having to mark twenty 3,000 word essays on different aspects of entrepreneurship. I used the same excuse for not running last Sunday, but that didn’t mean that I had no exercise… in fact, I had really stiff legs for most of last week!

The reason for this was Clive’s 50th birthday party on Saturday night. There must have been 200 people there, of all ages, but it was the Falmer class of 1982 who dominated the dance floor with their totally weird gyrations. Still young enough to have the stamina to dance all night, old enough to be really embarrassing to anyone under 30!

It probably counts as the most fun I’ve had all year!

This week I’ve had the first normal weekend since July. Weekends in August & September consisted of recovering from heavy weeks in Cambridge, finalising modules for my Brighton Business School course and then driving off on a Sunday evening. Those in October and November have consisted of reading and preparing for Brighton, UCL or Terbell lectures.

Aside from catching up on sleep, my ‘normal’ weekend has consisted of minor chores such as cleaning the windows with Kim, washing the cars, stretching out a painful shoulder from these activities etc and more enjoyable things like reading, playing guitar and so on.

This morning’s run fell in between these two categories. To build on my good work two weekend’s ago I decided to attempt a tempo run at 8 mph… that is, running at the same speed for the whole duration.

The machine needs a little time to get up to speed, so despite running at 8 for the first two miles I was about 12 seconds behind at the halfway mark. As a result I ran the next mile at 8.1 and the final one at 8.2 for good measure, clearing 4 miles with seconds to go.

It was hard going, but at least the discomfort was balanced in all areas, with nothing standing out to put a stop to proceedings. Whether this training regime will result in a faster latent running speed outside is yet to be seen, but it’s an interesting (if not wholly enjoyable) exercise.

4 miles in 30 minutes, 8mph average.

Next week is looking a little quieter at the moment and although this is ot good, there is still time for new challenges to arise! Have a great week peops!

November 17, 2013

Stretch goal

I’ve had yet another hectic week: bearing in mind that we tend to evaluate things based on the high point and the ending, this was a GREAT week. I had a series of interesting conversations: with students at UCL; with employees during a change management intervention; and with the engaging children of the client concerned. I also managed to save a client a steep fee through bootstrapped recruiting. The week then ended on a real high, teaching twenty extremely hard-working Terbell PostGrad students… thank you for leaving me with a really BIG smile on my face at the end of the day guys!

One of the concepts that I teach (and utilise) on my Team Dynamics module for Terbell is Matthew Syed’s Purposeful Practice. Syed’s concept, drawn from his experience of becoming a Commonwealth Table Tennis champion, involves constantly seeking to fail at what you’re doing during your practice sessions. His model asserts that by constantly pushing the limits of our mental and physical boundaries, we slowly increase the envelope of our abilities.

Two Sundays ago, whilst thinking about hypothermia and other stuff during my run, I was also pondering whether it would be possible for me to run four miles in 30 minutes… I had managed 3.77 miles, but I recognised that the gap was not insignificant.

My run in Brighton last week, where I maintained an average of 7 mph for 35 minutes, made me realise that my recent focus on speed over distance was actually paying off… even though it was time constraints (and laziness) rather than a training focus that had driven my choice of machine over muddy track!

So my goal, as I climbed onto the machine this morning, was to push the current limits in order to see whether this translates into an overall ability to run yet faster… Syed’s hypothesis is that it will.

I warmed up for half a mile at 7 mph before increasing the speed to 8.1 mph and settled into running at this increased tempo. I quickly realised that the fan was not blowing the air at me and that I had left my water bottle in the kitchen but, whilst not ideal, I did not let these irritations distract me from my task.

I consciously leveraged two insights: one from my childhood, where a Scoutmaster (who was a Police Diver) taught us to expel the lactic acid build-up in our lungs, by huffing out all the air between breaths, to prevent the stitch; the other from The Bok (Nick Broom’s appropriate pseudonym), who taught me to relax my hands, arms and upper body (and even my jaw) when running fast, in order to allow more energy to go to my legs.

I could see that I was adrift of my target after 3 miles so I started increasing the speed by 0.1 each minute to close the gap… I really started to feel the impact of the extra speed above 8.5 mph.

Still clearly adrift with a minute to go I ramped up to 10 mph, sprinting through the discomfort to hit my goal… but had I done enough?

I had! 4 miles in 30 minutes and an average of 8 mph… well done Foster!

Of course the irritating thing about Syed’s approach is that you can’t rest on your laurels, so I’m sure that next week will involve yet harder work! At least there’s a whole week to enjoy in the meantime!

November 16, 2013

Skating on thin ice

Last time I went skating was courtesy of Martin F in Sweden, where the ice was probably half a metre thick… except at the edge where we later went skinny dipping!

On Thursday evening my very good friend Jo invited me to a lovely event run by Venue Masters London which included skating on the newly opened Somerset House ice rink.

We had a totally glorious time figuring out how to skate again and racing round in circles!

Thank you to Jo and to the Venue Masters London team and other guests for making it such a memorable evening!

November 10, 2013November 16, 2013

Pier pressure

We’ve all felt the pressure exerted by our peers and last night I felt that inexorable pull as the first of my school friends turned 50 years of age… they always seem to be able to drag me along when it comes to age! I drove down to Andy’s party in Southampton with Cliff, who managed to persuade me, during the course of the evening, to join the crazy crew on the Pier to Pier run today. Not for them the straightforward route along the pavement… their route just had to do in the opposite direction and take a big 28-mile loop around mid-Sussex to get from one pier to the other.

Fortunately (from my current perspective, at least) I had my excuses lined up in a row… I had not run further than 3.77 miles for weeks, I was inundated with preparation for my current heavy workload of lecturing /consulting and I needed to be able to walk next week… unlikely if I did even half of the distance they were running!

I took a careful look at the route on the map to figure out which short section I could most efficiently run, time-wise and decided that I would join them at the end of the day for the final few miles to the end.

I met up with them in Ovingdean towards the end of a gloriously sunny day. Nikki had sadly succumbed to fatigue (on the last run, from the London Eye to the Brighton Eye last year, she intended to only run half way yet ended up completing the whole thing in style!) so there were seven left accompanied by two cyclists and Dai on his motorbike.

The running was easy as I was fresh out of the starting blocks, but these guys still had capacious reserves despite having run 25 miles! What I particularly enjoyed was the camaraderie, something you tend not to have on the running machine.

We ran on down to the kayak club, pausing to regroup and allow the last man to catch up ahead of the final dash.

The final dash ended up being exactly that, with Andy P inevitably unleashing a final burst of speed in order to cross the line first! Fortunately there wasn’t really a line as such to cross, so the ensemble all won first place at around the six-hour-mark for 28 point something miles.

As the sun started to head from the sky, I decided to make tracks back to the car, but I couldn’t resist doing my own pier to pier to pier run on the way. Of course I opted for the sensible direct route: it took me six minutes.

Thus I found myself running back from the West Pier to Ovingdean as the chill of the evening descended and a combination of this and my recent fast treadmill sessions spurred me onwards. Whilst the outbound route technically took me an hour and five minutes, including standing around chatting at the landward end of the pier, the return leg took me a mere 35 minutes… a respectable 7 mph.

We won’t mention the overall stats for the 8.2 miles ! (Well okay… 4.9 mph).

I shall now wait with baited breath for the next sublimely crazy challenge… increasing age certainly doesn’t appear (a pier?) to be dimming my peer group’s sense of adventure or creativity!

October 20, 2013

Stoned!

With a little more flex in my schedule last week and rain forecast for Saturday and Sunday, I chose to spend a few sunny hours here and there working in the garden as a trainee stonemason in exchange for a few rainy hours working over the weekend.

This meant that that the stone garden and path has progressed well, to the point where I can now focus on other things.

Next on the schedule is a final version of the hastily thrown-together prototype panel that has been standing firm against the elements for a couple of weeks, and a hidden store to clear out the shed part of the tea-house.

The latter is to facilitate the latest idea, which is to create a frame in the tea-house to take a futon mattress… moving it closer to the original relaxation/contemplation purpose that I had in mind when I designed it five years ago.

I was up good and early this morning, making good use of the tea-house (and coffee) doing the readings that I had set for my students tomorrow. Fascinating stuff and all about self development and happiness.

Around half-ten I jumped on the machine, positively reinforcing the habit that I’ve created over the last few weeks.

I warmed up for a mile at 7mph and then started to increase the speed as per last week.

It seemed easier, so I pushed a little harder towards the end and completed 3.74 miles in the 30 minutes… a shade under 7.5mph average compared to 7.3mph last week.

I still don’t think I’ll be completing the marathon distance pier to pier run next month, but at least I’m running enough to have overcome the feeling of slothfulness! Although that could also be something to do with moving the pieces of a one-tonne stone jigsaw around!

October 13, 2013October 13, 2013

Project Man digs in

Last week was somehow more frenetic than any of the nine weeks that preceded it, despite generally not working the 11+ hour days that had typified the Cambridge project. Thus, when Saturday morning emerged, I was ready for a rest.

Hmmm… well, they say that a change is as good as a rest and since I’m not really one for sitting around, I opted for the former.

Kim and I had been looking for stone with which to progress the garden project and with a little desk research we found it… right on our doorstep!

I had been wanting to visit the local reclamation company Dorton for years, but it doesn’t have a particularly consumer friendly exterior. However, once inside there are friendly staff making sure that you can find what you’re looking for in this capacious Aladdin’s cave.

We found a metric tonne of rock… as you do.

With the rock ordered and the likelihood of dry days fading as autumn blows in, we seized the sunny day to prepare the ground.

Whilst I stripped the turf, Kim laid it back down in the new ‘working garden’ area behind the deck panel. It was back-breaking work for both of us, but by evening we had completed our task.

Fast forward to today and I was fully expecting to feel wrecked after all that hard work. But with the rain tipping down outside, all I could feel was really pleased that we had grabbed the moment.

I’ve been preparing for my Monday workshops on and off across the weekend and I finally reached an interesting inflexion point at a confluence of thought between the following two ideas… in the context of creating high performance teams:

First, Rory Sutherland, of Ogilvy fame, who said that ‘the circumstances of our lives actually matter less to our happiness than the sense of control that we feel over our lives‘ (it’s well worth watching this TED talk!)
Second, Albert Ellis, the forefather of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) with his ABCD model, which highlights the need to Dispel unrealistic Beliefs about Adversity to reduce the emotional Consequences that they would otherwise create.

I could see that there was a really important link, but I couldn’t quite grasp what it was… it was clearly a good moment for a run!

I hopped on the machine and set myself a 30 minute challenge like last week, this time donning trainers to protect my feet from the heat. I set the warm-up speed to 7mph and then increased it slowly after the first mile until I finally reached 8mph.

The run was harder work than last week, but the result was a little better too: 3.66 miles in 30 minutes, 7.3 mph average.

As I’ve noted before, I find it difficult to think clearly around 7 mph or faster, so it was actually a really great break from my cognitive challenge. Better still, Kim (a qualified CBT practitioner) quickly pointed out the connection afterwards… rather obviously, I guess, it’s simply belief.

I believe that we’ve had a fantastic weekend and that I’m now ready for another frenetic week! Have a great one!