Category: Photos

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Humidor

Humidor what?

After a beautifully relaxing summer’s day yesterday spent reading, playing guitar and just thinking, I was not much inclined to run at all this morning.  However, since my body and mind both need me to run regularly, I decided to make the most of another summer’s day to run outside for a change.  As a last minute afterthought I grimaced my way through a gel left over from the Eye-to-Eye… I was to  be grateful of it!

It was already hot when I left so my intention was to complete the woodland run that the Bok and I used to do in the mornings sometimes… a nice relaxing 5.2 miles.

Everyone I passed seemed to be in a good mood, each one returning my cheery greeting with a smile… somewhat different to running in Brighton!  Somewhere over towards the Royal Oak (as was, now closed) I met two runners who were slightly unsure of the path, which really does look as if it goes right up to someone’s front door!

Having put them back on the right track I headed out to Wivesfield and up through West Wood.  It really was muggy (and very muddy too, by the way) and yet I decided to take an additional loop out to Hundred Acre Lane to push the distance up nearer to 6 miles.

What was lovely was to see was a field of oak trees that I remember being planted… I used to run through when they were saplings and they are already growing above 10 feet.

Once back on the main route I headed up to the magical path which, with the sun still relatively low in the sky, really was in top magical form!

I could hear other people across to my left, with the occasional sound of a sharp whistle and when I reached St Georges Retreat I discovered that it was a group of runners, out for a morning run.

They kindly let me tag along and thus rather than head back home I headed on out.  All over the place as it turned out.

They were from St Francis Sports & Social Club and they had a neat system so ensure that no-one got left behind.  Every so often the whistle would sound and the front runners would turn round and run back to beyond the back of the group before turning round again to continue.

With a series of such loops we ran down to Worlds End, across to the fishponds and back across to Rocky Lane, mid way between Burgess Hill and Haywards Heath.  Crossing the railway line under the road arch we then ran on towards the Fox & Hounds but I peeled off right before we got there to make a start for home.

It was interesting that my energy seemed to desert me the moment I was back on my own, but I pushed on forward regardless.  It was lovely to see Theobalds Lane again and then to run down Valebridge Drive past my old house… the garden now looking in need of more than a little help.

I took the direct route back up Junction Road and reached home at 1.52 and a distance that worked out approximately to (at least) 11 miles.

Thank you to Lyndsey, Dom, Siobham and the rest of the gang for your generous hospitality and for giving me a good reason to run a little further than normal.

The group meets at St Francis on Saturday and Sunday mornings at 9am and several times during the week… if you live around Haywards Heath and are looking for a nice social group to run with, contact Lyndsey and Dom through St Francis Sports & Social Club for more information.

One final cross-post.  If you are a graduate or young person starting out into the job market (or you know someone who is), then you might find my thoughts blog post about the Art Director and Photographer Karen Storey worth a quick read.

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John Aubrey Brooks, RIP

The 19th Brighton Scouts was a fundamental part of my life growing up.  Both brothers had been Scouts and Venture Scouts there, one later becoming a Scoutmaster, whilst my mother was Chair of the fundraising committee that oversaw the building of its ‘hut’ in the ‘seventies.

I was both Cub and Scout there and one of the Scoutmasters, among many who gave up a considerable amount of their spare time to inspire young Scouts, was John Brooks.

I remember John on a number of different levels.  Long-standing family friend, master of camp-fire songs, knowledgeable country-man, passionate motorcyclist.  Two of my memories are more unusual.

In September 1987 I enrolled on a one-year City & Guilds evening course in Social and Documentary Photography, part of which entailed finding a social subject to document.

John had been a Traffic Warden in and around Haywards Heath for more than 20 years and he readily agreed to be the subject of my photo documentary.  Permission was gained from the Chief Inspector and I duly followed John around during a series of lunchtimes and occasional early mornings, taking photographs of him working.

I must have walked miles following him around and I even persuaded my then-boss to park his car on double-yellow lines and pose as an insouciant transgressor arguing against being ticketed.  John did offer to write out the ticket for me to photograph, but said that Ken would then need to pay it!

My efforts over the year were rewarded with a Distinction and a nice letter from the local Superintendent, and since John retired the following year, due to the increasing poor health of his overworked knees, my work really did become a piece of historical documentary.

For many years John had also been part of the annual Pantomime at Clair Hall in Haywards Heath and had encouraged my parents and I to attend.  It was always great fun, although the thing that I oddly remember most was the chilly drive home again across Ditchling Common with the impenetrable mist often hanging in the dips in the road.

Around the time of my photo assignment, John asked if I could audition for a role in the pantomime.  When I arrived one lunchtime it turned out to be only half a role: the back half… of Daisy the Magical Mrs Cow!  Since John was the front half, I was lucky enough to secure the role.

After hours of rehearsals learning to perform hilarious movements with Daisy’s hind quarters, and with the pantomime dates looming, John’s knees sadly became too precarious for him to continue and I was promoted to the front end role!

This was a real step up, not least as I then had air to breathe and different (even more hilarious) moves to make with Daisy’s front legs, eyelashes etc.  Under John’s tutelage, my rookie back legs and I had a storming week of pantomime, culminating with a performance with my parents and sister sitting in the front row… seasoned heckler that she is!

As the performance ended and the leading ladies received bouquets, the Director asked if there were any other bouquets to give.  My sister, in a loud voice, proclaimed ‘Mrs Cow’, and promptly presented the Daisy team with a bouquet of grass and gorse that she and her partner had collected from the Downs, neatly tied with an elaborate bow by a local florist!

That was a truly memorable moment to end a memorable week, but was not as hilarious as what happened next.

As I staggered home after an excellent end of show party, a Police car slowed to pass me, turned in the road behind and then pulled up alongside me.  The Constable wound down the window and asked what I was carrying… the answer left them chuckling and shaking their heads in disbelief as they drove off.

It seems like only a short time after that John and his wife Natalie moved to Wales for a more rural pace of life.   He passed away after a gruelling battle with Parkinsons, whilst she predeceased him by a couple of years.  I have happy memories of both.

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Status anxiety

Most excellent blogger and friend Stuppsy has recently been asking where my running mojo had got to.  I’ve looked high, low and even in the pockets of running shorts that have been laundered, but all to no avail.  It’s temporarily absent… though I did find this nice clean ten-pound note.

Yesterday found me enjoying the peace of the tea-house and the moderate discomfort of philosopher Alain de Botton’s Status Anxiety.

For an example of the discomfort, he quotes from the mid-nineteenth century psychologist William James:

‘With no attempt there can be no failure and with no failure no humiliation.  So our self- esteem in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do.  It is determined by the ratio of our actualities to our supposed potentialities.  Thus

Self Esteem = Success divided by Pretensions.’

Of course, methinks, if you try to mix in Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman’s

‘Success = Skill plus Luck’, (and ignoring his real point, which is that great success = a little more skill and a lot more luck)

then, aside from the ensuing headache, you get

Self Esteem = the sum of Skill + Luck divided by (what I think of as) your Aspirations.

It strikes me that self-esteem should probably be at least 1 or above for us to be feeling good about ourselves, which means that if we aspire to greater things then we should be prepared to allocate time and effort to enhancing our skills and improving our nascent luck.

Curiously (for your writer really is making this up as he goes along!), another word for self-esteem is… mojo.

Sooooo…. if my running mojo is absent, then it probably = 0.  Assuming I still have at least some running skill and that luck remains relatively positive (at least I’ve not fallen over or pulled a muscle… lately), then what is missing is actually aspiration.  And as soon as aspiration rises above zero, then my mojo should return.

What all this means, in short, is that I need a new challenge.

Confused?  Hmmm… me too!

With half a book of these kinds of thoughts tying my head in knots yesterday, I retreated to the running machine to at least maintain my current skill level.

I continued the 7mph tempo from last week, noting that it was harder work, probably for the lack of a mid-week run.  What also didn’t help was the stitch I got from gulping down a Lucozade power-bar moments before I climbed aboard the machine… forcing me to focus on breathing rather than just being.

So 7 miles in one hour and apologies for the delayed posting… my office technology lacked mojo this morning and eventually conspired to stop me working altogether (and posting this).  We could choose to see something like this as unlucky, but as Alain de Botton might say (if asked), this is a matter of perspective… not so unlucky from the perspective of my parents, who got a little help in their garden as a result!

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A loud out

After more than a month sitting pining by the door following the brilliant Eye to Eye event, my mud-caked runners were finally allowed out to play yesterday.

It was a stunningly beautiful day, made more so by the ensemble which consisted of BIG man Daren, and Dai with Henna the dog.  We met upstairs at Jack & Jill and traced the well-worn path through Pyecombe and Wolstonbury Hill, to Clayton and the Tank Tracks.

The discussion was heavy-going to start with as we unpacked our general frustrations, but this lightened as the 6 miles rolled by.  1.25 of collegial conversation, with the 4.2mph average reflecting the steepness of the hills and the heat of the day!

 

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Thinking

It was a muggy morning after a night FULL of rain (the front lawn was a swimming pool when I went to bed), but it was too lovely to be inside so I opted for a seat in the tea house.  I was particularly glad that I had ignored Mark’s offer of an 8.30am pick-up to go run the Chichester marathon!

I had been sitting and reading for some time, enjoying the smell of the honeysuckle and chuckling at the sound of a bird who seemed intent on waking the neighbourhood, when I had a minor epiphany.  Joseph Jaworski might even class it as a ‘predictable miracle’.

Epiphanies are not actually an uncommon occurrence hereabouts and this one involved a connection between the fields of neurogenesis and change management: it turns out that one of the reasons that scientists have thought until recently that the human brain is unable to produce new neurons is because the primates used in experiments were stressed…. I’ve lost you, I can tell!

Suffice to say that this is a very useful connection to have made and it gave me plenty to think about… so I decided to go for a gentle run.  Gentle is important here, since it gets more difficult to think the more quickly you run.

My aim was 5 miles at an average of 7mph, but after a first half mile warming up at 6mph, I realised that I would need to ramp up the speed to make my intended average.

7.5mph is just too fast to think clearly, but it was necessary so I paused my brain until I reached the half way mark to ensure I was ahead of the game.  Then I dropped back to 7mph for the rest of the way completing the distance in 42.5 minutes.  Average 7.06mph.

I guess that I should also have drawn a connection between muggy morning and running at more than 7mph… I was still dripping with sweat half an hour later, even after a cold shower!

I wonder if Mark managed to stay dry in Chichester?

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Putting my back into it

Those people who have dropped in on us unannounced will testify that we live in a relatively ordered, clutter-free way… down to the showers that get wiped down after each use and our somewhat Zen-like garden.  And yet, with six important visitors expected last Sunday, we still managed to spend most of the Saturday tidying the garden and the Sunday tidying the house.  All of which is a slightly elongated excuse for not running last week.

You will note that my excuse has nothing to do with the Eye-to-Eye odyssey.  I actually had surprisingly few side-effects for my 47-odd miles, although it’s fair to say that mid-way through the following week I suddenly developed a severe case of narcolepsy.

However, mid way through last week (eleven days after the odyssey) I suddenly developed severe back-ache.  This was most likely due to gardening, although by coincidence it occurred around the same time after the Eye-to-Eye as it (or something similar) occured after doing the Tour du Mont Blanc last year, so it might well be a case of over-heavy back-pack syndrome.

Which is my excuse for not joining Mark on the Downs at 8.30am (on a Sunday!!) this morning.

Although I had wimped out of a long run I was still mindful that a short run might indeed loosen my back, so I climbed on the machine this morning safe in the knowledge that I could get off at any point.

I started at 6mph and felt pretty-much-every-other–step jar my back for the whole of the first mile.  Increasing to 6.5mph for the second mile helped a little, as did increasing to 7mph for the third mile.  Some of this was probably due to my back loosening off, but it’s also much easier to skim along at a faster speed… if only I could hold it for extended periods of time!

7.5mph for the fourth mile was as fast as I wanted to go today so for the fifth and final mile I reduced back to 7mph, desperately trying (and failing) to do mental arithmetic to figure out the average minutes-per-mile covered.  As I’ve mentioned before, as the level of exercise increases, so the bandwidth available for processing data in your head decreases.

I completed 5 miles in 44.17, an average of 6.77mph.

I then spent some considerable time stretching-out while my muscles were warm (read HOT!)… in fact the front of my body looked as if it had been glazed, although you only get a sense of how lobster-like it was from the photo below.

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Eye eye

For some reason my weekend seemed to blur into one long day… probably because I didn’t make it to bed on Saturday night.  In fact, with the exception of some short intermissions, I was awake for 36 hours straight.

The reason for this long day started  at 7.30pm on Saturday, after a circuit around the London Eye, when 15 of us started running along the Embankment in the direction of… well, the Brighton Eye.

I have been vehement in my absence at any such Ultra events that the other guys have been competing in over the years, but this one was conceived by Cliff and Andy so it seemed rude not to participate… though only after a considerable battle of willpower with myself!

We had two support cars which carried Andy’s spare shoes and most of his running wardrobe, though, to be fair, most of the others also had large kit bags.  This enabled the ensemble to run with micro-packs holding water and emergency supplies only.

Since I was avidly trying to avoid doing the run in the first place, I had not attended the planning sessions and so pitched up with all my gear in my running pack… which weighed about 7kg including 2 litres of water.  Dai tried to persuade me to decant some weight into the support cars but… well, I didn’t, choosing instead to lighten it slowly by consuming all the edibles!

The support cars met up with us at predetermined locations along the route and provided additional snacks, hot cups of tea and, for those that had them, fresh socks, shirts, trainers, legs etc.  This also meant that we could choose which sections we wanted to run, with some people running only a few sections and others running the whole way.

The general idea seemed to be to walk up any hills and run the rest of the time and I had hoped to complete the whole distance by going more slowly.  It quickly became apparent that this was not going to be possible since, in order to maximise the time spent off-road, the route was torturous.  Map-reading never having been my strong suite, I had to keep with the pace or get lost… although keeping up didn’t prevent the group from getting lost on a number of occasions!

As evening turned into night turned into morning, so the differential between my pace and the others’ slowly widened until I would catch up with them only when they stopped to figure out which way to go or at the next refreshment stop.

Eventually, on reaching the support cars at Weir Wood Reservoir at just after 7am , I decided to hang up my sodden shoes… everyone else  having already taken refreshments and continued on.  I had covered more than 43 miles in just under 12 hours.

My legs were tired and my shoulders ached from the pack but I could probably have continued further… but only at a much slower pace.  My mind was also tired though and the lure of an escape was too appealing so I joined the kit bags riding between check points.

The aim was that everybody would at least complete the first and last sections so I was fortunate to have more than six hours to recover until the last of the others had completed the next 18 miles.

I then rejoined the ensemble as we ran the final four miles into Brighton… though run is not the right word in my case and the others had to wait for me to catch up before we ran the final hundred metres together.

The event, which covered more than 65 miles in about 19.5 hours, was topped off by a ride on the Brighton Eye.

The gang of 16 (including Paula, our one permanent driver) were amazing throughout, though my Top Banana award has to go to Nikki who intended to do half but managed to complete the whole distance… and still managed to disappear off ahead of me in the final section!

I didn’t ask for sponsorship, but if anyone would like to donate a little money to charity in recognition of my efforts, then please go to my Just Giving site.  The charity, set up 20 years ago in memory of Big Man Daren’s brother Clive Packham, encourages Scouts to participate in adventurous activities by offsetting some of the costs of travel or training.  I particularly like it because they insist that the Scouts themselves present a formal case for the money they need and then make a final presentation of the event to the Trustees.

Even small donations will be very welcome!

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Marklighting

I had the pleasure of seeing Mark on Friday in a work context and the incredibly flowery shirt that he was wearing has led me to an admittedly spurious and totally illogical conclusion.  I don’t have a photo of  the aforementioned shirt so you’ll need to take my word for it, but the material must have been designed in the late 1960s!

I think that Mark was wearing it to distract onlookers from realising that his body was actually elsewhere, masquerading as a mannequin.  Fortunately I do have a photo of his body, standing casually in the window of a running shop in Queens Road, easily identifiable by the degree to which… er, I’m sorry to be blunt about this… his nipples stand out.

Mark won’t mind me mentioning this, I’m sure, since it is well known that he buys Vaseline in industrial containers to reduce friction rash in this area when running… and you can see why from this photo.

As those people who know both Mark and I will attest, there is a vague visual similarity between us.  It’s as if someone has squashed me from above, goatee and all, forcing my body and legs (yes, etcetera!) to bulge out.  This might help explain why he calls himself Mini-me, though the name could work for either of us!

But, for the record (Karen Scott) we’re not actually related… I meant to confess that I was pulling your leg, but got sidetracked… sorry!

Mark is busy competing in yet another marathon today (number 55?) and after my not running last weekend he shamed me into committing to a run today.  I decided the fastest way to get back into shape was on the treadmill, so after a couple of quadspressos and a banana this morning I climbed aboard with the aim of completing five miles.

I talk a lot (both here and in person) about the tension between conscious and sub-conscious and here was to be a battle worthy of mentioning.

I decided to do intervals, running every other quarter-mile at 6mph in order to recover.  The alternate quarter-miles started at at 6.5 mph and rose in 0.5 mph increments to 10 mph, before reducing again in the same way.

Adapting as the speed increased turned out to be okay, since the recovery period each time was quite generous, but having run a quarter-mile at 10 mph I didn’t manage to catch my breath before having to run at 9.5 mph.  This would have been okay if I was just running 5 miles, but by this point I had decided to run further and probably for an hour.

This is where the subconscious starts to kick in, trying valiantly to stop the body from running itself out of energy.  In a straight fight the conscious would always lose (you might be able to happily dance along a plank of wood on the ground, but place it between two rooftops and the subconscious will tell you it’s impossible to walk across), so instead it needs to play little tricks in order to get its way.

Strategies that I used today included: deciding that I would stop after the next recovery phase, be it the one following 10, 9.5 or 9 mph (and then not doing so on each occasion); focusing on something else by counting down the distance to the end of each faster quarter in breaths taken (five breaths to 0.1 mile); pointing out to myself that each interval was getting easier; and then by focusing on the pleasure of being able to write this post without having to confess that I wimped out when the going got tough.

There was eventually a compromise.  Having successfully got back down to 6.5 mph and run the subsequent recovery interval at 6 mph, I then relented and walked the final quarter to 8 miles as a cool-down.  At which point even the machine told me to STOP.

So 8 miles in just under 72 minutes, including the walk, averages at 6.67 mph and just about did me in… as you can see from my face below!

Having chilled my legs with a cold shower and eaten lots of peanut butter on toast I now feel pretty good, but only time will tell how well I will be able to walk come Tuesday morning.  All bets are off, but there’s a good chance that I will be walking markedly like a mannequin!

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Vicarious marathon running

With a whole load of great friends running in both the Brighton and the Paris marathons today, I couldn’t very well not go out for a run.

The sun was out but there was a chill north wind and I suspected that I had made a ‘wrong trousers’ choice as I ran off down the road directly into it… in my shorts.  It would have been a good day to run in the woods, but having not run for a while I was curious to see how far I could get and it’s easier to count the miles on my usual pavement run towards Clayton.

In fact it has been six weeks since I last ran (6 miles on the machine) and a further week still since I ran 10 miles, so my 10 mile plan was probably a little ambitious.

When I got to the London Road and the wind was behind me, the temperature in my gear became much more comfortable.  Three miles later, as I neared the turn point, I was even starting to get too warm but as soon as I turned back into the wind the temperature plummeted again.

It was clear from the little niggley leg pains from the second mile that I’d not run for a while, but I pushed forward regardless.  Today it was definitely my brain pushing my legs on and as I reached 7 miles they felt as if I had completed double that.  As I ran back up the road in the last mile they were definitely fading, so it was fortunate that the rest of me felt okay otherwise I would surely have had to walk.

All quite appropriate for a vicarious marathon… and no way could I have completed a full one today.

At 1:39 (and 59:91 seconds) the time wasn’t as bad as I thought, the return leg taking me 53 minutes against the 47 minute outbound one.  An overall average of 6mph on the nose.

Still not fast enough to keep up with Mark’s speed over 26.2 miles today.  Despite being ill and having completed the 50-mile Paris Ecotrail the other weekend, he still managed an average of 6.16mph , while Phil got a PB in Paris running 6.52mph.  I’ve yet to hear about the others but that probably means that they’re recovering… in the pub!

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More absence

Last weekend I was still feeling limp and lifeless as the lurgi continued morphing into different symptoms and into its fifth week, so there was no running to be seen anywhere.

However, as a direct result of this post we wandered up to Bedrock Music to buy 24 new guitar strings and while we were there, Kim traded up in the bongo department, from

 to 

To the percussive sounds of a grinning Kim, I then set about removing old strings, oiling fret-boards (with the lemon oil that Lucas mentioned), cleaning, and eventually restringing all three guitars.

There were ten or fifteen wilderness years where I hardly played my guitars and my strings probably did not get replaced at all during this time, or maybe only when my Bro took pity on them on the rare occasions that he was across from the States.

Since deciding to start playing again I have had the strings replaced by Steve at Bedrock or by my good friend Andrew, so this was the first time I had done this task for maybe 15 or 20 years!

I didn’t make as neat a job as Andrew (who is a perfectionist), but the guitars all have a bright sound again and I really enjoyed the process so will definitely be doing it again in the future!  Andrew recently gave me a book of Jazz standards, so I have been patiently trying to twist my fingers into knots for a few weeks now… my resilience is paying off as it now takes me only ten minutes to play the initial 60-second track!

The week that ended in Easter was a really busy one for me and seemed super-long despite only being four days.  So this week I thought I would try taking an additional day off!  Yesterday Kim and I drove down to the amazing Goodwood Sculpture Park and wandered through the woods enjoying the sculptural creativity… it really is a most amazing place.

As we neared the end of the trail there was a tell-tale crack of thunder and a few spots of rain so we retired to the luxurious Goodwood Hotel for a substantial lunch.  When we finally emerged much later in the afternoon, stuffed to the gunnels, the sky was clear and there were deep puddles of water everywhere… our timing had clearly been excellent!

Neither of us could face any further food last night, but in an ad break around ten o’clock we managed to  do another HIT session, the second this week.  It’s amazing that you can schedule a meaningful fitness regime into the time it takes to make a cup of tea, whilst the ensuing heat rush could save a fortune on your utility bills!

The percussive backing track that has become a normal part of life here has quietened momentarily, while Kim taps away on the keys of her laptop, so it’s time to twist my fingers into knots again on those new strings!

By the way, good luck to all you mad people running the Brighton and Paris marathons tomorrow… I won’t be there but I will be thinking of you!  I might even take my runners for a spin in your honour!