Gym’ll fix it
It’s at least 3 months since I quoted this Twainism, so it must be time for a reprise: If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got.
It dropped into my head again early Monday evening, as I pulled up sharply, clutching my left calf.
The annoyingly whiney voice that accompanies hindsight tells me that this was an ill-advised jaunt. At the time, I spied no danger; just a pleasing excess of enthusiasm. After another strenuous spin class early in the morning, I must have been feeling a bit too self-congratulatory, and lined myself up for a further 4 mile plod later in the day.
And a lovely evening it was too, with an unexpected burst of warmth after a fortnight of what the forecasters call ‘changeable’ weather: a euphemism for blustery dampness. Still, after a couple of hot and sunny months, it was welcome. The garden and pond are looking particularly grateful.
Two miles into my run-walk regime, I suddenly felt a familiar tightening in my left calf. Within 5 seconds it had sent the message through every sinew and capillary in my lower leg, reducing me to a painful limp.
With a day or two to digest the experience, it turns out to be the same as ever: not a ‘serious’ injury per se. Not a tear or a pull; just a fairly mild strain.
But.
But I’ve been here before. Several times. Six months after I last ran, and last strained a calf, I run again, and again strain a calf. The surprise wasn’t that it happened again. The surprise was thinking it wouldn’t happen again, given that I’ve not attended to the things I was recommended to do – core strengthening.
So that’s it. That’s what I must now do, 6 months after I should have done it. Gym ball, medicine ball, and twisty turny stuff. That’s the new menu. Along with continuing to shed weight. The renewed campaign of ballast disposal went very well for a week, then stalled for a few days, but now seems to be back on track. At least I can continue spinning and cycling, and anything else aerobic that doesn’t involve pounding up and down on my ankles.
I want to feel disappointed and angry with the running gods, but I can’t. It’s not their fault this time. Instead, it’s mild self-reproach, but even that is pointless. I’m glad to have a ready-made plan of action, and the right mindset. As far as my revival goes, it’s been a double-dip recession, but this is the real thing. I know it when I see it. This isn’t going to derail me, and send me to the pub or the Chinese takeaway: my usual consolations.
One good thing about the calf problem is that it never lasts long. Even though I know it would happen again if I went out for a plod again today, already, just 40 hours in, it no longer hurts enough to fail the acid test of comfortably using the stairs.
It still ached a little yesterday, but didn’t prevent me popping out for a 17 mile evening bike ride around the lanes and along the canal towpath: my longest bike trip in years. The motivation wasn’t just a fitness top-up. There’s an increasingly realistic possibility that on the first weekend in October, I will be press-ganged into joining a masochistic group of cyclists led by my mate Ricky, in a celebratory journey along the bicentenary Kennet & Avon Canal.
The only drawback to this otherwise agreeable outing is that the proposed trip is 85 miles long, from Bath to Reading. Admittedly, the ride extends over 2 days, but still, I’m seriously undertrained for such a venture. Part of me knows it’s a foolish idea, while another, louder bit, thinks it will be an interesting new challenge.
And every new challenge is a firm riposte to the Twain sentiment, which so neatly describes the Micawber trap so many of us fall into: “Something will turn up”. If you’re lucky, that strategy (or lack of strategy) can work for a while, but eventually you get found out. This week, I got found out.
29 bikes and a shallow grave
Considering this blog bears the strapline: Running is the answer, it seems like a long time since it reported an instance of this purportedly miracle activity. Barring my Connemara stroll, the Almeria Medio Maraton, at the end of January, was the last time I heard the slap of rubber on tarmac — and even that one ended in calf tears.
Six months. That might sound like a running career that’s dead and buried, but it isn’t. Buried? Maybe. But it’s a shallow grave, and a premature burial. The dead man breathes.
He breathed very heavily three days ago, and again yesterday. Just 7 miles in total, but a journey of a thousand miles… and all that. Added to the aerobic mix in the last week were 3 spin classes, along with the numerous bike rides since the collective stirring of the RC loins a couple of weeks ago. The initial clamour lasted a few days, then stopped. I’m hoping the silence is a healthy sign; that we’re all busy chipping away at the rock of a hot World Cup summer, and all the beer and BBQs that accompanied it.
As always, logging weight is my chief method of monitoring progress. Last week began with the self-promise to lose 7 pounds in 7 days. Result? After a week of cycling and mainly judicious eating, I managed to gain a half pound. Admittedly, I’d dined very well over the weekend, and been to the pub twice, but still, this was a blow.
And so this week began with renewed determination, and the decision to ramp up the heart rate. Cycling is a wonderful way of engaging with the countryside, but I have to admit the truth, that it just doesn’t cut the anaerobic mustard. Most of my safe local cycle routes are twisty country lanes, which get my heart rate up to about 110, compared with typical HRs of 135-140 for running and spinning. It was time to step it up.
So last week, for the first time in many months, I slunk back to the gym to join a mid-morning spinning class, and have added another two this week.
I’m reluctant to talk up spinning too much, in case it encourages even more people to make it even more difficult to get into a class. The morning sessions are not usually quite full, but the evening ones are a hot ticket. Getting seats for the opening ceremony of the London Olympics will be a breeze after this.
But. It has to be said: a spinning classes is tremendous fun. At my gym at least, it’s something akin to a fairground ride. You enter a very small, windowless room, and find 4 rows of bikes, 29 in all, plus the instructor’s. The room is usually half full already, with a crowd of excitable, chatty people fiddling with seats and handlebars and pedal straps. Some are already determinedly whirring away. You find a machine, and deposit your two essentials in the cage at the front: towel and water bottle. Even though I’ve booked, it’s always a relief to find a spare bike. It’s like being part of the crowd jumping onto the dodgems to find an empty car at the end of a session.
You adjust the height of the saddle, and slide it the right distance away from the handlebars. More people enter the room. Being tallish, both seat and handlebars usually need to be raised. Onto the saddle. It never feels quite right, but it will do. Feet on pedals and into straps. Lean down and pull them tight. More people come in. Excitement grows. Instructor arrives and starts shouting. Anyone new? Anyone pregnant? Any injuries I need to know about?
By now, most of us are pedalling away; warming up; feeling the first drops of sweat pricking the scalp. The lights go down. Apart from a couple of small safety lights, the only illumination comes from the LCD of the CD player beside the instructor. She cranks up the music and starts to bellow into her headset. The sudden darkness and noise generates a sort of excited panic. A couple of people whoop and cackle. And we’re off.
As the techno-pop hammers at our ear drums, away we go on our imaginary, undulating bike ride. Turn that resistance up, comes the scream. And again! More! Another turn! And that includes YOU!
Very quickly I’m starting to pant and sweat and laugh and swear. Different instructors have different routines, but they all follow the same sort of pattern: 4 or 5 minutes of frenetic effort, then 10 seconds or so to grab a drink and drag the towel across your forehead and down your face. Then another song crashes into the room and you’re up and off again. Most of the time you’re acutely aware of being immersed in this orgiastic thrash of moaning bodies, but just now and then you enter some sort of closed-off area where you can shut down your senses, and float like a truly independent, truly liberated human being; the sole survivor on a deserted planet. For a few moments, the music recedes and takes you with it. But then it’s back again, and once again you’re spinning your burning lungs out.
As with running, after a few minutes, you wonder why on earth this seemed like a good idea. And as with running, when it’s all over, and you’re gratefully doing your stretching and dripping and heavy panting, you remember, and feel intensely glad.
The two round-the-block plods have been tough, but I can see progress. The first one, on Monday, was barely more than a strenuous walk. I alternated 2 minutes of laboured jogging with 2 minutes of walking, and arrived home in just under 50 minutes, for a route that I have completed in under 30 before now.
The second attempt, yesterday, still needed a run-walk pattern, but the recovery walks were limited to 1 minute, and the jogs were allowed to creep up towards 3. I made it home in 43 minutes this time. Still a very poor figure to put on my spreadsheet, but it’s a big improvement over Monday. And the next one will be better again.
I always need a false start or two to get me going, but I hope I’m underway now. It’s been a tremendously enjoyable and exciting summer (despite the attempts of the England football team to spoil it), but for reasons mentioned in recent posts, it’s time to get back on the road, and embrace another good spell of healthy living and exercise.
This is a period of great optimism on the work front. An opportunity has come up that I’d love to see turn into reality. I can’t jinx it by discussing it in any detail, but if it works out, it will be a genuinely life-changing development.
Fingers crossed.
The man who mistook his trousers for a carrot
BALLACK WINDS UP ENGLISH
I read this headline the other day, and for a moment, misunderstood it. I thought it was saying that Michael Ballack, of Chelsea and Germany, the owner of the most punchable face in football, had ended up being English. Perhaps he’d married an English woman and applied for British citizenship? But no, it meant something else: that he was cheekily prodding the old enemy in advance of the Crash of the Titans.
So what did he say? Well, something quite incisive in my view: that “England are intimidated by their past”. He was talking about the football team, and needlessly self-imposed pressure. With third person singular verbs, the sentiment could equally apply to the country as a whole, but let’s not sink that deep into the national navel today.
Intimidated by one’s own history. This thought stayed with me for a while, and yes, eventually did stray beyond the football realm. Are we not all guilty of this? Do I make things unnecessarily difficult when it comes to running and fitness? When I’m trying to clamber out of the warm, slimy pit of inertia… the comfort zone… perhaps I make the task even harder than it is, by immediately sparking up another beautiful Excel spreadsheet, and without permission, trying to design a future modelled on the past.
If we describe it as “planning”, it seems to be a good thing. Motivation and all that. But looked at in a different light, I wonder if it doesn’t add, subconsciously, extra weight to the burden? And extra weight is the last thing I need at the moment.
It was my birthday recently. M bought me some trousers, reasoning that more people will want to give me more money, the neater I look.
They didn’t fit. Or perhaps it was me that didn’t fit.
After a while, I gave up trying to get them on. Forcing the fastening issue threatened to fire a high velocity button towards the window. Or to cut me in half.
“But I bought you some last year”, protested my wife. “They’re exactly the same size.”
Maybe they are, I told her, but sadly, I’m not. What a hellishly uncompromising reminder of how fat I am all of a sudden.
She offered to take them back and change them. No, I said. Let me keep them. Let them torture me.
So now, they dangle from the back of the bedroom door. Threatening. Accusing. Wagging a finger. Let them be a daily reminder; let these callous Callards torture me. Let them be the first thing I see each morning, and the last thing I see before dragging the tarpaulin of sleep over my head every night. Let them haunt my nightmares. Instead of a race target, I now have a trouser target.
[ASIDE: : Callards? Cockney rhyming slang, innit guv'nor? Callard & Bowser's - trousers.]
It was about six weeks ago that I wrote a post announcing the end of my lethargy. As usual, I need a false start before the serious stuff kicks in. That said, ‘Juneathon’ wasn’t a total letdown. I managed several bike rides and a few walks. I even got out for a 2 or 3 mile lumber at one point. This is it, I thought. Part of the countdown. But unfortunately I took the firework instructions a bit too literally. I lit the blue touchpaper alright — but then retired.
It’s time to try again; to come out of that premature retirement. The trousers can’t take all of the credit. A recent outburst of Twitter bravado, followed by an explosion of bluster on the forum have helped make up my mind for me. As the great Sweder likes to say, it’s time to get the band back together. I don’t need reasons to get healthier, but there’s an important new one these days: I’m working on my new business, and I know that losing a few kilos and feeling fitter will help to keep me gazing straight ahead.
It’s always a good time to start, but this weekend is doubly good. The World Cup final is tonight. I’m already committed to watching it at the local pub, but after that, I suddenly run out of excuses to drink beer. Almost. One or two social engagements may linger in the calendar, but nothing excessive. Anyway, I’m not announcing some dramatic transition. You don’t have to become a monk to display a saintly habit.
The plan: a bike ride this weekend. Now, in fact. Then a gym trip or two in the week ahead, with at least one spinning session, and a run-walk of some kind.
I don’t want to go much beyond that at the moment. No need to talk of races. I rather like the idea of being a mere recreational plodder, slowly shedding blubber and feeling re-energised.
It’s easy to be frightened off by the thought of long, painful programmes extending into the seasons beyond the current one. It’s how I’ve tried to organise myself before now, but it doesn’t always have to be like that. Even though I’ve not had, and will never have, a glorious running career, I do seem to look back to try to work out how to go forward.
So it is indeed easy to be intimidated, or tormented, by one’s past.
Quite a thought.
One of mine?
Or is it Ballack’s?
In the club: the joy of networking
I’m not a parent, but I suspect that starting a business is a bit like having a child. Life-changing. A shuffling of priorities. Being kept awake half the night.
Networking is the new sex. Or the new black. Or perhaps the new running. I’ve attended plenty of hand-shaking festivals in my time but what was, in a previous life, often an onerous, awkward duty, now seems like a self-reaffirming recreation. Mind you, this is based on just two experiences. Or perhaps three. Last night’s ‘speed networking’ session (a pleasure still to come) was cancelled, so I ended up in the local pub, though even this turned into a mini networking experience, and might eventually have more value than the others.
Last week I joined my local branch of the Chamber of Commerce.
Crikey, has it come to this? I asked myself that question, much as a new dad might as he finds himself queuing for Sainsbury’s to open so he can buy his very first trolleyful of nappies and baby food.
The very name: Chamber of Commerce has a gravitas and a grandeur that I don’t readily associate myself with. It isn’t cheap, but one of the benefits is a Regus gold card which allows me to use the ‘business lounge’ of any Regus office I want to. I already have one of these, but the cost of Chamber of Commerce membership actually works out less than I would pay over the year for the card, so that alone makes it a good decision. The other main reason is the chance to network. That’s the word of the moment. Everything I read about new start-ups stresses how vital it is to mingle with others. Conventional marketing tends to be scatter-gun, expensive, and ephemeral. Talking to people, finding contacts and building relationships, is where it’s at.
Last Friday I had my first experience of a dedicated networking event. At the horribly early time of 6:45 I was wearing a suit and tie for the first time in a long time (funerals aside), and making my way to Ascot racecourse for the chance to grasp a few palms and grin inanely at total strangers. Nice venue. I was here once before, for a Dell sales conference. It makes sense to use the smart facilities for these sort of events on the great majority of days when there’s no racing on.
About 200 of us gathered to hear Richard Robinson, Head of Business Markets at Google “dispelling the search engine myth”. At least, that was how the talk was headlined by the organisers. The invitation read: “At the Thames Valley Chamber of Commerce’s most highly anticipated event of 2010, Google will be speaking on the intricacies of search engine optimisation and dispelling some of the mystery surrounding your Google “ranking”. This is a not to be missed and rare opportunity to hear best practice advice directly from the expert.”
Sadly, the event didn’t live up to its billing. Far from levering a few SEO secrets from the Google bod, we were served with a pretty bland sales presentation about Google Analytics, and some new products coming down the cyber track – information which is freely and easily available already. Search engine optimisation wasn’t mentioned once. Two or three slightly awkward questions from the floor about online privacy, and the burgeoning tendency to give prominence in Google rankings to those who pay the most, rather than to sites which actually best match what the user is looking for, were batted away with a terse “I don’t know about that, so I can’t comment”.
Disappointing. I’ve always thought of Google as one of the good guys, and it’s impossible not to admire their technology and hunger for innovation. But increasingly they seem to be switching to a model where “you pay us more and we’ll promote you more” seems to be the philosophy. We were in Swansea recently, and stayed at the excellent Christmas Pie B & B. Trevor, the superb host and creator of the best range of breakfasts you could wish for, told me that they’d been called by Google and asked to pay them. He declined, and their Google ranking has since fallen from high on the first page to the bottom of the second, and sinking.
So the presentation was anti-climactic, but what about the networking? I’ve no previous experience to compare it with but I would give myself about 4 marks out of 10. In my new spirit of positive thinking, I’ll quickly point out that this is better than 3 out of 10. It was a slightly nerve-wracking but useful experience though I probably didn’t put myself about enough. I had a natter with 5 people in total, and came away with a couple of cards worth transferring to my ZoHo CRM contacts. The good thing about these events is that everyone is as anxious as each other not to be the silent wallflower, so it’s easy to fall into conversation.
Then yesterday, another opportunity. This one was a seminar I found out about through the Job Centre. It was run by an excitable and enthusiastic owner of a recruitment agency, and aimed at newly discarded professional types. I learnt little during the couple of hours that the 9 of us sat through, but it was good to have a few things emphasised and rebroadcast. Like the importance of networking. There was no networking time factored into the seminar, but a few of us lingered afterwards, giving me the opportunity to dish out some business cards, and have a chat with a couple of other people who are setting up on their own.
Perhaps most useful was my evening in the pub last night, when I got some support for an idea that has drifted in and out of my head for a couple of years now: setting up some sort of organisation for local businesses. A mini-Chamber of Commerce. There’s plenty of mileage in this plan, but I’ll talk about it another time.
No time to muse
It’s time someone gave a new image to ‘the jobless’.
When the TV news has an item about redundancy or unemployment, they tend to reach just an inch or two into their image library for monochrome clips of dole queues snaking round the corner of the labour exchange, or clumps of silent modern youth on street corners, eyes downcast. When they interview one of these tragic statistics, we find some gloomy middle-aged bloke on a sofa, as if paralysed by boredom, blaming politicians and cheap foreign imports (both the human and factory-produced kind) for his plight. The scene is often shot in a half-light, or against an industrial sunset, to offer a crude metaphor for dwindling hope and moribundity.
These images of hopeless paralysis and resentment aren’t ones I can relate to. Since the bloody axe fell across my neck, I’ve felt overwhelmed by opportunity. Life has become a firework display of ideas. The chance to start over is a luxury we don’t get very often, and I’m determined to exploit this one to the full.
Far from having too much time on my hands, I seem to be as time-poor as I was in my last job, where I felt myself to be perennially at the base of a mountain of thankless tasks, with no companions to keep me company. (Working from home is not all it’s cracked up to be.) The difference this time is that the mountain road ahead promises much more varied scenery. Best of all, it’s not one path but a whole network of paths, and I get to make the decisions about which direction I take and how long I spend at any particular spot.
One of the things I looked forward to most about this long vacation to the other side of the corporate moat, was doing more writing, and particularly more blogging. I have a plan to put together a new site about running, though I won’t do this until I start running again. (My juneathon has been all biking and walking and gardening so far.) That’s just the way it is. When I run, I write about running, When I don’t, I can’t.
I also have a plan to blog about post-redundancy, and have been keeping detailed notes along the way. And there’s the village website and blog. The trouble is, I’ve always thought of writing-blogging as a pastime; some sort of passive relaxation activity, like watching TV. Something you do after real work has finished for the day. If it ever finishes. Trouble is, it doesn’t, and the stuff never gets written.
Part of my recent researches have included trying to understand web trends. It’s becoming clearer to me that blogging is becoming big business, both literally and culturally. I have to do more of it, and want to do more of it. I wake up early, and am usually out of bed shortly after. I then potter about for 2 or 3 hours as breakfast and the Today Programme works its way through the system. I ablute, check email, surf the web, make my wife’s lunch, perhaps read for half an hour. I will try to use this time more profitably. As an experiment, for the next week, it will be my writing time. The success or otherwise of this initiative should be apparent without having to report back, but that I will do.
In the meantime, if anyone reading this is unemployed, and has trouble filling their day with useful activity, please drop me a line and tell me the secret.
The £12 cup of coffee
An unseasonably hot, claggy day in central London today. 29 degrees might be the sort of temperature that would make an Aussie reach for his overcoat, but for us, it’s just on the uncomfortable side of warm — unless you’re in a beer garden.
I wasn’t in a beer garden. Instead I was sardined on the London Underground system, floundering in a forest of armpits and hissing headphones, and can attest that it’s a less pleasant spot from which to enjoy the heat.
This oppressive subterranean expedition would eventually lead me to the gates of the Bank of England, then slightly beyond. I was heading for Cornhill to attend an all-day seminar. One of the more substantial crumbs I was tossed by my previous employer was some time with an outplacement firm. This means access to a number of useful services including one-to-one career coaching, and these seminars.
With 25 minutes to kill, I stopped off at Starbucks in Cornhill, and joined the queue of hangdog bankers. I ordered my “large” Americano. I have no truck with this tall, grande, venti bollocks. It’s small, medium, and large. Simple. Alas, way too simple for the marketing boys. (And don’t get me started on the regular, large, and extra-large nonsense you get on Planet Fastfood. Small, medium, large. Simple.)
Starbucks in Cornhill is tiny, with barely room to swing a fat cat. The place was packed. The one concession to the lingering coffee drinker is a narrow shelf and a few stools along the wall opposite the bulging counter. I wanted to sit down, but with all stools taken, this seemed unlikely. The pleasant cashier asked for £2.05. I handed over my £20 note. As I did so, I heard the rasp of stool scraping across floor right behind me. This sound means just one thing: I am vacating this spot. Hurrah! A couple of seconds later, the previous occupant had completed his off-to-work manoeuvre, so I reached over and deposited my books and newspaper on the stool to stake my claim to this priceless patch of City real estate. I realised the cashier was calling out to me: “Change please! Change!” Ah yes, thank you. She handed me… £7.95. “Er, it was a twenty,” I said. She looked confused. “It was a twenty”, I repeated. “I gave you a twenty pound note”.
She still looked confused, and looked down at the till drawer. Eventually, she said no, I’d given her a ten. No, I assured her, it was a definitely a twenty.
How can I be sure? Two reasons. Firstly, I’d picked up the £20 note from my bedside table earlier this morning and put it in my wallet. It was the only banknote I had on me. I recall doing a quick assessment of whether that would tide me through the day, deciding that, in this current beer-free zone, it certainly would
Second reason is more nebulous, but I think people will understand what I mean. If you buy something for £2, and hand over £5, you semi-consciously register an expectation that you’ll receive 2 or 3 coins in return. If you give the person £10, that semi-conscious expectation is for a £5 note and 2 or 3 coins. And so on. When I handed the lady my £20, my brain received that subtle message that there was a £10, a £5 and a few coins on the way. They didn’t arrive.
After a few seconds of awkwardness, she summoned the boss, a startled looking African man. He asked me to wait, then took the till drawer and vanished through a door next to me. A minute or two later, he re-emerged, declaring “I cannot find the ten pounds”. Eh? What did he mean? “I have checked everything, and I cannot find this ten pounds.” He claimed to have spent his brief absence in a frenzy of counting and comparing and calculating, allowing him to declare there was no discrepancy.
As Boris Johnson, once a denizen of these very streets, and possibly this very establishment, would have put it, this was an inverted pyramid of piffle.
What’s a fellow to do in these circumstances? And I mean both of us. I accept that Starbucks can’t afford a policy of giving a tenner to anyone who requests one. But he could at least have suggested I call back later in the day, by which time they might have conducted a more plausible till check. A higher tech solution could be the one that a friend told me about, when he had a similar problem at a petrol station. While he stood there, they ran the CCTV pictures back a few seconds, and were able to see who was right.
And what could I do? A prolonged physical pummelling seemed unreasonably harsh. Even a sharp tug on the man’s ear would have been beyond my sentencing powers. The coffee in my hand was too hot to pour over his head, and I could hardly ask him to come back once it had cooled down. Sheesh. If only I’d bought a caramel frappuccino. Instead, I uttered pompously: “OK, I will now enjoy the last cup of Starbucks coffee I will ever drink”.
And that’s all I can do. They can stick their venti up their jacksie. I just hope that at Starbucks HQ at the end of the year, Mr Starbuck will be stroking his chin and saying with a faint whiney tone: “Y’know, ten billion dollars of revenue is just fine and dandy an’ all, but well, I can’t put my finger on it, but I was expecting around a hundred dollars more than this…. let me check those figures one more time.”
Ha! That hundred dollars is here in my pocket, and you are not getting it.
The seminar was called How to start your own business. Starbucks may be a long way from that point these days, but maybe they should remind themselves of a few first principles.
As soon as this pub closes, the revolution starts
It’s about time I wrote another Starting Over post. Everytime I do it, I hope it will be the last one. Not because I want the running to stop: just the opposite. I want the stopping to stop.
At least the circumstances are different. Usually, an extended period of idleness follows a major race effort. This time, a startlingly enthusiastic late autumn and early winter was brought low by a series of calf strains and unconsummated races. Result? A ballooning midriff, and an attack of mild pessimism. Neither is good. Both must go.
My weight has returned to the level it was at last September, when I last had this moment of clarity. I’m often consoled by the knowledge that I can lose weight fairly quickly, once I decide to do it, but the annoying corollary of this is that I gain ballast even faster, when my resolve fades.
Does this sound like a girly vanity issue? I hope not. It’s much more than that. Here are the facts, and they are convincing enough for me: I’m 52, a lovely age for an early lifestyle-linked heart attack. With too much weight, plus a chronically sedentary existence, plus an appalling, over-salty diet, plus too much alcohol, means my blood pressure is way too high, and I’m exposed to a variety of other risks like diabetes. To improve my chances of staying alive for a while, something has to change.
Just as important is my current work status. Since being made redundant last month, I’m rapidly coming to realise that I won’t walk into another corporate sinecure soon, and perhaps never. Instead of mechanically firing CVs at any passing executive, I need to have a plan B and and a plan C. Whatever happens, I need to be clear-headed and motivated, and that’s what running provides.
The beast did stir itself last week, with a couple of bike rides and a spot of gardening, but I need to get more methodical. One of my infamous plans is in gestation, this time with a twist, as I still have that unresolved injury problem. If nothing changes, I’ve no reason to think the calf weakness won’t reappear. Mark Twain, as usual, had it right: If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got.
So I need to not do what I’ve always done. It’s time I took more seriously some of the advice I received (here and here) about improving core strength. The thought of wrapping myself around a Swiss ball, and crunching my way to fitness in the gym isn’t too appealing, but I’ll be happier once I start to feel looser and lighter.
On top of this, I’m keen to take a closer look at barefoot, or at least Vibram, jogging. I’m not completely sold on the idea yet, but I may be once I’ve finished reading the Christopher McDougall book, Born to Run – kindly lent to me by Sweder in Ireland, promptly left behind on the homeward plane, and just repurchased. I’m under no illusions that I’ll easily, or ever, become a barefoot runner, but I’m hoping that at least walking in some Vibrams should help to toughen my lower legs and produce a more natural running style.
Which brings me to Juneathon. The admirable and quirky JogBlog is supervising this year’s effort to get us away from the World Cup, or at least to provide a non-footballing diversion. If the tournament is a glorious, steaming plateful of fish and chips, as of course, in some way, er, it is, or could possibly be construed as such, then the juneathon is the salt and vinegar, and tomato ketchup. The idea is simple, but difficult: for the duration of June, you undertake to do some sort of strenuous exercise every day, and blog about it.
June is still an entire week away, and I don’t intend waiting. The revolution starts tomorrow. Sort of. I’m in London for the day, and may not get the chance to exercise properly. But I will have plenty of walking to do, and I’ll be kicking off my healthy-eating week with a mountain of fresh fruit and veg.
If I can have a good week, and a successful Juneathon, I’ll be able to start dreaming of some proper running goals once more. But one thing at a time.
Politics: it’s one big party
As Churchill put it, “Democracy is the very worst form of government — except for all those others that have been tried”.
For a political junkie like me, the last few weeks have been one big party, and that’s what we seem to have ended up with.
Looking back, not much happened during the 3 weeks of the election campaign. An elderly lady in Rochdale was described as a bigot, and this became national news for several days. A cynic might say that the discovery of an elderly lady in Rochdale who could be described as not a bigot, would have been more newsworthy. But of course, I am not a cynic.
Our first ever live televised leadership debates were disappointingly dull. No gaffes or fist-fights. The best we could prise from them was a bit of unintended humour. “I agree with Nick” became an instant catch-phrase, a joke that must have worn very thin, very quickly, for Nicks across the nation.
On your marks… get set… STROLL!
I’d been waiting for the chance to issue some cliché along the lines of “normal service has been resumed”, but it struck me today that normality will probably never reappear. Or not that old normality. Some different lifestyle, currently unimaginable, will eventually rise from the swamp and conquer all that came before. The form it might take will be revealed — just as soon as I manage to identify the real thing in among the statues and their shadows.
In the meantime, I chew greedily on luxurious flux. It’s delicious. A couple of weeks into the supposed hell of redundancy blues, and I’ve not felt this busy, this happy, and this liberated, in a long time.
My new freedom didn’t start too well. Unemployment might be bad, but death is worse. News of my brother-in-law’s demise put my own professional extermination into salutary perspective. I wasn’t especially close to Brian, nor to my sister, his long-time partner, but witnessing her public grief was a powerful reality check. I didn’t have the capacity to store enough sympathy for both of us, and her cause was more deserving than mine.
At the cremation service, I learnt things about him I wish I’d known when he was alive. Why was I unaware that he was a jazz afficionado, majoring in Benny Goodman? That he’d spent 15 years at sea? That he’d spent numerous early summers in Alderney, a Rosebud-like experience that had produced reams of sentimental poetry late in life?
As always at funerals, I was struck by the irresistible theatricality of the occasion. You can see why they feature so prominently in novels and movies. We dress up and behave differently. It’s like being an extra with a walk-on part in some Pinteresque soap opera. One day, we all quietly think to ourselves, one day I will take the starring role.
Sweet and sour meet
Better to light a candle than curse the darkness
One of the many excellent aspects of redundancy is the chance to dig out my favourite quotation. Popularised by JFK, its origin is unclear. Google research has everyone falling over themselves to attribute Better to light a candle than curse the darkness to that sagacious Chinese guy who seemed to do little but generate minimalistic wisdom in memorable one-liners. One site even reproduces it in Chinese characters, as if this makes the attribution unarguable. (I’m not sure about that comma though.)
I drove up to Nottingham early last Tuesday morning, expecting to be discussing FY11 objectives with my line manager. Could I persuade her to give me something more challenging to do?
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