Chaos Practice

The last few weeks have been tough as far as training is concerned - not because I have upped the volume, added quality workouts or pushed myself harder, but because I have not been able to run at all - save for the odd jog to confirm this sad fact. I am still training - working on my core strength and upper body power in an effort to not lose sight of my goal, which is to stay fit and - one day - run well. The year is coming to an end and this is not the way I had hoped to go out. I feel a bit down and very frustrated. I feel, frankly, that it is all a waste of time and that given the weakness of my body I would be better off embracing it and avoiding situations that lead to pain and frustration. What's the point, really? It is a horrible question but one worth looking at from time to time. What's the point of running in excess of 70 kilometers a week, of finding the motivation deep inside myself to do something that requires a huge amount of discipline and dedica...

My running in September, October and November is now irrelevant - December is what matters.   I've decided to stop posting running stats for the day on the grounds that it is boring.   "There will be worse days, and this was a way to hedge against them." That was the last line I wrote in the entry prior to this one. The next day I ended my streak, or it was ended, after 138 days. Work and life and rain all ganged up on me to end it just two days short of 20 weeks (without a day off from exercise).  This afternoon I was standing in a kids' playground watching my young son and his friends climb and run and slide and scramble, and I said to a friend and fellow father, "I can't believe no one has been hurt yet." Within two minutes someone had. Not seriously, but it resulted in a nasty bump on a little boy's forehead and a few stressful moments for his dad. I should stop trying to be so fatalistic and / or tempting of fate. At best it's not h...

A leaf on my balcony this afternoon - Santos, Brazil 15 km  1:14:26 / 4:57 pace  Midnight cycle lane, 21C, light rain I often wondered how my GPS watch would file a run started at - say - 11 PM and finished after midnight. Would it be filed on the starting day, or the finished day? I found out tonight - it's the starting day that counts. This is a relief, as far as my running streak is concerned. It's been threatened a lot recently by the rain and today I tried several times to get out but couldn't get going until just after 11 PM because that was the first time the rain called a truce when I had a chance to run.  I tried a slightly different configuration on this outing but it was nevertheless run almost entirely on the cycle lane, with the one kilometer exception of a run along what I recently learned is called a marine outfall. It's funny because it's a tourist trap in Santos, serving the same kind of purpose as a pier in England in that respec...

Bassetlaw Hospital car park, Worksop, November 2016 - rain always looks better  through a car window*   10 km  51:31 / 5:09 pace  Late afternoon, 21C soft rain  I really try hard to avoid writing total drivel but I am highly aware of the fact that it is impossible to self-edit when writing stuff that is supposed to be free-flowing and in the moment. I mean, I have no idea what I am going to write until I actually start to write it and I like it that way, but I know that it runs the risk of coming out as a load of old crap.  I write way too much here about times and distances, as well, and I will do my best to cut that out. I think everyone gets the idea that some runners think they are onto something special and so feel the need to share their mystical insights, in the process giving truly enlightened runners who keep themselves to themselves a bad name.  Once again, it is worth asking - why write this? Right now I am not sure but I do...

This evening's run - all 370 meters of it. I have always spent too much time thinking about death. I don't think it's necessarily a subject to avoid but too much of it is a waste, especially with all the life around us. This morning I had one of those lucid dreams where you know it's a dream but you are not really awake and sometimes you can influence what happens, or at least you think you can. This was interesting. I somehow knew I had ten seconds left to live, and the count was going down in my head. I was facing the end and something inside me knew that as this was only a lucid dream all I had to do was relax and see what death felt like.  It felt like nothing. I woke up and thought how lucky I was to be alive and also how fortunate I am that death is just nothing. As I counted down to my own death I had no flashes of my life before me, no regrets and no thoughts about anyone else. I was just counting down and aware of the fact that it was - as I have sai...