Chaos Practice

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...

This afternoon's three-beach run, down the bridge of the nose to the upper lip - Santos, Brazil 16 km  1:24:24 / 5:16 pace  Late afternoon, 24C, rainstorm  I wasn't feeling it today. I've been in a bit of a mood recently, anyway, and when I was looking out of the window this afternoon I could see it was going to rain but had no idea when. It was about 5 PM and I really wanted to run in daylight, so didn't have too long to wait and see. I decided to go and face the consequences - deciding only that I would stop if there was any lightning.  As I set off and reached the beach I thought I would run 12 km and go for an average pace of 5.30. This was my attempt to give myself a break from targets, really. I wasn't in the groove. I also hoped the lightning would start and take all other decisions out of my hands.  In the end it wasn't until I hit 8.2 km that the rainstorm started. Cold rain, too. Large drops. Not really very nice, but neither w...

Cycle lane, Santos - one of these people is probably a nutter   13 km  1:03:54 / 4:54 pace Cycle lane, mid-afternoon, 27C, windy The Brazilian Cycling Association (ABC, in the Portuguese acronym) considers Santos to be a ‘bicycle friendly’ city because of its 43 km of cycle lanes. I can well imagine the ABC acts in good faith and probably feels it is on pretty firm moral ground in its mission, which I would guess is something to do with promoting cycling. I suppose lots of representative associations feel secure in their moral standing based on the idea that whatever it is they are representing is unimpeachably good. Such security would be patent nonsense.  At some point we cannot escape the fact that these associations are representing people and a significant number of people are morons. Cyclists in Santos might well enjoy living in a bicycle friendly city, but we should remember that the cyclists themselves are not necessarily friendly at all. I'...

Left, 3 PM this afternoon; right, 11 PM this evening Today I decided I'd just run to the gym - 1 km is the straightest line - and do my non-patented, non-reserached speed workout before running back in a state of near exhaustion. I'm not kidding about that state. I spend half an hour doing upper body weight exercises as fast as I can with the shortest breaks possible in between (normally 30 seconds) and by the time I leave the gym to run home I feel and look like someone who's been picked up by a massive dog and mauled.  It's a strange thing, motivating yourself to do this kind of thing for no real reason. I wasn't looking forward to the fast kilometer to the gym in 35C but I sold it to myself as "better than running 12 km in this heat." That is plainly a compelling argument but I could have looked at another alternative: staying at home and resting. But I am on an exercise streak that now numbers 133 days straight without a day off and I am fin...

The beach puts on a brave face - Santos, Brazil 16 km  1:22:06 / 5:08 pace Late afternoon, 27C, quite windy It was another holiday today - in celebration of the Proclamation of the Republic, on November 15, 1889. I'm not sure what has improved in Brazil in those 128 years. Not much, that's for sure - and no doubt a lot of things are now worse - pollution, congestion, and urban poverty being the obvious things I wouldn't even have to check, given that they are creations of the modern age. Well done, Progress. We have air conditioning and wifi everywhere, so that's something.  The beach was teeming with people, most of them walking around in a kind of zombie daze, taking selfies and pictures of each other looking at the sea in studied calm. These pictures were no doubt immediately posted to social media pages with a caption about gratitude or love or something more esoteric.  I can mock all I want to but the joke is on me. I am one of these people. ...

This afternoon's run - a good pace for me in heat on asphalt but also evidence of my cowardice  I had nothing to do this morning. This is not common. I have worked for myself for just over 15 years as a translator and I almost always have something to do. This morning was a rare exception and I found myself doing some organizing. That's something else that's very rare in my life.  I made a quick list of stuff to get done. I always make lists. I have no idea where I get this from or when it started but lists are a big thing in my life. I make them on Post-It notes and take an absurd amount of pleasure in the actual writing of them. I use a mechanical pencil (which I called a propelling pencil as a kid, without ever asking myself why they had that name) and I have the sense that I am engraving something of great value as I write really small. I could write on larger sheets of paper, in pen, or I could use my phone or computer but it would upset me. I have habits, ...

A soap bubble, São Vicente beach, near Santos, Brazil 12 km  59:59 5:00 pace  Evening beach run, 27C - hot and windy Turns out that talking, or writing, about running at a faster pace is considerably easier that doing it. I feel somewhat disingenuous saying my target was to run at 5:13 pace this afternoon - mainly because it was, but not really. I mean, I knew I could run better than that, and I set it as a target just because I knew I could do it easily. So it was a bad target and I know it. I knew it at the time but the first person I ever lie to is myself. The good news is that I felt great, until the last two kilometers. They were into strong headwind and my average pace dropped dramatically from 4:57 to 5:00. There was nothing I could do about it, given the wind - and anyway, I had benefitted from the wind earlier on in the run and I know these things balance out. Still, it meant I finished the run feeling a bit like I had failed, no matter what st...

Afternoon Run - November 11 - click here 12 km  1:00:16 / 5:01 pace 23C, bright and sunny, slightly windy - late afternoon. Perfect.  This was what I wanted. I lovely cool afternoon after light showers throughout the day and a 12 km beach run at 5.01 pace. You can click on the link above to relive it, as if hovering above the beach. If you have not seen my runs in this format before, you might be confused by the dashes inland that I make along the way. These are the canals and sometimes I run them to add to the distance and sometimes I run them because the tide is in and I have no other way to cross them. Today it was for both of these reasons.  I could have run faster, but the point is that as I set out my target was 5.13 pace, so the final result was considerably quicker than planned. This is because I just felt sharp and although my heel hurt, it wasn't unbearable. Well, of course it wasn't. I ran, didn't I? It struck me on this run that I ne...

The beach, Santos, Brazil - it must be obeyed I have lived in Santos, an island i n southeastern Brazil , since January 2015 when I moved from Toronto, Canada. The winter in Toronto that year was so bad even Torontonians expressed some surprise when the temperature plummeted to minus 35C. It was so cold that spending any time outside at all was just idiotic. People sing Toronto's praises and often cite its very low rate of crime. They do not mention that the reason for this low rate of crime is that everyone is off the streets for half the year, sheltering from the elements.  Santos gets to around 35C (positive) in January and you can probably imagine that I suffered a bit before acclimatising. Perhaps because of this shocking shift in climate, I spent most of 2015 ignoring the beach that is no more than 400 meters from where I live. I've wasted lots of time in my life, and that period - which extended into 2016 - is right up there in the top ten worst examples of m...

The awful truth about fitness is that it takes ages to build up and a moment to collapse - at least that's how it feels. It's not something you can store, like - say - fat. If ever you needed proof that this life is really Hell, there you have it.  I got the image above from my GPS watch this morning just after I spent an hour talking on the phone to my bank manager about what could misleadingly be referred to as my financial planning. The cheery message from the software was welcome after the phone conversation had covered my need to extend my life insurance cover because, in a nutshell, I could drop dead any day now, according to the actuaries. That wasn't exactly how it was put to me but that's what I read between the lines.  I don't consciously think that running will extend my life - extend it from what to what, for a start? Thing is, when I look at that number above - 57 - all I can really think is how close I am to reaching that age. The fact that it i...

Ilha de Urubuqueçaba, Santos - it might be a few days before I next run past it 1 km run to gym - 4:58 35 minutes picking stuff up and putting it down, or variations on that theme 1 km run home - 4.55* It's easy to get a bit lost in running statistics, always looking at distances and times and all the rest but they can also help identify problems and opportunities. This morning I found myself with time on my hands and I got my calculator out. I'm glad I did - the numbers showed me that although I have picked up the pace recently, I had a few days at the beginning of the month when my pace fell considerably because I was just tired out. So, although my last few days were encouraging the average pace was dragged down so much by the days that went before that to get my average pace for the month back up I would have to keep those faster-paced days coming for some time. Every single part of me is perfectly OK with that idea, exce...

The beach, São Vicente - this is the 3.5 to 8.5 km stretch of my run, turning back at the foot of the two apartment blocks in the middle of the picture. At night I run along the silver line where the sea laps onto the shore 12 km  59:21 / 4:57 pace  17C nighttime beach run, 16 kph wind   I got home tonight at 10:00 PM after taking two hours to drive 87 km from the University of São Paulo. Every time I drive to or from São Paulo I am forced to confront the failure of Brazil up close. It is a broken country but no one seems to mind much. No one except me. It drives me crazy and when I got home I was in two minds. I was tired and fed up and I have an early start in the morning, but I also really did not want to skip a day's training. I knew that if I did, the anxiety would probably keep me awake all night anyway, so I decided to go out and see what happened.  I promise not to drag this on any longer, but the traffic light fell for me. You know what that ...

Road signs, Toronto, 2014 12 km  58:23 / 4:52 pace  21C nighttime cycle lane run I just remembered the quote that is attributed to Woody Allen:  "Eighty percent of  success is showing up ." This afternoon I was raring to go and was all set to go out to run 16 km along the beach. Just before I was about to go, the rain fell hard enough to put a stop to that idea. I don't mind running in the rain, but a downpour like today's would just have been unpleasant and I decided to wait until nighttime.  I hit the street at just after 9 PM and I could easily have just turned round and gone back to my apartment. I had zero motivation and as I set off I had the worst thought a runner can entertain: what is the point of this? I don't know what it is that brings these doldrums on. I had rested in the afternoon and I should have been in good mental shape for a long run but all desire to run any distance at all evaporated, for no obvious reason. OK, I have...