Perspective and quick fixes

The perspective of moving out that door

They do say that the hardest part of a run is getting out the door. I say it to myself all the time. It is a handy technique to beat away the self loathing that will surely follow if you don’t get out that door. Runners are funny that way.

Now I am prone to a spot of self loathing as much as the next man.  I am also a king of procrastination, or rather grouping things in an order to be done. If you ask my wife it looks like procrastination. To be honest, I am not sure where this trait came from. My entire family is dynamic to the point of being wearisome. My wife too can’t stop moving and doing, a beautiful mix of activity and exhaustion to behold. Now before you start forming this mental picture of me standing at the doorway with my running shoes on, wearing a wife beater with a pizza stain down the front, blinking at the sunshine. In this mental picture I might even be adjusting or scratching somewhere usually not done in any sort of company never mind polite circles. Perhaps I belch or kick the dog and then slope back to a darkened room and settle back into a fragrantly stale couch. I am not that guy either.

Where has this trait come from? I think I can only blame Tetris. I was obsessed with the game as a kid. But I had a weird way of playing, I would build up solid piles on either side of a  long one-block wide gap, much like a space between skyscrapers, just waiting for when one of those long rectangular blocks would pop out from the top of the screen, slotting them down to the bottom row. Magically after a blink, seven rows of carefully arranged and compacted building blocks would vanish. That was far more satisfying that any score I got. I couldn't bear building a solid row on top of three rows with gaps in. Weird and particularly unhelpful. So you see, video games do corrupt the youth of today and clearly yesteryear. Happily that’s where my dalliance with video games ended. Shooting and driving fantasies never took hold. It did give me the idea though that things needed to be grouped together and completed in blocks.

Living in London didn't help either. I worked as a project manager in the City. Of course speaking to project managers about their work is perhaps one of the duller ways to spend your time. Pray you never get introduced to one at a party. Maybe quantity surveyors are the dullest of all. So dull that you are afforded a glimpse of what it must be like to be at a cocktail party in Zurich. No matter how interesting the project they are working on is, it is all dull sequences and timelines. Time will even, mid conversation, take itself off to whither and die in the corner leaving you standing in a stifling vacuum.

“Wow, you are building a hovercraft barge that will revolutionise… “

“Yes, but we can’t do anything until we have selected the right colour doorknobs for the cabins before we can…then of course on the critical chain there’s the marine license…”

That sort of thing. Filled now with self loathing you wonder why even asked?

A door with a view

But what it did teach me was the importance of perspective. Projects are nothing without the bigger picture with a series of structured steps leading up to it. So really a more advanced level of Tetris. English weather too gives you a sense of perspective. There is no waiting for a sunny day tomorrow because that day comes only twice in a year and never during Wimbledon. You just need to get on keep the big picture in mind. The weather was always terrible and if you wanted to go out running or cycling you just had to get out that door and grim your way through it making sure your upper lip didn't wobble at all. Guilt and doom too add to a sense of perspective that is unique only to living life in England. Guilt because someone somewhere out there was braving the weather and you weren't. Doom, because there is only so much grey sky you can take.  

Not so now that I live in Greece. Rain and clouds are only fleeting visitors and you can be assured that tomorrow will be a better day and you can just wait it out. Their weather is wholly responsible for the concept known as Greek time. It has no bearing at all to the Greenwich meridian or any US Naval atomic clock. Things get done later, when the time is right or maybe when the right day has rolled around or after dinner. Perhaps that’s why Greeks live so long. Infuriating. The lesson here is more the necessity of perspective and planning. Observe any Greek road works as a case in point and you’ll get a distinct feeling that the whole thing is influenced somehow by zodiac movements, the seasons or only when their mothers let them out after dinner. A few months later the whole thing is dug up again or collapses.

Don’t open that door

Sometimes running out that door is just rubbish advice. It is difficult to distinguish at the time, some runs do get better and you return home with a smugness that is more insufferable than self loathing. At other times they just get worse and worse. A few nights ago I really did not want to run. I had had a long week and it was the last week of the school term. There is tiredness in your bones that only teachers will know. Nevertheless I felt I was behind in my training, I had to run, I needed to run but I shouldn't have run. The whole way round one of my regular trail routes I felt like the unfortunate Edgar in Men in Black:

Imagine you had been given a second chance to live and got to inhabit someone else’s body and to your dismay you end up with a pretty useless corpus. Nothing ever clicked into place. My feet were clumsy and my lungs had no interest in what the rest of my body was doing at all. I had the distinct feeling people were staring without looking at me as I jerked along the path, the way people do at parents dragging a tantrum throwing child behind them in a quiet supermarket. I didn't even feel better when I got home. Just like that time when you asked that tedious fellow what they did at that party – you never get that time back.

But other times it can be blissful, a release so glorious and unrealised at the time. Yesterday I ran up into the clouds on our local mountain with our four dogs, got drenched, leapt over bushes following the dogs and was annoyingly happy when I returned home.

Arranging four dogs, one of whom is deaf, neatly in a photograph is nigh on impossible. Three was the best I could do.

After a week where I felt like an Edgar and then like a kid, I thought about the value of perspective and running

•  You need a sense of perspective with your training just the way you do with life. Unless you are training for the Olympics and are not having fun, you need to look at what you are doing.
• At some point you’ll realize that as a runner you are the sum of all the steps you have ever taken, not just that last training block. Make your runs count.
• Training well is always better than just training.
• Getting out that door and moving is the next best thing. If you can’t run and feel like an Edgar, do something else. Walk, take the dog out or ride a bike. You can run well another day. 
•  Run when you can with man’s best friend. It is entirely worth it and you’ll feel like a kid again. There is nothing as happy as a dog running. 
• You’ll never be as young as you are that day. Enjoy it because it won’t come round again.

      Hacking about without purpose and perspective just means you’ll get a job in the Athens Road Department. Once and only once you have been let out after dinner.  

Are you tough enough?

There goes the neighbourhood...

The problem with the internet is that too many people are getting involved with things that they shouldn't be. Everyone has the freedom to push their own agenda, much the same way as I am now. That a little knowledge is a dangerous thing is well known and there are just too many people imparting their advice. It is wonderful that the internet can give a voice to everyone yet there is a growing noisy corner of it that seems to be getting a little out of order. As a society we have successfully marginalised the workings of Darwin and we are paying for it. Facebook is the main vehicle of social connectivity at the moment and it seems to be the receptacle of all that is really useless out there. Don't get me wrong, I am on it as much as the next person, but I am now beginning to get an inkling that I am outgrowing it. I don't want to admit it but I think that this means that I am getting old. The perils of microwaved water, rice that ferments quicker because of mean thoughts, the healing power of 'Likes' and KFC's secretly bred four-legged and four-winged chickens are some of the latest inane warnings that are gradually creeping into the realms of social media. The allure is the underlying subtle dichotomy of these premises. That the thinking behind them could make sense is more appealing that the alternative. But what has happened to critical thinking? So far my microwaved porridge with its altered DNA (really now...) hasn't caused anything to go awry. Perhaps it's because I choose to eat bananas with brown flecks on the skin that is counteracting the adverse effects...you never know. Or do you?

It's not that people post them in an ironic way, people believe it. Utterly and completely. Have I just got old? Is my thinking now too rigid? Am I becoming a little bit grumpier? Probably. Just because there is a scientific experiment captured on YouTube doesn't mean it is true. If only it were that easy. Sample sizes are too small and with random variances. A theory needs to be replicable - test it yourself. Don't just YouTube it. 

When the going gets tough, the tough work out

Aside from the plethora of irritatingly bad science out there, there is also the range of inspirational workout posters doing the rounds. Again, I love them. It is a little bit like a walk down memory lane with a dab of testosterone applied Floyd Landis style. If you walked through an open plan office floor in the 90s, most likely the walls would be covered with paintings that looked as though they had been churned out by some unfortunate retirement home-cum-sweatshop in Florida. Pastel water colours with no real discernible subject matter. Amongst these instantly forgettable swathes of pink, blue and lime green prints there was always one of these put up by some departmental middle management hack:

That eventually became this...

Inspired yet?

There is no end too of inspirational work out quotes. It appeals to the athlete in all of us and unfortunately is even more irresistible to the unsophisticated of the species. We just can't help it.  Again, there is nothing wrong with it . They are motivational red flags to the competitive. Because I am not into Crossfit as it appears so much of the Facebook world is, I don't take them to heart. The challenge was not thrust on me. My masculinity intact, I can let them pass by and my un-Spartany toughness remains threatened. 

One though that really caught my attention was the one where there was never anyone that regretted a run. Ever. Really? It kept cropping up with different friends. It jarred something in me. 

What was I thinking?

It made me think. There is often nothing that feels as good after you have returned from a run. That exhilarating yet fleeting dose of endorphins makes everything feel right. But there are many times that I have regretted going for a run. It was those runs that lead to injury or illness.  I knew it at the time too but I could not stop myself. Years ago when I was on the ironman bandwagon I was on the far side of being over trained for much of it. We used to call it the razor, that fine line of finding form yet with the abyss of fatigue. We used to revel in it. It was fun, too and I was part of a pretty competitive group that were all out there chasing this bone, egging each other on. In one sense we are still pack animals. A simple mob with a cause. 

Later too when I started with specific marathon training, following the programme was everything. I never wanted to regret, the feeling that I didn't achieve my weekly training targets. Sadly, all those miles completed whilst over-trained ended up being junk. I didn't get faster, I was just tired for longer. All the while hanging in until the magical taper period so that I could somehow repair myself in time for the big day.

I regret that run when I twisted my ankle after deciding on running a needlessly technical downhill just a few days ahead of a race I had prepared hard for. I missed the race and I still have a slightly dicky ankle. I regret the track session last year when I strained my knee ahead of the marathon. I knew I was tired but I felt I had to tough my way through it because I would be stronger afterwards. It is all fine until it isn't. I regret all those runs when I knew I was getting sick but I went anyway. Why I never listened to my body I don't know...but I also know the next time I get into a training cycle I'll get caught up on driving towards my goal. It is hard, but I have resolved to regret less and listen more. Hopefully it is a sign of maturity. 

Listening to your body is just one of the steps along the road of being an athlete. It is also one of the steps that you heed the older you get. Many athletes find it hard to hold back when training with accumulating fatigue. We make little deals with ourselves such as promising to get a little more sleep that night or that by eating a bit better so we can avoid the downward spiral of over training. Letting go of that missed training session seems to be the most difficult to do. Life too seems to get better at adding obstacles in your way. Less time, work responsibilities, family commitments. The less time you have to train the more important it is listen to your body. 

Sometimes I know that I am not tough enough and that's okay too. Training at the end of the day is a luxury and I want to be able to enjoy it for as long as possible.