Great North Run 2012

Today I received word that I have a place in this years Great North Run!

This is the most iconic half-marathon in the country. Not a bad choice for my first.
So its off to Newcastle and South Shields for me come September. May God have mercy on my soul!!

State of February's 30-Day Challenge (Week 1)

This challenge did not start well. First, I forgot to charge the battery for my DSLR camera so all of the pictures were taken with my iPhone. Also, I missed 3 days because life got in the way.

Below is a map showing the locations where a photo was taken this week.

View Photography 30-Day Challenge 2012 (Week 1) in a larger map

I will endeavour to do better and catch up next week.

My Thoughts on Competition

Tug of War (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Today I want to share my thoughts on competition.

I am no stranger to competition. To get my place in medical school, I had to fight off (on average) nine other candidates. To get my current job, I had to fight off almost twenty other candidates (it took me two attempts to secure that job by the way). What may surprise you is that I dislike competition.

As you can see from my Challenges page, I'm contemplating doing a Tough Mudder event. (Yes, I am slightly mad!) What I find refreshing about it is that it's not a race. In fact, some of the obstacles are insurmountable without help. They believe collaboration is superior to competition, a belief I agree with.

A lot of people don't try things principally because they don't think they can compete. They say to themselves that they can't possibly be the best so why bother? If you step back a moment and think about it, it's crazy. If I felt that way about running, I'd never run. I definitely can't run 5km in 15 minutes like some of my fellow parkrunners! I still run. That's because I don't gauge my results relative to the elite runners. I gauge my results against my own previous performances. Yes, I want to improve and see how good I can be but I don't need to be the very best.

The only person worth competing against is yourself. You might not be the smartest, strongest, fastest person in the world but in your group you're bound to be the best at something.

I think it all goes back to our society's fear of failure. Being last is not a failure if you complete the course. The only true failure is never trying. Don't let competition stop you.

Work-Life Balance

Today, I'd like to share a TED talk I came across relating to work-life balance:

My favourite points:

• "I'd like all of you to pause for a moment, you wretched weaklings, and take stock of your miserable existence".
• "And the reality of the society that we're in is there are thousands and thousands of people out there leading lives of quiet, screaming desperation, where they work long, hard hours at jobs they hate to enable them to buy things they don't need to impress people they don't like".
• "It's up to us as individuals to take control and responsibility for the type of lives that we want to lead".
• "Because commercial companies are inherently designed to get as much out of you as they can get away with".
• "You can't do it all in one day. We need to elongate the time frame upon which we judge the balance in our life".
• "With the smallest investment in the right places, you can radically transform the quality of your relationships and the quality of your life".
• "We can change society's definition of success away from the moronically simplistic notion that the person with the most money when he dies wins, to a more thoughtful and balanced definition of what a life well-lived looks like".

Wise words indeed.

My Thoughts on Choice

"You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your ben and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes."

Yesterday, I saw"The Adjustment Bureau", a film dealing with choice, the nature of free will, the ripple effect etc. It got me thinking.

Every day we are presented with endless choices. Do I drive to work today or shall I take the train? Will I have a coffee before leaving or skip it and have one later? Do I go for a run or stay in because its cold? Shall I cook for myself or get a Chinese take-away? I could go on...

Many of these decisions we take mindlessly, through habit or reflex. Should this be so? After all, each decision leads to another choice, and another, and another ad infinitum. If we step back a moment and put even a tiny amount of thought behind some of those seemingly tiny choices perhaps, just perhaps, we could influence those things in life that seem inevitable or insurmountable.

For example, I'm a runner. I've made no secret of that but I've only been a 'proper' runner since October 2011 because I'm monumentally lazy if I can get away with it. I read books and running magazines for nearly a year before stepping foot outdoors. It has taken a great deal of conscious effort for me to actually drag myself out beyond my front door to run consistently. I've battled cold weather, wind, my ungodly work schedule and my own laziness to do what has been necessary. Each time I've not felt like getting out for a run, I've had to remind myself of how rubbish I'd feel for letting myself down. I even joined a running club. And the result of all this? I regularly run 3 times a week no matter what my work schedule and I've raced up and down a mountain! If you told me that a year ago I'd have laughed in your face!

It took a surprisingly small amount of effort to achieve this though. I just had to stop and think briefly before choosing to stay inside my warm house. I simply said to myself, 'it'll only be half an hour', 'you'll feel better about yourself afterwards', 'it'll be easier than the last time', 'you'll soon warm yourself up' etc. Then off I would go.

What's my point? Well, my point is that often we do know how the ripples of our decisions will play out but we simply ignore it. I knew if I didn't go out for that run, the next one would be even harder to do, I'd be down on myself, I'd eat crap and eventually just give up.

At the end of the day, all we have are our choices. We have total control over the decisions we make. We can predict the impact our decisions will have on our lives. We just have to think before we choose.

My 2nd (and 3rd) Miles in Vibram FiveFingers

In future I may avoid using VFF's in freezing temperatures!!

Tonight was my second run in my Vibram FiveFingers KSO's. This time I pushed on extra kilometre. Here are my thoughts:

1. The ankles are getting stronger.
Last week, I felt my ankles were being strained stabilising my feet without the support of my normal running shoes. Tonight, they seemed to know what to do and only now, a couple of hours later, do my ankle muscles feel worked. It's the pleasant discomfort of a muscle worked-out as opposed to the agony of injury. (My shins are a little sore but that is mainly left over from a hill session with my running club on Tuesday).

2. I'm liking the extra awareness of the running surface.
To work in an extra kilometre, I detoured down a new road with some construction rubble strewn over it and a muddy patch of earth. You can instantly detect the change in terrain and the feet seem to reposition themselves of their own free will. I wonder if the same would be true for those times you catch your foot unexpectedly on a patch of mud or slush?

3. I continue to get faster.

Behold, RunKeeper's analysis of my run. My fastest average pace ever 

apparently.

Compared to last week, RunKeeper says I'm 7 seconds/km faster. I can't say with certainty the VFF's are making the difference because I've not done an easy run in my normal shoes yet to compare. However, based on my thought last week about the possibility of energy being wasted in compressing cushioning, I wouldn't be surprised if they were. Alternatively it could just be me getting fitter. We'll see.

4. You definitely know how your foot is landing.
Linked to more awareness of the road surface, is greater awareness of your foot position relative to the ground. In the VFF's I know I'm landing on my forefoot and pronating far less than I do in shoes. In my normal shoes I have no idea what my foot is doing.

5. VFF's may be a poor choice in cold weather.
It was zero Celsius outside tonight. When I got home, I couldn't feel my toes. Enough said.

Next week I'll try 4km (hopefully in warmer weather!). If that goes OK it'll be time to try a parkrun in the VFF's.