Turkish March. More music for running.

Today's run with Strelka and Leroy: 10.2 km - 62.26 min. We have a very pleasant cool summer here, not hot, not cold, just right, +18ºC today, sunny with a bit of cloud. Put some sunblock on my long nose.

First time sleeveless vest this year. My 30-year old Nike nylon, so light it feels as though it's not there. Good things never age.

Since my Paris running fb friend Olga Nikolaeva has asked what music to take on the run I keep making a mental note of what I was listening to. Today it was Ludwig Van's Turkish March. 

Note: I never take iPod or Walkman (I still have one, remember that cassette thingy?) on the run. I want to hear the sounds of nature. Including approaching cars. I just listen to the tune on YouTube and let it play in my head. They call it earworm. But it wears off after a while.

A Sunday Afternoon.

Today's run with Strelka and Leroy: 14.3 km - 1 h 26.02 min

Over the steep Chaulieu hill and down through the woods towards Truttemer le Grand and again through the woods. 

It was in the afternoon and lots of French walking en famille after the Sunday lunch, a fine tradition still very much alive here.

Climb Every Mountain.

St Christophe de Chaulieu. Hill on the left.

Today's (8 April) run with Strelka and Leroy: 7.6 km - 46.10 min. 

Grey day but much warmer than yesterday. I decided to do a stamina-building run after yesterday's long 16 km race - and to check out one of my shorter courses with a steep short rise to the top of the Chaulieu hill through the woods and then a gentler but longer uphill stretch to St-Christophe de Chaulieu. It felt much easier than yesterday, no extra huffing-n-puffing. 

And the path through the woods was cleared, I suspect, by the neighbour who keeps horses for carriage driving. I saw tracks of hooves sliding in the mud and wheels going all over the place. Apparently someone really adventurous went down that path in a horse car. But brambles were neatly cut or bent not to go over the path. 

Thank you, horse people.

Catkins!

Today's run with Nala and Strelka:

10.75 km - 69.33, +6ºC, no wind, sunny.

The day is sunny and pleasant, smells of Spring everywhere. 

We had a slow run, stopping several times to check for primroses but couldn't find any. 

Yet, when we came back, my wife showed me a glorious bundle of catkins!

Photo by Bogdan, from here.

Boxing Day Run, 2012

Just managed to squeeze a run in between two sheets of rain - 9.8 km - 57.26 min, +9ºC, windy but ok. With Nala and Leroy. 

Don't know what's going on, the dogs were ahead of me all the time except when they stopped to sniff around in the woods. I wasn't slower than usual - they were faster. Where's this new bounce coming from? Are they trying to tell tell me they're good? I know it already.
 
It was nice to work off all the turkey and chocolate after Christmas Day. Strelka stared behind and was distraught.

In the end they each got a sliver of turkey.

Run, Golden Strelka, the star of my book.

10.17 km - 62.12 min., with Strelka and Leroy. It's windy, almost stormy, fallen branches everywhere and very, very cool, 14ºC. But somehow neither the chill, nor the wind, are unpleasant.

The cutout photo below is of Strelka, the Golden Retriever, who has been my running buddy for eight years now. I made it with graphic tools in iWork/Pages, an Apple Mac word processing and page layout programme. The cutout was meant for this blog, but I also put it in the book about iWork I've been writing this year. So Strelka became a star in it. (read on below the photo)

The technique involves editing the photo's contours on a Mac. In physical terms, it is similar to what we all do as children in play groups and kindergartens – cut out a picture with scissors to glue it into a scrapbook. Except that on computers we move editing points to hide the rest of the photo and leave only the image we want. Anyone with basic computer skills can quickly learn how to do it. And not just this but many other tricks with text and images that many of us have always wanted to learn but were  afraid to try. This includes the Internet. I made the graphic title-panel for this blog in iWork/Pages too.

The book is out now, in print and Kindle versions. Cropping and cutting out photos is described in detail there, as well as many other techniques for family and professional projects, from cards and posters to brochures, magazines and books. You can read or download a sample chapter on how to make logos with iWork/Pages here (opens in PDF).

The book, iWork for Mac OSX Cookbook (link to the book on Packt Publishing), is now on Amazon and all other major book-selling websites. It's called a cookbook because of the easy-to-follow descriptions of computer techniques – just like recipes for cooking.

This weekend the publishers, Packt Publishing, are having a big promotion: if you register on their site, you can download one of their ebooks, including mine, for free.

Click on the book cover below to go to Amazon.

Puppies and kittens as live bait? No!

10.4 km - 62.58 min. September, one of the most pleasant seasons to run. Mild, slow, embracing.

A friend sent me this link, a campaign to stop French islanders to use live puppies and kittens as shark bait. Apparently, it happens in a French overseas (Dom-Tom) departement of Reunion, an island territory off Africa. Let me know if you know more. Meanwhile I am signing anyway.

Bluebells and Harebells.

9.85 km - 59.45 min. 

What a pleasant day today - warm, but with a good fresh breeze. 

Dogs kept smelling something – and dragging me along at top speed. Even after a good long stretching my calves still hurt.

Scottish Bluebells popped up everywhere suddenly. These are not the English bluebells that blossom in Spring and early Summer. In England they call them harebells. But in Scotland they are called bluebells.

Cooling their feet (paws).

Nala (back to camera) and Strelka in the woods

67.12 min - 10.1 km.

Took female Golden Nala for a run after a long break. Her and Strelka, her male twin.

She hasn't really regained form after giving birth to eight puppies two years ago, but is a happy active dog. Time doesn't matter, she can do it in her own pace and the rest of us will just follow.

It had been raining and there were puddles on the road and water in ditches. I went down to a slow pace to let Nala enjoy her run. Boy, she did!

And noticed: halfway into my usual 6-mile circuit both Goldens started running through puddles and and jumping into the ditches to gallop through the stream. It's fun for them but it's also a natural way for dogs to cool their paws. 

Squelch

9.85 km - 59.09 min - a very pleasant run through drizzling rain and squelchy mud in the woods. 

The farmer was working in the fields along the path through the woods, which left a lot of squelchy mud on the path. I slipped a couple of times but the dogs absolutely loved it. It's probably because it's softer on their paws.

I gave them both a quick warm shower after the run, just to wash off the mud. Which they didn't enjoy. I did mine.

But we all enjoyed sitting by the fire, getting warm and dry while outside drizzle turned to downpour and breeze to squall.

Deceptive heat

6 miles - 55:07 min, 23ºC

They talk about global warming making Britain hotter by 4 degrees. There is concern, but there is also a bit of glee - so, we will have more sun, less rain? Great!

Not really, not for me, not for my runs, I think, as I finish today's 6-miler.

The heat is deceptive - there is a cool light breeze from the Atlantic. At moments it stops - and then the heat of the Sun is absolutely scorching. Dogs pant and I sweat, we slow down to a jog and clock a really low time. Strelka and Leroy immediately walk off to lie on a soft patch of clover in a shadowed corner of the garden and I drink two or three glasses of lemon water before starting the stretches.

picture by Vincent Van Gogh, 1889

Naked Running: stay cool

6 miles - 52.05 min - a bit windy, cool. Still, I could feel the blistering sun on my skin when clouds parted at times. I did put sun lotion on my nose and cheekbones, they are the first to catch sun, but it was more to protect against wind.
(Picture: Boys running out of water by Alexander Deyneka)

Yes, it is Summer and I strip layer after layer to stay cool. Runner's World has published an article 'Should I run naked?' by Amby Burfoot.

If you ask me, the ancient Olympians were a lot cleverer than we are, she says. They had the good sense to run, jump and throw in the nude. When you put anything between your skin and the environment, such as shorts and a singlet, you only decrease your body's cooling efficiency (even if you're more comfortable in certain areas). The so-called “modern” Olympians of 1896 were cleverer than us, too. They did their running, jumping and throwing in April. Some athletes complained about the chilly, damp weather, but Spiridon Louis gave thanks to Zeus all the way to his (clothed) marathon victory in 2:58:50.

The article is more about the hydration and heat challenges facing summer marathon runners, than nudity, but the idea is there. Some advice and caution from the article:

Too Much
Perhaps no runner has thought more about heat training and racing than Alberto Salazar. Before the 1984 Olympic Marathon he got tested in a heat chamber (where sweat production is measured) and learned to chug two litres of fluid before every workout. But then he crashed. He now believes he did too many hard 20-milers in the heat. "I was exhausted from the first step of the marathon," he says. He finished 15th in 2:14:19.

Hydration
:

Everyone knows drinking fluids is supposed to help you run faster. But you have to slow down to grab your drinks. America's Steve Spence worked on this dilemma when he was training for the hot, humid World Championships Marathon in Tokyo in 1991. Spence set up a water table on his local track, and then practised drinking while running intervals at faster-than-marathon pace. "I figured if I got good at taking my drinks at this pace, it would come easy in the marathon," he says. Spence claimed the bronze medal.

And of course, Cool Clothing:



You already know that a white shirt will absorb less heat than a black one. <...> In 2000, Nike produced a shirt that several runners wore in the Sydney Olympics. This white shirt sat off the skin on small bumps (allowing air to circulate), was constructed of a large fishnet weave (more air circulation), didn't absorb sweat (leaving it on the skin to cool you via evaporation), and was made of recycled plastic bottles. Too bad Nike called the shirt the Stand-Off Distance Singlet (because of the way it stood off your skin), which sounded too much like a shirt with a body-odour problem. They then went on to produce something called the Nike Sphere Cool Marathon Singlet, with aerodynamic seam placement, mesh construction, and 'Zoned Venting' technology. But give me a Stand-Off Distance Singlet, and I'll show you a really great hot-weather running shirt.

And now we're coming back to what was promised in the title:

Here's my advice <...>: cut your racing singlet as short as you can. Research by exercise physiologist Timothy Gavin has shown that 'the chimney effect' can improve body cooling. This refers to air moving up the bottom of your untucked shirt and out the top.

Or just run naked. You'll be reconnecting with your Olympic forebears, increasing your chances of a medal, and giving a big boost to the BBC's TV ratings.

It looks like Nike got wind of the advice. Here's their video on naked running:

The Future Runs

30 March 09
6 miles - 49.00 min sunny, light, cool breeze

Light stride, easy run - felt a bit like Max Kammerer, a hero of my favourite sci-fi book from the 60s, Prisoners of Power, also known by its Russian title The Inhabited Island.


He is a man from a future utopian Earth, where people live and stay healthy for as long as they have an interest in life. The anti-utopian (distopian) option of the future is on a planet where Max lands to prepare a report for the KGB (K-Council of Gallactic B-Security-bezopasnost.) People there drink, smoke, die early and are controlled by mind-bending rays broadcast from cell-phone type pylons. Nations wage nuclear wars against each other polluting the planet that is already suffering from unbalanced environment.

Stranded on the planet Max misses his favourite pastime on Earth: running. It's not any running. His was a run through the woods a-chasing the deer. The future human would catch up with the deer, grab him by the antlers, stop, hold down and then release.

Oh, and while on the planet Max discovers a race of Headdies (Golovans), dog-like creatures who, as a result of mutations, acquired intelligence equal or superior to human. Dogs eventually join the human on his mission, running beside him and warning of approaching danger...

The Inhabited Island by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, 1969, published in English in 1977 under the title
Prisoners of Power


Yesterday, 29 March, saw first swallows (or house martins). It's only March! Are we in for a scorching Summer? Or are they just passing and stopped in my garden on their way further North. Swallows go all the way to the North Sea and the White Sea.

Vita breaks her record

23 Nov 2008
4 km - 27,45 min

It's a cold and windy Sunday with prickly rain and gusty North-West. My daughter has been nagging me to go for a run all week, but I didn't feel fully recovered from my cold and wanted to build up running slowly. Today we go, putting on thermal shirts and windbreakers with hoods.

It's not that it is difficult to run in the rain, it's not hearing approaching cars that is the problem. With a hood on and rain gear rustling and crackling when rain and wind smash into you, you can hardly hear anything. So we rely on the dogs to alert us. Over the years I trained the two Goldens to weer off on the verge when a car approaches. The adopted English Setter quickly learned to do it too.

We never stop - it's just to cold to do anything, but run as fast as we can. We get to the village and turn back. By the time we stop by the gates of the house we're dripping wet, all four of us. I rub the dogs with towels and as we go through stretching on the verandah I check the time - wow, Vita has broken her record by nearly a minute.

Find and get what you need for running with dogs

Get fit to survive the economis crisis

10 March

6 miles - 51:48 minutes

Strange. Same strong North-West is still blowing, but feels pleasant. And somehow the run was easy and my feet felt light.

Below is the Editor's Blog by Miranda Ingram from the March issue of the Rendezvous, an English language magazine published in Normandy, France. As a rule I only publish my own original content, but since I have become a character in Miranda's article, I decided to make an exception to the rule.

ever noticed how men swim the same way they drive -
over-taking, cutting in, then
holding everybody up

It’s that time of year when a glimpse of daffodil cheers the heart and hints that maybe - who knows? - the sun will put in an appearance this summer.

It also reminds us, however, that lardy winter bodies will soon be unwrapped and put on show.
Making a stab at getting in shape makes sense and it’s not just about how you look, or the fact that looking better makes you feel better.

This year, more than ever, we need to be physically and mentally robust.

There may be little we can do about the global economic crisis. What we can do is look after ourselves well enough to be able to cope with its effects on us and those close to us. Being in poor physical shape leaves you more prone to despair.

So, time to peel away from the wood burner and sniff the air outside. I can preach! Some, of course, are irrepressibly active and naturally subject their woes to a punishing physical regime. Others among us are more inclined to escape via a glass of wine and a good book, curled up on the sofa. The invention of cars, we feel, surely made legs redundant.

Can those of a more static disposition morph into active types? Apparently so. You only have to do something new - drink tea without sugar, go for a walk, for example, - 13 times or for 2 weeks for it to become a new habit.

Take my husband. One day he hit forty, drained a last bottle of vodka, stubbed out his cigarette and announced he was going to run the London Marathon. He took to crawling out of bed in the dark, donning a miner’s lamp and dragging the dog out of her basket for a morning run.

The following April he fulfilled a life long dream when he crossed the finish line on the Mall.
He has run it again several times since and yes, running is a new addiction. He gets twitchy if more than a day passes without the mental release of a 10 km run.

Me, I prefer swimming. When I say swimming, I mean actually swimming, not the palaver of going swimming.

Not the business of getting undressed in a tiny cabin, balling up your clothes and then finding that you have crammed them into the one locker where your token doesn’t fit or the lock is bust.

Not the dash through the freezing foot-bath nor the eyes of the life-guards summing up your excess pounds; not the knee in the stomach as you try and pass someone in a swimming lane laid out for stick insects.

Ever noticed how men like to swim the same way they drive? Compulsively over-taking, cutting into the gap in front then holding everybody up.

When lanes are organised from fast to slow, men will always pick the fast lane even if they can barely muster a sluggish breast stroke while women, even aspiring Adlingtons, opt for the slow or middle lanes.

You see these men on the pool side, limbering up and gulping energy drinks. Natty little swimming trunks, bodies waxed and tanned, go-faster goggles: you just know they’re going to throw those testosterones into the Man-Butterfly - the one-man wave-machine.

So you let them go first, then they run out of stamina half way down the first length and you have to stop dead to avoid a kick in the face.

(OK, OK, don’t all write in. Women can be just as annoying. I mean, if you want a gossip, why not meet for a coffee and a fag rather than catch up in the shallow end?)

But, if you treat yourself to a jacuzzi afterwards, (the whole point of going swimming, surely?) there’s Mr Man-Butterfly again, draped across the tub so you have to sit sideways with your knees bent. Either that or he’s in the sauna cranking it up to extra hot.

Then at the end of it all, there’s the timed shower which peters out just when your eyes are screwed closed and full of shampoo, trying to put socks on when the floor’s sopping wet and finally emerging into winter with wet hair.

So when I say I like swimming, what I really mean is that I would swim at least daily, possibly more, if I had a private heated indoor pool of my own. Sadly, it is a renovation project which will have to wait.

There’s always a good excuse to put off a new exercise regime. Banish it - and get moving!

************
Once again, we have been rewarded for being too lazy to pick up the last of our apples in autumn. On cold days, the garden is a sea of birds come to feast on the rotting fruit. And there’s more than enough to go round so they don’t even have to fight over it.

Meanwhile, the red squirrel makes a daily visit to add another walnut to her collection.

© the Rendezvous Media

Happiness is a good run

5 March 09

49:06 - 6 miles
Happiness is a good run made faster. Lopped off three minutes from yesterday's run.

Why?

Nothing new: same weather, same shoes, same pair of dogs, same 6 hours of sleep, same glass of wine with supper, same number of cigarettes, only one day difference in my age.

So, what's happened?

Running is a wonderful stress buster - when you're feeling down, just stop everything and go for a trot. You'll feel better.

But it works the other way round too. Something good happened in your life - and you run better.

We've just had a helpful grant approved for our publishing company to develop a new project. The approval was largely based on the good impression produced by our first guide that only this morning came from the printers. For the past few weeks we worked flat out to finish it in time for presentation at the grants committee meeting. And did it!

So, my spirits were high when I set out to do the usual 6 mile circuit. And even though it felt like my normal pace, when I looked at the stopwatch it was, in fact, three minutes faster.

Listen to Happiness is a warm gun by John Lennon here

Couldn't find Ray Conniff's Happiness is different things to different people anywhere.
Can anyone help?

Dambusters theme is here
and Ghostbusters theme here

Running in the Country: Drop, but Never Loose

6 miles - 52.48 min

The weather broke yesterday. It was a lovely warm beach day all day, but all through the night it rained and thundered. Humid and grey today.

I always take a handkerchief with me on the run. It is, I think, a runner's top piece of gear. I was sure I had it today, but when, after two miles in the run, sweat started dribbling down my forehead I suddenly realised it wasn't in my pocket. Shucks!

My circuit is, first, a two kilometre stretch which I cover twice on the run-out and the run-back, and then it's an 6 km loop. I was really suffering with sweat pouring into my eyes when I came back to the 2 km run-back stretch - and sure enough, the hanky was lying there in the middle of the road. It just slipped out of my pocket.

This is one of the joys of running in the country - safe and trustworthy. At least that's how I interpret the fact that I can drop something on the road and pick it up, untouched, in the same place half an hour later.

Beating General Petraeus

1 July

6 miles - 47,36 min.
Wonderful cool day, night showers cleared the air of dust and pollen. Me, my Golden Blond and Freckled Beauty pound a fast and happy 6 mile circuit today.

General Petraeus, the commander of American forces in Iraq, recently ran a 10 mile race in 64 minutes according to the interview published in the Sunday Times this week. Petraeus is known to be a passionate runner. He often challenges younger officers for a 5 mile dash. Even in Iraq, the Sunday Times article says, he runs 4 times a week.

But 10 miles in 64 minutes is simply incredible! His time for 6 miles at this pace would have been 38,4 minutes. He is 56, I am 51, my time for today (with dogs) is ten minutes slower. My all time best for 6 miles is 39 minutes (without dogs). I can't beat Petraeus.

At his 10 mile pace Petraeus would have done a marathon in 2 hours 46 minutes. I've looked up this year London Marathon results for 55-59 age group. Only one man was faster at 2:45 and the second best was 2:47.

I have grave doubts about Iraq, but firm belief in runners.

London Marathon Day

13 April
12 km - 1 hour 05.47 min


Beautiful Sunday morning, sunny cool and still. Dogs are bouncing and leading the way, happily wagging their tails.

Come back and watch on TV the greatest running festival in the world, the London Marathon. The children know and don't even grumble when I ask them to switch to BBC1 from their usual programmes. They too fall for the excitement of thousands of runners pounding the streets of London and thousands cheering and celebrating. Shall I run next year, my daughter asks. I think I should, I miss it so much.