Week 6 Christmas Easy week

 

"“Do not give up. In order to reach your goal, be regular, be determined, be cheerful! Do not give up, do not give up! The Goal is ahead of you. If you do not give up, you are bound to reach your destined Goal.” -Sri Chinmoy"

The week is slowing to a restful recovery week from the programme .I only had 2 days at work and with Christmas on Friday 25 December I had 3 days of rest between sessions. 

Started with a rest day and meditation.I did a cycle session at the Gym .On Tuesday it was an hour running  with 4 x 500m on a hill .I did Mount Street and found it hard going with my coughing but got through the session with 7km . On Wednesday ,I did my strength session at the gym and an hour of Yoga ,felt a lot better for it .Again did my meditation in the evening when everything was more restful. Focusing on rest and parts of the body that one could relax such as the earlobes , hair finger tips breathing and feet. Harder to focus on these then just the other form of meditation learnt so far which is see, hear and feel and labeling the action and just moving on .

Thursday Christmas eve even though there was nothing on , I did a gym session with 5km of running and strength work .Mainly planks, and working on my balance on a Bosu ball.

Friday Christmas day was a quiet time of contemplating the most difficult year for everyone but also thankful here in WA .I had an easy meditation session and evening with Family.Saturday was just an hour of walking with 20 minutes going hard .Managed 7km in the heat.Sunday an easy hour running with 6mins on and 3 minutes walking for just under 8km.

A  pretty easy week .The weight remains static but hopefully in a month will be under 75kgs. I was suppose to go down to Denmark this coming week but that was put on hold .So will just train here and hopefully will be fit to help pace the runners at Delirious in February.

This weeks session is dealing with the negative thoughts that flood through and white-ant our desire in a race and convinces us to drop out in  the extreme scenario of a death spiral of negative thoughts.

What is imposter Syndrome

I have been trying to smile and to focus on relaxing on runs all hard as the thoughts flood in and out and for me the coughing is also a disruptor of focus.

Week 4 & 5 Dec 7-20

 The fourth week into a year long programme is moving slowly. The days are warmer and the training on hot days are harder .My coughing comes and goes and is a real nuisance to training but settles down after 10-20 minutes but i will need to see if I can get it sorted. 

 

The training is building slowly with a 2.5 hr run walk session on Sunday .otherwise it has been fairly light.I have continued to practice the meditation and slowly learning to try and focus the mind and not getting too disconcerted with the thoughts flooding in .Just refocusing back to the present.  It is slow going and not a quick panacea for the run becoming effortless but I am finding like all things it is a slow progression with having faith that in time all these small endeavors will surely help the ultimate goal of running ultra distances.

7 Rest Day: Rest Day Meditation: Meditation: See, Hear Feel, 5... 10:00

8 1:03 PM Run: 20 min warmup, 20 min hilly... 7.72 km ~ 1:09:59 Meditation: Meditation: See, Hear Feel, 5... 10:00

9 Rest Day: Rest Day Meditation: Meditation: See, Hear Feel, 5... 10:00

10 2:42 PM Run: Run easy 8.88 km ~ 1:00:07 3:50 PM Strength Training 0 km ~ 20:05 Meditation: Meditation: See, Hear Feel, 5... 10:00

11 Rest Day: Rest Day Meditation: Meditation: See, Hear Feel, 5... 10:00

12 7:50 AM Run: Walk 20 /20 /20 1.46 km ~ 22:28 8:17 AM Run 6.58 km ~ 1:01:56 2:14 PM Strength Training 0 km ~ 36:01 3:02 PM Cross Training 0 km ~ 1:29:31 Meditation: Meditation: See, Hear Feel, 5... 10:00

13 10:24 AM Run: Run 6 minutes, walk 3 minutes... 18.82 km ~ 2:30:03 Meditation: Meditation: See, Hear Fe

The following week is the same with the focus on now trying to practice relaxing and focusing on the runs . Great article on smiling whilst running which I read on training Peaks and which was discussed in our session that somehow it does make the run feel better . Can Smiling make you run faster

14 Rest Day: Rest Day 6:43 AM Run 1.36 km ~ 23:09 7:08 AM Bike 17.07 km ~ 48:54 5:07 PM Bike 19.43 km ~ 49:05 Meditation: Meditation: See, Hear Feel, 5... (10:00)	15 11:59 AM Run: Run with 6 x 1 minute efforts 7.77 km ~ 53:02 Meditation: Meditation: See, Hear Feel, 5... 10:00	16 Rest Day: Rest Day Meditation: Meditation: See, Hear Feel, 5... (10:00)	17 12:06 PM Run: Run easy 7.5 km ~ 56:02 4:02 PM Strength Training 0 km ~ 46:24 Meditation: Meditation: See, Hear Feel, 5... 10:00	18 Rest Day: Rest Day Meditation: Meditation: See, Hear Feel, 5... (10:00)	19 2:19 PM Strength Training 0 km ~ 30:01 Meditation: Meditation: See, Hear Feel, 5... 20:00 3:04 PM Cross Training 0 km ~ 1:36:38 9:08 AM Run: Walk Steady Pace: Find some... 6.33 km ~ 1:00:43	20 6:04 AM Run: Run 6 minutes, walk 3 minutes... 22.43 km ~ 3:02:25 Meditation: Meditation: See, Hear Feel, 5... 13:00
Run: 45.4 km ~ 6:15:23 (6:00:00) // Bike: 36.5 km ~ 1:38:00 // Meditation: 53:00 (1:10:00) // Strength Training: 0.0 km ~ 1:16:26 // Cross Training: 0.0 km ~ 1:36:38 // Total: 81.9 km ~ 11:39:28 (7:10:00

I did a 3 hour run on Sunday and ran to Sherbet for breakfast and then a run home for the 3 hours and about 23kms .The weight is slowly coming off but a long way to go yet.

WEEK 3 - Kintsugi

 

Cape walk in September

It is settling into a more consistent routine with the inconsistent parts the cross training not part of the programme. That adds a little spice in the mundane training of a single sport .

I lack strength and fitness so the long road to building the strength with weights and cycling on my mountain bike and even Yoga with body balance such as standing on one leg has been helpful.

The trick is to build and be consistent.In addition it is now a week of starting the day meditating.Not always successful with the mind wandering but always recognizing the mind is imperfect and bringing ones thoughts back to focusing on the meditation Being in the now. In addition reading Grahaks book and Sri Chinmoys book on meditation,makes the exercise quite time consuming .

I have also listened to the odd podcast including Ultra running Podcast called DNF .this week it was an interview with   Ben Gibbard from  Death Cab for Cutie,( A short piece on him in Men's Health Journal)

The discussion is about ultra running and how it can heal .that is the take away line I got. the title of the podcast is Kintsugi the Japanese Art  of porcelain repair :

Kintsugi (金継ぎ, "golden joinery"), also known as kintsukuroi (金繕い, "golden repair"),^[1] is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum, a method similar to the maki-e technique.^[2][3][4] As a philosophy, it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.^[5]

  It displays the cracks and makes it the focus.Like Kintsugi , ultra running can be the glue or gold that repairs the fault lines of our lives as in the case of Ben Gibbard. 

Like all endurance events there is the mundane element of training and the freedom of the surrounds of trail running .The suffering to replace the pain for some .The joy of overcoming the challenge.

This week a bit of coughing on the runs whichis the norm for me presently but the throat settles down after a few kms on the run. The hard session is hill work on Mount Street .Other than that it has been fine.

this week the sessions are :

Monday 

Meditation for 10 minutes in the morning

Cycle session at the Gym and 15 minutes strength work at the Gym

Tuesday

Meditaion and a hill work out at  the end of the day on Mount Street.

Wednesday

Gym strength, Yoga for an hour and meditation

Thursday

Easy Run, meditation and weights at the Gym for 40 minutes

Friday

Dog walk ,Bike to work and back and meditation

Saturday

1 hour walking with hard fast for 20 minutes and meditation

Sunday

2 hours with 6 minutes run and 3 minutes walk for 15 kms and meditation

Total 12 hours 

The run on Sunday was hard and slow and felt a little tired despite the very low volume.

Still overweight and slowly dropping the kgs and trying to build fitness slowly. Still coughing every run but once I have coughed it out I settle to breathing easily.

The meditation is hard as the mind struggles to focus but I have to just keep bringing it back from rambling thoughts that enter the head .Somedays are better than others.

In a way my own cracks in respect to the ups and down of my fitness health life feelings are all that make it part of that journey the uniqueness that our experiences brings in moving forward and the uniqueness' in the cracks that are our Kintsugi. We can treasure them and build from them or dissolve in them ,forever defining us and being our weakness our achilless heal., forever holding us back.

If anything 2020 has been a year that has shown us what is important and what is not .Life is precious and to live it is to experience everything even the bad days ,are lessons we can cherish , Learn and thrive from all the experiences  if we allow ourselves the opportunity. This week has been pretty average but I wouldn't have it any other way.

 

 

Meditation

 ‘The success-road is paved with patience and perseverance"

 Sri Chinmoy 

The Second week of training has the added leg of starting to practice meditation . We had an hour long discussion with Rob by zoom and then several videos I watched about the benefits .I have posted some here. I have also started reading Grahak's book called Running Beyond the Marathon about his experience running the transcendental3100 race in New York .Winning it once and doing it 4 times .Each race 3100 miles round a Block in Brooklyn measuring about 890meteres .

A staggering feat of  human endurance and the ability to overcome the physical discomfort and mental stresses over nearly 50 days.

Here is a snynopsis of the book:

 Willis, Christopher. "On My Bookshelf: Running Around the Block." Ultrarunning, May/June 2013.

BEYOND THE MARATHON; INSIGHTS INTO THE LONGEST FOOT RACE IN THE WORLD. By Grahak Cunningham. Available for $5.99 from www.grahakcunningham.com(link is external).

The Self-Transcendence 3100 Mile Race was founded in 1997 by running guru Sri Chinmoy to exemplify the endless possibilities of the human spirit. It is held on a concrete footpath around an883 metre (roughly half-mile) block in Queens, New York. 

 Running Beyond the Marathon

 Grahak Cunningham

 

 Why Meditate

 

 I have after 26 November started to practice meditating at least 10 minutes each day . It is obviously not simple and constantly trying to bring the mind back to a focus of the experience here and now .It is an activity ,that will take time to develop and grow into.As the 2 videos above show there are many reasons and empirical data to show the benefits of the practice. 

On Friday 27 November I went down to Subiaco Community Centre to watch the Doco above and meet Grahak. In addition on Saturday I spent the afternoon at a introduction to Meditation run by Sri Chinmoy Perth. The speaker was Anuba and her lecture was engaging and enlightening . There are numerous techniques and everyone finds the one that they are comfortable with . Most important is to be consistent. This will be an interesting journey of self discovery and trying to quieten the mind and becoming more focused..

 

WEEK 2 23-30 November 2020

 I must begin my life
Once again
By dreaming the impossible.

Sri Chinmoy, Emperor-smiles. Orphan-tears

 

The schedule of training has been easy. After all it is the start of a very long programme to build fitness and mental capacity for ultra running with the aim of a 100km run in June then a 100 miler in September before considering longer distances.The aim is to finish and to be as prepared as I can .

 This week :

23 Rest Day: Rest Day 6:53 AM Run 1.71 km ~ 25:22 7:22 AM Bike 19.21 km ~ 49:22 5:14 PM Bike 19.45 km ~ 48:13

24 12:09 PM Run: Run with 6 x 1 minute efforts 9.05 km ~ 1:02:51

25 Rest Day: Rest Day 6:59 AM Run 1.17 km ~ 20:29 7:23 AM Bike 19.4 km ~ 54:28 5:16 PM Bike 10.05 km ~ 30:37 6:01 PM Cross Training 0 km ~ 1:01:00 7:04 PM Bike 6.27 km ~ 20:48

26 12:35 PM Run: Run easy 8.55 km ~ 57:09 8:45 PM Meditation: Meditation: See, Hear Feel, 5... 10:00

27 5:17 PM Strength Training 0 km ~ 34:13 6:45 AM Meditation: Meditation: See, Hear Feel, 5... 10:00 Rest Day: Rest Day

28 8:12 AM Run 6.52 km ~ 1:00:09 Meditation: Meditation: See, Hear Feel, 5... 10:00 7:29 AM Run: Walk 20 /20 /20 3.07 km ~ 38:27

29 5:19 PM Run: Run easy: HR < 150 8.41 km ~ 1:00:01

The main focus is preparation. Aside from the running , I had2 days of riding , a Yoga session and a short strength session .The interesting part of preparation is the commencing of meditation each morning for 10 minutes to try and get the mind more focused.

There were a number of videos on You Tube recommended and I have attached a few . This is as suggested the last frontier for training . The mind is or can be our greatest ally or worse enemy in a race . As the videos discuss it it that inner Monkey(voice) we try and quieten as it is usually full of negativity .