Mad dogs and Englishmen

Go out in the midday sun.  In that case I have passed the Tebbit test.  That said it does not aid the running process.  Sadly I was not able to run at the speed I was hoping for, which means now is the time to enter a tapering period.   It is hard as I did not do my big run last week; you tend to develop a sense of guilt for not training hard all the time.  And considering I am training for a half marathon in July, trying to balance the needs of one run with the more immediate needs of another is a tricky thing.

So I am now less than a week away from what will be my second running event.  I may have to skip Jiu Jitsu as the last thing I want is an injury to derail all the work, that Taryn, Samiul and I (to a lesser extent) have put into it.  I would like to take this moment to thank everyone who has supported me and look forward to meeting you at the big brunch.

Right Leg Hospital

Mirko “Cro Cop” Filopovic is one of my favourite fighters. We are both left handed, and primarily strikers.  If I ever got a really good rear leg kick I was going to get “left leg cemetery” tattooed in Thai (ป่าช้าขาซ้าย) on my left shin.  Sadly my kicks never got that good and more importantly I am terrified of needles.  

Actually the only thing we have in common is that we don’t seek out the spotlight.  While sparring, and running long distances don’t really worry me, doing the meet the “athlete” last week did, a lot.  To the point I asked someone else to impersonate me and read my speech.  They said no and I had to do it anyway.  While not the disaster I thought it was going to be, I will not be pursuing a career as an after dinner speaker anytime too soon.

So what is the point of this particular blog entry?   I will be running for charity, yet I probably ran away hardest just from making a speech in order to promote a run I was doing.  Doing something that is worthwhile is often about doing something challenging.  While this May 1^st 10k will be difficult, and I will learn a lot about myself training for it and actually doing it, facing up to an unexpected and unwelcome challenge has taught me a lot more

All in my head?

Matt Hughes, Frankie Edgar, Ledley King, Optimus Prime, Stephen Hendry….wait a minute Stephen Hendry is on this list?  Ultimately all of these individuals demonstrated what it is to be a champion.

They all in a key moment, pulled out of the proverbial rabbit out of the hat. As clichéd as it sounds the test of a true champion is how they conquer adversity. And a quality that goes through all of them is an unwillingness to give up.   All though David Gray hated this song it does not make the oft repeated message any less true.  Though the training I do is mostly physical, I am starting to learn from what I do (or do not!). 

A case in point being my last cardio session.   I was looking to do two hours straight on the stationary bike.  Lately what with Jiu Jitsu and spending time with my girlfriend, my aerobic training has been mostly weekly running sessions and making use of the fine weather to go running at any given opportunity. I am looking to maintain my cardio during what most runners calls the tapering end of their running cycle, so as to avoid picking up any injuries.  However training in my makeshift “gym” is not without issue. Primarily training without my body overheating.  When I am running outdoors I am generally running at a time in the day when it is not too warm and even if it is there are sufficient air currents generated my own running motion to counteract my increasing heat levels.  But indoors that means sipping cold fluids often and frequently.  Like a diligent boy scout I prepared (but not enough :-( ), I had two pints of chilled water at hand … 90 minutes of constant sipping ... Soon out of cold bullets and my body heat was rising too quickly.  What I had started I could not finish.

In that moment I had to make a choice force myself to finish and suffer heat exhaustion, or call it a night and be glad that having been off the bike for so long, know that I could go for a whole two hours, if I had just been better prepared.  Compared to a kick in the nuts, a bit of overheating seem like an easy thing to endure.  But would I be pushing to make the finish because it would be the right to do, or because it was my ego making me doing it?  Ego is a not necessarily a bad thing, if used right, (why else would the Devil love it so) but misdirected ego can be calamitous.

The next morning I rose early and finished off the rest of the two hours, and then did seven rounds of shadow boxing to get develop anaerobic fitness, an attribute I am sorely lacking in.  Before I had these grandiose workout routines but would end up quitting by round 3 or 4.   I was trying to achieve too much (do callisthenics in between rounds to further fatigue myself).  Attempting to run, when I had barely started crawling. Sometime the greatest victory a champion can have is over one’s self.

7/7 but the good kind though

Did 14k yesterday and while not the furthest I have ever run I get the feeling my running is back on track (forgive the pun: D). I am back to top speed and the best/worse thing I know that there is room for improvement.  A minor but thoroughly avoidable oversight on my part is a downer, but knowing how to fix it is the perfect upper... Thank you Scotty. 

So the Swissball and wobbleboard and El Guapo are due to make a comeback….time to broaden my horizons…. By cutting a video promo for Taryn?

Highgate Hill made me its bitch

On Saturday I ran to Kentish Town….it was about 6 odd miles to get there.  On the way back I discovered my Everest …Highgate Hill in Archway next to the Whittington hospital….That is one steep hill and to be honest it made me its bitch.  My back was in tatters and the joy I had felt earlier by running the hills of Hornsey soon evaporated.

The way everyone at EKBJJ makes me their bitch I was made to feel by this damn hill…and it told me one thing in no uncertain terms while I can run and have been doing as well as my bike work…I have neglected my strength and balancing work…..Like my old coach Jason Kelly taught me conditioning is not just the aerobic and anaerobic but the muscular and skeletal.   Terms like proprioception which Jonny Silmon taught me the value of…I had ignored…..

As long as I did the running I had convinced/lied to myself that I can neglect do the conditioning, the stability ball, the need to do anaerobic…Yeah I was doing my bizarre hyrbrid of yoga/kata/kembagan/wai khru before each run.. The muscles were loosened up and warm…but they lacked the fibre I was demanding but had been… yep too lazy to put into place

Monday I did some of the Steve Maxwell body exercises, used the lat pull down machine and my back felt stronger for the first time in ages. And while I have lost some of the tiger blood (sorry Charlie) ….by heeding the wisdom of Dai Goh Dais like Diamond Stan and Jonny Harimau

I am in a wonderful relationship right now, but that is no excuse for me to indulge my inner sloth…time for me to just bring it..bring on the Bas, just bring it….

There are three emotions that occur within my training

Euphoria, disappointment and most dangerous of all indifference.

I recall back in 03 doing Vale Tudo padwork in Neil Mcleod's class back in St Monica's.  I had been away from Bob's for a while doing a different kind of training.  But I was back hitting pads so crisply, my pad holder  paid me the ultimate compliment, it was as if I had never been away....I must have let it go to me head because the next week I was pants.....

When you do well in training, you raise the bar for what is the absolute minimum you should be delivering...when you do not do as well you could, you need to figure out why and look to redeem yourself....The last thing you want is a shrug of the shoulders.

In my training I have only gone through the motions a few times ...each time it served as a huge wake up call for me to question my motivations

Today's training run did not go as well as I would have hoped...could of been my choice of MP3s which was lazy, the weather, you want one excuse you will end up finding a thousand.  There is no easy answer that will appear immediately to me...

All I can do is make right where I made wrong....

the hardest part

of running for me is the first twenty minutes...your body is cold, getting out of the door is a major achievement...You are struggling to get your groove....

Then suddenly it is so easy.  You run on familiar ground, folks who have no idea who you are nod their head or smile at you as if you are doing something really amazing, when all you are doing is just putting one foot in front of the other just a wee bit quicker than other folks on the street

I am looking forward to the warmer weather, doing early morning and late night runs.

The die has been cast, the wheel is in motion

I have entered in the Dartford Half Marathon for July 11.  And I have found a way to not have to choose between two Breast Cancer Charities!  Saves my guilt!


Now comes the hard bit the the training....yoga, swissball, stationary bike and running....Who knows maybe I can squeeze in some Jiu Jitsu