Text to R this morning:
I don’t want to go run in this freezing cold.
I just want too snuggle up with the warm bachcha, hot chocolate, hot samosas and watch Gilmore girls.
After a good interval running session in freezing cold:
I’m the next Kipchoge. I’m the new Mary Kitane. I can beat Shelly Ann Fraser Price. David Rudisha is me. Mo Farah wants to be me!
Hormones and all that stuff … :)
Woke up before 7. Took care of the boy’s morning business. Meditated. Worked. Stretched. Practiced French. Ran. Stretched. Now working again.
Shaved. Walk with the boys in beautiful, freezing sunshine. Chatted with parents. Posted a few photos1. Wrote notes for Running with Sherman. Gritted the front drive. Made lunch. Ate lunch. Didn’t work2.
It’s three hours past my bed time. I’m still awake.
The day started with a slow lazy morning. My head was awake but the body was tired, so I stayed in bed.
I did a good day’s work, and had the boys and R for company. I stretched often, though not enough. I drank enough water, maybe too much.
Got a call in the evening that dampened the mood a bit. Received a rejection email that dampened it a bit more.
I must stick to the rule of not checking email after 6. Any wrong messages just knock the head off. I can take the knocks in the morning when I have work to dissolve the head in. In the evening they just ruin the sleep. Then the lack of sleep ruins the work, the run, and everything else in the next day.
In the last two hours, I finished reading Hemingway’s A movable feast. Then I read his Wikipedia page. I also read Scott Fitzgerald’s Wikipedia page. I read a few articles of the Economist. And now I’m writing this (on the phone!) while eating the Coffee & Walnut cake that R baked in the evening. It’s long past midnight, so it isn’t no-carb Wednesday anymore!
Almost 3 pull-ups!!
The dark clouds arrived—Boris returned as PM, winning a big majority, winning a mandate for more lies and bluster for all future elections.
The silver lining faded—Corbyn refused to step down, instead asking for a period of ‘introspection’, and only promising a vague ‘will not lead the party in next election.’ Labour lost 61 seats across the country, and managed to win just one from another party. Labour has now lost two elections in a row under him; elections that any other decent leader would have won comfortably. Still, the ditherer-in-chief says he wants to introspect for a few months to figure out what went wrong!
Then the interesting stuff began.
I published my second Android app: Accelereader for Instapaper. It was in beta for a few weeks, but went into public release earlier this week. It’s always scary publishing publicly, however small the audience may be.
Then I did something even scarier—I decided on the Hanson method for training for the Paris marathon. Even the beginner program has 6 days of running most weeks; I struggle to run 5 days consistently. The beginner program also has almost two months of running 80-90 km per week. My weekly cadence has only rarely been above 50 km. It involves multiple faster-than-race-pace 10-mile tempo runs, and interval sessions that go on longer than my current long weekend runs. I’ll come out of this training season at the top of my running fitness, or broken—mentally and physically.
Not everything is scary. I made progress with the pull-ups. Today I did two full ones. Twice. Last week I was celebrating almost completing one. A few weeks ago I couldn’t even do a quarter. I also do 4-6 chin-ups a couple of times a day, up from just 1-2 a few weeks ago. (Yes, chin-ups and pull-ups are different)
I’ve also made progress with weight loss (despite the muscle gain from pull-ups and running). Yesterday, I weighed-in at 76.2Kg, a nearly 5-year low, and within hitting distance of the goal weight.
And finally, the best bit: I’ve started meditating again. I’m on a 15-day streak, sometimes twice a day, and finally getting back to being able to focus for a few minutes unbroken. If nothing else survives from this period post (I really hope the current government and opposition leadership don’t), I hope at least this will.
The last vacation was in late summer 2017—two glorious weeks in France, mostly Corsica.
The last time I spent a night outside Guildford was in Nov 2017—visited India because dad was sick.
I’m gonna disappear some day soon.
Ran.
Showered and shaved.
Got to London way before 10am.
Optimistic scenario achieved!