Running

is something I want to do right now!

The pleasure of doing nothing

I have done little running the past two weeks. Aside from a slow amble on a Sunday, and casual football on a Friday, I have done little to no physical exercise. This is not my normal routine, as well you might know. There are reasons for this:

1) My right foot and ankle have still not recovered entirely from my marathon training last year.

2) I have never entirely managed to run without pain or boredom, unless I am running fast.

3) I have no basis of long-term running fitness.

4) I am overweight by about a stone to half a stone.

While I have ambitions to tackle all the above, it requires me to have a lifestyle of rearranging my evenings. The title of this blog is a 'Teacher' who runs. And I'm an English teacher at that. The requirement to work evenings is always pressing; the requirement to manage my classes is even more so. To do so I need a certain standard of teaching fitness; something I blog about on a fairly regular basis. However, despite all my pontificating, I do not really want to rearrange my evenings.

I do not want to give myself only a couple of hours of leisure time in the evenings. I have avoided a commute by living in a sleep town. I do not want to run in the evenings. However, without that kind of running, I do not know how I am going to strive any kind of fitness at all.

My usual response is to head to the gym and run intensely for 20 minutes or so as HiiT. It is an immediate response, and makes me feel superb. However, it is limited. It is better than nothing, but it is limited. I should want to run for slightly longer, and slightly more regularly. Is exam time, though, the best time for it? I wonder.

As I have said before, I (like many men ) am a sprinter. I want to work hard in short bursts, rather than sustain a routine of extended endeavour. I have speed stamina, and must work at my 'any other kind' of stamina. But there is a limit as to what I can achieve with speed stamina.

For the past three to five years I have sought and thought intensely, and often fruitlessly, about what kind of lifestyle and what kind of ambitions I should like. Well, the lifestyle is only a recent consideration. I know that the people that surround me with influence my lifestyle and ambitions, and that I cannot always control those people who surround me. I have no conclusions as yet, save the residual feeling that the following is important:

1) Why work six hours today, when you can work four hours yesterday and four hours today?

There is something about deadlines and working for an extended period of time, and of choosing the nature of work. Here is another thought:

2) Autonomy is work is perhaps its most important quality.

I have never striven for money or status, although I have both to a degree. I have also not striven for physical fitness for its own sake on a frequent basis, although I have done so to a degree.

And here is perhaps another thought:

3) Moderation in all things, including moderation.

I can't take credit for that last one. But moderation is, for me, only working for a certain length of time, and completing certain kinds of work, too. It also involves building in, as I did last year, busy weeks and non-busy weeks, and matching them up to my requirements.

The past two weeks have been relatively easy work-wise, but that is because I know the upcoming week is the final week before Easter. I will receive much extra in the evenings, but I have two weeks with which to play with such things.

Before I sign off and return to my desk, I must remember that, like with all marathons, five days is a long time in teaching. Each day and each lesson is testing, and cumulatively so. Therefore, mental fortitude and fitful sleep is essential more than ever.

And gallows humour.

A marathon, not a sprint

And so I sit here in my study realising that I have not written in my blog for three weeks. I had managed to run in the Sewerby Park Run for a good 4-5 weeks, and at a decent pace. However, I still lacked any kind of ability to run for an hour at the weekends.

Two weeks ago I didn't run, because I realised that if I did run, I would break down. And for two weeks, I have dedicated a little bit too much time to school work. This has meant that my evenings have been devoid of fitness work.

Today I aimed to run for an hour. I managed to run for about 25 minutes before turning round and walking back (albeit with one or two jogs along the way.) While I need to build the strength in my legs and my joints, I also realised that my legs were still weak. Very weak indeed.

My marking has been intense over the past two weeks. Part of my teaching is to balance being creative on demand with marking intensely (and on command!) Both of these conditions are difficult: being creative under pressure is an act of personality and mood as much as it is an act of intellect.

I would like to aim for longer runs, but that is not something that I can commit myself to right now. Or, at least, something that I won't. And therein lies my problem. I want something, but I am not sure about how or what to sacrifice to achieve it. Ideally, a job that is fairly physically active would be useful. Or walking as my commute. But, over the next few weeks, we'll see how my fitness goes.