Jul 30, 2023 | Legs!, Sugar, Ah Honey Honey
Quiet progress and a bit of a change this month. On the progress front, I started July with my first 10k run since 2009; I finish it with today’s 15k run, although ‘run’ is perhaps too grand a word. I’ve increased my capacity at various distances by a straightforward process of mixing it up and making sure I get appropriate rest days. I’m injury-averse (because they take longer to heal now) so I don’t try any heroics. I try to do 3 shorter runs during the week (usually 6.5km) plus a longer one at the weekend. My aim is to build out the weekend runs by a kilometre or so per week. As I’ve written previously, my general aim is to be at half-marathon fitness long before I run the Edinburgh Half Marathon next May.
Unsurprisingly, my weight has responded to the increased exercise levels and I’m now at my lightest since the mid-eighties. I’m comfortable enough with where I am now and expect that over the next couple of months my body will find its own equilibrium point/range. If I was being picky/vain it would be that I have some excess flab caused by losing so much weight. At my age, skin elasticity decreases. It should go away of its own accord if I give it time.
The hearing aids have arrived and I’m getting used to them. They definitely make a difference and I’m hearing a lot more high-frequency sounds again. It’s a bit weird because everything sounds as if the treble has been turned up – including my own voice. The guidance says it can be anything up to six weeks before the brain gets used to how to process the sound.
Jul 20, 2023 | Global Heating, Legs!, Writing
On my last long weekend run I covered 11k and felt OK at the end of it. My plan for the coming week is to push it out by a further kilometre and thereafter to gradually increase the distance and the time spent running continuously. Looking at progress so far, I’m confident that I’ll manage the Edinburgh half-marathon next May and have entered it. My aim is to be at half-marathon fitness well before it, allowing for inevitable setbacks and for winter.
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Back in 2017, a visit to Audiology confirmed that I was losing some high-frequency hearing. I went back to Audiology this week for another test that they could match against my records. The loss has indeed spread further down the frequency range and the audiologist asked if I wanted to try hearing aids calibrated to boost the frequencies where I’m having difficulties. I agreed to a trial and I expect the hearing aids to be delivered at some point in the next few weeks.
It is a trial because it isn’t clear whether they will be effective in the situations where I have difficulties. All of this is free at the point of use, of course: NHS.
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I’ve written here off and on over the years about climate change and how it is the only game in town. This has been known for years. I’ve also written that I expect no mitigating actions to be taken until it is too late – arguably it is already too late. As I write, the impacts in the northern hemisphere are obvious and will only get worse. And it is linked to the other major issues of our time – biodiversity loss and pollution – as well as driving problems with food supply and population movements.
In my collection Coyote in the Corner I had the problem of reducing emissions solved by vampires largely wiping out humans. I’m writing sequel stories now, and one of my problems is that every time I calibrate a story for the latest analyses of climate change, I have to revise it six months later as more analysis comes in of the changes already locked into place – usually to make things worse.
In my teens, stories built around various apocalypses used to be either the very British novels of John Wyndham or set in the far future. It seems odd to watch it happening on the news and encounter so many people, not all of whom are American, still denying what is happening. It has been a feature of the past few years, despite no lesser person that Margaret Thatcher warning of what was coming, that governments have found all sorts of ways to ignore what the science was saying and to water down reports and predictions.
All the time, various optimists have been saying that there was still time to mitigate at least some of the impacts we can expect. All of those optimists ignored the inertia in the system and tacitly put more faith in governments and their willingness to cooperate towards necessary changes than justified. My view has been for a decade or more that the necessary changes will not happen at scale, at pace or in time. Nothing I see now changes my mind on that, and there are no magic hearing aids to distribute to politicians who default to expedient deafness.
Jul 11, 2023 | Legs!, Sugar, Ah Honey Honey, Writing
I ran my first 10,000 meters since 2009 at the weekend, picking out a route that took me from home and around the back of Murrayfield to Roseburn and back via a roundabout route. One hour 11 minutes. It took a bit more out of me than I expected, but I know I can do it now, which helps for the next one.
I ran it alone. There are advantages in having ‘running buddies’ and there’s a kind of fun in running with a large group, but Murakami was right to say that for many of us the pleasure is in the solitude and the ‘Zen’ aspects. Having said that, I’ve signed up to do a ‘proper’ 10k in Edinburgh on October 22nd, a couple of weeks after I turn 64. I may as well mark the return to 10k form with a t-shirt and a medal. I’ve also signed up for the Edinburgh Kilomathon on Sunday 7 April 2024: 13.1 k from Ocean Terminal. Both events finish inside Murrayfield Stadium.
By the time I run both of them, they should be well within my ability given the training schedule I’m putting together, assuming no injuries or mishaps along the way – always a risk with Edinburgh’s roads and pavements.
I bought some new running shoes – last year’s model, heavily discounted when this year’s model hit the shelves – and some odds and ends of ‘technical’ clothing found very cheap in either my local Cancer Research shop or as clearance items in TK-Max. For readers in the UK, Trespass, with its never-ending sale, is quite good for heavily-discounted wicking t-shirts, as is Mountain Warehouse.
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My most recent Substack post waded into a topic that I hadn’t thought much about until a stray thought occurred while I was out running. When I started on the low-carb route I unthinkingly bought into the notion of both beer (in the sense of real ale) and bread (in the sense of traditionally baked bread) as high-carb products. What occurred to me was that looking at the carb content of the ingredients missed out on the effects of fermentation. I haven’t completely made up my mind on this, and I have to be wary of settling on the answer that I want, but I reckon there is something more going on than received wisdom suggests.
You’ll find it here: Bread and Circuses
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I’ve been writing, though not as quickly or assiduously as I’d like. I have a number of projects bubbling under and decided to prioritise putting together a sequel collection to the stories in Coyote in the Corner. The first of these, coming in at a lengthy 57,000 words, is now complete in first draft. I like it, although at present the ending is rushed and only blocked in. I’ll let it ferment for a while as I’m writing other tales in the sequence then come back and sort it out. That’s more than half the book done, though, so I’m pleased with that.
One of the things I like about Coyote is the way I managed (I think) to imply a bigger picture from how the stories fitted together. That’s my aim for this one when it is done as well.
Jul 1, 2023 | Goggle-eyes, Legs!, Music
After taking that tumble last week, I gave it five days before I went out for a run and spent most of the time listening to what my body was telling me and alert for reaction. It went fine, and I gave myself a couple more days until going out again, which I did this morning. The aim today wasn’t about distance and it wasn’t about speed: my aim today was to run for a continuous 45 minutes, which I achieved. I did a little more than that, but by then I was on our hill and gritting my teeth.
Assuming no more accidents or illness, I’m back on my leisurely track towards 10k fitness. Sometime in the next couple of days, I’m going to follow a reasonably flat route and aim for 7k, then focus on short runs through next week. This would put me on a path to 10k fitness sometime in early to mid August. If I get there, I’ll look for a couple of 10k runs to enter and reward myself with a T-shirt and a medal 🙂
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TV has livened up again with the appearance of season 2 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. After bailing on season 3 of Star Trek Discovery and putting Picard on pause, I was sceptical about any new shows in the franchise, but I’m enjoying Strange New Worlds a lot. I don’t think it’s groundbreaking, but it has a good cast and tells its stories well, even if the stories are familiar.
The Witcher is back for season 3 and has started strongly. I’m also enjoying Star Wars Visions on Disney+ – anime shorts from the Star Wars universe (well, except for the Ardman mashup of the pod race from The Phantom Menace and Chicken Run.)
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For reasons not unrelated to the acoustic bass guitar that I’m currently grappling with, I’ve been listening to a lot of The Beatles. I haven’t listened to a lot of their stuff for a while and it’s fascinating to come back to them with fresh ears. The journey from a hot band playing rock’n’roll standards in Hamburg and Liverpool to the emergence of their own writing talent is one I’m going to have to think about more, but something happened in 1963. It might have been meeting George Martin, but there was something else going on: the emergent repertoire of Lennon/McCartney originals is qualitatively different to the Hamburg/Cavern material.
At the same time, McCartney begins to emerge as a creative and influential bass player, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. He has said that a big influence was James Jamerson of Motown, but there is more to it than that. The bass line of All My Loving is rooted in neither rock’n’roll nor Jamerson. By the time of Michelle (1965) he’s a long way from roots and triads or walking basslines.
There was more to the Beatles than just Macca, of course, but I can’t help but think his restless creativity was the catalyst for what the band became.
More on this to come.
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