A Blaze of Colour

Mad Keen Runner

I've been a mad keen runner for a good 10 years now. I fell into it during a lonely year in northern Spain - even through the winter, the long siesta in the working day saw my colleagues lunch and snooze, but I never got the hang of that. Instead, every lunchtime I took myself off down the tracks that snaked along beside the river Ebro, to see what I might find. At first I just walked, but walking wouldn't let me get far enough in the time allocated. So I began to run.

Since then I've travelled lot. I've moved cities, switched countries, and worked and studied in numerous places within the UK. The same black and green rucksack has come with me on all these moves; much stitched, patched and emergency-repaired. No matter where I'm going or for what purpose, the first thing to be packed into that backpack is always my running kit. Trainers and a stopwatch are the crucial two items. Otherwise, kit has varied over the years and climates, though I have found that the sporty fabrics that are specially designed to wick and not chafe, are a mercy and a gift. I've never had all the sexiest latest gear, and I'm not immune to pangs of envy or inadequacy when someone jogs by who really does look the part. But as I usually choose to run trails and tracks way out the back of beyond, how I look is mostly irrelevant once I've got out there.

Running grounds me, and enlivens me. It ensures me a connection with the weather, seasons and terrain. Late summer comes and goes, and the lush greens in the fields gradually wither to husks and stalks... the first dustings of snow come... through the wild storms of winter... the arrival of frogspawn in the ditches... turning to darting teeming tadpoles... Cherry blossoms and daffodils burst into life... later raspberries stud the hedgerows, blaeberries nestle in the hills... This is an awareness and connection that I find is weakened to the point of irrelevancy in normal daily life in the city. Without running, the changing seasons and weather are reduced to scraping ice off the car, adjusting the thermostat in the house, deciding which coat to go out in...

Some of my best thinking happens when I'm out running. It seems to happen in the empty spaces - between the endless mileage calculations, the chanted mantras to stop me giving up when it gets tough, and the pleasure of being outdoors - there must be cogs a-whirring. Because out of nowhere, new thoughts materialise, problems are solved and clarity gained.

I often, almost always, experience moments of exaltant emotion: euphoria, invincibility, a gratitude and awe for the world. My running is driven by what must be a form of addiction, coupled with an urge to explore: always a little further, what lies round that bend, over that ridge, beyond those trees?

Running has carved a niche into my life. It's a passion. It's a form of bliss.

Choked with the Cold

9.30am on a frosty Saturday morning. The sun is rising through a gap in the trees, and bathing the living room in gold. I want to be out there, jogging the ice-crusted trails down by the river. But I'm not, because I'm choked with the cold: just the walk from my desk to the kettle makes my head pound and my eyes wince, let alone the 7 miler my training schedule suggests for today. What is even more galling, is that this is my first bout of ill-health in about 18 months (hangovers withstanding). It seems to say a lot, to me at any rate.

Whilst away travelling, my health was exceptional. No colds, flu, tummy bugs or any of the other common ailments that ordinarily catch me out a few times per year. It was a fear of mine - that I'd end up coughing and sneezing through the night while staying in a 8-share dorm somewhere. How unpleasant, unfair and annoying it would be for my room-mates. Or a stint of food poisoning, while sharing a small block of communal toilet facilities! How vile that would have been for other guests. I did carry around a vague anxiety about falling ill on the other side of the world, away from the familar system of free health care taken for granted in the UK.

But, luckily, it never came to be. I enjoyed over a year of perfect health. It doesn't take a genius to see why: lots of exercise, daylight and fresh air on a daily basis. A massive reduction in negative stress. Autonomy and control over pacing and activity levels - if I felt a bit tired and rundown, I could opt to rest. If I felt buzzing with energy, I could run/hike/write/work like a fiend. Constant changes of my environment and the people around me probably boosted my immune system over time. The need for very cheap and very simple food meant a super-healthy diet of fresh fruit, veg and carbohydrates most days. Being a budget nomad was so good for me.

Now I'm back, have been for 4 months now, which seems to have been long enough for all the good contributing factors to slide away and a pesky dose of the cold to incubate. It'll be over in a day or so, it's no big deal, and I'm grateful that this is the worst health problem I have to complain about. But the compare-and-contrast is resonant. In comparison to before, life now is characterised by significantly less control and autonomy, less exercise, less exposure to daylight and fresh air, more negative stress, a less healthy diet, and less engagement in creative fullfilling activities.

Normal life is bad for my health.

Re-adjusting to Life Back Home

This always makes me both laugh and feel nostalgic. Don't know who to credit for it, its done the rounds on Facebook I don't know how many times, but whoever you are out there, thank you. This is great!

"Having trouble readjusting to life back at home now that the travelling is over? Here are 9 handy hints to help you settle back in:
1) Replace your bed with two or more bunk beds, and every night invite random people to sleep in your bedroom with you. Ensure at least one person talks in their sleep and at least two people snore like trains. Remove beds one by one as symptons improve.
2) Sleep in your sleeping bag, forgetting to wash it for months. Add some bugs in order to wake up with many unsightly bites over your arms and legs.
3) Enlist the help of a family member to set your radio alarm to go off randomly during the night, filling your room with loud talking. This works best if the station is foreign. Also have several mobiles ringing, without being answered (at least one should have the default Nokia ring). To add to the illusion, ask a friend to bring plastic bags into your room at roughly 6am and proceed to rustle them for no apparent reason for a good half hour.
4) Keep all your clothes in a rucksack. Remember to smell them before puting them on and reintroduce the use of the iron SLOWLY.
5) Buy your favourite food, and despite living at home, write your name and when you might next be leaving the house on all bags. Your food should include mainly pasta, two minute noodles, cans of food with very plain labels, apples and chocolate.
6) Ask a family member to every now and again steal an item of food, preferably the one you have most been looking forward to or the most expensive. Keep at least one item of food far too long or in a bag out in the sun.
7) Even if it's a Sunday, vacate the house by 10am, and then stand on the corner of the street looking lost. Ask the first passer-by of similar ethnic background if they have found anywhere good to go yet.
8) When sitting on public transport (the London Tube would be ideal) introduce yourself to the person sitting next to you, say which stop you got on at, where you are going, how long you have been travelling and what university you went to. If they say they are going to Morden, say you met a guy on the central line who said it was terrible and that you've heard Parsons Green is better and cheaper.
9) Stick paper in your shower so that the water comes out in just a drizzle. Adjust the hot/cold taps at regular intervals so that you are never fully satisfied with the temperature. Because of this frustration, shower infrequently.

These simple but effective instructions should help you fall back into normal society with the minimum effort."

Living The Dream: Costs

Freycinet Peninsula, Tasmania. A nice place to hang out for a few days marathon training. I put in a couple of magnificent 12 milers here, round the Hazards-Wineglass Bay loop, at the crack of dawn while most of the tourists and hikers were still fast asleep.

What a dream. But how much did it cost?

Cost:

Youth hostel accomodation/night = AU$24.

Food for a day = around AU$10, depending on what you can find on the hostel's free food shelf.

Entertainments = running (free), sun-bathing (free), reading (free book off the hostel's exchange shelf), writing/drawing (cost of a biro and a notepad - a cent or two per day), conversation with interesting people (included in price of hostel), likewise any TV viewing.

Thats AU$34 for one's day's simple but blissful living, or £14.50 in UK money! How many hours work is that? 2.5 hours on the minimum wage. Less if you're lucky enough to be able to command more cash for your labour.

Now, ok, maybe it's not as simple as that. An airflight from the UK to Australia is a hefty price (besides being desperately bad for the environment, something I'll deal with on this blog some other day). But if you work out the cost of a round the world/return ticket of approximately £1000, across 365 days... Comes out as £2.74/day! That's less than a daily commute costs just about anywhere in the UK, unless you walk to and from work.

And yeah sure, if you want to be super pernickety, there are other costs: The clothes on your back. Running trainers and shorts. Deodorant, soap, shampoo, toothbrush... etc etc. The list goes on, but not indefinitely. With a minimal kit bag of essential gear (a lot of which can be picked up for free on the road from hostels' free-shelves or other travellers moving on), the cost spreads out very cheaply over several months of travel. Probably a lot cheaper than your lifestyle at home.

It certainly cost me a fraction of my lifestyle at home, and I'm not a particularly extravagant person. For somewhere in the region of £20/day, I was able to live my dream.

How Our Economy Is Killing The Earth

For a brilliantly informed and thought provoking series of articles on the relationships between the economy and the environment, follow the link to New Scientist, edition dated 16th October 2008, issue number 2678.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026786.000-special-report-how-our-economy-is-killing-the-earth.html

Anti-Stuff

Been thinking about 'stuff' a lot lately. Cataclysmic economic difficulties across the globe have prompted all sorts of views and debate on the topic and its solution... To little ol' me, the message seems to boil down to... If you're lucky enough to still have money to spend, get out there and spend it! It's your duty to the economy - and by extension, your community, way of life, and the entire social order.

Unfortunately, this clashes big time with all the thinking, reading and living that I've been doing over the past year or so. I've been heading in a steadily anti-stuff direction all this time.

• Buying 'stuff' buggers up the environment - and for what? A brief buzz of acquisition, and then, too much junk and clutter lying round the house, and ending up in landfill.
• Having lots of 'stuff' weighs you down, mentally and physically. There's nothing like trying to backpack your way round the world, to make you get brutal on exactly what stuff is essential. I found that I'd prefer a light backpack and the ability to run for the bus/train, rather than lots of lovely clothes/laptops/gadgets/books - but an inability to lug it comfortably around with me. Plus when you've got lots of stuff, you've got to worry about how secure it is, what happens if you lose it, insuring it...
• Needing stuff means needing an ever-renewing ever-increasing money supply to buy the stuff. Which means working lots. Once I quit work I found, after a bit of an adjustment period, that I preferred having loads of time to run/read/write/paint/soak in the sun/think/hang out with friends. There's a certain level of cash that is necessary to earn - to meet the basic needs. But after that, to me, time seemed more valuable than nice gear.

I didn't work for 8 months last year. I lived off savings that I'd expected to last a maximum of 3 months. But they just seemed to stretch and stretch, as I simplified and streamlined my lifestyle and my needs. As I passed through hostels, I gradually shed clothes, books, shoes and gadgets. And in exchange, I got to train for a marathon, running 5-6 times a week, in some of the most stunning places in the world. It was heaven.

Anti-stuff. That's the way to go in every way. Except for the economy.

The Freedom Not To

Lately, I've been reading a lot of Tim Ferriss, AJ Hoge, Rolf Potts, Chris Guillebeau and similar. All guys who describe their routes to a particular pot of gold at the end of the rainbow: portable empires, 4 Hour Work Weeks, internet businesses.

They focus on how their business models have freed them to travel as much as they want, whenever they want, while still running their businesses and making their fortune... And how anyone can live the dream!

I like the dream. And there's no denying that I love to travel. But part of what I dream about, is the freedom not to have to keep wandering. I'd like the option to stay put, in a particular remote corner of the world, and build a life there. But remote corners of the world don't tend to have many jobs going...

And maybe that's going to be the key thing that saves me from a lifetime of wage slavery? I actually like my job, most of the time. Well, I love my work and I think it matters - though I could do without the bureaucracy and the corporate nonsense that comes with it. But I don't want to live here, in the city, for the rest of my days.

I want to combine the work that I care passionately about, with a place I care passionately about. 

In Love Again

I'm just back from a few days up north. I always get a shock as I drive up the coast, round the bends at Berriedale, and eventually emerge out onto the Causewaymire. Its bleak. There's nothing there. Weeks and months spent in the city shrinks my horizons; I get used to built-up streets and estates, hustle & bustle, advertising and traffic everywhere. There's always something in front of you, and it close up and in your face and noisy as hell usually.

Head up north, and the further you go, the less there is. Caithness in November, is a landscape blasted by gales and sleet. It's miles and miles of rolling moorland in dreich greys, browns, blues and purples. The wind turbines turn steadily, clustered against a wild backdrop of Morven and storm clouds. When I see it all for the first time in a while, it makes me gulp. Is this really the place I love and miss so much? I get out of the car, and am halfway knocked off my feet by the wind. Its bloody cold, and the hail stones sting. I hurry indoors, and close the door behind me.

But by the next morning, I am in love again. The sky rolls by ever changing, and creates unique moments of light that make my spirits sing. Three geese honk overhead in formation. The wind roars through the tops of the Braehour forestry. The moors unfurl ahead of me as I run out to Loch More. There's nowhere else I'd rather be, not in the whole wide world.

Duty To

It's our duty to the economy to buy more stuff. It's our duty to the environment to buy less stuff. Hmmm.