The Ed Techie

Year of epic fail & minor win (running)

<Even puppy power wasn't enough to salvage my year>

For the past few years (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012), I end them with a post reviewing my running over the previous 12 months, and make some tenuous connection to education. No-one cares, but hey, it's my blog, and I like to plan this post when I'm out running, as it gives me something to fix on. So here goes.

This year started out with big plans. I signed up for a marathon in January, a 10K February, half marathons in March and April, just a 5k in May, and marathons in June and July. That was the plan. It started badly and got worse, in a year of woe on the running front. 

I was training ok for the January marathon and did a 20 mile long run on December 20th 2012. I didn't know it at the time but I was coming down with flu that very day. The next day I was feverish, shaking and wiped out. The whole family came down with it. Christmas day 2012 was cancelled, our holiday was postponed. Full-on, miserable, definitely not just a cold, type flu. This lasted for about 3 weeks, before I could get out running again. I could barely do 5 miles then, so the marathon was out of the question. Epic fail.

I regrouped, and concentrated on the 10K in February. I forgot my Garmin when it came to this, and so had no idea of pace. I went out too fast (I was like Simon Pegg in Run Fatboy Run), and slowed considerably but actually finished in a decent time (for me) of 49.50. This was a race PB for 10K. Minor win.

Then I had a note saying the March half-marathon had been cancelled due to insufficient numbers. Never mind, I'll concentrate on the April New Forest half-marathon. Come the race date, it was postponed due to ice and rescheduled for a day when I was in Bali for the OCWC conference. Epic Fail.

I did discover the wonderful parkrun though. Every Saturday you can go down and run a 5K free of charge, and get a time posted on their website. In a world of evil, the parkrun is an unalloyed thing of goodness. I went a few times in May and got my time down to about 24 mins. Minor win.

I abandoned the June marathon as I hadn't maintained enough fitness and decided to concentrate all my efforts now on the July Tenby marathon. If I could do one marathon this year, it would still be all worthwhile, I could salvage the mess of the year with this one race. I trained dilligently, if not enthusiastically. I wasn't going to get a good time, but I should be able to get round. Come the day before the marathon I was planning my arrival time when I had a sudden thought: "That's strange, I haven't received anything from the organisers". I checked emails with increasing panic. I rang the organisers. No, it seems I had registered for all the other races back in December, but this one I had forgotten to actually put my name down for. It was full, there was no way of running the race. Epic, epic fail.

I entered a slough of despondency then. I hadn't been enjoying the running, but at least it had some purpose. I picked myself up for a late entry into the September 10k, and managed another PB of 49.43. A minor win. My Cardiff Half time was average for me at 1.55.

And then I lost all running mojo. I ended the year with a desultory total of 880 miles, the lowest in 4 years. I could have reached the 1000 mark easily if I'd kept up any decent running schedule in November and December, but I really couldn't be bothered.

Why? Well, I'm doing an MA in history and as they got nearer the end it demanded more time. And I'm writing a book, and managing research projects, etc. I found that a day would be stressful if I had to fit running in as well as these things, but if I took it out, then suddenly the day fitted together more neatly. Sarah, my wife, has a theory that you can only keep three plates spining effectively, for example work, family and one serious hobby. You can have more on the go, but the others suffer. You have plenty of other minor interests, for example I like reading literature, but if I was to go at it seriously, one of the others would have to suffer. Completing MA and maintaining running has proven difficult. 

But ultimately, that is an excuse, one can always find the time. It's only an hour here and there with the occassional long run. So, I need a plan, and it is this: next year I am going to be less ambitious in the knowledge that once I started failing this year, it gave me permission to carry on doing so. I've signed up for the Windermere marathon in July, and I'm not going to stress about time - a 5 hour marathon is better than no marathon. This way I hope to get back to enjoying running, as any run I do, regardless of time, is a success. 

So, now for the tenuous link to learning. For a start, the title could stand for any edtech review of the year, but I won't go over that again. Instead I think the analogy is that in learning you can coast for a while or you can overstretch yourself, and then you need to reflect and plan for some success to make it seem wortwhile. This may be completing a Masters, or finishing a MOOC, or just reading that novel or learning that programme language you always promised yourself. Failure is part of the pattern, but now that learning, like running, is so diverse, there's always one more way to tackle it.

Gravity always wins

More out of tradition than profound insight, here is my annual running review post.

First, since you demand it so, is the data:

• Miles run: 1049
• Duration: 188:58 hours
• No. runs: 141
• Av. distance: 7.44 miles

Not bad overall, on a par with last year. It seems that having struggled to break the 1000 mile barrier for a few years I can now do it, but not with much to spare. Any significant increase would mean changing my approach drastically.

It's been a bad year in terms of events though, I signed up and trained for the Llanelli marathon in April, but went to India, caught Delhi belly and bailed from it. I did the New Forest Half marathon in September (wet, slow) and that was it. I decided I needed a new challenge so signed up for the Lakeland 50 and set off on a mountain/trail running regime. I found that I really enjoyed running through forests and taking 5 hours or so to complete a run with lots of walks in it, necessitated by hills. It's a different rhythm to road running. We live outside of Cardiff and I have Caerphilly mountain and lots of trail runs of around 15-20 miles on my doorstep. And then there's the Beacons less than an hour away, and I managed a 20 miler around the peaks here on my own. I'm not much of a navigator, but Sarah has loaded up her extensive set of trails onto a GPS device for me which I follow slavishly.

But I came to realise that was the extent of my ambition. As I mentioned last year I don't have a reservoir of fitness to draw upon and to do the 50 I'd need to be up in the mountains every weekend. As I slogged around the Gower coastal marathon (eventually only doing the half) I realised I don't love mountains in the same way Sarah does. I like them, I enjoy being in them, but I don't want to spend 20 hours dragging myself through the mud. I do actually like doing the running part, and sometimes it's so steep, or icy, or boggy, or treacherous, that you hardly run at all.

Living with an ultra runner kind of distorts your sense of distance. In our house the following sentence can be uttered with a straight face: "I'm only going to do 20 miles today". The word 'only' has no rightful place in that sentence.

So, I decided on reflection that the 50 isn't for me, and instead have signed up for an event a month, consisting of halfs, marathons and even a 10k. I've enjoyed the trail running so I want to keep that in the mix. I suppose my lesson for the year is that you need to both always be exploring what kind of runner you are, and also know when something isn't your bag. But to accept that may not always be true - in a year's time I may find the thought of going 0.1 mph uphill, knee-deep in icy mud a really appealling day out.

The other thing I've taken on this year is to start studying an MA in History, and there's an element of this here also. I am of a scientific bent and I'm finding the subtle disciplinary differences and attitudes interesting. But I'm now of an age when I can appreciate them, whereas I think my younger, more arrogant self, would have had to be in one camp. 

The year has ended badly though, with a virulent flu bout (no, not effing 'manflu') which has laid me up for 10 days over Christmas (no alcohol, no food, no holiday!). It means my first event - a marathon in January - is unlikely to happen as I've lost the key period I needed and am still not back running. But hey, I lost a stone in weight, so when I do start back, I should be flying.

Earning every mile

The end of the year is time for my traditional running review post, much to the pleasure of absolutely no-one, including myself. Still, that's what traditions are for, so here goes.

First, the data part, because you're worth it:

• Total distance: 1028 miles
• Number of runs: 136
• Total duration: 182 hours
• Average distance: 7.56 miles
• Average duration: 1hr 16mins
• Average pace: 10.09 min/mile

Compared with last year, where I was a bit lost and only did a total of 831 miles, this was a big improvement, and I finally broke that 1000 mile barrier. Even so, this still only comes in at just over half an hour a day on average. That's not actually that much time is it? I probably spent this much time watching Masterchef. So there is plenty of time to do more. I like this video that asks, 'can you fit in all the sleeping, watching TV and being online time into 23.5 hours a day?':

 

The biggest single factor in increasing mileage this year was running two marathons. I did my first one back in April in an ok time of 4hrs 11mins and then a second one in November in a poor time of 4hrs 30mins. I learnt two things about myself from these experiences.

Firstly, ignorance is a kind of bliss. When I first started running I thought doing a 10K was a big deal. Then I moved up to, and stayed at, half marathon distance. But having done a marathon now, I have knowledge of long distance, and I don't think I could be happy with just staying at shorter distances. The problem is I like those shorter distances, and I'm even worse at longer ones. Sometimes newly acquired knowledge isn't always a blessing. Like when you begin to understand about writing or film making, you can't simply 'enjoy' a book or a film anymore, there is always some critical appraisal occurring. But of course, this brings with it pleasures of its own, and longer distances do have that. They also have a lot of really boring, slogging it out miles too though.

Secondly, I have to earn every mile. I am not a natural athlete. I know people who put in less training than me and complete a marathon in 3 hours. Even if I gave up work and concentrated solely on running, I couldn't do that - we're just built differently. This came home to me as I struggled around the second marathon in Nice. I hadn't put in the same level of training as for the first marathon, and it showed. There was no reserve of natural talent I could draw upon - every bloody mile has to be earnt.

In making my tenuous connection to learning, I'd say there are a lot of similarities. Some people can breeze through a course and an exam, others have to work hard, study long hours and fret through the night for every single mark. And no matter how hard they try most people won't achieve top marks, but they still study and learn and gain from it. Learning, like running, is about competition with yourself, not others.

A marathon not a sprint

So, yesterday, after talking about it for a few years, I finally got around to doing a marathon, over in Llanelli. It was a warm day, along the coastal path, with only about 600 runners. I've been following a training plan since the beginning of the year, so was reasonably confident.

I was aiming for a 4 hour finish, and was on target for this until mile 17 when I hit a bit of a psychological as well as physical wall. The route is two loops of a figure of eight and this was the furthest point out, and suddenly, the thought of having to come back all the way round again seemed too much, and before I knew it I was walking. I had to abandon my target then and refocus on simply finishing, and allowed my pace to drop significantly. I finished in 4 hours 11 minutes in the end.

It is customary for me to make some tenuous connection to learning when I do running posts, by way of allowing myself the indulgence on an ed tech blog of boring everyone with running. But it's not that difficult to make, and the following were all genuine thoughts that occurred to me yesterday:

1) You can make it achievable and manageable, but you can never make it easy. Even if you have the best trainer in the world, and support teams, dieticians, and the ability to give up work and train full time, you, and only you, still have to do it. Privilege or money may gain you some advantage but ultimately it comes down to individuals. 

2) It's worth doing because it is tough. Related to the above point, if you could make it easy, there would be no point. There were a couple of times when I was running on my own and could easily have taken a shortcut where the route doubled back on itself, but really, what would be the point?

3) The long haul is rewarding. I've done lots of shorter races, but doing a long distance has a different aspect to it. As we move to increasingly shorter chunks of learning, it's worth remembering that prolonged endurance has its own qualities.

4) Experience pays off. I was struck by how many elderly runners finished ahead of me, and how many younger runners were behind. A lot of the veterans had a pace they stuck to, and they had the reassurance of knowing they can do this distance. 

5) Never say never. I have already begun to experience 'forgetting the pain of childbirth' syndrome, as when I finished I vowed never to do another one, and I'm already thinking 'perhaps if I planned it differently next time'. You will hear many people who complete a study programme say the same.

6) Formal structure is essential for motivation. If something is tough then you really need to be forced to do it. I could have just run my own marathon, so why pay to go to an event? Because it is a definite goal that becomes difficult to justify giving up on. For all the wonders of informal, DIY learning, the formal course provides this same legitimising and motivating structure.

7) Social pressure is also a strong completion factor. I told everyone, plus I had very generous sponsorship from a wide range of people, so I had a strong social element to keep going (a very big thankyou to all those who sponsored me). This was particularly useful in training, when the question of 'why am I doing this?' came to me more than once. In education then establishing these social connections for students (eg through Facebook) is more than a nice to have but a key factor in success.

8) Within the same framework there is a lot of variation. Everyone is doing the same basic thing - running 26.2 miles but the variety of strategies and styles is fascinating. Some people run in pairs, others walk every 5 miles, some have music, some have a shuffling gait, others long bounding strides. This probably says something about not being too restrictive, and providing a general structure within which there is room for individuality.

9) You get to drink guilt-free beer afterwards.

Buddy, can you spare a dime?

Well, actually a fiver. I'm running my first marathon this year, and what with the old hip, general age and fondness for beer and pie, I figure this may be the only one I do. So I thought I'd put out a request for sponsorship, which I don't usually do. I'm raising money for Velindre Cancer Centre, which is where my wife had her treatment a couple of years ago. It was a very well run, friendly place that attempted to remove as much stress as they could do from a rather gruelling process. 

The marathon I'm attempting is the Great Welsh Marathon on April 10th. I would like to say I'll be tweeting and audiobooing all the way round, but I think finishing alive is a sufficient goal at the moment.

So, last time I'll ask for money, I promise, but if you've got anything down the back of the sofa, here is the obligatory Just-Giving page: http://www.justgiving.com/Martin-Weller

Running review

Because absolutely no-one requested it, here is my annual running-review-with-tenuous-link-to-learning post.

The year started badly as I'd had a month lay-off with hip bursitis. I lost some of my running mojo this year, and for long periods struggled to get out the door. I also tried mixing in other forms of exercise, including spin classes, but I always default back to running. I'm a one sport kinda guy I guess. Overall this year I have done about 830 miles, so over 100 down on last year. But on the plus side I got a personal best in a 10K (48.22) and in the half-marathon (1hr 49). The last one probably doesn't count as the organisers of the Cardiff Half messed up and the route was 193 metres short. But we'll take it, who knows I would have sped up a bit more had I known.

As the year ends I have lost some fitness, and am struggling to get motivated again, but I have signed up for my first marathon - the Great Welsh Marathon in Llanelli on 10th April, so I'll need to get going.

So what lessons from this year's running? Peaks and troughs are fine. Don't be too hard on yourself, if you need to take a break then take it. And formal structure is good, it was having the races that motivated me and I then followed a training plan quite strictly, but I can only do this for a limited period. And some variety, but not too much, is a good thing. 

On being (almost) a 1000 miler

(it's been a tough year on my trainers)

At the start of the year I set myself a goal to run a 1000 miles this year. That works out at about 20 miles a week, so not too bad when you're going smoothly, but when things get in the way, it mounts up. After a slow start, I was well on target to achieving it at 950 miles at the start of December, when I developed hip bursitis and was told to lay off running for a few weeks. I found this really depressing - running is part of my identity, and not just any old exercise. I'm hoping I can take it up again in the new year after some physiotherapy and maybe a cortisone injection.

But this post is not about self-pity, but about some of the things I've come to understand over the year. You could probably substitute 'learning' for running in most of this and the same would apply (oh, okay, maybe not, but I need someway to justify this post).

• There are no bad miles - the good thing about an overall distance goal, rather than say a pace one, is that even if you have a bad run, it's still miles in the bag.
• Getting going is the tough part - because of my wife being in hospital at the start of the year and all that had preceded that, I hadn't done much running since October 2008. This meant I was starting from a low base - getting a 20 mile week is tough when your doing 3 or 5 mile runs. But crucially I did something, so even if in those first few months I was falling short of the monthly average, it was a whole lot better than doing nothing.
• Big chunks pay off - once I'd got my long run up to 10 miles or more, then hitting and surpassing the weekly average was easy, I could do it in 3 sessions. When you up the big chunk the little chunks get proportionally bigger too, so my shortest run increased from 3 to 5 miles.
• Routine is key - disruptions such as going away on business, holidays, etc make it hard to fit in the weekly schedule, so need careful planning.  By planning the schedule I notched up 70 miles when we were on holiday in France.
• Do it when you can - you don't know what will occur, such as my bursitis, but also picked up a back injury in the summer (not from running but from moving a guinea pig hutch would you believe) which took one week out and a cold in March removed another week. These time-outs impact on the weekly average quite considerably, and I regretted the times I could have gone for a run but had decided not to, as these could have accommodated the injuries.
• A long-term goal is motivating - there were countless times when if I had been just running for the sake of it, I wouldn't have bothered, but the pressure of the overall goal was enough to make me go out.
• Different strategies are required - I don't like treadmill running much, but for a while I made myself get up every morning and do 1 mile on the treadmill in our garage, in addition to any other run I might do. It didn't last long, but it all counted. Similarly I experimented with hill sessions, 5K times and tempo runs to vary it.

So, although I fell short in the end it's been a worthwhile process on several fronts. Healthwise, it equates to about 120,000 calories (or 750 pints of beer if you prefer that measure), and will have kept my heart, if not my hip, in good working order. It's given me routine, and space for reflection. Most importantly it's given me lots of data to obsess about.

And if we're playing the 'running is like learning because' game then the analogy falls down with the final result - unlike your hips, your brain won't get a stress injury from overuse.

Running with the missus

<Image - Cardiff Clowns by Left-hand http://www.flickr.com/photos/left-hand/2964743595/>

As some of you may know, at the end of last year my wife was diagnosed with tongue cancer. Some fairly horrific surgery ensued (grafts of arm skin onto tongue to create a pragmatically termed 'flap', neck dissection to remove lymph glands, further graft from belly to fill the patch on the arm). I'm a queasy male, so clipping toenails has me feeling a bit uneasy, so I have no idea how she endured this.

Then a 6 week dose of radio and chemo-therapy followed. While there are surely no 'good' places to get cancer, one of the insidious elements of it being in the mouth is that as radiotherapy does its business (basically killing cells), you get to taste your own body's decay. Constantly. It would prove to be a very effective torture since there is no escaping it.

After all this though the treatment has been successful and she is now healthier and fitter than ever. Most years we run the Cardiff Half-Marathon, but not usually together, me being all competitive and wanting to improve my time. But this year she set the half-marathon as a goal to mark her recovery, and we'll be running it together. Which brings me on to the inevitably charity call - she has a just-giving page, so if any of you feel like giving, it'd be much appreciated (and no, we won't be running as clowns).

What I talk about when I talk about running

I read Murakami's reflection on running recently (he pinched the title from the first chapter of my VLE book - oh, okay, we both pinched it from Raymond Carver, but I got there first), and it caused me to consider why I run. I started running regularly about four years ago (it's my runiversary!). Before I launch into a meditation on running here are a few facts:

1. I am patently not very good at it. There are people who discover running and a talent is unearthed, they are effortlessly clocking sub-3 hour marathons and a slow training run is faster than I can ever manage. I am not one of these. At my peak I managed a 48 minute 10K. I guess if I trained really hard and changed diet, got a personal trainer I could bring this down, but I am never going to be a 40 minute 10ker, let alone a 30 minute one. Some people start up and within a couple of months are clocking 40 minutes. I am at very best average ie I come in the middle of the pack of a race (although see next point).
2. I am getting worse at it. I used to be an 8 minute miler, but my pace has slipped to around 9 minutes and despite my best efforts I seem unable to reclaim the glory of the first year or so. This could be related to age, or putting on a bit of weight, but I think it's more down to being willing to push myself harder when I was starting out.
3. I frequently don't want to do it and don't enjoy it. I drag myself out and have a miserable, below-par run.

So why do I run? I have rarely gone a week without a run in the past four years, usually run about 4-5 times a week and have taken part in countless (oh, okay, 13) races that I have no chance of doing well in. Let's put aside issues of staying reasonably healthy and weight (which are factors, but probably not my prime motivation). As Murakami says of his writing, he doesn't really compose much while running. I am the same, I could argue that I think through problems, but while I do occasionally, often I don't think of much beyond 'I'm not enjoying this run much.' Having said that, it does give you some clear space and maybe that not thinking of much at all enables you to be focused at other times. I do semi-compose blog posts (hell, even tweets) while running so it has helped with that.

The god things about running? There is something about the nature of the data in running that appeals to me. It's about miles run, pace per mile, top speed, long distance speed, etc. I also like its simplicity (being a simple person at heart), but this very simplicity provides a multitude of ways of approaching it (kind of like Twitter). You can concentrate on a race, different distances, pace, hills, etc. This year, although my pace is rubbish, I am aiming to run 1000 miles over the course of the year. It's not an amazing amount, but it requires a steady approach, and changes the psychology of my running. I am fond of running on holiday and some of my most memorable runs have been in Cornwall, Antigua, Italy and Australia.

But all these are bonuses: the main reason I run is something I've been thinking about a lot lately with regards to online activity - namely, identity. Although I'm not a good runner, I do it regularly enough to feel confident in classifying myself as a runner. In running terms I am a mild underpronator, 8-9 minute miler, half-marathon runner. And that classification matters.

And so on to the inevitable connection with education. Actually I don't think the link is as arduous to make as I sometimes manage - running is a lot like learning. You don't have to be the best in a subject, you 'compete' against yourself, you find different strategies, you need different motivations, and we define ourselves by what we express a preference for. And the analogy holds true if we consider formal and informal learning. I don't belong to a running club and I mainly engage in informal learning. But for the sake of motivation and the experience I like to take part in formal events, ie races, and occasionally I might want to have my learning formally recognised. The two can exist quite happily and to each other's mutual benefit in running, so why not in education?

Logyourrun quick review

My running rather tailed off towards the end of last year (in favour of mince pies and beer) so for the new year have a new schedule set up. I came across a 2.0 running site - logyourrun. Here's a quick review:

• The ability to share training schedules is useful. I created my own, but as is often the case, used others for inspiration.
• Having all your running tools in one place is really useful. I used to use gmap-pedometer to plot my routes, but logyourrun has Google maps embedded so you can create a set of routes to choose from. When you come to log your run you can then select the route you took and it will add in the distance and calculate pace, etc. There are also blogs, forums, etc.
• It has reasonable graphing functions, showing your pace against your schedule.
• The syntax for the running schedule you create is rather limited. It only recognises 'miles', 'rest' (I'm good at this one) and 'cross'. So if you use any other terms it doesn't add the distance in. As a runner I'd want terms such as hills, race, fartlek, pace, tempo and easy to be available so I could create a more sophisticated training plan.
• It doesn't allow goals to be set in terms of time as far as I can see, only distance. If you are aiming for a race goal, then it's not that you ran 6 miles in a training session that is important but that you did it at the required pace.
• It does have a blog widget - this was my main reason for signing up (although I've since found out Nike+ does this now as well, but my iPod Nano suffered an ignoble death when it was washed along with my kit). This is great, a while ago I blogged about shaming yourself into action (after Kerry Buckley's visible belly graph). Making my running log public is a motivating factor. I know that no-one else really cares, but having it public makes you less likely to skip sessions (or more likely to lie about it). One has to be careful about this public display of all actions however - the default setting when creating routes is to make it public, but as most of mine go from my house, this is potentially dodgy.