"Exercise is for people who can't handle drugs and alcohol"

That is Lily Tomlin being quoted at the beginning of chapter 3 in Dean Karnazes's Run! 26.2 Stories of Blisters and Bliss. I got the Kindle version last night just by chance as it was very cheap, 2 pounds. It's the second runners kind of book a read lately that is not a training manual or a nutrition book, although this is different from the first one.

The first one, about which I've been thinking of writing for a while, was Haruki Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. Murakami's is an autobiography as a kind of memoir from a writer who has been running for as long as he has been writing. I enjoyed reading it. Karnaze's, although I've only read three chapters, is different as it is made of short stories, twenty six of them, one for every mile in a marathon. It seems like a collection of thoughts and anecdotes which makes it different from Murakami's as he is using running and his running history as an excuse to write about himself and his own personal history.

But today I want to write about what Karnaze's writes on his third story, the so called runner's high. According to wikipedia neuroscientists have no clear evidence on what it is that is responsible for that high, and this is of course only anecdotal and personal experience, but it's true that after I have run or after I have had an exercise session that taxes my body next to what I estimate are it's limits I feel what I, from my total lack of experience with drugs other than love or coffee, can only describe as a high. I am not entirely sure about the biochemistry underlying it, it may be endorphins or it maybe something different but as far as my personal experience is concerned, I can confirm it happens(whatever it is, the underlying mechanism must be biochemical because it happens in my brain and everything happening there is biochemistry(although I admit that I'm just playing with the words, cloaking everything under the name of biochemistry and just going on, but hey, I may as well claim it to be quantum mechanical and I'd still be right, but, at least in this particular case, it's not about me being right)).

Does it create an addiction? Do I feel withdrawal symptoms if I don't run? My answer is affirmative to the later and as for the former, I'll quote Karnazes's "Yes, so what of it?". That is what I told my mum when, I find it very ironic as she smokes and smokes a lot, warned me the other day with the wise phrase "be careful, that may become addictive". But I guess that suits my personality very well, I think I can become a very passionate and focused person if I feel like it(that is not necessarily all good and can, as it has in the past, backfire though). And that endorphins kick I get after some miles or some laps in the pool or lifting my ass up a wall is what makes me go back to my running shoes and also is responsible for part of my misery and grumpiness on the days I don't or a I can't run or exercise.

Yesterday was my day off and that and some other reasons made it not the best day, that's why today, with hopefully rested legs(the only reason why I did not run yesterday is because I could hardly run 7 km on Tuesday and at a very slow pace) I'll try to get some miles under the belt as I'm anticipating I'll need them this afternoon or more accurately I'll need those endorphins.

On a zombie apocalypse and how to survie it... (part 1)

Yes, it's Christmas and it's supposed to be a time of peace and love, but well, I've been getting up to date with The Walking Dead tv series. That has derived in myself, as any reasonable person would do, considering how the zombie apocalypse would occur around here and how I could survive it. Long story short, if I'm in Spain, I can do a good job. If this happens in the UK, I'm screwed. I don't even think they've ever heard of the concept of "window bars" or "solid doors".

If I elaborate a bit more, the fact is that, just by default, pretty much any traditional small town house in Spain, or at least in the south which is where I am familiar with, is zombie proof. We have massively solid doors, which are open the whole day and only closed at night as we have what we call Zaguán, a kind of small room traditionally with some azulejo(painted ceramic tiled work) and only then we have the kind of doors that you can find as front door in the UK. That second set of doors is not everywhere, but most of the houses have those. So, my point being that you can just close the real door and it's pretty much zombie proof. As for the windows, we have window bars, so, that's also covered. Hence, by definition, we are zombie proof as well as masked serial killer proof too. In the UK, well, doors and windows are easily broken so zombies, who happen not to worry about neighbours or police noticing them breaking in, would not have a problem. The same argument is valid for garden fences, those in the UK may keep foxes or dogs out of your garden but if you wanted to, you could kick them down. In my hometown, it's all a solid wall and if it happens to be a thin one or a not very tall one that you could jump over, it's usually topped with some cement and broken glass icing, that may not work for zombies, but walls tend to be resistant. We would be safer by default. Of course, if you happen to be trapped in a zombie infested house, getting out of there is harder in a Spanish one.

Weaponry, some may argue, would be our weakest point as Europe is kind of civilized and we ain't no cowboys around here. But hey, at least in rural towns, I'd say that 5 out of ten male adults hunt. We may not have big rifles, though as, at least around my home-town, we don't have any deer to hunt so the only kind of hunting they do(I've never actually been near a any kind of gun other than those that policemen carry) is quail hunting. But I guess that from a short distance those guns could open up a zombie head. And it's coming to short distances where all the tools people tend to have at home for gardening can be used for zombie head breaking. I guess British gardeners would have the same kind of tools, so we are even on that point, although that would only be useful in a one on one or maybe against a couple of zombies as you may find in a Spanish house. The problem with trying to clean a zombie infested British house is that the noises would alert the other zombies around and given the openness of the British ones, well, you're screwed.

Also, I visited a medieval castle(or well, a reconstructed very old one) in Cordoba. And my brother and I had some fun planning how to survive zombies in there. Also, they had a kind of collection of swords and I found what would be my chosen zombie killing weapon, a Spanish alfanje. Although the one they had there looked more or less like this one

My house is particularly well positioned as we have a big supermarket and a food store building next to it. And we have a well(although I'm not sure that water is drinkable). So, yay! I guess I could manage to resist the first outbreak and then slowly gain terrain cleaning house by house. The fact that we would not be the only survivors is a real possibility of course as pretty much every house around here has the same kind of default zombie proofness. But that, maybe, will be part 2 of my thoughts on a Zombie apocalypse.

If you happen to be curious about how a story would set in this part of the globe, there is already a trilogy set in the south of Spain. It is also masterfully written by Carlos Sisi and you are lucky because you can find the first book already translated in English: The Wanderers

I have this stupid thing with some songs...

I just cannot stop listening to them for some time, just play it again and again...



A friend showed me this one like two months ago, I listened to it for like a couple of days, but this blog was in some kind of limbo at the time, so I could not post it. Today, I saw it again because someone posted it on facebook... and I've been clicking replay since then.

On the other hand, I've survived my third massive family meal in less than 12 hours(I'll write about my family traditional two dinners in a row in Christmas eve in other post). That was somewhat eased by my 8 miles run yesterday and my 10km today. Turns out that wind can make a run on a flat surface much harder than running on hills. I must be turning into a masochist because I did enjoy every step of it. And I've spent a very nice evening working with my father and my brother on a Bachar ladder to play with in the garage and now my arms are tired and my ego has been deleted as I'm unable to go up without using my legs... :s

I love my Bachar ladder! It's really fun! :) Although the best part was working hand in hand with my brother and my father, we don't get to do that very often anymore :).

Also, given the stupidly depressing nature of the lyrics of that song, I need to compensate with something for this to remain a neutral post:



:).

And this one is just because I saw it on the sidebar on youtube and I like this song.



This is more a collection of scattered thoughts than a proper post. I guess my future me will just be able to get a glimpse of what was going through my mind now that I'm writing and will possibly have no clue what I really meant with this. Current me thinks that he does not mean much, he likes those songs and he enjoyed building the Bachar ladder.

Merry Newtonmas everyone!

Of course, there is no better way to say it than this:

I wanna jump!

I just want to jump!

What I was thinking on the train today...

Over the past seven years I may have done this trip, the one that takes you from Granada to Seville in the train, about a hundred times or possibly more. I've done it in all kinds of weather except for, I'd say,a heavily snowed one. But every single time the beauty of the Andalusian landscape strucks me with its tapestry of olive trees over the smooth domes with some rocky mountains, nothing of proper height, in the background. Here and there you get some wind turbines which some may argue are not beautiful, but here, even those are. That tapestry it's a very peculiar mixture of nature and human work, as the regular pattern used for the trees makes it look, from a certain distance, like a dotted portrait. Of course, this is much older than that concept by possibly some hundreds years.

Today was a lovely late december day in Granada. It was a very sunny september like day, indeed I think it burnt my cheeks a bit. By a lovely sun I mean that which warms your skin everywhere within photon reach and makes you take layers off. I ended up walking just on my t-shirt and accidentally my hat, but that's only because I had been swimming and I had wet hair. Of course, that's mainly due to the cosine of theta factor on top of the square of the distance from the sun to the earth in the equation that, approximately but very accurately, describes how the power of that our nearest star reaches the surface of this, our home planet(times a constant which depends on the units). It's that cosine of theta as I say, that makes the sun a bit of a bizarre joke up north in the Perfidious Albion, where you can only enjoy it from behind a window glass and only if you are inside a heated room. It does not happen to me anymore but in the beginning, not only one or two but many times I've seen the luminosity of a bright day from the inside of a not as often as I'd have liked heated room and I have gone outside just to catch some photons only to be slapped by a freezing air and having to convince myself that it is indeed a sunny day because my eyes are more sensitive to luminosity and if I look nearly straightforwardly at the direction of the sun, I have to close them.

From the balcony of a friend's apartment you can see, as if you had just gone there to enjoy the views, the city of Granada in all its charm. The cathedral towers on the bottom, with the Alhambra in the middle and the fractal snowed mountains of Sierra Nevada with their cake like frost on top. The everytime recognizable shape of Mulhacen, which appears sketched in plenty of touristic references to the city, in its whitest version with the bluest and cleanest sky on top. That was not the best thing there, of course. That's just the place, a framework made of a conglomerate of naturally formed mountains with some human additions, but it's the human side of it that it's most amazing. I say that because I consider myself a very lucky person as it seems that when counted, the number of good people I've met in my life outnumbers that of whoresons by a lot. And in Granada I've met a lot of them, good people I mean. Not all of them are still there as life has shuffled them around the globe but visiting the ones, even though I've not seen all of them as my trip was very short, reminds me that I'm a very lucky self-conscious tad of atoms.

I want to grow a beard...

I just don't have the necessary patience, at least now. Indeed, I shaved sooner after deciding I was going to grow one than the previous week when I simply did not shave because I forgot about it. So, I'll have to just put a picture of a guy with a beard:

That also happens to be a song that I've been listening to in continuous mode pretty much since I came across it. Before listening to this guys, I've just listened to Pegasus Bridge, a band I also came across by pure chance(some random Spotify magic). There are three songs I keep just going back to.





and



Sadly, these guys are no longer a band so there's not going to be more Pegasus Bridge, but I like these three.

Mediterranean

He was sitting on the shore. It was already after sunset and the only light was that of a shimmering lamp somewhere around. The sound of the waves dying against the rock filled everything, creating an isolating and relaxing atmosphere. That led him, although I am not going to say that it was inevitably, to consider whether she was also looking at the same sea at that particular moment, it was as if "he could feel it". But then out of the complexity that the human mind is, a thought landed on his mind: "Wait, that's just bollocks". Following that, the sea opened in two, allowing a stage to emerge and on that stage was Tim Minchin.

My best me

It's been in my head for the last days. Who's my best me? I mean, of all the me's I've been, who would beat the shit out of the others? Physically I mean. I like to think I'm at least as wise as yesterday or wiser, so, intellectually I should be my best me at every moment(or maybe I'm just becoming more and more an obnoxious prick). I can possibly point out three periods when I was at the peak of my physique: 16, 18 and 25 years old(although I'm still building up now). It's a bit tricky as those periods have been physique peak at different sports. For example, if we considered fighting, 16 years old me would kick all my others not ass but heads quite easily, not even breaking into sweat as I was competing at a decent level in Taekwondo at the time. On the other hand, I think 18 year old me was a better swimmer or at least had a better training and when it comes to running definitively I am at my peak( hopefully I'll change that next month and the month after that and so on... and I hope to take my swimming to a new level to :) )

I miss Taekwondo. I wish there was a Taekwondo school around. I mean, WTF Taekwondo, the olympic one, not ITF. There are a couple of ITF gym's around, I just don't like it(although I've never tried it). I'd love to get back to some amateur competitions, although I'm sure I'd be beaten up badly. I digress, but well, I'm writing hence I can do whatever I want :).

I'm learning to dance

Pretty much all my life I've consider myself a bit of a clumsy person not in the sense that I could not do the stuff, I could do it. It just would not look as clean as it should. At some point in the past I was good at Taekwondo, I could do all kinds of double and multiple, jump and spinning kicks. It just was not ballet-dancer-clean-like but it was effective and I did kick hard(if I warm up enough, I can still do some stuff).

On the other hand there was some music I recognize I've never been good. I've been told I'm kind of a Chandler style dancer, as in:



Which, truth be told, it's quite an accurate description of my dancing skills. Not that I dance much better these days or not that I actually care, I just enjoy the music, but recently someone tried to convince myself that I dance like this:


I wish.

Anyway, I've given up on ever learning to dance properly and I do just enjoy the music if I'm in the mood, at least on the horizontal plane. And yes, this was all a deceiving introduction, stupid you may say but I felt like writing it. I am learning to dance in the vertical plane, or tilted or, I hope that if I train enough in some time I'll be able to turn my dance floor around pi.

I am learning to climb and I love it. It's tremendously fun and challenging. As I say, and I'm just borrowing Eric Horst words, climbing is a vertical or a horizontally hanging dance. Most people, myself in the beginning included, think that it only requires a tremendous amount of physical strength and nothing else. It could not be more wrong. Of course it requires a minimum of upper body strength but that's easily achievable and it's only then when you start realizing how complex this sport is. I'm a newbie, I've only been to the walls a few times, but I'm hooked. In particular I boulder, with no ropes and I do it in the indoor gym because that's what I have available. Bouldering it's the equivalent of having a big rock and climbing it up just for the sake of it. Few moves but hopefully challenging ones. I've tried ropes a couple of times but either I was tired from bouldering or I just lack the stamina needed for it, I'm not quite convinced I like it that much, but I have to get better at it, someday. As I was writing, climbing is a vertical dance but it's also a live physics/optimization problem: your goal is to move in the most efficient way and compensating all the forces so as to get the most stable position. Which appeals to the physicists in me, well, I'm a physicists so that's basically saying that it appeals me.

Indicentally, last night I inaugurated the list of worst climbing sessions ever. It was the third time I went climbing in less than 7 days with running in between so I was a bit tired and I could feel my joints, my right elbow in particular, a bit stressed so I ended up not staying for more than one and a half hours and failing at pretty much everything I attempted(other than the easy traverse and the yellow roof traverse route). That was the last session of the year, in the UK at least, and that left me a bit disappointed, but hey, not everyday can be tremendously good, some days are just going to be bad. I've had those days running too, when I had to walk back a couple of miles back home just because after 4 or 5 miles my legs just decided to stop. I guess I needed to be reminded of the importance of recovery.

I shall be a half-crazy one

After some consideration, maybe too much, I've decided that I'm going to run half-marathons and shorter races this year(I already spoke of the half-marathon as my distance in the previous post). Maybe not even run that many races, but train for such short distances. I started last year with a beginners plan for a 5k, then run a 10k charity run and then stopped due to my own stupidity and in-adaptation to cold weather . I started running again back in September, being optimistic and pushy, I took the intermediate 10km race plan as mine and I've been following it regularly(more or less) although ignoring most of the quality training. I must say, I'm tremendously pleased with the results, I've gone from suffering for finishing 8km in one hour to covering over 20km in a bit more than two hours. But as I said in the first post, this is just the beginning.

The main reason behind my decision is that I think, I may be totally wrong though, that I should take advantage of my age, I'm only 25 after all, and train for faster times. I will have time to go far as I age. Or that's my plan.

Beware of the hills...

Or how reality slaps back.

After last Sunday I should've rested but instead I took advantage of my horrible swimming technique. Given that I don't kick, swimming would not bother my legs at all, and the little kicking I do, theoretically, could work as some kind of "active recovery". Plus, I wanted to avoid not moving for a day which I solved quite effectively as I ended up going to the pool three days in a row. On the other hand, pushing myself on the water a bit was something I had to do it as I'm not sure I will be able swim at all in the coming weeks until term starts again. Yes, term is over now and what was Hoghwarts has become a nicely decorated version of Azkaban, again, but I'll just have to be here for like a week and then I'm back to my motherland.

Motherland's a weird place but needless to say I kind of feel my roots. I surely have an Spanish character, not to mention a thick accent. But other than that, I have adapted more or less al-right to life in this land of pirates(although my fellow Britons learned about them as "patriotic sailors" in their history lessons) so as much as I'm looking forward to a couple of weeks of not having to worry about cooking and mostly having to worry about reminding my grandparents and my mother that my stomach has a finite size and capacity and running, I also know that a couple of weeks is possibly the upper limit of how long I can stay home without getting tired of it. We'll see. I'll get back to the present now.

As I subtitled it, I was hit by reality today. Very nicely but firmly and I think it is something good. I went for a long run, this time outside, with some wonderful friends of mine who showed me a lovely new running route. This route in particular happens to be also of a distance equal to that of a half-marathon, my distance, so it was perfect to test my finishing time estimate of about a couple of hours(not to mention my estimate of being able to finish). With an altitude change of 150 meters, it's as much an altitude change as you can get around here. I finally ran it in 2h and 20 minutes approximately. It's not like I was trying to run fast, I was going with my friends so I went at their pace. But after finishing(and having to walk the last bit of the hill because of the complaints coming from my right knee) I was totally knackered and I am actually not sure that running faster would have been possible to finish. So, all in all, I'm not that kind of superhuman that I was getting convinced I am, I'm still pretty awesome though :) . And I need to start training seriously and doing proper quality training. Also, I really need to get strength training in if I don't want me knees to be fucked up.

But I finished with a smile and, given that I didn't finish at my doorstep, I just kept running a bit longer, completing 14 miles(22.5km). It felt/feels good.

PS: This time my nipples are fine. Just in case you were worrying about it.

Note to my future self:

Don't put too much parsley on an omelette.

Also, remove the thick bits.

Other than that, man, that was an awesome omelette!

:)

There is blood in my shirt

And it's mine.

Today was a good day. I overslept as usual on Sundays(and other days) and it took me a couple of coffees and a couple of hours to wake up. Sadly, living in Perfidious Albion results in having very short,and at least chilly, days which left me with no options to have my long run other than the treadmill. 10 miles, a very long distance that I had only run once and of course that was outdoors. In the treadmill it was going to be an experimental realization of unbounded boredom. While I changed into running clothes I also started looking for excuses to make it a shorter distance on my way to the gym. The best one was just because I have been off exercise for half a week due to a mild cold. And well, 6 miles is still far better than nothing :).

With the perfect excuse under my belt, I set out for 10 miles though. Today I did something unusual and started with a proper warm-up during the first mile. So far so good so I speed up to my chosen pace(7mph which is slower than what I usually aim for in the treadmill).

3 miles...

4 miles...

5 miles...

And I keep feeling very well.

6 miles...

7.5 miles... And after a quick stop to restart the machine(cos' that is the maximum distance you can set) I keep going, pushing myself a bit, just a bit, and speeding up to 7.3mph. That may seem a minor speed up but sustaining it for a mile can be quite challenging.

9 miles...

I am feeling very good. One mile to go but I know I have something left on my legs. I also know that 'it's only 5km extra'. So I decide to go for it.

And a bit later: 13.2 miles!, or in more familiar units 21.2km and 1h 53 minutes on the clock. I have run my first half-marathon. On a treadmill, though. But it feels good. Ok, I'm totally knackered, but it feels good, very good. Although the blood in my shirt is from my nipples, running long times does that if you're not careful. It's a bit itchy but I'm proud of having run long enough to make my nipples bleed.

Why?I had been extrapolating my possible half-marathon finishing times from my shorter run times and I had come up with something near 1h 50min. I did it in slightly longer than that and I could have run slightly faster, so not bad, but I need to work hard if I realistically want to go below 1:45. But today's run was very good because I just needed to have a measurement, some tangible proof that those 'extra 5km' were just that, a bit more that I could cope with, other than a killing factor. Now I have it, now I have to stop doing what I did today and try not to get myself injured because this is not the end, this is just the beginning and it is going to be great!

I have decided to start from scratch.

I have changed, I have recovered some bits of myself that I thought I had lost a long time ago and I have new projects, some big goals in mind.

I need a blank notepad to tell myself about them, to keep track of it.