LSD - Long Slow Distance...
Last night we were leaving one of our regular tavernas, and as we were paying our bill, we got chatting with the owner. He told us how he had come to start the restaurant, some history of the area… ‘Barbati and Spartilas were all one village in the past…’
We were warned again of the snakes… ‘They have been asleep, and now they are waking up; they are at their most dangerous….’ He even told us what to do if we were to get bitten…’ Make a deep cut, and get straight to the hospital…’ He emphasised…‘ They can move seven times faster than a horse, so if they attack there is no time to do anything...'
He told us of his picnics under the full moon at mount Pantokrator; taking up bread and wine, and eating under the light of the moon, ‘it is a dream’ he said…
But he urged us to drive there, not to walk up the mountain in the dark…
We are resolved to go there for the next full moon…
Today, I ran easily down to the seafront. I ran along the waters edge of another sunny day… Dwight was opening up Calypso for the day, he waved to me; and I called across the road to him that I wrote a daily blog; and that he featured in it…
The regulars I have been seeing each morning greeted me cheerily, some in Greek, one in a broad northern English accent…
I like running on my heart rate again; it means I jog, it means that as I am getting fitter, I am not going too fast… LSD - long slow distance - has always worked for me; it is almost like taking some magic potion…
All I need to do is head out, day after day, and jog and stretch and clear any tension within my body... I turned the corner, up the road to the football field and it was when I was circling the pitch that I had the insight…
‘Just do it’ – thank you goddess Nike!
It is easy, running can often be so much easier than we make it…
Many things can be far easier than we make them; often it is simply being consistent, and unraveling any aspects of us that trip us up, or self sabotage… Seeing our patterns, noticing which ones work for us and which do not!
A big aerobic base, built from easy easy running makes me fast… with a little interval training, in general not more than ten percent of my total mileage. I get worse when I do too much interval training!
Once a week is plenty and brings out the best in me…. And then I am ready to race whenever I want to… The programme is also good for my health.
To be healthy all any of us really need is do some aerobic exercise, eat to a level that keeps us relatively lean and let go of stress… Easy to write down!
And yet so many of us are stressed, exhausted, eat too much and exercise too little; and it isn’t our fault… We are trapped in belief systems and programmes within us, that have been running since childhood, imprinted by society and reemphasized by TV and media….
But there is another voice now too; have fun, take it easy, love yourself, be still, breathe, relax, be, now, you…
Coupled with a growing awareness that we can re programme these belief systems, shift the patterns that limit and bind, and so live with more joy!
I was FaceTiming with Athena Jane earlier…
We were talking about the benefits of easy slow running… I mentioned Van Aaken, the advocate in the 1970’s for easy running, and how I loved his training methods, in truth because they work for me, and I prefer running easily... But also I believe for the runners that survive intense training, there are many others who don’t and fall by the wayside, exhausted, not enjoying it, injured, ill…
It was Van Aaken who taught me that there is value in 'occassionally taking walking breaks whilst running…'!
And so while I was running around my football pitch on this 'oh so sunny day' I thought this thought…
'It is all very easy… Do what you love to do; run lots of miles, nice and easy … simple'
So often the answers are simple; but we want complex, we want something for our mind to grab onto and be excited about… just going running doesn’t sound that exciting and wouldn’t sell may running magazines…
But of course there is huge joy in the simple, amazing delight in the body enjoying the ease of the step, the connection with the earth, with movement with being alive…
I remember being read the story in the bible about the commander of the kings army, Naaman who wanted to be healed of leprosy… And so he went to Elisha, who was a man of God, to ask him to heal him; Elisha said to him… ‘Wash in the river Jordon seven times'.
‘Is that all’ Naaman replied…‘ That is far too easy’, and he turned away… But his men said to him, ‘If he had asked you to do something difficult you would have done it…’ And so he turned back and washed seven times in the river Jordon and his skin was healed of leprosy
And it is easy in truth…
To be free and healed…
‘Stay in each step, listen to our body and clear the tension as it arises and we are free….’