ignore-the-environment-around-you machines are grabbing share at an alarming rate. way beyond more than half the runners that you see in the streets are wearing one. no highlights anymore for male runners to greet or beam over a big smile to a graciously running female co-runner and get a brief nod or perhaps a small smile in return. no, those times are over, all have those cables in their ears connected to their portable music players, music phones or similar gear, and stare straigh ahead without taking any note of you. tried a cautious friendly nod a couple of times before recognizing that the creature was attached to the ignore-machine, but i could have equally tried to convince sarah palin, the republican candidate for vice-president, that global warming has man-made causes, not a chance.
at the thought of this 20+k run, earlier in the afternoon, the idea to get a bit fired up through music to the ears was quite appealing and i thought to try it as well. the latest nokia handset equipped with a large enough memory card to carry a lot of music would provide it’s company on the run anyway, the sports tracker measuring and locating where we’d go. carefully were those wires installed below the shirt from the device in the right hand through the sleeve up tp the neck. however the micke-ear-anatomy threw a spanner in those plans. the earplugs that ship with the device only stay in the ear when not moving the head at all even when adding all pads a stuff to the plugs. 10 meters out of the door and a couple of running steps, both were hanging down already, several attempts to readjust or just press them harder in didn’t result in any success. what the heck, let’s pocket them.
later at about km 8 or 9, came the idea, why not combine the best of both worlds, listening to music and not ignoring but rather including the environment in the experience (whether they like it or not). mobile handsets have acceptable speakers nowadays. so, music player on and screwing up the volume. he, he, that earns you some surprised faces around you. and off we went into a nice little social experiement: in what area to get the best reactions. residential neighbourhoods feature mostly dog owners with their rovers in the streets, those stare at you in a way you wished they had the ignore-machine on. best results were achieved in forestry patches with the middle aged segments.
tightly pacing nordic walker(esses) look at you first surprised but quickly a couple of dynamically looking running steps, a beaming winner smile and a nod to greet, they earn you a smile in the end. not bad, the nordic walker race still looks up to us runners, the way it should be.
it was a double hammer training set, yesterday and today, first the 10×1000m on the track, of which again only 8 were reached, and then the long run, almost 23km today. added together both total running distances, that makes pretty much one marathon. that’s alright.
the 10×1000m are quite a psycholocical training. you are on the track and each 1000m bit is 2 and a half laps, taking the one and a half laps jog inbetween the efforts into account that makes 38,5 laps altogether. with only 8 efforts it’s still 30,5 laps. get your head around that, äsch, better not to think about it. the original training program suggests to alternate 1000m and 2000m runs every other week, and then reduce the amount of efforts when doing the longer ones as well, perhaps that’s the best way out of this. next week is slow, no interval runs at all, this is a way out as well …
