Beyond the expected

Day 440 of my running a mile each day.

It's foggy here today, which is making it feel cold. Funnily enough, it wasn't so bad on my 6.30 a.m. run, but it felt colder later when I was out on my bike.

I was thinking this morning about the people who really inspire me, both locally and globally, and what I noticed that they all have in common is that they all go beyond what is expected.

In some cases these are people who help, or doing things for, others with huge amounts of kindness and compassion. In other cases, it is people who run marathons and go rock climbing well into their late 70's and beyond.

But they all go beyond what is expected by most people. They push the ordinary into the realms of the extraordinary, what a good friend of mine calls "a life less ordinary" (as opposed to a lifeless ordinary).

So, what could I do to go beyond what I, and others, expect of me?

Game of 2 halves

Wish I could shake off this cough that has followed on from last week's cold.

I have only been doing the minimum distance apart from a gentle 5K I did with Nicky on Sunday. I think that the October marathon is looking very unlikely right now, and yet the vision of an eventual ultra still remains strong. Who knows exactly what and when, but it doesn't feel like it matters right now.

I did some preparatory work on foot toughening on Monday, walking barefoot on the stony beach - really quite painful.

Today has been like the proverbial football (soccer) match, a game of two halves. I was struggling with a problem that needed to be resolved today and couldn't see a way through this morning. The result - reduced energy, feeling of me on my own against the world, inspiring vision evaporated, only able to see two to three feet in front of me.

By this afternoon, I had taken the problem apart piece by piece and addressed each small chunk individually and dealt with it. Result - energy supercharged, I'm back in alignment with the rest of the world, excited by the endless possibilities (and heard some positive news about a new business opportunity), and I'm now physically looking across the tops of the trees at the vast and amazing sky from my desk.

Talk about the power of the inner game being so much more critical than the external one. I think so!

Happy Birthday Cyd!!

Flat lining

I'm finding it harder to find something different to say about running a mile each day.

Today I ran five and a half miles and I'm pretty shattered. That doesn't feel like it bodes well for bigger challenges, but then again I know that we all go through cycles of good and bad days, or even weeks. I guess today is one of my dips.

Having conversed again with coach "Mad Dog" Mike Schreiber, I also feel rather flat because he believes I need to do a lot more groundwork before considering a marathon. Mind you after this morning, I think he could well be right.

"Mad Dog"

Today I have been conversing by email with "Mad Dog" Mike Schreiber, who, I believe, is based in Mexico and was Matt Beardshall's on-line coach for his coast to coast run described in "Life on the Run".

I think he is questioning my sanity of aiming to run a marathon in October when currently on a mile a day. I'm very interested to hear what he has to say.

I do know that he thinks that barefoot running is a current fad and makes no sense, but what do I know, I haven't actually tried it yet and I'm not particularly ready to leap into something that leads to an injury.

One of my main reasons for starting the mile a day challenge was to find something sustainable, that gets me moving, which in turn gets me flowing and helps to create possibility in my world.

Hopefully I'll be in touch with "Mad Dog" again in the next few days.

The challenge is on!

Well, I've done it now. No, not my mile, although I have done that too. I have finally bitten the bullet and entered the Beachy Head marathon scheduled for this October.

So there go all my platitudes about just enjoying running for its own sake and not needing a bigger goal to motivate me. While it's true that I DO just enjoy running for its own sake and all the benefits it gives me, I have also realised that I also love a challenge.

The mile each day was definitely a challenge when I started it, but it has now stopped being that challenge. In fact I said some days ago that I'm now more likely to miss brushing my teeth than my daily run, and yesterday I almost did exactly that. I got my run done first thing in the day as usual, and was working at home all day, suddenly realising at lunchtime that I hadn't brushed my teeth. Disgusting I know, but that's how it was.

I could feel the excitement in my stomach as I logged on to Runners World and submitted my application.

So, the challenge is on. I guess I might be running a few more longer runs than one mile over the next few months. The other challenge of course is to keep running a mile each day right up to and including Beachy Head.