Sixteen years

Feeling a little tired today after eleven and a half hours of driving and delivering three quite challenging workshops in the last 36 hours.

Today, Nicky and I are celebrating sixteen years of being together with a nice lunch out.

Then it's building my strength up to run the Tunbridge Wells Half-Marathon on Sunday.

Oh yes, and I also ran two gentle miles this morning in daylight again. Very nice.

The joy of the M25

I'm in Preston having completed a six hour drive from home. Oh the joys of two and a half hours on the M25.

A gentle mile-and-a-bit run this morning, but I'm not sure whether there is a pavement on the road my hotel is on, which could be a bit dicey for my 420th mile run in the dark tomorrow morning at 6.00 a.m.

Tomorrow I'm co-facilitating three 90-minute workshops to groups of 40 attendees in a curtained off area of a canteen, which will be in use.

Could be interesting.

I hope the journey home tomorrow night is speedier than my journey up here.

The questions behind the question

I'm still at home as the Lytham St. Annes trip is now later tomorrow.

As it's half-term I've been getting up quite a bit later and running in the daylight. This morning I did a 5K.

I was thinking on this morning's run about the work I do with helping people paint inspiring visions of what their career and life could look like.

I realised that the most important questions are not about "What do you want?", but the questions that come after that.

Questions such as:

"What are you settling for?"

"Why that and not something else?"

"What will that give you?"

and

"What's really important about that?"

Lots of adventure

This morning I had to run to pick up the car from where we left it yesterday, following a slightly boozey engagement party. Strangely enough it was only a tenth of a mile longer than my usual quick run.

It's half term, the hours of daylight are noticeably lengthening, March is just around the corner and we've just booked a holiday in Italy, which is all very exciting.

I watched a video last night of me being interviewed about coaching, which wasn't half as excruciating as I expected it to be.

I'm now waiting to hear if I have to head up to Lytham St Annes at short notice later today to deliver three workshops tomorrow.

Lots of adventure, which is good.

Stroking the ground

Seven miles, my longest run since I clattered my left knee ice skating. Although it is still sore, I was pleased to complete half of a half marathon and at a minute per mile faster pace than I will have to do for the whole distance next Sunday.

My family are always telling me how heavy I am on my feet. Apparently they always know when it's me coming down the spiral staircase into our kitchen/dining room, because the staircase shakes.

So as my knee still isn't perfect, I decided during this morning's run to see if I could land a bit softer when I was running.

I have tried in the past to see if I could think of tiptoeing while I run, with little success.

This morning I came up with the thought of stroking the ground.

What was interesting was that when I tried to make my feet stroke the ground, it didn't really work, and even created stress and tightness in my shoulders.

What did work was imagining what it would be like for my whole body if my feet were simply stroking the ground, and also becoming aware of how close or far I was from that ideal.

Just being aware of where I was without trying to force anything was the most effective strategy.

It didn't work all the time but it was certainly the most effective approach I've found so far.