Running

I am currently working on a piece about running & writing, how I feel the two counteract and complement one a another, how they're both hard as hell to get started at but better than almost anything else once you're in the flow.

In the meantime I recommend that you check out this excellent post, which replicates my thoughts on running almost exactly:

Hello, It's Me.: Running vs. Cycling

"I like running because it is simple and, on a good day, can free me like nothing else. Running is just about me and the machine that is my body. Although I have managed to spend a lot of money on running-related gear over the years, the only thing that is really necessary is a good pair of shoes. Well, and a good sports bra. But that's really it. [.....]

I guess I must have a bit of masochist in me too because I also really like the aspect of running that forces me to summon up from deep within the vast amounts of sheer will that are required to keep my body going even as my mind does everything in its power to convince me that I can't. It's like a battle within myself and some days it's hard to predict the outcome. But every finish feels like a victory - whether it's a race or a tough hill workout or a recovery run with Otis.

Hell, just lacing up my shoes feels like an accomplishment some days. And I'll take it. I also respect running because it's tough. And there's no cheating or in-between. You can't coast or glide to recover - you're either running or you're not. And the difference between the two is all up to me. I like that. Even though sometimes I hate it."

And this is another great post from the same blogger, again about running.


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Honorary degrees for media names. This infuriates me, it really does. Even as a twenty-one year old graduee, sitting in the convocation hall in July, hungover and dangerously over-heating in that stupid cloak & mortar board, I remember feeling a sense of complete coutrage when they wheeled some journalist I'd never heard of onto the stage, waxed lyrical about him for twenty minutes then accorded him the exact same honours as those of us who had worked for our degrees. These days I am even more irate about it: I am currently working full-time (9-5- monday to friday) and STUDYING FOR MY SECONG DEGREE IN THE EVENINGS AND AT WEEKENDS. Add to that the other stuff which is either essential (supermarket shopping, cooking, cleaning, eating, showering, paying bills, etc etc) and the self-indulgent luxury stuff (running, writing, socialising once in a blue moon, sleeping) and I am generally to be found in such a state of exhaustion that I could cry. Silly me ~ instead I should be poncing around in a wanky car a la Clarkson & wait for a degree to fall into my lap.

"Celebrating the award with [Billy Connolly] in 2001 was his wife Pamela Stephenson, who five years earlier had completed six years' study for a PhD in clinical psychology at the California Graduate Institute. In the light of Connolly's honorary degree, one really wonders why she bothered." Indeed.