London Marathon #4: 17 weeks to go

Wow! My run "in the wild" this week was a real reminder of how great it is to make sure we are connecting with the natural world around us. I took off just as it was becoming daylight, warm enough to be in shorts and singlet top, only a slight breeze, birdsong at its peak for the day and virtually no traffic - heaven! I never wear air pods when I run, I like hearing the sounds and connecting with what is around me.

Listen to the birdsong (with a touch of dog bark) below...

My first learning, or reinforcement, this week, was to rest up when you are ill. I have not always been good at this, thinking even if I am slightly okay, if I am upright, I should be out there getting the work done. Of course, this is no good for me and probably sets me back overall. So, Thursday/ Friday this week I very deliberately took two days out to recover from a viral-thingy - probably should have been Saturday too! Like everyone else - I'm always a work in progress!

This week's completed program:

• Tuesday: Tempo run to Zeleni Vir, Croatia

• Wednesday: Recovery run in Tanzania, at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro

• Thursday: No training

• Friday: No Training

• Saturday: Long run along Sajama Lagoon, Bolivia

• Sunday: Easy, progressive run around the streets of town

• Monday: Walk to Eagle Falls, Lake Tahoe, California

The key self-leadership learning for this week comes from fartlek training, giggle, giggle. Fartlek is a Swedish word meaning "speed play". This training technique was introduced by Gosta Holmer in the 1930s for the Swedish cross country running teams. Fartlek training involves alternating random variations of speed and intensity: Sprinting or high intensity (uphill) is interspersed with periods of slower, lower intensity work. However, the spicy ingredient in pure fartlek training is that the length of the various efforts is not known to the athlete! Thus, training mind and body.

Imagine you are running at high intensity or speed, you're hurting, your body is under stress, you're not sure when this will end! What do you do?

You work on your mind! You coach yourself to hang in there, you've done hard stuff before. You think to yourself "this will end at some point." You might also start to think about what you can do to adapt your effort to stay in the game, to sustain the performance without blowing up. This sounds like life, doesn't it? Work, kids, study, aging parents, relationships, illness, pandemics...most of the time we don't know how long we will need to endure, or, in fact, what our breaking point is.

What can we learn from fartlek?

• Going at high intensity all the time is not sustainable, we need recovery time.

• We are stronger than we think we are, training our mind is as, or more important than, training our body.

• We can adapt our approach to reduce the intensity, or lean on a "teammate", to help us keep going.

• Life and its experiences are cyclic in nature. As sure as we have "ups", we're going to have "downs" - but neither lasts forever.

"Ups and downs in life are very important to keep us going, because a straight line, even in an ECG means we are not alive" - Ratan Tata