Have you been out today?

So, despite the title of this blog, and a career that combines a number of sedentary pursuits, I sometimes go running. And, being a boy, and a bit nerdy, I often use a running app - Nike Running - when I do. It tells me each time I complete a kilometre - whatever I'm listening to on my headphones fades out for a moment and Ms Electronic Games Mistress intones something like '4 kilometres completed. 25 minutes 40 seconds. Average pace 6.25 per kilometre' then the music or podcast fades back in. I like this, because I'm a boy, and a bit nerdy, and it makes me try a bit harder if I know I'm going slower than usual. And it makes me try a bit harder if I'm going faster than usual because I think 'blimey, that's good' and feel spurred on to keep it up.

The problem is ... if, as is quite often the case, the GPS signal is a bit weak then the record of how far I've gone (and thus my speed) becomes distinctly inaccurate, normally in a generous manner. So I think I'm going faster than I actually am, sometimes subtly so, sometimes to a ludicrous degree such that I appear to be close to Usain Bolt's 100m pace over a 10K distance. I was fooled by it a few times early on, but nowadays I'm wise to its faults and I'm happy to plod along knowing that I'm probably going at a pace of between 6 and 6 and a half minutes per Km, because that's what I do, rather than the claimed 4 minutes 20 per Km on my first run back after a month of no exercise, as happened fairly recently. (It was a shame when I realised that one was fake. I'd figured that my subsequent book espousing a rigorous training regime of sitting still and eating too many biscuits to achieve massive improvements in personal best times would have been a surefire bestseller.)

So anyway, this morning I was running with Lucinda Williams's excellent album Little Honey playing in my headphones, and I was running pretty well, I think, but I knew not so well as Ms EGM was telling me. So when Jailhouse Tears faded out at the (supposedly) 6Km mark and the voice told me I was averaging 5 minutes 20ish per km I thought 'well, that hardly seems very likely'. Then the music faded back in. 'You're so full of shit,' sang Ms W, more succinctly.

John Purcell Paper A5(ish) sketchbook number 2, begun 25th January 2001







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John Purcell Paper A5(ish) sketchbook number 2, begun 25th January 2001






Sometimes I think, when I get to a couple of spreads like these where I think there's little or nothing of interest, I consider skipping them and pretending they didn't exist, but I've gone for a warts and all, near-facsimile kind of approach from the start so ... let's just hope there's some better ones coming up. And at least, in the meantime, I get to think 'well, at least I'm better than that now'.

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John Purcell Paper A5(ish) sketchbook number 2, begun 25th January 2001











The good thing about blogging four successive spreads from an old sketchbook with nothing much in them that I like is that at least it helps me believe that I've got a bit better at this kind of thing in the subsequent dozen or so years.

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