On Attitudes and “Progress”

I had a conversation with someone very recently that made me see them - and myself* - in a whole new light.

First, some background (skip if you like).

Strava, the app/ site I use to log my rides and measure my progress, has a couple of things that I really like in terms of motivation:

1. Social aspect - people can give you "Kudos" (basically a thumbs-up) for a ride/ run (I don't do running) and can leave comments. It's a whole thing. I like both giving and receiving kudos, and sometimes I comment on "I ran really badly"-labelled activities with "Maybe, but you did run."

2. Comparison on "segments" - people can set up either public or private segments so you can check to see how you do on certain sections of a road/ track/ whatever against the average person/ your gender/ your age group (well, those in that demographic who use Strava, anyway).  More importantly - to me - you can compare how you do against yourself, and each time you do a segment faster than before, you get a new personal record (PR), complete with tiny, virtual gold medal.

You can set up the app so that, while it's recording your current progress live, it will read out to you which segment you're on and - if you've done it before - what your current PR is for that segment.  It'll also tell you how you're doing when you're halfway.  (If you've never done it before, it'll tell you the overall best from other people - I generally ignore this.) I, personally, especially for commuter runs, would prefer it to announce what my average time is, so that I can tell how I'm doing for getting to work. But hey - if I tell them, maybe they'll make that available as a option.

Background done.

So yesterday, on the way to work, I had some tailwind.  The prevalent wind in (my part of) Cambridge is generally in the opposite direction, so it's nice not to be fighting my way into work. (On the other hand - more of a slog getting home; oh well.)  The Strava Lady announced that I was starting the 0.2 mile "Milton Road Buslane start to Milton Arms sprint" (I didn't name this) segment.  I was whizzing along by this point - good tailwind, no randoms crossing in front of me and slowing me up; it was all good; maybe today was the day...  I got to halfway, and she said "halfway: ahead by 7 seconds." Ooh! I'd somewhat resigned myself to not beating my 1:06 PR for at least the next few months, and I thought: it's today! Come on! And behold - I beat my previous PR by 8 seconds.  That's a 12% decrease, right? Considering the all-time recorded time on Strava for this segment is 31 seconds, I doubt the leaderboard are crapping themselves, but it means there's room for improvement (if I ever get a tailwind again/ do continue to get stronger and faster through the training).

So far so nice start to the day.

So then I get talking to a non-cyclist. I tell them the "it told me I was 7 seconds ahead so I pummelled it and beat my personal best! Yay!" story and... they didn't share my jubilation.

Their opinion was that I'd done it wrong: "So, instead of coasting for 7 seconds, you pummelled it? That was a mistake - you'll never beat that."

At the time, I just felt puzzled (and, okay, mildly deflated).

This morning, with a milder tailwind, and tired from a dodgy night's sleep, I heard the announcement of the start of the sprint on my earphones, and gave it a medium amount of welly, wondering how close I'd get to the previous day's PR, but not too bothered either way.  And I got to thinking about that conversation. It occurred to me that it spoke a lot about both my general attitudes to life (when the wind's behind you, really go for it!) and theirs (you don't want to push harder when things are going well...).  I've not entirely finished thinking about this (hence post), but it seems to me that this is something about ambition, goal-setting, and where effort is best placed.

I consider myself still "in development" - I likely will until I'm in my 90s, at least.  There's lots of things I don't know and can't do yet, but I've not given up on all of them (okay, still working my way up to swimming - shush). Generally, nowadays, while cycling, I push to at least 80% maximum effort - whether or not I'm  running on time/ late for/ early for my next appointment/ there is no appointment. I've not only changed my body, but I've changed my mind about how long it takes me to get from one place to another, and how long a distance I can actually do.

So I think that "let's just fucking do this, and do it hard" is a great way to get further faster. To progress. But that's only important if what you want to do is progress - which, to my mind, means: do it faster, better, stronger - and if you don't, if you want to maintain your current position, that's a different approach, and a different set of priorities.

At the moment, I'm not strong enough to overcome the underlying bullshit that is HMS/ EDS. So I need to progress on that front. And my (artistic) career isn't where I want it to be, so progress needs to be made. Maybe my friend is in exactly the place they want to be.  Or maybe something's scaring them about the notion of moving on, and I think - if that's the case - it's more likely to be fear of success than fear of failure. And I think I could learn a lot from my simple attitude to fitness, and apply this to other parts of my life. There's places I want to be, and I need to be taller to get there...

---

*Yes, that's a correct** use of the reflexive.

**one of the few

Sometimes it's difficult. That’s okay

#TimeToTalk 

Last weekend I had a panic attack. It wasn’t a particularly bad one, putting aside the fact that they’re all, you know, horrible. I mean, no concept with either of those words in it is nice.  Even writing this out has made me super-aware of my heartbeat, the way it fists on my breastbone; my breath, the way those accelerating swells bind me into my clothing. And how, okay, that’s a good thing, but it doesn’t stop. It just doesn’t stop. And the heat’s rising, that very particular sensation at my temples and if I lift my fingers I’ll see them trembling and my skin is tingling and...

Breathe out. Slowly.

Butitsallhappeningitsallmybodyrevoltingallthoughtschiming

Breathe in. Slowly.

CaughtinsomethingthatIcantescapebecauseitsmeandwhywontitstop

It stopped before. You mastered this. You have enjoyed your body’s good reactions to challenge. You will inhabit it happily again.

Nonononononono!

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Before all that, it turns out, is something like a migraine aura. I caught a whiff of it, running late for a gig in what turned out to be an impossible-to-breach venue once everyone else had gone inside.

“I’ll power through it, distracted by the entertainment and my pride in my friends’ achievements...”

Wandering alone around deserted-looking buildings in the dark, in a quiet and imposing part of town is no-one’s favourite. Certainly not mine. Well, sometimes. But not that night. And knowing I was on the verge of panic was a mixed blessing, let me tell you. So I made my way back to my bike in the freezing cold and called everyone I trusted who I thought might be available. Luckily for me, someone finally answered, and I was able to talk to someone who wasn’t going to judge me, tell me what to do, or ask me a ton of unhelpful questions. They said:

“I can do whatever you need - either let you talk or tell you what works for me or blather to distract you.”

Right there, teetering one-footed on the edge of desperation, I chose for me to talk, then them to distract me. Once it was clear to me that I was only rehearsing the panic that had led me there rather than actually purging it, I asked to swap roles. Then I sat down, caressing the icy, fake cobbles of the ground around the bike stands. I imagined the heat of sun-warmed rock beneath my trembling fingers, and I listened to my friend talk, uncondemning and measured, and then they moved onto a topic close to both of our hearts that was also not a burden to me and I felt myself uncoiling, there on pitiless concrete, softening into the circle of a hug from 50 miles away.

Thank you. You know who you are.

I spent the next two days poisoned with adrenalin and its fallout. I treated myself very carefully. I was as assertive as I could be about my needs. I supported people making and performing art. I was lovely. I was tired. I was present. I was fed and watered and wonderful and happy and so, so tired.

So I’ve learned some things from this:

1. You can feel the panic aura as it approaches.  This is useful; very useful to know.

2. These things work:

a) Recognising and putting boundaries on it before it gets going properly.

b) Phoning someone you trust, if you can’t get physically to someone you trust.

c) Sitting down and touching the ground, no matter where you are.

d) Talking yourself down using a kind of loving dissociation.

e) Eating hot chicken soup once the main freak-out is passed.

f) Talking about it so that you can remember all the people saying “that sucks, poor you” rather than “get away from me, freak!”

g) Remembering.

3. My friends are even more awesome than I already thought they were.

4. I can ask for help.

5. If I go for a week of short/ crap sleeps I lose my shit.

I hope this has been useful for any of you. It’s been scary and useful for me – both the writing and the sharing.

Be well, lovely folk.

Today is the first day...

... of the rest of the working year.

(I appreciate that some of you may have worked between 24th December and today - sorry about that! I, however, have not. Benefits of working for an academic-related organisation, I guess...)

So! :) How’s it been going for you lot? Me, I’ve been powering through the day on rampant optimism and a renewed determination to prove to myself that I am a worthwhile human being (I have had too little broken sleep - more about this in another post, I suspect). In fact, that’s the core of my “resolution” for this year - basically: feel better about myself.

Obviously there are various different elements to this (i.e. pretty much every aspect of my life! :)), but for each one I do actually know what I need to do, I’ve just not always been doing it. So, in order to inspire myself, I reckon I just need to keep that clear “feel better about myself” goal in front of me every time I find myself wussing out and cutting corners. Because when I work at doing things right, I feel better about myself.
 
Ludicrously simple; diabolically difficult.
 
I’m not a big fan of New Year’s resolutions. I generally start on projects/ changes/ movements that look like them in December, when it’s dark, and miserable, and cold, partly to prove to myself that you don’t need a set date to kick off Doing Stuff Right, just a good mindset. Sometimes I start them in April, or February. Or on a Thursday or something. Because I know that if I keep waiting for some kind of perfect kick-off signal, I’ll keep on finding excuses.
 
I have a narrow line to walk here - let me introduce you to the brain weasels (I’m not going to dignify them with title case): they represent the snarly, snide, tricksy little bits of me that are always looking for reasons to put me down. They say tiny, mean things - their sharp, narrow teeth and sinuous forms are slippery and insistent. They are composed of fear and are like handy little pocket abusers - you may even have left the originals behind, but they’ve sowed tiny, portable, conveniently-sized memes to take with you everywhere. (I’m sure you know the kind of thing they like to say: you’re not good enough, you’re a failure, you’re a disappointment.) They snigger every time you trip or drop things or run late. And I do those things a lot... They represent the opposite of “you are a worthwhile human being”.

They’re wretched little bastards and they need to be stopped. Or, okay, well, transmuted somehow.
 
The ways to beat brain weasels need to be as multitudinous and flexible and cunning and (nearly as) small as they are. Because the more you give in to their assertions about your worth, the more you’ll give up putting effort into doing stuff right, and the more fodder there’ll be for their grindy little teeth. I’ve seen this negative spiral demonstrated very clearly in my physical health, and it’s all too evident in my mental health, if you know where to look.  I want to get a series of positive spirals going - feel better, do better, feel better, do better, feel better, do better, feel better, do better...
 
What’s the narrow line? Well, years of playing host to the weasels has left me with some difficult-to-repurpose mental constructs in which the furry little gits flourish. And one of them is where I find it really, really difficult to take compliments. Because I may know fine well that the weasel runs are ridiculous, and that they make me miserable, but I’m used to them, see? They’re home. They’re where I’m comfortably miserable.  So the more loudly people are nice to me, the less I can take it. I get so overwhelmed with this enthusiastic evidence that at least part of me looks dramatically different to the Worthless Map of Fay (© Weasel Enterprises) that I throw up as many big walls as I can to stave off the information overload. Go too far and I cry and shake and run away. Literally. It’s messy.

Slowly I’ve been working on my anti-weasel techniques. I’m being scientific about it, which means being better at spotting both negative and positive patterns, instead of taking either states for granted or treating them as neutral. I have learned that the following things are particularly good at helping silence/ squish weasels:

1. Walking. Anywhere, at any time. But it needs to be fast/ vigorously. At my own pace, anyway. 
    
2. Dancing. Stomp on their little heads! Drown them with music! Okay, maybe just stun them into submission and muffle their annoying squeaks to the occasional half-hearted “you’re too old to be doing this!” (Yeah, I’m manifestly not, so shut up! :D) 
    
3. Hosting performances. You’d think that the nerve-wrackingness of this and the massive potential for tripping up (Get the names wrong! Stutter! Offend someone accidentally!) along with opportunities for jealousy would be fodder for the invisible shit-stirrers, but somehow: no. I enjoy the performances too much to be jealous, and frankly, when you’re running an event, you have no time for weasels. 
    
4. Spending time with particular friends. You know the type - diverting yet supportive as appropriate. Also: the wider I allow my network to be, the better my chances of spending time with people whose personal styles will fit the mode I need to be in. And the less chance of the weasel who says “you’re just a burden to your friends!”  
    
5. Properly singing something I know well. There’s a pattern emerging. 
    
6. Spreadsheeting. Doing something both systematically and creatively. It’s something I have developed good... wait... excellent, expert skills in, and it’s something I can sit quietly and nerd out over.

The answer appears to be: do things irrefutably well with good people. Keep pushing at (sometimes tiny) increments of What Could Be Even Better so that the evidence for being worthwhile mounts manageably. Get the adrenalin flowing. Allow meaningful connections with other humans. Demonstrably build up the ability to be more awesome.

It’s not about comfort blankets (because the more moping/ eating crappy food/ taking a taxi rather than cycling/ playing dumb computer games I do, the worse I feel) but about strapping in tightly before heading off towards the horizon, laughing uproariously and whooping at the steep bends.

So I will be giving myself tiny compliments. Every day. Not ignoring the bad stuff (because weasels loooove it when you’ve got stuff you’re procrastinating over - oh my yes!), but aiming for the kind of objective approach I’d use with someone who isn’t me. And also coming up with ways to improve things.  In other words, I’ll be running a Lessons Learned on my life. Every day, if I can, no matter how vestigially, sometimes.

And, in the meantime: getting fitter, having more fun, and being more awesome, a bunch of which I’ll be posting on here. :)

The Aftermath

This needs to be made clear - I am very happy right now. Okay, it's my birthday and the sun has been shining its arse off in crisp, blowy weather - exactly how I like it. Okay, I now have an actual window seat in work that overlooks anything other than a grimy roof. Okay, I've helped Sport Relief to raise nearly £1000...

But I'm knackered, and constantly hungry - like persistently starving hungry today. And there is no musculoskeletal part of my lower body that does not ache, that doesn't stiffen into vicious immobility if I sit a bit wrong for longer than a few breaths.

And yet.

And yet I can't stop smiling. And yet I'm not being a total sap either - if people come to me with unnecessarily annoying bullshit, I politely, smilingly, do not take it. And yet everything feels like something either small, or fun, or a challenge I am looking forward to spanking. And, despite feeling pretty fuzzy in the head, at the same time it's like I'm seeing people very clearly.

If I stop, I'll fall over. I'm quite sure of that and am looking forward to it immensely. The six hours' sleep I had this morning were some of the best I've had in a long time.

How did I do? Well, I got all the way around (and around) Milton Country Park just fine, ta. The track turned out to be 1.45 miles long, which made calculating difficult. (It also adds a new perspective to the "struggled 1 mile two years ago" thing, now I come to think of it; it was nearly 50% longer!) I had some company along the way after all (possibly because I'd said before that I probably wouldn't), which was particularly heroic on their part as both of them had done the 5km swim the day before. Ellie ducked out after 3 goes round (fair enough with an undisclosed chipped ankle!) and Emma trudged on with me for another revolution, a swift sit-down, and a sneaky wriggle up the middle of the circuit, so that we ended up doing 6.25 miles (according to Google Tracks) in total. It took just under 2 hours, what with the pausing to take photos, the pausing to let actual runners past (and cheer them on), the toilet break, and the aforementioned swift sit-down (long enough to do me good, not long enough to get stuck).

(And then I had to drive home, via Emma's house, wrestle the car seats back up (buggering my neck/ shoulder again - a shame), tidy and clean the house, pack the car, drive to the venue, take part in a poetry workshop, watch other people insist on setting up the space (:D), run a show, pack up, take crew and features home, chat a lot of interesting stuff about poetry and accents and poets and language and training and poets and accents and women and poets and PhDs and poets and accents and dear God 1am, hi there...

Long day.)

How'm I doing physically? 

Well, my knees are surprisingly buoyant - certainly no worse than they've been in the past due to prolonged standing (which, if you remember, I did a fair amount of on Saturday), and do not appear to be swollen, which is nice. :)  Similarly, the soles of my feet are uncomplaining.  However, my ankles are surprisingly achey (this may well have been to do with the constantly-changing, bumpy, humpy, muddy, potholed terrain) and my lower back is disappointingly sore.  The most surprising set of aches is in my abdominal muscles - kind of interesting... And I want to eat everything. All of it.

What went well? 

The time spent on the walk was good - could have been shorter, but maybe it wouldn't have been if I'd pushed faster earlier...  I didn't start to feel the walk badly in my legs until about 4-5 miles in, and then pushed through the remaining distance. I did rest when I really, really needed to. I didn't run out of puff. The distraction of friends helped even more than I would have thought possible. I hydrated well (knowing that I would have somewhere to go if I'd hydrated too well!), and fuelled myself with morning porridge. I did my physio beforehand, but had rested generally, doing no weight-bearing exercise, the whole week before. And I was assertive about not standing throughout the concert the evening before, and tried my best to eat and drink well (lots of (particularly raw) vegetables, high fibre, as little refined sugar as possible, loads of water) during the week.

Oh, and I raised a bundle of cash. If you've not sponsored, you can do so at http://my.sportrelief.com/sponsor/fayroberts :)

What could have been better? 

Well, controversially, I think I could have done with some non-weight-bearing but vigorous exercise in the preceding week. If when I do this kind of thing again, I think I'll benefit from the rush of achievement of vigorous exercise in the run-up to something scary like this, as well as keeping up momentum on happy muscles and good bloodflow.  While I stood up less than I could have done the night before, I still did a lot of standing, and my sleep levels were rubbish that week (another case for more aerobic exercise?!). Also: while I rallied towards the end of the week, my diet wasn't exactly stellar during the preceding few days.

What next? Well, firstly I need to see how the recovery actually goes (update 25-Mar-14 - my knees are actually starting to hurt quite badly now; bugger), and I want to know more about this next-day euphoria and confidence. Have you run a (half-)marathon or 10k? Climbed a massive hill? Cycled to France or something? Is it like this? Or should I be looking at some other factors? Like the sleep deprivation, for example. Because yesterday was brilliant, and I feel like I could do with more of that, if my knees can survive it.  And I need another challenge - another milestone on this path of Being Fitter.  Any suggestions gratefully received, and I'm going to get some instruction from the gym in a few weeks' time, once I'm back in the mode, asking for some extra goals...

So thanks for the props, everyone, and yes: this blog will go on (though perhaps less frequently until I have a new Big Goal) as I continue to chart my relationship with my body, fitness, pain, and recovery...

Just Do It #3

Quick, throwaway "motivational" phrases can be helpful, especially when you're exhausted and your body's drenched in adrenalin, and the buffer zones of carefully-constructed cognition are crumbling in the face of your inner waaah that just wants to give up and go home and, incidentally, eat a large plate of biscuits, or possibly ALL THE CHEESE.  So this tag series is for those small pre-fabricated tools that help me get the chuff on with it.

I ran into someone at work who's doing the Sport Relief Swim - very cool! :)  Her partner's doing the Six Mile run (run!) and they've both been getting into getting fitter generally since the New Year.

They told me a brilliant phrase that the runner's spinning instructor calls to them when they're mithering:

"What's sweat?!  It's just fat crying!"

I love it... :D

Challengers

It’s time to talk motivation. Okay, again, but this time I’m not talking about goals, but some of the things that got me started on this path, and one of the means by which I keep myself going...

The first time I did Sport Relief (March 2012) was because of a friend I wouldn’t have met if it wasn’t for The Stick and Twitter. I struck up a conversation on a bus with someone using a crutch, after I got involved (I can’t not get involved - can’t decide if it’s a Welsh thing, a my family thing, or just a me thing) to clarify to her that yes, this bus would get her reasonably close to where she needed to go. We talked only a little before getting off at the same stop, but - on alighting - she dropped the spoons shibboleth and we nattered rapidly before getting to my house and exchanging Twitter handles.

I then took her up, via Twitter, on an invitation to meet up with a bunch of people at a wheelchair-accessible pub after work. At this point I had no idea whether I’d ever ditch the stick and, while used to the vicissitudes of invisible disability, was resigning myself to the fun bits of more visible disability. Years before, the person who’d brought me to England had conceded to a wheelchair, so I was used to a lot of a crap surrounding that second-hand. Being the direct object of horrified pity/ confusion/ penetrating curiosity/ terrified revulsion was yet another brick to carry around in the growing arsenal of This Sucks, never mind the practical considerations, weird shame, and increased expense on top of physically feeling like crap. Meeting some people who could help me shape/ share/ laugh about this was an alluring concept.

I met a bunch of lovely people through a series of nights out, and have roughly stayed in social media contact with many of them. However, one of them was more persistent, and I got to know him better.

Nearly two years ago, he mentioned that he was going to help out with his school’s Sport Relief Mile (he’s a TA), but that doing a mile in an electric wheelchair capable of 8mph felt underwhelming, somehow. He then got a brainwave - he would do it backwards. Suddenly, when taking a heavy machine backwards over grass when you have limited neck movement, a mile feels a lot longer.

I’d been feeling low and sorry for myself. It was coming up to my first birthday with The Stick, and - while I was making a little progress with physio - I wasn’t convinced that this wasn’t as good as it would get, and all these images of sporty and otherwise celebrities doing things like dancing and cycling - two things I dearly loved - when I couldn’t was bringing on butthurt in large quantities. I was getting emails about sport (I support Comic Relief, so was getting the SR emails), seeing posters about sport, TV programmes about sport, the Olympics were freaking everywhere in 2012, and I was filled with waaah.

And here’s my mate, who doesn’t feel like life is challenging enough, so he goes - literally - the extra mile to raise some money and support his students.

What could I do? I signed up for Sport Relief a few days before the event, got some sponsors, had a birthday party, and set off - horribly hungover (my birthday is one of the three times of the year I drink alcohol) - into the muddy sunshine of Milton Country Park to hurple a pained and shaking mile (with an even more heroically hungover partner by my side).

So there’s one of my motivations - the idea that, despite the many challenges life might hand you, there’s little more satisfying than fulfilling one of your own, despite/ because of them. Pretty much all of my personal heroes are friends who haven’t let the terrible crap life has dealt them stop them pushing themselves to new horizons - often ones that are of direct benefit to lots of other people. When I’m feeling particularly butthurt, thinking of him, or any of those other many generous, striving souls I know puts me back on track.

This post was going to go to some other places, but I think we’re good here for now...