Training PB in the tower! and suffering through cold showers!

A couple of weeks ago I started tower running training monday and wednesday mornings with a group of friends from work.

The tower we run up is 28 stories high (approx 600 steps).

I also trained in this tower last year. Up until last week my personal best time was 3 minutes 31 seconds.

Last wednesday I smashed that with a run of 3 minutes 17 seconds!

Super happy!

Short term (next two months) I'd like to get that down to under 3 minutes. Longer term I think 2 minutes 30 seconds is possible. That would be a stretch goal though!

One of the things I love about tower running is that it's just you versus the stairs. When I was bike racing there were so many variables; weather conditions, road conditions, punctures or mechanical failure. In the tower all the variables are within yourself. It's interesting to tweak something (like what I eat prior to running) and then seeing the effect this has on overall time.

It's intersting (and motivating) seeing my times improve as my weight decreases.

It's also meditative. You go through so much pain running up stairs that you need to be able work through this pain. Maybe block it out, maybe embrace it, I'm not sure yet. It's all a learning process.

Another learning process I've been trying recently is cold showers. There's lots of benefits associated with cold showers:



I guess part of the reason I want to take them is to get used to the suffering. Taking a really cold shower is hard. I'm definitely not there yet and I can't really say it's got easier over the past week but I'm at the stage now where I look forward to the cold showers, relish them even. And I feel great afterwards! Last night I slept poorly. I was completely out of vegetables and fruit (very unusual) so I had a bowl of cereal before I went to bed. Big mistake! Was up at 4am and couldn't get back to sleep.

But the cold shower snapped me out of my funk and set me up for a good day.

Give it a try yourself and let me know how you find it...

Starting a 40 day meditation challenge (anyone wanna join in?)

I had my first encounter with meditation back in 1996 when I did a meditation course. The course was something like 4 * 2 hour evening sessions and I spent a bit of time meditating each evening. Basically I just stayed still and focused on my breath. Even though I was a complete novice and was only spending 10 or 15 minutes a day on the practice, meditation had a really positive impact on my life back then.

I felt much more relaxed and at peace and content. A couple of months after I started meditating I moved to a different city and meditation somehow got pushed to one side. That was almost 17 years ago and it's still pushed to one side now! I often mean to try and establish a meditation habit but up until now I've never been able to actually do it for anymore than a day or two.

So this is my attempt to make a 'public' commitment to meditate twice per day for the next 40 days. I say 'public' as I'm not sure if anyone other than me will actually read this but anyway :-)

If anyone out there is reading this and wants to join in this challenge with me then I'd love to hear from you and maybe we can support each other in giving it a go...

I'll try and post on here every day to let you know how it's going...