Slingshot

The Paris half-marathon is on the 3rd March 2012.  I signed up very early and am now officially a contestant.

This will be my first ever timed race. It’s only a half-marathon so I can’t say I have any reason to be overly concerned or worried about my performance, but I’m not exactly in the best shape ever and there’s a certain amount of preparation that needs to go into an event like this.

I’m a competitive spirit by nature. It’s hard to say if that’s a good or a bad thing, but it does mean that I find myself setting the bar  little higher than might be reasonable. I hear myself coming up with arguments like, if someone else could do it at about my age, surely there’s no reason why I should set my own standards any lower.

I’m aiming for a time between 1h45 and 2h00.  I think that’s reasonable.  Secretly, deep inside, I want to do much better, but I’m trying to resist that urge because I’m most likely to either fail or hurt myself.

I have eight weeks to prepare.  I’ve gone running twice.  I can currently finish 6km in 32 minutes.  I need to finish 21km in 2 hours so the minimum standard I have to set myself right now is quadrupling the distance with no loss of speed.

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Calvi harbour

We wanted to come back to Corsica for a holiday since we had such good memories of the island from our first trip. Only there’s always the risk of finding things less interesting when you see them for the second time, so we mixed it up a little.

Instead of coming in the Summer, we aimed for Spring. The downside here is that you risk inclement weather (and we got our fair share of that), but the advantage is that the island is more or less devoid of tourists. Since you’re in advance of the summer, everyone appreciated your custom in the same way that we look for the arrival of swallows to herald the coming summer.

A lone tree in abandoned Occi

Of course in spring you can’t really go swimming in the ocean unless you were brought up in Iceland and had your entire nervous system desensitised during your frozen childhood. On the other hand, generally warm weather during the day allows you to take advantage of one of the best places in France to go walking.

We were lucky enough to pick the right days to go for long walks when the sun was with us.  We went to the abandoned village of Occi, a modest 30 minute walk above the village of Lumio, but had to beat a hasty retreat when the sky threatened a downpour (which never occurred).  A few days later we walked from Calvi all the way to the tip of the “almost-island of Revellata”, which is a long spit of land at the northeastern tip of the island.  The walk is complicated by many luxury villas being built along the path, but the views are sometimes spectacular, even without the summer sun.

Images of Revellata

We also visited a vineyard, and I regret not having the time to visit several.  Perhaps this is something to do next time we go.  The reception at the Orsini Vineyard was very warm, and while I find Corsican red wines far too rich and thick with fruit for my palate (and their whites somewhat too mineral), their new rosé (Gris Fruité) was excellent and very affordable, and I ordered two cases for delivery to Paris in the coming weeks.

You can see selected images from the holiday over at the photoblog : Accidental Cliches.

I’ve always disliked the concept of telling people how they ought to be. This includes their shape as well as their ideas.

I think most people agree with me, and when I say this I sometimes get choruses of encouragement about “the media telling us how we should look”. Unfortunately, that’s not what I mean.

I consider the media to be a demand-driven environment. We consume what we want, and if we spend all our time obsessing over stick-thin models, we only have ourselves to blame when our perception of attractiveness alters as a consequence. I don’t buy into the “media conspiracy to make us all insecure in our bodies”.

So when I say that I don’t like the idea of telling people how they ought to be, what I’m actually referring to is the new trend in countries that tend towards nanny-statism to regulate what size models are allowed to be if they’re going to model clothes. I’m astonished that elected or appointed officials think they have a role in deciding the shape and size of people on catwalks.

While the debate about what a “healthy” weight is and what we mean by “healthy” in the first place is probably valuable in its own right, I think that it crosses the line into an infringement of people’s free expression when authorities start mandating what weight or BMI a model is allowed to have it they’re going to be seen by the public.

Monitoring them for eating disorders is a great idea, I’m all for it – the models themselves are often young and under immense pressure to appear perfect, and sometimes that degree of body-consciousness can lead to skewed behaviours, just don’t cross the line into saying that because someone has a high metabolism and therefore appears very tall and thin, they’re no longer employable as a model. That’s not an appropriate area for the law to start regulating – to my mind.

We appear very concerned with the possibility of making people anorexic by displaying extremely thin people in the media. I understand the concern. I’m more concerned with obesity as it is statistically a much more significant problem. I would be personally very happy to see a change in our body-shape preferences towards a very “healthy” (by which I mean fit) look. If we could admire and aspire to looking like people who look good because they do lots of sport, rather than exercise huge discipline over their eating habits, that would be good, and we might get over this concept that thin is bad or good, because that’s a function of the person. But that’s probably just my personal tastes getting in the way of my reasoning.

I certainly wouldn’t advocate regulation to push the trend one way or the other – that usually backfires – you change tastes and preferences by influencing, educating and informing people, not telling them what it is permissible to look at or to believe.

No more alcohol

I don’t like New Years resolutions, but I am subject to the December excesses.  As a consequence, I am ringing in the New Year with a month during which I abstain – more or less – from alcohol and caffeine. It’s quite likely that my twisted mind decides on this course of action in December so as to jettison guilt as I contemplate the third massive meal in as many days, and the several that are to come between the middle of the month and the beginning of January. Having done this several times, I highly recommend it. A month is a perfectly achievable target for giving up alcohol, and although I am not fanatical about the health benefits of going teetotal, but there is a difference between not drinking between two weekends, and not drinking for 30 days.  You feel it when you fall asleep and when you get up in the morning, and it’s a good feeling to rediscover if you, like me, are a non-abusing but nevertheless frequent drinker.

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Having finally come to the conclusion that not doing any sport for the last three months has been very detrimental to my health, mental as much as any other variety, I pulled myself together and went for a run today. It’s December, and there are bits of ice floating in the puddles in the Jardin du Luxembourg, but I did it anyway. Read the rest of this entry »