Thoughts, Health and fitness

Reasons it’s OK to stop on a run

minceandskirlie

I watched a recent video by The Running Channel on YouTube where the presenter beat themselves up for stopping near the end of their long training run. I’ve seen other runners do the same, being annoyed with themselves for stopping on a run or walking a short distance. With the caveat that I am not a fast runner, or a coach, I’m just a recreational runner that’s been doing this for a long time, let me just say to everyone – it’s OK to stop!

Walking for a minute or stopping for a few seconds won’t suddenly undo the rest of the good work you’ve done during the session. If you’ve been working hard for weeks during a training block, aiming for a specific event that’s coming up, one short rest won’t knock back the weeks of effort you’ve put in leading up to it. So give yourself a break!

Here’s some reasons why you should stop during a run:

1 – To get a rest
This is the obvious reason. Maybe you’re coming down with something, maybe you’re still getting over that interval session the other day, maybe you just aren’t having a good running day. Take a minute, catch a breath and then get going again once you’ve reset.

2 – To cross the road
Another obvious reason. Not all of us have access to miles of uninterrupted running and occasionally, or quite often in an urban environment, you need to stop to safely cross the road. Remember to look both ways.

3 – To admire the scenery
You’re out for a trail run, you turn the corner just as the sun peaks out from the clouds for the first time, lighting up a majestic mountain which reveals itself in the distance and making the landscape around you glow. Birds are singing, flowers are blooming, sonnets are being written in your head at the sights in front of you. If you can’t stop for a second to check out the view, why are you even running off-road?

4 – Squirrel!
Channel you’re inner Dug. It’s OK to be distracted by a squirrel, fox, stoat, eagle, kestrel, owlbear. Just like number 3, one of the reasons I love running on hills and trails is to be surrounded by nature, and fill up my inner well with the beauty of the landscape and wildlife around us. If I hear a skylark high above me, damn right I’m stopping for a second to try and spot it. If I see a stoat running along the edge of a field, I’ll watch it until it disappears.

5 – To refuel
On race day, going for your PB, you can force yourself to eat a cereal bar or squeeze down a gel while you’re running. When you’re out on your long run in the spring sunshine and you’ve had months of a cold, wet, windy winter (as we have in Scotland), then it’s OK to stop to take on a gel, soak up some warmth for the sun, find a bin or a pocket to put the wrapper in, then set off running again.

6 – Because it hurts
If something hurts while you’re running. Stop! At least to see if it goes away. If it doesn’t go away and it’s affecting how you run – changing your gait, slowing you down – or it gets worse (especially if the pain is sharp), then really stop. Cancel the run and walk home or phone for a lift. Carrying on and making it worse will just lead to long term injury and even less running in the short term. Having said that, a bit of muscle ache is fine, no-one said it would be easy.

So there’s a few reasons why I think it’s OK to stop the next time you’re out on a training run. Obviously, some people are more hardcore than me and if you really don’t want to stop, that’s OK too. I’m not saying you have to, I’m just saying if you do stop then don’t be hard on yourself about it. At the end of the day most of us are doing this because we enjoy running, it keeps us fit, and gets us outside. Make the most of it and keep it fun.

Thoughts

This is going well

minceandskirlie

Welp, It’s only been 3 months since my last blogpost! Such much for getting back to writing more regularly.

In the aftermath of my post about loneliness I said things were looking up and I had a plan to try and improve the situation. And I did, really! But knowing what I should do and actually doing it are two different things. Work got busy. I got sick, had an (unrelated) minor operation, then got injured. Kids had football to go to, school holidays, and birthdays. My OU course hit it’s peak for the year. The excuses and the stress just builds on top of each other.

In the end, all the things I told myself I’d try and do, like get back to the local running club, go to some local folk sessions or try to get together with friends more often to play games, just haven’t happened. I spent ages fretting about my online branding and renaming my Twitch channel, then haven’t had time to stream since.

To paraphrase Jurassic Park – Life, uh, gets in the way.

I did find some time to do another linocut print:

Even that was over a month ago now and I haven’t done any more. It’s really frustrating.

There is light at the end of the tunnel though. My uni module is coming to an end over the next weeks and the pressure in my day job is easing off as well. I seem to have recovered from my knee injury (pathetically inflicted walking down the stairs at home) and have managed to start running again. I’ve even managed to use some firm self control and some calorie counting to start losing a bit of weight. I figure if I can get rid of some of the weight I’ve put on since the pandemic that might help reduce my back issues and other injuries.

Hopefully this all sticks and I can get enough momentum to start hitting the running club meetups again. I’ve got a three times deferred race entry for the local half-marathon coming up in July too, so that’s giving me a strict goal to train for. If things keep going well I might enter some more races to push me through the rest of the year.

With uni winding down for the year, I hope I can get some more time to do more arty stuff. Be it lino printing or painting Warhammer again. There’s a new Ork codex with my name on it so I need to get some of my forlorn pile of shame painted up and get some games on the go. I should also manage to get some time to do some Twitch streams again for the half a dozen people that have ever watched one. I’m wary though of over committing myself to projects that I will never find the motivation or time to complete!

Which brings me to another thing that’s been playing on my mind lately. I think it’s pretty to me now that I probably have inattentive ADHD, and have always had it. Which explains why I bounce around so many (god, so many) hobbies and struggle to build any momentum. What I need to decide is should I do anything about it? But I think that’s a whole separate blogpost.

Anyway I’m going to leave it there for now, with a promise not to leave it so long until the next post. If you’re reading this, thanks for sticking around. Go watch Fallout on Prime if you haven’t already. I saw the first episode the other night and it was fantastic.

Thoughts

What’s in a name?

minceandskirlie

I’ll be honest, I’m starting to really dislike my name. Not Chris, that’s fine. I mean my gamertag, Twitch screen-name and the name I’ve been using for most of my socials in recent years – Folkedoff.

It started simple enough. I think I picked it as a gamertag when I registered a new xbox account in the xbox 360 days. I like folk music, the off is part of my surname, and yes it was a childish play on “fucked off”. That joke got old real fast once I had kids and they got old enough to read my gamertag out loud.

Also for a joke to be funny, people have to get it. No-one gets it. If I jump in a new twitch stream and hit follow or start chatting, people don’t seem to be able to parse “folkedoff”. Not just those who don’t speak English as a first language either; Americans seem to have real problems with it. Admittedly you could argue that they barely speak English as a first language either… (joking obv. after all I’m Scottish and the same could be said for many of us)

Nothing kills a pun like mangling the pronunciation, so it’s painful to hear all the variations of the name people can come up with.

As a gamertag it’s not too bad. It’s fine. But now I’m using it for everything it’s starting to bug me a lot. If it was just Twitch it might be bearable, but now I’ve tried to align my most active public socials like Threads and Instagram with Twitch, along with any Discord memberships the name feels really clunky and uncomfortable. I’m not happy with it.

So what do I do about it? I don’t know really. I guess I have to change it but I don’t know what to change it to?

If my primary focus for a name is to choose something to use for content creation – Twitch, YouTube, and socials then it should be something broad enough to cover all the content I’m creating. On Twitch I keep intending to main music, playing some folk songs and trad tunes, maybe testing out some metal and electro stuff, but it never works out like that and I spend more time streaming sim games like DCS or Flight Simulator, plus a few variety games I pick up on game pass. While folkedoff kind of fit the music theme (assuming you get the joke), it’s clunky for anything else. Then on Threads and Insta I’ll often post pics of projects I’m working on, arty experiments, Warhammer models, wildlife pics, plus all the other thoughts and nonsense that comes into my head. Lastly there’s this blog as well!

I guess I need to take some time to think up some new names and mull them over. There’s a few, including Mince and Skirlie, that I’ve used for other projects in the past that might fit but probably not really. If I switch it up I think it’ll be something new. Full rebrand!

Ideally I want something simple, easy to say, catchy, maybe a bit folky or metal, that will fit with music or gaming. I don’t really want to split things up too much into separate Twitch streams or YouTube channels. Maybe I pick something from nature, a bird name or something like a Scots name for one of my favourite birds or some other object related to my interests. There’s a lot to consider. Let me know if any of you have good ideas for picking names!

Watch this space then for the big rebrand on Twitch and socials once I’ve made up my mind!

Thoughts

Rook what I made

minceandskirlie

I’m not very arty, but every now and then I see something and think “that looks achievable, I could probably do that”. I do a bit of sketching, I like drawing birds in particular and have seen some amazing printing recently using linocut techniques. It seemed like something that was pretty straightforward and would work well with my basic sketches so I thought I’d give it a go.

One cheap linocut starter kit later and here we are. I’m really happy with how it turned out. I sketched out a rook on some paper until I was happy with the proportions etc. then sketched it out again on a slab of linoleum (seems like most people use tracing and carbon paper to copy designs across, which makes more sense). Once on the lino, you use the cutting tools to scrape away all the negative space, anywhere you want to show as white on the final print. This takes ages. The two small tools in the kit didn’t help, a bigger cutting tool would help with the larger areas.

Final step is to pour out some ink, coat a roller, then roll it over the lino block before placing some paper on top and pressing down with a wooden spoon. It’s so simple. I think I’m hooked. Need to think of some more designs now.

Health and fitness, Thoughts

On Loneliness

minceandskirlie

Let me start this by saying something important, I’m not actually lonely. I have a great family, good friends that I see semi-regularly, and work colleagues I get on well with. In technical terms I’m not alone. I get adequate amounts of social interaction. This article isn’t a criticism of the people in my life or a problem for them to solve. But still… I feel lonely a lot of the time and I think I should talk about it.

It’s strange talking about loneliness. As someone who tends towards being introverted, I’m quite happy spending time alone. Especially when I’ve spent a lot of energy in other social situations or doing something stressful. Time by myself, to spend on a hobby – strumming a guitar or playing a game in peace – lets me recharge the social battery and give me a chance to calm down a lot of the anxiety that I’ve struggled with in recent years. But that doesn’t mean I don’t value time spent with others. I just have a limited well of energy to draw from.

It’s not intentional, or even by choice, but most of my hobbies I now practice alone. I’m quite classically nerdy and have a lot of interests I enjoy – I like video games, collecting Warhammer miniatures, playing music on guitar and mandolin (switching between heavy metal and traditional folk), writing, and dungeons and dragons. For the sake of my physical and mental health I have a few ways of keeping fit that I also enjoy – running, cycling, and more recently, indoor climbing.

Almost universally, I do all of these things alone.

(the exception is D&D where we have a semi-regular online session. It doesn’t work well alone)

Now this isn’t really by choice. Take playing music for example, I spent most of my late teenage years and my twenties playing music in local bands, going to gigs and talking to friends about it. It was a huge part of my life and my social circle. But as tends to happen, you get older, you start a family, work gets more important and it just fades away until it’s not really something you do any more. I still play music, just for my own enjoyment, but it’s not really a big part of my life anymore.

It’s the same for gaming. Growing up we spent most of our time playing games with friends. Slowly as we all grew up and left home, that moved into playing online together. But again, that’s faded away as it gets harder and harder to arrange sessions and by the time the kids go to bed, there’s not much energy or time left to try and get a game going. So I don’t really bother. I still talk about games with some of my friends, but it’s not really the same.

Even the sports I do find time for used to be more social. Many years ago I did Taekwondo and really enjoyed the social part of training martial arts. I was an active member of a running club a decade ago. I loved meeting up two or three times a week in a carpark in the hills and then trotting round a cairngorm nature reserve for an hour or two. It was brilliant. Since we moved house I joined the local club here and have been to a couple of sessions a few years ago, but then the pandemic happened. Now things are more normal, all the club sessions clash with kids activities or their bedtimes and it just isn’t feasible to make it along.

Before we had kids, my wife and I started going indoor climbing. Both of us were terrible at it, but it was something we did together and it was good to push us out of our comfort zone. A few years ago I tried to convince her to take it up again, but instead I find myself going to the boulder wall on my own and struggling in silence for an hour or so. I’ve tried suggesting to friends that they take up climbing so I can do it more socially, but hanging off a high wall, gripping tightly to some small bits of plastic appears to be a hard sell.

Now I know all these things can be social. I realise there are other people at the climbing wall when I’m there. I could even try and arrange social runs at lunchtimes with other people in the office that go running. They exist, I’ve seen them. I’m sure I could talk to them and suggest running the same route, at the same time, at roughly the same pace. I’ve even joined discord servers for the video games I like where they have regular online sessions, which I could join in. But that introvert part of me just doesn’t know how to do it and then thinks I’ll just end up letting people down when I can’t make it.

I’ve got into the position where I have lots of hobbies. But none of my friends that I do see, or any of my family, share those hobbies. So anything I’m really interested in I don’t have a way of enjoying with other people. It’s that feeling of not being able to share your interests with other people that makes me feel lonely.

My evenings are mostly a write off due to family commitments, so I can’t go to regular training nights, or folk sessions, or spend hours a week climbing. I’m also studying for a part-time degree with the Open University on top of everything else. I don’t have the energy to figure out how to make it work.

I’m sure this is something that will get better as the kids get older, and rely on us less and less. Or at least I hope so. I’m sure as well that this is a common experience. We all pine for our youth and the things we used to do when life was more carefree and we had no responsibilities. I also know there are people out there scratching their heads at this and wondering why I make it sound so difficult. I do see people my own age, with kids and responsibilities, who cope a lot better with making time for themselves to do things with clubs or groups, or make time to go see friends etc. I’ve just no idea how they do it. Answers on a postcard please.

There we have it. I don’t really know how to end this. I don’t have a solution or a plan of action to change things. Basically I feel like I’m alone a lot of the time, even though I have lots of hobbies, because I don’t get time to do any of them with other real people, and the friends and family I do spend time with, don’t share many of my hobbies. Maybe I have too many and need to focus on just one of them to do more socially? It’s a conundrum. If I could solve it, then it wouldn’t be a problem I guess!