Training Log Archive: OJ

Lately, I have been questioning the nature of reality. I had a job interview last week for a promotion I really wanted and it didn’t go my way. Cue black feelings of anger, frustration, disappointment and self-doubt. I dreaded going in to work on Monday. All pretty standard responses, I guess. If ‘reality’ for me means work, that is. At a talk I did this week at my local orienteering club’s junior training evening I got asked how I had managed to balance training with work as a runner. My answer was that running was the thing that had always given me balance. Without it, how would work (and life itself) even be possible?

I dealt with the interview frustration by going running, obviously. But how does that help? Surely it is just escapism, plain and simple? A case of running away from my problems.

For me, it has more to do with what is really real. Work is a socially constructed environment with its own set of conventions and expectations (like progression, for example). Running is a way back to authentic experience, my route out of the matrix. It gives me the perspective to see work for the superficial reality that it really is. All problems look trivial from the viewpoint at the top of Parkwood Springs.

I can think of a few other folk who could do with escaping from the matrix. The whole of Parliament, for example. How can anyone's hope to solve a problem like Brexit without going for a run? Preferably together. And up on Kinder. Come on MPs, take the red pill and get some perspective, I recommend it.

C • Nice thoughts Oli - hope yo... 2

IW via Ringinglow, Rivelin and Coppice Track putting my new bike through its paces. 21.9km

Lunchtime.