It was a year ago today that I spoke with a friend about my running as I had been recording my runs on an iPhone app and measuring my average pace. As a result of that conversation, I decided to follow his example and enter a timed road race. My first event is my memory tag for 2 September 2012.
As I went through the review of the images pinned to the 26th day of each month today, two things struck me. Firstly, the pleasure of knowing where I was a year ago and what I was doing. This ability is part of my reality now, but the second thing that struck me was that on 26 August 2012, I would have been hard pressed to say where I was the year before. This new reality is new.
On the subject of running, I am now regularly taking part in group runs on Saturday mornings. Although I keep a record of the road races I enter (and souvenirs such as my chest number, the flier and the results list), I haven't been noting these group runs down. I decided to start doing so as I am experimenting with running technique - last Saturday I tried increasing the number of paces per minute after reading in a magazine that the optimal rate is 180/minute, according to some. My breathing could not keep up!
I decided to go through my app history and write down all of the past runs in a little black book as well - in the same magazine a famous runner had mentioned her running diary. I devised a set of headings and pulled up the details from the app: date, distance, time, pace. I thought the pace information would be useful to see how I progressed over time.
Among the figures, the 15 July 2012 stood out as particularly slow. In an instant I knew why - that was the day I pulled a muscle in my leg. It is the memory tag for the day.
It wasn't often the case that a run was my memory tag, but as I wrote the entries, I often checked my mental calendar to recall what I had been doing on that day to place the run within it.
As I went through the review of the images pinned to the 26th day of each month today, two things struck me. Firstly, the pleasure of knowing where I was a year ago and what I was doing. This ability is part of my reality now, but the second thing that struck me was that on 26 August 2012, I would have been hard pressed to say where I was the year before. This new reality is new.
On the subject of running, I am now regularly taking part in group runs on Saturday mornings. Although I keep a record of the road races I enter (and souvenirs such as my chest number, the flier and the results list), I haven't been noting these group runs down. I decided to start doing so as I am experimenting with running technique - last Saturday I tried increasing the number of paces per minute after reading in a magazine that the optimal rate is 180/minute, according to some. My breathing could not keep up!
I decided to go through my app history and write down all of the past runs in a little black book as well - in the same magazine a famous runner had mentioned her running diary. I devised a set of headings and pulled up the details from the app: date, distance, time, pace. I thought the pace information would be useful to see how I progressed over time.
Among the figures, the 15 July 2012 stood out as particularly slow. In an instant I knew why - that was the day I pulled a muscle in my leg. It is the memory tag for the day.
It wasn't often the case that a run was my memory tag, but as I wrote the entries, I often checked my mental calendar to recall what I had been doing on that day to place the run within it.
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