Another year ends

The end of the third calendar year where I can remember what I was doing on every single day draws close. As many people are probably saying, it seems hard to believe 2014 is nearly over. For me, it is not just the approach of the new year that is a shock, but that the year still seems so fresh.

Today, I recalled the events of 29 and 30 December 2013, as I have done once a month. I can shut my eyes and drop through the image pinned to my mental calendar and feel I am there again. The same is true for those dates in 2012 and 2011. The difference of perception is not so much due to the separation in time, but the events that have passed, including engaging in this process. I and my loved ones have changed through ageing and experiences.

I can label these years of remembering with themes, which help me as much as the years to place the memories. There are different themese - or developing stories. Here are some:

2012 was the year we spent most of the time in a flat we loved (after a tricky start) and I began to run more regularly and entered my first 5 km races. The year ended with our niece being diagnosed with cancer.

2013 became the year of our niece's illness and separation from my wife for months at a time as she cared for her, until she passed away towards the end of the year. It was the year I joined a running club, ran 5 km most Saturday's in the park and moved up to 10 km races.

2014 almost seems too new to settle on themes. It is the year of my wife and her sister's family trying to come to terms with the loss of a young life, though that is not yet over, and the fall of my mother-in-law at the end of the year has not helped. My running progress continues. After an injury - a pulled muscle - drove me to a physiotherapist for professional assessment of my posture, together with reading and experimentation, I have reduced my 5 km and 10 km times significantly, as well as run my fist half marathons.

This process has become part of my daily life. I have adapted it so it does not become too much of a distraction. This won't be sustainable if I have to spend a long time lost in the review process.

There are many gains. I not only remember where I was, but use memory tags to capture other information such as names, birthdays, restaurants to visit again, names of birds and trees, and so on. This process also gives me balance and perspective.

All things pass. I know like never before that a challenging day ahead will become a memory. I can choose what I carry with me and may prefer to make my memory tag the sights of a new town rather than focusing on the difficult meeting I had there.

A pleasurable time is something to relish; at the time or in retrospect, I have often said to myself, 'This is one of the best days of my life'. Sitting with my wife looking across a lake as the sunset after visiting a Christmas market at the beginning of December, I said to her too, 'This is a moment to remember'.

My mental calendar for 2015 is currently clear for when I step onto it later this week - except for some dates with events scheduled - such as running my first marathon in April.

Lost Christmas

I was so looking forward to Christmas.

My wife and I had everything planned: visiting my brother and his family, a carol service, overnight at a spa hotel on the way to my parents, Christmas dinner with them and my sister's family. I had quietly booked to run in a race on Sunday near one of my wife's favourite places so we could combine our interests.

Then my mother-in-law had a fall and we hurriedly booked tickets to return to my wife's country to provide support. She has come through the operation and is home, but needing constant care.

I have no regrets about making the trip and had the chance to exchange Christmas wishes with family here, while presents for my family sit at home undelivered. As we intersperse changing dressings and moving my mother-in-law from bed to chair and finding nurses who can provide long-term support, each of the events we had planned pass by in a joyful parallel universe.

They are tags on my mental calendar for future days that did not become memories.

Coping with three years of daily memories

Now I am in the fourth year of remembering every day that passes, I need to adjust my refresh strategy.

For a long time, I have  reviewed the images for the same day of the month since January 2011, before I even began this process.

Today being December 28, I would have recalled the image for the 28th of each month. In so doing, I would often use the preceding day, recently refreshed, as a reference. This is in addition to the more detailed review of the past 6 month period described in the 'refresh technique' post.

As the months have piled up, the long review has become too much. When I've failed to complete it, I've been faced with doing two or three days per month on subsequent days to try to catch up. When I lost it completely, I did a memory reboot, recalling sequential days from the beginning over the course of several days.

I have wondered whether the sequential days route might be the way to go. For example, taking say three months to refresh during free thinking time each day for the whole of the period I have covered, and then looping back to the start. I'll keep that in reserve for the future.

The modification I am introducing now is to review two consecutive days per month over two days.

So yesterday, I ran through the images for the 27th and 28th of each month. This doesn't really take more time that reviewing a single day as I would often have to orientate myself by recalling the preceding day in any case. I didn't complete the review yesterday, so finished it today - that freedom to run over takes the pressure off. I'm now up-to-date.

I first tried this on December 24, running through the 24th and 25th of each month to get ahead of myself. I completed the review in one day, so had no long review at all to do on Christmas Day (my intention).

Unlike my six-month review, I do not intend to overlap days: tomorrow I will review the 29th and 30th of each month, not the 28th and 29th. This will give me December 30th to either finish the long review - or as a break from the long-review process.

No doubt I will still have to orientate myself with surrounding days, but I suspect the overall time demands will be reduced.

Starting year four

I did not know how long this experiment would last when I began.

Three years later, the techniques I have developed to remember every day that passes are still working and enriching my life.

So here is to the start of year four as 17 December comes around again.

Stepping sideways on my mental calendar, I can easily move to the same date in 2013, 2012, 2011.

And then I am lost. In all the years that lie before, I do not know where I was on this day.

That fog seems ever more strange. Why did I allow it to descend?

Perhaps this system will falter. But not yet.

Month end

I carried out a memory reboot recently when my review process failed me - and felt like doing so again.

Normally, I conduct a daily review of the same day of the month since I began this process. So on 28th of the month, I recall the images pinned to my mental calendar for the 28th of each month, starting from January 2011.

When I failed to complete this review for several days, I recovered by runnng through consecutive days from the first day of this process. This took me several days to complete, but was hugely rewarding.

A perfect opportunity to repeat the process came on the 28th November. Things become complicated at the end of the month. There are 28 days in every month, but February drops out when I come to 29 days, unless a leap year. November has only 30 days and so I have to squeeze in the 31st of each month by doubling up. In months with 31 days, half the months drop out of the review.

So I decided to do a full memory reboot by running through consecutive days, giving myself 28, 29 and 30th November to complete this. In actual fact, I only completed it on 1 December.

Running through years of daily memory tags was an illuminating and satisfying experience for all the reasons I have been exploring on this blog.

I have lost no days and surprisingly few images proved elusive - there were just three that I had to set aside to retrieve later, using the techniques I have developed. As I've noticed before, it was the most recent weeks that proved most difficult as the images are less entrenched.

Having completed the reboot, I've finished off today by reviewing the 1st of each month to slip back into my usual routine.

All images are noticably fresh once more.

I don't think I will make it a hard rule to do the same at each month's end, but perhaps several times a year will be beneficial.

Funny walks

This is the year I moved up in my running to half marathon distance. Various memory tags recall the progression.

My first 21 km training run on 21 April made me over confident. I pulled a muscle in my knee two days later, which interrupted my running for 6 weeks.

My first half marathon race was on 6 July. Time just under two hours.

Then I embarked on a training schedule to improve my time and knocked 15 minutes off in my next half marathon just over two months later.

In the final half marathon of the year before easing back on the training, I knocked another 5 minutes off my time, while feeling much more comfortable on the run. My pace over the 21 km was 4:37/km, which also gave me my fastest 10 km time of about 46 minutes.

I am now going to concentrate of 5 km and 10 km races for a while to try to improve my pace further. My next race will be 10 km and I have a target to beat 45 mins.

I feel I am still a long way from my potential. At the moment I sense improvement will come from strengthening my leg muscles to improve power and technique.

On training runs I think about two aspects to strengthen my hamstring muscles: semitendinosus, semimembranosus and biceps femoris (long and short head). I'm cribbing this information from this website: http://lrgoodman.hubpages.com/hub/Muscles-Used-While-Running

At some point I think about pushing further back to strenthen the hip-flexing function of the muscles.

At another point, I think of the knee-flexing function, so lift my heels more powerfully.

It feels like I am Monty Python's Ministry of Funny Walks. Going from a flat, extended rhythm to a bumpy, bum flicking trot. Both exercises cause my legs to ache in a good way, telling me the muscles are working.

At inervals, I'll recover by easing back on these exercises. My achilles-flexing push-off then becomes more of a focus.

Then I try putting it all together, which is faster, but tiring. With time, as my muscles strengthen, I will hopefully become faster and less tired.

My 5 km time is already falling and consistently below 21 minutes. My next target is to knock a few seconds off my best time to drop below 20 mins.

Post office

This is another example of how this process of remembering every day that passes enables me to capture other information I do not want to forget. It helps me to remember the names of birds and trees, for example, something I previously found difficult.

Now I've applied it to remembering when the Post Office is open. My memory tag for Wednesday, October 15 is going for a coffee with my wife at lunchtime to a particular café. Instead of these visits merging into a single generic visit in my recollection I can now differentiate between them by something specific that happened.

So on this day we went via the Post Office to send a birthday card to a nephew. The Post Office closed at lunch time and does not re-open on Wednesdays.

Now I will remember.

The next day on the way home from work I called in at the central depot and posted the card there. I noticed that on Wednesdays it is not only open in the afternoon, but stays open until 8 pm. So registering that fact is in my memory tag. Having a common theme to consecutive days is one of the memory tricks I sometimes use.

Whenever I refresh the memory tags, I will remember when the local Post Office is closed in the afternoon - and that the depot is open late that day.