You've got to make time to take time.

Drinking a beer and stroking a cat. An excellent use of time.
Gary Peterson's place, New Zealand. 

When I was a rower at university in Bristol we would periodically make the trek up the M4 to Reading, for a session of specialist coaching with Rob Morgan. Rob was the head rowing coach for Reading University and considered by us to be something of a guru.  Not to take anything away from Rob, but we hadn't set our coaching standards very high - at that time, self styled "west country bandits" that we were, we didn't have a coach of our own.  Some referred to this approach as 'self-coaching'.  In retrospect it could have been more accurately called 'being rubbish'.  

Anyway, I digress. It is the winter of 1998, it's cold on the upper Thames, and it is inevitably raining.  We are all sleeping on the floor of Reading University's (unheated) boathouse, a privilege for which I think we actually paid cash. And all this so we could hear Rob's words of wisdom.    Rob talked a lot.  In fairness, he knew a lot about rowing, and he was an enthusiastic communicator.  Most of what he said made sense, but some things were so opaque - so cryptic - that they remained a complete mystery.  There were two phrases in particular that stuck with us, and we would spend hours repeating them to each other in the minibus home, trying to mimic Rob's style, tone, and general sense of guru-ness.  (All I can say is that Reading to Bristol on the M4 can be a long and boring journey).  

The first was easy: "You've got to save your beans for when you're giving it beans!".  I think I figured this one out pretty well.  Essentially what Rob was saying was that you needed to conserve energy for when you'd need it most.  Don't go full guns on the warm-up and leave yourself knackered for the actual race.  At least that was my excuse for never pulling too hard on the way to the start (this explains why our warm-ups were often terrible - for which I would like to hereby apologise publicly to my former crew-mates). 

The second was a little more cryptic: "You've got to make time to take time".  I was never quite sure what this meant, although it didn't stop me form nodding sagely whenever it was uttered by guru Rob.  I think the general point was: don't rush.  The rowing stroke has two distinct phases: the drive, and the recovery.  The drive is when the oar is in the water, you are pushing with your legs and applying maximum force to accelerate the boat forward.  The recovery is when you've finished the drive phase and are travelling back up the slide to start the next stroke.  Taking one's time over the recovery is vital. Whizz up the slide too fast and you have to suddenly decelerate; the combined 700+kg of rower weight in an eight man crew acts as a massive brake against the forward momentum of the boat.  

So why am I talking about the technicalities of the rowing stroke?  Well Rob's words came back to me today at work when I was reading a book about being a better lawyer.  I am starting a project to look at how we can more effectively manage large disputes and I thought a good place to start might be to read everything I could on the subject - management, project management, leadership, whatever.  This particular book was closer to the 'self help' end of the scale than the 'academic' end, which meant that like most self-help books it was terribly written but quick and easy to read. (To quote one critic of this blog, "Samuel Pepys it is not"). But it also contained a few really useful ideas.  And one that struck me was the need to make time in your day for the things that are important to you.

The one thing we always complain about not having enough of (besides money) is time.  This particular book advised making time for leisure; for reading; for meditation; or for simply sitting and thinking.  It also pointed out that whilst most people would respond "but I don't have the time", they need to realise that there will only ever be 24 hours in a day. And that if the day were 30 hours long they would still probably want 40. As Rob Morgan might say, such people need to make the time to take the time. 

For a long time I was as guilty as anyone of not making the time for the things that really mattered to me. And I see it in others.  The other day Anita described her Wednesday night 7pm ballet class to me. It usually involves a full speed cycle up the road at 6.59 followed by a mad dash into the studio and a breathless start to the class.  Anita herself admitted that its usually a bit stressful.  And this is meant to be leisure time!  The reason for the hurry? A failure to leave work in sufficient time.

These days, I am making a conscious effort to prioritise my time towards those things that are really important. To read (I reckon if you don't read you'll never learn), to write this blog, to enjoy a post-lunch espresso at a quality coffee emporium, to sit and watch Lara play in the evenings before her bedtime.  There's always the time to do the things that matter to us.  After all, each day will always have the same number of hours - wishing for more time is a waste of time (literally).  Its just a question of prioritising.  Leaving work five minutes earlier to make that journey to ballet less frantic.  Saying "no" to something at work because I want to spend half an hour a day reading around my subject matter.  Deliberately leaving one weekend a month commitment-free just so we can wake up and spend a delicious few moments in bed wondering what to do with the day (everything or nothing - imagine that!).  Making the time to just take time. Maybe Rob Morgan really was a guru after all! 
  

Breaking down.

Its all training: another attempt on "Barn Wall Traverse" (F7a?), Hay-on-Wye. 

When Anita decided to run the London Marathon earlier this year she sought advice from one of her old school friends, herself an enthusiastic (and successful) runner. The advice was essentially this: doing the running is the easy part. The challenge is staying injury-free during the training.  Wise words indeed.

This year I've been trying to heed that advice.  Now I am working less, I can commit more time to training.  A lack of training time is no longer the problem. On the contrary my problem now is the risk of training too much.   It sounds obvious - but I have to keep reminding myself - that I'm not as young as I used to be.  At the ripe age of 35 I don't feel particularly old (although someone at work complimented me on my 'salt n pepper' beard the other day).  But I have noticed that I don't recover as well - or as quickly - as I used to.  When I was an 18 year old student at the University of Bristol I trained with the boat club six days a week (and twice on Tuesdays and Thursdays).  I would punish myself in the weights room, on the rowing machine and out on the water day in day out and still managed to study a fair few hours a day for my law degree and fit in the requisite amount of student socialising.  Looking back I remember feeling tired in the evenings (sometimes too tired to go clubbing on a wednesday night - shock!) but I managed to go three years without any serious training injuries or long term illness.  When I look back on that time it seems like I was invincible. (I also consumed two bowls of sugar puffs and a full english breakfast every day for a year without putting any weight on - those were the days). 

Fifteen years on things are very different and I am slowly learning to adapt.  I have had on and off elbow tendonitis niggles for a couple of years, as well as a few minor finger tendon injuries.  I've realised that if I do a hard session at the indoor wall I need to rest for 48 hours - two sessions on consecutive days leaves me nursing sore elbows for days afterwards. I can generally only manage three climbing sessions a week, sometimes only two if they are particularly hard sessions.  I need to stretch - a lot - and I need to work my antagonistic muscles (the 'push' muscles that are typically overlooked during a hard session 'pulling' on the climbing wall) at least twice a week.  Add in my on-going leg strengthening exercises, a couple of 5k runs each week and half an hour on the bike twice a day for my commute to work, and it adds up to more training time than I perhaps realise.

I've had a mixed climbing year in 2012 - I think Ive managed only around twenty days on rock in the whole year, mainly as a result of the terrible UK weather.  I've trained quite hard though, and spent probably somewhere close to 300 hours in indoor climbing walls since January.  About a month ago it finally started to catch up with me and now I feel like my body is breaking down.  An irritating cough in late September refused to shift and finally developed into a full-on weekend of flu (the proper pounding-head-shivering-uncontrollably-joints-on-fire kind, rather than the wimpy sniffling man-flu sort) at the end of October.  Annoyingly this coincided with a weekend break to Valencia, including two days' climbing on Costa Blanca limestone. I managed only three relatively easy pitches, including one on which I had to rest halfway whilst my shivers subsided - even though it was 28 degrees at the time.

My GP now tells me I have a chest infection and has put me on antibiotics.  I feel permanently out of breath and am going for a chest x-ray in a few days' time (my history with Dickensian chest infections isn't a good one).  I'm taking it as easy as I can - 9 hours a night in bed, plenty of rest - but even taking Lara for a 45 minute stroll around the park leaves me feeling wasted.   Not being able to exercise is a thoroughly frustrating experience.  

Fortunately sitting around feeling sorry for myself isn't really an option. Today Lara and I have had breakfast; been to the park; had coffee and second breakfast in a cafe; bought some bananas (real); been on a shopping trip (imaginary); done some colouring; read some books; and had a cup of tea.  And its only 11.30am.   On reflection maybe its not the climbing training that's doing me in.