My wife is currently working in Vienna, Austria, at the NPT PrepCom for a project called ‘Reaching Critical Will‘. This has nothing to do with me or my ersatz ‘bamboobike’, and it means that I am also in beautiful Vienna looking after our daughter.
I hadn’t realised I had got my mojo back until earlier this past week, when I went out for a run. In terms of distance and time it was relatively ‘short’ at 50 minutes and around 9-10km. This is nothing like as long as the insane long-runs I’d been doing pre-marathon last year, nor as long as a random 21km I did the other week, but it was one of those monumental runs where everything just falls into place:
Light, airy steps, quick fore/mid-foot falls, and felt like I could go all day.
So after about half an hour, I decided to up the ante and mix-in some fartleks: 30, 60, 90, 120, 120, 90, 60, and 30 seconds with 60 second jogging ‘breaks’ in between them. Since then I have run two half hour negative splits – first time I have tried this, but a really good way to stay focused for a fast finish.
Culminating in today: fastest 5km ever, 25:15.3!
I put this down in large part to Crossfit, a fitness regime that I started in February. Furthermore, this is reawakening my competitive spirit, and I have found myself, running notwithstanding, doing series of skipping (1000 yesterday), push-ups (100 today, 80 the day before), sit-ups (50), and squats (50).
Orwell said, “Sport is war minus the shooting.” In running and in Crossfit, as in life, and indeed in every individual endeavour, there is only one person who you actually have to beat: and it ain’t the person in front of you.
It has taken me years to appreciate this: if Orwell is right, then I am fighting myself. The battle is uphill, and I am coming back stronger.
Reaching Critical Will
Reaching Critical Will (RCW) is a project of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), the oldest women’s peace organization in the world. WILPF was founded in April 1915, in The Hague, Netherlands, by some 1300 women from Europe and North America, from countries at war against each other and neutral ones, who came together in a Congress of Women to protest the killing and destruction of the war then raging in Europe.
WILPF created Reaching Critical Will in 1999 in order to promote and facilitate engagement of non-governmental actors in UN processes related to disarmament. The project was designed to increase the quality and quantity of civil society preparation and participation in UN disarmament processes and of NGO interaction with governments and the United Nations; to provide timely and accurate reporting on all relevant conferences and initiatives so that those unable to attend can stay informed, and to maintain a comprehensive online archive of all statements, resolutions, and other primary documents on disarmament.
