Sunday_training_footprint_sunny_clear_dogged_wind_30K

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Above: Sunday footprint after sunny clear 30K training. Dogged wind from the South.

Today/training/after/footprint/january/spring_run

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Today/training/after/footprint... January Spring run. Sunny with spring-buds in the trees..

Smart training is entertaining

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Kennemer dunes 360° today. Share [ radiate ]

Min/max temperature: 6°C/9°C; humidity: 100%; precipitation: 2 mm; sea level pressure: 1002 hPa; wind: WNW 43.0 km/h; visibility: 10.0 kilometres; Clouds: Few 304 m., Scattered Clouds 365 m., Mostly Cloudy 457 m

"'Cest le ton qui fait la musique.' A statement's tone and style decide about its meaning."

Quoted and translated from French by Martin M. Winkler in 'Arminius the Liberator: Myth and Ideology', page 250, first published in 2016 by Oxford University Press, New York

" I love my own time too much and would not have chosen to live in any other even if that had been possible. Yet, if forced to an alternative I would choose to be the first European in Africa free to see, before we laid our blind, violent hands upon it, the vast land glowing from end to end in the blue of its Madonna days like some fabulous art gallery with newly restored and freshly painted Bushman canvases of smooth stone and honey-coloured rock. […] Already [ between the years 1800 and 1860 ] the Bushman's extensive hold on Africa had shrunk to the country along the Great River, the southern and central water-pints of what was to become the Orange Free State, and some of the steeper and deeper gorges of the Dragon ranges and their splintered spurs. He was still fighting back in tiny little pockets all over the veld but only in these areas did he retain some semblance of his former cohesion with his own kind and the other natural children of Africa. But about the year 1800 all that quickly changed. In that period pressure from the south reached greatest force; in the north, its starkest brutality. A long process of demoralisation of the spirit of the indigenous peoples of Africa was fast approaching its climax. Already, for centuries, human society in Africa had been society on the run. But in this period the whirlwind welter of migratory hordes having their violent way with weaker peoples, as well as the systematic raiding, year in and year out, deep into the heart of the continent by the pitiless slave trader from Zanzibar armed with powder and shot, produced a convulsion and disruption of human life and spirit on a scale not seen before. Terror, destruction, and disintegration, like the smell of the dead rotting on an apocalyptic battle field, stood high in the shining air. Almost every tribe of Africa picked up only what was negative in the situation. The weak lost the courage and wit that alone might have saved them and were ruled by blind terror. But they, too, whenever forced to flee into the country of someone even weaker than themselves, practised with all the ruthlessness of the convert the terror which had hitherto flayed them. The strong thought of little more than plundering and preying on the weak and making themselves even stronger. Then they feel out among themselves, setting up rival combinations for loot and destruction."

Laurens van der Post in 'The lost world of the Kalahari', page 30, 49, first published in 1958 by The Hogarth Press in Great Brittain

"The Tao of heaven is like bending a bow.
The high is lowered and the low is raised.
If the string is too long, it is shortened.
If there is not enough, it is made longer.

The Tao of heaven is to take from those who have too much and give to those who do not have enough.
Ordinary people act differently.
They take from those who do not have enough and give to those who already have too much.
Who has more than enough and gives it to the world?
Only the wise.

Therefore the wise work without recognition.
They achieve what has to be done without dwelling on it.
They do not try to show their knowledge."

Lao Tsu in 'Tao Te Ching', page 80, translated by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English. Originaly published by Knopf, New York, 1972

Sensory offensive

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Kennemer dunes, today. Jumping out of the office.

The benefit of bare -- unprotected running¹ -- comes from digesting reality as it makes contact. It is a way of perceiving information. Just as driving, after a certain amount of experience allows for relaxed conversation with other people in the car -- as it is so well expressed in these Volvo films. So does barefoot running, regardless of underground surface, such as sand, stones and shells, flat, up, down and trough the water, trough snow, over ice and trough mud and over asphalt. After a certain amount of training it is all OK. As said before: the foot is a miraculous piece of biomechanics. When people sometimes ask: how do you do it, doesn't it hurt, don't you get injured? Lawrence of Arabia would have said: "The trick is not minding if it hurts." My reply is: my feet only get hurt at home. Never out in the open. At home, nasty pieces of glass prove to be leading to bloody injuries. Always unexpected. While running, apart from the experience of stimulating the flow of blood during running  -- in the feet and trough the legs -- rough surfaces such as small stones, shells and all that create what I call the experience of sensory offensive training. A mental experience. Flow on demand. After the path doesn't scare anymore, the way of information digestion becomes -- however pretentious that may sound -- 'bread and butter' and you start to apply that attitude upon digesting information 'in general'. Stuff starts to make sense within a broader perspective. You open up to a more free perspective upon things. The muscles move, the mind is at ease. Barefoot running burns fear.

Such as this experience. Today it struck me, after having seen television for the first time in maybe 10 years, last Saturday evening, how annoying TV and commercials are².  Around 8'O clock in the PM we watched some TV in a hotel room. On channel one of the Dutch public television there was a nature documentary broadcasted by the Evangelical Broadcast organisation. ZAP. On channel two of the Dutch public TV there was a church service with purple light effects upon the wall and flashy crane shots and people singing, broadcasted by the Evangelical Broadcast organisation. ZAP. On channel three there was the news for children. "Please leave it on", Melle said. Shortly followed by at least 12 minutes of annoying commercials aimed at children. For Lego, and sugarcoated cereals. And they repeated it over and over and over. Just like the Teletubies do: repetition must lead to deeper recognition. Someone must have found that out. Public television. It struck me: TV creates anxiety. Unfulfilled wishes. And you can't start providing that experience too early it seems. This was not commercial television, this was STER, responsible for selling advertising time on radio and TV on Dutch public television (with a section on their website: "how to trigger the lust to buy?"). If politics is the part of the iceberg under water, media is terrorism for the mind, the visible part of the iceberg. In neo-liberal Holland everything looks very decent from the outside (people who drive like assholes do so in respectable cars). The real wars are fought in the living rooms. If you go by houses, regardless of size and neighborhood. Big villas, small workershouses, appartmentsbuildings, poor, rich, old, new, rented, bought: inside it seems that everybody is watching television. Terrorising the mind! The good news is: something can be done about it. Switch it off. Find and read books. Go out. Talk together. Have fun out in the open.

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¹ Currently approx. 80 - 100 kilometres (49 - 62 miles) per week, the whole year round

² Regardless of the label of programming: progressive, alternative, truly alternative, even more truly alternative, most alternative, for the youth, governmental, liberal, adventurous, sportian, kathological, protestantical, muslimian, buddhistical, evangelical, intellectual, social, musical, regional, local, technological, folkloristical, political, historical, commercial, educational, dramatical; it rarely ceases to amaze in any other way than by its sheer, overdressed, cold, single-minded, power hungry unscrupulous stupidity! A primary coloured, brightly lit electric poultry house: talk-talk-talk-tok-tok-tok. And that is odd. It is a great invention, given center stage -- as a shrine -- in just about every home on the planet.