Above: Coming down from todays rhytmic Strategic Alert Run. Fresh, sunny, clear, Northern-wind-bitten, dune, Swash, Face, Wrack-beach training. 

 Above: Melting ice painted footprint on the first floor

Ice after training gives this great relief. It helps prevent injuries; a natural inflammation inhibitor. While the ice melts over time, the flipside of the coin is that it gives wet feet and leaves footprints all over the place. See also: Saturday_morning_midsummer_dirt_dive

More information about inflammation here http://www.marksdailyapple.com/what-is-inflammation/#axzz2vyNZCsV5

Above: Sliding in after todays (Saturday's) 30K SAR-training. Clear, sunny, wind from North-East.

Today the 'A' in SAR stands for 'Antertainment'. Like a Hollywood block-buster, that deals with a problem (zombies, monsters, terrorists from within the own troops, corruption, greed, fear) an injury is best treated as just that, Entertainment, a break from routine, FUN to deal with -- to be experienced as a major challenge. Training continues, while we take care of our injury (treating the effect, healing the injury and attacking the overload causing it, through improvement of the technique, eliminating the cause). My experience of today followed these steps:

Prior to training, warming-up fase:

1) Lokalize the exact problem-spot, characterize the injury;

2) Analyze the cause: find the fault in technique leading to overload;

Then, during the training, from the moment training starts -- simultaneously, as the flipsides of one coin:

3) Improve technique;

4) Heal the injury.

Post training (PT) attach ice to the affected muscles and/or tendons, and refuel (water, carbohydrates, protein and fat, NO sugar and s**t like that)-- as soon as possible.

Above:Todays PT ice-pack, as part of the final stage of training, is like the training itself: it surrounds the injury and smokes it out.Battling injury sometimes bears resemblance to the strategy of Siege Warfare: starvation until submission. it does, however, require a vulnerable mind-state to begin with -- otherwise wake-up signals and the direction to be given will get lost in confusion and mind-crap. It, thus, requires focus and awareness to come up with a strategy and to make it succeed. As said before: win the game in the mind first.

Above:Footprint after deserted dune-/beach-scape SAR 3. Fresh day, some wind from the South/West, with silver sun reflections -- 30K. Meeting Peer -- master-carpenter and builder of the new, still located at the geographical center of the Dune/Beach-training-route, 'Beach Inn'place -- driving his Land Rover on the beach, is always fun -- we regularly run into each other. Our talk lasted about 20 minutes while several flocks of returning birds from the South flew over and two bulldozers shovelled excess sand back into sea, to make way for the return of the summer-beach-houses.

Todays training dedicated to [Land Rover owner] Bastiaan Houtkooper and his web-hosting company 'Zebra hosting'. In a (telecom-)world dominated by moguls and morons, Bastiaan founded, owns and operates a state of the art web-hosting company -- his costumer support and brilliance in trouble shooting is beyond comparison, rooted in deep empathy and years of experience as high-end cinematographer for commercials mainly.

Zebra hosting website: http://zebrahosting.nl/

Bastiaan Houtkooper's personal showreel website: http://bastiaanhoutkooper.com/

Feeling good, creating new stories™

Above: SAR-10 footprint

When we have dealt with the acuteness of the injury (cause and treatment of the injury and attention to technique) we arrive at a cross-point where we move on to start building up pressure and focus on further progression and loyal running-fun.

SAR training on the threshold of returning to best level:

1) Evolve Alert and creatively and efficient and technically sound

2) Put intensity up to good level (duration, resistance and distance)

3) Keep pressure on intensity (with Srategic use of resources)

4) Rise frequency (shorten rest-period, see 1)

5) Put intensity up (increase duration, resistance and distance, see 1)

6) Balance intensity and frequency into best level (and SAR on!)

More here: 

http://bartvanbroekhoven.com/en-US/running/51-introducing-sar-strategic-alert-running

http://bartvanbroekhoven.com/en-US/running/75-sar-9-injury-control-interim-management

http://bartvanbroekhoven.com/en-US/running/68-footprint-post-sar-2

http://bartvanbroekhoven.com/en-US/running/15-viewer-discretion-advised-frostbite-7th-update-02-05

http://navyseals.com/2341/sealfit-a-big-problem/

http://www.dezestigvantexel.nl/index.php/trainen-voor-de-zestig

http://web.fitdeck.com/blog/10-strategies-to-cope-with-injury

http://barefootrunning.com/?p=2052

Above: 30K SAR footprint

"Get in...get it over with...then get out" 

'The Ballad of Cable Hogue'(1970) -- directed by Sam Peckinpah 

As suggested in the previous post, best level is achieved when intensity and frequency are balanced.

Balanced frequency and intensity lead to progression and growth and fun.

See also:  

http://bartvanbroekhoven.com/en-US/running/77-sar-10-threshold

Above: Footprint after todays 32K SAR dune-beach training

"History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain, as quoted today by George Friedman in 'Borderlands: The New Strategic Landscape'

"Our feet flattened, our backs straightened, our buttocks strengthened their muscular arrangements to permit us to run. And as more and more we became specialised earthlings, so more and more it became anatomically impossible for us to return to the arboreal life. Such trends take place in an evolving world. A minor alteration of behaviour and body, a change of equivocal value, may command that further genetic alteration beer of increased specific value until a course is determined, and horses are set upon their way, men upon theirs. Now evolution becomes irreversible.

As important as our anatomical adjustments to the terrestrial life were the psychological changes which such life commanded. Shyness is a luxury permitted the mountain gorilla in his high, remote, cloud-softened bamboo thickets. The modesty once demanded of the tiny, primitive mammal in his monster-dominated times retained a value in the lives of jungle primates with profound green tangles of vine and leaf in which they might vanish. But for the ape of the field in those long-gone Miocene times, hiding places might be far from hand. Not unlike the baboon today, the aggressive spirit became a survival asset. Time and again we had no alternative but to stand and fight. And the social necessity, since the time of the true lemur a primate compulsion, doubled and redoubled its survival value."

Robert Ardrey, T'he Territorial Imperative', page 255 (published in 1966)

"The drive to maintain and defend a territory can be regarded not as a cause but only as a condition of human war. One can recognise its workings in the fury of a Finland attacked by a monstrous large enemy; in the madness of Hungarians attempting to reassert their land's integrity; or in the lonely, irrational heroism of the Battle of Britain, when never did so many owe so much to so few.
These were defensive social actions taken in strict accordance with territorial law and deriving from profound instinct the unbelievable magnitude of their energy. But in every case territory was the condition of war, not its cause.

Robert Ardrey, from: 'African Genesis' (1961) as quoted on page 245 of TTI

"For Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Serbia and Azerbaijan […] there is not yet an emergency. But one could materialize with surprising speed. The Russians are not intrinsically powerful, but they are more powerful than any of these countries alone, or even together. Given American strategy, the United States would be prepared to begin providing aid, but substantial aid requires substantial action on the part of the buffer countries.

The first and second world wars were about the status of Germany in Europe. That was what the Cold War was about as well, although framed in a different way. We are once again discussing the status of Germany. Today it has no western threat. The eastern threat is weak, far away and potentially more of an ally than a threat. The force that drove Germany in two world wars is not there now. Logically, it has little reason to take risks."

George Friedman, 'Borderlands: The New Strategic Landscape'

Above: Footprint after today's completion of 32K-lunch-time-SAR 4. Todays weather was the experience of theCreation of the Heavens and the Earth within roughly 2 hours30. Start under fully-clouded-sky with rain. First step on the beach at sun-break: clear blue sky, fresh wind from South/West,deep-tide.Next: partly cloudy with silver sun reflections, then sky opened again to end the training and the day inFriday sunshine.

There is an excellent study to be found on the SSI Website (Strategic Studies Institute). From the booklet 'Forging an American Grand Strategy: Securing a Path Through a Complex Future Selected Presentations From a Symposium at the National Defense University' (pag.80): "... Our greatest problems are not political; they are biological. Specifically [...] that science and anthropology converge to prove that the human brain has not evolved to keep up with human progress. Complexity has outpaced the brain’s ability to process it. This causes it to hit [...] a cognitive threshold, defined as the difference between the slow speed at which the human brain can evolve and the rapid rate at which complexity grows".

There is more interesting stuff to be found in the book; such as the case around a questionnaire that asked people in many different disciplines across the sciences, engineering, arts, futurists and other fields too numerous to mention about their projections of the future.From page 103: "...the possibility of a technological singularity by 2060 is noted, when robots will be smarter than human beings..."

Read te paper here: http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/display.cfm?pubID=1177

Above: After todays SAR-training. Fresh, clear-view, sunny, deep-tide, gentle wind.

In KNMI (Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute) language: 
 
ZCZC


SA251655 EHAM AMSTERDAM/SCHIPHOL NLD -3 m.


METAR EHAM 251655Z 04013KT CAVOK 09/00 Q1011 NOSIG=
 
 See more: knmi.nl

Above: FP 32K SAR Best-Level-Training on dunetrails and in beachscape. Intertwining wind, rain and high-tide provide excellent dynamic circumstances.

" […]… suddenly it rained, there was a storm. We decided to use it. We grabbed the Steadycam and we just did it. Then the rain stopped. I think we could do it in two takes. That forced us afterwards to get rain on the street because there was only a dissolve and it was supposed to be three minutes later, but that worked in our favour. This is a very old trick. If you wet all the streets you have twice as much light. It doubles all the reflections. It has been used in old gangster movies of the thirties and forties. in our case it just happened and we where forced to do it."

Nestor Almendros about his work on the Three-part-anthology' New York Stories ', episode -- ' Life Lessons ', directed by Martin Scorsese (1989), in the (unpublished) report ' Framing; A Symposium on Cinematography, 1990 ', edited by Andreas Fischer-Hansen, Igor Koršic and Tina Sørensen (page 81)

Above: Footprint after 32K SAR-training. Clear-, refreshing-, sunny-, with playful-tide-, friendly wind and general-summer-atmosphere on beach and in dunes.

Above: Footprint after 32K SAR BL training.

"The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of eternity too great for the eye of man."

William Blake as quoted by Joseph Campbell 'The hero with a thousand faces'('The world navel', page 44)

"Photography is a luminous drawbridge trough which the story has to reach the audience and the audience has to acces the story, the DP and the director have to built it together with the same objectives. Cinema is synthesis: the rapid and ever increasing popularity of the cinema is due to the possibility of concentrating huge amounts of information in its images, and the immediacy of the process with which the eye transmits them to the brain.

The set of rules that technique [...] allows us are indispensable to express ourselves better, more thoroughly and rapidly with the available means. It would be almost impossible to do […] without a great technical training. Everything is to be measured in terms of balanced relationships to serve the story that is committed to us. The enjoyment of the cinematographic show will be the more complete, the less the technique disturbs the story.

To know one's limits is indispensable even to a director of photography -- it is an invaluable gift because the curiosity it generates stimulates one to invent and experiment."

Guiseppe Rotunno in 'Guiseppe Rotunno', published in 1999 by Camerimage, Poland (page 30, 31, 69)

Above:Footprint SAR_7: rain and sun and wind lend supportive-atmosphere to today's-training

"Cartier Bresson has formed me a lot. I have been in Paris just to meet Cartier Bresson. I had no money, I moved to Paris, I knew the restaurants where he was going every day. I stayed outside the restaurant. Waiting. Some day I saw Cartier Bresson entering. I thought: Now I wait, he is going to eat." See: '"Go to take a reading Luciano Tovoli"' [ interview with Cinematographer Luciano Tovoli ]

Above: SAR_9 footprint

"In any process of change, the complementary tendency toward stability must always be taken into account. If, for example, the manager puts all the emphasis on change [...] frequently the opposite response is provoked as an attitude of resistance. In The Law of Opposites, such opposition is creatively transcended trough the insight that, in the process of change, change as well as stability are always recursively involved. Any manager wanting to initiate change has to respect stability. If he wants to realise stability, he has to honour change."

Dr. Michael M. Tophoff  ('Chan Buddhism: Implications of Awareness and Mindfulness-Training for Managerial Functioning')

SAR training is Kick-Ass-training: taking-over from previous 'management' (that led to overload and injury -- usually fear driven management) and re-establish control ("Get in, get it over with and get out! ").Change requires collaboration on all levels. Trough the creation of unity the runner leads/inspires/guides/informs/balances the transformation at hand. It requires growth from egotistical overload-behaviour towards- and transformation into- an Alert-balanced runner, who emphatically and sensibly controls his behaviour. SAR training is focussed upon improvement of technique and effeciency. Trough Strategic use of available resources, including time, terrain, weather, technical-support -- and injury treatment, food and rest.

Familiar terrain for storytellers,who are trained and experienced inhabitants of this threshold zone. The best stories take place (t)here, it provides the dramatic content -- the protagonists awakening willpower and conflict coming from ignorance -- that storytellers focus upon, record and loyally show.

Mark Divine wrote in his Blog 'Trust Actions NOT Words continued…': "The relationship of those in a loyal bond is transformational versus transactional. Like trust, it is a two-way street, in that loyalty is earned through mutual action. Loyal teammates don’t tolerate negativity, backstabbing, or activities that harm the team. Loyalty requires that you examine and shore up your weaknesses so that you can carry your own load to support the team. Trust and loyalty, when accompanied by honor and integrity, lead to high-performing individuals and teams."

Mark Divine's blog 'Trust Actions Not Words continued': http://www.sealfit.com/blog/marks-blog-trust-actions-words-continued/

Dr. Michael M. Tophoff: http://www.tophoff.nl/en/

Above: SAR¹ 30KMS BLMT² midpoint [ x ] training. Sarsential x: the Kambei-Point of View [ midpoint in the narrative; redirecting negativism towards reasonability and decisiveness, from an empathic POV ].

"The waterwheel makes its regular noise throughout the scene, emphasising the pauses." -- Akira Kurosawa in 'Seven Samurai' shooting script.

Midpoint: the Samurai squad-leader Kambei-character -- performed by actor Takashi Shimura in 'Seven Samurai' (1954) -- moment. The moment where the character shuts-down negativety ("I know how you feel, but you have to. We can't defend these outlying farms."), previsualize's victory (battleplan) and starts building it! Eye's off the self now, eye's on the team-effort!

In the midpoint scene in the film, the Samurai-squad-members share their strategy for dealing with the bandits and protect the village and the inhabitants. The villagers respond reluctant, negative, scared, hysteric. It seems negativism is hysteria in the making! At midpoint x, it is removed and replaced by a positive attitude, radiating decisiveness. 

From the original shooting-script, page 137:

Close-up ofGISAKU in the wind mill with a women behind him looking worried. They both look towards something off-screen. The woman puts a hand on the old man's shoulder with a cry of distress.
Medium close-up ofMOSUKE withGOROBEI just in shot beside him.
He looks atGOROBEI fearfully. Other farmers are gathered behind him, open-mouthed with amazement.

MOSUKE: You mean I have to leave my place?
(Close-up ofGISAKU, with his son and his son's wife, just behind him, frowning worriedly. The son stands up but his wife pulls him down, looking away nervously.
Medium shot ofGISAKU sitting in the middle of the room withKAMBEI , his son and his wife behind him andGOROBEI andMANZO beside him.KAMBEI is holding a small child in his arms. Tilt up with him as he stands up, still holding the child. He paces backwards and forewords in the foreground, back to camera. The waterwheel makes its regular noise throughout the scene, emphasising the pauses.)

KAMBEI: I know how you feel, but you have to. We can't defend these outlying farms.
(KAMBEI continues to pace about. Suddenly the wife bursts into tears.)

From: Seven Samurai and Other Screenplays by Akira Kurosawa, collection first published in 1992 by Faber and Faber Limited, London.

More on "x": http://bartvanbroekhoven.com/en-US/running/123-sar-epilogue

More on Akira Kurosawa: http://bartvanbroekhoven.com/en-US/running/97-sar-7-along-the-way

¹ Strategic Alert Running

² Best Level Mixed Terrain

Todays training: warm after cold week... 

Friday-training/after_two_day_break/below_zero/ice/sunny/good_wind