Runs Writes Code

high nothing awed small by mountain peaks we find ourselves, or rather we discover what is left when we take a chisel to our own façade and chip away. not the creature we carefully curate (and learn to believe in), but what is left when we are alone, standing on a shelf in the sky, touching fear with our fingertips, breathing unshared air, senses shrilling over bare, sharp rock that promises to tear brash skin: a casual tiger bothered by a moth. it is impossible to be anywhere else: there is no future, no past to dream of, or regret. just this still moment and the keen ecstasy in knowing: 'i am nothing'

Towards the end of 2017 I quit my job, enrolled on a 16-week intensive software engineering course, and moved to Edinburgh. This meant balancing a full day of coding (learning new languages every couple of weeks), training and homework. Who hasn't got the train to Falkirk High on a Saturday morning, run 50km along the canal and then settled down with an alcohol free beer and a software assignment in the afternoon? Totally normal Saturday. I have had to be pretty flexible with my training to fit everything in, especially after I noticed that my early morning runs were getting slower and slower. My body simply wasn't up for crawling out of bed and going straight out in -5. I thought about what I was getting out of it and decided to shift most of my training to what I could grab at lunchtime and more structured evening sessions (returning to homework afterwards). I didn't get up to 100k-weeks until Christmas and have only had a couple of 70 mile weeks in 2018. Despite this t...