Update Whoops, looks like we lost a paragraph in the original edit.

The good people at TED, who run conferences for very clever people about even more clever people who can do presentations without Powerpoint, are promoting a great project called Pangea Day that is all about citizen film-making, or ordinary people making films. The objective is world peace through video. Easy.

Anyway, Pangea Day wants to bring together a whole bunch of video-makers in a big celebration next May aimed at reducing cultural disconnects by empowering real people to tell real stories through film. This is a global do-good thing, not a comedy gangsta rap thing (see below). The celebration looks like being a Live Aid/YouTube mashup.

So the people at TED have asked that we help this video go viral. Go here to view, comment and recommend Pangea Day on YouTube. For more information on how to participate and the full presentation from the project’s founder — documentary-maker and TED prize-winner Jehane Noujaim — visit the Pangea Day website.

And if that’s too serious for a Friday, here is that gangsta rap video on the subject of fresh fruits.This video is slightly rude, so if you are more arch than the Knackered Hack, don’t go there. To protect your limbic from the offensive material — which has generated a rather dubious lawsuit against the two brothers who made the video — here is the refrain:-

It’s all about the produce produce, we don’t like to kid
It’s the lower middle portion of the food pyramid.”

And here’s one for the evolutionary fitness crowd .

They call me razor blade because I cut veggies with precision and skill.
I cut the roots off arugula, Italian parsley, and sometimes dill”

Knackered Downunder is knackered by running

As I discovered while training for the annual Sydney City to Surf run, what’s important is not only what advice fellow weekend athletes may give you, but equally — and often more crucially — what they don’t say. And what they don’t do themselves. The run, which took place last August 12, is 14 kilometers and starts from Sydney’s Hyde Park and ends at the iconic Bondi Beach. It normally attracts some 60,000 participants.

I had started training with 8km runs, but two weeks before the event had injured my knees and was forced to withdraw. Before the injury, I had discussed the schedule with other athletic types and no one seemed to have any problem. In fact, they were all very encouraging. But after the injury — which has since mended — I discovered that many of those who were most supportive don’t actually run, in fact strenuously avoid it.

The sporty types, who included swimmers, golfers, hikers and cyclists, all confessed that they thought running was, as one put it, “actually bad for you.” All had incurred at one time some form of injury from running, and consequently avoided it like the proverbial plague; hence their enthusiasm for their own sports. One even conceded that he thought running on pavement was “crazy.” Thank you.

The injuries included damage to the knees, calf muscles, feet and ankles. The list was exhaustive. The only person of the group who still ran did so in the safety of a gym on a treadmill, where he said there was little strain.

Another who signed up for the City to Surf said — after I informed him of my injury — that his intention was always to walk it. And in an article in my local newspaper, a veteran of 19 runs said that this year — his 20th — would be his last. His next stop was a knee-reconstruction operation.

The moral is: when swapping tips with other athletes, be sure to ask them if they actually practice the advice they are dispensing. And check on their own training schedules. Do they include the activity you are talking about? And more importantly, if they don’t do it, would they?

Behavioural economists have shown that we overestimate how much gym time we will use when signing up for monthly or annual health club membership; we’d be better off paying for individual sessions.

That’s certainly my experience. I was a member of a gym behind Fleet Street for a number of years, and never lifted a single weight. Membership was subsidised (modestly), but this was not complete profligacy, or an egregious triumph of hope over experience; the purpose of my membership was really to use the showers. My exercise regime involved riding a bike to work 130 miles a week in all weathers, so access to a shower was mandatory. I rode flat out, had no concept of rest and recovery, and would end up knackered, or — more scientifically — suffering from overtraining syndrome.

The idea of modulating effort and choosing to have rest days never crossed my mind — the mutant puritan gene at work. Progressively, after riding home from 12-hour days late in the evening following frequently pointless conference calls with New York head office, all the benefits of this excercise started to go into reverse. Continue reading ‘gym fees require heavy lifting’