Things were generally rather different back then, of course. #lgovsm was a major lobbyist for the emancipation of social media – Twitter in particular – for it to be seen as far more than a new comms team tool, for example, and to push for responsible experiment with the many opportunities unlocked by social media generally.

With a few gaps in its timeline, a key part of #lgovsm has been the Tuesday evening, hour-long Twitter “discussions” on a series of given topics, or sessions with a guest host. Past and ongoingtopics have been revisited from time to time, to test progress and growth.

Local government has changed a lot during the life of #lgovsm. Social media, and the use organisations and individuals make of it has changed even more so. Both, of course, will always evolve. And so must #lgovsm. For many, the hashtag has already assumed more importance than the Tuesday evening discussion sessions.

It’s obvious to say local government has no monopoly on good ideas or good practice in using social media. What constitutes “local government” itself has also changed a lot. An ever widening range of public services are being delivered by agencies and partnerships, rather than by traditional “in house” local government structures. Sharing information and innovation on the use of social media as an element of digital public services has never been more important, and a wide view of what local government is nowadays needs to be taken to do this properly.

Those of us who have hosted #lgovsm discussions for the last couple of years have for some time recognised that the role of social media in the delivery and management of local services would continue a path of inexorable growth. We also kept an open mind on the added value that the once a week, “are we all sitting comfortably”, Tuesday night session would bring. We feel the point has now arrived critically to question the value of this.

The #lgovsm Twitter hashtag enjoys wider usage than just as a rallying point for those able to sit in on the Tuesday sessions. We want to see this continue, of course. However. we feel it has become increasingly artificial to attempt to corral wisdom and opinions on a given topic into one hour a week. There is no shortage of topics, of course, nor of knowledgeable hosts, advocates and participants, and we’re not suggesting twitter gatherings like that using #lgovsm be abandoned altogether.

We are, however, proposing that the Tuesday evening #lgovsm hour should end, but that the hashtag itself should be used more and more by those tweeting about local services and how local services use social media. The hashtag needs to remain a valuable rallying point for information and sharing.

Maybe this will free up those minded to do so occasionally to set up one-off #lgovsm discussions at other times (and for some, more convenient times). We will ourselves look to occasional good opportunities for others to share their wit and wisdom in this way from time to time – just not regularly at a fixed time once a week.

These proposals are aimed at evolving #lgovsm, not undermining it. The 8.30 #lgovsm session already advertised for Tuesday 16 April will serve as a chance to unpack some of these issues.

I’ve just finished covering most of the top indoor events for Masters athletes in the UK this winter. A tough job at times!

The photos are here.

On a non-sporting front, I also got around to posting a gallery of 100 shots of Venice, here.

Work on The Great Dolomite Road website has come on apace this winter, after much success hunting down old postcards from online sellers. See here.

I began racing indoors in the far-off days of the Open Competitions at RAF Cosford, in the Midlands. In those impecunious days of the 1970s and early 1980s, it was just possible to get a day return on the train from home, in the South East, all the way to Cosford and arrive in time for one’s first event. It meant getting changed on the train on the branch line to Cosford, and sometimes even doing some warming up exercises on the train! I usually did a 60m and a 200m before having to hurry off to catch the train back to London, and onwards to Kent before the day was out. I very much doubt that the journey could be done any more like that, but no matter: it’s many years since indoor athletics at RAF Cosford ended, sadly.

My first British Masters Indoors was in 2006. If I recall correctly, this was the last time they used Cardiff’s answer to the fairground “wall of death” – the little 4 lane track at the University. I even put some noses out of joint by getting a bronze medal there on my first indoor appearance as a Master. Not long after, I ran in my first Masters International event, the World Indoors, in Linz, Austria. Two semi-final places and a silver medal in the 4×200 relay there were an encouraging debut, I thought.

I’ve had mixed fortunes at the British Masters Indoors the last few years, courtesy of injury, though winning both of the “B” final sprints last year wasn’t too bad, I guess. This year, however, I didn’t even get that far. I was completely sidelined as an athlete, and had to make do with seeing the whole championships down the barrel of a camera lens.

The reader of this blog will already know that I’d ruled out any indoor competition this winter, in an effort to mend my damaged left foot. Well, happy to relate, that is all going pretty well. I’m up to some light jogging on it again, although still some way off being able to sprint. However, even if it had been well enough to race on, my often unpredictable back chose two weeks before the Championships to play up badly again, and at one point I thought it was touch and go that I’d even be there as photographer.

The weekend was a physical marathon. I covered every event in the arena with my camera, save for a few of the age group competitions in the shot and the jumps, and one race on the track, which happened ahead of time while I was making a pit stop. I was on my feet, moving round the stadium and trying to be both technically competent and creative with the camera for more than nine hours on the Saturday and a further seven hours next day. That, plus the small matter of a 120 mile round trip home and back again overnight.

Most previous years, I’ve also competed at least once over the weekend. I’ve decided that actually makes things easier, not harder, because time spent warming up, waiting to race, racing and warming down is all time not spent leaping about taking photos. OK, I got to see races and age groups this year in events I’d normally have missed, but when my own age group was on the track, there was a huge feeling of “I ought to be there doing that”, tinged with a little voice of doubt that said “Well, I hope I still can”.

I was delighted to see friends doing well, especially those notching up national, European and World age group marks in their events over the weekend, but seeing them and capturing their moment of glory on camera was simply no substitute whatsoever for being there as a competitor myself.

The ache in my legs, back and hands from shooting more than 2,000 frames that weekend had faded within days. Not so that other, deeper ache of the frustrated competitor.

It’s almost the end of February and I’m trying to become accustomed to not racing indoors this winter. I recently went as photographer to an event I’ve competed in for many years, and it was pretty difficult. Not just watching everyone else, and wanting to say to myself “I can do that”, but also wondering when the next time will be that I get my chance to prove it. I’ve got several other photographic commitments coming up, at events I’m usually also racing at, so for a few weeks, things won’t get easier in this respect.

Elsewhere, there’s good news and not so good news. I’m feeling very fit and well – see more below – but my injured left foot is only showing slow signs of improvement. It’s a lot better than it was, say three months ago. I’ve done a little gentle running on it (and on the other one, of course) and this has been enough to convince me that there is still currently no way I could sprint on it without considerable pain, and setting back such recovery as I’ve achieved to date.

One thing I am proud of, given that I’ve had a pretty bad time with depression this winter, too, is that I’ve got into, and pretty well stuck with, a solid training routine. When I was working for a living, training was often thrown in around evening meetings and stuff. I did the training, but almost always skimped on proper recovery afterwards. I seem to have got that sorted. My current routine is all gym-based, but I’m training there at a quiet time of day, when I have plenty of space, and getting good time afterwards to eat and relax. More than anything, I think it’s the routine that has been holding me together and the routine that is largely responsible for the progress I’ve made.

But I’m not racing, so how do I know I’ve made progress? Well, every three weeks or so, I have a session I do which I regard as a benchmark. It’s never fun, because it requires ten tenths effort, but it has shown me I’m moving forwards. I’ve also been far less prone to the dreaded DOMS – delayed onset muscle soreness – this year. When it strikes, this usually hits me 24-36 hours after training, and can last until the next session is due. It’s seldom something you can “train your way out of”, so it can inhibit the subsequent session. Initially I worried I just wasn’t training hard enough in the first place, of course. The old tendency to beat myself up every session dies hard. I blogged about that stuff not long ago, of course.

My other benchmarkers are digital aids. I’ve used the “ithlete” iPhone app for quite a while now. All it demands of me is one minute each morning, shortly after waking, to take a measurement of my heart-rate variability. Look on the website for the science around this. My figures from last spring and into the summer were very disappointing. By the time I left for my long stay in the Alps in the autumn, I was showing “ithlete” figures as low as ever I’d seen. While in Chamonix, and, of course, away from training and racing, things made a pretty major recovery. I’ve always believed that my “ithlete” figures are also a pretty good guide to my mental state. Thus, they rose in Chamonix as the pressure came off, and dipped when the inevitable “post holiday blues” crept up on me. However, despite some evidence of an up and down cycle through the winter, my overall graph from the system has risen to what I know to be at least very satisfactory levels.

The other aid I use is also iPhone based and is made by the same people. It’s called Precision Pulse, and it’s basically a very good heart rate monitoring app. It measures, and charts, heart rate, calories burned, progress towards anaerobic threshold and things like that, and can immediately display a work-out as a graph including a personalized “TRIMP” (Training IMPulse) setting, which is a recognized measure of training lead stress imposed on the body. The TRIMP figures will show me when I maybe thought I was working hard, though actually not, for example.

I owe a lot to ithlete and Precision Pulse this winter.

A couple of blogs ago, I said I’d make no quick decisions about my racing in 2013. I’ve made some decisions after a lot of thought, and quite a lot of trying to put off the need to make those decisions. The passage of time was inevitably a factor, given the need to put in entries for upcoming track meets, commit to travel and accommodation for overseas events, and so on.

The modified training I’m doing to work around the pain in my left foot, caused by medial arch problems, is going well. What’s really going well is my training routine. I’m fortunate to live ten minutes walk away from a well-equipped and relatively spacious gym. I’ve been a member long enough to know some of the staff quite well, and it’s a good, supportive environment in which to train. Right now, it is the core of all my training; because there is simply no point in me trying to train on a track (20 miles away) all the while running is so painful and counter-productive.

I’m fortunate these days to have great power over my diary, and I have managed to stay in a very regular routine which gets me three good training sessions each week, and enough rest between each of these. I’m also able to train at quiet, off-peak times of day, albeit that the price is training alone almost all of the time. Previous blogs refer.

If there was ever “a plan”, it was sort-of a hope that as I got fitter and stronger during the winter, I’d a) cope better with the problem in my foot, b) realize that the indoor track season was imminent, and c) somehow turn up ready to race, come the day. However, it’s a plan full of holes and by mid January, it was really only part b) that was coming to fruition!

There’s no doubt I’ve made some very good progress in terms of fitness. I’ll blog sometime about the two iPhone apps I’ve used for quite a long time to track this. I’m seeing objective evidence of progress, and the subjective evidence matches it! But I’m a sprinter, and sprinters race.

Deciding to skip all indoor competition this winter was quite easy. I’d only have entered something like four meets. I’ll actually still be going to them all as a photographer. As I write, the start of the stuff I normally do for my summer track season is more than four months away, and I remain optimistic that I’ll be racing then. However, the extent and the level of that racing is the issue.

This year sees the World Masters Championships taking place in Brazil, and not until October. Several issues I’d cite, even before the matter of sheer cost: I’ve never wanted to go to Brazil. I’ve never been convinced by the assurances from those hosting these championships that they will be able to put on a good show. And I’ve certainly never wanted to drag my competitive season out until October.

Because the latter is pretty much what would be involved. Nothing in my domestic racing calendar is due to start later than usual. The national Masters championships, which are usually in late June or July aren’t going to happen until mid September this time. There is no mid-season lull, either.

Factor in my plan to spend another month or more in the Alps this September/October, following the success of the trips in the last two years, and my decision became quite easy. I will only be doing local races in 2013. That means the Kent Masters League. It might mean nothing else.

It’s the end of January. That is the plan. I am content with it. At this point, I don’t see it being likely to alter much, although if it did, my concern is that the alteration would be towards even further reductions in my racing plans.

And sorry, real music lovers, but that Eurovision song was really the only choice for my title this time.

Readers of this blog will probably know Steve. He’s a great guy. He’s THE sprinter in my Masters age group. I’ve raced him many times, and spent hours with him in places like call-rooms, waiting to race at championships. I handed him the baton for the final leg of the World Masters 4x100m relay in Finland in 2009. I’m proud of that gold medal, one of three relay golds I’ve won alongside Steve.

4×100 relay 2009 (by Lesley Richardson)

I was also struck that in the interview, Steve’s World Masters wins at 100m, 200m and 400m in 2009 were picked out as his big year. Why did this strike me? Because two of these races – the 100 and 200 – were probably also the high point of my own track career to date. I was 5th in that 100m and 4th in the 200m. I blogged about these races at the time and have mentioned them since.

That 200m final. Steve centre. (By Ken Stone)

The pressure I also heaped upon myself in life and training after those results was, again as I have said before, what I believe to have been one of the defining factors in my slide into depression. Put simply, in the pursuit of even repeating that sort of result, and possibly improving on it, I beat my self up pretty mercilessly. Physically and mentally. No, I didn’t reach the point of actual, commonly understood, “self harm”, but I hurt my body and my mind nonetheless. Steve Peters would fully understand if I describe it as having totally lost any sense of perspective about what I was doing. To the extent I would have described as obsessive? Maybe, but it would have been called sadistic if someone had inflicted it on me. To call it “masochistic” almost seems to suggest I might occasionally have enjoyed it. No. My mind saw it as a necessary evil, not anything to be savoured.

When you train alone, as my lifestyle then and now tends to dictate as necessary, you inevitably spend far too much time looking inwards at yourself. I used to say that I could never be bothered anyway with other peoples training problems, such as you’d encounter working as part of a group. But what you don’t get, training alone, is some of the necessary challenge and comparison. Solo, looking inwards, you can kid yourself you’re progressing. Maybe by comparing how badly something hurt the last time you did it, for example. The only way forward from that becomes doing it again until the same distance, time, weight, etc, hurts more. That, or you continue to do it in the hope that, by the time it hurts less, you’ll have made the progress you were seeking. That’s all folly, of course. You’re more likely to have burned out a few fuses in your physical and mental systems instead by then.

At the time, I felt I was fortunate during that period of late 2009/early 2010 to have remained relatively free of injury. Looking back, of course, I can see that, while an injury might have been frustrating, it might also have been exactly what I needed to regain some sense of perspective. As it was, staying free of significant strains was just part of the mix that was convincing me I was doing things right, or at least, doing the right things.

My blogs from those days are not on this site, but here. I switched to the site you’re reading this on in early 2010. As I read them now, I can spot clues in what I wrote. It’s clear that kidding myself was occasionally part of the game. I’m particularly struck by my apparent fear that my training was “behind schedule”, though I’d be hard pressed to say what the schedule actually looked like!

I’m not qualified to say whether the pressure I imposed on myself, coupled with other things going on around me, over those months, was itself the trigger for the resulting damage. It seems such a short period. However, I can also see it in the context of pressure that had been ramping up for maybe a couple of years previously. I’m coming to see these as “dark days” containing memories I seldom revisit, and I’m not about to start.

But back to Steve Peters and the interview that triggered off this blog. At one point, talking about sport and sports-people, Steve said “were just entertainers really”. We’re what? “Entertainers”? I’ve just had a huge dose of perspective poured over me.

Go well, Steve.

British Masters 100m 2009 (by Lesley Richardson)

Yes, my title’s a music reference again. It’s a track from Van Morrison’s fabulous “No Guru, No Method, No Teacher” album. Sort of ironic, that album title, eh?

Very shortly, I will be helping to run the first training course about social media that those lovely people at the award-winning Voluntary Action Within Kent have laid on. The audience will be drawn from several local voluntary organisation. This blog is one of my visual aids.

We’re taking a simple approach in this introduction. It isn’t a social media surgery; we’ve no time and not got the facilities for that. No, it’s a basic introduction to what social media is, and how it can be used in the voluntary sector.

Basically, we’re breaking the whole social media world down into four blocks:

Social networking
Media sharing
Blogging
Fundraising

Yes, I know there are things that sit outside these categories, and several which occupy a place in more than one category, but we have a little over half a day for the session!

I’m going to use this blog as a visual aid in the session about blogging. No surprise there. I want to use it also to advertise a very useful piece of work that’s recently been published by Honey Lucas on her The Very Tiger’s web site.

This is an online training course for the voluntary sector about why charities etc should be blogging, and how they can go about it.. You can find out more about it here.

It’s great that there are resources like this around. We could probably have run the whole training session around online resources other people and organisations have posted on the web!

To be very honest, my injured left foot is not really getting better. It’s nearly six months now since I started getting significant pain in the ball of my foot and my first two toes. This was traced to a failure of my medial arch. Kinesio taping provided temporary relief, and insoles with a high arch provide relative comfort when standing and walking. I survived six weeks walking in the Alps, during which time the pain didn’t increase, but didn’t go away, either.

I made a tentative resumption of training a couple of weeks after returning from the Alps. I saw this as “training for training”, and began quite gently. However, running still hurt. I worked around this, doing some good aerobic work on a static bike, and beginning some promising weights sessions. But what good is it if a sprinter can’t run?

It’s also reached that time when I need to set my strategic targets for 2013. That tends to be dictated by the need to arrange flights and accommodation for any major international events in the year. For 2013 these are the European Masters in San Sebastian, in Spain, in March, and the World Masters Games in Turin, Italy, in August. My problem is that I simply cannot envisage me being at either event.

I mean that literally. Part of the preparation is being able to “see” the event in the mind’s eye, and then to work towards it. I can’t. The image won’t come. Bottom line is that I’m just lacking the confidence or the drive to mortgage money and time on another event I fail to get to. That’s “another” on top of the World Masters Indoors in Finland last Easter and the European Masters outdoors in Germany in August. Failure to turn up is becoming a habit.

My priority, of course, is to repair my foot. Nothing happens anyway unless that happens. I get more advice on this shortly. Finding that where it hurts is probably not where the problem resides has made me very cautious about jumping to remedial conclusions.

I’ve already begun thinking in terms of a 2013 season built around just local competition. Possibly not even national championships. On one level, it makes sense. Masters athletics is based on five year age bands. I will be in the top year of my current age group in 2013. That will make it tough to do well, in terms of positions and wins. That’s not a disincentive as such, but objectively makes it a good year to step back from things, perhaps.

And that’s as far as I’ve reached at the moment. No decisions, no solutions, though I am acutely aware that if I just sit on my hands, the passage of time will rob me of some of my options. And writing it down is maybe a way of me coming to terms with the inevitable.

Tom

(ps: The title is that of a haunting Sandy Denny song)

I was, frankly, a bit amazed at the thought that our National Parks and/or their staff weren’t already exploiting social media. A quick search on Google revealed that there were some National Park Chief Executives or “admins” blogging and doing other things on line. But not Wardens. It’s clearly been thought about. These were sad finds, for example:

http://www.breconbeacons.org/environment/helens-new-folder/wardens-blog

and

http://www.peakdistrict.gov.uk/index/looking-after/rangers.htm

A thousand and one thoughts started racing through my mind, which I’ve distilled down to this short list of possible uses. I hope these might set further thoughts running in the minds of others. I offer it simply to get a discussion going and other ideas to be put forward. It seems to me most of it would apply to local authority country parks as much as to National Parks.

1) Every Warden to have a smartphone and a Twitter account of their own, and be encouraged to tweet about everything they do. (I do realize I am taking mobile phone reception for granted here, which it might not be throughout some of our National Parks). The opportunity for tweeting weather conditions, traffic and parking problems, photos of work they are doing, safety issues, appeals for help, and so on. Real time news is a reality via Twitter. There are some really good examples of people tweeting really interesting stuff about the job they do.

2) Every Park to have a Facebook page and to encourage visitors to use this for comments, photos, discussions, etc, etc. The National Park authority to play an active part in turning these things into discussions, to encourage visitors, responsible behavior, environmental awareness, and so on.

3) National Park Wardens should be blogging! Regular pieces, with photos, from Wardens, would be a fabulous way to share the important work they do. Hats off to the voluntary wardens in the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park for this, as an example.

I’d love to read a regular blog from a Warden working in any of our National Parks. Just think of the wealth of information they could share as the year goes round, even blogging, say, once a month?

4) Photo and media sharing sites like Flickr and YouTube are social media. National Park Authority web sites should have online photo and video galleries, and be encouraging Wardens and visitors to be feeding material to these.

I have no link with any UK National Park, though I’ve visited them all, some many, many times. I hope someone find this helpful.

Sunset on the Chamonix Aiguilles

I’ve rediscovered what Welsh-speakers call “hiraeth”. The word has no direct translation into English, but “homesickness tinged with grief or sadness over the lost or departed”, or “a mix of longing, yearning, nostalgia, wistfulness” are definitions I found on the web, and both convey it well.

I’d literally just returned home from six weeks in Chamonix, in the French Alps, when I penned my last blog. I’ve now been home a week. I need to write this piece to help me settle, because it ain’t happening of its own accord at the moment!

There was a time when I did this fairly often. At least twice a year. I had a routine, and a proper job to return to, which was sufficiently manic that it helped make my trips away become distant memories very quickly. Life is different now. Up to a point.

The idyll of several weeks galavanting around the mountains is great for getting you fit. Carrying a rucksack full of camera gear is great for getting you strong. But if you have my half-a-lifetime of back trouble, there’s often a payback. Mine came a few days ago. I got out of the car and suddenly realised my back had gone into serious spasm. No sudden thunderbolt; I just seized up completely. I was fortunate to get an early appointment with my good friends the chiropractors at Southcote Clinic (thanks, Ben) and functionality has been restored, though I am “fragile” and aware that my new-found fitness is ebbing away. This isn’t how it should be after six weeks of the very best kind of altitude training.

I grew to like the apartment in Chamonix a great deal. It was simple but adequate and unlike a room in a hotel, I could close the door at the end of a long day and really sink into my own thoughts. Routine was simple: up early (very early a few times!), eat etc, and out. I’d be home by late afternoon most days, which always gave time for a quick stroll through Chamonix. If the weather was up to it, and it usually was, I’d end up in the japanese garden above the town. This is a superb spot to watch the changing light on the Chamonix Aiguilles as the sun sets. Right now, I miss those peaceful twenty minute breaks on my wooden bench possibly more than anything else.

I’ve started work sorting and editing the 6,500 or so photos I took while I was away. Hmm, more than 1,000 a week doesn’t sound many when I reflect that I regularly shoot 1,000 a day and more at a big track and field meeting. I have the tough job coming up, which involves scanning more than 200 large negatives from my big old film camera. I saved that camera for some of the best stuff, on days with a guaranteed good weather forecast, and the negatives look great. I’ve not started, though, because we have the bathroom fitters in at home, and it’s amazing how much dust there is. I’ve put the film scanner under cover and will fire it up next week, I expect.

The digital shots I’m two-thirds of the way through sorting have been trial enough, though. I have an interim “100 best photos” from the trip here on my website. As I was working through the shots, every so often, memory would transport me right back to the moment the shutter was pressed. These feelings were vivid, believe me. Even if I was left with a heavy heart when the feeling passed, I hope the ability of these photographs to do that to me never fades.

Having the builders in has required me to be at home almost all week. That too is about as different from time in Chamonix as it’s possible to get, and I feel really rather imprisoned. It’s helped me focus on getting the photo jobs done, though. I’ve used the Pomodoro Technique to get me through. This has helped my concentration, but has also been vital in ensuring I don’t spend too long sitting down. Thus it helps prevent my back from locking up. I’ve become a very adept tea-boy, too.

In theory, I start training again next week. Or at least, I start that little, very useful phase of training for training. It’ll be the opportunity to see how/if my foot is recovering, and it’ll get some dust out of my lungs. Somewhere deep down inside them is the fresh air from Chamonix….

Tom

(And once more, the title’s a song track. This time from the Albion Band with John Tams)