Only 6 Days before the Half Marathon

The results of last week's 10 km race have been published. I finished 109th in a time of 49:32, and 8th in the men's over 50s class, which I think is o.k. I have now started counting off the days to the half marathon on Sunday. Since the 10 km the training plan has been fairly gentle and continues to be so until Sunday. Last week I ran nothing more than 8 km and in the coming week I have nothing over 5 km planned, although there is an emphasis on interval training to help improve my speed. I was pleased to see this morning that I seem to have reduced my weight by two kilograms since the start of the year. According to my marathon book, each kilo of fat increases the marathon time by two minutes!

Today I led the lunchtime meditation in the Buddhist centre. In addition to the usual handful of meditators, I was joined by 22 Danish students and their teachers, who are on a week's trip to Berlin, and who stayed for an hour afterwards to learn something about the Buddha and his teaching. As well as being impressed by the students' brightness, politeness and by them being so well-behaved, I also had the unusual pleasure, as well as the challenge, of teaching in English. I always appreciate the challenge of getting the message of the Buddha across to people for whom it is new, as I have to re-connect with that message again myself. It is so easy to slip into the habit of taking things for granted, whether it is the teaching of re-birth, the four Noble Truths, Karma or anything else. I hope I managed to get something of value across to our visitors this afternoon. At least they appeared to have learnt something and afterwards they expressed their gratitude.

Finally the six-week Introduction to Buddhism Course this evening that I've been leading came to an end. Again, these courses never fail to give my own practice a boost and I always enjoy the freshness and energetic inspiration that the participants inevitably bring with them.