Leadership Through Vulnerability

What is leadership? This was the first question posed during a leadership course I attended last year, and I was surprised at how difficult it was to answer. I was able to reel off a dozen qualities of good leadership, but summarising all of those qualities succinctly proved elusive. At one point I thought I had found the answer when I suggested that being a leader was being whatever your team needed you to be at that time, but the question was then posed about whether leadership was also about being able to prioritise your own needs. At times those needs can conflict with the needs of the team, and therefore I was no nearer finding a neat answer to the question.

The purpose of the discussion wasn’t to arrive at a neat answer. The purpose was to consider everything being a leader entailed, and the challenges that presents. Later in the course, the role of leaders in shaping the culture of a team or organisation was discussed, though over the past week I’ve been reflecting on an important omission from that discussion – vulnerability.

When people discuss a healthy culture in the workplace, the focus is often on how to make coming to work fun and rewarding. However, a healthy culture will also be one where people feel comfortable feeling vulnerable, whether that be knowing there is someone they can speak to if they are experiencing challenges in terms of their mental or physical health, or the vulnerability that is felt when questioning decisions made by others, particularly those more senior in the organisation. The traditional view of leadership is one of strength and resilience, against which the need to be comfortable being vulnerable seems a contradiction, but it isn’t.

The reason why this conflict has been on my mind in recent days is because having come through a few weeks which were tough personally for several reasons, I was looking forward to a week of annual leave as an opportunity to refresh and recharge. That was until a nasty wasp or bee sting to my face last Sunday left me feeling bad and looking worse (if you want further details, look at my recent Instagram post). At one point I couldn’t even wear my glasses comfortably, and whilst the swelling was barely noticeable by Wednesday, I was still limited in what I could do.

I began to feel increasingly frustrated by how my week was unwinding. Normally my way to cope with that type of frustration is to go for a run, but when I tried to do that, I realised that my body was still physically drained and not ready for even moderate exercise. Which, in turn, was even more frustrating. Far from coming back to work refreshed, it looked like I would be coming back to work feeling much worse than when I left. I therefore started thinking about if it would be something I needed to address when I got back to work, and if so, what that would look like.

I haven’t made a decision on that yet. Thankfully I have been able to exercise over the weekend, and am looking forward to visiting the Kenilworth Food Festival this afternoon, so am feeling a lot better now than I was a couple of days ago. But I’m more aware than ever that I still have plenty of work to do in terms of showing vulnerability as a leader. I recently ran some workshops on how to deal with difficult conversations, and whilst the purpose of that was primarily to help equip the team with the skills to deal with those conversations as best as possible, it did prove a useful opportunity to demonstrate vulnerability too.

Moving forwards, I want to look for other opportunities to display vulnerability. Having never really sought those opportunities out before, I’m not really too sure where to look. Every organisation is different, and there is only so much you can learn from the outside, particularly in terms of culture which really needs to be experienced to be understood. One area I like to look at is professional sport. Whilst you don’t see all of the preparation and never really know what is said privately, we get to see not only the outcome of their work but a lot of the process too.

One sports team which has both been praised and at times ridiculed for their culture recently is the England Men’s Test Cricket team. The leader of the team, Ben Stokes, is a fascinating case study. Last Summer, the question was put to him that his approach to batting was doing himself a disservice by being so attacking as to prevent him making big scores consistently, but Stokes refused to accept that argument, countering that it was important to demonstrate the approach that he wanted the team to take, not just speak about it in the dressing room.

Stokes’ leadership has been described with words such as boldness and aggression, but vulnerability should not be overlooked either. He has spoken often about the challenges he has faced with his mental health, and took a break from the game in 2021. Almost every player in the team has come out and said how much they enjoy playing for Ben Stokes, and any thoughts about whether that is just a message for the media are banished when you watch the team play.

Stokes is not the only example I could cite. Gareth Southgate is another. So too is Adam Peaty, who even in a primarily individual sport like swimming still has a leadership role within Team GB. And of course there are countless examples across other industries too. Opportunities to learn can come from the most unexpected places at times, and when you are dealing with a topic which is under-discussed like displaying vulnerability as a leader, those opportunities can be extremely valuable.

Barbenheimer: Which is better?

It is very rare to get a week like this in cinema. With 52 weeks in a year, it shouldn’t really be necessary for a film with a $100+ million budget to open against another $100+ million budget film in its opening week. This week though we’ve had Oppenheimer going up against Barbie in one of the weirdest cinema events I can imagine.

And if the evidence of my two trips to the cinema are anything to go by, it is proving to be a highly lucrative cinema event for everyone involved. Barbie was clearly drawing the bigger crowd but both of the mid-afternoon midweek screenings I went to were sold out, and I suspect the novelty factor of watching such vastly different films convinced a lot of people to watch both who perhaps would only have watched one of them had they been released a month apart. But which is better?

Obviously this is like comparing apples and oranges, or perhaps that should be pink grapefruits in the case of Barbie. Despite being released in the same week, it is more relevant to compare them to other films in the same genre rather than each other. That being said, both films boast an absolute abundance of acting talent in their respective casts, particularly Oppenheimer where you’ll find Academy Award nominees and winners who only appear in one scene in the entire film. Both look and sound fantastic too, albeit in very different ways.

I’ll start with Oppenheimer since I saw it first, and in terms of genre, it is tempting to put Christopher Nolan films in their own genre. And yes, there is non-linear storytelling here, albeit for the most part that is very easy to follow. In terms of a broader genre, this is a biopic, and a very good example of that genre too. The challenge for any biopic is how to build tension if it is a story the audience is familiar with, and with this story, even if you had never heard the name of Oppenheimer before going into the cinema, you most likely still know what the outcome of World War II was. I knew rather more of the political and scientific story than that going in, yet was still gripped for the first 2 hours or so at least. The final 40 minutes or so does drag a bit, albeit I was still interested as it covered parts of the story I was less familiar with. I could very much see myself watching this film again, which often isn’t the case when the subject matter of the film is so heavy and bleak, which I think speaks to the fine balance which is struck between a personal story and how that played into incredibly significant world events.

Barbie is a slightly harder film to define in terms of genre. At times it is a comedy. I did find myself laughing at most of the jokes, and there are so many references scattered throughout that I’m sure I missedsome of them. However, definitely don’t go into this thinking there will be jokes every minute, because they certainly aren’t that frequent. This isn’t a musical either, even though there are a few song and dance numbers which I enjoyed a lot. It’s not a kids’ film, and is probably aimed slightly more towards adults than kids than would be the case with something like Toy Story, with which there are obvious similarities.

I think this touches on what I liked most about the film. It would have been so easy to do something obvious and by the numbers, like so many other films which trade heavily off their IP have done in recent years. But this definitely isn’t obvious, and many of the choices the film makes are quite weird. Weird in a good way though. It doesn’t feel like it was put together in a boardroom, even though the reality is that it would have gone through as many boardroom meetings as any other big budget Hollywood film.

Which is better? Who cares. Go see both.

Taking A Beating From A Bee Sting

Sunday’s bike ride had been going so well. It was my first opportunity to do a normal ride for a while, with all of my other bike rides being commutes of one form or another. I put in a few hill efforts, enjoyed a few fast descents and took things nice and easy on the flat. I was almost within sight of the first Kenilworth signpost on my way back home when out of the corner of my eye I spotted something flying towards me. A fraction of a second later, I felt it smack into me, about an inch away from my right eye. I’m still not sure whether it was a bee or a wasp, but one thing I can be sure of is that it stung me.

The remainder of the ride wasn’t particularly pleasant, but thankfully I didn’t have far to go and once I was home, I felt confident I was over the worst of it. I was able to apply some antiseptic cream and for the rest of the day, I felt okay. It was therefore a bit of an unpleasant surprise to wake up on Monday with swelling across most of the right side of my face.

Thankfully I am on annual leave this week, and had nothing booked other than my car service. I was slightly worried about that as there was quite a bit of swelling around my right eye, but thankfully it never got to the stage where it restricted my vision. I was able to visit a pharmacy to pick up some tablets, and spent much of the remainder of the day icing the swollen areas and getting plenty of rest.

I had been planning to train on Monday, but having run on Saturday and cycled on Sunday, I was content to move forward my rest day given the circumstances. I really wanted to train again on Tuesday, however the short walks I did whilst waiting for my car to be ready to collect confirmed that wasn’t an option. I only did around 5000 steps, but I felt as drained as I usually would after a 2 hour run. It was an easy decision not to run, and again used the remainder of the day to rest and ice my face.

By Wednesday morning the swelling had almost completely gone. It was barely visible when I put my glasses on, having been so swollen that it was uncomfortable to wear my glasses on Monday. I tried to go for a run, but the stiffness in my hip flexor was back so I aborted within one minute. Instead I did yoga, a bit of strength work, some foam rolling and some gardening, and my energy levels felt good.

I was therefore confident that if my hip flexor was okay, I’d be able to run today. A few strides were enough to confirm that it wasn’t fully okay, but definitely better than yesterday. Given I was only planning a short and steady run, I decided to go for it, and the hip did get better throughout the run. It’s now a couple of hours after the run, and the stiffness which has immediately followed some of my recent runs has been absent, so I’m optimistic it should feel okay the next time I try to run, which I’m planning to be Monday.

Despite the somewhat positive news about my hip flexor, today’s run was awful. Sometimes the numbers from a slow run tell a mixed story, but today they aligned to tell a tale of one of the worst runs I can remember. For context, I chose the same route as I did for my first run after having COVID last year. It is 5.44km, and last year I did the route in 31:26, with an average heart rate of 153bpm. Today I did it in 32:54 with an average heart rate of 155bpm. Or to put things a different way, more effort to go slower.

I’m not too concerned with today’s run. I know the context behind the numbers, and by the end of the week I’m pretty confident the after effects of the bee/wasp sting will be behind me. It’s just a frustrating setback at a time when I really didn’t need one. The issue with my hip flexor was one I potentially could have avoided had I spent more of the Winter and Spring concentrating on building strength in that area, given I had the same issue last Summer. This issue was quite literally out of nowhere. There was nothing I could have done to avoid it, and nothing really I could do to speed up the recovery either. I just have to allow more time, be cautious with my training over the next few days and hopefully feel better for a bit more rest from full training.

How to improve your 5k time by 5 minutes in one week with no running!

Last Saturday I completed the Warwick Racecourse parkrun in a time of 25 minutes 12 seconds. Today, I completed the same parkrun in 20 minutes 10 seconds. In between I didn’t go for a single run. So how did I improve by more than 5 minutes in a week without doing any running?

Sadly if you were hoping for some form of revolutionary training hack, you are going to be disappointed. The context behind last week’s run is very important. My hip flexor has been causing me issues for the past 6 weeks or so, either manifesting itself as mild pain or restricted movement. Last Saturday, it was the worst it has been this Summer, both restricting my movement and being more than just a mild pain. My time certainly wasn’t me just coasting around, I pushed as hard as I felt I could without doing myself any further damage.

After the run, I realised that the fact that I had been neglecting proper rest days was definitely a contributing factor to why my injury was not only persisting, but seemingly getting worse. I could have done cross-training on Sunday and Monday, but fought the urge to do so and took two consecutive rest days instead. I have no doubts that this decision was crucial in arriving at the start line today with no real pain or restriction in my hip flexor.

The title of this blog is also deliberately phrased. I didn’t run over the past week, but I did train. I’ve been commuting to work on my bike three days per week since the start of June, and over the past couple of weeks I have been able to start thinking about those rides as training. I look for opportunities to do short, powerful efforts, like getting away from traffic lights, whilst also recognising when I need to have an easy session.

On Thursday morning, I decided to set myself a challenge of going under 30 minutes for my 14.8km route for the first time. My commute is essentially 5km heading south east, and then take a 90° left turn to head north east for the remaining 9.8km. During the previous week, I had managed to beat my previous PB by more than 2 minutes, setting a time of 30 minutes 12 seconds. That was with a strong south-westerly wind though, which obviously was the perfect occasion to set a fast time. This week however it was a north westerly wind, so to my favour for the first 5km, but a crosswind thereafter. Nevertheless, I pushed hard throughout and managed to set a new marker of 29:59.

It is easy to think if you aren’t running regularly, you will get slower and slower, but it isn’t necessarily true. I remember reading an interview with the 800 metre runner Elliot Giles, who did remarkably little running during a normal training week for an elite athlete. Most of his base cardio fitness was done on an elliptical trainer, which helped him keep his fitness levels high with the stresses and strains that running would have placed on a body which had been plagued by injury in previous years.

This plays into what I found most surprising about today’s run. If I was pain-free, I knew I’d be able to run a lot faster than last week. What I didn’t expect was that I would run my fourth fastest time of the year, just 15 seconds slower than my fastest time. There are definitely areas where I’m a long way off my best right now like my endurance, but my ability to do a shorter, hard effort seems to be improving through doing those types of efforts on my bike.

There were two other elements which came together today. Firstly, the weather might be disappointing for those going on their Summer holidays, as a runner the cooler temperature and light rain was perfect. Secondly, I gauged my efforts purely on feel. I had a rough idea about how quickly I was running based on the company I was keeping, but I didn’t want to overextend myself chasing a specific time. Had I known I was so close to 20 minutes, I would have been very tempted to raise the pace with 2km to go, but that could easily have backfired. As it was, by ignoring my watch I actually went 30 seconds faster than my watch’s race predictor suggests I should be able to do a 5k in.

Stepping off the treadmill

If you are a part of the parkrun online community, you will be familiar with the many different parkrun challenges and the fact that parkrun HQ have recently taken steps to discourage some of them, specifically some of the number-based challenges due to the increased pressure they can put onto events. As a regular volunteer at Warwick Racecourse parkrun, I do have some recent experience of this. We recently held our 111th event, which is part of the ‘Nelson’ challenge (a concept which will require no further explanation to Cricket fans). There had been 314, 318 and 268 finishers at the previous three events, however for event 111 this increased to 398, though it should be noted that Coventry parkrun was cancelled that weekend due to the Godiva Festival, so that probably accounted for some of the extra participants. My plan for that event, for reasons I will discuss shortly, was to run and then support post-event closed down, however having finished inside 21 minutes I was asked to support barcode scanning too. I was happy to do so, but that did mean having to adapt my planned warm down.

So do I support the stance parkrun HQ have adopted? I’m not sure I do. I can’t say any of the challenges appeal to me. I prefer doing my local parkrun as often as possible over travelling to different locations. On the weekends when Warwick Racecourse parkrun is cancelled or I find myself away from home, location will be a much bigger factor in choosing which event to do thanthe name of the event or the event number. Discouraging these challenges wouldn’t impact me as a runner in the slightest, and as a volunteer it would make certain weeks slightly easier.

Yet there isn’t too much difference between those challenges and my current goal of running my 100th parkrun on my next birthday, which would also be the 6th anniversary of my first parkrun. I need to run roughly two out of every three events between now and my birthday to make that happen, which is definitely a factor when I’m deciding which weeks to run, which weeks to run and volunteer and which weeks to volunteer. Yesterday I had planned to run, and even though my hip flexor was mildly painful throughout my warm up, I decided to run, conscious of the fact that if I didn’t, that would be an extra event to fit in at some stage over the next few weeks.

Generally speaking, anything which encourages people to be more active should be viewed as a positive. Whether that be hitting a milestone number on a specific date, completing a challenge, chasing a PB or whatever else, if it helps get people out and about then I’m in favour of it.

Ironically yesterday this did backfire on me. Even at a gentle pace, it was still a painful run, and there was a bit of discomfort walking yesterday and this morning too. Not running would have been a smarter decision, and that is something I didn’t really need the benefit of hindsight to tell me. Pushing through did however highlight one of the areas I’ve probably been neglecting over recent months – proper rest from exercise.

My hip flexor had been a mild discomfort during the Northbrook 10k last Sunday, and the discomfort was significant over the following 24 hours. Yesterday was my first run since then, which theoretically should have been ample time to get over the injury, but for the fact that I have continued to train, having cycled to and from work Tuesday to Thursday. My hip flexor isn’t painful whilst cycling, and cycling gives me an opportunity to maintain or even improve my cardiovascular fitness, so the temptation to continue to train has been significant.

However, sometimes there is no substitute for actual rest. That’s something I’ve definitely lost sight of in recent weeks, particularly in regards to managing my injury. So even though I’m pretty confident I could have done a bike ride or a swim today without making my injury worse, I’ve decided to have a complete rest day today. I’m almost certainly going to have a complete rest day tomorrow too. My mind always feels frustrated if I’m not training when I feel like I could be, but it is definitely time to listen to my body and give it the rest it is asking for.

The Northbrook 10k 2023

I arrived at the Northbrook 10k today in an unusual situation. This was the first time I had entered the event, yet I knew the roads better than almost anyone who wasn’t wearing a Northbrook vest. Between 2008 and 2012, virtually every run I did incorporated the roads of today’s route, more than half of those runs were 10k’s and many of those were raced as solo time trials. Between 2012 and 2016, I was living in London but almost always raced my 10k route whenever I came home. Therefore I not only had familiarity with the roads, I also knew the feeling of running them at the pace I would hopefully be able to sustain today.

I therefore arrived feeling good about the run which lay in store. I always enjoy running these roads, and I think they’ve played a big role in determining the type of runner I’ve become. Not everyone enjoys rolling hills but I love them. Partly that’s because almost any set of rolling hills can evoke memories of running these roads, but also because I’m so well practiced at them that I can run them effectively.

One of the two unknowns was what the event itself would be like, albeit I had a fairly good idea from the pre-race emails. This is very much a club 10k run. Almost everyone there was wearing a club vest, to the extent I wondered whether I could compete for the honour of being the first non-club runner home, purely because of how few of us there were. I’m not actually sure how that went, as it doesn’t seem possible to apply a ‘No club’ filter to the race results, but I didn’t see many non-club vests when I crossed the line. Club 10k’s offer everything you need from a running event without any of the unnecessary extras. There was no pre-race warm up, and the pre-race briefing mainly stuck to a few safety instructions.

The other unknown was how my hip flexor would feel. Whilst it has generally been better recently, when I’m doing certain yoga poses like Child’s Pose, I can still feel a lot more tightness in my left hip than my right hip, so I know I’m not over it yet. The short jog from the car park to the start told me everything I needed to know. There was no restriction of my movement, but there was a low level pain. Probably only a 2 or 3 out of 10, but enough to sound a note of caution.

I absolutely loved the start of the route. It is on the lowest slopes of a hill, so you are going uphill immediately. It is the type of thing that the big events would almost never do, but I like any type of quirk in an event. Any thoughts anyone had about easing into the run were immediately out of the window, and my heart rate was into zone 5 within a minute.

Had I not been expecting this, it might have thrown me off my plan. However, I had factored the start and every other hill into my strategy. Whilst there’s almost no flat along the route, none of the hills are especially long or steep. If you are feeling good, you should be able to sustain a good pace on the uphills, safe in the knowledge that you’ll soon have a downhill to give yourself a bit of respite.

There were more than 500 runners taking part, but one of the benefits of having so many club runners in the field is that most of them were realistic about how close to the front to position themselves at the start, and also most of them were experienced enough to know how to pace their efforts. I therefore quickly found myself surrounded by runners I would be with through to the end of the race, and we settled into a familiar pattern. I would push a slightly faster pace on the uphills, but would take the downhills slightly easier. My hip flexor felt more of an issue on the downhills, and my caution also gave me the opportunity for a little recovery too.

That was until 2km to go. By then, all of the climbing had been done, so I began to gradually wind up my pace. I couldn’t find a proper sprint at the end, but did at least record my fastest kilometre of the day. My official time was 42:14, which all things considered I’m pretty pleased with. My pacing was spot on, and though I’d be disappointed if it wasn’t given how well I knew the route. On a similar route I was less familiar with, I might have struggled to go under 23 minutes, but as it was my average pace was only slightly slower than my two most recent parkruns.

My hip flexor hasn’t been good since the end of the run, which is a bit of a frustrating pattern at the moment. I can only get back to the type of runner I want to be by doing some harder efforts, and yet every time I do, the injury seems to flare up again. I’m going to abandon my plans to run tomorrow and swim instead, in the hope that it feels better after a bit more cross-training and strength and conditioning work.

The better feeling after the run was the enjoyment of the event. I’m thinking about whether this year might be the year to join a local running club. Whilst this event was open to non-club runners, there are a few other events which are only for the local clubs which I suspect would be a lot of fun. Obviously the club runs, access to athletics tracks and ability to car share with club mates to get to events are other benefits. Given I’m cycling more than running at the moment, now is not the time to join, but once I’ve done my next Marathon and the clocks have gone back, that might be the time to make a decision.

All Roads Lead To Rome!

After nine rejections from my previous nine London Marathon ballot entries, it would be fair to say my sense of anticipation was much lower going into this week than in previous years. I generally assume I’ll be unsuccessful, and only discovered that the emails had been sent out when a colleague at work asked me whether I’d been successful. Neither of us had, and they went on to ask for my advice as to whether to wait for London in future years, or to enter the Brighton Marathon next year instead.

That’s a difficult question for me to answer since I haven’t done either, but I completely understand the allure of London for a Marathon debutant. You only really know whether you want to do a second Marathon after completing the first, and if you don’t do a second, you’d ideally want that first one to be a bucket list event. In the UK, the London Marathon is by far the biggest, most famous and most well supported Marathon.

It is the obvious choice for a first Marathon, but it is a sensible choice too. There are so many aid stations and volunteers along the route which removes some of the complexities around carrying enough fuel for the run, the huge crowds all along the route means there is always encouragement whenever you need it, there are loads of pacers to follow and whilst it isn’t entirely flat, none of the uphill sections are particularly steep or long.

My considerations are rather different. After the confirmation of missing out on a ballot place for the 10th time, I picked my Spring Marathon for 2024 without looking at any of the event information. There’s nothing it could say which would be a red flag for me. I’ve done unsupported solo Marathons, so even basic, infrequent aid stations would still be more than I had for the solo Marathons. I know I don’t need to worry about whether there will be crowd support or pacers, because I can manage without both if needed. There are route profiles which I’d think twice about before entering, but those are all off-road. Road Marathons in urban areas are never too dramatic, and definitely within my capabilities.

The first thing I looked at was the date of the event. Ideally I wanted something in March. I find it easier to hit my peak earlier in the Spring rather than later in the Spring, and a March date also gives me the option to either enter or race events later in the Spring which I’ve either not been able to enter in previous years, or my performance has been compromised by the proximity to the Marathon.

After that, it was really just a case of deciding where I wanted to visit. I decided on Italy, mainly because I’ve never been before, which left me looking at either Rome or Milan. I chose Rome in the end, mainly because I thought there would be a few more tourist things to do after the Marathon. I’m a firm believer that there is no better way of doing sightseeing than a Marathon too!

This is all still a long way off though. I’ll be doing at least one more Marathon before then, and there’s ample time to actually do some research about how to spend my time in Rome or potentially slightly further afield. It will be my second overseas Marathon, and a great way to focus the mind through the Winter training.

Charging My Body Battery

I was back at Edgbaston last night for the 1st T20I in the Women’s Ashes series, and sadly there were a lot of parallels to my experience on the 5th day of the Men’s Test match. Once again there was a tight finish, once again it was the Australians who got over the line. And once again, the overall experience inside the ground was still incredibly positive despite the result. I say inside the ground because both trips have ended up with me getting a taxi back from Birmingham International, rather than changing at Coventry to travel onwards to Kenilworth. The first time round there were a couple of cancelled trains which would have meant waiting for an extra hour at the end of an already long day, last night it was a later finish and even had I waited until the next Coventry train, I would have missed the last train back to Kenilworth so still would have had to get a taxi home. On the Edgbaston website they encourage fans to use public transport to get to the ground, which is reinforced by pricing car parking at £25, but whilst there is a match day shuttle bus service between Edgbaston and New Street station, for those with onward journeys that experience will only be a positive one if the rest of the network runs smoothly.

Unsurprisingly the late return home led to a poor night’s sleep. If I’ve been out, regardless of what I’ve done, eaten or drunk, I normally need a couple of hours to unwind at home before I can start my bed routine. Getting back after 11pm and having an open water swimming session at 08:30 this morning, I didn’t feel like I could use a full two hours, so I condensed to about 20 minutes and the end result was a bad night’s sleep. Which is to say I didn’t sleep much at all, and woke up this morning feeling almost as tired as I did when I went to bed.

Which finally brings me onto the actual topic of this blog, the body battery feature of my Garmin watch. My watch provides a wealth of data, though generally the ones which I pay the most attention to are the ones I find easiest to understand, like heart rate data. Body battery as a concept is a relatively simple one to understand, as it is essentially a score displaying your energy levels which you can track over time. The problem is that I don’t have any real understanding of how it is calculated. I’m assuming heart rate data is part of the calculation, and potentially sleep too although I don’t wear my watch when I’m in bed.

Yet it always seems to know when I’ve had a bad night’s sleep or am generally feeling drained for any other reason. The body battery is displayed as a score out of 100, with 100 being fully energised, and on Friday when I woke up my score was 99. I’ve checked my diary and I’d noted that I slept particularly well thanks to the cooler night time temperature. On Saturday I again slept pretty well, and my score was 92. This morning it was 78. It is a similar story during the day too. Whenever I’ve felt like I’ve had a draining day, invariably the score on my watch reflects this by being a lot lower than I’d normally expect.

Whilst it is interesting that a metric I don’t really understand is able to fairly accurately reflect what I’m feeling day to day, the more useful aspect of body battery is when you assess why you feel drained on certain days and how you can use that information for your benefit. It provides another way to assess your nutrition beyond weight and performance metrics. It is easy to think about nutrition purely in terms of the nutritional composition and number of calories in each meal, and whilst what you eat is clearly very important, when you eat shouldn’t be overlooked. I’m getting a better understanding of when I need to eat, particularly the snacks in between my main meals, by tracking my body battery throughout the day.

It has also highlighted to me that exercise can be energising not only in terms of improving your fitness in the long term, but on that day too. When I cycle to work, I have to get up almost an hour earlier than I do across the rest of the week, and whilst I do tend to go to bed a few minutes earlier the night before, I’m definitely spending less time in bed than I do on days when I drive to work. Yet my body battery invariably is just as high by the time I get to lunch on the days I cycle to work, which I put down to the combination of a nice 35 minutes of relatively low intensity exercise followed by porridge. One of my concerns about trying to cycle to work three times per week was that I would be constantly tired, but other than the days when I’ve been a little too enthusiastic with my effort levels on the bike, I’ve generally felt better than I do on the days I drive.