Ok, a recent weigh in clocks my weight at 76.7kg. I have to say, it does feel like I’ve swallowed a Boeing 767! I’m 1.76m tall, which puts my Body Mass Index at 24.76, which according to the same people who devised the Body Mass Index, that I am bordering on being overweight. I can’t help to notice the recurring number 76.

After the rambling to state simply that I need to lose some weight to avoid buying new trousers, I’ve recently started running more regularly. I started with a goal of running 10 runs in 4 weeks (Nike plus makes it easy to set this with some pretty graphics). I’m at my 6th run with 11 days to go.

I was recently told that the first 20 minutes of a run will only burn 20% of fat and 80% of carbohydrates. The next 20 minutes will have the ratio closer to 50/50. After 40 minutes, 80% of fat will start burning compared to 20% carbohydrates. My runs vary between 3km and 6km, and they never exceed 40 minutes. I guess I’ve only been burning the donuts I had during teatime. No wonder the waistline is still expanding. I think the donuts have to go…

Of course, I didn’t take you through my uninteresting attempts at losing weight to tell you about the donuts I had. I want to highlight a point which keeps popping up about learning. It’s interesting to note that only after 40 minutes that more work is done. It’s only when I’m tired that the real learning begins.

I’ve been trying Chi Running every time I run, adjusting here and there to improve on the technique, and let pain be the teacher. But it’s always after a certain period that pain starts to set in. Then, and only then, the learning begins. I try to adjust the body to do away with the pain so that the Chi Running technique is more refined. It’s only during this period that the learning is at it’s peak, or at it’s bottom, if I give up due to the discomfort.

I believe this is probably true with anything you’re trying to learn. You learn less during the initial period of learning, a period when you’re eased into the learning material. You most likely will find the initial learning easy, or even trivial. But it’s only when you’re at it for a certain period that the real learning kicks in, when the learning material really challenges you.

So give it a try. Whether you’re learning something new, or want to re-learn Geography, realise that you’ll learn less during the initial stages, but don’t give up once the learning curve takes an up-turn. This is when the learning really begins, and this is when you’ll feel best about yourself, after you ride out the pain to take learning up a notch. It’s true what they say, pain can be a real teacher, but do challenge yourself sensitively, and not just fight pain for the sake of fighting it!

Now, where’s my donut…