Blog Archives
PERFORMING FASTER IN TIME
In my novel Time Is Gold, Maxi is an elite marathon runner who controls her performance time to improve. She learns to use the technique ‘flow’ helped by her partner Jack, a physics PhD, who researches time dilation in ‘extreme flow’, according to Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity. Her intense training raises her neural transmission speed near to the speed limit, causing her time to dilate, by analogy with travel in space.
Her willpower and physical ability are strengthened by practice and she gets more running done in longer seconds. Maxi’s training is epistemological, based on self-coaching. Her preparation for races is advised by her entourage of experts in psychology, neuroscience, philosophy and Zen. Maxi’s winning performances on the international marathon competition circuit cause jealousy and she is falsely accused of taking performance enhancing substances.
Many performers in time stop improving when they reach glass ceilings set by others’ time agendas. If their performance time is referred instead to times they have experienced in practice, they can feel their way to improvement.
The book is on Amazon and chronicles Maxi’s running career and results in competition.
See reviews at martinknox.com
TIME IS GOLD
In Winter runners analyse their personal bests and reset their goals for the next season. In the novel Time is Gold author Martin Knox shows how a runner’s performance time depends on the neuroscience of her mental engagement, by analogy with Einstein’s Special Relativity, a tested theory. This new theory explains some extraordinary performances in athletics and behaviours of wild animals which have evolved in their own time, without constraint by clocks. Everyone can learn that their time is their own from this story about Maxi exploring theories of endurance, in love with physicist Jack and competing for Olympic Gold.
Available from Amazon. Reviews martinknox.com
RUNNING OUT OF TIME
Maxi Fleet is a marathon champion able to stretch her time, called time dilation, following Einstein’s Special Relativity theory, applied to neuroscience. In the novel ‘Time is Gold’, author Martin Knox explains the science of ‘flow’, the psychological condition optimal achievement, or ‘in the zone’. The story follows her career as she trains for an attempt on the world record in a future Olympics. Her story will keep you on the edge of your seat.
Available on Amazon. Reviews: martinknox.com
THE ART OF BODY MAINTENANCE AND PERFORMANCE
I compare my novel Time is Gold (2019) with a book I love, Robert Persig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), reputed to be the most popular philosophy book ever written, selling over 5 million copies.
Time is Gold is fiction with a similar philosophical underpinning.
The genre of Persig’s novel is a roman-a’-clef, in which real people or events appear with invented names, in much more than a travel story. Time is Gold is a coming-of-age epic adventure thriller.
Both books are steeped in Zen philosophy applied to adventuring.
Robert Persig cared for his motorbike, often taking it to pieces and reassembling it, the way people care for their horses. In his book The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance he demonstrates his Zen philosophy of ‘quality’ living, with care as a compromise between mechanical classicism and romantic spirituality. His son, Chris, goes with him as pillion passenger on a long journey and learns his philosophy of ‘quality’.
In Time is Gold, Maxi is a schoolgirl with running talent whose training is taken over by a team of expert coaches from whom she learns ‘extreme flow’, a philosophy of optimal performance time. Jack Cram is a university research student who helps his girlfriend Maxi to combine, physiology, physics, psychology and neuroscience and Zen in her training. Her story is punctuated with marathon race reports in high level competition.
Maxi tunes up her body for marathon running like a complex technology, in the Zen way, with her attention on goals and processes but not outcomes. Maxi balances physical and mental demands as she approaches Zen mastery.
The protagonists’ journeys are seldom downhill. Phaedrus, Persig’s autobiographer, contends with the aftermath of an earlier nervous breakdown. Jack’s career in industry gets off to a rocky start. These experiences open them to radical experimentation to achieve their personal needs. They have successes, becoming euphoric, with some poetic descriptions.
Maxi’s racing is punctuated by coaching dialogues, whereas Persig’s protagonist Phaedrus reflects between adventures.
Readers interested in endurance and resilience in any field of performance or problem solving will be enlightened by Time is Gold. Why do athletes inspire us so much?
Available from Amazon. Reviews at https://martinknox.com
