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RUNNING IN A FASTER TIMEFRAME.
When Maxi Fleet, a marathon runner, meets Jack Cram, a physicist researching flow, their careers blossom and they become partners. Their story is told in a novel Time Is Gold by Martin Knox. Maxi trains using flow, or ‘in the zone’ and her performance improves to the elite level. Her goal is to run faster than any woman has run before.
Jack has an idea that if she trains to run in ‘extreme flow’ she can dilate her time, being able to run further in the same time, according to Einstein’s Special Relativity theory. Her training is planned at meetings of her team of friends, in a think tank, with Jack as her philosophical coach. Her coaching needs develop from accepting her father’s authoritarianism to Jack’s role as her technical adviser. He is too much in love to be able to tell her what to do. The philosophies and scientific theories of her running are carefully described and explained in non-scientific language. Her progress is fresh and inspiring.
Will Maxi achieve her goal and break the World record?
On Amazon. Reviews see martinknox.com

NEUROLOGICAL TIME IS RELATIVE
Time is Gold is a novel by Martin Knox. Maxi Fleet trains and improves her personal best time to compete in the Olympic Games marathon. Her boyfriend Jack Cram develops a neurophysical theory based on Einstein’s Special Relativity theory that she uses to stretch her performance time. This is a story about ambition, creativity, persistence, trust and love.
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
