Weight off my mind

I hadn’t realised just how much time I’d spent making sure everything was ready for the memory championship these last few weeks, but I got an amazing sense of job-done when it was finished, and devoted a lot of time to planning what to do now that I’m not so busy.

The plan is to prepare for the Memoriad, which is only a month away. Practice 30-minute binary in the evenings if I can, and the hour numbers at weekends. If I’m to have any chance of not embarrassing myself horribly, I really need to get into the habit of doing marathon memory disciplines again.

Someone, possibly Jonas, reminded me on Saturday that when I was first starting out practicing memory, I only ever practiced the marathon disciplines. This is true, but it’s something that I’d completely forgotten - it comes to something when other people you’ve never met before remember more about your daily doings than you do yourself. Even so, it’s a sensible thing to do, and I think I’d like to revert to that habit. If you can do an hour numbers, you can do a five-minute numbers too, and quite fast at that. Getting accustomed to long periods of concentration is the key.

I’m talking as if I’m really back to regular, enthusiastic memory practice, but don’t get too excited yet. We’ll see how it goes.