FosterRuns – Page 12

September 28, 2015October 4, 2015

Seaside sun

It was a beautiful day, so I drove down to my folks place, ran the lawnmower around the garden and then ran down to the sea.

But first I met lovely new neighbours who, out of a world of choice (they moved from Shanghai) had chosen this place to bring up their child. I reflected on this as I ran.

I knew before I had even reached the ridge path that I was low on energy compared to normal… it was tough going even three minutes into the run! But the views were glorious.

I ran down to the bottom of the Ovingdean valley and then along the Undercliff Walk to Rottingdean. Exhausted, with only the downhill and level bit completed, I then had to fight hard to make my way back up the hills without stopping.

As I ran back up the ridge path an unusual thought occurred to me, prompted by my conversation with the new neighbours. I’ve seen lots of beautiful villages, towns and cities in this country and around the world, but as places to come from (I was actually born in my parents house), this really is a rather lovely one.

According to Strava my 5.9 mile run took me 1 hour, the slowest time to date… though bizarrely the fastest time is only 2.5 minutes less.

Of course, when I got back home later, the first thing I did was not to sit & recover, but rather to get the lawnmower out and cut the grass and the green… doing my bit to keep the area lovely for those people who come from (or simply live) here.

September 20, 2015September 20, 2015

Indian Summer

Working outside this morning at the bistro table, in bright warm sunlight (t-shirt temperature), was a real treat for late September. It was a glorious Indian-summer day!

I have spent the last four days in scruffy clothes, helping Kim refurbish her rental flat. I consider this work (cleaning & painting particularly) to be really good for the soul, not to mention good from a thinking perspective. Its mundane, repetitive nature requires clear singular focus, leaving space in the background to process more important stuff, in this case preparing for a series of new (and typically unusual) L&D sessions that I’m running for clients over the next few weeks.

Neuroscientist David Eagleman describes the conscious in terms of a stowaway on a trans-Atlantic liner, claiming the credit for the journey and ignoring the vast machinations below that are actually doing the hard work. The subconscious will have spent days, weeks or even months making connections between input material and everything else we already know and the result bubbles to the surface like methane from an old rubbish tip. If the conscious has plenty of bandwidth available, then it is able to sense this virtual methane, claiming it as brilliant flashes of inspiration.

I chose my short local route to minimise the time out, opting for the sunny paths to make the most of the weather. The greens were lush and the wooded sections delightfully dappled and all the while my conscious mind was whirring away, catching the ideas that bubbled up from my subconscious.

I was even surprised at one point by a memory from the seventies. Ferns must create their own microclimate which is more humid and has a really distinctive smell. Passing through a bank of ferns in the sun I experienced both the humidity and the smell and recalled the times that I had come across them in Walstead woods when I was a young Scout… happy days!

I was so enjoying the stuff going on in my head that I extended the run by running across the Common on my way back home, despite the fact that my body had probably already had enough!

So, according to Strava, 7 miles in 67 minutes, an average of 6.26mph.

The sky is still clear but the afternoon is already not so warm… with the Autumn equinox approaching fast, we’re unlikely to see many more Indian summer days this year. At least I’ve really enjoyed this one!

September 13, 2015September 27, 2015

Grey, green and pebble dash

It was a flat grey morning and I decided it would be a good day to drop in on my folks and run from there. Sunny days are lovely on the coast, but there’s something about a grey sky and flat water that really appeals to me.

I ran down the ridge path from Woodingdean to Ovingdean and then down to the valley floor and out to the seafront. At the top of the steps to the Undercliff Walk there’s a real vantage point, so I paused momentarily to take in the view.

Then I went down the stairs and along to Rottingdean, pausing to take photos each time something caught my eye.

From Rottingdean I headed back to Ovingdean past the windmill.

And then, having got all the really steep climbs out of the way (and got a hearty ‘Well Done!’ from a lady who lives on the steepest section), I took the ridge path back to Woodingdean.

Despite the grey, it was a really lovely run and warm enough to be comfortable in t-shirt & shorts. According to Strava, I completed 5.9 miles in 58 minutes, an average of 6.1 mph. I’ve run this same route four times now with Strava since January and there is surprisingly little difference in the times… 30 seconds faster, 3 seconds faster and 69 seconds slower.

September 10, 2015

Life is good!

Big man Daren and I had agreed to meet at Jack & Jill windmills this morning for a run and it’s fair to say that the weather was very kind to us indeed! It was a glorious day, with a slight mist making the place look nicely atmospheric and (since I’d forgotten my sunnies) usefully taking the edge off the bright sun.

Our runs together are infrequent enough that we tend to run the same route each time… but it’s a good one! From Jack & Jill it drops down into Pyecombe ahead of a long slog up to the top of Wolstonbury, with it’s amazing views.

Then there’s a big downhill to Clayton that has a steep vertical kink (a bank that is almost too steep to run up) in the middle… today this left me gasping for air! Towards the bottom end of this path is a section that is notoriously muddy, even in summer, but not today… workmen had laid a new section of path which we ran down, despite it not yet being officially open.

The mist provided us with a nice view of the Windmills on the hill from Clayton Rec.

The route then takes us along Underhill Lane to the bottom of a section we call the Tank Tracks… the path goes directly up the scarp slope to the top of Home Hill. We have a rule that pausing is not permitted, so we have to run the whole way and I really suffered on this today! We’re never speedy, but I note that on Strava this section took us 11.25, putting us way down the leaderboard compared to the ‘course record’ of 6.16!

At the top we did pause!

Then there’s a gentle run back down to the Windmills. Our run was 6.4 miles and according to Strava, our running time was 71 minutes, giving an average of 5.4 mph… not bad considering the 1082 feet height gain and the fact that we were deep in conversation the whole way round, even on the steepest sections..

For all the challenges that we each face, I think it’s fair to say that (especially on a day like today) life is good!

September 6, 2015September 7, 2015

Racing bicycles

Before my good friends at the Framed Bicycle Company in Snowdonia get excited… no, I haven’t bought a bike! You would have seen it already… before I had picked it up from you!

Rather, I have been racing cyclists, rather successfully as it turns out!

Kim and I have had the pleasure of Karen’s company this weekend and I capitalised on this by getting her to take some new photos of me for my various on-line personas… chief amongst which is the relaunched Rally Strategic site. What was funny was that she really liked the photo that I have used as a placeholder on there… not realising that it was one that she had taken five years ago with a little extra background added in by my good friend and website designer Simon! The updated photo won’t appear there straight away, but I welcome any comments on the site itself.

The recent wet weather has finally returned the brown summer stubble to green grass, such that I spent yesterday cutting & edging the green and the verge in the Close, sweeping the roadside etc… the grass was long despite me cutting it only last weekend! A quick glance today at the other local green spaces, which are looked after by the either Burgess Hill or West Sussex County Council (which involves neither of them cutting, let alone edging them!) reminded me why my neighbours are so happy that I make the effort.

It was a beautiful morning, but with a chilly edge, so I didn’t hurry to get out for a run. When I did finally get out, I wasn’t really sure where to go or how far and this was exacerbated when I went to take my first picture of the day… the iPhone was FULL, despite deleting more than half the photos from it a couple of days ago. Since part of the reason for running & blogging is to keep my folks looking at places they’ve not been lately, this put a considerable dampener on proceedings. As a result I meandered and eventually stopped at a stile to sort the phone out. The temporary fix was a brutal cull of apps, though later I realised that when you delete photos from the iPhone, it assumes that you don’t mean it and keeps it around for another 25 or so days just in case.

The stile was out by Ridgeview and thus it was natural to head in the general direction of Ditchling, even if I didn’t have the energy for a Beacon run. As I crossed the Ditchling Road I had to wait for a load of cyclists to pass… it was strange to see so many outside of the middle of June.

I was expecting it to be really muddy going this way, but it was just soft… the parched ground had clearly mopped up all the water that the weather had thrown at it. All the meadows were lush and the various livestock (mainly sheep & chickens) looked well-fed. As I reached Ditchling I took a path that led me out onto the High Street and found a lot more cyclists. I asked a couple of cyclists what was going on… it was a second London to Brighton bike ride, focused on raising money for charity.

I followed the cyclists up towards the bottom of the Beacon and decided that, in view of the comparatively low numbers, it would be safe to run up the road for a change. This is a rare treat and I think I’ve only done it once before… it’s normally too dangerous and even during the normal London to Brighton there are too many cyclists on the road.

I started to climb and quickly realised that most people were walking rather than cycling… I should have counted how many I passed, but it was easier to count the number of cyclists who passed me. One. A second one (number 705, I think) caught up with me near the top and we chatted as we finished off the ascent.

I then ran the short distance to to top of the Beacon.

On a whim I chose to descend the really steep way (Cliff’s route) which basically drops down a steep spur and then goes straight down the rest of the scarp slope. I then followed the road back through Ditchling, smiling at all the cyclists as they chatted about stopping at the top of the Beacon.

Towards the end of the village I turned left and ran up to the ridge and then along to Oldlands Mill, where they clearly had an open day… the smell of food cooking was amazing and made me want to stop, but I had no money with me so I would need to have done a runner afterwards!

My legs were starting to complain towards the end of the run… quite fair really, given that I didn’t plan to have a long run, nor to race so many cyclists! According to Strava I completed 10.5 miles in 108 minutes, an average of 5.83 mph… not quite as quick as last week, but not bad Foster.

Since then I’ve had a cold shower & a hearty breakfast, said goodbye to Karen and washed Kim’s car… I can still smell the food from Oldlands Mill so it MUST be time for dinner soon!

August 31, 2015

A cold shower to end the year

Kim & I drove into London yesterday for a family gathering and I used this as a good excuse not to run. Having managed to run for four weekends consecutively (after an extended period of more irregular runs), the pressure was on and I got up this morning knowing that I had to get out there.

With my 15th birthday tomorrow (I realise that I’m showing either my age or dyslexia), I was also keen to go further afield than my normal circuit and I had wondered about running from Jack & Jill.

Tough luck then that the torrential rain that had been forecast on BBC Weather for yesterday, was now scheduled for lunchtime today… just when I was going to be in the middle of my run!

Undaunted, I donned shorts and my rain jacket and jumped in the car. When I got to Jack & Jill, I was slightly less keen to jump out of the car on account of the low cloud and drizzle but, thanks to my training with Big Man Daren, this was only a temporary cognitive hurdle to negotiate. I was soon running up the hill into the mirk.

There was not a whole lot of landscape to see, but this made me focus more on what I could see… ponds & puddles in the main.

My arrival at Ditchling Beacon coincided with some walkers who were originally from Lancashire who very kindly took a photo of me standing on the trig point.

I was not at all sure that I wanted to go very much further before turning around, yet at the same time I didn’t want to have to ‘fess up to you that age, fitness or the weather had truncated a decent run before the end of the year… thus I continued on, and on, until I reached Blackcap, where there’s another trig point (but alas no-one around to photograph me).

Strava conveniently showed that I had completed 4.7 miles, so I ran on down the hill a little way and turned round at a bush which was growing at the 5.1 mile mark.

The return journey was a mirror image of the outbound in all but speed, which was a little slower. I’d blame the terrain or the elevation, but the turn-bush seems to be at almost the same altitude as Jack & Jill, so it can only really come down to my level of fitness!

According to Strava I covered 10.3 miles in 100 minutes, which gives a not unreasonable average of 6.18 miles per hour.

I kept expecting the forecasted torrential rain, but, if anything, the mirk was starting to clear by the time I got back to the car… it was very disappointing, but I had a nice cold shower when I got home instead.

August 23, 2015

Wet run in the woods

I was not on great form this morning. I’m still suffering from dull hearing and I absent-mindedly wondered if this was making me feel old, in the same way that psychologists can invoke people to walk more slowly by getting them to talk about the physical effects of ageing. Either way I would have happily not run… especially as it was humid and the forecast was for rain.

I eyed the darkening sky as I supped my espresso and completed a work task and then, despite all of the above, got out for a run.

I’d not even got to the end of the road before it started to drizzle, but it was sufficiently humid that this was actually quite nice Even so, I opted for a tree-covered route… and a short one to boot.

I took my old route out to Wivelsfield, stayed out of the deepening rain by sticking to paths going through West Wood and then came back along the Magical Path. The sound of rain on leaves was really lovely and the flat light made it easier to see through the trees.

According to Strava I ran 5.8 miles in 57 minutes, an average of 6.1 mph… slow, but not as slow as it felt! Though after my 58 second sprint last week, I covered the short end section in more sedate 96 seconds.

One of the benefits of feeling older is being able to confidently get mixed up about stuff. For example, I’ve just realised that it’s less than 10 days to my 15th birthday, which is awesome… I can feel the spring in my step returning already!

August 16, 2015

FosterRuns is Eight!

Earlier today, whilst out running, I realised that today is the 8th anniversary of FosterRuns dot com.

I don’t think that I’ve done the running stats for a few years now (my spreadsheet says 2012) but I think outings, miles and speeds have all been in slow decline, though I’m enjoying the running in a different way now.

Google analytics shows that user numbers for FosterRuns re up from 717 in the year to Aug 16th 2013, to 1006 in the year to Aug 16th 2014, to 1506 in the last year… a 50% increase for two years running.

To be fair though, I think the site used to get more traffic early on when I ran more, but at least it’s going back in the right direction.

Either way, it still serves to make me run when I’m not really in the mood, as well as to exercise my writing on a regular basis.

Thank you very much for being a reader!

August 16, 2015

Dull hearing

At the end of last week I managed to temporarily misplace the hearing in one ear… I’m hoping that the doctor is going to help me find it again, but unfortunately that’s not going to be for another ten days! Meanwhile my hearing is somewhat dull and as I sat relaxing with a quadspresso in the teahouse, half-listening to the waterfall, it was almost a good enough excuse for me not to run this morning.

However, it was a beautiful morning and I didn’t want to lose the momentum from the last few weeks so I just got out there regardless.

It was hard work to start with and I had already decided to do the shortest of my loops when I passed a ‘mad woman on a bike’ (her description, not mine!) going the other way. My memory is nowhere near as good as my dull hearing (and it was frankly unlikely that I would have recognised anyone dressed in mountain-bike protective garb and dark glasses), but she somehow recognised me from an event we attended a good few years ago so we stopped to chat. I love those random conversations that you have whilst running and by the time that she pedalled off to continue her training session I felt totally reinvigorated.

I continued on the same loop I’ve been doing recently, deep in thought, as much as anything about a team-building session that I need to design for a Finance team. Every step of the running was a real pleasure! Well, almost… there’s a stile and a short section of path that are being reclaimed by the undergrowth, so I had to duck and dive and still managed to get stung by the nettles!

Last week the distance was 6.9 miles, which is still a short run according to the criteria I’m used to, so I was keen to run at least one tenth of a mile more today. I decided to loop the other way around Ditchling Common, using a path that I used to use as a speed circuit. It’s a while since I’ve run that way, but I’m sure that there’s a tree where there wasn’t one before.

As I got back towards home I decided to have another go at the sprint… it must be about 300m along a road that many runners use and so there’s a league table on Strava. Whereas last week I simply hurried along there, today I lifted my skirts and sprinted, pretty much all out… such that I ran out of steam towards the end. My personal best had been 1.04, but today I managed 58 seconds. Hooo-RAH! This is the third fastest time… though the ‘course’ record is a sobering 48 seconds.

So 7.1 miles completed in 67 minutes, an average of 6.35 mph. You can see the stats on Strava.

One final thing: they say that when one sense is dull, others are enhanced… like seeing vivid colours in the dark?

August 9, 2015

Deep in thought

I was determined to keep up the recent positive momentum and get out for a run this morning, so it was fortunate that we woke up early and to a beautiful morning. We were due to be at a celebratory lunch with friends for midday, but I still had time to sup a quadspresso, read a little more of Clayton Christensen’s fascinating book Innovative University and get in a leisurely run.

Thanks to Christensen, whose thinking I have always found particularly engaging, I spent most of the run deep in thought about new ways that I might be able to inspire my Brighton students in the autumn.

I was curious to know the extent to which my fast midweek run with the Bok would impact on my pace this weekend, so I deliberately took the same route as last Sunday… though it’s fair to mention that I had the benefit of some Jelly Babies that my Mum had given me.

I’ve been harping on about our narrow management (or cognitive) bandwidth for years… something that is really noticeable on the running machine where it’s difficult to think about anything much as the speed increases above 7 mph. Today the run passed in a blur and there were one or two occasions where I realised that I had done something completely without thinking about it… fortunately with no adverse consequences.

As I neared home I had a sudden realisation that, if I hurried down the final road, I might beat the time that the Bok set this week (only because I forgot to tell him until we’d almost reached the end of it). I did and I did… in fact I was only a second off my PB for this short section, despite the fact that I was only ‘hurrying’.

I’m not sure why, but having taken exactly the same route as last weekend, Strava calculated the distance at 6.9 rather than 7 miles… hey ho! So 6.9 miles in 67 minutes, an average of 6.18 mph (against only 5.75 mph last week)… I clearly need to run more than bi-weekly!

I casually wandered in and started to think about a leisurely breakfast before realising that I had about 30 minutes to get ready to go out. I rushed around and we then spent an extremely enjoyable afternoon celebrating an Emerald wedding anniversary and 80th birthday with 40 or so other lovely folk. The quantity of food I consumed more than made up for my skimpy breakfast!