Category: Short run

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Amnesia

Short of time to run on Sunday before we went out to lunch, I took to the machine for a 7mph tempo run.

At that speed the conscious seems able to detect thoughts bubbling up from the subconscious and I managed to find some really inspiring ones before I finished.  These I captured briefly on the white board in my office as: Emotion -> Problems, conscious/subconscious.

Alas, I now seem to have amnesia about what those ideas were… somewhat frustrating as I was clearly excited about them!  My memory is not my strong suite though so there’s no point in beating myself up… hopefully I can rediscover them on a future occasion!

5 miles in just under 43 minutes.

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More workshop material

A damp, grey morning did not inspire me to want to run outside.  I knew that my favourite paths would be ankle-deep in cold and watery mud and running on the road didn’t especially grab me either.  Instead I headed for the machine.

After a half mile warm-up at 6mph I jumped to 7mph and then increased by 0.2 each quarter-mile until I reached 8mph.  I returned to 6mph for a quarter mile and repeated the exercise before returning to 6mph and running the final mile at 7mph.  This may seem a little convoluted, but I saw it as a mild form of interval training.

Though I focused my cognitive resources on the mechanics of running for a change, I also alighted upon an interesting exercise for a workshop later this week.  It’s amazing how similar the approaches for training people to run faster is, to helping people to think more creatively.

5 miles in 42.35, a little over 7mph average.

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Temporary support

Andy P was (and probably is still) running the Extreme Running London to Brighton event today.  Cliff had suggested that we run a section with him to boost his spirits so we went to find him in the largely unexplored territory beyond Forest Row… in fact we only narrowly missed leaving the county of Sussex, that’s how far north we were.

We were hampered in our quest to find Andy by the fact that we didn’t know the route the race was following.  This led to an interesting tour of narrow, only vaguely metalled roads and a short stand off with a 4×4 with a wood trailer attached… eventually the guy reversed the few necessary metres, albeit with surprising difficulty!  Cliff was not about to reverse as the next passing place was about a quarter of a mile away!

We eventually found Andy who was running with Daniel from Jersey, which meant that I could put in a plug for Gemma at Orchard Chiropractors in St Helier!

Bearing in mind they had got lost early on and were six hours in, they looked to be moving pretty well.

We ran with them for a short while, during which time they paused several times to discuss the direction and eventually went the wrong way (yet?) again, but they were clearly not alone in this.  Various other runners caught up and then scattered in different directions… most of them incorrect too in retrospect!

After half an hour we left them turned & headed back to Cliff’s car… an easy 15 minute run when you know where you’re going!

So a very temporary support crew but it’s the thought that counts!  Thank goodness for Paula doing the proper job… otherwise Andy’s crates of spare gear & dry trainers would never have made it!  I’m still thinking of him even now and he’s probably still counting down the miles to Brighton!

Our run was about 3.5 miles in 50 minutes… time well spent though!

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5 mile breakfast

After a couple of weeks off (read whatever poor excuse you like!), I broke my fast this morning with a five mile run, performed in 42.41, an average of 7mph.

However, while Mark chose to get his legs shot-blasted with the first heavy rain of the autumn, I chose to run indoors on the machine… call me what you like, so long as it’s prefaced with ‘sensible’!

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Six fix

A weekday run with Daren is always a great way to fix the cognitive fog which afflicts us all from time to time, although you can clearly see from the photo above that any fog could only have been on the inside!

We run so infrequently that we’ve not yet tired of our simple six mile route: starting from Jack & Jill, dropping down to Pyecombe, running up Wolstonbury, dropping steeply to Clayton, running along the the bottom of the Downs and up the ‘tank-tracks’ that rise directly up the scarp slope and finally dropping back down to Jack & Jill.

It’s not lost on me that this is the third windmill (technically the forth) that I’ve passed in three runs!

We were particularly appreciative of the rough steps that have been installed on a short and often slippery uphill section below Wolstonbury (Daren thought this might have been big bearded Charlie at work) and otherwise just generally laughed our way round, appreciating the weather, the view, our open schedules, life in general and so on!

We even had an unseen audience… Maria (from the top of the Men’s Sussex Fitness League) arrived back in the car-park ten minutes after us and said that she had seen us running up the tank tracks.  She had heard us first, of course… probably on account of our chatting loudly to be heard over our own panting up the hill!

Six miles in a leisurely 1:25, 4.2mph average or so, TOP value!

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A loud out

After more than a month sitting pining by the door following the brilliant Eye to Eye event, my mud-caked runners were finally allowed out to play yesterday.

It was a stunningly beautiful day, made more so by the ensemble which consisted of BIG man Daren, and Dai with Henna the dog.  We met upstairs at Jack & Jill and traced the well-worn path through Pyecombe and Wolstonbury Hill, to Clayton and the Tank Tracks.

The discussion was heavy-going to start with as we unpacked our general frustrations, but this lightened as the 6 miles rolled by.  1.25 of collegial conversation, with the 4.2mph average reflecting the steepness of the hills and the heat of the day!

 

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Tempo hour

My life is fast becoming a series of fascinating cognitive experiments.

In the week leading up to last weekend I spent 53 hours researching an alien (to me) commercial sector, first trying to gain a working understanding of it and later attempting to elicit valuable insights and present them in a coherent narrative.  

My approach to the fascinating project was based on one of my creativity hypotheses and whilst some time needs to elapse for the client to be able to measure the real value of the exercise, one thing was abundantly clear: it left me mentally exhausted!  Such that I wasn’t even able to contemplate a run last Sunday.

A contributory factor might have been a generously hearty dinner at Cliff & Nessie’s… where the combined testosterone from that many serious ultra-runners in one room was probably exhausting in itself!

This week has been fascinating for different reasons.  Tuesday I was a participant in a Phd neuroscience experiment into pain at Kings College.  This involved surprisingly little pain allied to the interesting experience of being scanned in an MRI machine, twice.

As I have aged so the subject of pain has become more interesting.  When I was young I remember my father periodically yelping in agony at various twinges brought on by the gardening which he used as a means to relax.  Now I understand those twinges first hand and the only evolutionary modification is that I try hard not to yelp!

Later in the week I had the privilege of helping Brighton Business School to review their new MBA syllabus.  It seems to be an increasingly common theme for me to help people look at challenges from a different perspective, even when, as in this case, the people concerned are consummate specialists and way more learned than I.

So after another thought-provoking week and with a fresh back-ache to ignore (brought on by gardening yesterday) I decided that I really must get a run in.

My aim today was simply to run for an hour, so I set the speed to 6mph, covered the distance indicator with a towel (and later the clock too) and just got on with it.  6mph is a great speed for thinking, hence the myriad thoughts above, whilst it is also not too draining on such a gloriously warm summers day.

6.07 miles in one hour, 6mph average.

And now on to my next experiment.  My sense is that I either need to strengthen my back by doing more gardening, or avoid aggravating it by doing less… no guesses which one I’ve chosen!

PS congratulations to my niece Kate and her beau Alex, who got married yesterday!

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Thinking

It was a muggy morning after a night FULL of rain (the front lawn was a swimming pool when I went to bed), but it was too lovely to be inside so I opted for a seat in the tea house.  I was particularly glad that I had ignored Mark’s offer of an 8.30am pick-up to go run the Chichester marathon!

I had been sitting and reading for some time, enjoying the smell of the honeysuckle and chuckling at the sound of a bird who seemed intent on waking the neighbourhood, when I had a minor epiphany.  Joseph Jaworski might even class it as a ‘predictable miracle’.

Epiphanies are not actually an uncommon occurrence hereabouts and this one involved a connection between the fields of neurogenesis and change management: it turns out that one of the reasons that scientists have thought until recently that the human brain is unable to produce new neurons is because the primates used in experiments were stressed…. I’ve lost you, I can tell!

Suffice to say that this is a very useful connection to have made and it gave me plenty to think about… so I decided to go for a gentle run.  Gentle is important here, since it gets more difficult to think the more quickly you run.

My aim was 5 miles at an average of 7mph, but after a first half mile warming up at 6mph, I realised that I would need to ramp up the speed to make my intended average.

7.5mph is just too fast to think clearly, but it was necessary so I paused my brain until I reached the half way mark to ensure I was ahead of the game.  Then I dropped back to 7mph for the rest of the way completing the distance in 42.5 minutes.  Average 7.06mph.

I guess that I should also have drawn a connection between muggy morning and running at more than 7mph… I was still dripping with sweat half an hour later, even after a cold shower!

I wonder if Mark managed to stay dry in Chichester?

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Putting my back into it

Those people who have dropped in on us unannounced will testify that we live in a relatively ordered, clutter-free way… down to the showers that get wiped down after each use and our somewhat Zen-like garden.  And yet, with six important visitors expected last Sunday, we still managed to spend most of the Saturday tidying the garden and the Sunday tidying the house.  All of which is a slightly elongated excuse for not running last week.

You will note that my excuse has nothing to do with the Eye-to-Eye odyssey.  I actually had surprisingly few side-effects for my 47-odd miles, although it’s fair to say that mid-way through the following week I suddenly developed a severe case of narcolepsy.

However, mid way through last week (eleven days after the odyssey) I suddenly developed severe back-ache.  This was most likely due to gardening, although by coincidence it occurred around the same time after the Eye-to-Eye as it (or something similar) occured after doing the Tour du Mont Blanc last year, so it might well be a case of over-heavy back-pack syndrome.

Which is my excuse for not joining Mark on the Downs at 8.30am (on a Sunday!!) this morning.

Although I had wimped out of a long run I was still mindful that a short run might indeed loosen my back, so I climbed on the machine this morning safe in the knowledge that I could get off at any point.

I started at 6mph and felt pretty-much-every-other–step jar my back for the whole of the first mile.  Increasing to 6.5mph for the second mile helped a little, as did increasing to 7mph for the third mile.  Some of this was probably due to my back loosening off, but it’s also much easier to skim along at a faster speed… if only I could hold it for extended periods of time!

7.5mph for the fourth mile was as fast as I wanted to go today so for the fifth and final mile I reduced back to 7mph, desperately trying (and failing) to do mental arithmetic to figure out the average minutes-per-mile covered.  As I’ve mentioned before, as the level of exercise increases, so the bandwidth available for processing data in your head decreases.

I completed 5 miles in 44.17, an average of 6.77mph.

I then spent some considerable time stretching-out while my muscles were warm (read HOT!)… in fact the front of my body looked as if it had been glazed, although you only get a sense of how lobster-like it was from the photo below.

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Hot banana

It was HOT today!  Even with a breeze blowing through the house the temperature was still in excess of 80 degrees.  Outside it was way hotter still, so it was going to be a hot run whatever.

I opted to run inside and decided that there should be no mind-tricks today: I would be happy with five miles.  Sticking with the intervals of late I started with 6, 6, 7, 8, 6 to warm up (huh?) before repeating 7, 8, 9, 6 four times.  This was definitely exertion, but not by comparison with some of the recent sessions in view of the heat.

A hastily eaten banana ahead of the start of the session thankfully caused me no discomfort and having completed 5.25 miles in 44 minutes  (7.16mph average) I went for a very long, cold shower!