Short run – Page 24 – Foster Runs

October 21, 2009January 10, 2010

Lunchtime intervals

I was reminded last night that I’d not done any speed work for a while… so I took the opportunity at lunchtime to go on the walking machine.

I’ve already given up on the idiosyncrasies of the in-built programming, so I opted for a set of manually adjusted intervals, based around the visual 400m track that appears on screen.

I warmed up at 4mph for 400m, lap 1, then ran at 6mph or 6.5mph for all the even laps, whilst incrementally increasing the speed on the odd laps. For example, lap 3 consisted of 200m of 7mph and 200m of 7.5mph. The penultimate odd lap was run at 9.5mph and 10mph, the final just at 10mph.

I then cooled down on lap 15, slowly going down from 5mph to 3mph.

Overall I managed 3.48 miles in the 30 minute (pre-cool-down) session, which is an average of just under 7mph.

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By the by, it is my understanding that someone, who will remain nameless other than to let on that he lives in Brighton, went out for a quick run yesterday and got so lost that they ended up in Eastbourne of all places. This 5 hour detour took him 26 miles and he was forced to catch a bus home, DUH… not the kind of person you should ever trust with your navigation, methinks! Come to think of it though, this is not actually a bad marathon time bearing in mind he went over all the hills en route.

October 13, 2009

Happy Tuesday!

The last week went as follows:

Last Wednesday I was in Southampton for a networking event in the evening, back at late o’clock. Thursday we went to Brie’s in London for dinner and got back even later. Friday night, Karen & Kit came to dinner with us. Saturday night we were at Tim’s 60th birthday party in Norfolk and stayed with our friends Edward & Dianne. After a long breakfast on Sunday morning, we drove into London for Karen’s 22nd birthday celebrations. Yesterday I had a 4-hour meeting in Durham, resulting in me leaving the house at 6.30am and returning at 8.30pm.

So even I was quite surprised to find myself looking out of the window at the moon & stars just after 6am this morning, by the eerie light of the gas under the coffee pot. More surprised still when an hour later, having caught up with some work, I was running up the road in a pair of shorts!

It was gorgeous out there, with Dawn stretching her gentle haze of sunshine through the early morning mist. But my word, it was cold! I may have been wearing shorts (winter doesn’t officially start for another couple of weeks) but I had two high performance tops on, plus my Gore jacket, a beanie hat and a pair of gloves.

I only wanted to stretch my legs so I did the (current) default run out past Royal Oak, through the West Woods and back down the Magical Path. I know it’s 5.2 miles so I don’t need to get the map out when I get back. And I know that 45 minutes is an okay time, especially bearing in mind I stopped to take a couple of photos.

The morning is now full of glorious sunshine, which makes it difficult to see my computer screen, but I am loathe to drop the blinds just yet. Happy Tuesday everyone!

October 7, 2009

Greyday road run

If I had not already planned to run this morning, I don’t think that the view from the window would have encouraged me to do so. It was a dingy grey day, with rain threatening in every direction.

Actually, when I got out there, it was really quite warm and the threatened rain didn’t materialise… although it is chucking it down outside as I write this now!

I’m still not in the autumn mood of getting my runners as muddy as I can and since I also need to increase my road miles, I stuck to a run around the town. I didn’t really feel as if I was travelling at any great speed, yet it was quite a tough run and when I got back, I could not believe it had only been 42 minutes… just like the run last Sunday with Cliff & Andy, it felt like a heck of a lot longer.

I have further been surprised by the distance, which I have just worked out to be exactly five miles. This gives a gratifying speed of over 7.1mph. I call that progress, at least!

September 30, 2009

Mud at zero wetness

After a couple of weeks of sweet sunshine, I heard that the weather is about to break, so I capitalised on a quiet morning by getting out for a run. I left the house about 6.45am, just after the sun came up and took the old default route out to the Royal Oak, Wivelsfield, through the woods to the industrial estate and back down the Magical Path and across the common.

It was warm enough to justify the shorts I was wearing, whilst the jacket I had worn for good measure was quickly taken off and tied around my waist. As we enter October and the weather starts to change, I will no doubt start to comment on the state of the mud under foot, so it’s fair to say that this morning there was none. Even in the places which are normally damp the ground was bone dry.

It occurs to me that there should be a way of categorising the mud, when it finally makes an appearance. It’s going to be comparative and anecdotal only, but I suspect some scales along the lines of depth, wetness and slipperyness might work… other suggestions are welcome though.

5.2 miles were dispatched in 45 minutes, which is just shy of 7mph… it would have easily been that if I’d not stopped to take a couple of photos!

September 27, 2009September 27, 2009

Good for the sole

We have had family staying across the weekend, so I was grateful that they insisted I tootle off and do my Sunday run… while they sat in the garden!

And my, what a b e a u t i f u l day to do it!

I met Cliff in Falmer and we set out for a short run… me for time constraints; he because he’s still recovering from the crazy Mont Blanc race! We followed the route previously taken from here by heading up alongside the Falmer Road and then across to the copse, before dropping down to Newmarket.

Then then we ran back towards Falmer on the disused road and turned right up, up, up through Balmer Farm and all the (long) way to the top of the rise at Balmer Huff. From here the view was stunning!

After five or maybe even ten minutes trying to stem a nose bleed brought on by altitude, or maybe age, we then headed back down on the other side of the hillock and down Ridge Road into Falmer again, taking in more gorgeous views as we went.

Our route was 6.85 miles and our run one hour and five minutes, but if you take off ten minutes for stoppages, you get more of an accurate sense of how quickly Cliff was going… clearly already well back on form again!

September 13, 2009January 10, 2010

Sleepy sunday

After returning late from a party in London and crawling into bed around 3am this morning and then getting up just after seven, I think it’s amazing that I even thought about going out for a run. But I sleepily climbed straight into my running gear to help me prepare mentally, thinking that despite it being a bit chilly outside, at least the sun was shining cheerfully.

Then the sun went in.

So instead of going out for a run in the cool overcastness of the fresh air outside, I opted to visit my friend’s running machine.

It started gently enough, but realising that Radio 4 could keep me going only so long this morning, I dialled up the speed a little and settled for a shorter time-span.

Short of recounting what I heard on the radio, I’m afraid that there’s not a whole lot to report, although this will no doubt please Cliff. Once you’ve realised that the initial gentle warm-up pace meant that the first mile took over 10 minutes and that the speed indicator now shows 8mph, most of your focus is required for merely staying on the whirring narrow band of black beneath your feet. While the rest contemplates the philosophical meaning of the only scenery there is within sensible eye-shot, pictured below.

So 7.5 miles in one hour, which if I could keep it up would give me a marathon time of three and a half hours. This is great until your consider that my closing heart rate was over 180bpm, which is too high to sustain.

So, more training required…. much more! And now I come to think of it, more sleep too!

August 18, 2009August 18, 2009

A hill or three before breakfast

Daren, Andy and I met at Jack & Jill windmills this morning for a quick run before (a late) breakfast. It was a beautiful morning, as can be seen from the photos.

We ran up to the top of the first hill and left down the tank tracks to the gate at the bottom. We made out to Andy that the gate was locked and ran back up the tank tracks to the top.

Despite being knackered towards the top, the testosterone still kicked in and Andy & I ended up sprinting for the gate! Meanwhile Mister P was much more circumspect and gracefully gave me just enough time to take a photo of him.

Gluttons for punishment, we dropped down Burnhouse Bostal with a view to coming back up that too, but on reaching the bottom changed our mind & ran along Underhill Lane to go up the Beacon path instead.

This time Andy left nothing to chance and gently pulled away from us towards the top, saving all of us some energy!

We then pottered gently back along the top of the Downs to the cars. All in all a thoroughly enjoyable run with a gratifying height gain of over 340 metres!

Our 6.25 mile (just over 10k) run took us one hour 17 minutes (4.87mph), which was clearly slightly slower than the 13.88mph of Kenenisa Bekele from Ethiopia who ran 10k in under 27 minutes in the World Championships in Berlin yesterday.

However, for the race to be a little more equal we would need to tilt his 400m running track to have one end 5m higher than the other and then make the surface a lot less pristine… let’s see him do 60-odd laps of that!

Speaking of which, Cliff & Pete are off to do some crazy race next weekend where they will have a gain in height of about 60 times our run today whilst completing a third of the distance I have run in the last year! I have to sit down just to think about it! Good luck boys!

Ooops… I almost forgot.

August 14, 2009January 10, 2010

No sweat!

I wish that were true, but it’s not!

A local girl friend of mine has a running machine and she has agreed to let me use it whenever I like in exchange for a small charge to cover running costs.

So since I’d not had a midweek run this week I tried it out this lunchtime.

The view above was not as inspiring as my normal runs, but the result was 6.2 miles in one hour and this should be a useful facility in order to help me add an extra run to my current two a week… especially as the winter training push starts to kick in ahead of our April marathon.

Who am I kidding… I’m only trying find ways to get ahead of the Pac-Man in the local men’s fitness league!

Right now though I need to replace the 336 calories I used up, along with about a gallon of sweat… I’d forgotten how warm you get when you’re not outside!

August 5, 2009

Another flat run

I’m trying to remain aloof from Daren ‘I’ve run up a 1000m mountain twice this week’ Packham‘s various acerbic comments. I’m sure that some form of bovine retribution (eg. a misplaced footfall in a recently deposited cowpat) will have to be forthcoming at some point.

I think the Girl Guides (who are in Division 2 of the Men’s Fitness League) are secretly pleased that Daren is putting some effort in again… they are tired of always being on top and are looking forward to him giving them a run for their money. Very tempting spoonerism there!

This morning I embarked on yet another flat run… and short too. I did my increasingly normal midweek mini circuit to Wivelsfield & back, the 5.2 miles taking me 45 minutes… just over 6.9 mph.

The weather was really strange. At 6am it was the most beautiful summer morning but by the time I left the house at just after 7am it was cloudy and dark… like I should be expecting heavy rain. The rain did not materialise but running through the woods I had to remove my Oakleys because I couldn’t see!

July 30, 2009

More falling

After two hot & sticky days in London and an evening of torrential rain, I escaped out earlier into a clear, cool, sunny morning. I did my quick 5.2 mile circuit… not so quickly it turned out, as it took me 50 minutes this morning. 6.24mph.

I was aware that I was running more slowly, so I set about enjoying the scenery which was beautiful. To such an extent that at one point, looking to the side and miles away in thought, I tripped heavily on an exposed root and landed on my palms & elbows!