Category: Short run

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Slippy

Neither Nick nor I were in a mood to run this morning and we very nearly skipped it and went straight into breakfast but for two reasons:  Firstly, we had our running kit on and second, I had already skipped one run this week, with Daren on Tuesday, in favour of breakfast.  It seemed churlish not to go.

It was hard going though as we tramped off up the road, with both breathing and legs heavy.  We decided to keep the run short so approximately reversed a normal-ish route and cut some corners off. 

Spring was showing with the ground firmer under the surface but the impact of the recent April showers was apparent in a very slippery top layer of mud.  Quite frankly, we were all over the place and only the constant core stability workout from running off-road and a little luck saved us from any number of muddy falls.

Although I did run headlong into a small tree at one point as there was insufficient traction to turn around it!  For some reason Nick kept getting caught on the brambles along the side of the path, but that serves him right for being a wuss about keeping his trainers clean!

It was certainly a pretty little run that ended with Nick demonstrating, as per usual, just how much faster he is back along the home straight.

We covered a distance of 5.2 miles in 52 minutes (well, Nick in 51 minutes!) which is 6mph on the nose.  Not bad bearing in mind how many of our footfalls were taken off sideways by the conditions.

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Short d-run-ken

Nick and I went to an (er…) interesting networking event in Spitalfields on Friday night for entrepreneurs in the social digital space.  If that term makes no sense to you, don’t worry, as most of the people there were making it up as they went along.  We went for two reasons.  Firstly, to chat to other like minded people about our idea and second, to enjoy a publicised free beer.

It got off to a poor start, as when we arrived half an hour after the event commenced, the music was too loud to talk to people inside, the free beer was gone and the Sol was £3 a bottle.  Whoever was coining it in did not appear to be among the bulk of the people that we talked to, or who spoke from the rostrum in a series of short presentations (against an increasing groundswell of bar-room chatter).  Whilst the general ideas presented were interesting, there tended to be a lack of thought given to the business model… as in, er, how does this make money?

Leaving after the presentations and a few bottles of (captive?) beer, we strolled past the cafe culture of Spitalfields until we realised what the time was.  Twelve minutes to train o’clock.  I remember some time ago Nick mentioning to me about running after a few beers before and I also remember reminding myself not to try it myself, but here we were, of a sudden, running down Bishopsgate like a couple of bag-snatchers.

What was quite surprising was that the beer made little difference to our progress and we ran effortlessly down Gracechurch Street, avoiding the myriad pedestrians, over London Bridge, in to the station and right up on to the platform.  We even beat the arrival of the train by a minute or so.  Probably not our fastest run, not our longest at just over a mile, but definitely the funniest!

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More mud!

A short run this morning for two tired blokes …which reminds me that I forgot to mention that I had the £80k Vogue on two wheels at a couple of points yesterday.  Anyway, it was a sunny morning and both my jacket and longs were pretty much superfluous.  Which means that my shorts (and by extension, legs) may make an April showing if the weather is okay on Sunday.

We almost opted for a pavement run, but went the muddy way after all.  Out around the common, with it’s marshland areas, up through the woods with its sticky mud, across the wet-land part of the common and back down Folders Lane. 

It was 4.5 miles in 40 minutes: an average 6.8mph, but with a top speed of over 13mph according to Nick’s now functioning utility watch.  Interestingly, these speeds are not dissimilar to yesterday!

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Yes?

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Do I look crazy?

Yes, I guess I do, and as you know, I am!

I have to confess that the motivation to run came from Kim this morning.  I was contentedly supping on my quad-spresso this morning, tucked up in my reading chair with a truly excellent book (The Lost Village, by Richard Askwith – more of which later, I’m sure) when she announced that she was going for a run.  Despite the fact that she drove to the gym to do this, I still felt I couldn’t just sit there and relax.  Although it was a close run thing!

The only additional bits of kit that I took with me this morning were a neckie to keep my nose warm and Kim’s warm gloves, both of which were needed.  The other things that were very welcome were my Gore jacket (with only two layers underneath) which was toasty and my Thurlo woolen socks, without which my feet would have fallen off several times over the last few months.  The really great thing about the Thurlo’s is that even when you splash through a muddy puddle and your feet get an ice cold blast, they warm straight back up again.  Totally priceless!

So, the going was a little slippery on the pavement as I set out, but once I got out into the country the going was… a little more slippery still!  Not from the snow, you understand, but from the mud.  Oh glorious mud!  It rained a lot yesterday before it snowed today, so there was lots of it, with a covering of snow to disguise it for the unwary.  It even caught me out once or twice, giving me a good excuse to laugh out loud as the icy cold enveloped my feet!

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My route this morning took me across the common, past the Royal Oak, up through Hundred Acre Woods, right across to the water tower, the railway and the then home.  Unusually, I met three other runners out enjoying the conditions… well two of them were anyway.  One lady was wearing her brand new trainers and was clinging to the foliage along the edge of the path in a vain attempt to keep them dry.  To be fair, she and her husband had run six miles and the trainers were no longer particularly clean, but there was a stark difference between her progress and mine, as I sploshed down the middle of the path!

Back across the common, the snow was in abundance, as can be seen in this short video video000a.mp4 (and note that it’s quite difficult to press the off button wearing gloves on cold hands) while beyond the water tower some snowmen and their dogs were out playing with the locals, which you don’t quite get to see ahead of me in this short video video001a.mp4.

It was a joy to be out in the weather and my run lasted one hour and five minutes. covering 6.4 miles… a speed of around 5.9mph or 10.15minute miles.  Ironically, about the same time and distance that Kim covered in the gym and strangely, she felt colder than I did by the time she got back!

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Barbie returns

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I suspect that you already know that the longer you don’t run, the less you feel like running: while I last ran only a few days ago, it was this feeling I had when I woke up today.  Leaving nothing to chance, I donned my running gear from the getgo, ate a banana and downed my usual quadruple espresso… and closed the door behind me on the way out. 

Now I either had to run, or alternatively look silly standing around on my street while my neighbours go to work.  As a portfolio worker (as in someone who has the good fortune to have a number of work interests) they already think I’m weird, so I figured I’d better get running.

The aim this morning was to take the photograph above for an earlier post, so I quickly worked out a convoluted way to pass there and was delighted to find that there she was, still walking around harmlessly and without a care in her head.  Wherever it was.

The downside of going this way was that I once again ended up falling off the edge of my map and my word, it’s muddy over there!  What can I say other than ‘don’t stray orf the map!’  When I finally get around to buying the next one up (which may end up being the two maps, as I think the bit I need falls right on a vertical join) I won’t be at all surprised if it’s all mud (and planks, see the pic below), as far as the legs can run.

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So what else can I say?  From an unenthusiastic start, the different route with its more than liberal helping of mud helped to re-engage me and by the time I returned, I was running well.  It was warm enough that I had to take a layer off (the middle one) and tie it around my waist.  I also had to take my gloves off, which since there’s only one place to put them, may explain why I got a few more smiles along the way than normal.  Barbie certainly seemed pleased to see me, although she bent over backwards to hide her blushes.

In all, I was out for one hour 18 minutes and covered 5.5 miles according to my map.  Though exactly how much further I covered off-map I’m not exactly sure.  It could be a good time to buy shares in Ordinance Survey!

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More rain… and bad wind

After almost perfect driving conditions out on the roads yesterday, this morning dawned very wet.  We ran from Nick’s place and it was fun to go somewhere completely new for a change… even if I have absolutely no idea of where we went or how we got back.  At times I had the feeling that Nick didn’t know where we were either, but I’m sure this was just feigned.

The run was a mix of delicious, lightweight and very wet mud in a parky sort of area; a nasty road with no path and lots of fast-moving traffic; a forest firebreak with big trunks across and deep slippery clay-mud, another road like the previous one; and a pavement through a build-up area, where the puddles seemed to be jumping out at me as I ran past.  This latter may have been something to do with Nick’s foot… I don’t know.

At one point he managed to thwack me with a medium sized tree: I thought it was a little unsporting bearing in mind we were clinging to the side of the dangerous road to avoid being collected by a car roaring past at the time.

I was also surprised by the drains in the locale.  It’s a fairly upmarket area, but even in the forest I kept getting whiff of them from time to time.  Later I realised it wasn’t the drains…

 So, our run was a very wet 6.6 miles in a breathy 58 minutes.  Great fun for a change, but can someone buy Nick an OS map before I return?

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Shorts

No, I don’t mean clothing… it’s still WAY too cold for me to wear shorts, although Cliff probably went back to wearing them straight after his annual Christmas break!

No, having had more than my fair share of mud, sweat and tears (of laughter) this week, I decided to go for a pavement run… which is not as inspiring as running through countryside… so I don’t run so far… so I have to run faster.  Therefore, if you’re still with my logic, I ran for short bursts around a short circuit and shortly became short of breath.  Shorts.

31 minutes (WOW, that IS short!) and 3.9 miles gives 7.5mph.  Or just under 8 minute miles.  This latter information is particularly relevant today because I had to pull the rug out from under my reputation yesterday.  My colleague John had assumed that I was training at around 7 minute miles (as he used to), as opposed to  7mph (my usual fastest), which is actually 8-34 minute miles.  Or my more usual and sedate 9-15.

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Raindrops

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We all spend a lot of time inside, out of the weather: our homes, offices, cars, shops etc each place a roof over our head, a barrier to the weather outside.  One of the things that was most striking about the Vipassana meditation retreat that I attended last year was having time to immerse myself in the weather: to be able to think about it, listen to it, revel in the wind and the rain.  It helped that it was January and there were lots of weather fronts sweeping through to demonstrate their power.

This morning there was an ever so gentle rain falling and the raindrops were caressing my face the whole way round.  It was a truly delightful sensation.

I wasn’t quite sure how I would feel after not running for over a week.  I helped Debbie & John to dig a hole in their garden last Saturday as part of their pond redevelopment: it was only 2.5 feet square by 3 feet deep but past the luscious top-soil, it was thick, heavy London clay, so heavy that I could hardly lift a small spade-full of it above my shoulders (my work boots, above, both weighed me down and stuck to the ground!).  The combination of this with some most inclement weather disinclined me to run Sunday [please see comment below].  This week was then very busy, added to which Nick has been poorly and quite sensibly decided not to run.

So it was just me striding out this morning, which was a shame as it would have been fun watching the Bok trying to avoid the gorgeous, squelchy, wall-to-wall mud!  In the same way that the Inuits have quite precise descriptions for different types of snow and ice, so I might describe the going today as a good structure of firm mud with large pockets or areas of wet surface mud: my trainers came back wet but not clogged and thus got a wash off and are now drop-dripping outside… I had actually forgotten that they were disco shoes!

Cutting to the chase, the overall time was one hour, one minute for 6.7 miles (6.6mph), but it was interesting that after 45 minutes I decided to increase the pace and managed to change it from a comfortable 7mph, for the distance prior to that, to a breathy 5.25mph for the distance home.  Yes, you read that right: I actually slowed down!  Go figure!

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Bush Thwacker

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It was another chilly morning in Sussex and the glorious sunshine was one of the two reasons that I wished I had worn my Oakleys (no, I don’t have Prada sunnies either).  The other was that the Bok was getting his own back for my mud splishing, by thwacking bushes across my face.

Mind you, part of that had to do with my proximity running behind him, itself the result of a reversal in fortune, energy wise.  Yes, let’s be clear about this: I was on form for a change.  I realised this when we got to the first hill (that’s a low rise to you Cliff) and the Bok started to push harder: where he would normally open up a lead, today I just went with him.

We went out via Ote Hall and around to the north of Wivelsfield, dropping through the middle of the village and heading south on Hundred Acre Lane where I was once again able to match his pace and raise it a little on the rise. 

An indicator that he was finding it harder by comparison was that the alarm on his heart-rate monitor, which sounds to warm of impending heart failure, kept sounding.  Beep beep BEEP!  Having slightly more energy that normal, I pushed the pace a little harder every time I heard the alarm sound, keeping it going off for as long as possible.  Beep, beep BEEP!  Beep, beep, BEEP!  You might say that this suggests a total disregard for his well-being, but I feel that he has proved pretty conclusively that he is virtually indestructible in this regard (note the qualifications on both counts!) so I felt no qualms about it, whatsoever!  When the sunne shyneth, make hey!

Heading back through the woods, we came across an old bike and since he was clearly finding it hard work running, he tried to cycle instead.  Despite being a mad keen cyclist as well as all-round mini Olympic team, the combination of the state of the bike and the gradient of the terrain proved too much for him and he had to lay down for moment, as you can see for yourself above.

The run continued in a similar vein, with me generally taking (and extending) the lead until we got to the home straight.  This is where he normally runs me completely ragged, so I thought I would play him at his own game and to the tune of his alarm, I gently upped the pace the whole way down the road until I was virtually sprinting.

Beep, beep, BEEP!  Beep, beep, BEEP!  Beep, beep, BEEP! 

Then nothing.

I thought it was the batteries on his watch that had expired, but I suddenly found myself running on my own.  More than slightly alarmed, I retraced my steps to find him walking along very gently, the power outage not in the watch, but in the owner.

I have to report that there were several perfectly reasonable mitigating circumstances (note that I deliberately went out of my way not to use the word excuses) as to why he had less energy than normal, but alas I am unable to make further hey under pain of extreme torture!

According to the beep beep watch we covered 7.12 miles in one hour and one minute, a speed of 7mph on the nose, which I am pretty pleased with personally.  His maximum heart-rate was apparently 193 – I’d welcome comments as to whether this shows that this 40 year old is fit, or just passing his perspiration date.

Post-script.  In the spirit of friendship, I told him about my having pushed harder when his alarm sounded.  As a measure of his competitiveness, he immediately worked out how to to turn the sound off!