Foster Runs – Page 18 – Observations of an occasional runner

April 6, 2014

Return to the Magical Path

It was grey and drizzly outside this morning and having completed some administrative work I thought it would be easiest to run on the machine. I guess that’s the downside of having a machine to run on!

I’ve read a couple more chapters of Richard Askwith’s book this weekend. His visceral descriptions of running on cold winter mornings and the amazing sense of well-being that you feel afterwards really resonated… and made me feel a little guilty that I was going to run inside.

In the end it was Kim who helped me make the right decision… she was engrossed in work, sitting right next to the running machine. Thus it was that I pulled my long running tights and gore jacket out of the gear-drawer, rather than my shorts.

When I got outside it wasn’t actually raining at all and I felt quite good as I ran along the road. It’s always difficult to pace yourself at the start of the run… fast enough to get into a good habit (and to complete the run while it’s still light!), yet slow enough to have the energy to get all the way round. Especially when you’re not really quite sure how far ’round’ is.

I wrote a lightweight blog called England Garden Gang for a couple of years, commenting on the local grass verges and running little experiments (each of which usually involved me in hard graft!) to see how easy it was to make a difference. It wasn’t, but after a couple of years of looking really tatty, the verges looked a little better this morning… almost as if they had been cut more than once in the last few weeks. Is there a local council election looming?

The run proper starts at the end of the road, where the path crosses the railway tracks and tarmac turns to mud. It felt really good to make that transition… all memories of the running machine forgotten.

You’ll be able to see from the photos that Spring hasn’t reached the branches of the trees, but the shallow depth of the mud suggests that the year is progressing nicely. Er, well most of the way round at any rate!

My route took me out past the old Royal Oak pub, ripe for development apart from the main road that runs along the front wall of the building. Rounding this corner in a spirited manner, one morning in about 1986, I lost control of the lightweight van I was driving. I caught the slide but ran the front corner of the van neatly along the length of the steel railings leaving a pinstripe paint mark… which neither the landlord nor my boss at the time (who owned the van) were very happy about.

Having touched on the corner of Wivelsfield, I ran up into West Wood, taking a dog-leg out to Hundred Acre Lane and back to increase the distance a little. Partway into this section I had to take my jacket off before I started to cook.

Back on the main path I passed my friend Lew helping a neighbour in his tractor, which was making heavy work of lifting a one-tonne bag of something. Lew’s one of those guys that you would expect to be able to lift that kind of load without the benefit of a tractor, so it must have been heavy!

And then I finally got to the Magical Path, a narrow track with ends which used to be hidden. It’s quite straight, but over the decades trees have grown up to turn it into a twisty route round big adjacent trunks. It always feels special to be there, hence my name for it, like a little throwback from a previous age.

What was not so magical was the deep wet mud near the start, nor the fallen tree that was all but barring the way, but these were small distractions.

Then it was across the Ditchling Common and back to base. I remember that there was a point in the run where I started to flag, but something must have distracted me as I have forgotten where exactly and was on good form by the time I got back.

6.2 miles in one hour and one minute is 6.1 mph, only marginally slower than I did this run on July 23rd last year… the big difference is how good I feel. Last summer I had to retire to the sofa, whereas today I am (almost) ready for more! It seems like a winter of treadmill runs may have had a positive effect after all!

One last thing: is this a photo of a fieldmouse? It was playing merrily on the deck yesterday… I’m just hoping it’s not a baby rat!

April 2, 2014

Running, but largely out of time

Please forgive me reader, for I have sinned… I’ve not come to confession for 24 days!

I have a vague excuse, with eight 5am starts (two of which I got home circa 11pm), ten 6am starts and way more than half of the daylight hours of the three weekends spent working at my desk. This is an excuse mind, not a complaint… it’s been a generally fun, engaging and challenging few weeks!

And I did manage to fit in two runs, although one was only a mile and took me more than ten minutes, if the hieroglyphics on my whiteboard are correctly interpreted… average 5.88 mph. From memory it was an early Monday morning antidote to the lethargy that not running creates. I think that it did its job, though I clearly didn’t hang around afterwards for long enough to record this fact.

The other, last Sunday morning was more energetic though, alas, still on the machine. I set the speed to 7 mph and ran for 45 minutes, clocking up 5.28 miles. The average works out to something like 7.04 mph, as I increased the speed at the end to compensate for the time that the belt takes to get up to speed at the start… and I got a bit enthusiastic!

There, that’s my confession. Now for some photos:

March 9, 2014March 9, 2014

Running Free

Spring arrived suddenly and in full force this weekend, as if someone upstairs had finally got fed up with being cold or wet and turned the thermostat up. Bravo!

Yesterday I got outside and mowed the grass, cut the grass on the green and generally sorted out some stuff in the garden, which meant that this morning I could relax and enjoy the view.

By late morning I had sipped my way through three quadspressos whilst sitting on the deck in the warm Spring sunshine and had finished the first three chapters of Running Free by Richard Askwith. I had found his previous books (Feet in the Clouds and Lost Village) particularly thought provoking and have to say that I’m already completely hooked on this one!

Inspired the the warmth and the day and of the writing, I decided I needed to run outside… but where? Of all the options, one instantly stood out and it involved dropping in on my parents.

When I was growing up, there was a big field between the end of our road and the school that I went to. I can remember a few occasions when I ran across the field and they all involve getting my bare legs ‘burned’ by the tall cereal crop… serves me right!

Over the last few years the field has been turned into a quasi public space and I really enjoyed running across it to get to the path that runs down the ridge towards the sea.

Having spent the winter months running inside, the simple views were particularly amazing and I soon found myself passing Rottingdean windmill.

Down on the Undercliff walk there were throngs of people, all looking happy and slightly dazed by the sudden transition out of Winter and there were even a few people sitting on the beach. I ran along as far as Ovingdean, jogged up the 60 or so stairs and took the road back inland.

At Ovingdean church I paused to pay my respects to a very dear friend who is perpetually stuck at 44 years old, whilst the rest of us have to cope with the effects of increasing age. Not a bad place to see out eternity, though my sense is that, for all its faults, life is way more interesting!

I had been tiring as I ran towards the church, but the few minutes it took me to wash the dust off his gravestone gave me renewed energy and I ran easily up the steep road back to the ridge path.

The route back from there was a real breeze and I was soon back at the stile at the top of the grassy field looking back the way I had come.

Excluding my pause, six miles took me 1.10, giving an average just over 5 mph… nothing compared to my pace on the machine, but then the views and the fresh air are a great trade-off.

I’m sure that we’re due a little more bad weather before the good weather settles in, but at least my depleted reserves of sunshine, sea views and fresh air have been topped up in the meantime!

March 2, 2014March 3, 2014

Clean car

After a busy and interesting week, I hit the pause button this weekend. My Mum & Dad had sent me a book about three men driving across England in a 1958 milk float so I deliberately put aside some time to really get started on their journey.

It was also another of the 50th birthday parties, this time Steve’s, so we spent a lovely evening catching up with old friends. Bizarrely, some guests, Rick & Sam, recognised us from Nick(aka the Bok)’s fancy dress party several years ago (well, we were dressed fairly conspicuously as monks) and it transpired that they are also good friends with Daren. Separately, Maria’s parents know my Mum… I forget how small the world is, or maybe how well connected my Mum is!

It being the 1st March, the Kojo was evicted from it’s hibernation in the teahouse and I’ve already seen a bee making good use of its blossom. I was tempted to do more gardening but the ground is still too sodden to make it an appealing prospect. Instead I turned my attention to the cars… unwashed since last year.

Despite living outside, Kim’s car was not too dirty on account that I sluice the water off the top half of it each morning. This is ostensibly to make it easy for her to see out of the windows, but it also means that it looks fairly clean despite not having been washed. The inside was a different matter though, as the cherry tree came back in it the other weekend.

My car was caked, inside and out, the final icing (right colour, right texture) being the mud from my run with Daren last week. I actually really like cleaning cars and I worked happily outside for more than two hours washing and hoovering… and then went back out there again today to put a coat of polish on my car while it’s still clean.

My run today was back inside on the machine again and really only counts as ‘keeping my hand in until the weather warms up a little more’. I started at 7 mph and raised the speed by 0.5 mph each quarter mile for the first mile and then just repeated this for a further three miles. In the last quarter mile I ramped the speed up a little more and completed 4 miles in 31.01, an average of 7.73 mph.

This week I started some little experiments to figure out how I could utilise a new social media platform called Niume. It’s a young London-based start-up (which I like) and the idea is not so much to connect people as to connect ideas in the form of conversations (which I also like).

My FosterRuns experiment on niume is a relaxed conversational circle for occasional runners and my hope is that some of my readers here will feel more inclined to engage in dialogue in that environment. There are also many more interesting conversations going on there, so it’s worth taking a peek.

February 25, 2014February 25, 2014

Upstairs, Downstairs and in the Master’s cabin

It’s an amazing three and a half months now since November 10th when I last ran outside. It seems unlikely that I would choose to get back out there on a day where the weather was turned up to full, but there it was… Daren was back in town and very little, weather-wise, would stand in the way of my catching up with him.

We met upstairs at Jack & Jill (as opposed to downstairs at Clayton Rec ground) and our run almost instantly turned into a retreat for a cup of tea… the wind was shocking! Daren is the master of a boat (though I’m not sure that he or the owner would thank me for calling it that) and as such is well used to weather of all kinds, so for him to put his hood up gives a reflection of how bad it was!

Undaunted (well, a little) we faced into the biting wind and got on with our run.

The usual route was taken, which is basically a sublime roller coaster ride down to Pyecombe, up to Woltsonbury, down to Clayton, up the tank tracks to Home Hill and back down to the windmills. An early comment from Daren made me realise that I was running around puddles… he pointed out that by the time we reached Clayton we would be coated in mud, so there was little point avoiding the puddles at this stage. The new game was ‘running through puddles’!

We paused at Wolstonbury for the view before slip-sliding down the other side.

As we neared Clayton, we reached the path that is eternally muddy, even in the full scorch of summer. Today the mud was glutinous and wall to wall so his early assessment had been correct… the best way was through the middle!

This picture is a little shaky because I was laughing… Daren is up to his knees in a muddy puddle and that wasn’t the worst of the mud by any means!

We ran on through Clayton and reached the bottom of the tank tracks, aka Daren’s Nemesis. This path takes the direct route up the scarp slope of the Downs, but we kept pushing and managed to reach the top without stopping. The downside of reaching the top was that we came back into the wind, low laden with stinging rain!

The upside was that it was all downhill back to the cars, so we made light work of it. Strangely enough I got wetter in the few short minutes it took me to remove my muddy shoes and running longs than in the whole of the run… the wind was blowing the rain horizontally into the car, a little like sitting in the surf on the beach.

6.25 miles dispatched in a respectable 1.16 is a shade under 5 mph… not at all bad bearing in mind the conditions.

I enjoyed it so much that I’m inclined to run outside again.. well, maybe when someone turns the weather down a little!

February 23, 2014February 23, 2014

Working downstairs

Another post containing two runs, this time because out of the last ten days, I have spent two days lecturing or in meetings and eight days working at my desk marking (fortunately really interesting) strategy papers.

On average I spend twice as long marking each paper as I’m paid for (to reach the standard required by my client), but it’s at least pushing me slowly up the experience curve. HA… of course I’m not always as upbeat as this, but my current task is now complete so I’m currently basking!

Last Sunday I was basking too, this time eating breakfast in the garden for the first time this year… fine weather indeed for the middle of February and all the more so bearing in mind that in the deluge two days earlier, the stone garden had looked more like a river bed!

On the sunny Sunday though I had decided to run a for a little longer and push through to 45 minutes. I had clearly expected to write my blog post later that same day so I made no notes on the board… and thus, other than vaguely remembering that it was hard work, I have little to say about it. I covered 5.36 miles, an average of 7.14 mph.

I saw this excellent example of positive PR in the paper this week… it seems like a visit to the cafe at South Downs Nurseries Garden Centre in Hassocks is to be recommended if you’re looking to shed your walking stick!

I’m feeling more generally upbeat this week because, for the first time since the autumn, there was a glimmer of light in the sky when I got up at 6am. I love the speed that the mornings lighten from here as Spring hastens to take hold.

I’ve been waking up with a painful leg for the last few mornings, probably because, despite being disciplined about getting up to walk around between papers, I have sat at my desk for something like 50 hours in the last week or so. I really pity office workers… at least I generally get a real mix of working environments.

So today, having completed my mammoth marking task, I was happy to take to the machine once again. Not wanting to overdo it I started at 7 mph and increased by 0.2 each quarter mile until I had completed a mile. Then I returned to a base of 7.2 mph and repeated, all the way through to a final quarter mile at 8.2 mph.

Nothing strenuous, but good ground-floor foundation reinforcement!

4 miles took me 31 minutes 38 seconds, an average of 7.58 mph and because I worked up to it slowly, I was not exhausted at the end. However, with my leg in mind (only painful laying down) my legs got an extended cold shower for their effort!

February 9, 2014February 9, 2014

Hard going four me

It would have been really easy to have skipped my run today as I was enjoying reading and also had a crick in my neck, but I managed to usher myself onto the machine before I had the chance to escape.

I started at the same speed as last week, 7 mph and 7.5 for the first two quarter-miles, but then increased to 8.5 and 9 mph After the first mile I was 17 seconds off the 8 mph pace and after repeating it a second time, whilst making the speed increases a little early, I was only 13 seconds adrift.

Then my subconscious started to pull rank and I soon found myself running at 6 mph. It’s a funny thing, that energy-preservation override and more than once I pushed the speed up a little, only to find it come back down again.

4 miles took me 31.29 in the end, an average of 7.6 mph, which is actually not so bad. I just need to remember to start more slowly next time, whilst Kim pointed out that I had no fuel in advance of the run, so I really was running on empty.

So far I have managed to curb the urge to sleep this afternoon, first by going shopping for a Japanese cherry blossom tree and later by putting some vibrant music on whilst we prepared the stew for tonight.

In the end I didn’t get as much reading done today as I would have liked and the neck crick is still there, albeit less prevalent, but it was really nice to have a more relaxing Sunday after missing all those ones in January.

February 7, 2014

Research mode

I’m in research mode today, reading reports on strategy & change management in large and unionised organisations to help inform a potential project. My mind needs space and time to digest the information, so I thought I would try an experiment.

Last year I met the guys from Armadillo Merino, who shared the merits of the merino wonder-material… aside from its lightness, wicking ability and natural odour resistance, what really appealed to me was the idea that I could compost it when it was finally of no use to me as clothing.

As an experiment I bought three t-shirts from Armadillo, giving one to my brother Nigel (kayaker), one to Kurt (runner), the owner of the brilliant running shop Run, and kept the third for myself (lazy oaf?).

Since then, aside from wearing formal shirts for work, I have worn either the Armadillo t-shirt, or another similar merino one, pretty much non-stop. It really is an amazing material! Reports from Nigel at Christmas were that, despite already being a merino fan with a large number of garments, he too had worn it a lot because it was so lightweight and comfortable.

Sitting, working barefoot in the sun this morning I became aware that my t-shirt was just starting to pong… I hasten to draw your attention to the ‘starting to’ preface to ‘pong’, lest you think that I’m a slob.

The proto-pong was no real surprise as I had been wearing the shirt on and off since Sunday morning. Hence, in a break between articles, I quickly hand-washed it, loosely wrung it out and, being in an experimental mood, put it back on. Wet.

It’s certainly more comfortable when it’s dry, but it was no so uncomfortable in its wet state that I felt the need to take it off.

After about 15 minutes the sun went in, which meant that the temperature dropped, my socks and shoes went back on and my fleece too. I was aware that the shirt was wet, but it wasn’t cold and I was able to carry on working.

In all it took about 45 minutes for the body to become dry with the remnants taking another 15 minutes or so. Not bad!

While Armadillo’s core target market is service personnel (army, police etc) I can’t help feeling that this is actually a backpackers dream garment too! And if I still ran an agency I would definitely specify merino for riggers, event managers etc. Hey, but that’s a whole different experiment!

February 2, 2014

Short

I seem to be short on time, all round, at the moment… but correspondingly high on frustration for some reason.

Hmmm… I can’t help feeling that there’s a link there somewhere…

Anyway, I did manage to fit a run in earlier today, albeit on the machine again. Starting from 7 mph I increased the speed each quarter mile… 7.5 to 8 to 8.5 mph… before going back to 7 mph and repeating for the next mile. In the final quarter mile I slowly ramped up to 10 mph before finishing, exhausted.

As a result I managed to complete 4 miles in 31.03, an average of 7.74 mph.

The picture above is a neat guitar pedal that my big Bro sent me. I haven’t managed to figure out how to use most of its features, but it has a very simple 40 second recording facility that allows you to either play along to a riff that you’ve played into it, or record further layers on top.

What this really means is that I have been driving Kim mad playing short melodies again and again and again and again and.. well, you get the picture. Thank you Bro!

January 26, 2014January 26, 2014

Two more runs

The recent inconsistency of posting to this site reflects my sense that the current working week, consisting of consultancy, lecturing and all the necessary background preparation that goes with both, started on the 1st January… and that I’ve yet to encounter a weekend.

Not that I’m complaining, as the work is challenging, varied and fascinating. It’s just not conducive to a serious blogging proposition with its requirement for a predictable flow of posts… not that FosterRuns.com is a serious blogging proposition, despite its six+ year history!

Since I’m only pausing before the next pressing task on the desk, I’ll be brief.

Last weekend I opted for some intervals. Working from a base of 7mph I managed to cover 4 miles in 31 minutes 38 seconds, an average of 7.65 mph. I clearly could have gone faster as I ramped up the speed to 10 mph towards the end.

This morning I followed the same basic pattern but shortened the 7 mph rest periods and generally got the speed up earlier on in the run. As a result my conscious mind kicked in and I struggled towards the end, limping through the final mile at 7 to 7.5 mph. Despite this I was only 5 seconds behind last week, with a time of 31 minutes, 43 seconds, at the end of 4 miles.

That’s all for now folks! Normal service will hopefully be resumed next week… whenever that happens!