Month: June 2010

Day 10/30: Camaraderie with big sweaty men. Also, ducks.

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Today’s run was planned to be a long club run. However…

I had a work day that was very intense, not in a bad way, just full on and I’ve completed my third incident form this week. By 5 o’clock my head was full and my muscles were zinging. Normally I would come home and slouch with a brew and hobnob, but not during Juneathon, oh no.  Instead of a club run (where I would have to be vaguely sociable) I went round to my mum’s to offload (declining a cup of tea and a delve in the treat tin) and ended up doing a 2.5mile route of my mum’s suggestion.

It took me down an offshoot of the canal that is closed to boats, but seems very popular with dog walkers and duck feeders (including my mum who does this route as a pram walk with my niece). The ducks seem to have got wise to this and there was a flotilla of twenty-odd ducks who were pursuing a small girl in a bright pink anorak. I do hope she had enough bread to satisfy them, otherwise I fear that they could have ganged up and carried her off.

Being out at teatime meant that I actually saw people, including a few runners. I have missed the pleasure of connecting with others, even if the only thing that we have in common is that we’re wearing trainers.

I finished up being a lot more chilled and even enjoyed running without tunes, so that’s a result even if it wasn’t what I planned.

Day 9/30 – brief

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I’m sure that my morning runs were never this lacking in people. There was a chap with a dog at the end of a road, but I didn’t see anyone to wheeze “morning!” to and once again have nothing interesting to report.

I was going to do 2 miles with my garmin virtual training bully and set it so my pace would be at least 10.30min/mile, but then I decided that I didn’t want to be a prisoner to the tyranny of the garmin so I just set off. And did my 2 miles at 10.08min/mile.

Day 8 – perky but old

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Another quiet and uneventful morning run (4 miles) today – the most remarkable thing about was that I woke up feeling enthusiastic about going out. Possibly it was because I had a crap day at work lined up and running was the lesser of two evils, but I have a sneaky suspicion that I was just looking forward to it. Odd I know. And this was despite the fact that when I checked the weather last night, my running time fell somewhere between ‘light rain’ and ‘heavy rain’.

In the event, it was light rain. The sort that’s quite nice when you’re on your way home when it starts, but when you set off in it you can’t tell if it’s going to start belting down and if you chance it in a t-shirt you end up cold, drenched and miserable. Not wanting to chance it, I wore my jacket (whose waterproof-ness I tested the other week while shovelling gravel, doing the garden and going to the tip. I do recognise the fact that, having owned the jacket for over a year, I probably should have already tested it a few times in more conventional running situations. Like running. In the rain) and ended up warm, clammy and with Miami Vice stylee rolled up sleeves.

Even more disturbing than the enthusiasm and the Miami Vice sleeves is the thought that popped into my mind when I saw the rain – “well it’ll do the garden some good, that’s the main thing”. I am truly one step closer to middle age.

Day 7/30 – one week done

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Another early morning one today. Made a kind of attempt at doing something structured up a hill with not entirely successful results, oddly I went a bit faster after I’d tried it (I think I was trying to make up for my embarrassment). I think I need more grading with both the hill and the reps. 3 miles altogether.

Day seven means we’re a quarter of the way there folks!

Count: 7 Activities
Distance: 22.02 mi
Time: 04:04:53 h:m:s
Elevation Gain: 1,586 ft
Avg Speed: 5.4 mph
Calories: 2,742 C

This also makes a very satisfying blue stripe across the garmin connect calendar!

Day 6/30 – Tormented by canal desires

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First of all, an apology. I was absolutely knackered yesterday and actually fell asleep, laptop on knee, whilst writing up my Juneathon efforts. There was a much better entry planned in my head as I ran, one that was full of witty bon mots and insightful comment. What you ended up with was something barely literate and lightly dribbled on. After that, I crashed out for an hour before heading out for a lovely afternoon/evening with big sis and my adorable niece.

There was no way on this earth that I was going to get up for an early run. No alarm was set and yet I still woke up at bang on 5.45. Thanks Juneathon. Needless to say, I looked at the time, muttered darkly and fell back asleep. A bit unfortunate because a morning run should have been a given today as it’s my mate’s birthday and we were off sailing the dark and choppy waters of the Leeds-Liverpool canal.

I reckon that everyone should have a go on a canal barge at some point in their lives, it’s ace! It’s brilliant seeing things from a different perspective and at a different pace, even if it’s somewhere that you know quite well. The route that we chose took us down to where I tend to do my canal runs and the outward journey was pretty much a repeat of one of my most regretted and hellish runs ever. It was far nicer on a boat.

Where I start my canal runs, viewed from a barge

It’s definitely left me with a taste for a towpath run along a different section of canal. The downside of this is that I’ll have to park up at the ice cream parlour that we went to yesterday (and might well have accidentally called in at again today…) and resist the lure of a single scoop with sprinkles.

Oh yes, today’s exercise. I’m not sure what was the most amazing part of today – the fact that I stayed sober or the fact that I went for a run at the end of all this. Only 2.5 mile s (which was all that I wanted to do after my narcoleptic antics yesterday) and at a deliberately slow pace. I’ve come to the conclusion that if I want to start getting my distance up a bit, I need to keep an eye on my pace and this seemed an ideal opportunity to get used to using the nagging garmin to watch what I was doing. When I uploaded my stats, it was interesting (to me anyway) to see that my deliberately slower pace was the same as my average for yesterday when I was set off nicely then ground to a halt. I think that this should teach me something.