First run of the year

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Two posts in two days – get in!

It might have been blogging yesterday, it might have been the promise of a steaming bowl of porridge and the madness/genius of test match special, it might just have been that I’m fairly embarrassed by my inactivity – whatever it was, it motivated me to pull on my trainers and head out of the door. The plan was for 3 miles, nothing earth shattering, and I went my multiple choice route so I could choose where I ended up. Although I thought I’d do a there and back to my 1.5mile pub landmark (now demolished to be replaced with 3 and 4 bedroom luxury homes – I can’t say I’d fancy living in a house whose foundations have been sealed in ice for a week. They were like little brick icebergs isolated a sea of frozen muddiness), I ended up going past there and carrying on in a loop. The loop took me home at 3.72 miles, so I rounded up to 4 around the back streets. It wasn’t the fastest 4 miles in the world, but they were all my own work. And I had the great excitement of noticing a tiny wooden hut of a church on the main road. I’ve lived in the village about 2 and a half years now and have never noticed it before; this is not a great reflection on my observational skills, but was quite exciting.

In the afternoon, we had a bracing walk/slide down by the canal and called in at the running shop to buy me some new trainers. Running Amok’s description of his shoes kind of describes what my old ones were like, so I’m now the proud owner of a pair of Brooks Ariel. They’re a control shoe, so only one step away from being a special orthopaedic boot, but they’re damn comfy and when I’ve clumped round the house in left new shoe and old right shoe, I can see a difference in my alignment. I suspect that they’re going to take a bit of getting used to as my knees are rediscovering what it feels like to face the right direction.

I was also talked into buying some special socks (I was giddy and easily persuaded) – I’m sure proper socks are important, but have never ventured down that path (Surely socks are socks?) and have a nagging doubt that I’ve been sold sock-shaped snake oil. My question therefore, is – are socks good?

Frozen Canal

Snowing at the canal

Canal

Idiot husband "just testing" the ice

Today’s run – 4 miles, average pace 11.10.

NB. Husband would like to issue the following disclaimer “I did not actually walk on the ice and do not condone such behaviour from fellow idiots”. I can vouch that he didn’t walk on the ice, or even put two feet on, as he was holding onto me at the time, just in case.

Happy New Year!

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Once again I can’t believe that I’ve left so long between posts and once again I’m ashamed to say that this is partly down to my increasingly slapdash approach to commitment. Since my puddley run I’ve had a bit of a gammy knee, which I’ve self diagnosed as my body’s way of reminding me that I need I new pair of trainers. This has made me a bit reluctant to go out and combined with the weather and Christmas, I’ve only managed to get out a couple of times.

What I have been doing is devouring ferrero rocher, seeing lots of family and friends (alarming myself by how excited I got over my niece’s first Christmas on the way), enjoying wall to wall David Tennant on the TV/radio/universe and knitting. There’s been lots of knitting. It’s been rather ace… Next task is sorting the wool pile and dealing with the backlog of projects (whilst also graduating onto 4 needle sock kniting and learning to crochet).

Much as I love Christmas, I’m not so good with new year as it’s made me a bit miserable in previous years. I do like the idea of a clean slate though and have set myself the world’s vaguest resolutions.

The most concrete one is

  1. Learn to crochet. Then there’s…
  2. Be more sociable ( I like the idea of being warm and hospitable, but I also like the idea of gradually becoming more grumpy and cantankerous. I’m being encouraged towards former as apparently it’s nicer to live with)
  3. Learn by doing (which stemmed from a random card pick at a pre-Christmas mediation and ying yoga workshop I went to. I’ve probably misinterpreted it a bit, but I think it works).

And that’s it. I might set myself some running goals as well because I did that for 2009 (I managed all of them apart from running a 10k; I ran 10k, just not an actual 10k race).

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and enjoy a fabulous 2010.

Rain + rain = puddles

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A certain amount of thickery today… Despite the fact that it has rained pretty much every day since, um, ages ago, my little brain didn’t click that this would result in the canal towpath being mainly puddles. We nearly gave up before we started as our usual route is closed for lock repairs, we had to fight through hedgerow to get past anglers’ brollies, got distracted by ducks and then had a mile of puddle dodging/near drowning. I don’t mind getting wet or muddy, but have wonky ankles and a poor sense of balance so muddy puddles are fraught with danger for me, especially when they’re next to the cold, dark depths of the Leeds-Liverpool. After a mile we gave up on the towpath and went on the road to run through the town centre instead. Not necessarily the rural nature run I had in mind, but we did 5 miles.

Time: 01:00:32
Distance: 5.01 mi
Elevation Gain: 595 ft
Calories: 600 C

At what point do you realise that you have no shame as a runner? I think I’m nearly there after going to Asda post run, mud-splattered tights, windswept hair, bright red face, soaking wet trainers…and I didn’t bat an eyelid.

And the experiement proved…

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That my hypothesis was correct – ran 3 miles before yoga, tom yum soup for tea and then yoga-ed. And managed to stay conscious for the entire relaxation at the end, no snoring, no drifting, no suddenly realising that I’ve not heard a word that the teacher has said since “lie down on your mats”. It was rather splendid.

In fact, I’ve come out of the class feeling completely blissful and chilled out. I feel like I’m smiling from inside for the first time in ages. It’s a wonderful feeling and having it has made me realise how long it is since I’ve felt like that.

The way our yoga class runs is that it’s an 8 week progressive course, but the courses run continuously so a new course starts every 8 weeks or so. New people join, old people drop out, old hands guard their mat territory like feral beasts (that’s just me then?) and we go back to basics again. I think this does us all good; I know that I pick up bad habits and it’s easy to slide into casually skipping through postures without thinking deeply about what you’re doing. This probably applies to more than just yoga and it’s maybe something I need to do a bit more through life in general. Maybe it’s something we all need to do.

In other news, I’ve finally discovered Garmin Connect. Whatever your feelings on Garmins, this appeals to my inner geek and makes far prettier graphs and maps than the training centre. I may even get brave and bore people with my (quite frankly embarassing) run stats, particularly since I’ve realised that I’m very coy about admitting what speed I go at (hint, it rhymes with ‘glow’. Very glow).

In wool news, I went to Whitby and sold a kidney to buy vast amounts of lovely but pricey yarn. So I now have 3 pending projects from the new wool pile, 1 planned from previous escapades, 3 half formed ideas, 1 half baked idea (thanks to a link on Beanz’s blog I now have a pattern for knitted cupcakes. It scares me how much this excites me) and lots of stray balls with no future plans. I must stop buying new wool.

Positive steps (with a bit of a lithp)

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A slightly odd run tonight. The original plan was to go to the group and run there, but we ended up doing a 4 miler a deux. This means that we probably went a bit further than if we were out with other people, but also a bit slower. Our speed wasn’t helped by the need for a bit of a loo stop in the first couple of miles – the end result being that we ran/walked a bit/ran the first two miles, went to my mum’s (thank god she was in, she’s let me down before with near disasterous consequences) and then ran the two miles back again.

To be honest, it was nice just being out without stressing about time/pace/distance (although she did refer to my “bloody garmin” because I made us keep going until we hit 4 miles, I’m not bloody stopping at 3.95 I tell you. So there.). It was a little scary on Saturday as even the thought of going out for a run made me feel anxious. I appreciate how weird this sounds and I don’t really have a reason for it, although I wasn’t in the best of spaces head-wise over the weekend (I’ve perked up since then). The sweet irony is that I sometimes have to do anxiety management at work and I know all of the theory about challenging negative thoughts, grading and practising tasks, riding out the anxiety feelings, flight or fight, the lot. I’m just crap at putting into practise with myself when I need to. The upside of this is that I have a good stock of anecdotes to give examples from, I think the latest one can be filed under “Examples of Black and White Thinking – if I do a run that isn’t 100% perfect to me, it’s a crap run and I’ve failed. Ergo, I may as well not run as I will inevitably fail”.

Husband has suggested that we have a bit of a Decemberthon to keep me motivated. I like the idea, apart from the fact that I can’t pronounce it without sounding like Violet Elizabeth Bott, Juneathon is a lot easier to say than Dethemberthon. Add to this the fact that the running bully and I are planning a bit of tag team bullying to get us back on track, we’ve a canalside run booked in for Saturday morning and a 4.5mile race in Santa hats in a month. All very positive steps, I think you’ll agree.

Next run, round the village tomorrow 5pm pre-yoga. Ooooh, actually, I can test a hypothesis that a pre-yoga run will be as effective as a pre-yoga nap for keeping me awake during meditation (and the nap is very effective, despite it taking me nearly a year of falling asleep in class to realise this).