notajogger

Squeezing It In

Life is a hectic beast at the moment.

I’m busy at work, busy looking after cats with tubes sticking out of their faces (ick), busy eating, busy trying to get enough sleep. What did I miss? Oh yes, training for a marathon.

A run usually gives me headspace, time to think, a break from stress. When I’m pressed for time, it becomes a funnel for all the guilt I’m feeling about everything other than running. During last night’s 6 mile stagger I spent 5 worrying about work and the cat and how I was going to fit in the weekend’s running and the other 1 blowing my nose.

These are not vintage training runs. They are tough and slow and cold. I’m churning out the miles in a low gear and I can’t seem to change it. However, as I said to Mr Notajogger last night, if I judge my performance based on effort rather than speed, I am giving it pretty much everything I can. It’s just that everything isn’t very much.

50 Words For Snow: None Of Them Printable

Reading other blogs written by runners in colder climes, I feel like a wimp for complaining about the cold. It is almost as common and dull as moaning about having a cold, but I must get it off my chest.

Thursday’s and Friday’s runs were done at -2 degrees C and -4 degrees C respectively, and Sunday’s 12 miles were slugged out through 4 inches of wet snow. I thought I had something to complain about after Friday morning’s run – in Alexandra Palace Park the freezing fog was like having a bulldog clip clamped to each ear – but after Sunday’s nightmare all is forgiven.

It was, quite simply, the hardest run I’ve ever done. I cried for the whole last mile. I screamed with frustration as I plunged ankle-deep into my 15th icy puddle of meltwater. I was still cross about it when I went to bed last night. It was 1 hour and 55 minutes of hell, if hell is London streets covered in a sloppy swamp of slush. And it is.

You may be wondering why on earth I ran at all. I had three reasons:

I love snow. It’s so pretty. I went for a few snowy runs last winter and the winter before and they were gorgeous.
We left the house early thinking we would avoid any slush, as it was snowing all night.
I couldn’t run on Saturday so I really had to get the miles in.

Unfortunately, it did snow all night but the temperature rose, meaning that new snow was already soft and wet. Even areas untouched by the late night clubbers, kebab eaters and random salt-scatterers of North London proved tough-going. There was none of the lovely crunch and scrunch you get when it’s cold; my feet went straight through the white stuff to the squelchy slime beneath.

In summary, it was like running in mud for two hours. Not as dangerous, perhaps – I didn’t fall over – but, because it took as much energy to pull my legs forward as is it did to push them back, just as exhausting.

My rage knew no bounds. Poor Mr Notajogger got the worst of it. He runs in a very upright way, with a short gait and straight stride. I do not. At the end of every step on the slushy bits (ie half the run), my right foot slipped off behind me and had to be reigned in before the next step, making me very slow. Mr N trotted away, unperturbed by the shifting ground. This made me cross. All the other runners (there were surprisingly many of them) looked jolly and rosy cheeked and bouncy. I felt like I was running at half-speed, stuck in a slow-motion crime scene reconstruction. I was certainly feeling murderous.

Totals for the week:

Monday: 7 miles (un-steady)
Tuesday: 6.5 miles (hills)
Wednesday: (5 miles easy)
Thursday: 7 miles (steady-ish)
Sunday: 12 miles (very very slow indeed)

Total: 37.5 miles

The Anti Freeze

It’s great weather for running at the moment. I confess I wasn’t thinking that at 6:30 last night, hopping about in my bedroom putting my running tights on under my coat because I was still so cold from the journey home.

When I was outside pegging it down the freezing streets, however, I had a revelation. At 7:00pm in London yesterday it was -2 degrees C, but the pavements were firm and safe. No frost, no ice. On the BBC forecast this morning they said that the air is so dry at the moment that we’re getting all the cold of a cold snap with none of the crunch of frosty grass or slide of sneaky ice. And that, for a runner – especially one with poor vision – is great news. I even managed a hill session last night, without falling over once.

This cold dry weather means I get to witness skies like this from my office early in the morning:

Sadly, however, my view while running is still like this:

I want to put more pictures on this blog, but the sad fact is that I’m going to be running in the dark for a good month yet. Roll on March.

Making a Spectacle of Myself

I am short-sighted. I wear glasses all day, every day.

I squint with envy on those who can wear contact lenses. I do have some but unfortunately my eyes are too dry for me to wear them for long. I save the lenses for special occasions: a long weekend run, a race, an event where people are likely to take photos and put them on facebook without my knowledge. For everyday running I am ashamed to admit that I wear an old pair of glasses, the right lens of which has a big scratch, and which I keep in place using a red rubber band. Like the ones that postmen use to bind letters (because it is one).

In my defence, the band is usually kept hidden a cap, or at least by my hair. No doubt there are proper running glasses and/or bands to keep them in place that I could buy, but I am too tight-fisted and more importantly too lazy to do this when I already have something that works perfectly well.

Well, perhaps not perfectly. Last night my home-made running glasses let me down. Literally. It was cold and I was running a 7 mile “steady run with a few fast surges”. The glasses were fixed tightly in place. Leaving the office, it was easy to pick up the pace just in order to warm up in the freezing air. Twenty minutes’ in, I was averaging 7:20 miles and feeling good. The trouble started at Old Street tube station, where wandering pedestrians forced me onto the road a couple of times, then brought me to a dead stop. Waiting for an opening to push past them, my steaming breath fogged up my glasses. This happens quite a bit, but usually clears once I’m running again and the wind hits my face.

Heading up City Road, it seemed very dark. I was struggling to make out the edges of paving slabs. I’m not sure what happened next, but one minute I was bounding past a bus queue and the next I was lying face-down on the pavement, legs akimbo. It was more embarrassing than painful, though my right knee and elbow were bleeding. I levered myself up, limped for a few yards, then jogged carefully home.

On entering the flat, I took off my glasses. They looked strange. I have quite long eyelashes, and their mascara-ed lengths had obviously been brushing up and down against the lenses, combining with the foggy air to create black inky patches in front of my eyes.

Perhaps it’s time to invest in those proper running specs?

On the Seventh Day, She Rested

In 6 days, you could get a lot done. You could read War and Peace. You could walk from London to Edinburgh. You could drink 12 glasses of wine and eat 51 KitKats (if you were a woman obeying UK guidelines). You could even create the Heavens and the Earth.

I couldn’t. What I could do was run every day and give my training plan a good kicking. A mid-week interval session gave me thigh burn of the first degree, but I pushed through it with two consecutive days of slow ‘recovery’ running and made it to Sunday’s long run feeling surprisingly fresh.

A summary of the week is below. Annoyingly, life might get in the way of this week’s running, making me struggle to get to 35 miles. I want to be running 40, but I do have 14 weeks to go, so think what I could achieve in that…

Tuesday: 5 miles (easy)
Wednesday: 6 miles (steady)
Thursday: 5 miles (with intervals)
Friday: 4 miles (slow)
Saturday: 6 miles (easy)
Sunday: 10 miles (slow)

Total: 36 miles

The Return of the Burn

My thighs hurt.

On Thursday morning I did not get up at 5:55am. I stayed in bed, took gym kit to work, and headed there at 5:55pm.

Running intervals in the gym is odd. I have no idea if I’m replicating the speed I would run them out of doors or not. The plan was to run 4 x 3 minutes fast, 2 minutes slow. A fairly easy interval session, which I sandwiched between 10 minutes each of warm up and cool down running, some cross-training and weights.

I’m not sure if it was the cross-training, the intervals or the weights, but my thighs were killing me as I attempted to climb the stairs out of the gym. Getting on the bus home for my mammoth three minute journey, my legs buckled and I had to sit down.

Did I push too hard? I have no idea. When I run intervals outside I’m fairly good at judging the fastest pace I can run each interval and still finish them. In the gym I have to pick a speed and hope I’ve got it right. Even half-way through the interval I just can’t tell if I’m running faster or slower than I should be.

There is no way to solve this mystery. It’s not like I could measure how fast I run the intervals outside, then choose that speed in the gym. Oh, wait.

Running Autopilot Fail

5:55 Tuesday. Get up. Feed cats. Brush teeth. Eat small square of kendal mint cake. Put on running kit. Leave house. Go back to collect gloves. Leave house. Start running. Run 5 miles easy in somnambulant state. Get back. Consult training plan. Realise I did the wrong run.

5:55 Wednesday. Get up. Brush cats. Feed teeth. Eat small square of kendal mint cake. Put on running kit. Leave house. Go back to collect tissues. Leave house. Start running extended 6 mile route. Get back to the house at 5.5 miles. Run around block twice like an 8 year-old. Consult map. Realise I went the wrong way.

There is a lesson to be learned here. If only I could stay awake long enough to find out what it is.

Steady as She Goes

My first week of marathon training is over and, despite minor ill-health, it went well. I ran 33.5 miles over five runs and it felt like a good ‘foundation’ or ‘base’ running week. Nothing too strenuous, no run longer than 8 miles.

I got scared on Thursday, listening to a Marathon Talk podcast about training, which assumed that ‘intermediate’ marathon runners start from a base of 40 miles a week. That’s before they really start training. I am aiming for that kind of mileage, but it’s going to take me a couple of weeks to get there. I ran zero miles per week for most of November so I need to be careful.

Having recovered from my cold, I was able to make up for lost time on drinking front on Friday and Saturday, so both weekend runs suffered as a result. Saturday’s was worst: an evil headwind + hilly route + minor hangover = grim 6.5 miles. I meant to run 7 but confess to walking the last half.

Sunday’s was the best run of the week, despite a woolly head. The plan dictated a “steady 8 miles” and I obeyed. I love a “steady” run – which I interpret it as “how I usually run when not training”. I run fast, but make sure that I’m not straining to catch my breath and that my head is always up. I go easy on the uphills and swiftly on the downhills. Basically, I try to enjoy it, which for me means running quickly without killing myself.

The first 6 miles were great – my pace was at 7 minutes 20 per mile, the fastest I’ve run in a while. As mile 7 started, however, I could feel everything slow down and start to hurt, from my lungs to my hips to my feet. What had been easy became a struggle. At this point in my route there’s a slow incline – probably over a mile long. When I first started running around Crouch End I used to hate it, but I hadn’t noticed it lately. Until yesterday. By the time I turned the corner onto Park Road I was exhausted and ready to throw in the towel. A week’s running had taken its toll and I had already run 32 miles – why not just stop?

I slowed down a little bit to catch my breath. I dropped my shoulders and shook my hands to get the tension out of my neck. I sped up past the shops. I ran very slowly up Crouch Hill, then pounded down the other side and made it home in just under 1 hour. My face was hot for the rest of the day – a literal glow of self-satisfaction.

Sick 6

As I write this, on Friday morning, the world is a beautiful place. The view from my office window may be a symphony in grey and beige, but there is a technicolour wonderland inside my head. I can breathe, I can taste, I can even smell (a bit). My cold has gone!

At least, I think it has.

Last night, however, it had not. I brought my kit to work in order to force myself to run home, knowing in advance that this was the only way I would do it. It is a good trick, particularly if you place said kit by your desk where people will trip over it, then tell all of them that you are running home tonight (for peer pressure). Then eat a large lunch and several biscuits (for guilt pressure).

At 6pm I headed home on foot with just a packet of tissues and a grimace. I had mapped out a 6 mile route winding through the depths of Clerkenwell and Old Street. After a day’s rain, night had descended cold and clear, clamping down on puddles with a black hand.

Grim faces hid behind collars and brims. Crouching lanes of traffic crept up behind me, bicycle brakes screeched and bus queue backs blocked my way. Every step seemed to be uphill, my neck craning to stay upright. At Sainsbury’s on Stroud Green Road, I finally stopped and stepped out of the dark into six feet walls of shiny packaged propaganda. I was trapped in a video game, a virtual world of consumerism, collecting points and scanning items. When I had inserted my card into the chip and pin device, I was deposited, shivering, back on the stiff concrete to walk home with the spoils.

Into Intervals

I can’t bear to talk again about my C word, so I won’t. Please bear in mind that it is still in progress and judge my performance/mood today in its light.

Day two of the training programme called for 7 miles containing 10 x 1 minute fast, 2 minutes slow. That’s half an hour of intervals but, more importantly, nearly a whole hour’s running before work on a Wednesday. In the rain.

Thankfully the arctic temperatures of yesterday had receded and I was able to run my warm up without resembling the Hunchback of Tufnell Park. I could also wear my regular running gloves rather than the enormous ski-mittens I’m now sporting on extra-cold days. They may be warm, but they look ludicrous.

I can’t say it was good to be running intervals again, but it did make me feel like a ‘proper runner’. You’re no-one until you’ve pelted past a pedestrian at breakneck speed only to have them wander by you moments later, laughing.