notajogger

Morning Gloom

Autumn is upon us. I ran 5 miles to Muswell Hill and back in the dark this morning.

Darkness pervaded the run in more ways than one: I forgot my watch; and I was listening to the BBC’s dramatisation of Life and Fate – the episode about the Holocaust. Returning to the flat, I felt a wave of relief. The clock was ticking on the wall, the sun was rising and the Today programme was reporting on Afghanistan, not Stalingrad.

I wouldn’t recommend running alone through dark streets listening to the sound of Eichmann eating lunch with a colleague in their freshly constructed gas chamber. I suppose there is no appropriate time to listen to this story, and that the important thing is that I listened at all, but I felt bad that it was the soundtrack to my leisure pursuit.

New shoe shuffle

I bought new trainers at the end of August. As ever, I had left it too late and waited for holes to start appearing in the toes of my existing ones (pair II) before shelling out for new ones (pair I). Pair II needed to be binned straightaway, but I couldn’t start running 30 miles a week in pair I. The worst running injury I’ve ever had (a stress fracture in my foot) was caused by a long run in new trainers in 1999.

Pair III came to the rescue – my marathon shoes, sentimentally kept on the shelf. They were in better shape than pair II, I decided. They would have to do.

I am still, after a month, alternating pair I and pair III. The new pair still feel small (they’re not) and tight (they’re the same size). Last night, running home, I had to stop and loosen the laces twice in 5 miles. At the weekend I stuck to pair III over the half-marathon distance. I know that soon I’ll break the new pair in properly, but that just as I do they’ll start to break down. The toes will rub thin, the inside of the heel will wear and tear into a hole.

Too new becomes too old so quickly and, for the brief period when the shoes fit perfectly, you take them for granted and forget you’ll ever need another.

And yes, it is my birthday next week.

Short Circuits

This week is billed on my training plan as ‘recovery week’. Apparently recovery begins with a killer session of 8 x 400m at mile pace (1600m pace, for fans of consistency).

Hmm.

I found this session much harder than the longer, slower intervals of previous weeks. I managed 30 seconds of each set before praying for it to be over. I don’t think I was going too fast, I just don’t think I can run fast over short distances. My 10k time is nowhere near as quick, relatively speaking, as my half-marathon one and never has been.

Sitting here on my sofa writing this at 10pm, three hours after finishing my run, my face is still hot and I feel a bit sick. I hope this is doing me some good in the long term, because the short term effects are not fun.

On the positive side, I discovered that the Emirates stadium is a perfect place to run circuits, and the lights of the Hornsey Road were a welcome sight on the way back home.

Return to Rutland Water

In November 2010, Mr Notajogger and I ran the first Rutland Water Marathon organised by Fat Feet. It was a beautiful autumn morning and views of the reservoir from its banks were stunning. We should know, we got to see them all on the way around, including the ones from the Hambleton Peninsula twice in a row.

Yesterday we returned to the scene of our marathon triumph (and tribulations) and covered almost half the course, in reverse. Mr N asked if that meant we would be running backwards. Then he asked again in case I hadn’t heard his great joke.

We started on the dreaded Peninsula. It’s always harder to run around than you expect, even once rather than twice; the hills may be short but they are very sharp. Conversation was sparse in the first four miles. Mr N didn’t enjoy his marathon as much as I did and I suspect the memories our run was evoking were none too pleasant. I, on the other hand, was irritatingly perky. I had such a good race that day – my training had gone well, our pace was sensible and the weather was great – I couldn’t believe my luck. Mr N had no such luck. His training had been plagued by niggling injuries and colds, then he was forced to run with Miss Hospital Corners, telling him to drink more, eat more, keep going.

Running the first half of the race in reverse offered a bit of catharsis, I hope. We moved from painful hills and memories, through long sections neither of us could remember, to the open stretch across the Dam to the starting/finish line. At 1o miles we were both tired, but our pace was quickening as the end point of Normanton Church was in our sights from 3 miles away. If only the same could have been said for it on the day of the marathon. Obscured by the constant ‘undulations’ of the shoreline path, my inner mantra of “this must be the last hill” came back to me as we coasted along to the finish on Sunday.

Maybe this year they should run the whole marathon in reverse. And no, I do not mean everyone should run backwards. Other than Mr N. He should definitely do that.

Loooooooooooooong Hills

This morning I ran up Crouch Hill (the long Finsbury Park side), from bottom to top, five times. 5!

I used to live near the top of the hill and have always struggled to run all the way up it without walking. This morning I discovered that I could run a full 1 minute 50 second ‘long hill’ session at 10k pace from the junction of Shaftesbury Road to the big tree at the top. Not only that, but I could do it five times in a row. 5!

I also discovered that 1 minute and 50 seconds is a long time. Particularly the last 50 seconds. After the second rep I stopped looking at my watch until I was nearly at the top and that helped a bit. The fourth rep was the hardest. I gave everything I could to the final one, much to the amusement of the builders blocking the pavement at the top. Sod them, I have walked up so many hills this year that nothing could rain on this morning’s little victory parade.

I’ve no idea if these sessions will make me faster over 10k, but if they stop me walking up every hill of a morning, that will be enough.

Two for One Workout

Last night’s interval session was performed to a soundtrack of Kazuo Ishiguro’s “A Village After Dark”, read by Ben Marcus on the fabulous (and free) New Yorker Fiction Podcast.

It is an eerie tale, set in an “airtight world”, as Ben Marcus put it. I ran my 1200m intervals on a loop of surburban streets in the dying evening light. As I ran, the sentences of the story crossed the Crouch End roads like swooping telephone lines, catching me in their imaginary web. At the close of my final interval the story ended and the discussion began, but the web I had weaved still held me as I headed slowly up the hill back home.

I love listening to short stories when running, and the ones I love best are those where I have to work hard to understand them, where I have to take part. Where meaning drifts in the space between the words, waiting to be found. This was one of those stories. I savoured the delicious feeling of uncertainty, of teetering on the edge of confusion and clarity. I think that feeling might be a secret door into the unconscious mind. I felt it at the end of the film Mulholland Drive. I didn’t know why it made sense, I couldn’t explain exactly what happened (and I didn’t want to), but I knew it was right and I knew it was great. Sureness and confusion, safety and danger, all experienced at the same time.

I’m not going to make an analogy with running here. Running is sometimes a complex combination of mental and physical effort, but last night’s effort was purely physical. My mind was working on other things and the disconnection was almost total. My body was running, my mind was listening and my brain was putting together a story about memory, about death, regret, guilt, self-loathing, or just a small village after dark.

I love Liverpool

I do.

It’s beautiful: big sky, tall buildings, wide river, friendly people, scouse accents. There is a lot to love here. This morning I skipped an 8am session on immigration law to run 6 miles around the city centre and the docks. I ended up in Toxteth at one point because my navigation skills were rather lacking, but that just added an extra frisson to the experience.

The docks are spectacular, great clouded pools of sky. There were hardly any people around – I ran right past the conference centre but saw no police with guns; it was much more relaxed than Birmingham. Like that city, huge amounts of money have been spent here on regeneration but, in contrast, it hasn’t all been spent on shopping centres. Whatever you think of the Museum of Liverpool building, it is at least a whacking great monument to there being more to Liverpool than places to buy stuff.

10k Training: Week Two

29 miles in 5 sessions this week and it felt easy. I don’t want to over-think this, but either it’s a fluke or I am actually getting fitter.

It may be no coincidence that I haven’t been drinking much booze lately. Another thing I’d rather not examine too closely. I like a glass of wine, but I’m no Oliver Reed – two glasses and I’m drunk – so I would be quite shocked if my paltry booze consumption were impeding my running performance. I would also be quite gutted. Pinot Grigio is my pal, Chardonnay is my chum. I’m not ready to let go.

Another party conference today and tomorrow, so the booze may be making an appearance, but I plan to experience Liverpool by pavement as well. The hotel has a swimming pool so I might have to experience that afterwards. Marvellous.

Short Hills

Last night I ran the first ‘short hills’ session in the plan. I didn’t check exactly how short a short hill was, so ran 10 x 45 seconds up the hill, jogging back down to the bottom. Turns out it should have been 50-60 seconds, oops. It did feel a bit too easy. Maybe I didn’t push hard enough, as the ‘long hills’ session was so difficult and I feared running out of juice.

Next week looks tougher, but if I’m finding it easy as this week I’ll switch to the 35-40 miles a week version of the plan and get more reps and miles in.

Get me!

I’m looking forward to this weekend’s running, a short tempo run tomorrow followed by an easy 10 miles on Sunday. I’m going to leave that run until after I’ve watched Paula Radcliffe’s return in the Berlin marathon. I really want to believe that she can come back on top form. She’s a role model for 30-something female runners everywhere. No pressure then, Paula.

Running for Office

This week I went to my first party conference. On the train on the way to Birmingham, studying the agenda and working out what to attend, I entertained a brief hope: maybe it wouldn’t be a gathering of political activists, journalists and special advisers? Maybe it would actually be a conference about parties? Or a conference OF parties? Perhaps we would all have to eat birthday cake and take part in organised games for prizes? I was briefly cheered.

Sadly, it really was a party political affair, though there were an awful lot of free sandwiches and many terrible jokes. There was also singing, though the only prize for that seemed to be getting as far away from it as possible, which I was happy to do.

Despite ‘fringe’ events starting before 8am, I managed to fit in a run. I don’t know Birmingham very well and worried about the route. Usual rules seem not to apply there – being able to see your destination is no guarantee that you will actually be able to reach it. Public spaces are suddenly intersected by motorways, roads cut off by shopping centres. I had a look on mapmyrun and saw that most people’s routes in central Birmingham were along canals rather than streets. This made sense – provided I could find a canal there was little chance of getting lost on the towpath.

I chose the Worcester & Birmingham Canal and had a very pleasant, if a little quiet, 4 mile run. Tall trees and buildings rose directly from the opposite bank, shutting out the morning sun. Under gloomy bridges, the pounding of my footsteps echoed loudly, only to be swallowed up by the dark, still water on my escape. I passed a couple of other runners, a few cyclists whizzed by at a frightening speed, but mostly I had the city to myself.

Arriving back at Gas Street Basin, two armed police with huge black guns waved me back onto the street. Back to civilisation.