Good Days – Page 7 – Not a Jogger

Approaching 30…

No, not me, my mileage. I’m still 21*.

Marathon training starts on 16 January, one week away. My aim over Christmas was to get up to 30 miles a week by now. Or was it 35? Either way, I ran 30 miles last week. Actually I ran 29.7, but given the margin for error on the mapmyrun app, this was definitely over 30.

Probably. During Sunday’s run the disembodied Voice of the App announced that I had run “distance: 3.0 mile” twice, so I’m taking her pronoucements with a pinch of salt. Mysteriously, by mile 8 we were back on course.

I ran twice this weekend: a 5.5 mile trot on Saturday and a supposedly slower paced 9 miles on Sunday. In actual fact I ran them both at the same pace, though Sunday’s felt much easier. There was no logic to this, and certainly no plan behind it. I should have been more tired on Sunday and it felt like I was running much more slowly.

When the training starts I must be stricter with my pace. Faster sessions will have to get harder and easy runs will need to be just that. The long Sunday runs should be 1 minute per mile slower than my planned marathon pace so I will be spending a lot more time on my feet. I may need some new podcast recommendations.

*A lie.

Elevation Revelation

Yesterday morning I woke at 6am and staggered into the kitchen to get a glass of water before going for a run. ‘What is that sound?’, I wondered as I headed for the sink. An aeroplane seemed to be passing directly overhead. At the sink I looked up to see waves of water washing down our sloping skylight, spattered with falling gobs of hail.

I went back to bed.

At 6pm I tried again. The wind had dropped to a non-terrifying level and the rain had dried up, leaving a clear and cold London skyline winking beyond the tops of Crouch End’s hills. Hills that, I now have a mapmyrun elevation to prove, are properly hills. Hills that I ran all the way up and down for the first time in a while.

The first 1.6 miles of my regular Muswell Hill route are uphill, and there are only 1.5 miles of flat running in the whole route. Experience had told me that this was the case, of course, but somehow seeing it in digital colour was a revelation.

In with the New

The 2nd of January dawned bright and cold in London. By 7:30am there was a hint of blue in the sky and, could it be? Yes, the sun was making its first appearance of the year.

Outside my bedroom window the garden was slowly filling with colour. Inside my head was filling with cold. Mr N has had various forms of man-flu since Christmas Eve and they seem to have finally caught up with me.

However, it was the last day of the holidays, the sun was out and I need to run 30 miles this week. Of course I was going to run. To help, I tried a new trick to motivate me.

I’ve used MapMyRUN for ages to plan my runs but I didn’t realise that their free iPhone app could measure and time my runs. I take my phone with me anyway – why didn’t I know about this earlier? I downloaded it and set it to talk to me every mile, telling me my average pace.

It worked! I am always surprised when modern technology does what it says it will. The only downside is that it might make me go a bit too fast. The nice lady telling me my pace brings out my competitive side. “Only 8 minutes per mile”, she seems to be saying, “even though you were running 7 minutes 30″.

As a result, I ran faster than I have for a while. Probably not the wisest move with a cold. Here are the stats, which I will be quoting with irritating regularity from now on:

5.02 miles; 37:51 minutes; 7:35 pace.

Out with the Old

Happy New Year to all runners, ex-runners and would-be runners. I think that covers everyone.

It’s a miserable day in London so I’m glad I finished my 25 miles for the week yesterday. For the last run of 2011 I ran to Regent’s Park with Mr Notajogger and our friend Brian, aka the Rocket from Runcorn. As Mr N has been busting out super-fast 10k’s left right and centre, and Brian runs like a bullet from a gun, I had visions of them giving me the slip by Tufnell Park tube and running the next 8 miles by myself.

Thankfully they were kind; they kept to an ‘easy’ pace of just over 8 minute miles and took a trip to the gents’ half way round so I got a chance to get my breath back. I haven’t run in a group of more than two for years and it was surprisingly great. We (ok, I) talked the whole way round, I never once thought about stopping and I didn’t have to motivate myself to keep going, I just did it.

I wonder if this is something I should do more of in 2012? It’s more manageable than my other resolution – to run a marathon in 3:30. My last and only other marathon was a 3:55 but it was hilly and I took it relatively easy. If I can run a half-marathon in 7 minutes 10 a mile then I can run a full marathon in 8 minutes a mile, right?

2011 wasn’t a vintage running year for me. Other than starting this blog, I haven’t broken any new ground. Every race has been slower than my best, every training programme thwarted by illness. 2012 will be better.

The Nine Before Christmas

I’m really proud of myself for managing a full 9 miler to Regent’s Park this morning. So proud that I rewarded myself with half a bottle of wine, so I’ll keep this brief.

I’m going to put my feet up for a couple of days but will be back on the 27th for another instalment. In the meantime, here’s a snowy pic of me and Mr N running on Christmas Day 2 years ago. Happy Christmas!

Frosty Wind made Moan

The first really cold run of the winter yesterday. It was still zero degrees at 9am and the pale sun, which had been glimmering weakly, promptly disappeared as I shut the front door behind me.

Pavements were rimy and littered with hidden puddles of ice. As I struggled up the first hill, occasional hard pellets of snow scratched my face. Before I’d even registered what they were, they became dabs of slush and swooped down in wet whirls for the rest of the run.

It was hard. I managed 7 miles and an hour’s running – my first full hour in a couple of months. My hands were so cold they went completely numb and then extremely painful as the feeling returned in the last 20 minutes. Unlocking the door on my return, I felt like an astronaut in space gloves trying to pick up a pin on the moon.

Back in the flat, skin tingling, face and ears burning hot and cold, sweat and sleet mingling in my hair, I caught sight of a smile in the mirror.

I’m a runner again.

Race Report – A view from the sidelines

I am back!

Sadly, not back running (give me a week or so, then we’ll talk), but I wanted to write about Mr Notajogger’s amazing PB-smashing 10k performance on Sunday.

As he has mentioned, he’s been training for the last 8 weeks to try to improve his 10k time: 43 minutes 57 seconds. He followed the same schedule that I started, but then had to abandon. Mr N is very good at following training schedules. I tend to use them in the same way that I would a recipe, adding a handful of raisins here, changing the oven temperature there. He uses them in the way that he would a recipe, to the absolute letter. As a result, he knocked 54 seconds off his PB, and I am sitting on my bum eating cakes.

It was surprisingly fun to be watching a race, rather than participating in it. I particularly enjoyed waiting at the start line, watching 350 runners shivering through the announcements, whilst dressed in a parka and boots. Despite the grey weather, there was a lovely atmosphere – it really is a friendly race and my hands ached with constant clapping. There are three laps, so from the leader’s first appearance at about 11 minutes (!), there is always someone passing who needs to be cheered on.

Dan (Mr N) looked good at the end of the first lap, bang on time to break 43 minutes, which was his goal. The second lap is the killer in this race, it’s really hard to maintain motivation and not let self-doubt creep in. He dropped off the pace a bit, but was still looking good. I gave him a few choice words of encouragement (I may have shouted) at this point, which obviously did the trick as his final lap was his fastest and he finished in 43 minutes and 3 seconds. Whoop!

What is Dan doing to celebrate this great achievement, you might ask? Is he joining me on the sofa with the cake? Not quite. He is starting a new 8 week plan to knock off those 3 seconds.

Last Gasp of Autumn

Sunday was the kind of day that we used to call ‘unseasonably mild’: 17 C (62 F) in mid-November. I wonder if it’s now ‘seasonably’ mild? In any case it felt like spring, not winter, was around the corner. In my garden the rambling rose which began flowering in April is again in bud.

The last of the falling leaves were calling me outside. My bed was warm, but the sunlight was warmer. I think this might be my last ‘long’ run for a while. I managed an hour, stopping to walk sometimes, taking my weekly mileage to a weakling 15.

Enough of the self-pity, it was an amazing run. As I crossed the top of Alexandra Palace park I was on a literal and metaphorical high. I slowed down to savour the view: trees, newly empty of leaves; a blue mist over miles of rooves and chimneys; a couple sitting on a bench far away enough always to look happy.

Mid-way across the park, this song came on my i-pod. Like all the best Low songs, it sounds like sadness and glory, fear and hope. It could make a grown woman, running across a sunlit park on a November day, cry. Especially me.

A Very Quiet Weekend

Saturday dawned, cloudy and grey. I lazed in bed for a good couple of hours, will-I-won’t-I-ing. Eventually I scraped myself into my running shoes and lurched around the streets for 20 minutes like a zombie. The furthest I moved for the rest of the day was from the sofa to the kettle. I watched The Princess Bride, Harry Potter (5, I am way behind), and read the paper from cover to cover.

Sunday dawned, cloudy and grey. Mr N was planning an 8 mile tour of the Crouch – part of his “easy week”. I felt good, but how good? Not 8 miles good. I turned down his running chat for a solo amble with the latest This American Life podcast. In the end I ran about 7 miles, (with a minor walking break towards the end). The sun came out, the legs were steady and I even made it out of the house again that afternoon.

—

It’s hard to read about the New York marathon, or races of any kind, when you feel too tired to train properly, or you’re unfit or injured. Even on a good day, stories that should be inspirational can feel like accusations – you will never do this.

Seriously, though, running a marathon in just over two hours must involve witchcraft. It’s as fictional as Harry Potter, as much of a fairy tale as The Princess Bride. Not so many laughs, though, I shouldn’t think.

Ironic Woman

On Sunday evening, when I decided to stop the training plan and postpone my race, I was feeling good. I was making tough choices for the right reasons. What a grown-up I was being, how sensible and measured. How, dare I say, smug.

Last night I ran home from work. I mean, RAN home from work. Like a bullet from a gun. Like a rat from a trap. Like a person who could run a really fast 10k time.

Hmm.