Ho hum run – Page 3 – Not a Jogger

So It Begins

Let the marathon training commence! The North Dorset Village Marathon is now 16 weeks away and my training for it officially started this morning at 6.15am with a 6 mile run – starting slowly, finishing faster. I completed it, despite my and the cold, and it felt ok. Not spectacular but passable. Solid. Fine.

I’m using the same training plan I used for my last (and only) marathon. It’s aimed at 3:30- 4:30 finishers, over 5 runs a week with no mid-week run longer than 8 miles. Perhaps my memory is playing tricks on me, but I think I enjoyed the training in 2010 so I’m looking forward to tackling it again.

Marathon Schedule_May2012

There are three key challenges I have to face this time however:

In 2010 I ran 3:55, this time I want 3:30.
I trained with Mr Notajogger last time, in 2012 I’m on my own.
Last time I trained in the sunlit summer and autumn, now it’s dark and cold.

I’m not so worried about 2 and 3, but 1 is going to be tough. Probably too tough. I would be happy to finish under 3:45, a ten minute PB. I do want to run 3:30 this year though, and I think I can do it this time. I don’t want to set my sights too low and regret not pushing hard enough.

3:30 marathon, you are my goal and I will have you.

Christmas Casualties

Ow. 7 miles on my feet after two solid days’ scoffing and quaffing. An hour’s penance was the least I could do, but the most I could manage. It felt like I was carrying a giant belt of cheese around my stomach. Mostly because I was.

I had it lucky. Barely one minute from the flat I spotted my first Christmas casualty, a magnificent red and gold fox lay sprawled in the centre of the road. Facing away from me, towards the park, his huge tail was ruffled by the breeze from occasional passing cars. As I turned back to look again, a van halted in the middle of the junction and a man approached the fox with a plastic bag. It was a small one, the type you would get from a corner shop, not big enough for your christmas presents. Not large enough to contain such a beast.

The next corpse I encountered was a turkey carcass lying on a grass verge, at eye level. Disturbingly red and shiny, the sight of it stayed with me for the whole run.

Litter was everywhere today. Bags full of beer cans sat next to cardboard packaging for plastic toys, wine bottles rolled down hills. Rounding the hill for home, a burst water pipe washed rubbish out of gutters and onto me via a passing bus.

Gym Jams

I darkened the doors of my gym last night as it felt less risky than running outside. Lack of risk was in this case defined by proximity to toilet facilities, rather than likelihood of muggings.

The receptionist at Fitness First greeted me with suspicion. I think she was confused as to why I had come in two weeks in a row. Or did she greet everyone in this way? A strange feeling of unreality persisted throughout my visit. In the changing room a woman stood touching her toes, backed right up against a large mirror, naked but for two blue plastic bags on her feet. On the cross-trainer next to mine, a woman was pushing out the miles, head down, with her chin touching her chest for 25 minutes. I never saw her face. While stretching, the woman behind me stopped lifting weights periodically to do a handstand against a pillar.

As I was leaving, waiting to swap my locker key for my membership card and get the hell out, the wary receptionist handed me a ticket for a spin class instead. I was wearing my coat and scarf. “Don’t make me go back in there”, I said.

A run-walk strategy

I love that there is a technical term for “walking for a bit”. Last night I adopted a run-walk strategy on my way home from work. This was sort of intentional, or at least inevitable. Cumulative tiredness has left me struggling to find the energy for running but I reasoned that: a) I had to get home somehow; and b) some of that ‘how’ could be running.

There were several bonuses to this approach. Within my ‘run-walk strategy’ I could find time for window shopping, for day-dreaming about shopping, and for actual shopping. The first was mainly indulged on Upper Street, and particularly at this shoe shop:

The poorly photographed boot (bottom right, ankle variety) had the most perfect heel I’ve seen. It was curved so sweetly it distracted me from the fact that my own functionally-shod heels hadn’t moved in five minutes. I plodded on.

The day-dreaming then induced by the passing slideshow of gleaming windows built into a theoretical orgy of consumption as I acquired multiple coats and dresses, more shoes, two woollen jumpers, a scarf and a 50s reclining chair from heaven.

My actual shopping was done in Tesco on the Stroud Green Road.

Fur Coats: the way forward

Last night’s run home from work was only my second of the week. I am finding it surprisingly easy to cut back. My bed has been particularly comfortable, the evenings especially dark.

Usually when the clocks go back it spurs me on to run. I like being out at night – there are fewer people in my way and no-one can see how fast (slow) I’m running. I can’t run in the park any more, but I feel safe running on the roads, despite the best efforts of the odd drunken idiot.

The only bad thing about running during the winter is the washing. With two runners in the house running 4-5 times a week each, our washbasket overfloweth. It’s not even cold yet so this can only get worse. By Christmas our bed will have disappeared under the piles of dirty or drying laundry and we will be forced to run in jeans and workshirts. There will be chafing.

Yesterday’s run was filthy. It was teeming down and I landed in at least two monster puddles crossing busy junctions. Back at the flat, a very wet cat was waiting on the doorstep to greet me. I peeled off my soaking kit in the hallway, attempted to find places to hang it all, emptied the washer of its current load and hung that up. The cat shook the water loose from his fur in seconds, licked off the remaining few drops in a trice and eyed me patronisingly. Where was his dinner?

Cutting Down

It’s been a low-key weekend of running. I ran home from work on Friday night, did nothing on Saturday, then went out for a quick circuit of Crouch End this morning.

This would all be great, indeed was great, but my eating habits have not adjusted to a lower mileage. A mid-morning croissant here, an afternoon cake there. My jeans are noticeably tighter. I keep waiting for my brain to tell my stomach it needs less energy but I think it must be too busy digesting the Welsh Rarebit I made for lunch.

I’m so tired at the moment there’s no way I’m increasing the mileage so there’s only one thing for it. The jeans have got to go.

21st Century Schizoid Woman

This morning’s was a run of two halves.

6.15am – 6.35am: I bounded over puddles and dodged pavement cyclists, laughing as a wet branch hit me full in the face. My music was loud and electronic, there were even bongos. I dashed up the stems of the Emirates stadium like a premiership side on a winning streak.

6.35am – 6.55am: I pounded slowly across the stadium’s uneven concrete surround, swearing as the water from hidden puddles filled my trainers and slopped up the backs of my legs. My music was quiet and sad, at one point there was total silence but for the sound of breathing. Not mine. I inched home like a premiership side that knows its glory days are behind it, but just has to keep struggling on in the hope that the old formula will come good once again.

Dark Days Ahead

I’m very behind with the blogging this week. Oh, and the running too.

After Saturday’s 5k dash, and 12 miles on Sunday, I gave myself the day off on Monday and Tuesday. Since reading Haruki Murakami’s book, I always feel guilty taking two days off in a row. It’s one of his hard and fast rules, never to do that, but on Sunday’s run I had to stop to stretch out my left ankle which has started to grumble – a sure sign that I have been overdoing it.

On Wednesday I set the alarm for 6am, ready for my comeback. On leaving the house I discovered that, since just this time last week, a darkness has covered the earth. It was a cold, bright morning yesterday but the sun was barely up when I got home, after a 5 mile trip to Tufnell Park (photo below).

I was a little delayed leaving the flat, I must admit, after standing on the doorstep for a full two minutes trying to shove my housekey into the pocket of my running tights with my gloved hands. It would not go in! I couldn’t seem to find the pocket opening, and eventually yanked off my gloves and threw them on the doormat, in a moment of petulance. It was then that I realised, of course, that I had the tights on inside out. I went back inside to change…

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.

10k Training: Week One

Another catch-up post.

Saturday was tempo run day. I had been both wanting and dreading it. Wanting it because I like the concept – it makes sense to run at the threshold of discomfort, to understand what that feels like and know you can cope. Dreading it because running at the threshold of discomfort has, in the past, been very hard to judge and has mainly involved running in discomfort. What does running at 85% effort mean? On Saturday, I think I worked it out. My tired legs meant I couldn’t run a 5k or even 10k pace, so the 20 minutes went by at half marathon pace, which felt about right.

Sunday’s 12 miler (as per plan) would have taken me to 33 miles, 10 more than last week, so I dropped it to 10 miles in the hope that would be enough to stave off injury. I know this still made for too big a jump, mileage-wise (apparently one shouldn’t add more than 10% per week), but I felt good so risked it.

It was worth it. Sunday was a beautiful early autumn morning and I made Mr N run a proper easy pace. We chatted all the way round, discussing the merits of the various dogs out for their Sunday strolls. We even managed to come up with a plan to save Arsenal’s season. I must pop in to discuss it with Arsene next time I pass the Emirates. I hear he loves that.