Category: Ho hum run

Last night I chose the sofa over the pavement, waiting until this morning to test out the creaking knee. This was the right choice. I didn’t feel any twinges during the run and managed to reach the top deck of the bus afterwards without causing a 91 pile-up on the stairs.

It’s good that the run was injury-free, but that didn’t make it a ‘good day’. I’m supposed to be racing a 10k on Sunday and I have rarely felt less like doing it. I haven’t kept my promise of re-starting interval training. I haven’t raced a 5k outside. I’ve just plodded along at my usual pace, well within my comfort zone, for weeks.

This morning I ran 6 miles, which was good, but I stopped to walk 3 times, which was not. I can blame it on the fact that I hadn’t eaten, that I’m not good in the mornings, but the fact is that I walked because I could. I just don’t have the motivation to cause myself actual pain running up hills at 6.15am if I don’t have to, at the moment. I need a goal, and 10k is clearly not enough.

What I’m hesitating to write here is that I need a marathon, because then I might actually have to do one.

In less scary news, the highlight of my run today was running past an extremely cool guy running in a cut-off Motley Crue t-shirt and a beanie hat. He was a tiny bit overweight, wearing flapping basketball shorts and unsuitable trainers, but bounding along pretty fast. He smiled and half-waved at me, breaking the London runners’ code. I was very tempted to high five.

Yesterday we left our Swaledale cottage and made the long journey back to London. We wanted to fit in one last run in the fresh air so I set my alarm for 6.30. We hadn’t slept well. The room was damp, the bed lumpy and there were ominous scuttling sounds in the wall.

The previous evening, over delicious fish and chips and local beer, I had happily agreed to risk the rabbit run again – this time the mountains would be but molehills! In the grim light of dawn expectations were duly lowered. During whispered negotiations over tooth-brushing we agreed: 15 minutes out, then turn around; slow; no big hills.

It was not a great run, as you may expect. Yet now that I am in London, hemmed in by concrete and other people’s radios, I remember it differently. In 30 minutes we passed pheasants, sheep, chickens and rabbits (of course). We crossed a shallow river, a waterfall almost trickled dry, pushed our way through wet grass and hobbled over mud and stones. The air threatened autumn in its chill and the clouds hung low over the valley. Stone walls and ancient houses meandered along the river. No-one was watching but us.

On my way from the tube station to Tesco last night I saw more people than I did all last week. It’s so strange that we choose to live in the pockets of strangers like this.

I live in a hilly part of London. I know runners often disagree about what counts as ‘hilly’, but I would say that last night’s 6 mile circuit of Highgate, East Finchley, Muswell Hill and Crouch End was hilly.

I walked three times. I am not proud of this but it has been a long week. I tried to push myself over the first (and hilliest) ten minutes but I could tell my lungs weren’t up to the task. The legacy of giving blood is still there – I feel much less fit than I did a month ago.

I want to test myself, push myself harder again. Today I’m heading up to the Yorkshire Dales for a week’s holiday, with my trainers. I have a feeling I’m about to find out what ‘hilly’ really is, and it won’t look like this:

Running home from work, I used to loop through Islington’s leafy backroads – the quiet squares of Barnsbury, the faded terraces of Canonbury, a peek into the shop windows of Essex Road. Lately though, when I am spat out of the revolving doors of my office building onto the King’s Cross pavement at 5.30pm, I have been drawn towards Camden Town. 

I think my love of  Regent’s Park has crept slowly east; I used to hate going to Camden. Arriving late at night, I would scurry from the tube to the Electric Ballroom or a late night bar, trying not to catch anyone’s eye. The heady mix of chancers and drunks selling their souls down by the Lock never seemed romantic to me. I never went in daylight. 

Last night I ran a circuit of Camden back-streets, breathing in dust and fumes as I ran past council estates and faded townhouses, grandeur and squalor. I braved the wandering chaos of the High Street, dreamed of New York on Delancey Street, and had to rewind my podcast on St Pancras Way, too busy people-watching to pay attention.

At the corner of Camden Road, two girls were photographing the street sign. A fading bunch of flowers was tied to the railing and I turned to gawk intrusively. “AMY” was written on the sign.

It’s odd how an area can be so inextricably bound to a person. I am just waking up to the tawdry romance of Camden, but Amy Winehouse is its pin-up girl, now forever tattoed to its arm. I ran on to Tufnell Park and Archway, back to the quiet hinterland where I live, anonymously, happily. Luckily.

I made a second attempt at photographing the greenest of green trees this morning. This one was on Avenue Road in Crouch End, enjoying a morning bathe in the sun. He looked very handsome.

It was a beautiful morning for a run today – my stomach was feeling a little worse for wine –  but I managed a 5 mile circuit of the Crouch. One ear of my headphones has stopped working, so I could only enjoy Joni with my left brain. I looked at life from one side only. It still looked pretty good to me.

It’s hard to take a good photograph on a cameraphone. Sometimes, if the light is right and the hand is steady, it’s possible to capture an approximate likeness of reality, but most pictures disappoint. Last night on the way home I ran past some trees in Camden that were a supremely green kind of green and I wanted to capture them for this blog, as I knew I wouldn’t be able to describe them using words.

Sadly the clouds had thickened overhead and the picture doesn’t show the looming flourescence of the leaves. They just look like ordinary leaves, not something to make you stop in your tracks and fumble with your phone in an attempt to fix them in the memory.

Oh well, the photo does show one of my favourite streets to run down, so I thought I’d put it up anyway. It’s a short, wide street in Camden between the Park and tube and I like peering into the little shops and pubs and imagining who lives in the houses and flats. I have got into some odd habits when running this route home – I look forward to certain streets, trees, gardens or shop windows – even patches of particularly smooth pavement have been known to give me pleasure.

I’m slightly deaf this morning after a very loud gig last night. It’s been a metal kind of week, so I was a bit laissez faire with the earplugs and kept taking them out to fully appreciate the onslaught of noise coming from the speaker 5 metres away. With that, and the drizzling rain, this morning’s run was a muted affair.

I ran 3 miles more out of habit than desire. I was up, it seemed like the right thing to do. No hangover this morning, apart from the sonic one. I was only planning a short run and I wanted it to be flat, so I found a new route around Archway and Tufnell Park. All main roads, no beauty, no hills either. Job done.