Not a Jogger

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?

The Idiocy of Strangers

I am not a violent person. When I do get angry, it’s usually at myself or, occasionally, at more general things like racism, cheating, or people who wear leggings as if they were trousers.

When faced with someone jumping a queue, though, or a woman with visible knickers, I struggle to get angry at them personally. It just makes me sad, because I know they’re humans having bad days or fundamental lapses in judgement, and I too am a human who has bad days (though I would never leave the house in a pair of tights and a leather jacket).

This morning I got angry at a person, personally, in person. It is the 1st of November and I was running down Tufnell Park Road at 6.30am in the dark. Two men and a woman were filling the pavement ahead of me, tripping down the footpath on their way home from a Halloween’s carousing. They were young and tall and costumed, probably students with nowhere they had to be on a Tuesday morning. I ran close to the wall, annoyed that they didn’t seem to be making room when, just as I was squeezing by, the girl screamed into my face, then laughed as I jumped and dodged out of her way.

It was nothing. A split-second encounter.

I was so cross it took me the rest of the run to calm down. I wanted nothing more than to turn around, run after the girl and push her to the ground. I wanted to do it so much my fingertips ached with the longing to do it. I wanted to scare her. I wanted to show her I wasn’t scared. I wanted to tell her she was an idiot.

I didn’t. People love to goad or taunt runners, because they know that a 6.30am running type isn’t going to turn around and deck them. If you ever retaliate, or shout at them, they are offended, “I was only joking”, they say. Well, I’m not laughing.

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.

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.

Weekly Round-Up, Race Climb Down

My training has been going well, though last week I only managed four sessions, and I was looking forward to trying for a sub-43 minute 10k on 6th November. Last night, however, I decided to postpone this world record* attempt until 2012.

Nothing dramatic, I’ve just recently started a course of medical treatment which is leaving me really tired. I’m perfectly able to run, but running at full pelt and high mileage seems foolish and probably counter-productive. It’s time to put my health first and at the moment that means running less and sleeping more. Ho hum.

I was really enjoying running a tempo, hill and interval session every week so hopefully I can pick it up in the New Year once I’m off the drugs (this makes it sound like I am currently having a lot more fun that I really am).

Pre-race postponement, I managed a 10 mile run to Regent’s Park on Saturday and thoroughly enjoyed it, though it did wipe me out for the rest of the day. Had we not had visitors on Saturday night I would have been in bed by 7.30pm. It’s non-stop party in my flat.

*world record for fastest 10k run by a 36 year old woman from North London with two cats called Bill and Ted

Sticking it to the Plan

I haven’t been sticking to the plan. I missed my interval run session on Tuesday, kept to the steady 5 miles on Wednesday, but wasn’t sure what to do yesterday. Should I run the stipulated ‘5 x long hills’ or do Tuesday’s 8 x 600m at 3k pace instead?

I left the house undecided. I’d mapped out a 600m section of road, but it started at the bottom of my ‘long hill’, so I was still keeping my options open. At the end of my mile warm-up I finally made up my mind and plumped for the intervals.

On the second interval, it dawned on me that the first 100m of the interval was straight up a hill. It was like a mini-hill session in itself. I was getting tired. Maybe I could count this as a hill session too? Was there therefore any need to run the full 8 intervals or could I possibly run fewer? Maybe I could run only 6. Or even 5?

I ran 5. Not enough for an interval session, not enough for short hill session, but enough for my tired legs and lungs. Take that, plan.

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…

5k Challenge – Parkrun Edition

This weekend Mr N and I did our first parkrun in Finsbury Park. I’ve been meaning to go along for ages, it’s such a great idea – a 5km race, measured and timed, running every Saturday morning and, best of all, completely free.

It was a beautiful morning, but I am in two minds about how it went:

On the one hand, I was the first woman (none of this ‘lady’ nonsense please) to finish, I ran 21.36 on a hilly course (43 minute 10k pace), I ran hard but didn’t kill myself.

On the other, Mr N beat me; I thought I could run under 21 minutes, I thought this training plan might help me run a 42 minute 10k, which seems really unlikely if I can’t run a 21 minute 5k. Did I mention that Mr N beat me?

I have always known that this day would come. The circle is now complete, he was but the learner, now he is the master. My powers are weak, the force is no longer strong with me. I have gone over to the dark side.

Birthday present?

On Thursday I was 36. Hard to believe, what with my youthful good looks and poorly dyed hair, but it is true. I can’t say I’m a fan of the inexorable march of time, but I still love birthdays.

When I was young, my parents used to plant presents at the foot of our beds to surprise us in the morning. Now that I’m older, and a little bit taller, this might result in smashing, so Mr N waited until I had drunk a cup of tea before breaking out the swag. It was a good haul – this is what comes of circulating a list in advance.

Terminally sensible, I took the day off and worked out a day of lovely things to take my mind off the ticking clock. It included a run, of course. Sadly I wasn’t in charge of the training programme and its birthday present to me was “tempo hills”.

Tempo hills are like regular hills designed by Satan. In a regular hill session, at the top you jog gasping back down like a deflated balloon slowly filling with air. In a tempo hill session you get to the top, turn right back around and run down fast, not pausing to recover your breath.

I demand a refund.