Not a Jogger

Too much, too soon

Or, “when will I learn?”

Yesterday’s rain-a-thon was a 7 miler, so I could have gone for a short run today; a 5 mile trot around Crouch End would have been fine. Me being me, however, I decided it would be a good idea to run to Regent’s Park (4 miles away), run round it and come back – 9.5 miles in total.

I didn’t manage it.

Waking up this morning I didn’t feel dizzy or faint. Things were back to normal, I was convinced. I was fine on the way down to the Park, some stiffness from yesterday’s run, but my head was clear and I was happy to be out dodging puddles. Then I set foot on the soggy grass and knew that things would be going downhill as soon as I started the uphill return leg. The woozy dizziness had returned and the horizon started bouncing around oddly in my peripheral vision. It was a strange feeling, not like I would keel over at any minute, more an uncertainty about what might happen with every step. I had to marshal every part of my brain to land each foot on the ground. As I rounded the final bend in the Park I entertained a brief fantasy of flopping face forward into the welcoming wet turf and lying there until lunchtime.

I didn’t. I dropped the pace but kept running until Tufnell Park, then walked the rest of the way home. With an “out and back” route there is no shortcut, walking is the only way forward. I’m glad – at least I got the miles done, slowly.

Rained On

The good news is I made it out for a run, the bad news is so did the clouds. They were so happy to see me running again they cried. A lot.

The only people out on the streets today were running, mostly to their cars or for the bus, but some were running to run. We grimaced at each other as we passed. No-one had been caught by surprise, it had been raining all morning and will continue all weekend. We knew we would get wet but we went out anyway.

I usually like running in the rain, if it’s not too cold. The streets are quiet and as long as I have a cap on and can actually see through my glasses it doesn’t bother me to get wet. I have an expensive gore-tex running jacket I could wear but I don’t usually bother. It’s too swishy. And pink. Why do all women’s running clothes come in pink? Grr.

I am wondering why I didn’t enjoy this morning’s run. I think it’s due to still feeling a bit dizzy after giving blood and worrying about that. That and the relentless rain. In Alexandra Palace Park the street lamps were still lit against the darkening sky – at 11am.

When I got home I had to take off my dripping clothes in the hallway before i was allowed in the flat. I should probably go and pick them up…

Vampires ate my trainers II: this time it’s serious

I gave blood on Monday night and Thursday finds me only just capable of walking without feeling faint, so I don’t think there’s much chance I’ll run this week.

I don’t really understand what’s going on with my body. When I gave blood in March I felt fine afterwards; my running wasn’t at its best in the following two weeks, but I didn’t feel faint or sick. Giving blood is an important act, and a small amount of wobbly headedness is a small price to pay for saving a life so this shouldn’t put anyone off donating, but I would quite like to feel normal again now please.

I managed to walk to work this morning, which was made interesting by a couple of serious head-spins when I looked up quickly from the pavement or my i-pod to the street. It reminds me of the winter when I had labyrinthitis or, as Mr N called it, David Bowie Disease. Sadly this didn’t involve hanging out with the Goblin King, rather constant dizziness and nausea. At its worst I couldn’t walk without falling over because I wasn’t able to tell whether my feet were hitting the ground or the walls. Fun times.

This faintness is nothing like labyrinthitis dizziness – I know it would stop if I lay down – so I’m trying to treat it like a trippy addition to my commute. It was a little bit like walking on a bouncy castle at times, but most of the pavements stayed where they should be and I managed to remain upright. Concrete is no soft rubber pillow, as my smashed i-phone screen can testify.

Wake-up call

Back to work today, and to rising at 6am for a run.

I was tired, but after the initial shock of the alarm and a fight to open my eyes, a smile started to wake up my face. Into the kitchen to feed the weaving cats, back into the dark bedroom to pull on my kit, a quick brush of the teeth and out onto pavements dark with last night’s rain, glittering in the sun. It was a beautiful morning, even on the Holloway Road. I passed several other runners who looked deep in thought, pondering the day, the week, or perhaps just breakfast.

I myself have eaten two breakfasts and am about to go for my second lunch, as it is time to give blood again and after last week’s croissant festival, I will take any excuse to fill my face.

There was a young lady who swallowed a fly…

…or more precisely, two flies. I don’t know why she swallowed two flies, perhaps it’s because once was not enough and the coughing fit induced by the first one was so much fun that she ran for the next 8 miles with her jaw hanging open just hoping for another throat buzz.

Yeuch. In addition to ingesting winged beasts, I have been running twice since returning from Paris: a gentle 5 miler on Friday afternoon and a stiff 10 yesterday morning.

I think a few days off running was a good thing, though I did walk down every Rue in Paris so they weren’t really rest days. I didn’t miss it at all, it was hot and there weren’t many runners on the streets. It seems that Parisiennes get their exercise by smoking and walking their tiny dogs, with an occasional trip on a scooter.

I’m not sure where I would have gone to run – there was a man in the Luxembourg gardens who looked like he was on lap 3 of 45. Give me Regent’s Park any day. Everything’s bigger there: the dogs, the trees, the love handles. There isn’t an actual palace though, I’ll give you that Paris.

Au Revoir

I’m off to Paris for a few days this week and I am not taking my trainers. I have filled my travelbag with floaty dresses rather than sweaty t-shirts; it’s packed, the deed is done. I will have to use the time I would have been running to eat macarons and have afternoon naps. Quel domage!

In all seriousness, I am feeling a bit nervous about a few days without running, which is an indication that this might be a good idea.

Yesterday I prepared for the oncoming rest with a 10.5 mile run. It seems this summer thing is actually going to keep happening, so I made myself take the camelpak and choose a route which took in as many parks and the shade of as many trees as possible.

I stopped to take this photograph of the angel in Highgate Cemetery as I ran down the hill. I like to keep track of how he’s doing; I was quite jealous of his shady bower.

The stillness of the Cemetery was quickly broken. I set off late and the pavements were punctuated by runners. There were charity events in Hampstead Heath and Regent’s Park, and every patch of grass was filled with cricket players and dogs, sunbathers and Ricky Gervais (now there’s a celebrity spot for you, Michelle).

Until Friday, au revoir mes amis.

Morning Morgantown

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.

Cretins

It’s Wimbledon time, and therefore the season to get disproportionately annoyed at other people. My Dad likes to shout “Cretins! Morons!”, and “Peabrains!”, at the television whenever the audience yell “Come on Tim!” just before the player is about to serve . According to Pa Notajogger, audience participation in sport should be limited to polite applause. Apart from when Leeds Utd are losing, of course, at which point it is mandatory to hurl insults in a broad Yorkshire accent you haven’t used for 40 years.

Yesterday evening I experienced some unwanted audience participation of my own and I rather wished my Dad had been there to voice his opinion.

It was time for the 5k Challenge III so, although I was very tired, hot and really didn’t want to, I planned out a 5k outdoor route and attempted to run it as fast as I could. The route wasn’t ideal: there were roads to cross, people to get stuck behind and hills to run up and down. It was also a warm evening and I was mildly dehydrated. Enough of the excuses. Two kilometres in it was going badly but I was holding on. At the next upward stretch I ran past the open door of a betting shop, which pumped out a blast of cold stale air, along with a thickset man who started running close beside me up the slope, shouting words into my face.

I don’t know what he was saying – I had headphones in and was staring straight ahead – but it was something like, “Come on, run faster, even I can beat you!”. He was laughing like a drain. People have done this to me before, but usually the cretin pretends to run for two seconds but then gives up, but this moron kept on running, and he was faster than me. Automatically, my legs speeded up, ‘I can beat this peabrain!’, my body said. Then my mind kicked in and countered, ‘I will not alter my running plan for this loser’. I slowed down and the guy threw his arms into the air in a victory gesture, cheering.

Rounding the corner away from him, I slowed to a jog to catch my breath. At 4km I slowed to a walk for 10 seconds. I left the watch going and finished the 5k in 21 minutes, 25 seconds. Not too far from my treadmill time if you take into account the slowing and walking, but you can’t do that. The time I finished it in is the time it took. If I hadn’t slowed down to walk I would have slowed down in general.

The gym isn’t real life and the treadmill isn’t real running. Real running comes with other people.

Capturing beauty

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.

Hot Hot Hot

Yesterday was the British summer. That was it. It was already 25 degrees by 9am and, just a few days after midsummer, the sun was high in the sky. Mr N and I girded our loins with as few items of clothing as possible and headed out for a 9 mile run to Regent’s Park.

Along with my good sense, I left my water-bottle-belt-thing at home because the belt needs to be tight and if it’s on tight then it makes me really hot. I realise that this was not good logic on a hot day. I always dismiss runners carrying drinks with scorn, “bottle w@nkers,” I judge them, “they’re probably running for 20 minutes, what are they going to do, die of dehydration in that time? Ha ha”. Well, the joke was on me yesterday, and I didn’t even have any money to buy any water either. W@nker.

It was a terrible run. We clung to the shadows of tall buildings on the way to Camden and veered from tree to tree in the Park, but I still came back with sunburn. My leg strength had been used up by a long walk on Saturday so it felt like there were swinging sandbags attached to my knees. Nearing the Park exit, we stopped to dunk our whole heads under the taps where a couple were washing their panting dog. With a soaked vest slapping against my back I forced my flailing body onwards, onwards, up the hill towards home and a cold, cold drink.

Next summer I will take the bottle, remember the sunscreen and not be so mean about other runners.