Country Roads (Take Me Home)

Even on a cold March day with no hint of blue sky, 8 miles along country lanes like this will always beat a trot down the Stroud Green Road. I’ve been staying at the parental home this weekend and managed to get out twice, with varying success.

The first run, the dreaded ‘tempo’, is best passed over swiftly. Thanks to a minor stomach complaint it was cut short as I too was caught, um, short. I managed 36 minutes and walked (shuffled) the rest.

Today’s was thankfully untroubled by bowel-related incidents. I did however see a Red Kite, two Buzzards, a live rabbit, several dead ones and a farmer demonstrating the right place to wear a Barbour jacket and Hunter wellies (ie in a field, rather than Dalston). Amid all this nature watching, I also managed to run 8 miles at 7.5 mins/mile without really noticing.

A good run.

25 miles this week, but not a great start to the training really. I felt sluggish then ill on the interval and tempo sessions so plenty to improve on.

Friday Fail

A confession: this morning I spent 45 minutes reading my book club book in bed this morning instead of running 6 miles. I am currently feeling pretty guilty, though I will run it tomorrow instead.

As if a Friday morning spent eating toast and drinking tea  in bed, when I could have been running in the cold, wasn’t already enough of a guilty pleasure, the book I’m reading made it even more so. Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls is more Irish than a pint of Guinness eating a potato in a peat bog. I’m only 50 pages in but I’m already feeling nauseous from the steaming mounds of hokey oirish charm seved with a side order of paedophilia and domestic violence. I feel like a teenager reading a Maeve Binchy hidden under a geography text book.

Back to the running guilt. My knees are feeling a little strained after the exertions of the last 3 days so I think a rest was necessary rather than simply fancied. They have to make it through 14 miles this weekend, so I feel it only fair to let them de-creak for a day.

Double-decker

When I’m running to a training schedule, I try to fit the running in to my life, rather than the other way around. This sounds very sensible and non-Madonna-ish, but in reality it means I run at crazy times, carrying bags of stuff, with a hangover or, in today’s case, twice in 12 hours.

Yesterday’s commandment was “OFF, cross-train, or easy run of 30-45 minutes”. Today’s was “Easy run: 30-45 minutes”. I’m going out for drinks tonight so knew I would have to run this morning but, rather than take a fully legal day OFF, I hopped aboard the cross-train and went to the gym last night at 7pm like a loser.

Getting changed afterwards, I heard a woman say to her friend, “I couldn’t come more than twice a week, exercising more than twice a week is too much, it’s not healthy”. At 6.55am this morning, running up Crouch End Hill for the second time with my husband in the biting wind, I thought she might be onto something.

I’m a bit nervous about tomorrow’s run. It’s a “tempo run”, and I still don’t fully understand what they are… I think it’s when you run almost as fast as you can over that time/distance, but not quite. Which, over 4 miles with 1 mile warm up and cool down, at 6.30am with a hangover, is not going to be pretty. Eek!

New Leaves

Today I have turned over not one, but two new leaves. I have started a proper training programme and begun blogging every day. If I say it here, then I have to stick to it. Both leaves are now firmly turned over and stuck to the internet.

The first run in the programme was the snappily titled “5 x 800m at 10k pace; recover after each repeat for half the interval time”. In reality this translated as “leg it past frightened pedestrians at an uncertain pace for just over three minutes, panicking alternately that you are going too slow/fast, then wheeze along for two minutes hoping time has mysteriously stood still and you have a bit longer before the next sprinty bit”.

I was really surprised it was so hard, given that I’ve been running pretty regularly since a marathon in November. I think it’s because I struggle with the concept of 10k pace when not either a) running a 10k race, or b) on a treadmill. It’s difficult to judge how fast I am going when I have to dodge past dogs, stop for traffic lights and run up hills. I suppose I could use technology to solve this problem, but I have a feeling that it’s important to be able to judge how fast I’m running.

Apart from the uncertainty about pace, it was a fair start to my training, a 35 minute run home down some of Islington and Holloway’s less salubrious roads, listening to the new Radiohead album. I have a theory about that album which I’m hoping that future listens will bear out: I think it’s like the ‘lotus flower’ in the middle track – it slowly unfurls, starting out harsh and impenetrable, but opening out into something beautiful by the end.

Effortless running

Ok, running wherein no particular effort was expended. Not quite the same thing…

I went to the gym on Tuesday and ran 3 miles on a treadmill in the middle of my usual cross training routine, then ran 5 miles last night around Crouch End, just before the Arsenal-Barcelona match. I felt quite stiff after the weekend during both – my ankles are worrying me a tiny bit.  Weirdly, on Tuesday it was the left ankle then on Wednesday the right. I really should stretch more (that will be my epitaph).

As I’m still at work at 6pm today, so there is no chance I’m going to make myself run tonight. This might be a wise move.  I have my work appraisal tomorrow and I know I’d spend each step worrying about all the things I could say, I shouldn’t say, they might say, they might not say, I might cry. That way madness, truly, lies.

Weekly round-up

Drizzle. Not a word I want to hear, unless it’s followed by ‘extra virgin olive oil’. This morning I ran 7 miles in grey, windy, drizzling rain. My legs were quaking on the hills like an old chair about to collapse and I ran 7 miles in the same time it took me to run 8 yesterday.

On the good side, I made it to 25 miles this week, 25.5 to be precise. I ran 15 of them this weekend, so it wasn’t exactly a well balanced week, but let’s gloss over that. Quantity, not quality, is what I’m aiming for at the moment. Quality begins in a fortnight. Mmm quality street. I need chocs.

Quantum Leap

It took me a while to work out what was wrong on my run this morning. Everything seemed strange from the start- I was too warm, even wearing just a t-shirt, and the people I passed were different, and there were so many of them. Instead of workmen and postmen there were families with dogs chatting in the middle of the path, getting in my way. Pavement cafes had sprung up overnight and a hungover man eating a packet of crisps walked into me .

If I had left the flat an hour earlier I would never have seen any of these people. The Early Me would have wished I’d worn a thicker top, and saved a minute not having to dodge buggies and dog leads. I keep thinking about what Early Me might have got done in that extra hour after finishing today’s 8 miles, but Late Me knows the answer is probably not much, and maybe Early Me wouldnt be thinking right now that spring is on its way.

It was a good run in the sunshine. You can’t ask much more of mid- February really.

Clenched teeth

When I’m going through a bad patch in a run, I tend to clench my teeth, rolling my lips up and baring them like a snarling dog. At this point, usually running uphill, I’m not thinking about the effect of my grimace on passing strangers, I’m only thinking about how many breaths it will take before I can get to the top. However after the painful bit has passed, maybe sometime the next day, I remember the faces of people looking at me in horror.

“Why would someone do that to themselves?”, they must be thinking, “What is she doing? It’s 6.54am! I know I’m outside but I have to walk my dog/ get to work/ steal this car”. I think to myself that they must be jealous, they must wish they had my motivation, they wish they could run all the way up this hill without stopping. They’re not. What they’re really thinking is, “thank god that’s not me!”.

This morning I ran 5.5 miles, in the rain. I grimaced twice, once for 3 miles and once for 2 miles, as my dad would say… It wasn’t the best.

The Weirdness of Strangers

This morning I ran 5 miles around Crouch End, starting out at 6.30am in the dark, as usual. I wasn’t really paying that much attention to my surroundings, and was just sleepily chugging along listening to a fairly dull podcast when I realised I could hear breathing. It took me a few steps to work out that it wasn’t my own.

I started and turned my head around quickly, to see a tall man running up close behind me, less than 2 metres away. He spoke and I pulled out a headphone from my ear, not hearing him. He was indignant “there’s no need to be scared”, he said.  “I didn’t hear you”, I said, trying to explain my surprise, and expected him to run ahead past me. He didn’t. He kept right there, just behind my left elbow. His pace was the same as mine. There were roadworks on the other path of the quiet street, so neither of us could cross the road. A few moments later he said, “Don’t worry, I’m your guardian angel”. I looked across at him and wondered about whether I should try to remember what he was wearing for any future police statement. Then I crossed the road. Then he crossed the road. Then I turned right. Then he turned right. I slowed down and let him go past. When he had, I stopped and tied my already tied shoelace. He carried on up the hill.

Why did he say that? Did he want me to feel less scared, or more scared?

Weekend (ok, weekly…) round-up

Oooooooops, forgot to write anything after Tuesday last week. Here’s a quick round-up, then normal service will resume.

After my poor mileage the week before, last week was a tiny bit better with 19 miles in total. After 3 in the gym on Monday night, I ran 6 on Wednesday morning, then got too busy at work and didn’t manage anything til Saturday morning, when I ran a good 10, even though I’d drank booze the night before. 

I love those long runs when you feel invincible – for me they only ever happen on a weekend morning, when I’ve eaten a good breakfast, drunk a pint of water, two cups of tea, and finished the  Guardian crossword. I’m not just a running geek..