Tag: Running

I’m Running up that Hill

Last week I ran four 5 mile runs, using two different routes: one flat, one hilly. I didn’t fancy either route this morning, so I left the house without a plan. I ended up zig-zagging around Crouch End for 6 miles over a mixture of hills and flat bits.

Over Christmas a friend expressed surprise that I, Not A Jogger, would ever give in and Walk during a Run. He was right, I’m always advising people to “run really really slowly but never walk”. In my defence, I’ve lost fitness and it’s really hilly, but that’s no excuse. As I was struggling up the first hill this morning I remembered something I had heard in a marathon talk podcast over the weekend. On the show, Tom and Martin had a ‘training talk’ segment about hills and how to tackle them in races. Tom discussed how, during his best ever race, he decided to run hills with an even heart-rate – not going above 162 on the way up, and not below 158 on the way down. To do this, he had to run very slowly on the way up, and really fast on the way down.

I don’t have a heart-rate monitor, but I decided to give this a go based on how out-of-breath I felt.

It worked!

I ran solidly for the whole 6 miles and managed to feel good at the brow of each hill instead of struggling to get my breath back all the way to the bottom. I also loved pelting it as fast as possible on the way down.

Highly recommended.

Approaching 30…

No, not me, my mileage. I’m still 21*.

Marathon training starts on 16 January, one week away. My aim over Christmas was to get up to 30 miles a week by now. Or was it 35? Either way, I ran 30 miles last week. Actually I ran 29.7, but given the margin for error on the mapmyrun app, this was definitely over 30.

Probably. During Sunday’s run the disembodied Voice of the App announced that I had run “distance: 3.0 mile” twice, so I’m taking her pronoucements with a pinch of salt. Mysteriously, by mile 8 we were back on course.

I ran twice this weekend: a 5.5 mile trot on Saturday and a supposedly slower paced 9 miles on Sunday. In actual fact I ran them both at the same pace, though Sunday’s felt much easier. There was no logic to this, and certainly no plan behind it. I should have been more tired on Sunday and it felt like I was running much more slowly.

When the training starts I must be stricter with my pace. Faster sessions will have to get harder and easy runs will need to be just that. The long Sunday runs should be 1 minute per mile slower than my planned marathon pace so I will be spending a lot more time on my feet. I may need some new podcast recommendations.

*A lie.

Elevation Revelation

Yesterday morning I woke at 6am and staggered into the kitchen to get a glass of water before going for a run. ‘What is that sound?’, I wondered as I headed for the sink. An aeroplane seemed to be passing directly overhead. At the sink I looked up to see waves of water washing down our sloping skylight, spattered with falling gobs of hail.  

I went back to bed.

At 6pm I tried again. The wind had dropped to a non-terrifying level and the rain had dried up, leaving a clear and cold London skyline winking beyond the tops of Crouch End’s hills. Hills that, I now have a mapmyrun elevation to prove, are properly hills. Hills that I ran all the way up and down for the first time in a while.

The first 1.6 miles of my regular Muswell Hill route are uphill, and there are only 1.5 miles of flat running in the whole route. Experience had told me that this was the case, of course, but somehow seeing it in digital colour was a revelation.

Cold Runnings

Ugh. My cold is officially A Cold and I am officially a boring person who bores everyone as if she were the only person in the world ever to have A Cold. I can only apologise in advance, and promise to avoid the word ‘mucus’.

It was more of a struggle than usual to get up at 6am for this morning’s 5 miles. As well as coping with the Cold, I had our cat Bill to contend with overnight. He had been granted special permission to sleep on the bed due to having a(nother) torn up face from fighting, so the combination of trying to curl around him and continuing to breathe out of my blocked nose didn’t result in the best night’s sleep.

Once out of the house though, I was sure that five minutes’ running would be enough to clear the passages (sorry) and make me feel better. Alas, it was not to be. The constant feeling that I was about to sneeze stayed with me for the whole run. I used a whole packet of tissues and exhausted my total supply of motivation. By the final mile I was running as if pushed from behind by a broom handle in the lower back, arms and legs flailing pathetically.

It was not a vintage performance. I managed, just, to keep my pace below 8 minutes a mile which, under the circumstances, is nothing to be sniffed at.

(Sorry)

In with the New

The 2nd of January dawned bright and cold in London. By 7:30am there was a hint of blue in the sky and, could it be? Yes, the sun was making its first appearance of the year.

Outside my bedroom window the garden was slowly filling with colour. Inside my head was filling with cold. Mr N has had various forms of man-flu since Christmas Eve and they seem to have finally caught up with me.

However, it was the last day of the holidays, the sun was out and I need to run 30 miles this week. Of course I was going to run. To help, I tried a new trick to motivate me.

I’ve used MapMyRUN for ages to plan my runs but I didn’t realise that their free iPhone app could measure and time my runs. I take my phone with me anyway – why didn’t I know about this earlier? I downloaded it and set it to talk to me every mile, telling me my average pace.

It worked! I am always surprised when modern technology does what it says it will. The only downside is that it might make me go a bit too fast. The nice lady telling me my pace brings out my competitive side. “Only 8 minutes per mile”, she seems to be saying, “even though you were running 7 minutes 30″.

As a result, I ran faster than I have for a while. Probably not the wisest move with a cold. Here are the stats, which I will be quoting with irritating regularity from now on:

5.02 miles; 37:51 minutes; 7:35 pace.

Out with the Old

Happy New Year to all runners, ex-runners and would-be runners. I think that covers everyone.

It’s a miserable day in London so I’m glad I finished my 25 miles for the week yesterday. For the last run of 2011 I ran to Regent’s Park with Mr Notajogger and our friend Brian, aka the Rocket from Runcorn. As Mr N has been busting out super-fast 10k’s left right and centre, and Brian runs like a bullet from a gun, I had visions of them giving me the slip by Tufnell Park tube and running the next 8 miles by myself.

Thankfully they were kind; they kept to an ‘easy’ pace of just over 8 minute miles and took a trip to the gents’ half way round so I got a chance to get my breath back. I haven’t run in a group of more than two for years and it was surprisingly great. We (ok, I) talked the whole way round, I never once thought about stopping and I didn’t have to motivate myself to keep going, I just did it.

I wonder if this is something I should do more of in 2012? It’s more manageable than my other resolution – to run a marathon in 3:30. My last and only other marathon was a 3:55 but it was hilly and I took it relatively easy. If I can run a half-marathon in 7 minutes 10 a mile then I can run a full marathon in 8 minutes a mile, right?

2011 wasn’t a vintage running year for me. Other than starting this blog, I haven’t broken any new ground. Every race has been slower than my best, every training programme thwarted by illness. 2012 will be better.

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.

The Nine Before Christmas

I’m really proud of myself for managing a full 9 miler to Regent’s Park this morning. So proud that I rewarded myself with half a bottle of wine, so I’ll keep this brief.

I’m going to put my feet up for a couple of days but will be back on the 27th for another instalment. In the meantime, here’s a snowy pic of me and Mr N running on Christmas Day 2 years ago. Happy Christmas!

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Not a Morning Person

Running before breakfast is hard. When I’m fit, it’s just about manageable. When I’m not, it’s like running through porridge.

This morning I felt exhausted before leaving the house. Tiredness of the general and physical kind are combining – why isn’t it christmas yet?  I only have three days left at work – the shortest of the year –  but they feel like the longest.

Enough of my moaning. The run was tough, shorter than I had planned and I was struggling to think of anything positive to say about it, but then I realised: I had run the whole way. I didn’t stop to walk. I may have only run 3 miles, but they were 3 whole miles.

I ate my porridge with a little less resentment after that.