Running – Page 15 – Not a Jogger

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.

Key Performance Indicators (“KPIs”)

At work I have been asked to come up with a set of KPIs for my organisation. We need them so that we can proactively check progress towards our goals going forward, to make sure we’re not just picking the low-hanging fruit on a case by case basis, and that we are operating where our locus is. Or something.

It has occurred to me, whilst I attempt to come up with statistics that describe what a difference we are making to the quality of life in the UK (yes), that I am just not very good with numbers. This will come as no surprise to anyone who has watched me trying to split a bill in a restaurant, or played scrabble with me when I attempt to keep score. These things are what modern technology was invented for.

So why, when running, am I still calculating distance and speed using only my few brain cells? Last night, according to the plan, I ran 5 x 1200m at 10k pace. What I actually did was run for 5 minutes, wheeze for a minute, run for 5 minutes, wheeze for a minute, run for 4 or 6 minutes (not quite sure which), wheeze for about 2 minutes until I remembered it was time to run again but then forget which interval I was on, wheeze again, and finish it off with 4 minutes of sprinting.

I have no idea whether any of these 5 minute session was run at 10k pace, or was 1200m in length. I really need to measure a proper route, remember it and stick to it. That or I need a shiny new piece of technology to do it for me.

Woooah, we’re half way there

Week 4 of the 10k training plan = done.

This weekend included a tempo run on Saturday and a 10 mile ‘easy’ run on Sunday, taking the week’s mileage to 28. I meant to test out my speed with a timed 5k this week but failed I’m afraid, so I can’t report any effect yet. I’m not injured, or exhausted, which either means that the training’s going really well, or that it’s too easy. In either case, I’m patient (lazy) enough to wait four weeks until the race to find out.

As for the weekend’s running, well, in the words of Woody Allen, “I wish I had some kind of affirmative message to leave you with, I don’t. Would you take two negative messages?”. Both runs were terrible – the first because I was hungover, the second because there is no justice in the world. I’m ready for week 5.

Morning Gloom

Autumn is upon us. I ran 5 miles to Muswell Hill and back in the dark this morning.

Darkness pervaded the run in more ways than one: I forgot my watch; and I was listening to the BBC’s dramatisation of Life and Fate – the episode about the Holocaust. Returning to the flat, I felt a wave of relief. The clock was ticking on the wall, the sun was rising and the Today programme was reporting on Afghanistan, not Stalingrad.

I wouldn’t recommend running alone through dark streets listening to the sound of Eichmann eating lunch with a colleague in their freshly constructed gas chamber. I suppose there is no appropriate time to listen to this story, and that the important thing is that I listened at all, but I felt bad that it was the soundtrack to my leisure pursuit.

New shoe shuffle

I bought new trainers at the end of August. As ever, I had left it too late and waited for holes to start appearing in the toes of my existing ones (pair II) before shelling out for new ones (pair I). Pair II needed to be binned straightaway, but I couldn’t start running 30 miles a week in pair I. The worst running injury I’ve ever had (a stress fracture in my foot) was caused by a long run in new trainers in 1999.

Pair III came to the rescue – my marathon shoes, sentimentally kept on the shelf. They were in better shape than pair II, I decided. They would have to do.

I am still, after a month, alternating pair I and pair III. The new pair still feel small (they’re not) and tight (they’re the same size). Last night, running home, I had to stop and loosen the laces twice in 5 miles. At the weekend I stuck to pair III over the half-marathon distance. I know that soon I’ll break the new pair in properly, but that just as I do they’ll start to break down. The toes will rub thin, the inside of the heel will wear and tear into a hole.

Too new becomes too old so quickly and, for the brief period when the shoes fit perfectly, you take them for granted and forget you’ll ever need another.

And yes, it is my birthday next week.

Short Circuits

This week is billed on my training plan as ‘recovery week’. Apparently recovery begins with a killer session of 8 x 400m at mile pace (1600m pace, for fans of consistency).

Hmm.

I found this session much harder than the longer, slower intervals of previous weeks. I managed 30 seconds of each set before praying for it to be over. I don’t think I was going too fast, I just don’t think I can run fast over short distances. My 10k time is nowhere near as quick, relatively speaking, as my half-marathon one and never has been.

Sitting here on my sofa writing this at 10pm, three hours after finishing my run, my face is still hot and I feel a bit sick. I hope this is doing me some good in the long term, because the short term effects are not fun.

On the positive side, I discovered that the Emirates stadium is a perfect place to run circuits, and the lights of the Hornsey Road were a welcome sight on the way back home.

Return to Rutland Water

In November 2010, Mr Notajogger and I ran the first Rutland Water Marathon organised by Fat Feet. It was a beautiful autumn morning and views of the reservoir from its banks were stunning. We should know, we got to see them all on the way around, including the ones from the Hambleton Peninsula twice in a row.

Yesterday we returned to the scene of our marathon triumph (and tribulations) and covered almost half the course, in reverse. Mr N asked if that meant we would be running backwards. Then he asked again in case I hadn’t heard his great joke.

We started on the dreaded Peninsula. It’s always harder to run around than you expect, even once rather than twice; the hills may be short but they are very sharp. Conversation was sparse in the first four miles. Mr N didn’t enjoy his marathon as much as I did and I suspect the memories our run was evoking were none too pleasant. I, on the other hand, was irritatingly perky. I had such a good race that day – my training had gone well, our pace was sensible and the weather was great – I couldn’t believe my luck. Mr N had no such luck. His training had been plagued by niggling injuries and colds, then he was forced to run with Miss Hospital Corners, telling him to drink more, eat more, keep going.

Running the first half of the race in reverse offered a bit of catharsis, I hope. We moved from painful hills and memories, through long sections neither of us could remember, to the open stretch across the Dam to the starting/finish line. At 1o miles we were both tired, but our pace was quickening as the end point of Normanton Church was in our sights from 3 miles away. If only the same could have been said for it on the day of the marathon. Obscured by the constant ‘undulations’ of the shoreline path, my inner mantra of “this must be the last hill” came back to me as we coasted along to the finish on Sunday.

Maybe this year they should run the whole marathon in reverse. And no, I do not mean everyone should run backwards. Other than Mr N. He should definitely do that.