Running on the downs

After weeks of micro-training (if we can agree to call it that for ease?) I finally got out for a run with Daren this morning.

It almost didn’t happen, because one of us had a moment of reluctance yesterday! This could have easily been either of us, but fortunately the other one had been looking forward to the run sufficiently to be able to tip the balance of the decision.

We decided not to do the loop, but rather to simply go from the Windmills to Ditchling Beacon (and on to the bottom of the next hill), and back… walking the ups and only running the downs.

Our accompanying conversation typically has the essence of a game about it, which reminds me of squash. In squash it’s important to dominate the T, in the centre of the court, in order to make your opponent (actually, it always used to be me) run round more and tire themselves out, while you’re able to serenely pick your shots and think about what’s going on. In our conversational game there is no opponent, but a well-timed open question means that you get to be pulled up the hill by the other’s answer, rather than gasping for breath and cognitive bandwidth yourself.

There was a slight disagreement about the distance. Daren’s watch claimed 4.5 miles, whereas Strava reckoned it was 4.99 miles, and dropping pins onto Google maps suggests maybe 4.8 miles. Whatever the number, we were moving for 84 minutes… so we’re well into the super-slow category in either case, which suggests that we need to do more running!

While I’m on the subject of running more, whilst the conversation only had two participants, we did actually have a third compatriot with us…. little Lyra. She ran circles around us the whole way (easily twice our distance), and looked like she was ready to go again when we returned!

Running nowhere, slowly

On 14sep, Daren called to invite me to do the double downhill loop, after a long absence. I did actually have a plausible reason for not being able to go, but what terrified me was that I was so out of shape, given a decline in motivation to even climb aboard the running machine, that the loop might actually have finished me off!

When we’re completely stuck like that, it pays to find a way to do something rather than nothing, and something which is simple enough that you can do it regularly.

My simple something was essentially ‘running for coffee’.

My hob-top quadspresso machine takes just under 4 minutes to brew and for many years I have used that time in the morning to do some simple qigong breathing and stretching exercises, along with a tiny bit of yoga, before sitting to enjoy the coffee.

But I often have one or two more cups when I’m working at home, and it struck me that I could use that time to gently run on the spot. I reasoned that this was about as friction-free as it’s possible to get, in terms of exercise… and that if I couldn’t manage something this simple, then there was likely to be a more fundamental problem!

I started that day with two cups of coffee, and have managed to keep it up across the intervening 7 weeks, sometimes setting a timer for four minutes when I didn’t fancy a coffee. However, I’ve not been slavish about doing it every day as, for example, it’s not so easy to do in front of other people when I’m on campus.

Using my dodgy mental arithmetic, I reckon that 63 stationary runs equates to around 3 hours of running… not bad considering that I would otherwise simply be waiting for my coffee!