FosterRuns – Page 17

June 15, 2014July 6, 2014

Infill 3

Not really up to much, but managed to run on the machine for half an hour and covered 3.54 miles… a shade over 7mph.

I had dropped in to see my folks the day before… it’s not hard to see where I get my interest in gardening from…

June 5, 2014

Recovery time

I’ve been laid low with illness for the last couple of weeks and am only just starting to get back on my feet.

However on the 18th May, just before I started spiralling downhill, I managed to choose a beautiful day for a run in the woods… which I hope the pictures below convey.

6.2 miles in an hour (from memory).

April 27, 2014April 27, 2014

Running in the rain, protected by a house

Apologies for no run last weekend… despite the Bank Holiday weekend I managed to only have one day of rest when I took the opportunity to go to see my folks. I was also catching up on work and studying most of yesterday, but finished around 6pm and cut the grass as well as the green opposite… I love this time of year!

By the time I emerged from my head this morning (which had been buried deep in Source, by Joseph Jaworski) I had missed the best of the sunlit morning and it was throwing it down with rain.

I contemplated putting on my wet-weather gear… well, not really. Actually I jumped on the running machine and set it to 7 mph and decided to do 5 miles, or maybe 45 minutes.

After half a mile I increased the speed by 0.2 and carried on increasing each half mile until I had run for three miles and reached 8 mph. Then I reduced to 7 mph again and increased each quarter mile. After a final quarter mile at 7 mph I increased to 10 mph in order to sneak my 5 miles in under 40 minutes… 39.51 to be precise, an average of 7.5 mph.

I then cooled down by walking until the 45 minute mark, when my average was still just above 7 mph. The rain paused just in time for me to go outside to stretch and I’ve spent most of the rest of the day studying… at least I’m enjoying it!

April 27, 2014April 27, 2014

TEDx LBS 2014

On Friday I took myself off to the Royal Geographic Society for my annual pilgrimage to TEDx LBS. This day of short talks and conversation is a real tonic… I was there for almost 12 hours and my mind has been buzzing ever since.

My congratulations go to the volunteers from the MBA and MiM programme at London Business School for putting on a REALLY professional event.

Rather than provide a synopsis of topics introduced by the 16 TED-standard speakers (which you can see via the link above), I thought I would create a pastiche of the amazing people I chatted to during the day.

April 13, 2014

Ditchling sans beacon

The chairs on the sunlit deck this morning were damp with dew, so I opted to sup my quadspresso in the tea-house and took the opportunity to read a bunch of articles ahead of tomorrow. It was warm on the deck, but the tea-house sits against the tall north hedge and it was thus a little chilly, especially with both the door and the side window open. I didn’t realise how cold until I picked up my empty coffee cup for a refill… it might as well have just had iced-coffee in it!

I was in ten minds about where to run this morning so in the end I just set out and followed my feet. After a little gardening yesterday and the inevitable subsequent hay-fever attack from cutting the lawn and the grass on the green, I felt somewhat leaden-footed so I quickly realised my feet weren’t going to take me as far as the Beacon. Or, more to the point, back again.

I cut through behind Folders Lane, crossed onto the the common and headed down towards Ditchling behind all the garden centres. It was firmer going than I had imagined, but still a little icky in places.

I ran down through the middle of Ditchling… it really is a very pretty place!

There’s an old house for sale at the south end of the High Street which always piques my interest as I drive past. The length of time that it’s been on the market suggests that the price is set too high (and way out of my price bracket!) but I thought I would take the path round behind it to see if there was more to see… apparently not!

I have occasionally stopped to chat with one of the friendly locals and I bumped into her here, walking her dogs. Bizarrely she also has a tea-house and a Japanese-influence to her garden… I reckon we’re probably in a real minority around here, but you never know!

I chose the direct accent of Lodge Hill and was rewarded with the glorious view to the south.

Then it was back past Oldlands Mill (passing one of my most favourite houses in the area) and on towards Burgess Hill.

Rather than take the road back into town, I took the detour that Daren & I used to use, passing the water tower and then running along the side of the railway.

Things have changed! What used to be a very muddy track is now cinder & tarmac. Whilst it was lovely to run along, it’s not as hairy as it used to be… I remember some really slip-slidey mornings!

Overall the 6.75 miles took me 1:28, though this time includes the conversation about Japan & Japanese gardens so I might have been slightly faster than the 4.6mph average that this suggests!

April 6, 2014

Return to the Magical Path

It was grey and drizzly outside this morning and having completed some administrative work I thought it would be easiest to run on the machine. I guess that’s the downside of having a machine to run on!

I’ve read a couple more chapters of Richard Askwith’s book this weekend. His visceral descriptions of running on cold winter mornings and the amazing sense of well-being that you feel afterwards really resonated… and made me feel a little guilty that I was going to run inside.

In the end it was Kim who helped me make the right decision… she was engrossed in work, sitting right next to the running machine. Thus it was that I pulled my long running tights and gore jacket out of the gear-drawer, rather than my shorts.

When I got outside it wasn’t actually raining at all and I felt quite good as I ran along the road. It’s always difficult to pace yourself at the start of the run… fast enough to get into a good habit (and to complete the run while it’s still light!), yet slow enough to have the energy to get all the way round. Especially when you’re not really quite sure how far ’round’ is.

I wrote a lightweight blog called England Garden Gang for a couple of years, commenting on the local grass verges and running little experiments (each of which usually involved me in hard graft!) to see how easy it was to make a difference. It wasn’t, but after a couple of years of looking really tatty, the verges looked a little better this morning… almost as if they had been cut more than once in the last few weeks. Is there a local council election looming?

The run proper starts at the end of the road, where the path crosses the railway tracks and tarmac turns to mud. It felt really good to make that transition… all memories of the running machine forgotten.

You’ll be able to see from the photos that Spring hasn’t reached the branches of the trees, but the shallow depth of the mud suggests that the year is progressing nicely. Er, well most of the way round at any rate!

My route took me out past the old Royal Oak pub, ripe for development apart from the main road that runs along the front wall of the building. Rounding this corner in a spirited manner, one morning in about 1986, I lost control of the lightweight van I was driving. I caught the slide but ran the front corner of the van neatly along the length of the steel railings leaving a pinstripe paint mark… which neither the landlord nor my boss at the time (who owned the van) were very happy about.

Having touched on the corner of Wivelsfield, I ran up into West Wood, taking a dog-leg out to Hundred Acre Lane and back to increase the distance a little. Partway into this section I had to take my jacket off before I started to cook.

Back on the main path I passed my friend Lew helping a neighbour in his tractor, which was making heavy work of lifting a one-tonne bag of something. Lew’s one of those guys that you would expect to be able to lift that kind of load without the benefit of a tractor, so it must have been heavy!

And then I finally got to the Magical Path, a narrow track with ends which used to be hidden. It’s quite straight, but over the decades trees have grown up to turn it into a twisty route round big adjacent trunks. It always feels special to be there, hence my name for it, like a little throwback from a previous age.

What was not so magical was the deep wet mud near the start, nor the fallen tree that was all but barring the way, but these were small distractions.

Then it was across the Ditchling Common and back to base. I remember that there was a point in the run where I started to flag, but something must have distracted me as I have forgotten where exactly and was on good form by the time I got back.

6.2 miles in one hour and one minute is 6.1 mph, only marginally slower than I did this run on July 23rd last year… the big difference is how good I feel. Last summer I had to retire to the sofa, whereas today I am (almost) ready for more! It seems like a winter of treadmill runs may have had a positive effect after all!

One last thing: is this a photo of a fieldmouse? It was playing merrily on the deck yesterday… I’m just hoping it’s not a baby rat!

April 2, 2014

Running, but largely out of time

Please forgive me reader, for I have sinned… I’ve not come to confession for 24 days!

I have a vague excuse, with eight 5am starts (two of which I got home circa 11pm), ten 6am starts and way more than half of the daylight hours of the three weekends spent working at my desk. This is an excuse mind, not a complaint… it’s been a generally fun, engaging and challenging few weeks!

And I did manage to fit in two runs, although one was only a mile and took me more than ten minutes, if the hieroglyphics on my whiteboard are correctly interpreted… average 5.88 mph. From memory it was an early Monday morning antidote to the lethargy that not running creates. I think that it did its job, though I clearly didn’t hang around afterwards for long enough to record this fact.

The other, last Sunday morning was more energetic though, alas, still on the machine. I set the speed to 7 mph and ran for 45 minutes, clocking up 5.28 miles. The average works out to something like 7.04 mph, as I increased the speed at the end to compensate for the time that the belt takes to get up to speed at the start… and I got a bit enthusiastic!

There, that’s my confession. Now for some photos:

March 9, 2014March 9, 2014

Running Free

Spring arrived suddenly and in full force this weekend, as if someone upstairs had finally got fed up with being cold or wet and turned the thermostat up. Bravo!

Yesterday I got outside and mowed the grass, cut the grass on the green and generally sorted out some stuff in the garden, which meant that this morning I could relax and enjoy the view.

By late morning I had sipped my way through three quadspressos whilst sitting on the deck in the warm Spring sunshine and had finished the first three chapters of Running Free by Richard Askwith. I had found his previous books (Feet in the Clouds and Lost Village) particularly thought provoking and have to say that I’m already completely hooked on this one!

Inspired the the warmth and the day and of the writing, I decided I needed to run outside… but where? Of all the options, one instantly stood out and it involved dropping in on my parents.

When I was growing up, there was a big field between the end of our road and the school that I went to. I can remember a few occasions when I ran across the field and they all involve getting my bare legs ‘burned’ by the tall cereal crop… serves me right!

Over the last few years the field has been turned into a quasi public space and I really enjoyed running across it to get to the path that runs down the ridge towards the sea.

Having spent the winter months running inside, the simple views were particularly amazing and I soon found myself passing Rottingdean windmill.

Down on the Undercliff walk there were throngs of people, all looking happy and slightly dazed by the sudden transition out of Winter and there were even a few people sitting on the beach. I ran along as far as Ovingdean, jogged up the 60 or so stairs and took the road back inland.

At Ovingdean church I paused to pay my respects to a very dear friend who is perpetually stuck at 44 years old, whilst the rest of us have to cope with the effects of increasing age. Not a bad place to see out eternity, though my sense is that, for all its faults, life is way more interesting!

I had been tiring as I ran towards the church, but the few minutes it took me to wash the dust off his gravestone gave me renewed energy and I ran easily up the steep road back to the ridge path.

The route back from there was a real breeze and I was soon back at the stile at the top of the grassy field looking back the way I had come.

Excluding my pause, six miles took me 1.10, giving an average just over 5 mph… nothing compared to my pace on the machine, but then the views and the fresh air are a great trade-off.

I’m sure that we’re due a little more bad weather before the good weather settles in, but at least my depleted reserves of sunshine, sea views and fresh air have been topped up in the meantime!

March 2, 2014March 3, 2014

Clean car

After a busy and interesting week, I hit the pause button this weekend. My Mum & Dad had sent me a book about three men driving across England in a 1958 milk float so I deliberately put aside some time to really get started on their journey.

It was also another of the 50th birthday parties, this time Steve’s, so we spent a lovely evening catching up with old friends. Bizarrely, some guests, Rick & Sam, recognised us from Nick(aka the Bok)’s fancy dress party several years ago (well, we were dressed fairly conspicuously as monks) and it transpired that they are also good friends with Daren. Separately, Maria’s parents know my Mum… I forget how small the world is, or maybe how well connected my Mum is!

It being the 1st March, the Kojo was evicted from it’s hibernation in the teahouse and I’ve already seen a bee making good use of its blossom. I was tempted to do more gardening but the ground is still too sodden to make it an appealing prospect. Instead I turned my attention to the cars… unwashed since last year.

Despite living outside, Kim’s car was not too dirty on account that I sluice the water off the top half of it each morning. This is ostensibly to make it easy for her to see out of the windows, but it also means that it looks fairly clean despite not having been washed. The inside was a different matter though, as the cherry tree came back in it the other weekend.

My car was caked, inside and out, the final icing (right colour, right texture) being the mud from my run with Daren last week. I actually really like cleaning cars and I worked happily outside for more than two hours washing and hoovering… and then went back out there again today to put a coat of polish on my car while it’s still clean.

My run today was back inside on the machine again and really only counts as ‘keeping my hand in until the weather warms up a little more’. I started at 7 mph and raised the speed by 0.5 mph each quarter mile for the first mile and then just repeated this for a further three miles. In the last quarter mile I ramped the speed up a little more and completed 4 miles in 31.01, an average of 7.73 mph.

This week I started some little experiments to figure out how I could utilise a new social media platform called Niume. It’s a young London-based start-up (which I like) and the idea is not so much to connect people as to connect ideas in the form of conversations (which I also like).

My FosterRuns experiment on niume is a relaxed conversational circle for occasional runners and my hope is that some of my readers here will feel more inclined to engage in dialogue in that environment. There are also many more interesting conversations going on there, so it’s worth taking a peek.

February 25, 2014February 25, 2014

Upstairs, Downstairs and in the Master’s cabin

It’s an amazing three and a half months now since November 10th when I last ran outside. It seems unlikely that I would choose to get back out there on a day where the weather was turned up to full, but there it was… Daren was back in town and very little, weather-wise, would stand in the way of my catching up with him.

We met upstairs at Jack & Jill (as opposed to downstairs at Clayton Rec ground) and our run almost instantly turned into a retreat for a cup of tea… the wind was shocking! Daren is the master of a boat (though I’m not sure that he or the owner would thank me for calling it that) and as such is well used to weather of all kinds, so for him to put his hood up gives a reflection of how bad it was!

Undaunted (well, a little) we faced into the biting wind and got on with our run.

The usual route was taken, which is basically a sublime roller coaster ride down to Pyecombe, up to Woltsonbury, down to Clayton, up the tank tracks to Home Hill and back down to the windmills. An early comment from Daren made me realise that I was running around puddles… he pointed out that by the time we reached Clayton we would be coated in mud, so there was little point avoiding the puddles at this stage. The new game was ‘running through puddles’!

We paused at Wolstonbury for the view before slip-sliding down the other side.

As we neared Clayton, we reached the path that is eternally muddy, even in the full scorch of summer. Today the mud was glutinous and wall to wall so his early assessment had been correct… the best way was through the middle!

This picture is a little shaky because I was laughing… Daren is up to his knees in a muddy puddle and that wasn’t the worst of the mud by any means!

We ran on through Clayton and reached the bottom of the tank tracks, aka Daren’s Nemesis. This path takes the direct route up the scarp slope of the Downs, but we kept pushing and managed to reach the top without stopping. The downside of reaching the top was that we came back into the wind, low laden with stinging rain!

The upside was that it was all downhill back to the cars, so we made light work of it. Strangely enough I got wetter in the few short minutes it took me to remove my muddy shoes and running longs than in the whole of the run… the wind was blowing the rain horizontally into the car, a little like sitting in the surf on the beach.

6.25 miles dispatched in a respectable 1.16 is a shade under 5 mph… not at all bad bearing in mind the conditions.

I enjoyed it so much that I’m inclined to run outside again.. well, maybe when someone turns the weather down a little!