Great things to do! – Foster Runs

November 18, 2017

Two Daruns and a bunch of other odd things

Ahead of my more comprehensive post about Nick, it’s worth reporting that I had two runs with Daren from Jack & Jill whilst the weather was still warm and a couple of excursions in my kayak.

On 24th July we ran along to top of the Downs, past Ditchling Beacon and on the next gate before turning around and retracing our steps. Daren kindly agreed to forgo our normal challenging circuit in favour of this more gentle run on account of my knees being painful… maybe on account of some gardening marathon or similar. During the run we paused to marvel at a two-headed sheep that was sensibly sitting down so that it didn’t pull itself in two. 6.8 miles in 69 minutes, an average of 5.91 mph.

The 1st August saw me paddling a very dusty kayak for the first time in an age. Daren & Charlie were feeding the other Martlet’s club members from a floating kitchen (strapped to the top of an open canoe) adjacent to the Palace Pier. I have no pictures of this hilarious endeavour, but judging by the number of people and seagulls looking down from the boardwalk above, it was a spectacular attraction!

On the 29th August I joined Martlet’s for a second feast on the water, this time where a kitchen was hung from a tripod strapped onto two surf skis… very ingenious. After a delicious light meal and as I finished eating a tasty piece of cake for dessert, I vaguely heard Dai ask if anyone wanted to paddle to ‘the buoy’. I finished my cake and chased after him and two others. After what seemed like half an hour I was starting to get worried… I could see no buoys, only the wind farm in the distance. They paused so that I could catch up and assured me that there was indeed a sailing buoy somewhere out there on this now glassy water. We paddled on, maybe for another half an hour until the buoy came slowly into view. Turning around for the paddle back, the view was stunning, with the coast from Worthing to Beachy Head arrayed in one long & narrow horizontal line, bounded top and bottom by acres of sea and sky. As the sun slowly went down it was a magical view, though alas I didn’t dare risk taking my phone out of its waterproof bag to capture it. That impromptu paddle is the furthest that I have been in my kayak in years… it was a really amazing workout for my shoulders, especially since I was trying to keep up with Dai & Charlie who were in sleek sea kayaks!

On 7th September Daren and I returned to our normal circuit, but at an uncommonly slow speed even for the extreme gradients… I kept my toe tucked under the accelerator pedal so that Daren could not push on faster :-). 6.5 miles took us 84 minutes, a rather pedestrian 4.64 mph!

Below are some other images I took over the summer… beware large bugs 🙂

June 28, 2017June 13, 2017

An almost-marathon in four easy stages

Easy stages, HA! A month of flattish one-mile runs on the machine is ‘easy stages’… four 6.4-mile runs, with a height gain between them of 4250 feet (almost 1300 metres)… well, these runs seem to be getting more difficult, that’s all I’m saying!

Though maybe this was because they were spaced out between January and June!

Runs with my pal Daren are always really special things. For starters we follow the same route that we’ve been running for about 5 years now… though infrequently enough that I’ve not tired of it yet. It’s also more of a perambulating conversation than it is a run per se… the run simply happens while we’re chatting. Aside from anything else it is slightly mind-bending, since we seem to be experiencing time-travel… the other versions of ourselves are running around the same circuit at around the same speed, separated only by time. I swear that you can hear the different versions laughing at each other on a quiet day.

For some reason most of the horizontal distance seems to be downhill (it’s just an illusion), but there are three major inclines: a relaxed 300 vertical-foot hill that you could chug up in a 4×4, barring the various gates & stiles; an anything-but relaxed 150 vertical-foot scramble that is almost impossible to crawl up when it’s slippery; and the much-vaunted tank tracks, a very steep 400 vertical-foot climb that occurs near the end of our run. The latter is a barometer to our level of bouncy zing: we have so far always managed to run up it without needing to stop (or stop talking), though on occasion that run has been a near stagger. However, this last time it was only Daren’s enduring positive mental attitude that helped my mind to pretend to my body that it could make it to the top… I say pretend, because I couldn’t walk for about 4 days afterwards!

I’m pretty happy though that I still managed the run at all, given the pitifully small amount of training that I’ve done over the last couple of months!

So that’s all my running for the last year accounted for… which means that the next post must be about the sedate art of gardening. 🙂

February 14, 2016

My dear, what a run

Pronounced muddier water run.

After a frustrating day yesterday, where having too many work tasks to do meant that I failed to get into the flow of any, I felt it was super-important to get out this morning and run.

Despite being chilly, it was a bright spring-like morning as well… one of those mornings that just simply makes you feel better somehow. This said, I knew exactly what the conditions underfoot would be.

I opted for a short local run… out to Wivelsfield, up through West Wood and back along the Magical Path. As expected it was super-muddy. This was the the kind of mud that has deep footprints & hoof prints, has then frozen, has then been filled up with water and has finally thawed… but only recently, judging by the water temperature! Despite being deep in places and gloriously splashy, it was safer to run through the middle of it than risk sliding on the super-slippery gradients at the margins.

The photos below should tell you all you need to know!

5.6 miles completed in 58 minutes… not bad given all the slip-sliding around!

On another subject all together, whilst I still have your attention: we have a tradition in our house of ‘unexpecting the expected’. The upside of such an arrangement is that there are occasional Tuesday or random day presents. The flipside is obviously that cards or presents aren’t always forthcoming on those days when it’s traditional to give them. Like today, for example.

So Kim, if you’re reading this… Happy Valentines Day gorgeous!

Sorry that the expected card is absent, but maybe there’s something unexpected hiding behind the sofa to make you smile?

August 16, 2015

FosterRuns is Eight!

Earlier today, whilst out running, I realised that today is the 8th anniversary of FosterRuns dot com.

I don’t think that I’ve done the running stats for a few years now (my spreadsheet says 2012) but I think outings, miles and speeds have all been in slow decline, though I’m enjoying the running in a different way now.

Google analytics shows that user numbers for FosterRuns re up from 717 in the year to Aug 16th 2013, to 1006 in the year to Aug 16th 2014, to 1506 in the last year… a 50% increase for two years running.

To be fair though, I think the site used to get more traffic early on when I ran more, but at least it’s going back in the right direction.

Either way, it still serves to make me run when I’m not really in the mood, as well as to exercise my writing on a regular basis.

Thank you very much for being a reader!

August 4, 2015August 5, 2015

Bokking the trend

Long term readers of FosterRuns will remember that I used to run a lot with the eponymous Bok (named after the mighty fast and tireless Springbok) and it’s fair to say that the speed of my running has probably declined in proportion with the frequency of our runs.

The deep rumble of a throaty V8 heralded the arrival of the Bok this morning and we were soon running down the road, already deep in conversation… but at a speed that made it difficult for me to talk! After five minutes he casually asked if the pace was too fast for me, before continuing unabated in spite of my gasped response.

It was a beautiful morning to be out, especially as overnight rain had reduced the humidity and brought a little extra depth of colour to the countryside. It also felt good to be running for a second time in the same week, rather than the recent bi-weekly nonsense. More than anything else, it was great to run in such excellent company, a facet that my recent running has been sadly missing.

We followed my normalish route (which you can see here on Strava) but time seemed to pass so much more quickly than normal because of the focus on conversation rather than running.

Oh, and because we were running a little faster than I have been used to lately… 6.3 miles in 56 minutes, an average of 6.75 mph. Of course, that’s not particularly fast… just faster than is normal for me at the moment, as you can see by all the PBs for the run below (added to which my phone showed PBs for 1km and half a mile too!).

When I suggested that the Bok run on at the end, he effortlessly made the leap to warp speed and disappeared almost instantaneously!

One thing did surprise me about my normally fastidious running partner… his runners are not as sparkly clean as they used to. I used to derive great pleasure from taking him on particularly muddy paths in order to see the gleam of his shoes disappear into the murk, but by the following run they would be back to sparkling again. Not so today… they were simply clean, the sign of a man who works hard at prioritising the important things in life. Like staying fit enough to run faster.

My runners never sparkle, but there’s still a message hidden in there for me… if I choose to figure out what it is…

April 25, 2015April 26, 2015

TEDx LBS 2015

One of the reasons that I love this time of year is that it’s when TEDx LBS happens. Set in the beautiful Royal Geographic Society and with a delightful dinner at the Science Museum’s ‘Smith Centre’ the night before, this event was both classy and incredibly down to earth.

What was particularly amazing is that the event, with it’s 14 high profile speakers, range of corporate partners and audience of 500, was organised by students who have been simultaneously studying hard at London Business School… truly great work guys!

The videos of the talks will be available at the TEDx LBS site where you can also view those from the last few years.

As in previous years, I thoroughly enjoyed some fascinating conversations with the amazing people who appear below.

I’m already looking forward to next year!

March 22, 2015

Absence makes the path seem longer

I’m not entirely sure where the last four weeks have gone, but my trainers had dried out so thoroughly (aka shrunk) that it was almost impossible to get them on.

The absence was due to a cold/cough which just would not go away, allied to time spent pushing the new garden project along. In my last post you can see how the space by the teahouse started, with a lovely Mexican Orange and two Hibiscus bushes (all three sadly past their best). Over the last four weeks the area has continued to evolve, as the following photos demonstrate.

Panels have been made and installed, sleepers moved and a Japanese Maple moved in. I even found time to clear my neighbour’s side of the fence for him, though I’m not sure that he was particularly grateful as now he needs to do something with the space that was previously overgrown with brambles et al. Yesterday I made a rough prototype of the water feature (using blocks of wood and a few off bits of stone) so that we could see whether it’s going to look okay.

This morning I drove down to my folks and ran from there to the coast and back. It’s basically downhill for the first two miles, but it was hard work from the get-go… it’s amazing how quickly the body loses muscle tone! Fortunately it didn’t get any harder-work as the run continued and I returned just as exhausted as I started!

According to Strava https://www.strava.com/activities/272331802 the run was 6 miles and took 60 minutes… it neatly discounted the 4 minutes of pausing to take photos.

I hope that you will find another run posted here next week… otherwise my trainers may dry out again and I’ll need to buy some thinner socks!

September 8, 2014September 8, 2014

Eight Days In

I’m now eight days into my fifties… so far, so good!

My new decade started with a lovely family lunch gathering where we toasted with a particularly delicious bottle of Dom Perignon that had been patiently waiting for such an occasion since before my forties.

Then a quiet dinner for Kim and I turned out to be a surprise gathering of close friends (mainly old school friends) at the Coach House in Brighton. I’m being deliberate in saying ‘old’ on account of being the youngest person in my year. It was a totally brilliant surprise… thank you guys… especially as I had seen many of them at Pete’s party two days earlier!

A few days later I was helping my wonderful folks to reduce clutter and came across a resting butterfly and then, later the same day, a Sparrowhawk (according to my learned friend Lucas) in my garden.

I woke up at 5am on Saturday in order to drive to the Porsche Experience Centre at Silverstone, where I spent the morning essentially going around in circles of various speeds and sizes, with Eunan MacGuinness gently correcting my foibles. BIG GRIN! I then spent the afternoon driving around a series of beautiful local villages with a friend in a Boxster.

Sunday then became a day of rest (I was royally knackered) but this morning started early with the rumble of a V8 and a run with the Bok himself, Mister Broom.

We ran my most recent normal route, but there the similarity ended. For starters we had audible conversation, where the voices are normally only in my head. More noticeable was the speed of progress, which was closer to the speed I was going around the ex-Lombard Rally special-stage-track at Silverstone than to any kind of running that I’ve done recently. It must have approached Bokwarp on occasion by all accounts, which sort of explains the photos…

5.75 miles was duly dispatched in about 50 minutes… an average of 6.9 mph.

Eight days in… may the rest of my fifties continue in a similar vein!

July 28, 2014August 5, 2014

LeadNow

I was on an interesting three day course this weekend so there is no running to report on. The course leader, Todd Eden, was an excellent facilitator and just happened to have worked on one of the Britvic brands that I helped launch in the Raisley days.

The LeadNow course is designed for graduates both in this country and in the third world and despite teaching similar material myself on the Terbell postgrad programme, I found it fascinating and extremely thought-provoking! Definitely a programme to recommend!

Many thanks indeed go to the LeadNow team and to my Brighton Business School student Giulia for inviting me along!

July 6, 2014July 6, 2014

Back in the here and now

The last three weekends I managed to run but not to write, hence the short infill posts.

This weekend we went away to stay in a treehouse, courtesy of Jason & Karen… thank you very much guys!

The treehouse is pretty substantial but has been somewhat carefully hidden amongst the trees…

Even the owners house and their other rented spaces are tucked away so you don’t notice them…

Yup… there be a house in there somewhere!

This is actually a sublime barn space with a double-height sitting room and stunning first floor bedroom!

While we were there we spent a few absorbing hours wandering round the Cass sculpture park at Goodwood… it gets better every time we visit. This place keeps drawing us back, as does the nearby Goodwood Park Hotel with it’s spa and restaurant!

The weekend fortunately arrived early this week which meant that we got back yesterday… which meant that I had no excuses for not running today. That didn’t mean that I was fired up ready to go however! Instead I took a potter round the same route as the last couple of weekends, managing the 5.2 miles in a leisurely 59 minutes… 5.25 mph average.