Category: Long run

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Far too early by (way too) far

I did my level best to get up on time this morning, but failed miserably.  I knew this because it was still dark when the alarm went off.  Worse still, when I finally did make it downstairs some time later, it was 5.40am… though I still have no idea whether this was in new money or old money!

Still, it was a beautiful bright morning so I took up residence in the reading chair and continued in my current amazing tour through the French waterways with Damian & Shiv Horner’s wonderful book For Better For Worse.  They each wrote their own thoughts which are then juxtaposed, so it is sharply insightful in a ‘Men are from Mars’ way.  Really a most highly recommended read!

I was totally engrossed so time swept by and despite rising so early I ended up eating breakfast late and was consequently late out the door.  No matter… I wasn’t really looking forward to the task ahead anyway.

I guess that you could say that I picked up an injury last weekend (left ankle pain), which is what Kurt from Run predicted if I tried to mix speed work with my training programme… I think the culprit was my fast five miler on the 19th March.  I have given my ankle and lower leg a lot of massage attention this last week and I even dropped the Friday run from my tight schedule, but today was my last chance to run a long distance before I start to taper ahead of the marathon… which is now in three weeks time… so I had to at least try.

My ankle lasted roughly three miles, down from Woodingdean to Rottingdean and along to St Dunstans, before it demonstrated that it had an electric prod and was not afraid to use it.  I stopped to comprehensively stretch and massage the affected area and plodded forward to see what effect I had achieved.  It was pretty good, insofar as the pain abated completely for another two miles, whereupon I repeated the exercise.

My mind became focussed on a new pain, this time coming from my bladder, so I fixed my metaphorical gaze on the toilets along towards King Alfreds, around the 7.5 mile mark and hastened thither.  Having greatly relieved myself there, I then spent a few minutes stretching my legs for good order before continuing.

At Hove Lagoon is the turn point for 18 miles, but since I really wanted to do 20 I continued onward.  However, a combination of not having a fixed turn point for 20 miles and the lure of running just a bit further saw me continue on to the end of the Shoreham Harbour groyne, around the 11.5-mile mark, which I reached in 1.45.

Once again I carefully stretched my tired legs for a few minutes before turning and setting off for home.

I reached the Peace Memorial around 16 miles before I stopped to stretch again, then again outside Martlet Kayak Club at 18 miles and then I made it all the way along the top of the cliffs to Rottingdean around the 21-mile mark before my ankle got painful yet again and I had to stop to stretch.  Each time I managed to resolve the pain before I ran on, but it obviously needs more work over the next few weeks to overcome it completely.

Interestingly, as I dropped down into Rottingdean I had a significant realisation… I wasn’t breathing properly.  Despite wearing a BreatheRight strip on my nose, I was not filling my lungs to any real extent at all.  It took me a while to open my lungs up fully, but the effect was dramatic.  Compared to the last few long runs, I fairly flew up the hills from Rottingdean.

One other point of note… Spring is not yet fully with us!  I wore only one long-sleeve top under my Gore jacket, but my hat and gloves only came off after the turn point when the wind was behind me and though I took my jacket off for the last two miles up the hill from Rottingdean, I got a real ice-cream head in the more exposed section around Longhill School.  It was not warm out there!

With my six stretching stops, each of more than a couple of minutes, I took longer than my last run along this route on March 14th… but since the time was only 9 minutes more I would guess that I was actually running a little faster.

The time: 3.48

The distance: 22.95

The average speed, stops included: 6.04mph

Now let the tapering begin!

PS. The run and the rather early morning resulted in my spending most of the afternoon asleep on the sofa!  Bless!

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Of a cold dark dank groyne

If you are easily scared, I suggest that you might want to avoid looking at the photo of Mark and I below… though I have to say that I blame the photographer (me) rather than the subject matter!

I’d arranged to meet Mark after work so that we could run the section of the marathon route along Church Road in Hove, down Grand Avenue and out to the Power Station.

It was already dark and threatening rain when we set out, but I was still slightly overdressed for the occasion, what with the day-glo jacket from my car over my normal Gore jacket.  I tend not to run at night, in part because most of my gear is black and I wasn’t sure how visible I needed to be… m’Lud.  In retrospect I think I would have been okay in just my normal gear… built up area, street-lights etc.

By the time we reached the seafront I was already over-hot and at Hove Lagoon I HAD to stop to take a layer off… this left me wearing a t-shirt under the day-glo… not exactly an optimal combination, but at least I could tie my Gore jacket around my waist.

Despite my thinking that I would be happy to end the run at that point (even the jelly-babies came out!), we ran on down through the industrial estate and out onto the end of the groyne where I had met Matt and his friends on March 14th.

The view was somewhat different, on account of it being dark… the beach-looking thing in the foreground is the top of the wall that I was leaning on for a sharp picture and I was too scared to move the camera any further forward in case I dropped it off the other side!

The view in the other direction was…

… scaaaary!

We then ran back towards Hove and I realised that it had felt hot before because we had been running with the wind… it was now chilling my bare arms and blowing my oversized day-glo off my shoulder!  Okay, so it wasn’t bad enough to put my Gore back on, but I did don my hat and gloves to take the edge off.

Not being too familiar with the area, the end of the run appeared very suddenly and having said our goodbyes, I then managed to jump into my car just before the heavens opened with a gusto!

Distance: 8.55 (according to Mark and http://www.walkjogrun.co.uk/)

Time: 1.13

Average speed: a healthy 7mph

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Spring delays posting

It was the Spring Equinox on Saturday evening and despite a rainy start to Sunday, by the afternoon it was glorious.

This meant that, despite feeling pretty knackered, I spent the afternoon moving pots and furniture back into the garden, edging the grass and generally titivating.

Which is partially why I’m writing this post a day late: the other reason being that the TV feed has gone and having spent a fruitless while trying to fix it, I have given up to do something less frustrating.

My schedule for yesterday said 14 miles, but I thought I would add on a couple for good order by running up the Ovingdean valley as far as the top of the narrow road… for those who know it.  So I ran down to Rottingdean, once again shedding layers as I went, along the coast and up to my designated turn point… where my testosterone pushed me on up to the very top of the steep hill before I actually turned around.

Once back at the coast I didn’t fancy shattering the Ovingdean peace by running along the roadside, so instead I dropped down onto the undercliff walk.

The chalk cliff has really fallen away over the winter, but I suspect that the council has used this as a bit of an excuse to drive walking traffic through the marina, as they have closed both the part of the undercliff walk behind the marina and also the path that ascends to Roedean.  This didn’t bother me as it was a good excuse to have a look at the boats, flats, people etc in the marina.

Sport Relief was omnipresent in Madeira Drive, although the marshal I asked at the marina end actually had no idea what event it was… her friend thought it might be running and when I had run down to the other end I saw that she was correct.

I must have got used to the seafront being cold and empty as it seemed to be thronging with people as I made my way down past the piers to the Peace Memorial.  Here I paused to stretch, my legs being unusually stiff, before I headed back past the piers again and along Marine Parade to avoid the worst of the throng below.

There were still a plethora of runners coming steadily towards me and as I neared the top of Dukes Mound, one of them stopped in front of me and bowed in a lavish way.  It was Mark Johnson and rather than run on past, or stand and get cold while we chatted, I turned around and ran back to the Palace Pier with him.

At the pier I turned once again and headed for home, noting that my left ankle was now quite painful, as if I had twisted it.  I found myself running alongside another runner, neither gaining nor losing and after a while I asked if he minded me tagging along.

His name turned out to be Gary and he was running to Telscombe, so we ran together as far as my turn off at Rottingdean.  The simultaneous upside and downside of this was that I had to keep running, despite my ankle slowly becoming more and more painful.

As he ran on, I paused to stretch and for a short while thereafter it was a lot better.  But as I really got stuck into the final two-mile uphill section, my legs and ankles began to stiffen and by the time I reached the Downs Hotel I was moving like a 95-year-old.  I couldn’t even manage a jog back down the hill, instead waddling gently like I had a beach-ball between my legs.

Despite this photo being taken after only five miles, it accurately portrays how I felt at the end!  It also serves to remind me to mention the anti-snoring device I’m wearing… although I’ve temporarily forgotten the brand name, it works really very well indeed (for running) by increasing air-flow and I highly recommend trying it at least a couple of times to see if it works for you too.

Time: 3.03

Distance 18.8 miles (remember, I had intended to do 14)

Average speed: 6.16mph, which reflects the stoppages as much as the snail-pace of the final climb.

The results of my afternoon recovery in the garden:

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Unremarkable ten

The downside of having a training program is having to stick to it, whether or not you feel like it.

This morning I did not feel like it.

However, I still jumped on the machine and set to with the specified task of running 10 miles.  After a brief warm-up, I varied the speed every quarter-mile within the range 7 to 8.5mph, but more towards the bottom end if the truth be known.

I had no radio on so only my thoughts for company and I forgot to ask Kim to open the door so after 30 minutes I jumped off to open it and got straight back on again.

With 2.5 miles to go I set the speed to a constant 7.6mph, but with a mile to go I realised I was going too slow to come in underneath 80 minutes, so I increased to 8mph.

So ten miles in 79.44, average 7.5mph.

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Spring-tease

This has been a really sociable weekend, at least by our recent standards!

Friday night we met Dai, Kath, Daren and Claire at Noori’s in Brighton for great conversation and delicious curry.

Last night we were treated to an adventurous dinner party by Grant & Karen… the food from all three courses was amazing, the portions generous and the Chateauneuf-du-Pape as rewarding as I remember when I could still afford it!  And with 9 of us to cater for, Grant did a genuinely superb job, cocktails and all!

Of course, as with all good dinner parties, we ate late and when I finally made it to bed towards one o’clock, for the second night running, I rolled in rather like a barrel.  And continued to roll around for some time on account of the diverse tastes and sheer quantity eaten.

Fortunately the food digested into weird dreams overnight and seven o’clock dawned bright and sunny, making it easy to arise, though it took a quadspresso to render me more fully awake.

I started my run just after nine, easing into the initial downhill section from Woodingdean with a view to a potentially huge training run.  As I neared Rottingdean I stowed my gloves and almost stripped off a layer or two, but my decision to wait until I had felt the seafront temperature was validated when it was decidedly chilly.  Spring is en-route, but had clearly not yet arrived.

Ahead I could see the distant chimney that was my halfway target…

… whilst the day was visually stunning.

At 54 minutes, I was a little slower than normal to the Palace Pier and it was 1.01 when I passed the Peace Memorial and continued Westwards.

1.20 saw me passing the point where I had turned round by Hove Lagoon on Valentine’s Day and then I was in to virgin territory, heading out onto the lower spit of Shoreham Harbour.

It’s quite a way along that last bit and when the road ahead was finally barred, it seemed rude not to join the back of another group of runners in running to the very end of the tiny breakwater.  If for no other reason than to see how far I had to run back again!

The runners turned out to be really lovely and also in training for the Brighton Marathon.

I gently pulled ahead of the group coming back along the spit and was once more running on my own as I came back East…

… reaching the Peace Memorial at the 2.20 mark.

Further East I ran along Madeira Drive past the pre-1940’s motorcycle rally and then on past a vast collection of more modern bikes in the car-park, many probably capitalising on a fine and dry, Spring-like day.  I stopped for five minutes at Martlet Kayak Club to chat to Graham, drink water and then briefly chat to Pete Graves on the phone about Table B’hote.  This latter comes with a ‘highly recommended’ tag from me… they’re delicious and now you can even order them online for home delivery, all the way from gorgeous Cornwall!

My legs were starting to feel the distance by now, but I pressed on past the Marina along the top of the cliffs even as the clouds started to roll in.

At Rottingdean, with less than 3 miles to go, the power in my legs really was starting to fade and the cloud cover had dropped the temperature by a noticeable amount.  This is where the mental muscle really carries you onward, in this case up the long hill of Falmer Road, placing one foot in front of the other, each step one nearer to the end.

As I rounded the last corner before the Downs Hotel the traffic was stationary to my left, backed up from the lights at the crossroad ahead and racing a Jenson Interceptor and a Police Car gave me a final goal to focus on.  I beat both to the lights and jogged back lightly to my parents house.

The time: 3.39

The distance: 22.95 miles

The average speed, which felt terminally slow, was actually a respectable 6.29mph.  Although this doesn’t quite get me to my marathon goal, it’s the same average speed as the Valentine Day run, which was only 18.35 miles long.  And whilst my effort at the moment is in building muscle, on the big day I will have no qualms about being swept along with the flow and using every ounce of muscle available!

One final thing, courtesy of two young boys along by Hove Lagoon… they say a picture says a thousand words!

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Ten on the tenth – part three!

Yesterday was always going to be a bit of a rush, hence my delay in posting.

I had a really interesting meeting in London late morning, spent the afternoon reading HBR and networking in the Alumni lounge at London Business School and then participated as a Judge (a pseudo potential early-stage investor) in a Trade Show by LBS MBA students in the Discovering Entrepreneurial Opportunities core course.

This is well worth mentioning further.

390 students, working in 65 teams, had identified opportunities which typically focused around resolving a real customer or stakeholder pain.  They then distinguished between mere ideas and more valuable opportunities, confirming their hypotheses by observation or primary customer research.  Finally they contextualised the opportunities to ensure that they represented distinctive, fresh ways of creating value  in the face of incumbents, and thought through the value chain for delivering the solution.

The Trade Show last night was one of the last parts of the course, where they opened up their ideas to peer review and pitched their ideas to a range of Alumni judges including me.  I have to say that the standard was extremely high indeed, phenomenal really, especially bearing in mind that this is a core MBA course rather than an elective.  It was a real privilege to see their work and full marks should go to the students and the tutors involved!

Of course, in advance of this fascinating day, I had to sneak in a ten mile run, so it was a bit of an early start.

Once again, for time reasons, it was a magic carpet run, but at least that enables me to make a direct comparison with the last two ’10 on the 10th’ runs.

January 10th: 10 miles in 82 minutes, heart rate sub 175, slight post-run staggering, upstairs bathroom in progress.

February 10th: 10 miles in 79.35, heart rate sub 170, scant post-run staggering, bathroom complete.

March 10th: 10 miles in 78.47, heart rate in the low 160’s, no time to stagger afterwards as I had bolt down some breakfast, run through the shower and get to the station!

For more interest (beyond Radio 4) I varied the speed of each quarter mile, warming up at 6 and 6.5mph then cycling thr0ugh 7, 7.5, 8 and 8.5mph until the end.

This certainly made the task more bearable and I definitely feel as if I’m progressing… which is useful bearing in mind that there are only 5 training weekends left before the marathon!

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Sociable Sunday

Kim and I saw Tim Burton’s film Alice in Wonderland last night, which was very strange.  Having seen Avatar a few weeks ago, I am already captivated by the whole 3D experience and physically ducked or flinched several times during the film and the 3D adverts that preceded it.  But there didn’t seem to be sufficient development of the characters involved , as typified by the Mad Hatter’s occasional lapse into a broad Scot’s accent, which kept leaving me with the feeling that I had missed some important bits.  Was there a prequel that I should have seen?  Overall, worth seeing, but slightly, er… vacuous.  Sorry Tim!

This morning dawned sunny and COLD!  Rather than run from Woodingdean, I had arranged to meet Cliff at Falmer and run off-road and since there was virtually no traffic on the road for either of us, we were both standing shivering by about 8.45am… as was the pond, which you can see below was partially frozen.

Pete then turned up in his car (a double surprise!) and I was then treated to the spectacle of two grown men comparing their prototype appendages ahead of the Brighton Marathon… if this sounds a little vague, then it’s supposed to, as I am sworn to secrecy.  I did get a photograph of one of the said items…

… although whilst Cliff is holding it, he is also carefully hiding it behind the black fabric.  Designers eh!

Since none of the others deigned to turn up (very sensibly, in view of the temperature) we set off up the Falmer Road, around to Newmarket Copse and then up to the top of the ridge.  The wind was fweezin and comments were passed the couple of times I snuck into Cliff’s slipstream, so I had to grin and bear it!  We went along as far as Swanborough Hill before heading south, down towards Balsdean pumping station.

At the bottom I suggested that we run up to the reservoir on the top of the hill before returning and continuing on our way, but was vetoed by my older friends.  I’m sure that I saw the sheep, with their newly-born lambikinis in tow, smirking at this display of wimpishness!  Mind you, neither I nor the sheep have a 50-mile race coming up in less than two weeks time… on that basis maybe they should be given the benefit of the doubt!

We took the path affectionately known as The Snake, for all its twists and turns (and today slightly slippery top layer), up to the top of Woodingdean and from here we doubled back up to the radio mast, Pete insisting on racing a cyclist up to the top of the hill.

For all you bottom fetishists out there, the following photographs are purely designed to illustrate that I’m a messy runner… that can be the only explanation, because we ran along exactly the same paths!

From the top of Castle Hill we dropped down to Newmarket Copse and then back to Falmer, which we reached at the one hour 40 mark.  Alas, I was certain that I needed to do more, so I left the others next to the cars and pressed onwards.

I ran over the A27 and up the road towards Mary’s Farm, cutting off left on the other side of the hill to reach the back of the University of Sussex… where I was frankly disappointed by the amount of rubbish laying around where the students presumably had held a party (what a grumpy old man I am… but clean it up guys!).  I ran through the campus and then across the bottom of Stamner Park before running to the bottom of Coldean Lane.

I crossed under the road and ran through the housing estate and then through Falmer School grounds, memories flooding back from the years I spent there as a child… although I have to confess mixed emotions about the evocation that has been placed over the doors, which read ‘Welcome Proud of Falmer‘.  I think I get what the authors were trying to say, but I bet this was designed by committee and I’m sure my old English teacher would have put a red pen right through it with a comment to the effect of  ‘could do much better‘.

I continued on towards the football stadium, but just past Falmer Station was forced out on to the main road when the path ran out.  I carefully snuck along the side of the road, took my chances with the traffic at the junction and then ran into the tranquillity of the old village (well, half of it, since the planners long-ago cut it in half), going all the way around the pond to add a few minutes to my time… and hence getting a rare shot from the other side of the pond.

The time was 2.32 and with a distance that I’ve just worked out as 15.5 miles, the speed averaged out at 6.12mph.  Sad to report that the initial 10.8 miles, completed with the guys and hilly as it was, was much faster at 6.48mph and the balance a tardy 5.87mph, but the distance was the overall aim today so I’m happy with that.  I have another 20-miler planned next week, so watch this space!

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Icky ten

Kim has been in NYC for a week and having collected her from Heathrow early yesterday, I drove into London and didn’t get back home until late.  Hence my Wednesday 10-miler got turned into a Thursday 10-miler.  Based on my run earlier this morning though, I don’t think I like running on Thursdays!

Maybe it was as simple as allowing too much time to elapse between runs, so my legs had a chance to stiffen up, but I didn’t feel great on the machine this morning.  Maybe it was also in part that I listened to Radio 4, where I’m fast coming to the conclusion that the BBC is actually the LBC… The Labour Bias Corporation.

This morning’s Conservative target was Lord Ashcroft.  Maybe I’m an oddball for believing that Government is stronger for having real, global businesspeople within its ranks, rather than anodyne, career politicians with little or no business experience.  And maybe I’m also odd for believing that global business people should pay taxes back into all of the communities around the world that they derive income from, not merely some Colonial master.

But my real beef here is about the timing of these so called revelations… rather conveniently for Labour in the run up to the election.  The BBC/LBC was fast to interrogate (a better verb might be to hector) Conservative ministers about how long they have known about the situation.  But presuming that the tip-off came from within the Government, to whom the Cabinet Office reported at the time the initial agreement was reached, they were curiously silent as to how long Gordon Brown has been keeping this quietly up his sleeve.

Anyway, suffice to say that by 10 miles I was feeling decidedly queasy, despite having jumped off the machine to open the door to clear my rage and swig some water after 8 miles.  Despite also only having set the machine to 7mph or thereabouts for most of the way.

84 minutes, 32 seconds of mostly uncomfortable running.  And all in the knowledge that I must climb aboard again tomorrow to do yet another 5 miles.  Ugh!

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Jump Start Sunday

My plan had been to run the ten miles from Woodingdean to the old Shoreham power-station this morning.  And then to run back again.  But the forecast was for extreme inclemence, consisting of North-Easterly gales and heavy rain… and for once the forecast turned out to be right.  The thought of running the second ten miles into driving rain was not exactly appealing so I decided to stay home and listen to Martin Archer on Kiss FM, with his 3-hour Jump Start Sunday programme.

Of course this left me with a slight quandary: what to do while I listened.  I’m not exactly one for sitting down & listening to the radio whilst doing nothing and it’s difficult to play guitar or to read a book, so I decided to have a gentle run on the machine.

Beyond this, there’s not a lot to report about today… except that I ran for all-bar one minute 36 seconds of the programme and covered 20 miles.

After a three or four mile warm-up, my heart rate stayed around 155 before passing 160 around the 14 mile mark and  slowly creeping up to 165 by the end.  The machine reckons that I used 2659 calories.   I’m not quite sure exactly what to eat to replace these… I don’t think the shops sell anything with this many calories any more.  I had to demount at the half way point as the machine only counts to 99 minutes, but despite my bladder faking that it required attention, I ignored it and only walked to open the door before getting back with the programme.

Two curious things:  Firstly, I set the machine to 6.7mph for the whole duration, but the time shows that I managed to average 6.726mph… I don’t have enough calories left for my brain to work that one out.  Second, somewhere in the combination of man-made-material running kit and a lot of movement, I always manage to create a little static… I was doubly shocked then,  when I managed to earth out via the leaf of the plant that hangs expectantly over the machine!

Alas, I have no landscape photos to share with you… this was all I could see!

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Wednesdix run

Once again, the prospect of a ten-mile run on the machine was not a welcome one.  I had planned to get it out of the way really early on this morning, but this didn’t happen because I sat up watching Deja Vu last night… and thus found it hard to drag myself out of bed!

Following the emergent pattern of my training, I started off at 7.7mph and celebrated each quarter-mile that I ran closer to my goal.  My heart-rate climbed slowly to 170 by about the 3-mile mark and at 5 miles I paused for a slurp of water, a stretch, some jelly-babies (I had skipped breakfast and eaten only a banana) and to open the door for some fresh air.  To be fair, this took 3 minutes, but I’m sure you won’t hold that against me!

With the machine now set to 7.8mph, my heart-rate took another mile to get from 124 back up to 170 and it stayed there until the 7.5-mile mark when I increased the speed to 7.9mph.  Between here and the end my heart-rate hovered around 172 to 174 which is higher than last week, but still acceptable given the pace.

What is interesting is that the simple stretch that Andy/Marina showed me has resolved the issue with my hip tendon, at least over this distance… although I was aware of it hovering in the background towards the end.  My focus in these runs is on making a positive and steady footfall, training my legs and my mind not to waiver, which has also helped overcome little niggly pains.

So 10 miles in 77 minutes 12 seconds (ignoring the break) is a speed of 7.77mph, which I think is a PB for me over this distance even though I wasn’t racing.