Category: Short run

Posted on

Spring forth!

This morning was BEAUTIFUL, although the wind has since blown up and brought rain!  I couldn’t wait to get out and as you can see above, it really was gorgeous!

I did my default circuit, out to the Royal Oak, across to Wivelsfield, up through the woods to Ditchling Industrial Estate and back along the magical path & across the Common.  I probably would have gone further if I had remembered it’s only 5.2 miles and the 50 minutes time shows how out of shape I am.  6.25mph.

Still, it was stunning out there!

And in contrast to Jason’s new shoes, this is what mine look like!

Posted on

Quick run and long conversation

I had a really lovely 6 mile run today along an old favourite route that took me out to Hundred Acre Lane.  The run itself took 58 minutes (6.2mph), but I arrived back after an hour and a half… go figure.

En route I had seen my good friend Lew and stopped to catch up on life, the universe and everything and it was great to put the world to rights.

Most of the water had drained away from last weekend or turned into a light surface mud, but there were clay pockets of deep water along the way into which my feet occasionally disappeared.  This is probably the reason that I didn’t get invited in for a coffee!

The fact that we’d had a LOT of water was evidenced by what was left of one of the bridges I crossed, shown above.  YIKES!

Posted on

Splashy mud

I had a genuine desire to do something other than run this morning.

I’d got into a creative zone on a work challenge last night & ended up sliding quietly into bed at gone 3am.  Not quietly enough though, I’m assured!  It was nice & bright this morning and easy-ish to get up, but it was cold outside and I’m reading a totally absorbing book at the moment that I couldn’t wait to get back to.  

It’s called 1421 and is written by a former US Navy submarine captain about his theory that the Chinese circumnavigated and mapped the world a century before Magellan, reached America 70 years before Columbus and Australia 350 years before Cook.  The evidence is compelling and those of you who know how much I admire the Chinese will realise why I it’s hard for me to put the book down!

However, after a large espresso and an hour or so of reading, I reluctantly donned my running gear and got out into quite a bright, if cold morning.   In short, I ran to the south west of Burgess Hill to Hammonds Mill Farm, towards Hurstpierpoint but turning eastward to reach the crossroads at Hassocks, through the village to Keymer, then north along the road and up the private road to Oldlands Mill (where the photos of the South Downs above were taken) and back on my normal path.

The going was wettish, with splashy surface mud left over from the snow and ice of the last week and my legs were sufficiently covered in mud to impress one of my neighbours when I got back.  As I write, so Kim is washing my kit out (a task that I normally do) and has just exclaimed ‘I can’t believe how much mud you’ve got in your socks!’

Anyway, 8.3 miles on one hour 19 minutes is almost 6.3mph, better than I’ve been managing recently and not bad bearing in the mind the weekend off.

By the way, for those of you interested in old mills, here are the dates for Oldlands Mill open days in 2009.

Posted on

Water run

The forecast was for wet weather today and I can’t say that I was particularly excited about going out into it this morning.  But I have faith in my gear and particularly in the ability of my Gore jacket to keep me warm in inclement conditions.

This is all very well, but before it had started to do this (it’s always cold when you first put it on) I had to run up the road into the wind with the rain biting at my face.  Fortunately I have a range of directions that I can go that are more sheltered, although coming across a tree that had come down across the path at least gave me pause for thought.

It was already clear that there was a lot of standing water, but just a little further on this point was reiterated… the small pond to the right of the path in the picture is normally a narrow channel.

For those sensitive souls who treasure their running shoes and keep them speck and span, this was not a day to be out and about.  In fact wellingtons or even waders would have been a more appropriate choice of footwear… it’s a good job that I care not about getting my runners wet and muddy.  

At one point I started to think about the ancient Britons and why they used to wash with mud.  Maybe it was not so much that they wanted to, but more that they were constantly covered in the stuff and just had to wash it off.  I suddenly realised that because the surface was more water than mud, my trainers were actually cleaner than they had been for an age (since new?)… strangely, the mud seemed to have migrated upwards and onto my calves!

There were several occasions when the mud tried to suck my shoes off (I’m not a great one for tightly lacing my feet in) and the mud eventually succeeded as I squelched across a field that seems to be wet even when the weather is dry.

In short, I ran out to the Royal Oak, across to Wivesfield and up through the woods to the top of Spatham Lane, then southeast and across to Wellhouse Lane, past the water tower and across the railway line, then north to the station and home again.  6.5 miles in 1 hour 10 is pretty poor going, but I did stop a few times to take photos and once to re-apply my shoe and tighten my laces.

I think I need to run more than once a week to really get back into the zone, but I’ve changed my work schedule so this is not so easy at the moment.  Maybe when the evenings get lighter… once the boys have come back from Prague and have finally worked out that I wasn’t there… maybe then I can safely increase my frequency!

Posted on

Exercise

Nigel & Kristin, as our lovely house guests over the Christmas break, may well report me as being a lazy git.  And they would be right.  The only time I went into the great ‘cold & wet outside’ during the three weeks they were here, was to paddle up the River Cuckmere with Debbie, Kim and them on New Years Day… a really still, flat grey day.  This was the first time my little Kendo had seen the water for ahem… years, but start the year as you mean to go on… that’s what I say!

Since they returned to Seattle on the 6th, I’ve been hard at work catching up.  The first thing I did was to go wimmin (that’s swimming for those of you unaccustomed to my obtuseness) for half an hour… although Kim swore that I was only in there for 20 minutes before I dragged myself out like a jelly.  Since then I went a further two times, for 30 minutes and 40 minutes, with my muscles starting to remember the strokes that I worked on before my collar-bone was so rudely broken whist skiing three (?) years ago.  By the way, does anyone else think that the lane-swimming at the Triangle is slightly over-priced, with the evening sub-one-hour sessions being priced at £3.80?

And since this is a running blog, I thought it would be remiss of me not to do some of that too.  Last Sunday I ran out into the remnants of the cold weather and returned an hour and ten minutes later in the start of the warm spell.  I did the 7.1 mile loop out past Ote Hall, the pyjamas, Wivelsfield village, Hundred Acre Lane & woods, Ditchling Common industrial estate, the Magical Path and back across the Common.  It was delightful running weather and I even had to wear my shades.

Yesterday morning was so beautiful, it was almost spring-like here and we made the most of it by doing all our outside chores… although by the time I had washed the cars I was pretty much done in and the weather had turned cold.

It chucked it down with rain last night and I was not looking forward to running in a storm, but this morning dawned bright and clear again and it was a pleasure to don my running gear on and get out into it.  Despite the ongoing twice-daily chi-kung exercises and the swimming, I wasn’t sure that I felt any fitter than last weekend, so I ran the same route to see whether there was any time difference.  Alas not… the same 1 hour ten as before… 6mph.  Although, to be fair, the ground was a little more, er, liquid than last week.

The sun was streaming into the house when I got back and I just had to sit and soak up the rays.  Inside, of course!

Posted on

Fweezin!

Based on the temperature forecast for this morning, I had decided last night that I wouldn’t run.  But when it came to it, the lure of a perfectly clear, if pre-dawn, sky was too much for me to pass up.

There certainly was a heavy frost, but I’m guessing the humidity was low as the cold really wasn’t pervasive… and not all the mud & puddles were frozen.  Once I got off the slippery pavements, it was a GLORIOUS morning for a run!

Half way round I stopped for three of four minutes to chat with the Best brothers of Middleton Farm Shop without even starting to feel cold.

The route was the same 5.2 miles as last Friday and I managed it in 48 minutes.  Bearing in mind that I had stopped to chat within this time-frame, I was actually on top form!

Posted on

Friday for a change

I had sat through a talk by John Dodds of BERR (the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform) on Thursday night and realised how little common sense the politicians & civil servants, who churn out the policy that affects us and our businesses, appear to have. Quite honestly, it profoundly depressed me and I awoke in the morning with a real desire to curl into a ball and shun the day.

However, Meester Broom, who also didn’t really feel like running, pitched up to save me from my reverie. Despite being woken up by his kids a number of times at strategic points through the night.

We begrudgingly trudged (is that betrudged?) off into a chilly morning (apparently zero degrees by the gauge in Nick’s car) and I was soon warming (in a number of ways) to the theme of government policy incompetence.

Of course, we understand only too well that one of the key reasons that it is just SO frustrating, is that we have no control whatsoever over it. We can elect a political party into or out of office, but the bureaucrats remain in their twenty-two (or so) well-defended silo’s, their names never appearing against the latest piece of legislation to darken our doors.

For example, in the last 11 years, BERR has created 678 new offences – it is my contention that entrepreneurs and people running SME’s either spend a fortune complying with this endless diarrhoea of legislation, with the cost of lost opportunity as an incalculable additional amount, or stick their heads in the sand and ignore it. The latter might not be such a silly strategy after all, as it’ll be changed again tomorrow (admittedly, if you’re incredibly lucky) after the legislators have seen the misery of the side-effects.

I remember Jeremy Clarkson talking about the car maker TVR, of old, which appeared to design, build and sell a new car before getting their customers to do the product testing. Having had an almost new TVR Cerbera (which was off the road for a total of 6 months out of the 16 months I had it), I know exactly what he meant. The 22 Departments seem to have adopted the very same approach and it sucks!

I would be quick to admit that not all civil servants should be tarred with the same brush, but anyone that uses ‘no legislation’ as a frankly cringe-worthy excuse for ‘over regulation’, will find it hard to convince me that they are really part of the solution.

My internal hot air kept the temperature outside at bay very effectively and I hardly even noticed the run itself. We went out to the Royal Oak, up through the woods and back via the magical path. 5.2 miles took us 47 minutes (6.6mph) and was only really notable for the fact that it was a collaborative affair, even down to the final charge to the finish that we ran shoulder to shoulder.

Though I’m guessing that the run, which felt to me like it was over in a flash, probably seemed an eternity to Nick’s ever-patient ears!

Posted on

Cold and forlorn

This morning’s run was the equivalent of not quite engaging first gear on a race car… it felt as clunky as a bag of old spanners.  And despite the dawn initially looking quite clear, by the time I went out it was indeed cold and forlorn.

Added to this, in addition to skinning my ankle on Sunday, I seem to have sprained it too.  Not badly, but enough to make me jump with the dull pain (like the shock of a weak electric fence) every now & then through the run and on through the day.

Still, at least I ran.

In fact I took the same short route that I ran with Nick last week, the only difference being that, at 48 minutes, it took me three minutes longer to cover the 5.2 miles (6.5 mph)… to be honest, the way I was feeling I would not have been surprised if it had been 23 minutes longer!

Two other things.  First, I lost my hat again today, whipped off my head by a passing bramble.  Second, Lew’s hatch has now been battened down, so to speak… looking good man!

Posted on

The return of the BEEP!

After weeks of trying to match diaries, the Bok duly turned up this morning at the allotted time for a quick run.  The weather seemed relatively mild to me, but he must have been under the weather as he was adament it was freezin’, so much so that he had his gloves on.  He was sufficiently adamant to persuade me to wear my gloves too,

We set out, with him getting his excuses in early… pain in the back, pain in the knee, pain in the ar… oh no, that was the fact that the mini-Boks had woken him up five times the night before!  Bearing in mind all the pain and tiredness he was exuding, I was surprised that he still wanted to rush off like a racehorse on oats… although I reined him in and we settled into a more leisurely pace!

We ran an old favourite route, out past the Royal Oak to Wivelsfield, through the woods to Ditchling Industrial Estate, down the magical path & back across the common.  I quickly removed my gloves as it was much warmer than I had been lead to believe… which correlates (strangely) to the fact that later, over breakfast, he confessed that he had sweated buckets, putting it down to how fast we had run! 

What nonsense!  He was still sweating when I saw him last night and it was plainly that he was overdressed for the weather, trussed up as he was in a three peice suite.  I’m kidding, of course… no-one can wear more than a chair in these troubled times.

We we half way through the wood when I heard the first Beep beep beep BEEP, the telltale sign that his heart rate was elevated… and this on a flat section.  I duly increased my speed and was rewarded with a muffled expletive and a further two renditions from his heart rate monitor.  To be fair though, despite the beeps and the fact I was running straight through all the mud and he way tiptoeing around the edges (well okay, strategic mud-hopping), he kept up pretty well!

Along the magical path, which is also more or less flat, I once again heard the telltail Beep beep beep BEEP and I once again increased the pace.  You may think I am being very unkind, but there are some unwritten laws (well, actually they are not even unwritten now, are they?) and this is one of them.  Snigger snigger!

Over breakfast, which was achieved after running 5.2 miles in 45 minutes (6.9mph), he probabaly consumed more than the 658 calories he reckons to have burned off.

Posted on

Bright morning

This morning was bright and slightly chilly… sufficiently so to warrant longs, although the gloves might have been overkill.  Not that I took them off, of course!

I headed out to Ote Hall, past Wivelsfield Church and then out towards what I now know is Wivelsfield Hall.  (I don’t reach it and I’ve only seen what I assume is it from afar)  Then I dropped into Wivelsfield, up Hundred Acre Lane and hung a right into the woods.

Autumn has really kicked in since the recent wind & rain, with many of the leaves on the ground like a gloriously rich & golden mat.  With mud underneath.

At the Common I opted to run to the roundabout, across and then right down the path without crossing the railway line.  This is a very old route that I’d not run for ages and I had forgotten how pretty it is, especially at this time of year.  At the end it joins my normal route and I made it back to the house in one hour, nine minutes.  Overall a pretty slack 7.2 miles at 6.25mph, but a really enjoyable one in the autumn sunshine.

Cliff is trying to persuade me to enter the Prague marathon next year, but at this speed I would probably finish with the 2010 runners.  Oh my, is that another good excuse not to do it?