Category: Short run

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Leaden legs

There are several effective ways to get the heart rate over 120 beats per minute, which is a good cardio zone for someone of my tender years: interval training is my usual way but yesterday I decided to scarify the grass. 

Now, those gardeners amongst you will know that scarifying by hand is a long and tedious task, but essential to keep your lawn looking great.  The combination of planting the legs, exerting downward pressure with the arms and twisting the trunk whilst pulling the rake through the grass pushes the heart rate quickly skyward… in fact after every ten minutes of rigorous work, I need a break and I’m sure that someone else could count my heart beats just by listening.  I certainly could.

So, three hours and lots of breaks later and I had reached a decision… to buy an electric scarifier!

This morning my shoulders, back and arms were all (more than) a little tight and I thought a run would be the perfect antidote.  The weather was beautiful and I set out on one of the short run routes.  Twenty minutes was all I managed however before I was walking for five, another twenty and I had decided to walk home.  My legs were heavy, but that’s not normally a problem: it was actually my mind that wasn’t in gear.  They say that grass can do that.

Walking back did give me an ideal opportunity to gaze at lots of beautiful houses, either admiring them or silently assessing how they might redesign their house or garden to add value or panache… although I dare say that people passing me must have thought I was just  a weirdo walking along in my shorts!

So, hardly a run this morning, but I do now own an electric scarifier.  I only mention this in case anybody would like to borrow it!

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The morning after

After yesterday, the run this morning was always going to be a slightly more genteel event!  I had the privilege of being joined (though that may have been followed) by Kim as we vaguely followed Daren’s route on a gorgeous, sunny morning. 

Kim looks very appealing in her running stuff and as a result we almost got eaten by a herd of growing calves who thought that she might be a tasty snack.  Dai had carefully explained how to whisper to a horse yesterday and so we (sufficiently savvy to know that these were not horses) ran away.  In a straight line! 

We also surprised a railway engineer laying down on the job in a most dangerous fashion… face down along the parapet of a railway bridge with no safety harness, pointing the brickwork below him!  He almost jumped out of his skin when I said good morning!  Sorry chap!

Between our bovine escape and Kim stopping to chat up a few people en route, our time was not great, but it was a lovely run nevertheless.  9km or just over five and a half miles in one hour ten minutes.

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Intolerant behaviour

Dai joined me for a really lovely run this morning, during which we apparently talked a load of rubbish… I thought it was quite a profound conversation but Dai is an intellectual so it probably just sounded like idle chitchat to him. 

We pretty much duplicated my run from last week, but the superior technology of his Garmen confirmed that it was 7.26 miles in 1 hour 10 minutes and that our best pace was 5 minutes 57 seconds per mile… which can only have been the ten yard sprint down the hill at the end, otherwise the run would only have taken us 43 minutes!  Statistics huh?! 

Although the Garmen is pretty advanced, I would be interested to pit it against Kim at some point, who runs at exactly 6 miles an hour.  She doesn’t come in a shock resistant case, but she has many more appealing features (many!), particularly as you don’t have to carry her around on your wrist.  Alas, she doesn’t much care for idle chitchat so runs on her own, which makes it more difficult to gauge distances. 

Which is why I have to make uneducated guesses as to the distances I’m running and how long it’s likely to take.  Dai was surprisingly intolerant of this approach to estimation… as an educationalist and teacher of CDT he is used to working within very fine tolerances indeed.  Give or take four miles did not impress him at all.  Oh no sir!

Breakfast did though!  Daren introduced me to Mooch76 and it’s fair to say that I have been more impressed with each of my, um, three visits now.  Part of the reason is professional admiration, as this little cafe-bar encompasses many of the aspects of customer focus and service that I hold dear.  The rest just has to do with the great standard of the food and the deliciousness of the coffee!  Dai had the small, healthy option (aka big bertha breakfast), I had the ultra healthy option (small bertha’) and Kim the vegetarian delight (wails ‘they didn’t give me any bacon’)  Duh!

Tenuous segway to short verse that I particularly like from Roger McGough which goes something like this (apologies, Roger, if it’s not quite right!)

‘There are fascists in the park pretending to be humanitarians, like cannibals on a health kick eating only vegetarians.’

Veggie steak, anyone, or do you have a fool intolerance?

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Of Sunday on Monday

In case you’re going to pull me up for having a lazy weekend, I DID go for a run yesterday!  Admittedly only 7 miles (1 hour 8 mins or so), but a run nevertheless.  Down to the Royal Oak, across to Hundred Acre Lane, round to Wellhouse Lane, over to the railway and back via the station & Darens flat.  The latter seems to have a tree growing out of the chimney… is that anything to do with you Debbs… smoking weed maybe?

I had this vague thought that I was running for both Daren, whose paying customers might not appreciate his dulcet steps running round the poop-deck above their sunday-morning-lay-in and Nick, who is out of action at the moment on account of having allegedly eaten a castle of cake on his own.  Thus, with three-up, I felt justified in finding it hard work! 

The local farmer didn’t help much by suggesting I must be mad (keen observation actually!) before leisurely driving off in his air conditioned John Deere!

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Sunday morning escapade

I awoke from my dreams at 7.55am and whilst it was not the sunny morning I had envisaged, I was rearing to get my trainers on… after a very large expresso, of course. 

The sun was straining through light but wet clouds as I ran up the road and as it was also wet underfoot, I chose not to follow the mud-fest route that Daren, Nick and I often take.  I was in the mood to explore, happy to follow my nose and see what there was to see.  This took me to the south and east of the town where I discovered that the council was in the process of extending the path across an area where I had often wished there had been one.  That they had not completed the aforementioned became apparent as I ran around the boundary of first one large field, then another, a third and a fourth, in search of the exit. 

It had been lightly raining with big drops of warm water, but around this point there was a deluge, almost accentuating that I was going in the wrong direction. 

I eventually came to the boundary of the golf course where there was a gate of the locked variety and no clear route through the golfers playing in the rain.  I soldiered on finding a farm track heading in the right direction, but blocked by a farmyard with some impressive looking security gates on the other side.  I hedged around the boundary and came to a point where a low barbed wire fence and six feet of driveway stood between me and the route onward. 

I almost hope that the owners of the house did see me step over the fence because I can imagine them smiling as my shorts snagged a barb and I was left pinned to the fence for a few embarrassing moments until I figured out which way I had to pull the material to free myself. 

I ran onward, back up through the eastern side of the town, smiling back at the dog-walkers and on back to the house.  Here, a glance in the mirror confirmed that I was a sodden, bedraggled, mud covered monster.  No wonder they smiled at me!

Eight miles in one hour forty.  Not exactly speedy (Nick and I ran just over six miles in 55 minutes two weeks ago, although I did nearly throw up afterwards!) but passable for a wet Sunday morning escapade.

And the sun is now burning through the clouds.  Better late than never!