Observations of an occasional runner
You’ll be pleased to know that, despite the absence (I’m writing this on the 7th June), I have actually been running most weeks… it’s only the writing that had lapsed! I didn’t make notes after this run, or the next two, so the posts will mainly consist of photos.
You can see the run on Strava at https://www.strava.com/activities/301661469 – 6.06 miles in 57 minutes,, 6.5 mph.
It’s been a long time coming this year, on account of the sporadic runs, but it finally happened this morning… the longs came off and the legs came out!
Not that it was overly warm… it was more a case that we’re almost at the end of April and it wasn’t overly cold!
The short local loop that I chose had almost no wet mud which, in comparison to last time, was a real blessing. As a gardener this is not great, since the garden is also dry, but at least it saved me the task of cleaning my runners! Only in one place was the way blocked and since I’d left my gung-ho mud-plugging head at home, I minced around the margins like a fair-weather runner!
You can see the route on Strava and you might notice that I ran a lot faster than the 4 previous times I’ve taken this route on there (though still slow by comparison to ‘the good old days’! I’m sure this has more to do with the hard surface than my fitness, although I did sprint down the road at the end… there is a short stretch that other Strava users run along and I’ve now managed to get into 2nd place!
I reckon that the people who live along the road were quite grateful for me whizzing past quickly… my white legs are probably not the most appealing sight to behold!
6 miles in 56 minutes 10 seconds…
As I sit here I have a palpable sense of deja vu… it’s been three weeks since my last run and I’m not entirely sure where the time has gone. Moving on quickly, at least I managed to get out for a run today, even managing to rub shoulders with some of the runners on the Brighton Marathon course… albeit the back markers. This is actually quite appropriate since, with my current form, it is where I would have been if I had actually entered the race!
I started from my folks’ place and ran the lovely 6 mile loop that makes up a lot of my running lately. I start by running down the ridge from Woodingdean to Ovingdean, dropping down to the valley floor and then taking the steps down to the Undercliff Walk at Ovingdean Gap. I then ran along to Rottingdean and worked my way back up to Ovingdean via the windmill and then on back up the ridge path.
I chose an easy pace, due to the lack of exercise lately, and just pottered along, stopping occasionally to take photos:
I completed the run in 1:03, though Strava helpfully removed the photo stops and called it just under 58 minutes. You can see the route here:https://www.strava.com/activities/284076530
In other news, I am now the proud owner of a rather unusual custom shop J185 Gibson. Unfortunately, whilst Kim couldn’t hear the myriad bloops that I used to make playing the Studio without an amp, now she can hear every blemish… and probably needs ear muffs! This purchase is part of an ongoing experiment into learning & development that I started in 2010… she’s showed incredible patience with the exercise to date and my hope is that I’ll eventually manage to string some less jarring notes together!
The garden project paused whilst I did some spring-cleaning last weekend… there are no obvious changes, other than the table making it out of its winter hideout, but Kim’s car was loaded to the gunnels with garden waste when I had finished.
I also finished the work I was doing at WorldRemit and it has to be said that I REALLY miss the people 🙁 However, I swapped my London desk for one with this view… ho hum!
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!
Yesterday was a lovely day and I managed to get out into the garden for a couple of hours to prepare the way for a new project. This involved removing a couple of large shrubs that were past their best and moving a couple of railway sleepers. I’m quite surprised that I’ve not felt the after effects of all the cutting, digging and struggling with sleepers!
After sitting with a quadspresso in the teahouse this morning, planning the next steps, I got out for a run on my local circuit. The ground was surprisingly wet and the mud was thus really liquid, meaning that I was splishing a lot. There was little point in trying to avoid this water-mud so I just ran through the very worst of it… generally in straight lines so that I didn’t end up on my face!
For a change (and in order to avoid the worst of the mud) I ran along the Magical Path today, though even this was muddy.
I don’t normally take pictures of the beautiful houses I run past, but this one is for sale if anyone is interested… though I can’t find it on the agent’s site to let you know the price!
Sometimes it’s hard to convey what the conditions are like… today, however, I have photos!
6 miles in 1.02 is an average speed of just under 6mph… you can see the route here: https://www.strava.com/activities/258563623
My aim was to get back out to my garden project, but incessant rain stopped play. Cue a slob-out afternoon in front of the TV instead!
Twice in the last week I have run for a train with a heavy work bag on my back. I managed to get to the station ahead of the train both times and was pleased that I could still breathe easily, but it clearly wasn’t a good idea as I have managed to tweak my back.
We went out for a pre-Christmas meal with my favourite (school) friends last night and the bearhugs (or at least Paul’s ones!) probably didn’t help.
Based on this I was in two minds whether to go for a run at all, but I decided there was at least a chance that it would ease the pain so went out into a sunny morning. It was like having the stitch, insofar as I couldn’t fully inflate my lungs, except that the pain was below my shoulder blades rather than my sternum. Every so often I would twist and utter the WhuHuh sound, which probably would have been funny if anyone had been there to hear me.
The mud was about the same as last week, so I was sliding all over the place. However it was a bramble that ultimately unseated me… I must have stood on one end and the loop then caught my other foot… THUD! Down I went onto my hands… I won’t be surprised if my shoulder aches tomorrow into the mix!
Overall it was a beautiful day which even felt warm in the sun… though it was fweezin’ out of the sun!
No photos to show (yet) – see last week’s rant (which I’ve only posted today) for the reason. You can see the 6 mile route at https://www.strava.com/activities/249027181 – I basically completed it in about 1.01, which is similar enough to the last few weeks to make me realise that the pain today didn’t slow me down… or that I’m not generally trying hard enough!
Photos to follow if my MacBook Air ever lets me download them! Post purchase dissonance R us!
PS. It might seem odd to have pictures above of runners that magically shed their mud, whilst the socks & longs retain theirs. Kim kindly handed me a bowl of water & a scrubbing brush to clean them before I even took them off. It worked well, but the next run returned them to their disgustingly muddy state!
Sitting here on the first of Feb, it’s already difficult to remember the details of my run last week.
And it’s also tricky to show you as my MacBook Air has found a new way to frustrate me. iPhoto (remember from before that this is the only way to get photos from iPhone to MacBook) started uploading 55 photos from my iPhone but stopped with 18 to go. It has clearly stopped uploading (maybe an hour ago now), but I still can’t close the programme because it’s convinced that it’s still working fine. Disconnecting the iPhone makes no difference at all. It’s an impasse.
So for those of you thinking about changing from a PC to a Mac, pause to think about the following. It’s great in that it starts as soon as you open it and it certainly looks cool, but:
I’m sure that I will get some stick for this outburst, but only from die-hard Mac users, or those people who have not tried both. I WANT to love it, but it’s really hard to do that with the constant constraints to work around.
Anyway, last Sunday started very cold indeed, but it was warmer running than I expected… I had my outer layers unzipped after about a mile. The mud was deep enough to cover me in splatters head to toe, but sufficiently shallow to be really slippery! There was loads of water around (photos would be nice here… I’ll upload them if I am allowed to at some stage!).
Overall I ran 6 miles in 1.02… a shade under 6mph. You can see the details here: https://www.strava.com/activities/245835561
I’ve been running around London this week meeting entrepreneurs: legging it up and down tube escalators and along streets to stay on schedule and managing well most of the time. There were even several days when I collapsed onto the train in the evening and realised that I’d not even stopped for lunch… though I’d had plenty of caffeine instead!
This morning was bright and sunny (though somewhat chilly) and it seemed like a good day to run to the sea… though not from here! Instead I drove down to see my folks and ran my short circuit there instead.
The circuit takes me down the ridge path to Ovingdean, past the church (with a nod to Richard Marsh) and then down to Ovingdean gap where stairs take you down to the Undercliff Walk.
For some reason it was hard work going along the flat Undercliff Walk despite having a fresh wind behind me all the way… though I did stop to take quite a few photos along the way.
At Rottingdean I turned back up the hill and past the windmill to get back up to Ovingdean.
From there it was a short run up to the ridge path and back to base.
Strava estimated the run to be 6 miles in under an hour (you can see the run here), though it was an hour on my watch… an average of 6mph. I suspect that this is considerably more leisurely than my sprints around London, with somewhat fresher air too. Oh, and way less coffee!
It was a close to ideal Sunday morning for me… get up, make coffee, play guitar, read HBR, run. It was very cold and miserably grey outside and I went upstairs to put on my shorts (for a run on the machine)… but for some reason came down dressed for the outside world. My runners were still caked in mud from last week and dried to a crisp, so I followed myself around with a dustpan & brush once I’d squeezed my feet into them. I stood ready by the door and then had an idea.
I had installed the Strava app on my phone at some point in the dim & distant past and had even gone so far as to create a profile… but that’s as far as I had managed to get. Here was a great opportunity to test it out… so I agreed to the T&Cs and set it (and me) running.
Cold it most certainly was, but as I tramped along the road there was a faint glow behind the grey mantle… enough to make me very glad to be outside. I opted for the same circuit that I ran often through the summer and quickly reached the start of the mud… oh boy, this was going to be a muddy run!
As I’ve written here often before, mud comes in lots of varieties, though I’m sadly unfamiliar with their names. Today the mud was light, wet, splashy, slippery and moderately deep in places (though fortunately not sticky enough to relieve me of my shoes!). Realising that I was going to get muddy regardless of how careful I was, I opted for a ‘plough through the middle’ approach, as much to lessen the likelihood of slipping over as anything else. This meant that I was quickly splattered in mud, but better this than running on the complex gradients at the margins of the path, having a repeat of last week and landing in the mud face-first!
Due to the temperature and the general slip-slidyness my phone stayed tucked away in the pocket of my jacket and thus photos were few… these should give a sense of the day though:
More mud ensued but little else caught my attention during the balance of the run… the benefit of reading HBR before running is that my mind was more active in trying to assimilate the new input, so random ideas kept pinging out including an idea for a short article.
It was fortunate that I had left the dustpan & brush out, as the floor was covered in mud by the time I had extricated myself from my socks and running longs, whilst my runners were returned sodden to dry ready for the next run.
According to previous calculations my circuit is 5.75 miles, but Strava reckons it was 6 miles… at least the difference is in the right direction! More curious, according to my watch the run took 60 minutes, whilst Strava calculated it as 58.30. Thus the average speed was in the range of 5.75 mph to 6.15 mph… either way not bad for such a slippery day!
You can even take a look at the circuit for yourself https://www.strava.com/activities/236534713
After a lovely dinner with Stuart & Grace last night, we had a lazy start to the day… in fact, I only just got up in time to load Kim’s car so that she could go off to London… and this before I’d even had a cup of coffee!
Since then I’ve had an atypically lazy day… hmmm… well aside from cleaning the shower room, doing the laundry, sorting out some bits in the garage etc. I do find it difficult to sit still!
Though I was too lazy to go out for a run, I did manage to do a quick five miles on the machine… though I regretted setting myself a target of sub-40 minutes. It would have been nice to have just plodded along, but this self-enforced time constraint meant that I had to crank up the speed beyond comfortable.
The music on the stereo today was Dire Straits and though the beat was good enough to keep me spinning along nicely, there were none of the spine-tingling musical moments that helped me sprint out last week.
So 5 miles in 39.42, an average of about 7.6 mph. No photos… too lazy!