I wasn't going to post because all I've been doing is running and working. Boring work and boring runs. But Mr Scientist asked me when my next post was going to be since I haven't posted in 4 days and I can't disappoint him of all people.
Last night I was up late attending to a colleague's leaving do. Late as in 2:20 bedtime late. No alcohol though, which was a good thing. I didn't realise how much it would affect my run until I started. My legs felt like lead and every second on the treadmill felt like an hour. Soon I was getting antsy and bored. I felt no elation or enjoyment, just a trudging kind of annoyance at being stuck there. I was supposed to do a 40 minute tempo run, but I opted for a less intense and slower tempo run instead. On level 0.
I chose Glosoli by Sigur Ros on my iPod at around minute 36 to carry me through to the end and I was just getting into it when I accidentally hit the emergency stop button.
Feck.
I hate it when I do that.
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I mentioned in a comment on Every Day's a Picnic that I used to have a blog about living abroad. I lived in Syria for 10 months and blogged the hardcopy diary I kept as a way of updating my friends and family about what I was doing there. In 2007 I deleted it in a fit of madness and only have one post saved - a post about the afternoon my friend and I visited the semi-abandoned Jewish Quarter of Damascus.
I've been thinking recently about rewriting it so it contains pictures and history of the area where I lived rather than just my friends' and my exploits and reblogging it.
Would you be interested in reading one post a month about it?
When I got up on Sunday morning it was tipping it down. Ru-roh, as Scooby Doo might have said. Fortunately the rain had eased by the time my family and Mr Scientist and I parked in Newcastle and it was merely drizzling by the time we got to Gateshead Stadium for the start of the Great North 10K. I was really anxious before the race and the weather did nothing for my nerves. I found myself alternatively wishing it would be called off, feeling sick, and wondering why the heck I put myself and my family through this for fun, and not only that, but paying for the privilege as well. Glumly I set my Garmin running partner to a slower pace, anticipating finding running on wet roads more difficult.
Full recap after the jump. I've edited this post to include a bit more info about the run.
Route of the Great North 10k according to my Garmin
I popped over to Gateshead yesterday to try to walk the Great North 10k. I went a bit wrong at the beginning, and didn't walk all to the end but I got a good feel for the area's hills and flats. It was hot and sunny. It is not hot and sunny today. It will not be hot and sunny tomorrow either. :(
Right now I'm having a lazy afternoon with a DVD of Tamara Drewe and a pot of green tea with mint while I wait for my parents to arrive for dinner. They're staying over and will be cheering me on at the race tomorrow. :)
Hope you all have a lovely weekend!
Here are some photos of the route of the run
Beautiful Gateshead International Stadium Industrial Park.
Today I ran a 3 mile race pace session before tapering ahead of the 10k race on Sunday. I put it off and put it off even though I knew it was only 3 miles and it would be over in around 26 minutes. I was worried my stomach ache would reoccur. To be honest though I'm quite chuffed 3 miles is a short distance and a run which covers it in around 26 minutes is one which doesn't leave me feeling like my heart is going to explode or that I'm going to throw up. The sense of achievement and accomplishment was brilliant.
The first mile was tough and I was huffing and puffing and often falling behind Mr Sticky the running partner representation on my Garmin. Then when I got out of town and on to the disused railway I run on I got into the swing of it for the remaining 2.1 miles. I even considered speeding up to make an attempt on doing a sub-25 5k attempt but decided to stick to the plan and not risk wearing myself out. It was a typical evening run - still warm, still sunny, lots of midges and flies that I had to avoid swallowing. The most trouble I had was a touch of a stitch in my right side and a slight tugging in one of the muscles in my inside right thigh. NO STOMACH ACHE! YAY! HURRAH!
I did 3.1 miles in 25:58 with an average pace of 8:37/mile, and I'd do the 10k in 53:32 if I keep that up for the race on Sunday. Hahah oh I wish. I kind of felt like I could have continued at that pace for at least another 2 miles but I'm not expecting to be able to maintain that pace for the whole thing. Mainly because I've never run longer than 7 miles, haven't run 10k at my race pace, haven't run at all in the Gateshead area so the course will be very unfamiliar, and because I think the course is hillier than where I've been training.
Still no sign of my pack. I emailed the race organisers and they said my pack had been sent out but that duplicate packs are available on the race day.
I have tomorrow afternoon off so I might pop to Gateshead to scope out the course of the 10k if I get time.
I can't believe I haven't featured one of my favourite bands, Calexico, yet. The driving drums but laid back feel to the song were perfect for my easy recovery run. I should have run it yesterday, but went to the beach instead, so I swapped the days around. I headed out of the village and into the countryside. I love running outside in the summer. No stomach ache, but then I didn't run fast at all.
On Saturday I ran the longest I've ever run. A long slow 6 miles along the high street, through the retail park dodging afternoon shoppers pulling out of the carpark, down the hill on a lane that runs between fields of oats and cow, over the river and the sportsfield and along a trail through the wood. Then I turned around and came back, I'm not very good at working out circular running routes. I ran later than I usually do, starting at 5pm because it was so warm up here in the usually frozen north. The air smelt of cut grass and the trees were a deep green tinged with blue in the late afternoon haze. I was glad to be outside.
My run wasn't so good. I've been suffering from mildly uncomfortable tummy aches over the last few runs. They're worse when I push myself, but even my long slow run was tough. I had to stop about 6 times in order to alleviate it. I'm not sure what's causing it and the internet is no help. It could be drinking too much water before running, not drinking enough, eating too much or not eating enough to fuel my body, not having enough core strength or straining my core with the pushups and situps I'm doing, etc etc etc. It could also be due to some pills I'm taking which can cause nausea and stomach aches as a side affect. Last week I also did more exercise than I usually do, so it could also be due to that.
It's worrying because it means I couldn't push myself as much as I'd like to, and if it continues it will badly affect my run on 17th July. I just hope that like the and hamstring calf twinges I had a few months back these aches will pass. I got the advise to try to keep my breaths in sync with my feetstrikes, so I'll try this today.
I'm still pleased I ran 6 miles. When I first started going to the gym I could barely run a mile, and when I first started losing weight I couldn't run for the bus.
One of them had short pieces about why people run. One journalist said they run to look as fit as George Clooney, another said she runs to have some time to herself, and the last said he runs to help his mental health. I'm a mixture of the first two - vanity and space. Running and exercise help me lose weight, and when I reach my goal weight they'll help me maintain it.
I also run to get fitter and improve just like you'd practice an instrument.
Running helps me if I'm in a bad mood or upset. I was in a foul mood on Friday and, frankly, being a right mardy cow for very little reason. I started off angry and running fast before I physically told myself to slow down or I wouldn't finish the run at all. I slowed my pace, got my breathing under control, and I could feel myself calming down. I completed the run despite having to stop frequently to ease my stomach ache and was a much nicer person by the end of it...
The only problem I had with the article was the response of some of the commenters below the line. I know the internet is full of nutters and malcontents and that opinions are like bumholes but some non-runner commenters seemed to feel that they were somehow superior to runners for not doing something they don't enjoy. I may need to be called a wahmbulance but this smug attitude of denigrating someone else's hobby or choice because you don't understand the attraction of it is one I find intensely irritating. I think it comes from insecurity, but also from plain narrow-mindedness and it's something I find baffling. Surely as an adult it should come as no surprise that different people have different hobbies, and that it's pointless to feel smug about not doing other people do enjoy.
Anyway, whinge over. I also discovered parkrun and there are a few nearish to me, so I can use them to work on getting that sub-25 5k without having to pay to enter loads of races, although I'm probably going to enter a race on 20th July.
Another thing - there's a running club that meets within walking distance of where I live. I'd like to join to improve my running with people who know what they're doing as well as to meet new people. , However I've seen them out and they all look impossibly fit and slim.
Should I join now, or wait til I'm a slightly less blobby and slow runner?
Today I went to the gym with the intention of running a 4 mile race pace trial, doing day 2 of week 2 of the 100 pushup challenge and 200 situp challenge. Halfway through the situps my iPod ran out of power. I was in a workout mindset so I ran anyway.
34 minutes and 14 seconds later I completed it with only one pause - because the treadmill is automatically limited to 30 minutes. I'm not a treadmill hog, honest, there are about 30 treadmills and only about 10 were being used. I'm a very conscientious gym user, really.
The run felt good. Not as good as if I'd just packed up my trainers and gone and done it outside later on but I was in the mood and I knew if I did it after going home it would be late and I would probably put it off till tomorrow or some such thing.
But the run felt good. It wasn't easy and I spent too much time looking down as the miles crawled by as there was little else to look at. Before the run I remembered that I found last week's 3.5mile race pace run incredibly difficult because I felt like I just didn't have the energy, and I was worried I was going to need the music to get me through it.
But the run felt good. The act of concentrating on my form to keep my shoulders and arms down felt good. I tense my shoulders and my hands creep up to my chest resulting in aching shoulders. I swear to God I can come back from a run with my leg muscles feeling fine and no blisters or anything like that but my right shoulder blade killing me. Also, pushups give me short-lived headaches. WTF, body?
The act of putting one foot in front of the other, managing my breathing, keeping my body going felt good. It would have felt better with the sun and wind on my face but it still felt good. And I needed it, I really did. After last week I needed a boost to let me know it's going to be ok and I can do this 10k. I've been overthinking training recently, worrying about if I'm training effectively, if I need to speed up, slow down, do something different, use my HRM more... so it was good to just set a target and enjoy getting there.
I now know I can run for 4 miles in very boring circumstances, since I run better outside, with an average pace of 08:33.5. I would not have been able to do that before I started training for this 10k. I now know I can enjoy running for itself.
Ok so I'm at the gym. Last night I discovered an amazing song by an amazing band, Short Change Hero by The Heavy, and I thought, "That is going on my gym playlist RIGHT NOW." I could see it being used in a western film with cowboys getting ready for a shootout at noon in a flea-infested town somewhere in the deserts of Utah. The wind whistles and raises a small dust devil that rolls along the main street. The hero chews down on his cigar and squints. The townspeople rush inside. The churchbell tolls...
So I downloaded it, loaded it onto my iPod shuffle and practically skipped to the gym today knowing that THIS AMAZING SONG would feature in my workout and I was looking forward to my planned CT session because it's not as hard as the intervals I did yesterday or the race pace run I've got tomorrow.
So I got to the gym and hopped on the elliptical. 30 minutes later it still hadn't appeared. Never mind, I had 30 minutes on the bike to do as well, it would surely crop up. 15 minutes in and still no 'Short Change Hero'. My earphones have been dodgy recently and I lost Lefty last week. 15 minutes in Righty joined him in the big earphone factory in the sky.
So here is a peaceful song for a peaceful run. On Sunday I ran a slow 40 minute recovery run. Usually for my recovery run I just run slowly for the set time, but this time I used the heart rate monitor on my Garmin to set my pace... If I'm correct, and I could be wrong because I'm still getting to grips with using a HRM for training, recovery runs should be at 50%-60% of the max heart rate and I found out for me that's slightly faster than a brisk walk/jog (omg embarassing!) and I have been running too quickly on my recovery runs to fully benefit from them. So I ran slower and it was a lot harder than I thought to keep my heart rate down. And today was a rest day so there's little more to report on the training front.
But going back to hiking in the Peak District. On the first day we walked in the Hope Valley up Losehill, along the Great Ridge to Mam Tor and back down to Castleton and it was beautiful.
The second day we did one of the most famous Peak District walks - Kinder Scout from Edale. The route we followed can be found here.
We started around lunchtime, having had a lazy breakfast of American pancakes and general faffage.
Grindsbrook, near the start of the walk. In this little valley we were met with two ways around a steep hillock at the side of Grindsbrook - along the rocky beck or over the top of the hillock - and a very kind man all in green told us they both met up after it, but the way scrambling over the rocks in Grindsbrook was more fun so we followed that.
After following Grindsbrook Clough for a while you come to the last ascent onto the Kinder Plateau, a scramble that looks formadible but which is easier than it looks with lots of well-rooted boulders to climb up. This site has much better pictures than I of tha part of the walk in much better weather too! We overtook a family who were climbing it with their children. One of the girls was just 6 years old and she was bouncing up it, how amazing is that?
After that we headed across the Kinder Plateau for Kinder Downfall. On the map it looks fairly straightforward - follow the path across a flat bit. Only we lost the path. And had to scramble around peat bogs intercut by gullies where streams flowed in order to find the path again.
On Kinder Plateau
After that we headed for Kinder Downfall - a waterfall that plunges off the edge of the Kinder Plateau and down into the valley below. Only it would if it wasn't so windy it was being blown back up onto the plateau.
Kinder Downfall.
Sheep sheltering at the top of Kinder Downfall.
The sheep around Kinder Downfall were among the friendliest I've ever met, in fact they're the only friendly sheep I've ever met - they must be used to walkers feeding them sandwiches.
We were dog tired by the time we got back to the farm, but ready to walk through the Manifold Valley to Thor's Cave on the Sunday.
Today was a fairly easy 4 mile distance run at a 6.5mph pace. Fortunately the AC in the gym was fixed and I didn't feel like I was trying to run in a wetsuit.
Today I also roughly plotted the course of the 10k I'm doing in July - the Great North 10k - on walkjogrun.net. From what I can tell there are quite a few steep hills, but they're not very high. I'll walk it when I get the chance. Where I live if you're not going down a hill you're coming up one, so I'll work as many as humanly possible into my runs to try to get myself ready.
What other things would you recommend?
I mentioned I went to the Peak District over the weekend. We found a few walks from walkingenglishman.com and followed them since none of us knew the area at all. The site's brilliant - it has a great many walks from all over the UK and is very detailed as it has full routes mapped out on OS maps as well as information about potential hazards and where you can get refreshments (beers in our case!) and so on. Some websites just list the start and end points with a few directions where to turn left etc, so it's great to be able to plot them out on your own map. I can't recommend it enough.
We started with a walk along the Great Ridge to Mam Tor in the Hope Valley. We started near Castleton, not Hope, and curtailed the walk because we were hungry and the pub was beckoning. Rather than walk across the hill from Mam Tor to descend into Castleton between Peveril Castle and Peak Cavern we turned and followed the road/path to Mam Tor Farm and down into Castleton that way.
The walk was a beautiful introduction to the Peak District.
Looking back toward Lose Hill you can see the path we followed along the ridge with Edale to the left and the Hope Valley to the right.
Here you can see the edge of Mam Tor cliff looking back over Back Tor and Lose Hill in the distance. Ignore the date, we didn't travel back in time...
A perfect walk to blow the cobwebs away and get us ready to walk Kinder Scout the next day...
Hello, I'm back. I'm not dead or abandoning the blog. I've been busy and I've been away. My partner and I spent the bank holiday weekend walking in the Peak District with friends. The calories I burnt walking just about covered the pub meals and beer, but only just. I'm going to blog our walks later this week when I've a bit more time.
Today's song is in honour of a) one of the best bands ever, and b) the gym today because the AC was broken and it felt like it was around 28C in there. I was doing some sit-ups and pushups on a mat and I swear to God my shins were sweating. Not the healthy I've-just-done-some-heart-pumping-cardio sweat, but the miserable itchy sweat that your body does when it's too hot and it wants you to find a nice fridge to sit in. Or is this TMI?
Anyway, my 3.5mile 6.9mph race pace run on the treadmill was incredibly difficult, and I felt a bit sick afterwards but I refused to give up (aside from a short pause to swig some water around 2 miles in) because I've been slack recently and missed a few training sessions. I missed an interval and a long-distance run last week on top of the runs I'd already planned to drop because I'd be walking instead.
All I know is if the AC is still broken tomorrow there's no way I'll be able to do my planned interval session. :(
I'm going to tentatively put some June goals up. I'm a bit loath to do this because I rarely achieve stated goals, but here goes anyway.
Lose 4lb
Complete every training session for my sub-hour 10K
I woke up with this song in my head and kept humming the same first line over and over again while at the gym today. "I'd like to be under the sea/in an octopus' garden..."
Aside from that I've got nothing much to post. Today was supposed to be a rest day, but work and life commitments on Wednesday means I'm too busy to workout or even run so I've swapped Wednesday's CT session for today's rest day. I did a relaxed 30 minutes on the elliptical at level 10 and a slow pace followed by 30 minutes on the reclining fixed bicycle-thing at a fat burning level.
I've got 9 weeks until my 10k race so I've worked out a training schedule which I'm going to try and post. It's unleashed the geeky side in me and I colour the cell green when I've done the session and note far/fast etc as well as how I felt afterward.
Anyone else do anything like that to log exercise?
I learnt a few things while running the 5k race this morning.
1) If you haven't been training to run a 5k race at a certain pace which just happens to be faster than the pace you were aiming to run a 10k in found but found too difficult and had to reassess how fast you will be able to complete said 10k, you will not magically be able to run the 5k at this pace.
2) If you wake up feeling lethargic and bloated, it won't help either.
4) Despite losing 14lb, and training somewhat regularly, you will only knock 1 second off the PR you set over a year ago.
5) After running you'll end up with phlegm in your lungs so that whenever you laugh you sound like a 65 year-old woman who's smoked 40 a day since age 14 for a good few hours afterwards. (Seriously, lungs, WTF?)
So I finished the race in 25:30, deducting the time it took to get over the finish line. I couldn't keep up with my mate who was pacing a 24 minute 5k from the word go. I was really hoping to finish in under 25 minutes at least, but I just didn't have the energy to sprint at the end.
I was talking the race over with my partner Mr Scientist, and he made a very pertinent observation which lifted my spirits a lot when he pointed out that consistency is a good thing. Finishing a race in a similar time isn't as good as finishing it quicker, but it isn't worse either.
I've had to reassess my goal for the 10k. I have 9 weeks and I'm going to aim for a sub-hour 10k. After that I'm going to train for a sub-25 minute 5k, and I will achieve it.... eventually.
