The loneliness of a light blogger

Just a quick post to say that I’m still alive, but there may be more light blogging ahead.

After some months trying, Mrs McrRunnr and I have sold our house, so all spare hours are being spent arranging paperwork and searching for somewhere to live.

The running continues (just!) and I’m still on track for the Conniston 14, but blogging about the runs is proving one commitment too far at the moment.

Hopefully the interlude will be brief.

An undulating 10

I’m always suspicious of the word undulating. It’s what mountain rats call hilly. To them, it seems, Everest is hilly. The path up to base camp is undulating.

In fact, today’s run probably wasn’t even undulating, it just wasn’t race track flat. Either way, it came as a bit of a wake up call following last week.

The self-levelling property of water means that running alongside uneventful stretches of a major river, as I did for 90% of my long run last week, is flat. Very flat. And that pancake terrain is really what I have become used to running in Manchester these past six years. Flyover bridges count as hills, while I think I deserve a red polka-dotted jersey for climbing hump-backed bridges without stopping.

Cut to today: I set off confident – foolishly so, as it turns out – that James and I could crack 10 miles in less than 80 minutes. We then met up with a friend of his who could probably crack 10 miles in 80 minutes without breaking sweat, and certainly without reaching for the Camelbak he’d brought with him today.

So off, we went OK: 8:07 for mile one, 7:56 for mile two, 7:48 for mile three. So far so good.

Even 8:02 for mile four was nothing to worry about. But not long after that, I started to notice hills which had never seemed to be on this route before.

Now, Cheshire is hardly known for its mountain ranges – I’ll grant you that – but by the standards of flatness to which I’ve grown accustomed, even the slight inclines I’d never noticed before began to loom up like The Eiger ahead of me. 

Add to this the fact that, had I decided that the pain in my lungs (which haven’t had a proper workout for months) and the sluggishness in my legs were unbearable, I’d no real idea where I was, or how to get home. That dilemma – hang on and painfully make it home vs drop out and become quickly lost – is quite something to get your head around when you’re having to concentrate just on breathing. 

As it was, I hung on a little, Fast Mark decided to go at his pace (he knew where he was too!) and James and I finished having averaged a little slower than I did last week at 8:07/mile. I will get under 8, but not for a week or two yet.

A good workout, and just ideal conditions. Cold in the shade, frosty underfoot, but with clear blue skies and the low sun bursting through the trees/hedgerows/footballers’ mansions on a very quiet Sunday morning around Dunham Massey and Bowdon. I really am going to have to find a way of taking a camera with me.

By the way, the graph shows the fluctuation in my pace – not the profile of the run! I think this is the route we followed.

A tale of two runs

“Jog in again today, Chris? Nice day for it.”

Except it didn’t feel like a nice day for it. Sure, by the time I was showered and at my desk, it looked like a beautiful day outside – clear blue skies, sun shining. I bet it looked a nice day from behind the steering wheel too. 

But go back to when I stepped out of the house at 7.20, and it felt altogether different. For a start, my legs seemed to have only just got over my Sunday run, and to be honest, were quite aggrieved that I was about to put them through another run so soon – if not ever.

Add to that the fact it was dark – I’ve no idea if it was clear sky or not because, to be honest, I didn’t look up that high. You see, as well as the legs protesting, my head was also in strictly “stare at the floor in protest” mode.

Finally, and what you couldn’t see from my desk was that there was noticeable breeze too.

In short, this morning I did not want to run. At all.

With that in mind, I was glad to have left the car at home at all, never mind to have been told my the nice Nike+ lady that I had somehow managed to stay under 5min/km for the full three miles into the office.

But had it felt like a nice day for it? Not one bit.

Oh, and by the way, No I didn’t jog in today. I ran.

This evening couldn’t have been more different. Though dark again, my legs had warmed up and realised that just because I was putting my running shoes on didn’t mean I was heading out for another 10 miler. I also knew it had been a nice day, and bothered to look up this time to see that there were still clear skies overhead.

More than that, after just over half a mile, a colleague beeped as she drove past in her car. Not normally something to cheer me up, but seeing as she’d left the office a minute or two before me, I felt quite pleased that I’d covered so much ground faster than she’d managed in traffic.

That, together with the menacing strings of Led Zep’s Kashmir, pushed me on to my fastest, most evenly paced run yet – 4:54/km - not particularly fast by old standards, and only over just under 3miles, but improvement nonetheless.

Here are the static graphs, but if you prefer links, here is the morning run and evening run.

 

Blood and sweat

A solo long run this morning. Having fought off the instinct not to go at all, I remembered I’d already told a few mates of my plans, so couldn’t back out now. With that in mind, I pulled on my kit, picked out a bit of Led Zeppelin on the iPod and set Nike+ to 10miles and set out.

I hadn’t planned exactly where I was going but had a rough route in mind which I suspected might do the trick: straight to the paths alongside the River Mersey, head downstream as far as Sale Water Park, then east to Palatine Road, and back. (The map’s here)

Nice weather for it – dry, bright, a stiff breeze in parts but largely still. The paths were still cut up and muddy in places, but all were (just about) passable.

Considering it’s very close to a busy motorway, and snakes through built up Chorlton and Didsbury, it’s amazing how far from the city you can feel with just a hundreds yards or so of nature reserves between you and endless housing estates.

The first thing I noticed was that I was far from alone. There were dozens of runners out there today.

The second thing I noticed – around 4.5miles – was blood trickling down my face. Quite what triggered a nose bleed on a pretty uneventful run, I’ve no idea, but it showed no sign of stopping until 10 minutes or so into my warmdown. So for six miles, as well as facing the irritating trickle across my top lip, I also attracted increasingly puzzled looks as I ran past the other runners, dog walkers and couples out on the paths.

The third and final thing I noticed was the pace. I’d assumed that running without my much-fitter training partner, I’d slump to a trudge, but Nike+ reckons I actually upped the pace fractionally from our 9 miler last week and crept ever closer to a solid 8-min-mile training run.

It’s been a few hours now since the run, and my legs are already reminding me that I’ve punished them a little, but nothing too severe. Let’s see how sore I am in the morning.