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.

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.