Eclectic Views

    
Sure. Quads, calves, hamstrings and illotibs. At least, I think I do. It can
be hard to tell if I'm stretching the right bits sometimes.

This evening's run, I have to say, felt good. Tiring as always, but less so
than before, and I wasn't quietly relieved when having to wait to cross the
road that I got to take a breather. It felt easy, even with the pain in my
lower back that still irritates me, and at the end I felt like I could have
kept going for a good while longer. Maybe after another run of this length
I'll up the distance again and see what happens.

A good hard run at the end (which is particularly fun as the station
footbridge is about 150m from the end of the route - about 35 steps up,
across the bridge and down the same again) shaved a bit of time off, and
this time 5.4km took 0:28:44. 11.3km/h, 5.3 min/km, and (for those who don't
do metric) 8m33sec/mile.

The stretch of the Thames which forms part of my route runs north-south, and
running along the east bank today there was a beautiful sunset across the
river. I had to try hard not to get distracted too much and fall in.
  

    
> I had to try hard not to get distracted too much and fall in.

And start your first triathlon.
  

    
Hahaha!
  

    
What are you gonna do when the weather turns wet and cold, Mike? Are thre
indoor tracks? Or are you an all-weather kinda runner?
  

    
It's starting to turn that way already - got absolutely soaked a few days
ago. The thing which really causes trouble is usually wind rather than rain 
or cold - running against a headwind is tiring.

Today, I paid for yesterday with what's usually described as a "hard" run,
one of those runs where your body just doesn't want to fall into the rhythm
your brain wants it to for no apparent reason. Same distance as before but
0:29:37 - 53 seconds slower than yesterday, but with a couple of fairly
lengthy and annoying waits at road crossings to take into account.
There's a running track in Kingston - I'm tempted to drop over there and
run 5k on a nice flat springy track surface to see how my timings there 
compare with running on-street. They should, in theory, be better.
  

    
Added a bit extra today on an impulse - feeling much, much better than
yesterday - for no apparent reason and ended up doing 6.1km in 0:33:14.

The good news about the small extension today is that it's finally taken me
to the point where any further extensions will be, with the exception of a
couple of hundred metres, along the substantially more pleasant part of
the Thames towpath which meanders beside the river through pleasant parkland
for miles and with a nice side-route into Richmond Park. When I get past 
about the 10km mark, there's also a really nice circular route (mentioned 
to me by my psycho ultramarathonning brother) which involves crossing 
Kingston Bridge, running back down the Thames as far as Hampton Court (nice 
quiet path down the other side of the river), across HC bridge and back up.

Rivers are good things to run along. The laws of physics mean they're lovely
and flat.
  

    
> The laws of physics mean they're lovely and flat

so far, anyway.
  

    
After taking Saturday off because, well, it was a good idea to do so I
decided to push the envelope a bit yesterday and headed off into the as-yet
uncharted areas beyond Kingston railway bridge. The good news is that as
mentioned before, the terrain gets much more pleasant at this point compared
with running on pavements. The bad news is that it's easy to let this lull
you into a false sense of "I could go on forever!", as once you've gone as
far as you want to.. you have to turn round and come all the way back again,
doubling the distance.

This time involved adding an extra 750m out and back, so the run was 7.6km -
just a few hundred metres off the five-mile mark. If I'm feeling well later
on today, I may well go out and see if I can add a little more to that
before running more easily for the rest of the week.

Oh yeah - it took 40-minutes odd, which is (yet again) 11km/h. Whatever I
want to do, however slow or fast I try and go, I always end up averaging
11km/h end to end.
  

    
Because yesterday's run was so tantalisingly close to that psychologically
important 5 mile mark, I went out this evening with the intention of
doing the full 5 miles. And do the full five miles I did - 8.6km, 5.3 miles,
in 0:46:19. This makes me Feel Good.

It's taken me two days short of a month to get to this point, and I'm
surprised how fast I've improved. When I think back to that first time out
involving a combination of walking, jogging and staggering around a 3.6km
loop it already seems a long time ago. However, there's still a hell of a
long way to go before I can call myself a proficient runner - next stop
10km!

For the rest of this week, however, I'll be taking it fairly easy and doing
shorter, faster runs rather than trying to push the distances any further
unless I'm feeling really good. This, all the gurus say sternly, is the
point at which increasing confidence has a nasty habit of making people push
themselves too far and injure themselves.
  

    
Are you tracking your weight or your waist or doing any other kind of
measuring to see how this running is affecting your physique?
  

    
I weigh myself fairly regularly to see what's going on. Not much change so
far, but I wouldn't expect too much as a lot of what happens is
redistribution rather than elimination as muscle gets built in strategic
places. Muscle is dense stuff.

Well, after 8.5km or thereabouts around Amsterdam on Wednesday including
a quick break while I collected my registration stuff from the conference
centre (how to stand out in a room full of UNIX geeks - turn up in running
kit covered in sweat) there wasn't any further opportunity to get running
for the rest of the week as I was too busy with conference stuff and the
excellently boozy social event on Thursday evening. Two days off don't
hurt, though, and they give the body a bit of a rest.

This afternoon I made up for it with an 11.4km run up the Thames to 
Teddington Lock and back in 0:58:05, and was pleasantly surprised with
how well I handled the distance (oddly, the time when I feel most tired on
longer runs is usually towards the end of the outward leg rather than at
the very end). The only drawback was that just after turning to head for
home, the skies opened and a lot of the return journey was in torrential
run running into a headwind. I got absolutely soaked, and at one point could
hardly see at all as my glasses were useless in the heavy rain and the
rain was washing the salt which had condensed out of the sweat into my
eyes. However, I'm pretty waterproof and my kit will dry eventually, so 
no worries. Anyway, at least it provided some entertainment for people
shopping in Kingston to see me running past looking like I'd just
lost a fight with a fire engine.
  

    
All the running books (my reference is the scholarly and authoritative "Lore
of Running" by Tim Noakes) tell you that it's easy to run yourself into an
injury in the first months if you're not careful (endurance and ability
increase faster than bone density and muscle strength) so, well, it was just
about inevitable that I'd run myself into my first running-related injury at
some point.

And so it came to pass today - although fortunately it's just an injury
sustained while running rather than a running-related injury. While doing a
short 5k at a faster pace than usual, I came to the wooden bridge at the
turning point where I start back for home, hit the soaking wood of the
bridge deck in a sharp left turn, slipped and took a rather spectacular
spill which skinned one elbow rather effectively. This obviously slowed me
up for a bit, so I was quite pleased in the end to have made an average
speed of 12.3km/h. The elbow's cleaned up nicely, but it's probably going to
smart for a bit. Serves me right for not paying more attention.
  

    
I'm glad it wasn't something more serious, Mike!  Be careful!
  

    
Another one from my website:

Another attack of the runs

The thing about running is that it's sort of the opposite of playing with
computers. When you start computing, all you need is a computer, which will
cost you at least a few hundred quid unless you're very lucky and can
somehow pick one up from somebody else or do anything else which lets you
avoid the curse of going to PC World and asking one of their Helpful Sales
Assistants (tm) what sort of computer to buy (and regretting it a few months
later when you've learned a bit). Later on you can get upgrades and
accessories and so on, but they'll generally cost less than your initial
outlay on the machine. Unless, of course, you have an inkjet printer that
needs a complete set of new cartridges, in which case you might as well take
out the second mortgage right now.

When you start running, all you need is a pair of shoes suitable for running
in. This could just be any pair of trainers, but a pair of decent running
shoes is a must. However, all but the most snazzy ultra-technical gold-
plated running shoes will cost less than a computer. You could run in
trainers, even those silly ones with what look like rubber shock-absorbers
in the heels, but you'd be wise to bear in mind the words of my psycho
ultramarathonning brother - "Oh, I've seen people run races in those. Well,
come to think of it, I've seen people start races in those."

My shoes cost GBP65, which is sort of about what you'd expect to pay for a
decent shoe without too many whizzy features. A lot less than a computer
(and a lot less than a set of cartridges for my Photosmart 7960 at PC
World), but ah, that's just the beginning of it. With a pair of shoes, a
pair of shorts and a T-shirt or two you can certainly get running, but then
you start reading running magazines and running websites and suddenly find
out that hell, there's a whole new area of geeky toys which you can buy now
you've found out that they exist.

Heart rate monitors, rain jackets, wind jackets, pedometers, gloves,
clothing made out of special microfibre materials which wick perspiration
away from the body, "hydration packs" (posh word for a rucksack with a water
bladder and a long straw), specialised hats, specialised socks, energy bars,
bum bags, shoe bags, you name it. No single item costs particularly much
unless you go for the massively high-end stuff which for most people,
including me as a rank newbie, is absolutely not necessary, but buy a few
bits and pieces here and there and you can suddenly find you've spent a lot
of money. However - and this is the good bit for a computer geek - it's
important to remember that it is extremely hard for a beginning runner to
spend more than the cost of a 15" Powerbook or even a fairly cheapo PC on
running clobber, so this makes me feel better.

I now have a stretchy T-shirt which allegedly wicks moisture away from the
skin and makes me less sweaty (which it does, except in the band where my
heart rate monitor sensor attaches round my chest and holds the fabric away
from the skin) and some extremely short shorts which are actually more
comfortable than my cheapo shorts, and will probably soon have to figure out
what to wear to run in when it gets colder as winter draws in which will
probably involve more shopping. Of course, one of the other primary
functions of running gear is to make you look like more like Someone Who Is
Running rather than like someone who's just trying to get somewhere in a
hurry before the buffet's all been eaten, so the more skintight Lycra you
can sport the more passers-by will consider you a force to be reckoned with.
There is another side to this, of course. If your kit looks too new, it'll
be obvious to other runners that you are just a rank newbie with delusions
of grandeur and more money than sense (quite common around London), so it's
important to get caught in a few rainstorms to make sure everything gets
soaked and starts to pick up that "used" look. At the elite end of the road
or cross-country running scale, the more mud stains, frays and holes you can
get into your thermals and Ron Hills the more you'll be able to intimidate
your opponents with your years of experience and implied ability to casually
pass them as if they were standing still while you give them a little nod
and pass a cheery remark about the weather.

Most improbably, I've now been running for about five weeks and am still
enjoying it despite getting massively lost in Thames Ditton last night and
running almost 15km rather than 12 as a result. Curse these Tory councils
with their low council tax rates and no decent street signage, but at least
I got to discover why long-distance runners all seem to have a pot of
Vaseline in their bags. I, too, now have a pot of Vaseline of my very own -
by far the least expensive piece of running kit I've bought and, probably,
the one which will give the most return on the investment.
  

    
...and this afternoon, I went back and did the run I got lost on a couple of
days ago - but didn't get lost this time. 12.3km, 1:03:15. Or maybe 1:02:15
- I found out too late today that my heart rate monitor resets the run timer
and averages if you don't have a free memory to store it in and have to go
and clear one out. It was either one of those times, but the sensible thing
to do seems to be to assume it was the longer one.

My total for the last week (Sun-Sat) is therefore 50.5km (31.4 miles), which
is quite enough to be going on with, thank you. I don't think I'll be
pushing the distance beyond this for a while - it would be asking for
trouble to do so.
  

    
50k is nice work!
  

    
...and anyway, tomorrow is the Kingston Running Festival, which I'm not
entering myself (I'd have missed the entry deadline before being sure of
being able to reliably run the distance) with 8.2 mile, 16 mile and
full marathon races going on simultaneously. I'll be at the finish to cheer
my brother on - he's doing the 8.2 mile race. And then go for breakfast
as it should be done by about 9:20.
  

    
It's been something of a long week of the soul as far as running is
concerned. After running on five consecutive days, Monday was a rest day. I
went into central London to do a bit of shopping and meet some friends in the
evening, walking several miles in the process. This seems to have caused my 
knees substantially more anguish than a whole week's worth of running - the
difference between running shoes and my old boots which I was wearing - which
has meant I've had to be very careful this week to avoid causing damage.

An easy week after a few weeks is always a good thing anyway, but I need to
be able to run confidently right now as my first race is on Sunday morning -
the Croydon 10k. I'm aiming to finish in about 50 minutes, which is slower
than most of my runs have been. Everything's more or less back to normal
now, so I'm going to try a gentle 10k later today and see how it goes. After
a couple of short runs in the last two days, I hope it'll be fine. The last
thing I want is to push things too hard and injure myself before Sunday.

Yesterday's 5k run was a nasty, crampy affair. Hopefully today will be better.
  

    
(and incidentally, I've been finding that Nike dri-fit T-shirts are
annoyingly comfortable things to wear just for hanging around at home,
let alone for running in. They make you look terribly sporty, too.)
  

    
<vard> will be happy to hear that.
  

    
Well, I'm obviously playing the major manufacturers off against each other
as far as the high-powered endorsements are concerned. It all depends on
what kind of deals my agent can come up with.
  

    
It's an interesting observation that after a while, *not* running starts to
become harder than running. Because my knees were giving me trouble after a
long walk around London in my old boots earlier this week, I've been taking
it easy in the runup to tomorrow morning's race as the last thing I'd want
would be an injury preventing me from running before my first race. The
phenomenon of exercise addiction is a well-documented thing so most people
are aware of it, and having experienced a few "go on! just a little run!" 
moments myself over the last couple of days I can completely understand how
people can get addicted to running at times when what they really need is to
take a break.

Time off and breaks from running are critical to keep your body doing the
right things - if you just hammer it into submission every day without a
break it doesn't have a chance to recover and strengthen. A day without a
run feels pretty odd right now, though. It's as if there's something
missing.

I've not run today or yesterday just to make sure those aches and pains
aren't going to cause trouble. They've now gone completely and I feel ready
to go, which I guess is a demonstration of the value of rest days. The main
problem now is that it's quite hard to now just throw my shoes on, go out
and run 10K just because I feel like doing so!

I ran 10k a couple of days ago to see what kind of pace I might be able to
produce tomorrow and did it in 49:07. Hopefully the race will be similiar,
but as it's in the morning and I'm generally an evening runner it remains to
be seen how I'll do. Right now, the main thing is nerves - after all, two 
months ago I wouldn't have even been able to consider running 5km, let alone
10.
  

    
How'd it go, Mike?
  

    
I'm still waiting for the official results to be posted on the web! I know
what I think my time was, but it'll be interesting to see how that
translates into positions. I did finish, which is a good start.
  

    
(awaiting the official results, too...)