Matt Gets Running

My only recent run was a slow 5K up the hill to the shops on Sat­urday. That’s because I’m (a) busy as hell this week, and some­thing has to give, and (b) run­ning the Bris­tol 10K on Sunday!

If you’d like to help me out with some charity-based encour­age­ment, I’ll be run­ning the 10K in aid of CLIC Sar­gent, the UK’s lead­ing can­cer char­ity for chil­dren and young people. My Just Giv­ing dona­tions page is here, and any amount, big or small, will be very much appre­ci­ated. And might help keep me going, too

Thanks!

April was a good month. I ran twice as far in April — 62.5km — than I did in any month in the pre­vi­ous year. So that’s a def­in­ite “win” when it comes to build­ing up my momentum.

There’s been a slight fal­ter­ing, though, in the first week of May, as I only went out run­ning the once. Social com­mit­ments, work, rain, and, I con­fess, too much beer at Thursday night’s Flickr meet, saw me put off run­ning until yesterday.

But! When I finally ran, what a good run it was. Not only did I do a full 10K, but it was also the fast­est 10K I’ve ever run!

I came in just under a minute faster than in the Bris­tol 2010 10K. Hope­fully that bodes well for the 2012 10K, which is in a couple of weeks, on May 20th. But whatever hap­pens on the offi­cial race day, it’s nice to have set a per­sonal best in training.

This week I’ll try to get out more than once; maybe Thursday and Sat­urday. We’ll see…

And so ends another week where I only man­aged two runs. My lack of time this week was some­what exacer­bated by the cur­rent UK weather situ­ation.

The UK media have been hav­ing a (water­logged) field day recently, because if there’s one thing that the Brit­ish love talk­ing about more than weather, it’s ironic weather, and we’re cur­rently in the middle of severe rain and flood­ing. Dur­ing a declared drought. With hosepipe bans in place. The news report­ers are lov­ing it, when they’ve got time to spare from ask­ing awk­ward ques­tions about Jeremy Hunt, any­way.

This morn­ing, I checked the weather (using the rather swish Weath­er­Spark) and found that today would be fairly rep­res­ent­at­ive of April so far:

So. I decided to wait until later to get out of the door. In the end I headed out dur­ing the prom­ised gap at about 8pm, which — sur­prise! — mater­i­al­ised exactly as promised.

As I’d been feel­ing guilty about not get­ting out for a second mid-week run, I decided to put in some decent dis­tance today, and actu­ally man­aged a whole 10K, which I was pretty pleased with. 1:14:27 is only five minutes away from my best 10K race time (almost to the second), so I think that was pretty good for run­ning alone on a wet Sunday night…

This week is look­ing like more of the same, so I may try the same pat­tern again, fit­ting in a couple of longer runs rather than three shorter ones. Not too long until the Bris­tol 10K, so it’s good to be get­ting some decent dis­tances in!

The tele­vi­sion cov­er­age of the Lon­don Mara­thon should have been a great inspir­a­tion to go jog­ging on Sunday. Unfor­tu­nately I was watch­ing it from behind a hangover, on a sofa quite a long way from home.

I did, in the end, struggle out for a run on Sunday, but it was just a des­ultory jog around the local area, more so that I could say I’d been out than for any other purpose.

This even­ing, feel­ing a bit guilty, I headed out down the Port­way to get in one of my mid­week 5Ks, and passed this sign. On a whim, I thought, “well, five miles isn’t that much fur­ther than five kilometres…”

So, I ran to Sea Mills sta­tion and back. It was a good run. The rain stayed away and I got to jog along the river at twi­light, which is always nice.

I also put some music on, instead of the pod­casts I’ve gen­er­ally been listen­ing to while run­ning recently. Back when I star­ted run­ning, I listened to music all the time. Speech Debelle’s first album, Speech Ther­apy, got me through a lot of my early runs.

Tonight I headed for harder ter­rit­ory and spun up the shiny new Fields of the Nephilim live album, Ceromon­ies. It was excel­lent run­ning music. The power of Psy­chonaut pushed me through an uphill stretch, the (not-usually-to-my-taste) more metal­lic Shine had me sprint­ing between lamp posts, and it turns out my stand­ard longer-distance lope is pretty much in time with Trees Come Down…

So, a bit of a wobble last week, miss­ing a run and being too hun­gover for any dis­tance on Sunday, but this week is off to a good start I’ll try to get out again on Thursday, I reckon.

I lost momentum a bit this week. I didn’t get out for two mid-week jogs, mostly because as well as being back in the office 9 to 5, I’m also work­ing hard out­side the office, and had a couple of even­ings taken up with social stuff, too.

Still, I man­aged to head out last night, at least, for a simple 5K down the Port­way, my default “haven’t time for any­thing else and want to avoid puddles on the towpath” route. And, with luck — and hope­fully not *too* much of a hangover after a friend’s birth­day party this after­noon — I’ll get out again tomor­row, so at least I’ll have run twice.

This month is already my best month of the year so far in terms of dis­tance, so I’m head­ing in the right direction.

Incid­ent­ally, the work I’m doing out­side the office is at least rel­ev­ant to run­ning! I’ve been work­ing on the Android ver­sion of Get Run­ning, my friend Benjohn’s iPhone app.

So, if you’d like to help us test the Android ver­sion of Get Run­ning, and you have an Android phone (or other device) with Android 2.2 or above, you can find a details of the Get Run­ning Android Beta Pro­gramme here!

I’m man­aging to keep up the momentum, it seems. Just came back from today’s 7.5K around Leigh Woods. I’m still not back up to the level of fit­ness that lets me get up that hill in one unin­ter­rup­ted jog, but it didn’t take long to get my breath back at the pic­nic table after the steep­est sec­tion. Another few attempts and I’m sure I’ll be doing it in one again.

And the good news is that this is the third jog this week, so my plan to get back into the habit seems to be work­ing out. Hope­fully my return to 9-to-5 employ­ment this week won’t hurt that. I used to do the very same job, in the very same office, full time, and still jog three times a week, so at least I know I can do it! I just need to make sure my momentum isn’t derailed by the change in work­ing patterns.

I’ll leave you with a pic­ture of the cold, cloudy/sunny day I was jog­ging through today, snapped with my phone dur­ing my walk­ing warm-up.

One of the prob­lems I’ve faced while try­ing to get back into the habit of run­ning three times a week is a lack of that men­tal itch that says “you’ve not been run­ning recently, you know.” It hasn’t helped that this is a busy week, as I pre­pare for a return to an office job on a ten-week con­tract, start­ing on Monday.

Today I remembered I should have been for a run while my din­ner was cook­ing. That, plus some heavy rain, and some annoy­ing prob­lems with some Android pro­gram­ming I’ve been doing, meant it was about 10pm by the time I thought, “Oh, yeah. I should have been for a run.”

But what the heck. The rain had lightened up, the Port­way has good street lights, and I still had a couple of hours before bed­time. I went any­way, for a quick 5K down the road and back, and it was fine. I even took time to stretch prop­erly at the end.

Hope­fully I’ll get out on Sunday to keep up my three-times-a-week momentum, though the weekend’s look­ing scar­ily busy so far.

Des­pite the huge omin­ous cloud that was lurk­ing over Bris­tol when I headed out this lunch­time, it actu­ally turned out to be quite a sunny run in the end.

Today was just a quick jog up Bridge Val­ley Road, along Ladies Mile, then back around that sec­tion of Clifton Down, fin­ish­ing with lunch in Boston Tea Party.

At least it gave me a chance to try out my new sunglasses — Boots’ own-brand finest

So, after the ropey Bath Half, I’m try­ing to get back to a level of fit­ness where I won’t embar­rass myself at the Bris­tol 10K. That means get­ting back out and run­ning three times a week, like I used to.

So far, that seems to be going well. I headed out for 5Ks on Monday and Wed­nes­day, and today I did a nice 8K up Bridge Val­ley Road and around the Downs.

Hope­fully I’ll man­age to keep this up, though it might be a little tricky next week­end, as I’m away for at least a day… We’ll see!

My plan to get back to run­ning three times a week, to help me recover some fit­ness before the Bris­tol 10K, seems to be start­ing off okay. I fol­lowed up Monday’s run with another run today, so that’s my two week­day runs done. I’ll get some­thing a bit longer in at the weekend.

Today’s run was a bit of a trial at the start. It was just a simple 5K down the Port­way. But I wasn’t sure I was going to make it to the first kilo­metre as I set out, mostly because the weather was hor­rible. Our brief burst of summer-like spring seems to be over, with a typ­ic­ally Brit­ish cold snap.

It wasn’t snow­ing in Bris­tol, but my walk­ing warm-up was done into a freez­ing cold wind that nearly sapped my strength before I star­ted off. On the plus side, I couldn’t wait to get run­ning, just to warm up…

Before the first kilo­metre was over, though, I was still freez­ing. The thought even crossed my mind to stop for shel­ter for a bit at the tun­nel under­neath the Sus­pen­sion Bridge, and then decide whether I just wanted to run back home. Before bits of me star­ted fall­ing off.

I star­ted to warm up even­tu­ally, though, and pushed on to the full 5K. The few other soaked and frozen jog­gers that I met all gave that slightly wry acknow­ledge­ment that says, “Oh, so you’re an idiot, too, are you? Well done, idiot.”

And the good news is that it was five whole minutes faster than Monday’s 5K, mostly because of my desire to get warm as quickly as I could by push­ing harder than usual at the begin­ning. So, throw­ing myself out there into the freez­ing wind and rain turned out quite well. Even though, dur­ing the first kilo­metre, it seemed like a bloody silly idea…