Matt Gets Running

Wow! I just ran up Bridge Val­ley Road.

Well, I say “ran”; actual run­ners might take issue. But it was a def­i­nite jog, at least. I’d dug around for advice on teh intar­webs, and basi­cally just started off the hill nice and slowly, with a shorter pace than my on-the-flat run­ning. And I kept it slow and steady, and I just kept on going. All the way up Bridge Val­ley Road, from the Port­way by the river to the height of the Sus­pen­sion Bridge.

And then I just kept on going. The path I chose ini­tially turned out not to be lit, damn it, so I plugged care­fully away on that until I saw a chance to turn and head for the glowier Clifton res­i­den­tial area, which turned out to be about my halfway point anyway.

Then I jogged through Clifton, back down to Hotwells, and home. I stopped to take this photo of the Sus­pen­sion Bridge (for­give the blur­ri­ness; the iPhone did a valiant job, but this was hand­held in the dark), but apart from that I just kept on jog­ging. Given the warm-up at the begin­ning and a shorter warm-down at the end, I’d guess I ran a tad under 5km.

And I could have car­ried on. This is quite grat­i­fy­ing; it’s going to be a lot eas­ier to get bet­ter at hills if I can actu­ally run all the way up a decent one right now, albeit slowly. And it puts the Downs within my reach, with enough energy to do a half-decent loop while I’m up there.

Now all I’ve got to do is fig­ure out which paths are actu­ally lit at night! Might do a bit of dig­ging with Google Streetview before I head out again…