Matt Gets Running

“…when the call it comes I will be ready for war.”

Today’s title is from Alabama 3’s fant­astic track Power In the Blood, from the album of the same name. It helped me get off to a nice start on the Downs after I’d clambered up Bridge Val­ley Road.

I woke up to the sound of fairly heavy rain on a dull morn­ing in Bris­tol. By the time I’d dragged myself into a fully awake state, though, it had dried off a bit, so I got out running.

I kept up with my plan to go around the Downs, but this time by a slightly longer route, still start­ing off by climb­ing from the Port­way along Bridge Val­ley Road and along Ladies’ Mile, but then turn­ing left at the top of the Downs, rather than right, to go around Cir­cu­lar Road and past the Sea Wall, before curving back towards Clifton Village.

That’s where today’s photo is from, by the way; I stopped for a minute or two in the howl­ing gale at the Sea Wall to take a quick pic­ture. It’s amaz­ing how small in the dis­tance the Sus­pen­sion Bridge looks, bear­ing in mind I star­ted off on the far side, on the road below it!

Any­way. I was going for dis­tance, rather than speed, today, so it was a fairly gentle plod, espe­cially at the begin­ning; I didn’t want to knacker myself on the eighty-metre climb at the start.

And it was suc­cess­ful, being my longest run to date. Look­ing at the Run­Keeper log, I did about 6.5km (you have to take off about 300m for the 5-minute warm up, which I walked) in about 54 minutes. I don’t think that’s bad, con­sid­er­ing the hill. My pace looks pretty even, too, although the graph is a bit skew-whiff at the end; I had to edit the route manu­ally after the GPS got a bit con­fused on the last bit of the run, prob­ably because I went through some trees.

So, basic­ally, things are going fine I’m going to take a couple of days off now, and prob­ably run on Wed­nes­day and Fri­day this week.