Matt Gets Running

Like I said in my last update, I fan­cied get­ting out for a nice long run this week­end, and this morn­ing I made good on that.

I ran from home, out along the towpath under the Sus­pen­sion Bridge, all the way to the far entrance to Leigh Woods, then up into the forest. I did a fairly big loop of the forest, then came out to head back across the Sus­pen­sion Bridge into Clifton, then all the way around Clifton Down and Durd­ham Down, and back to Clifton Village.

All told, it was just over 15km, although I lost GPS sig­nal for the last kilo­metre and a bit, so I can’t be cer­tain. I manu­ally fixed the route in Run­Keeper, and it came out at 15.59km, which can’t be far out.

I also took out two new things: First, The Indel­ic­ates’ new album, Songs for Swinging Lov­ers, avail­able right now for down­load — for the price of your choice, includ­ing “free” — from the Cor­por­ate Records website.

Second, my shiny new Panasonic Lumix DMC-FP3 cam­era. So, I took a load of pho­tos, too They’re all here in this set on Flickr, but there were two I par­tic­u­larly wanted to post here, because they say quite a lot about my route. They’re both pho­tos of the same place, the “Sea Wall” rail­ings at the top of the Avon Gorge, at the edge of Clifton Down.

Here’s the first one, taken on my way out, about 2.5km into the jog. The rail­ings are just about invis­ible on the sky­line, at the top of the cliff:

And here’s one taken of the same rail­ings, at the 10.5km mark, up close and personal:

So, yeah, think that gives some idea of the ver­tical height involved in my jog today, as well as the over­all distance!

I reckon I can declare myself ready for the Bris­tol 10K. And it’s nice to have done roughly three quar­ters of a half-marathon, too I don’t, on the whole, feel too bad, although I’m not entirely con­vinced I’ll be able to move tomor­row! I might give myself a few days off and not do a mid-week run until Thursday, this week. I think I deserve it!