Matt Gets Running

Just a quick update today. This even­ing was very much like the last run — up Bridge Val­ley Road, along Ladies Mile to take me to the far side of the Downs, where the water tower is, then the final bit of the loop back to Clifton Vil­lage. Where I stopped off in a chip […]

I just nipped out for a cof­fee in Clifton Vil­lage. But I went the long way round, as you can see here This run includes a 5-minute walk­ing warm-up at the start. So, just did a shade over 5km in about 40 minutes, includ­ing Bridge Val­ley Road. This pic­ture gives an idea of what that involves. […]

Actu­ally, to be fair, the tide wasn’t high. My run took me along the Port­way again tonight, next to the river, and it was very much low tide, with the steep, muddy banks of the Avon glisten­ing on my port side. But I was listen­ing to Blondie’s Greatest Hits, so the song was in my mind […]

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 […]

Just a quick check-in: I’m still alive. My run today was a bit rub­bish — I’d for­got­ten that bit of the A4 Port­way between me and my tar­get hill, Bridge Val­ley Road, was closed all day today. They’re doing rock­face safety checks, basic­ally mak­ing sure that no fall­ing rocks are likely to kill any ped­es­tri­ans or […]

FX: Fan­fare. Brrrrup-pa-pa-pa-pa-paaa-paaaah! Whoo-hoo! Tonight was Week 9, Run 3 of the Couch to 5K. Earlier on, I made a decision about tonight. Instead of the time, it would be about the dis­tance. Because I don’t think, in all hon­esty, that you can say you’ve com­pleted the Couch to 5K until you’ve actu­ally, you know, […]

Amazon.co.uk Wid­gets Tonight was a bit of a slow plod. I had a low point on the way out, some­where near halfway, where I was just drag­ging my body through the motions, and feel­ing pretty heavy with it. But I per­severed, mostly with the help of PJ Harvey’s astound­ing Mer­cury prizewin­ner Stor­ies from the City, Stories […]

If you’ve been pay­ing atten­tion, you’ll have been won­der­ing where I’ve been for the past week and a bit. Galav­ant­ing, that’s where1. Last week­end I nipped over to Clov­elly, in Devon, to see my friend Steve. This week­end I was at my friends Kavey & Pete’s wed­ding anniversary party. In between I took a whistle-stop […]

Today, for the first time, I didn’t use Get Run­ning. I’ve only got a few runs left in the C25K pro­gramme, so I figured I’d play with Run­Keeper, one of my options for con­tin­ued geek­i­ness after I check all of the little boxes on Get Running’s “pro­gress path”. Run­Keeper is one of the best iPhone running […]

Amazon.co.uk Wid­gets Today I did Week 8, Run 2. Instead of my cus­tom­ary mixed-up playl­ist, I took the chance to listen to this year’s Mer­cury prizewin­ner, Speech Debelle’s Speech Ther­apy. Run­ning seems to be a good time to get back to the rather old-fashioned pas­time of listen­ing to entire albums, as long as they’re suitable. […]