Matt Gets Running

So, I went to Crete for a week, and then took another week off jog­ging. Still, I hit the road again today, and I’m glad I did. I hadn’t planned on a morn­ing run today, but it was a lovely morn­ing, and I just felt the urge to be out there in the sunshine.

I did a plod­ding 5K down the towpath on the south of the Avon. Great weather, lovely clouds in the sky — as you can see from this pic­ture that I snapped on the return leg — and des­pite my recent lack of train­ing, I didn’t feel too bad.

All in all, a good jog. Shame Run­Keeper crashed between kilo­metres 1 and 2, but I was using the Garmin Fore­run­ner as a backup, so I still man­aged to get a decent log.

Hope­fully I can start ramp­ing back up to at least a couple of runs a week now.

Today I woke up tired and with a head­ache, after a bad night’s sleep. Oddly, though, I still felt the urge to go out for my first jog since the Bris­tol Half. I’ve been mean­ing to get back out pound­ing the streets for a couple of weeks now, but my change in routine — I quit my day job — seemed to hinder that, rather than help­ing it.

As you might expect, for the first jog in weeks when I was tired and headachy, it didn’t go that well. I wanted to nip up to Clifton Vil­lage and get some lunch, so I went up Bridge Val­ley Road (now fully open again after being closed to traffic, and occa­sion­ally even ped­es­tri­ans, for many months.) This was clearly too much of a chal­lenge for my unhappy body and brain, so after plod­ding all the way up the hill I was pretty exhausted. I slowed to a walk for a while to recover, then picked up the pace again, then dropped back to a walk.

I was also a bit annoyed by Run­Keeper. Some releases ago, Run­Keeper just seems to have stopped being able to keep a good GPS lock. It doesn’t seem to be related to my phone, because (a) I star­ted with the phone that worked fine with Run­Keeper for years, and (b) because of a head­phone con­nector prob­lem, I’ve just had my phone replaced by Apple for a new one, and Run­Keeper isn’t work­ing prop­erly on the new one, either.

Today, Run­Keeper was com­pletely rub­bish at track­ing me, and by the end of my 5K run, had recor­ded me doing a ran­dom 7.5K track with lots of ran­dom spikes out to the sides of my real route, and an aver­age pace of under 3min/km — I wish!

Luck­ily, my Garmin Fore­run­ner 305 always seems to be beau­ti­fully accur­ate — I guess the GPS hard­ware is simply bet­ter than in the iPhone — so I’ve just been upload­ing tracks from that to replace the rub­bish RunKeeper-recorded ones (here’s today’s). It’s a shame I can’t rely on Run­Keeper any more to give me voice prompts (like telling me when to turn around if I’m halfway through a jog down the Port­way), though.

Maybe the GPS is bet­ter in the iPhone 4S, which I’m hop­ing to upgrade to at some point soon…

Thank you, every­one who sponsored me for the Bris­tol Half Mara­thon. My com­pany were kind enough to match all the dona­tions, too.

So, work­ing it out, with the dona­tions, the match­ing, the gift aid, and the small fee Just Giv­ing take, I think I raised £272.50 for St. Peter’s Hos­pice, which is brilliant.

Due to post-half-marathon sore feet, a big long photo walk the fol­low­ing week­end, and being extra-busy in the last few days of my day job, I’ve not actu­ally been run­ning recently. This seems to hap­pen for a while after every half mara­thon, so I’m not too wor­ried yet.

And on the plus side, hav­ing given up the day job to con­cen­trate on learn­ing new stuff (spe­cific­ally iPhone and Android devel­op­ment) at home for a few months, I should have more time to go run­ning. This should be extra-good over winter, as I’ll have a lot more chance to get out when it’s light. But I’m going to have to work harder on stick­ing to a sched­ule without the struc­ture of work­ing days to guide me, I think… We’ll see!

Yup! Another day, another medal. I’m get­ting quite a col­lec­tion now!

I enjoyed the Bris­tol Half Mara­thon on Sunday, des­pite hav­ing had some reser­va­tions about my weight and the amount of train­ing I’d been doing. I didn’t think I stood much chance of beat­ing my per­sonal best from the Bath Half.

At least I arrived relaxed and well-prepared for the run­ning. After a couple of half-marathons and 10Ks I’ve got the pre­par­a­tions down quite well now, from pin­ning my num­ber on to check­ing the weather fore­cast before I set out.

The weather was a little too good, as it turned out. The sun was blaz­ing away, and the Port­way, which makes up the bulk of the route, is pretty exposed. Once we’d all set off from the Centre, I was glad of the few clouds there were occa­sion­ally drift­ing in front of the sun.

I ran this one on my own — there’s another reason to speed up my run­ning: you have more options for run­ning part­ners if you have more speeds avail­able than “dead slow”! — so I spent most of the race just enjoy­ing the feel­ing of run­ning and being part of the gen­eral crowd around me.

And people-watching, of course, espe­cially the crazy fancy-dressers. This race didn’t dis­ap­point on that score, with bag­pipers pip­ing their way around, a couple of people “wear­ing” a boat in sup­port of the Mar­ines, a waddle of pen­guins, sev­eral dogs, and Bob the Builder, to name but a few of the sights.

I also got a chance to wave to a few friends — I’d only just set out when Tom snapped me (with a proper old-school film cam­era, appar­ently) on my way past, plus I spot­ted sev­eral people com­ing back down the Port­way as I was on my way out, includ­ing Jose and other usual suspects.

I kept up a very steady pace all the way around, just plod­ding along as usual. I felt pretty good up to some­where around the four­teenth kilo­metre — that’s the way back into town along Cum­ber­land Road — where my legs star­ted to feel a bit dead, but even that wasn’t so bad.

Trudging around the last bit of town, I was determ­ined just to keep going, mostly because my legs seemed to have got into that fra­gile momentum which might have been dif­fi­cult to get back into if I’d slowed down for even a second.

As it turned out, I had just about enough energy to keep going right to the fin­ish line — perked up at the last minute by my friends Emmeline and Arnaud cheer­ing me on – and I came in at an offi­cial time of 2:48:15, break­ing my pre­vi­ous per­sonal best by just over a minute. Hurrah!

And that — apart from the now-traditional milk­shake at Roco­til­los (honey and Crunchie bar, thanks for ask­ing) was my Bris­tol Half Mara­thon 2011. I guess I can give myself a week off, then start get­ting back into train­ing. The next long race will be the Bath Half in March, hopefully…

Yes, the race pack has arrived

With two half-marathons under my belt now, I feel fairly con­fid­ent about this Sunday’s Bris­tol Half, des­pite the fact that the belt in ques­tion has had to expand by a notch or two in the last few months. A hol­i­day in the Lake Dis­trict actu­ally saw me lose a couple of pounds last week — clearly I wasn’t drink­ing enough beer to keep up with the walk­ing — so I’m relaxed and look­ing for­ward to the weekend.

Also, yes­ter­day I did 10-ish-K around Leigh Woods, and I cer­tainly felt like I had some energy left at the end. It was nice to see a fair few other run­ners obvi­ously prac­tising for the Half — I saw a few people in race tops, plus a few guys in com­bat fatigues wear­ing hefty packs, so I guess there’s going to be a ser­vices team or two march­ing round, as usual.

Of course, all this con­fid­ence could be com­pletely scuppered on the day itself by a bad night, awful weather or even just a cold, so I’m still going to be cross­ing my fin­gers a bit.

And, as usual, ask­ing for a bit of motiv­a­tion in the form of dona­tions to the char­ity I’m run­ning for, St. Peter’s Hos­pice. They’re the offi­cial race char­ity for the Bris­tol Half Mara­thon, and a very worthy local cause. I’m col­lect­ing dona­tions on my Just Giv­ing page — please give generously!

Thanks! And good luck to any­one else look­ing for­ward to the Bris­tol Half or any other event at the moment!

It was a lovely day for a jog in Bris­tol. I was a bit delayed get­ting star­ted. I nor­mally walk across the top of a lock gate on my walk to the start of the towpath, but this morn­ing the lock gate was open to let a little batch of ships and row­ing boats out onto the river. So, I watched that for a while, then snapped this pic­ture from the other side once I’d crossed.

Then, after a 7K jog down the towpath and around Leigh Woods, I crossed over that lovely sus­pen­sion bridge, and took a photo look­ing back on the lock.

This next pic­ture is a scrol­lable pan­or­ama — if you scroll to the middle of it, you’ll just about see the lock gates to the side of the little island-like bit pok­ing out in front of the three large red-brick ware­house buildings.

(The below pic­ture is a scrol­lable panorama)

I like these backwards-and-forwards pic­tures. They really give an impres­sion of how far I’ve jogged, and, in this case, how high I climbed.

Talk­ing about this jog with Jose — who passed me going the other way on his much longer long run — promp­ted me to check my head­line Run­Keeper stats, which led me to two inter­est­ing discoveries.

First, while I moan about hav­ing put weight on recently, ima­gine how much lardier I’d be if I hadn’t burned off 106,953 cal­or­ies since I star­ted record­ing my run­ning, in Septem­ber 2009. 106,953 cal­or­ies. That’s a lot of latte and cake.

Second, in the last two years, I’ve run 974km. Nine hun­dred and sev­enty four kilo­metres. Which means that, all being well, as long as I get in just 5K more prac­tice between now and the Bris­tol Half Mara­thon, com­plet­ing the race will take me through the 1,000km mark. One mil­lion metres of running.

So, while I’ve been feel­ing a bit sorry for myself recently, I’ve got a lot of jog­ging done since I star­ted, and that’s some­thing I can be proud of. And there’s still mile­stones to come. Well, what with me being all European, I guess there are still kilo­metre­stones to come, tech­nic­ally, but you know what I mean…

I’ll try to get out for 5K this week. Then I’ve a week of hol­i­day, where I’ll prob­ably be hill-walking rather than jog­ging, but I should be back to the nor­mal routine after that. See you soon!

Since my last angst-filled posts, I have man­aged to get out a couple of times, but I’m not back even to twice-a-week run­ning yet.

Still. On the plus side, last Sunday I got out for a 10K run through Leigh Woods, albeit with a bit of a walk­ing break on the steep bits. This week­end I was away vis­it­ing friends in Wales, but man­aged to fit in a 5K hike up a very steep hill, which should have been good for the cal­or­ies. And tonight I wandered off down the towpath for 5K and back.

I’m afraid I can present no evid­ence here, as RunKeeper’s site is cur­rently down due to a power out­age, so instead here’s a snap of the Sus­pen­sion Bridge I took on the way back.

Not long to go now to the half mara­thon, and I’m still feel­ing rather wor­ried about it. But hey, at least I’ve done a long run now — that 10K’s fur­ther than I’ve been for months.

After my last some­what dis­pir­it­ing post, some good news. I’ve been mak­ing an effort to get back into the habit. I’ve not sud­denly turned into the kind of jog­ging ninja I was fan­tas­ising about back then (shame, as The Jog­ging Ninja would be a good name for a blog) but I have at least got out there and got run­ning. Thanks to every­one here and on Twit­ter for the words of encour­age­ment and advice.

My plan does seem to be work­ing, though it’s not all been that joy­ful. First of all I con­vinced myself to get out of the door by going for a tiny 3K jog. That at least got me back on the street, though it actu­ally felt quite tough. Then I tried to make sure I went for at least one run within the next seven days, and got out for a slightly longer run. Though I’m not sure how much longer, because Run­Keeper stuffed up, and com­pletely lost its GPS fix about halfway through. Grr. And that run didn’t feel that great, either, and I even slowed to a walk in a couple of places because I didn’t really feel like I had much stamina.

On both of those runs, I felt tired, and quite achey, espe­cially in the left hip.

But, third time’s the charm, and all, and today I got out and the run­ning was much bet­ter. I went out think­ing I’d do 5K, but was feel­ing so good halfway through that I pushed on and made it six. It felt like I could eas­ily have done more, but I don’t want to push it too hard and put myself off by being too sore tomor­row. I think this is prob­ably down to get­ting more sleep and being care­ful with what I’ve eaten for the last few days — more energy. Also, it being a week­end run rather than mid­week prob­ably helped.

Today’s jog was pleas­ant, I didn’t ache, and it was just what I needed to help me back into the habit. I even passed a whole bunch of con­struc­tion work­ers rebuild­ing bits of Bridge Val­ley Road, which gave me a use­ful title for this post

So, I’m get­ting back into it, albeit slowly. Going to try to get out for a mid-week 5K on Wed­nes­day to keep up the momentum…

I’ve had my fail­ures. Most of them, with run­ning so far, have been indi­vidual screwups. Bad runs, bad shoes, that kind of thing. But at the moment, I’m facing a lar­ger fail­ure. I’ve repeatedly failed to lose weight since I star­ted run­ning, but recently — the last year or so — I’ve been act­ively put­ting weight on.

For a few dif­fer­ent reas­ons, I’ve not been run­ning as often. I did nip out for a bit of a jog/walk last week­end, and I’ve cycled to work a few times recently, but it feels like I’ve just, well — lost it a bit.

I guess this hap­pens with every hobby or past­time, doesn’t it? Some­times, there’s just a loss of interest, a lack of energy.

The weight and the lack of run­ning, I think, are related. It’s not so much that the lack of run­ning is caus­ing me to put on weight, as the other way around — I’ve put on weight, so I feel less com­fort­able run­ning. Espe­cially in sum­mer, where you don’t really want to dress up in a nice stomach-disguising outer layer, and it’s not dark, so every­one can see you.

I feel a bit para­noid about run­ning at the moment, to be honest.

And I feel a bit guilty, too. I’m a run­ner. Not only am I a run­ner, but I’m also very proud to be a part of the team for a product that helps get people run­ning. So not get­ting out and run­ning makes me feel pretty shabby, frankly.

But of course, that doesn’t help.

What really brought this home was the email reminder that there’s only about eleven weeks to go to the Bris­tol Half Mara­thon. And I think I’m a slower run­ner right now, not to men­tion a flab­bier run­ner, than I was when I did it last year, or when I did the Bath Half earlier on this year.

Eleven weeks.

Of course, there’s an image in my head of me sud­denly turn­ing my cur­rent lax ways around, start­ing to spring out of bed at 6am, going for an hour-long jog along the Port­way, com­ing back to break­fast on a glass­ful of car­rot juice before cyc­ling to work the long way round, maybe via Clev­e­don. Then a full day’s work, includ­ing nip­ping out for a couple of hours at a gym instead of hav­ing lunch. Fin­ish off my day with a hearty meal of fish and whole­grain rice, then maybe watch a motiv­a­tional film before my newly-imposed 9pm bedtime.

And repeat without fail for eleven weeks. Yes, well, it’s a men­tal mont­age, not a real­ity. I’ve never had a single day that healthy in my entire life, of course. What I should do, really, is try to turn things around gradu­ally and sens­ibly, one day at a time, and just deal with the half mara­thon when it comes along. See how I’m feeling.

But it seems quite hard to even make that small start.

What do you do when you’re in this kind of mood? Any other run­ners out there who’ve been through this? Any tips for going from put­ting on the pounds to tak­ing them off? All advice grate­fully received…

I’ve not pos­ted about run­ning since the Bris­tol 10K, have I? That’s lax of me. Good news: it’s not because I’ve been that lazy about exer­cise, just about posting.

Last Sunday I went up Bridge Val­ley Road and around the Downs, which felt good.

Since then I haven’t run at all, but that’s because I dus­ted off my bike on Wed­nes­day to go for a quick 11K down the Port­way and back. I’ve not been on a bike since last year’s bal­loon fiesta, from what I remem­ber. I really want to start rid­ing some more, mostly for get­ting around town and doing stuff. Walking’s great, but for longer dis­tances or quicker trips, a bike’s really convenient…

Any­way. Just check­ing in, really! More after my nor­mal run on Sunday, probably…