Matt Gibson | Matt Gets Running

The Tide Is High, I’m Holding On…

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 🙂

I’m surprised how blasé I’m getting about running now. When I got home, I quickly got my stuff together and got out of the door, conscious of the dwindling light, and just decided to do 5K.

So, a nice simple run, on the flat, tonight. It was fine overall, there was a good bit at the end. I was just coming around the corner on the way back, where the full width of the Suspension Bridge expands into view across the Avon Gorge, and the half-hour beep went off. So, I knew that if I could finish my 5km in less than six minutes, I’d have beaten my previous time.

So, I picked up my pace, just as Denis burst into my earbuds, and kept going fast for the last five minutes. In the end, I shaved a minute off my previous time, coming in at just a tad over 35 minutes. Here’s the full details where you can see my little tail-end burst of speed on the graph.

So, it’s all good. Think I’ll head up to the Downs again for the weekend’s jogging, so I can go when it’s nice and light…

Well, That Was Easier Than I Thought It Would Be

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…

Uphill Struggle

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 knock any cars into the river.

So, I got as far as the “footpath closed” sign and had to turn around. Instead, I tried to head pretty much straight from my place up to Clifton Village, which is a fair bit steeper, I think.

My route ended up looking like this on RunKeeper.com. Note the elevation graph — 80 metres upwards in about a kilometre.

I couldn’t keep going for long. I had to stop a couple of times for a rest, once to walk, once to stop completely and get my breath back for a couple of minutes.

So, I definitely need more practice on hills. But hey, it was pretty nice once I got up there, so I really want to get to the stage where I can run all the way up to the Downs and still have enough breath left to jog around them.

I think I’m just going to have to stick to my plan to run up Bridge Valley Road — making sure it’s actually open first — and try to get a little further up it without stopping every time. I figure the only way to get better at hills is just to keep on trying!

It’s All Uphill From Here

So, tomorrow I should do another run, if I’m going to keep up my normal pattern. And I think I’ve decided what I’m going to do.

It’s time to tackle something different. Something terrifying.

A hill.

Those of you who know Bristol know that it’s mainly hills, in fact. There’s not many flat bits, and you can rarely get from one bit of Bristol to another without going up or down a hill.

I’m lucky, being down by the harbour, that there’s a few flat routes I can take from my place. So I stuck to those for the C25K. One challenge at a time, I figured.

But now the hills are calling. Specifically, Bridge Valley Road, which the Bristol Running Resource calls “a fantastic hill”.

But then that was probably written by someone who can already run up hills 🙂

Bridge Valley Road runs from the A4 Portway, where I’ve been running recently, right up to the Downs, a huge area of pleasant grass with all sorts of nice routes for a runner. The only teensy drawback is that it also runs from river level up to the height of the Clifton Suspension Bridge.

This might be a bit more than I can chew, even if I take it in slow, bite-sized steps ((excuse my mixed metaphors)). Nevertheless, if I can eventually get good enough to run up it, then it’ll (a) make for some bloody good training, and (b) add the whole of the Downs to my potential running area.

So, tomorrow morning, I’m going to give it a go. If it goes well, I’ll report back. If it goes badly, please donate what’s left of me to medical science.

What a Long, Strange Trip it’s Been

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, run 5K.

So, for my final run I made the hard decision to put aside Get Running and instead dig out RunKeeper. Because while Get Running has been my steadfast companion, and while I still hugely prefer Clare’s voice and Ben’s fab user interface, Get Running won’t measure your distance, and RunKeeper will.

So I set it up to give me a five minute warm-up, a five minute cool-down, and two 2.5km stretches of running in between (so I’d know when to turn around at halfway.)

And I got running.

Tonight I went out along the main road on the other side of the river from my normal towpath route — a good choice, because it’s getting dark early now, and the towpath is unlit.

As I’ve noticed before, a rubbish night of struggling running, like Tuesday’s effort, is often followed by a nice easy run, and tonight was no exception. I just ran, and it felt pretty easy, and there was never any point at which I felt like I wanted to stop. I ran all the way out, I turned around when RunKeeper told me my 2.5km was done, and I ran all the way back. Job done!

So, I can now in all good conscience say that I’ve completed the C25K! And I’ve run 5K for the first time in my life. Yabbadabbadoo!

Anyway. Must go get my celebratory pizza out of the oven. More running to come on this blog at some point soon, but in the meantime, I’d like to say a quick thank you to Benjohn, Arline, Tiff, and anyone else who’s helped out, commented, or just been reading my running witterings as I’ve done this.

For posterity, here’s the route (including the warm-up and cool-down.) Hit the view details link for all the stats:

Chequered flag image by nionx, on stockxpert.com.

The Dying of the Light

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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 from the Sea, which is one of my favourite albums of all time. It would be perfect without the whiny Thom Yorke guest track in the middle, but luckily I excised that from the playlist 🙂

Sometimes, it seems, you’re just not in the mood. Maybe it was the long day at work, maybe it was that this is likely to be my last weeknight jog along the (unlit) towpath, as it was near sunset when I got back.

Still, if you can run anyway, then at least there’s a sense of achievement at the far end.

Hopefully the next run will be more bouncy. And as this one was Week 9, Run 2, then it’ll also be the official last run of the C25K plan!

Hiatus Over

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 where ((Galavanting is a small holiday resort in County Galway. Okay, I may be making that up…)).

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 tour of Devon.

I nearly packed my running gear, but in the end it was just that little bit too much to lug around, plus I knew my chances of running were actually fairly slim.

The week hasn’t been entirely exercise-free, though. I did a fair bit of walking, including a 10-kilometer hike around Dartmoor, which was lovely, and hopefully combated some of the ice-cream-based indulgences which inevitably made an appearance 🙂

Today I’m back at home, so I figured I’d get right back on top of things as soon as possible. I’ve just come back in from Week 9, Run 1. It was hard work, and my stomach was clearly a bit fuller than I thought — yesterday’s anniversary party involved quite lot of lovely Indian food and not a little cake — but I took it slow and steady and just plodded on through it.

So, that’s my first “official” half-hour run of the C25K done, and I’m very nearly at the end — just a couple more runs to do!

I’m not going to count myself as done with the C25K, though, until I’ve actually run 5K. This isn’t, after all, the Couch to Four-and-a-bit K plan. At the moment I’m running about 4.25K, so all I need to add is another three quarters of a kilometre. So — better figure out exactly which shiny new compact camera I want fairly quickly, I think!

Reward

I’ve decided what my reward’s going to be for getting to the end of the C25K. I’ve been needing a new compact camera for a while now. My venerable Konica-Minolta DiMage X‑60 was a good first digital camera, but it’s now battered, bruised and lacking in battery staying-power.

Not only that, but at 5 megapixels with a not-so-hot lens, pictures from it are looking pretty rubbish compared to many modern compacts.

I’ve seen a few good views while I’ve been out running that the rubbish camera on the iPhone couldn’t do justice. And while I have got a much better camera, it’s an SLR (a Canon EOS 400D), and not the kind of thing I want to take jogging with me.

So, a shiny new camera that takes good pictures and is light and small enough to take along in a pocket or a bumbag seems like an appropriate reward for getting running. And maybe it’ll help spice up the pictures on this blog a bit…

Traitor!

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 apps. I don’t see it as a competitor to Get Running; they’re different applications, for different users.

Get Running does one thing — gets a beginner running from scratch. And it does it extremely well.

RunKeeper is more general-purpose, and programmable, uses the GPS, links in with a web site, and does all manner of other clever things.

RunKeeper has a higher learning curve. There’s just a lot more to it, so it’s necessarily more difficult to get started with. Get Running effectively does one thing, and has one button, marked “Run!”, in large friendly letters.

RunKeeper needs you to turn off your WiFi (otherwise it might use the less accurate positioning information instead of the GPS), program your exercise yourself, if you’re following a plan, and starting off seems to involve pushing a few more buttons. Plus you’ve got to remember to stop it at the end.

(Also, RunKeeper’s synthesised voice prompts have nothing on the lovely, human, encouraging voice of Clare, who recorded the voice prompts for Get Running!)

But, when you get to the stage where the runs are just a half-hour of running, and you want to know a bit more about your pace, your progress, and how far you’re running, RunKeeper can make a very confident entrance into your training plan.

So, before I set off today, I programmed RunKeeper with the Week 8, Run 3 run of the C25K — carefully putting in two consecutive 14-minute runs, rather than one long 28-minute run, so I’d know when the halfway point was — and set off.

Today I’d decided to push my pace up a bit, to see just how far I could get in my 28 minutes. One RunKeeper feature I particularly like is a mode where if you tap the screen, it’ll tell you how you’re doing — your time, distance, and current pace.

This means there’s no need to crane your neck to figure out where you are in your run, or whether your pace has dropped off. I just slapped my conveniently-armbanded iPhone and the voice intoned my stats.

Anyway. Here’s the killer feature of RunKeeper, and why it’s called RunKeeper — the website integration. I’d created an account on runkeeper.com. I finished my run, hit RunKeeper’s “stop” button, told it I wanted to record my run, and by the time I was back indoors, it had been automatically uploaded to the website, and I could see it mapped out. And, even more hoopy, I can share it, like this:

Got to say, that’s pretty cool. And look — I’m doing pretty damn well! That’s 4.18km in 28 minutes, at an average pace of 6:45 per kilometer. That’s fast, for me, by the way 🙂

I’m going to use Get Running for the final week of the C25K, rather than RunKeeper — Get Running is easier to use, prettier, and the voice prompts are much nicer (and playback is slicker — Get Running fades the music down, speaks, then fades the music back up. RunKeeper just merges in with the music, making it difficult to hear.)

After that, I’m going to have to explore my options for getting up to 10K. RunKeeper will definitely be on the shortlist.

That’s Another Fine Mess I’ve Gotten Me Into

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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. Speech Therapy worked well, with its relatively gentle beat and melancholy feel keeping me at a moderate pace all the way through…

Today’s run did hurt a bit, though, because I had a really good massage yesterday. If anyone wants a fantastic Thai massage in Bristol, by the way, get yourself down to Absolute Thai Therapy, just off Whiteladies Road, near Richer Sounds.

Their massage left me extremely relaxed, and a little tender here and there, which probably slowed me down a bit. It also perhaps put me into a more suggestible and optimistic mood, because yesterday evening, a few hours afterwards, I signed up for the Bristol 10K!

I’d been chatting to Mike, of the Bristol Running Resource, over lunch yesterday. He mentioned the 10K after asking me what my running goals were, when I realised I didn’t really have any, beyond finishing the Couch to 5K.

The 10K takes place in May, giving me more than six months to get ready. This seems a comfortable distance away. It also gives me a goal to think about once I’m through the C25K. And another reason to keep on running, which can only be a good thing.

So, encouraged by Mike, and weakened by massage, I got home, headed for the website, put my name down and paid up. Once the Couch to 5K is completed, looks like I’ll be doing a 5K to 10K — somehow…