Hurrah! Actually managed to get out and do a midweek run. Nothing thrilling, just a dusk run along the Portway and back. But getting out on a weeknight is good, and hopefully I can do it again next week and start getting back into the habit of them.
Anyway. I’d best go and stretch, and then get some food inside me! See you all on the other side of the Royal Wedding…
I would title this entry “up with the lark”, but I don’t actually know what a lark looks like. If there were any larks in Bristol, the seagulls would probably have eaten them by now.
This time yesterday I was still in bed, having a long, lounging Saturday morning lie-in. So it was a bit of a wrench to get out of bed early today, drag my kit on and run 4K. But that’s exactly what I did, and I feel virtuous now, bordering on smug.
Okay, so it was only 4K, but it was the first run in ages that hasn’t involved illness or defective shoes or some other problem. And it went fine. I’m going to try to get a couple more of those under my belt this week.
My main motivation for getting out early was the surprisingly glorious bank holiday weather, which seems to be defying UK stereotypes by staying bright and hot and sunny for days on end. Certainly it’s not the kind of weather where I’d want to get out at my usual Sunday running hour and bake in the midday heat…
On that note, I think it may be time for some spring cleaning, and maybe a spot of gardening. It’s that kind of day…
I’ve got a problem at work. Well, okay, I have several problems at work, including the irritating fact I have to go there every day. But the problem I want to share today is the Problem of the Spare Desk.
Since our team moved floors a couple of months ago, I’ve had to sit next to the aforementioned spare desk. If you’ve not sat next to a spare desk before, here’s a picture of what they look like most of the time. Because pretty much every day, someone has a birthday, or is holding a bake sale for charity, or just feels like cheering people up because it’s Monday. Or because it’s Friday. Or because there’s a vowel in the month, or whatever.
And these things are all celebrated with calorie-dense, vitamin-free foods, all of which get put on the spare desk, of course. Today it’s Dan’s birthday and here are his doughnuts, shortbread, crisps, Haribo, rocky road, cocktail sausages, Oreos, cream cakes, and so on.
And I’ve had to sit next to the bloody things all day. While carrying on bravely with my diet.
I don’t think I ended up too many calories up, despite caving in to temptation in the afternoon. I didn’t buy lunch today, swapping it for occasional sugar-based grazing from the empty desk. And then this evening I ran 4K down the towpath. Hopefully, as well as starting to re-form the habit of weekday running, the 523 calories RunKeeper says I burned should cancel out quite a few shortbread biscuits.
So, on the whole, I think I got away with it.
But the next time our office has a re-shuffle, remind me to bribe the floor-planner, will you? I think that spare desks should only be put next to those irritating skinny people who can eat fifteen doughnuts a day without putting on an ounce.
Things I found out on my run last night: 1) It was cold. 2) My hip aches. 3) I was tired. 4) I don’t much care for Arcade Fire.
Still, I think it was probably important to drag myself out, reluctantly, for my first mid-week run of the year. I’ve got to build some momentum back up somehow. I got out on Sunday, too, but I didn’t have time to blog about it, being mostly knee-deep in books all weekend as I did some early spring cleaning.
And so I slogged through 5K, despite wanting to stop a few times and walk for a while. I also had to shut off the aforementioned universally acclaimed album, because it was so bloody dreary I started considering throwing myself in the river. The Suburbs just sounds like a dull version of OMD crossed with the Human League to me.
Instead of chucking myself in the Avon I switched to Medollic’s new album, which was far better jogging material. Not entirely my cup of tea — they’re rather too perfect for my shambolically-attuned ears, and tracks like Dollhouse, the title track, are far too straight-up rock for me — but Fable, a list-song in a very American/Canadian-Female-Singer-Songwriter-stylee, if you know what I mean, hit the spot, among others.
Anyway. First cold, dark mid-week jog of the year under my belt, and hopefully I’ll be heading on in the right direction and building back up my distance for the Bath Half. Which is in about five and a half weeks’ time now. Gah!
You may have noticed a short hiatus on the blog. That’s related to the short hiatus in my running.
As I mentioned last time, I’ve been feeling a bit tired and run down this month. As a result, I’ve not really been looking forward to going out for a run, especially on the dark weekday evenings. And at the weekends, I’ve either been feeling a bit poorly or been a little too busy to get out.
Plus, it’s been absolutely bloody freezing. It’s not easy to get out the door when it’s dark and ‑2C outside.
As Arline said in the comments here a couple of posts ago, “There seems to be a fine line between not doing some thing because you really need a break, and not doing it because your motivation just isn’t there.”
And I think I’m on the other side of that line now — I really need a break.
Generally, I’m an all-or-nothing kind of person. Which I why, I think, I’ve been a little scared to take some time off running. There’s always that worry in the back of my mind that I might not start again. But the build-up of stuff this month — the lack of motivation, the aches and pains, the general Christmas not-enough-time syndrome, the cold snap — have maybe been pointing towards the conclusion that yes, it would probably be good for me to take a few weeks off running.
When I finally had that thought, on the walk home from work a few days ago, my brain did a little happy backflip as it changed from it’s “oh my God I haven’t been running for nearly two weeks argh” guilt-trip to a new, serene, “maybe it’s actually okay to give myself a break and start again in the new year” mode of thinking.
And I reckon that’s what decided me, in the end. It’s an especially good time to take a break, not just because I need it, but because there’s a new year coming up soon, and that will be a great re-starting point. Especially as I’ve signed up for the Bath Half in March, so I’ll have something to train for…
So, I am officially giving myself the rest of the month off. I’m tired, I’m achey, it’s cold, it’s dark, I have less free time than usual, and, fundamentally, I just plain feel like it. I’ve been running for eighteen months or so now, and I’ve not really had even a week off in all that time. Even when I’ve been on holidays I’ve done miles of hiking.
So, I’m taking a short holiday from running. I’m keeping up some exercise; I’m walking to work and back, which is about 5km a day. And just because I’m officially giving myself the rest of the month off doesn’t mean I won’t nip out for a sneaky run if I suddenly feel like it on a sunny weekend day…
Mostly, in fact, it’s not running I’m giving up for the month, but the guilt about not running. Which seems like a good thing to skip for a few weeks.
So, hopefully that explains the hiatus. I shall probably find something to blog about between now and Christmas, but if not, then have a happy holiday, everyone!
I was a Sad Santa on Sunday.
As were these other people. We’d all made our way to the Lloyds Amphitheatre to take part in Santas on the Run, a 2K charity fun run for the South West Children’s Hospice. As you’ll have worked out, the idea is for everyone to dress as Santa for the run, and apparently more than 500 people had signed up for the event. Some kind people had already contributed on my Just Giving page, I’d collected some sponsorship at work, and I’d tipped off the local paparazzi. Well, I’d mentioned it on the Bristol Flickr group’s discussion board, anyway…
I did have some reservations on the walk down to the start, though. And yes, I did walk a mile down the Hotwell Road at 10am on a Sunday morning dressed in a Santa costume. There was hooting involved. And some occasional pointing. Not to mention half the police in the South West driving past on their way to their afternoon’s student demo (my pics of that here) crowd control duties. That was a bit odd.
But my reservations were mainly about traction. It had been a bloody cold night after quite a rainy Saturday, and the ground was icy everywhere. It was also so foggy you could barely see the other side of the harbour. “On way down to register for #santasontherun,” I tweeted. “Hope they’ve gritted the route, or it’ll be Santas on their backside instead.”
The lack of Santas when I got to the Amphitheatre was a clue, and my suspicions were confirmed by a couple of the organisers greeting me with disappointed faces and the news that the route was just too icy to be safe. The Amphitheatre itself had pretty much been a skating rink when they arrived to set up, and the rest of the route — especially Pero’s Bridge, often a curve of slippery metal in Winter — were still un-runnable.
So, I and the other Santas who’d not heard the cancellation announcements on local radio headed off across Millennium Square, pictured above, to the kind, warm interior of The Living Room, a fashionable and lovely bar who gave a free hot drink to anyone in a Santa suit that morning — thank you!
After a commiseration drink with my friend José, who’d come along to support me, I drifted back home, still be-Santa-suited, and still garnering the odd confused look and occasional cheery hoot.
There is some good news, though — I heard from Children’s Hospice yesterday, and they’re rearranging the run for January 23rd! So, odd though it will be to be dressed as a Santa nearly a month after Christmas, I’ll at least get the chance to do something surreal and, more to the point, give my various sponsors the run that I owe them 🙂
So, thank you, kind sponsors, for sponsoring me, and rest assured I still intend to run 2K as Santa, no matter what time of year it is when it’s finally safe to run!
These last couple of weeks I do feel a bit like I’ve just been going through the motions. I’ve been busy, tired, and feeling rather run down. On Wednesday, I got home feeling tired and run down and really not wanting to go for a run. And it was bloody cold outside.
“Maybe I could go tomorrow?” I thought.
Then I remembered that that’s what I’d said on Tuesday, too. So, summoning what little motivation I had, I got myself out and ran a boring 5K down the Portway.
Because, sometimes, going through the motions is a better option than just not going through the motions.
Bleurgh. Been a bit too busy to update, mostly because I spent most of the weekend before last either in London in a pub, or in Bristol entertaining people, often in a pub…
As a result, I was completely knackered last week, and haven’t been running much. Also, I think I may be coming down with something — my eczema is playing up, as it often does before I start a cold. And I’m severely overdue, as they’ve been dropping like coughing, spluttery flies in the office.
Still, to try and get back into the swing of things, I struggled out for 3K on Wednesday, and at least ran around the harbour for 5K on Sunday.
And that’s all the update I’m doing today, as I’ve got a bit of a headache, and I think I’m going to have an early night…
Yeah. Not entirely sure I believe the last few kilometres of RunKeeper’s log for today’s run:
Especially considering the pace over the last couple of kilometres measured around 1.5 minutes per kilometre. Although I suppose I would probably have needed that kind of speed to fly over the Avon Gorge and several tall buildings like that.
Still, not a bad run — I’m still doing the FitnessClass thing, which had me set to do just over 10K today, as an alternating run/walk. I reckon I probably did around 9K all told, but I was a bit stymied for knowing when to stop after the GPS gave out around the 7K mark. (It really died quite hard; in the end I had to turn the phone off and on again to get it back and working. Ho hum.)
In fact, I’ve just tried to correct the route manually in RunKeeper and it does seem to have worked out at about 9K. Good enough for me, especially as there was at least another kilometre of walk home on the end of that 🙂
This week I’ll really really try to do the two mid-week runs, rather than just the one I’ve been doing these last few weeks…
Okay, my momentum’s pretty much disappeared recently. I’ve done very little since the half-marathon, though I did go for a little walk with my dad while I was on holiday, at least. And hey, doing a half marathon and then going on holiday for a week is a reasonable reason for losing momentum, I think 🙂
Still, time to ease back into it, so even though I was tired I forced myself out of the door to do a basic 3K in the last of today’s autumn sunshine. Because when you’ve lost momentum, I’ve found it’s helpful to start back up slowly.
