Category: musings

Bearing in mind all the rain we’ve had recently, I’ve been pretty lucky with the running. It was gorgeous this morning, brilliant sunshine and not even that cold.

As well as this one of the winter trees, there’s a couple on Flickr taken from the same point on the Portway, one looking out of town, and one looking back toward the suspension bridge.

After last weekend’s 10K extreme, I stuck to a simple five-and-a-bit K, averaging a nice 7‑and-a-half minutes per kilometre, including the slow struggle up Bridge Valley Road.

I went into Coffee #1 in Clifton Village for my now-traditional vanilla latte. But they apologised before I’d even said “hi”, as they were out of vanilla syrup. And they gave me amaretto for free instead, which was lovely of them.

And that was my morning jog.

…that’s me.

Remembering how rubbish I felt on my first run after doing 8K, I figured I’d best be careful for my first run after 10K.

This time I left three clear days after my long run before getting back out on the road. It seems to have had the right effect. The simple 5K I just did wasn’t brilliant, but it wasn’t terrible. And I came in at a normal pace, comfortably under 35 minutes.

So, I think that’ll be the plan in future — after a big push on in distance, give myself a few days of recovery time before running again. Seems to work.

I didn’t see anything particularly thrilling on the Portway, so tonight’s picture isn’t from my run, it’s from my walk home. I figured I might as well get into the Christmas spirit; this was my first run of December, after all!

I’ve only jogged around the harbour once before, during week 7 of the C25K. Tonight I did it again, and did it a bit quicker, too.

So, all good. I’d got a bit bored with running along the Portway all the time, so although the round-the-harbour run feels quite short for me now (it’s only a bit over 4K) I figured I’d do it just to make a change.

And it was a lot more interesting. I saw other joggers, a gym (although with no-one on the treadmill, which would have been appropriate), random drinkers around Pero’s bridge, and a rowing club.

Also, it was a good job I was jogging, because there were a couple of guys I passed who were smoking skunk so strong that I probably would have passed out if I’d gone past too slowly.

At some point, I’ll take it a bit steadier and go twice around the harbour. Maybe one weekend next month. I’d prefer to do that in daylight. In the meantime, here’s a pic from the end of tonight’s run. You can just see the ghostly motion-blur from a couple of other runners who passed when I was taking the picture. Click through to see it bigger on Flickr.