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Sunday Morning Detour

Inspired by Jose’s post about early morning running yesterday, I decided to drag myself out of bed and head out at around 7am this morning. Naturally I failed to do that, but I was underway by about 7:30 🙂

Unfortunately, my plan to head out along the Portway and up Bridge Valley Road to jog around the Downs in the next instalment of my getting-faster-for-the-Bath-Half FitnessClass thingy was scuppered. I’d got about 250 metres into it when I saw that the entire Portway, pavement to pavement, was closed.

D’oh. So, instead, I figured I’d run around the harbourside instead. I wasn’t entirely sure where I’d end up, but at least I’d never be too far from civilisation. My 6‑and-a-bit kilometres took me around the Floating Harbour about one and a half times, and was pretty nice. It started dull, grey and uninspiring, but in the almost-hour I was running for, it brightened up and turned into a lovely day.

Yes, I was running for almost an hour, to do less than 7K. This morning felt like a morning for taking it easy, so I didn’t push myself during the running, and took the opportunity to take some pictures during the walking breaks, which didn’t help my average pace much!

Then home, having popped into Sainsbury’s to buy some ham, to try my hand at making Eggs Benedict for the first time. It turned out pretty good, even if I do say so myself…

One Year Ago Today

Today’s jog took me out along the Portway, mostly because the weather has been so utterly crazy in Bristol today that I figured I’d stick to a route where there were likely no puddles and I was fairly unlikely to be struck by lightning. We had the most enormous thunderclap I’ve heard in my life earlier on in the day, which broke windows in some of the buildings on Victoria Street. And it stood alone, like a concentrated dose of thunderstorm. Odd.

The picture above, taken on today’s jog, is some of the later fallout from the heavy weather, clouds so low they’re striking the cliffs of the Avon Gorge at Sea Wall and bouncing up into the air. I’ve been jogging along this route for a year and never seen anything like this.

Which brings me to my other point today: it’s exactly a year I’ve been jogging down the Avon Gorge, because I first took up jogging on July 22nd, 2009.

So, this is my… joggerversary? Runnerversary? Hmm. Think I’d best stick with “anniversary”, hadn’t I? Yes, this is the first anniversary of my being a jogger!

I think I should find some way of celebrating this over the next couple of days. It may well involve cake…

Getting Out There

I’m going to try to get out twice on weekdays this week, because it’s been ages since I’ve done that. I seem to have degenerated into a one-midweek, once-at-the-weekend pattern, mostly since the Bristol 10K. I think I need to start building the average miles up a bit again, and get out when I can.

Today’s jog was very much the same as the last, just 5K out along the towpath and back. It wasn’t a brilliant experience. It was muggy and I was tired, and I just got out there, did it and came back, stopping only to play with my new camera a bit.

New camera? Yes! To mark my first stone of weight loss since I took up jogging, I bought myself a better pocketable camera, this time going for the Sony Cybershot DSC-TX1, which is a nifty little thing, and may turn out to be better than my late, lamented Panasonic Lumix FP8. Only time and a few pictures in better light and better weather than we had tonight will tell.

It’s certainly better than the Lumix FP3 that I used as an intermediate replacement. I quickly learned to dislike the FP3, with its annoyingly useless touchscreen and rubbish, noisy image quality. What’s the point of 14 million pixels if six million of them are displaying sensor noise? Grr.

So, I think this is a good purchase, and a nice reward for losing 16lbs so far. Maybe if I lose another stone, I’ll get myself an iPad…

Woodland Jog

It was, again, really very sunny and warm today. I didn’t get up early enough to avoid it, so instead of heading for the Downs like usual, I went for a little jog around Leigh Woods, which has a lot more shade, instead.

I didn’t take it too seriously, stopping off in a few different places to take photos. Just a nice gentle jog in the sunshine, really, about 7.5K, all told. It feels like enough, on a day like today 🙂

Back on the Road

Back to the A4 Portway for a nice simple 5K this evening. It was warm and close, and the wide open feel of the road felt like a better antidote than the pleasant, yet sometimes-claustrophobic towpath.

Just a token effort, really, my first since Thursday’s 21km epic, and I took it slowly. No problems, though.

In fact, looking back, I felt better after Thursday’s half-marathon distance than I did after the Bristol 10K, possibly because I took it slower and steadier. I was a bit of a wreck Thursday daytime, but I’d mostly shrugged off any aches and pains by Sunday, and even Saturday didn’t feel too bad.

So, I think all’s going well, generally. Might nip out for a perfectly normal weekend run this weekend, just 7K, or something. I’ll let you know 🙂

A Teensy Little Jog

I had a day off work. It looked like a nice morning for a little jog.

So, I went out for a little jog. Which turned into a longer jog. Which turned into a bit of an epic.

I did set out with the idea of going for a longish run. I set off with plenty of water, because even though I started fairly early, it’s a pretty hot day. And I made my way down the towpath, and headed up into Leigh Woods.

I was feeling fine when I got up the big hill into the woods themselves. I figured that if I wanted to run a bit extra, I’d do it in the woods, rather than out of them, because the sun was pretty fierce and tree cover was nice. So I did a couple of loops of the “purple” path in the woods, which added about 5K to my planned journey.

I stopped at 10K to have an energy bar thing — and I can vastly recommend Mule Bars over those bloody gel energy pack things I tried before. Mule Bars actually taste like they’ve been made from actual food by a human, rather than cooked up in a lab my a crazed robot scientist.

While I was stopped, I asked Twitter to remind me how far a half marathon was. 21km, came the reply, give or take a decimal place here or there.

Okay. So I wasn’t even halfway. Nevertheless, I headed back into the woods to come out at the Beggar Bush Lane exit and head over the Clifton Suspension Bridge to the Downs, and started a long loop of Clifton Down and Durdham Down.

It was at this point — just after the nasty little hill that gets you onto the Downs at the junction with Bridge Valley Road — that I started having problems. It was hot. I was hot. I reined in my pace a bit, and enjoyed a bit of breeze by Sea Wall. But fundamentally, I was being pretty unlucky with the cloud cover; it was fairly direct blazing sunshine and there’s not a lot of shade on the Downs.

But I kept on going. And I kept on going. I stopped to change from podcasts to music, after I ran out of podcasts. I kept on going.

Eventually, I pretty much ran out of run, somewhere around 16km, though I was mildly perked up by the thought that I’d now run further than I’d ever run before, and kept up a slow jog for a while.

At 19km, I completely ran out of juice. Don’t know how much was the heat, how much was the hills, and how much was just because I’d run much further than I have in ages. But I ran out of running.

So, bloody-minded to the end, I walked a further 2 kilometres, pretty much exactly, to get myself to 21km. At which point I gave a little cheer, stopped RunKeeper, and realised that I had another half a kilometre to walk to get back to Clifton Village anyway. So I kept on walking.

It took me more than three-and-a-quarter hours, and I was walking for two kilometres of it, but I think I can fairly lay claim to having run a half-marathon in training.

And I’m not so scared of doing it on the day, now. Because, for starters, the Bristol half marathon is in September, and shouldn’t be quite so warm, and it’s also pretty much flat. It’s certainly a pancake compared to what I did today — RunKeeper reckons there was a total elevation of 372m over my undulating course, and I can believe it. There was a lot of up and down…

So, big pat on the back, I think. I don’t feel too bad, having had a nice lunch and a large latte in Boston Tea Party, followed by a Very Long Bath Indeed. I don’t think I’ll be running for a few days, but I don’t appear to have developed much in the way of aches, pains or problems.

So, to summarise: Win! Yay!

Pants in the Park

Ah, yes, the hottest day of the year. Just the time to get out into the sunshine at nearly noon and run 5 kilometres wearing y‑fronts. Oh yes. Although I do have a sneaking suspicion that the three laps of the bloody great field we ran around wasn’t quite 5K, but I don’t suppose it was far off.

Anyway, yes a different kind of Sunday run for me today, probably less far than I would normally run of a weekend, but also in much more blazing sunshine than I’d ever voluntarily venture out in. Despite the harshness, we got a fairly good turnout, and everyone managed it, even the intrepid older gent who came in last to a big cheer.

With the donations from my JustGiving page (thanks all!) and the money my company will pony up for me entering, I reckon I raised more than £100 for Prostate UK, which can’t be bad 🙂 I probably won’t be pestering anyone for donations until at least August now, when I’ll be starting fundraising for the half marathon. Which I very much hope is on a nice, cool, September day, preferably with a very light drizzle…

8K and No Pink Tutu

Got out early this morning — well, before 9am, anyway, which I thought was pretty good for a Sunday — and trogged up and around the Downs for 8K.

Getting out early was a good idea for two reasons. The main reason was to avoid the midday sun that nearly fried me the last time I went for a long run on a sunny day. But, as it turned out, another good reason was because today is day two of the Race for Life on the Downs. And I managed to time things just right, getting out early enough so that some of the roads were already closed to traffic, but not so late that I had to put on a number, a wig and a pink tutu in order to be allowed on the paths.

Looks like a marvellous day for it. I wandered up to take some pictures of yesterday’s 5K, and it certainly looked like everyone was enjoying it, so hopefully today will be just as good.

Anyway. I have a Boston Tea Party chocolate crunch to eat as a reward for getting around 8K on a Sunday morning, when any sensible person is obviously still in bed, so I’ll leave you to a hopefully sunny Sunday, wherever you are…

Mad Dogs and Englishmen

Wow. That was quite an intense 7K. Not because it was fast, or anything, just because I didn’t get out until about half past eleven, which meant I was running in the midday sun. That’s not been a worry so far this year. But on wandering outside, it was pretty obvious that we are no longer in Spring. Today is definitely, clearly, 100% summer. It’s a cloudless 24C out there, and that makes quite a difference to running.

I’d used up all my water by the end of the run, and the middle section — around the Downs, without much tree cover — was particularly punishing, just because of the relentless sunshine.

Still, I managed, and it’s all good experience. I’ve not run through a summer, yet. I only started this lark in July last year, and for the first month or two I was mostly walking, and even then it was mostly in the evenings. I guess there’s one important thing I learned today, if nothing else: if there’s a chance of it being that damn sunny at midday, I should drag my arse out of bed and go running at 8am, not 11…

Anyway. Today’s picture is the shadow of the Suspension Bridge at the start of my run. Enjoy the day, wherever you are!

Sunny Five

I didn’t hit the rainy streets last night, because I was knackered — didn’t sleep well on Tuesday night, for some reason. Still, today was a good alternative day for running, because it was gorgeously sunny. I took today’s picture on my warm-down after the run, with the sun still just above the horizon. Nice.

Just a simple 5K today, nothing special.

The weight loss is proving hard to start, but I’m still working on it. As with the running, I’m sure it’ll be easier to keep going once I’ve built up some momentum!