Matt Gets Running

Another 10K

Definite rule of running: once you’ve done a distance once, it’s a lot easier, psychologically, to do it again. Today I was feeling pretty good, and I’d had a decent night’s sleep, and the weather looked okay, so I decided to do 10K again.

And here it is on RunKeeper.com. It was actually 10.42km, about the same as my previous long run, and in about the same time. In fact, due to a nice bit of synchronicity, the last every-5-minute reminder I heard from RunKeeper was “Time: 1 hour, 15 minutes. Distance: Ten point zero zero kilometres”. So now know I can do 10K in exactly an hour and a quarter, even starting with a big hill. Yay!

Also, that time includes a few seconds stopping to take a picture. Today’s pic is the rather lovely collection of trees in the middle of Durdham Down, it looks to me as if it’s three separate trees, and also one single tree, all at the same time. A kind of distributed tree 🙂

Bad 5

Despite today’s picture, it wasn’t actually a bad 5K. This is just something written on the Portway pavement that I’ve been meaning to take a photo of for months. Today I did simple 5K, with no glamour and nothing to talk about of note.

So, bearing in mind I’m crazy busy and a bit tired, I’m going to leave this right here…

[EDIT: Ooops! I forgot to post this on Thursday, too, so it’s late as well as short!]

Deep Six

…well, deep puddles, anyway. I want to push my weekday runs out a bit further, so I figured I’d do 6K this evening. It varied between drizzle and outright rain, but it was still good. I felt fine, and kept up a nice pace. About the only thing that wasn’t great were my calves/ankles, and I think that’s probably because I forgot to stretch after Sunday’s run. D’oh.

So, a nice, simple 6K, in just a smidge under 40 minutes, at an average pace that’s faster than I was doing 5Ks in the dry a month ago. Cool.

Didn’t take any photos tonight — my camera lens would’ve been covered in rain in seconds — so here’s one from Friday, where similar, if slightly less rainy conditions prevailed 🙂 As usual, click through it for Flickry goodness.

Back to Basics

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.

5K, with occasional stops

Tonight I realised I was tired of jogging without photos, so I grabbed my camera and a mini-tripod on the way out. I took a nice steady jog, starting a little further out on the Portway than normal, and made my “halfway” point a little further on, too.

Then on the way back, especially toward the end of the run, after 4+ km, I stopped every now and again to take a photo. I got two or three good ones (it’s tough to get good night photography with a compact camera and a tiny tripod in the rain!)

All in all, I did a rather raggedy 5K. But hey, it was late, and I was tired.

I don’t have time to process all the photos, so for now, here’s one that caught my eye as I was grabbing them from the memory card. This is a view from the footbridge I use to get to the Portway, looking back towards Bristol over Cumberland Basin.

Simple and Steady…

IMG_0461 2.jpg …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!

Where did that come from?

I don’t know when this week became the week to push and to prove myself. But apparently it did.

I should have got out running last night, but I was knackered after work, so I did what any brave and stout young fellow would have done: gave up on the idea and went to bed early.

This morning, though, feeling fresh as a daisy and clearly a bit guilty about not doing 5K last night, I trotted out onto the Portway for my usual weekend plod. But during the warmup, probably only a few minutes in to Dire Straits’ Telegraph Road — great music for pushing yourself up Bridge Valley Road to, by the way — I decided to make up for last night’s lost distance.

So, doing a bit of quick geographical planning in my head, I took the route that got me through 8K the other weekend, and added an extra loop of Durdham Down to it.

And here’s the result:

Yup. 10K. Or, as I heard it in my head when I finished — and you’ll have to pardon my French — “ten fucking kilometres”.

In fact, a little bit more than that, as I was so close to my normal finish point when I’d completed 10K exactly that I decided to push on and do the extra few hundred metres, just to get to the lamp post outside the Avon Gorge Hotel that I traditionally slap to mark the end of my long runs.

And I’m faster than I figured I would be, too, especially considering I started off with the usual big hill. Looking at it, I think I came in comfortably under an hour and a quarter for the 10K. Nice.

Anyway, I’m a bit hungry now, for some reason, so it’s time to demolish the baguette and fruity flapjack I just bought from Chandos Deli…

I think I should probably give myself another couple of days off now, so I’ll probably catch up with you again on Monday 🙂

The Need for Speed

Seeing my friend Bert’s tweet earlier on got me thinking. I have generally been going for endurance rather than speed, especially recently.

Also in my mind was my friend Bananza’s advice that “if it’s easy, you’re not working hard enough”.

So, tonight I mixed things up a bit. I figured it’d do me good to push myself a bit harder. And it’d give me some idea of pace, and how it feels to go a bit faster.

As it turned out, it feels like hard work. Although good hard work, rather than bad hard work, like that crap run I had a couple of weeks ago.

But I certainly wouldn’t want to push myself to keep up a sub‑6:30 pace with every run, because I was really flagging at the end, and it was heavy-breathing tough work for most of the way through.

I managed it, though, keeping up a pace well below my normal 7+ minutes per kilometre for the whole 5K. As you can see from the RunKeeper stats, I actually came a lot closer to 6 minutes/km, finishing the 5K in just under 31 minutes.

So, that’s my fastest 5K ever. It was very rewarding, but I was a lot wobblier on my legs than normal when it was finished, and I think I was near the limit of my endurance at that speed.

Humbling to think that there are runners out there who can do 10K in that time and consider it a bad day… But I’m happy with what I’ve managed so far!

The Sun and the Rain

You never know whether it’s going to be a good run until you get out there. Today I woke up at 6:30am with a headache. I got up, took two paracetamol, and went back to bed. When I got up again at 11am, I still felt a bit rubbish.

Nevertheless, because it looked like it might chuck it down with rain if I left it any longer, I finally got out for my weekend jog a couple of hours later. And it was fine. Although I’ve been feeling tired all day, mentally and to some degree physically, that didn’t seem to stop my legs moving. Result.

So, aided by an iTunes Genius playlist kicked off by She Bangs the Drums, which meandered through some lesser-known bits of my library, including some of Ian Brown’s solo stuff, and the Magic Numbers’ Mornings Eleven, which was pleasingly bouncy, I jogged nearly 7K, at a decent pace even though it started off with a relatively slow puff and pant up Bridge Valley Road.

And I’m glad I did. Especially as I’d not managed to have lunch by the time I made it to Coffee #1 and Chandos Deli in Clifton Village at the end of the run 🙂 Vanilla latte “for the win”, as I believe the youngsters are saying these days…

Today’s photo is a bit of autumn colour from the path back to Clifton Village from the Downs. Click through for Flickr bigness.

Quick Harbourside Jaunt

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.