17 miles today over to Milton Keynes adding a bit on to the usual run to get the distance. So, so cold! As Father Grant at All Saints told me this morning, 'it's brass monkeys!'
Have relented over using an MP3 player when running... normally I despise the use of such things as they disconnect you from your body and from the mental, spiritual and physical experience of running, which I feel is a way of moving zen...
Yesterday and today, however, when the temperature has been so cold and the motivation has struggled but the need to get the mileage done has remained just as pressing I decided to cave in!
The problem with my MP3 is that it seems to have malfunctioned and returns to Glen Campbell as a kind of default so I usually get to hear what it's like to be a linesman for the county or a rhinestone cowboy (it's like riding out on a horse in a star spangled rodeo, apparently). Today, though, I decided to tackle it's mischevious ways and downloaded Pink Floyd and the Beatles onto it's complaining circuits (yesterday I ran to King Crimson). Quite a mellow experience running to the guitar solos of Dave Gilmour and the sitar of George Harrison. Just as the route got to Bletchley and the industrial area Davy Graham's 'Angie' flicked itself on and motivated me up Watling Street. It wasn't long though before we were back to being a wichita linesman or remembering how the sea winds were blowing the last time we were in Galveston...
Anyway 17 miles (2 hours 33 minutes), not bad and thanks to Tim and Isla for the boiled eggs and cups of tea - and for being part of team Broomy. These marathons are never a solo event I do need my motivators and supporters (thanks also to Rachel for Facebook motivation!).
Anyway, Watford Half Marathon next Sunday and I'm going to try and beat my half marathon PB...
The Three Peaks Challenge
Time really seems to go by with this blog and I seem to fall behind so fast. However to bring it up to date I need to go back to last Saturday and the 3 peaks challenge of Pen-y-ghent, Whernside and Ingleborough. All together it's a 26 mile circuit in the Yorkshire dales with 3 rather large peaks as a sort of inconvenience along the way! Since this was January there was mud, snow and ice to add more variables to the mix. At points I have to say I did feel outside of my comfort zone and traversing across a verticle snow slope on Ingleborough towards the end of the walk still gives me post-Vietnam type flashbacks... Never-the-less this felt like a great achievement and it was some beautiful walking. Thank you very much to Flora for being Tenzing to my Hillary; Flora doesn't appear in any of the pictures as she shuns the publicity; the cost of fame is high, so maybe she's right, but none-the-less, thanks, and we achieved the walk in 9 hours 33 minutes, which given the conditions was a very good time and I am pretty sure made us the fastest team on the day. Stayed at a really good B&B called the Willows in Horton-in-Ribblesdale absolutely fantastic pack lunches!
Experimented with dextrose sweets on this walk in my eternal quest for the right energy supplement and found them really good. With this sort of extreme exercise I find that my appetite becomes supressed and all I really want is hot tea. However, one still needs the calories and the energy and being hypoglycemic I have to watch this. So a dextrose sweet once an hour a few veggie sausage sandwiches and of course the emergency flapjack (I was carrying 6!) and I was ok!
Got back on Sunday and ran for 45 minutes - felt amazing. Just had to prove to myself that I was still in good condition. Ran or used the gym most days this week apart from Wednesday when I went to see Avatar - amazing!
Experimented with dextrose sweets on this walk in my eternal quest for the right energy supplement and found them really good. With this sort of extreme exercise I find that my appetite becomes supressed and all I really want is hot tea. However, one still needs the calories and the energy and being hypoglycemic I have to watch this. So a dextrose sweet once an hour a few veggie sausage sandwiches and of course the emergency flapjack (I was carrying 6!) and I was ok!
Got back on Sunday and ran for 45 minutes - felt amazing. Just had to prove to myself that I was still in good condition. Ran or used the gym most days this week apart from Wednesday when I went to see Avatar - amazing!
Wednesday 20th January: Energy Gels and Narrow Boats
Something of a day off today though still did the usual 6 or 7 mile daily walk. Ran 11.5 miles on Sunday over to Milton Keynes and a late Christmas dinner with some friends. It took 1 hr 40 mins; was feeling rather tired after a week's teaching but tried experimenting with one of these energy gels, which I had at about mile 7. Not sure that it really made any difference but did taste quite nicely of bananas and had a bit of a psychological boost, I guess! I did feel slightly better after the run so maybe it had some benefit after all. Experimented with my new Helly Hansen top and old pertex jacket. The pertex doesn't seem very breathable and the Helly Hansen doesn't seem very warm so the idiom that you get what you pay for does not appear to ring true...
Anyway, did an hour or so in the gym on Monday - just core stuff and strength exercises, particularly anything that will strengthen my knee. Lots of stretching too, of course, and yoga exercises. It is interesting what a difference these make.
An hour's run on Tuesday, which felt really good. Unfortunately it still gets dark by four o'clock so I'm still running along the canal in the darkness... it is important not to fall in but the lights of the narrow boats do make it look very pretty! It's not really spooky along there, just dark.
This weekend I'm attempting the 3 peaks in Yorkshire - all part of the training - I'm just really praying that the snow will miss us.
Will report back on this, of course, in a later post.
Just signing off by saying thanks again to my brother for the Christmas present. The marathon watch is really proving useful both for timing runs and timing students speaking in English exam classes... thanks very much!
Anyway, did an hour or so in the gym on Monday - just core stuff and strength exercises, particularly anything that will strengthen my knee. Lots of stretching too, of course, and yoga exercises. It is interesting what a difference these make.
An hour's run on Tuesday, which felt really good. Unfortunately it still gets dark by four o'clock so I'm still running along the canal in the darkness... it is important not to fall in but the lights of the narrow boats do make it look very pretty! It's not really spooky along there, just dark.
This weekend I'm attempting the 3 peaks in Yorkshire - all part of the training - I'm just really praying that the snow will miss us.
Will report back on this, of course, in a later post.
Just signing off by saying thanks again to my brother for the Christmas present. The marathon watch is really proving useful both for timing runs and timing students speaking in English exam classes... thanks very much!
Blog 2
So...rather a long gap between these postings! However, training is still going well and I've now worked out how to post photos onto this site. Note the Watford Autumn Challenge (very pleasant 5 mile cross country race (39.01)) and the London Santa Run (6k round Battersea Park (28.31))...more to come...
Just spent two weeks of really good training in Italy on the island of Ischia: swimming, walking and running. It's been hard to come back to cold, cold Britain and try to run in the snow! Actually it's been impossible, I've had to use the treadmill at the gym lately, which goes some way to getting the job done but it's just not the same. The great thing about running is the noseyness...it's great to watch the world going on around you from a largely invisible position.
99 days today until the start of the marathon...
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