Category: Jogging

Race day

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It is just wrong for an alarm to go off at 7am on a Sunday morning, unless you’re a nurse or something and have to go to work at the weekends or I suppose if you’re one of these strange people who go running and enter races that are on a Sunday morning instead of a more civilised time like a Saturday afternoon.

I’m lying in my bed thinking shall I get up and go to the race because I’m thinking I haven’t run for two weeks so I must be really unfit and I’m also wondering if staying up late drinking lager and eating Peanut Butter KitKat Chunky was the best race preparation and I’m also wondering if I can bear to be seen in public with a race number proudly declaring itself to be supported by Budgens.

But I decide that as I haven’t been to Hornsey before it’ll be an adventure.  Sort of.

Recovery run

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Due to having a cold all week due to too many late nights over the last couple of weeks, my best laid running and cross-training plans (they were laid so well that I’d even written them down in my diary [ok, so I also need a diary to remind me to look in my diary but that’s not the point]) went kaput in a spectacular fashion, in a I did no running and didn’t go to the gym either kind of way.

So this morning when I woke up, it was nice and sunny so I got up early and thought I’d head out for 3 miles so I put on my trainers and picked up my keys and just as I was leaving I realised I’d forgotten my Garmin. Eek. Must be ill. So I go back upstairs and retrieve my Garmin and go out into the grey and the rain which has replaced the sunshine and do what was actually a comfortable 3 miles without the urge to stop. Woo. Which is just as well as I’ve got a 10k next Sunday and I haven’t run 10k without a walking break, a look at the map break, a photo break or a can’t be arsed to run anymore break since, um, the 10k I did last October. Oops.

And we won’t mention the half-marathon I’ve entered in September which is now not only starting to look like quite a long way to run but doesn’t actually seem that far away in the future either. I blame joggerblogger. He put me up to it. Never trust a man with a rabbit.

Good luck to Angela who’s doing a triathlon tomorrow. Stratford Sprint tomorrow, Ironman next year?

Today’s route

Stats:
Miles: 3.24
Total time: 34:32
Average pace: 10:40
Total calories: 298
Music:
Mark Ronson – Diversion
Arctic Monkeys – Old Yellow Birds
Klaxons – Atlantis to Interzone
Mark Ronson – Inversion
Klaxons – Magick
Mark Ronson – Apply Some Pressure (Feat. Paul Smith)
Arctic Monkeys – Do Me A Favour
Mark Ronson – Toxic
Klaxons – Golden Skans
Klaxons – Gravity’s Rainbow

All the fun of the fair

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Jumping up and down at the Bobby Conn gig on Wednesday left my calves killing me so in a kill or cure kind of way, thought I’d go out for a short run as I’ve got a 10k in two weeks and it’s not going to run itself.

And in the smallest park in the world is the smallest fair in the world.

I just did a quick lap of the park and a quick lap of the sports field and someone had turned the weather off as it was freezing, can we have the warm weather back please?  And as it’s cold that means I’m not venturing out into my garden so most of my plants are still  at the seed-tray-in-the-kitchen stage and my garden is getting full of weeds again although it’s not as bad as last year.  Yet.

Stats:
Miles: 1.55
Total time: 16:36
Average pace: 10:44
Total calories: 162
Smallest fairs in the world: 1
Music:
Harvey Danger – Cool James
Klaxons – Gravity’s Rainbow
Baby Teeth – The Simp
Maximo Park – Hammer Horror

Early morning mile

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Insomnia strikes again and I’m awake at 4:00am and I try my usual trick of wondering what it’s like to go out for a run early in the morning but at 5:30am I’m still awake so I get up and peek through the blinds to see what 5:30am looks like when you’re sober and not on the way back from some dodgy club and it’s quiet like Christmas and I have a cup of tea and unload the dishwasher and reply to some emails and think I’ll go out for a mile but where shall I go? I don’t think the park will be open and there’s no way I’m going over the marshes at 6 o’clock in the morning so I think I’ll just go round the block and I go outside and the park is open so I go in the park hoping no one dodgy’s over there and I do a lap and it’s scary like someone’s watching me and then I see a man coming towards me but it’s ok because then I see he has a dog with him and on the second lap I see more people walking their dogs and then I see another jogger and then another jogger and for the first time in my life I’m glad other people are in the park and I just do a mile and go home and it’s still not even past the time my alarm clock usually goes off and I’ve still got two hours before I have to leave for work and I think I will fill those two hours by drinking hot chocolate and eating peanut butter (crunchy of course) on toast. Yah!

Stats:
Miles: 1.19
Total time: 10:21
Average pace: 8:43
Total calories: 99
People walking their dogs: 3
Other joggers: 2
Music:
Citizen Fish – Choice Of Viewing
The Horrors – Dragger’s Rant
The Bravery – An Honest Mistake
Ben Folds Five – Lullabye

30 minutes marshes

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I have found the best way to get back to sleep after waking up at 4am and not being able to drop off again is to wonder what it’s like to run at 5:30 in the morning. Straight back to sleep ’til 9 and wanting to keep up the momentum of my new found enthusiasm and motivation decided to leave my camera at home (eek) and see if I can get round the three mile route of the marshes in 30 minutes.

I run down the path and a rat scurries along and I wish I had my camera so I could take its picture and then I get to the footbridge and almost run head first into a spider and its web and I want to take its picture too and I get to the other side of the bridge and there’s an old man on a bicycle looking at the horses and we say “morning” to each other and I think if I get murdered he might remember me and say to the police, “oh yes, I saw a lone female jogger with really big headphones on” and there’s not many people over the marshes today, just a few cyclists and a few million midges and one gets stuck in the back of my throat and I keep coughing and the people I go past are probably thinking “she’s really unfit, listen to that smoker’s cough” and I’m thinking “I don’t smoke anymore, I’ve got a midge stuck in my throat” and I look at my Garmin and I’m half way round the marshes in 15 minutes so I’m on course for my 30 minutes and I get to the last stretch and I have to stop for a car and the car driver waves to say thank you in that car driver kind of way and I continue down the last stretch and get to the most badly painted house in the world and my Garmin says I’ve been running for 25 minutes and I’ve got half a mile to go so I speed up in a not very speedy way and I get back to my house in just under 30 minutes and just under 3 miles. Yay. I think.

Today’s route

Stats:
Miles: 2.94
Total time: 29:54
Average pace: 10:10
Total calories: 279
Old men looking at horses: 1
Midges stuck in my throat: 1
Music:
Charlotte Hatherley – Bastardo
The Young Knives – John
Cardiacs – Dive
Franz Ferdinand – 40′
Bee Gees – Staying Alive
Tori Amos – Professional Widow
Ash – Petrol
X Ray Spex – The Day The World Turned Day-Glo

Lost in music (and Hackney)

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Along with my half-marathon entry came some new found enthusiasm for this running malarkey so I got out of bed bright and early (in a bright and early 9:45 kind of way) and started on day 1 of putting some more mileage in and remembered that there was a route on the Serpentine Running Club‘s website that takes in the marshes and so I had a look to see how long that route was and it’s eleven miles and 99% off road so I chopped a few miles off it and went out hoping my new route would be about five or six miles.

I got to where the cows used to live and there’s a sign I hadn’t seen before warning people about a cattle grid.

Which would be ok but a) there’s no cows because someone stole them or ate them or something; and b) it’s not a grid. It’s a metal sheet but not a grid. And because I’m a pedant, that’s going to bug me every time I see it.

I leave Walthamstow Marshes and go into Hackney Marshes and there’s a marked difference between the amount of people in Walthamstow Marshes and the amount of people in Hackney Marshes. i.e. there’s hardly any. Am I the only person brave/stupid enough to go over Hackney Marshes?

It’s very quiet on this part of the river.

I leave the deserted river path when I can and a man comes down the path and he looks like a right cockney geezer type and he says “awright” in a cockney geezer type of way and I think he’s just saying hello and not enquiring after my general welfare so I say hi and I get to the bit where my route says I’m supposed to not go on the road like I did before but to carry on going round the sports field bit but I can’t see a path and I didn’t bring my map but I thought I was supposed to follow the river but I can’t see the river anymore so I carry on going down the side of the field and the river reappears and then there’s nothing but trees.

And I’m trying to forget I’m in Hackney and can see nothing but trees and more trees and even more trees.

And I see the cockney geezer type man again and he smiles at me and I’m glad I’m not alone in all the trees even if the only person around is a cockney geezer type but cockney geezer types are usually to be trusted unless you’re in Eastenders and called Tiffany and get runover by one but luckily enough my name isn’t Tiffany. And I’m not in Eastenders.

And I’m still running and running and thinking when are all these trees going to fuck off and I see a clearing just up ahead. Yay.

And sitting down in the clearing is a man with a small dog and I don’t usually trust men with small dogs but this man is cute and as I’m looking at him thinking I wish I had clean hair and make up on and hadn’t just ran five miles and look like a complete minger then I could ask him directions and maybe he’d give me his phone number, he looks up and sees me looking so I run off past him and I eventually see a signpost which points in the direction of Walthamstow Marshes and so I follow the direction of the signpost and cross a bridge but I still don’t know where the fuck I am and I see a path that seems to stop somewhere in the sky.

So I get to the top of the path and yay, I’m at the riding stables and know where I am now.

And so I head off in the direction of my house and take a couple of pictures of some weeds on the way.

One day I will stop taking my camera out and taking pictures of weeds. Especially as soon I’m bound to get an email from Bernard saying are you supposed to stop and take pictures when you’re training for a half-marathon? Um.

And if I don’t get my seedlings past the seed-tray-in-the-kitchen stage soon, Phil‘s going to win the gardening competition as well as the pizza competition.

But at least I’m not growing my plants in a pile of shit.

Although the spinach is still woefully lacking in compost.

Today’s route

Stats:
Miles: 6.30
Total time: 1:15:09
Average pace: 11:56
Total calories: 673
People over Walthamstow Marshes: Loads
People over Hackney Marshes: Hardly any
Cockney geezer type men: 1
Cute men with small dogs: 1
Music:
Jeff Buckley – Yard Of Blonde Girls
Junior Senior – White Trash
The Damned – White Rabbit
Justice v Simian – We Are Your Friends
The View – Same Jeans
The Fiery Furnaces – The Vietnamese Telephone Ministry
The Libertines – Up The Bracket
Ween – Untitled Baroque #3
Massive Attack – Unfinished Sympathy
Kula Shaker – Under The Hammer
Ben Folds Five – Twin Falls
The Young Knives – Tremblings Of Trails

Swan slapping

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I had the day off work today and had lots of plans of things to do but as I didn’t get up ’til lunchtime didn’t do any of them but as it was a nice sunny day, thought I’d go for a run up the river so I put on my personal alarm and my new wireless headphones which make me look like a right berk and off I went.

As usual there were loads of daisies and dandelions and I was looking and looking and looking for something to take a picture of other than a daisy or a dandelion and eventually saw these purple things.

Then just before I got to the marina, there was this sign. What does it mean? Please don’t happy slap the swans? Damn, always someone trying to ruin my fun.

I promise I didn’t try and slap any of these swans.

Or this heron. It is a heron isn’t it?

And as there’s been an email from the Experian Robin Hood Festival of Running 2007 sitting in my inbox for a few weeks staring at me with an accusatory glare in the way that emails do saying that entries are now open which I thought I’d ignore until payday but then they sent me another email saying oi you said you were entering the half marathon so stop clicking on the link and looking at it, get your card out and just do it, so I emailed Gary and said are you still coming to Nottingham with me for the half marathon and he said yes, my exams will be finished by then and I’ll be free, yippee, so I said oh, I’d better put my entry in then, eek. And so I came home and clicked on the link again in the email that keeps staring at me and put my entry in while checking, double-checking, triple-checking and quadruple-checking that I’ve ticked the box that says half-marathon, not full marathon, and I order a t-shirt too and then it says congratulations you are in the Experian Robin Hood Festival of Running 2007. Eek.

Today’s route

Stats:
Miles: 4.25
Total time: 47:15
Average pace: 11:07
Total calories: 413
Swans getting a slap: 0
Herons: 1
Half marathons entered: 1
Music:
Catatonia – Road Rage
Primal Scream – Pills
Sultans of Ping – Indeed You Are
Belle and Sebastian – Sukie In The Graveyard
The Young Knives – John
Lush – Ladykillers
The Cult – Breathe
Black Wire – 800 Million Heart Beats
Patrick Wolf – Landsend
Citizen Fish – Heard It All Before
Foo Fighters – February Stars

Unwired for sound

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I hadn’t planned on a run today.  Yesterday I said to myself that I might do the second half of my running commute today but I’ll see how I feel when I get up as, after my impromptu BBQ on Sunday led to staying up drinking and watching episodes of Brookside from 1985 and The Mighty Boosh ’til 3am which isn’t a good idea when you have to be at work the next morning, I wasn’t sure if I’d be recovered enough and even after 10 hours sleep on Monday night I decided that I wasn’t up to a running commute, even if it was only half of one, but while I was at work I remembered that I still hadn’t tried out my new wireless headphones and if anything can get me into my trainers and out the door, then it’s a new gadget to try out.

So I swallowed my pride and pretended I wasn’t vain and went out in my new headphones which make me look even more stupid than usual and to my surprise they did actually stay on my head, and it made a nice change not to have headphone wires annoying me by bashing me in the face.  No one laughed at me either, which was an added bonus.   And they must have magical powers too because although I stopped and took them off to find out where the volume control was on them, my Garmin reckons I did 9:44 minute miles tonight.  So either my new headphones have magical powers or my Garmin is broken.

Stats:
Miles: 2.07
Total time: 20:08
Average pace: 9:44
Total calories: 181
New headphones with magical powers: 1
Music:
Chumbawamba – Bad Dog
Bee Gees – Grease Theme
Harvey Danger – Diminishing Returns
Kula Shaker – Dance In Your Shadow
Soft Cell – You Only Live Twice

A mile of midges

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I had to be back by 10 this morning because Ben’s coming round to change my lock so I set my alarm for 8 but had forgotten about the power cut the other night and my fake sunrise clock had set its alarm itself for 7 so that woke me up making its bleepy noise so I got up and turned off the bleepy noise and went back to bed to wait for my other alarm to go off at 8 but the cat decides it’s time to get up and starts punching me in the face and I say cat, stop punching me in the face, so she bites me instead and I’m staring at the clock and the alarm goes off at 8 so I get up and turn off the alarm and warm up for my run by playing on the internet and I eventually get my arse into gear at about 9 and take my new wireless headphones out for a test run but I only get as far as the corner of the road and they’ve stopped working. Bah. I take them back home and look at the instructions and realise that after I’d stayed up late last night waiting for my headphones to charge so I could play with them, the instructions say to charge the headphones AND the adaptor. Bugger.

I grab my normal headphones and look at the clock and it’s 9:20 and I think can I get round the marshes in 40 minutes and I decide that I can if I don’t stop to take too many photos or stop to walk too much so I get to the marshes and it seems the marshes are speaking in kilometres now as this sign indicates.

You’d think over the marshes there would be some interesting fauna like stuff to take pictures of but once again, I come back with only a picture of a dandelion or four.

And I think to myself I’d better stop taking photos of weeds or Ben’s going to have had a wasted trip and I’ll still have a dodgy lock so I carry on and as I’m coming up to the last stretch a man overtakes me and he’s running in a very strange way and wiggling his bum like some kind of girl and I’m wondering if I wiggle my bum when I run and I decide I probably don’t and when I get to the last stretch there’s about a million midges and the midge army is out in force and the air is thick with the little bastards and I have to keep my head down otherwise they’re in my eyes and my mouth but at least it means I keep running and eventually I get to the road and the midge army dissipates and I get home by 9:55 and Ben comes round at 10:25 and tries to fix the new lock but the new lock is too big so he puts my old lock back on but with the new barrel and says he thinks he has a smaller lock at home and he’ll check. So it was just as well I didn’t try to fix the new lock myself as I would have been totally stuck and all this new lock old lock fixing business has taken nearly two hours and I say thank you, and I am way behind in my schedule of things I was going to do today which involves updating a website and doing some garden stuff like putting my seedlings into bigger pots before me and Dave from Liverpool who used to live in Ireland until last Thursday when he moved to Walthamstow go and investigate the restaurant which Time Out reckons do the best pizzas in London. Look, my seeds are growing, they’re bigger than Phil’s 🙂

And the sunflowers outside.

And the spinach that needs a bigger pot and more compost.

And the rocket.

And the lillies from last year are growing again. Yay.

Clearly I am the best gardener on the internet.

Today’s route

Stats:
Miles: 2.94
Total time: 33:46
Average pace: 11:30
Total calories: 300
Signs in km: 1
Dandelions: 4
Men running like a girl: 1
Midges: millions
New lock old lock hybrids: 1
Music:
Human League – Non Stop
The Killers – Smile Like You Mean It
Kaiser Chiefs – Thank You Very Much
Peter Bjorn & John – Up Against The Wall
New Model Army – No Rest
The Damned – Is It A Dream?
Bikini Kill – Rip
Rolling Stones – Satisfaction
Joe Jackson – Steppin’ Out

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