Category: Running

Running commute #6

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Oh yes, I am hardcore.  Two running commutes in a week and today’s one makes me especially hardcore as I did it with a hangover after spending the evening drinking white wine, red wine, lager, cherry beer and some strange green drink that the restaurant gave us.  But because tomorrow is my birthday, fitting in a run and writing this blog before showering/washing hair/drying hair/putting on make up/straightening hair and getting out by lunchtime for my birthday pizza, only left me with four options:

1) Do it Friday.
2) Get up super-early.
3) Do it on Sunday.
4) Don’t do it.

2) is possible but still the timing might be a bit tight.  3) is probably the most unlikely thing in the world, due to having had been out drinking all day on Saturday.  4)  isn’t the actions of a finely tuned athlete such as myself.  So 1) it was to be.

And earlier in the week I had been wondering how I was going to manage three runs in a week as I have trouble getting out the door when I get home and stupid Niketown don’t answer their stupid phone so I couldn’t check if their running group was still going and then my saviour comes along in the form of the Runner’s World Running Club which is a group of runners of all abilities meeting up at Speaker’s Corner every Tuesday evening at 6:15-6:30pm to run around Hyde Park, so get yourselves down there, first run 8 January 2008.  And if that wasn’t perfect enough, there’s even a visit to the pub after.  So with that and a weekly running commute and my usual Saturday run, that’s my three runs a week sorted, hurrah.

Stats:
Distance: 6.3 miles
Time: 1:19:02
Pace: 12:32
Hangovers: 1
Music:
Hole
Ween
Radiohead
Janis Joplin
Arctic Monkeys
The Pretenders
My Bloody Valentine
Hard-Fi
Rollins Band
The Cure

Running commute #5

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In an attempt to get three runs in this week I pack my running rucksack the night before in preparation for a running commute, not forgetting to pack the essentials of my personal alarm and don’t fuck with me look, due to part of my route taking me up what is locally not very reassuringly known as Murder Mile.

And while I’m at work the managing partner comes round with this  year’s Christmas gift which is a very nice box of handmade biscuits, shortbread fingers, cinnamon stars, Belgian chocolates and a bottle of wine which is a vast improvement on last year’s box of soft centres.

But by 4 o’clock I seem to have accidentally eaten the whole packet of shortbread fingers but I think oh well, I need fuel for running don’t I and it gets to 5 o’clock and my boss says I can go home and I go to get changed and he says haven’t I got a coat and I say I’m just going to get changed, I’m running home tonight and he says oh, I was going to ask you if you wanted to go for a drink but obviously not and I think that’s weird, that’s twice in a week he’s asked me to go for a drink and he hasn’t asked me to go for a drink since last Christmas and I wonder if I can get out of it with the running commute excuse on Friday just in case he asks me again then and I think I’m going to look a right div changing into my running gear on Friday when everyone else is getting dressed up to go to the Christmas party which I’m not going to because a) I hate office parties; b) there is a very high risk I will get obscenely drunk and say something I shouldn’t; and c) my birthday is the next day and I don’t want to be hungover.

So I begin my running commute and a mile up the road I’m in Angel and I’m at the lights waiting for the cyclists to stop going through the red lights and then I’m at some more lights waiting for the cars to stop going through the red lights and I think is it National Go Through The Red Lights Day or what? and I continue down Upper Street and there’s a lot of people and I think to myself I should be grateful of the safety in numbers thing while it lasts because once I get to Hackney I’ll be on the street by myself because people in Hackney are too scared to leave their houses and I’m thinking is this running commute in the dark really a good idea and I’m thinking if a friend said she was going to run through Hackney in the dark I’d say noooooooooooooo, that is the worst idea ever ever ever, don’t do it and so I think maybe I should get on the train at Hackney Downs and then I get to Hackney Downs station and I carry on and then I’m surrounded by housing estates which is a bit scary and then I get to Murder Mile and a police car speeds down the road, siren wailing, and then I’m over the roundabout and not too far from home but there’s fields on both sides and it’s a bit scary and then I go past B&Q which no one has petrol bombed yet but surely it’s only a matter of time due to them being incompetent fools and just as Somerfield appears on the horizon I stop to do my shoelace up for the third time and I wonder if I’ve deserved a bottle of wine and I decide I probably have so I get one and then I’m home and I’ve done a running commute without walking most of it for the first time ever.

Today’s route

Stats:
Distance: 6.36 miles
Time: 1:20:49
Pace: 12:42
Calories: 557
Packets of shortbread fingers: 1
Shoelaces coming undone: 3
Walking breaks: 0
Music:
Hole
Mark Ronson
The Cure
Idle Vice Pirate
Hard-Fi

I am not amused

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I hear about Niketown’s running club which goes out on Mondays and Tuesdays at 6:30pm and I think that is exactly what I need, although Monday is sexist night as it’s for ladies only and the longest run is 4.5 miles, but on Tuesdays it’s for everyone and the longest run is 7.5 miles.  Don’t they think girls can run 7.5 miles?  Cheek.  But I try all day to ring them to see if they’re still doing it and I can’t get through, all I get is a recorded Yank telling me to press 1 if I want to know the store times.  Bollocks.  I don’t want a wasted journey going up to Oxford Street for no reason as I know I’ll never get out the door when I get home if there’s no running club and so I go straight home and try to leave the house without opening the post or checking Facebook or my email and I manage one of the three and I’ve received my race pack for the Serpentine New Year’s Day 10k and it says STRICTLY NO HEADPHONES and I think they must really mean it as not only have they written it in uppercase but it’s also in bold and underlined and they say if anyone is found to be wearing headphones they’ll have their race number taken away and disqualified and I think well, you’re welcome to take my race number as you’ve given me number sixty fucking nine which is SO NOT FUNNY.  And I’m looking at my race number and I think I can’t wear that, people will laugh at me and I turn it upside down but it still says 69 and I think well, it would do really wouldn’t it, and I think why can’t they just leave out number 69, like Americans leave out floor no. 13 and I don’t want to wear my race number and I think maybe I’ll go out on New Year’s Eve after all.

I eventually leave the house after checking Facebook but resisting the urge to check my email and head off on my five mile route and as usual there’s too much traffic and having to stop every two yards to cross the road is seriously pissing me off and then I’m wondering what the song is that’s just come on my iPod and I run out in front of a car and I think oops, maybe the race organisers have a point about the headphones and I say sorry to the woman who nearly ran me over and I carry on and I get to the corner of the High Street and I think to pass the time I’ll count how many kebab shops and takeaways there are between here and the station and then I go past the Vic pub and they’ve got a sign up saying they’ve got a roof terrace and I think since when? do they just mean you can sit on the roof? and I think I should investigate, maybe on Saturday and then I realise that I am so intrigued by the Vic’s roof terrace that I’ve forgotten to count the kebab shops and I was up to 13 and then I’m going down Lea Bridge Road and there’s a power cut on the side of the road I’m on and it’s not making me feel any safer and there’s a tower block which is completely unlit, except for three windows which have lights flickering in them and they must be sitting in candlelight and then I’m back on a bit which has lights and it’s not like the 70s anymore and then I go round the corner and a hoodie comes along and leans over and says something to me but I can’t hear what he says and I think well, there’s a plus point for my iPod but then I think I probably wouldn’t have been able to understand him anyway, even if I didn’t have my music on and then I’m nearly home and I think I need to change my route and find a quieter one as an hour to do 5 miles is really shit.

Stats:
Distance: 5.10 miles
Time: 1:00:13
Pace: 11:48
Dodgy race numbers: 1
Cars nearly running me over: 1
Power cuts: 1
Unintelligible hoodies: 1
Music:
Baby Teeth
Devo
Elysian Fields
Edie Sedgwick
Editors
The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster
Eminem
The Electric Soft Parade

The modern scientific training regime

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As is becoming a bit of a Friday habit, I stay up late drinking wine and get the munchies but I have it on good authority that the most important elements of a modern scientific training regime are: (1) quality rest periods; (2) balanced nutrition; and (3) effective hydration. AKA lie-ins, chips and beer.  Or in my case lie-ins, cheese toasties and wine.

So I get up late and email Bear and say I stayed up late drinking wine, do I have to go out for 7 miles this morning? and he emails me back and says no, you have to do 8 miles, I checked your schedule.  Bollocks.

I eventually leave the house around lunchtime and I go past a house that’s for sale which has the advantage of being on the edge of the marshes but also has the disadvantage of being about 5 seconds walk from Ex Boyfriend’s house and I wonder if I bought that house how accommodating would he be if I went round to borrow a cup of sugar and I decide probably not very so I decide not to buy that house and as I get to the bridge where Ben came off his bike and broke his jaw there’s a man running really slowly and I follow him through the bridge and I’ve nearly caught him up and he’s obviously more of a finely tuned athlete than I am as he runs up the bridge at the marina whereas I do my usual stop and walk up it thing and I’m thinking please don’t go the same way as me as I’m going to have to overtake you, even I don’t run that slowly and if I overtake you, I’m going to feel bad and he does turn the way I’m going but he sticks to the path and I go alongside the river and I overtake him and then I get to my favourite bridge and Slow Bloke doesn’t go over the bridge but carries on and I get over the bridge and I think hang on a minute, weren’t the cows here last week? but the cows aren’t here now and I think maybe they’ve gone back to where they used to live and I wonder if the cows got confused with all this moving about or maybe they just got pissed off and I got to where the cows used to live but THE COWS AREN’T THERE.  Fuck.  Where have the cows gone?

And in place of the cows is this building thing.

And I think that’s no good, cows are better than buildings and what the fuck is it anyway?  And I get across the road and there’s a group of cyclists stopped off at the pub and I think I quite fancy a drink but I have no money on me and I wonder if they’d swap a pint for a photo of a cow and I think probably not so I continue on my way.

I get through Hackney Marshes without getting murdered and as I go through the bridge at Lea Bridge Road, Slow Bloke comes through and he says morning and I say hello back and then I wonder which route he took and then I think oh my god, if he came the direct way here from where I left him, that is seriously slow and I think no, he must have gone a different way and then I think why did he say morning when it’s about 1:30pm? and then I’m back at the stables and I’ve gone 6 miles and I need to do another two and I’m only a mile from home and I don’t know which way to go to make up the miles and I think shit, I should have thought of this before I left the house and I continue through the marshes and go through the bridge and there’s this sign

and I don’t know what it means.  Who’s not dedicated to the public and why not? And I leave the marshes the way I came in and then I’m at the park and I have about a mile to do so I go into the park and there’s people playing football which doesn’t help much with my football phobia and I do a lap of the park and then go round the edge of the sports field and back onto the street and then I’m home and I’ve done my longest outside run ever ever ever.

Today’s route

Stats:
Distance: 8.29 miles
Time: 1:33:59
Pace: 11:20
Calories: 720
Cows: 0
Slow Blokes: 1
Dedication to the public: 0
Music:
Polyphonic Spree
Rollins Band
Faith No More
The Cure
Stereo Total
Mark Ronson
Cardiacs
Chumbawamba
The Cooper Temple Clause
The Damned
Hole
The Horrors
Junior Senior
Sex Pistols
Ween
White Stripes

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