Category: Themes

Running Into An Idea

After yesterday’s failed attempts to get out running, if they can even be called attempts that is, I absolutely nailed it today. I managed to leave work a little early after a day of five meetings and got myself straight out onto the streets. I seem to have adopted a new favourite route, and this was the one I followed today, a 7.2 mile loop around Mannamead, Peverell and into Central Park before heading home. It was one of those runs where everything feels really comfortable and just clicks. Very enjoyable.

But what made today’s run particularly enjoyable was that as well as feeling physically nourishing it served as a vehicle for some really creative thinking. I am not going to go into details here (yet) but for no particularly good reason and completely unexpectedly I found myself struck by an idea about some research that I could get involved with at work that, for once, grabbed my attention and filled me with an surprising amount of excitement. I spent pretty much the whole run thinking through the merits of the idea that involves me doing stuff that I am not especially good at and which would certainly put me out of my comfort zone but, nevertheless, just felt right. It was a slightly weird fusion of physical effort and mental creation which is, perhaps, the best experience that running can provide.

I got back into the house and, as I had decided while on the run, immediately sent an email to a colleague to make sure that I didn’t sit on the idea and talk myself out of following it up. And when I say ‘immediately’ I really do mean immediately – while my heart rate was still over 100bpm and the sweat dripped off my forehead. Sometimes, there really is no time like the present.

It’s Only Water And Air

This morning I got up at 7am as usual and immediately did my Tuesday morning exercise routine. I was expecting to hear rain lashing against the windows and wind howling around the house (as per forecast) but as I completed the routine I realised that there was no sound from outside and, in fact, the morning was remarkably still and dry. The thought immediately struck me that I should make the most of the better-than-expected weather and go out for a short run, even though my plan was to run when I got home from work. It seemed like too good an opportunity to miss, what with high wind and heavy showers forecast for later and, indeed, most of tomorrow. I got as far as starting to look out my running kit but then made the mistake of looking out of a window at the front of the house towards the south-west – the direction the weather almost always approaches us from. What I saw stopped me in my tracks. The sky was a solid dark grey colour and appeared to be fit to burst. I didn’t like the look of it at all and made an almost instant coward’s decision to ditch the idea of a run and go and have breakfast instead. This decision seemed to be a wise one as the sound of rain hitting the window began almost immediately.

But that rain really didn’t amount to much and only 5-10 minutes later the skies had lightened. I found myself instantly regretting my decision to take advantage of the unexpected weather window and, shortly afterwards, I trudged off to work in the dry, not too cold and with hardly a drop of rain falling. I was disappointed, and rapidly convinced myself that I had made a bad decision, that the weather would obviously be horrible later on AND tomorrow which would mean I probably wouldn’t run on either day which would then make it really hard for me to hit 25 miles this week (my informal target) since I would only run about 5 miles on Thursday night (hopefully), probably run nothing on Friday (I rarely run on Fridays), maybe run 14 or so miles on Saturday (because at the moment I can’t really run more) and then almost definitely run nothing on Sunday (there really is horrible weather forecast for Sunday at the moment)… you probably get the idea! It was disappointing and annoying – I had made the wrong decision just because of a little bit of rain and now my new running target was in tatters.

As it turns out, at the moment (it is now 4:20pm and I will head home from work at about 5pm) the sky, at least that part of it that I can see from my office window, is mostly clear. There is a layer of cloud on the eastern horizon but it doesn’t look threatening. And whilst it probably IS windier out there than it seems in here, it does feel like the 40+ mile per hour winds that were forecast haven’t come out to play. So, unless there is a nasty shock lurking out to the west (which I can’t see at the moment) or a rapid change in conditions, I ought to be able to get home and get out for a few miles without too much trauma.

That ‘wrong’ decision that I made and which disappointed me so much this morning might just turn out to have been a perfectly good decision after all.

On the other hand, I’ve just looked out again and the sky is now filled with heavy grey clouds and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it rains soon. Decisions, decisions. I suppose that my experience this morning really ought to have taught me that it is better, and simpler, to just go out and run and not give a damn about a bit of rain or a bit of wind. After all, it’s only water and air.

Introducing… Dudley Disrupter

This morning I went for a five and a half mile run before work. This meant I got into work a little later than usual but this was all part of my original plan for the week. In truth, by the time I got into work (after a two mile walk) I was 14 minutes behind schedule, but I had already sneaked a look at my email Inbox and knew that there was nothing much in there that was going to take my time. So, I was confident that I would be able to get back on track pretty much straightaway. My plan for the day followed the same structure that I had (successfully) deployed in the last couple of days, namely a short spell devoted to email first thing, a short buffer of spare time, a longer timeslot of concentrated work on a substantive project (lecture planning in this case), a break for lunch, a planned timeslot for some research reading/activity, a second session on email and miscellaneous tasks and then a two hour meeting to end the day. After two days in which I have stuck unbelievably well (for me) to this kind of plan and made real progress on the substantive tasks I had set aside time for, I felt cautiously optimistic about the day ahead.

Anyway, back to the run. As I ran, I found myself remembering some cartoons I used to watch as a little kid. What I vaguely recalled was a cartoon in which the main character (possibly Mickey Mouse) had two little imaginary characters sitting on his shoulders, on one side a little angel who tried to get Mickey (let’s assume it WAS Mickey) to make good choices and behave well and on the other side a little devil who had the singular ambition to get Mickey into trouble. I have no idea why this particular cartoon idea popped into my head when it did but as I ran along I found myself thinking that my frequent struggles to stick to plans that I have made bore a lot of resemblance to the cartoon. Instead of Mickey generally going about his business there is me, trying to keep focussed and remain productive at work, and perched on my shoulders are the two imaginary characters, the ‘good’ one telling me to stick to my plans and the ‘bad’ one doing absolutely everything in his power to disrupt them, whispering things like: ‘It won’t matter if you just take a break here, you’re tired and you will work better later on if you do’ or ‘There’s no harm in not replying to that email immediately, it won’t do any damage if you just leave it there and then notice it and think about dealing with it another twenty or thirty times…’. I could see that this bad character was just hell-bent on disrupting my best-laid plans, and for that reason I decided that he would need a name with Disrupt or Disrupter in it. First off, the name Disrupter Dave came to mind, but I have a friend called Dave at my running club and he is friendly, helpful and just a generally really nice guy so I couldn’t bring myself to adopt that name. After a bit more thought I settled on Dudley Disrupter – the character Dudley Dursley in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novel series isn’t the nicest (although he is far from the worst of course) and I liked the idea that Dudley could be shortened to Dud which is exactly what I become when Dudley Disrupter gets his way.

I suppose there must also be a ‘good’ character on my other shoulder who also ought to have a name but I don’t really find that he gets in my way very much and so I hardly notice him. Consequently, at present, I am content simply to assume his presence but leave him un-named.

I decided on my run that one of main challenges in life is to watch out for Dudley whispering in my ear and trying to pull me away from my planned path, and I wondered to what extent Dudley might show his face today…

Now, at the end of the working day (I arrived home not long ago) I am glad to report that Dudley didn’t come out to play today. For the third day in a row I stuck to my plan and for the third day in a row I got some really USEFUL work done, as opposed to just getting some work done. I don’t doubt that Dudley Disrupter will appear on my shoulder again soon, tap me on the head and try his best to steer me off course, but it feels as if, by flushing out his existence and giving him a name, I might just have stumbled on a strategy for keeping him out of harm’s way.

Thankful For A Fit And Strong Body

This morning I went for my longest run for ages (since 6th October to be precise) – an 11.4 mile loop down to and then along Plymouth’s waterfront before returning home via Devonport and Blockhouse Parks. It was a cold, crisp morning, only one or two degrees above freezing but I wrapped up well and the sun was out so I ended up feeling plenty warm enough. It was a good run. I was a bit worried that my left glute, which has been giving me a bit of jip for quite a while now would play up, what with the increased distance from most of my recent runs, but it was basically fine – a little sore but not to the extent that it held me up.

As I started on my way back from the waterfront, running up through Devonport towards the park I was passed by a man coming the other way on a mobility scooter. He was probably not too dissimilar in age to me, huge and clearly not at all fit, healthy or mobile. The thought that ran through my head as I ran along was how thankful I was that I have been able to run for the last (almost) five years and have a body that is now fit and strong and capable of propelling me along under my own steam for quite large distances and at a reasonably respectable pace (I guess that I could probably run further than a mobility scooter on a single charge and also faster, at least over a short distance). So this post is just to acknowledge this gratitude and to count my blessings in this respect.

What Am I Trying To Prove? (and who am I trying to prove it to?)

Last night I went out for a run with my running club. I nearly didn’t go – about 15 minutes before I was due to leave the heavens opened (again) and it became clear that the evening was going to be a wet one. But I told myself that I couldn’t keep not going to the running club every time a bit of water fell out of the sky. It was still raining by the time we got out for the run about 45 minutes later but the amount of water on the ground seemed out of all proportion to the time the rain had been falling. Much of the run was spent splashing through almost ankle deep puddles and/or trying to avoid them. The end result was that I found myself retreating into my own little space and musing about the difficulties I have been having trying to decide on my running plans for the year ahead.

Usually at this time of the year I have a pretty good idea of the focus for my running in the first part of the year. For example, last year I had set myself the target of a 50 mile ultramarathon in May and the year before I had set up a succession of races of steadily increasing distance ahead of the 32 mile Dartmoor Discovery event in June. This year I have been vacillating badly. I haven’t yet entered a major event and I haven’t been able to decide whether I am going to go proper long again. I had almost decided to start running the entire South West coast path over a period of about 5 years and, with this in mind, I had almost fixed on a set of race events in March, June and August that would cover almost 95 miles of it. But the snag has been that these events are all ones that are popular (so many races seem so much popular than they were even a couple of years ago) and so likely to book up quickly which has meant that I have been trying to make fast decisions on whether to enter them and having to think about associated transport, accommodation etc. And then there was the nasty issue that entering just these three key events was going to cost approximately £150 just for the race entries, a big hit in one go.

Anyway, back to last night’s run. As I ran I found myself wondering whether I really wanted to do any of these events, or rather whether I really wanted the hassle of deciding and committing to any of these events right now. Why couldn’t I just run a bit, enter an event when I felt like it (accepting that certain races would be full), and not feel the pressure of having to decide and plan the year’s running out in advance? And then my mind started to ask the killer questions… by entering and completing race events what was I trying to prove and who was I trying to prove it to? I don’t have an answer to these questions yet. In fact, I am not sure that I want to find answers to them. As I ran it struck me that maybe I should just not be bothered about setting myself a major running target in advance this year. Maybe I should just run, follow a general training plan designed to get me up to marathon plus distance by, say, May, and then, or along the way, see what takes my fancy. Perhaps an event that I thought would book up would have spare spaces after all. Perhaps I’d feel like doing a different event on the spur of the moment. Perhaps a real desire to do a particular race would take hold at some point. I decided none of it really mattered because, I realized, in the final analysis I have no need to prove anything to anyone.

I would run 1200 miles, and I would run 1200 more…

I have done a lot of running in 2017 – just over 1203 miles in fact (ignoring inaccuracies due to dodgy gps signal). A lot of those miles came in the early part of the year when I was training for my first (and so far only) 50 mile ultra-marathon in May. The monthly totals go like this: 96, 165, 154, 177, 130, 64, 96, 103, 56, 44, 69, 51. Over the year I have run 3 x 10k races (Ivybridge in May, Muddy Duck in July and Plymouth in October), the 6 Moor Miles race (6.4 miles in July), 1 x Half Marathon (Reading in March), The Grizzly (19.4 miles in March), 3 x Marathons (Taunton and Southampton in April, New Forest in September) and two ultra marathons (Somerset Flat 50 Miler in May and Mendip Marauder 30 Miler in August).

My highlights have to be the two ultra marathons, but marathon PBs at Taunton and then at Southampton when I broke the 4 hour mark for the first time are also up there along with the cheeky 10k PB I got at Ivybridge when, on the back of my distance training, I had no idea whether I could still run ‘fast’ over short distances but just went for it anyway. Here are a few pictures to commemorate some of these achievements…


Crossing the line at the Taunton Marathon.

Post-Southampton Marathon with a new sub-4 hour marathon PB in the bag!

Looking a bit ill (and certainly not feeling so good) at about 32 miles into the Somerset Flat 50 Miler – a cup of tea and a good amount of food perked me up here.

With just 5-6 miles to go of the 50 Miler at Blue Anchor – this is one of my favourite pictures of the year.

On Uphill Beach at the end of the Mendip Marauder.

What does 2018 hold? As far as specific events are concerned, I’m not entirely sure. I am booked into the Grizzly in March again and have a hotel booked ahead of the Southampton Marathon in April (or maybe the Half Marathon depending on other events). I ought to have a crack at a really good time for the marathon (3:45 ought to be in reach) but I do also want to go longer again, and once I have fixed on an event (which is proving tricky) then the training for that will dominate and influence everything else. I’d like to try to run more consistently through the year – 100 miles in each calendar month seems like a good target but to achieve this I will have to be better at getting going again after a long event than I was this year. I suspect I would also have to do a little less in the early part of the year to avoid the general, creeping fatigue that I found had kicked in by September this year and which left me doing very little through the autumn. Perhaps a good plan would be to focus on the Southampton Marathon in April, then find a 35ish mile ultra-marathon in June/early July and then find another one or two marathon plus events for the early autumn (Eden Marathon in October?). We’ll see!

Something > Nothing

Over the last couple of weeks my running has tailed off quite dramatically. I had been in a phase when, despite having no specific races in the pipeline to prepare for, I was trying to keep to a routine of three runs a week – a short one (30-40 minutes) on Tuesday evening, a slightly longer one (about one hour) at my running club on Thursday evening and then a longer one again (something like 7-10 miles) at the weekend. My overall goal was to stick with that kind of plan through December, gradually lengthening the weekend run before launching into a more intensive training plan, along the lines that I followed at the start of 2017, in January ahead of a major (ultramarathon) event in May/June. Sadly, even my modest plan for December hit the rails – I ended up prioritizing the marking I had to do a couple of times which killed off the Tuesday run and twice in a row I missed the Thursday run because it was cold or wet or I was tired, i.e. for no particularly good reason other than general self-preservation through what is probably my busiest time of year at work.

With this in mind I have been particularly pleased that, even though I have not really felt like it, I HAVE managed to get out for a run on both of the last two Saturdays. Admittedly, on each occasion my runs were shorter than my target (they were just 4.3 miles and 5 miles) BUT I am pleased that I did SOMETHING. In this context, something is definitely better than nothing – it has kept me moving and given me some sense that I am still a runner and, surprisingly, both runs felt good once I had got myself going. These two shortish runs have helped to build a running bridge over the last couple of weeks and as I approach the new year, when my training must ramp up several notches if I am going to get to where I want/need to be in the spring, it’s now time to step off that bridge and get back into things properly.

‘Early’ morning run

This morning, for the first time in ages, I managed to get myself straight up and out for a run. Earlier in the year, when I was training more rigorously for the Somerset Flat 50 Miler, I was fairly regularly out running before breakfast, but since then I have become rather useless at getting out early.

Today I was out at about 7:25am and ran for just over 4 miles – a loop around the estate, across to Central Park, along the upper path towards the city centre, down and around into the trees and back to the football ground and then home again. It was a crisp, clear day with the low sun providing some warmth and sparkle. I was surprised that there were so few people around. Actually, that is not entirely true, there were a lot of people sitting in cars in queues of traffic along the main road, but there were relatively few people out in the park, walking dogs and heading to work. There is something quite invigorating in being out and about exercising before most people are moving. I hasten to say it, because it’s perhaps not really the best feeling to have, but it always makes me feel a little smug…

I got home, did some stretching (boy is my left glute stiff/sore at the moment) showered and, in a nod towards the imminent arrival of winter, opted to make porridge for my breakfast, topped with chopped banana and a slice of honeycomb from a local bee-keeper. All of this meant that I am a little late into work (deliberately) but it has to be said I’m feeling pretty good right now!

New Music (Ane Brun | Agnes Obel)

This morning I listened to two albums from artists who were entirely new to me. I pick up potential new listening from the i newspaper each day and particularly each Friday when there is an extended Arts section. I glance through the reviews and if I see any that sound interesting and/or get positive comments then I take a note of them for future reference. When I do this I try not to be biased by what I already like and whether I have heard of the artist or band before. In fact, I try to actively look for artists that I haven’t heard of much before. Two such finds were Norwegian songwriter Ane Brun (specifically her 2015 album When I’m Free and Danish singer-song write Agnes Obel (and her 2016 album Citizen of Glass) – clearly I must have a new music sensor set to a ‘Scandinavian female singer-songwriter’ setting!

I quite liked both albums but definitely preferred the Agnes Obel one – it was a little cleaner sounding with hints of Kate Bush. Parts of it felt slightly familiar, as if they were used as a soundtrack for some drama programme I have watched on TV (I don’t think they were). I’d probably listen to this album again and/or explore her other work. I wasn’t so sold on the Ane Brun album – it just seemed to lack any particular impact and so I didn’t particularly notice that I was listening to it (if that makes sense). However, I saw in the paper this morning that Brun has a new album out very soon (which is what prompted me to try When I’m Free today) so I will probably give that one a go if I can get hold of it.

1000 miles run

12 miles into the New Forest Marathon last Sunday I passed the 1000 mile mark for this calendar year. This is the second time I have reached that total, having completed a total of 1008 miles in 2015. In that case I think it was pretty much the last day of the year that I hit four figures so I am really quite astonished to have reached the same total (actually I have now run 1014 miles this year) by mid-September. With 3.5 months of the year still to go I will probably get my total annual mileage up towards 1200 miles taking into account the fact that as the nights draw in and I become less focused on training for events my mileage per week is bound to drop a bit. Looking back at my monthly totals it is obvious that it was my main training months in the early part of the year, ahead of the Somerset Flat 50 Miler in May, that have boosted my annual total. I tailed off a lot in June and July (post-ultra) but picked up a bit in August. For the record I ran 946 miles in 2016, 691 in 2014 (my first full year running) and 372 in 2013 although I only started running in April that year.

I think I’d like to try and hit 1200 miles next year by completing at least 100 miles each calendar month. That seems like an achievable but challenging target to me.