Death and Taxes
Taxes: Still haven't blogged about the Ely Epic that Ed and I ran on Saturday, mainly because I've been filling in forms for Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. Finally got all the figures for the tax returns and handed them in this morning, trying to assuage my resentment at giving Mr Brown more of my hard-earned with a warm feeling of goodwill at fulfilling my social responsibility.
Death: Went out with the CU Hare and Hounds for their long reps speed training session, and got completely buried. On the plus side I got to run with the ladies but couldn't complete the session because my left achilles started giving me gyp. Still, I think I managed to get around the corner with my honour intact before I started limping and hobbling.
Scrummy
PhotoFit created from info. gleaned from Rach at Monday's hash.
Big hands big tackle, as they say in rugby circles.
Marahashing versus Athleticism
What a glorious day! I was quite inspired at the prospect of a long run. Sadly, my body wasn’t. I’d spent a delicious Friday evening flirting wildly with Big Hands ((swoon) a rugby man who gave me all the inside information on Johnnie (double swoon)) and had consumed rather a lot of fine St John’s wine in the process. The twin prop taxiing down the runway at the airport did little for my pounding head, and when I bumped into my fellow running Hyper-twiglet Jonathan in Cherry Hinton I was trying very, very hard not to yunder. I summoned my inner reserves, pressed on and by the time I was on top of the Gogs, the hangover had passed and I felt fantastic. It was at this point that I realised what sets us marahashers apart from other mere athletes. Do you think Paula has to run and simultaneously metabolise last night’s booze binge?? I don’t think so.
On on marahashers.
The seamier side of running
The seamier side of running laid bare: Baboon backside.
It's behind me now, thank you for your concerned comments.
So no more "OoooOOOOooooOOOOOooooOoo", baboon noises please. Just when I thought I knew all the seams, and the places that they rub.As Rachel said, the Folksworth 15 course had hills. I can't compete with the telemetry and graphics that Jim and Ed have posted.....
....However, to experience the erratic cardiac patterns that these hills induced, mouse along this accurate Winston-Earth graphic of the terrain:
Start~~~~~^/\^/\^~~^/\^/\^^^~~~~Finish
- while applying your tongue to the bare wires of a live kettle flex. If you do this while sandpapering your bottom in a refrigerator, then welcome to my Sunday.
Back in the game
I had been getting towards worried about the whole marathon thing - I haven't managed to get out for a long run for a fortnight, what with having man-'flu and drinking copiously. I hadn't been for Sunday mega-sprints like Ed, cake climbing expeditions like Rachel, and I didn't even have a sore ring to show for my troubles like Winston.
My dander was finally lifted this morning, when I left work for an early lunchtime trot out to Hardwick.
The route didn't actually get me to Hardwick, as I stuffed up, turning North too early. Fortunately I spotted my mistake, and so did a Queen's Rd-Grange Rd loop at the end as penance. I tried a new (to me) energy gel; High 5 Citrus Burst. Whilst you wouldn't eat them for pleasure, it didn't make me want to retch, unlike the toffee flavoured ones I've tried before. So that's all good.
I generally eschew (forget) modern fandangalances such as wrist watches while I'm running, so I can't draw pretty graphs, but it took me 110mins to cover the 24.8km, which I'm happy with.
It seems that the vogue is to moan about hills this week, and I'm not one to break a trend. The hills, Oh God,
the hills! (Notice the use of the plural there - there were
two!!!). If only I had a GPS to show you! Instead, I've produced this multimedia animation of the route's height profile, just mouse over to start the animation, it lasts about 20s.
(Scale: x - 1:5,000,000,000. y - 1:1)
By the way, fellow marahashers, if you don't already have a feed reader, why not get one, and set it up with the feed address at the bottom of the right hand bar, then you can see when people post here without having to load the site. Try googling for "atom feed reader" or something like that for software.
The Week That Was Part II
With 24 hours to go to the start of
the most important race of January, I sensed that my training needed a boost. With so little time to work with I had two choices - find a way to emulate an existing base of 100 miles or focus on my tools. So tools it was and I took my tootsies off for a much needed luxury spa, massage and pedicure down Mill Road. It did the trick and sporting my new haute couture thermal regulator (or bin liner as some people know them), there was a spring in my step as Winston and I stood on the start line of the Folksworth 15. Unfortunately the spring didn’t last long, as within 2 miles of the start the ‘undulating course’ turned out to be ‘distinctly hilly’. Would you believe it, one must have been as steep as 1 in 100! Thank goodness for hill camp, it really stood me in good stead, and allowed me to beat my old nemesis ‘Mr Ely Runners’ (last trounced on the mountains of 2005 Bury 20). Sadly Winston didn’t fair so well, and the martyrometer must surely swing his way as he now has a bad case of Baboon Bott. On On Marahashers.
The Week That Was Part I
Hill camp had set me up well for the rigours of the second week of my training plan. This week it said
cross training. I took it at its word and decided to try some different runners cake. Waitrose tropical fruit cake had served us well at altitude, but for day to day training it transpires Duchys Original Dundee Cake wins hands down. Insistence on runners cake cooked by HRH may be considered decadent by some, but I have no doubt it made all the difference to my ability to go lightly at the Folksworth 15.
Anti-training
Had a great weekend - spent most of it at the Winter Ale Festival serving and drinking extremely tasty beer. Not in much of a state to run anywhere by Sunday, but managed to drag my sorry arse down to the gym to sweat alcohol onto the elliptical trainer for half an hour. The theory is that I'll do 24km before hashing tonight. Place your bets on whether
that's going to happen.
Come on, Winst, make me feel better by telling a tale of woe about Peterborough...
A very private race
Nice training run today. Hermione was out early with the University marathon training crew as prompted by Underwear. Their 20km trip sounded pleasant enough with the sightseeing taking in Coton, Madingley Rise, Girton, Histon and home.
Well following last year's debarcle in Paris with Hermione winning the private Ed/Hermione race by all of 7 minutes I am of course rather sensitive about how our respective training is going. The incentive was there, the weather set well so I pulled on the new shoes and set off to do their course in reverse. I'm now happy. It was quicker than H, and probably a PB over this distance on a trail that was >40% off road. Sometimes running can be rewarding.
OK, my attempts to show the true drama of THE HILL with google earth didn't really pay off:
It is there! promise, straight ahead, all 150ft of it. Well you try running up a big hill like this when all that you usually get is the stairs down to the bogs in the St Radegund.
Milling my tread
I'm trying out the
FIRST marathon program. It makes a lot of sense to me - emphasising the long runs and not taking them too slowly.
Did the second 'pace' run on the treadmill a few moments ago - 13km at 4min/km. To my credit I did finish it on pace,
and I missed the girl who was foolishly walking past when the machine spat me off the back (so that's what the dead-man line is for...). On the minus side it was really pretty painful for the last couple of km, and I'm still extremely discombobulated.
I earned my beer tonight.
Steve - how did your treadmill sesh go?
Australian suffering
By two votes to none, the martyrometer stays stable as Steve continues his mission to distribute his breakfast around the hills of Sydney.
Over the hill at 30
Scafell from Scafell Pike's summit.Scafell Pike had to be visited prior to Rachel's impending decrepitude on February 6th, her birthday.
Hallin Fell.Hallin Fell was just to blow away the cobwebs, and Ed's spectacles.
This chap was there too on Sunday 15th Jan.
http://www.leaney.org/lake_district_fells.php?fell_id=hallin_fell
New running things:
- Thanks to Sarah, I have an Xmas Polar pace/distance/heart rate monitor "Listen to your body", says the blurb on the box.
- I have renovated last year's Paris spreadsheet. Incomprehensible and unenlightening as it may be, it certainly winds Sarah up a treat. Revamped, it will be home to copious data from my "running computer", if Sarah hasn't shoved it somewhere beyond reach.
- Speed circuits on Jesus Green with Jim. This involves fast and slow paced laps of the park. Jim's were the fast ones.
- Due to a retirement, I have an entry for the Folksworth 15 on Sunday (http://www.yaxleyrunners.org.uk/) where I will record every heart beat and run very slowly. I see martyr potential.
Lastly, a late entry for the captions competition.....
Caption 1: "What's brown and sticky?"
Caption 2: (next day) "A stick! haaaaahaahahhahahahahaaa"
It's all in the timing.
Caption 2 ; 'Another sweltering day in the Lakes.'
Sunday 15/01/06 - 'The Western Wanderer'. Supposedly 30km of the Parramatta Inlet, but once again I succumbed to the irresistable charms of a couple of short-cuts, so the distance came down to about 25km. A recent cool change meant that the ambient temperature at the start was in the chilly mid-20's so on this occasion I wouldn't have worn my ice vest, even if I had one (memo to self ; invent ice vest). Having avoided all forms of exercise the previous day I didn't feel too bad initially, but the endless hills soon wore me down. At least I didn't resort to walking though I did have some quite strange chest pains and towards the end, a desperate desire to throw-up. Don't ask me about the time, but I know it was slow.
I've got a cunning plan to improve my speed training. I'm going to the gym tonight. I'm going to set the treadmill at 4 min km's and stay on it until it spits me off the back. What's your market ?
Caption 1 ; 'Of course, before the accident it used to be about 'so long'.
Long way to go to avoid training part 2
Rachel finding that Walkers Crisps don't pack anything like the punch of Runners Cake
[Caption competition 1]
Well, we've now done all the gradient traning that we have planned for this year. It was all quite exciting as evidenced by Winston wetting is running pants in the car park as we prepared for the first session. We knew that we were in great form when we passed 2 local fell runners on the path to Scafell. A brief stop at the top to guzzle fruit cake and marathon bars (for some strange reason they now call them snickers) set us up well for the rapid desent though the clouds. As true hashers our running endurance for the day was only bettered by the commited drinking that followed.
[Caption competition 2]
Day 2 commenced with an endurance sleep and dream session. Sadly Rachel did do a Jeremy and thus woke before she and her Blond beau got down to any exciting action. The hypothetical sprint session to the end of the road and back went well with Winston managing to keep his ladies trainers in nice pristeen condition. The final training session, The Carpet Slipper Ascent was to have been the light wind down session of the training camp. The wind was not down but rather blowing a full gale at the top. It failed, just, to blow us from the peak but succeeded in taking my glasses to their new home at the bottom of Ullswater.
We are now en route back to the flat lands of East Anglia and keen to prove that altitude training has done us absolutely no good whatsoever.
--ends--
Long way to go to avoid training part 1
Following the extreme flatness of last Saturday's run and inspired by Steve's hilly adventures, Winston, Sarah, Rachel & I have set off in search of some sensible training gradients....
Unfortuately it takes commitment to find hills if you are setting off from the home of the flat earth society. Never the less note the joy on Rachel's face as we speed north into the night and mountainwards.
Unlike Steve, we hope to avoid
doing a jeremyFull training report to follow.
Introducing the Martyrometer
The martyrometer exists so that people who don't have the time to get into the details and intrigues of Steve and Winston's marathon training schedules can find out, at a glance, who's having the most miserable time of it at the moment.
If Steve's having the worst time you'll see: -
(That's a 'roo skeleton on the right, by the way..). If Winst has been taking the flak then the meter will swing to the bulldog skeleton: -
And if dishonours are even: -
The martyrometer will hopefully be appearing in the right hand bar shortly.
Treadmill
Just back from a session at Fenners Gym on the treadmill.
Now don't get me wrong, I still hate them in principal and was pretty bored spending 45 mins staring at the sign telling me not to use the machine for more than 20mins on pain of death.
BUT... there are some definite pluses: -
- I did 12km with a 40'36 10km set in the middle. There is no way on earth I could have got that done outside, even if I did have a GPS. Or a watch.
- The experience of running at exactly 4' kms, and 3'30 kms is going to be valuable knowledge for longer runs, especially since I don't have a GPS or pedometer jobbie.
- You have to learn how to run hot. Not quite up to Sydney standards, but a lot warmer than outdoors right now.
So all in all, I might end up using them a fair bit.
In other news, watch this space for the Martyrometer, which will be a running swing-o-meter indicating who's having the least fun training between Steve and his Aussie buddies and the Fen trotters here in blighty.
Compare and contrast.....
On Saturday morning Ed, Jim and I turned out at about 10am, just as it started to snow. We did about 10.5 miles. I got this email from Steve in Sydney:
I was up at 5am this morning, picked-up at 5.40am and driven across the harbour for the start of this year's first 30km STaR (Sunday Training Run). This was probably the first time I've run more than 12km since the last Paris marathon. There was an amazing turn-out, perhaps sixty people ... which is pretty good given the alternative options on a Sunday morning.
Well, just for a change it was hot again, even at 6.00am .... and the hills. My God there wasn't more than 100m of flat in the whole damn thing. Up and down, and up and down, and up and down, and .... you get the picture. I was dying. I had a bowl of muesli half an hour before kick-off and that was probably a bad idea. I took a short-cut that reduced the distance to just 25km but even the, at the end I had nothing. I was walking up the hills ! At one stage towards the end, a fellow runner asked me which suburb I live in, and I couldn't remember. I couldn't remember where I live .... and Paris is just three months away. On the plus side I pulled-up without any injuries, and after a couple of cans of ice cold Coke I felt OK.
So ... interval training Tuesday lunchtime, 10km on Wednesday morning, something similar on Friday night and then 30km every Sunday ... that's the plan, about 60km a week.
Steve
Well, just for a change it was cold again, even at 11am.... and the hills! My god, there weren't any. There wasn't more than a couple of meters of rise and fall in the whole damn thing. Flat and flat and flat......... In fact that might explain the damn mud.
Many of the tracks around Quy and Lode were deeply muddy, maybe due to tractors, maybe due to big vehicles used to refurbish the electricity pylons thereabouts. We got very muddy and cold.
Only about 400 training miles before Paris.
TNT Hash
On a UML course in Edinburgh today and managed to hook up with
The New Town Hash in Edinburgh last night. Good crowd there, and a good run although it was a bit treacherous underfoot. The hash ran out of the Auld Toll Bar, and went on to Cloisters after that. Great pub with great beer. Acquired a
BRI to my right knee at some point in the evening.
