Monthly Archives: March 2011

Week 7 took a while.

Friendly Podcast Narrator Laura mentioned during the warmup walk that these continuous runs might feel ‘a bit relentless’ at first, when you’re used to running intervals. That’s a perfect description. It’s easy to train your brain to cope with the intervals punctuated with walking breaks, but setting off to run the whole way takes a certain amount of mental recalibration. That, plus getting ill halfway through the week and having my running schedule get all messed up as a result, made Week 7 the toughest so far. 

Day 1 – 25-minute run. Tough. Tough verging on hellish. Legs totally happy until halfway point, then degenerate into whiny despair. Struggle to end, speeding up for last 60 seconds as Laura suggests, because I know it’s all mental and I’m not really all that exhausted. Turns out that I am, by the end. 2.13 miles.

Day 1.5, rest day: get food poisoning. About which I won’t go into details here, because trust me, you don’t want to know, but it wasn’t conducive to going out for some exercise. One rest day became three rest days.

Day 2 – 25-minute run. Thought bacteria had finished wreaking havoc on my body. Was proved wrong. Continued running anyway out of sulky determination to not let it win, which may not have been wisest decision. 2.23 miles.

Day 2.5 – another rest day. Which becomes two rest days, to see off the last of the food poisoning. Which becomes three rest days, because the food poisoning refuses to go.

Day 3 – 25-minute run. Expecting it to get easier by this point but ohhhhhhh no. Again, first half fine, second half feels like a miserable slog. Refusing to let my complaining muscles win, I speed up for the last minute as suggested once again. 2.31 miles.

Day 3.5 – another rest day, which becomes two rest days because then it snows and the snow melts and refreezes and the pavements are lethal. Grump. Decide to make Week 7 four runs rather than three, given all the interruption.

Day 4 – 25-minute run. Resign self to misery, but something’s changed. Halfway through my legs start to get a bit tired, but don’t lodge formal complaints with my brain; my heart’s thumping, but not protesting about it. The rest of the run still ahead of me doesn’t look easy, but doesn’t look impossible either, and I’m no longer fighting the urge to give up and start walking with every footstep. Speed up for the last sixty seconds, make it to the top of the sloping path leading up to a bridge back over the river I’ve already crossed three times during the run. 2.4 miles.

I’m getting faster? I’m not trying to get faster. And yet, there it is; I’ve gone from a twelve-and-a-half minute mile to a ten-and-a-half, all while thinking I was absolutely going to collapse and give up and quite possibly gasp out ‘I – hate – running!’ with my last breath. Turns out, getting fitter isn’t the part that’s a mind game.

Summer

In honour of the warm sunshine they’re getting down south and we’re not seeing here, some of my favourite summer pictures from the past couple of years:

West End sunflower(Sunflower in Partick, with red sandstone tenements behind.)

Fetch!
(Caught mid-splash in Victoria Park, named for the Golden Jubilee in 1887. Dogs are allowed in that pond. At least, dogs are always in that pond, and nobody seems to mind.)
Wemyss Bay(Coastal view at Wemyss Bay (pronounce it ‘weems’), a little village surrounding the ferry port linking Bute and the mainland. Took this from the ferry on a blazing hot summer day.)

When skies are grey...(Cafe Cherubini on Great Western Road, still optimistic in October.)

Blech.

Weather’s been a world of foul recently. Rain followed by sleet followed by five minutes of glorious sunshine followed by howling wind followed by more rain, and on, and on. I swear the wind picked up a puddle and threw it at me walking up from Kelvinbridge underground the other day.

And now it’s the weekend, just time to head out for another run, and… snow, sleet, driving winds, and pavements covered in dangerous slippy slush.

Damn it.

Welcome to Glasgow

Cumbrae

How to get from Glasgow to here:

1. Grab coat, bag, book, keys… keys?
2. Search for keys for ten minutes.
3. Find keys and walk to Partick station.
4. Obligatory grumbling about ‘renovated’, understaffed, departure-board-less Partick station while waiting for train to arrive.
5. Chug past SECC and Anderston stations, wondering vaguely why Anderston is always deserted.
6. Arrive at Central. Feel smug about perfecting optimum route from low-level platforms to normal platforms, taking in cash machines and bagel shop along the way.
7. Train to Largs. Takes about an hour. Nice route, even in gloomy weather; made better by a good book and entertaining conversation from teenage boys a few seats over (‘if I get married, I’m going to invite everybody. Everybody ever. And then I’ll be all “Ha, in your face!”‘)
8. Short walk from Largs train station (rebuilt after partial demolition by runaway train) to ferry terminal.
9. 10-minute CalMac ferry from Largs to Great Cumbrae.
10. 10-minute bus ride from the slip to Millport.
11. Follow Cardiff Road out of Millport (and it takes about two minutes to be out of Millport), following the road as it curves up the hill, then left through stiles and across fields (squelchy with rain, but not too muddy), then head down to Fintry Bay.

I wish I’d remembered to charge my camera battery; as it was, I was limited to my iPhone, which is okay but not great. The light wasn’t fantastic for photos either, but I still managed to get this one of the Crocodile Rock in Millporth:

Fierce.

Week 6, over and done with

Day 2 of week 6 is the last day if the whole program with walking breaks: run for 10 minutes, walk for 3, then run for another 10. I didn’t try to push it too hard after the surprising toughness of the run before, but I was still a little peeved to notice afterwards that I was juuuuuust a fraction away from a 10-minute mile for both runs. Seventy yards off! So close! I’m telling myself I’d be faster on the flat, although to be honest I’m not so sure I would; the hilly paths are more of an interesting challenge than the boring slog of the flat parts, and they stop you seeing the whole damn run stretching out ahead of you.

Day 3 is a 25-minute run, no stopping. I was not looking forward to that. Not looking forward at all. I changed my route for that one, and so while the first half was pretty familiar, the second was new.

It started raining just as I set off, which was miserable, but did give me that smug virtuous I’m-running-in-the-rain,-people feeling it always does. After five minutes of running, the rain was starting to ease off again, and I was feeling pretty good. Off the roads, into the big green leafy Botanic Gardens, up the side of a hill I usually run down and down the one I usually run up, people walking dogs, kids jumping over puddles, people with umbrellas looking suspiciously at the sky, still feeling good.

Twelve-and-a-half minutes. Halfway there. There’s a narrow curvy bridge over the river at this point and a wooded path on the other side, which, because I’m starting to feel a bit tired by now, I’m hoping is going to be enough fresh new interest to take my mind off how my legs are feeling. But it’s not, so much, and the next chunk of the run, until friendly podcast narrator Laura tells me I’ve only got five minutes to go, just gets harder and harder.

I’m not running out of breath. My legs aren’t sore with lactic acid buildup. It’s more a general buildup of exhaustion getting heavier with every step, and it’s taking all my concentration to keep putting one foot in front of the other. By the five-minute notice, I could happily have curled up by the side of the path to sleep.

But the five-minute notice means I’ve done twenty minutes, and that means I’ve now beaten by own record for continuous running, and that means – surely – I can keep on going, just for another five minutes. So I summon up energy reserves my musclesnhad apparently been hiding from me, and I keep on going.

And then there’s a hill. Of course.

So the last two minutes, including the one-minute notice where Laura suggests speeding up (pfffft right), are up an increasingly steepening hill. I manage it, just about, but it’s the first run for weeks where I feel like the cool down walk is going to be a challenge, where I’m nit entirely sure my legs can take it.

And they do. Which means, success.

Twenty-five minutes, two miles.