Posts Tagged ‘running’

After achieving my 50th Parkrun and earning my t-shirt in September, November saw my dad reach the target too. He is now hot on my heels for the 100 club. Of course, it is not a competition. Something I want to be very clear about given a man who is twice my age is a good 4 minutes faster than I am.

I went over to Temple Newsam to run it. Overall, I think it is a better Parkun course. It is up and down hills, and there is some actual countryside. In comparison, Woodhouse Moor is just running around the houses. Temple Newsam does get too muddy at some points, but Woodhouse Moor has the horrible muddy corner as well, so I hardly avoid it on my regular run. Mud is fine of course, but the possibility of slipping over and hurting myself slows me down.

Earlier this month I ran the Abbey Dash for the second time. It was their 30th birthday, making them even older than me. The photo above is me the next day. I did not look like that after the race. I looked more like an shrivelled old man about to have a heart attack.

The weather conditions were not ideal. It rained before the race, leaving us stood around for an hour in the cold and wet. Once the race started (at which point you actually want the rain to cool you down a bit) it backed off.

I was 22 second slower than last year, coming home in 1:07:58. Not brilliant, but I trained harder last year, so to get such a small difference entires de-values all the work I did for the 2014 Dash. It certainly wasn’t the nightmare that my friend Howell had, running a 32:10, over 6% slower than his target time. I’ll give him some tips for next year.

I made the mistake of putting 70 minutes as my expected time which bumped me down to the slowest starting pen. Next year I think I will bump it up as I have never run a 70+.

I am not sure they are quite as well organised as Run For All. There is only one water station and I had to skip that because there was a queue. There was no big banner for the finish line so I did not know when it was time for that very final push until it was almost upon me. I was unable to spot some of the kilometre distance markers either. Finally I did not get my time until more than 24 hours after, whereas Run For All text me in under a minute of finishing (which I was very impressed at, later in the day would have been fine).

I started doing Parkun early last year. I’m not really sure how much I like it, but I have been pulled back each week by the promise of a free t-shirt. Now, almost two years later, I have said t-shirt!

It was totally worth it. Now on to the 100 club. That’s a black t-shirt…

The Abbey Dash is 10km race that takes place in Leeds each year. It is in aid of Age UK and you literally run out to Kirkstall Abbey and back. It is also older than I am – just. This was the 19th annual dash.

I decided it would be less depressing to start right at the back this time and found it easier than the Run For All. I had enough energy to pick up the base for the last kilometre or two, rather than wondering whether I would live to see tomorrow.

That said, I came in at a slightly slower time of 01:07:36, which put me 8,459 out of a field of 10,000. Mostly retired women in my speed category. I don’t know how everyone else does it…

Recently I have been trying out various running socks to try and stop my toes blistering.

More Mile

Very impressed with these. They provide a lot of cushioning for my feet. I did not notice the difference until I went back to socks without that cushion and they felt a lot rougher.

They don’t entirely stop my toes from blistering, but they’re an improvement on regular socks.

Karrimor

These were rubbish. They did not feel or produce results any better than just a regular cotton socks; they might well have been worse.

Nike

These were special toe-socks (they had individual toe holes) to stop them rubbing together. This seems to have produced good results on the 5km I did today, however they felt quite rough on the rest of my feet, particularly the balls of my foot, so without the padding of the others I am not sure I prefer them. They are also quite difficult to get on.

Recently I ran the Leeds 10k. I think it was the hardest run I have ever done. I was not expecting it to be that difficult as I run 10k quite regularly. However, it proved much more of a challenge doing it as an organised event.

That is not entirely unsurprising as my Parkrun times are usually slightly slower too. However, why it is, I am not entirely sure. The race is later in the morning and has less shade than my usual route, so I think heat had an effect. Also possibly lack of familiarity with the route.

At the start, you also spend half an hour crammed in with 10,000 other runners too, which was quite anxiety-provoking, so that probably took a bit out of me,

I finished in 1:06:14, which is about 8 minutes slower than my personal best when out running by myself. Not the complete disaster I was expecting though, from my pace on the home stretch I remember thinking I was on for a 1:20:00!

The event was well organised. They had water stations along the route, lots of volunteers to hand out goodie bags and you were texted your result within a minute of crossing the finish line.

I was very grateful for Elina coming to meet me too. I felt really ill after I ran 10k last week before attempting to run up to the park, so it was awesome to have someone bring me drinks and snacks.

I recently read Run Less, Run Faster after it was recommended by a friend. It sets out a training programme that emphasises getting rid of “junk milage” and making the runs you do do more effective.

In general it seems to have a lot of good stuff in it, and if I wanted to take my running more seriously, it seems like a great programme to follow. As it is, I will take some ideas from it without taking the whole package.

It seems mostly written for people who run marathons. There is plenty of adjustments for 5km and 10km races and all the tables discuss these values, as well as values for quite slow runners (a lot slower than me even) but even so I feel like it is really for people who dedicate their entire lives to running. I guess that should be obviously from a scheme that advocates five workouts a week. It certainly is not a book targeted as casual runners, or anyone who’s primary purpose is fitness rather than competitive running.

It is filled with jargon. Maybe if you are a serious runner you will understand it all, but a lot of it is lost on me and I have had to look quite a few terms up.

Some of it seems cautious. It talks about speaking to a doctor before beginning a training programme. Perhaps this is good advice if you have health issues, but I am pretty sure that the overwhelming majority of doctors will tell overwhelming majority of people “yes, of course you should exercise!” And as Chris H has pointed out previously, if you are a healthy 20-something year old, you don’t really need to train for a 10km. If you already do regular exercise, you will just be able to do it. Even by accident. Again though, that goes back to whether you just want to run it, or whether you want to run it competitively.

I like the way they mix up the format of the book. Some of it is standard flowing text, other parts are delivered as a question and answer. They also intersperse of all this with letters from people telling them how amazing they are. This I find odd and uncomfortable. I am always suspicious about texts that spend so much time openly stating how good they are rather than offering real content.

Overall, I think if you want to run competitively, this is a great book to read. Otherwise, it probably is not that useful.

I have been running more recently with the anticipation of completing the Abbey Dash in November. I had drawn up a training programme, in my head, in which I would add half a kilometre each month so that by October I was running the full 10km.

Then, a few weeks ago, I felt pretty good on my run, so I just kept going and suddenly I had done 10km. This has entirely ruined my schedule. Not really sure what to do now.

Parkrun is a network of UK (and now international) 5km weekly runs open to the general public. There are now three in Leeds – Woodhouse Moor, Temple Newsam and Roundhay Park.

Each one takes place at 9am each Saturday. You register (for free) and print out a barcode. You then turn up and run 5km with everyone else and get your barcode scanned when you are finished. They then upload all the data and email everyone to let them know their times. They are popular events. Woodhouse Moor had around 400 people there this week.

Overall, I am not sure I prefer it to running on my own. For a number of reasons:

• I like running because it is accessible. I live next to the canal, so I can leave my front door and start running. No overheads. With Parkrun I have to make my way up to Woodhouse Moor, wait around for it to start, do my run, then come home. The whole experience takes around 75 minutes for less than 30 minutes of running.
• I am not very fast, so it is not that motivating to be at the back of the field.
• It is hard to pace yourself when running in a large crowd.

However, cleverly they give you a t-shirt when you have completed 50, 100 and 250 runs. And I want my t-shirt!