By eck it's windy!

Probably went out for my windiest run ever today. I was keen to repeat my run up the Carrick hills today and wasn't going to be put off by horizontal bullets in the form of hailstones. ;-)

It wasn't too bad when I started but by the time I was halfway up the hill I was very glad of all my protective gear (hat, gloves, long sleeve wind proof top, tracksters & lightweight waterproof). A lot more than I've worn in a very long time I wouldn't have been without a single item.

The hails was flying horizontally and the wind was so strong I was struggling to stay on the tarmac. The final ascent head on into the wind had to be done with my head lowered so far I could only see my feet. On a couple of short stretchs I was forced to walk, it was just too tough.

The run down with the wind howling at my back brought its own problems as the road was covered in a thin layer of slushy hailstones and it was hard not to slip. Still, once off the steepest part, it was more or less plain sailing. My quads seemed absolutely fine (no hangover from Saturday's run) but I'm willing to bet they'll be protesting by tomorrow. ;-)

Fame, of a sort...

It's not every day that you find your phizog splashed across a race application form. Must make enquiries about royalties. ;-)

Another week. Bad start, great finish.

Today I enjoyed a great 30 mile run along the WHW from Drymen to Beinglas farm. The forcast had been bad but the weather (until the last few miles) was to bad at all. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

My running weeks started with a failed attempt at a hill run. I'd been helping one of the buidersmove a picinic table in the morning and put my back out. It wasn't *that bd and I was hpeful that it would affect my running too much so I attempted my hill run. I'd barely jogged 10 feet though before I realised that it was a "no-go" situation. Shoooting pains down my legs etc. so that run had to be aborted.

By Tuesday, my back seemed a lot better so I went along to the club to do the session of mile repeats. Seemed to start well but by half I mile I realised that I was going too fast to hope to repeat the same time on my second rep so I eased off a bit. My finishing time was a disappointing 6:17 though and every repeat (just three) got progressively worse. Something clearly wasn't right with me but I thought I'd attempt a easy run the next day to see how that went.

That too turned bad. Within a mile I knew wasn't going to omplete my expected distance (7 miles) and cut is short as soon as practical to about 4 miles. With a 30 mile run planned for the weekend things weren't looking too hopeful!

I rested on thursday and Friday and then consumed far too much red with on Friday night. Feeling decided less than brilliant this morning, I forced down a bowl of cereal and followed that up with some left over chicken curry & rice with peas. Perhaps not a conventional breakfast but I've learned the hard way that you really can't skimp on breakfast if you're planning on a long run.

Met up with JK and another 11 WHWers in the carprk in Drymen. As ever, good to see familiar faces again and at about 9:20, we set off. 200yds up the road I remembered that I'd fogotten to lock my car! After a hasty jog back I spent the next 20 minutes trying to catch up again. Teach me for being so stoopid! ;-)

Not having any ambitions to push the pace I was very happy to bring up the rear with Ellen Thomson and we enjoyed the easy pace. Conic hill was rather breezy and I had to put on my waterproof for a while. The descent of Conic hill was as treacherous and slippery as you'd expect but we made it down safely, catchin Debbie & her support runner Shona on the way down. We then ran together to Rowardennan where we were a bit surprised to find all the rest of the crew having a picnic. Not that we were complainng, it gave us a chance to catch up with the main group. We only stopped to top up our water and I downed my second Mars bar of the day (having eaten my first at Balmaha). Suitably recharged, I found that the easy early pace meant that I could pick up my speed a bit. This proved to be the case for the whole of the rest of the run and I seemd to get faster and faster as the miles passed by. I reached Inversnaid at 2:10. This was quite a shock for me as I felt like I had only been running for about three hours. I paused to take a picture of the river there that was in spate.

JK, IanB, George, Marco & IanK were having another picnic but as I was feeling so good, I decided not to make it too easy for them to catch me so I pressed on, running up many of the hills and generally just loving it.

The solitude, the views & the fine rain falling created a lovely peacefull atmosphere. On top of this I felt like I had bags of energy to finish the run with after my last Mars bar at Inversnaid.

The high water level in Loch Lomond created several challenges, this being one of the wetter ones. ;-)

We'd all long ago given up trying to keep feet dry so it was no hardship just to wade through but by glooy the water was cold! Felt like snow melt!

JK and Marco caught be after about 55 minutes and IanB caught me after about an 1 and a quarter. While I was leading though it felt great to be ahead of JK, even if it wasn't for too long! After running with IanB for a while he made the tactical blunder of stopping for water. After that I'm afraid I legged it, galloping the rest of the way to Beinglas farm.

After a brief photo session with JK, four of us headed off to the Drovers from some well earned fod and drink. They must be used to odd knackered people there as the barman didn't turn a hair at being asked for a pint of milk & a pint of Deuchers. I always crave milk after a long run and I think it helps my recovery. The beer and Aberdeen Angus burger were much appreciated too though. ;-)

All in all, a very pleasing run. My best on so far this season. I think the easy start helped me enormously to finish strong. A couple of days rest no doubt helped too as did the three Mars bars I scoffed. Full marks to JK for organising the transport and enabling us to do a one-way run which is so much more fun than turning back half-way.

Sadly I think I may have to miss the next group run if it's on the 16th of Feb as provisionally planned as I doing the Carnethy 5 an that day

Where was I?...

I finished my last blog full of hope and ambitions to run my hill route twice weekly. We'll like so many of my plans, not too well thought out. ;-)

Of course, just running up and down twice a week shouldn't really present any real problems but the way I ran down last Tuesday made my legs ache in all sorts of interesting places and I found I couldn't really participate in last week's "hills" session with the club in Troon. My muscles were just aching too much and it was immediately obvious that it would have been senseless to persist in pushing myself. Consequently I took Wednesday off and did an easy 6 miler on Thursday.

Friday was a "rest" day, at least insofar as I didn't run. In real life though it was anything but. We're having an extension built out the back of our house and everything out there had to be moved. In addition, the gas tumble air dryer "needed" to be replumbed to work in the garage. I say "needed" because I'm too pig-headed to go out and buy a cheap electric dryer to tide us over when I've got a perfectly good dryer already and I wasn't going to let the lack of a gas connection in the garage get in my way. ;-)

On Saturday morning I said goodbye to our old conservatory which I had "Freecycled". For those not familiar with the Freecycle movement, have a look at this & the local group here. I'm actually the creator and one of the moderators of the local group. It's a great way of disposing of stuff that too good for landfill but you're not interested in selling.

After the conservatory had gone I met up with three other club members for a repeat run down the River Ayr from Failford. This time the pace was more relaxed (which suited me very nicely after the previous day's exertions) but whilst it certainly wasn't icy, it was a bit windier and wetter than last week. As ever, the last 5 miles drag a bit but it was good to do it again.

On Sunday I repeated my easy 6 miler just to try and get my miles up. For the WHW good speed is nice but "miles on legs" is important to build up the necessary "toughness". Only just over 40 miles this last week but I'm happy with that. Come February, I'll be aiming for 50 miles a week, perhaps with alternating long & short weeks.

Carrick Hill route

For anyone interested, here's the route I run up & down the Carrick hills. It's almost exactly 4 miles from bottom to top with no flat bits.

Run up the Carrick hill again

Last Thursday I ran up the Carrick hill from Minishant for the first time in nearly 3 years. Well, the prospect of doing embarrassingly badly in the Carnethy5 race has impelled me to try and run up here twice a week so I went out again this afternoon for another crack at the hill.

What a difference! Of course a lot is to do with familiarity but last Thursday it was a horrible grind up and not much faster down. This time I wasn't that much quicker up but it felt a lot easier. Intentionally I wanted to concentrate on my downhill technique and I was over 4 minutes faster (over 4 miles) coming down than last week and really enjoyed it. It would be great if I could keep improving at this rate but I know I'm just enjoying early easy gains. It's bound to get progressively harder to shave seconds off as I get better.

Still, I'm feeling a bit less trepidation about the hill race and it's given me a psychological boost.

Just as an aside, my right ankle has been aching badly first thing in the morning for a couple of months now. Until I put shoes on in the morning, I could barely weightbear on it. Since my training mileage has increased, it's got better! I had almost resigned myself to the fact that I was "just getting old" and would have to live with it. A remarkable (and perplexing) thing the human body.

A training run on the RAW

On Saturday I did a 15 mile training run along the River Ayr Way (RAW) with a couple of club mates. This is relatively unusual for me, I usually do this run alone more through necessity than anything else so it was nice to have some company and someone to encourage me to push the pace a little bit, something I'm not very good at on my own.

Three of us set off from Failford with the cautionary words "Mind the path, it's awfa slippery" from a local lady. She wasn't lying either. Whilst the air temperature was above freezing it was clear that the ground temperature was lagging well behind and the footing was quite treacherous in bits. In addition, the storms of last Tuesday (our 5K night) had blown over quite a few trees across the path that we had to negotiate. Most of them were easy enough but one near Annbank was really quite awkward to get around. Fortunately, it doesn't block the official RAW, we were on the "unofficial" RAW at that point using a stretch of fishermans path.

It was interesting to see other runners approach to the hills on the route. I'm used to running every hill, making it a point of principal not to walk any of the slopes but one of my clubmates (a far stonger runner than me) was quite content to walk the hills and make up the time on the flat. That is what I would do for a longer run but I guess I probably have more endurance training under my belt just now and for me, attacking the hills feels right at the moment.

By far the worst stretch was the tarmac section (known locally as "Tomato Lane") which was covered in black ice. For much of it we had to run with one foot in the gutter & one foot on the verge. It was about the only way to get any grip. Even so we were nearly waltzing off the road into the hedges on more than one occasion.

Still, it all made for an interesting (and challenging) run that probably exercised more muscles than it would have had it not been icy and I was pleased with our overall pace which was definitely quicker than I would have run alone.

Looking forward to another run along there this weekend if possible.

Where's my brain gone?

I thought it had only been a year or so since I had last done my run up and down the Carrick hill. Just checked my training logs and it was March 2005! No wonder my legs seemed to have forgotten how to do it! I was also quite a bit quicker back then. :-(

Looks like I've got a bit of work to do before Carnethy!

Back to running (and blogging)

It's been a long time since I posted so I'll try and fill in a few gaps without boring everyone silly.

Sometimes when I'm not posting, it's because I'm just clocking up "routine" training miles which I don't think anybody is too interested in. Other times though, it's because I've not been running much. On this occasion, it's the latter reason. ;-) Whilst in some ways I'm envious of runners who can keep up their training through the festive season, part of me feels that if there's ever a time of year when you should swing the family/running balance in the direction of "family", this is the time to do it.

So what have I done? After my kneepit got all inflamed I started myself on some antibiotics I had lying around and went to see the doctor on the 27th. He agreed with my diagnosis and was happy to give me a presciption for the same antibiotics (but this time not out of date ones). I didn't then run until the 2nd of January (a 7 mile easy jog), having spent the intervening days eating and drinking too much (as is normal for this time of year).

On Saturday the 5th I got it into my head that I'd manage a nice easy jog up to Failford from home. Big mistake! Not only was not really up for the distance, the weather was absolutely foul and I was soaked and cold after just 4 miles. Decided to cut my losses and give up my unrealistic plan and headed for home (just another 3 miles but it felt a lot further in that wind!).

On Monday 7th, it was another repeat of my easy jog. Didn't want to do anything too strenuous with the club 5K looming the following evening.

On Tuesday, I was decidedly nervous about how poorly I might run. It was another really windy night but unlike December's 5K, I had someone to chase which was a big help. In the end, I was happy enough with my 20:51. Still leaves me with a fair bit to do to get back uder 20 minutes but I'm sure I'll get there.

This morning (Thursday), I thought I really ought to spend a bit more time running up some hills if I'm going to be taking part in the Carnethy 5 next month so it was back to my old "4 miles up & 4 miles down" run from Minishant up to the radio masts on the Carrick Hill. Not steep or high enough to simulate what I'm going to suffer in the race but it's a start. Felt really feeble going up the hill and was seriously questioning my sanity in entering the Carnethy 5 race. Fortunately , as ever, the descent cheered me up.

Goals for 2008?
Gotta get back under 20 minutes for 5K. I'd love to run a sub-40 10K but that, if it's ever going to happen will have to wait until later in the year. A sub-24hr WHW race is a must but even more importantly, get to the start line! An interesting new event in the autumn is a Cleveland Way race, 110 miles and more elevation than the WHW. Still debating whether to do this or not but I think I'd be foolish to make any decision until after this year's WHW race.