dinsdag 31 augustus 2010

Month total 1942 = 32 hrs 22 min

Back up to schedule + 47 minutes extra now. August was clearly less warm than July so not so many reasons to put off runs. Talking of monthly things - here's the first edition of my subscription to Runner's World, which Riny gave me for my birthday.

Sunny Dawn

84 min
Start 6.30
Out just before the sun so got the last of the pink clouds but it was such a

clear morning that I really should have been out half an hour earlier for the best light. After last week's filthy grey start to the birthday run I'd almost forgotten that a proper dawn is still an option.










I'm enjoying 'racing' against my clock now that I can measure distance too. Gives me little inter-run goals, trying to reach the next kilometer mark before a certain time.

Out to the start of Amersfoort and back via the klompenpad. This is grass so my feet got wet with dew but not as wet as last week and not for so long so it wasn't really a problem.










The local llamma family has 2 new junior additions.

maandag 30 augustus 2010

Week total 523

With my 48k on Thursday it wasn't difficult to chalk up more than 8 hours for the week with a couple of shortish runs before and after the epic birthday run. With a short run today or tomorrow my month total should bring me back up and beyond my year total target so far.

zondag 29 augustus 2010

Back to Baarn

48 min
Start 19.00
Am starting to get the hang of using my watch and my kilometer-counter to monitor my training now. Did the first 3 km in exactly 20 minutes and then tried to speed up a bit to achieve a negative split. Second 3k was run in 19.45 min. Then slowed down for the last bit to cool down.

Marching Band

46 min
Start 10.30
Ran from Baarn to Soest in between showers. (Of rain, not the soapy sort.)

When I was almost home I heard a marching band - they were just turning into the museum when I reached them. Didn't have mYpod with me as it was still packed away in the running belt I used on Thursday.
I am now going to try to make a link to my Nikeplus page registering this run...

vrijdag 27 augustus 2010

Recovery Garage Run

20 min
Start 16.00
Recommended practise is to have a 20 minute gentle run the day after a major distance to keep the legs loosened up. I could easily have done more as I felt fine but as I needed to pick the van up from the garage and it just happened to be about 20 minutes away I thought this was an efficient way of combining the two activities.

donderdag 26 augustus 2010

48km for 48 years

340 min
Start 6.20
The forecast was wet. Very wet. Biblically wet. Wet wet wet in fact. And although I could have done with perhaps slightly less wetness at least I didn't have to worry about it being too hot for me to run in, which was my biggest fear when I planned this epic run for my birthday. It was actually an ideal temperature for running. The rain varied from drizzle to nigh-on torrential but ach, once you're wet through you can't get any wetter so at some point it doesn't really matter any more whether it stops raining or not. I was wearing 'technical' running clothes so they didn't get heavy with water like cotton does. Only slight problem bit was a small patch on the inside of my upper right arm which is a bit irritated by the wet sleeve chaffing. (So a sleeveless shirt would have been better - remember this for next time. No sleeves are better than short sleeves in the rain.)

I started in Hoek van Holland just as the sky was starting to turn a lighter shade of grey. (No spectacular sunrise as a birthday present to start the day.) Because of the rain I didn't wear mYpod. I thought that running for hours without it would be boring but somehow the time just flew by. The noise of the waves and the wind and my steady running pace seemed to produce a kind of meditative state. The running never really seemed hard at any point. Klaas popped up at various points along the way with bananas and encouragment but as I still had a gel and 2 drink bottles left at the end I could have theoretically done this run unsupported.
There was a bit of drama at the end when we missed one another at the final meeting point due to various factors and Klaas had left his phone in the car so I couldn't reach him for a wee while. I consequently spent some time screaming and kicking at walls on the seafront in Noordwijk but ach, I'm sure that there's some law which states that you're allowed to be tired and emotional at the end of a 48km run in the rain. Then it was back to Den Haag to shower and change before going off to a reception in the afternoon. The revitalising showergel I'd got as part of my birthday present seemed to have done the job as I felt fine. After rubbing tigerbalm into my calves and lemon oil into my feet the half hour I could lie down feeling clean and dry was sheer bliss. Then it was into my good frock and shoes and off to the next event of the day.

Next day: I'd never have thought of it myself but actually I think wearing heels afterwards is probably good for the calf muscles. Something about the position they're held in? I have no problems at all with them today and usually after a marathon a few days of 'careful' walking is par for the course.

dinsdag 24 augustus 2010

Racehorse Speed?

33 min
Start 18.30
I think I have my thingy (technical term) properly callibrated now as it gave the distance as 2.03km which is given as 2 on the map. 3 meters here or there sounds like a good margin to me. And my speed of between 7 and 8 minute kilometers is about right for my steady training pace. Works at around 8k/p/h and as I can do 10k in just under an hour during a race this sounds about right. So I wonder if I'll do the 48k in under 6 hours on Thursday? Not that that's really the object of the exercise but it seems like a reasonable goal of sorts.

maandag 23 augustus 2010

'The sun is going down and the moon is coming up'

36 min
Start 20.00
In another attempt to do the callibration thing I ran a fixed distance and walked it back but could only manage to figure out how to log the info using the last logged 'run' which was in this case my walk. I thought I could do them both at once but can't find that bit now. Ah well. I'll have another go this evening. Title quote if from this song.


These are the cycle route distances I was basing my measured run on. Ran the 2k between 17 and 20 and then did some of the 4.5k route but it was getting dark quicker than I thought so just did the bit of it that involved running up and down the stairs to the motorway crossover a few times.


Week total 412

Almost caught up with myself but not quite - ach this week's l-o-n-g-r-u-n should help make up the monthly balance...

zondag 22 augustus 2010

Flowers and a Friendly Big Dog

101 min
Start 19.30
On my way out various explosions of flowers in gardens caught my attention.


































On my way home on the Klompenpad circuit I spotted what I at first thought in the fading light was a calf in a garden along the road. It was in fact a huge dog. Some sort of Turkish herder type? Very impressive looking as a guard dog but he didn't bark once and when I approached his gate to say hello he just pawed at it to get attention.

zaterdag 21 augustus 2010

Lara Croft in Dunsinane

92 min
Start 19.30





This was me trying out my double water-belt configuration in preparation for Thursday's epic run. (Note to self: wear different knickers with these shorts...)



Set out to run a 2km stretch of straight road I'd measured with the car the other day but somehow made a mess of it as I lost the starting place and then it turned out not to be as long as I'd thought it was (either that or I was running faster than I've ever done before and I know this isn't true). So still haven't callibrated my new toy. Still it was a good run, only it got dark before I'd really gone as far as I'd have liked to, what with all the time wasted messing about running back and forth looking for disappeared gates and trees that had apparantly walked. It was like a Dutch polder version of the 5th scene in Macbeth...

vrijdag 20 augustus 2010

Sportband Test Trial

95 min
Start 5.30
First test run with the new toy. Nike+ Sportband complete with sensor in my shoelaces.




















I'll have to callibrate it properly because I'm sure I wasn't running sub 5 minute kilometers at times. I know that 2.5km in 12 minutes is my absolute top speed on a track during a Cooper Test so there was no way I was reaching this whilst running this morning. But it is easy enough to use and I enjoyed working out what the different signals meant.

Shame there isn't a 'pause' function on it so that I could stop it when I stop to take photos, cross roads, unleash dogs and so on, as I do with my stopwatch when measuring total time spent running (rather than walking or standing). Now my average speed is brought down by the stops in my run, but never mind, speed isn't really my aim anyway.

woensdag 18 augustus 2010

White Swan on Green

40 min
Start 18.00
Meant to run for longer but lots of things were conspiring to irritate me so decided to cut my losses and do longer later in the week when circumstances are hopefully better.




















I didn't have a new RunRunLive episode on mYpod, while I was sUre I'd loaded one yesterday. I'd forgotten to take my watch with me so had to do my timekeeping with the stopwatch function on my phone, which is not ideal. The dogs (Sproet and Sil this time) were not co-operating (or rather their leads weren't, jiggling annoyingly for some reason). Ha, wouldn't it all be easier if I could just run out the door without all the techno and canine accessories...? But to be fair, usually they do add rather than detract from a run but for some reason I wasn't coping well with the combination of all I had with me.