Mini Run 3

7.74k
Start 16.45

 

New route, behind the windmill at the Praxis and then left along the river and left again back into town via the museum harbour.

Mini Run 2

8.89k
Start 15.30

Gentle run out to the Goudse Hout.  Not nearly as many pheasants as I usually see there when running early in the morning or later in the evening. 

Mini Run

5.20k
Start 19.30

Mini the greyhound arrived for her few days here in Gouda so we went for a short run.

Slow but steady

12.37k
Start 17.30

Realised when the intervals weren't going so well that I'd forgotten my Ventolin but ach, I'd already decided to take the rest of this month fairly easy so I wasn't really concerned about great improvements.  This was really just a 'maintenance run' with my attempts at faster intervals just keeping me from completely sinking back into plod mode. 

Rubbery eggshells

17.77k
Start 4.30

Beautiful huge low full moon when I went out.  Too dark to take a good photo of it.  Interval period with 3.5min with 30 sec recovery was a bit heavy going and after that ran about the Goudse Hout for a while trying to find my bearings (and therefore the swan's nest).  Took me longer than I'd been counting on and my hands were freezing and so I didn't really feel too great.  Finally did find where I had to be and found that the nest was empty apart from the rubbery remains of the eggs.  The female was on some grass round the corner and the male was swanning about (as they do) looking stroppy on the water nearby.  No sign of the cygnets but I suspect they were sleeping under the wings of the mother.

Warmed up a wee bit on the way home when the sun finally got above the low ridge of cloud.  Not the best run ever but it's another one on the way to whatever improvements I may be making so, as always, glad I got out of bed to do it.

Blue sky run, with mud

14.14k
Start 17.30

Such a glamourous activity...

Great run, after a short warm up on the path to Park Bloeyendaal where the sun came out for what seems like the first time in ages I did my half hour of intervals through the allotments and surroundings. 3min effort with 30 second recovery jogs.  Went really easily - was good to see the clear pattern on the Garmin graph when I got home. Then took a detour up the back of the gardens and enjoyed splashing through the mud there.  It's exactly the right temperature now to be pleasantly refreshing rather than freezing cold.  

10k with intervals

10.57k
Start 5.50

Didn't make the 4am alarm call, fell back into a dream filled doze where I was dreaming I was staying with friends in Apeldoorn (who I'll be seeing later today) to get some hill training in.  In the dream I got up to go out for an early run and so woke up and did get out of bed just after 5.  Continued with my plan of increasing my 'effort' time of intervals, so this time the plan was 2min30sec effort followed by 30 sec recovery jog for half an hour after a 20 minute warm up to get me out of town.  Lost count at one point somewhere and one of the intervals became 3 minutes but the overal plan went well enough as I ran more than 5k in that half hour so was averaging more than the 6:20 which included the warm up run.
Only photo stop was when I ran along a path with a very strong smell of garlic and stopped to see if I could find the wild garlic plants.  Thought I'd spotted them but it turned out to be nettles in flower so still don't know what they look like.  Oh and one photo of the lilac coloured blooming tree at the end of the road.  Called blauwe regen in Dutch (blue rain) - lilac in English? 

Rainy River Run

12.67k
Start 20.20

 

After waiting all day for the rain to stop it seemed it just wasn't going to so went out anyway in the wet.  Along the river and then back on the higher dijk path.  Saw some very miserable looking longhorned sheep huddling under a tree.  It wasn't cold and was actually pretty ideal running weather.  Did 30 minutes of 2 minute effort, 30 sec recovery jog after my 15 minute warm up and got down to an average of 6.13min/p/k and was up to 6.20 by the time I was home again. 

Hekendorp 20k

20.23k
Start 4.30

Managed to get out of bed when the alarm went at 4.  Sunrise was actually rather dull as no clouds to reflect the light.  Bit of mist over the fields and a haze on the horizon but no real colour.  Did 30 minutes of 2 minute effort, 1 minute jog intervals after my 20 minute warm-up to Goudse Hout.  After that it was more or less a medium effort with a few stops to decide my route, investigate new paths (which went nowhere).  Lots of pheasants and hares, lambs and calves.

Satelite problem

16.14k
Start 20.30

Great interval session on The Pocket Running Coach podcast.  90 sec fast with 30 sec recovery - it was really handy to have someone telling me when to speed up and slow down and he played good music as well.  But half way through I noticed there was a message saying that the last satelite signal on my Garmin had been a few minutes earlier.  Kept running for a while as I was enjoying the interval stuff, hoping the problem would solve itself.  But in the end I had to stop and switch the watch off and on, then leave it on a fence for a few minutes till it had refound its bearings.  So I 'lost' a few kilometers. 

Sunset with sitting swan

10.89k
Start 20.15
Out to the Goudse Hout again to see if there was any sign of hatching cygnets.  Back via the edge of the Plassen and along the canal.  Couple of photos later but my battery ran out so I missed capturing a rather good sunset.

Sunrise over the towpath

16.78k
Start 5.00

Out past Haasdrecht and back along the Hollandsche IJssel.  Actually the towpath to Oudewater doesn't really start till Hekendrecht I believe but there was a jaagpad of sorts for me to follow most of the way.  Quite heavy shower for about 20 minutes in the middle of the run but the rest of it was dry and full of good light and impressively coloured clouds.  

Allotment tempo

11.01k
Start 16.40
Out to Bloeyendaal and around the allotments at a fairly steady slightly faster pace than of late.  No stops, no photos.  10k in 62 minutes so much faster than the 8k/p/h plods of recent months.

New Route with Compression Shorts

19.03k
Start 18.10

 

Slightly longer route than I'd first planned due to a wrong(ish) turn at one point, but no matter, new paths through the lakes were claimed, much less poplulated ones than the southern half of the area.  I'll soon have been on all the available paths - it gets easier to adjust a route to suit the particular mood/weather/time available once you've been on them all and can navigate by recognised landmarks rather than direction. 

Dauwtrappen

14.33k
Start 5.10
Hemelsvaartdag (Ascension Day) is a national holiday here and traditionally you should begin it with a barefoot walk in the dew at sunrise.  So I planned my run to include a bit of this.

 

 

 




In the Goudse Hout running about the various paths saw at least a dozen pheasants, mostly the male ones as they were squabbling and very noisily drawing attention to themselves, but also a few of the calmer and more camouflaged females.  This swan on her nest about 3 metres from one of the paths got up to rearrange her eggs when I was watching - she has 7 of them.