Blue Runnings

I had all sorts of good intentions today. I actually had a moderately productive day at work for once and was looking forward to a jog along to Wylam, which even with a later finish I would be able to do if I got changed and hurried myself out the door again. Then I got distracted by facebook as one does, but I found a freebie running book that looks amusing in the process on Amazon so that’s my evening’s entertainment sorted (I’m doing this first or it wouldn’t get written at all) so it wasn’t a completely fruitless use of my time!

That pretty much set the tone for my evening…I left the house, and literally a minute later saw 2 red kites overhead on the main road – it’s unusual to see them quite as far South as we are – they’re usually in the villages to the North or West where we see them often and I normally only see them in the distance or from the car – we’ve had a few close encounters from the car. I don’t usually get to experience them flying straight overhead when I’m not sitting in a metal box zooming along the road. So, I threw the car up the kerb as one does and dashed down the road to where I’d seen them. I don’t know why I thought I could catch them up, when they’re gliding in the opposite direction to you and particularly when they have the wind behind them they go a fair clip with very little visible effort! I think I dashed most of the length of the road before giving up and heading back to the car laughing at myself. It was a good warm-up anyway!

I got another 800 yards down the road, and there were more kites! A big flock of them right over the Derwent Walk pub car park. In for a penny in for a pound right?! I swerved into the carpark to ogle them, so of course they all flew out of sight over the high embankment, except for one who was kind enough to glide over me for a minute or two and let me ooo at him. They’re a bird I’d love to catch on camera, but typically I only had my phone – which is terrible for photos of anything that moves even at a snail pace so I had to content myself with eyeball ogling.

So, quite a chunk of my run time disappeared in my travelling time back to Prudhoe increasing by about 50% with my birdwatching detours… I’ve been thinking over the last few days about trying to get back to how I got into running, which was why I was intending to head along to the bridge at Wylam – it used to be my regular intermediary distance between the 5km and 10km distances. Before I stopped for my second kite detour, I thought I might have time for an 18 minute there-and-back again along the river, but the second stop put paid to that one as I would need to finish in time to pick P up from work, and I didn’t want to do a 12 minute one as I’m thinking of doing that tomorrow before I pick P up if I get out of work in time! I opted for another old river haunt route – along the back of the Spetchells and back along the riverside, which was actually probably the first route I started doing when I began doing a short run before picking P up when he first went on shifts.

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There’s a stretch of the C2C (Sea to Sea/Coast to Coast) cycle way which runs from Cumbria to Tyneside and passes through the Consett environs, and I headed out this morning for a there and back again along a stretch of it known as the Waskerley Way – a railway path similar to the Derwent Walk I sometimes follow. Looking it up now on a very helpful link from the Durham Council website, I can see I ran it the ‘wrong’ way. Some of the Bounders sometimes get dropped off at Park Head and run back to Consett – a 10 mile stretch in a predominantly downhill direction. Being on my own this morning, I dropped the car off in Consett and ran up to just before Waskerley picnic area before turning round and heading back again.

No wonder if felt easier heading back to the car! At least I seem to have gotten most of the uphills out the way while I still had some puff. I’ve only done a very short stretch of this path before, to not a huge amount further than across the viaduct on a Run England session, and then to be honest forgot it was there despite at the time thinking I would have to come back and explore further along. That particular stretch looked mostly flat and shaded, and like a good alternative to the Derwent Walk.

My intention this morning was to see if I could hit 10 miles again – it’s been 2 months since I last hit this distance. I was expecting to find myself pootling along in the shade with not much to see for the duration of the run, but the Waskerley Way crosses much more open country than the Derwent Walk and I could pretend I was fell running as I crossed the heathland, while still being on a flat, level-ish, good quality footpath! I think it’s probably the furthest I’ve been from towns and villages on a run that wasn’t part of a race – and to be honest I think Kielder is the only one that’s felt as remote. The morning started off sunny but was kind enough to cloud over once I left the shaded avenues and return to sunny not long before I was back among the trees! The views were fantastic, I really felt I was out in the moors and wilderness 🙂

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Well, I found a moneybox 🙂 not the one I was looking for but one none the less. I have managed to complete day 1 of my no junk food challenge. There’s still cake in the house but I have resisted so far, despite getting home super munchy.

I was toying with doing a gym session tonight and a run tomorrow night, but with the Gateshead Trail on Saturday morning I decided to swap them round and do a short run tonight around the village triangular, a route I haven’t done since April despite it being pretty much impossible for me to get much more local. I’ve set myself a new best time for this route, but didn’t really enjoy it. It was the coolest it’s been with it being later than when I normally run, but I think I need to slow my pace back down to get the distance back up for the summer. That hill at the start never seems to get any easier!

I also had some run related post today – Great Run related in fact. My GNR number has arrived! Marking the imminent arrival of an event I have some work to do before I’m ready for. Time to dig the game face out the cupboard.

Campervan Cash: £2

I’m not doing very well with dates this week and was determined to go out on Saturday for a longer run and finish July on a high note. Except that Saturday was the 1st of August so I’ve started this month on a good note instead…definitely in need of a holiday before any remaining brain curd leaks out my ears and away never to be seen again! This wasn’t a run that went the way I was intending it to in several ways, but I went out anyway and that’s always a positive!

I thought I’d head down to the Derwent, and instead of parking at Pow Hill as I normally do, I’d go to Milshield picnic area and run from there down to Pow Hill, do the loop around there before I was ready to pass out, and then head back – which would have the other advantage of splitting the dam-crossing legs up more. Apparently the carpark at Milshield is closed until the end of August as there’s some ITV show thing being filmed there and they don’t want Joe Bloggs bimbling in with his fishing gear and running shoes.

So, Pow Hill it was! This also meant I couldn’t do my original distance plan – going between the two picnic areas would have put me somewhere in the region of 10k, possibly a bit more with the loop around Pow Hill added on and I was hoping to hit between 10 and 12km on this run – can’t pester J about not hitting the distance for the GNR when I’m only doing 5k loops myself!

In my current ‘try different things’ vein, I also thought I’d try running with music again – I used to run with it all the time so I wouldn’t have to listen to my own depressingly raspy panting as I pootled along, but after signing on to one or two running club road races where headphones weren’t allowed, I got myself used to not taking them even on the longer ones where it was just me and listening to the wind and the birds. It helped that I got used to pacing myself on my breathing so I didn’t sound like a dying asthmatic the whole time, noone wants to listen to themselves sound like that! My headphones were charged up, but my ipod had been left on since last time it was used (however long ago that was) and was flat as a pancake. There goes that plan. Me and my ears it is then. I’d have to try and find a new distraction for crossing the dam.

It was bang on a mile – 1.6km – from the carpark to the gate at the start of the dam, and I don’t even remember it, I was sufficiently distracted by the various things to see and my own head that I was at the dam before I’d really realised it. The dam itself was less than half this distance across from gate to gate, but once again felt like twice as far. I don’t know how people do multiple loops of routes when doing races – like round and round the same athletics track, or 5 laps around Gibside for the Gibside Marathon knowing you’re going to hit the same horrible monster hills again and again and again!!! Talk about sapping! I can’t do a short, straight bridge without flagging!

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