Blue Runnings

I know, I know; “Where have you been woman?! You’re supposed to be half marathon training, not disappearing for weeks at a time!” No, this time I have not been on an exercise mope. A couple of rough days at work followed by a VERY welcome holiday break to Belgium, where I think I gained three stone just walking around the streets! Every 3rd shop was either a café or a chocolatier, and they all smelt amazing. And I know why you only seem to find UK strawberries in the UK in strawberry season – all the European ones have been shipped to Bruges to be dipped in chocolate or adorn waffles! Delicious they are too 😉

I thought about taking my running stuff, I really did, but realistically with us getting the overnight ferry there and back, there was only really one morning that it would have been an option – so I didn’t bother 🙂 It was good to have a few days recharge and do some walking and face-filling. My exercise involved lots of street-bimbling, and we climbed the Belfort – the tower in the first picture, which is if memory serves is 300+ steps high.

Last time I tried to climb a tower of this scale at York Minster, I thought I’d pass out before reaching the top – this was before I started running last year. Knowing this, I was a little nervous about how I would hold up with this one; it would be my ultimate proof of improved fitness – or lack thereof, and it was definitely warmer in Belgium in August than in York in February! I actually made it to the top in better shape than P, just concentrated on keeping my breathing even and I’d deliberately worn lightweight trousers and a vest top for maximum coolness, and overall I was fine! No stiff legs or collapsing in an elegant heat 2/3’s of the way up for me! Having a bit more brain to concentrate on the world around rather than just drowning in cramping muscles and lack of oxygen this time, I think I’ve worked out one of the reasons I found York so tough – there’s like zero air movement in those towers so the air’s warm and slightly stale – not great when exercising! The ultimate fitness prover will be to return to York…one day, one day…

I am back in the UK now and was looking forward to hitting the ground running for a long one today as I’d taken it off work to recharge and square up before going back to work, but that’s going to have to wait for Run England tomorrow. I don’t know what happened but I’ve eaten or drank something that left me feeling rather rotten from yesterday morning and through most of today so running was O.U.T., I have however managed an hour’s workout this evening and am looking forward to getting ye olde trainers on tomorrow 🙂 Rosie was a great help, rubbing her face on me and kneading my stomach when I’m trying to do floor work and stretch off. Having one’s belly kneaded when one has just got back from a cake and ice-cream filled break does not do wonders for one’s self-esteem! Might help me hit the gym and track a bit more though…

The Gateshead Trail 10k is on Saturday and I need to be up and ready to go! I was looking forward to trying to beat my time for this one, and it only occurred to me today that I haven’t actually run it yet either – I run-walked last time so I’m looking forward to also being able to feel I’ve run it by the time I’ve finished – because I will! (Watch me sprain my ankle now 😛 )

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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I have spent a fair amount of this month sitting around with my feet up, especially compared with how busy June was! I started the month with my first dedicated hiking holiday to the Wicklow Mountains just South-West of Dublin with a friend of mine from uni. The idea of a hiking holiday has appealed to me for a while, but it’s not something P is really interested in, he likes to base himself in one place and explore from there rather than covering a linear or big circular route over a few days. I’m sure I can find somewhere in Northumberland or the Lakes where we can base ourselves from one place and do several circular routes to explore the area though 😉 Watch this space 😛 We bought a tent last year that’s not been used yet – definitely needs a good airing 😉

Anyway, back to July – This was a really good way to see a part of Ireland I’ve not been to before, particularly as some of the places we went and things we saw you couldn’t really get to by car – it was your own feet, a bike or nothing! You can find links to my travels here and here 🙂 I only had my GPS watch on for the actual Wicklow Way stretches, so the amount of actual walking I did while over there is severely underestimated when looking at my month summary. S’s phone fitness tracker had us clocked up at more like 50km over the 2 days than the 15.7km I’ve got us ‘officially’ marked down as.

Dublin really knocked my energy levels for six, and it was 2 weeks before I did any exercise at all, and 3 weeks before I actually got my trainers on for a run. There are a multitude of broken-record excuses for this – it was so FRIKKING HOT, I had no energy, and I am a lazy bum when given the opportunity! So I sat around on my butt and ate vast quantities of cakes instead 🙂 Everyone should have a hobby 😉 My calendar page for this month has been most appropriate (it’s The Oatmeal’s wonderfully motivating calendar for 2015)

Puddings and cakes have been the very “in” thing this summer…

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I have worked out why it has rained every day since last Friday! It’s because on Friday morning I ordered some running shorts (some Ronhill trail shorts if you’re particularly interested) in a desperate attempt to find coolness (alas, trendiness will never be mine) through the summer scorchy months, and thus it will no longer be sunny or indeed quite as hot. They turned up yesterday, so it’s done pretty much nothing except rain for the last two days since they’ve dropped through the letterbox!

P’s been on day shift again today, so in the interests of not ending the month on a COMPLETE exercise flop as I have been somewhat slack this month, (machine shut tomorrow so will probably not get anything extra done and Thursday and Friday are anyone’s guess!), I went for a run before picking him up. It’s been a bit cooler anyway, and was on and off showering, so I have yet to taunt the weather with my new shorts, and so decided I would be A-OK in my capris and a t-shirt. This of course meant that I was still a little on the warm side as I hadn’t taken into account the lack of wind that there always is by the river. One day I will learn, and on that day it will be blowing a gale right down the path and I will freeze.

I mentioned last week I was getting a bit bored of doing the same old routes and wanted to shake things up a bit and roam in new exciting directions, so today I went the same place I’ve been going for over a year now…nothing like a hypocrite 😉 Last week in the interests of adding a bit of variety, instead of heading for one place I did a time-trial type thing, turning around when I hit 12 minutes and then heading back again and seeing how far I’d made it when I got back. I did the same thing today, and as usual set off at my too-fast pace which I always do for the first few minutes. This time I pushed myself to keep it up until I was feeling a bit uncomfortable and then a little further, but not to the point where I couldn’t continue jogging afterwards – I kept up this ‘run’ pace for 1.2km before dropping down a bit before dropping down to a jog, but even this felt quicker than my usual distance eating one – I kept it up knowing I wasn’t going to be going death-inducing distances.

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Some people like to exercise first thing in the morning on an empty stomach, some like to leave it an hour or two after a meal, tonight I ran on pizza tummy. P is working nightshift tonight and didn’t sleep too well today – so motivation to clean the kitchen and think about dinner before I got home from work was at a low ebb, and wanting something quick and easy, he ordered pizza for dinner. Dominos doesn’t sit with me at the best of times – high dairy foods never do, and it’s one of those foods like chinese that I occasionally get a hankering for until it actually turns up, and then my appetite for it is sated very very quickly. It’s basically ‘what can I have for dinner which requires the absolute minimum amount of effort from me?’. Normally, post pizza me is not much good for anything for the rest of the evening except groaning and holding my tummy, but today I had told myself I was going out, and going out I was!

I mentioned yesterday I’ve had a craving for new routes and just something a bit different to my usual old haunts, and I had a couple in mind for this week which I’ve been thinking of doing for a while. Normally, if I’m doing a stretch of the Derwent Walk, I park up at where Ebchester Station used to be, and run downhill (I use this term loosely – it’s a very very very shallow gradient) towards Rowland’s Gill and then back again. I’d passed signs for the old Shotley Bridge Station on my way back from purchasing a print from this lovely lady a few weeks ago and knew it was on the Derwent Walk further up from Ebchester, so decided today to head that way and see how far – knowing reassuringly it wasn’t a huge distance further up.

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I went out for a run on Saturday morning, and going out tonight wasn’t any easier. I’m hoping that if I go out a couple of times this week I’ll get some stamina back again and maybe even get further than 5k without feeling like death! It really does feel like I’ve had the clock turned back 6 months or something – I can do the distance without a walking break, but I don’t find it easy and I’m not enjoying it as much – it’s just determination to get past it that’s pushing me to go out.

I’ve also got a real craving for new routes and different places rather than the same old well-trodden paths. I was picking P up from work at 7pm today, so did go to an old haunt down by the river, but rather than aiming for a certain point to turn around at, I thought I’d do it by time rather than distance and see how far I got – I had about 35 mins to go out in including stretch off and pile back into the car time, so I jogged along for 12 mins figuring that the way back would take me slightly longer, and turned around then instead of going for a physical marker. I was actually only about 45 seconds longer on the way back than the way there, and I knew I’d had a burst of unsustainably too fast at the start. Once I’d got this puffed out the way my pace turns out to have been pretty much flat as a pancake which is good – it didn’t feel like it, I wasn’t quite at foot-dragging stage but as with Saturday, it would have required more mental stamina than I had to turn around and do it again!

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Well, hello there trainers, it’s been a while! Three weeks to be precise, and damn do I know it! For an assortment of excuses including the weather, travel, hiking, work and general laziness, I haven’t been out in a while! 🙂 This morning I finally found a degree of motivation and thought I’d head over to the Derwent Reservoir and go out over the dam – P and I have walked along to the near end of the dam before, but not along it.

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It’s been a fortnight since my last ‘exercise session’ – excluding Ireland. Last week, between packing for Dublin, ridiculous heat, and a lot of travelling, I got nothing in after my cycle session with the guys on the Monday. Ireland definitely counts as exertion! We walked many miles with heavy bags on in a heatwave. I only had my watch tracking on the actual trail legs – S’s phone tracker included all the faffing about Dublin and general area exploring, and if I remember correctly had us capped at about 50 miles in three days which is most respectable. I got back on the Monday night after a relatively low exertion day around Dublin – we stayed in the hotel as late as possible and then hopped onto a tour bus for two hours before heading to the airport for my flight. I was wrecked when I got back – straight to bed when I got home, and not a huge amount better for work on Tuesday – I was completely useless, couldn’t tell my ass from my elbow! Fortunately it was a quiet day, I slept like a log that night and have been vaguely functional but still feeling too tired to push myself to do much for the whole of last week.

Now however, the weekend has been – P has been working day shifts and I deliberately had him take the car yesterday, for one thing it meant I didn’t have to get up at 6am to drop him off when I desperately wanted to have something vaguely resembling a lie-in (that’s 08:30 for me!) and it also meant I was housebound or confined to the locality within walking distance so couldn’t feel pressured into flinging around doing the shopping or spending the few pennies I have left after Ireland on more frivolous things. I’ve read 2 books and pootled about the house doing the minimum housework to keep things chugging over and I feel so much better for it.

I still haven’t done a run, I’m saving that for tomorrow – this morning was a 04:30 wake-up with P, who had woken up ridiculously early and got straight into the shower so I thought it was time to go and dashed about as I needed the car today (no food in the house!) before realising what a ridiculous time it was. I did however, do a work-out for the first time in 2 months. Putting my trainers on after so long felt like coming back to old friends, so while tired I don’t feel like I’m in the rut I was about 2 months ago. I went back to my old faithful strength conditioning circuit in Women’s Running from November or something and worked through it three times with the 2kg weights. I’ve definitely lost something, the tricep curls and leg-dip things were harder than I remember, but I managed the full reps on all three circuits without having to drop the weight down. If I can keep doing it at least once a week I’ll be back on the 2.5kg and eyeing up the 3kg weights in no time 🙂

P’s on night shift Monday and Tuesday night, so my intention is to go and do a pootle by the river after dropping him off, but I’m waiting until tomorrow to see how far and how fast I feel like going 🙂 Time to get back into this 🙂

I say it every month, but the year is rapidly eluding me – half gone already! If this is how fast a year goes at 26, I’m dreading turning 30 let alone older! I’ll never keep track of things! It’s getting into summer proper now and I must confess the latter end of June I have found it a struggle to get out sometimes with the humidity. I missed the Run England session last week as I was prepping for Dublin, but it was so humid it sounds like most of the guys headed home after half their routes and just walked back struggling with getting their breathing and generally being too hot so it doesn’t sound like I missed a tremendous barrel of laughs!

It has been something of a milestone month for me, I’ve been to one of my ‘bucket list’ Northern races in the Blaydon Race (the other on the list being the Great North Run in September – watch this space, it will be here in no time!), and surviving my first ever half marathon – the Rock ‘n’ Roll Half at Liverpool! I’ve been taking something of a break from events since Liverpool, I did the Newburn River Race with J a few days after, and have been and am event free until the Colour Obstacle Rush with J and my sister on the 17th of July, which I might remember I’m doing a few days before hand when my sister appears on the doorstep!

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The Wicklow Way lodge was amazing – I wanted to steal the sheets, they were so soft and we both slept really well. Breakfast was yummy and they made us a packed lunch too 🙂

After yesterday’s hike being rather tougher than expected, and today’s and Sunday’s looking to be twice as long and twice as high, we opted for showing our flexibility rather than ruining our holiday breaking ourselves and opted for getting two buses to Enniskerry and exploring the waterfall there before trekking the 4km from there to the hostel. That was the plan anyway.

The waterfall is at the back of the Powerscourt estate, which is just outside Enniskerry and both house/gardens and waterfall are signposted from the town, but with no distances. First leg was straight up a hill – not what we were looking for. Carry on following the signs for the waterfall…lots of downhill (dreading the prospect of getting back up to Enniskerry and onwards) and we hit a junction with a distance sign…another 4km to go and starting uphill again. We tried calling a taxi company, but as we weren’t at a landmark or address they couldn’t come out until we hit one, so we started heading for the b&b in the same direction but 2km away. We ended up hitching a lift with a lovely young couple who dropped us off at the entrance to the waterfall park. Having passed the hill to the b&b we would have died making it there with our bags!

It was about 10 mins to the waterfall proper where we stopped to shove our packed lunches in our faces and have a well-deserved rest!

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