Traction control

Wednesday morning was a little less cold than anticipated, but still below freezing and the coldest air temperature I've run in. Having run at 4C in a long sleeved under shirt, T-shirt and some old trackie trousers (I can't bring myself to buy running tights) I was pretty sure I'd need something extra to ward off the 4.5C difference.

I added a windbreak zip-up fleece, bobble hat and upgraded my gloves from some sailing gloves, with the first finger and thumb half open, for thermal gloves. The sailing gloves are intended to allow for the tying of knots and fiddling with little metal pins holding the sheets in place. They are also really good for accurately pressing buttons on a Garmin.

Having loaded up on the layers, I was already overheating as I made my way out the front door, so I had a few moments to cool down slightly - taking in the gloriously clear sky, just starting to lighten, before kicking off.

This run moved me forward again now 3 x 9 minutes with one minute walking between. Again I kept the pace down and followed my MapMyRun planned route. It was pretty slippery out there and in some spots I was only really keeping myself upright and letting momentum carry me forward. Mind you I had plenty of padding if I did go over.

The gloves only lasted the first mile before they came off, and the hat lasted another mile before I just couldn't stand the heat. I was pretty much roasted at the end, so will be replanning my run-wear for next time.

9 minutes felt pretty good, but now 24 hours later I can feel that right ankle tendon complaining again. I've been wondering if Carmen has something similar which has put her out of action for a while.

Not wanting to loose this progress, I'm considering rolling back to 8 minute sections for a while longer, then trying again at 9. Physio help would also be great and I keep promising to get an appointment but can't see where in my diary it will fit until mid February.

Hope all is well with you.

Monday: 2.7 miles, 10:02 pace 27 minutes. 9 run : 1 walk.

Mr Stumble

For the benefit of Mr Stumble

I've been considering over the last few days what benefits my sorry attempts at running have brought me thus far. I was somewhat surprised when I realised that since I started way back in April last year, I haven't had a single "bad head" day related to lack of sleep.

I had recognised a pattern. If I had less than 7 hours kip for more than 2 nights in a row, I'd wake with a bad head which would progress to debilitating migraine by lunchtime, and then ease off in the evening.

The response to this was clear. Go to bed earlier. However, over the past couple of weeks, I've broken this golden rule of sleep at least twice with no ill effects. The conclusion: my lack of any conditioning and fitness were having a much more corrosive effect on my life than I had ever guessed at.

The maths of the benefit are pretty positive. I spend about an hour and a half running each week and gain between 5 and 7 hours each week awake in return. That's a bargain.

Over the last week and a bit, I've maintained my running schedule much better. Monday was my last run at 7 minutes x 3 and went OK. Wednesday I moved up to 8 minutes x 3 which strangely felt a more comfortable distance and time.

Friday nearly didn't happen. I got stranded in London due to the storm-force winds closing the rail network. I had a suit, my PC and a credit card. The credit card got me a room for the night, so I ditched the PC, jacket and tie, and headed out into the West End with a collegue for a good Chinese meal and spur of the moment tickets to Spamalot. Cool.

Having made the best of a bad lot, I still didn't know how I was going to get my Friday run in. Thankfully, despite chaos at Euston station, I managed to get a train home and arrived by lunchtime. So first job was pounding pavements which was great relief from the previous 24 hours.

Monday 22nd was much colder. I'm starting to increase the clothing layers now and I expect it to be well sub-zero centigrade tomorrow morning, probably -2C or lower. I'll be watching my step!

Last 4 runs :

Monday 2.1 miles, 21 minutes @7:1 run:walk 9:59 pace 11C
Wednesday 2.42 miles, 24 minutes @8:1 run:walk 9:55 pace 13C
Friday 2.46 miles, 24 minutes @8:1 run:walk 9:46 pace 11C
Monday 2.4 miles, 24 minutes @8:1 run:walk 10:01 pace 4C (trouble crossing a road!)

Phil, congratulations on your marathon finish. Just brilliant!.

Mr Stumble.

Good intentions.

It's been one of those weeks of good intentions but poor results. Following my run on Friday 5th, the tendons in my right ankle felt sore through the weekend. I knew I was off to London very early on Monday, so wanted to run on Sunday evening, but when it came to it, I was worried about not giving it enough rest time.

So Monday turned into a long day - 5 hours of travel, 7 hours of work and wasted on my return. Tuesday, however, was an altogether different kettle of fish and I was working from home. I didn't manage to get up early enough to run first thing, so decided to brave the oncoming forecast rain at lunchtime. Happily, this rain turned up the moment I stepped back in through the door, having completed another 7run:1walk x3. This was done purposefully at a lower pace, just under 10 minute/mile pace, as although I don't find the running difficult on the cardio/energy/breathing side, the slower pace is far better at damage limitation to my tendons.

This meant that my next scheduled run would be Thursday, giving myself a day recovery. However, Thursday was another day in London, this time starting even earlier. So no time to run in the morning and, as we do most Thursday evenings, we had a baby sitter booked for an evening out (seeing Pan's Labyrinth at the local Arts cinema - very good!) so no time then either. Bah.

The weeks second run occurred 2 days late, on Friday morning, bright and early-ish. Again, this was a slower paced run, the same as Tuesday and all fine.

This then left me with a problem. To fit in a 3rd run would mean going out on consecutive days, Friday and Saturday, or Sunday and Monday. My next week diary is again shot through with 2 trips to London on Tuesday and Thursday, leaving me Mon, Weds and Fri as convenient days to run. I don't want to jeopardise Monday by running Sunday and then needing a rest day for my ankle, but then I do want to get my 3 runs in for this week.

So, I might write this week off as "underachieved" (there's nothing like emotive language to spur you on to improve) and stick to a regular schedule next week. I'm also going to try to keep my future London meetings to Tuesdays and Thursdays only - if I have any choice in the matter!

Mr Stumble

The uphill struggle.

A late post for a run last Friday. This was a middle of the day run, it had dried up nicely and as I was working at home on nothing in particular, the luxury of an hour's break for a run, shower and lunch was welcome.

Since the previous run on Wednesday, I'd had some moderate tendon soreness again in my right foot, but this had all but gone by Friday morning, so I went ahead with another 7run:1walk x 3.

The route I'm now using gives me a short light downhill, followed by a steady slight uphill incline for a half mile, then a substantial flat-run along a busy main road before turning downhill. It finishes with a bit of uphill. RunningAhead tells me that the biggest elevation changes are 50ft up and 80ft down, which doesn't seem much over half mile distances and are purposefully much less than in my original 3 mile course.

However, the extra slight ankle stretch going uphill is still causing me problems. Since Friday, my right ankle has continued to be sore through the weekend, and a long trip down to London today gave me an additional excuse not to run today to give it a little more time to settle down. The plan is to run tomorrow (Tuesday) early - I've seen the weather predictions and don't want to be out after 11am - and see how it goes. I might even drop back to 6:1 for a while, to see if I can maintain something while my ankles try to build some strength and I can push on up again.

Of course, Christmas feeding hasn't helped as, once again, I find I am that little bit heavier. This in turn loads my ankle up and isn't helping. I get the feeling I have the ankles of someone 2 stones lighter. So, I'm going to see what I can do to reduce my weight through being more careful about what I eat. I don't want to use the D word. I'm just going to eat less and better, that's all.

Friday: 2.21Miles, 21 minutes running @ 7:1 run:walk. 9:31 pace

Mr Stumble.

How I did in '06.

After spotting Phil's snazzy diagrams and run-metrics, I thought I'd take a look at RunningAhead myself and see what it could do for me. As it turns out, quite a lot. My Garmin does not have the data upload facility - it's the cheapo one - but manual data-upload really only takes about 60 seconds of clicking and typing, so it's not really a problem, especially if you do it regularly.

Of course, having found it, I then hacked in all of my Garmin recorded runs from last year too. This told me that I'd run a grand total of 32 times last year (probably more like 40 with pre-teched-up runs taken into account) and racked up just over 69 miles. If nothing else, this is 69 miles more than I ran in 2005. However, I also note it's under a weeks mileage for Thomas at the moment, so I have a clear perspective on this one.

It's return-to-school day here in Blighty, at least for two of the three kids, so schedules were as ever mucked about, especially as we've all become so used to staying up late and sleeping in late. My plans to run this morning went out the window, so I've run this evening instead. I can't really leave it later than 8:30 to run, as I know the weight of prevarication increases exponentially thereafter and I'd end up eating my way out of a tub of pistachio nuts for the remainder of the evening.

However, 2 hours is still a bit short for digestion, so I ate reasonably lightly, knowing a Christmas Pudding, which had survived this long because of us all being ill, would be a delicious high-carb reward on my return.

Today, I moved up to 7 minutes x 3. RunningAhead helped me plan a slightly longer route and I headed out into a relatively warm (9C) blustery, drizzly, dark evening. Aside from a calf twinge at the start of the second 7 minutes, all went fine. I even managed to tidy away some stray bin-lids which were blowing down the road - good deed for the day. Still some slight tendon strain in the right ankle after the run, but I expect that will subside before Friday.

2.18 miles, 21 minutes running at 7:1, ave 9:39 pace.

Back to work tomorrow. Bah!

Mr Stumble.

Spritely, for the New Year.

Staggered out of the house this morning at about 9:30. It's not that I had a bad head from revelry, I'd just been daft enough to stay up after the Big Ben bongs to watch Amnesty's Secret Policeman's Ball and not managed to unstick myself from the sofa. All those nuts, dates and Black forest gateaux probably didn't help either.

The particular 20 minutes I selected turned out to be the best, sunniest part of the day. I spent half the run squinting into the Sun which all the incline parts of the loop point at and the other half at the neat purple blotch in the middle of my vision.

Mustn't grumble though as it felt fresh and new, and nothing like the miserable Thomas Hardy poem about New Year I studied decades ago, but still comes back to me on New Year's day.

I found this morning I was a bit more spritely than anticipated, and had my first 6 minutes at a 9:10 pace. This meant I would run out of road if I didn't alter the route - well actually I'd have to run past my house for a few hundred yards and walk back - so I added the Woodlands Walk back in - it tacks a few hundred yards on in going across, running parallel to the road and then coming back again. And it's far more pleasant than the main road.

I followed on with the next two 6 minutes at 9:23 and 9:20 giving me a total run of:

1.94 miles, 18 minutes running at 6:1, 9:18 pace.

All remains well with foot and ankle, so on Wednesday I'll move to 7:1 x 3, and alter the course again.

At the moment, this new approach seems to be working, so I might start thinking about a 5K target for March soon.

All the best to you.

Mr Stumble.