Finding My Inner Runner

Perspective is important, but it can knock the wind out of your sails sometimes. Last night's run was a fairly gentle 5k involving two laps following a path out to the end of my village, a country path along the perimeter to the other end of the village, and then back to the start. I've done it many times and, it's kind of my "comfort" run when I'm not really feeling it, because it has about half a dozen exit points where if it's not happening I can tell myself "just to the next branch and see how I feel..." It was was an invaluable trick during the early weeks of C25K and I still use it (although I seldom use the exits) from time to time. Anyway, I am aware that there is a fairly gentle, but constant climb out of the village and along the old railway track followed by an equal downhill stretch back to the starting point. On completion, I looked at the elevation profile on the Garmin app on my phone, and was presented with the top chart. ...

So, I did it. One 5.37k lap of Arthur's Seat in 38:29. The 5k bit was 36:17. The conditions were idea, the participants (all 2,500+) we're amazing and the support at the finish from the well wishers and early finishers was brilliant. It was never going to be my fastest time given an ascent of 89m for the first half of the run, but I'm still chuffed to have done it and for the money raised so far. The climb up Queen's Drive to the top road was definitely a shock to the system. I knew it would be tough, but I hadn't appreciated just how tough it would be. Once on the top road, it was fantastic to see the city stretch out before me and the second half of the run was a much easier downhill all the way to the finish line. This was the goal I'd set myself after completing Couch to 5k and I'm so happy to have managed something that I couldn't even have contemplated doing at the start of this year.  If I'm feeling brave, I might try the 10k version...

It's just possible that things are beginning to get out of hand. Back in early March, after having to put the programme on hold for 8 months, I picked up where I'd previously got to, and restarted week 2. My intention had always been to get to running non-stop for 40 minutes (the equivalent of one half of a game of rugby) Tonight, just over 3 months later, I ran non-stop for a full hour and covered 8k... Because of my refereeing, I'd always been fortunate to have a reasonable background level of fitness, but seriously, what is happening to me?

After the cluster-burach that was last week's run where I went off way too fast and bombed out just shy of 2km, this week I managed to keep things together, run much more sensibly, and still achieve a new PB. All in all, a good start to the weekend...

OK, I know the "F" word is strictly verbotten, but there is no other word that can be used to describe the first bit of this morning (and I'm actually thinking of a word much stronger than "failure" here, but I digress). I wasn't really in the right frame of mind but headed off to one of to Meadowmill parkrun anyway, thinking it might help me re-calibrate. Unfortunately, it only managed to make things worse. I basically got everything wrong. I allowed myself to get caught up in the surge of faster runners at the start and the inevitable happened... Yes, so I got PBs for 400m, 1km, ½ mile and 1 mile, so that's kind of great in a way, but I bombed out at just over 1.9km; nothing left in the tank; all gone. The most annoying thing is that I knew I was too fast but it was just one of those ones where, try as hard as I could, I just couldn't reset my pace; no matter no consciously I slowed myself down, unconsciously, I kept speeding back up. I ...

A year ago (or even a couple of months ago if I'm being completely honest) I didn't even know that #GlobalRunningDay was a thing. Now, here I am, having run 5k and being awarded with a very nice badge from Garmin for my efforts. Not only that, in doing so, I knocked another chunk off my 5k PB, bringing it down to 34:20, so that's not too shabby either. I'm now away down to the big smoke with work for a couple of days so next run won't be until Saturday at the earliest, but I'm not going to complain; an extra rest day certainly won't hurt me.

I can't quite believe that it's June already. Today, I decided to indulge in a little parkrun tourism and headed to Meadowmill ; although I suspect it doesn't really count when the run you attend is almost exactly the same distance from your front door as the one that you have arbitrarily decided is your home event, but that's a minor technicality. Both Vogrie and Meadowmill are about 10 minutes drive from my front door; it's simply a matter of choosing to turn left or right when I get to the end of my road.  Today, I turned right... Meadowmill isn't as scenic as Vogrie, but it is flatter (although with two short but fairly sharp climbing sections that have to be done twice on account of it being two laps. My time was a health 33:02, so no complaints on that front and I was the 59 th finisher out of a field of 81, which was also quite reassuring. The coffee and the cake in the cafe afterwards were also very welcome and definitely hit the spot...