I got a 10-miler in on Tuesday at a steady 10 min/miles. One part of it is a long stretch of flat gravel path section that is used by runners, walkers, cyclists, dog walkers and runs along the back of a local racecourse. Anyway, I use it quite regularly and there is one chap who has a small dog who I've seen a few times. This dog isn't dangerous (in fact, it looks a lovely little thing), but it runs very quickly up and down this long path whilst the owner saunters along. It was turning dark, and a cyclist was coming along at what I would have considered a sensible pace and had all the winter gear on. The dog was legging it up towards him and unfortunately the cyclist ran over the dog. There was a lot of yelping but the dog was fine.
I'm getting to the point, but the dog owner absolutely lost it with the cyclist ("If I see you here again I'll throw you over the f'in fence" type of thing). The cyclist had stopped and I jogged up next to the cyclist and didn't say anything, but then the dog owner started having a go at me as well! Something like "And you - you need to slow the f down as well!".
I initially felt a warm burst of pride that he thought I was running too quickly, but I quickly realised the chap was delusional! I just calmly pointed out that it was a shared path and that I saw the whole thing with the cyclist and felt the cyclist was going at a safe pace. The dog owner wasn't happy though!
In all seriousness, over the last 12-15 months since I've been running more regularly, I quite often see altercations between different groups of people. On this occasion though, I thought the cyclist hadn't done anything wrong and the dog owner was very over the top in his reaction.
Hills!!
Wednesday night is the club night that I usually do and there is a choice of sessions to attend. This week was one of my favourite sessions, known as Pitt Hill. It's a hill-repeat session where you run hard up the hill (and also along a flat stretch) and then a long jog recovery. We jogged from the club house and then did one loop as a warm up, and then 5 intervals.
I know these things are as only as tough as you make them, but I always feel like I've had a good work out on these sessions. The instructions are to run hard up the hill and went it levels out keep pushing until a certain point. When it levels out, you're absolutely knackered, your lungs are bursting, your legs feel like jelly and you really just want a little lie down, but it's only another 50m so you dig in. There's always some friendly competition as well which helps, and then there is a long jog recovery (about 3.5mins), before the next effort. The jog recovery for me is very slow, but that means I can attack the next effort which is the point of the session.
The times don't mean very much, but I pressed the lap button and the efforts were quite consistent which I was pleased with, and each effort being about a 1/4 of a mile.
1 1:51.9 0.24
2 1:48.2 0.23
3 1:51.5 0.23
4 1:50.8 0.23
5 1:54.2 0.24
Long runs
I did a 12-miler yesterday, going out at 10min/miles. I often do something like this and the pace is always a close approximation but yesterday's session, according to my Garmin, was precisely 10min/mile over the 12 miles. Little things!
London Marathon
This weekend is the first extra chance I have to get in to next year's London Marathon, following the failure to get in via the public ballot. I am in the club's ballot for a London place, and the ballot takes place at this weekend's Xmas party, so I'm looking forward to that.
Also on Saturday is the last of the "run 8 parkruns in a row for a chance of a London place" promotion. The odds of getting a place via that route are very slim though as they have 2 marathon places, but currently over 4000 people still in with a shout.
I have entered various other competitions (Lucozade, Holiday Inn etc) and this week Timex had a promotion, which I had to give a reason with no more than 100 words as why I wanted the prize, which included Timex's new GPS watch. I wrote:
I am a regular poster to the Runner's World forums and a subscriber to the magazine. The London Marathon and I also have unfinished business as the last time I did it (2010) I crawled around in 5:15, when the course well and truly beat me. Some decent training, together with the Timex Ironman Run Trainer for extra motivation, will hopefully see me do much better. When all my clubmates see my shiny new device and see me knock minutes off of my PB, I’m hopeful that they will all go out and buy the new Timex device too.
100th post on this blog
This happens to be the 100th post on this blog. Looking back, I've waffled a lot, but I'm pleased with keeping the blog going.
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