OK I’m really properly running again. Three runs in three days and I’m feeling much better. But is running the answer, as I keep saying, or is it just a welcome distraction? Am I deeply, seriously happy again, or am I just sincerely deluding myself? To be honest, I don’t care that much. My beer tastes so much better now, and that’s very important.
In a vaguely related aside, let me say I agreed with much (if not all) of what Marcus Brigstocke said in glaconman’s BBC pointer, and today’s post-run beer made me wonder if organised religion wouldn’t benefit from a few post-hard-run beers too. In fact I know it would.
Today’s run was a gentle 5km hill climb (in as much as any hill climb can be said to be “gentle” – perhaps “slow” is a better description) done pretty comfortably I’m pleased to say, although not without an acute awareness of just how much work there is ahead of me.
But I also know it’s do-able. That’s a great feeling!
Track du jour was a close-run thing. I wanted to give it to Abba’s Waterloo (seriously, try running to it, it’s great), and Billy Idol’s White Wedding was right up there, if only because of his constant exhortations that “it’s a nice day to start again”, but in the end I gave the gong to the Dead Kennedy’s Holiday in Cambodia, for no other reason than I really, really like it.
andy Wrote:I put it on my list of things to do -- try to extract it somehow and make an MP3 of it. I'll see if I can get it done while the episode is still up there. Need to investigate how to do it.
Andy, for future reference: you can use free software such as Freecorder or Audacity to record streaming audio.
Mid Life Crisis Man Wrote:A rough but entirely uphill 5km kicked off my Point to Pinnacle campaign this morning. For the moment I'm ignoring speed and time and concentrating instead on just covering some territory with an emphasis on hills. If I'm to tackle this mountain in November I have to get times and pace out of my head and fully focus on altitude, working up to a half marathon at an average 6% gradient.
Good to hear you're back in town MLCM.
Liked the bit about rockabilly by the way.
So now the training starts .
I'm toying with the idea of doing more on the bike this year. I'm convinced that cycling up big hills does loads to help you run up them later on. Plus Glaconman's stuff on Mont Ventoux has definitley... inspired me.
Bierzo Baggie Wrote:I'm toying with the idea of doing more on the bike this year. I'm convinced that cycling up big hills does loads to help you run up them later on.
No doubt about that BB. Cycling apparently better utilises the quads giving you a more efficient and slightly stronger running style, especially on the hills. It also does a lot to help prevent injuries, particular in the knees. One of the team of medical specialists that I keep in the lap of luxury strongly recommends cycling for that reason. I'd like to jump on a bike, but intensely dislike sharing the road with traffic, having had one accident and several near-misses in the past.
I've recently adopted the gym bike for warm-downs. I too was told that 10 to 20 minutes at the end of a session on the bike would do my quads the world of good. It's too soon to tell really but I'm sticking with it. It's marginally more tolerable than the treadie.
The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph
Did a short, 30-minute speed session today, just to gauge where I'm at and what I need to do from here. It's a bit tricky, because there aren't too many training schedules out there designed to cater for a half marathon mountain climb, so I'm having to make it up as I go along somewhat. The race organisers' official training program seems to be a rather simplistic "do lots of hill work", which is of course rather open to interpretation.
Anyway, today's brief fast stuff wasn't too bad, but neither was it brilliant. I did a 2.3km sprint session (2.3k being the distance of one of my old training runs around the block), in 12:50, which by recent standards isn't too bad, but it's way behind my PB of 10:46, set some three and a half years ago.
I also did some intervals, about which I shall say nothing more.
So, more speed work needed. Pretty essential really, because my hill work is very slow. I'm not sure how it works physiologically, but it does all seem to come together on race day somehow.
Actually, I've been thinking about this "why is race day often so much faster than your very best training day" question quite a bit lately. It's had me totally stumped. Oddly enough though, I've been reading Alan Bennett's fat tome "Writing Home", and whilst he certainly isn't a runner, he wrote something that I thought was relevant:
[INDENT]
[INDENT][INDENT]The majority of people perform well in a crisis or when the spotlight is on them (ask any actor) - it's on the Sunday afternoons of this life when nobody is looking that the spirit falters". [/INDENT][/INDENT]
[/INDENT]
Bennett is also a great fan of Kafka, and so writes a lot of stuff about cockroaches and bank tellers, but he is a great student of human behaviour, and am sure he'd have some interesting stuff to say about the habits of we runners. But I think he'd say the wonder of long distance running wasn't so much the "triumph of human spirit over suffering" but more about the indignity of not performing in front of a crowd. Or something like that.
But I prefer the triumph of human spirit stuff. Bugger reality, let's just have some fun with it.
I don't know what it's like in your part of the world, but over here we are awash in Italian-style cafes and restaurants with names such as Ti Amo, Cafe Paesano and (God forbid) The Godfather Restaurant and Pizzeria. Some of these are superb, most are adequate, and a few are simply awful. Over the years I have developed a standard test for the worth or otherwise of a supposed Italian eatery: I order a simple bruschetta on the basis that it is a simple dish that is either divine or terribly ordinary, and a fantastic litmus test for purveyors of Italian fare.
My own bruschetta recipe is hard to beat, and ridiculously easy - fresh tomatoes (good stuff, not the rubbish from a hot house somewhere), finely diced (but not pulped) and mixed with fresh, chopped basil, the best extra virgin olive oil and an excellent balsamic vinegar. The base can be a good pizza dough or toasted rye, or whatever you like really, but the key is a liberal rubbing of fresh garlic (and I don't mean the dull, vulgar Chinese variety) into the base before the tomato topping is applied. If you can let the tomato/basil/olive oil/balsamic mix sit for up to 24 hours before use, so much the better, but freshly made is OK too if there is no choice.
A cheap, nasty cafe will serve up some God-forsaken tomato-paste glup on a basic pizza base with maybe a token smattering of chopped basil. While this may be edible, it mostly signals the fact that you should eat your bruschetta, drink your cappuchino and move on elsewhere. The recipe is simple, but the freshness and quality of the ingredients is critical. This is why it makes a good test.
I mention this because it is good training food for runners. I'm not sure how true this is exactly, but whenever I run, I generally crave a good bruschetta in the hours immediately after a tough session, and I nearly always have the ingredients handy, and so it is an easy craving to satisfy. Pretty darn healthy too, I think. Only problem is that it doesn't sit very well with beer. The sharpness of the balsamic and the acid of the tomato make a decent Chianti or even a Rhone or Rhone-style red a much better and safer bet. No problem there. You can feel the antioxidants and phyto-nutrients gurgling with delight inside you afterwards.
Anyway I mention this only because today was supposed to be a rest day, but as it was such a pleasant day (I swear the first hints of spring are in the air down here) I took myself off to the beach, not just any beach, but one I remember from my childhood but hadn't visited in about 30 years or so. A lovely beach, (see photo below) but rather steep and with very soft, deep sand. The result of which was that instead of a gentle, pleasant 4km stroll up and down the beach, it was quite a respectable work-out, with tired and sore hamstrings and lower back soreness afterwards. And not to mention a decent sweat with it.
Which left me with a hankering for the aforementioned bruschetta. Perhaps coincidentally with the beach-of-my-childhood visit, I also watched I movie I hadn't seen since I was a lad - John Schlesinger's Marathon Man with Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier. An excellent movie, but really having very little to do with running. In fact, I'm struggling to work out what the running motif had to do with the movie at all. Perhaps someone here can put me straight on that point. Anyway a good flick.
So no deep and meaningfuls in this post, just a good day at the beach, an excellent bruschetta and a brill movie.
I'm glad you posted a foodie note MLCMan.
I make Bruschetta on occasion, and concur with much of what you have to say about the quality of tomato used. I like to add red onion to my topping.
On the base preparation I have a variation for you.
Try lightly toasting some sectioned french bread on a griddle. Take a clove of garlic, slice it open and press the bulb until garlic 'weeps' from the cut. With a sharp knife make several slashes in the toasted bread then rub in the weeping garlic. It's amazing how much zing you can get into your bruschetta this way.
On Marathon Man, it's Hoffman's regular runs around the park that enable him to escape on foot during the chase scene, and which lead him to come to know the pump station featured in the climactic scene (its been a while since I saw the movie I'm afraid). This is a rather literal explanation of the title and I agree it seems a peripheral reference given the central premise, but it's still a great watch for all that.
Is it safe?
I hate dentists.
The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph
One of those bad ones. No form, no rhythm, everything hurting. Had to drink half a bottle of red and watch two episodes of Top Gear afterwards to recover. But in hindsight, the time wasn't too bad for a 5km hill climb, and I've recovered well so now I feel good about it. Or maybe my famous green lentil and chick pea curry had something to do with that. It's good. If you want to lose weight, you could do much worse than an MLC Man curry. It works. Tasty, too. Mmmm.
Track du jour? Easy. In honour of his recent tour down here, it has to be Alice Cooper's Poison. Not that it helped me on my run much. But a great song, and a worthy winner. As usual, you can collect your prize in person Mr Cooper.
Veering from the fascinating subject of bruschetta (no sarcasm, honest -- I must try making some), and onto wine.. What do you know of Jacob's Creek Steingarten?
I'd always thought of JC as just cheapie supermarket shelf-fillers, but I've recently read a review of their Steingarten Riesling which the writer was drooling over. Claimed that the 2005 will be every bit as good as top German gear given some cellaring. At around £13 a bot, it isn't dirt cheap, but according to the writer it's usually much pricier than this.
Know anything about it?
El Gordo
Great things are done when men and mountains meet.
Andy Wrote:Veering from the fascinating subject of bruschetta (no sarcasm, honest -- I must try making some), and onto wine.. What do you know of Jacob's Creek Steingarten?
I'd always thought of JC as just cheapie supermarket shelf-fillers, but I've recently read a review of their Steingarten Riesling which the writer was drooling over. Claimed that the 2005 will be every bit as good as top German gear given some cellaring. At around £13 a bot, it isn't dirt cheap, but according to the writer it's usually much pricier than this.
Know anything about it?
I drink a lot of Clare Valley/Watervale riesling, which the Barossa-made Steingarten is similar to (but which probably has a lot of Watervale fruit in it anyway). Whilst the Steingarten may be arguably a better wine technically, I'd suggest the Clare/Watervale rieslings are similar, but far more interesting and literally about half the price.
You won't be disappointed with a Steingarten if you can forget how much you paid for it, but you will be far more impressed with a good Clare riesling when you factor in the cost.
Clare Valley riesling is astonishingly good value. Especially so at the moment when riesling is not particularly trendy here. My cellar is full of it. Don't expect it to age quickly however. It's nearly all bottled under Stelvin screwcaps now, and doesn't even begin to age for 15 years+. You have to either like it young and fresh or be very, very patient.
Oh, and price-wise, it retails for about A$30 here, so £13 sounds about right. No more though.
July Hibernation
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![[Image: Clifton%20Beach.jpg]](http://www.sandarac.com.au/misc/Clifton%20Beach.jpg)
