August lashes out in volcanic fury

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

Unless your arse is anything like Jennifer Ennis's - and trust me, it's pretty damned far from that - yes.
Most 'fun' runners have flabby glutes. That's how we roll. Or wobble. Sadly very few remedies are much fun, though I did wonder if being paddled by a tall lady wrapped in leather might help. I'll let you know.

Sorry, you lost me at Jennifer Ennis's arse. 

Dare I say it? Damn it, I will. A good cure for flabby arse is... cycling. 

[Charliecat5]

Earlier this week, Mr Big, the Capo Di Tutti Capi of our local running scene put out a call inviting the Soldato to attend a parkrun this weekend.  I don’t like parkruns (he says having only done one) but I put my hand up as I knew it would do me good.   Plus I like his company, and that of the Capo Bastone who also put his hand up (aka BGG).  I also like cake. 

However, as the week went on, I realised that the parkrun wasn’t going to fit into my schedule.  The main reason being that on Sunday I plan to break the 15 mile barrier.  This is a big physical and psychological barrier for me.  It sounds almost glib amongst the giants of running who reside on this forum, but the furthest I have run is 14 miles… the 15 sits there like an impenetrable mountain, yet I know if I can break this, then the JS20 is mine for the taking.

So having given my apologies to Mr Big  I decided to head out yesterday evening for some hill reps.  Clearly, I need to work on firming up my flabby arse… a flabby arse I didn’t even realise I had until running with BGG last Monday. 

As the weeks pass, I am slowly becoming fitter, which means that the little old hill just up the road doesn’t really cut the mustard now in terms of hill reps… so I headed to the bottom of the Downs at Kingston Ridge (the middle bit of the W as some of you know it as).  I ran first up the eastern side and then down… then up the steep western side and down… before running back up the eastern side again… before heading home.  I ran 5.5 miles and climbed 340 metres.

My arse feels better already.  

   

[Charliecat5]

Well that was bloody awful.

2 miles in, gawking towards the top of Caburn, I knew I wasn’t going to make 15 miles today.  And once that thought had crossed my mind, I definitely knew I wasn't going to make 15 miles today.

I lacked energy, my legs ached, my stomach hurt and my mind really wasn’t with it.  Even the downhills were hard work. So just short of 9 miles I sent up a flare and called for a lift home.  It just wasn’t worth persevering with such an awful run.

The only positives I can take, is that: a) It was 9 miles; b) I managed 370 metres of elevation; c) I didn’t stop on the up hills.   However, my timing chart looks like a set of broken teeth… far too many stops, pauses and lulls of despair.  Less booze and a better diet would go a long way to improve matters.   

I am now falling behind my JS20 schedule which is a worry as I am only 7 weeks away.   Still, tomorrow is another day.

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

Read the book and rejoice in the fact that you aren't as bad as I am/was/will be.

We all have bad days... suck it up.

[Sweder]

Don't take this the wrong way but ... This is good news. 
The Runner's Black Dog is a mangy cur. These ugly bastards come at us out of the hillside without much warning. Usually, the inverse is true. You wake up thinking there's no way you can run and end up having a decent go. But when that dark mood sucks the life out of your limbs there's nowhere to go but homeward to think again.

You fought well before pulling up, a sensible move when things go tits up. Nine miles when you're not feeling it is a bloody good effort.

[Charliecat5]

Don't take this the wrong way but ... This is good news. 
The Runner's Black Dog is a mangy cur. These ugly bastards come at us out of the hillside without much warning. Usually, the inverse is true. You wake up thinking there's no way you can run and end up having a decent go. But when that dark mood sucks the life out of your limbs there's nowhere to go but homeward to think again.

You fought well before pulling up, a sensible move when things go tits up. Nine miles when you're not feeling it is a bloody good effort.

Thanks both for your encouraging words.  I am actually quite sanguine about matters.   I realise these days that not every run is going to be great and that sometimes I will be knocked sideways by matters that I will never understand.  I made the right decision to pull the pin on this one and head home.  It just wasn’t working and although I could have turned north at Southease and wound it in along the river, it wouldn’t have been pretty.   So best to ‘suck it up’, accept it for what it is, go to the pub for lunch and save it for another day.

BTW I’ve now reached 2007 in The Running Diaries.  This is quite a salient chapter for me as I am currently 45 and am able to sympathise with much of your challenges, anguish and successes.  I have noticed certain repetitiveness with the prose though… I have wondered at times during the first 113 pages, whether this is a running diary or a chronicle of your 'midlife' beer years.  Either way, I approve.

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

BTW I’ve now reached 2007 in The Running Diaries.  This is quite a salient chapter for me as I am currently 45 and am able to sympathise with much of your challenges, anguish and successes.  I have noticed certain repetitiveness with the prose though… I have wondered at times during the first 113 pages, whether this is a running diary or a chronicle of your 'midlife' beer years.  Either way, I approve.

Quite seriously, the final published version has a great many references to beer edited out after the publisher stated that the first 100 pages had over 130 mentions of beer and that this perhaps distracted slightly from the principal theme of running..?

Maybe I should publish the 'black label' edition which is in fact much more about the grog?

[Charliecat5]

The training has gone off the rails somewhat in recent days.  An aborted run at the weekend has been followed by a stubborn three miler last night thought the beautiful Lake District countryside.  It was nice but achieved little other than clearing out the nasal passages (and boy did it clear those out).  Where does this leave me is the question.

I’m not counting (due mainly to the self-induced fog of recent weeks) but the last 4 (ish) weeks have been incredibly boozy and somewhat rocking in terms of the carb loading.  It’s not all been bad… in fact it has been very good, and I have nailed a few good runs in the process as well, but if I am going to run the JS20 I need to get my house in order… and sadly that means a better diet… and… I can’t believe I’m going to say this… reducing the amount of beer I’m drinking.  I didn’t say ‘no beer’… just less beer… quite a bit less.

So having made this resolve I receive a text from Mrs CC5 saying that a very splendid friend of mine has dropped off a late birthday present, in the form of a few bottles on his way back from Belgium and that we have friends (boozy friends) coming round for tea on Sunday.  Oh yes, I am also going to the rugby on Saturday – and rugby, as we know, involves beers – it’s the law.

 Perhaps we get serious about the running after the weekend.  Eek.
 
 

[Sweder]

Two of my favourite and coincidentally 'best' races were built on beer. Paris 2006 and Connemara, the latter set up by a tour of Dublin pubs with SP, EG, Antonio and Suzie. Beer is not the enemy. Lack of mileage is the only danger, and I can see you sorting that out nicely in the next week or two. You've built a solid platform and, trust me, you're traveling well in that familiar terrain. The JS20 will hold no surprises for a man of your calibre.

[Charliecat5]

Life seems to be conspiring against me.  I fear I have a slight infection in my sinuses … I say ‘fear’ because this is a self-diagnosis.   It is not that bad, but just enough to knock my pace a little and to force more stops (mainly to clear the nasal passages) than I would usually take.    I also have a sore foot, right on the top.  I put this down to twisting my ankle last weekend, but I am not completely convinced.  Anyway, like the sinuses, it is not that bad… I will ‘suck it up’ until my foot falls off, then I may have to take it a little more seriously.  Lastly, my workload is reaching warp speed.  This always presents a dilemma…  more work means more income… but more work also means more pressure and less time to do the things that I can spend more income doing.

The upshot of all this moaning is that another weekend has gone by and I haven’t done a long run.  I did a short one early Saturday morning, 6.5 miles to Blackcap and back… running right past BGG’s door… but it was slow and hard going.  But worse than all the above diatribe… is that I’ve realised I’m at risk of not enjoying it.  Running is becoming a chore.  The battle to constantly improve is becoming stressful.  Which begs the age old question (and one that MLCMM asks himself on a regular basis in his excellent diaries): WHY DO I GO RUNNING?

For me the answer is actually quite easy.  I run because I love that feeling of self-propelled motion in the hills.  I love the feeling when you reach the top of a long hard climb… I love running along the ridges… I love flying down the hills slightly out of control.  I think back to the runs I have enjoyed most and they have been those run in horrendous weather conditions, those when I have discovered, by design or by accident, new routes and new bits of the South Downs… those shared with friends.  I won’t forget for a long-time a recent run when BGG and I found ourselves flying down Itford Hill in the rain, oblivious of the world around us… well until we discovered our shorts were foaming.

This for me is what running is about and what provides my motivation.  I am lucky to be able to run in a beautiful part of the world; I literally have the South Downs on my doorstep.  So why do I want to improve?  It is not to achieve personal bests… or to beat the next man over the finish line… I want to improve so I can run further… so I can run the fells in the Lake District… so I can run the mountains in the Alps.  That’s why I push my boundaries… so I can unlock the doors of more experiences… explore new places, just me, my feet and my friends.  Running for the sake of running… running free.

So with the South Downs on my doorstep and a plethora of good running mates scattered around the town, why am I getting stressed?  This last week, between meetings and spending a lot of time strapped to a thundering Virgin (*sniggers*), I have been reading quite a lot about the motivation of running and eventually have reach some kind of conclusion… but it’s not a conclusion that’s going to be easy to bear.   The root cause of my running stress is my lovely Garmin.  I love my watch… it tells me exactly how I am performing; my distance, my pace, the route, elevation, splits… and it all downloads when I get home so I can pour over the stats.  Sadly, it also lets me assess my performance in real time.  If I haven’t run faster and farther than the day before I start to agonise… I start to over compensate, I don’t listen to my body and it all goes Pete Tong. 

So I have reached a conclusion, and actually the answer is really easy… but the very thought strikes terror through my soul.  I can’t possibly run without my watch… I would rather run naked.  Since I started this two footed adventure I have always had some form of technology recording my every step.  Nope, it is not going to work.  

I tried on Saturday morning… it should have been an easy one up to Blackcap and home; easy because I know the distance, I know the route and I could check the kitchen clock out and in.  But no, as I went out the door the watch had found itself on my wrist.  I did reach a compromise by switching off the pace and only having time and distance illuminated on the screen.  But (and I guess you have got there a lot quicker than I did) that is all the data you need to calculate pace; and yes, a mile into the run I was struggling and starting to fret that my pace had eased up above 10min/mi.

I’m a junkie… addicted… but they say the first step is being able to admit you’re addicted.  “My name is CharlieCat and I am addicted to my Garmin”.

But my next run I AM GOING TO GO OUT WITHOUT IT.  I AM.  TRUST ME.  IT’S TIME TO GO COLD TURKEY.

Then without the data, without the stress, I can start enjoying my running again.   Will it make me a lazy runner? How will I be able to measure progress?  Will it actually make any difference?  The answer at the moment is that I don’t know.  But I sense that by leaving the data behind I will become more attuned to my body which in turn will make me a better runner but more importantly, a happier runner. I am not saying that I will always leave it at home… there will be times when it will be sensible to take it… but for the home runs I’m going to give it a go.

All I have to do now is avoid the temptation and battle the withdrawal symptoms.

Wish me luck. 
 
   

[Sweder]

Actually, it really doesn't matter. I've been through all this. Once you break the shackles it's plain sailing. What starts out as a gentle jog around a known circuit can translate into a PB, just so long as you don't care too much. Run for the love of it, for the thrill alone, and you will improve your state of mind and your physical endurance. Change your route mid-run. Cut a run short - go on, I dare you - simply so you can chuck in a hell-for-leather, eyeballs-out sprint where one WASN'T PLANNED. Liberating. Head out to Blackcap without knowing if you'll turn left along the Moyleman, right down the chalk pits or straight on to Ditchling - or even turn around and run home - until you get there.

Did you ever read the Boff Whalley book? Or Running Free by Richard Askwith?
These are the books you need now.