To the pylon!...but not beyond

I was half expecting some work to come in today. But it didn't, which meant I could adopt Plan B for the day. So, after a couple of hours serious gardening (i.e. digging out firmly entrenched giant grasses, manipulating boulders and shifting flagstones. More building than gardening really.) in the beautiful sunshine and cool gale that we had this morning, I just had time for an hour's run before Mags and I visited the Edward Lear Landscapes exhibition at Grasmere.
So I headed for East along the Dales Way, which is rapidly becoming my 'default' run if you like. It's seriously undulating without being a soul-destroying grind at any point, and you get great views of the Howgills. Also, there is a whopping great pylon just beneath the high point of the run. And it took me 30.10s to reach it, so it was the perfect 'touch the pylon and turn for home' point.
It was a cracking run. I've been hitting the pool and the gym a bit recently, and I think my leg and core strength has increased. It felt very relaxed as a run, even though my average heart rate was about 80% of max, so I must have been working reasonably hard. So a good smileyrating I think...

Smiley rating 8.5/10

Skye Larks in pictures

I've just discovered how to get piccies on my blog! So, at the risk of boring you all senseless, here are some holiday snaps...

The white speck is a beautiful house on the way between Elgol and Loch Coruisk in Skye. Bet they don't get pizzas delivered! They must have one of the best views in Britain; out to sea to the island of Soay.

Tthis is the boat from which it was taken. The 'Misty Isle'. She was built in 1966 in Mevagissey in Cornwall and spent a lot of her life ferrying passengers to and from Brownsea Island in Poole Harbour before the current owners bought her to Skye.

You've heard of salt-marsh lamb. This is salt-marsh beef! At Elgol, the cattle wandered the beach contentedly munching the seaweed (if you look really closely, you can see the stipe of a bit of Laminaria sticking out of this one's mouth). And if it all gets too salty, they just wander up the beach to where a stream flows into the harbour and drink their fill.

Enough for now. I'm just getting used to the technology.

Skye larks

I defy anyone to have had a more scenically beautiful run than I last Saturday. A simple, stress-free 35 minute trot out from our fabulous B&B (Coruisk House - highly recommended) at Elgol in south west Skye.
It was a stunning summer's evening at the end of what a friend called a 'blue day' - when the sky stays that happiest of blues all day long, the sea is the colour of a travel brochure and the distant hills are a soft purple. The road, single-track with passing spaces, undulated gently but persistently to give me a good work out; the sun was still strong and warm on (horror of horrors) my white, knotted legs and the air had that refreshing chill breath of oncoming autumn.
To top it all, the landscape (which, to be fair, is largely bog) mixed the rich gold of the dying bracken with the pink of the heather, the vivid green of the late season grass and endless shades of browns, greys, pinks and yellows of the lichen-covered rock.
We had a fantastic week with great seafood and pleasing wines but curiously no whisky - until we got home!
So now it's back to work, back to training and back to working on the motivation as the darkness creeps in. Now, where's me headtorch!

Smiley rating 10/10

Of bogs and drizzle.

I'm sitting here wearing a T shirt more proudly than any other (apart from my 1st MV50 triathlon I did for my 50th birthday, obviously. Except it's a lousy T shirt for such an event). I did the Puma Lakeland Trail Derwentwater race today - 8.96 miles, 2,060 feet of ascent, through knee-deep bog in parts - in 1.25.58.
This was an average of 09.35min miles which, though not fast by any sort of keen runner standards, is as fast as I've ever gone over such terrain. So I'm smugly chuffed.
It's not as if the build-up was carefully planned and spread-sheeted (runningbear, I need your help on this. Do you run clinics for the Excelphobic?). I ran last Sunday with brother-in-law Pete, cycled to and from Wilf's Cafe to meet Mags for lunch on Tuesday, did a 'mini' triathlon (swim/bike/weights) in the gym on Wednesday night and bugger all else except test champagne (long story) and eat too much. But it all came together in the drizzle near Keswick this afternoon. At one point I saw that I was running a 7.01 minute mile and the Garmin shows my fastest was 04.54. God knows where that was. I think it's an anomaly.
Curiously, I woke up this morning thinking it would be OK. A sort of deep, vague feeling that it was going to go OK. Yes, I still had all the usual "I hate events: Too many people. Too much stress. I need the toilet - again" thoughts, but once the thing got started, it was fine. Maybe I was just well rested. Anyhow, a big thank you to Mags and niece Helen for driving me around and braving the conditions and I'm truly sorry I didn't see you as you shouted encouragment at the end, to the organisers for a cracking event, to the other runners with whom I shared a shivering fit at the start line (why did it take so long to get us started??) and the girl who kindly rescued my cap as it blew off in a squall coming down towards Latrigg.
Next week's training will be long windswept walks around Skye as we're on holiday. Hooray! . I'm going to takesome running shoes as well. I fancy some pre-breakfast trots if the weather's not too awful.

Smile rating 9/10

It's the Wowgills

Well hello again. I hope you're all enjoying your running.

Much to report from the Hayfella camp, so if you're in a hurry, here are the edited highlights: Whoopee, new camera! Good 5 mile blast in London. Dales Way jaunt with unexpectedly great view of the Howgills.

For those kindly taking the time to read further:
It was my birthday recently. And my utterly brilliant wife bought me a digital camera to replace the one I so foolishly lost earlier in the year. I'm over the moon! It's a Nikon Coolpix. It's tiny, so I can take it in a (secure this time) bumbag on my trots out and , once I've cracked how to upload shots onto this blog, I can make it more pretty. Won't that be lovely.

On the running front, things are picking up again after my recent hiatus which started with an Achille/calf tweak and continued with a spell of working a lot and an attack of 'I can't be a***ed to get out as often as I should'. Nonetheless, last week in London I did another 5 miler along Regents Canal - only 4 minutes quicker this time, which was great in that 'I don't know if I can keep this pace up' way that leaves you buzzing at the end of it.
Yesterday, some of the family came to visit and we did a nice lazy 10 mile walk to Windermere, westwards along the Dales Way, and got the train back. This morning my brother-in-law and I went out for a lovely exploratory run eastwards along the Dales Way. This was a great, if extremely boggy, run with plenty of up and down, done at a positively leisurely pace* but one that felt fairly even. The highlight was cresting a ridge and being rewarded with stunning view of the Howgill Fells in the misty sunshine. I like the Howgills; I like their rounded massiveness that's so different to the more jagged outline of the Lakeland Fells, even if they are just t'other side of the M6.
My plan is to continue pushing eastwards along the Dales Way as I gradually lengthen my training runs. It won't take long before I'll be running to the M6 and back as my long run, which sounds pretty good as a plan to me.

This week coming I'm hoping to do a speed/interval session earlyish in the week, and then a mid length run towards the end, because I have the Lakeland Trail race at Derwentwater next Sunday. I've not done this event before, so don't know the course, but am looking forward to it.

*12.55 min/mile. Very slow but, in a book I'm reading at the moment I came across this: "We tend to do our slow runs too fast, and out fast runs too slow". This struck a chord, so I'm going to redress the balance in my own running to see what difference it makes.

Smile rating 7/10 (the 5 miler) 8.5/10 (the Wowgills)

Of unexpected marinas

Bit of a belated blog, this. On my London jaunt last week a couple of guys in the agency I was working in took me on a fantastic 5 miler along Regent's Canal. This was a great surprise. We were running along a canal path, past some very trendy apartments, watching swans and ducks. Then, before we knew it we were in the middle of Camden Market all a-heave with people.
And did you know there's a place in the heart of North London called 'St Pancras Marina'? Neither did I. But there is and it's full of canal boats.
The whole run was tremendous; like running along a hidden thoroughfare reasonably briskly.
Next week I'm back in the smoke. Hopefully we'll run it the other way, eastwards, which is apparently more rustic. I'll let you know if it happens.
Today's run is meant to be a long slow job, but I'm not sure it's going to happen. I'm working, I'm listening to the Oval Test on TMS and it's relentlessly, grimly, chucking it down with rain. I may just take a rain cheque. Feeble I know. But sometimes running just has to fit in where it can.
I think life will calm down a bit soon, so I can concentrate on some more serious training. In the meantime I'm just concentrating on not losing all my conditioning.

Smile rating 8/10

I discovered something wonderful this morning. I actually like running in London in the early morning. Once I dredged myself up out of bed and into my kit I was out the door and into the quiet coolness of Islington borough where I had the streets pretty much to myself.

I went exploring towards the City today. Just half an hour, but it was great. I saw one other runner - but they don't smile, nod or even grunt acknowledgement down here, so the cheery 'Morning' that left my lips probably turned into 'NUTTER ALERT' by the time it entered his head. Ah well. 

Smile rating 8/10