Shinning out

Bit of a risky "all or nothing" test on the shin splints, but it surprisingly worked.

What killed today was the headwind, which was with me nearly every step of the way. And as an added free bonus, for several steps, there was also rain driving straight into my face! I was running back from Harlow again, and the boat-dwellers thought I was certifiable. Still, if it rains on April 13th, I can't exactly shelter under a canal bridge, can I?!?

By 18 I was pretty much all-out, with a bit of pain creeping in from the shin splints. Then I went over on my ankle, so I stopped when I got to the North Circular in Edmonton and got the bus home.

Distance: 19 miles
Time: about 4 hours
Music: shuffling
Score: Mind Over Matter AFC 34 - 6 Dynamo Dobbo's Demons

McCain's

Nope, I'm not about to get all Republican on y'all. Rather this is a paen to frozen oven chips: my attempted salvation from shin splints. I slept last night with a bag of frozen chips wrapped against my leg with a sleeping bag!! Just hope it works...

It puts me in mind of a John Hegley poem:
'There once was a Martin from space
Who entered a three-legged race
He wasn't very fast
In fact he came last
Because he was a bag of oven-ready chips.'

Score: Mind Over Matter AFC 33 - 6 Dynamo Dobbo's Demons

Soggy achy morning

Didn't run all the way to "school", but did need to test out just how much my shin splints were hurting. Answer is, unfortunately, a fair bit. But it will be okay with some rest & ice.

Distance: 7 miles
Time: about an hour
Music: shuffling
Score: Mind Over Matter AFC 33 - 5 Dynamo Dobbo's Demons

Leeds leeds leeds

Just back from Leeds, where I've been on my mate Lucy's hen weekend. I was always going to have to let the Demons team chalk up a couple this weekend, but the pain from my shin splints hasn't helped either.

Friday - 12 mile hike (4 hailstorms, lots of rain, bit of snow)
Saturday - not much
Sunday - 7 mile run, 4 miles walk (freezing cold, pain in my shins from Kirkstall Abbey onwards, hitting 'excruciating' levels by the time I reached Headingley cricket/rugby grounds).
Monday - nothing

Distance: 7 miles or so running, plus about 16 walking
Time: ages
Music: shuffling
Score: Mind Over Matter AFC 32 - 5 Dynamo Dobbo's Demons

Splints schmints

At about 9 miles this morning, I developed shin splints in my right leg. Shortly after finishing I was pretty much unable to walk.

This is not good. I need to rest & try and stretch it out over the weekend.

Distance: 10 miles
Time: 1 hour 50, I think
Music: shuffling (but only in the left ear: damned aged headphones!)
Score: Mind Over Matter AFC 31 - 3 Dynamo Dobbo's Demons

(By the way... gym last night, so +1 on the score again).

This morning I'm defnitely feeling it a bit in my thighs from Saturday. Nowhere near as bad as last week, though, which is an improvement.

I only managed 6 miles, which was more to do with me having a phenomenally bad night's sleep than my legs, I think. Still, something is better than nothing, and a good burst of Manic Street Preachers around Seven Sisters woke & speeded me up.

Distance: 6 miles
Time: about an hour
Music: shuffling
Score: Mind Over Matter AFC 30 - 3 Dynamo Dobbo's Demons

Keep on keepin' on

Just to keep going and not seize up after yesterday. Thassall!

Distance: 3 miles (& 1 hour gym)
Time: 25 mins + the gym hour
Music: shuffling
Score: Mind Over Matter AFC 28 - 3 Dynamo Dobbo's Demons

The big two zero

(By the way... quick gym & track session yesterday, which meant I got through the week with the requisite 2 days off).

And so the biggest challenge yet: a 20 mile training run. I decided that the only way to face this would be to get the train somewhere a long way away, and then run home. So I headed for Harlow on the train with a cagolue, some Lucozade and energy gel, and a credit card for emergencies.

It's actually quite a picturesque run, as you leave Harlow almost straight away! Seriously, the towpaths and riverbanks of the canal and the rivers Stort and Lea, taking in the various locks and weirs does make for a good amble. The bridges under the North Circular and the sewage works at Pickett's Lock, however...

I'm still hitting a physical wall (mainly linked to the ability of my thighs to make the distance) at about 16 miles, but this is getting gradually better with each run. Slow progress, but it IS progress, and on balance I'm actually enjoying myself.

Distance: 20 miles
Time: 4 hours 10 mins
Music: shuffling
Score: Mind Over Matter AFC 27 - 3 Dynamo Dobbo's Demons

As a sign off... isn't Harlow nice when you're running away from it

Sproston Green...

...is what I've re-named Finsbury Park after this morning's jog-along-a-Charlatans-fest.

This morning's observations:
1) An agening (c. 60), balding white man in a Wu-Tang Clan hoody on the Seven Sisters Road. Not exactly the usual, or expected, Wu-Tang target audience.
I can only apologise that I couldn't get the camera out fast enough.

2) One I've been meaning to comment on for a couple of weeks, but quite how long has that very same lady been lying on that 48-sheet poster at the south-west corner of the Finsbury Park to advertise the bowling alley?
I've been in London nearly nine years now, but my guess is she's probably pushing fifty.
The building has now been 'refurbished' into a Lidl (inverted commas to draw attention to the oxymoron: there's definitely something technically wrong with that figure of speech!!), so she's obviously going up in the world. Bet her Mam's proud.


Distance: 10 miles
Time: 1 hour 55 mins
Music: The Charlatans
Score: Mind Over Matter AFC 25 - 3 Dynamo Dobbo's Demons

Exterminate!

My thigh muscles (mainly my quads now) still feel like granite after Sunday.

And, more worryingly, I have the stair-handling ability of a type-1 (ie. pre Russell T Davies' revival) Dalek.

Still, another wee saunter this morning...


Distance: 6 miles
Time: 1 hour 5 mins
Music: The Ramones ('Pick Up The Pieces' is a true "power" running song)
Score: Mind Over Matter AFC 24 - 3 Dynamo Dobbo's Demons

3767th!!

Okay, so it's a pretty big race (I think nearly 7,000 ran) , but I'm teetering on the brink of that great British tradition of "prize for turning up" territory.

988th woman. 629th in my age group (women 18-45). Not getting much better, is it??!

I started out really well, running the first 3 mile lap in 28 mins (=1 lap of Silverstone Grand Prix circuit - okay so messrs Alonso, Hamilton et al aren't exactly worried there...), and had clocked up 6.2 miles by the hour mark. Not much by some standards, but if I tell you I usually run 5 to 5.5 miles an hour, pleasingly faster...

But I had a nasty hamstring cramp at just over 10 miles, which was a complete bummer as I could have done mighty fine from that auspicious start.

Still, 2 hours 15 was 6 minutes under my previous 1/2 marathon PB. And I'm on course to get my marathon under 5 hours.

Bizarrely, I don't actually look too done in:

It IS pretty cool that I'm standing in the pit lane at Silverstone, though.

Distance: 13.2 mile

Time: 2 hours 15 mins

Music: Ben Folds Five, til the t'iPod gave up on me : (

Score: Mind Over Matter AFC 23 - 3 Dynamo Dobbo's Demons

Track night

After a long day's quick pilgrimage back to Leeds (for work), it was back down the track in the Stow (not the dog track, before someone at the back starts smartarse comments!).

Nothing to report. Sorry.

Distance: who knows?!
Time: 50 mins on the track, about the same in the gym
Music: Mylo. Dunno why
Score: Mind Over Matter AFC 21 - 3 Dynamo Dobbo's Demons

Snooker loopy

Another ten-miler into work today. Normally I don't wake up for the first couple of miles. Today my iPod didn't wake up until Finsbury Park. To be honest, I had no idea that I had so many crap songs on there...

Still, Mitch Benn's John Peel tribute song 'A Minute's Noise' and a fantastic live version on British Sea Power's 'Carrion' (both played twice, of course), more than made up for it ; )

Today's observation... no words are needed:

Have been meaning to take a photo of this for ages. Just look at the attention to detail on the cue ball!

Distance: 10 miles
Time: 1 hour 55 mins
Music: shuffling
Score: Mind Over Matter AFC 22 - 3 Dynamo Dobbo's Demons

Damn and blast

Going to have to let the 'Demons' team sneak one back today. I'm not going to get to the gym or track now. Way too tired, for a start.

Working on a pitch, doing my normal job and training for a marathon is pretty full on. Even in Dobboland where days, given the "extra hours" I gain by not needing as much sleep as the average mortal, are c. 27 hours long.

Score: Mind Over Matter AFC 20 - 3 Dynamo Dobbo's Demons

Who needs a travelcard?

Ten miles to work again (after a rest day to recover my legs from Sunday). It just is, and needs doing to get the training monkey off my back. Simple.

This morning's observation: the youngest boy EVER with a moustache. He must have only been nine (well, ten at best), yet his top lip had the kind of dark fluffy growth that Gary Neville would be VERY jealous of...

Distance: 10 miles
Time: 1 hour 55
Music: shuffling
Score: Mind Over Matter AFC 20 - 2 Dynamo Dobbo's Demons

Effing Epping Forest

It just wasn't working today. Every ache and niggle, every hill, falling into a muddy puddle and having an argument with a bush (running around with deep, bleeding scratches).

Still, the further you go up Epping Forest, the better it gets. Particularly from Queen Elizabeth's Hunting Lodge and up (Connaught Water, Green Ride, High Beach, etc.) into the areas where you can look for the houses you would buy if you won the lottery. But then you come out onto the top of the hill, and can look over at how Sainsbury's behemoth distribution depot has completely blotted the view of Waltham Abbey. Luvverly.

Distance: 15.5 miles
Time: not actually sure, but it wasn't good... 3 1/2 hours?
Music: Muse, until the t'iPod packed up
Score: Mind Over Matter AFC 19 - 2 Dynamo Dobbo's Demons

Just popped out...

...for a quick, short run after Soccer AM. Have decided against running the Woodford AC Half Marathon in favour of a longer one in the forest tomorrow, so today's pretty much resting up.

Distance: 3.5 miles

Time: 35 mins

Music: none

Score: Mind Over Matter AFC 18 - 2 Dynamo Dobbo's Demons