Ye gods, how have I offended thee?

I’m not a particularly religious man but I couldn’t help feeling that I done something to offend the weather gods on my run tonight, as thunder, lightning and hail rained down on me in what seemed a concerted effort to make me turn back and give up on the whole idea.

Think the weather gods were trying to tell me something

Added to this was the uphill challenged of getting out on a run at all given the amount of cider, whiskey and wine consumed last night in what can only be described as a belated Wassail/Burns Night mash-up, which involved lots of food, some poetry and a lot of boozing.

I needed to at least run off the excess but somehow managed to stun and amaze myself by running more than 5.5 miles, non-stop, in the pouring rain and thunder. The hail was quite something, stinging my legs and turning the road and pavement white in a matter of what seemed like seconds. Thankfully I was wearing my baseball cap and the visor shielded my face against the pummelling. Which was fortunate as with a face like mine the last thing I need is for it to be made any worse by getting a face full of hail cutting it up.

It took 1hr 22mins, so no records broken, but I couldn’t believe that after the night I’d had last night, and the fact that just a month ago I couldn’t run half a mile without blowing up and almost throwing up, I managed to keep going for 5.6 miles.

This means I’ve smashed the first goal in my training plan, which was to be able to run five miles by the end of January. I wasn’t really sure I could do it when I set that target, but it feels like this week I’ve regained all the ability I lost after basically giving up running three-years-ago, and the muscle memory has kicked in and remembered how to keep going. Otherwise I’m at a complete loss to be able to explain how I’ve been able make such good progress this past week or so.

I’ve also lost a total of 17lbs in weight since the end of December so that is clearly having a huge impact as well as near abstinence from boozing. An abstinence that was quite spectacularly smashed last night.

So, next target, to be able to run ten miles by the end of February. And by the way weather gods, thunder lightning and hail, is that all you got? Bring it on.

Best run yet – three miles without stopping

Real breakthrough tonight as I managed not only to go out and run on compacted ice for three miles, but managed to do it without stopping once.

In terms of my running ability this is nothing short of a quantum leap forward which has made me almost deliriously happy, which I do appreciate is not a state many people who know me would recognise.

Conditions more suited to bobsleigh than jogging

 The freezing temperatures didn’t put off that many committed runners (a hardy bunch whose number I feel I can now count myself among) as plenty of people were up on the Downs or trudging round the streets of Clifton, gleaming with the street lights’ orange glow bouncing off them.

It probably wasn’t actually a very good idea and I did spot a rapid response ambulance car parked up close to the water tower, presumably in anticipation of some idiot, much like myself, attempting to run on what was now compacted snow with an underlay of ice and a topping of early evening frost.

I almost wondered whether they might not pull up alongside me and explain to me just how much tax payers money I could soon be needlessly costing the NHS with several broken bones to mend.

However, I have a feeling it was almost because of the conditions that I had such a good run. It was clearly important to take it easy and as such I managed to get a good steady pace going and after about a mile or so everything just felt like it was working like clockwork. A very slow clock granted, but even so, ticking along nicely I was.

Bit cold out

 Now, three miles round the Downs is obviously not a full marathon, but tonight was the first time I could just hit the road and keep going at my own pace and if it wasn’t for the fact that I am aiming to hit five miles this weekend, I honestly feel I could have just kept purring along for another couple of miles..

I was almost convulsing with the euphoria that had washed over me as I just kept going, step after step, to the extent that I punched the air and leapt up a bit after finishing, as if I'd grabbed gold at the Olympics. 

It must be the first time I’ve been able to do that probably since the London Marathon in 2010. And in some ways the run tonight was just as important as that, because it confirmed to me that the training is working, the weight loss is helping and I’m getting fitter every week.  Get in!

And I managed to run at a faster pace than I walked last night, so that’s another little victory to chalk up tonight.

The Ham Green Prowler

Thanks to the snow there have been limited training opportunities this week, which a few weeks ago would have been a very welcome development and I’d be happy to sit at home chomping through a vat of pasta and catering pack of Cadbury’s Chocolate Buttons.

Now, weirdly, I have been really annoyed about not being able to go out running in the middle of a freezing January and feeling acute anxiety about falling behind in my training regime.

So, instead I’ve been out walking the mean streets of Ham Green, as it was deemed safer than trying to run through the snow and ice. And after coming too close to mention to being squashed on the A361 through Gloucestershire the other day, I am tending to agree.

The (not particularly) interesting thing I have discovered about walking however, is that I appear to be better at it than running, for now anyway.

I’ve been out twice this week schlepping along at a bit of a pace and according to the Run Keeper app I use to measure these things, my average minutes per mile are fewer when I walk than when I run. Which leads me to wonder why I’m bothering to run at all, why not just walk the Edinburgh Marathon and save all this time and energy running round North Somerset, like the day-glo wally I am?

Late night walks all very well, unless you look like a house burglar

 But, the more disturbing thing I have discovered on these walks is what I must look like to the good people of my sleepy village as I stroll purposefully through the centre. As is well documented it is currently quite cold, so in order to tackle the freezing temperatures I sensibly don my coat, hat, gloves and scarf.

However, what I realised stepping out tonight is that my coat is black, my gloves are black leather (Nazi gloves somebody once called them, you know the ones) and I often wear a black baseball cap that shades my face. Basically I look precisely as I would think of dressing if I was going out to rob somebody’s house or lurk in the dark corners waiting to mug somebody. Given that I am trying to walk as quickly as I can to derive maximum cardio-vascular benefits from exercise, I also look like I’m trying to flee the scene of a crime without rousing suspicion.

I’m not sure this will do anything to endear me to the neighbourhood.

Burning calories in the snow

It seems that the basic principle of moving more and eating less really does work, I mean, who knew?
Following a week which included three decent training runs and continuing my diet of cous cous, lettuce and porridge, I stepped up on the scales for my regular Saturday weigh in, and it turns out I’ve lost a whole stone since Christmas, 14 little lbs that have dropped into oblivion somehow.
Very pleased with progress as I’m hoping to lose about a stone each month, so slightly ahead of the game now. However I have been a bit worried this weekend that the snow would knock my training plan off course, as I have tried to run in the snow before and looking back it was a particularly stupid thing to do given the potential for falling and breaking bones.
However, the ‘white stuff’ may have put paid to leaving the house by car over the past two days (thanks to the wonder of email and telephone I could carry on my important work in PR), but we were able to have a great schlep through woods on foot instead.
Living in the country as we do now, sort of, we are blessed with some amazing walks around Leigh Woods and Leigh Court, where we had a ramble this afternoon. Stunning views and yes, it did feel like Narnia, and all those other cliches. It was very difficult not to find the nearest horse cart and start dragging it through the drifts like in Rocky IV - great training montage here.

Leigh Court in the snow

Leigh Woods

Leigh Woods

So, whereas I had hoped to run for an hour or so today and get to 4.5 miles, instead we walked through the snow for more than two and-a-half hours and according to the Run Keeper app covered over seven miles and burned 1200 calories. Result! Now I’m preparing a pan full of bolognese and warming the garlic baguettes to enjoy a spaghetti feast completely guilt free tonight, and maybe a glass of wine or two to celebrate shifting the first stone off my backside. Cheers!

Ice Cold In Banbury

I'm not sure what it was about my appearance walking through the lobby of the hotel that prompted a couple of blokes sat with their pints to look up and exchange glances and a snigger.

I mean, it was only minus 2 degrees outside, why wouldn't you expect to see sometbody in trainers, shorts, running top and a luminous striped hat heading for the door to go for a run. Perfectly normal where I come from.

To be fair, I did have to question my own sense of sanity as the icy blast of the night air tore through my flimsy polyster top and almost took my breath away.

Had to keep repeating the mantra I'd seen on Facebook recently about how it doesn't matter how far or slowly you run, you're still going further than you would sat on your arse watching telly.

With that in mind I bravely set off on my jog through Banbury town centre. I say bravely, it really wasn't, it was more stupid than brave, but I gritted my teeth nonetheless and started the film of my life playing in my head to keep me going.

In all honesty, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. After leaving the office this evening the cold felt almost crippling, but then, you don’t go running in a cheap suit from M&S and an even cheaper cotton shirt, unless you’re being chased by muggers I guess.

Properly attired the cold was not so much of a problem, and anyway, the layers of lard I’m working so hard to shift off my frame played a key role in keeping me alive. Also, considering I break into a sweat from stepping up a kerb, it wasn’t long before I warmed up on my run.

I did see one or two other similarly luminous people trudging round, which made me feel a bit better, although they seemd to hunt in packs and were much quicker than me. I’ve never been a fan of running clubs, always felt I’d never be quick enough to keep up and frankly I had years of lolling at the back of the pack in sport when I was at school, and it’s not an experience I wish to repeat by choice as an adult. Besides, I enjoy the solitary nature of running on my own, with my own thoughts for company, shaking off the stresses of the day and, once again, pretending I’m playing Rocky in that scene when he runs through the streets of his home town. Was it Philidelphia or Pitsburg? I can never remember.

As I was consumed with these thoughts and other weighty issues, I realised I was jogging past the historic Banbury Cross, so I stopped briefly (any excuse) and took out my phone to take a quick pic. So as I was reviewing my handiwork, which was pretty crap as I managed to cut the top off it somehow, I was dawdling in the middle of the pavement a little and started to move off again. But as I looked up, suddenly out of nowhere the running club I’d seen a few minutes ago were charging towards me with the all terrifying force of a herd of day-glow wilderbeast.

I stood paralysed with fear as seemingly hundreds (probably half a dozen) of them swerved either side of me to avoid flattening me completely. They didn’t look best pleased that I had somehow got in their way, so much for the solidarity of the running fraternity.

Once again, I bravely found the courage to go on in the face of overwhelming adversity, and headed back up the hill towards the hotel.

It was a fairly stop-start run but did manage 35 minutes and covered about 2.5 miles, which was better than sitting on my arse in my hotel room. Especially as the telly only has five  channels and the only thing slower than me round here is the free wifi. I only wish the sniggering beer drinkers had still been there to see me return from battle, tired but victorious and just a little bit ice cold.

Running on the Portishead cycle path

Legs are little weary after the longest run we've achieved for a while, 4.25 miles along the Pill to Portishead cycle path this afternoon in the bright cold sunshine.
It's a curious stretch of path which takes you under the M5 bridge, along the side of Portbury Docks, with Avonmouth chugging away in the distance.
In large parts it runs alongside a disused railway line which I assume will be resurrected if the Portishead to Bristol line gets reinstated.
The overwhelming impression is of a hidden and forgotten industrial wasteland as the rail line is overgrown, tunnels are covered in graffiti, the odd burnt out motor scooter lies wrecked by the path and every now and then rusted gates bar the way to large fenced off open spaces, surrounded by flood lights, which I can only assume are secret UFO landing strips. Maybe.
We only managed to get a couple of miles along the route before coming back home, but the biggest challenge wasn't the prospect of spray paint wielding youths or fumes spewing off six lanes of motorway, no, it was more like the pair of walkers ahead of us.
At this point in my training the speed at which I can run is really on slightly quicker than walking pace.
Reason being of course I'm trying to build stamina rather than speed and am quite happy running for an hour at the same speed as I might walk it, just to keep running.
However, it is a bit of a problem when on the slow trot a couple of people out on an afternoon stroll hove into view. They were almost certainly taking their time as well which made it all the more embarrassing as I had to dig deep to find the acceleration to get past them.
At one point I was shoulder to shoulder and could have had a fairly in-depth conversation about the weather and what kind of Christmas they had as my little legs pumped away to move, with glacial progress, ahead of them. Reminded me of one or two Bristol Half Marathons where the power walkers would whistle past and off into the crowd never to be seen again.
Once we finally managed to get round them we paused to catch breath, and realised that if we didn't get running again they'd overtake and we'd have to go through the whole charade again.
We managed to kick on back Ham Green and left a host of dog walkers and afternoon strollers flailing in our wake as the sheer force of our pace scattered them across the path. Sort of.
But blimey was it ever cold, took a nice hot bath to thaw out when we got home and a bowl full of stir fried veggies and rise. Yum. At this rate, should easily hit five miles by the end of January.

I am Roborunner

The deeper integration of mobile technology into virtually every aspect of our lives is seemingly an unstoppable force and in many ways is a welcome development for society. For example, how else could I possibly get know the eating and TV watching habits of hundreds of people I don’t know and have no desire to meet in ‘real life’, via Twitter and other such social media platforms.

Gone are the days when that term, social media, meant handing somebody a copy of the paper you’d just finished reading on the train and when you arranged to meet somebody you made sure you made it, as there was no means by which to send a message with some lame excuse because you couldn’t be bothered. Having said that, one or two incidents of waiting several hours for people who didn’t turn up could have been easily avoided. But I digress.

Original social media

Frankly the digital revolution couldn’t have come sooner as far as I’m concerned. As a consumer and purveyor of information at the rate that would make me obese if it was food (some parallel there methinks), it is a truly exciting time. And when, in years to come, our kids ask ‘what did you make of this amazing transformation in society which changed forever the way we work, live and experience life’, I for one do not want to sit there and say, “It was a load of bollocks really, all that internet crap, I preferred to actually talk to people”. You know how people wear that level of ignorance like a badge of pride as if they somehow elevate themselves above this foolish pursuit of ever increasing technology like it’s the emperor’s new clothes. And in any case they never actually talk to people anyway because they’ve got no friends. They would have probably been against the development of the written word several thousand years ago.

Anyway, the point is, I have realised that I am using a lot more technology in my training at the moment, most of it based on my iPhone. Whether it’s the iTunes to keep me motivated (Eye of the Tiger still inspires) or the several apps to track my progress.

In my head, this is me on training run

I was introduced to an app called My Fitness Pal by a friend at work and it’s basically a calorie counter, but for the first time probably ever, it has enabled me to get to grips properly with portion control.

My weight gain has not always tended to be because I eat a lot of rubbish, it’s simply because I eat a lot. I always cook dinner at home and enjoy cooking as a social activity. The problem has been that I would always fill my plate to over brimming and probably be eating enough for two. Not in the pregnant sense of course. I have the same issue with booze to be fair, so bingeing on both of those will inevitably lead down the road to fatness.

Now, this will not come as a revelation to anybody remotely sensible, but I have now discovered that if I stick to the daily recommended calorie allowance (2050 in my case), and do more exercise, the weight starts to come off. I know this is obvious, eat less and move more is the mantra. I had always thought I would just be hungry all the time if I ate less, however, lo and behold, it’s not the case. So I’m now a bit of a slave to the calorie counter, always filling it in after every meal and it could do with a little more male-focussed content, but it’s definitely working as I’ve lost 9lbs since Christmas and feel on my way to hitting weight loss targets.

In conjunction with this app I am also using Run Keeper on my phone to chart my distance and calories burned on my training runs.

Long gone are the days of pulling on the trainers and heading out with a quick glance at the kitchen clock to gauge how long I’ve been out. Nowadays every step and heart beat is recorded and analysed with interactive maps of where I’ve been, average minutes per mile and all sorts of telemetry.

I think it’s an age thing. Being a couple of years older I feel I need to know more about my progress than when I was a spritely 31-year-old with much springier legs. But it does work and despite feeling like Roborunner (although if I was a robot I probably wouldn’t need to run anywhere on account of not being capable of gaining weight, saying that R2D2 is basically short and round) being able to chart the progress means I can keep to the training plan for the Edinburgh Marathon with any luck.

Fat robot: R2D2

I think Nike do something similar which is embedded in their training shoes, which would be good. But I have actually done quite a lot of running down the years (you may find that hard to believe) and the best trainers I’ve ever had are my Asics Gel Nimbus. They are totally amazing and have carried me through several half marathons and the London Marathon in 2010, with not a single injury or even blister. If they did something similar to Nike I’d definitely be interested in trying that out.  If only there was some way to alert the Asics PR machine to this, I could perhaps shamelessly endorse their TOTALLY AMAZINGASICS running shoes for instance. It wouldn’t be dishonest, I already use them. Let’s see what happens.......No, nothing yet. Maybe the SEO will do its thing and they’ll pick up on it. As I was saying, ASICS ASICS ASICS ASICS........

Enough of that. I’m off to roast a chicken, mash some potatoes and make real gravy for dinner to give us fuel for a long run tomorrow along the banks of the Avon. In my Asics. 

My amazing Asics. Which are much more knackered now.

Do I look like I eat curry every day?

I had to laugh earlier this week after checking into a hotel for a work-related overnight stay in Banbury.

Having parked my cock horse (whatever that is) in the car park and got myself settled, I enquired of the helpful receptionist as to the proximity of the town centre, having never spent any time there myself.

She informed that we were indeed close to the town centre and there are number of Chinese restaurants, kebab houses and Indian food establishments, in fact the best place for a curry is just a short walk from the front door.

Now, given that I hadn’t asked about the best place to get junk food, and setting aside the fact that I’m sure her boss would be delighted to know she was actively pushing potential customers out of the door to the nearest curry house, I could only reach the conclusion that she had taken one look at me and decided that all I was interested in was access to the nearest and least healthy eating option. And fortunately the best Indian in town was just a short waddle away, that even somebody of girth and rotundity could manage without getting too out of breath.

How could she make such an assumption? Perhaps I had asked the question because I was interested in getting to know more about this historic Oxfordshire town, its place in English folklore and the cultural heart beating within its ancient buildings? Just because I may look like I eat curries and drink lager all the time, doesn’t mean it’s necessarily so.

Turns out the Indian take away probably is the cultural centre of the town, but I could be doing it a disservice. A quick stroll through the darkened shopping centre on a cold and darker January night probably doesn’t do it justice.

Either way, I managed to avoid the lure of the numerous take aways (she wasn’t wrong), and settled for a lamb tagine from the less-than-extensive hotel menu. Which tasted a bit like a curry anyway.