The Walker With Heart

The cold has finally gone, I've managed two good runs and a couple of longish walks this week.  No ill effects, I even managed to drink and run at the same time without choking:-) So where am I in terms of my training? I can readily run 10km, I can run at full pelt on up to about 5 miles.  I've not gone further than 10km and I've not done much speed training.  Oh, and I'm two weeks away from a half-marathon and 4 weeks away from an off-road marathon. My every rule in the book I should be a little worried, but this is where all of the run last year come into play.  I know these runs are going to hurt, I know I can do them and stay hale and healthy and I know that thoughts of PB's and good times are will of the wisps.  These runs are now probably what they should have been from when I booked them, staging posts on to the rest of the year and the madness that is yet to come. At various points last year I was knocking off half marathons for fun, 2 in ...

The nightrunner series on the face of it is a little bit mad.... Take a trail or fell run... Take some runners... Make sure they have headtorches... wait until after dark... and let them go! The most local one of these to me was yesterday on Formby beach, part of the Sefton dune system.  During the day I'd be (in warmer weather) looking out for Natterjack toads, a local speciality and a national rare species. In February, any self-respecting toad is going to be hibernating and the local wildlife was best described as human (probably) and gobby (definitely) AKA scallies... Their dulcet tones greeted us during one stage of the run. There were three distinct types of terrain I either ran on, jog/stumbled on or walked through slowly... That'll be trails, the beach and sand, deep sand!  On the trails I was keeping up with the group of friendly runners I'd started with at the back of the pack, on the beach I was doing fine until I went flying... Splat... I tripped ...

I love the Mad Dog 10k... It's early enough in the year that I don't put myself under too much pressure... And at just the right point to give me an indication for the half, full and Ultra's to come. It's also a crackingly well organised run, all for charity as well!!! The Garmin does provide some simple analyticals - and when I look across the years I smile, and frown... The smile, I'm quicker than I was last year.  The frown - if I'd run the last 2km of last year I'd have been knocking on the door of a PB... Bugger... However, by that point I'd had to stop to drink and eat... Running with a blocked nose may be possible, and up to 5km seemed good (hell a 30min 5km is good!)... Trying to drink, and run at the same time, is not such a good idea... I did wheeze, and I did try and breathe water, and I did go red! Ho hum... Positives - I was faster than last year... It was cold, I had a cold, I finished and I got a cracking t-shirt and stunn...

I don't often write reviews... Occasionally my run writes ups are like reviews, occasionally a company does something nice for the cause and gets a thank you... This is a bit of a review and a lot of a thank you! The idea behind Fitbit is simple - a total activity monitor... How many steps a day, how many flights of stairs, how many calories... It's a pedometer with bells and whistles. It's not a GPS watch (got one of them) it is nice and small (think USB stick). And so it clips on to your belt, or bra (their advice not mine!) and just monitors you day in day out and the real selling point for me monitors your sleep - simple stuff on how many times you wake up and how long for.  But a data point I've not been able to access before, and as regular readers know I'm a data junkie as well as a run junkie... Now what's clever, and addictive, is that Fitbit adds at least two layers of "gamefication" (I do jargon... ) the first is the flowers, the hel...

I booked this trip back in December... Two night, 3 trips out... I thought it would be a chance to practice my winter walking skills and if I was lucky get some endurance training in... So much for the Great British Winter... Friday night - cool and damp, wet for periods Saturday - Glorious, dangerously glorious Sunday - dank and overcast My plans changed with the weather - Friday night became a 10 mile trot around Derwent Water - mostly offroad, rough trails and slippy boardwalks.  Not fast, but it was a night run by the time I finished. Saturday was all about control - the weather was stunning, the hills were almost empty.  It would've been the easiest thing in the world to carry on walking, but I'd started to encounter ice on the trails around Catbells, and I was walking on my own... So I did the sensible thing and ducked down to see somewhere I never had before - Newlands Church, and very pretty it was too! Sunday was a power walk to th...