What on earth would make me miss this I hear you ask? Well, I went to assist with some pedigree dog breeding, which basically involves:
- Getting up hideously early for a Saturday morning meeting my friend and her er.. bitch (innit) at a motorway services
- Lots of caffienated drinks (for us)
- Lots of dog treats (not for us)
- Driving to Huntingdon racecourse through the bucketing sleet and snow to meet up with "the stud" (who had travelled from Norfolk especially)
- Rampant outdoor humping (not for us)
At this point I suppose I should explain that my friend lives in Kendal - Cumbria - and this was a long drive in a day for her, so I rode passenger on my bit of the M6/A14. This was partly for extra company and undoubtedly for my navigational skills (in this modern age rather than the ability to hold a map the right way up it simply means I have a TomTom). I don't have the lifestyle to have pets, but I adore my friend and her dogs, so she and they are one of a small subset of people / four legged friends I would drop everything for. We got to Huntingdon racecourse in plenty of time and another car drew up in the parking area.... *gasp* It was the Stud and his lady owner - he looked just as handsome in real life as his photos. Phwoar!
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| *swoon* :) |
The owner of the stud informed us that he didn't usually like blue bitches such as my friend owns (that's a term for their colour not personality) preferring the orange ladies (e.g. blond - bloody superficial men) so we were a bit worried he wouldn't be up to the job; but like a true man as soon as we got our lovely girl out of the car he went ballistic and started panting so the signs were good. In true ladylike style she sensed this over keen vibe and seemed petrified - I've heard of playing hard to get but this was something else. We walked them along a little bit by the privacy of a particularly cosy looking hedge, and just as they were about to get better acquainted, a random man appeared out of nowhere with a car and launched about 8 Springer Spaniels out of it muttering something about "I'll walk my dogs where I like" - what?! we never said anything!. The most deserted spot in Cambridgeshire and we get the cast of a Disney movie running past in a comedy style-ee.
Things got a bit more relaxed once the stampede had run off over the horizon, and the magic happened (with me feeling like I should be averting my eyes). I've seen plenty of nature documentaries but I didn't quite realise that pet dogs locked together for that long, hence I played the important role of being lookout for "grumpy springer man" whilst my friend and the studs owner held the dogs in position. These dogs (English Setters) are not massively intelligent when it comes to furthering their breed and need a bit of extra help. Hopefully in mid April there will be the pitter patter of lots of tiny puppy feet and I can make everyone vomit with sickeningly cute photos on Facebook and the like.
My start on that Saturday was too early for even a parkrun, so after I got home I ran to the parkrun course near me and back home in a progressive style. I'd been feeling a bit tired all week, but what happened that evening was weird. Got back, had a shower and thought "I'll just have a nap for an hour" at 5pm. Woke up at 9.30pm thinking "Must eat for tomorrows 20 miler". Managed to shovel down some "Breakfast Biscuits" to fill me up and then back to bed and asleep again by 10pm. Up at 8am on the Sunday. So that's about 14.5 hours sleep. It worries me slightly, I think and hope it was just the combination of some decent mileage weeks, some late nights and early starts. I did feel better for the sleep-a-thon though.
Long runs have been going well, it might seem early but for me the more 20 milers in a marathon campaign the better and I am well in to them already. The Sunday after my half day sleep I was raring to go, despite it being chucking it down and a howling gale - I messed up my route planning (probably too busy daydreaming / listening to the radio but in a long distance runner I think sometimes this detachment is a good thing) and ended up clocking 22 miles. C'est la vie, it was at an easy pace and I don't think the extra running did me any harm, I'd have done more harm if I'd walked back to the car or phoned someone (who I would dare to disturb from the Coronation Street Omnibus I don't really know) to be rescued and spent half an hour getting cold.
This weekend just gone, I visited the Newbury Parkrun again, it was lovely to see so many friends. Not racing this week I ran with Jayne, and we went for an easy start, inadvertently doing quite a good progressive run. And the cake. Well, the cake...
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| £10 model's own to give a sense of scale |
I did share it though. It also looked like it was made with wholemeal flour, so with the addition of some dried fruit that constitutes "health food" right? And here's a nice thing, it appears an actual running club has been born out of the ParkRun community at Newbury. Seems like quite a cool thing to have happened.
Landed at my Mum and Dads Saturday after Newbury. They have purchased a tank and some tropical fish. An afternoon of "ooh the fish has swum in to the log" "now he's swum out of the log". Love them :-)
Last Sunday was the Stamford Valentines 30K, one of my favourite races, and in longer distance terms one of the ones that I've done the most times, I think this is the fourth outing here for me. First things first, despite doing parkruns and things, it seems like about a year since I've actually had to do any marathon paced running. Might not be true but it's just how it feels. Stamford is a hilly course, and despite having done some far more tricky routes I felt really nervous about my mission. Why?? I think it was fear of not being able to do it, fear of blowing up, fear of putting the effort in expecting say 9.00mm and getting 10.00mm but I've learnt if you don't try you'll never know. So I promise myself I will always try - always when it comes to running, I try to apply this rule to general life with mixed success.
I lurked at about 10.15 easy pace for the first 6 miles, and felt comfortable. It was an absolutely beautiful day - all of the other times I've run there it has been grey and freezing with patches of snow on the ground, it's amazing how the conditions can change your perception of the same route. It felt good to be alive. So, the six mile mark approached, and ding ding, I started off on the MP effort (my MP is about 9.00mm) and realise I'm doing 8.00mm down a hill. Gasps of shock from the people who I was behind up to this point as I started running past them like a lunatic. I soon calmed it down, but it felt like every time I got in to something approaching a rhythm a large incline would appear and slow me down, or a large downhill where I would end up going faster for the same effort and wonder if that was "too fast".
I caught up Becca just before 8 miles, and said something like "I feel like I'm finding this too hard", I think it was just nerves and over enthusiasm and I had to accept that on this course mile splits are going to be up and down; once I had got my head around that (and focused on not losing Becca's red and yellow shirt bobbing along in the distance) I felt a lot better. The good thing about starting slow is that if you do put any faster work in then it becomes an overtaking-fest, which I'm sorry to say is good for my state of mind but probably not those I'm overtaking. Sorry everyone.
The other thing I have to to remember is that this was a training run. My MP efforts were all in the right zone so still decent splits according to the amount of uphill/downhill on a given mile. The point of training is that it is a building block and come the marathon day it all comes together - so for the first attempt at MP in a while I think that was a pretty good session. When I got to 15.5 miles I wound down, and then very ironically found it hard to come down off of the marathon pace. I stopped for a few seconds at the 5K from home water station to get my water bottle completely refilled, in relative terms it was quite warm at Stamford and I don't think I needed the thermal top. As I approached the school I couldn't help but speed up a little to make sure I didn't have any embarrassing being overtaken moments at the finish.... 2.57. In itself not a bad time, good when you consider 9 miles of it were run very slowly.
So I grabbed my goodie bag, headed quickly to the car, took my number off etc and ran 0.6 miles back up the course and back home as a warm down. Always, despite not having a number on, some twit will be shouting "you're running the wrong way" *sigh* I warm down along the course to be encouraging to people coming in and all I get is smart-arses. The extra mile or so made it up to 20, job done and I felt fine.
I must admit when I saw the club speed work schedule this week I groaned at the thought of a hill session, but maybe Stamford has acclimatised me or something because on our 9 hill loops last night I felt like I was flying. My general form moving along and overtaking power showed I probably was flying - good news.
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| Another set? Don't mind if I do. Raargh! |
I think I forgot to say in the last blog, I've entered the 100K in Stockholm (early August) I'm quite excited, it looks like it will be a nice course and a nice break either side. I'll be happy to get through it, and having watched the 'team USA' Spartathlon video (made by a chap with very white teeth who runs insane distances and eats just fruit and veg(!)) I think if I managed to go under the qualifying time I would have to give entry some consideration, - it would be one of those amazing and life changing experiences. But all that is a bit too scary to think about at the moment so I won't. My head is firmly in the sand on that one.
National XC on Saturday in Sunderland, looking forward to it, last outing of the XC season and it looks like it's going to be proper cold and miserable, in the words of Mrs Doyle I want a good miserable time!
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