Monday 25 November to Sunday 1 December

Total kilometres ran in 2019 before the start of the week: 1347 kilometres

Month by month distance recorded in my little tracking spreadsheet.

Feel free to follow me on Strava, where all my activities are shared.

The week in summary

One of those weeks where you roll into it and keep rolling. Sunday’s 12km might not have seemed to have set me up to keep running from the start of the week. A weekend of two runs and travelling for work means Mondays are usually a rest day.

But I’d been up early to get to Newcastle, finished late, and once I got to the hotel had a cup of green tea and a sit down for ten minutes — and got changed to head to the gym. 5.7km on the treadmill. Listened to some (dance) tunes while I ran. Sweated liked I was in hell, but felt good-tired afterwards. 👍🏼

View the activity on Strava

Tuesday: 5km on the pavements of Newcastle after another long one at work. Said it before but good pavements are a thing worth noting. Noted I was felt low on energy towards the end of the run, but also worked out I’d not had a lot of carbs for a couple of days. Made sure I got some for dinner afterwards. 💯

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Wednesday: Didn’t feel too well at the start of the day so a day off from running. On the plus felt OK late in the day. Noted my legs weren’t feeling that bad given the recent run of runnings. 🤔

Thursday was a day pretty much sat my desk, but MADE SURE I wedged in a run at lunch, something I’ve struggled with recently. Make sure I take a lunchtime break, make sure I get out. I only had time for something short so focused on a quick blast, 1.87km down Leeds Road and back as fast as I could. Woke me up a bit! 🙂

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When worky stuff finished on Friday I changed for the gym. Being done with work by 4pm means I put a lid on a long week. Being done with running by 5:30pm means I am not encroaching on fam time. 6km on the treadmill at the gym was a bit of a grind, but had tunes on again. Getting back into music at the gym. It might be a way of distracting from the tedium of the constant surroundings. Felt lighter in my feet afterwards and head clear. 👍🏼

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I ventured for my first Park Run on Saturday, at Lister Park in Bradford. Minus degrees, the threat of icy pavements, nervousness about do I need to do anything when I arrive, the obligatory waiting around, and a slight worry was doing this the day before the Percy Pud a good idea. So before I headed off I had to keep telling myself don’t go full out, take it steady, and just get the KMs under the belt. Had to take a shot of my inhaler as I went round, but might have been down to the cold. Had to continually remind myself to not bomb my way through. 00:24:42 was alright. Three laps and a little hill to grind up about two-thirds of the way round the course. And I now know you get a token as you cross the finish line, nothing to worry about at the start: Just turn up and run (and make sure I have my Park Run bar code in my pocket). Biggest worry while running was if my car keys were going to jump out of my pocket. Looking to do another Park Run soon. 🤞🏼

Apparently, I have a Park Run runner profile now.

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A drive to Sheffield on Sunday for the Percy Pud 10km. A lovely day and a lovely course. A there and back running route. But also a frustrating run. I logged a chip time of 00:51:37 which I would now take as alright. But I spent the first few kilometres boxed in. I couldn’t pick up my pace much, finding gaps to work through was a game of immense patience. And there’s the obligatory dick who’s running on the verge, all “Excuse me! Coming through on the right!” as they move up past four people and then settle that’ll do. Wait like the rest of us goddammit. Finishers got a decent sized Christmas pudding (with no nuts, hooray!) and a Percy Pud hat. Useful stuff! I’ll do it again next year — and make sure I don’t put my time down as 1:05:00. Hopefully I’ll have cracked a 50 minutes 10km by then too. 🤞🏼

Oh, and the Sheffield Striders stewards at the Percy Pud were just the best yet, a good mix of enthusiasm, motivation, and daftness. Thanks, stewards!

View the activity on Strava

Seeing out the week with four consecutive days of running felt sweet.

At the end of Percy Pud I told the Nike Run Club app on my phone I was done and it crashed, taking with it my run data I thought. I checked my Apple Watch activities and there was the distance and time in there but not the geo data. RunGap didn’t seem to be able to drag it out for some reason. I spent an hour trying to extract the data from Apple’s HealthKit, which was a bit of nerdy fun really. I got there in the end and pumped it into Strava. It felt like the NRC app crashing at the end of a race was the most painful time for it to do it. Also though the app not flagging it’s crashed and there’s data from a race I’ve not saved seemed weird in 2019. I like a lot of the NRC app (the workouts have helped me a lot), but it felt like time for a change. I’ll be using the Apple Watch‘s native workouts tracker for the coming week and see how that goes.

I read something about more Chris McDougall books, so I’ll dig into one or two of those in the near future, probably Natural Born Heroes.

And that brings an end to my month of doing run notes weekly. Looking back these notes have been best for me when I have noted how I felt. It’s an exercise worth doing if you don’t. Before your run, during your run, after your run. Run apps are very big on the “effort” but very little on how you felt. I totally recommend you try to record how you feel.

Is it just me or did autumn pass by quickly? I dunno. All you runners with your Autumn Is The Best Season and cripes it went by fast.

I’m not sure I have a reason to do my run notes for December weekly again. If you’ve read the weekly notes for November and got something from them that might be reason enough. I’d love to hear from you, and what has worked in these and what doesn’t.

The week in summary

Number of runs: 6 (in 7 days)

Kilometres run in the week: 34 kilometres

The month of November in summary

Total kilometres ran in November by the end of the week (and the end of the month!): 119.5 kilometres

That leaves 130 kilometres to run in December for a 1500KM year, wtf!

The year so far

Total kilometres ran in 2019 by the end of the week: 1380 kilometres

That leaves 120 kilometres to run in the rest of December for a 1500KM year, wtf!

Looking ahead

Away Monday through Wednesday, and staying in the middle of Newcastle. Might get the chance to run along the Quayside. Tuesday will probably be a day off running and hoping I can get something in as soon as I get home on Wednesday. Hoping.

Thursday: gym? Friday morning run?

Park Run on Saturday? Then a half marathon on Sunday.

I smell that 1500 kilometre line.

Original source – Simon Wilson

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