Juneathon day 14. Hills. Oh my god, hills.

Very short of time this morning so I decided to go for a quick run around the block incorporating a few hill repeats. I've run up hills (well, probably more shallow slopes than hills - does a railway bridge count as a hill?) before when out on ordinary runs but I've never made the hill the point of the run before. I know it's a good idea to incorporate hill training into one's routine but that feels like something that only hardcore runners do (wait - I've been running every day for two weeks now. Does that make me a hardcore runner?) and I've always been a little nervous of trying it. Rightly so, it turns out. 

Deceptively hard work

I am 'fortunate' to live more or less at the top of a hill so there are hills of varying degrees of steepness in every direction around our house. Today I warmed up with a brisk jog around the town and then headed for Oxford Road. It's a straight slope up for about 225 metres. When you're walking up it the slope feels pretty slight so I wasn't too worried. Hollow laugh. For the first half of the first run it felt perfectly manageable. Then it suddenly got hard. Then it got really hard. Up and down three times by the end of which I could hardly breath. Gosh - hills are hard work. 

The devil's hill

Then I decided to finish things off (almost literally) with a run up Castle Street. This is about 150 metres but really substantially steeper than Oxford Road. Getting to the top of Castle Street was the closest I've come to feeling like I might throw up after a run since I was forced to run cross country at school. Oh. My. God. 

Looking at the stats I see that Garmin estimates a whopping 13 metres of elevation. This cannot possibly be right. All that pain for so little gain? I can't believe it. 

So, in summary this looks like a pretty puny run by recent standards. A fairly short distance at a slowish pace. But don't be deceived. This was the closest I've come to dying from over-running (if that's a thing) since I started running again. 

Day 14 2.24k in 15 minutes

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Juneathon day 13 - social running

Today I ran at lunchtime, 5k with my friend Oliver. Running with someone else is fairly unusual for me. I'd say I probably run 90% of my runs on my own and certainly so far in Juneathon I think I've run all but two alone. Oliver is training for the British 10k (which I have now signed up for too). We ran together a couple of times this time last year so I know his natural pace is significantly faster than mine and I'm grateful to him for sticking with me rather than haring off like a rat up a drainpipe leaving me in his dust (slightly mixed metaphors there but I think it works).

We ran a steady 5k at what, for me, is quite close to my top pace for that distance. The big benefit of doing this with someone else is being able to check that what I think is conversational pace actually is conversational pace. With the best will in the world it's hard to replicate the feeling of a real conversation when you're running on your own. Even though the pace was fairly quick we chatted all the way around and it never felt difficult to maintain the conversation. This makes me think that I may be holding back a little on the pace and there could be another faster gear to be explored. In the last kilometre we ramped it up a little and ran a few hundred metres down a long straight in Regent's Park at something like 4.30 per k pace. That felt fast but doable, and even at that pace I was still able to talk although not quite as easily as at 6.30 per k. All in all a good run in pleasant company. More of this, please!

Day 13 5k in 30.05
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Juneathon day 12 - the motivational power of Juneathon (and Daft Punk)

There is absolutely no way in the world I would have done any running today if it hadn't been for Juneathon (let's face it, I would have done well to keep a running streak of more than 3 days going if it wasn't for Juneathon). Today I really wasn't in the zone at all. I originally planned to run first thing this morning. That didn't happen. Then I told myself I'd run at lunch time. That didn't happen either. I finally forced myself onto the treadmill just before 7 this evening, motivated in no small part by having put quite some pressure onto fellow Juneathoner Steve Hanlon to go out and run earlier in the day so as not to break his streak, only for him to lock himself out of the house and spend most of the afternoon wandering the streets. Oops. After that I would have felt like I was really letting the side down if I hadn't run myself.

As usual I eased myself onto the treadmill with the idea of just doing 15 minutes, then once I got going I decided to go for 30, but towards the end of that time I ran into a rich seam of Daft Punk on Spotify, culminating in Giorgio by Giorgio Moroder starting up with two minutes to go. I have mentioned before the awesome motivational power of this track - I just cannot get enough of it and it took me up to exactly 5k. Job done.

Day 12 - 5k in 37.36
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Juneathon day 11 - slightly too short long run

My legs were feeling pretty good today after a couple of dodgy days, and I'm happy to see that it's possible to recover from achiness whilst still keeping running. I had begun to worry that running every day would mean my legs getting sorer and sorer each day until I couldn't take it any more and would have to retire permanently to the sofa. Hopefully that's not going to be the case. Also, I'm going to be at Glastonbury at the end of the month and it's going to put a considerable dampener on things if I can't walk by the time I get there. 

This is a busy week so today was the only feasible day for a long run. After the frustrations of running slowly with the heart rate monitor at the weekend I decided to just go for it today and not worry about pace. The first 5k or so felt very hard going. My legs were heavy and my calves felt very tight. For a good while there was a woman running in the same direction on the other side of the road, a little bit behind me but slowly gaining. When she eventually passed me I determined not to let her get more than about 20 metres ahead so I sped up, and was able to maintain that faster pace for the rest of the run. Thank you anonymous woman for your motivational help!

I really wanted to beat the distance I ran on sunday but unfortunately I misremembered it as 12.39 when actually it turns out it was 12.79, so I fall less than 200 metres short which is VERY annoying. On the plus side I've covered almost the same distance as on sunday but taken 22 fewer minutes to do it, which I am very happy about indeed. Sunday's average pace was 7.56, today's was 6.16 - that feels much more like it. 

I passed quite a lot of other runners today and said (gasped) hello to all of them. I've noticed that women running in pairs hardly ever acknowledge a runner coming the other way whereas most other people, men or women, generally do. No idea what that's about, but how hard is it to make eye contact and at least grimace some kind of greeting?

Day 11 12.51k in 1.18.26

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Junethon day 10 - longest running streak ever!

In last year's Juneathon day 10 was the first day that I missed, and once I missed one day it became easier to miss other days. In short, it was the day that the rot set in. So, running on day 10 in Juneathon 2013 means not only that I beat last year's performance but also represents the longest continuous exercise streak of my life. I know there are people doing Junethon who have run every day for weeks, months, even years so a 10 day streak is not very impressive by those standards, but for me it's nothing short of a miracle. And as if that isn't miraculous enough, today I got my run out of the way before work. What's happening to me??

Anyway, it's become apparent that the only way to maintain a steady moderate pace is to do it on the treadmill so I started the day with a 30 minute recovery run. As you can see the treadmill isn't in such a lovely location so all else being equal I'd rather be outside, but the it does serve its purpose in enabling me to fix a pace and stick with it (as well as still being able to run when it's raining - actually going outside to run in the rain being something which still feels impossibly hardcore). In case you are wondering, all the scary-looking weights equipment belongs to my boyfriend who is properly super-fit and spending his Juneathon lifting heavy weights and beefing up until his shirts won't do up anymore. Each to their own.

Amazingly my legs feel pretty good today after the exertions of the weekend so I added to the good work of the morning run by walking from Regent's Park to Waterloo this evening for a meeting. It's about 5k, but my route was considerably longer as I had to go in and out of most of the shops I passed en route (just to get the mileage up, you understand.) And then to top all that I ran up the escalator at Marylebone Station (breaking my strict No Running For Trains Policy) so that I could get there in time to see my train leaving without me on it. That there is why I have a No Running For Trains Policy - running for trains just ends with you being the hot, sweaty, out of breath person watching their train depart. Much better to take it easy and pretend you never wanted to get that train anyway. Anyway, missed train aside, a good day.

The delightful man cave. Not at all reminiscent of the kind of
thing you'd see in a serial killer movie.

Day 10 4k in 30 minutes

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Juneathon day 9 - pain!

Well it turns out that I shouldn't be so quick to dismiss the power of the slow running, because I woke up this morning barely able to move my legs. Pretty much every part of my legs ached - toes, calves, knees, thighs - the works. I had to inch down stairs one step at a time. This is the most that my legs have hurt since I started running again at the beginning of the year. Most odd. I took it pretty easy for most of the day - knitting, watching TV, snoozing - basically all activities designed to be performed with your feet up on the sofa.

There was some talk with The Boyfriend of perhaps ditching running for today and cycling instead. I'm a nervous cyclist due to a serious accident when I was at college, so the fact that I seriously considered this option shows how sore my legs were. That said, I'm not sure how much training benefit there would be from riding my bicycle. It's a Pashley Princess - the kind of bike you'd generally expect to see Miss Marple riding with a basket full of puppies, cut flowers or fresh bread on the front. It only has three gears and weighs about the same as a small family car.

Built for comfort, not for speed.

Anyway, the general leg pain got slightly better as the day went on and I really wanted to run so as not to break my running streak so in the end I decided to go out for a gentle 30 minute jog and just see how it went. Once I got moving I felt perfectly fine so ended up actually going for a fairly fast 5k, not far off my personal best. Whilst I am delighted with that, I can't help feeling that I'm going to be paying for it tomorrow. Already, less that twenty minutes after getting back, my legs are back to being as painful as they were this morning. I think I may be back on the treadmill tomorrow, assuming I haven't lost the use of my legs completely.

Day 9 - 5k in 30.06
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Juneathon day 8 - running slower than I ever thought possible

I mentioned a couple of posts back that I was experimenting with using the heart rate monitor to moderate my runs. With that in mind I've just read the supposedly definitive guide to the subject (if you had told me six months ago I would be buying and reading books like this I would have laughed in your face).

By John L Parker Jr - father of Ray Parker Jr (possibly...)

Anyway, the author suggests that most people run their slow runs too fast and their fast runs too slow. His  system boils down to alternating fast and slow runs, and the pace should entirely be governed by your heart rate. On slow runs your heart rate should never go above 70% of your maximum, and on fast runs you should be aiming for consistently above 85% of your max (I've simplified it a lot but that's the gist).

Slow runs are where the fat burning happens - I'm all about the fat burning - and also how you build up endurance over longer distances. So, today I went for a long, slow run. And boy when I say slow do I mean slow. To keep my heart rate below 70% of max meant 'running' at an insanely slow pace, for most of the run a full 2 minutes per kilometre slower than I usually run. The outward leg of my run is very, very slightly uphill and during that part I had to walk several times to keep my heart rate down. For the rest of it I was running at a pace which can barely be called running.

At one point a father with a child on his shoulders, another in a buggy and two massive bags of shopping passed me. Old ladies with walking sticks passed me. Couples out for a romantic Saturday afternoon stroll passed me. Basically everyone passed me as I shuffled along at a snail's pace. Hell, snails were passing me. To be fair, John L Parker did warn that this would happen. The idea is that over time your endurance and general fitness improve and so does your pace, so you find you can cover longer distances at a faster pace but while still keeping your heart rate below 70%. That day cannot come soon enough in my book.

Today's run actually represents two personal bests, for duration and distance, but I don't feel very triumphant because the pace was so slow. On the plus side I did spend at least an hour in the fat burning zone so I feel fairly positive about the prospect of pizza and home-made ice cream for dinner this evening (vanilla and pralines - nom). As ever it's swings and roundabouts.

Day 8 12.69k in 1.40.43
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