Running On Empty

Another day in the office, another run at lunchtime. After scouring the map for decent green spaces within reach in Gateshead and only coming up with what turned out to be a cemetery, I decided to stick to what I know and head back to Jesmond Vale. This time, I made it a more direct route so that I could get further into it. Looking at the maps for my two forays, however, I'm not sure it's that much of a difference. 😐 Spot the descent into Jesmond Vale (and the climb out again) on the elevation plot Anyway, I'll keep this one brief. I didn't set out with a specific goal in mind other than to do about 6km again and prepare myself for this weekend's parkrun. I guess the latter meant I wanted to increase the pace a little, to see improvement over my previous 28:35 for 5K, but not so much that I couldn't hack the greater distance. In the end, while I felt like I was running well, I only just scraped an improvement, reaching 5K after 28:26. I really need to start d

Today saw me make up for the lack of a Saturday parkrun — an absence brought on by a worryingly clicky left knee — by putting aside the time for a slow recovery run out to Heaton Park from work. The knee had seemed fine on the previous day's junior parkrun, so I figured I'd give it a fairly flat route and definitely not do any stairs or steps. So, heading out the back of work onto Pilgrim Street, I immediately headed eastward towards Shieldfield... going up the spiral staircase by the Blue Carpet. 🤦 Okay, that was foolish. But I took it slowly and gently enough to avoid any clicking. From there, my route took me from the Manors footbridge over the central motorway, past Sainsbury's and through Shieldfield (mmm, smell those herbal cigarettes) in the direction of Cradlewell. I'd planned a route that went further in that direction than I'd run before, so I was spared the dreaded boredom. Passing the now-closed-down Little Green Social (to be fair, it was a pretty ex

Just a very quick post to record and celebrate the fact that Daughter the First was presented with her Half Marathon wristband at yesterday's junior parkrun on the Town Moor. Congratulations, popplet! ❤️ She also got a time that was almost half a minute better than her previous week. Get in there. 😁

What with guide running and junior parkrun being my only weekend outings, and work lunchtimes proving tricky, I was keen to get back out for a decent run this last week. I finally made it on the Thursday, but that meant I'd gone over a week without proper exercise. And, in the end, it showed. Working at home on the Thursday, I decided to give myself a bit longer than usual, sacrificing lunch, to get a slightly longer run in. Intending to follow the advice of Mark Lewis  to go longer at a slower pace (to ultimately make 5K seems easier/quicker), I even considered a 10K. A colleague at work had recently shared a 10K route that goes pretty close to me, which was tempting: These are not the roads you're looking for. In the end though, I just didn't have that much time to play with. Instead, I thought I'd take inspiration from it, even if I didn't do the full route. I figured maybe I'd start heading north, do the upper half of the eastern edge, then the whole of the

Writing this almost a week late, but last weekend (18/19 Mar) was another one where I didn't do a regular parkrun, but did get out to two parkrun events. On the Saturday, I racked up another volunteer credit (unexpectedly) by being a guide runner for a visually impaired colleague who was getting back to doing exercise after having a little boy. This time last year, she was just starting out on a Couch to 5K program and never actually got to complete it, so to start that journey again with a parkrun was amazing. It did mean that we walked most of it, dodging (as best I could) the multitude of puddles and boggy bits on the Rising Sun course , but getting a fast time certainly wasn't my focus (I got a 52:08, which has made my charts on the 5K app a little interesting 😂). On the Sunday, it was Daughter the First's eleventh junior parkrun, meaning she's now completed a half marathon in total. 👏 That means that she'll be presented with a wristband tomorrow when she do

My new role at work has, so far, freed me up from a number of meetings, which is glorious. It won't last of course, but it meant I had the chance for a slightly longer run from the office today. And actually, it's now that it's struck me that that means I can reach new places. Being bored of heading out in a particular direction can get in the bin, as I've still got the potential to explore new areas. And today's new area was St Peter's Basin. Entering the marina area at St Peter's Basin, Newcastle upon Tyne In the end, I spent a fair chunk longer than intended out on the run. And not all of it was running. First, there was a phonecall from the wife, which was really hard to pick up, given my phone was in an armband that I couldn't get it out of. That paused things for a couple of minutes. Then I decided I wanted the odd photo of where I was running. Ordinarily, if I hadn't already stopped, I'd just plough on a sacrifice the photos in favour of m

This weekend was the 7th anniversary of the Town Moor junior parkrun and, to mark it, they were going to be running the course in reverse. The daughter and I were quite looking forward to this, as it would mean a slight downhill to the finish line. Alas, the recent snowy weather meant that... you know, I don't actually get why the weather meant they could run it in the normal direction, yet not in reverse. But... that was the reason given. Instead, they'll be doing the reverse configuration next week instead. Barring something like Mars aligning with Saturn or whatever. Always nice to have the wind behind you on this stretch; and the sun was a pleasant surprise too Regardless, the daughter set herself the goal of doing the first kilometre without any walking today, which I was more than happy to set the pace for. I was even more happy when she achieved that goal. At the halfway point, if we'd kept up that pace, we might've troubled her PB (13:04). In the end, it appear

Third time here today and I'm writing this while studiously ignoring my phone, which has just received the txt message telling me what time I got. Instead, I want to write about how I think I did,  unbiased by the stopwatch. So here goes. Steve McShane / Saltwell Towers / CC BY-SA 2.0, as pilfered by from wikimedia In short (and I will keep this short), I'm happy that I pushed myself hard enough. I purposely moved nearer the start line today in an attempt to avoid the worst of the congestion, but still got boxed in until the first corner, which was really frustrating. Thereafter, there was more space to set my own pace and I'm happy with what I did. I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't hoping for a PB (for this course, not overall), but I've also felt like that in the past and been disappointed, so... whatever. I guess the only other thing to note is that I did complete the course without slowing to a walk in a toilet-related panic . Which was a relief. 😂 I

The gaps between my runs are getting longer. This is not good. I'm reverting to one-run-per-week territory. 😞 With this in mind, I chose to have a lunchtime run today plus a parkrun on the weekend rather than just repeating last Friday's run-to-work tomorrow. So, despite the fact it had just been snowing, I headed out of the office knowing I had mercifully few meetings to trouble my lunchtime. I'd planned the route on onthegomap.com before heading out too, so knew I'd be doing just under 5km, which was fine. I also knew I'd have a bit of a hill in the first half, as I was heading up Westgate Road past all the motorbike shops. As it turned out, I did just over 5km. At the turning point by Elswick Park, I was checking street names to spot the "Gloucester Road" that I'd seen on the website. When I thought I was passing it, all I saw was a very faded sign for a road that appeared to be named Milligan something-or-other. Comparing to Google Maps now, I can

Last year, when I started parkrunning, the eldest daughter decided she wanted to copy Daddy and do the 2K  junior parkrun. We already went orienteering together, but it was lovely that she wanted to do this too. Ultimately, it fizzled out as, after an initial run that saw her bag a time of about 13 minutes, her subsequent runs got increasingly slower. A lot of that was probably down to the sheer adrenaline of her first run, but I also can't help feeling a bit responsible too, what with all of my "take it steady" advice. 🤦‍♂️ Another photo shamelessly 'borrowed' -- this time from the parkrun blog Anyway, last week I enrolled her in the 3K Race for Life , along with myself. (You can, y' know, sponsor her here . Just sayin'. 👀) She was, to say the least, a little bit excited and initially said she'd start training by doing junior parkrun again a couple of months before the event. However, by the time Sunday arrived, she'd decided she wanted to do i

Following Friday's 7km run into work, I figured I'd better follow advice to not overdo things, so I chose to make this the weekend when I volunteered for the first time. I'd seen that the Town Moor parkrun was asking for help to fill its slots, so I got in touch. The next morning, there I was freezing my fingers off getting ready to marshal for the first time. Gotta say, I'm not naturally social. Smalltalk is definitely not my thing. Before the start, I probably interacted more with someone's dog (Albi was lovely, mind) than the rest of the volunteers. That said, many thanks to Alison for taking the above photo. Anyway, I'd been assigned the marshal role as one of three at "gate number 3" — like I knew where that was! 😂 Turned out was a gate leading onto/off the moor on Grandstand Road, near the Blue House roundabout. This was the gate I'd gone through on the Race for Life last year, though for the parkrun, only the narrow pedestrian gate was op

Smug mode: engaged. 😁 Yesterday, the opportunity arose to travel into work today without having to carry anything in. Immediately, my mind sprang to the possibility of running in. Back when Daughter the First was still junior parkrunning, I'd suggested to her that I should aim to run to work by the end of the year. That was 2022 and it didn't happen. (Not sure how I forgot about that in my retrospective. Maybe I'll go back and fix it.) Now though? Here was my chance! I knew it was about 4½ miles, but I didn't bother to convert that to km until I was actually into the run (mental gymnastics ahoy!). I also knew there was a decent hill — Matthew Bank — to contend with, but I told myself it would be ok to walk that bit if necessary. And I knew I'd be up late the night before, but I planned to make full use of the fact I didn't have to start work till 10 o'clock. And so I just did it . 💪 SEVEN kilometre markers. You love to see it. In the end, I a