Running On Empty

Tell me... can you feel the milestone? Ohhhh yes. TWENTY-FIVE! T-shirt incoming! 😁 Aaaanyway... back to the run. First time at Chopwell Wood and it was HARD . A few months back, I watched a YouTube video of some guy doing this course and... well, it didn't look too hard. He talked through the fact there were uphill sections, but in all honesty, they looked pretty easy. In hindsight, maybe it was just that they were easy for him and the camera wasn't showing the true extent of the hills. (He got a time of 23:50, btw. 😲) Whatever, it was definitely hard for me . Possibly the hardest one I've done, in fact. The walk to the start from the car park (seen above) was pretty typical of the trails we'd run: mostly gravel and small stones bedded nicely into mud. Nothing too squelchy, so mostly a decent running surface, though there were a few sections with larger, more rubble-like stones, but mostly smooth ones. Prior to turning up, I'd been a bit...

Another midweek run from the office, but I really sold myself short with the amount of time I allowed. With a series of meetings starting at 1pm, setting off from the office at 12:20 was just daft. 20 minutes for a run, then another 20 to gather my gear, get showered, dried and dressed and get back to my desk and into a Teams meeting. It's not enough to be either comfortable or productive (in terms of fitness). Had I given myself more time, I would've gone for a longer, slower run as prep for a faster, shorter parkrun. Never mind. As often happens when I'm short on time, I didn't really plan a route. I fancied heading to Exhibition Park and back, but didn't really fancy being in the crowds up Northumberland Street. Instead, it was eastward out of the office before skirting the shoppers by going up John Dobson Street. That took me towards the Northumbria University campus though, which lured me away from Exhibition Park. So, I dodged through its pedestrianised area,...

Obligatory introspective opening lament: another midweek blog post with no intervening parkrun post: bummer! 😞 One day I'll make a chart or calendar of excuses... I mean reasons for not having done parkrun, but for now, back to this run. Today's lunchtime run from the office was another attempt to avoid the crowds and better explore somewhere that until recently I didn't even know existed: the Byker Link . As that linked article says, it's a (dirty) green corridor close to the Ouseburn area running from Byker down to St Peter's Basin (and probably far beyond) that used to be an active railway line until the 70s. I first stumbled upon it when exploring the far side of Ouseburn on a run (which I don't seem to have blogged about, so it must be a while back) and I've been meaning to take another look ever since. Byker Link, definitely not today and definitely not taken by me No time for photos today though, as I was trying to concentrate on just getting back i...

With a busy weekend of visiting relatives, there was no chance for a run and then it was straight into a 2-day work trip. Finding a time and place for a run — let alone finding the energy for it — was always going to be difficult. In the end, I skipped breakfast on the second day of my work trip to hit the gym. Despite the appeal of running in Auckland, New Zealand, I opted instead for a workout I had a little more control over, selecting a 5K program over "rolling hills" at some arbitrary, but mid-level, intensity. Sadly, I found it so hard that I reduced the intensity and cut it short at 4K. I really wasn't feeling it. 😞 And for once, I think I'll just leave the report there. Not a great day, but hoping for better on the next outdoor run.

It was nice while it lasted. Headed out for another lunchtime run today, again intending to do fairly flat loops near work, but I completely failed to replicate Tuesday's pace. Pushing myself every bit as hard (I felt), I was going to do 3 laps of the Millennium Bridge and the Swing Bridge, each lap being roughly 1.5km if memory serves. After just 1km, however, I was already struggling, with Google Fit reporting a 5:14/km pace. 😞 Had Tuesday not happened, I would've been perfectly happy with that as a first kilometre. Today, however, all I could think was that it was about 45 seconds per kilometre slower than I'd been 2 days ago. To give myself the best chance of picking up the pace, I decided to minimise the amount of pedestrian dodging required for the rest of the run. To that end, I abandoned my quayside laps in favour of heading upriver towards Dunston Staithes. A gentle breeze blowing down the Tyne then felt like running into a gale as I continued to struggle. The le...

After the 10K a couple of days ago, I got back to a much shorter lunchtime run today. As is often the case, I had limited time, so I opted to stay close to the office. I also wanted it to be fairly flat to allow me to practice a faster pace, but rather than heading down to the quayside, this time I decided to do laps of the Tyne Bridge and High Level Bridge... which, it turns out, is almost exactly 2km per lap. Leaving the office by the back door, I headed straight over Mosely Street and past Cale Cross House onto the Tyne Bridge. By the time I reached the turning point on the Gateshead side, Google Fit piped up with its 1K progress report... and shocked me. At the time, it said "4 minutes and 34 seconds" though it's since revised that downwards! Anyway, that set the tone for the rest of the run, with me seeing how well I could maintain such a ridiculous pace. I rarely come out of the blocks that fast, so I wanted to capitalise on it. Pushing hard, my second kilometre was...

In my last post, I talked about how I'd signed up for a 10K event in July. And while my last run was partly an attempt to start getting me used to longer runs, I honestly expected the day of the Great North 10K to be the first time I would actually complete a 10K distance. Well, I've gone and blown that plan out of the water. 🙄 Route and stats for my first ever 10K run, showing an average pace of 5:40/km The last few days, I've been getting all agitated (internally) about how little real opportunity I get to go  for a run when the kids are off school. By the time I get the chance, it's pushing 9pm and I'm feeling too tired to contemplate exercise. The frustration's been exacerbated by missing parkrun to take the younger daughter climbing and even missing the chance to run with the elder daughter at junior parkrun. And then I realised that I'll have to miss next week's parkrun too as we're visiting relatives again. So, despite really not feeling ...