These long weekends this month have made time pass more slowly it feels. Plenty of chance to get stuff done, get out and enjoy the countryside. With a full week of beautiful sunny days ahead I decided to get time on feet and walk into work every day using a different route than the one I run when coming home sometimes, a little over 9km each morning. I was rewarded with great sunny days and getting to work feeling energised and ready for the day. It may have helped with the afternoon/evening running. The downside was not being able to write the blog on the bus on the way in to work so I kept feeling like I was falling behind on this without Wei Hei to chase me for the Eagle’s blog deadline.

Monday I switched out the club run for a run home from work. Club run is now the only session I run that late in the evening and it was starting to feel like a millstone around my neck. I’ve come to realise I am much more of a morning runner and waiting around until half seven to get an east run in on a Monday isn’t really working for me in terms of enjoyment recently. I have one more date where my name is down to lead and then I think I’ll switch to running home, or any other session Jenny wants to throw at me over the summer. The run felt good, I was positively bouncy and was a little fast pace wise, but it felt good and as most of it is down hill isn’t not easy to slow down. 

Tuesday was my turn to coach in Lammas Park. This is always a fun session to lead as it attracts so many more eagles than track or hills. Add to that I get to stand in the middle of the park blowing my whistle every few minutes and there is nothing to not like. No running for me today, just more walking, with urgency. When I got home there was just enough time to nip into the gym and do some strength training.

Wednesday there was a Chase the Sun race in Hyde Park after work which my training plan had down as a 10k tempo effort. So after work I ambled across to the park to the swelling crowd of runners that gathered around the bandstand while a couple practiced their ballroom dancing up on the podium. I joined the back of the pack as usual and started easy, calmly working my way through the runners and being mindful of how the body was feeling. This training block feels a lot less exhausting, physically and emotionally, than the marathon training. So as I turned the first corner onto the shallow incline I started to wonder if I knew what running fast felt like? I’d see if I could make this a progression run, see what I had for each kilometre. Overall the trend line shows I hit my goal but it’s easy to tell where the shallow hill hit and slowed me a bit, happy with that run.

I finished the working week with another walk into walk and ran it home in the afternoon, very ready to start the bank holiday activities. I’d settled on a route near Tring and along the Ridgeway for Saturday’s trail run, four hours was in the plan and with the hills I was fairly sure this route would meet that. So another 4am alarm call on a weekend and I was ready and out the door to get the train up to Tring to have the route started just after 8am. The skies were overcast, the light subdued. Almost immediately I was climbing a hill up to the Ridgeway with the first bit through woodland. Just me and the dog walkers at this time of day on a bank holiday morning. The tree line opened up to the chalky grassland on the tops of the hills. I’d been sticking to the 9:1 where possible but with quite a few inclines at the start there weren’t many i could complete. As I reached the trig point at Ivinghoe Beacon a grand vista of the English countryside opened up as the last of the clouds were burnt off.

I descended back into woodland emerging into meadows and pasture with sheep quietly grazing under the pale blue skies. I’d been steadfastly following the directions on the Garmin and hadn’t veered off course yet, although there had been a phantom path early on where a wall of trees and vegetation suggested there had never been a way through here. Then, as the route passed through a farm complex the signs disappeared and all the gates were locked. The other signs erected by the occupants suggested that the way had been closed off by them on purpose. With no obvious way through that wouldn’t involve damaging something I navigated a detour until I found an overgrown way through the hedge to another way through the farmers sheep field back to the trail I was meant to be following. Picking my way gingerly past the nettles I crossed the pasture and rejoined the route on the Garmin, I love its map function for exactly this reason!

The terrain continued to change as I continued, from pasture to village green complete with duck pond into ploughed and planted crop fields and back onto a country road. I almost started the whole route again when I turned the wrong way heading back up the hill rather than heading for the station. It all looked very different in the sun. I was almost an hour and a half short of the targeted time for today’s session. I still have a lot to learn about the distance/time ratio of these trail runs.

The week ended on a planned hike and I wanted it hilly and get some pole practice in. Going to need that for the last leg of the upcoming race. So I took myself off to the Seven Sisters, a route I know well after using it for a lot of my training for Kilimanjaro a few years ago. I would do an out and back from Eastbourne over to Seaford. Getting there as early as I could with a two hour train journey I headed out into the hills passing the finish line of the GB Ultras race that was on that weekend. Climbing up to Beachy Head I saw the first ultra runner of the day on his descent to completing his 100k, not May weeks until I’ll hopefully be making a similar journey. Although I very much doubt I will be running it like this chap!

It didn’t feel like a long time before I was at Burling Gap, it was a lot shorter than I remembered?!? Was I going to fall short on the turning again? My perceptions of distance have changed a lot and it’s happened so slowly I seem to have missed it happening. In an idle conversation at work a colleague asked what I was doing that evening. “I’ve got a race in Battersea Park. It’s only 10k easy.” They let out a little laugh, gave me a look, “Only!” I forget that there was a time when running for More than two minutes seemed impossible to me doing laps of Southfield Park. Back in 2014 one crossing of the Seven Sisters was on my limit and I only did an out and back on them once before. So when I’d planned this in my head it was going to be more than far enough to hit the time on feet I needed. Apparently not, I was destined to finish in five hours, not the planned six. 😏

I got the practice on the sticks I wanted though. On the way out to Seaford I didn’t use them at all, coming back I used them for every incline, getting the rhythm right for the incline. They made a huge difference, especially on those slightly tired legs. I was powering up the hills (well, in my head anyway) and passing everyone else. This cemented my decision to invest in specialist trail running poles rather than the trekking poles I had from my hiking days.

So after a week of beautiful weather, bright vistas of the English countryside and some great runs what were my takeaways? Clearly my perception of time and distance are out of whack and I need to recalibrate, running poles will be my savour in the last half of the coming race and walking is most certainly the way to go for the hills and the parts where I am just plain knackered.