Training Log Archive: bradc

Dumyat from the house. After a day sat in front of the computer again, I was about to scrape the wallpaper off with my fingernails, so Beccy pushed me out the door. A nice long run was required.

I've thought of heading for Dumyat from the front door for ages, so today I decided that I might just head in that direction and see how I felt. So, I set legs to all-day pace (as in, "I've just eaten an all-day breakfast and this is as fast as I can go without calling for Huey") and engaged gear.

I was still as fresh as a daisy by the time I got to the yooni via the Darn Path and Br of A, so it was up, up and away to the heights. Dumyat lurked in the dank mist. Water above, water below... welcome to Scotland. Choice of footwear was proven a bit suspect on the long comedy descent along the ridge towards the Lossburn path - at one point every step was taken straight out of the Ministry of Silly Walks handbook (category: extreme silliness bordering on the insane) - but I struck lucky with a sheep trod that headed in the right direction in exactly the way that sheep trods usually don't.

Once on the Lossburn track it was over the moor to Waltersmuir reservoir, more comedy bog snorkelling to get to the track, then home via Kippendavie House and the slitherfest wood behind the house. Eggselent. My calves got a wee bitty tight on the Kippendavie track, but rolling them out with an empty bottle helped. As did emptying the bottle in the first place.

C • Great stuff! 6

Spent the morning helping at the CATI at the yooni. Well, sitting on my bum, really, we helpers far outnumbered the punters; although I believe that it picked in the afternoon, by which stage we were off shopping. Joy. Sainsbury is not a great place to be on a Saturday.

These 30 minute runs are getting to be too regular. It just seems to be all that I can squeeze in at present - work is manic! Actually, I'd intended to run for longer; I stopped off at Barrwood en route back from a meeting in Bellshill, intending to run my way around an old 6km brown course, but very rapidly discovered just how horrible the bracken is there during the summer. It makes the area completely unusable! So, after fighting through that for 15 minutes I bailed and did a couple of laps of the paths, one at hard effort, and called it a day.

Work work work. All I had time for was a quick jaunt around Beecraigs. Just to be different (and after having read Alibongo's blog of a few weeks back) I parked up at the Korean War Memorial and explored some tracks around there and over Witches' Craig before heading into the CP. Not ideal, as it's out on a limb with only way into and out of the park, but it made a change.

Legs felt fine and feet quite nimble, which was good on the root-strewn and muddy paths. Gosh it has rained a lot this summer.

Another wonderful day of getting on the road at 0500, trawling down the rain and traffic-strewn M6/61/60 to Stockport, full high-stress day on-site, and back home again. Knackered.

C • high stress day 2

Decided that, after a summer of basically just starting to get some consistent, steady but slow miles under my belt, it was time to start reintroducing some pace work. Which the body has pretty much forgotten how to do! Well, you've got to start somewhere so I set off at a base 16.2kph but only kept it up for 5km, at which point I had to throttle back and gradually ramp up again. By all standards a fairly dismal performance, but by the end of the year I'll be running 10km at 17kph, see if I don't.

Time to start doing some circuits again as well - get that leg speed up. The achilles is fully functional (16 months after the op) and that long-term left hamstring thing is nearly better, so there are no excuses!

C • Circuits 4

C • 35:17 6