Training Log Archive: ndobbs

440m climb according to garmin :)

Warsaw, river run. Tired... must be acreful not to get sick...

Weather isn't awful, but I'd love to be back on the mediterranean... or even in wet hills in ireland. flat sucks...

flew back from marseille yesterday, via brussels...

C • 440? 2

jog in Marseille.
Despite nice weather, some nice buildings, a park, a small hill, seeing the sea etc it just was not particularly enjoyable after the glorious week in Corsica. Pavements just don't do it for me.

hohum

didn't sleep particularly well last night on the boat, so spent much of the morning in bed after checking in at the hotel.

Corte to Santa-Lucia-Di-Mercurio

Enchanting village up in the hills across the valley and visible from much of Corte, this was on my to-do list all week. With a name suggestive of extra-terrestrial worshipping Christians how could I resist?

After two days of clouds and showers, today was as lovely as forecast, warmer than earlier in the week. My running shorts made their first appearance since September and the sleeveless top was sufficient. Started off, like three days before, with the descent from the farm into town, then past the railway and the Oliveraie, over a minor hill and across some fields before hitting the climb. En route I met sheep, cows and mouflons. After reaching the top of the spur, there was 2.5km without miild ascents and descents before reaching the village. Had a stroll around, fantastic views of the surrounding mountains, some quaint houses and a church, smoke coming from a few chimneys and even a couple of people, but no sign of any commercial premises (bar the church). Sat down by the fountain, drank a bit and enjoyed the sunshine before heading back.

Outwards I was 1h16, sped up on the way back, having fun on the fast bits. Much of the downhill was steep enough to be slow, however. For fun, sped up to 3.30/km to see what the HR would do, only went up to around 150 - on the uphill, going slowly, it was in the 160s...
Towards the end it was all slow :)


One of the nicest runs in a long time, scenery, the sunshine, the smells, sensations, all was great!!

went to l'Ile Rousse today by train and bus... lazy day, walked around the rocks, had lunch, strolled along the beach, did a little maths, ran back for the bus I nearly missed :)

Lovely dinner in l'Oliveraie this evening, Goat, gratin and french beans... a drop of house red... chestnut and hazelnut pie to round it off...

Corsica is great!!!!

vallée de la Tavignano, Corte

Jog up this fantastic rock-enshrined valley, accessible only to pedestrians, along a stony path fifty to a hundred metres above the Tavignano. Only crossed a few people (including one runner!), and only made it halfway up the valley. Towards the top there is "refuge de la sega", closed in winter, and then another few hours walk to civilisation. Brought a 25cl bottle with me which I refilled at a couple of tributaries.

Tired but good at the end :)

After eating a small bit and resting, walked into town for more food.

Climb guestimated with the aid of a map... Garmin ain't much good: 1550m climb according to the 305... great.

Corte, Corsica

1h25 up a hill, 45 down... another hour+ walking around town and to and from the farm

Big climb, from under 500m to almost 1200... stopped when I came out into sunshine on a col between more upwards towards the snowline and an outcropping... glorious views. Knees were wobbly on the downhill. Sunny, not particularly warm (at over 1100m in the shade there was frost on the ground).

C • I don't think I've ever see... 2

bus to Corte after a half-decent night's sleep on the ferry.
from railway station to the farm, in and around town (Corte, Corsica), then an hour and a half up the Restonica valley. Lovely.

walked around marseille a bit today in search of newt week's hotel where i left a couple of small bags... then in search of a ferry to take me to corsica :)

yesterday afternoon walked over an hour after lunch... lovely weather :)

day off today I guess. In the previous 7 days I ran about 6 hours, which if Eoin was right is about what I ran between mid-October and January... hopefully I'm still alive :)

C • Good Come Back 2

after breakfast, slow jogging and then climbing and scrambling to get to the bus stop. Arrived twelve minutes late, just in time to see our bus go past.

Hitching to Cassis worked a dream, first car to come stopped for us, drove us down to the port.

Legs ripped to pieces on the off-trail part.

Cassis to Luminy with a detour to the top of mont pugeot

Lovely lovely run. Sunshine, not too warm, so sweating but not suffering.
It was mostly on stone or rubble/scree.

With Mark Holland.

>2hr walk in the calanques, a few hundred metres of climb. Sunny but a little cold.

Marseille-Luminy

Unwisely agreed to go for a morning jog :)
It was still dark when we set off at 7am, heading out towards the Mirador. Calanques are LOVELY. I could live down here :)

As we admired the view it got properly bright... took a slightly longer route back.
Running with Mark, Dan and Mike, ergodic theorists from England.

Garmin distance: 15.93km, 6:37/km

Rovisco Pais, Day two of Trofeu de Cantanhede

Nice orienteering again, not as technical by any standard... but long and quite sandy, so tough running.

Got very tired after 8km and 51 minutes. Can see it on heart rate... which got much less smooth after this point. (Note under half the time for half the distance) - it was en route to the fifteenth control. On this control there was a bit of vegetation and I found it very hard to keep a rhythm. My biggest mistake was perhaps on the way to the 12th... at least it's the mistake that annoys me the most... I did leave the 23rd at 30 degrees...
Fun having gps and hrm :)

Garmin distance covered: 7.42km, speed 6.12/km

Dunas de Cantanhede
Portugese WRE middle distance
Mattias Karlsson won in 31:07, so I got a fantabulous 744 points... probably more than I dserved anyway.

Surprised I survived the weekend. I used to be able to run faster and read a map better... so hopefully there's progress o come.

Map was fantastic, really fun area, well-planned course...

warmup and down... after was 1.05km with paddy in 8:34

run in Porto, down to and then along the banks of the douro

got a twang as i came off a bridge... hope hope hope hope hope it's not serious. I thought I might be better...

Mindelo,
just north of Porto

Took the Metro after work... I had intended stopping work early to run in daylight but got delayed... and then the metro got delayed... so got to see sunset from it en route.

By the time I got to Mindelo and located the map, it was well after sunset but there was still a bit of light. Started running with a single LED.
Did just over 30 controls on a 1:5000 version of the map, mostly in open semi-sand duny area. There was plenty of brambles and gorse for me to run into, which I did with greater and greater frequency as it got darker...

Made a couple of mistakes early on but then got the hang of it, only making one biggy at the 12th (my 18th?) where I knew I was going to make one, flat area, couple of indistinct paths, scattered nasty veg, looking for a smally short ditch...

One of those important training sessions where it would have been all too easy just to go to bed instead of suffering... actually I quite enjoyed it, despite it being dark :)

Having spent most of the day before and all morning in bed, HR was down to 45, lowest I've seen it in a while.

Went out for a gentle run in Porto, spent a good bit of time in the lovely park containing what was a palacio of cristal and now is a millennium bank billboard.

Found a playground with soft surface so did some conditioning exercises, jumps and stuff.

I had been hoping to head out to Mindelo today to do a bit of orienteering, but it's a fair hike and it was raining all day (until a couple of minutes after I started to run) and I didn't feel like getting sick...

from bus to start.

Parque de Cidade or some such, Porto.

Very nice city park. Took an age to get to because I got on the wrong bus. Manuel Delgado kindly lent me a substantial part of his map colleciton, so I got to run an old course...
very pleasant.
Lovely day, too.

I had spent most of it in bed as I was feeling really close to getting seriously ill - maybe sore throat - again. Managed to avoid it thankfully.

1.4km along the Atlantic coast at sunset afterwards, followed by a bus ride back along the Douro to the first bridge... jogged from there back up to the hotel.