A runner's little helper

It was like Brief Encounter but without the repressed English emotions or perhaps it was more like the song Strangers in the Night except we were not exchanging glances.  In fact we resolutely kept our gazes forward.

The other night I ran with a stranger and it was a brief but extremely welcomed encounter.  I was heading into the last 3k of my 10k circuit in the park.  It was hot and humid and I was tiring and overheating.  I was determined to finish it running not walking when quite by chance I fell into step with another runner.  We were roughly the same height and build and it turned out a matching pace.  So for the next 2k we ran together.  Not looking at each other or acknowledging that we were but we knew we were running together.  We held back if one of us got caught behind people and we sped up to avoid obstacles.

What I have discovered about running

As you know I started to run seriously last August.  This was when it all fell into place and I realised that running was something that I both enjoyed and could probably be good at if I applied myself.

Since then I have been running regularly and outside and on Sunday I made one of my more startling running discoveries.  I hate running on a treadmill.  I really do.  I ran on one for an hour because a: I needed to get a ‘long’ run in (T-6 days until my first race) and b: the weather wasn’t sympathetic to me running outside (too hot) so Mr Lapin (aka The Fitter One) and I went to the gym to pound the treadmill together. 

What I discovered was that running on the treadmill really did not seem like running at all.  Yes I had chosen one of the machines that had a fan to try and give the illusion of movement.  Yes I had brought headphones to watch television but even season 2 of Hawaii 5-0 wasn’t distraction enough from the realisation that running on a treadmill isn’t really running.  You are moving but you are not really doing anything…

Run soul girl, run.

On the 22 August 2011 I ran 3.27k in 22mins 18sec at a pace of 6’48” per kilometre.  How do I remember this momentous day?  Not from some dog eared notebook but from my shiny Nike+ gadget that sits on my iPhone and the 22 August was the first time I used it.  I am unashamed to say I love my Nike+ it has been a solid motivating tool that has helped me to keep focused on my running. For example today as I sit here writing I know that I have only another 28k to run to reach the goal of completing 249k and thereby conquering the second level on the programme, level orange.  I can track my runs, see my times and trace when in a session I speed up and conversely slow down.  I also love the way I get shout-outs from either Lance Armstrong or Paula Radcliffe congratulating me on running faster, longer, stronger.  If I keep this up I may turn into the Bionic Woman!

The Nike+ is not all perfect though.  Like all love affairs what started out in a giddy appreciation of the miracles it could perform is at the moment leaving me feeling somewhat deflated at its lack of accuracy.  I have a horrible and growing suspicion that it may be a good 1km out in its tracking.  I am making very different distances when I train in the park to when I run on various treadmills.  I am investigating.  I don’t expect the application to be perfect, but a 1k error is kind of a big thing.*

Barefoot in the park but not a Redford in sight

The blogging and running took a serious hit over the Christmas and New Year break.  However, I am back with a committed mind-set and posting and running much more regularly.  This radical promise has mainly come about because  in less than three weeks I will be waking up at an unearthly hour to get to the start line for my first 10k road race at the Standard and Charter Bangkok Marathon (the catalyst for this blog in the first place).

While I might have been tardy with writing and running that is not to say I have not been thinking about all things running!  I have been building up the running twitter posse. Some of whom I am stalking (ahem following) and have also been kind enough to follow me.  My tweeting has mostly been focused on trying to get @johnprescott  to retweet my bad film titles along with the odd pithy reply to a couple of tweets .  I will endeavour to be more “running focused” in daily tweets.

Burma on my mind

I have been horribly remiss with my blogging (and running) over the Christmas and New Year period, but today marks the return to the web of my musings.  As I said in my last post before Christmas, I was going to be spending it in Burma with my mother and her partner (my husband, due to work and last minute injury stayed at home).  I had planned an ambitious nine day trip for us, visiting Rangoon, Inle Lake and Bagan.

How can I best describe the experience?  It was at once beautiful and sad, energising and exhausting.  Burma held so many contradictions that it at times blew me away.  Rangoon is a dusty, sleepy town of crumbling grandeur, sandy streets and people who are probably the nicest I have met in a long, long time.

My travelling companions