Fire Above, Ice Below

I was planning on running every day this week except for Friday, which is my work Christmas dinner followed by a trip to Lewes for continued work drinking - I will probably walk over the hill to Lewes from Glyndebourne though, which does count as exercise. I didn't get out today though, as I ended up having to stay late and I have still got rather a lot to sort out at home this evening too. However, I did do the same full route of just under 4 miles on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday - even in the snow on Wednesday. In fact, it was much colder Tuesday, although that may have something to do with the extra gloves and hat I wore Yesterday. On Tuesday I totally thought I was getting frostbite for the first 10-15 minutes, until the blood started pumping into my hands at which point I got chilblains instead.

So this is the route that I have been running, except that I haven't been running it from A to B, I've been running it from my house to my house, and in fact the gap between A and B has been lengthened into this:

The best thing about the last few days is that I have finally got my own, working mp3 player. I had to upgrade my phone and so I got one which could do the job as well, and it was free to boot. It's also good because it means that I have my phone on me while running in case anything ever does go wrong. At the moment it only has space for about 10 songs, but I've ordered a memory expansion so that should sort me out properly. AS it is, I've been able to notice a few things about good music to run with. I've found that longer songs work much better than really short and fast punk music, because it doesn't encourage me too run to fast and thus run out of steam and at the same time, by the time each song is finished I've run much further, so it feels less arduous. 

Best of all so far has been Iron Maiden and Agalloch - for a combination of steady rhythms and long songs. I'm tempted to try even more doom, Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride for instance, although I'm worried that the longer tracks by those bands might actually be too slow. Power metal is also pretty good, I had Sonata Arctica's Deathaura on my playlist yesterday which was pretty awesome, but the cheese factor might become problematic. I was disappointed that sticking on Faster by the Manics didn't make me go any faster, or maybe that was the problem, because I ran out of steam by the end of it. I shall experiment further - I intend to push up to an 8 mile run while I'm in London, and hopefully my memory card will have arrived in time to keep me entertained while I do it.

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

Sorry that I haven't posted anything for the last week and a half or so, but I had a bit of a downer weekend the weekend before last. On the Saturday I picked up Alan Sillitoe's The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, which was all very good and prompted me to listen to lots of Iron Maiden, which I was very happy with. Then on Sunday I went for a run around Moulsecomb Wild Park, and actually a bit further than I had been going which was great until about halfway round when my knee started to seize up and I ended up walking most of the way back and then couldn't really do anything the rest of the week.

One of the ways that I motivate myself to do things that are difficult or that are excess to my absolute basic requirements of survival is to go so far into them that the only way to get back is to keep on going. This works fine except when you get yourself stranded somewhere because of it. Also, in retrospect, TLotLDR was probably not the best thing to read. It's brilliant, but the ending did not chime well with my injury the next day, at least in terms of keeping me motivated about keeping going and all since I spent the whole time feeling this growing discomfort, slowing down and just thinking that that's the end of it. Especially after my ipod conked out only a little before my knee did. The fact is, with the exception of the awesome and surprisingly faithful Rime of the Ancient Mariner, most Iron Maiden songs based on the classics of literature are not always completely, er... accurate to the story, so I should have guessed that my preconceptions might have been slightly out.

This week has been a lot better. I've sorted out a longer route for the evenings, and it's mostly fine, with more pavement and less grassy hill. However, it does still go up on the hill for a bit (if I want to) and yesterday that may not have been the best idea, what with the heavy mist and all. I was too excited by the fact that I had working music, having borrowed my girlfriend's ipod, and I ended up falling down a rabbit hole. The bad news is that I didn't end up in wonderland. The good news is that I didn't break my leg either. I'm going to be a bit more careful from now on.

To play out this post, I shall leave you with this awesome Japanese Maiden covers band doing Loneliness, seeing as they hardly ever seem to play it live now. Top quality.

DMs

I did actually attempt a run in my 8-hole boots, when I knew I was doing the marathon but before I picked up the trainers. It was ill advised. However, I did win on one aspect - a seven year old girl who I passed buying ice cream said that she liked my shoes.

These are not good for running in.

Rainy Sundays and The buying of equipment pts 1 & 2

I still maintain that playing Prince of Persia for two hours in my pyjamas counts as training. I mean, he does loads of running around and jumping between rooftops and stuff and it was raining. That said, I did make it out for about half an hour, in a slight detour that dumped me at the bottom of the steep end of the valley, just by Moulsecoomb station, so I ended up just walking back up that, just as it started to rain again. It was annoying, because I had planned to repeat and improve on my run from last Sunday but what with the rain and a general lack of motivation that I've been suffering from all week (not just on the running front - I haven't had the desire to do anything much) it didn't really happen. I know that it'll pass, and I just have to wait for my energy to come back a bit, but even that knowledge doesn't always help when you're in the middle of it.

What I did manage to do this weekend was make it to the army surplus store at Preston Circus to buy some t-shirts and vests to train in. Paul Bruton's is seriously the best army surplus store I think I've come across, beating even the one at Greenwich Market that I used to go to as a teenager. I had meant to head there when I got first started training but I left my debit card on my desk at home and didn't realise until I was already at London road. What followed was a fairly miserable trudge into town, ending up at Sports Soccer staring at huge and unintelligible piles of trainers and racks of identical but slightly different tracksuit trousers. I bought a pair of Puma's in the end - as much as I might want to even I realise that I cant do proper running in my DMs.

Wales

I'm back from Wales, then, where I didn't run along Portmeirion beach. This was to be expected, as it was cold, starting to rain and I had to drive back to the cottage we were staying in.

The Smell of Rain- Looking down on Portmerion Beach.

I did try and run every day though, in the area around the cottage - which was basically about half a mile of hill and nowhere else to go. I swear I got less fit over the course of the week as well, as the first day I did it not easily, but at least without feeling like collapsing. By Friday I could hardly make it up at all, but it must have been worth it. On Sunday (after driving back to Brighton through the sort of storms you normally only get in Horror films about malevolent fogs) I managed to run a good four miles or so without stopping to walk. Success!

The view from the hill which I ran up almost every morning.

Upon Portmeirion Shores

Another shortish run this morning, mainly because I now have to get ready to drive for six hours to Snowdonia for my long awaited holiday in Wales, home-ish of the criminally underrated Hecate Enthroned, the supposed birthplace of Merlin, and also proud supplier of numerous desolate beaches as used on BBC location shoots. As we are staying in the North we'll be unfortunately too far away from Southerndown Beach, or Bad Wolf Bay as it is in Dr Who, but we will be close to Portmeirion, which was used in The Prisoner.  I shall return in a week or so with pictures.

The Golfcourse by Moonlight part 2

I went out this evening again, around six when I was just in from work. The moon loomed a lot lower tonight making the whole place much darker, and there were lots of small animals skittering in the shadows. I've been running up on the hill at Hollingbury, out on the path overlooking 'Scoombe valley until this small round pool in a strangely lonely ring of trees just before a really steep drop onto the playing fields. I came back over the golf course, but due to the darkness managed to get lost. 

Lost. On a golf course. That's seriously one of my nightmares. Right there.

The Golfcourse by Moonlight

Feeling a bit better this evening, and what with the full moon making it rather atmospheric (and not treacherously dark) I managed to get back into the swing of things with a short run (15-20 mins or something). Woo!

Training blip

My plan was to post fairly regular updates on my training. You know, how far I've been running, how long and so on. It's a plan that I still nurture, but that will have to wait a while, as I am still feeling just a bit ill, making any running about probably counterproductive.

The thing is, I was actually very good in the last few weeks - either running or swimming five days out of seven for two weeks until the tendrils of winter caught up with me and laid me low with, I'm not even sure what. Something grotty enough to keep me weak, but not grotty enough to get me off work, kind of like a constant hangover.

In any case, I shall make a short note of my plan for the next month or so, which is based around building up my stamina on the hills around where I live. That's it really, actually. I'm going to run at least three days a week, and swim two days. I already have been swimming for about an hour once a week with my girlfriend, and we've been meaning to up that to twice a week anyway - so this looks like a great chance to make that happen. And maybe I should do some more running too.

I Bid You...Welcome (etc.)

So, I said that I'd run a marathon. Among the really clever things that I've done in my life this ranks pretty low, but its not at the bottom; I used to play rugby.

The marathon in question is the inaugural Brighton Marathon, in 2010. Now, as far as I'm concerned 2010 is the future, which maybe made my initial decision seem less daunting when I made it. Of course 2010 was actually only two and a half months away when I decided to do this, and may even be here by the time you are reading this. I have, at the time of writing, just under six months to get myself up to scratch, so it's a good thing I've already started then, isn't it? This is going to be fun.

Regardless, I think doing this is going to be really worthwhile. I'm running on behalf of a Brighton charity, Leo House at Home. I like this, not just because I think that Leo House do awesome work, which they do, but because they do that work here in Brighton, where I live, so it all ties together - I'll be supporting people in Brighton by running around Brighton. A lot.

As for me: for those who don't know me my name is Amsel and I'm a bit of a goth (I'm also a bit of a metaller, but don't tell the other goths that). I'm running this training blog so that you can find out trivial details like how well I'm doing as well as important information about how my hair dye is holding up, but you can go and donate at my JustGiving page too. Do it now. It'll be great.