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.