Parks and Recreation (and Canals)

Sleep, run, eat. And repeat. That's how it's felt for the past few weeks. The P+D training plan is really kicking in on the distances. After four weeks my weekly distance is about as much as it was during the height of my previous training plan. And I like it! I must be a masochist.

I've noticed on my midweek runs that I don't venture far from home. Even if I'm running 10 miles I will choose a familiar circular route that keeps me within a couple of miles from my front door. Yet on the weekend I will happily forge a new route that takes me miles away. I take my Oystercard and some money just in case I get injured or have to stop for some reason. I used to take my iPhone with me to listen to podcasts which meant I could call my wife to come and pick me up should I get into trouble (not that I did!). But now I use an iPod Nano because it's much lighter so leave the phone at home. Anyway, I think the midweek runs top out at 14 miles so maybe I'll be forced to go far from home. Maybe it's just a psychological thing but it's worth mentioning.

I used to have issues on about 90% of my runs where I would feel the need to take a "comfort break" for want of a better euphemism. I'd either have to stop to compose myself or find a nearby hotel, both of which were a major disruption. In my quest to prevent this I've started getting out of bed about 15 minutes earlier and having a cup of coffee. So far this has done the trick and I'm able to go out on my run a happier, lighter man!

Two long runs since my last blog. The first was 14 miles and I mapped out a route that took me around the Grand Union Canal that surrounds Ealing. I managed to plan it such that 10 of the 14 miles were on the canal itself. The advantage of that being that it's flat as a pancake. At that time in the morning (6am on a Sunday) there were three other types of people sharing the canal path - runners, anglers and drinkers on the way home from a late night party. It's a beautiful time to run the canals. All the water birds are out. Coots, moorhens, herons, ducks, geese and swans. Although the swans and geese tend to sit in a big group together on the path which can be quite alarming and requires a bit of careful negotiation to wend a path through them, especially as a lot of them have young. A duck with a little gaggle of ducklings - cute, a swan with a gaggle of cygnets - potential death!

Here's the route (you'll notice that my watch's battery died just at the end during the last mile):

The second long run (today) took me down to Richmond Park for the first time since the marathon two months ago. It was a 15 mile run on a beautiful summer morning. There's a bit of a climb to get into Richmond Park but apart from that it's a flat route. It was one of those mornings were I didn't know precisely where I was going to run. I'd thought of three of four potential routes and in the end just went where my feet took me. Richmond Park on a day like this seemed like perfect sense although I didn't see any deer this time. My fitness is definitely improving and hopefully it will improve again over the next three or four weeks.

Here's the Richmond Park route:

Next week I'm going to be in Chester and will need to find a 16 mile route to run either on the Saturday or Sunday morning. At the moment we don't know which family member we will be staying with so I can't start planning any routes yet.