Ten Miles Before Breakfast - Richmond Park

Up and out at 5am. I see a fox, a grey heron. I see masses of deer, both red deer and fallow deer, bucks, hinds, calves. I see jackdaws, pigeons, rabbits, squirrels. I hear woodpeckers but can't spy them in the high bare trees.
I do my ten miles then it's a bath and a breakfast of porridge, peanut butter and banana.
Perfect.

Barefoot Running - The First Five Miles

So this morning I decide to try running barefoot. It's been on my mind to do it for some time now but today when I wake up I feel really up for it.
I do a bit of googling to see what I should do to get started but I am in the mood for running, not browsing, so I'm not taking much in.
There is, though, a clear message coming through about taking it easy to start with so I reckon, OK, I won't go for a ten miler, I'll just do a quick five.
I get up and dress for running, except my feet of course, put my Mizuno shoes and a pair of socks in my Salomon back pack and go out the door.
Ouch. Now I know what tenderfoot means. My plantar nerve endings seem to be feeling every speck on the gritty tarmac. Hell with it. I start running.
Interesting. My natural, barefoot, instinct is to avoid striking the ground with my heel. I am running on the outside and front of my foot. This is not a conscious choice, I am going with the flow here.
I am feeling socially exposed in my barefoot eccentricity but the guy around the corner spraying wax on his car through the smoke of his lip-dangled cigarette doesn't give me a second glance. Or a first one for that matter.
The surface of the sidewalk varies in its grittiness. Sometimes it is really ooo-oooh-ouch and I walk for a bit. Walking doesn't really help much because your foot is in contact with the surface for longer at a time. I run again remembering to look out for broken glass. There isn't any.
It takes me about fifteen minutes to get to the Roehampton Gate entrance to the park. This is about twice as long as usual.
But when I get into the park I pick up speed. The surface is lovely. The well-worn trail is surfaced with broken stones and packed sandy earth. It is damp and cool. My feet feel wonderful. Oh yes, this is the real thing.
I pick up speed. My stride is shorter that usual and, as I said, the footfall more to the front of the foot. Despite my tender feet I am running pretty fast. I overtake a couple of runners.
A passing cyclist shouts, 'Barefoot!', at me as he passes and gives me a grinning thumbs-up. Thanks, mate.
I am really enjoying this and am momentarily tempted to do a full circuit of the park. But there is a definite muscle ache at my right hip and stress signals from my ankles and lower calf which I put down to my unaccustomed gait. Best not push it.
I turn back at the fallen tree before I get to the first big hill and head for home.
The soles of my feet feel somewhat tenderised but they do seem to be coping with it all very well.
Oops, I stub my right toe. Ouch. Seems OK, though.
A South African cyclist passes me shouting, 'Hey, there's Zola Budd. How you doin', Zola?' Whatever.
Out of the park and back onto the pavement and the little stones and grit are really irritating.
For the first time I see some broken glass. A busted beer bottle. I dance around the shards and congratulate myself on getting through uninjured until I realise that a sharp irritation on my right sole might not be a stone.
I stop and find a little piece of glass stuck to my right foot. It's not very big, maybe an eighth of an inch long. I pick it out with my thumbnail. There's a bit of blood but not much. I continue running wondering what toxic substances and misanthropic life forms are getting into the wound.
But, you know, all in all I'm feeling pretty psyched. This has been a good experience.
Nearer home the guy is still out washing his car, buffing it now, wish a fresh cigarette on the go.
I unlock the door and step into my flip-flops which I left waiting there.
And then the pain starts. Oh dear. Now that I am not running the blood is pooling in my feet and, ooh ooooh oooooh dear. And there's blood. Not from the little bit of glass, but that time I stubbed my toe I tore a flap of skin off a blood blister and there's blood dripping onto my sandal.
I sit down and look at my feet. Jeez. I mean, what the....! Through the mud and the grit I can see that my feet are extensively blistered. About a fifth to a quarter of the surface of the sole of each foot, mostly at the side and the front, is covered in blood filled blisters.
And they hurt. Oh dear. Oh dear. There's a good reason torturers beat the soles of your feet. Because it hurts.
Somehow I haul myself all the way upstairs to my room for my first aid kit. I grab a towel and crawl back downstairs and fill a bath. There is a certain amount of groaning and some howling. And most definitely a whole bunch of whining.
In the bath there is whimpering as I clean and dress my feet. I have to keep my feet raised or else they fill up with blood and HURT!
Now here's a thing. Have you ever tried to get out of a bath and get yourself toweled dry without putting your feet on the floor? Ain't easy.
In conclusion, I really need to start taking seriously those warnings to start out easy. But, pain and mashed-up feet aside, it was a wonderful experiment. And as soon as I'm healed up I'm out there again. Without shoes.

Ten Saturday Morning Miles

Yesterday evening a three mile struggle home from work, still digesting my food from a late lunch.
But now it is The Saturday Morning Miles. The sweetest miles of the week.
This is my ten mile run. From the house to the park by way of a shortcut through the hospital and down Clarence Lane to Roehampton Gate, left into the park and then a complete circuit, the longest way around, out the way I came in and back home.
It's busy today as it is every Saturday, walkers, runners and cyclists, alone and in groups, the groups on the go already or gathering by gates, at the cafe, in the car parks.
This morning my first few minutes out the door I feel like a dead man running. I don't feel like I have ten miles in me. But going down the long slope of Clarence Lane I somehow loosen up and my breathing comes easier.
There are three and a half hills on the run and it is the hills which tell how fit I am. The first hill about twenty minutes into the run comes not far beyond Robin Hood Gate. This morning it feels tough but nicely manageable. I reach halfway a couple of minutes quicker than I expect and when I reach the second hill, the toughest of all, I am looking forward to it. I run the long flat section towards Pembroke Gate and then instead of going out of the gate turn right up the hill. It is a long, winding, rough slope, more or less muddy except in the driest of weather. When I am out of condition I can be close to puking before I am half way up. Today I reach the top tolerably short of a full-on stroke.
Beyond that second hill and an hour into the run I am feeling pretty good and really pushing the pace. Fantastic. The rest of the run is just perfect.

Another Morning Run

Just a lazy three miles home from work yesterday. But this morning I'm out for five miles before breakfast again.
The clearer sky, oddly, means it is darker in the park. No cloud cover to reflect the not yet risen sun. The stars are brilliant white points on a dirty blue blanket. No one about except a couple of distant cyclists and the power walking lady.
Lying on my bed after a quick bath and a quick breakfast I long to go back to sleep.
Drag myself up and out for the bus.

Early Morning Richmond Park

After Ten Mile Sunday and Recovery Monday it's out at 6 am this Tuesday morning for a quick five miles of scaring rabbits and deer in Richmond Park. No other runners around. I am sooooo special.
I am thinking that when my contract ends at the end of March I will go up to Scotland for a couple of months of full-on running around the hills before running across Europe.
It would be an opportunity to test things out. I have a lightweight bivvy bag which I am keen to test. It is a great deal lighter than the tent. But would I be able to sleep in it night after night for an extended period? That is something that would be worth an experiment before heading off to the Baltic.
If I could do a thousand miles of Scotland before heading off there might be a book in that. I have lots of ideas for a book about Scotland. When would I have time to write it, though? I could draft it as I go and finish it when I get back from Europe later in the summer. A lot depends on how long I can make my money last, I suppose.
Any way it plays out I have a feeling this is going to be a great year.

Ten Miles Richmond Park

After a second recovery day yesterday it was time for a ten miler.
It was afternoon by the time I got out the door struggling against tight muscles. What an old fart.
A real Sunday in Richmond Park. Plenty of walkers and cyclists of all ages. Runners too, of course.
The really fit looking black guy with the blade-style prosthetic left foot was running towards me at one point. I love to see him run. There is something sure and relentless and unforgiving about his steady, fast pace.
Then I heard heavy breathing and scuffing feet behind me and although I had promised myself to take it easy I couldn't let a heavy breathing scuffer overtake me. I pulled forward. The heavy breathing got heavier but stayed with me. It sounded young and female.
The breathing behind me faded a little as I struggled up the first steep hill. But along the flat section beyond the top of the rise I heard it getting nearer again. Shit. She wants to make a fight of it. I put some more into it and edged ahead but she was still there. I held it for a bit, not wanting to provoke her too much. I wasn't sure how much of a battle I could take without losing my porridge and peanut butter.
Then came the downhill section and I could hear her hammering away behind me. I had to really open up then, knowing that, if she caught me, in the fight to stay ahead I could easily lose both breakfast and dignity.
I opened up some more and heard her slip farther behind. Then it sounded like she cut across to the car park there.
Anyway, I slowed down when I crossed the road at the next gate and looked behind me. There was nobody there. Jeez. That's it, no more racing. I did some recovery jogging for a bit and sped up for the last third of the run.
I lay down in a hot bath rather than have to stand up in the shower, made myself a smoked fish sandwich and crashed for two hours.
I've got a lot of miles to do before I'm fit for a run across Europe.
Wasn't able to time my run because the battery has gone in my watch, the old Timex Ironman Triathlon Speed and Distance System. Dunno whether to replace the battery or splash out on a new watch.

Early Morning Richmond Park Again

I did the three miles home from work yesterday evening and now I'm out early again.
A beautiful not-quite-morning in Richmond Park, bare trees against a sky the colour of iron-rich earth.
I'm working against tight muscles but feeling good. Five miles feels like a half run. I long to do the full ten.
Busy morning. At one point I think a cyclist is heading towards me but it turns out to be another runner blinding me with his headlamp.
On the way back another runner comes up behind me his headlamp scattering shadows in front of me. Jeez, guys, it's not really dark. I pull away and leave him behind.
Then, coming towards me, a little old lady power-walking, really striding it out, in her hi-vis waistcoat.
Then, where the path briefly parallels the road, a beautiful, compact woman running alongside me. Actually, I can't make her out too well but any woman who is out running that fast before breakfast gets my vote. I put some muscle into it and draw away from her and then it's a right turn out of Roehampton Gate.
I give it some extra going up the long slope of Clarence Lane.
Nice.
Time for porridge and peanut butter, I think.

Early Morning Run Richmond Park

Up and out at 6 am for a quick five miles before breakfast.
Not fifty yards from the house a fox streaks across my path. Run well, my brother.
In the rusty pre-dawn of Richmond Park I keep to the middle of the track, stepping high to avoid stones and holes and tree roots. Just too much light to see the jeweled eyes of the deer and not enough to make out their forms. Alone apart from the distant light of an occasional cyclist.
A really sweet run. I feel fantastic now. Porridge and peanut butter tasting just beautiful. Breakfast of champions.
I'm packing my new Salomon back pack with running gear for the run home from work this evening.
Remember folks, hours on your feet is miles in your legs.
Run, eat, sleep. Run, eat, sleep.

Last Richmond Park Run Before John O'Groats

I bought a new bag the other day. A nice little twenty litre day pack, the Salomon XA 20. It's the bag I'm going to use on the John O'Groats to Lands End run.

This morning I packed it up with pretty much everything I'll be taking with me. Tent, sleeping bag, waterproofs. The Camelbak water bag zipped into it's own compartment and the sleeping mat got lashed to the outside. I even packed food.

It was a beautiful hot day in the park and it was a lovely run. The new bag was a lot more snug than the old one and ten miles was little effort.

I had the iPhone on my belt in its rainproof Aquapac and banged out the miles to high energy music. I raced a couple of cyclists up the big hill and left them behind easily.

On a sunny Sunday the park was busy with walkers, runners, cyclists and picnicers. That didn't seem to bother the deer though. They were grazing right up to the main path. I took some pictures with the iPhone.

Ok, now this is really unexpected. I can't, at this point, decide to attach a picture of the deer to this message. And I've checked online. Once you've started a message on the iPhone there's no way to attach a picture.

Instead, this is what you have to do. If you want to email a picture you need to go to the picture you want and then select the option to email that picture, and then write the message. That seems silly to me. It makes me wonder if you can email more than one picture at once. Hmm.

Never mind. The deer gets a post all to himself.

One More Run Around Richmond Park

Up and out this morning at 4.45 for ten miles before breakfast and I have Richmond Park all to myself.

Except for the rabbits and the jackdaws and the deer.

And the coots. The coots, out of the water, walking in the grass at the edge of the pond in their big comedy feet.

And at last another runner, and a cyclist and another. And then I'm headed home along Priory Lane and Upper Richmond Road and ten miles is over before I know it and I'm sitting in bed typing and eating porridge and honey and then I'll snooze for half an hour before getting up for work.

Fantastic!

John O'Groats to Lands End - Five Weeks To Go

Only five weeks to go before the start of the Big Run. Last minute nerves.

I'm working full time Monday to Friday up until then so that makes it harder to fit in the miles. It will make things more sorted financially, so that's good.

After a big mileage week (130) the week before last, last week I only managed 50 miles. This weeks total will be 90.

So I'm getting the fear that I'm not doing enough miles to be fit enough for the run.

But I don't want to push the mileage too hard because I'm afraid of overtraining at this point. I'm also afraid of developing some kind of overuse injury. My achilles tendons feel absolutely fine now after some problems earlier on.

Now my worry is a tenderness that I feel along the front of my shins after a run. It reminds me of the shin splints I developed a few years ago. That put me out of the game for months.

So, on balance, I'd rather start the run somewhat undertrained but injury free and with my enthusiasm intact.

I do feel fantastically fit, though.

Months ago on weekends I was running 18 milers and the occasional 25 or 30 mile run. Then I thought, wait a minute I want to be running 35 maybe 40 miles a day but I'm not going to be running that all in one hit. I'm going to be running it in chunks. So I stopped doing the big long runs and started running 10 milers, but often doing two or three a day. I thought that made more sense.

But I did the 10 milers relatively fast, without a break and running all the hills. Usually eight and a half to nine minute miles. That's quite hard running if you're doing three in a day. I was thinking, train hard, run easy.

In June, when I'll be doing the run, each day will have about 16 and a half hours of daylight. That's a lot of running time. So I can afford to run more slowly than I have been in training. It takes less energy to run the same miles if you run more slowly. And I don't have to run the really tough hills. I can take a walk break whenever I want. I can take it easy. It's not a race. As long as a I do the miles.

My goal is a pretty loose kind of goal. I'm going to travel from John O'Groats to Lands End on my own two feet, running most of the time, off road most of the time, carrying my own gear, refueling with food and water as I go. The distance should be something like 1,150 miles and I'd like to do it in not too much more than a month.

35 days at 35 miles a day ought to about do it.

Put like that it doesn't sound too hard. And I honestly believe it isn't. It's what I was born to do. OK I've been running fairly seriously for a few years now and training specifically to do this for several months but my physiology has been in preparation for this kind of thing for a couple of million years.

You know something, I'm going to stop worrying about it. Right this minute I'm going to get up and go out for another run. Richmond Park will be beautiful in the sunshine. And I'll have some porridge and banana when I get back.

Then I'll finish off the press release for the The Road to Endorphia and get it off to some people. The Edinburgh Festival is only about 13 weeks away.

Hey Ho! Lets Go.

Friday Morning Ten Miles Richmond Park

Ten miles without a twinge. A really sweet run. Blowing out the second ten miler yesterday was the right thing to do.

As regards my readiness for the John O'Groats to Lands End run I'm not too worried about my fitness. I'm really confident about my cardiovascular fitness. Even running twenty miles a day my resting heart rate on waking is usually in the low to mid forties. I may have the face of an old fart but I have the heart and lungs of a young god. A pagan god of course. But not Apollo. Maybe Dionysus. Yeah, Dionysus drunk on endorphins.

And I've never really had any problems with my joints. Never any lower back pain or trouble with hips or knees. And problems with my achilles tendons have been episodic rather than chronic. And it has always been pretty obvious what has caused the problem. Usually increasing mileage by silly amounts. Or the time recently when I ran almost thirty miles on roads in those beautiful Inov8 shoes which were meant for soggy cross country conditions.

But now, even after showering and eating and everything has had a chance to stiffen up there isn't a whisper from that left achilles tendon.

So I'm feeling good. I've just had a couple of baked potatoes and spinach cannelloni. Time for a nap.

Twenty Miles River Thames and Richmond Park

The plan for today was to get up at 6 am and run ten miles before work and then another ten after work at 1 pm.

The morning alarm managed to wake me up but it failed to get me out of bed. I mean it was still dark. Whose idea was that?

So to make up the twenty miles I chose to double the length of the post-work run.

And it really was a fantastic run. I left work in Ladbroke Grove with no real plan of where I was heading. I had the intention of being on my feet for around three hours. Other than that I was busking it.

I headed south and west from Ladbroke Grove through Holland Park and Shepherds Bush towards the river at Hammersmith. I was vaguely thinking I might head downriver and cross over at Wandsworth Bridge when I realised I had never gone along the north bank in the opposite direction. So that's what I did.

I headed upriver, through West London and away from the centre. It's interesting that the further away the river gets from central London the more like a river it is. In some parts there were houseboats and boating clubs and boatbuilding and repair yards all along the banks. Anyway I just kept running, not forcing the pace at all, just running how I felt, and stopping now and again to scratch my head and puzzle out signposts and diversions. I got lost at one point and ended up following the Grand Union Canal, then I had to cast about to find the river again.

I crossed the Thames to the south side at Richmond Bridge and headed up Richmond Hill towards the Richmond Gate of Richmond Park. That's right, I got as far as Richmond.

I turned right into the park and took the long way round to Roehampton Gate. By the time I got home I had been running for three and a quarter hours. That's gotta be 20 miles.

It's been a long time since breakfast. And I had run out of porridge so I hadn't had my usual start to the day. 20 miles is a long way to go on three Weetabix.

Time for lunch.

Monday Afternoon Ten Miles Richmond Park

In the afternoon, while I dozed, there was rain. So it was cooler and cloudier when I went out just after four for my second ten miler of the day.

Physiologically, though, it was a much more pleasant run. My muscles warmed up nicely and there was only the merest of tendon twinges in the left achilles and just a hint of soft tissue tenderness in my feet. Going uphill I savoured the toughness of the climb and on the downside I opened up and let myself fly.

I must have seen a hundred or more deer. There were crows by the dozen, and jackdaws and magpies and two woodpeckers and ducks and smaller birds I couldn't identify and one lone squirrel. There was blossom blowing in the breeze and some trees were budding and others were beginning to green.

Later in the run the clouds were starting to clear and there was warmth again in the low sun.

I did the run comfortably in 90 minutes and I'm feeling good. Now I'm going to shower and soon I'll dine on baked potatoes, sweet potatoes, beans and smoked fish.

Monday Morning Ten Miles Richmond Park

My usual ten mile run is the following:

About four minutes from the house I turn into Priory Lane and head along its long straight length towards Richmond Park's Roehampton Gate. Once inside the gate I turn left and follow the track roughly all the way around the perimeter. One circuit of the park is about seven miles and a third. From home to the park is about a mile and a third each way so the total is roughly ten miles.

For about a week now the weather has been warm and springlike. This morning is the same. There's a bit of a chill as I leave the house at eight thirty but it warms up as I run.

Last week I ran 120 miles in six days and rested Saturday and Sunday. It wasn't a completely inactive weekend. On Saturday I had a long walk and a frisbee game. On Sunday I had another long walk around the West End looking for a new shirt for Karola's wedding which I failed to get.

But I haven't ran for two days and my muscles are resisting. They don't wanna play. They remember last week and they don't want any more of that shit.

It's my front calf muscles. Particularly my right. It's as stiff as a board. And as I run it's painful. I stop when I get inside Roehampton Gate and rub and fist massage my right calf. And it is freakishly board-like. You could hammer a nail into it and I swear it wouldn't bleed.

Anyway I keep going because it's clearly just stiffness, there's no trauma. It slows me down considerably but I stick it out and about forty minutes later it is perfectly fine.

The route is mostly flat but there are two testing hills and one minor one. The park has trees and deer and ducks and sometimes if I'm lucky a Grey Heron. There are other runners and cyclists and dog walkers. I've ran it often with the sun high in the sky, I've ran it in a low sun at dawn and dusk and more than once I've run it very early in the morning under the light of a big fat moon.

Today the sun and my muscles get warmer as I run and it is just perfect.

Usually the ten miles takes me under 90 minutes. This morning because of the slow start with the muscle problem it took me all of 97 minutes. I feel fresh at the finish and breakfast on porridge and honey. Yum yum.