The self-doubt creeps in

I am off on a stag-do to Madrid on Friday for three days and while I am there I will probably down endless sangria while dancing like a wounded monkey.
I will also probably make a promise to go on a road trip across California or form a dance troupe and enter Britain's Got Talent.
I know, as everyone else does, that this will just be drunken talk and no-one will mention it again and we will get on with our lives.
What I have never done, whilst drunk, is promise to run a marathon. This is a decision always made in the clear light of sobriety.
So when the self-doubt creeps in I have nothing or no-one to blame.
"I was drunk", "I don't remember it."
No.
I was perfectly sound of mind when I made that decision.
When a run goes bad, like last night on the way home from work, I really needed a crowd of people to cheer me on when I was close to giving up and hopping on a bus.
They weren't there.
I pushed myself to finish and did so in reasonably good time for the heat and the traffic - 6 miles in 48 minutes - but I thought, can I do 26.2 miles?
I know I can and I know I will but I think every runner goes through this at least once during their training.
The feeling soon goes but it is the equivalent of hitting the Wall, I suppose before the actual race.
Encouragment is still encouraged though, so if you have the time, feel free to post a comment and tell me that I can do it.
Then I can go and get drunk and agree to fly an albatross to Canada single handedly.

The suit issue - resolved.

The easiest way from E-G

View Earlsfield to Greenwich in a larger map

Now I have my running rucksack my running world has expanded and I can go anywhere I want.

While I have both of my feet and no injuries I know that I can always go to Greenwich.

Transport for London cannot give its customers that assurance and lo and behold the Jubilee line was down in both directions between Stratford and Green Park.

Every weekend. EVERY weekend.

So on top of running home from work in a bid to give the fools at TFL less money, I decided today's run will be from my home in Earlsfield to the Cutty Sark in Greenwich just to prove my superiority over the pathetic service the millions of travelers get each year.

The distance is around 14 miles and I set off at 1100.

The sun was beating down and I was running at the warmest time of day. 

I managed to run about 10 miles before really starting to get dehydrated so I stopped off in a pub called the Grapes at Limehouse and got a free pint of squash.

Not the smartest move to run in this weather without water and I would like to think I have learnt a lesson.

There were no ill effects, I just know that it affected my time and pace.

In the end I completed it in around 1 hour 45 minutes. 

I can't be too accurate as the GPS does not work in tunnels and that includes the Greenwich foot tunnel.

My pace was 7.28 per mile and that was kind of my aim but I know that keeping myself rehydrated regularly will enhance my improvement a lot.

Obviously I did have to get a train ticket to get home (via the DLR) but it was another small victory and will be my method in the future for getting from E to G.

A quickie

It's a short post today as I have been out tonight on the university end of year shindig.

Finished at 8.30 but then when you have the taste for it.....

BUT! You will be more than proud to know that I did go for a very unscheduled run at 0630 this morning, before the binmen could soil my path and jogged round the Wimbledon Park route of 4 miles in 30 mins.

Makes me feel better about the bottle of red wine I snarfed earlier this evening. 

Anyhoo, to bed and a good proper run tomorrow.

The human fly-trap

The run home from work is so fulfilling, I enjoy it every time.

There are, however, two things which are not welcome.

The first is the amount of second hand smoke I inhale going past the tourist throngs outside Harrods and the office bods spilling out of the pubs for a chat around their cigarettes.

The second are the kamikaze flies which somehow manage to aim straight for my mouth.

I swallowed about 3 yesterday and it is not nice. Not nice at all.

I do take my hat off to them in a small begrudging way. It's quite impressive to hit such a small target while we are both going at such speeds.

And talking of speed, I am getting faster.

It didn't feel like it but I ran at an average of 7m12s per mile covering 6.02 miles in 43m 15s.

That is great progress as I was running a 7m40s average just under a month ago.

Like I say, it doesn't feel any different but it shows that the training is working.

I am doing core exercises and weights for today and tomorrow due to university commitments (OK, OK, tomorrow is the end of year party, not compulsory...)

So the next run will be on Saturday and it will be an 8 miler around the Thames path, early enough so the flies will still be asleep.

Northerners - not funny

I had been looking forward to this run for a couple of days and had prepared by buying a new rucksack to give me the ability to start and finish somewhere other than my house.

Its very lightweight, clings to your back and fastens around the chest and waist.

I would attach a picture but I cannot find it on the internet. 

As with all of Adidas' online content, it's flash and looks impressive, but you can't find sod all that you actually want.

So, the run.

I hopped on the train at Earlsfield and hopped up 5 minutes later at Vauxhall.

After rebuffing a tramp for his request for a change 'to get a drink', I did him the favour of helping him sober up for another moment or two, I did my stretches on one of the walls of the MI5 building.

I was disappointed not to be spirited away to a secret bunker and water-boarded and started to run, pressing Start on the trusty Garmin watch.

That trusty Garmin is only trusty if you fully charge the damn thing.

So one mile in to the run, somewhere near the Southbank Centre it ran out of juice.

Balls.

So I just decided to run for about an hour and a half and that would amply cover the expected 12 miles I was to cover today.

I continued along the South bank until Tower Bridge where I scampered across and ran past the tourists and ice-cream vans of the Tower of London.

Unbenownst to me their was a BUPA 10K run taking place from St James Park and coming at me coming at them so I went past the Houses of Parliament without claiming any expenses and up to Hyde Park.

I don't know Hyde Park that well so I stuck to the main road and ran past the Serpentine and up to Bayswater road.

By this time my hayfever decided to pop its head up for the first time and I sneezed and rubbed my eyes all the way to Baker Street.

Going up Marylebone Road I got my first sightings of the throngs of northeners who had descended to see which of their teams would spend one season in the Premier League.

I managed to squeeze past their morning pints and pies and guts and flapping pages of the Sun and got back out into the middle upper class areas I was more familiar with.

I had no idea where to finish this run and looking at my Blackberry I had secreted away in one of many useful pockets of the rucksacks I had already done my alloted time.

However, I decided to end the run at Euston so I could go and meet the wife and wangle well-deserved free breakfast.

It was at Euston, warming down when a group of these northern people mimicked my stretches (the calf stretch where you stick a leg out while pressing on to a wall and, yes, hilariously it looks like you are trying to push a building over)

"Heeyar mate can I help thee" they cackled.

I knew someone was going to do it in such a populated area, it's so predictable.

When I didn't react and carried on they just walked off like a squad of monkeys muttering 'fuckin southerners'.

I think they had about three teeth and one frontal lobe between them.

I saw them again in the underground trying to work out the Oyster travelcard machines. I bet they're still there now.

I love the smell of rotting fish in the morning

0615 and I positively leapt out of bed, gave the wife a peck on the cheek and went into the living room and ripped the curtains apart to reveal a morning of sun dappled splendour.

Time, for a morning run. On a weekday. On a workday.

It's never been attempted before, I hear you cry.

Well i fly in the face of convention, strapped on the old heart rate monitor and running shoes and limbered up.

I gave the wife another kiss and told her I was going for a run so she wouldn't think we were being robbed when I returned.

Then I stepped out into the bright, breezy morning and breathed in.

Mmm-mm. It's bin day in Wandsworth and I would run behind various dust-carts for the next 7.5 miles.

Bin day is a little less romantic than market day of a morning even though it is essentially the same produce.

Lesson learnt, I will change the morning run to a Wednesday I think.

In any event I ran the big hill twice past the All England Tennis Club and I feel pretty darned great.

It was a general aerobic run which is between about 70 and 80% of my maximum heart rate which was pretty gentle and I ambled round in 56 minutes.

Now I just have a full day's work and night out on the town to cope with.

Come 8pm I may be rueing the opportunity of a lie-in.

Hey-ho, only 4 miles to cover tomorrow and without the whiff of rancid carcass in the nostrils.