12 Miles - 600 metres climbing :-)

Yesterday went better than i hoped so am on a high today.  12 miles doesn't sound like enough when 30 miles is 5 weeks away but it's a real step forward.  Think i've discovered a few things that i really must try to remember.

• Start slow, i've not got the discipline to do proper static stretching so starting off at a walking pace and gradually pick it up.
• Off road really is the way to go.  Hard man made surfaces really do hurt, so maximising the amount of off road really helps mimimise the pain.
• Antisocial is the way to go at the moment.  Having the freedom to go at my own pace makes a massive difference to managing my grumbly knee.

So yesterdays outing.  I felt good in the morning so figured it was a good day to push it a little.  It was easy enough to work out a route, head out the door, hit the hills and start walking.  I'd stayed at Lisa's in a town called Pontypridd just outside Cardiff, Wales.  Travel through town on a Friday night and there's not much to enjoy about Ponty but in it's defence it has some fantastic hills right on it's doorstep.

So, Northward bound into the Rhondda Valley it was.  Once, in the age of coal, the Rhondda valley was once at the centre of the industrialised world, it's safe to say it's not now.  Just like old industrialised areas throughout the world it's struggled to adjust to the changing world of the last forty years, certainly growing up there was not much fun when i was a kid and i don't think it's much better now.  Lack of jobs and prospects aside though it has some nice hills and as an adult i've found myself going back there more and more, often to enjoy the things i ignored when i was an adolescent.

Six miles in Archie and i found ourselves above Porth, with the sun out and feeling good it was a good place to be.

Oh, and yes, today my companion was Archie the wonder dog.  Fair play to him he's always up for an outing despite being a complete scaredy dog is a fantasticly loyal companion.  Amusing moment of the day was when after 8 miles he decided to literally just walk off the bank and into an algae covered pond, over his head he went and calmly as you like just swam back out.  Guess he was a bit hot and tired by then.  Anyway, here's Archie.

So, that's it for yesterday.  Really, really good day and hoping to move things forward this next week.  Will also try to take more photo's and make even try to get some of them in focus. :o)

Good, good weekend

Bleep test went well.  :o)  Got to level 10 which was much better than the shambles last time.  Sean got 11.4 which was also pretty fantastic.

Todays run went even better.  Managed 12 miles in 3 hours 9.5 running alone in 2 hours and 2.5 walking with Lis'.
Good couple of days.  Later on i'll write up some bits on today and even have some photo's.   :o)

Just deciding what movie to watch with the babies.  Good weekend so far.

Weekend plans

Had a couple of days feeling good so time to make some weekend plans. Have a couple of 3 day stints with the babies coming up and its Libs' birthday and folk club this week so need to fit stuff in where I can.

So, tonight another go at the dreaded bleep test, hoping to make it a lot less shambolic this time. And then, hopefully a long one tomorrow with Sean and Nige, I'll even try and take some photo's because this has been a bit short of them so far.

Sean knows better

It turns out Sean may have been right. It may be the case that a 30 mile trail run in 8 weeks was pushing my luck. Don't give up on me yet though. Just because he was right doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to listen.

My doubts stem from a trail run I attempted with Sean and Nige on Sunday. Running with others didn't allow my usual really slow start and I ended up suffering bad about 4 miles in. Real debilitating pain kicked in and I ended up barely able to walk down some of the hills. :o(
So I cut it short and ended up with 7 miles in 90 mins and pretty severe doubts. These werent helped when I had to walk down hills backwards the same night whilst walking Archie with Lisa. :oS

Monday morning was a world of pain but surprisingly it eased loads during the day, to the extent that I was able to do an easy 3 mile trail run Monday night. I've followed this up with a nice 6 mile trail run on Wednesday morning with little pain. Including walks that makes mileage of about 22 miles in 4 days, no reason for loads of confidence but a start at least. :o)

I mentioned the other day how podcast geekery is helping me get through the runs. I find it helps loads more than music and is making solo runs a real pleasure. It does however mark me down as a sad geek and has cost me a tenner in new apps so far.

Preferred pod cast list.

The talk show. (Apple geekery)
Appslappy. (App recommendations and reviews)
The engadget show. (General tech geekery)

Feel free to recommend others, my taste is pretty transparent.

Beep test

Sean (who I think I'll be building up as the villain of this story) decided that doing a beep test may be a fun idea.  For those that don’t know a beep test is a series of shuttle runs over a marked 20 metre course completed in an prescribed and accelerated time.  The basic idea is that you star off almost walking and then over 10 / 15 mins your pace increases until your going as fast as you can whilst simultaneously reaching your state of exhaustion.  It’s not fun.

What is funny however is three fully grown guys who absolutely should know better haring back and forth in a residential cul de sac whilst trying to hear Sean’s phone telling us when to turn and what level we’d reached.  We must have looked like freaks.  Not that I'm bitter because I was rubbish you understand, no, not at all.  It turns out that there was no need for me to spend any time googling professional athletes results, oh no.  Anyway, the upshot of it was that Sean’s about as fit as the fat one who bowls spin for the Sri Lanka cricket team, and if that sounds as though I'm on my high horse, please don’t think that, I'm only as good as a Russian female shot putter who’s just coming back from an injury.  And Nigel ?  He doesn’t count because he misunderstood the concept of having to stop if you miss two beeps, so he just showed he had the morals of a premiership footballer.

Other people

Just a quick post to link to a couple of cool things.

My friend Sean did the coolest run yesterday, 10 and a half miles over and around Pen y Fan, the highest mountain in South Wales, it's not big in the scheme of things but offers some pretty cool sights in between the Welsh weather.

Garmin linky

And i see Fatty's in the form of his life. :o)  Go Fatty!  Gives hope to us old guy's everywhere. ;o)

Leadville Fatty

Building it up

So, a solid week.  Last weekends 9 and a half miler left me with a bit of knee pain but not so much that it i needed to take a week off.  Managed a few bigish days with over 7 miles in and a run/walk yesterday of 8 and a half.

The plan was to try and be ready for a 16 miler in early september on route to the 30 miler in October.  AM not sure how much i'm feeling that plan now as looking at the route profile over half of the 16 miler is on asphalt and while i'm pretty sure i can tough that out if needs be, am not sure what it'll do to me joints afterwards.

All my miles this week were in the hills around Pontypridd, there were some pretty good views on offer.

Also got  to see some strange sites.  Fair play to Archie ( he's a collie / German shepherd cross ) he's not fazed my much.  He showed no interest in dropping his stick and playing with the 2 dead moles on yesterdays run, and as for the little fella below, Archie just wanted to make friends.  And yes, that horse really is less than 3 three feet tall. :o)

Have a busy week ahead of me this week, so will again be looking to fit in a couple of evening outings, hopefully of a decent length and then a big one next Sunday evening.

Ouch

So, the best laid plans and all that.  No time for the full 6 mile walk, 6 mile run plan, so ditched the walk and pushed the run out to 9 and a half miles.  Ouch!

Only the last mile was on road, so thats 8.5 miles off road, 1500 ft climbing.  Took 2 hours 10 minutes and the last mile really hurt.

On the plus side, felt really good until then, and general fitness felt fine even at that point, just started having joint pain.  Next time i do it i'll take some photos as the scenery is truly fantastic, weather didn't allow that this time.

One thing i've discovered about myself already is that i run far better with the power of geeky podcasts than i do with music.  Lisa finds this hilarious and i'd better be careful she doesn't have second thoughts about getting involved with such a geek.

Geeky podcast listening list coming soon.  :o)

Big Sunday

Oh joy.  Woke up this morning to a pretty bloody wet scene.  Supposed to be doing big mileage today, lovely.  Better just man up about it though i suppose.  There may be some bitching and moaning later.

Background boring bits...

So, a little bit of back-story.  And don’t worry this isn’t going to be the sort of blog where personal issues are raked over, lets get this out of the way and move on.

I’m Simon Pritchard, a keen mountain biker from South Wales in the UK.  I’ve three children, a 20yr old son, a 6yr old son and a 5yr old daughter.  About 10 months ago I went through a painful break up from the Mum of the 2 youngest.  The only redeeming feature of this break-up was the loss of about 14 kilo's and the subsequent increase in fitness.  This year has been pretty hard, i'd never been hurt before really and keeping it together hasn't always been easy.  The kids are fantastic though and i've met somebody special with two great kids of her own and slowly, in a complicated and messy way, things are getting better.

Exercise wise it's been a good year, the bike has helped keep me sane and the two big events I did went as well as i could have hoped.  In between the biking, a close friend decided to enter an ironman and sparked a little interest in swimming and running.  Swimming was fantastic, but not the easiest to fit into what is a busy routine, but for the first time in my adult life, running was easy and fun.  The only problem though was it was a little too much fun and I hurt myself with some badly thought out rookie runs.

So now, three months later my knee seems a lot better just as i've has a MRI scan for the original injury so the plan is to ramp up the mileage and have some fun.  I know 30 miles in 8 weeks seems a bit stupid but the plan is for the increase to be much more gradual than last time and the mileage to be nearly all off road to avoid bashing the hell out of my knee on asphalt.

This week has been an easy start, have only managed a couple of runs (4 and 2 miles) and a very tame MTB ride.  Well, the exercise element was tame, the technical side scared the life out of me, but scared is good. :o)

Weekend plannage involves a couple of nice nights with the little creatures and then a walk and run on Sunday.  Am feeling something between 10 and 14 miles would be fun so i'll see how brave i feel.

This will get better i promise. :o)

First Post

So, inauspicious start.  Where to start on something like this?

Firstly, Hi. :o)
I'm Simon, and this blog will be mainly concerned about a pretty stupid challenge i've set for myself.  The plan is that i'm going to run a trail 30 miler in 8 weeks time when i'm only just coming back from an injury and have no real experience of running.

Sounds stupid i know and my mate Sean has wasted no time in telling me so.  He's right of course, it makes little sense but really how much of our everyday lives make sense anyway?  In my defence, whilst i am just (hopefully) finished being hurt and have no real running experience, i am at least moderately fit and have some experience of long bike events to fall back on when times get hard.

Sean also tells me that a sensible approach to increasing running mileage is to add 10% a week.  Taking into account a 4 mile starting base that puts me at, lets see... about 8.5 miles in 8 weeks time. :oS
Not so good...

But, i was always good at maths and with a bit of dodgy counting let's see what we can do.  Firstly, 4 miles is a low start, i managed a 7 mile trail run last weekend so that seems a more reasonable place to start.  Secondly, i am reasonably bike fit at the moment so i reckon i push out that 10% wekly improvement to say 12%?  Also, do i really need to get to the 30 before the event?  Adrenaline on the day will add a few miles i reckon.  So, let's have another go.

7x12% (compounded) = 17.3 miles

hmmm, maybe this will hurt then...