Feel The Darkness

No, not Poison Idea's riot inducing 1990 late classic but the half moon-lit LSD I did last night. I have had to squeeze my training together a little, as I am about to head north of the border for a week and wanted to maximise my running up there. More on that next time.

As mentioned I returned to the forest tracks this week and headed out along the flow of the bike tracks into the forest.  I left at 18:15, as dusk was falling, and under the canopy the clocks had already fallen back.

I decided to try a new headlamp, as my old tech Petzl just doesn't cut it any more so I have gone entry level and picked up a Unilight H1, mainly because it's as cheap as the chips you used to buy in the eighties, when you'd been sent down the road to the local chippy. It's also hi-viz yellow, bright as a single AA powered 175 lumens Cree LED can illuminate and it's highly waterproof. I found myself using the 20 lumens setting along tracks out of the canopy and only amped up for detail work finding junctions.

It seems my ears interface with the tri-glide band adjusters a little bit but I didn't really notice that until much later in the run and it didn't bother me much. The strap grip is buffered with a line of silicone and didn't move once, and the 45degree rotational head was ample for seeing the state of the tracks ahead.

Thanks to @UniliteUK for that.

The forest soon gave way to the common above Jevington and I found my route onto the Weald Way, which was a muddy mess, preferable to the ice rink chalk. After a good twenty minutes of that I started to rise up above Folkington and the A27 and was reminded of that hill above Keighley in the dark.

I was due to pass under the Long Man and was amazed when the headlamp picked out it's chalky feet fro the path below. A slog up the side took me back to the South Downs Way, which I skirted around for the final four mile descent back home.

There is a point just by the nature reserve at which my GPS shows a path that doesn't exist. If you follow this advice you will come to a three foot fence with double strands of barbed wire, to pass which you will need to bend double thru an old hawthorn glade to find any kind of crossing. The hawthorn trees will hate you and try to scratch you to a bloody pulp, but eventually one will provide a way out. I'd suggest avoiding it.

After passing that trial I fled down to Charlotte's Bottom and home in time for bed.

11.1 miles, LSD constant in a horrendous time. It's not the distance but the speed that kills you. Start slow, relax and forget about it.

Feel The Darkness

PS it's the Seven Sisters Marathon today but I'm off to the Anarchist Book fair which I haven't been to for nearly 20 years.

Late November to early January, 2010

I had a pain in my leg. I was running in Inov8 280s which, though perfect for the muddy sections and the steep up and down of the wooded hillside, offered little forgiveness on the Tarmac road at the end of the middle third of the race. I put it down to bone strain – the result of a too much, too soon, oops, too late training schedule – and the best thing to do was to ignore it. Only at that moment did I have any trace of doubt during that first racing experience.

Nonetheless, I love those 280s. I’ve had them for years and I’ve still not managed to put more than forty miles on them. They used to rub the back of my heel so I always passed them over in favour of my Walshies*. These days I use them without the foot-bed. They have been promoted - for Summer use only.

I’ve only a vague memory of the pain after the Beastly Feast. Once the euphoria had receded and I’d got over the contents of the finishers goodie bag, and I’d stuffed my face with junk and had a bath, I recall the exhaustion as substantial. But I can’t gauge it at all now. If I had to place it on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being ‘no bother’ and 10 being ‘oh heck’, I wouldn’t be able to. Nature has its way of obscuring the recollection of past distress and discomfort that works independently of you and me.

I was still getting the same pain a week later, so I tried some different strategies in training and switched to doing hill runs on the bike.

I figured that the impetus behind running up hills at that time was to strengthen my leg muscles and improve my form, not simply to become better at running up hills. That requires a session of its own, as Kevin Shevels seems to suggest in ‘UPHILL TECHNIQUES FOR OFF-ROAD RUNNERS’.

The bike sessions meant that I could keep my heart-rate at the correct level for the entirety of the exercise. This had a great effect, both in terms of giving my legs a break and leaving me with enough energy to perform a couple of quality runs later on that week. There is no mention of pain at all in the Diary over the following few days, and so began the inexorable climb up Mount Increased Mileage.

I tried a Plyometric session. Something called P90X. An hour of leg lifting over imaginary tires, and make-believe baseball whanging, and other ridiculously exhausting stuff. I’m sure we had to play rounders at middle school but baseball simply does not compute. I might return to P90X in the Spring, if I can, but hopping across a football pitch on alternate legs and running backwards to the beginning is more my style.

The G and I did a few less weights sessions at that time, no doubt due to the Xmas build up. Eventually the festivities came and went. With a whimper, rather than a bang.

I spent a week down on the south coast at New Year, with some good friends and, as expected, the old demon was unleashed and allowed to ravish the local population; scrawled across four days of the Diary are the words “right off” and “got fucked up on booze and ‘ting’”. Sometimes the endorphins addiction looses out to less demanding options. I still managed to do 23 miles during a week of revelation, wonder and lung abuse. Running along that beautiful coast line, now in needle sharp rain and now in bright sunshine, got me thinking about a holiday.

Considering the weather that broke in the first weeks of 2010, eventually to cover the length and breadth of the British Isles with a fall of snow that, once more, saw local government and public transport providers accused of near incompetence, the thought of a weeks training somewhere hot and bright was, and still is, uppermost in my mind.

It isn’t going to happen.

*I regret leaving my Walsh PBs in a Hebridean rubbish bin. They had plenty of miles of running still in them but circumstances conspired against me and left they were, along with a stack of good books and surplus clothing.*