Janathon #18 - Monolithic

I'm very lucky, I think, to have good friends delivering good advice. Advice with knowledge and experience attached, rather than just "I read summat in the paper..." Advice like this, whether it's big stuff or little stuff, life-and-limb saving warnings or just "you might find it easier if..." type hints, can be invaluable. And hell, they could save me doing silly amounts of damage to myself while trying to set myself targets.

I have set myself the target to finish this week having run 40 miles. Well, actually I'm setting that at 40-and-a-half miles, for that will take me to another milestone (or should that be kilometer stone?) of 150km over 3 weeks. A couple of good friends, another Janathonite and a non-Janathonite fell- and ultra-runner (and both all-round nice chaps as well) have given friendly encouraging advice/warnings about not knackering bits of myself in the attempt. Advice which, to be honest, I'm very happy to follow.

To make my target I need to average about 7.5km a night, which is quite a big ask. But the bonus, and my ace in the hole, is that no-one's telling me how fast I have to do the distance. Yesterday it turned out to be a fast 8, because my legs felt good and I had the energy to go for it, which is okay. Tonight it was slow, but that's okay too.

Tonight the legs weren't feeling too good. Not "oh my god they're going to fall off" bad, just "Yep, I ran quite quickly yesterday". It's a good hurt, in a way, but a hurt that reminds me that not all nights are like last night, and that tonight has to be a night when I shake down, take it a bit easier and just have fun. So I did! I loaded the Minidisc with The Cat Empire (funky Aussie jazzy hip-hop-type-stuff) and The Grit (Geordie rockabilly punk-type stuff), put on baggies as opposed to my racing snake lycra, (the attire which once got me described as looking like "a bulldozer wrapped in cellophane"), picked up a pair of walking poles and headed out the door for a mix session.

The mix was good fun, alternating jogging (with poles held like a rifle), Nordic walking, and walking vaguely normally. I wasn't paying a lot of attention to where I was going, so my feet and my head lead me round in a big loop with some inetersting hills and fun downs, mainly off-road for the outlap. I did have a stop in Meanwood park when I noticed that part of the new play area looked like two large standing stones... except they had climbing holds bolted to them...This required further investigation and testing, which concluded they would be quite good fun if I came back one night with my rock boots. Wet trail shoes didn't hold too well on tiny slopers...

Mini climbing walls: Yey!


After that brief sojourn into alternate sports, I headed off along more of the Meanwood Valley Trail, up a few more muddy hilly bits,  then shambled slowly back up the Otley Road from Headingley, having stopped at Sainsbury's for meatballs and mozzarella to go with my pasta and sun-dried tomato sauce for tea. The clock stopped at about an hour and forty minutes, but I'm taking 20 off my actual movement time to cover the climbing and the shopping. Oh, and the distance was over my daily target at 8.45km. And the legs feel much better now...

Comments

Anonymous said…
Ooh - they look fun! Good luck on reaching that 40.5m...just thinking about that makes me tired!!
January 19, 2011 at 1:45 PM
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