Pyro's Yard v2.0

So, Juneathon is done. Honestly, at lunchtime today, I want sure I'd make my target. But, we got there, and in relatively fine style. The run itself was again unexceptional, a slightly weird experience running down Briggate, the main shopping street in Leeds, but after that, I hit the canal for 5 miles of steady trot to the Abbey Inn (and a bit beyond) before looping round Rein Road and up to the Better Half's place, to pause the clock at 18.1km. A quick can of something caffeinated and back out for a quick loop of Abbey Park and the Vespers. Back to the house to stop the final tally at 21.4km - a half marathon to finish on, and a final monthly haul of 323km, 201 miles. That's enough for me. A big thanks to Cathy and co for another month of fun, and well done to everyone who's joined in. And a huge thanks to everyone who's provided amusement, encouragement and mild abuse as well. Pics and map when I've set up my PC in the new house. Cheers all! Pyro

So. 8.74 km yesterday, early in the morning, takes me over 300 km for the month. That's my original target passed with a day to spare. Woo! Cake for the moment, 300 candles (and a fire extinguisher) on order. I have, of course, already declared another target - 200 miles, 322 km, which leaves me in need of a half marathon tonight to finish. However... My legs are, frankly, shot to shit. As well as cracking the mileage over the past 3 days, I've also been moving house, and yomping boxes up-and-down a couple of flights of stairs has done me in. Add to that last nights whopping 4hrs of sleep and you get a rather blitzed Pyro. Not admitting defeat just yet, not for certain. But low and slow will have to prevail for me to make it. Please, if you read this before 6pm, send me good vibes. I may need them.

Another 12km in the bag, the reverse of a 10 route from the other day with a wee diversion tagged on around Clarendon Road. Nota a massively exciting route (non of the recent ones have been, really) but more miles in the bank and a step closer to the end. And nicely accompanied (continuing our world tour of hip-hop music) by the Dust Junkys 'Done and... Dusted' and Everlast's 'Whitey Ford Sings The Blues'. All good. (Map when, as stated on previous post, MemoryMap stops being a sh*t...)

Oh blummin' 'eck! Nearly forgot about the blog bit again. Fer smeg's sake! Anyway, sneaking under the 24hrs, just (since it was 11 when I went out last night. Too flipping hot...) I ran a 10km loop to bring me up to 280km this month, making my 300 a relative stroll in the park. It looked a bit like this: (Map to be added when I work out how to stop updated version of MemoryMap playing silly sods!!) However... I still have a job to do. A 22km job And that doesn't fit in with the '20km over 3 days' numbers. But. It does fit into the 'I like nice round numbers' plan. And the 'I like to finish with a tester' plan. And the 'I like a challenge' plan. 321.86, here we come.

So. Day 26 was a short-ish run, and a very gentle one, and I'm blogging this now so I can catch up and stop slipping behind again. Before I start on 26, let's just nip back into history to fill in some blanks about Runs 24 and 25. They were both long, as you can see. Not intentionally so though, in either case. Despite my insitence that I wouldn't do, I've found myself 'running by the numbers' more in the later stages of Juneathon. Not specifically going "I have to run X-km tonight, so I'll do Y-route" but definitely going "This could do with being a long one because I want to make Z-km this week so I can hit my 300 by the end of the month". My recent runs, and both 24 and 25 in particular, started out with a particular route in mind and just went off-plan at some point, but turned out okay. 24 was going to be a short recovery run, just an out-and back to the Ramada hotel at Golden Acre, about 8km. Then I got to the ring road roundabou...

No song lyric in the title, just the way my legs feel now. Turned out to be another long one - just shy of 20km. Again, got distracted by interesting looking trail and ended up miles from where I was intending to be. Worked my way back slowly as, due to not anticipating a 20km, 3hr run, I hadn't taken any food or water with me. Must rethink that particular strategy, I reckon... Anyway, it looked a bit like the map below, was lovely and sunny for the vast majority of it's length, and took me far too long, but I don't really care. I do care about my sore legs though, so I'm going to have a cup of tea and put my feet up. Which is nice...

Still behind, but catching up! I WILL get tonight's run blogged tonight.. but first yesterday's! I ran ten miles. Don't ask me why. I think I took a wrong turn somewhere. But ten miles it was and ten miles I'm quite proud of, in that it was only just over two hours. So faster than I would normally do. 's not bad, really. Looked a bit like this:

Aargh! I'm getting behind with these, aren't I? Must try harder... (story of my life...) Last night was a short, slow, 6km loop of the block to the Better Halfs and back via Headingley, becuase after a faster 11 on predominantly tarmac on Wednesday I've got sore feet. Recovery runs yesterday and probably tonight and we'll try and shift some longer ones over the weekend to push the distance back up. The juggernaut is still rolling on!

(after the rather wonderful Deltron 3030 track...) Not many words about yesterday's run. Just a map. I was faster and more flowy than usual, may have been down to the combination of Deltron and Rise Against whopping through my headphones. Never a bad thing. 11.3km, 1:20, which is fast enough at this point in the month. Now into the final full week, 220km down, 80km to go. Smoke me a kipper...

I couldn't work out what this said. So - replacing the placeholder post with something proper about Run 21 and the end of week 3! Took me a while, I know, but hey. Juneathon 21 was a really lovely run, for a few obvious reasons: 1) It was out in the woods and scenery, not just hacking round the local streets. 2) It was a really lovely evening. 3) There was a trig pillar involved.  The Shepherd  All of these things make me inordinately happy.     I'd decided I was sick of being stuck in an office and trailing the local streets and woods day-in-day-out, and I'd planned a run up on the Chevin for a little while. There's a trig up there (in the side marked as Caley Deer Park on the OS rather than the Chevin itself) which I'd not bagged, it's only a short drive from home to get there and it would make for a good uppy-downy woodsy run. Plus, as can be seen above and to the right, there's a bunch of sculptures in there which are quite interesting and ...

As the days continued, everyone in the garden kept up their running. Ermintrude and Brian pottered in circles, distressing the garden flowers and drinking more cups of tea than is probably healthy for a snail. Mr McHenry tricycled every day, finding new tracks he'd never tricycled before and looking for new places to dig flower beds. Even Mr Rusty managed a few short laps of the roundabout, mainly chasing runaway horses or pinging sprockets, or occasionally the odd flyaway child. Dylan kept count, chalking up everyone's scores on a blackboard in between naps: Florence was the clear leader, but then, Dougal still hadn't been seen in days. Dougal, it seemed, hadn't really understood Florence's idea. Dougal was now a very, very long way from the garden. And he was lost. Very lost. Somewhere near Crewe he stopped for the night, bedding down in an old barn. As he curled up in the hay, a small Welsh voice sounded out from the shadows. " 'scuse me, boyo. Would...

(In this particular case, the very beautiful Apocalyptica version of the Metallica track. If you haven't heard it before, have a look here ) A short bimble tonight - well, 6km, short enough for me, and the first time my run has been under an hour in a while - because, frankly, I need an early night! Whether it's achy legs, various stresses (both the Better Half and I are in the process of moving houses*), work, the hundred-and-summat kilometres I've run this month or whatever, I'm not sleeping properly. Because I'm not sleeping properly, I'm spending the day propped up on large quantities of caffeine so I don't make silly mistakes at work. Because I'm propped up on large quantities of caffeine during the day, I can't get to sleep at night. Because I can't... you get the picture! Like Pacman, it's a vicious circle. So tonight I went for a short run and am going to go to bed early to try and break it. In other news, I'm happy to report...

So called because it was slow. 10km, but slow.o Enjoyably slow, though. Can't complain. Nae bugger listens...

Blimey. This feels odd. It's just gone 2pm and not only have I done my running for the day, I have a chance to sit down and blog while it's actually daylight. This is very strange indeed. Today was a 'long run day', but I decided it would be more fun, and less stress, to split it down into three shorter ones. It seemed like a good idea, and meant I could do all those important sport-y things like warming up, cooling down etc. Stage 1: For once, I actually got up when my alarm went off (instead of hitting the snooze button repeatedly) so I was up and about and more-or-less functional (okay, I'd had a coffee at least) by 7:30. I set off slowly, jog-walking around the back of Beckett's Park and through the trails, tracks and backstreets down to Hyde Park, taking about an hour for what tracked out to be 5.6km - 10 min km's is respectable enough when you're bimbling warming up. Stage 2:  Hyde Park parkrun , though I didn't have a barcode with me...

Nice bimble up and onto some new trails today, ones that branched of familiar ones, or ran close to them, but I'd not looked at. Not much to report since it was just a long, slow 10km, but that does get me up to 100 miles this month, so that's a pretty cracking achievement again. Aside from that it was just a nice steady trot up towards Cookridge and Holt Park, but then past the normal turn-off and looking for the track down to Lane End and Rushes Farms. I deliberately kept it shorter and turned right towards Paul's Pond, despite there also being another trail into the back of Bramhope to take otherwise, so I can save some other interesting pink dotty lines for another day (and it's part of a loop pointed out by Gary V who  fortunately for the rest of us sadly isn't doing Juneathon this time). Plus, the right turn made the loop nice and heart shaped (ish. Near enough. Real hearts don't look anything like that that shape, anyway...) After a couple of hard ...

A quick blog for what turned out to be a reasonably quick run for the second night on the trot - no, I haven't deliberately kicked it up a gear, it's just the way things have worked out. I'll add the map in later, but the gps track failed due to pilot error. Using a new piece of software (ViewRanger) for nav and tracking, but it handles the route recording differently to any other system I've used and I haven't quite got used to that yet. Fortunately it was an easy all-road loop to trace into Memory Map, and I managed to keep an accurate time for once so we have our stats. The loop was from home, down to and along Kirkstall Road, then climbing up Woodsley Road top the edge of the university before turning left and heading back along the Otley Road to home, all of which was much enlivened by Modest Mouse's 'Good news for people who love bad news' plus a few other random tracks, and also by the Corsa full of girls who cheered as they passed me trying t...

It was all very hectic in the garden. Summer was in full swing, the flowers were in bloom, and the Roundabout gleamed in the sun. Everyone was happy, except one: Dougal. Dougal sat in his house with a cup of tea and a sugarlump and watched the summer through the window. "Everything alright, old chum?" enquired Brian, appearing at the door. "Don't you ever knock?!" snapped Dougal. "I can't hear myself think for you sneaking up silently." "Sorry, dear captain" replied the snail "but I am a single-footed master of stealthy approach" "You are a noisy mollusc. Now what did you want?" Brian considered this a moment, eyeing the teapot. "Well, offering me a cup of tea would be pleasant, dear hound, but mainly I came to ask if you wanted to join in our game. Florence is organising it" "Hmph. Well, I suppose I've nothing better to do. Come on then, snail." Near the roundabout, Florence, Dylan, Mr...

Long thin map today. "You can't stop me, I'm close enough to kiss the sky..." Those were some of the first words that fired out of my headphones as I set off tonight, and I guess in a way it's true. You can't stop me. I can stop me, if I want to, but just for now I guess I don't want to. So I'll keep going. "If pain and mania show what we are, I'll draw your skin and push us too far..." I'd been down to the Better Half's house for dinner straight after work, and letting it settle and relaxing had taken a bit of time, so it was nearly half 10 when I finally wandered out the door. That said, cool evenings suit me a bit better than hot muggy days, so tonight was perfect. I hit play on the mp3 and was greeted immediately with the opening riff of the Guano Apes 'Walking on a Thin Line' album. From that point, tonight was going to be about trying to move quickly. The music dictated that. "The beast is a rhythm...

So, end of Juneathon Week Two. How's it been so far? Hmmm. Distance wise, I'm on course for my arbitrary targets and exceeding my own expectations and perceived limitations. I've run two back-to-back 40 mile weeks, with multiple runs over 10km and three over 10 miles. Not something I would normally consider myself capable of. Physically I'm standing up pretty well, aches and pains are present but nothing that I would get alarmed about. I'm running off-road wherever possible, stretching before, during and after runs, warming up well on longer runs (they tend to start off at walking pace anyway!) and warming down pretty well. I've got the odd wee blister, but what do you expect?! Unfortunately, I've hit the doldrums motivationally. My last four or five runs have been alright time and distance wise, but in terms of 'head space', rubbish. Tonight started badly and, fortunately, improved gradually (thanks in part to some textual  abuse  motivatio...

Short lap last night, in the dark, sure to spending too much time viewing house and yakking with potential future housemates, 4.1km sprint lap around the ring road and West Park in just over 22mins, so about as fast as I get! Back to longer plods tonight. Woo!

A short jaunt in the rain today - round the back way into Beckett's Park, a couple of half-arsed, unenthusiastic laps, and then back home. Legs feel surprisingly trouble-free after yesterdays long run, but I'm still grumpy and un-motivated. Oh well... That is all.

Okay, I got my long run. It wasn't the long run I'd been planning, but it was a long run all the same. And, for most of it's length, it felt rubbish. I woke up cranky today, as opposed to the past week where I've just gone to bed cranky. I slept way later than I was planning and as usual that completely hoofed my Plan A for the day. Reverting to Plan B would have meant sitting on the sofa with the other half of last night's dinner and vegging out until 6pm when I'd acknowledge that I still needed to do my run for the day and stumbling out for an hour or so, arriving back still cranky and no better off and feeling guilty about it. It's an awkward situation where mind, mood and motivation seem to all be in the doldrums, maybe because of the distance I've already run this month or just because it's the weekend and I'm feeling a bit flat. The solution was to stick some music on and just walk out of the front door, start the tracker, and see wh...

Ha! I knew I'd manage one short one this week! Erm... Is it a good sign that I'm perversely proud of only doing a short run? I think Juneathon may be doing something to my head... Tonight I mainly jogged slowly to Sainsbury's and back. My sat tracker shows 3.64km, but I think I forgot to pause it, in which case that distance includes multiple laps of the supermarket trying to find muffins. That's muffins of the 'toast and butter' variety, not the 'double-chocolate-full-fat-American' variety. These are cheddar and black pepper ones which are good toasted with cream cheese and smoked salmon, as opposed to the other type which are bad for me but good with coffee. I may have a long run tomorrow, just for a change...

Slow, slow, quick-quick-slow. That was about the theme of tonight's run, but I'm happy to say it takes me up 80km / 50 miles for the month so far, which is pretty astounding compared to the fortnight it took me to reach the same point in January. Maybe it's the lighter evenings and warmer weather making long runs more appealing... I set off up towards the Cookridge and the back of Holt Park and stopped for the customary 'pit-stop' at the shopping centre (see the last post of Janathon for details), but stuck to the road rather than the golf course track back to the Otley Road. A nice little cross-filed footpath took me over to the church (not as spooky in the daylight), before looping round Long Causeway, across the ring road to the Hollies and back up through Oxley. Not particularly fast, although after a hard 9 days, I'm happy that my legs are standing up to anything like 8:30min/km pace for that length of time. Tomorrow night is going to be a SHORT slow one,...

Late blogging of last night's run, I know, but it wasn't really that eventful. I opted for a slow jog around Roundhay park, heading up to catch up with Claire and Geoff at the Aire orienteering event (Sprint Series - too short and fast for tired little me) before bimbling off to grab the trig pillar just off the ring road, getting soaked through in an unexpected heavy shower in the process. I opted then and there to run back through the wood to try and keep a bit dryer, which was a good call because it meant I ended up bumping into Suzie who was also out for a run and joining her for the return leg to the Mansion. See. Not eventful at all :) Total distance 6-and-a-bit km. Not that concerned about the time.

Last night was a recovery run. After the hilly moorland of day 6, my legs needed a little bit of a break, so a slow shamble was the order of the day, distance immaterial, but a day to just head out for a pootle and see what happened. In the end, what happened was just the top side of 8km in about an hour and a quarter's running - the full GPS file shows 1:40-ish, but I stopped to meet up with the better half and potter round Sainsbury's to pick up dinner. I haven't included the pottering time, or mileage. And so, to the end of Week One stat-attack (because, as was pointed out in January, I am a geek): Total distance: 65km / 40mi - The same distance as my longest week of Janathon, a point I reached at Day 11 in January. Average distance per run: 9.28km / 5.77mi - 4.3km further than my Janathon week 1 average. Total time: 8:47, giving an average daily run time of 1:15. Average pace: 8:07min/km or 7.4km/h (or 13min/mi - 4.6mi/h) - a little quicker than my January ...

I've said in an earlier post that I want to spend less time in June reading maps and worrying about distances and more time just going out for a run. Contrary to this, I keep catching myself at the maps, making plans, looking at routes, going "Ooh, well, that would put me up to X-km this week... dagnammit! Behave!". Today's run started a bit like that, with a plotted, measured, planned route, but I'm happy to say that the planning went a wee bit awry when I spotted some pretty looking trail that looked like it'd be fun to run down, and the rest of the route varied between the planned and the "Ooh, shiny... less go see where that goes..." This is, I think, a good combination. Especially on lovely sunny summer evenings like tonight. Sunshine on singletrack I drove up to Guiseley, with the idea of looping round on to Baildon Moor to pick up two rogue trig pillars* that I'd planned to stitch onto an Ilkley Moor run, but never got the time (or in...

So, first technical hitch of Juneathon - we knew it was going to happen, didn't we. More about that later, but first... Juneathon day 3. 2.8km, 27mins Expanding on the two very brief blog posts from the weekend, I've been back up in the Lakes for the weekend as my Dad was going into hospital for his second full knee replacement. The better half and I drove up on Friday evening in the blazing sunshine, met my Mum at home and went for a quick bimble round a short local loop, the one I did on Jan 1st, but in reverse. We pottered off down the field, then started climbing sharply onto Brown Moor, watching her ladyship first fall over while trying to run uphill - she doesn't really run off-road - and get followed by first a herd of curious bullocks, then a few curious sheep. Perhaps they could sense the shared vegetarian-ness.We climbed over the stile and made our way carefully across the next field, full of cows with young calves - never the best thing to have in a field wi...

Slightly longer jaunt today, 8.7km from Torpenhow along to Prior Hall, through the lonning to the Ireby road, up the little bridleway (gated, well maintained, pretty flowers up the edges) and back to Cockshott bank, over the top and back home. About an hour's jog, nice and steady, with the odd stop to take pictures (below) or stretch tight calves.       It's nice being up in the old stomping ground, and I'm hoping to get out for a long fun hill run tomorrow. We'll see :)

A nice short hilly loop tonight, around my old home of Torpenhow. In fact, a reverse of the horrible hungover Janathon-the-First run, only this time without the hangover and with the Better Half in tow. Hannah in the Solway sunset. A stop-starty 2.8km in 27 mins, but with a lovely sunset over the Solway to admire, who's counting the time?

A lovely sunny evening round of Kirkstall Abbey and the Vespers, accompanied by Steve G, in his first proper Juneathon run. We'd waited until 9 to set off, as it's been a pretty warm day, and headed down to Kirkstall road, through the Abbey park, along the road and then up through Vesper Road, round the loop and back along Burley road to the house. A nice steady 45mins, covering 5.3km, and a good stretch out after the longer run yesterday! (Route map to come when I'm on a different computer!)

First Juneathon run out, and a very pleasant day it was too! I'd spent various bits of today staring at Google Maps trying to work out where to run, what mileage I was aiming for, whether to go hilly or flat, tarmac or singletrack, high or... ...And then I remembered that those decisions, those hours of poring over maps and stressing about mileage, were the things I enjoyed least about Janathon, and that my best runs came when I sacked the maps, the minimum mileage and the agonising and just did what I wanted to do. Hill #1 - Newlay Locks With that in mind, I got home, stuck my shorts on, chucked a bottle in the bumbag and headed out. 1:20-ish later I got back, having had a lovely bimble from the house, down to Kirkstall Abbey, onto the Leeds-Liverpool canal, along to the Abbey Inn (where, reputedly, there is the exit of a secret tunnel from Kirkstall Abbey. Presumably so the Monks could nip out for a cheeky pint without the public spotting them) , and then along the edge ...