Endomondo Running Workout: "was out running 26.55 km "
The first thing to mention is that, despite a number of technological issues being solved - see last week's blog - there are still problems with the technology. I don't think there's any way that we ran 26km. And in fact, when I run the same set of data through RunKeeper (one of Endomondo's competitors) it comes up with a much more plausible 22.5 km, which is what I would have guessed. So, it's a software problem. I guess I'll just have to wait and see. No point complaining too loudly; all the software is free.
Anyway, another boringly perfect running morning, cool but clear. Almost warm in the sun, in fact. Still quite muddy, but at least there was no free-flowing water on the TVT (Two Valley Track) this week, so we ran one whole valley before taking a bit of a shortcut across Homer St, thus cutting out the second valley. All the hill running must be having some positive effects, because I almost didn't grumble about the shortcut. It takes about 3 km out of the run back to Steel Park, but the trade off is a very steep ascent & descent. And now that I think about it, I was actually in sufficient breath to admire the view to the north west coming down the steps. It's quite startling how much green there is in the fore-to-middle ground before the suburbs take hold. Right now, of course, after the rain, the green is really green, almost an English green. (True, I haven't seen an English green since I was 8, but definitely a lush green. No noticeable greys, browns or blues.)
The pelicans are back from their winter break. There was an incredible amount of rubbish in the river; I would have expected that immediately after the heavy rains, but a week on it seems even worse. A pity, although I think it's possible to see past/through the rubbish (I've been cultivating this since living in Clifton Hill). The water was clear, especially for high tide, and the air was clean. You can't really ask for more from an urban landscape.
Next week Jabulani, in Kuring-Gai National Park. 23 km of trails, should be interesting. I've just finished a book called "Born to Run"; it's rather messianic, but intriguing. More on the virtues of trail running, like my main Sunday colleague. He's trying to get me to run "ultras" - that's not happening! (well not yet, anyway)
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Second last July run
Endomondo Running Workout: 28.05 km in 2h:35m:09s
Well, extraordinarily the rain vanished this morning so it was pretty easy to get out. I needed to do a long run this week because the last couple of weeks have been a bit short (quick & hard, but short), which means I was going rain, hail or shine, but there's no doubt that shine is much the easiest.
On a technical side note, I upgraded my mobile phone OS to Froyo (it's a silly name, but it reflects the adolescent humour of the guys who write OSes) which has in fact been out for a while, so ought to have had the bugs ironed out, but in fact on a test run yesterday was playing up badly in the GPS department. It took 2 kilometers to find the satellites yesterday (about 10 minutes) where previously it was about 30-odd seconds, i.e. the time it takes to get down the front path. Today was worse - It took nearly 4 km to get a fix on the satellites & then 24 km later just stopped. Meantime whatever it was doing caused Endomondo to add 3 fictitious kilometers (Endomondo tries to work out when you've stopped for traffic lights so it's a bit sensitive to interruptions in signal). That sort of balances out; I think it might have been more like a 30 km run, but 28 will do.
Nothing really new today but we tried a three stage approach because we had two new members, so we did 5 km around the golf course, then 9 km around the back of Arnecliffe, then I did an extra 14 around the airport. It was all pretty wet. It's amazing to me that 10 meters from the river, and about 5 meters higher than the low tide level, Marrickville's engineers & builders have managed to build paths that don't drain. In places the paths are 10-12 cm under water; but they're only puddles, 10 meters away from a perfectly dry path. Seems wrong to me. Anyway, it's not really a big problem, I can run with wet feet.
The Arncliffe spur - which is pretty much 100% bush on the Wolli Creek side - was a small waterfall, even though it hadn't rained for 24 hours. Well, 12 hours. Still, it's amazing for how long water is retained on top of a hill. All this hill running practice must be worth something; I nearly managed to spring up the rocks like an aging gazelle.
Did I mention that the first wattles are out? Spring is coming!
Well, extraordinarily the rain vanished this morning so it was pretty easy to get out. I needed to do a long run this week because the last couple of weeks have been a bit short (quick & hard, but short), which means I was going rain, hail or shine, but there's no doubt that shine is much the easiest.
On a technical side note, I upgraded my mobile phone OS to Froyo (it's a silly name, but it reflects the adolescent humour of the guys who write OSes) which has in fact been out for a while, so ought to have had the bugs ironed out, but in fact on a test run yesterday was playing up badly in the GPS department. It took 2 kilometers to find the satellites yesterday (about 10 minutes) where previously it was about 30-odd seconds, i.e. the time it takes to get down the front path. Today was worse - It took nearly 4 km to get a fix on the satellites & then 24 km later just stopped. Meantime whatever it was doing caused Endomondo to add 3 fictitious kilometers (Endomondo tries to work out when you've stopped for traffic lights so it's a bit sensitive to interruptions in signal). That sort of balances out; I think it might have been more like a 30 km run, but 28 will do.
Nothing really new today but we tried a three stage approach because we had two new members, so we did 5 km around the golf course, then 9 km around the back of Arnecliffe, then I did an extra 14 around the airport. It was all pretty wet. It's amazing to me that 10 meters from the river, and about 5 meters higher than the low tide level, Marrickville's engineers & builders have managed to build paths that don't drain. In places the paths are 10-12 cm under water; but they're only puddles, 10 meters away from a perfectly dry path. Seems wrong to me. Anyway, it's not really a big problem, I can run with wet feet.
The Arncliffe spur - which is pretty much 100% bush on the Wolli Creek side - was a small waterfall, even though it hadn't rained for 24 hours. Well, 12 hours. Still, it's amazing for how long water is retained on top of a hill. All this hill running practice must be worth something; I nearly managed to spring up the rocks like an aging gazelle.
Did I mention that the first wattles are out? Spring is coming!
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Lane Cove National Park
Endomondo Running Workout: 18.41 km in 1h:46m:28s
Just two of us in the end, and we drove through a light drizzle up to Hunter's Hill to get to the edge of the Lane Cove National Park. This is a resource which is slowly being eaten away by developers; I don't know how long it has to go. It's huge, so I guess a while. Plus the locals are both well heeled and articulate so there may be limits to how far claims that new corporate premises will be integrated "lightly" into bushland. And despite everything, this run (which you can see is squeezed into a pretty thin strip of bushland on the river bank) is not appreciably different to running through, say, the "real" bush; and it's only 20 minutes from Marrickville with Sunday AM traffic.
You can see we had to take a detour through a bit of suburb; the track & bridge were being refurbished due to the summer fires; there are boardwalks laid down at strategic points across the mangrove swamps, and presumably these were damaged by fire.
Liz has been paddling up the Lane Cove River recently on Saturdays. It's a much more significant entity than the Cooks River, for sure, where I think a canoe would get grounded at low tide. Even though you are very close to suburbia you still feel the quiet of nature. OK, quiet plus birds. But birds aren't all bad if you're not trying to sleep.
It's startling the variety of ground; primarily three kinds, the swamp, the sandstone and the soil, but these have their own internal variations and there are also sections of domesticated land, cleared and grassed with little beaches on the river banks. Surprising to see no sign of any boats though; in the bits of Middle Harbour (further north) that I've seen, where the landscape is vaguely similar, anything resembling water access has boats, even if they're old rowing boats chained to a tree. Perhaps the council here is less sympathetic.
All the variety of ground makes the running even harder. Nothing's flat, so you're either going up or downhill, both of which are hard work. There's rocks, logs, rocks and mud to avoid on the path, and trees to get under - not too many - plus branches to dodge. It takes a degree of concentration, which is fine on the first 10k or so, but not so easy as you get near to home on the way back. When I'm tired I mainly like to concentrate on breathing (it makes a surprising difference - given that you could do it without thinking - to pay attention to the mechanics) but with trail running concentration has to be on the path. Even more given that I was running without glasses, due to the previously mentioned fog issue. Anyway, no falls this time, unlike the NOSH where I went head-over-heels in the last kilometer.
I was pleased to stop though. Only 18 km this week, but I swear it was harder than the 21 last weekend. Still, I had a look at the Sydney Marathon course yesterday, and it has a lot of hills. I se more of these trail runs in my future.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Dolls Point Half
Endomondo: "21.81 km in 1h:41m:25s"
Time for a race: I've run down to Doll's Point from my place when I wanted a long run (it's about 30-ish km there and back) and it's a very pretty spot, with the bay in one direction and the George's River in the other. Of course, it's perilously close to "The Shire" for a big person but at 8:00 AM on a winter's morning it didn't figure to be all that dangerous. This was a Sri Chinmoy event, cheap and cheerful & with excellent pancakes and after a couple of long-ish training runs a brisk 21 km hit out seemed just the go. The run itself, like all SC events, is based around loops (it makes providing fluids much, much easier) and Dolls Point-Ramsgate-Taren Point bridge is a very scenic 10 km.
I wanted to do this in 100 minutes, which would basically be extending my 16k PB pace for another 5 km. It seemed like a reasonable challenge, and in fact, the 101 minutes will do me as a success, given that I seem to have run a bit over the 21.1 km anyway. So that was good & the run actually includes a PB for the 10k (43 mins) and 16k (73 mins) as well. On a competitive note, I didn't make the top 3 in my age group (by 7 minutes) and the #7 women's competitor passed me in the final km and comfortably held me off to the finish line. (That's actually about par for me)
Another fantastically sunny day, pretty much identical to the last couple of Sundays, with one big difference: the wind. The one thing my phone doesn't do is measure wind speed (I'm sure that's only because I haven't looked hard enough) but I think I can give you an idea. The first lap wasn't so bad; there was a noticeable breeze, but the most noticeable thing about it was that it seemed to be coming from two directions. The first run east from the bottom of the bridge past the sailing club to Dolls Point was into a mild headwind which irritatingly persisted after we turned north at the point to head up to Ramsgate. "Irritating" turned out to be a mild problem because by some mystery of weather by the time we got back to the point to turn west back towards the bridge for the second crossing, the wind had turned and there was now a howling gale in our faces, the kind of howling gale that makes you think that you're not moving at all despite the effort, and has you wondering if there isn't some way to run sideways so as to present a smaller target (there isn't, BTW). The one good thing about this was that the leaders were by now going past us on their final couple of km, and they looked pretty happy and relaxed with the gale at their back.
Because I run so many laps (unlike most distance runners, who hate laps) I have spent a fair bit of time thinking about winds. You might think that it all evens out, but in fact out of the 360 degrees that the wind might come from, only about 60 - at most - are beneficial. All of the other 300 are problematic, either because they slow you down, or interfere with your balance, or both. I was wondering what the winds would be like on top of the Taren Point Bridge, which I wasn't particularly looking forward to anyway because as bridges go, it does a very good impersonation of two non-trivial hills, and despite all Andrew H.'s exhortations, I still don't really like hills. But when I got onto the bridge, I forgot about the hill problem. It was time to worry about the standing up problem. The pedestrian pathway is protected by concrete barriers from traffic (hard to imagine they would actually be any use in an accident, but it IS nice to see them there) and the first problem was to avoid being blown into & over them. Every time one foot left the ground the wind would try to push you into the barrier, and please note that the definition of running is that there are periods where both feet aren't on the ground. Plus I had to hold onto my race number with one hand because I wasn't sure the safety pins were up to the task. The path is a shared pedestrian/cycle way, and cyclists were holding onto the railings to stop themselves being blown in front of the runners.
That sounds bad, but curiously downhill was even worse. Normally downhill I open out the stride and try to concentrate on not falling over while I run as fast as I can; not today. If you left your foot off the ground for the length of a full stride the wind would catch it and blow it across in front of the other one (yes, only for one side, for the other foot the wind tries to make you take a frog step) leading to disaster. I had to invent a new gait, which involved leaning into the wind and running slightly crabwise. Normally you hope to get back on the downhills the time you lost on the uphills. Today time was not the issue. Uprightness was. I didn't meet anyone who actually fell, but everyone I spoke to felt the same way about it.
Of course it was the same, reversed, going back the other way Really, quite an extraordinary feeling. I meant to take in a bit more of the scenery the second time round, but I was so busy concentrating I completely forgot.
Once off the bridge it was almost an easy run home. The wind did stay consistent, so it was at our backs for most of the last 4 km - if you look at the times I think I managed a 4:15 km around about the 18/19 km point. That is certainly tailwind, much as I might like to claim otherwise. I couldn't find any sprint in the legs over the last couple of km, which I suppose means no unused energy, but is a bit annoying when you get passed. It also suggests to me that the finishing burst of my youthful running was based around a lazy first 90% of the race. Strangely, that is what my PE teacher(s) used to say as well.
Hard work, but a lot of fun. Running with that wind makes for a totally different experience.
Time for a race: I've run down to Doll's Point from my place when I wanted a long run (it's about 30-ish km there and back) and it's a very pretty spot, with the bay in one direction and the George's River in the other. Of course, it's perilously close to "The Shire" for a big person but at 8:00 AM on a winter's morning it didn't figure to be all that dangerous. This was a Sri Chinmoy event, cheap and cheerful & with excellent pancakes and after a couple of long-ish training runs a brisk 21 km hit out seemed just the go. The run itself, like all SC events, is based around loops (it makes providing fluids much, much easier) and Dolls Point-Ramsgate-Taren Point bridge is a very scenic 10 km.
I wanted to do this in 100 minutes, which would basically be extending my 16k PB pace for another 5 km. It seemed like a reasonable challenge, and in fact, the 101 minutes will do me as a success, given that I seem to have run a bit over the 21.1 km anyway. So that was good & the run actually includes a PB for the 10k (43 mins) and 16k (73 mins) as well. On a competitive note, I didn't make the top 3 in my age group (by 7 minutes) and the #7 women's competitor passed me in the final km and comfortably held me off to the finish line. (That's actually about par for me)
Another fantastically sunny day, pretty much identical to the last couple of Sundays, with one big difference: the wind. The one thing my phone doesn't do is measure wind speed (I'm sure that's only because I haven't looked hard enough) but I think I can give you an idea. The first lap wasn't so bad; there was a noticeable breeze, but the most noticeable thing about it was that it seemed to be coming from two directions. The first run east from the bottom of the bridge past the sailing club to Dolls Point was into a mild headwind which irritatingly persisted after we turned north at the point to head up to Ramsgate. "Irritating" turned out to be a mild problem because by some mystery of weather by the time we got back to the point to turn west back towards the bridge for the second crossing, the wind had turned and there was now a howling gale in our faces, the kind of howling gale that makes you think that you're not moving at all despite the effort, and has you wondering if there isn't some way to run sideways so as to present a smaller target (there isn't, BTW). The one good thing about this was that the leaders were by now going past us on their final couple of km, and they looked pretty happy and relaxed with the gale at their back.
Because I run so many laps (unlike most distance runners, who hate laps) I have spent a fair bit of time thinking about winds. You might think that it all evens out, but in fact out of the 360 degrees that the wind might come from, only about 60 - at most - are beneficial. All of the other 300 are problematic, either because they slow you down, or interfere with your balance, or both. I was wondering what the winds would be like on top of the Taren Point Bridge, which I wasn't particularly looking forward to anyway because as bridges go, it does a very good impersonation of two non-trivial hills, and despite all Andrew H.'s exhortations, I still don't really like hills. But when I got onto the bridge, I forgot about the hill problem. It was time to worry about the standing up problem. The pedestrian pathway is protected by concrete barriers from traffic (hard to imagine they would actually be any use in an accident, but it IS nice to see them there) and the first problem was to avoid being blown into & over them. Every time one foot left the ground the wind would try to push you into the barrier, and please note that the definition of running is that there are periods where both feet aren't on the ground. Plus I had to hold onto my race number with one hand because I wasn't sure the safety pins were up to the task. The path is a shared pedestrian/cycle way, and cyclists were holding onto the railings to stop themselves being blown in front of the runners.
That sounds bad, but curiously downhill was even worse. Normally downhill I open out the stride and try to concentrate on not falling over while I run as fast as I can; not today. If you left your foot off the ground for the length of a full stride the wind would catch it and blow it across in front of the other one (yes, only for one side, for the other foot the wind tries to make you take a frog step) leading to disaster. I had to invent a new gait, which involved leaning into the wind and running slightly crabwise. Normally you hope to get back on the downhills the time you lost on the uphills. Today time was not the issue. Uprightness was. I didn't meet anyone who actually fell, but everyone I spoke to felt the same way about it.
Of course it was the same, reversed, going back the other way Really, quite an extraordinary feeling. I meant to take in a bit more of the scenery the second time round, but I was so busy concentrating I completely forgot.
Once off the bridge it was almost an easy run home. The wind did stay consistent, so it was at our backs for most of the last 4 km - if you look at the times I think I managed a 4:15 km around about the 18/19 km point. That is certainly tailwind, much as I might like to claim otherwise. I couldn't find any sprint in the legs over the last couple of km, which I suppose means no unused energy, but is a bit annoying when you get passed. It also suggests to me that the finishing burst of my youthful running was based around a lazy first 90% of the race. Strangely, that is what my PE teacher(s) used to say as well.
Hard work, but a lot of fun. Running with that wind makes for a totally different experience.
Another stunning winter Sunday
Endomondo Running Workout
Well, I said when I set out that it was already visibly clear that we were past the solstice because it was noticeably lighter than last week. It certainly makes it easier to get out of bed. The Marrickville sky was a little cloudy but the weather's been incredibly consistent recently, 4 days clear to 3 days rain, and the rain only finished on Thursday, so I was pretty sure it'd be a good day.
I was stiff as a board in the thighs - some new exercises started on Friday - but eventually I got up some speed. It's comically similar to the setting sail of the Queen Mary. It's curious, I don't feel that I'm running at all well at the moment, although the times are as good - possibly better - than 3 months ago. It's hard to get into the rhythm of it, and easy to fall out of the rhythm when eventually found. Anyway, how it feels is not that important. I have technology to tell me how it's going. (Grins) Marketers' dream, nearly; if I didn't have Yorkshire blood I'd buy every new device as it comes available. "Fortunately" they are too expensive and not actually all that useful; plus my phone has most of them built in anyway.
Barrelling along Illawarra Rd I noticed what looked like a layer of brown smog hanging over Homer St ridge (that's the farthest point on the Illawarra Rd horizon, about 3 km away). It looked pretty unpleasant but the curious thing was that there was no sign of it on Marrickville Rd. However by the time I got down to the river there was mist everywhere, pretty close to fog. I don't remember anything quite like it before; it really reinforces the geography.
The 3rd & 4th most diligent of our group were, respectively, orienteering and running the Gold Coast marathon this AM. It was pretty easy to guess that if you lived anywhere near the water getting up would be an unappetising prospect & it was too cold to wait around. Andrew (T.O.A) and I set off immediately.
We went over the steps from the Cooks River valley into the Wolli Creek valley, which was even foggier than the Cook's. It was so foggy that I came within inches of breaking my neck by tripping over a chain strung across the entrance to a park. The glasses had to come off; I have a patent "de-fogging" spray but it's completely useless in these conditions. But within an hour the mist had burned off, the run was riz, the sky was blue and we were being deafened by the morning chorus of birds (invisible) along the Bardwell Creek.
We managed about 12 km along trails near water before being compelled into the streets of Kogarah. We managed to wend our way - it's not that difficult to navigate by the sun when it's just risen - down to Botany Bay a little south of Brighton & then we ran back along the bay watching planes float mysteriously up and down to the airport.
That's it really. A long run, but a beautiful morning for it.
Well, I said when I set out that it was already visibly clear that we were past the solstice because it was noticeably lighter than last week. It certainly makes it easier to get out of bed. The Marrickville sky was a little cloudy but the weather's been incredibly consistent recently, 4 days clear to 3 days rain, and the rain only finished on Thursday, so I was pretty sure it'd be a good day.
I was stiff as a board in the thighs - some new exercises started on Friday - but eventually I got up some speed. It's comically similar to the setting sail of the Queen Mary. It's curious, I don't feel that I'm running at all well at the moment, although the times are as good - possibly better - than 3 months ago. It's hard to get into the rhythm of it, and easy to fall out of the rhythm when eventually found. Anyway, how it feels is not that important. I have technology to tell me how it's going. (Grins) Marketers' dream, nearly; if I didn't have Yorkshire blood I'd buy every new device as it comes available. "Fortunately" they are too expensive and not actually all that useful; plus my phone has most of them built in anyway.
Barrelling along Illawarra Rd I noticed what looked like a layer of brown smog hanging over Homer St ridge (that's the farthest point on the Illawarra Rd horizon, about 3 km away). It looked pretty unpleasant but the curious thing was that there was no sign of it on Marrickville Rd. However by the time I got down to the river there was mist everywhere, pretty close to fog. I don't remember anything quite like it before; it really reinforces the geography.
The 3rd & 4th most diligent of our group were, respectively, orienteering and running the Gold Coast marathon this AM. It was pretty easy to guess that if you lived anywhere near the water getting up would be an unappetising prospect & it was too cold to wait around. Andrew (T.O.A) and I set off immediately.
We went over the steps from the Cooks River valley into the Wolli Creek valley, which was even foggier than the Cook's. It was so foggy that I came within inches of breaking my neck by tripping over a chain strung across the entrance to a park. The glasses had to come off; I have a patent "de-fogging" spray but it's completely useless in these conditions. But within an hour the mist had burned off, the run was riz, the sky was blue and we were being deafened by the morning chorus of birds (invisible) along the Bardwell Creek.
We managed about 12 km along trails near water before being compelled into the streets of Kogarah. We managed to wend our way - it's not that difficult to navigate by the sun when it's just risen - down to Botany Bay a little south of Brighton & then we ran back along the bay watching planes float mysteriously up and down to the airport.
That's it really. A long run, but a beautiful morning for it.
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