Oh, how I was itching to get out today after yesterday’s static Juneathon in the gym. I had been consuming Ibuprofen yesterday like sweets and realised that my foot only actually hurts when it bends but, crucially, not when pressed onto something. So… a cycle ride was planned for this morning. Surely pressing down on the pedals would be alright. And I need to keep up the cycling momentum as in 3 weeks I attempt The Dunwich Dynamo and need all the time in the saddle I can get (so, if being all fatalistic, everything happens for a reason, maybe SonNumberTwo was just reacting to some greater universal law that forces me to forego running for cycling???).
I had a route in my head and set off early(ish) as it was forecast to get hot, very hot, later in the day. About halfway through the ride, I embarrassingly got caught up in a cycle race. When the first lycra clad cyclist passed me, I thought nothing of it. But then another and another and for a while, I was caught up in a little “peloton” of about 8 riders… them all serious, lycra clad with carbon fibre machines and me. Me, in a t-shirt and cut down camouflage combats singing along to my iPod and riding a bike bought for £10 off e-bay. I felt a bit out of place.
They left me after a mile or so and I carried on pootling along. Until I met up with another bunch of road racers. And I had a dilemma on my hands… I was about 5km from home. I needed to get home quickly as an item I was bidding on on e-bay was ending and I wanted to be there to slip in a last minute bid. But…if I sat patiently behind them, I would miss my e-bay deadline. But, if I tried to overtake, I would look like a competitive dick.
In the end, the call of e-bay was too strong and I nipped past on the outside, going as fast as possible and hoping I didn’t break any unwritten cycling code of conduct. I got home 30.97kms after leaving the house, just in time to not win the item on e-bay because the reserve had not been met. Typical.
Posts Tagged ‘mp3 player
our little secret
Bowing To Peer Pressure – The 10k Playlist
It took some thought and a little bit of tweeking but this is the playlist that accompanied me last week on the Wheathampstead 10k and will accompany me on Monday when I tackle the BUPA 10k with Hauling My Carcass. Click on the songs to hear (and see – sorry about some of the videos!) them for yourselves.
THE EATINGTREES 10K PLAYLIST
The first 5 tracks are just tunes that put me in a good mood and bring a smile to my face whenever I hear them.
James Brown – I Got You (I Feel Good) – What better way to start??
MSTRKRFT – Element Of Danger – And into the second kilometre with a bit of twisted disco. It even has cowbells on it. Nice!
Marc Bolan & T Rex – 20th Century Boy – The sound of my childhood…
The Cramps – What’s Inside A Girl? – Always brings a smile to my face and is just the right tempo to run to.
The Specials – Gangsters – My mis-spent youth (sigh!)
From here, I’ve put in a few uptempo and harsher sounding tracks to stop me from getting complacent
The Horrors – Sheena Is A Parasite – Like a shot of espresso (mmmmm!), at 1 minute 42 seconds, this may be small but packs a punch.
Crystal Method – Weapons Of Mad Distortion
This (all things being well) is my halfway point. The next 2 tracks are fairly quick in tempo. I know that if I can run to the beat, I will have picked up the pace slightly and this is where I need to be for the next few kms
Asian Dub Foundation – Flyover
Once again, a few more aggressive sounding tunes to keep the adrenaline going and hopefully me on track
Rage Against The Machine – Pistol Grip Pump
Slayer – Threshold – the testosterone literally drips from this track and it always makes me chuckle and pick up the pace
By now, the end of the race should be no more than 10 – 15 mins away so treat myself to a couple of guilty pleasures.
The Meters – Just Kissed My Baby – This is the funkiest track ever recorded. Ever. End of.
Reel 2 Real – I Like To Move It – I know, I know… Just don’t tell anyone about it, OK?
The finishers…
U2 – Elevation – My two sons (aged 3 and 7) have cultivated a strange fondness for the works of Bono and Co. This reminds me of my boys and is suitably uplifting.
Sam & Dave – Soul Man – If, by this point, I haven’t already finished, this should give me the necessary push to get me over the line.
not much running
I’m In The Wrong Business – Revenge Of The Luddite – Music Music Everywhere
Tuesday was my appointment with the specialist. It started sensibly enough with him getting me to describe the pain I’d had in my neck, shoulder and arms and then suggested that I get an x-ray – y’know… as a precaution. So I trundle off down the corridor and see a very nice lady who gets me to stand very still and then hurrys off into her little radiation proof box and then turns me round and hurrys off again into her bunker and then gives me a disc containing 2 x-rays and then I sit back in the waiting room and then the specialist calls me back in and looks at the x-ray for,oooh, maybe 15 seconds and then says there is a common abnormality at C5 and C6 and that I need an MRI scan and that my x-ray has just cost £135.00. So, £135 for an x-ray (only a precaution, mind) and the nice lady only got my neck and shoulders in otherwise I could have used it as a very cool but expensive Facebook profile picture. So on the way home, I call the MRI scan people and say I need an MRI scan on my cervical spine and am told it will be (worst case scenario) £735.00. And suddenly the pain in my neck doesn’t seem quite so bad but I have a terrible stabbing pain in my wallet…
So I ring my doctor and he says he can refer me for an MRI but it may take a few weeks. I then do a quick calculation and work out that even if I have to wait 2 months and eat ibuprofen and paracetamol morning, noon and night for the duration, I still don’t get near £700+ so decide that now I know I am not about to keel over and die, I’ll wait for my MRI.
As I was very good on my last run and came in under 1 hour for my 10km and didn’t stop, I rewarded myself with a trip to Heaven last night to see Killing Joke. They did not disappoint but the surprise of the night was a friend of mine arriving on a beautiful Specialized single speed bike which I instantly fell in love with. It is fantastically uncluttered as it has no gears, therefore no extra sprockets, no derailleur, no back brake cable as it has a fixed wheel and is about as simple a push bike as you can get. Obviously, only having one “gear” it does make it less practical for actually riding but it is very lovely. Which got me thinking… singlespeed pushbikes are considered very cool amongst a particular section of the cycling community despite (or perhaps because of) their slight impracticality. I wonder if someone were to invent the running clog (no unsightly laces, no flexible sole just 1 block of beautiful ergonomically carved wood), would the hipper members of the running community fall head over heels in love with it????
Hauling My Carcass has bitten the bullet and revealed most of the contents of his meticulously compiled running playlist (read about it here) and, a few weeks ago, Anna was daring people to come out and list their favourite running tunes. Both of which have prompted me to finally get round to creating a proper running playlist as opposed to a bunch of tracks on shuffle on my mp3 player. I have a good idea of what I consider to be my “ultimate” running playlist in my “minds I-Pod” but will experiment a bit and try it out on a few practice runs before deciding whether to pluck up courage and share it with you. I need to get busy though as I have a 10km in little over a week and think that the correct playlist for a relatively short distance could make all the difference.
Soundtrack to this post: Sea Within A Sea – The Horrors
we have the technology
70′s Cliches – No More 60 Times Tables – 2 Wheels Good, 4 Wheels Bad
The title of this post, for those of you not old enough to remember, is from the beginning of The Six Million Dollar Man. It was a bad American TV series from the late 70′s about an astronaut injured in a crash and who was subsequently rebuilt to make him better, faster and stronger than before. It really bears no resemblance to me as I do not think for a second that I will be better or stronger although I hope to get a little faster with the arrival of the technology fairy at my house…
I now have my replacement mp3 player which, ironically, arrived the day after the Fleet Half Marathon. Damn… surely I could have shaved a few vital seconds off of my time had I had the newer, smaller player with me. Oh well…
Secondly, today I received my Garmin 205. Thanks to everyone who offered me their opinion on the relative merits of the 205 / 305 / 405. In the end, I went for the 205 as I really don’t need a heart rate monitor or the ability to add a cadence monitor for when I am on the mountain bike – both would have been nice – but unnecessary. And would have encouraged me to start monitoring all manner of activities that should remain unmonitored. The 205 appears to do plenty enough for me at the moment and should signal the end of me having to do bad maths to work out my average running speed. In fact it’ll tell me my actual splits per mile. Or per kilometre…
Which brings me on to the Prague Half Marathon. The Czech Republic, being much more forward thinking than this little island, will be measuring their Half Marathon in kilometres. And rightly so. Now I have the Garmin, I shall be able to train in kilometres too, which may sound like an odd little revelation but bear with me…
Over the course of a regular Half Marathon, I would ordinarily have 13.1 indicators of my progress. If I am down by 30 seconds on one of my miles, I need to wait another mile until I can work out if I have corrected my pace. If I measure the same distance in kilometres, I have 21.1 indicators – which allows me to try to rectify pace issues earlier and also see if they have been rectified over a shorter distance. Which probably isn’t news to many people but is, like in a cartoon, a tiny, tiny lightbulb appearing above my head for me… Or I could just race against the Garmin’s little “virtual” training partner and I’d need neither miles nor kms…
My 6.54 miles yesterday was completed in 60mins 17secs – an average of 9:13 a mile which still leaves me outside of my goal for Prague of sub 2 hrs – arse!
So I have 2 more training runs before Prague. Sundays is planned to be approximately 10 miles (16.1kms) and then another on Tuesday with Hauling My Carcass of little over 6 miles (10kms). It has been almost 6 months since HMC and I were able to train together owing mostly to me
a) stopping travelling to London for work each day and
b) having my motorbike break down and be in the garage FOR 6 WHOLE MONTHS!!!
Fortunately, last Saturday, I received the call to tell me that the bike was fixed so now I am mobile again. Able to move around without relying on using the car (boo!) or public transport (boo!). So now, I can come and go as I please and get to beautiful South London to do some training along the banks of the Thames. And to quote another cheesy American TV series… “I love it when a plan comes together!”
Soundtrack to this post: Weapons of Mad Distortion – Crystal Method
