I’ll tell you this, boy, that’s a lovely sight.

In Juneathon I finished by standing on the trig point on the summit of Arthur’s Seat, having my picture taken by a bemused Canadian tourist. No such event this time, just a straightforward run. However, there’s not a lot left in the legs and I needed to get away on time tonight, so it was a short, sharp, fast one.

Running Free is down again, but the numbers can be summed up as follows: 6.54km in a time of 29:23 giving an average speed of 4:30/km. Not a high number to finish on, but proof that heavy legs can still move when they need to.

So that’s it, a total of 243km which is only 15km off June’s total. A cracking result! I’m much further down the leaderboards this time so I guess people have upped their game. Whatever the reason, I’m happy to have started from a weak position in terms of personal fitness and put in such a decent effort.

I’ll be taking a few days off, but I’ve already got my return planned out; a Sunday morning run back at my folks’ place and then more chainsawing of fallen trees. It’ll be a good day.

I’m off to see Stephen Jones.

******
Distance: 7.29km
Time taken: 00:35:14
Average/Max Speed : 12.41/30.08 kph
Average/Min Pace : 00:04:50/00:01:59
Calories: 520

*****

So that’s it. The distances are dropping off as my legs are in need of a rest. I’ve done far fewer kilometres than I did in June, but I went into that month having been training leading up to it and started Janathon from an almost standing start. After Tuesday, it’ll be a few days off in which I’ll work out and write down a training schedule for the Ultra and then I’ll have tangible and quantifiable to aim for.

Oh, and 2012km in 2012. It’s got a nice ring to it, doesn’t it…

Today I had intended to run the same loop as yesterday as it’s a known 10km loop and that was my distance target again. However, when I got to the end of the path from my door and onto the street, I couldn’t face turning left for the umpteenth day in a row. So I turned right instead and headed off to the completely opposite side of town.

******
Distance: 10.25km
Time taken: 00:55:23
Average/Max Speed : 11.10/14.59 kph
Average/Min Pace : 00:05:24/00:04:06
Calories: 730 ******

It’s funny to think that this time in Juneathon, I went out and did a half marathon. Instead, it’s half that distance that I’m aiming for. Ah well, I was in full training swing last June so the extra miles weren’t quite such a shock to the system. I fully anticipate that with a few days off after Janathon, I’ll be able to head straight into a 15km run. Yeah, that’s way more than the 10% week-on-week increase that’s suggested, but I’ve run longer distances happily in the past and the only thing that’s stopping me at the moment is knowing that I’ll need go out again tomorrow.

Anyway, I’m rambling. Today had been earmarked for getting back on the bike but that wasn’t to be. The other weekend, my local games shop, Kingdom of Adventure, announced that it was shutting its doors, another victim of the crappy economic climate. It’s strange to think that it was fewer than two years ago that I played my first role-playing game at Hi-Ex 2010 and now I’m mourning the loss of a local store.

I’d always turned down the opportunity to play RPGs before, believing them to be too nerdy even for me. I was wrong. Turns out they’re a bunch of mates getting together to talk shite, roll dice, talk more shite, and generally just have a good laugh. Luckily, plans are already afoot to keep the various Monday night games going, so there will be many more nights where someone rolling snake eyes reduces everyone to howls of laughter. You had to be there.

******
Distance: 10.04km
Time taken: 00:51:12
Average/Max Speed : 11.76/14.52 kph
Average/Min Pace : 00:05:06/00:04:07
Calories: 720 ******

I had fully intended to get the pack on again, but I was having a bit of trouble with motivation this morning, mostly due to the fact that there was a thick layer of frost over everything. So when I go to the back door, laced up my shoes and made sure the GPS had a connection, I realised that I couldn’t be bothered venturing back into the house to find the pack.

It had to be a morning run today as I’ve been across in Glasgow meeting up with some of the consolevaniacs for the semi-regular occurrence that is ConCon. Put simply, it’s a bunch of mates who used to watch an online video games review show who get together to laugh at/with each other and have a few drinks. Imagine that, eh? Gamers who socialise. Pffft! That age old stereotype will be collapsing in on itself any day now.

On the way home, I made time to listen to The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman. As a digital release, it’s available as a single, 64 minute track which is coincidentally the same time as the bus from Glasgow to home. What an album. I can’t imagine it would work as someone’s introduction to Sparks unless they’re into bizarre musicals about Swedish directors, but it has that classic Sparks feel running through it. I can imagine it being a staple in the car for journeys that last just that little bit longer than an hour.

An exact repeat of yesterday’s run, not because I enjoyed it so much, but just because I needed to get some kilometres done and get back for food. Tomorrow’s run will be longer and with the pack, just to make things a little more interesting. But for tonight, I’m just going to pummel my leg muscles with the foam roller and then relax with a book. A full weekend is in the offing, so might as well get some rest this evening.

******

I decided that I’m going to do evening runs tonight and tomorrow, so that I can have a slightly more relaxing time during the day at work. It also gave my legs a few extra hours of rest today, for which they were grateful.

I’ve been pretty damn tired over the last few days, partly because of socialising in the evenings and partly because the day job’s been tiring me out mentally. The work I’ve got on at the moment hasn’t been overly taxing, but several projects were coming to a head at once and I had to just get the headphones in and get things done.

That’s the reason you’ll see that I’ve scrobbled 52 Girl Talk tracks so far this week. If they were tagged properly, you’d also see that I’d listened to Vinyl Fantasy 7 a few times as well. I find that when I need to focus, there’s nothing better for that than a good mash-up album. It’s probably the fact that it’s all based around a relatively constant rhythm and no tracks stick around for too long.

I should keep a note of what music I reach for at different points. I know that when I’ve got something monotonous to do then I’ll reach for the country music. If I’m just getting on with programming without too much pressure or masses of brain power required then it’s shop, sharp punk a lot of the time. Documentation tasks normally call for some Cat Empire or Yo La Tengo. If I need to engage my brain but need to block out noise, that’s when I reach for the foreign language stuff (with the exception of Wir sind Helden who cover all bases), something like Yelle, Camille (the early albums, never the recent stuff) or Rammstein.

Or there’s always the ever welcome presence of some Sparks.

******
Distance: 9.52km
Time taken: 00:48:56
Average/Max Speed : 11.67/60.88 kph
Average/Min Pace : 00:05:09/00:00:59
Calories: 676 ******

Another run with regular running buddy Jacob today, though both of us were feeling a bit leaden. If evidence was needed it was long periods of silence as we just tried to keep enough oxygen flowing. Or maybe that was just me.

Tonight is the last Wednesday of the month, and the last Wednesday of the month is the traditional time for zombies! Well, given that we very, very rarely show zombie movies perhaps it’s not so traditional, but tonight was an actual, bona fide, zombie double bill.

I was only going to be able to stick around for the first film, but it didn’t disappoint.

An astonishingly bad film from start to finish. It’s clear from the trailer that Lenzi had no intention of using ordinary zombies, these ones run, plot and use automatic weapons. The film introduced characters with elaborate histories, only to kill them off with a crossbow in a small field. Heads exploded, women screamed, men were useless, it was all there. Highly recommended!

Best line of the night definitely goes to “We’ll go with Plan H, and keep Plan B for later”. Genius!

You’d think that victors in running would be the people who win races and yes, in some way, they are. However, that would mean there’s only one victor per race which would imply that everyone else lost. Which is bollocks since most of us haven’t a hope in hell of taking home that trophy (well, vouchers for a local restaurant and a bottle of cheap plonk) so why do it?

In running, a victor is someone who pushes themselves and feels good about it. I’ve known a number of people who set their fitness goals far, far too low. They start running and work up to a 5km race after a year’s training. I’m not saying that that first time you run 5km you shouldn’t feel like a winner, but since a race generally isn’t about taking home a trophy (well, a pair of Thorlo’s) it should be about achieving something else.

Victors push themselves under race conditions to do better or feel better. Ran 10km and felt like a sack of coal by the end? Well done! You just ran 10km! winnar! Next time you do it, have more breath by the end and take less time. winnar!

Victors look at different races or routes and think “I’ve never done that, sign me up!”. They don’t look at distance or terrain as being something that’s comfortably within their field of experience, they look for new challenges. Or they do the same race and think “where can I improve?”.

A victim knows their limits. Victors mis-quote Douglas Adams and say “I love limits! I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”

******
Distance: 7.14km
Time taken: 00:34:10
Average/Max Speed : 12.54/22.22 kph
Average/Min Pace : 00:04:47/00:02:42
Calories: 509 ******

Just noticed the time and I’d quite like to start a new book.

The last few runs have followed a definite trajectory whereby I start off feeling absolutely terrible, heavy legs,lungs unwilling to work and a mental fatigue. I switch off for a few kilometres, thinking of anything but running. Then, not long after I’ve decided I’ll just do a short one today, I start to straighten up a bit, my breathing becomes less laboured and the legs wake up a bit.

That’s definitely what happened today, so the “I’ll just give it 5-6km” turned into another 10km loop. Surprisingly, I’ve run two new loops over the weekend and both have come out at almost exactly 10km to the metre. That’s some homing GPS I must have up top.

******
Distance: 10.12km
Time taken: 00:53:17
Average/Max Speed : 11.39/16.50 kph
Average/Min Pace : 00:05:16/00:03:38
Calories: 718 ******