running, reading, nonsense.
In the heat of this particularly sweltering summer my writing habits have melted away. Thankfully, my running habits have mostly survived. My Strava progress chart is a steady mountain climb interspersed with brief, sometimes steep downhill drops indicating, probably, a heavy-ish weekend. I wanted to have a fun summer, and I have had one. I've been… Continue reading Summer of Run
Why walk when you can run? Running covers more ground, quicker, so more miles can be put in the bank, and miles in the bank is what we like. Usually. I went for a good long walk in place of a run for the first time because I was horribly hungover and the slower motion… Continue reading A Change of Pace
Image by Matt Seymour, from Unsplash.com The North Midlands Cross Country league is sort of the premier event for endurance runners at my athletics club, but I’ve never actually been involved before. The combination of recurring lockdowns and my previous job consistently eating up my Saturdays has prevented me from ever being able to turn… Continue reading MUD
Fresh from my trip to the Peak District, I had a feeling that I would enjoy my first half marathon. The word enjoy, as always with running, is relative. In running terms it means a type II kind of pleasure - that ‘oh that was fun’ kind of feeling, not a ‘oh this is fun’… Continue reading The Debut
The first sign that not all was right was when the first mile arrived before the first mile should have arrived. GPS is an unreliable friend at best however, so I disregarded this and trundled on. When the 4 mile sign drifted past as the watch stuck 3.25 miles I thought perhaps, yes, something has… Continue reading Not 10 Miles
It is a relatively small, but notably unique and remarkably challenging, rise in the Peak District, just outside the sleepy village of East Sterndale. The clouds were low, but they didn’t obscure the view so much as to make it all the more dramatic; crowning every hill top, farmhouse, and tumulus, in eerie grey wreaths.… Continue reading Alone on Parkhouse Hill
Not every run is particularly good or particularly bad. Most runs are...what they are, and the more you run the more each individual run becomes more anonymous. This isn’t a bad thing, it is just a symptom of daily practise. Perhaps it sounds like a negative, but what it really speaks to is routine, and… Continue reading Eurus, God of the East Wind
I’ve worried about time quite a lot. In relation to running, I often worried about having enough time to run. In the process of applying for new jobs I’ve considered how the positions which I am applying for may impact the time I have to train. The thing is, I realised it doesn’t matter. Time… Continue reading Always Time
Last year it was the lockdown which restricted our running routes, this year - for me at least - it has been this little fuel crisis which we’ve been undergoing. Although, I suppose it’s not a fuel crisis at all, it’s a HGV driver crisis (which sounds considerably less dramatic, although clearly that’s unfair) -… Continue reading Close to Home
With the transition of the seasons comes a transition in training. It isn’t exactly a new year, or a completely clean slate, but the gradual shifting of nature’s palette has encouraged me to take stock and consider what might I do differently in the year’s final chapters compared to it’s long open, and sun-stunted middle. … Continue reading To Watch Less
run into words 