I had a lovely run this morning. I went out on a variation of my easy five miler, along the country roads around our village. About a mile in I saw a lovely red kite flying over a field next to the road, it was quite low, lower than the tree tops so you could clearly see its rusty coloured plumage rather than the usual forked tail silhouette.
Carrying on through the lanes and round the corner a bit, a pair of red kites flew out of a tree I was running under, one swooping across the top of the roadside hedge, they really are huge birds. Looking up I saw them, one, two, three, four... they kept coming, and culminating in a flock of eight fully grown red kites, all in the same area, presumably a good food source was nearby to support so many hunters,
To top the run off, a minute or so later a buzzard and a kestrel also made an appearance.
Clearly not a good day for mice.
Friday 29 July 2016
Thursday 7 July 2016
I just made a training plan
So after a few months of bumbling about, running on and off, and varying the distance and the terrain, I thought it would be best to actually put something down more formal so I could structure my training better than I had been doing.
I sat down and had a chat with myself. What sort of training do I need to cover for this event? (I said to myself). 'Well Chris' I replied, You need to practice carrying your pack, you need to practice running in boots, you need to practice navigation, and night navigation, and you need to put in some long runs - and finally combine everything.
Hmm interesting. Well its the middle of summer at the moment so to do anything in the dark would mean staying up until 11pm, or getting up before 4am, which is just daft, so I will wait until the nights draw in to do the dark stuff.
Navigation would also be a bit of a challenge as I pretty much know the general area around me, so that will need to wait until I travel a bit further away from home.
Which leaves me with the running with/without various bits of kit. So my plan (for the time being) ends up like this:
Mon: Rest day.
Tue: Normal run.
Wed: Walk/run in boots.
Thurs: Run with pack (in running kit).
Fri: Normal run
Sat: Normal run
Sun: Walk/run in boots and with pack.
The more observant will see I have not included distances in this plan. They will vary depending on time available and will (generally) increase (especially the weekend ones) as the months progress. The mid week runs are really limited to length as I run in the morning before work, and getting up before 5am is difficult enough, so bringing it even earlier would just be silly
So that's it, I did a nice 10m run around the country lanes on Tue, a simple 3m walk around the village on Wed (in my boots), a 5m run with my pack (loaded with about 7kg of kit) this morning. All good, although the front loading bottles may need adjusting a bit higher to avoid bruised ribs.
I sat down and had a chat with myself. What sort of training do I need to cover for this event? (I said to myself). 'Well Chris' I replied, You need to practice carrying your pack, you need to practice running in boots, you need to practice navigation, and night navigation, and you need to put in some long runs - and finally combine everything.
Hmm interesting. Well its the middle of summer at the moment so to do anything in the dark would mean staying up until 11pm, or getting up before 4am, which is just daft, so I will wait until the nights draw in to do the dark stuff.
Navigation would also be a bit of a challenge as I pretty much know the general area around me, so that will need to wait until I travel a bit further away from home.
Which leaves me with the running with/without various bits of kit. So my plan (for the time being) ends up like this:
Mon: Rest day.
Tue: Normal run.
Wed: Walk/run in boots.
Thurs: Run with pack (in running kit).
Fri: Normal run
Sat: Normal run
Sun: Walk/run in boots and with pack.
The more observant will see I have not included distances in this plan. They will vary depending on time available and will (generally) increase (especially the weekend ones) as the months progress. The mid week runs are really limited to length as I run in the morning before work, and getting up before 5am is difficult enough, so bringing it even earlier would just be silly
So that's it, I did a nice 10m run around the country lanes on Tue, a simple 3m walk around the village on Wed (in my boots), a 5m run with my pack (loaded with about 7kg of kit) this morning. All good, although the front loading bottles may need adjusting a bit higher to avoid bruised ribs.
******
On a closing note; due to the overwhelming amount of comments I have received from one of my previous posts, I need to point out that Cathy is a very dear friend (not in that way) that I have known for ages, so to call her a "lazy bint" was perfectly acceptable, and in no way was this comment intended to cause upset or anguish, no matter how true it might (or might not) have been. :-)
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