Five kilometres, painfully

I got out of bed at 6:30. This was a struggle because I was up until 11:30 last night, reading The Postmortal. That was an enjoyably grim story exploring a future where a cure for aging. (It doesn't end well for anyone: there are other ways to suffer apart from getting old.) It's vaguely reminiscient of the Blair Witch Project, crossed with a blog: the conceit is that the whole story is discovered in an abandoned settlement, and for the most part it feels convincing that somebody would be journalling their experience. Not at the end though. I wonder if I would be.

An early start, confounding brunch

This morning my alarm went off at six. I rolled over, turned it off, and slept for another hour. Then I got up and went out for a run.

Undeprived

After a week where I seemed to be in continual mental freefall, my mood darkening with each day, things have been on the up again these past few days. Last night I managed, in an all-too-rare act of discipline, to go to bed at 10. That meant that rather than having to be unloaded from my bed and shoved out onto the cold, harsh streets of Singapore, I woke feeling fresh and mentally capable.

Fraudulent running

I've run every day so far this year, and all the way back into early December, without a break. However, recently I've maintained this unbroken series at the expense of proper exercise. Rather than getting out and doing a proper, solid 10k, I'll manage a kilometre (or at most, when feeling ambitious) a mile, before returning to home, smelling perhaps more of defeat than exhaustion.

This is partly because I'm nursing a sore heel from Sunday's over exertion, partly because the poor quantity and quality of sleep I've suffered this week has left me sluggish, and because I've either been thinking too hard, or not enough, and lack the willpower and mental strength to push myself to run a proper distance.

And thus, instead, a kilometre here, a kilometre there, not really enough to persuade my body that it's still alive and not on the road to cheese-flavoured obsolescence, my cholesterol-enhanced cadaver sleepwalking from home to office and back again.

To make matters worse, there's just as much dirty running kit in the house as if I'd run a marathon every day; sweaty socks make no consideration for whether they were used to run a mile or twenty six miles. Although I did a Stakhanovite amount of laundry last weekend, I've lacked the mental ability to put it away, and now hunting for clean socks becomes a confused and frustrating occupation.

If somebody would come up with a ten day week, perhaps I'd have time to get all of this done. Until then, it's just these pretend, plastic runs to take the place of doing things properly. At least this is a recovery week - but that means next week will be even tougher...

Run out again

Today's run

I got up at 6 this morning, to protest from my body, and went out for a 13 mile run.  I was excited to try out my new shoes on a longer distance, but also slightly perturbed by the thought of running so far - since the marathon in November, I don't think I've run much more than an hour in one go.

New shoes!

After last night's unexpected drinking binge, I was a frail mess today. It took me several hours to achieve even simple tasks like sweeping the floor or washing the dishes. By early evening I felt I'd returned to humanity, so to celebrate I bought a pair of Nike's latest running shoe, the FlyKnit1.

Near miss

I almost didn't make it to the MacRitchie Reservoir 5k time trial today, which would have been greatly aggravating after all the training I've been putting in.

Green Corridor Run

We're all winners

This morning, I got up early for the inaugural Green Corridor Run in Singapore.

A long run in the sunshine

Tomorrow I've got a 10k race, starting from the old Tanjong Pagar railway station. It's sponsored by Blackberry, who apparently still have enough money to buy 6,000 sun visors for runners to wear, so I suppose they must still be selling phones to someone or other.

Caught with your pants down - running and Boeing

After a week of early starts (6am every day) and late finishes (midnight with a depressing regularity) it was wonderful to be able to get up at 8. However, that was a precursor to driving to Magnuson Sports Field in Seattle, to go for a run.

What I did on Sunday

It's been a rather long day.  I went to bed early last night and got up early this morning and took a taxi over to the MacRitchie Reservoir to run five kilometres.  I did this about a month ago but missed the start of the run, and the next chance to run it officially isn't until the start of February, but I thought I'd try it today to see how well my training is panning out.

Born to run, live to play Xbox

Last night we stayed up late watching GI Joe: Rise Of Cobra, which is something any right minded person should never do. I'd seen it before, so that makes me wrong minded to the power of two. Shame on me. I woke at six to the sound of rain, put the alarm on snooze for ten minutes ... and then went back to sleep until 9.

A morning after

I felt rather toxic this morning: it's strange what a couple of beers will do to you. Well, it's horrible what a couple of filthy cheap beers will do to your morning after, and it's annoying what two cheap beers will do to your wallet when they cost $15 each. $15 for a horrible drink when I should have been drinking decent cocktails somewhere else for pretty much the same price. Then again, a gin hangover can be as bad as a beer one, and a hangover on two beers is scarcely worth the name. I should just blame feeling lousy and dehydrated on being - well, lousy and dehydrated.

No more racing?

Tonight I started looking for a marathon in 2013 that I could enter. It's going to be another busy year, and I've got mixed feelings about reattempting Osaka; now I've thoroughly slain the monster of my poor time there, it feels like it would be odd to go back and run it again. The third time I ran Tromso wasn't as good as the second, although I'm not sure that's much of a guide to anything.

A proper celebration

After half a day more, I finished cramming all the virtual cogs into my database and everything worked the way it was meant to. To celebrate, I walked once around the office building, which was almost as exciting as Alan Shearer celebrating winning the English Premier League by creosoting his fence.

I returned home this evening to the rumble of thunder. The skies turned orange, then black, as the lightning flashed over our building, but the promised rain never came. Still, I whimpered and tried to hide in the wardrobe at every thunderclap. Why my wife thinks she wants a pet animal when she has a perfectly good me is quite mysterious.

Later, when the weather was calm again, I went for a run, an easy, slow one, that inexplicably ended up being a mile at marathon pace. Maybe it was the shoes, maybe it was all the tortilla chips I ate, perhaps it was two hours of dicking about on the xbox. Whatever it was, I was surprised. My legs work, my knees don't hurt, and I don't seem to have lost any pace. It's almost like I didn't run on Sunday.

In three days time I'll have been writing this blog every day for three years. I'm not sure if the next three years will involve as much sweat as this one, or indeed so many pairs of running shoes. We will have to see.

For now, that's all: I had a can of Pepsi last night and couldn't sleep, so I'm rather behind on sleep now, and my eyes are beginning to give up on me. Til tomorrow, then.

A last bit of unpleasantness

I got up this morning to do a few intervals, my last set before the race. I wasn't looking forward to them much: I really struggle with the faster paced ones now. Back when I was sprinting round Happy Valley in October they seemed much easier.

Still, I managed to keep close to pace on the first two, but died a death trying to run a k at 5k pace - I was making all kinds of horrible noises as I ran, like a cat that had been beaten with a broomstick.

I imagine.

Running essentials

Today we bought a new Garmin 210 to replace the old one that had died. The difference is amazing, in lots of little, slightly worrying ways. The buttons have a proper clicking feeling when you press them; the beep as it moves through menus is much louder, and I'm left with the sinking feeling that Garmin haven't improved their design since I bought a 210 last year. What has happened is that my brand new 2011 Garmin has rotted in the sweat I've produced over the last year, and come this time in 2013, my new Garmin will be just as cruddy and sick as my old one was.

Still, at least the strap hasn't exploded and flung the unit into the darkness, like last night.

How to lose weight instantly

There are lots of fad diets that tell you the way to lose weight is to eat nothing but cream crackers/cabbage soup/fruit on Mondays and sausages on Wednesdays. They're all a load of rubbish. I had four meals today, including two that were principally cheese, and I had a chocolate cake for dessert tonight, with a fist-sized splodge of whipped cream, and I still lost four pounds.

Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness

Today I can hardly walk. Perhaps that's not surprising; I did run over 17 km yesterday after sitting in a chair all day. But it's not the furthest I've run, and although I've been wobbly after running before, not to this degree for a very long time.

Run out

I got up at 5:30 this morning and ran for ten miles. This wasn't as pleasant as it sounds: while it was a great privilege to be up early, watching the sky turn from a deep shade of royal blue to a lighter gunmetal blue, the experience was spoiled by the sound of me wheezing and the constant thud of my brain deciding to recite racist jokes from the 1970s at me. As fast as I ran, I was trapped with myself.