Diverse Ramblings

Congratulations, Jacques!

Happy blogiversary to Jacques over at J'accuse, who today is celebrating "7 years blogging so you won't have to".

I am pleased as punch to be joining the celebrations by contributing to Jacques' Festschrift, and look forward to reading what the rest of Ye Olde Tyme Maltese bloggers have written for the occasion.

Congratulations Jacques on 7 years of blogging, may there be many more.

Film Review: Finding Neverland

The film Finding Neverland (Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet, Freddie Highmore) is the story of J. M. Barrie at the time of his life when he wrote the play Peter Pan.

Several gross liberties are taken, such as omitting one of the Llewelyn Davies boys (as well as their father), and presumably many of the details are fictional, but the broad sweep of the story is there.


There were two things I particularly liked about this film.

The first is Johnny Depp's Scottish accent, which I thought he carried off very well.

The second is the cinematography of the playacting scenes, switching back and forth between reality (six people in an English garden) and fantasy (pirates on a storm-tossed ship).


This film isn't a romantic comedy, but there is some romance, some comedy, and certainly plenty of imagination. I found it very entertaining (and cried buckets at the end).

 

Running in the rain

Today was one of those rainy days in Malta where it rains and rains all day, and low-lying villages get flooded, and the Civil Protection Department tells the public to stay inside, and the occasional car gets swept away.

On the way home from work, my husband and I decided to eat supper at the airport. Right as he parked the car, the heavens opened AGAIN and the rain just bucketed down.

We waited a few minutes for a lull in the downpour, and then made a run for it, sprinting through puddles, dodging the big ones.

One mad dash later, we stumbled laughing into the entrance.

 

Then I noticed something odd; I wasn't out of breath.

OK, just a little bit.

I guess that learning how to run means that you can... well... run.

I'm getting fitter, and it feels good.

Or why I am an idiot

When someone makes a mistake because they didn't know any better, we call them, perhaps, naive.

When someone makes a mistake and they didn't know any better but <b>should</b> have, we call them ignorant.

Someone who makes a mistake and <b>did</b> know better, now that person we call an idiot.

And I, gentle reader, am an idiot.

 

On Saturday I ran longer than I ever have, much longer, TOO much longer. By Saturday evening, my left foot was killing me and I was barely able to walk on Sunday.

Now, in hindsight, I recall that runners are usually advised not to increase "long runs" by more than 10% each time. I knew this, having read it in various books and articles, but of course I was too much of genius to actually remember this salient piece of knowledge when I really needed it.

I missed my run today but at least my foot seems to be healing and hopefully I haven't done any real damage to it.

Idiot.

Double Whammy

Today I hit not one, but two of my running goals.

When I started this business of learning to run, I made this list:

1. Run for 30 minutes without stopping or walking
2. Run for 5km without stopping or walking
3. Run 5km in 30 minutes
4. Finish the half-marathon in under 3 hours

Today was my first real long run. The idea of a long run is that you do one, say, once a week, and the emphasis is on the time it takes, not on the speed. The point is to get your body used to staying on your feet for long periods of time, while you use your other training sessions to work on speed.

On Thursday I managed more than 20 minutes without stopping, so I decided that today I would try to achieve my first goal, which is to run for 30 minutes straight.

To put this in perspective, when I started training 2 months ago, I could just about manage 60 seconds.

 

So this morning I headed off to the airport because I want a nice straight shot for long runs, without all the business of crossing side streets that is the nightmare of running in the middle of a village. Having learnt my lesson from that session with my sister where we ended up in the maze-like back streets of Ħal-Safi, today I went to the North side of the airstrip, and planned to run east along it, and then back again.

I steeled my nerves against the fear of failure, strapped on my backpack, and started jogging.

This was the first time that I could look ahead and see a straight path ahead of me. Usually I run around my neighbourhood, which is your typical Maltese village with nary a straight stretch. The long, straight path looked rather daunting, actually, but on the plus side it has two slight hills, so I could never see more than about a kilometre ahead.

Turns out that it is about two kilometres down the north side of the airstrip, then the path turns south along the short end of the strip, but very soon presents the aspiring runner with a rather steep hill.

Not wanting to push my luck, I turned back at the bottom of the hill. Hill climbs can wait.

 

My first kilometre went by at a 9:30 minute pace, which was better than I had expected, but then I began to slow by about 10 seconds each km.

I reckoned that it would take me around 3 and a half kilometres to reach 30 minutes of running, and by the end of the second km I was feeling pretty good.

That's when I began entertaining thoughts of pushing through to my second goal... the 5k.

So I just kept putting one foot in front of the other, and the narrator in my Runkeeper smartphone app kept on informing me as I hit one km after the other, mostly to a background of hiphop mashups on my playlist (with the odd musical theatre number thrown in).

 

 

 

Finally, I heard the words "Distance... five... kilometres" and I felt so thrilled! I kept going for a little longer, though, because I'd walked a little after I started the app, and I wanted to make sure I really did run for 5k...

At 5.2k and 51 minutes, I stopped the app, and slowed to a walk. My legs immediately felt like jelly and I almost fell over (a very bad thing, given that I was on the hard shoulder by this time, in the cycle lane, with cars whizzing by a couple of feet away from me).

I staggered off the road to safety, sat down on a low wall, drank the rest of my water, and held a little victory party for myself. I immediately received a congratulatory email, which really made me smile - my Runkeeper account is integrated with my Foursquare and Fleetly accounts, so I received a badge from Foursquare and a medal from Fleetly:

 

 

My pace was very slow - 10 minutes per km is a brisk walk really, as well as a slow jog - but today was all about slow and long. That's what I'm aiming for anyway, to be able to go for long distances. Time is only an issue because races have cut-offs, and if you don't make the cut-off then at best you don't get the pretty medal, and at worst you get picked up by the rescue vehicle and not allowed to finish at all.

So my next step is to start doing some speed work as part of my training, mostly by doing intervals. To finish the half-marathon within the cut-off of 3 hours, I need to be able to reach an overall pace of 8:30 minutes.

 

I'm considering throwing out my third goal, which is to combine the first two by running 5k in 30 minutes, mostly because I'm not training for a 5k, but for 21k. Maybe I'll set some other intermediate goals instead.

For now, I am celebrating my achievements and looking forward to going longer and faster.

Free Foot Massage

Right after I finished my 5k run this morning, I walked through a grove of olive trees.

The soil was still damp from yesterday's showers, and it gave under my weight as I walked across it.

I have never walked on a soft surface in my aqua socks before - the effect is like a foot massage, and I loved it.

 

Bye bye insoles

Today I took the insoles out of my aqua socks.

They weren't attached to the body of the socks, and were slipping around while I ran, which was incredibly annoying.

 

I was a little concerned about heading out with only a few millimetres of silicone between my feet and the ground, but really it felt fine.

Out of curiosity, I have also weighed my aqua socks (sans insoles)

100g each, about 3.3 oz. Now *that's* minimalist.

 

 

A question of willpower

This morning I found it harder than usual to get out of bed. A lateish bedtime last night and a for-no-reason 4am wake-up left me groggy and tired.

When the alarm went off at 5am, the temptation to skip my running session and use the extra time for a nap was strong. Very strong.

But I finally managed to drag myself out of bed because I had made a deal with myself - that even on those days when I skip runs (say, due to heavy rain), I will still put on my running clobber and spend half-an-hour on the elliptical machine instead.

Once I was up, the prospect of a run began to sound better. It had been five days since my last proper run - my weekend long run with my sister was more like a long walk - and my legs wanted some exercise.

By the time I left the house, I was running late, too late for my usual 35-minute route, but I decided to go anyway and take a shortcut to reduce the distance and therefore the time. Better a short run than no run at all.


I'm so glad I went, it was one of my best sessions so far.

After a 3-minute walk, I jogged for 15 minutes without stopping, and it was a decent jog, not the same-speed-as-walking jog.

Oh yeah baby.


I couldn't find my mp3 player as I left the house, so I plugged my earbuds into my phone instead.

The media player was set to 'repeat this track' and I couldn't figure out how to undo this, so I listened to Coldplay's Viva la Vida several times in a row.


Not a bad running song, actually.

Patience, grasshopper

I think I am at a dangerous place in my journey to become a runner.

After three weeks of training, I can already feel an improvement - my leg muscles can run longer, the shape of my body is changing.

The change feels good - it feels VERY good - but it is only a tiny change so far, and I want more of it.

I catch myself wondering when I should squeeze in an extra run, maybe I should do doubles (morning and evening) to leave my rest days for rest. Already I am running through the cool-down instead of walking and, you know, cooling down.

So I am reminding myself that one of the strengths of a run/walk program is that it helps stave off injuries by only gradually increasing the load on the new runner.

If I attempt too much, too soon, I may well regret it.

Not so minimalist today

Yesterday my calves were quite stiff and sore, and this morning so were my ankles.

I don't know whether this is due to running in minimalist shoes on Sunday for the first time, or because I ran more than usual.

Just in case it was the shoes, this morning I wore my usual trainers. Outside I found that it rained during the night (and was still drizzling on and off) so I was glad I had the trainers on to keep my feet dry :-)

Today was my first session of week 3 of Couch to 5k. It went well.

If you had told me three weeks ago that I would be able to jog for 3 minutes without stopping, I wouldn't have believed you.