Not a bad run

I couldn’t tell you that today was a bad run … I walked more than I ran. My heart rate was way too high even when walking …

But let me try and better my mood by listing the positive points first …

It did not rain. It was not cold. There wasn’t even a gale force wind in the air. It was not dark. I didn’t need a headlamp … The pebbles were mixed with enough sand to give some grip.

I made it to the end of the beach …

I saw two of my favorite dogs …

I made it home …

… ok that was it … I can’t think of anything else that was positive.

If you only want to read about running – stop reading here …

 

 

Now I don’t think my lack of fitness can justify today. I ate well … maybe I can improve my hydration levels. I think the reason, is the situation the world is in right now, my reaction to it and the fact that I am scared shitless of what might be happening in the future. During my run I remembered my visit to the KZ Dachau (KZ = concentration camp) when I was a kid. Has the world forgotten?

Am I exaggerating? I don’t think so …

I wish I had time to dwell on this, but I had the whole weekend and it didn’t help. I have work to get done … work that might or might not be paid … which is actually one of the things that really really ticks me off right now … time is the most valuable thing a person has. Up until the election, bad business practices were just that … bad business practices. If you don’t pay a contractor, it was not OK. Now … we live in a different world and I don’t think morale will get better anytime soon … and it feels like we’re loosing … it’s so hard to watch bad people succeed, because they don’t care about the costs and only their own benefit.

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Impressions on a run

My run starts usually at the beach. This greeted me today:

Happy times were ahead! Dawn was spectacular and even the beach wanted to collaborate today and had left me a piece of sand to run on. I just love it when the sand is just right!

But I didn’t want to miss out on my usual pebbling and I found this beauty:

Leaving the pebbles behind me, I went to another favourite spot. My feet just love running on this:

Back to the sand and down the beach again! The birds also are awake by now and hunting for breakfast:

I had spent a bit too long with the pebbles and when I arrived at the end of the beach, it was cut off by the tide. I ran back again, across the pebbles and past the bike.

The beauty of running as slow as I am is, I have enough time to appreciate the colours:

All in all I did the 8k I had planned to do yesterday and I’m glad how it worked out.

The tale of the purple dot

I had 8k on my plan … and didn’t feel like it. It might be connected to a little foot niggle which I think I am mostly over now. I haven’t mentioned it yet, but the gist of it were blisters under calluses that probably led to wrong stride stuff etc … you know the song. At some point I actually thought I had broken my foot. Which is absolutely ridiculous, but that’s what happens in my head when I think I can’t run. Parallel I was super busy with work and still am, which is fantastic.

Anyhow, due to the foot not having felt 100% (at some point I had pain walking and it made weird noises), I didn’t run as much as usual and took days off, getting loads of work done. I ran each week, but no way as much as before.

So instead of doing 8k today, I convinced myself that 30 minutes is better than no run, if not as good as 8k which I could still do tomorrow. Today would also be a good test for my foot.

The hardest part about this is that 10k in my head is a short run … heading out for 30 minutes is not really worth washing my clothes for … but I’ve got to ignore my head, just as I had to learn to ignore it when I was starting and had to run slow. Reality sucks, but it can only get better.

Back to today’s run and the title of this post! The good thing about “just a 30 minute run” is that it doesn’t really matter if the tide is up. I can hop around on pebbles for 30 minutes, no problem. Longer than that and the beach ends, because the tide cuts the way off and also pebbling stops being fun.

It was a beautiful day, the sun was just up and the grass wasn’t too wet.

While I was slogging back I remembered Kristian’s post about cadence:

Guess at what point I remember his tip to start counting?

I nearly broke out in laughter as once I did start counting my cadence was around 190!!! It was only a short affair as the nice grass dunes stopped and the big pebbles began again, but I think it clicked!

I’m now looking forward to doing that more and more. It requires quite a bit of concentration, so this will be a fun distraction to work on instead of mulling over my lost fitness.

My foot also felt fine the whole time and I am cautiously optimistic that I am through the worst and can now up things again, including my cadence!

Ain’t no moonbeams where I run

Moonbeams! Taking the Internet by storm. Not to be seen around here. Looked for them for 55 minutes and even included 5 20 seconds sprints. No beams around. 

High Tide

Today I ran up the beach, over pebbles forming dunes and then along grass fields. Tide was high, no sunrise in sight. I do like the moody clouds, fits my running at the moment.

8k

Beautiful run … done.

… and another one

No sunrise today as clouds were in the way. Sea was very quiet, contrasting my heart rate. I hope my fitness picks up quickly again.

Went for a run …

40 minutes … saw this:

No time for posting much lately as loads of work which FYI is great if you run your own business, so all is good.

One minute

One minute the sun peaked out and I managed to witness it.

Note the bird. It’s just on time as well.

Just a quick one today … really need to get back into it.

Storm

Wind was blowing me around today and I had a blast. I listened to Storm and other fast rhythmic noise. I might not have stuck to my low heart rate, but if I don’t look I will never know.

No sunrise during the whole 90 minutes, but a nice 7 ° Celsius.