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Well done M! super time indeed :-)Bungy Girl wrote: »Great report! Well done, I hear ya on the heat, I wouldn't have been able. Sorry we didn't see you after but BG Jr was very impatient to get on to the Teacup Merry-go-round :rolleyes:Well done in the race today, can't have been easy in that weather!
Thanks guys. Plenty more work to be done this spring & summer, including warm weather training! Must ask my brother about the teacup merry-go-round, he was at the playground with little-niece later in the afternoon....Brilliant work! As my eight-year-old would say: "SICK!" (which is good!).
Ohhhhhhh..... Now re-assesses some fb post of younger friends (*never* though I'd be admitting that).I really like the strong finish - I always struggle with that. That's a real sign of a good performance, having emptied the tank. Well done, hillside!
Thanks, it wasn't pretty, was close to puking after coming over the finish
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Absolutely fantastic race and report...loved your *appreciation* most of all I think
Nice to see your hill-strength, aptly named hilly, looking good for the Big One! Great to run into you again, see you next time.
Ps 'Deschanel shorts'...gotta nice ring to it 0 -
Well done on the time today, and the strong finish especially!!! I'm with you on the heat but sounds like you battled through it well!!!
Thanks Anna ... little bit of a battle but good to have it under the belt
. Hope it is warm up in Donegal too!Absolutely fantastic race and report...loved your *appreciation* most of all I think Nice to see your hill-strength, aptly named hilly, looking good for the Big One! Great to run into you again, see you next time.
Hillside is a district :rolleyes: ... was going to call myself "hillsider" but that handle was taken. Wished I'd put a bit more thought into it as it paints a false picture ...Ps 'Deschanel shorts'...gotta nice ring to it
You did have that vintage thing going on.... nice change from all the Nike etc gear!0 -
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This week's running has been a little bit 'meh'. The coughing has been still going on for the past couple of weeks and this time it's not asthma but seems to be gastric ... which means loads of stupid rules on foods to avoid, and not eating close to bedtime etc etc. *Snore*. One of the articles said it can be aggravated by running, especially running uphill which is not too convenient right now :rolleyes:. Have had this once or twice in the past and it should go away if I'm careful for a while. Looking forward to that (it going away).
No Wednesday run because of the coughing (had been hoping to do a bit of speed training).
Thursday, 9th April: 7.5miles multi-terrain easy run with 2 big hills at 10:24 avg pace
In the sunshine. Similar run to two weeks ago, including 2 Radical Road laps, ie two climbs of 100m upwards over 800metres. The average pace turned out a bit quicker than last time but the run itself was less successful. Stopped a good few times on the first climb, mostly to cough (*stamps* foot). The route was slightly different to a fortnight and would have been closer to 8miles except that I decided to walk the last half mile back :rolleyes:.
Plan for this morning was to head out to parkrun this morning, and I managed to kick myself out of bed before 8am and start getting organised. Then when I was pumping up the bike tyres the valve broke, so that was that. At least I tried ... I was planning to head out around lunchtime to do the run but got distracted searching for non-existent details of the Great Ireland Run online (RTE's coverage IoI only
) Eventually kicked myself out in the afternoon ...
Saturday, 11th April: 5.46 miles including 3 miles at tempo pace
Done round the neighbourhood. 1 mile w/u at 9:31 pace, then the three tempo miles [8:26, 8:26, 8:31], 1.46 c/d at 9:23 average. Found the 3rd tempo mile difficult and had to push towards the end of this to bring the time close to the other two. The paces are towards the slow end of tempo (off my parkrun time 4 weeks ago), so maybe it's just as well I missed parkrun this morning. Next week.
Tomorrow's run will be a running recce of "6 Hills of Edinburgh", leaving Arthur's seat out for now. Will be about 12-13 miles. It'll definitely be start-and-stop with bits of walking ... and bits of standing looking blankly at the map :rolleyes:. I've only done one recce off the course and that was back in November with friends. Tomorrow it'll be just me and my map and a couple of printouts of old race reports with photos...0 -
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good luck finding those 6 hills tomorrow... :eek:
hope the cough clears up soonYes, hope you tame that cough and fwiw, I'm sort of glad you didn't get to do the speed session on Wednesday, it was, after all, only two days after your race of 10 miles!! :eek:
In constant awe at your consistent splits
Thanks both, the coughs are already a good bit better. Have the very first symptoms of a cold since yesterday so am trying to banish that too :rolleyes:
Dubgal, I was doing that tempo as laps of a mile-route near my flat ... so the route itself was consistent which helps I think. Would not mind a bit of inconsistency if it came with faster times myself! Ah, but I'm patient ....0 -
Sunday, 12th April: 14.63 hilly LSR @11:45 avg pace
"4 Hills of Edinburgh". This was my first running recce of the 7 Hills route (walked it once with friends back in November). Plan was to do 6 of the hills, and leave the baddie (Arthur's seat) for a later recce after I'd learned the rest of the route. I know the section near A's seat pretty well anyway as I live fairly close; the problem of getting-up it, I'll leave for a couple more weeks.
So .... headed out in the evening with my map, and the printouts of Portobello Running Club's pictorial log of the route. Ran from my flat up the back of Calton Hill to start, so had the 7th hill done first ... then followed the route. Was taking it easy from the very start as the main point of this run was route-training. All went fine for the first 4-5 miles where I knew the route or had studied-up. Two hills comfortably done (Calton Hill and Castle Rock). On the ascent to the 3rd hill (Clermiston) I started having to check the picture log to see where to go. So had a couple of stops for that and one stop just because the hill was steep. Then after the hill a loooong section of road running to get to the next one - not the most interesting section of the city either, and loads of turns to take including wrong turns :rolleyes:. Had a couple of unplanned detours at this stage. Got to Craiglockart where hill number 4 is, and got up to the peak of that scrambling and puffing uphill with a bit of walking thrown in. This was the hardest of the 4 I did today. Then I ran most of the way towards hill number 5, getting a bit lost again. Anyway, at this stage it was already showing 10.5miles on the watch and I decided I'd just run straight home. Wasn't expecting it would take an extra 4 miles....
A very enjoyable run in nice sunny-but-not-hot weather. I only bailed because it seemed like it was going to end up being too long ... the detours had added a bit of mileage. I let my watch run throughout so the average pace is including a lot of things besides running: a bunch of stops to check my printouts ... about 5mins climbing up a steep slope grabbing onto tree roots ... an aborted attempt to climb some railings ... and a few walks on hills. But not as many walks on hills as I expected .
Stayed upright on the hills themselves but Edinburgh has plenty of potholes and I went flying over a exposed tree root on the roads between hills 3 and 4. Didn't hurt and I was able to keep running but have a hole in the knee of my favourite tights now so this will be their last year. But just as well ... I had to sew them up on the bottom a few weeks ago. Really love this pair but their time is past ....
weekly total: 37.5 miles
6 Hills for sure next week.0 -
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We will all have to take a trip over there sometime & do those hills sounds tough but different & different is good!
Boardsies trail trip although I experienced some of those hills in January and they are tough!Is anybody else intrigued about the aborted attempt to climb some railings......??? Sounds fun and challenging. As FD said, different is good!
:pac: i didn't want to mention the railings... maybe Hilly needs a course in orienteering :pac:0 -
that sounds like an obstacle course!!! and those are some hills, jayzis...
How does the race actually work? you have to follow your own route...? how do you get an official time? Is there a marshal at the top of each hill to make sure you show up or something?
The order of the 7 Hills is fixed (Castle Rock, Clermiston, Craiglockart, Braid Bill, Blackford, Arthur's Seat and Calton Hills) but runners can choose their own route from hill to hill and no roads are closed ... and there's quite a few busy road crossings unfortunately. There is a checkpoint at the top of each hill and you have to clip your number at each one (the clippers are different), and those are manned. I guess they are relying a bit of trust but if you are near the front any messing-around would be noticed.
I'm not even doing the "Race" as they split registration into two groups - the Race for people who can do a sub-1:40 half, and others do the Challenge. But even for the Challenge many of the entrants are club runners... then they send the Challengers off early so we will get passed by the Racers later in the run
Even though the runners can choose their route the best possibilities have been worked out over the years and are available online. The one I took from Portobello runners is pretty close to optimum I think. I'm not going to follow all their suggestions as one of the short-cuts involves taking a detour into the University grounds and doing a limbo under a turnstile .. have heard there tends to be a queue at the turnstile with people climbing over the wall too :rolleyes:, so I'll run into Holyrood Park the usual way and put up with the extra metres!We will all have to take a trip over there sometime & do those hills sounds tough but different & different is good!
Indeed all welcome & I'm happy to do tour guiding once I've learned the route myself. 0 -
hillsiderunner wrote: »The order of the 7 Hills is fixed (Castle Rock, Clermiston, Craiglockart, Braid Bill, Blackford, Arthur's Seat and Calton Hills) but runners can choose their own route from hill to hill and no roads are closed ... and there's quite a few busy road crossings unfortunately. There is a checkpoint at the top of each hill and you have to clip your number at each one (the clippers are different), and those are manned. I guess they are relying a bit of trust but if you are near the front any messing-around would be noticed.
I'm not even doing the "Race" as they split registration into two groups - the Race for people who can do a sub-1:40 half, and others do the Challenge. But even for the Challenge many of the entrants are club runners... then they send the Challengers off early so we will get passed by the Racers later in the run
Even though the runners can choose their route the best possibilities have been worked out over the years and are available online. The one I took from Portobello runners is pretty close to optimum I think. I'm not going to follow all their suggestions as one of the short-cuts involves taking a detour into the University grounds and doing a limbo under a turnstile .. have heard there tends to be a queue at the turnstile with people climbing over the wall too :rolleyes:, so I'll run into Holyrood Park the usual way and put up with the extra metres!
This sounds AWESOME !! A combination of parkour and hills, what could be better ? Does it sell out really quickly every year ?0 -
Is anybody else intrigued about the aborted attempt to climb some railings......??? Sounds fun and challenging. As FD said, different is good!
Emmm, there is a short cut on the Portobello route which goes through Braidburn valley park and makes the optimum exit to catch a turn ... their log has a picture of one of their young slim runners squeezing through the railings where one bar was missing. I didn't see any gap in the railings where I was looking so I tried the vertical route .... no luck, and I ended up going to find a gate. Fortunately in my case there was noone there with a camera ...
The picture log I'm following is here if anyone needs Sunday night reading:
http://www.portobellorunners.co.uk/oldsite/sevenh.htm
(it's the first half of the run, there's a second link at the bottom of the page)
Btw, if anyone is wondering the 2015 Race/Challenge has been sold out for a good while now ... one of my friends here got a shock when she tried to register a few weeks ago - apparently when she did it a few years back you could register the day before.0 -
That's gas... you go past the silver cars, then turn at the 'to let' sign... if that house has been let, your whole day is ruined! It does look like an amazing event, can't imagine what the tourists around the castle think is going on 0
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That's gas... you go past the silver cars, then turn at the 'to let' sign... if that house has been let, your whole day is ruined! It does look like an amazing event, can't imagine what the tourists around the castle think is going on
Anna, it's so funny you mention that. I was running down the path to that corner, reading the log, and thinking "How does he know there will be silver cars today, this was written 7 years ago".... then when I got to the corner there were three cars and two of them were silver. :pac:
I ended up over-running the turn down a small lane "after the sign" by a fair bit (now, not because I expected the to-let sign to still be there ...) I did think it would have been helpful for him to mention that if you are coming to the Zoo entrance, time to turn back ...
Very happy to have that log with it's imperfections and not to have to work direct from the map though.0 -
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Not sure anyone could still be reading this thread, but the coughs persist, so a boring mid-week.
Monday was rest day, and then I wasn't able to get out for my intervals on Tuesday.
Wednesday, 15th April: 7miles easy @9:23 avg pace
The aim was do 7miles including 5x650m repeats, the longer overall distance to make up some of Tuesday's missed miles. But when I got to my intervals corner and stopped to prepare for the first repeat, I had a fit of coughing. Wasn't up for 5 bursts of that so skipped the intervals and just ran in the 7 miles easy on the flat.
Pilates has started back again so 75mins of that after the run.
Thursday, 16th April: 7.1miles easy @9:26 pace
Almost exactly the same as yesterday. The plan for today was 8miles including hills. But was not sure I should even be doing this run at all, and had the memory of all the coughing on the Radical Road uphill last Thursday, so did basically the same run as yesterday again.
Am not dodging the harder-running, was genuinely sorry to have to skip both intervals and repeats. Tomorrow is a day off, then the plan is parkrun on Saturday and "six hills long run" on Sunday. I'll wait and see how things look tomorrow before deciding for sure. I'm doing most I can to try to banish the coughs and cold, and it's all very boring. Going to try a bowl of steaming water etc this evening. Apologies to everyone for the hypochondria & especially for the lack of glamour of my ailments....0 -
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hope the cough clears up soon... do you have asthma? is it affected by pollen at this time of year? would an inhaler help...?
Have cough-variant asthma (I *think*) and have been taking an steroid inhaler for it for over a year now, which made a difference. Pretty sure from extensive googling that what I have right now is 'silent reflux' which unfortunately will be sorted by eliminating trigger foods (*huge* intersection with my main food groups), eating way before bedtime (:mad:) ... and I don't drink a lot anyway, but all the same two glasses of wine and two half-pints of beer over 3 weeks is a bit lame....
Am doing my best ..... Don't worry, I think it will just go away after a while more, and I can taper off being sensible. I have generally weak airways and used to get colds that lasted for weeks on end, and even as a teenager my Mam sent me to hospital to get an X-ray because she thought I could have TB! (I didn't ..)
After that complaining I should say I am back from parkrun and had an lovely run in the sun and a bit of improvement, but I'll wait for the official time before writing up. Am getting closer to the summer 2014 PB. 0 -
ok .....
Saturday, 18th April: parkrun in 23:55, then 2.2 easy miles @9:27 a bit later (5.2 miles total)
Got up at 8am, looked out the window and decided ok, I'd go and try it. Didn't have time for breakfast but probably a good thing re the coughs. Cycled out to parkrun in the sunshine, just enough time to lock the bike and shed some extra layers and into the pack. No time to warm-up. It was just sunny enough to take the chill off the air, and there was only a light wind, so perfect conditions.
Started out quite conservatively and improved the pace to end up with 7:51 for the first mile. Then on the second mile started to pick it up a bit, still feeling mostly comfortable. There was a girl in a 'finishers' shirt near me, and an older guy from Hunters Bog Trotters, and I was keeping pace with them as they seemed comfortable. The second mile was going better than my previous attempt last month, and even on the slight-uphill I wasn't losing much pace. Breathing still good. Looked down at my Garmin at around two-thirds into mile two after the mild downhill and was surprised to see it was around seven and a half mins pace.... even more surprised to bring the entire mile in at 7:33. The third mile was more difficult and at this stage I was breathing heavily, and I also slid a little bit behind my companions ... but it still ended up at 7:27 to my surprise.
[7:51, 7:33, 7:27, run-in 7:27]
I was mostly working off breathing and comfort-level in judging my effort, and had a few very nice moments in miles two and three when I looked down at the watch and was surprised. Mile three was a bit tough but I didn't 'crumple' .. a few times through this I used the trick of relaxing my shoulders and moving the legs through more quickly.
I'm a bit of an arithmetic nerd and had been comparing the mile times to what I could remember from my prior attempt ... knew I'd made up a good bit of time but was surprised again to see 23:54 on my watch after crossing the line. And 23:55 official. Did not expect to be below 24mins at all. In fairness the conditions were perfect this morning with very little wind, and that little bit of wind on the 'out' and not the 'back'. Was the same situation 5 weeks ago, so I have been choosing the right Saturdays to climb out of bed....
After parkrun I had to rush back to base to do a Skype call at 11am, so couldn't a warm-down either, but went out for 2 easy miles at lunchtime.
The 23:55 is 46secs faster than last time out, and just 26secs off my summer 2014 PB. I'm getting close....
A second parkrun was born to Edinburgh this morning... I went back to the usual venue because I wanted to check progress on the same route, but I'll try Portobello on my next outing in two or three weeks. The new event is three laps of a narrow circuit, so probably has less PB potential than the promenade. But it is a shorter cycle from my house, so will be useful on mornings when I'm cutting it fine.....0 -
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