So far so good, I suppose

We've had an extremely wet weekend and Monday (by the way, I'm not sure if it's observed in any form, but happy Memorial Day to you folks across the pond). It was more or less non-stop rain since Saturday afternoon, heavy and lashing at times, sometimes a persistent drizzle - the papers reported it as "A month's worth of rain in 36 hours". I do pity the folks who headed down to the beach only to have unseasonally cold and wet weather instead of the chance to be on the deck chairs. I spent most of the weekend indoors stretching, doing weights, and finishing off some summer school work. We also had a chance to go shopping for house stuff and a clavinova. As of today I have 360 ab crunches to do by next Monday and have done an average of 2-3 sets per bodypart. Today is a rest day for weights, and more time for stretching instead.

Doing 2 sets per bodypart is fun. It's also easy to fit in over the course of the day. Kettle on boil? Two sets of calf raises. In between periods of typing? Hamstring curls. Time for a break? Pressups. And so on and so forth. Cooking? Bicep curls. I find it easier to break it up in bits, rather than designate "30 minutes for weight training".

I also ran 5 miles today again, in about 42 minutes or so, up to Ally Pally, which leaves me the target of 10 more miles to run again by next Monday. The rain returned towards the end of the run but since Mother Nature always wins, the only thing I could do was work with her. It's been a long time since I ran on hilly terrain of that kind and I was glad that the 5 miles ended before the hill leading to home. I chickened out and had no courage to finish at the top. I hope to do the entire loop in 40 minutes soon, 8 min/miles over hilly terrain.

Thanks for reading - happy running!

Catchup

I've been fairly unmotivated about running lately. (I should add a "still" somewhere in that previous sentence.) Today Laziness caught up with me - I ran 5 miles in 42 minutes. The days of the 8-minute mile, for the moment, are behind me. Nevertheless, I was happy to have lasted that long, and at a fairly okay pace - manageable enough for me to still want to finish the run at the top of the hill. From the bottom, the road seems to rise endlessly into the clouds. Stairway to heaven.

Don't you just love the British weather? It's been summery these last two days, but we're transitioning to a cooler and rainier weekend. It's the Bank Holiday weekend curse - it's always seems to be like that when there's a long weekend. People head out to the beach in droves but the weather turns when they get there.

I read in the paper about a particular website set up to remember people who died too soon. To fund that website, the owner set up Google Adsense. Since Adsense selects the ads based on the site content, there were many inappropriate ads next to stories of the deceased. Cheap motorcycle deals being advertised on a page about people who died from motorcycle accidents. "Self-defence classes" on a page about two girls whom, the murderer claims, killed them in self-defence. Cheap flight deals from RyanAir (airline company) on a page about a deceased person called Ryan - his relative claims he simply "lost it" when he saw the ad. Bad bad bad.

It's mid-terms next week. By the end of it, I'm hoping to:

a) Run 15 more miles
b) Do 500 ab crunches
c) Do an average of two sets per bodypart per day
c) Stretch
d) Spend more time with Pork Chop
e) Finish up the last of the jobs in the house
f) Prepare my lessons

Tall order. Happy running everyone!

Misc.

Many of my students have started "Work Experience". In most schools, work experience is usually held over the two weeks leading up to the summer mid-term break. That means teachers and problematic 15 year-olds can be rid of each other for a whole month, and this, for both, must be bliss. Better yet for those students who bunk off work experience (I bet it happens) and spend all that time lounging at home or at the malls. Bliss for me took the form of having a bit more time than usual to re-grout the bathroom tiles, fix the washing machine and do other DIY jobs. I find grouting frustrating - it looks alright when it's dried up, but while I'm doing it, it always looks rubbish and I always end up thinking "I've spent three or four hours stripping it off the walls only to put up something more inferior".

At one particular school where I'm a visiting tutor (thankfully just for a day), the new headteacher has decided to get rid of school bells. I suppose he wants to instill responsibility in the students. The way he explained it to the students was, "Prisons have bells, we aren't a prison, so we won't have bells." Great. I suppose methods like these can work in schools where students have that sort of motivation and discipline, but this school happens to be, shall we say nicely, the "armpit of the district". Now the students that previously sauntered in to lessons ten minutes late after the bells rang have an excuse to be even later. Now, I know I'm a bit of a Whiney the Pooh-Pooh, a wet blanket; but surely Mr Headteacher's just handed control of the prison over to the inmates?

We are having more Sprinter (part-Spring, part-Winter) weather these days. The last time the in-laws were here it was almost like summer and the media was doing its "climate change" reporting rounds again. This time round it's been cold the past few days, but at least we get light for until half-past eight in the evening, which is good. Today it was sunny and muggy (must have drifted over from Philly) so I hit the trails for a bit. I ran a bit of my old usual loop and some new parts. The first 25 minutes were run at 7:36 pace, then I jogged for about 15 minutes and was so wiped out after that I had to walk all the way home.

So yes! Just for today I was a semi-trail runner. But I felt so out-of-shape, I wasn't Rob the Runner "trail" material, but more "trail" as in "lagging behind". Wait for me at the finish line please.

too boring to post

Running-wise, I don't have anything interesting to say, really. (But maybe it's not just running-wise.) The last time I put running shoes on was to jog over to the old place about a week ago to check for mail. (Why didn't we get it redirected through Royal Mail, you might ask? We did, but you'll have to wait for a rant on public-sector incompetence to find out more.) The jog took about twenty minutes, which is enough to qualify for a run in my books. The part that was slightly different than usual is that it took me through three hill-like sections. I don't mind the uphill parts, but the downhill parts don't seem to agree much with my knees. And "downhill" doesn't seem all that great when you know you'll have another "uphill" to come.

We are liking the new place very much. We're near a main road and a tube station and that's good for transport links. The garden is set opposite the garden belonging to the house on the other side, so if you look out the windows it's a long away to the house opposite, and most of what you see is trees, and it feels like you're in the countryside. It's nice to wake up to the sound of birds chirping and to hear them again as the sun sets.

There are two new routes that I might try when I'm more into running. One will take me past Alexandra Palace and it will largely be uphill and along nice quite trails. On a clear day the view from the top is lovely. It's definitely more a run for a day when I'm feeling in the mood to challenge myself.


Alexandra Palace (affectionately called Ally Pally)

View from the top (I need better pics)

A shorter trot is along the nearby trail called "the Parkland Walk" by locals, which goes along a disused railway track. The sides are now overgrown with trees and it's like a charming little city secret.

Parkland Walk

And maybe I'm a bit unsympathetic to today's youths, but I think it's such a pity that certain sections of a place like this have been handed over for the "expression" of youth - there's a skateboard park and a graffiti area (legit or not, I don't know).


Appropriate?

More photos of our area from this website.

So - plenty of new routes to run, pity that I'm not really into it at the moment. It's a busy period for work, and whatever free time I have, I prefer to channel it into doing the odd jobs around the house first, really. I like hitting the weights, though. I'm doing less supersets, and more "one set of everything" once every hour or two. I've even started doing ab crunches to stave off my middle-age spread. And believe me, there's more spread there than a year's supply of peanut butter. Time to start running soon.