Thursday - Run
Anticipating that my running partner from last week was to cancel our Friday night appointment at the reservoir as he apparently received an injury whilst playing football on the Tuesday (coincidence?), not wanting to miss a day and in a blatant plot of avoiding the treadmill of woe, me and my house mate went for a little outing around one of Bradfords many recreational areas for a steady 3.25mile run, peppered with short walks. The route isn't bad actually for a heavily built up area, and is quite hilly, so it's good practice and is just down the road.
Friday - Run
To my surprise, James stuck to our arrangement despite winging on about this apparent football career jeopardising injury, which amounted, as far as I could see, to be nothing more that a slight bruise. And I'm being generous with my diagnosis. So with the appointment confirmed, it was back to the reservoir for us, with plans grandeur of doing 5 laps. Well, this didn't happen, because by the time we had got there, it was getting dark, and 3 laps later, it was pitch black, which made for some "fun" falling down little dips and trying in vein to avoid squelching kamikaze frogs. BUT, and there is a but, we were successful in completely one full and uninterrupted lap, the full 1.35miles without walking any of it, in a quite respectful 12minutes and 25seconds. What? I don't think that's bad going myself, after all, James was injured for christs sake! (what, I'm not allowed to play his injury card too?) This now of course sets the bench mark for future outings. Trouble is, we're going to have to stop going soon, as winter officially beckons bringing with it shorter and shorter days. We'll have to find a suitably lit route instead, but we've got a few weeks yet I think.
Saturday - Bike ride
In an attempt to escape the madness that is three women arguing over one bathroom, I donned my cycling gear for a pre wedding bike ride. Once again, I headed for the canal, this time in the opposite direction to see where it would take me. You may notice a pattern emerging here. This is because I like canals, as due to the very nature of them, they are flat, and flat is good. They are also quiet, and scenic, and smell nice. Other people, out and about minding their own business, whom you've never met before, greet you, either with a subtle nod of the head, a smile, or a cheery "hello". What more could you ask for on a leisurely ride out? The down side is, short of riding them the length or breadth of the country, they have to end somewhere, meaning normal service will inevitably resume, unless you just turn around and come back again, but where's the adventure in that? In this case, the "normal service" was a bloody big hill. A two mile hill in fact, leaving my quads screaming for mercy, well they would have screamed if they had mouths. Instead they seemed to hatch an escape plan by means of burning through the overlaying flesh and running away. Thwarted they were, as the peak of the hill was reached, eventually. Mountain conquered, I was then rewarded with a nice long descent, which looped back on to the canal from the opposite direction. Aah canals, we salute you.
Here's the route...
Sunday - Bike ride
Today it was back to the canal again, for some more free wheeling fun. I also discovered that the canal which I have been enjoying this week isn't actually a canal at all!! It has been masquerading as a canal all along, and is in fact a river. Sneaky. If you look at the map above, or indeed care enough to look at the map above, you will see that from the West, it is a canal, with a river adjacent to it right up the lock, after which the two merge, making it a river from that point on. Before setting off this afternoon I consulted Google Earth to plan out a route, and here it is,
intending to ride along the "canal" for as long as sensibly possible, and spotted a crossroads in the "canal". Canals don't have cross roads do they? Well as it turns out, no, they do not, firstly because they are obviously not roads, and secondly it's because it's a river system. Ah well, it's still flat, so off I went. What I forgot to check, due to the shock of this discovery, is that there was to be a path for me to follow along the river route. There wasn't, so after a mile or so of overgrown paths through the trees, I ran out of route. Not to be outdone by this, I carried on across grassy fields, sticking close to the river, whilst looking out for irate, shotgun wielding farmers. This ended with me lobbing the bike over a gate and me scaling it, only to see a sign on the other side saying something about trespassing and how it's best for all concerned not to do it. Another section of river, some more blatant trespassing over a viaduct, and I was back to relative civilisation, and hopefully on the right side of the law. Thinking it was best if I lay low for a little while, I continued the remainder of the route on roads. 12.5 miles in 1hour 16minutes or so, not bad considering half of it was definitely what you'd call "off road".
THE CONCLUSION
A good week all round I feel, I'm off of the treadmill and braving the real world, however I'm in danger of focusing too strongly on riding and not enough on the job in hand, running. That said, and even though the distances haven't been great, I have stuck to three running session this week, which I'm pleased with. Next week I'll try and get out on four of the days and just have one stitch prevention gym session on Wednesday. Tomorrow it's back to the reservoir, so we'll just see what that brings.
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