10th-16th March Run notes

Tuesday

A lunchtime run due to morning faff. Off to Spring Lane sidings to climb Cave Lane. I'm rewarded with a glorious half hour of sunshine through the woodland and canter about loving every stride. Some days are too good to just sit around doing work, but sadly it's one of those where I have to come back.

Upgraded my watch to the Suunto Race S. I've been conscious for a little while I'd like a watch to help with navigation. My previous Garmin Forerunner 55 has been great for recording activities and heart rate but the first Garmin models supporting maps are a bit pricey. On account of their environmental credentials and some good reviews I chose a Suunto Race S (aided by a small discount) and got that set up today after my run. Everything was reasonably straight forward, I was able to find a plain watch face, was able to disable chimes on every notification, and it fits nicely on my wrist. The only tricky bit has been back porting my Garmin activities into the Suunto app (no web interface I can find which is sad). I was directed by Suunto customer support to use RaceGap, another iOS app, to download all my Garmin activities and use that to import them into Suunto. This, it transpired, required me to spend £5 on RaceGap which is a shame but something I'm willing to do to keep all my training data together. I'll give it a proper test drive on Thursday for my next run and probably won't give maps a real go for a little while, but it ticks off one more thing ahead of Eyri 25K.

Thursday

A normal morning slot and an adventure run around Middleton Park. I try and follow the lay of the land to build in more ascent rather than just follow the path. I head up to the Clearings and head down the western side following the biker trails. I descend all the way down the slope into part of the wood I've never been to before sometimes over the bike trails sometimes just over the leafy ground. When things level off I turn around and climb back up the side of the Clearing and find the track that leads to the visitors centre and eventually out of the park. Everything is firing well this morning and I want the woods to go on and on.

This was my first run with the new watch woo! I was a little distracted getting used to where all the information is and how to tap around to find laps and maps. In general though was happy with it, one quirk v Garmin with Strava is that whilst it auto laps on a kilometre (like Garmin) this doesn’t show in Strava. I just see the whole session as a lap in the workout analysis view on Strava, not a biggie as you can still see your splits per km but a difference.

Friday

It's a chilly morning and time for more hill repeats. This time it's 3-minute reps and I'm off again to the park and the familiar track that runs for almost a kilometre up to the visitors centre. The pacing today is a challenge, 3 minutes is a long time and I need to maintain the intensity for the duration. I go a bit hard on the first two, and on rep three I look around and wonder why am I doing this. I give myself a little talking too, imagine Eyri, think of your heroes slogging it out, it's all in the preparation. Rep four and five are better, but I fade a bit on rep five which isn't ideal, next time I need to keep the reps even and start a little slower.

Sunday

I should stop writing "it's a chilly morning" because every morning this week has been chilly. Today's long run has one mission, not distance just ascent. I head for Sissons wood and the old golf course which sit on the ridge down to the train line perfect for this sort of thing. I follow the regular trail into the woods and take every opportunity to go up and come back down, if I'd have met any dog walkers they'd have probably thought I looked a little crazy. Sometimes I follow trails cutting up into the Sissons estate and other time I just bound between the trees. The new watch comes in handy here I've got a activity display to show me my cumulative ascent so I can check my progress. I reach the open clearing before the golf course and decide to plot my way on the western upper path towards the highest point of the old golf course that looks out over the White Rose centre to Morley. This works well and I get plenty of opportunities to dash off into the woods over all sorts of terrain. Sometimes I'm not running more power walking my way up the sides of the slopes, grappling with trees and roots in some places. I turn myself around after two ascents of the top of the golf course and descend back into Sissons wood this time all the way down past the old railway bridge and the new. I come to the little brooks that runs right at the bottom of the ridge before you climb to the ring road and from here commence three loops. It's about half a kilometre of climb all the way up to almost Bodmin road before coming back down and following the path back towards the clearing and down again to the railway bridges. I make it to be about 50m-ish of ascent/descent altogether and its a real slogger. Initially, you're own tarmac and gravel but once you're under the old, disused railway bridge things get muddy just as the grade gets higher. You pop out onto grass and climb over the regular trail and up the muddy bank towards Bodmin road which is the final steep sting before the top. I get home without feeling super zonked and am pleased to have clocked over 500m of ascent.

This week has felt super strong and finally felt like I'm going through the gears after the rubbish end to 2024.