Beautiful spring morning

Went for a run this morning, a beautiful spring morning.

Took my Dad along (for the second time ever, after he’d come down the weekend before) for a walk too while I ran the length of the front.

My Dad would be ultra-fit, he’d been the complete athlete in his youth and due to the slack safety standards of heavy industry in the sixties, seventies and eighties he was now suffering from a lung condition the meant he couldn’t walk very far and a wind or an uphill section would mean him being out of breath. If he’d not had this condition I know he’s still be as fit as me and competing against me in runs but he was now cursed. However he wasn’t taking this lying down and he was fighting against it with runs and my Concept II rower was now his and he was already past his first one million metres.

He’d always been keen to find out how my running was going but had never turned out to see any of my runs. Nothing personal I know, it’s just the way he is and him coming along last week and this week was a complete surprise to me.

Anyway he set off before me so he could get to a good point where he could watch me on the open section of the front.

I messed around with my watch and I took off running from within a throng of women who were stretching and limbering up before their walk/jog/run along the front.

I swiftly ran into a stiff headwind but on passing my Dad I picked up the pace and confidently ran past at a pace I couldn’t keep up for too long. At least I managed to get out of sight before I dropped my pace but I think I looked pretty confident as I passed.

I ran into the wind and at one point a young girl popped up on the radar, ran across around thirty yards in front of me and paced off. I thought I might be able to catch her but there was no chance, she was clocking along. She quickly pulled out to quite a distance and I gave up on trying to catch her. A couple of minutes later though I felt I was catching, then I was catching, I carried on at a pace and I realised I was catching for definite, I reeled her in and passed her, she must have been running from her start point and hey she’d not been able to keep up the pace…

I carried on passing another girl and turned at the end of the length.

The wind took a bit of time to settle as I was running in an arc, but when it did settle it was quite magical. The wind just disappeared, nothing, no side wind, no blustering, just absolute silence, it was like I running on an absolutely still day. Looking out across the sea too that was totally still, there was no lapping at the shore or waves the tide was so far in there was no sealine lapping at the shore. The sea just glistened in the sun and what had been a windy in your face pretty cold run now turned into a hot, still beautiful, even magical run. I quickly found that slowing ever so slightly meant that you could feel the wind at your back, this was cooling and raised the volume a bit but it helped keep the temperature down.

I jogged back and raised the pace on seeing my Dad again and we met up at the car.

I asked what he thought of my running, he said that I was running ok but there was something strange about the way I held my held my head. He asked me if I knew I ran with my chin tucked into my chest, well I sort of knew it, I’d noticed it in pictures taken of me running in the Great North Run but I’d not thought of it as a feature of my running apart from when I might be exhausted.

I’m not going to concentrate on putting this right, I’d not known I was doing it and now I do it’s going to go, I wonder if it’s all the running into stiff North East headwinds I’ve been doing over the years

Running Statistics 23-03-2014

Running Graph 23-03-2014