Floating down to Camelot

Due to my ongoing back issues, some busy months and the fact that the weather has been very fond of raining on my days off, I've not done a proper walk with Scenery since early May. When I have gone out, I've stuck to the cycle path and sea front so I could pop home for lunch - and therefore save my back from having to carry a rucksack - before doing the second half of the walk in the afternoon.

But today I went in search of Scenery. I decided not to take my camera, since I'd photographed said Scenery a million of times before.

Mistake! The visibility was just perfect. The buildings of Bournmouth were sparkling and the cliffs of Purbeck looked close enough to touch. The sea behind me was dazzling silver, and every leaf and cow and mushroom stood out in perfect clarity. And there were many cows, massive and phlegmatic and untroubled by my passing. (No Heilan coos yet, though; presumably they're still in their summer quarters.) And there were many mushrooms, although nobody seemed to be picking them; a couple of years ago, at this time of year, elderly ladies were out in the dozens, snaffling mushrooms and taking them home. (Maybe they all chose unwisely and are thus no longer around to snaffle this year's crop?) There were many furry caterpillars, doggedly wiggling their way across the Down. There were gentians. I paid particular attention to these, remembering the occasion when Pellinor and I were berated by a random stranger for "walking too fast to notice the gentians."

All in all, it was really quite lovely. And, rather pleasingly, All The Hills of the island have apparently disappeared since I last walked them, in my pre-running days. Even the Gurt White Hill, that used to leave me panting and shattered, had turned non-existent, in that I was striding along, mentally tweaking the details of my new dance, and suddenly realised that I'd reached the top without having noticed the climb. I wasn't even out of breath. So that's good. I just wish I could do the actual runs so easily, or enjoy running even a quarter as much as I enjoy walking.

Quite a lot this months, it seems - poetic language on the moon, five books of spirits and thieves, two very silly children's books, a man who lives for (almost) forever, monsters in a dark city, and a history of the census.

( Books read in October )

Fewer books than normal this month, due to being on holiday last week, during which I spent much of my reading time reading guidebooks and maps and obsessively checking the weather forecast.

( Books read in July )

After I finished my Thief series re-read, the month was dominated by Jasper Fforde, pausing only for some undone Victorians and an angry chef"

( Books read in June )

I have a well-worn map rant. I will put it behind a cut, since it is so well-worn that everyone has probably heard it before.

( Open Wardrobe of Outrage, take down Rant Hanger no. 5, take up well-worn rant )

Well, yesterday I bought an orange 1:25,000 map of the Winchester area... and discover that once you've bought a map, you can now get a free electronic download of the same map. This is excellent news! You see, the other problem with printed maps is the need to actually carry the printed map. Carrying it in your hand is inconvenient and awkward. I've got one of those plastic map holders that you dangle around your neck, but they're horrid and annoying and flap around, and the slightest breath of wind causes them to leap around like a demented terrier and try to strangle you with its lead. So if I'm walking on a path I more or less know, or a path I expect to be well signed, I leave my map in my rucksack, ready to consult it only when needed. But extricating both myself and the map from the rucksack is a hassle, so when Doubt begins to strike, I tend to put off the awful moment of actually checking the map, and carry on doggedly, hoping that everything will turn out well. This does not always end well.

But when walking, I carry my phone in a belt pouch, so it will be the easiest thing in the world to pull it out and check the map. This is excellent! I'll still carry the printed map in my rucksack just in case, and for when I want to quickly view a wide area, but I'll have an easily-accessible version, too. Now I can buy a new orange map of the island and have an up-to-date map on my phone, without needing to wrestle with any octopuses! I am quite ridiculously thrilled by this. :-D


By the way, I noticed that although 1:25,000 maps are now available for the whole country, only some of these maps have been designated an Outdoor Leisure map. Aren't you allowed to do outdoor leisurey things in an area that hasn't been designated thus? I notice that I'm allowed to do outdoor leisure anywhere on the south coast between Eastbourne and Weymouth. Most of Hampshire and West Sussex are joyous, leisure-filled places, but in Dorset, leisure only goes as far north as Dorchester. Somerset and Wiltshire are Right Out, and here I must be sober and industrious.

How can a book be called "The untold story of..." something or other. You have written the book, Mr Author. It has been published and is sitting on my desk. The story is now told. When you first had the idea, you might have been entitled to call it an untold story, but once you'd finished writing it, the title was now a lie. Unless "telling," like communicating, is something that requires an attentive listener? If you recount a story in an empty forest, are you still telling it? I think you are, but I will be charitable to Mr Author and allow him to argue that his story remains untold even after he has typed the final full stop... but only as long as nobody has beta-read it, proof-read it, edited it, helped him with the index or listened to him expounding on the subject while gesticulating with a wine glass at dinner parties. Well, unless these people are only allowed to glimpse snippets of the completed book and are kept by force from even glimpsing the rest of it. But, even so, the minute it's published and somebody reads it, the title is now a LIE!

(Which reminds me of the award Pellinor recently received for being an unsung hero. I argue that the second he accepted said reward, he became sung, so was duty bound to hand it back. Whereupon, of course, he became unsung again, and the award-giver was bound to give it back to him, and so on and so on, for a never-ending eternal loop of politeness and pedantry. Although at least somebody would probably give in eventually and say, "Just take the damn thing!" so we wouldn't be stuck in a true never-ending loop like the case of the buttered toast strapped (butter side up) to the back of a falling cat, which, logically, can never, ever land. This is known.)

But, anyway, back to books, I always smile when I see "unnumbered pages" on the catalogue record, although it's always in the context of "24 unnumbered pages," or the like, which just seems wrong.

I might have mentioned this before, but books called things like "A practical guide to keeping chickens" always make me chuckle, since I invariably imagine the companion book, and sometimes spend a happy few minutes imagining chapter titles and diagrams and suggestions. Impractical chicken-keeping. Impractical bike maintenance. Impractical yachting. Sometimes I want to draw the pictures, which, for some reason, often end up involving balloons, and, occasionally, bananas.

"...of the world" books, on the other hand, always cause me to declaim them out loud, as a rallying cry, often adding "unite!" to the end. "Frogs of the world," unite! There's a section in Sainsbury's called "Breads of the world," where I always want to rally the ciabattas and pitta breads and urge them to throw off the chains of the Chorleywood overlords.

So we're still running, after finishing Couch to 5K in mid-March. We're keeping up with 3 runs a week. The only ones I've missed was when I was due to run on a day when I'd walked 35 miles of coastal path, on the grounds that I'd done more than enough exercise already, thank you very much.

I definitely find it a lot easier to do my runs in the evening, about two hours after dinner. I never seem to struggle at this time. When I've run during the day, I've always found it harder. There are some good reasons for this. The weekend runs have sometimes been after a late night the night before, and some have been in hot sunshine when thirst was an issue. Sometimes I've gone out after getting in from work, before dinner, but I think I just don't have enough calories inside me at that time of day to keep myself going. However, I'm also beginning to worry that I'm developing a bit of a mental block about non-evening running, and there's a risk that I'll find the runs hard merely because I expect to.

Then there's the issue of speed. At the moment, my comfortable pace seems to be about 6 mins per km. I can maintain this steadily for long periods without getting particularly out of breath. Increase this to 5 mins 45 seconds per km, and I really struggle. It seems crazy that such a tiny increase in speed should make such a big difference to my ability to cope with it. Although, granted, all these faster runs have taken place just before dinner, when, as mentioned above, I might be struggling for other reasons.

We did 10k on Tuesday, not entirely intentionally. I'd done 8.5km by myself when Pellinor was away the other weekend, so wanted to go to 9. Pellinor measures his runs in miles (I walk in miles but run in km) so when we reached 9k, he pointed out that he wasn't that far off 6 miles. So we kept going... whereupon I pointed out that we were now close enough to 10k that we might as well carry on until that. We did an hour and 30 seconds, with a pretty constant speed. So far, the best I've managed for 5k is just under 29 minutes.

I don't know what goal to work for now. Pellinor's faster than me, and much more interested in speed - specifically, speed while wearing armour. I'm not that fussed about speed, but would like to increase my distance. But I'm worried about possible hot weather, so I might have to keep things fairly steady over the summer, and add more distance next winter. We'll see.

I can't say I actively enjoy running, especially when I'm by myself. But the 10k on Tuesday was fun, since we were coping well enough to be able to chat, and we had loads of cat encounters to keep things interesting. But I enjoy seeing the improvement in my abilities, and I like feeling like "a runner." Perhaps my next goal should be to take part in a Park Run or something similar, and actually engage with other runners.

I really should post more. I will attempt to make up for a silence of many weeks by posting trivia. So here goes...

I bought a hoodie today. Part of me feels that this should fill me with the urge to loiter suspiciously in the park looking disaffected and suspicious.

However, said hoodie was bought from M&S, so...


Not entirely unrelated to the above: never believe anyone who says that running is a free hobby that involves no specialist equipment. To date, I have bought: 1 pair of alarmingly-coloured running shoes that fit my rolling-in gait (£100), 1 fleece, 2 pairs of mid-calf-length leggings for running on hot days, 1 pair of jogging trousers for colder days, 1 hoodie, 2 confusing sports bras (£25 each), one pack of low-cut socks to go with the leggings (probably unnecessary, but I felt embarrassed about the happy smiley tigers on my ankles), 1 cheap top with wicking technology, just to see how it worked, 1 belt pouch to hold my phone (an excellent buy, since I use my phone to track my running, and it was very irritating in my pocket: I use this all the time for walking now, too) and one small water bottle to attach to said belt.

To be fair, the fleece has become my indispensible default extra layer to wear around the house, on walks, and pretty much everywhere, and the jogging trousers (which have an elasticated cuff around the ankle) are really useful for walking in, since they get much less muddy than my usual flappy trousers. Also, whereas I am in pain after walking just 2 or 3 miles in normal shoes, the £100 running shoes have given me absolutely no pain at all while running almost twice as far, so were a Good Buy. But, still, that must surely come to over £250 by now. And I've only been doing this for less than 4 months, and haven't yet run for further than 5 miles...

EDIT: I've just discovered that my hoodie has little slits in the cuffs which allow them to become sort-of fingerless mittens! :-D Granted, I had some fingerless gloves back in the 80s, when they were In, and found them a particularly rubbish item of clothing. However, that was mostly because the knitting splayed out at end of each truncated finger, which meant that I had to go around with my fingers ever so* slightly spread, as if half-heartedly casting a tiny cantrip. However, it turns out that semi-partial-half-hearted suggestions of a fingerless glove, masquerading as a normal cuff, are really kind of awesome. At least they are when you've drunk a couple of pints of cider. :-D

* Whenever I say that, I remember my Mum saying that a neighbour of hers in Edinburgh in the early 70s once said, dismissively, of somebody else that she was "the sort of person who says 'ever so.'" I have never worked out what sort of a person this is, but ever so often, when I notice myself saying it, I wonder who is nearby, judging me.

I had a day off yesterday, and headed off to south Wight for a lengthy adventure through varied terrain.

( Here be many photos )

So we finished Couch to 5K last night. Since the last week, like most other weeks, consists of repeating the same run three times, the final day was no different from the 2 runs that preceded it, which reduced the sense of Yay! Achievement! Nevertheless, it felt good to complete.

( Weeks 8 and 9 )

So that's that. I can't say that I actively ENJOY running, but it's tolerable, and I like the sense of achievement of finishing, and I like being able to get some good exercise without having to commit too much time. I don't want to mentally mark this as "done" and just stop, so I think I need to keep on with the structure of 3 times a week on set days. I'd decided that my next goals were to run 5K in 30 minutes or less, and to work up to 10K. The first goal shouldn't take that long to achieve, since we're already at 30:50. The second will take a lot longer, of course. Actually, rather than 10K, my aim is to be able to run to work, which is probably more like 8 or 9km. I won't actually run TO work, since there are no showers, but want to be able to run to my work place on a day I'm not working, just to show myself that I can do it.

We don't want our weekday runs to take up any longer than they currently do, so the current plan is something like this:

Tuesday: Under 5km, but concentrating on gradually getting faster. Pellinor and I might do this separately, since he wants to go faster than I do, since he wants to be able to run down monsters while wearing armour, and I do not have this need.

Friday: 5km, taking as long as it takes and not fussing overmuch about timing

Sunday: Gradually upping the distance

We'll see how it goes...

We spent most of Sunday at an intensive Morris dancing workshop: many hours of virtually non-stop dancing, much of it involving jumping and leaping. By the end, my muscles felt like limp spaghetti, and my left calf in particularly was particularly painful and shaky. Sunday was also one of our scheduled running days.

Now, obviously the sensible thing to do would have been to say, "we've done hours of exercise today already and are shattered. Let's not run today." However, Monday wasn't available as an alternative, and I was aware that by the following day, my legs would have stiffened up, and everything would feel even worse. So out we went. In my slight justification, I did at least resolve to abort the whole thing if my calf hurt when running, but it didn't really, not much. The whole run - on paper, a much easier one than the previous one (5 minutes, 8 minutes, 5 minutes) - was HARD, though, and I struggled for breath and struggled to persuade my legs to keep going.

I slept badly, due to sore legs and a left calf that kept on twitching just as I was about to fall asleep. Yesterday I had the day off, and the weather was lovely. I get quite disgruntled and unhappy if I don't go out for a walk on a sunny day off, so I did about 6 miles in the morning, came home for lunch and a reassessment of the state of my legs, then went out for a further 10 in the afternoon - just a fast, flat walk along the seafront and cycle path. I had no problem with my calf, once I'd got over the initial stiffness of the first 20 yards or so.

Last night I had dance practice, and soon discovered that I couldn't even do the easiest, least stenuous of Playford dances (essentially walking, with occasional bobs), let alone anything more vigorous.

Today even walking across the park at lunch time involved hobbling, and today, unlike yesterday, it doesn't get any better once I get into the swing of things.

I doubt I'll be running tonight. I have only myself to blame. There is probably a lesson in here somewhere...

Week 4 has involved 3 minute and 5 minute stretches of running, two of each, with much less walking in between - 90 minutes after the 3 minute stretches and two and a half minutes after the 5 minutes. I'm still not getting stiff or massively out of breath, although my legs have been getting quite weary while actually running. I've also started getting a bit of stitch, although nothing too bad - mild discomfort, really, rather than pain, although it was a bit worse today during the first 5 minute stretch.

I realised today that I've had no shin pain this week, despite getting very mild twinges of discomfort in my right shin in the first few weeks. This could be due to the new shoes. However, for the first few weeks, I was learning a Cotswold Morris jig on Monday nights (officially a rest day, but hey...). Cotswold Morris is more boingy than the types of dancing I normally do, and the dance I was learning involved a lot of capers, in which you leap off your left foot and land with all your weight on your right leg. We didn't do it at this week's practice, and there's no practice next week, so it remains to be seen whether the (very slight) shin pain was caused by dancing or by ill-fitting shoes.

Weather has been one of the themes of this week. Sunday was really quite wet - although I waited until the worst of the rain had passed - and also quite windy. Just as I had to start my first run, I rounded a corner and got hit full in the face with a strong headwind, bearer of horizontal rain. Not nice. Tuesday night and today involved no more than hints of slight drizzle, and were also noticeably milder than last week's runs.

Pellinor was still ill last Sunday, so I went out alone. He joined in again on Tuesday, and although he'd missed 2 runs, he concluded that he was fit enough to continue on without filling in the missing runs. We're away tomorrow night, so brought tomorrow's run forward. Pellinor has dancing practice tonight, but for once, he was home on time from work (6.30) so we were able to go out immediately, before returning to eat the dinner I'd mostly cooked before we left. The timing is challenging, though. I'm always desperately hungry by the time he gets home, so am reluctant to do run regularly before dinner. However, after-dinner runs end up being fairly late, since we need to leave sufficient time for the meal to go down. We have fairly small meals, but now we're running for a bit longer, I was beginning to feel as if I was running too soon after dinner for my liking. However, I found today's run harder than Tuesday's, so maybe running while hungry isn't the answer, either.

Week 5 next, and that looks terrifying. I am very dubious about my ability to do it. This time next week, it's going to expect us to run for 20 minutes without a break. :-O

So I took everyone's advice and went to the running shop on Tuesday, where I bought some new running shoes, ones designed to support feet like mine. Why do running shoes all come in lurid psychedelic colours? "These ones are on sale," the chap said, "since they're in last year's colours," but I couldn't see any obvious difference between this year's cornucopia of psychedelia (band name?) and those that were SO last year. I tried on many, and chose those that were by far the most comfortable - ones which the chap said supported my feet properly. Unfortunately, they're fluorescent turquoise with fluorescent orange laces.

( Week 3 diary )

So we appear to have accidentally started doing Couch to 5K, a 9 week programme endorsed by the NHS, which aims to ease couch potatoes slowly into running. Two weeks ago, we had just finished a game of Defenders of the Realm (which, by the way, is a far more satisfying game when you include a few of the optional "make the game a bit harder" rules) when Pellinor commented that he should probably try Couch to 5K one day. "Why not start it now?" I said, and within half an hour, we had located suitable shoes and appropriate technology, and were heading out the door.

While in some ways I'm not a couch potato - I regularly do brisk walks of 20 miles plus and Morris dance twice a week - I am rubbish at running. If I do have to run to catch a ferry, I flail like an ungainly flappy thing and am shattered after 50 steps. (Pellinor's a lot better, due to his habit of running down monsters while wearing armour, but wants to improve his stamina.) I kept up a programme of workout DVDs for most of the winter a few years ago, doing them as soon as I got home from work, and have done them occasionally since them, but I always really disliked doing them, and they well nigh killed me in hot weather. When my work moved and I started coming home a little later, it was easy to use that as an excuse not to do them. I love walking, but it does take up a whole day, and in winter you have to get out at first light or you run out of daylight. Getting up early isn't a problem for me, but getting out is, since I love reading in bed with a cup of tea for an hour or two in the morning. So while I have no intention of stopping walking, I wanted some additional form of exercise that would take a lot less time than a 20 mile walk, and could be done on a week day, too.

With Couch to 5K, you run just 3 times a week, for half an hour at a time. So far, "run" isn't really the word for it. In week one, you walk briskly for 5 minutes, then alternate 1 minute of running with 1 and a half minutes of walking, keeping this up for 20 minutes, before another 5 minute walk. I was pleasantly surprised to find it not remotely arduous. It turns out that running in running shoes is a LOT easier than running in town shoes, while wearing a flappy coat and carrying a bag. Week 2 lengthened the running segments to 90 seconds, and was a little harder. Tonight we start week 3, which will include some 3 minute stretches of running. There is a terrifyingly steep learning curve ahead of us over the next few weeks. Whether I'll be able to do it, I don't know. I might need to get special shoes, since my feet roll inwards and this causes me problems when I walk more than a few miles without my boots. I don't want to splash out a lot of money if it might be a whim that I don't stick with, but on the other hand, if I hurt myself due to NOT having the right shoes, then I'm less likely to stick with it, so... well, it's a bit of dilemma at the moment. But for now, I'm not having any problems.

I understand that for many women, the main thing that scares them about running is embarrassment about being seen. "What? In PUBLIC?" is the reaction I've had from most women when I've told them I'm doing this. No man has said that. Doing it in the dark helps, and doing it alongside Pellinor helps even more. At the moment, I'm really enjoying it. It's just a nice half hour walk and chat, with occasionally bits of running added in. I fear this will change once the running gets harder...

When my old walking boots literally started falling apart, a year of boot-related angst ensued: six months in which I clung, whimpering, to my old boots, and insisted on wearing them even though they were becoming more hole than boot; several weeks of trying on every pair of boots on sale on the island, some of them twice; then six months of hating the new boots merely because they weren't my old ones. From the start, they never gave me blisters, but the heel was a bit bigger, and I resented it bitterly for this.

Once I got over this somewhat irrational hatred, I realised that actually these new boots were rather awesome: comfortable, far more waterproof than the old ones, and exuding an air of indestructability. Despite this, the day will doubtless come when they need to be replaced, so I recently decided that I'd avoid a repeat of the trauma of a couple of years ago by buying another identical pair. This would also allow me to keep a spare pair in the mainland car, to avoid the need to ferry boots to and fro over the Solent when we go on holidays.

This leads me to the following points.

- Why don't shoes and boots have the name of their style clearly written inside, to aid people who want to rebuy them? By careful comparison of pictures, I deduced that I was looking for a Bergaus Explorer Trail ladies' light hiking boot, as opposed to a Bergaus Explorer Trex or a B. E. Trail Plus or a hiking boot (non light) with a similar name, or a walking shoe with a similar name. It would have been nice to have been told.

- It's very annoying that boots stay on the market for only a year or two before disappearing. I expect the company wants to have a constant flow of new products getting reviews, and they can go on about new improved designs and new technology and the like. But it can be really hard to get boots that feel good, and chances are, the "new improved" version isn't going to work for someone who was utterly content with the old model. It would be lovely if you could buy a boot in 2014, secure in the knowledge that you can reasonable hope to replace it with exactly the same version in 2017.

- It is very annoying that when, following many failures, you eventually find a website that - yay! - has the boot you want and it lets you select its size and its colour and add it to basket... only to reveal, when you click "checkout," that actually the boot is out of stock. If the product is unavailable and never likely to be available again, please remove it from your listings. If it's unavailable and likely to come back, at least put "not currently available" in a nice prominent location. If only some sizes are available, at least let us know when we try to select our size. Don't raise our hopes, only to snatch them away and laugh.

Grump!

122 books. Quite a lot, given that the vast majority of my reading takes place in bed in the morning before getting up for work.

I've bolded those titles that I particularly liked.

( All books read in 2016 )