Archive for the ‘Running’ Category
Edinburgh hills
Wednesday, April 4th, 2007Southern Road Relays
Sunday, April 1st, 2007I had been recruited as part of Southampton Running Club’s team for the Southern 12 Stage Road Relay. This meant an early start for the drive up to the Open University at Milton Keynes. I was down for leg 10 which then meant four hours of leisurely spectating in the sunshine before trying to gear myself up for the 5.3km course.
Gaining my spurs
Friday, March 30th, 2007
Towards the end of last year I went to the GP as the occasional pain that I felt on the front of my left ankle when the toes were pushed up, for example by stepping on a log, had become more persistent. I was referred to the physio whose holistic approach undoubtedly saw my back and core stability improve but did little for my ankle. Yesterday I finally made it to a foot and ankle specialist at the Wessex Nuffield hospital (yes – the IBM medical insurance is paying!) via the X-ray department. After a brief description of the symptoms he took a look at the images and immediately diagnosed anterior impingement, better known as “footballer’s ankle”.
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Summer’s on its way
Tuesday, March 27th, 2007Spring has well and truly sprung and it feels like summer won’t be far behind. The change in the clocks at the weekend and some bright sunshine left me with no excuse not to cycle in to work yesterday. I don’t use those muscles very often and my legs ached after just a few miles. The sun was out again today for the first Tuesday night run of the year. As is tradition, this was from the Royal Oak, Fritham and involved visiting six of the nearby ponds. I’ve decided to post GPX files for these runs but don’t yet have a good way of displaying them. If your running Internet Explorer then you can view it on some MS Virtual Earth imagery and try and spot the ponds! You can always use GPSBabel if you want some other format.
Running in Romsey
Wednesday, March 14th, 2007John Horton put on this evening’s street event in Romsey on a new map courtesy of Graham Harrison. For once I hadn’t been orienteering at lunchtime although, as the sun had been shining, I hadn’t been able to resist the group run up to Farley Mount. It didn’t take long for me to decide that I wasn’t going to be able to get all 32 controls but I still didn’t pick a particular good route all the same. Only managed 24 and I was still 26 seconds late back.
Watery end
Sunday, March 11th, 2007Having not got much exercise last week I attempted to sneak out for a run this morning. I set off south from Kidlington down the canal towards Oxford. At Dukes Lock I noted the branch off to the right for the Thames and concluded that I might be able to make a loop. I therefore continued along the canal to Port Meadow and then turned right through Wolvercote. I then turned north again up the Isis (Thames). Unfortunately, unlike canals, rivers have a nasty habit of branching and it wasn’t long before I found myself paddling across some flooded field not entirely sure where I was going. Eventually I ended up at the ring road but mistakenly turned right again, ending up back at Wolvercote. Looking at the map this evening I realise that the footpath that I had seen turn off never crosses the river and therefore my cunning route was always doomed to failure. Still, my 45 minute run ended up being twice that!
Valley Park victory
Thursday, February 22nd, 2007My luck improved this evening with Christine’s street event around Valley Park. I had two advantages: local knowledge and some inside information that it was going to be border-line as to whether you could get all the controls. Putting these two together it was just a question of picking a vaguely sensible order for all of the controls and then running as hard as I could. The warren of branching streets and small footpaths joining them meant even then some thought was required for the best route between any two points. I made it back in just over 55 minutes and this time, not only had I visited all of the controls, I had only visited them once! There was a good turnout so it was a shame that I then had to rush off rather than enjoying the traditional post-run beverage. I haven’t had a chance to put all of the controls on my route this time but you can probably guess where most of them are from my convoluted route!
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