Crowthorne (running viral day 32)

As you can see by the above, my map is really beginning to fill in. Having been granted a 3 week extension on my GPS drawing project, and attempt to exhaust the spaces of Bracknell (by which I refer to another 3 weeks of lockdown announced by the UK government yesterday), I have a renewed energy.

I'm happy with today's shape even though, technically, Garmin cut off about a mile of my originally planned route.  But I don't think that original shape would have been as elegant as the one that resulted from the actual performed route, which had some nice about faces, turnarounds, and self-flybys.

Birch HIll (running viral day 31)

Today's run feels a bit cubist. I found Bracknell's Aldi along the way, and it is much closer to South Hill Park than I had realised.  My about-faces and turnings played out quite satisfactorily in the end, with a satisfying 'volumetric' look to some of the shapes, and a fairly good zigzag result in the park itself.

Half Brac (running viral day 30)

Today's run is called Half BRAC (see image below) because I was attempting to fill in 'outline' of Bracknell.  It's more like a 2/3 outline I think, but really it is only distinct in the more easterly parts, and breaks down or gets a bit fuzzy over on the Wokingham side.

I ran fast today, and now feel a bit hypocritical for my critical remarks about 'fast' running a few days ago.  But I am also somewhat vindicated because my surging speeds of late happen to correspond quite closely to a very recent re-affirmation of mine, namely, to run an ultra distance to replace my deferred Race to the Stones on 5 July 2020.

The original RTTS race is 100km over two days, or 31 miles per day. Instead of doing a two day run, I'll only run one, but to keep it interesting, I'm going to do 35 miles:

The route shown above will take in Swinley Forest, Chobham Common, and Windsor Great Park, heading through Bagshot, Windlesham, Sunningdale, and Ascot, as well as parts of Bracknell.

When you're training, you run some days harder than others, usually alternating hard/easy days. Hard can mean a fast pace, or it can mean a long distance. For an ultra, the fast pace is less important, but there will still be days when the run is, relative to other runs, faster.  More important are those challenging runs that run faster than recovery pace, and that go a long way.

I'll be doing a few runs around the 15 to 20 mile distance, mostly on Saturdays or Sundays. These get you ready for being on your feet for a long time. I expect to maintain a 10min/mile pace for the duration, putting me in at around 6 hours. It should be interesting.

Recovery Running (running viral day 29)

With a few exceptions where I dipped down to 9min/mile, sub-9, or even, like yesterday's sub-8 (11.5 mile) effort, the whole of this lockdown has been one big recovery run.  

How else do you explain the fact that in the first week of lockdown I ran my highest mileage week, a week that Strava informed me was 'easy' and that I could push a bit harder?

Actually I'm going to try and introduce a bit more structure to my runs, and alternate easy days with those in which I push just a bit harder.  Yesterday and today are a good start.

Today's recovery run was excellent, and it was an 11 min/mile pace.  I'm really on a learning curve with these recovery runs, because what I've realised is that they should be truly easy. If you are pushing at all, in any way, then it's too hard.  

Today I tried to run down the median of Bagshot Road, and was successful for a while, but it became so unpleasant that I gave up when the opportunity presented itself.  I cut away from Bagshot Road at Rapley Farm, and then used my ever-expanding mental map to navigate my way back home through the forest.

Running fast (running viral day 28)

Yesterday was a recovery day: I walked 7.5 miles during an exploration session to get ideas for today's 'real' run. It panned out well. I found a new entry point into Swinley Forest that leads to a crossing of Bagshot Road for exploration of the more eastern forests south of it.

The walk was good because I took in some of the forest in slow time, and I also realised that if I want to I can run down the median of Bagshot Road in order to fill in that part of my map.

Today was good because it was my first sub-8 pace (over 11.5 miles) since holding fitness steady for over a month now. Fitness is noticeably improving again.  

Actually I had to walk yesterday because I was running the risk of over-reaching, as I was just barely over 50 miles for the week, but my load was reading 'in the red'.  With the recovery day (walking) and a really good night's sleep, I found myself effortlessly pushing fast while running through the forest, which is a magical feeling.  Perceived effort of 5-6 throughout.

I don't seem to be having any problem maintaining 50 mile (minimum) weeks right now, and will continue this average throughout the year.  In fact, I will shoot for an average of 10 miles per day with one rest day, and that should push things closer to 60 miles.  

Forestrunning (running viral day 26)

Today's run was all about quality. It didn't really feel hard, though I pushed a little bit, and Strava informs me that it was my historic seventh best effort. I would not have guessed that because my perceived effort was probably no more than a 3 throughout (easy breathing, easy talking).  Without having looked at my fitness for a couple of weeks, it has maintained dead-level over the last month (0% change over 30 days).

Today's run used my watch in Satnav mode, wherein I followed the directions laid out by the course, which I had programmed into the watch the day before.  The course was in turn guided by the Strava heat map of popular routes through the forest. What I actually did was looked at routes that were somewhat, but not the most, popular.  In other words, passable and legible routes through the forest that allow for navigation of some lesser known copses and groves of trees.  Often, but not always, these are the denser or older areas of growth, parts that haven't been harvested for some time.  A couple of areas look ancient.

When I say 'forestrunning' and leave out the space I am attempting to be dialectical. The act of running and the forest, in this type of run, are inseparable.  That the omission of a single space can achieve such a feat is amazing to me.  There is the running. There is the forest. And then there is the running through the forest. It reminds me of my favourite Le Guin novel, The Word for World is Forest, which featured indigenous forestrunners who carried messages between the different tribes that inhabited the forest, which was under seige by logging colonists and military types.

We have these in Swinley as well, and it somewhat breaks my heart to see how much has been cut down.  I don't see how it is sustainable, really, and I hope the current situation doesn't somehow give the impetus to cut faster.

Performative running (running viral day 25)

There's a heightened sense of self-awareness and reflection to my running these days. In part because I'm being quite constrained as to where I go, which requires planning, but also because I'm sometimes transgressing the established rules of order in the lengths to which I'll go to both complete my drawing and maintain social isolation while out and about. For example, I was running down the median of a major four-lane divided A-road (highway) with traffic rushing past, and one of the vehicles that went past was a police car. I felt like I was doing something wrong and, technically, I probably was. At the same time there was all kinds of foot traffic on the pavements (sidewalks) that because of where I was, was well away from me.

Even just walking around is becoming something of a performance. We perform distance now, some even look away, avert their gazes and, by proxy, their breath-trajectories.  Actually, it's worse to be behind someone in motion because as they breathe, that breath trails back and swirls around mixing into the air that the person behind is inhaling.

But besides this, and like writing itself, running is a performance, and the act of producing a GPS drawing, or of participating in what I like to call a 'distributed participation' running event like a predict-a-time distance run, or a landmark-selfie project, or any other kind of event that can be run not at the same time, but re-synchronised using an app like Strava, is a performance.

Running has always been 'performative', to use the academic word that is not quite equivalent to the idea of performance.  Performative is quite closely related to the bodily (as opposed to the inscribed) aspect of the bundle of physical, cognitive, social, and technological apparatuses that form an assemblage for the production of this thing we call 'running.'  It's not just you and your watch, with the satellites watching you. It is that and much more: it is the unfolding of the event that is called the run, and the historical development that leads towards each and every instantiation of the run; and then the combination thereof across time, culture, and the evolution of the technologies (as activities of cultures situated in particular places) that arise therefrom.

This is what makes my analysis dialectical: the critical spatiotemporal unfolding that makes its way through, and that feeds upon, various contradictions, paradoxes, and their eventual (evental) resolution in the performance of the run itself.  Which, for today, is a 'string of beads' (see the opening figure above).