A Remembered Present

Like many, I'm looking back on the days of the Coronavirus fondly, as a time when I took up both running and writing in a big way. I discovered that they are two sides of the same coin, that the idea of writer's block is a sham, and that the parallel idea of runner's block, similarly, has no basis in reality.

I started double-running, doing a 'hard' session in the mornings, usually a fast run, or some speed work or fartlek, or a hill session. The evening run, ideally situated between the hours of 8 and 9 pm, was a 'recovery' run, designed to allow my body to gain fitness while actively healing itself.

On Mondays, I took a day of rest, and therefore on Tuesdays my fitness blossomed.  In parallel, my writing blossomed, I wrote poems, short stories, and long blocks of incoherent text that I later deleted (and with a flourish, before I could think on it for even a moment, I clicked "Empty Trash" just to make sure the mental turds had been flushed away forever).

I read Delany's About Writing and Wendig's The Kick-Ass Writer.  I followed Matt Fitzgerald's Brain Training for Runners. I wrote blog posts and posted them (even though no-one reads blogs anymore).  I discovered that I am still a writer, but only by reconnecting with a thread I'd dropped when I started my PhD in my late 30s.

Back then, I had been 'writing every day'. If there's one rule I follow for being a writer, it's this one, and I'll be re-instating it, alongside my other rule, 'run every day'.  You can throw in a rest day once in a while (one day per week maximum).

On rest days (from writing or running or both) I walked through blue-sky coronavirus days blissful in my ignorance of what was to come. I crested the top of Hut Hill and looked down over the city I now called home, its cluster of ambitious architectures stolid as a diorama, bearded in a deciduous/pine tromp l'oeil.

Those were days of delicious weather, of endless long walks that broke the law by two hours or more; of runs that rankled the civilians and new-fangled runners with their 'breathing'. There were club runners who advertised the fact, and who later were the subject of harrassing phone calls to the police. We know how Cummings feels.

Those were brilliant cool days when the wind wound down the empty country shoulderless roads like blissful rivers of calm. I wandered, running, lonely as a cloud down their shimmering surfaces, along in my world, in my remembered present, a city surveyed fresh and new, like a virgin, only for me.

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.