You run 1095 miles and then can’t even get a beer

Runner's Glee Club: Andy, David, Irene, me, James, Pete and Carl at the end of the run

So this morning I gathered with my little Glee Club of running to head on a circuit of Hyde Park to go past the 1095 mile minimum mileage point that I set myself when starting to run daily back on September 20 last year.

On day 280 of the challenge, my fellow runners included David, James, Irene, Carl, Pete, Andy and Will and we set off to do a huge figure of eight around Hyde Park at around 10am this morning, passing the magic mark two miles into the 5mile run with a very English stifled round of applause while running.

Given it was approaching 25 degrees and Will hadn’t run for a while, he left us around the 2.5 mile mark to head to the start but the rest of us started as a bunch and finished as a bunch on what was a really lovely run.

Questionable refuelling? Not us

While I still have 85 days to run to complete running for exactly a year, I am now actually averaging 3.92 miles a day and am a whopping 258 miles ahead of target!

Post run, we decided to head for some liquid refreshment into nearby Shepherd Market. But despite a proliferation of five boozers in an area four streets by two, none of them were open until noon and none of us fancied hanging around for almost an hour.

James thanked the Lord for creating beer

Luckily, one little pavement breakfast café was open and, after we had to ask a couple to move and we moved another table on (possibly down to the whiffy smell) we settled down to a cold one with a couple of us tucking into bacon butties and bacon and egg as an added refueling measure. It was an Ice Cold In Alex moment – and I can’t thank the guys enough for joining me to do it.

Click here for a link to Garmin Connect for a route map and details of the run

Miles today: 5.27
Target: 840
Miles to date: 1,098.31

Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here

Running on two hours sleep (Friday’s run)

So I am actually posting about Friday’s run after a difficult set of circumstances on Saturday afternoon…

Thursday night, Laura went to see Sex & The City II with her pals and I met a couple of mates in Soho for a few beers and figured we could meet after and go home together.

At around 10pm, we hooked up at Oxford Circus and headed to Victoria for the train back to Streatham and she told me she was feeling a bit queezy. By the time we got home, she was even worse, feeling light headed and almost fainted, so we called NHS Direct.

I’m not sure if any of you who read this blog have ever done it, but I’ve probably done it about four or five times in my life and, without fail (probably in fear of being sued) they send you to Accident & Emergency at the local hospital, which makes using it as a primary car emergency phone service redundant. They should just have a recorded message saying: ‘Go to A&E’.

Anyway, we arrived at the hospital just after 11 and, she was seen pretty quickly, which made me think we would be out of there just as quickly… how wrong could I be.

We finally made it home at 5.30am after they’d done every test in the book, given her an IV drop and found not too much wrong bar a slightly irregular heartbeat and some dehydration, both that they attributed to work related stress.

Luckily for Laura, she could take the Friday off work but I was shifting at The Express. I managed to just grab a couple of hours sleep before the alarm went off at 7.30am and got up and went for a run. I knew that if I’d left it to the end of the day, I would just have no energy at all, so I chugged an energy drink before the run, went around Norbury in a Zombie-like state, and then took another energy drink when I got back.

It felt like I was running with severe jetlag.

Click here for a link to Garmin Connect for a route map and details of the run

Miles today: 3
Target: 774
Miles to date: 1,015.17

Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here

Perspiration for the nation

According to the old saying “Horses sweat, men perspire and ladies merely glow”… well I must be a horse then.

When I run – and I know this is unpleasant – I tend to lose a lot of liquid, I mean a lot of liquid. When David and I went out for my 1000th mile run at the weekend, he ran six miles to our meeting point and looked totally unruffled.

By the time we’d ran a mile together, you could already see the beads on my brow and darker patches on my shirt.

Of course, this problem is getting worse now the sun’s out again. To the point where I’m going to have to change my routine. At the moment, running takes up just over an hour of my day: Five minutes to get ready, 25 to run, 10 to stretch, 20 to shower and change, 20-30 to blog about it.

Well that is now going to have to increase if the weather stays like this as I’m going to need longer to cool down as jumping straight in the shower just ain’t going to do it.

This morning, I gave myself about five minutes between coming back and getting in the shower. Clearly not enough: half way through drying I was as bad as when I got in, meaning I had to take another one and then stand in front of our fan for five minutes to cool down.

Click here for a link to Garmin Connect for a route map and details of the run

Miles today: 3
Target: 771
Miles to date: 1,012.17

Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here

Hot in the city, tonight…

… well, I was a fan of Billy Idol as a kid.

I didn’t get the chance to run this morning. Injured? Up late? Too much on? Nope, none of the above… I was actually up at 5am to watch the finale to the TV show Lost. I was shifting at The Express today and so as soon as the show was finished, it was shower, dressed and off to join something else with a smouldering inferno at its heart: the Tube.

It was after six when I got back and I went running as soon as I could after so as not the loose the evening. I don’t really like running at night, it makes me feel listless, especially after a day where everywhere I’ve been has felt like a sauna.

I decided it was so nice I should do the nicest local route and so I headed off to do round Streatham Common and forgot the first rule of running club: go to the loo before going out. Ten minutes in and I was unsurprisingly busting – a fact that sped me up, despite the heat.

Click here for a link t0 Garmin Connect for a route map and details of the run

Miles today: 3
Target: 741
Miles to date: 977.77

Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here

I love the smell of barbecue when running… not

We’ve got Laura’s cousin Rob, her sister Annamarie and George, her Greek husband down from Leeds for the weekend. George has been a friend of mine for years and Laura and I introduced them.

Last night the girls and Rob were at their other sister Alice’s hen-do and George and I went up to Brick Lane for a swizz round the shops before finding a bar and sinking a few pints while watching the Champions League final.

Having a drink and being shattered from my trip last week, I actually managed a lie in today… until all of 9am. I know it’s not much a lie in for most people but for me, that’s a full four hours later than I normally get up.

Breakfast and lunch were both down to me and so there was no chance of getting a run in anywhere between it all… For lunch, I went down the easy route and fire up the barbecue – well it is nice weather and BBQing is as much a Sunday tradition in hot weather and a roast is in cold. When we went to Sainsbury’s for some extra provisions, we managed to snatch the last bag of burger buns in the whole place.

For some reason the word barbecue is a euphemism for ‘buy loads of food and stuff yourself’ and we did nothing to dispel that, finishing the afternoon with a half hour lounge on the grass.

When the guys went just after five, I went out for my run… still bloated from our feast. You can imagine, as I struggled round, how the smell of  meat sizzling on other people’s charcoals made me feel…

Click here for a link to Garmin Connect for a route map and details of the run

Miles today: 3
Target: 738
Miles to date: 974.77

Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here

Feels like summer is here

Pretty sunny and hot went I went out this morning. Laura came with me to Tooting Common – not to go around with me of course but to sit in the sun reading the paper at the common caff while I went on my run.

There were loads of people out today – all the fair weather runners getting the trainers out as the weather is so much better and beach season is around the corner.

For people running the London Marathon tomorrow, it’s going to be pretty hot.

Click here for a link to Garmin Connect for a Google Map and full details of today’s route

Miles today: 3
Target: 651
Miles to date: 865.52

Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here