Post Run Routines

What to do after a long run?

If you do something often enough you form habits and the routine takes over. When that happens you cease to pay full attention and you just get on with doing what you always do. For that reason habits are very useful – they allow you to do things efficiently, but sometimes they get in the way of appreciating what you are doing.
One of the reasons I run is to help me look at things more clearly – blow away some of the fog that is always drifting around my mind. When you stop there is a chance, jus a chance, that you might have some moments of mental clarity. However after a long run things can be a little tricky if you have gone a bit too far and taken a bit too much out of yourself you might end feeling hazy. Post run recovery then becomes important for both body and mind.

The first thing I always do (apart from taking off the trainers, towelling away some of the sweat and swapping my t shirt for a fleece) is to get some food. I have read that eating within an hour of exercise is important for replenishing your glycogen and improving recover but that eating sooner is better. (There is a good brief summary about post run eating here and an article here that quotes Troy Flanagan, head of sports science for the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association: "When our athletes reach the finish line, they're trained to go right to the feed bag. They can take sports drink, a milk, or yoghurt drink, the feed bag is right on the hill. They will eat straight away."). My usually choice is a bowl of nutty muesli with a chopped up banana and a big mug of tea. Never does tea taste quite so delicious as it does after a run.

I like to consume this meal (more accurately my second breakfast) quite slowly and deliberately – relaxing. Music is important. I am not too bothered about listening to music when I run, sometimes I do, mostly I don’t, but after the run it helps set the mood. There are a number of albums that sound particularly post-run (almost anything from the ECM label works). They have to be slightly contemplative and have holes to give your mind scope to wander. This week I listened to The Blue Nile and thought about productivity as they are a group who have managed to produce a grand total of four albums in a career stretching back to 1984. Perfect music for a slow runner I thought.

After that it is time for a tepid shower. The thing I resist is having a warm bath – although it is tempting, after exercise I know they make me feel very dopey. After that I will make a decision about stretching. If my legs feel too beat-up I will not stretch, as I have an intuition (as far as I know it is not supported by any research) that if the muscle fibres are too frayed stretching might do more harm than good. Stretching can always been done later in a separate session.

Anyway that is what I tend to do after a run. I am sure all of us do things slightly differently as, like everything in running, it is a matter of experimenting until we find something that works. I am sure I will try other things in future - I might even try mince pies.

The Bridge Is Less Pretensious Than The Prose

I ought to pay closer attention to the different types of bridges that cross the canal. Mostly they are of a plain, functional design but every one is slightly different(unlike today’s motorways where the bridges seem to come from the same concrete mould). This one is Palladian and also a Grade II listed building. I find it quite pleasing and every time I run under it I think I am passing through a film set. It is part of the driveway to the Grove, which used to be the home of the Earl of Clarendon but is now a swanky hotel, much used by the English football team.

When I got home I had a look at the Grove's website to see if they said anything interesting about the building or the bridge - they didn't. But I did find this sentence: Our unique style is a mix of traditional elegance and hip, contemporary design which we call “groovy grand”.

You have no idea how much my head ached after I stopped banging it on the desk - it hurt more than the running.

Treadmill Tips and Alpacas

That's something you don't see from a treadmill - alpacas! I actually had no idea there were any in the neighbourhood until I passed this field on my run yesterday. There they were, three of them. I then did what I always is always possible on a long slow run: stop, look more closely and take a picture.

It is one of the thing that makes running outside more satisfying than the treadmill: you are in charge of the rhythm and can slow or stop at a whim and pay attention to your surroundings. There really is a sense of freedom. On the treadmill, although you can set the tempo and duration, there is a sense of being controlled by a machine. It is a relentless.

Having said that, and in a slightly perverse way I quite enjoy them as a part of my training, even if it is mainly when the weather is crap (pace JogBlog). However I have had to find ways to break up the time as an hour on the treadmill at constant pace can seem like an eternity.

The answer is to not run at the same pace but to make regular changes. I run in sections of 5 or 10 minutes and then change something, which means I only look ahead for those 5 or so minutes. My routine is usually one of three basic shapes. The first is the step, where I gradually increase the pace until I stop. The second is the pyramid where I symmetrically increase then reduce the pace. The third is the wave, where the pace goes up and down ( but not as dramatically as it would for intervals).

The important thing, simple games, have mini challenges and always do things slightly differently. I suppose that applies to all running but it is more important for the treadmill because you just don't have the chance to see the unexpected - like an alpaca.

Disassociation: Music and Memorials

Because of the weather I have been using the gym and running on the treadmill. In some ways it is good training because it forces me to trundle along at a set pace without slacking, and with no chance of being diverted by cows, swans or boats. The downside is that there are no diversions like cows, swans or boats and the treadmill is dull. I can only survive for any time by listening to my ipod.

I still have no favourite running tracks and no idea whether one type of music or rhythm is better than any other. The only thing that matters is that it offers some sort of amusement as its job is disassociation i.e. to keep your mind occupied away from the effort of running. For example by all objective criteria Nico's 'Frozen Warnings' must be one of the most useless running tracks, just about one rung down from John Cage's 4'33": it is slow, dirge like, no strong rhythm, with little tonal variation in her voice. It is, as the title suggests bleak, but haunting and somehow appropriate for the weather and so I think about the weather. Also one of the strange things about Nico's life is that this glamorous figure, ex-model, German exile, part of the Andy Warhol entourage, singer on the first Velvet Underground album, spent her last years sharing a house in Manchester (or Salford to be more precise). I then think of Manchester, which is good because I like Manchester. My daughter is at university there and I think of her. So everything is good and the song did its job - it kept me occupied. Next time it might just sound like a dirge and be totally useless.

The gym is OK but it is important to get outdoors. I still don't want to run because although some of the paths are now clear others are still icy or slushy, so I have been out walking. Although it does not give me the same sense of satisfaction it allows more time for looking and even more disassociation.

I have run past the object in the photo countless times, known it was there, thought of it as just some ornate street lamp, but paid it no real attention. Yesterday I stopped to look. The first surprise was that it was built as a drinking fountain. The second was that it had an inscription saying that it erected in 1835 to commemorate 300 years since the printing of the first English Bible. How wonderful is that? How many memorials are there to the Coverdale Bible in this country? I don't know but I now know we in Hemel Hempstead have one of them

Snow Again

Another snow day so another picture.

It is just a record of something in my garden and cannot really compete with Fit Artist who built a couple of beautiful snowmen. If I was going to give a prize of snow person of the week I would give it to her and use her picture to illustrate this rather silly article on snowmen fashion.

The weather makes me think of another thing I never quite got round to: increasing the insulation in my loft from 100mm to 270mm. So instead of running I will be doing something far more useful - scrambling about on my hands and knees trying to lay a carpet of insulation. Not so much cross training more a case of 'bolted horse door stable'.

Snow Day

On Monday the snow came and as this picture, from my window, shows the conditions for running were not good. However there were plenty of opportunities for fun. I could for example watch cars trying to struggle up the hill but there was not a lot of that as most people realised it was a waste of time and did not go anywhere. In some way it was as if people had been given a licence to relax and go-out and enjoy the conditions. The atmosphere was different from a normal weekend day, there was a greater feeling of camaraderie.

A very small example: I was walking down to town and clumping up the hill was a boy of about twelve, we were the only people on the street, and when we passed he looked up and said "wonderful weather isn't it". There was such enjoyment in his voice it made me feel good for the rest of the day.

Coming back I passed a gang of youths on a corner, hoods up, occupying space in a way that can look threatening. Except that when I passed they had sledges and plastic snow shovels and were reliving their tobogganing exploits. Again there was enjoyment in their voices. Again the world felt good.

Inside I listened to the news and everybody was talking about the weather. There were, of course, any number of miserable voices lamenting the lost hours of work. The most predictable, and depressing, comments were along the lines of: ' We are no better than a third world country', 'this is pathetic, a little bit of snow and the whole country seizes up', 'I travelled from Stockholm to the Artic and that train was five minutes early', 'it's the same every time why can't we cope?', 'when I was young we didn't close schools I can remember trudging across the fields', etc, etc, etc.

If something only happens once every 18 years (and with global warming, probably, less frequently than that, in future) it is not worth building the infrastructure to cope with it. Canada is a good example. Most of the country knows it will get snow, prepares for it, and can cope. Vancouver though has a climate like ours and this winter they also had heavy snow and just like us things got gummed up.

But it is no use arguing. If people want to be miserable, they will be miserable. Me I prefer to think of that twelve year old boy and how his eyes sparkled.

Next time I am out running I want to remember that joy , as a reminder of the excitement that comes from being outside and being active.