Taming the hedge

When the neighbour and I had the top of the hedge chopped off, you suddenly got a rather good view on it from above. I noticed just how asymmetrical it was! My neighbour keeps it rather trim, but I had let it grow out way more. And that is not itself surprising; my neighbour is a lot more meticulous at matters like that than I am. But now it became glaringly obvious!

It irked me, so on the Thursday of the Easter holiday I decided to do something about it. I was aware it was spring, and the beeches would grow leaves soon, and I would be cutting off a lot of buds, but I am sure there will be sufficient left. I have faith it will manage to grow a fine set of leaves. 

In the future I might even cut it back a little bit more. But for now I’m satisfied. And it also means I have gained more access to the raised bed next to it. I am thinking of moving a big shrub out of it. If I do, that would be a lot easier now with the smaller hedge! 

Not sure it is obvious in this pic how far I cut it back

Lots of branches

Downhill training

I am scared of speed! You should see me skiing. And I'm scared of spraining a knee or an ankle on uneven terrain. So if you combine both, running speedily downhill on uneven terrain, you have several of my fears combined. It is not surprising I am absolutely rubbish at it. 

One night on the track I heard that the club training on the Monday night would organise a session on downhill running, led by our youth trainer Neal. That sounded amazing! I don't normally go to the Monday evening training, for a session like that I would make an exception.

When I saw the announcement I immediately registered. There is no good way of avoiding downhill running! You can, of course, do only flat races, but I like going up. And unless you are doing the Snowdon Twilight, or an uphill-only leg of the Welsh Castles Relay, what goes up must come down. And it does annoy me that I am so slow downhill. But I also have such a strong history of spraining knees and ankles it is only natural. 

The announcement came quicker than I expected, and I was glad I had bought my new shoes on time! They would come in handy. 

There was a good crew of us. And when Neal figured we were all there, we ran up to a field that is part of my standard off-road run, and also contains my hill rep incline which is also the finish of Ras Moel Wnion. And we did some general exercises that we could also do ourselves. Things like standing on one leg and then doing balance challenges like touching your knee with your nose. And at the same time, Neal talked us through a bit of theory. And then it was time to start properly. We were asked to pair up, and I did so with a lady called Tina I didn’t know before. 

Group pic by Nia

Neal orating; pic by Nia

Balance exercise 

We started with running some loops. One half of a pair first, while the other observed, and then we swapped. First just without instruction. Then when making a concerted effort to lean forward. Then with long strides. And short strides. And variations on that. 

It was quite useful to have an observer. We saw things the other person was not aware of. She mainly saw my fear! And that was exactly why I was there. But she said I was going faster with the passing of time. Maybe I was gaining some confidence! And then we moved to a deeper bit of terrain. Then we did some more running down. But it was scarily steep and I stayed within my comfort zone. I didn't want to sprain anything!

We then did some exercises with what looks like a rope ladder. This is for forcing you to take very short steps. And then Neal started to add little cones to restrict where we could put our feet. There was a lot of skipping going on! That was fun. The one thing that scared me was if I was behind someone with big feet, and they struggle to keep their feet between the rungs of the ladder, and kicked it. I don't want to be pulled over by a moving ladder!

It was getting late and we moved to do the final exercise of the night. We went to the incline. We all trundled up, and then we ran down. I normally walk down it! I did run, but with my familiar very short steps, and low speed. That thing is steep!

The only thing we needed to do was run back to the cars. An evening well spent! I think my spotter was right; I did build a tiny little bit of confidence. If I do this sort of thing a bit more often, I might increase it a bit further still. Who knows! I don't think I'll ever be really confident; I can't really forget decades of spraining my knees. But I think I can reasonably gain a bit of confidence without endangering myself! 

Llandudno 10 miler

The first day of the Easter break I could just relax. And the second day I would have the biggest race in my diary! The one where I had been asked to race for North Wales. I took that seriously.

It was not going to be an easy race. The distance and the route were fine, but the weather forecast was atrocious. A lot of rain and wind! But so be it. And it probably wouldn't help that the night before, the clocks would go forward, and it had a morning start. 

I woke up in Llandudno. The clock change hadn't affected me. And it wasn't raining! That was good news. But there was a lot of wind. I had my breakfast, and Neil and I walked down to the start. That was some 30 minutes. I first went to the loo, and then I went looking for Paul, the NWRAC official, who would have my race number. The rest of the team also flocked to him, so I got to meet them. There had only been two that I already knew; one from the club and one from the track, and now I heard there had been an addition to the team: very fast Menai Track and Field runner Steffan. But we had lost a lady; she had fallen ill the night before.

I did a little warming up with two others from the team, and then I got ready. When we were lining up by the start I found myself, again, starting next to, and expecting to be left in the dust by, Olivia. And now it started raining.

The team before the race (minus Jane who was on the loo)

Because of the heavy wind we would run an alternative route. This race was supposed to incorporate the Llandudno pier, but that had been changed. I'm not sure what the safety considerations are that made them take that landmark off the route, but off the route it was.

A view we didn’t get. Neil and I recce’d the Pier the (sunny) day before

We would first run over the promenade in the direction of the pier, turn around, do most of the Pier to Pier route, turn around again, run back to the the start and beyond, turn around one last time, and then run approximately a kilometre back and then finish. 

Right at the start, a lot of people run away from me, including the entire rest of the team, and Olivia. I didn't want to start too fast. After the first turn we had the wind approximately in the back. That was nice! And I happily trundled towards the little Orme, and down on the other side. I could still see Jane, another lady in the team. She was the other 50+ runner.

Someone else I could see was Gruff, a young Harrier. He must not have had his day. Normally, he is faster than me! I could remember the days when he was so young that that wasn't the case, but these days are definitely over. Nevertheless, I overtook him close to the turning around point, but he was not having that, and just accelerated enough to stay in front of me.

I had a feeling he was getting in my way, so I overtook again. This time he let me. And that brought me close to Jane. Then there was a little repeat. She wasn't having me overtaking her! But she sped up sufficiently to get ahead of me, and start increasing the distance.

With not much distance between us we ran over the Orme again. And we bumped into Tony, the decorated Harrier. He was not in the race; he was just doing a normal Sunday run in the other direction. I got a high-five!

When we had run down the Little Orme, we lost all shelter from the wind. It was quite a battle fight against it! Jane was doing better than me and increased the distance. And I was really looking forward to the turning around point. It seemed so far away! 

When I finally reached it, things got easier. I now had the wind in the back and could accelerate. And I did! I really wanted to run a personal best, and also, I could now throw everything out that I had. Exhausting yourself is fine in the last kilometre!

Almost there

There was still disruptive wind. It was largely behind me, but sometimes it came from the side. At some point I was blown several litres off course by some serious gusting. But I could tell that personal best was within reach. This could be the first 50+ PB of which I hoped I could achieve a whole list. It wasn't a tight PB at all; there are few 10 mile races around, and it had been set last year when I was mainly trying out my knees. But on a flatter course in better weather. My time then had been 1:16:13. I now came over the finish line at 1:13:42. Success! And 18 seconds after Jane.

Neil immediately found me, and together we quickly went inside. I wanted to get out of that wind and rain. Venue Cymru was race HQ and it was warm in there. Together we waited for the presentation.

In a way, it was a highly unsuccessful race. Since moving to the 50+ category, I had won a category win in every regular race so far. Now I was only third! And Jane, obviously, second. But I was still chuffed. And as this was a North Wales championship, and the fastest woman over 50 wasn't based in Wales, I did nab a silver NWRAC medal.

What about North Wales team? Well! The men came second after Staffordshire and before Cheshire. We as women came third and last. It turned out we had lost a very fast runner to an injury. So there were only four finishers; the first two had done really really well, coming 2nd and 5th, and the other two were Jane and me, bringing up the rear of the entire team. Not that we weren’t doing well! As 14th and 15th woman (out of 150), and 10 years older than the others, I think we did fine. Staffordshire had 5 runners in the top 10, including on the top spot. With a 55+ coming 3rd! That’s impressive. Not sure about Cheshire as their fastest woman came 6th as far as I could see, but I’m sure it all makes sense. 

It turned out I had been 46th person overall, out of 258. I was quite pleased with that!

I now only had one race in the diary for the next month: the Trawsfynydd race. I hoped there would be some last-minute additions. And if not, maybe I would have to do Parkrun again to get my fix!

 

Reaching Easter

It had been a couple of very full-on weeks. There is a sizeable amount of background work to do, and if you have to squeeze it in between practicals, student presentations, field trips, and even a PhD viva, it's hard work. There is, of course, the work that you know you need to do, like providing students feedback, doing journal reviews, and organising the dissertation presentation conference, but sometimes you get such a load of emails while you are away from your desk for several hours, all demanding more work, that you start lagging more and more behind.

All the last Friday before the Easter break, when we don't teach the students, I was walking from lunch back to the office with a colleague, and he asked me if I had some running injury. I asked if he thought I was limping. He just said he thought I was very slow. That was just how tired I was! And I'm sure he was worse, but at least I could not detect it in how he moved from building to building.

That afternoon I came home and I was very relieved that now I would get three weeks in which I could catch up on the backlog. And organise my time the way I see fit. There is very little timetabled now. 

I suppose one of the most important things I need to get out of the way now is organising the student presentation conference. I hadn't got very far with that yet. But I can start with doing something about that straight away on Monday morning. I'm sure I'll be making good progress with that.

Reaching Easter is always an important milestone of the year. And I've done it!

New trail/fell shoes

I started running more than 15 years ago, but I'm still only on my second pair of trail/fell shoes. I suppose there are two reasons for that. One is that you just don't wear them out so quickly; mud and grass are hardly as abrasive as asphalt. The other one is that I am predominantly a road runner. I have worn out so many road shoes over the years!

I bought my first pair of off-road shoes in a shop. I just bought the ones with the biggest lugs they had. But later I developed a habit of buying my shoes secondhand, and my second pair (bought just before a trail 10k) was a bit less luggy. But I really like grip. So when these shoes were showing signs of old age, I decided my next pair should be more grippy.

I am in the position to try several of them out. On a fairly regular basis, there is a demo event where we can borrow a particular (new) model of trail shoes and try it out on the hill. I had really liked the Inov8 mud claws. I hadn't bought a pair at the end of the event, as I wanted to try both the regular model and the wide one. Maybe they could have provided me with that, but among the shoes I could see these options are not available. I probably should have been a bit more proactive! 

With spring well on its way, I figured we would soon go back off the road on the Thursday nights. I should be ready for that, with new shoes. I intended to they just get to Llanberis early enough one Thursday to get there before the shop close, and sort out my mud claws. But then there suddenly was a demo event of Altra. The shoes were fine, but not quite what I wanted to buy. But after the run but before the prize draw, I had a mooch in the rest of the shop. And I noticed that there was a sale going on with running shoes. And there were some seriously grippy models! And they had my size. I suppose everybody in the world has bigger feet than me.

I tried the two grippiest shoes. The pretty one didn't have a good fit. The ugly one did! And prettiness doesn't matter. And the people in the shop were totally fine with selling me a pair of shoes that were not Altras. So now I am sorted! Sorry Inov8. Maybe next time. And wish me luck in the new off-road season!

To the physio for unusual reasons

I've been going to the physio for almost two years now. It normally is something to do with some part of my legs. My ankle, my knee, my hip… but now something was different. 

For some reason, I had been feeling a niggle in my elbow. No idea where it came from! But then again, I had no idea where my hip issue had come from either. Maybe I'm just getting old. And it wasn't a big problem, but I had a caving weekend coming up. That could involve a fair amount of rope work, and for that you need your arms. I thought I had better get me some exercises before that would happen. Luckily, Adam could fit me in.

He seemed to find it funny that I turned out to have a golf elbow. It certainly has nothing to do with golf! But he must've seen this many times before, and he knew what exercises to give me. Most of them involve a rubbery cylinder I had borrowed from Neil, because he has been struggling with the same injury in the past. So now I can try to get myself back to normal before the caving weekend hits. Or at least part of the way! 

One of the exercises: the metronome 

Beach trip with better weather than expected

After the beautifully sunny and calm trip to Cwm Idwal, the trip to Red Wharf Bay could almost only be a bit of an anticlimax. And the weather forecast was rain and wind. One of my colleagues even emailed me the day before to check if it would even take place. But I thought it would be OK. 

On the day, it was actually sunny when I arrived on main campus to wait for the coach. That was a bonus! And it was still sunny when we arrived on location. It was rather windy, and the wind was quite cold, but it was quite doable. 

I had a rather responsive group, but I was a bit worried to notice they hadn't remembered an awful lot of the material. They would have to do a lot of revision before the exam in May! But maybe that's normal.

We talk to them about all the evidence of the tectonic and sedimentary processes from the Silurian to the Carboniferous you can spot there, and then some from the last Ice Age. And then we were basically done. A little bit early! The weather had held the entire time. And the coaches hadn't gone anywhere, so we could just go back to campus a bit earlier than timetabled. I had been a bit worried about this trip, but in the end was lovely!

Lovely rock

Heading back