Kielder lakeside way

Posted on September 19, 2010 by admin

The Kielder Lakeside Way is a full Marathon length track around Kielder Reservoir in Northumberland. When it opened over a year ago I took a run around the first section of the course and I have to say I was very impressed with the design of the trail. The designers had managed to pretty much keep to the edge of the lake all the way around, but had incorporated elements of the forest and a few little hills and not only added new bridges, but also a number of pieces of public art.

kielder lakeside way image

As one of my last long runs before heading off to the Himalaya’s I went back and revisited the course this week, this time completing the entire 26.4 miles.

If anything I was even more impressed, there were now mile markers every mile and some sculptures that weren’t quite finished last time were now complete, my favourite sculpture was the giant designer chairs looking out over the lake I think I could quite happily have stopped and had a lie down on those.

The trail is now quite established and has sort of mellowed down nicely into its surroundings last time it was still a bit shinny and new and stood out a little bit as something man made in the middle of the countryside.

The first official kielder marathon is due to take place in October, and while i won’t be able to run it as i’ll be tapering for India, it looks set to be a fantastic event.

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I think I killed my Asics

Posted on September 17, 2010 by admin

When I started to think about running the Himalayan 100 back in around April i had just bought a pair of Asics 3010 gels. I paid a little more for the 3010′s, as I knew I would be putting in a lot of miles this year and  the guy in the shop said that the 3010′s had a little more cushioning that my previous Asics, but they were still a good pronation trailer.

According to most shoe manufacturer’s and running magazines, you should replace your trainers every 3-400 miles, and that the mid sole which can’t be seen but ads the shock absorbency will be gone long before the tread on the bottom of your shoes. I managed to get just under 800 miles out of my Asics and if it wasn’t for having actualy wore the soles out i’d still be running in them.

So was I crazy to ignore the shoe manufactures and run twice as far in my Asics as I should have? The recent popularity of Chris McDougall’s book ‘born to run’, and the associated increase in Barefoot running, would seem to suggest the opposite.

Apparently your brain like to feel your feet landing, so if you try to protect your feet with shock absorbing trainers, your brain simply makes you slam your feet down harder to get the responses it requires. This is especially so for people like me that pronate, landing on your toes not your heals takes a lot of the impact out of landing.

These are my 5th pair of Asics in a row, i’ve been wearing them since i ran my first marathon a few years ago, and i guess i keep coming back to them because they just seem to fit my feet really well, i can wear them straight out of the box and run in them until i can’t run any further. I’m hoping my latest purchase will last me another 800 miles and i’ll not be needing to make another visit to the sports shop until next April!

As i wrote this post, I’ve been thinking about trainers and favourites. I don’t think i have a favourite pair of trainers of all time, but i certainly do remember my first pair of trainers, they were bright green Nikes i got them from school, in the late 70′s road running had not quite taken off and sports shops didn’t sell the kind of running shoes they do today, it was either football boots, spikes or tennis shoes in those days…its a very different story today.

Do you have a  favourite pair of trainers, and what made/makes them special?

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Running faster!

Posted on September 14, 2010 by admin

Before signing up to the Himalayan 100, I had always ran, but it was mainly the odd Sunday morning run or a day out in the Lakes, and i’d never really been one for training or club running as such.

This had to change when I signed up for the Himalayan 100, I had to started to take training more seriously, a lot more seriously!… after all 100 miles is a long way, and to do it in the Himalaya’s at an Altitude of 6,500-12,500 feet was going to make it an even greater challenge.

Its often been said that you become good at what you train to do, so with only around 20 weeks between signing up and the race, I really had to decide what it was i needed to concentrate my training on. I decided I only really  had time to concentrate on 2 things distance and hills.

What this boiled down to was running 40-50 miles a week, including something with some hills at the weekend, with a couple of trips over to the Lake District when i could fit it in.

You can imagine my surprise then, when I recently started looking at my times for the year, i’m running faster than i’ve ever ran, and at practically every distance. The strange thing is, still i haven’t done any speed work at all, no sprinting, no intervals, very few races this year.

Could this be down to simply being fitter, or could it be that my running style has improved with all the running i’ve put in, or possibly that i’ve picked it up from reading books like ‘born to run’. Whatever it is though, i’m definitely liking it.

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Crossing the 1000 mile mark

Posted on September 7, 2010 by admin

Today is a pretty big day for me, for the first time ever i’ve clocked up over a thousand miles in a year, nearly three times more that i did in the whole of last year (and we still have 3 months to go this year).

I know its a bit of a random thing to celebrate reaching a particular number of miles, but 1000 just seems to be a bit of a landmark and I have to admit to being a bit of a stats freak, religiously logging my runs on not one but three running sites.

The 1000 miles has included: 25 runs to or from work, 11 circuits of the “peter’s pies 6 tyne bridges run”, 6 runs between railway stations, 2 marathons and half a dozen fell races. In total i’ve ran for just over 171 hours, listened to about 3000 track on my ipod, worn out two pairs of trainers, and made a few new friends along the way.

Now if that is not worthy a bit of sponsorship for the Eve appeal I don’t know what is…. www.justgiving.com/davidcoxon

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3 things to lift your spirits and keep you running

Posted on September 5, 2010 by admin

Although I love running most of the time, training for a big run like the himalayan 100 means you have to put in the miles, and you often end up running the same old routes listening to the same old playlists day after day and week after week. Over time this can really wear you down.

I got to the point a couple of weeks ago, where I was starting to get really bored with my running, and finding it hard to put my trainers on and get out for a run, but three things got me back into my stride.

motivation image

First was the support of fellow runners on sites like the dailymile. I posted a comment on how I was struggling to get motivated, and almost immediately I received messages of support and bits of friendly advice to keep me going. I’ve used a couple of websites to track my training, fetcheveryone is another good one (although it doesn’t link to my nikeplus) and NikePlus (although it doesn’t quite live up to its potential as far as community goes) but at the moment dailymile is my favourite. It seems to be largely an American site, but it has a really community feel and a great mix of people with a lot of ultra and trail runs, there are also a handful of local runners on there that share there routes and race details.

The second thing that made a big difference was taking a week off running my regular routes to and from work, and doing some trail runs that i love. A sort of back to basics week,  just enjoying the runs and not worrying about how many miles I need to get in or what time i do them.

Finally I spent a couple of hours creating a whole new playlist on itunes. I use my ipod nano and nike plus to track my times and mileages, so I tend to listen to my ipod as i run. Its quite surprising how refreshing something as simple as having a new playlists can be, some of the tracks were recommendations from runners on dailymile others were tracks from my library that i hadn’t listened to in a while. I’m even thinking of creating a set of playlist for the himalayan run, and getting some friends to record motivating messages for me for those 10,000 meter ascent days.

Another great way to recharge your running mojo is to read something like ‘feet in the clouds’ or ‘born to run’, these are 2 of the books that got be into fell running and ultras in the first place and are a great reminder of everything i love about running.

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Fundraising gets a boost from Boots

Posted on August 18, 2010 by admin

We got some great news today from Lucinda’s work. Boots are going to match any donations we get for Macmillan up to £500. Macmillan Cancer Support one of the two charities than we are supporting and are also one Boots nominated charities.

Lucinda’s colleague have already already been really supportive of the project and have always been very generous in the past, but with this boost from Boots there donations will now go twice as far.

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Profiling the run

Posted on August 15, 2010 by admin

With less than 10 weeks to go, I only have about 6 weeks of proper training left before i need to start tapering down ready for the race. But should i be spending my remaining time just just getting random miles in or should I be hitting the hills.

Well one way to try and make that decision is to produce an altitude profile. I’ve created altitude profiles before for fell races, using the grid lines on ordinance survey maps to produce quide accurate guides to a races ups and down helping be decide when i can run a bit faster and when to hang back.

Its a bit harder for an run like the Himilayan 100 mile race, as getting an accurate map is a bit tricky to say the least. So i spent a few hours today pouring over itineraries, maps and blogs trying to put together as accurate a profile as i could for the 5 days.

altitude profile fro the hiliayan 100 mile stage race

Judging by this pretty crude profile it looks like be thrown in at the deep end when it comes to ascents, will be around 10,000 feet of climbing on the first day alone, day 2 and 3 are long hauls, but the climbing doesn’t look too bad, but it looks like we’ll be finishing on a high with a return to the hills on shorter days 4 and 5. So with that in mind i’m going to split my time between longer runs and hill work with maybe a tough weekend of  back to backs in the lakes getting in some serious hill work.

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Corporate sponsors needed

Posted on August 13, 2010 by admin

Now that the new look run blog is up and running, we have some exciting opportunities for corporate sponsorships.

t-shirt printed with logos

If you’d to help the fight against Gynaecological Cancers, support the Eve Appeal, and see you logo at the bottom of this blog’s pages, or on my running tops, please get in touch.

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Now open for business

Posted on August 13, 2010 by admin

I hope that you are enjoying the new look running pages. I’ve finally got around to drawing together the hi-lights of the dailymile, the just giving site, and fetch blog, and rewrote some of the old posts and notes i’ve had floating around.

Hopefully the new site should give you a better idea of how the training is going and keep you more up to date with the plans for the himilayan run. With a bit of luck i’ll also be able to attract a couple more corporate sponsors and be able to use it as a focal point for the upcoming press coverage.

It’d be really great to get some feed back from you the readers. What do you think? Is it useful? Is there anything else you’d like to see? Is there anything you love or hate? Anything you’d like to change? It would be fantastic if you could leave a comment and let me know.

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Back to borrowdale

Posted on August 12, 2010 by admin

I successfully completed my first full Borrowdale fell race this weekend. I’ve ran Borrowdale twice before, but never completed to entire course, So this was quite an achievement.

The first time i tried getting around Borrowdale, was just after taking up fell running, i had no idea what i was taking on. At the bottom of great cable I met the legendary Joss Naylor for the first time, he look one look at me and said ‘ladd if you don’t lengthen your stride your never gonna make the cut off”, he was quite right of course, I missed the cut off on Honister pass my a good 25 minutes, and rode uncerimoniusly back to the start in the back of a passing builders van. The second time was in 2007, when the mountain rescue manning the checkpoint at Scafell summit, rule the weather conditions were too poor to allow runners to attempt it, and the course had to be shorted to miss that section.

borrowdale

Borrowdale is a Lakeland legend, not only because its one of the older races, or because its one of the ‘Lakeland classic series’, nor because of the length or steepness, but because in order to get around it in a decent time, you need to use all of your fell running skills. Its quite often misty with poor visability – so you need to be able to navigate, its a long and steep – so you want to carry as little water as you can, topping up from streams on the way around, and then there’s the strategy of knowing the hills and picking the right route for the day, with various runners trods to choose from you have to decide between taking a short cut that may save you a few hundred feet but could end up a bog that will slow you uo and drain your energy.

As borrowdale will be the closest i’ll get to running the kind of hills i’ll face in india, I followed it up with a series of running to or from work this week, clocking up around 76 miles in total, and getting by stats for august back on track, with a bit of luck i’ll fit in another Lakeland Classic in September before starting to tapper down, for the Himalayas.

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