Watch Out Autumn’s About

It’s staying darker longer in the mornings, as Summer drifts towards Autumn, this darkness makes it that bit harder to get out of bed, particularly on the mornings I have an early start. Which reminds me that it’ll soon be getting darker earlier in the evening as well and it’ll be time to make sure I have enough high visibility clothing. I’m quite lucky, Ronhill produce some really good high visibility clothing and accessories and, as part of their support for Roger Alsop Personal Training, they supply me with enough to keep me visible in all the sessions I do outside.

If you run in the dark, or even semi-dark, it’s important that are visible and seen aas early as possible, particularly if you are running on the road. Having moved from Edinburgh to the countryside (when I lived in Hassall Green) it made me realise that cars travel fast down country lanes, not expecting to come across a runner in the road, so it’s even more important to be noticed early, I always recommend a high visibility jacket at any time of the day if your run takes you down country lanes.

But it’s not just the dark that poses Autumn danger for runner, you can also be sidelined by tree debris. Lots of things fall from the trees, branches, twigs, leaves, acorns and conkers, to name some. If you’re not paying attention you can land awkwardly on some of this debris and cause an injury. Leaves in particular can be a problem, they tend to collect in hollows, hiding potential dangers from view, I always recommend that people avoid treading on a pile of leaves as you never know what they’re hiding. Wet leaves can also be a problem, as you can slip on them very easily, particularly if going downhill.

One other thing to watch out for in the dark, overhanging branches, with the leaves having been dropped it’s not always easy to see thin branches as they protrude into the street. On a number of occasions I’ve been running along a street and taken a direct hit in the head from an overhanging branch, blood has been drawn and I’ve even taken a nasty poke in the eye, but thankfully no lasting damage. Be alert to these dangers.

The start of Autumn isn’t all bad, it also heralds the start of the cross country season. Now I know that school cross country running has been the cause of many an adult having a psychological fear of running but there are many people, like myself, who absolutely love it. Ok love is perhaps too strong a word for me, in fact I absolutely hated every minute of this year’s National Cross Country Champs (which you’ll recall is the first blog I wrote about), but there is a certain smell about early season cross country (and I don’t mean sweaty competitors), plus you can get some really nice sunny and dry conditions and some venues are actually really beautiful to run around. But the main thing I like about it is the camaraderie, not just with your team mates but with your opposition too, sure you’re out to beat them but it’s in a nice way, like beating your mates in a kickabout. As I live about 200 miles away from my club I don’t get to do much cross country these days and it is the one thing I miss most about not living in London, or Edinburgh for that matter. In fact I want to see if I can run in a local league as a guest, but then that lacks the team element might still make it like running a road race. Having said that, and I can only really vouch for Pennington Flash, but I feel like the atmosphere at Parkruns comes very close to that of cross country as it’s often the same people week after week at the same venue, and whilst still trying to beat others you’re always happy to see someone else have a good run.

This week I returned to proper running training. I’m still not doing as much as I was 4 weeks ago, I’ve been quite busy with new clients and housey things, but at least I’m able to do quality training. I didn’t do any core or strength work during that first week  but I’ve started that this week. In fact on day 4 of my return I was doing a Yasso session with Ray. This involved running 10 x 800m with 400m recovery and the principle is that you get an idea, from it, of what you could do in a marathon. With Ray due to run the Chester marathon in less than three weeks he was keen to see what he should be aiming for. It turned out pretty good, Ray has come on hugely since I first met him, there is no way I could have considered doing this session with him 6 months ago but on Tuesday he managed to average 3:23 for the 800m reps. Now I think that’s pretty damn good, and as I was running them with Ray it gave me a good session too. Incidentally I’ve just picked up another client looking to improve from a 38 minute 10k, so I’m going to be training pretty hard over the next few weeks, just to keep up with my clients. As I’ve mentioned, in a previous blog, there’s a limit to how many clients I can run with and I’m getting close to that limit, so better book me up soon if you want to Run with Rog.

On Saturday we decided to go to Pennington Flash Parkrun, I had wanted to go the previous week but my back injury put paid to that. It was a reasonable start to the day as Ray, Carole and I set off. It had rained quite a lot over the week and we were expecting some mud, but it has been wet before and there was always a way to avoid the worst of the mud. However conditions on Saturday were the worst I’ve seen them and I have to admit to treading gingerly in a few places, almost coming to a standstill at the bottom of the grass hill as I tried to avoid falling over. This coupled with a slight loss of fitness gave me my slowest time around the 5k run, 17:50. Still good enough for 2^nd place but not good enough to avoid ruining my average. Oh well it’s only a statistic. I was beaten by youngster, Matthew Crehan, who comes from a long lineage of very good Crehan runners and I’m sure he’ll be producing some great results as he builds up his fitness. As I slip into old age I’ll be able to watch him from afar as I slip down the field. Carole had one of her better runs but it was Ray who surprised us all by setting a personal best on the course, that marathon training is turning him into a powerhouse. Unfortunately Ray twisted his back on the mud and is having to consider his training carefully, in his lead up to the marathon. Hopefully no lasting damage. 

On Saturday night I went to the Northwich beer festival. I’d arranged to go with Ray but Ray had to call off, due to his back. I’ve only ever been to beer festivals during my time living in Germany and they do them very well, so as it was local I thought I’d give it a shot. Well it was a really good laugh, some of the beer was really nice though some was a bit disappointing. Still it all went down. There was a group called Cheeky Monkey playing throughout the night and they were pretty good too, playing punkish style versions of many 80’s hits – took me almost back to my schooldays, though not completely otherwise I’d have been drunk after two pints. 

Complete Nutritional Meal Planning Package

This week I wanted to tell you about a new nutritional meal planning package that Roger Alsop Personal Training is promoting. Now I know blogs aren’t supposed to be about product promotion but I hope you’ll forgive me as I’ve written so many about running I wanted to focus on something else this week. This particular package helps you to plan your meals around your goals and dietary requirements. It’s not about restrictive dieting, but about eating real food and once you’re familiar with the process it should add to your weekly food shop planning exercise.

The tool allows you to set your own preferences, omitting foods you don’t like and even create your own recipes, should you want to. Once you’ve gone through the initial setup and dietary preferences it can create a meal plan for you, which can then be converted into a shopping list. You then track your progress against your goals. It has other resources too, calculating how many calories you burn off during exercises, and it’s growing all the time.

Promotion over, take a look at www.rogeralsop.co.uk/nutrition for more info, and a video. If you’re interested get in touch, I’m in the process of creating paypal for it, so that should be available soon. Oh and I’ve set the price quite low, initially, because it’s a new concept.  

I know there are some regular readers of this blog, so another apology from me, because there wasn’t one last week. I decided it was time for me to treat Carole and myself to a romantic break, so I went away for 10 days. It was a little bit like history repeating itself for me as I revisited places I’d been to before, but they were all new for Carole and they’re really nice places to visit anytime. As you’ll know, I may take holidays from Cheshire but I don’t take holidays from training, however I made the decision to give myself a little break, maybe take a few days off and on the days I trained to just train at ticking over level – but it didn’t all go to plan.

We went to Slovenia, starting in Kranjska Gora, where I had been skiing back in ’92. It’s a lovely little town with very little to do, except walk up big hills, which of course we did. We had a great view of the mountains from our hotel balcony but I’ll admit now that I was a little less impressed with the food at this hotel. We stayed here for 3 days and I did two runs, running up to the Jasna lakes, using minute reps with 30 second recoveries to justify only doing about 35 minutes of running.

After 3 days we moved onto, what I consider to be the most romantic place I’ve been to, Bled. Bled is a real attractive resort with a lake, castle and island. Have a search on the internet for pictures of it, if you don’t believe me (I would put some of ours up but I’ve been too busy setting up the nutrition package to look for the camera). I stayed here in 1997, I’d just started running again after fracturing my foot, and found the 4 mile circuit around the lake pretty good for training. This time however there was a small problem I hadn’t anticipated. The World Rowing Championships were being held on the week we were there. Whilst it was pretty good mixing with so many elite athletes, just like at Pennington Flash, it did mean a portion of the Lake road was sealed off and the diversion took you up a steep hill, adding a further mile onto the run. However, to be honest, it was just what I needed, allowing me to, justifiable stretch out my run a little further and make it more of a workout. After a few days I did get a little problem with my Achilles, but changing my shoes to a lower heel seemed to have cured that, I’d better keep my eye on that though.

I’d really gone to town this time, staying at the Grand Hotel Toplice, last time I was here I was staying lower class but went to the bar, which has huge bowed windows with a spectacular view, for a drink each night. Another plus was the fact we had a balcony on the lake side of the hotel. Carole was impressed, and so was I. The hotel was great and, unlike the previous hotel, the food was pretty damn good too, if a little strange at times. One of the other nice things about this hotel is that it has a pool fed from natural springs, but boy is it cold. I remember last time I couldn’t face getting in but this time I braved the elements and followed up with a sauna. It was in the pool I got chatting to Canadian, Ron Gibson, who’s son, Robbie, was in the Canadian 8. They ended up with bronze, with Germany getting the gold and Great Britain the silver. Ron was leaving before the end of the week and passed on his tickets to me so that we enjoyed a day at the races, on the Friday. I also had a brief conversation with Quin Batten, former rowing gold medallist, who just happened to be having breakfast at the same time as me one day.

Of course, being out of the country meant missing out on a few things, like the rain. We missed most of the World Athletics Champs, we tried our best to catch up with the highlights but Eurosport’s coverage was pretty dire, I was particularly disappointed when they concentrated on field events whilst Mo Farah was trying to win the 10000m. Thankfully we got back home in time to see him win the gold in the 5000m, better coverage from Channel 4 but still not up to the standard we’re used to. Good to see a gold for Dai Greene too, in the 400mh. One other thing I missed was the 6 month anniversary of the Pennington Flash Parkrun, but I understand my age grading rival, Jeff Whittington, won the race, again stretching his lead even more in the age graded tables.

I woke up this morning raring to go, I was wide awake, the sun was shining, my Ronhill test kit was washed, and then I did a stupid thing….I bent over, somehow I must have twisted as I reached for my shorts and my back went into a spasm. After a few exercises it was clear I wouldn’t recommend myself to run, hopefully It’ll be ok for tomorrow when I have a number of clients to service, it doesn’t help that I also ice burned it, despite using a tea towel, and now have a very unpleasant red raised area on my back – still it could have been worse, at least I got out of mowing the lawn.