Making a point

I found this sign in Cornwall I think the owner of the store where we were wanted to make a point about his competition

Sensible idea

On a recent visit to Berlin I took the train into the town and noticed that whenever the train stopped at a station the connecting trains and buses were displayed on the monitors on my train. this is really helpful information, we should do it in the UK 

who is this training for?

The Hotel I was staying in at Montreal was running the above seminar, I assume it was an education seminar for the regulators and not an assistance for the people insider training !!

Not what was intended

whilst walking to the office in Montreal I walked past this truck sat with its engine idling in a recharge bay for electric cars, I am not sure this is what the city intended.

the next morning however all was well again and there was actually an electric car on charge. I have to say I never thought these things got used so have been proved wrong on that one

Going underground ...............

This week I am at an industry workgroup in Montreal my second favourite city in Canada after Vancouver. The weather is fantastic and I am trying to spend time outside. The same cannot be said about the weather in February when the population retreats inside and underground as much as possible. there are tunnels connecting the main buildings in the city so that you can move between them without the need to venture above ground into the snow and ice. at -25 degrees Celsius I would be staying inside as well !!  

Running the 10K

14 weeks after starting running again it was time to see if I could do the 10K run they were promising at the start of the course. The previous Wednesday I had went for my usual run and ran 9.54K when we arrived back at the club house so I continued round the field until my GPS ticked over the 10K mark and a 1 hour 13 minutes I had a personal best for the distance, Given that I had never run 10K before this was always going to be a personal best! I ran 7K on the Friday and found that to be a bit of a strain on my left leg and at after some consultation with “those in the know” discovered that I had a shin splint developing. The only thing to do with a shin splint is to rest it but with the 10K race on the Sunday rest was going to have to wait.   I woke up early on the day of the race and had breakfast at 6AM we left for the start at 9:30 with me feeling fine, normally I am standing around watching whilst my son goes through his warmup and this time I was joining him. The race briefing took place at 10:30 and then we walked a few hundred metres to the start arriving at 10:50. Optimistically putting myself near the sign for runners that were expecting to achieve a one hour time I like everyone else had to wait for the siren to go off at exactly 11AM. The race was down a disused railway track for 3KM around a local forest for 4KM and then back down the disused railway track before routing through a housing estate to the finish.  There were about 330 runners entered into the race which considering at best the biggest group I had run with previously was 20 was quite an experience, The first 2KM’s the track was very crowded and I managed to keep up with the faster members of my running course and then slowly in KM3 they started to pull away which I found disheartening. As I passed the KM4 marker I felt my left shin starting to hurt and started to walk briefly which caused it to tighten up so I started to run again, at the KM5 market the pain was getting worse and I started walking again. This time my lower left leg started to tighten up a lot and realising that I was as far away from the finish as I was ever going to be in the race and the fact that my son was running well ahead of me I decided it was going to have to be a mind over matter and started running again, I knew that even with the two stops I was keeping a pace for a time of about an hour. A huge part of running is mind over matter and just being able to tune out of the actual running. Given the rural area I live in I have never used music or headphones to distract me, and in any case they are banned in competitive races, so I started to focus my mind on things not related to running. By this time the field had spread out and I was running near a lady in a local running club top that stopped and as I passed she told me it was the hardest 10K she had run, this caused me to stop briefly but realising I had to run I started again and could hear her following me until she overtook me late in the race, with her gone I was mainly running on my own and as we turned back onto the disused railway train at 7KM I was determined to finish. My speed was slowing a little and my one hour time was looking unlikely but it was not slipping my much, I continued to keep running past the 8KM and 9KM markers and at that point started to believe I would actually achieve it, the final 1KMwas mainly uphill and as I ran into the housing estate I knew I was nearly finished, There were no other runners around at this point but the marshals were very encouraging at 200Meters to go I started to smile and I was hugely relieved to run under the finish line in a time of 1 hour four minutes and 30 seconds several of the running course that had already finished were there shouting encouragement. I then checked my GPS and saw to my horror that it had only recorded a distance of 9.96KM. I knew the course had been measured at 10KM so it was my GPS that was wrong but I equally knew it would not record my 10K time unless it believed I had done 10K, I put the device on pause and decided I would think about that later.  After getting some water and the obligatory “I finished the “insert name here” 10K shirt and cheering on the remaining beginners that had still to finish, I was still thinking about that to do with the GPS after device as we left the event when my son pointed out that the .04KM I was short was only 40 metres and with that I un paused it and ran 40 metres down the road. Now my tracking app has a little trophy next to the day as I have a new “PB” for a 10K run.

As an follow up to the story, It took me a couple of days before my legs settled down but I decided to go back to the running club on the Wednesday evening as I will be traveling for the next two weeks and I want to keep the running up. I was spot on time but most of the beginners had already left so I and a few others of us were pared up with the club’s elite runners on their 8K time trial that they do monthly. To my surprise I discovered that it was a 1KM run to the start line, having reached that we rested for a couple of minutes before starting, I already knew that my lower left leg was hurting again but I managed to keep up with them for the first kilometre before it was clear I was not going to be able to finish this, after 1.5Km I had been left behind by everyone so I decided to shortcut the course and cut back to the start point. I managed to keep up a jog / walk mix and got back after what I would reckon was a four KM run after about 25 minutes only to find that the first of the runners was already back. With that It was a jog / walk for the first KM back to the club house and home with my leg in some pain. Two days later my leg appears to have fully settled down and I am not sure how much of the pain came from me knowing I had been dropped after 1KM and how much was actual pain but I will give it another couple of days before I try again.