No. 1 Running Log Sept 2025

 So I'm 65. Most of the blokes in my family don't get to 66, but they smoked, drunk and ate Bacon and other crap food. Hopefully, having seen that happening around me, particularly my favourite Uncle dying aged 40 out of nowhere leaving a wife and two small boys, I kind of took notice. 

So over the years I've generally had a decent diet and it's one of the more important aspects of our family life - eat well. But in the last 5 years or so I've been diganosed as having high blood pressure for which I'm taking Amlodipine. Originally 5mg and then 10mg and then I made efforts to reduce my blood pressure holistically and recently at the last check the dosage was brought down to 5mg. 

But this July I had a blood test and I got a call from my Dr saying that your Cholesterol is a little high, when you got to get your Amlodipine, there'll be a bunch of statins. Take these and we'll see how you're doing in October. 

I've watched a lot of stuff on Statins and have seen that you might be able to regulate and reduce your cholesterol by life style changes. So since then I've been making adjustments to my diet and doing more exercise with the hope that come October the Drs do another blood test and come back with 'Guess what mate... the Statins have done the job, these will now be part of your daily life along with the Amlodipine'. Hopefully, I'll be able to turn around and say "Ha ha! I've not touched the Statins, I'm just eating better and doing more exercise".

Whether that happens remains to be seen, but in the meantime I've started to run and my older son Ben who runs advised me from the start to buy some proper running shoes otherwise I'm going to end up with knackered knees. So I've bought myself some Hoka Challenger 8's which cost £140 - most I've spent on footwear ever. But, to be fair they make it so you feel like you're running across a mattress.

When I was younger our family never had a car, so I ran and walked everywhere if it wasn't further than about 3 miles. If I ever felt unfit or bored I'd go for a run to kill an hour or so or just to test out my fitness levels. For a winter or two I did orienteering with a mate and we were pretty fast at that and at school I would alway place in the top 3 on cross country runs in PE.

But as I got older I did less of it and if I ever did it for fitness purposes it bored the living hell out of me in the same way as going back and forth in a swimming pool does. But with this desire to live a few more years and play cricket into my 70's this kind of fits in with the whole health and fitness agenda. So since August I've been running sporadically.

I've been trying to work out what routes I like and which ones are going to be usable in the winter. I have another aspect to the running, ideally I want to do it after work and for it not to be something that gets in the way of other aspects of my life. With this in mind these last couple of months I've been doing this route here above which is around 7KM. I get on the train at Southend and then get off at Leigh-On-Sea and run to Benfleet along the creek. This is my favourite route in terms of the desolation and the fact that I'm not breathing diesel and petrol fumes. More on this later.

Initially I wasn't set on beating times and what have, but it was very apparent from day one that my ability to run continuously over any distance - even 400 yards was gone and so I went to a technique I used in previous summers - interval training. I run for a short period of time and then rest for an extended period, when I say rest, I mean I'm walking as fast as I possibly can for around 2 mins at the start. 

Since then I bought a chest heart monitor and a belt to put my phone in which allows me access to a bunch of data and then I got Strava https://www.strava.com/athletes/147680321 and then things started to get interesting. Remember, I don't really enjoy this a great deal, but as someone pointed out to me - this is similar to your obsession with your wrist-spin bowling and cricket data, which is true. So now when I run, I'm able to look at the data and analyse the results and see if I'm improving and that for me is interesting and hooks me in. 

The most local run is a shorter run in the local woods 'Marks Wood'...

The last time I did this one was back In August. At the time I set a series of PB's...

These PB's have all been beaten since on longer road runs, but the run I've done on Sept the 16th on this same route "Marks Wood" if compared shows improvement, which is what I'm looking at and pleased with.

This route around the woods is more like cross-country and involves rough terrain and hills.

So tonight the details are...

Another thing I'm looking at and comparing is my recovery rate. Yesterday I was a bit disorganised as I approached my house what with getting my phone out ready to turn off the Strava app used for recording the times. As a consequence the final section where I run fast and try and get my heart rate up to maximum rate was a little short, so it only got as high as 122bpm . Despite that it dropped to 99bpm within a minute and 82bpm within 2 mins which is very good for someone my age. 

https://www.strava.com/activities/15833451843