Today is a running day (and a netball day). I had a grand plan for today's run but, as it turned out, I had less time available than I had hoped and so had to shorten my session a bit (which was good because I have found that I despise running but bad because I need the training). My plan was to spend my allotted 35 minutes (which turned into 20) of "undulating" terrain running around the Barbican, but I had two problems - one being the lack of time (for reasons I will explain in a moment) and the other being that I couldn't find the way in.
For those international readers among you (I know there are a few of you in far flung places), the Barbican is a post-WW II housing estate and exhibition centre with myriad other facilities including cinemas, a concert hall and a library, located just outside the City of London. It was built in the 1960s and 1970s as kind of urban utopia to fill in a gap left by pre-War slums that were flattened in the Blitz. Its Brutalist architecture is not to everyone's taste, but the apartments in the tower blocks are spacious and, since Margaret Thatcher's "right to buy" scheme took off in the 1980s, virtually none of them remain in local authority hands and most are privately owned - the views are outstanding, as are the prices!
One of the ideas behind this project was to create a place where someone could live and have everything on their doorstep, effectively without ever having to leave (other than to stumble the couple of hundred yards to work in the City). However, that has led to an interesting issue - no-one other than the people who live and work in the Barbican can find their way around it (or, in my case today, even into it - please note that I do know some ways in, but they involve going through buildings or up escalators and I didn't really want to do that in my running kit). I recall when I first started work we had a stall at a graduate recruitment fair in the Barbican Exhibition Halls, and those manning the stall were given two-hour slots. Every single person turned up at the stall at least 15 minutes late because no-one could find where they were going. The Barbican Centre management has tried to mitigate this issue by putting lines on the floor to follow to the various facilities and by putting up loads of signposts, but even the most geographically enlightened still get completely obfuscated by the similar looking towers and the highwalks (the whole thing is above ground level because there are service areas and car parks underneath).
In any event, today's run turned into a circumnavigation of the Barbican. After three or four minutes, my ankle problem was back again with a vengeance and I had to stop to stretch. I decided that I was going to have to go back to basics and did the rest of the run as a run/walk session. In the 20 minutes, I managed to go further than I had on my previous run. This is very confusing, but I can only assume that it's because when I was actually running, I was running faster than I had the previous time. The really annoying thing about the ankle issues is that I can tell that my cardiovascular fitness has improved and I know that I could carry on for much longer and probably go a bit faster if it weren't for my legs playing up. As with previous runs, it did ease up after a few stretches and a bit of time. My ankles have one more run to improve and then if they don't, I'm going to see someone about them.
I have really mixed feelings about today's run as, on the one hand, my legs felt rubbish and I didn't get to do the whole time I was supposed to but, on the other hand, I can now tell that I'm getting fitter and in spite of everything I managed to go further than I have in any run to date in about the same time. I ran 2.3km today (soooo close to the actual race distance), making a total of 10.21km.
Cycling tomorrow - I'm actually looking forward to that, even if it does mean a bit of an early start.
No comments:
Post a Comment