Month: January 2016

In 2004 when Paul Sinton-Hewitt had the idea of a free timed 5k run in a park each week, you would be forgiven for thinking that it didn’t sound exactly an earth shattering idea.  But it turns out the concept is inspired and you have only to look at the stats on the parkrun website to realise that it has transformed the sport of running as a mass participation activity.

When my wife and I started going to parkrun in 2008 in this part of the world it meant going to what was called Leeds Hyde Park (now Woodhouse Moor).  I love telling people what it was like back then in a  “when I were a lad” sort of voice; there were no barcodes, you had to queue up before someone with a laptop who would record your position.  The timer used what looked like a desktop calculator that even produced a printout.  The principles have always been the same though, a free weekly community activity with a massive sense of support and belonging whatever your level of athletic ability.

There are none more friendly and supportive than our local Temple Newsam parkrun.   Regular runners at Temple Newsam are made of hardy stuff; it is famous for its massive hill up to the house which is great for fitness and is “character building”.  Of course, what goes up must come done and you are rewarded with a super-speedy down hill section! However, these hilly sections are susceptible to ice in the winter but the clever organisers have a solution; a four lap route around a field near the house and car park, which is where we ran today.  Now you may think that this flat course would be fast but a field that a few days ago would have been well churned up with mud and then frozen is quite tricky and I was glad of my trail shoes which I had packed just in case (we guessed it might be the field today).

Nevertheless, we are thankful that they do have a standby option because we know that quite a few parkruns around the region were cancelled today because of ice.

Yesterday I promised to get up early to try and photograph the ISS before going for a swim.  I am pleased to say that I managed both of these and my time-lapse shot of the space station is shown above!  What a brilliantly clear sky it was at 5:45 AM and even with our city light pollution you could see a great array of starts and planets.  The NASA predicted time for the sighting started at 5:55 and wow, there it was, the brightest object in the sky, streaking across at an astonishing rate; if you didn’t know better you would think it was a plane.

The photograph you see is a 20 second time-lapse shot showing how far the station moved in 20 seconds relative to the stars around it.  You can just see the slight movement in the stars caused by the rotation of the Earth.

Next time I will try and site it with my telescope.  There is a BBC video showing how you can do this by taking a video through your telescope and then try to manually track the station.  The idea is that even if you only get a glimpse you should be able to get some frames from the video.  It would be really exciting to take a picture where you could make out the shape of the space station.

Anyhow, this is supposed to be a running/exercise blog so, 500m of swimming happened this morning and tomorrow you will find me at Temple Newsam parkrun, sporting my shiny Temple Newsam Ten Finishers T Shirt!

 

I know I have blogged about this before and it’s probably really annoying to those who really appreciate an extra hour or two in bed, but I can’t help it; I really love mornings!

The great thing about the morning is that you can get a few extra hours in the day “free of charge”, this extra time can be used for running, blogging, swimming, taking time over breakfast etc etc.

I think the barrier is that moment when the alarm goes off and your body is just crying out to stay in the warm bed and to go back to sleep.  The trick is to acclimatise yourself to break through that feeling, drag yourself up and get on with it.  I know to go out running on a dark, cold, wet winters morning at 5 AM when you are snug in bed is a tough thing to make your body do.   The thing is that if you can force yourself to do it once or twice, you can experience how good it feels when you are warmed-up and under-way.

A slightly less traumatic experience is to (as I did today), drive to the gym, which is quite a nice environment and they have luxuries like a sauna and jacuzzi and you can get coffee and stuff.

I think I will get up early again tomorrow because I want to go swimming (since I’m not running) and its going to be a clear morning, with an expected sighting of the International Space Station (ISS) at 5:55 AM, and I might try and get a time-lapse photograph (I saw a video on the BBC web site on how to do it).  Another great reason to get up early and make more time to enjoy the day.