Marathon Mann

 

I quite like running in the snow but it hasn’t always been that way.  When the first time as runners, we were faced with persistent icy conditions, Helen and I resorted to an isolated stretch of country road, gritted (because it was on a bus route), so clear of ice that we could run up and down, relatively undisturbed by traffic.  Later, we realised that compacted crisp snow is quite good surface to run on and so we did routes around Temple Newsam park in the snow.  Once we discovered Yaxtrax, it was clear that with the right equipment, practically no surface was unrunnable on.  Today alas was not Yaxtrax weather since it was all very melty and slushy but I did fancy an off road route for my long run, so I found myself running down the “Yellow Brick Road”.

There is a path that follows a deserted railway line from Bottom Boat (near Stanley), which goes under the M62 and ends up near Methley. It is now part of the Trans Pennine Trail.  It used to have a rather attractive fine yellow gravel compressed in to Tarmac, hence the nickname: Yellow Brick Road.  Alas, much of the yellow has now worn away but I expect, quite rightly, the Council has other more pressing priorities.  It is about two miles long and it’s great to run along wihout any traffic to worry about or curbs to trip over; you can let your mind wander.  Today it still had a nice snow covering in places.

My destination was Methley to see how under water the St Aidan’s nature reserve is since the floods (fair dos, it is supposed to be a wetland).  To my surprise and contrary to some tales of it now being more of a lake rather than a wetland, it seemed to be almost back to normal.  The lakes were a bit high and the causeway was cut off, but this is nothing exceptional so it looks like things are retuning to normal.  All the canal towpaths are passable if a bit damp and muddy in places.

All in all a pleasant 15 mile run though the countryside but it was time to return home since it was rather cold and my fingers were feeling rather numb!

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!