So my running schedule from the last post hasn't exactly gone to plan. This is for two reasons - the first being an inability to work in four runs due to volunteering commitments, being a terrible mornings person and traveling to and from London at stupid hours on Fridays followed by market days on Saturdays. Unless I can start hauling my backside out for exercise at 7am, it's just not going to happen. The second reason is a little more...uh...unexpected.
I'm being bullied by sheep.
My normal run along the river starts on a dog-walking field - I don't particularly like staying there longer than I have to because it's very flat and open, so anyone else on it will see me huffing and puffing along, and because this is a tiny toy town, they're probably going to know who I am and vice versa. If it's quiet, I can work in an extra lap, but I prefer not to because it's hard to enjoy running when feeling exposed and paranoid.
The next part is a funny little stretch of scrubby woodland. In the afternoons, it's plagued with pre-teen boys on bicycles, and it's a straight, narrow path, so meeting walkers coming the other way is highly irritating, especially if they have dogs. I've had a pug go for my ankles before, and if I have my dog with me, I have to stop to put her on the lead, or try and herd her away. She's not exactly aggressive, but she seems to have the dog equivalent of 'one of those faces' - most dogs she meets take issue with her, whether I have her on a lead or not.
The next bit is where my favourite - or what used to be my favourite - part of the run starts. The fields. They're open, enclosed by styles and gates, I can let the dog off of the lead if I have her with me and know where she is 100% of the time, few walkers go out this far, and it's where I can really get into it (it also coincides with the one third in marker). It starts with a crop field, which is where pheasants seem to like hanging out and panicking as I run past (nothing to get your heart going that little bit extra like a large, frenzied ball of feathers hurtling out in front of you from the undergrowth), and then leads into a little square field, followed by a nice long field that curves up to follow the bend in the river, and beyond that, another little crop field, after which, I turn back around to run home.
The downside to Welsh fields - livestock. I have been intimidated out of these fields by cows before (wouldn't have tried it in the first place if my exercise addled brain hadn't mistaken the white lumps for sheep until too late) and if I have the dog with me I don't like going into a field full of sheep, even with her on a lead, because she will try and chase them, and I didn't want to cause them upset and stress.
For a wonderful few weeks, all the fields were livestock free. The sheep were on the other side of the river bend, and the cows were nowehere to be seen. The dog came with me on almost every run, they were largely stress free, and I was happily hitting my time targets and then some. Then the sheep came back, and I lost out of a good fifteen to twenty minutes worth of running space. That's a lot of time to make up for in laps and repeats. I stopped taking the dog so I would be able to carry on running through the sheep field, but the sheep turned out to have other ideas. Instead of being out grazing the huge fucking field they have to clutter up, they were all gathered around the gate into the field. I try my luck anyway, and they all run away. So far so good. I continue my run. Then one sheep turns around and eyeballs me, before taking determined, purposeful strides towards me. More turn around and start doing the same.
You know that scene in Inception where Dicaprio breaks a glass in the dream hotel lobby and all of Cillian Murphy's dream people stop what they're doing to stare at him? It was that level of creepy. So that was that. I stopped running and backed out of the field. Perhaps I should have gone on the aggressive, but seeing as I still had a large amount of field to run around with them in it, I didn't think making myself a threatening figure was a good idea. I don't particularly fancy getting headbutted into the river by a rebellious, giant cotton ball on legs. Instead, I went all psycho on the gate once I was on the other side of it, screaming abuse at them and shaking/kicking the gate in the hopes of freaking them out.
Didn't work. Just made my leg feel funny and left me too out of breath to carry on running.
Since those woolly fuckers came back, I haven't managed to make my 30 minute target once. In fact, I've struggled to make 20 minutes. This is partially due to a stomach cramp problem - at about the 12-15 minute mark, for two weeks out of the month, I get a nasty case of cramp. It's manageable, and takes about five minutes to run through, or if it gets really bad, one to two minutes of walking it off before I'm fine to go again. However, this is also the point where I get to the sheep plagued field. Stomach cramp + out of space + having to do laps of the same crummy little field = motivation nosedive.
So I'm finding myself more drawn to the hill running plan. I went again yesterday, and it was wonderful. The downside is I can't actually run much of it. I'm right back at the beginning of the interval plan, and not completely fulfilling it. The uphill pull to the wood takes about four to five 2 min run/1 min walk repetitions, and I should be doing two/three more once I get to the wood, but I'm just not in the right state.
So I don't know what to do...continue with the attempt to mix it up a bit, doing half my runs by the river with continuous running and the other half hill running with interval training, or to drop the riverside running entirely and focus on the hill running...
I know time is a big factor for me. I find the prospect of doing a 30 min block of running intimidating, even when I know I can do it, and I'm worried with the hill running I'll fall into the habit of walking more than running.
On the other hand, nothing is going to give your fitness a boost like running up and down a steep hill three to four times a week...
Or perhaps next time I go riverside running I should just take the dog and let the sheep get freaked out.
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