my body has been sending me the signals for some time, that i need to cut down on the number of miles that i'm running, i've been feeling dehydrated, which is usually a symptom of over training, but more worrying than that my left knee has been giving me trouble to the extent that it has been moving about in the knee socket while i've been running. the worst case scenario for this was when i was out on a 13 miler on sunday, the knee actually moved about an inch, which was quite scary, but i managed to run through it. i will be consulting a physio about this problem. apart from that since then i've just been doing some very easy paced 4 or 5 milers just to keep me ticking over. nothing exciting really but i just felt the need to come on here
pete
Tuesday, 20 October 2009
Thursday, 15 October 2009
an apology
first things first i have heard about johns mate sarah who has been experiencing problems with the postal system recently due to the recent industrial action that has been taking place in bristol london peterborough leeds and scotland and will be going national next week. i heard that some thing she sent in the post got delayed in the back log and was consequently late. i can only apologise unreservedly for any inconvenience it caused her or to any of you who have experienced problems with royal mail recently. i'm sure you don't want me going on though too much about our reasons for going out on strike (staff being bullied by managers, longer working days, later hours in return for less pay, job cuts) and a refusal by managers to compromise or negotiate meaningfully on any thing has left us with very little alternative. NO POSTMAN/WOMAN OR UNION OFFICIAL WANTS TO BE IN THE POSITION OF GOING OUT ON STRIKE AS WE LOSE A LOT OF MONEY
enough of that though recently i have been runnig a lot of miles including a 16 mile long run on last saturday and a 10 k tempo run tonight which i completed in 38:59, my best time for that distance since my come back began. conditions tonight were near perfect with a slight cooling drizzle, and next to no breeze. for those of you that know portishead the course was this. start by the toilets at the lake ground, down esplanade road up lake road, rodmoor road, down beach road west and back to where i started. i repeated this 3 times followed by 3 shorter circuits of esplanade road and the full length of lake road, before i finally did a final length of esplanade, before finishing by the open air pool. i made a relatively conservative start for about 10 minutes before i really got in to my stride and attacked the run. there have been times when i've been running when i can really feel the testosterone flowing, like floyd landis must have done on THAT tour stage a few years ago, when no matter how hard you push yourself, no matter how hard your breathing, you just don't feel yourself tiring and thats what i felt like tonight. contrast that with last night when i went on a steady 9 miler around clapton in gordano and my legs were so heavy due to the unusually heavy mileage i've been doing, that i really felt like i was struggling to lift them for the whole run.
aerobically i feel fitter now than i've been for a long long time, backed up by the fact that i pb'd at the burnham half marathon. unfortunately anaerobically i can't say the same thing though. it is pretty much the story of my running career though, that its my struggle with any form of training that involves heavy lactate production, that i've really struggled with and with me soon going to be the wrong side of thirty its hard to see it changing ever now. part of that is due to the fact that i came to running competitively relatively late in life and part is due to my physical make up ie lack of fast twitch muscle fibres and the marathon is unlikely to help it but i feel confident i can get my self in to some thing close to pb shape by the time i start my 18 week plan for the marathon. we'll see.
enough of that though recently i have been runnig a lot of miles including a 16 mile long run on last saturday and a 10 k tempo run tonight which i completed in 38:59, my best time for that distance since my come back began. conditions tonight were near perfect with a slight cooling drizzle, and next to no breeze. for those of you that know portishead the course was this. start by the toilets at the lake ground, down esplanade road up lake road, rodmoor road, down beach road west and back to where i started. i repeated this 3 times followed by 3 shorter circuits of esplanade road and the full length of lake road, before i finally did a final length of esplanade, before finishing by the open air pool. i made a relatively conservative start for about 10 minutes before i really got in to my stride and attacked the run. there have been times when i've been running when i can really feel the testosterone flowing, like floyd landis must have done on THAT tour stage a few years ago, when no matter how hard you push yourself, no matter how hard your breathing, you just don't feel yourself tiring and thats what i felt like tonight. contrast that with last night when i went on a steady 9 miler around clapton in gordano and my legs were so heavy due to the unusually heavy mileage i've been doing, that i really felt like i was struggling to lift them for the whole run.
aerobically i feel fitter now than i've been for a long long time, backed up by the fact that i pb'd at the burnham half marathon. unfortunately anaerobically i can't say the same thing though. it is pretty much the story of my running career though, that its my struggle with any form of training that involves heavy lactate production, that i've really struggled with and with me soon going to be the wrong side of thirty its hard to see it changing ever now. part of that is due to the fact that i came to running competitively relatively late in life and part is due to my physical make up ie lack of fast twitch muscle fibres and the marathon is unlikely to help it but i feel confident i can get my self in to some thing close to pb shape by the time i start my 18 week plan for the marathon. we'll see.
Tuesday, 6 October 2009
**NEW HALF MARATHON PB AT BURNHAM ON SEA**
The title gives it away really. having done the burnham prom 5k series on thursday evening in an awful, pathetic 19:15 (iknow it was windy but my split time at the clevedon 10k was quicker than that though for gods sake) mike richards, my sisters ex boyfriends step dad offered to pace me round after i found out that you could enter on the day. so i made the same journey down to burnham on sunday morning. the first couple of miles were very easy as you would expect running only 6:45's. half marathon for me usually means a sub 6 minute first mile and agony for the rest of the race. this was the first time in my running career that i have managed to run the same pace for a whole race of any distance apart from mile 10-11 where we went over a railway bridge and lost about 4 seconds. i started to feel the accumulation of fatigue albeit gradually from about mile 3 onwards and miles 8-10 were the bad patch that every one goes through in long distance races but i still hit the same pace. mentally the final mile gave me that second wind and i pushed hard until the line and even managed a sprint over the last 2-300 yards and i staggered over the line in 1 hour 28 minutes and 36 seconds, which made up for the disappointment of thursday night. after the warm down and a sunday lunch i wasn't in the mood to do much else apart from lie down on my bed taking some well earned recovery time. its been easy runs since then and the same tonight although i may try and do a speed session later on this week depending on how quickly my legs recover from the beating that long distance running gives them.
nothing much to report at work apart from fridays strike almost turned in to a disaster for the union because they called it at short notice (how is it they managed to inform the company last week and only tell us on the tuesday) and we had an informal union meeting at work where we finished the meeting more confused than when we started it as we talked about a work to rule instead but when i said i didn't think my conscience would allow me to cross a picket line it seemed to turn more people in favour of striking and we ended up letting peoples consciences decide what they should do. the next strike for delivery is on october the 12th and this one i think will be national if its a yes vote-results this week and it probably will be. although they're talking at the minute i can see this dispute lasting for a few months yet
nothing much to report at work apart from fridays strike almost turned in to a disaster for the union because they called it at short notice (how is it they managed to inform the company last week and only tell us on the tuesday) and we had an informal union meeting at work where we finished the meeting more confused than when we started it as we talked about a work to rule instead but when i said i didn't think my conscience would allow me to cross a picket line it seemed to turn more people in favour of striking and we ended up letting peoples consciences decide what they should do. the next strike for delivery is on october the 12th and this one i think will be national if its a yes vote-results this week and it probably will be. although they're talking at the minute i can see this dispute lasting for a few months yet
Friday, 2 October 2009
sorry for the delay in posting
i apologise to people for the delay in posting since the last post. i have been very busy with things like training, reading writing and enough other things to distract me. as a matter of fact we've been on strike today at portishead delivery office. although the ballot result is due to be announced next week it is important to keep the pressure up on royal mail as the fact is that the two sides are now talking as a result of the industrial action but without the pressure from the union the talks will collapse without agreement. after getting up at 5 am to go and stand on a picket line for a couple of hours the few hardy souls that bothered to come down we went for a breakfast at a cafe.
striking is always a controversial subject and we posties have been given little public sympathy over our industrial action. here though is one story about about what happened to one of my work colleagues in a previous job down at portbury docks. the firm he was working for forced the union out of the work place. the managers then made so many cuts in hours that it left the work force unable to meet the targets laid down for them because the work load was so high. as a consequnce of this business went else where and within 3 years the firm went bus. unions are there to make work places more democratic and also to stop firms from shooting themselves in the foot like the current crop of royal mail managers are trying desperately hard to do as their plans for the business will only drive more business to the competition in the long run. we have lost no business as a result of the strikes it is all due to incompetent management, but the fact is we were losing contracts even before the first round of strikes two years ago. the union have never tried to stop modernisation of the business but the fact is that modernisation cannot come at the expense of peoples working conditions which is what royal mail is REALLY trying to force through. they (royal mail) say that it is the union trying to act like luddites but the machinery that the union is supposedly trying to block the use of is already in place and being used! so all in all the facts of this dispute are being wildly inaccurately presented by royal mail in a desperated bid to get people on their side and the tragedy of it is that many people are gullible enough to believe what they say and nothing that the union says saying with some justification that the unions have political agendas etc etc. the morale of postmen and women is lower now then it has ever been. scott roberts and many others have criticised us for going on strike saying things like 'don't they realise there's a recession on?'. recessions should not be an excuse for giving big firms the green light to do what they want because financial problems work both ways. ie these problems should be solved democratically and not just by rich people like cronzier and mark higson making more cuts and dumping all their shit on poorly paid workers who're already struggling financially before this recession even began, henceforth not by diktat. we've also been told many times that we should be count ourselves lucky that we have a job. well firstly there are many postmen and women who would gladly give up working for royal mail and swap it for redundancy. secondly there is a threat of redundancies in the very near future, although royal mail has gone to great pains to assure its staff thatno one has ever been made compulsorily redundant in this business, but they have made no assurances about the near future that convince me there will not be compulsory redundancies (a very cleverly worded statement) and the union has repeatedly tried to get them to make these assurances but they keep onn giving us the same crap about the past. in short my argument is that trade unions are about every member of the working classes standing together against the criminal behaviour of some of the people who try to run (or ruin) our lives and don't do a particularly good job of any thing apart from enriching themselves
striking is always a controversial subject and we posties have been given little public sympathy over our industrial action. here though is one story about about what happened to one of my work colleagues in a previous job down at portbury docks. the firm he was working for forced the union out of the work place. the managers then made so many cuts in hours that it left the work force unable to meet the targets laid down for them because the work load was so high. as a consequnce of this business went else where and within 3 years the firm went bus. unions are there to make work places more democratic and also to stop firms from shooting themselves in the foot like the current crop of royal mail managers are trying desperately hard to do as their plans for the business will only drive more business to the competition in the long run. we have lost no business as a result of the strikes it is all due to incompetent management, but the fact is we were losing contracts even before the first round of strikes two years ago. the union have never tried to stop modernisation of the business but the fact is that modernisation cannot come at the expense of peoples working conditions which is what royal mail is REALLY trying to force through. they (royal mail) say that it is the union trying to act like luddites but the machinery that the union is supposedly trying to block the use of is already in place and being used! so all in all the facts of this dispute are being wildly inaccurately presented by royal mail in a desperated bid to get people on their side and the tragedy of it is that many people are gullible enough to believe what they say and nothing that the union says saying with some justification that the unions have political agendas etc etc. the morale of postmen and women is lower now then it has ever been. scott roberts and many others have criticised us for going on strike saying things like 'don't they realise there's a recession on?'. recessions should not be an excuse for giving big firms the green light to do what they want because financial problems work both ways. ie these problems should be solved democratically and not just by rich people like cronzier and mark higson making more cuts and dumping all their shit on poorly paid workers who're already struggling financially before this recession even began, henceforth not by diktat. we've also been told many times that we should be count ourselves lucky that we have a job. well firstly there are many postmen and women who would gladly give up working for royal mail and swap it for redundancy. secondly there is a threat of redundancies in the very near future, although royal mail has gone to great pains to assure its staff thatno one has ever been made compulsorily redundant in this business, but they have made no assurances about the near future that convince me there will not be compulsory redundancies (a very cleverly worded statement) and the union has repeatedly tried to get them to make these assurances but they keep onn giving us the same crap about the past. in short my argument is that trade unions are about every member of the working classes standing together against the criminal behaviour of some of the people who try to run (or ruin) our lives and don't do a particularly good job of any thing apart from enriching themselves
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