Julia jogged " out of the womb" and basically has not stopped running since! From an early age her dream was to pull on an England vest. A dream which was achieved by her 19th year representing her country in cross country races in Glasgow and Manressa, Spain. As with many of us she was lured towards the marathon in the '80s winning the Dublin marathon in 1985 and followed up that feat with a fabulous PB of 2:36:31 in the London marathon of 1986.
Julia, when not writing books (Running To Learn), writing blogs, writing magazine articles (for Running Free magazine)
and healing via her counselling, still performs at a high level. She is currently ranked at 4th UK with her 5K time of 19.28 and 10th with her half marathon time of 90.52.
So when there's nothing on the tele , you've done all your more important chores and are at a very loose end you might wish to check our podcast Talking with Terry which can be found by scrolling down on Julia's fine blog http://www.runningtolearn.com/
Hope you enjoy it....if not, don't let me know!
FRIDAY. I think we've all done a training run that we regretted.....................
Today was one such run. Every morning I look out of the front window to check out the weather and check out the way the flag on the local church is flying to assess the direction and strength of the wind. I look across to the skyline ridge opposite and of ten think that traversing the ridge would count as a good trail run. Wrong!
I should have known better. I have run up there in the Round Hill trail race. But I think when we're concentrating , in the heat of competition, we're so involved sometimes we remember the good bits and forget the awkward bits. The trail was just too rocky for my old legs; legs already fragile from Wednesday's canal speed session and a pretty tough trail run yesterday. The scenery and isolation is fantastic but the intensity of concentration required to stay upright is such that with the head down most of the time, it just cannot be enjoyed very much at all. Minutes later my concentration does lapse, I do try to survey the late morning scene, clip the top of a protruding rock and have to react quickly to maintain my balance and stay on my feet. If I had suffered a "nasty" fall, I am in a totally isolated location and haven't told anyone where I planned to run and I have no ID on me.
Turning off the stony track didn't help either as I rapidly lost height on a path which went down and down and of course what goes down ...let's just say it was hard work regaining the ground. Perhaps if I hadn't been so tired it would have been better, but the a further lesson is don't just check out the distance to be covered on gmap-pedometer check out the terrain button as well!
Interestingly (?) there was a lot of burn heather on the moorland up there but, unlike other parts of the UK which are aflame due to wanton acts of arson, I think I witnessed the results of controlled burning. The deliberate burning done by moor keepers to prevent the heather becoming too long and lank which apparently reduces its nutritional value. Done between Autumn and Spring only the heather is burnt leaving the wet peat below relatively cool. As opposed to this week's uncontrolled arson fires which are burning both heather and the dry peat below. Very difficult to put out.
The local WEST YORKSHIRE FIRE SERVICE have reportedly been working very hard extinguishing heather fires on the moors near Halifax. They must have known that several hundred runners are counting on them to salvage Sunday's CALDERDALE RELAY. A race already postponed from last December because of snow. Good luck to any readers doing the event.
Running past I thought the burnt heather conjured up quite a nice image......
It's encouraging to see that it's not just us newbies that are still learning about trail running! Now don't do it again before your race on Sunday. You know you'll regret it afterwards if you don't come in with a good time :) Have a good week, John
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