Friday, January 21, 2011

Running up Hills and Vinyl Records Return

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 Day 21 of Janathon and the madness continues. I ran again today as I have for the last 3 weeks in a row. I am trying to do 2 quality sessions a week by which I mean either a long run, an interval or speed work session or hills.  Wednesday I did some intervals and today rather on the spur of the moment I decided to do some hill repeats.

One of the hills I run up is called Beeton's Way in Bury St Edmunds. It provides me with a minute of running up hill followed by a recovery jog back to the bottom of the hill. Today I did just the 5 hill climb repeats but it provided some variety to the training and when you run every day you need this.

A change is as good as  a rest. The hill was fairly busy with young students heading off to the Upper Schools along Beeton's Way. I have got to know every step of this hill, where the lamp posts are and where there is a dip or crack in the pavement.

Colder this morning and I chose to wear gloves,hat and my Ron Hill tracksters. However it was a little brighter and not so grey and cloudy which I prefer. My total miles for this (from Monday to Sunday) week so far 23.3 miles. I am aiming for 32 miles.


Reward for completing the run was a listen to some vinyl records. I never got rid of my collection of vinyl records mostly dating from the late 1970's and early 80's though they have sat gathering dust in a shed for many years and it almost got to the point of considering getting rid of them. After all I haven't had a turntable to play records on for many years and of course armed with an IPOD you can have 1000's of tracks on a tiny lightweight player. Tape Cassettes for listening to music have really bitten the dust but let me know if you still listen to tapes C30- C60 -C90! Compact Discs are fast going the same way and although I have a big collection of these it is rare I buy these now. When you can download or stream music from your PC there is much less need for a CD.

The same is true of vinyl of course but the difference for me has always been the product. With a vinyl record you often get a little bit of history detailed in the sleeve notes and sometimes on the record grooves. Flicking through vinyl records is more fun and easier then looking at Cd's in boxes. Then of course you get the different sized records 7inch , 12inch and also a few 10 inch different colour vinyl and different speeds 33, 45 and 78 rpm.

The ritual of removing a vinyl record from its sleeve and loading it on a turntable may be alien to most people born after 1990. Its much slower and less instant  and you are drawn to the revolving disc as the stylus glides across the grooves of your vinyl sometimes with a crackle.

Like books, vinyl records have a smell of their own. Smells and sounds of vinyl invoke memories which you obviously do not get when you download a track from the Internet.

As more and more people turf out there records I am hoping to have fun picking up all sorts of music at bargain prices from car boots sales this year.

Reason for all this talk of records is because we got ourselves a late 1960's record player at Christmas. It has meant all of the vinyl has been rescued from the shed and we are now able once again to listen to records.

Anyone guess what album this is from the photos above ! That's difficult but have a guess


Day 1 - 5 miles
Day 2 - 5 miles
Day 3 - 4 miles
Day 4 - 4 miles
Day 5 - 3 miles
Day 6 - 2.52 miles
Day 7 - 7 miles
Day 8 - 3.5 miles
Day 9 - 2 miles
Day 10 - 4 miles
Day 11 - 4 miles
Day 12 - 8 miles
Day 13 - 3 miles
Day 14 - 4 miles
Day 15 - 3 miles
Day 16 - 4 miles
Day 17 - 6 miles
Day 18 - 6 miles
Day 19 - 4 miles
Day 20 - 3 miles
Day 21 - 4.3 miles

Total 89.3 miles

1 comment:

  1. vinyl offers a nostalgia that no other form of music since has been able to do... cassettes were just awful - always being eaten alive by the player, and then you had that tense 10 minutes where you had to wind the tape back in again, without ruining it... just to save the sounds of Kylie or the Levellers (my music tastes were that diversely weird!)... CD's were fine... but portable players were anything but!... and I remember a Blue Peter programme introducing them to us when they first came out, where they showed how industrious they were by throwing them across the room and smearing jam on them! No such luck!! Then I remember the mini-discs... a phase which lasted all of 5 minutes (quite thankfully) before it all became computerised! As a runner, I am very grateful of this invention... but you still can't beat a good vinyl record! :-)

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