Tokyo Police Club & The Kings Speech - thoughts during a long run

Day 12 of Janathon and the quest to run every day during January. So far so good and I think from reading other blogs that most of the Janathon partcipants are still going strong during week 2.

I am conscious that in the quest to run every day that this can lead to a tendency to just run junk miles IE just doing a few steady miles each day. In itself this is good and will if nothing else build up a good level of stamina and base mileage. However I still want to try and do a couple of quality sessions per week if I can. By this I mean either a long run, an interval pace session or hill training. I think the variety to my training will help me to get through the month hopefully.

Moreton Hall

So today I decided on a long run. My longest last week was 7 so I set out aiming to do just a little more and run 8 miles. The weather has turned really mild but wet and it rained persistently all day. I timed my run to try and avoid the worst of it and there was only a light run when I ran.
I ran well for the first 5 miles but after this I began to slow and negative thoughts about cutting the run short started. However I over came this listening to an episode of Marathon Talk talking about new years resolutions and an event they have set up called Jantastic. This is not the same as Janathon as the rules are different.

Towards the end to keep me going I needed some music and I listened to Tokyo Police Club and my album of the year Champ


 Run completed in 1hr 13mins . 30 seconds so not the quickest of times but pleased to do my longest run of the year.

The previous night we went to Cineworld to see the King's Speech. In my view this is a must see film. It makes a nice change to watch a film that is totally believable and this is achieved obviously because it is based on real history but also because of good acting. So many films are an escapism  and you do have to ride with the film knowing that scenes and events are totally unbelievable.

The film is set in the 1930's when Edward VIII threatens to abdicate from the British throne, his younger brother Bertie played by Colin Firth knows he must overcome his humiliating stammer in order to deliver important war time speeches and rule the country.
Bertie's wife  Elizabeth played by Helena Bonham Carter enlists the services of an Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue played by Geoffrey Rush. This is the main theme of the film the relationship between Bertie and Lionel and it is full of humour.

The cinema was three quarters full and the demographics were markedly an elderly audience. I believe there was only one teenager and there were many walking sticks in use.

I give this film a 9 out of 10

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


Total 52 miles

Found a Fiver , Breakneck Speed and a Couple of Runs

On Sunday I ran a green zone run. No I am not living in a war zone simply using the Adidas mi coach. A green zone run is a medium effort which extends your endurance and optimally burns calories. You'll also build a greater cardiovascular capacity - or foundation - to push harder in later stages and more intense zones.

Heart rate based training helps you:

• Know Your Body Better: When you train consistently, you'll learn how your body responds to exercise.
• Track Your Progress: As your fitness improves, you'll be able to handle harder runs.
• Pick Up the Pace: mi Coach lets you measure your pace against your Heart Rate and, as you improve, you'll be able to run longer and faster at the same heart rate as you were (at a lower intensity) a few months back.

Least that's what the official blurb from the Adidas site tells me.

After a 5 minute jog in the blue zone I then ran 40 minutes at a steady green zone pace followed by a 5 minute warm down jog. I managed to run for 79% of the time at the green zone pace. However the rest of the time I ran too quickly and this is when the mi coach steps in and my friendly coach interrupts my ipod playing songs from Tokyo Police Club to tell me to slow down.

In short what I am finding is that I have tended to run a lot of my training runs at too fast a pace probably leading to injury. Much of the time my training has been at a green zone pace and I am struggling to run at the slower blue pace which does feel a bit like a crawl .Blue zone  is an easy effort builds your aerobic base and improves recovery. It also allows you to put forth a greater effort in the higher intensity zones to get more out of your running. 

It feels alien and almost embarrassing to run at such a slow pace but I am going to stick with as a radical new form of training. After all I have been injured for a lot of the last year and this is worth a try.

Directly after my run which was just over 5 miles I felt fit enough to visit Nowton Park and we did a 2 mile walk around the circumference following the yellow route path. Almost immediately on starting the walk I found a fiver! A stroke of luck and not the first time I have done this at Nowton Park. 

On a previous walk around here I found a tenner. What is it about Nowton Park that encourages folks to empty their pockets of cash? Might be the thought of the ice cream van at the car park or the haste to get back to the car when they get the car keys out.  Still not complaining, I just need to visit Nowton Park more often to reap the rewards that are there to be found. Why go the beach and metal detect when you can go to Nowton Park and pick up free money after all it grows on trees. Well at least it does at Nowton Park.

An element of me feels guilty for picking it up but if I didn't someone else would and once dropped how would you know who was the rightful owner.


On Monday I did a very easy 30 minute jog at a very easy pace. So far so good with the easy pace running.  Certainly not Breakneck Speed

David Monks -  Photo from the recent Latitude Festival where Tokyo Police Club played. Now on tour in USA and Canada promoting their new album Champ.