Oh Bracknell, how wonderful art thou! ......NOT!

No new posts on this blog for a week! Luckily, that's not because I haven't gotten any runs in, but rather as I've been traveling. Mind you, traveling to my favorite place on earth, the lovely, glamorous, energizing, all inspiring, jaw dropping, enlightening, swanky Bracknell, UK. :( As you may have guessed I'm not a fan and try to avoid the place like a toothache. But every now and then there's no escape and last week was one of those occasions. Whenever I think of Bracknell, I immediately think of the comedy series "The Office" which is filmed in Slough next to Bracknell, but with the same vibe. Yikes!

But first things first, here are last week's runs:

• 60 minute run in the Vondelpark
• 8 x 5 minutes interval on a treadmill in the Hilton St. Annes in Bracknell
• 55 minute run along the highways of Bracknell 

 The 60 minute runs are more like routine runs now, which is great! Who would have thought that 6 weeks ago! So nothing really to report there on last weeks run. I'm feeling particularly good about last weeks interval run, which due to the lack of a good track in Bracknell, I decided to do in the hotel gym. Running on a treadmill is not really my thing, sweating with 6 other folks next to you in a hot sticky stuffy room. More than ever I realized again how much I enjoy being outside in the fresh air: taking in the scenery, looking at the surroundings and listening to the noises. The interval was really really tough, the voice inside my head was screaming to stop after the 3rd interval. Nevertheless I didn't give in and felt great about making it through. But man, its hard.

The morning after I really needed to get out to the fresh air (my days are filled in team meetings in stuffy rooms, so getting out makes all the difference). I used runnermaps.nl to map out a nice run from the hotel in Bracknell and loaded it up to my Garmin 405CX. Worked again like a charm! But besides all the obvious reasons why people don't like Bracknell, I even managed to find some more!! Due to the lack of parks, forrest or other useful green in the vicinity of the hotel (or in the majority of Bracknell for that matter) I was forced to run through residential areas. All well enough, but in the UK they have not invented something which we take for granted in other countries: pedestrian pavements?! So here I was at 7.00 AM running along a road which looked on runnermaps.nl to be a nice quiet backroad, with not too much traffic to fear. But man, how wrong can you be! The whole route was packed with cars not used to seeing runners or cyclists, speeding like absolute maniacs, all on the wrong side of the road. Nothing to clean the lungs in the moring like a good whiff of car and truck fumes. Been there, done it, but definitely not getting the T-shirt!!!!

And now I realize and appreciate more again why living close to a nice park in a beautiful city is such a plus.

Today 80 minute run, tomorrow, 40 min run slow tempo, 50 minute run, 45 minute run and 120 minute run scheduled this week. That's a lot! Yes it is! :-O