The phrase of my sporting weekend has been embracing chaos. Yesterday that referred to my tactics in the crit race I entered on Zwift. Since I don’t have a powerful sprint finish, the more chaotic the race is, the better my chances of doing well become, since I’ll either find myself on my own at the finish, or in a small group where it isn’t guaranteed that someone else has a big kick. Therefore I tried to make the race as chaotic as possible, attacking multiple times in the hope of breaking things up. Did it work? Well, you’ll have to read yesterday’s blog to find that out.
Chaos is probably overstating the scenario I found myself in during today’s run. My dislike of an out and back course is well-known to any regular readers of this blog, but I decided to try to combat this by giving myself a goal. I knew that it would take me roughly 50 minutes to reach my planned turning point, and I would then try to get back home in 40 minutes. On a good day that would have been a stretch but definitely possible, but although the legs felt okay after yesterday’s crit race, the thought of trying to significantly increase my pace over the second half of my run was not remotely appealing. Which in turn meant that the prospect of an out and back course was also not remotely appealing.
So it took the same decision I have taken on almost every long run this year, scrapping my planned out and back in favour of a loop. The only difference being that those other loops took me on familiar running routes, so I knew exactly where I was going and had a decent idea about how far the route would become too. Today though I took a turn out of Balsall Common towards Kenilworth. That sounds like a safe move, and indeed the road I took was one which I have driven on many times. But I had never run along it before and knew that the pavement would eventually disappear, and be replaced by a verge which didn’t look suitable for running. Given the road is fairly busy and the speed limit is 50mph, running on the road wasn’t an option either.
I was gambling on there being a side road or footpath which would allow me to get back to Kenilworth via a quieter, safer route. That gamble wasn’t a big one, since I always had the option to turn back if I didn’t find anything. That would have left me with the prospect of a longer run than I had planned, but I had a safe route home. Therefore it probably can’t be described as chaos, but the more accurate descriptions wouldn’t make for as catchy a title for a blog post.
Pleasingly though, I didn’t have to turn back. My first exploration down a side road resulted in nothing more than a lap around a retirement home, however just at the point where the pavement disappeared, I found a footpath off to the left. After a couple of hundred metres, I found signs for the Millennium Way, and was immediately very happy, since not only was this a route home I knew, it was a route which gives you some really good views of Kenilworth Castle towards the end.
Embracing chaos in terms of route planning is about taking a “I wonder what’s down there?” approach, rather than either sticking to what you know or meticulously planning out new routes. I would never have spotted the footpath I took which led me to the Millennium Way on a map, yet by being spontaneous, I’ve now found a new way back from Balsall Common which opens up several options from the routes I already know, yet alone the routes I don’t know yet.
When chaos arrives, I like to try to embrace it. Of course there are times when you want to avoid any possibility of chaos, and as I get closer and closer to my next Marathon, I will be sticking to what I know. But that is still 9 weeks away, so a little chaos at this stage is no bad thing. It challenges you in ways you cannot predict and gives you opportunities to learn. If you roll the dice, it might land as a 6.
Scorpo Stories 