The Pussy Run

November last year, I began running with one of the guys from work and his pack.¹

The route starts off on the Linkeroever side of St Annastunnel in Antwerp; from there, we run alongside the man-made lake to the motor-way tunnel; onto the other side of the motor-way tunnel and the courthouse;  back to St Annastunnel; through the tunnel and up the escalators to finish.

The Pussy Run

The reason my friend travels 30-60 minutes, on a Saturday morning (go time is 09:00) just to run 10km is because we cap it off by going up the escalators in the opposite direction. It gets its name from this: The  Pussy Run.

I imagine a couple of brows quirk at this ("you are talking jive, I don't see the connection"), but please, please let me elaborate... The copious amount of stairs originally earned it the name "The Rocky is a Pussy Run". Over time, this contracted to the aforementioned, more ambiguous,  appellation.²

A month or so after the marathon,³ I started doing it most weekends.

Then in September, I decided to change it up; I split it into 4 distinct portions

• From pt. 2 to pt. 6 on the map (2.6km)
• From the turn between point 4 and 7⁴ and the big green box (2.6km)
• From the green box to the traffic lights at St. Annastunnel (1.9km).
• To finish it off, I sprint the tunnel as fast as I can (570m) and then do the escalators (there are two of them, totalling a vertical height of ~31m).

Between each of these, I take a breather for a couple of minutes, either jogging to the next start point or walking around for a time. With the change-up, I started using a timer as well, to motivate me to keep a good pace. Today, I ran my final one of 2012.⁵ And here's a lovely chart I made of my progress. :)

Average speed per section of the Pussy Run, first three are fast runs and last one is my all out sprint.⁶

I used Googledrive for it... the interface is pretty sucky, but still the info is there.

The points are shown in order, so for the vast majority, my first route is faster than the other two "long routes." I do like that the second two runs are similar in speed. This change marked my first time sprinting properly; one can see that in the chart with the sharp increase in speed for the 570m at the beginning as my technique improved. I am very proud of myself for how close  some of the later first 2.6km runs (blue 6, 9, 12) are to the speed of the first sprint (green 1).⁷ Between runs 9 and 10, I missed 3 weekends, which contributed to the slowing. Also, around that time, it turns out that I was carrying quite a bit of tension in my chest and shoulders, which would have slowed things down a bit.

I really like finishing out with the sprint; it's more difficult than the other parts, which means the endorphin pay-off is all the sweeter! In fact, I find it harder to keep going after the 250m mark than I did going through the 20-40km markers of the marathon... My heart is going like a jackhammer, and the end looks so far away. The tired part of me tells me that I have done enough. Then I remind it that willpower is infinite, if we want it to be.

Fingers crossed that I can eek out some more incremental improvement over the next year.

************

1. I think it is cool to refer to groups of men being all macho and sh*t as "packs" - deal with it
2. I first wrote "moniker" instead of appellation, but I really wanted the alliterative 4 hit combo. Thankfully, with footnotes, I can have my cake and eat it too!
3. I'm going to bury the lede here - I did the marathon in 4 hr 15 mins.
1. The first 10km were boring and took a surprising amount of concentration not to just stop.
2.  After 21km, everything kinda locked up and I was hobbled there after.
3. The next 18-20 km were very unpleasant, the words "interminable hell" come to mind, but as Churchill said: "When you are going through hell, keep going."
4. I picked up the pace to stay with the 4:15 pace-setter for the last 2-2.5km. At that point, I was literally running as fast as I could; my hamstrings spasmed when I tried to go faster.
5. Walking down stairs for the next two days was unpleasant - each step became a precarious ledge that I had to cast myself from... I physically could not move faster than a mangled skip.
6. On day three, I had a Gumpian moment running for a bus, where it felt like I had burst out of braces and I could suddenly jog along as I would have the week before the marathon.
7. The muscle stiffness was gone by Thursday.
4. What the hell is going on with this numbering?!
5. What with the world supposed to end yesterday, I wasn't sure if I would make it.
6. True, not a huge increase in speed from run to sprint,  aaa-and the sprint is almost fast enough to be a decent marathon pace... I have a very deep appreciation for what those athletes do.
7. First sprint was 14.6 km/h and my last 2.6km run was 14.3, and my fastest was 14.4. :)