Oh, to be a kid again

I remember being a kid and wishing I was older so that I could do cool stuff like staying out late, driving a car, and putting on my shoes without undoing the laces.

Well, now I'm a grown-up (in age at least), and I don't often wish I was a child again. I'm now quite happy that I can drive my Czech-made hatchback to work, come home late, and ruin the backs on my shoes. It truly is a wonderful life being an adult.

However, occasionally there are some things that make me envious of children today. Lego is one of those things. On Sunday, my youngest got a lego camper van from his great grandpa, and it's... in a word: fantastic! That thing on the left of the picture is a barbecue, with a lego fish cooking on it!!

Thinking about it, I realise it's a strange sort of envy, because I could buy myself one of these and play with it all night if I wanted. I think what I'm actually wanting is some sort of childlike appreciation of seeing something like this for the first time, but mixed with a grown-up sense of nostalgia about lego and the inherent sense of freedom associated with a camper van and a surfboard.

Do I sound old when I say that I hope my youngest plays with it as a camper van for a few days instead of turning it into an aeroplane?

Intervals - time machine

I've now got a few weeks worth of miles under my belt, so today I did some intervals. Me and another bloke where I work went out at lunchtime and did six lots of fast running for 2 minutes, separated by jogging for another 2 minutes.

Einstein's theory of relativity states that objects going close to the speed of light experience time differently to those that are not. I'm not an expert on relativity or travelling quickly, but time was certainly altered today.

Every time we started running the fast bits, the 2 minutes seemed to take ages. Whereas when we were running a lot more slowly, each 2 minutes was up before we'd even started to get our breath back.

On returning to work, I sent an email to the journal Science, so that others could benefit from my groundbreaking discovery. I'm hopeful that time travel can be developed based around the same concept.

For the rest of the afternoon, I had a lot to do, so stayed in my running kit and ran round the office, trying to slow my time so that I would have more time to complete the report I was working on. Unfortunately, I had to nip back to the computer every few minutes to type another word.

By home time, imagine my surprise when I realised I'd only done about 20 words. I was also very tired. I can only conclude that the time machine effect doesn't work inside buildings. I will let Science know about this first thing in the morning. Actually, it will have to be at 10am tomorrow, as I notice I've got a meeting with my boss and the head of HR first thing. Perhaps they're interested in getting more people to try my experiment, or maybe moving me to an outside office.



Albert Einstein relaxing after a hard set of 12x400m



Navigation - where it's at

This was my first chance to sample some of the delights of my club's winter navigation challenges. This one started in Hayfield and went for a very nice meander around the local area taking in four wall/fence junctions and the like. In total, it was about 9 miles.

I've not got a great sense of direction so thought it would be a good chance to develop my navigational ability. I was set off as one of the last runners, on account of my fairly good running ability - when I'm fit and I know where I'm going. Unfortunately, today I wasn't and didn't. I was also telling as many people as would listen, that I did some more cycling hill reps yesterday, so I wasn't going to be setting a good pace.

I was set off with a team-mate Darren, who seems to be running well after missing some of last year's races for a variety of reasons. For the first mile, it was easy enough to follow Darren and not really worry about navigation. I was thinking that this was kind of cheating. So it was lucky that he then ran off into the distance and I had to do some proper map reading.

In the end (1 hour and 36 minutes later), I completed the event and was rewarded with soup and cake from various Pennine members. I'd really enjoyed it, but hadn't done very well. In handicap terms, I think I was dead last. Even looking at time taken, I was a long way off the leaders and those who I should be close to. Darren beat me by over 20 minutes - nice one Darren. I'm hoping this will serve as a baseline from which I'll work up in future navigational events.

My main learning from today is this:

• Make navigational decisions while running uphill, even if they are a fair way ahead. I can read a map running uphill without having to slow down, but I can't do this downhill.

Flash! Aaaaarrgh

I'm now getting back into a sort of training plan, having spent most of the winter doing the odd jog here and there. I've been out running 3 times this week, and I fancied something a bit different today. So I tested my new cross-training technique - cycling hill reps.

The good thing about cycling is that it's not an impact activity, so you can do it when your joints are sore from running or as a recovery activity. It also isolates your big thigh muscles so is good training for uphill running. The bad thing about cycling is that it takes a long time and there are often long bits between the hills.

So, why not do hill reps on a bike? There are many answers - such as "because it's dull". Still, I've not grown tired of it yet. I'm quite lucky in that I live within a few miles of Flash - Britain's highest village. Old Flash road deserves more than the 1 arrow it gets on the OS map. The steepest bit has over 100 metres of ascent in not very much distance and I'm pleasingly tired by the end of it. I can just do it on my road bike, but the gear ratios are not really designed for hills, so I prefer it on Mrs Noel's heavier mountain bike.

Today I did four reps of it and my thighs are now pleasingly achy, despite the rest of me not feeling too tired. Hopefully I can get out for a run tomorrow. I'm sure I could do a lot more ascent if I went out for a proper bike ride. However, that would take 2-3 hours. Today's reps took less than an hour, including the time taken to get there and back.

Here's the profile from my mapping software.

I await comments:

(a) from proper cyclists, saying how I should be doing more reps, harder hills, and using my road bike, and

(b) from fell runners, saying how this type of training won't help.

Statistics for ladies

Normally I try to get into the top 20% of fell race fields. In the last year or so, I've even managed to sneak into the top 10% of some race fields. This is possible if there are 150 people. It's harder if there are 15!

The number of ladies entering fell races doesn't often lend itself to such analysis. There might be 10 women in a field, and one or two of them are normally disproportionately fast.

Last Sunday's Tigger Tor race was one of the few exceptions. Mrs Noel did it for the first time, and there were loads of ladies there. So I felt very helpful doing the maths and pointing out that she was in the top 10% of the ladies' field (5th out of 67) and of the lady-vets' field (2nd out of 27).

I stayed at home as our youngest was a bit ill, so I have no photos of the day. However, I can show the marmalade that was part of the prize. I realise I've done quite a few photos of jars of conserves, so am trying to make them more interesting with unusual camera angles. What do you think?

The future of running vests?

Would the colours of the club vest have an influence over which club you joined? I don't think it would for me. It also seems not to for any members of Dark Peak Fell Runners as their shirt is brown and purple!!

So if you could design your favourite fell running vest, what would it look like? Here are a few examples that have been designed by some of ever-young members of Pennine - note the tassles on the first one.

I'd like to apologise in advance to any clubs who find their best fell runners leaving in order to design their own vests to rival these ones. They probably feel, like I do, that 60s-inspired flower power designs are sadly lacking in amateur and professional sport.

For those who would like to see what other club's vests are like currently, there's a handy guide here as part of the Durham Fell Runners site. You'll notice there is a startling lack of love-hearts and tassles.

Exciting kitchen utensil news

I realise it's been a while since I last posted, but it's all been a bit dull in the world of Noel. Mrs Noel has of course been doing well with her running and was first lady at Famous Grouse fell race, which was more than a month ago now.

So why have I posted now after such a long period of inactivity? Well, Santa brought me something that I felt I had to share with the world. It's an apple peeler and corer. I'd seen one of these at a friends house a few years ago, and was delighted to get one for Christmas - thanks Mum. However, when I describe it to people, it's a bit hard to visualise (even with arm movements and analogies to other kitchen utensils).

To fully bring it to life, I've had to step into the 21 century and video the proceedings. Interestingly, once I'd uploaded this onto YouTube, I noticed there were several other videos of exactly the same thing. Anyway, this one is mine. Enjoy!