Because 26.3 miles would be crazy

So, it is done. All the training and effort is firmly in the past and the race is over. The race is over and i am left with a vague sense of anti-climax, a degree of disappointment but also a strong sense of satisfaction. A difficult thing has been done, not done as well as i would have liked perhaps but still done and that is something i am proud of.

While the race itself is something that takes some effort to come to terms with, the trip overall was unequivocally excellent. Florence is a marvellous city and a joy to be in whatever the circumstances. Add in the hoopla of a city marathon and it is a potent mix for a chap like me. This puts my previous marathon experience into some sort of context. The Edinburgh marathon is a rather staid and low key affair when compared to the passionate way that Florence seemed to embrace its race. The crowds lining the streets of the centro storico created a real sense of occassion that added to the already heady feeling of running round the Dumo or across the Ponte Vecchio. Of course this only partly mitigated my suffering but more of that later...

The weekend started with something of a failure as our itended Segway tour of the city was cancelled. The replacement food tour was possibly even better but it cant have been the ideal nutritional preparation for a distance race. It also meant we were later in getting to the Expo than intended. This was where i first got a sense of the excititment building towards race start. There were large crowds in and around the Expo hall picking up numbers and milling around to get T-shirts and goody bags. These had to be picked up form a different desk to the numbers obliging runners to run the full gauntlet of stalls, leafleters and hawkers in the exhibition hall. In the final calculation all of this combined with the walk to and from our appartment probably meant i was on my feet for longer than i ought to have been. How significant that was i cant say but this is the downside of an 'away' marathon- you really cant look after yourself to quite the same extent as you can at home.

This also applies to sleep. On our first night i failed to work out the significance of the ear plugs that were thoughtfully supplied in our apartment. A full night of listening to the sounds of what felt like the Italian equivalent of Sauchiehall Street on a saturday night meant that sleep was at a premium. Saturday night involved using those ear plugs. Fortunately they proved effective and i was up bright, early and reasonably rested to watch the final race preparations from our balcony (this involved an intriguing man vs bollard battle which must rank alongside the rumble in the jungle for its gladitorial qualities).

Being so close to both finish and start meant we could be down in the start area with plenty of time to spare. As the pens began to fill up it struck me that recreational running seems like a more serious business in Italy than in the UK. There were almost no charity vests, almost nobody in fancy dress and the vast majority either representing clubs or displaying their previous marathon conquests. Strikingly the mix was also overwhelmingly male with less than a quarter of participants women.

Despite fairly limited space the start area seemed well organised and marshalled. High fences controlled access to the start pens with access only permitted by displaying your race number. The pens quickly became quite congested however and as the crowds started to move off, discarding bin bags and painters overalls to the side, it was obvious that the start was going to be slow.

And so it was. We were off, but off at no more than a jog and very soon we were stopped again and after the first kilometre i was probably 30 seconds outside my target pace. No panic yet, lots of time to make that up but as the crowd began to thin slightly i started to pick up the pace to recover that lost time with the intention that i would do so slowly. Of course there is slowly and there is slowly. Ultimately i failed to recover the time slowly enough and i paid for that later. Miles two and three were 10 seconds or more inside target pace. I dropped the pace slightly after that but was still averaging 8:04, 7 seconds faster than i ought to have been.

By the 10k mark i had made up the time i lost and was starting to bank time relative to target. It wasnt long before i was 30 seconds to the good and realising that i wasnt running quite as easily as i should have been. Some of the running around 10-15k was fairly monotonous through a large park to the west of the city. This was enlivened somewhat by a band on top of an open-top bus doing a cheesy Euro version of Sweet Home Alabama, The early stages were also notable for the course dipping into a couple of road tunnels accompanied by echoing chants of the field as it passed through.

Just before halfway was perhaps the high point for me. I was still feeling fairly comfortable and the route returned to the city and made its way through Oltrarno to the Porta Romana. The narrow streets here were thick with supporters and when the route opened out to the Pitti Palace they were added to by a couple of school orchestras playing away gamely in little gazebos. The route then dipped past the end of the Ponte Vecchio in a corner that was thrillingly crowded and massively noisy. My own particular support team were at the side of the road just after this and i was feeling quite emotional and buoyed by the support as i approached the 13.1 mile point.

I still couldnt quite silence the little voice telling me i was going too quickly. I was feeling ok but i couldnt ignore the fact that i wasnt feeling quite ok enough. My heart rate was starting to creep up and as the route again made its way through a quite monotonous section it became harder and harder to hold my pace. By mile 17 i had slipped back to just outside my original target pace finally. Unfortunately it wasnt proving to be easy to hold that pace either and by mile 20 i had slipped to 8:30 miles. I was in  no position to arrest this slide any longer and things just got worse as the race progressed.

Over the last few miles i had found it harder and harder to take on board any nutrition or fluids and i suspect this helped to contribute to my massive slump. Yes, i bonked big style.

With about 5k to go time and distances started to play tricks. Kilometres felt like miles, minutes like hours. My stomach rebelled and i introduced the Italain public to the joys of a guid Scottish dry boak. It was all i could do to keep moving at this stage and shamefully i had to stop and walk on a couple of occassions. There was no way that i wasnt going to finish, but it felt very much like my race had gone by now. The temperature had risen, the road surfaces had become more uneven and i could feel my form going to pot as i struggled to maintain any semblence of momentum. Finally though i came past the start line and round the corner towards Piazza Santa Croce and the finish. I just about managed to summon up a sprint finish. Of course in reality that sprint was no faster than my original target pace but that isnt how it felt at the time. Almost literally slumping across the line i finished in 3:41:10 feeling frustrated at how had allowed my pacing to get out of hand. Before i had made it out of the finishers funnel though it had struck me that rather than a failure, this was a personal best and a pretty massive one at that. 8 minutes off my previous time is nothing to be sneezed at even if it was some 6 minutes outside my target and the subject of a massive negative split.

So what to be learned? Well, i think ultimately my training over the course of the year proved to be too inconsistent. Injury caused things to be quite stop start and even in the lead up to the race a couple of significant long runs went astray. That had to impact on my ability to hold target pace. I still think i need to do better with nutrition and my preparation could have been better in the lead up to the race but rally, pacing is the big thing i need to get better at.

All that being said, it was a thrilling thing to do. The sections through the centre, past the Dumo and the main shopping streets were amazing. The crowds were 3 or 4 deep in areas and gratifyingly noisy. While i would like to have been in a better place physically and mentally to enjoy this more it was still an experience which the Edinburgh marathon just doesnt match.

So overall, a curate's egg. Not quite what i expected but i am not discouraged. Next stop Lochaber in April!

And now, the end is near...

Less than a week to go! This time next week i fully expect to be struggling backwards down stairs and generally basking in the glow of knowing i have usefully borken myself. For now though, tapering and all the frustration that brings.

Reaching the end of a marathon campaign is an odd experience. It is very much a case of going out with a whimper rather than a bang as the training decreases over the final three weeks towards race day. When an old bit of timber has been under load and is suddenly releieved of that tension it is going to creak and groan a bit. So it is with my tapering experience. Whilst one would expect to feel bright and energetic when the requirement to run long distances and high volumes is removed, the reality is actually the opposite. My legs dont feel especially fresh. I know i am fit but i still feel slightly sluggish. This doesnt translate to race day though as properly rested and prepared, it all feels better when you are moving.

The more frustrating side effect of the taper though is the taper lurgy. Distance running seems to have a pretty positive effect on the immune system but reducing volume has quite the opposite effect and thus i am suffering (slightly) from the cold that has been working its way round the office. I am not suffering so much or so close to race day to be too bothered by this. Yet.

Last time i wrote here i was still to run my final prep race. I had planned to run the Southside 6 at marathon pace. My Garmin tells me i didnt quite do that, sitting a few seconds outside of my 8:11 mile target. My Garmin did however record a slightly shorter distance than was billed. If the race was actually 16 miles or more then i was pretty much spot on. To be honest though that doesnt much bother me. The 6 turned out to be a pretty challenging event in its own right. I know the area it  is run in very well but i am not so familiar with racing over such a hilly course so have to admit to being surprised by quite how much it hurt. I have pictorial evidence of that too. This now ranks as my favourite photo of me, taken at the top of the steps in Queens Park. Ouch!

 

Sections of the course were also really quite muddy so definitely challenging. Good soup at the finish though and certainly one i would do again.

So now thoughts turn very much to the marathon. We fly friday morning and i am spending far too much time running over my preparations in my head. I dont want to be travelling without necessary kit and i want to be at the start line feeling relaxed, properly and safely fed and watered and in good health to go on sunday morning.There are many more variables when doing a race abroad so a greater degree of risk. One of those risks is the weather. As i type this the forecast is veering between just about being ok on race day and being absolutely atrocious. I need to expect the worst and plan for the latter option. Not that it involves much planning to be fair, it will mostly involve just doing the same stuff but much wetter. And with more vaseline. But that is not a subject for a family friendly blog...

Update

I think i have missed a couple of weeks here. In part this is because i was suitably chastened to discover that not everyone finds the running chat utterly riveting. Really? For shame!

With the sarcasm button set back to 'off', my absence from this journal has been more about injury (minor, resolved) and motivation fatigue (ongoing, managed). I am at the stage in my training schedule where i can see the light of the oncoming train and i am just about ready to taper and have a bit of a rest. Whether this is connected to my slightly creaking body isnt certain but my calves are again problematic. A niggle meant a couple of runs missed. Unfortunately one of those was my last 20 miler. Not a massive problem in itself but getting towards the sharp end i find myself with no real scope to accommodate that run elsewhere.

Thus i am left with a vague feeling that no matter how fit i am (fitter than i have ever been i feel), a lack of long runs will be my undoing and i am not well enough prepared. Logically there is some merit in this. More miles would mean i was *better* prepared but in reality i should know that my preparation has been excellent. My overall mileage has been good and while the programme has a whole and indeed the entire year, has been patchy, i am in a good place fitness wise.

That was demonstrated at the weekend with another PB. Jedburgh half was in my schedule as my last race effort and the means i would use to finalise my target marathon pace. That meant i needed to hit it hard. On top of the 2 hour drive, the miserable weather and my niggle calf, i just didnt feel particularly up for that. There are some runs that you just dont fancy and i hated just about every step of this race from start till finish. I felt like i was about to detonate from about mile 4 onwards and my HR data confirms that feeling with a higher average heart rate than my hilly 10k PB from a couple of weeks previously!

For all the negativity and despite an annoying headwind on the way back in, i came home below my target and a good 3 and a half minutes below my previous best  with 1:39:27. A fantastic result in the circumstances as it was run off almost no taper.

So, thats it decided, my marathon target is 3:35:00. Online calculaters suggest my shorter race times ought to translate to something south of 3:30:00. These things always overestimate how well normal people can translate times to longer distances so i am playing it safe and going for a slightly slower time with the proviso that if i miraculously get to 18 miles and feel fantastic i can push on a bit.

So i am here now with less than 1 week of proper training before taper. As i sit here and write this i am of the view that i am not recovered properly from Jedburgh so i can see this week being a challenge. Last night had me doing one of those batshit mental interval sessions that seem to pepper this particular schedule. 5*1200m reps @ 5k pace. Failure to operate my Garmin correctly meant i was hitting each rep somewhere between 5 and 10k pace but to be honest i doubt i could have given too much more. The legs are heavy this morning and tonight's 14 mile run seems like a thoroughly stupid idea.

But this is my last chance to get something into my tank before easing back so i intend to push through it. The fatigue i am accumulating will make Sunday an even better marathon simulation. I am running the Southside 6. 16 miles through the streets and parks of Glasgow's southside. Undulating if not actively hilly but well within my normal long run territory. The plan is to run it at or around marathon pace. All going well this will prove to be an enjoyable confidence booster. If things dont go quite so well then i have the excuse of tired legs. Still, fingers crossed for the former...

Week 12

"I'm playing all the right notes—but not necessarily in the right order."

Total Mileage : 65

Runs: 7

 

Quite a momentous week this. Amongst my many petty achievments are:

1. Finally managing to complete a full week as specified in my training schedule. Almost. No, actually, i nailed it this week. The fact that one or two sessions were shifted about doesnt alter that. Messrs Pfitzinger & Douglas have written an excellent book on marathon training, but expecting you to race on a saturday is unrealistic given that almost every race in the country takes place on a sunday.
   
   The downside of swapping stuff around was a friday night long run. 18 miles. Rock, and indeed roll. After a long week 18 miles on a friday is a trial. It is even more of a trial if you decide to try out a new route round the hillier parts of Newton Mearns and the south of Glasgow. Ouch.
2. Doing the double.  Thursday was 4 miles before breakfast, 6 miles after work. The theory behind days like this is it lets you get the miles in without the same impact that a 10 miler would have. Pffft! Personally i think that final 6 miles hurt more than it would had i not run in the morning and recovered more fully before going out again.
3. Biggest week ever. 65 miles. Off the back of this i am feeling slightly more sluggish than i have been. Recovery feels like it is taking a little bit longer while the sessions are coming thick and fast. Only 3 weeks away from starting to taper though....
4. I have broken my annual mileage record. Only 22 miles off my target for the year too.
5. A new 10k PB! 45:09 (garmin time) at Pollok Park on sunday. This showed the perils of trusting GPS times, particularly in a heavily forested area. For most of the race i was averaging, according to my Garmin at least, 7:35 miles. My time looked to be heading for 47 minutes or so. Not a time i would have been disappointed in given the up and down nature of the course and the lack of rest in my legs. Turns out i was measuring short and i crossed the line in a massive 27 second PB.
   
   Frustratingly i am less pleased with this than i ought to be. My 10k PB has stood since September 2009. Possibly because it wasnt a particular target this time out and possibly because i failed to crack 45  minutes, i find myself less enthused. For all that it is a satisfying result and it stands me in good stead for the coming decisive weeks of training.
   
   While i dont think this changes my marathon pace target yet, it gives me something to aim for in the Jedburgh half in a couple of weeks time and how i do there will decide what i target with the Southside 6 the following week giving me a chance to do a MP dress rehearsal.

Week 11

Total Mileage : 63
Runs: 6

This week? I am not even going to pretend i was close to following my plan to the letter. I have mostly been doing what i feel like. Running wherever the spirit takes me. Jazz. Freestyle. Bip badda boop badda weeee wak wak wooo badda bong.

Or something.

Actually its been more a case of getting the runs in as and when and doing what felt reasonable at the time. Again, its been another week thats been almost entirely about the key sessions. In particular this was a tempo run on friday (which felt about as effortless as these runs can) and sunday's long run of 22 miles.

That long run was pretty much a breeze. This seems quite ridiculous to me. 22 miles and it wasnt a trial? How is that even possible particularly when i did a 5 miler earlier in the week and it felt pretty horrid? These are the mysteries of marathon training though. I have hit a bit of a sweet spot where i am in control of my effort. My form (while it has its issues) is clearly working for me (i know this when my feet feel better and look less scabby...). Most of all i am recovering well. Speed of recovery always seems like one of the best indicators of fitness to me. Just now i am recovering from everything other than the harder sessions in 24 hours with some comfort and even sunday's 22 mile run has not resulted in the expected stiffness (though i am experiencing slightly fatigued feeling glutes).

22 miles also marks something of a peak in the training schedule. Thats the longest run i will do. I have another 20 miler and at least one 18 mile run to come but getting the big one out of the way feels like i have broken the back of it a bit. There are still some tough runs to come but one of the most important ones is banked and that gives me a bit of confidence moving forward. Stats are currently suggesting i am ahead of where i was at a comparable point in previous marathon training. There is more improvement to come between now and the race too. This makes choosing a race pace tricky. My warmup races will help decide on that. More on this subject another time i expect...

Getting that benchmark out of the way has caused me to think more generally about benchmarks in my training. The 63 miles run this week ranks it as the joint biggest week i have done. My mind still quietly boggles at that number as i can quite clearly remember what a barrier a 25 mile week felt like!

September was the biggest mileage total i have posted in a single month by quite some distance. 248 as compared to my previous best of 214. For the last couple of years i have targetted 1500 miles for the year and failed. This year it looks like i will achieve that with ease, probably in about a week and a half's time.

Now these are not particularly significant milestones in and of themselves. Their real importance is in demonstrating that i am capable of absorbing the kind of training volumes that will hopefully give me a decent chance to have a good run in Florence. That being said there is a lot of positive motivation to be had from these little challenges and targets. If nothing else it helps to stop me fixating on the looming 26.2 mile monster heading rapidly towards me.

Week 10

Total Mileage : 62
Runs : 7

So a week where for once i have not been fretting about marathon targets and training plans and heart rates and all that fluff. This blog has primarily been about that sort of thing. It has mainly been about tracking how my training has been going and so it has been rather more technical than most folk will probably find interesting. I didnt ever much intend it to be about other stuff. My opinions on things are not considered all that important in my own home so i dont expect the wider public to have much interest in them. For this reason and for the very fact that i am a chap of fewer thoughts and even fewer of thos which are interesting, i have stuck to a narrow path with this journal.

This week is slightly different however (but only slightly, there is still running involved).

Sunday was the day that our son was due to be born.

Now were life as neat and tidy as the movies, this would have been an entirely momentous occassion. If we could package our lives up into bite sized and easily digestible sections, it would have been the end of one thing and the start of another. None of this is true however. This has been a complicated episode for both me and Lucy and to be perfectly honest, its always going to be there in some form. What that form is is usually hard to predict and even harder to grasp and while milestones help in gaining distance and perspective they never really alter the reality of what has happened.

That being said, it felt important to us to do something to mark this particular day. it felt equally important that this be something positive as we have never sought to dwell on the negative aspects of our experience. While we have been scuffed, bruised and scarred emotionally, we have also curiously found some degree of empowerment.

Certainly for me it was an obvious choice to do a run on sunday. Without being too pretentious i hope, running is the thing which connects me most firmly with both my inner self and the world around me. There is something quite profound in being contained within your thoughts but firmly connected to both earth and elements, place and time. When dealing with something which might start to consume you in a very negative way, i feel that sort of connection to something other than your thoughts and fears is vital. I feel this even more strongly when it comes to mass participation running events. I find the act of taking part in this activity as a shared experience with thousands of others quite moving.

We have been quite open about our experiences as we dont feel that there is anything in what we have gone through to be ashamed of so it felt like we could join a few dots by doing something together where we could publicly remember our son and raise some money for ARC (a charity we both found comfort in).The stars aligned and the date fell on the day of the Loch Ness Marathon. Too soon for me and too long for Lucy but the River Ness 10k which was part of the wider marathon festival seemed just the ticket.

I usually have a love/hate relationship with 10ks. Unlike longer distances you usually run them much closer to your boak threshold (thats a technical term there folks) so while satisfying they arent always fun at the time. Running together was clearly going to be a different experience to that. The result for me was my worst time every but possibly the best time i have ever had taking part in a race.

We were helped by smashing weather and the route along the banks of the river was flat and pleasant but the real joy was the support we received on the course. Running quicker the experience of ones fellow runners is usually in the context of dodging their phlegm or getting round them, head down. At the even less sharp end of the course it actually all felt a bit more fun. No less effort, but a bit more of a smile and better chat and the response we got to our signs saying why we were running was incredibly moving. I wish we could thank personally all the people who paused to offer us support. It really did help us through something which could have turned out to be quite difficult.

The other satisfying aspect of the day was Lucy's performance. While she had taken part in a number of 10ks before she had never quite ran the full distance. Even in training she didnt get further than 5k. On sunday she ran the full distance, with good steady even splits, even into the face of a strong headwind for the last mile. Proper sprint finish too. Doubling your long run in one fell swoop on race day is a massive achievement. Doing it all in a controlled and skilfull manner is even better. It might not have been quick but it was some proper running and i am very proud.

Post-Run Soup

Apart from that there is my usual "not quite following the training plan" bulletin to come. This week was down as a rest and recovery week so of course i run over distance after slipping in a few extra miles here and there. All the key runs were done though with an excellent intervals sessions through the week which was lots of fun. I am now finding that i can pretty much recover from anything other than the harder sessions or the longest runs within 24 hours. Friday evening/saturday morning amounted to over marathon distance and very few grumbles so i think this decent block of consistent mileage is paying off.

Week 9

Total mileage: 57

Runs: 5

In ordinary circumstances I am not usually of the view that fate is any sort of factor in my life. Lately however I have, on more than one occasion, harboured the thought that this marathon campaign is governed by dark forces out with my control. The cause of this ridiculous melodrama? Yes, again I have come through a week without doing all the runs my marathon programme expects. First world problems indeed and by no means something to be too upset about. Nonetheless it is frustrating and amusing in almost equal measure to note the various items which have conspired against me, from various ailments, to work, to (trying to have a) real life. This week, despite once again being something of a martyr to my feet, my issues were not physical. This week I lost runs to fire.

At rather short notice I was called down to Leeds for a meeting. With the way my week had already been rearranged I had already missed a planned morning run, this being a double day. I was still on track to at least get my daily mileage in despite missing a session until the train back pulled in to Darlington. There everything took on a pear-like appearance. A fire north of the station called a halt to all services on the line and as the delay dragged on it became clear that I wasn’t going to be running. Now the eagle-eyed reader may notice that once again it appears to have been a double which has been missed off. This is surprisingly not deliberate on my part. I am actually massively keen to try running twice in a day. This is however again the intervention of fate, more so since I had already moved things about this week to accommodate the double day with it having previously clashed with a night out to see Karine Polwart at Oran Mor (very very good by the way).

Anyway, each new week brings new hope that for once fate will not intervene and training will be accomplished as planned.

Where running has been done, it has been done pretty well (and with maximum modesty). The main event this week was Sunday’s marathon paced session with the rest of the week geared up to be relatively benign to support this key run. It says something about both this schedule and how I am responding to it that the inclusion of a 15 mile midweek run doesn’t so much as raise an eyebrow. Such runs are a staple of any week rather than a particularly exceptional occurrence.

Marathon pace runs are a different kettle of fish however and are not something to be underestimated. To the inexperienced, it might seem like 12 miles at marathon pace is fairly easy, after all, am I not going to run 26.2 miles at that speed? This ignores the impact of rest, taper, adrenaline and the sharpness that comes when one is race-ready. It also fails to understand just how hard it is to judge marathon pace and what can go wrong if you are even a little bit out on that pace judgement.

Pace judgement (or lack of it) is probably the biggest reason why people don’t reach their marathon targets. Judging the effort level for a race which might take four hours and which consequently needs to be significantly less than maximal is hard. MP sits in a zone which doesn’t feel slow enough to be easy and isn’t fast enough to feel like a tempo run. In order to run your best possible race you also want to get it right precisely. I am aiming for 8:19 miles at the moment (to take me in around or under 3:40:00). Running on anything other than a track at a consistent pace requires constant adjustment – to the weather, surface, traffic, incline. With that it is easy for 8:19 to become 8:09 or 8:29. Those miles that are ahead of target pace tend to save up trouble for later in the race. It’s imperative not to let that pace creep up and to keep it controlled. I failed to do that successfully on Sunday. Its fine for me to run 12 miles at 8:09 pace. That isn’t even half marathon pace. If I run 12 miles in a marathon at that pace I will absolutely detonate later on, it just won’t be sustainable. It’s also very hard to recover when you have done that damage early on.

 

So not an unqualified success this weekend. My pacing was wrong but apart from that it felt like a good workout. Generally I am feeling strong at the moment. Apart from my feet, my body is responding well to all this. My legs are recovering well after sessions and I like to think I have acquired the gaunt and haunted look of the long distance runner. I am also reaching the point where just about every waking hour is spent thinking about running. Experience suggests this will be followed quite shortly by a mental and emotional slump as that is no more sustainable than an 8 minute mile marathon pace. That will need to be dealt with as and when it arrives though. The specific challenges of this week will need to be tackled first.

 

Scheduled as a recovery week, this could in fact turn out to be harder than any of the other weeks in this process. That has nothing to do with Wednesdays interval session (5k pace intervals! This early? On a recovery week??) and everything to do with next weekend. Inverness looms. At the moment I don’t have a clear idea of how it is all going to play out for us. I expect many hurdles (not literally I hope) along the way but currently I am positive about what it is going to represent.  There will be points where that is something we both will need to hold on to. Really it is a step into the unknown and I am sure it is something I will need to set my thoughts down on separately at some point. Until then, I have my fingers crossed that maybe, just maybe, this will be the week when everything comes together. One perfect week of training….

Week 8

Total mileage: 62

Runs: 6

 

No new ailments...

 

The story of this campaign so far is of missed targets. Another week, another failure to quite live up to the lofty ideals of my training schedule. Every time I look at my training diary I can feel its scornful gaze looking back, mocking my indolent inability to manage to get all my sessions in.

 

To be fair my failure this week was rather less significant than in previous weeks, amounting only to not quite managing to get my second run of the day in on Tuesday. Yes, that's right, my second Tuesday run. This is one of the aspects of my programme of which I am currently most wary. I understand the theory behind it - two shorter runs in a day allow you to maintain peak mileage whilst reducing the injury potential of the impact of longer runs. That makes sense logically but the idea of running twice in one day just seems, well, a bit wrong.

 

This past week I was saved from this perversion by Huddersfield. The need to travel has been a frequent obstruction this time round and while i was perfectly prepared to rush home at 8:30 in the evening and head straight out the door for a run after a long day, I wasn't prepared to try and do a swift 4 miles before my 05:40 train.

 

Apart from that this has been an excellent week of running. Definite progresss has been made. If there's anything which comes with a guarantee in the world of running it is that you are going to get some sort of a training boost from either a decently long tempo run or an absolutely muckle long slow run. This week had both and as a result I am feeling significantly more confident and generally stronger.

 

With increasing volume I did greet the reintroduction of quality with some trepidation. Trying to run hardon fatigued legs can be a very messy business if not approached with caution. Apart from the key sessions this week my focus has mostly been on recovery and making sure am able to run hard when I need to. This has meant making sure the slow stuff is properly slow again. Running slowly is harder than most people think. It is less efficient, your form is different and it just feels a bit weird. The thing is though, even just being slightly too quick on a recovery day can cause massive knock on effects later on. I think I could still stand to go a bit slower on my easy days but I have more or less done enough to manage my legs through the week and through sunday's long run.

 

That long run was indicative of how difficult running can be. Not because it was especially hard (21 miles isn't ever easy though), but because of how hard it can be to understand. Last week's similar run felt quite comfortable. This week's felt like a bit of a trial. Counter intuitively this week's was significantly quicker and at a lower average heart rate. So, listening to your body is vital, but sometimes you need to get it to submit written evidence just to be sure.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Week 7

Total Mileage : 60
Runs: 5

Ailments so far: 6

Calf strain
Achilles tendonitis
Hip Bursities
Blister
Blood blister
Gingerbread man

So, week 7. Weeks 4-6 didnt happen. Almost literally, so here we are at the end of the 7th week of training. In one piece (more or less).

This is in itself surprising but something i am very grateful for at this stage. Common sense and experience got me over my last injury blip. Common sense then dictates that one doesnt immediately fire in with what at this stage probably amounts to my second biggest weekly mileage ever. I really ought to have built more gradually to this volume but i dont think you can run a marathon without some element of risk and this was a gamble i was willing to take based on always being able to cool it off as the week progressed.

As it turned out i did cool it off a bit. Coming back from a break usually follows a patter. Early runs a awful. Slow, high heart rate, low fun. Then your body quickly reacts, gets better again and you have at least one run that is right on the button - quick, easy, light on the feet. This is invariably followed by another crash as the fatigue catches up on you. So it was this week. I had a few runs towards the end of the week that were trials. One indeed involved a classic 'bonk'. It was all i could do to finish and drag myself home before my energy levels completely collapsed and my spaghetti legs gave way.

All the same, i made it to friday only to discover that in my absence from this training programme it had gone and introduced a 7 mile general run on saturday rather than the 5 mile recovery effort i was expecting. Fatigue combined with football at Hampden being a general disruption alongside my ambitions for sunday caused me to bin that run and i am glad i did. I think it did me good to get a little extra rest.

Those sunday ambitions were around my planned long run for the week. 21 miles scheduled. In the end i did 'only' 20. The P&D schedule is relatively light in genuinely long runs so i dont like to miss them when they come up in my diary and even though it was a challenge given my current fitness i was determined to do this one.

In the end it proved to be a bit of a confidence builder. Despite a slightly elevated heart rate it felt easier than i could reasonably have hoped. I have tried to explain to Lucy just how much fun it is to do a run that is almost entirely uphill for the first ten miles and then downhill on the way back. She doesnt get it. I do though and i got this one in while avoiding some forecast rough weather. The first half was inevitably into a headwind which mysteriously disappeared at the turn and there was a few squally showers along the way but nothing that challenged my vaselined covered extremities too much.

Noticably fewer runners out now that GSR  is out of the way. We are definitely now heading in to shorter days and dark and grimmer running.

Injury

No blog for a while. That is largely because I have been practicing denial. By not thinking about running and my training programme I have been able to cope with the fact that I have been prevented from doing running of any sort for over a week now.

 

The culprit is,surprisingly, neither calf nor Achilles, the to main concerns I had commencing this campaign. I is instead a recurrence of a hip bursitis (but on the other side this time). Having been the full and very expensive physio programme last time round I feel I know all there needs to be known about this. The cause is the cause of just about everything you can see a physio for (weak glutes). The cure is rest, ice and industrial quantities of ibuprofen. and so it is this time. Some deep tissue massage might have been of benefit but I don't believe it would have appreciably speeded up my recovery. Fingers crossed the drugs and ice packs have done the trick and things are feeling much better. Experience tells me not to get too excited too soon though. There always seems to be a false dawn but this injury already seems to have gotten better and worse a couple of times so I assume I am now on the way out of it.

 

Of course sod's law dictates that an injury is most likely to occur when one is furthest from home and the weather is the worst. So it was for me. Things started to feel iffy when doing a longish run in weather which seriously suggested the risk of drowning on pollokshaws road of all places. By the time I turned to come home at clarkston toll it was clear I wasn't going to be ale to run the 3 miles or so back. Some hobbled home with squelchy shoes and a drookit demeanour.

 

I am newly philosophical about my running. This is helping me cope with this and the genuine concern that a couple of weeks gap in marathon training is going to have a major impact on my ability to do this race. The reality though is that there is still a lot of running to be done between now and November. There is also the objective of his race which is now less about performance than about raising funds for Arc. More than that though it's about taking something positive out of this difficult year and taking control of my destiny again, even of just in a very small way.

 

With that in mind I am tentatively pencilling in a run of some sort in the coming days. Only if I feel sure it won't further endanger this year's targets. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

 

Now maybe I should do something about those glutes....

 

Posted with Blogsy

Week 3

Total Mileage: 53
Runs: 5

The top line is consistent. I have been putting in pretty much the same overall volume for 3 weeks in a row. Consistency is good in training. Its less good if we are meant to be ramping up your overall mileage but lets not worry too much about that yet...

This week has again been Speed of Light affected. I couldnt find a sensible way of fitting in a run on Wednesday with having to travel to Edinburgh in the evening to take part in the walking audience for Speed of Light. The late night drive back through on the M8 would have been even more of a trial if i had been up at stupid o'clock in the morning so again, i have ditched a recovery run.

If i know any small thing about marathon training its that flexibility is vital and i am more than happy to take a view on recovery runs. While i think these are really important parts of the process they are definitely less important than the long runs. My target therefore is to make sure i get the key sessions in each week and then work around that.

Which would be great except i failed in that respect this week too. This time the weather was the culprit. Training for a marathon in Scotland is always going to have its climatic challenges. Whether that is a spring marathon where you have to train through the cold, wet and miserable winter or an autumn race where you do your training through the cold, wet and miserable summer. Presumably because i am now pretty much used to the rain Friday hit us with some scorchio sunshine. My afternoon tempo run looked to be a bit too much of a trial in the heat so i binned it for the same distance but at an easy pace. Predictably my performance data taunted me with my failure by not being heat affected in the slightest. Still, a good run is a good run and i didnt want to be wrecked for saturday night anyway.

Speed of Light has been covered more fully elsewhere here but in running terms it was again a joy, albeit a slightly harder joy than the rehearsal night suggested. More distance overall and fewer pauses. I definitely need to get out on the hills and have a go at running them at a less leisurely pace.

While the pace was benign the inclines still wrecked havoc on my legs. Sunday's long run was fine till late on when running downhill towards home. Fatigue and the pounding my legs had taken on Arthur's Seat caught up on me and the last mile and a half saw my pace fade. Its telling that as writing this on tuesday my legs still feel a bit sorry for themselves. 9 miles tonight should get them moving again though.

Speed of Light and the Olympics

I have many issues with the Olympics. If you are going to spend upwards of £9 Billion on something then its impossible to do it without questions being asked. Its nigh on impossible to assess whether that sum achieves any sort of value for money as nobody can really agree what the ultimate purpose of the shindig is. Are we striving for a sporting legacy or is it just about a 'national' feelgood factor? Will there be broad economic benefits or is it about local regeneration?

The evidence from previous games suggests that the quantifiable benefits will be slight. Legacy is nebulous and few games make profits. Certainly a neglected quarter of London has been substantially regenerated but from the perspective of this little corner of Northern Britain it is hard to get too excited about further massive taxpayer funded investment being siphoned south yet again. Even if one accepts the principle, has this regeneration been done well? From the lens of television coverage and extensive features in the architectural press my answer is no. The park and the athletes village look like a messy collection of fairly shoddy temporary structures arranged around an intellectually rigorous but ultimately flawed and aesthetically arid stadium. The temporary flat pack nature of many of these venues could be a virtue in these depressed and resource conscious times but that doesnt quite tally with the quite astronomical sums spent on the enterprise as a whole. Overall it looks to me like another example of how we just cant do planning on a grand scale. This might be a particular cultural issue to do with how English cities have developed in a piecemeal manner but the picturesque if not quite wacky stylings of the Olympic park are just crying out for someone to apply some sort of rigorous order to them in my view.

But. But. While there are issues it is clear that on many levels the games have been an absolute triumph. The organisation seems to have been thorough and efficient and punters have embraced almost every aspect in an enthusiastic manner. And of course there is the sporting success. It takes a cold cold heart not to have found some joy in  the many stories of commitment, talent and inspiration that have filled our screens over the last few days. Bolt, Rudisha, Farah, Ennis, Kiprotich, Dibaba. There have been some breathtaking performances.

Where i do find myself bemused though is the haste with which people will suddenly discover an interest in dressage or pentathlon or BMX or whatever minority sport happens to be likely to yield a medal to the UK. I don't buy in to the notion of the UK so i have no particular affinity to 'Team GB' so their medal performance means little to me. I have therefore not had the same sort of way in to some of these odd sports that others have. Having said that, i take little more interest if there is a Scot involved so perhaps i ultimately have fairly narrow interests...

I really shouldn't begrudge these sports and their participants their day in the sun. It struck me earlier this afternoon that once upon a time it would have been perfectly normal to see minority sports on national TV as the BBC filled its Grandstand schedule with them. We have lost that now and we only hear about these things when there is a broader context to provide people with a hook. Media plurality has actually had the opposite effect to what one might expect and made such things less accessible than they used to be.

And accessability is really the key here. When people can speak positively of the fact that a still disproportionately small 70% of the Scottish medals went to those educated in the state system, we still have an issue of representation. However inspired someone is by dressage they are going to struggle to take it up. Equally while kayaking might look exciting on telly its a larger leap from the sofa to paddling down a river than it is to just strap on some trainers and get out there and be active. The current system has focussed funding on the greatest opportunities for medal success. This has had an undoubted effect on national pride but is it the best use of resources from a public health point of view? If legacy is really the objective why dont we focus our attention most firmly on the kind of things that people can actually identify with? A nation that fails to fill places with qualifying athletes at an Olympics because they dont have a strong enough medal chance doesnt value participation enough. What is that Olympic ethos again?

Around the fringes more interesting things happen however. Speed of Light is one of those and it places participation front and centre. Operating on the relatively uncharted fringes between sport and art, Speed of Light is a new work by NVA which uses LED clad runners to create patterns of light and movement on Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh. The audience themselves are also particpants in the event, walking through the work with light sticks. This is no passive spectacle and it would lose much of its resonance were there a more traditional audience/performer distinction. By emphasising taking part and the process, the artwork extends its reach beyond the performance, back to the streets where the runners train, to the workshops where the technology was developed and even to the management of the event itself. The whole thing gives off a positive communal vibe through its use of social media but also in the safety briefings which emphasise the need for particpants to look after each other. There is ultimately a very social, if not political grounding to all this and that feels particularly satisfying in this location, surrounded by the symbols of power and patronage.


In the best traditions of land art though, while the process lends resonance, the triumph of the piece is ultimately in how it alters one's perception of its context. Here the lights on the hillside end up subtley co-opting the lighting of the city beyond. All of a sudden strips of street lighting become drawn in to the composition. The fireworks above the castle become part of its narrative. Even coming down off the hill i was briefly disorientated by the lights on a passing bicycle which appeared to be a new element of choreography. As a participant there is then a very strong sense of place and time. Landscape, the city, the weather and the community that one has been drawn together for this all come together in a particularly satisfying way. Most pleasingly it does so without the obvious heavy hand of a guiding high concept. On the surface, it is about light and running and movement, it almost finds its own meaning beyond that.


Quite apart from all that, it is an absolute hoot to take part in. Without doubt this is the most fun i have had running outside of a marathon and most instructively for the Olympic legacy and our current politicians who are again missing the point about competition in sport, it is inclusive and accessible. This is running for the sheer joy of it. We are not competitive runners out on the hill, we are collaborative. That is new and quite thrilling. Somewhere in this is a way to get people involved in sport who turn aside from tesosterone fuelled competitiveness. Utopian? Perhaps, but each of us out there has a story to tell about how running has in some small or large way made us better people. Whether that be the hardcore fell runners or those who trained specifically for this event and found themselves growing in confidence with every step as they found that they could meet the challenge. Running is not snake oil. Running makes the world better and Speed of Light proves that.

Week 2

Number of runs : 6

Total mileage : 53

Second week done and mileage has remained static where the programme anticipated a slight increase. I have an excuse. This is not simply lack of effort on my part but a calculated result of the big event of these next couple of weeks: Speed of Light.

Saturday was my second time on Arthur's Seat, this time as part of the technical rehearsal for SOL. As compared to my previous visit there for the Super Sunday training session, the run distance was significantly less this time, being only a couple of miles all in. That meant that i missed my programmed 5 miles for the day but since that was a recovery session i am refusing to be concerned about that.

The SOL run itself was amazing despite some minor issues (such as the lightsuit not working and not actually being able to see the hill for the fog). I am very much looking forward to both running it for real and being part of the audience. The effect of the lightsuits on the hillside is something special.

Apart from that minor deviation, the week has more or less gone to plan. Various issues have caused it to be a busier week than expected and as such the running has weighed heavier than it might have but i have generally coped and the nerdy data i collect has suggested my fitness has taken a step forward. I mostly use a figure for beats per mile from my run data to assess progress. To some degree this device helps to remove some of the differences between faster and slower runs, being a measure of running efficiency. In reality it isnt quite as simple as that. I seem to  tend to get lower figures when i run more quickly suggested that my technique is more efficient then, possibly because i am running more naturally, possibly just down to increased stride length for the same cadence. Equally terrain and weather also impact the figures so it is far from an absolute measure but it helps  to show trends.

The trend has been fairly static of late but it has now taken a bit of a dip. At the moment anything in the 1200s is good for me and i am now seeing some consistent runs in the range of 1240-1275. That is still nowhere near where i was earlier in the year and i still cant quite establish exactly why i have lost so much fitness since then. While i have had periods out with injury and other training disruption i dont really see why there has been such a substantial impact. I can only assume that it is down to consistency or lack thereof. Now that i am consistently getting the miles in i have seen a step change in my data and i would expect to see another similar leap in the next 3 or 4 weeks.
On the injury front, i can also see some progress. Despite some tiredness my calves are never tightening up to the degree they were earlier in the year. My achilles is continuing to be concerning though. On sunday i could feel it at varying stages of my long run. It is never enough to stop me but i can feel it for a bit before the pain fades away again. Its never good to get niggles like that on a run and even less so when you are hitting the turn on a 16 mile out and back route when you are your furthest away from home and the mild drizzle has just become a torrential downpour...

Moving in to week three though and things look more positive. It seems like my programme of stretching may have been aggrevating it. Easing off on that has improved the symptoms so perhaps my ankle just needs a little love.

Hello tiredness my old friend

After a positive first week comes the slump. Only two runs into the week and it is already looking like week 2 will be a hard slog. Not that this is a particular worry yet. I have found that fatigue tends to come in waves through a training programme and it will in particular rear its very ugly head at the start when the body is still adapting to new stresses and strains.

As an additional excuse, Real Life has poked its nose in this week. Some work travel and a terribly inconvenient stab at Champions League football have meant i have been getting a bit less sleep than i would want. It is amazing just how much sleep has an effect on training. My energy levels are right down without doing any particularly hard running and it is all down to tiredness. My heart rate data tends to support this as i am running to more or less the average rates that i would expect. This isnt proper fatigue brought on by over-training, i am mostly just needing a good kip!

That Real Life thing has also forced me to be more flexible than my OCD would like in my schedule this week. I have ended up doing my 3 longer midweek runs back to back. We will see after tonight's how that is panning out. It may be that i need to back off a little tomorrow evening, particularly as i am doing Speed of Light on saturday night.Going by the Super Sunday training session the pace of this isnt crazy and the overall mileage involved is limited but on rough and hilly terrain carrying a battery pack and wearing a lightsuit its not quite the intended recovery run i ought to be doing.

The other spectre that is haunting me at the moment is injury. This is my second shot at this particular schedule, the first having been brought to an abrupt end by my second calf strain. This time round i am experiencing tightness and some pain in my heel. Dr Internet suggests this is achilles tendonitis. The good doctor also suggests that it might want some rest. Fortunately running fora abound with stories of idiots like me who run through such problems. So, while be strategy is not conservative, i am not actually stupid. My current intention is to monitor it very closely indeed. Presently it is no more than an niggle and isnt debilitating in the least. A programme of stretches and Ibuprofen has caused an appreciable improvement in symptoms so (with very firmly crossed fingers) i think things will turn out ok.

Week 1

Number of runs : 6

Total mileage : 54

 

The first week of a schedule often presents a bit of a shock to the system. This time however there has been a fairly smooth transition into the demands of the programme. The volume of running involved is not an appreciable increase from my base mileage and while my current schedule has slightly more intensity I have been able to manage the pace of my order runs sufficiently that has been easy enough to absorb.

 

Of course this is just week 1. Things will get tougher from here. 50+ mile weeks are not particularly challenging. That is relative of course. I can vividly remember being excited by my first 25 mile week and it takes a long time for the body to adapt to these demands but now 50 is fairly standard. I won't be sticking at this level for long though and last time round with this schedule I broke down after a peak of 63 miles. I would like to think I am more ready to deal with that volume now. I have a programme of stretching and I am constantly assessing and managing the multitude of aches, twinges and pains that are the feedback I get from what I am putting myself through.

 

Even still. There is no reliable way of knowing how I am going to respond. Am I going to adapt and get quicker or will I fail under the pressure of ever increasing volume? In a way though that is what is. Out exciting about this. It is one of the things that really brings home the scale of the endeavour. This *is* a challenging activity. Running 26.2 miles is not easy and I know from experience just how much of a knife edge the training for it is. For now though, optimism. This is when everything is still possible and it is where the fun really begins.

Posted with Blogsy

The beginning

For a few years now I have self-identified as a runner. Not a jogger, I don't go to the gym or occasionally spend half an hour plodding round the blog for fitness, I run. Running is part of who I am now. That will sound pompous if not pretentious but it is important. For me running is less about fitness or targets and more about finding space, mental well being and really just being connected to the world in a meaningful way.

 

Being a runner rather than a jogger does nothing to imply speed. I am a plodding sort of runner but that isn't important. Where there is competition it is with myself and with whatever my current level of fitness is. This year that has been somewhat variable. With injury and other circumstances my running has been disjointed and ineffective for most of this year. Where I imagined I would have made significant progress I have at best stagnated. There has been no continuity to my training and I have achieved none of my long-standing goals.

 

I am now embarking on a new challenge (more on which later) with a greater degree if optimism and that is where this blog comes in. I have always been a bit of a geek with the numerology of running. I religiously log all my runs, heart rate data, paces, even weather and pore of the results, the trends and their underlying performance implications. What I have not done is really record how it all feels. Despite running for me being about how I feel more than anything else this is an aspect of my training that I have long neglected. That is where The Mansionhouse Runner comes in. I plan to use it as a record of my running and my progress over the remainder of the year and also as an outlet for the mental and psychological burden that an extended marathon training programme can bring.

 

And that marathon is the new challenge I am embarking on. In November I aim to run Florence marathon. This will be marathon number 2 for me. In running terms it is no more significant than a marathon inherently is, but this year is different in a couple of ways. Firstly, only days before running the race I will be 40. If you are gong to celebrate an arbitrary age milestone running a marathon in a beautiful city seems like a good way to do so. That is just part of it though. This year has been difficult and traumatic and we have seen some major highs and crushing lows. We have gone from being prospective parents to having to make the most awful decision and then having the aftermath of losing all that potential to deal with.

 

This marathon then is to mark and remember the child we have lost. Along with Lucy I will run the Inverness 10k I'm September, on the weekend our son was due to be born. I will double that up with the marathon a couple of months later. We will both be running for charity with the proceeds gong to Antenatal Results and Choices, a small charity who provide invaluable advice to parents in similar situations to us. More on that on this blog once we set up our giving page.

Posted with Blogsy