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.

 

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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.