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.