February 2012 – Not a Jogger

The Unfortunate Brevity of the Running High

I went for a beautiful run this morning. Dawn broke as I sallied forth along the more charming roads of Crouch End, turning the sky pink behind the terraces and trees, lending a rosy glow to the faces of passing commuters.

Two runners smiled as they passed; two cars waved me across at traffic lights. I took it easy, running smoothly up and down the hills and enjoying the growing feeling of comfort and happiness as it became clear that this was going to be a Good Day.

Back at the flat, I held on to that happiness throughout breakfast, ironing, and five minutes playing with the cats. On the 91 bus crawling along the Caledonian Road, it reduced by about half, but was still keeping me afloat. Opening the office door, I walked in and my happiness stayed outside in the hallway.

I made myself a coffee and ate a biscuit. Perhaps that would bring it back? No. By 9:30am, it had gone. I found myself contemplating an extra run tonight.

This is how it starts. One minute you’re a woman who likes a jog, the next you’re putting your name down for Badwater.

24 Hour Marathon Training

Last night I slept like a woman unable to stop running, even while unconscious. I went to bed at my customary hour (9:30pm) and dropped off in seconds. Sadly from 1:00am things were less successful. My legs were uncomfortable. I moved them. They were fine for five minutes. Then they weren’t. I moved them again. And again. At first I blamed the cats, who had arranged themselves around my feet. The fifth time I woke up, I realised that the cats were in the same position, but I was not. This continued until 4:30am, when the cats woke up and started requesting breakfast.

I am now propping my eyelids open with caffeine and drinking matchsticks to survive. I didn’t run yesterday, so I’m not sure why my leg muscles were giving me such grief. Is this DOMS or, as wikipedia more delightfully calls it, muscle fever?

MUSCLE FEVER! Out now starring Jean Claude van Damme!

Oh god I think I am delirious. I can’t quite believe I managed to run 6 miles this morning, with 10 minute intervals of “half-marathon pace or faster”, but I did.

I can’t stop!

On Reaching 40

Week Six of my marathon training programme is over and that’s the best thing I can say about it. It was not a vintage week, with one horrific run and no really good sessions to make me feel I’m working hard. I am working hard though. To prove it, here are the numbers:

Tuesday: 7 miles
Wednesday: 6 hellish miles
Thursday: 7 miles (intervals)
Friday: 3 miles
Saturday: 4.5 miles
Sunday: 13.1 miles

Total: 40.5 miles

It’s all about the 0.5. Actually, I jogged about a mile home after my long run on Sunday, so it’s probably all about the extra 1.5. I had planned out a perfect 13.1 mile route, ending at the corner shop near my flat so that I could buy a lucozade sport and limp the few yards home. Of course I then forgot all about the plan and just ran my regular 10 mile route on autopilot, only waking up to my mistake an hour later. I added on an extra loop of Regent’s Park, but got carried away.

The extra Park loop was lovely. The sun was out, the crocus were croaking (thanks, Dad), and I saw my first blossom. I also got shat on by a bird, but them’s the breaks.

All Your Bad Days Will End

One bad run does not make you a bad runner.

It had all been going so well. I had kept up with my training plan with borderline obsessive-compulsive accuracy. I was feeling stronger, fitter and more confident. Yes, I was tired. Yes, I had a fleeting and mysterious pain in my left foot, but nothing to stop me training.

I was late leaving work on Thursday, but headed out to run at around 7pm. 7pm is not a good time to run around my neighbourhood unless you love terrifying dogs. I passed four bull terriers, without leads, out on their evening lurch. I’m sure they’re lovely dogs with the right owner, but I did a lot of crossing the road.

The dogs were the least of my worries. This run was one of the worst of my life. It was 5.8 miles of hell and it took every ounce of will power in my body not to stop, walk, or cut the run short. I slowed to a plod, I tried to think positively, I told myself it would get better in the next ten minutes. It did not. From start to finish, this was painful and unenjoyable. It was the kind of run that makes you question not just your training plan, but why you are even running in the first place.

On Thursday morning everything hurt, from my finger joints to my chest muscles. Holding on to the rail on the tube train on the way to work, I could barely stay upright. Even my eyelids were tired. Was I overtraining? Should I have a rest week? I felt really low.

At lunchtime the sun came out over London. Temperatures pushed the high teens. I went out for lunch and bought brownies on the way back to the office. As 5pm approached the sky faded from blue to orange on the horizon. A perfect evening. I had my kit in the office. Dare I use it?

Thursday’s run was everything Wednesday’s was not. I ran intervals and enjoyed them. I felt fresh and strong. I ran an extra mile without meaning to.

My Left Foot

A week ago I went for a reflexology foot massage in a room down a backstreet in Chinatown, where they wash your feet in blue detergent and make you drink water as warm as blood. I was initiated into this experience by a very good friend, who promptly fell asleep as soon as fingers hit foot. My eyes were wide open throughout. No amount of Heart FM, soft cantonese chat or cracked leather seating was going to distract me from the matter in hand. My feet were being attacked.

I am not a fan of physical contact from strangers. My parents are from Yorkshire, where a nod is an intimate indication of love. Over the years, however, running has necessitated several back massages and some painful physiotherapy, during which I have been known to yelp like a frightened puppy.

The foot massage was better. I didn’t scream and managed to stay seated for the whole 45 minutes. My feet felt pleasant afterwards. During, however, my primary concern was that the masseuse’s fingers would snap something important. I suspect that this probably can’t actually happen, but I don’t know that it can’t. It must be at least a possibility. It certainly felt like one, particularly when the tendons on my left foot were being plucked like strings on a double bass.

Yesterday night I ran 7 miles home from work and afterwards, lying on the sofa stuffing my face with pancakes, I realised that the outside sole of my left foot was hurting. Was it stiff? Was it pulled? Was something about to snap? It was painful when I walked, but also when I didn’t.

It hurts less this morning, but I can still feel it. I have put off this morning’s run until the evening. I will wear my old trainers in case new ones are the issue. I will take care. I will not panic.

I might have to go back to Chinatown.

Hills, Half Marathon and a Recovery Run

There’s a lot of catching up to do, so I’ll start with my weekly summary:

Tuesday: 6 miles (intervals)
Wednesday: 6.5 miles (start slow, finish faster)
Thursday: 6 miles (hills)
Friday: WIMP OUT
Saturday: 13.1 mile “race”
Sunday: 5.5 miles (plod)

Total: 37 miles

I had intended for last week to be the first 40 mile week of my training. A piffling 3 mile jog on Friday morning was all that was needed to achieve this, but I just couldn’t manage it. Thursday night’s hill session was a killer – only one more rep than last week, but my thighs were suffering from the third rep onwards.

Saturday’s plan dictated a half-marathon race. I interpreted this not as 13.1 miles “run as fast as you can” (i.e. a race), but “run at marathon pace” which, for me, is 8 minutes a mile. The good news is that the pace felt fine. The bad news is that I cannot imagine running it again today, never mind immediately afterwards.

However, I’ve been here before. Running this very training programme in 2010, I remember feeling exactly like this after the first half-marathon in the plan. By week 14 of the training, 13.1 miles will seem like a short run. Gulp.

Sunday’s run should have been the easiest of these three. It was the shortest, the sun was out and it was a beautiful day. Not so. A run around Archway, Holloway and Highbury on a Sunday morn’ is rarely a thing of beauty. Blue skies may loom overhead, but pavements are littered with Saturday night’s hangover. Broken bottles glitter from gutters, polystyrene burger cases bloom in hedges, and benches and bus stops have yet to lift their skirts of vomit.

This week the mileage should hit 40. Life begins there, I hear.

That Final Push Out Of The Door

This week I’m finding that just having put my name down for a marathon is not enough to get me up at 6am every day to run.

Motivation doesn’t magically arise from the fact that I have to run 26.2 miles on 6th May. Or perhaps it did for the first few weeks of training, but now I’m tired, so tired. I need to mix up my motives:

1. Background Motivation

I love running. I love being a runner. I love having been for a run. I love telling people I’ve just been for a run. I love eating twice as many biscuits because I’ve been for a run. I love being able to fit into my clothes and not having to buy new ones. I love the feeling you get when you’re 10 minutes, or 40 minutes, into a hard run when it suddenly clicks and you feel invincible. I love seeing the seasons change. I love being outside. I need to remember this in February when it’s dark and cold and I have eaten all the pies and even though I’m running nearly 40 miles a week my jeans are still tight.

2. Training Goal

I am going to run a marathon in 3:30 this year.
I am going to run a marathon in 3:30 this year.
I am going to run a marathon in 3:30 this year.

3. The Final Push

If I get up now and run it will be done and tonight I can come home and fall asleep in the middle of my dinner. If I get up now and run I can eat three slices of that delicious bread I bought from the farmer’s market on Sunday for breakfast, with proper butter not flora light. If I get up and run today it will make it harder not to get up and run tomorrow.

If I don’t run today, I won’t make my mileage for the week. If I don’t run today, I will have to run tonight when I’m hungry and even more tired. If I don’t run today, it will be easier not to run tomorrow.

I wrote most of this yesterday, after I had got up to run – an interval session no less – when I really didn’t want to. I am finishing it today, when I didn’t get up to run. I will run tonight.

Base Layers

My training is all about base layers at the moment: those next to my skin (god bless Helly Hansen), and those miles pounded out on the streets.

I’m four weeks in to my marathon training plan, with twelve to go. This week I notched up 37.5 miles over six runs and it’s the first week that the mileage has felt comfortable (unlike the runs themselves, which were mostly spent with shoulders hunched up to ears in an attempt to combat the cold). I do feel like I’m ready for some longer, harder runs now.

On Saturday I headed out in -6C for a 10 miler to Regent’s Park. My mapmyrun app failed to work, leaving me with only a vague notion of pace. This might have been a blessing. I was listening to my body instead of the Voice of the App and managed to keep a steady even rhythm, averaging 7.5 minute miles. I’m really happy with that, particularly as the previous night I had drunk two vats o’ wine, as well as half a beer and a glass of 43 (“cuarenta-y-tres” – yum).

All part of the plan. Ahem.

The week’s totals:

Tuesday: 6 miles (intervals)
Wednesday: 6 miles (easy)
Thursday: 6 miles (hills)
Friday: 4.5 miles (slow)
Saturday: 10 miles (hungover, but quick)
Sunday: 5 miles (easy)

Total: 37.5 miles

On Not Flaking Out

I am tired. Have I mentioned that recently? I think I might have, but I can’t remember because I’m so flippin’ tired.

I may be tired, but I am still doing this thing. This marathon thing. Training. I went out last night with my shorts over my tights for a hill session, just before it started to snow. Usually I run about a mile to a hill, do the session and then run a couple of miles afterwards to make up the distance. This time I decided, on a whim, to run 4 miles first, then do the session. I think it was a good idea. I was quite tired (yes) when I got to the base of the hill, but I gave it everything I had, as there was no reason to hold back. The end of the session was the end of the run, bar a jog back to the flat.

I did 9 x 40 seconds uphill, as fast as I could. These are very short reps, so I might extend them in future weeks, but for now they were fine. As usual I felt at my worst on the 7th rep, then the last two were better.

This morning I was tired (again) but a short easy run would get my mileage above 35 this week, so I went out in the snow. I ran mostly on the roads as the paths were icy, though the short pieces of untrodden snow I found were rather lovely to run on. Almost crunchy. I still hope it’s gone by tomorrow though.

Squeezing It In

Life is a hectic beast at the moment.

I’m busy at work, busy looking after cats with tubes sticking out of their faces (ick), busy eating, busy trying to get enough sleep. What did I miss? Oh yes, training for a marathon.

A run usually gives me headspace, time to think, a break from stress. When I’m pressed for time, it becomes a funnel for all the guilt I’m feeling about everything other than running. During last night’s 6 mile stagger I spent 5 worrying about work and the cat and how I was going to fit in the weekend’s running and the other 1 blowing my nose.

These are not vintage training runs. They are tough and slow and cold. I’m churning out the miles in a low gear and I can’t seem to change it. However, as I said to Mr Notajogger last night, if I judge my performance based on effort rather than speed, I am giving it pretty much everything I can. It’s just that everything isn’t very much.