Good Days – Page 3 – Not a Jogger

How to run a 10k race and actually enjoy it

10k is my nemesis distance. Too long to be short, too short to be long; it’s running kryptonite.

This is one reason why I haven’t attempted a 10k race since September 2011, the others being 2) pregnancy, c) wine.

On Sunday our friend Brian was staying for the weekend and we decided to run one of the Regent’s Park Summer 10k series – you can just turn up 15 minutes before the start, pay your £16, tie on your timing chip and off you go. Spontaneity is not usually my middle name, but in this case I think not booking in advance gave me some psychological advantages: I didn’t obsess about it beforehand, I didn’t really* train for it, and I didn’t have a pace in mind. There were no hopes to be dashed – I was just going to turn up, give it a go and see what happened.

What happened? Some flippin’ excellent things! I paced it sensibly, ran a negative split, and got a new pb of 43:04. Best of all, I didn’t even feel like death at the end so there is room for improvement.

Now that the race is over and I no longer need them, I have come up with some useful tips on how to run a 10k.

1. START SLOWLY

The Regent’s Park 10k is a 3 lap course, which I have previously found to be soul destroying, but this time I used it to my advantage. Rather than starting at maximum pace and trying in vain to get faster each lap, I started at a pace that felt way too slow and really did get faster each lap. Aiming for a 45 minute finish, I actually came in a lot quicker as I felt so good in the second and third laps.

2. STRUGGLING? SLOW DOWN

I wasn’t aiming for a pb so I tried a crazy thing: actually enjoying the race. Every time I started to feel uncomfortable in the lungs, legs or stomach, I slowed down a bit because I didn’t want to feel like that. Then, once I felt better, I found I sped back up to pace without really trying.

3. GET TACTICAL

The Regent’s Park course is billed as “flat”, but really it has a couple of slight inclines and declines which shouldn’t be ignored. If you try to run them all at the same pace, your perception of how hard you’re working gets skewed and you end up ruining yourself. Slow down a bit on every incline, and you will reap the rewards on the downhills.

4. SAVE IT FOR THE END

This is a version of 1. Pick a point at which you are willing to give it everything and save your heroics for then. I picked 8k, but it ended up being 9k, then really just the final straight. Things do even out in the end, though. I used to peg it for one lap, die in the second and end up jogging it in. How much better to end on a sprint finish in front of your husband and child?

Like any tips, these seem really obvious. But, given that I’ve managed 20 years of running without following them, I hope they’re worth sharing.

* Ok, I have done some training, but nothing specifically 10k focused other than two interval sessions during which I nearly threw up. (6 x 800m with 1.5 minute recoveries, pain fans)

Me, daughter and 38 minute 10k-er Brian post-race. Plus plastic cup.

Underpass, Overpass: Milton Keynes Marathon 2014 Race Report

Behold! Warrior woman, striding it home in 3hours 41 minutes at yesterday’s Milton Keynes Marathon, with a grazed knee but a big smile. How strong I look! How fresh!

I love this picture, taken by my sister who so brilliantly came to see me at the end of the race. I love it even though it is a massive lie.

The thing about a stadium finish, I discovered, is that it forces you to (MK) don your gameface and power home like Paula. This is a good thing, but the scene in the Arena, behind the stadium, was the true face of marathon running. Everywhere runners were prostrate in exhaustion and pain. The St John’s Ambulance medics were running out of chairs. There was a distinct whiff of vomit.

My sister and her boyfriend found me on one of the chairs having a piece of metal prised out of my knee. The St John’s medic was keen to know if it hurt. “Hurt?” I said, “compared to the race, no, it does not hurt. At all.”

I fell over at some point in the last six miles of the race. Where, I could not say. It was a bit embarrassing, spinning onto my back whilst cornering one of Milton Keynes’ 96,000 roundabouts, but my main feeling was one of relief not to be running for 10 seconds. That and appreciation for the blood now dripping down my leg. A war wound!

This race is an odd one. A city marathon that starts on empty dual carriageways, as if the zombie apocalypse had left only an army of runners on the streets, it then has a long succession of cycle paths with one child and his gran waving you on, before heading towards IKEA and ending up in a proper stadium. It has many out and backs – oh, so many out and backs – where you are cruelly faced with other runners who look better and faster and, most importantly, nearer the finish than you. In a mean piece of planning, most of the out and back sections are down and up the same hill.

This section destroyed my pacing. I wasn’t wearing headphones, so couldn’t hear the Strava lady giving splits and had to rely on my poor maths to work out mile times. I thought I was doing ok on 3:35 pace (and in fact I was) until I got overtaken by the 3:45 pacer group at 7 miles. This really threw me. I put in a couple of sub-8 minute miles over an uphill section. I shook off the 3:45 pacer but sweat was now stinging my eyes – it was too warm for heroics, and I would pay for them.

I enjoyed the race after the half-marathoners disappeared at 11 miles, but I knew pain was on the way. At 19 miles everything started to hurt: stomach, knees, quads, neck (neck?!). I promised myself to slow down but never never walk. Even on sharp underpass inclines (of which there were about 937) I ran the slowest I possibly could without walking. At one point I felt like the only person who wasn’t, it was really surprising, and I think the weather and course must have been to blame. I didn’t do it to prove anything to anyone, but because once I started walking I wouldn’t be able to start running again.

So, I went from 8:15 miles to 9:30 miles, but I made it home before that bloody 3:45 pacer.

The good thing about competing against yourself, is that you always win

When we were little, my dad was the King of Competitiveness. Racing us up the street, he would hang back until just before the kerb and then pull a Mo Farah and beat us to the pavement at the last minute. When playing cards, he always used his superior skill to trounce our measly efforts and, when he couldn’t, he cheated. He hated games of chance. “There’s no skill involved!”, he would moan, as our tiny hands won at snap.

I say all this with affection. Never has there been a lovelier man, but the thing that he loves most of all is to win. He used to have a duffel bag full of trophies which we occasionally emptied onto the bed, practising our Oscar acceptance speeches with the one for ‘G Flight Darts Champion, 1979’. The man had a trophy for every sport: football, cross-country, boxing, ice hockey (ice hockey!), squash, cricket. There was nothing he couldn’t win at.

I have inherited this competitiveness gene. My daughter is still too little for me to test it in full – about the same age as me in the photo – but I suspect my turn to cheat at Hungry Hippos may not be far off.

On the whole, I’m grateful. You say competitiveness; I say caring. For what is the point of playing a game of cards if you don’t care who wins? Non-competitive people make very dull playing companions. They forget who is dealing. “Who is next?”, they ask time and again, “what’s trumps?”, “oh, does that mean I win?”. ARgh.

Sometimes, though, I will admit that it is not a blessing. The desire to beat your personal best running times can be a great motivator, but it cannot be switched off. In Spring 2012 I ran a marathon in 3 hours 28 minutes. In Spring 2013 I had a baby. In Spring 2014 I’m running another marathon, and I have just had to accept that I should not attempt to better my best.

A small voice inside, even now, is still saying “really? Why not??!!”, but it must be ignored. On Saturday I ran what my training plan called a “half marathon race” and what in reality was a steady 13.1 miles. I completed it in 1h 43 minutes. Not bad, if you ignore the fact that it nearly killed me. The thought of doing that, at that speed, twice, is unimaginable. I could try it, but I would surely fail. If I tried to run the Milton Keynes marathon in 8 minute miles I could possibly manage 15, maybe 20 miles, before blowing up like a pulverised balloon at my daughter’s first birthday party. For the first time, my desire not to do this is stronger than my desire to win.

So, my new goal: finish in 3 hours 45 minutes and ENJOY THE RACE. Still a bit competitive, obviously. I’m not giving up who I am, after all.

Weekly stats:

Monday: rest
Tuesday: 6 miles with 200m bursts
Wednesday: rest
Thursday: 7 miles with hill reps
Friday: 4.5 miles easy
Saturday: 13.1 miles “race”
Sunday: 4 miles recovery run

Total: 34.5 miles

My New 3 “R”s: Running, ‘riting and Remembering to do both…

“Your domain is about to expire!”, my emails have been warning me for a month. “You are giving up on notajogger.com!”, they accuse on a daily basis. “You have nothing left to say about running!”, they cry. “Your creative impulses have been sucked out of you like breastmilk!” (sorry). “You are running in a silent void! Run all you like, no-one cares any more!”.

On Friday (payday), I will silence these voices. For $25 I will be furnished with both the means and the reason not to run unheard and alone for another year. Even when I’m not writing the blog, which I realise is almost all of the time, it is still there in the back of my mind like a little motivational push every time I hesitate between my bus pass and my trainers. When I am writing the blog, it brings me pleasure, sometimes even joy, when I’ve managed to put my running into the right words.

So. A new start.

Hello again! How are you?

I’ve been busy. I am well, but tired: working full-time and running four times a week. On Monday 5 May I’ll run the Milton Keynes Marathon. I have no idea how fast I’ll run it, but would settle for 4 hours, be happy with 3 hours 45 minutes, and delighted with anything faster. On four runs a week, I suspect this is ambitious.

My training will be so different from my last marathon. Gone is the dream of 50 mile weeks, 8 hours sleep a night, running every day, at any time of day, napping on the sofa to recover. This year I will run when I can, no matter how I feel or how tired I am.

It will be hard. Will it be worth it? I think we are about to find out.

I am still running, honest

Every week!

Three times a week! Really, I am.

On Sunday I’ll be running my first post-baby race – the Great Eastern Run. I’m running it with my sister, to give her some moral support in getting around her first half marathon, and I’m really looking forward to that. I’m also dreading it. The furthest I’ve run in the past five months has been 9.5 miles, which was supposed to be 10 miles, but I just couldn’t do that last 0.5.

Oh dear.

The last time I ran the Great Eastern Run I’m pretty sure it was just called the Peterborough Half Marathon, but I was the Great Notajogger, busting out a personal best time of 1 hour 34 minutes. On Sunday we are aiming for 2 hours 30 minutes.

I’m taking flapjacks.

When I last wrote I said that “naps have finally arrived”. Can you hear the sound of hollow laughter? The one thing I have learned since having a baby is that you SHOULD NEVER SAY ANYTHING GOOD OUT LOUD because that thing will then immediately go wrong, forever. So, naps are out of the window, along with me, walking with the buggy. This means I am getting a lot more exercise, but also drinking a lot more coffee, and not writing any blogs.

The good news is that running has finally got easier. About three weeks ago I noticed that my joints were feeling stronger – when I turn back to look for oncoming traffic at a crossroads I no longer feel like my hips were going to slip out of place. As soon as this happened I knew: it was time to see if I could run fast again.

I am not a slow runner. I realise that these things are relative and that I am no Usain Bolt, but what I mean is that I do not enjoy running slowly. I do not believe in jogging. It has therefore been somewhat challenging to my self esteem to get back to running after pregnancy.

From 8 weeks to 4 months there was no change in my pace. It varied between 9 minute miles to 11 minute miles during a run but it never, never got faster from run to run. There is a good, if slightly depressing article here which talks about why it’s probably not a good idea to try to run quickly post-partum, but this was not a choice on my part, I just wasn’t able to run at any other speed.

Three weeks ago (so at about 4.5 months post-baby) I ran fast for the first time. It was just a very short pyramid interval session, but I loved it. It felt amazing to be running at (relative) speed again and my painful ankle tendons were miraculously fine throughout the whole thing because I was concentrating on pushing with my thighs. A couple of these sessions and two tempo runs have improved my normal pace to about 8 minute 40 second miles. At this rate of improvement, I’ll be challenging Usain come Rio.

The “session”

Warm-up
1 minute fast 1 minute slow
2 minutes fast 2 minutes slow
3 minutes fast 3 minutes slow
2 minutes fast 2 minutes slow
1 minute fast 1 minute slow
Cool down

Finding the time to run after having a baby is hard. Finding the time to write about running…

… is harder!

I miss this blog. I miss trying to put my running experiences into words. I miss having the time to think about how to put my running experiences into words.

I miss words.

Goo goo ga ga is all very well, but I’d like to try to retain the ability to express myself in whole sentences, preferably not containing the phrase “Sorry, I’m just so tired”.

I’m really not that tired. I mean, I am, empirically (empirically!) pretty tired, but not as much as I was in the first couple of months. My daughter is now 3.5 months old and has recently discovered napping and going to bed early, which is why I find myself at the laptop at 8.20pm with a glass of wine and the determination to nail this. If I could write this blog on an iphone whilst feeding a baby I would have written every day, but my brain can no longer process anything more than 140 characters. Damn you, twitter.

So, the facts:

15 weeks ago I had a baby.
9 weeks ago I started running again.
Last week I ran 7 miles without stopping to walk and it felt good.

I am running three or four times a week: on Tuesdays and Thursdays when Mr Notajogger gets back from work and one or both days at the weekend. It’s hard. You don’t get to decide whether or not you feel like it, you just have to do it right then. If the baby is having a bad day, you can decide not to run or you can just do it anyway and feel like a bad mother. Ideally you would do it anyway and not feel like a bad mother, but I have yet to achieve this.

The running itself is also hard. Much harder than I thought it would be. I had this “magic four weeks” in my mind. Whenever I’m trying to convince someone to start running I say, give it four weeks, then everything will get easier. It hasn’t worked out like that post-pregnancy. My fitness is actually fine – I’m rarely out of breath during the run – but that’s mainly because I can’t run fast enough. At 15 weeks post-partum (ew) I’m no faster than I was at 6 weeks. My legs and joints still ache during and after the run and I can’t do any kind of lateral movement while running for fear of breaking something, probably my pelvis.

BUT. I am running, and running is great. With minimal training, I’m going to run the Great Eastern Run (half marathon) in Peterborough on my birthday (13 October) and it will be slow and painful but it will be both a shot in the arm (mine), and a kick in the teeth (of anyone who thinks I’m crazy for running).

I run.

I rule!

Now here’s a picture of my daughter showing off her future running skills.

Returning to running: week one

Things I have learned in my first week of running after having a baby:

1. Running will not make you more tired. You are already so tired that would not be possible.

2. The first run will be the best. The second and third runs will hurt a lot more so if the first run is agony it’s probably a good idea to wait a few days before attempting a second, or go for fast/hilly walk instead to get your muscles working.

3. The week that you are (sadly) stopping breastfeeding is not a good week to go running. At least not without a sports bra several sizes larger than your usual one, and a whole lot of painkillers.

4. Walking is great preparation for (or replacement for) running in the first weeks after birth, and in late pregnancy. My muscles still feel strong despite not having run for 6 months thanks to lots of walks.

5. Your running gear will be tight and your belly will wobble. You will feel like people are staring but, if they do, you can shout “I just birth to a human being, what’s your excuse?”

6. It is great that you don’t wet yourself mid-run but that doesn’t mean your pelvic floor is back to normal. Try doing some star jumps and you’ll see what I mean.

7. Don’t work too hard to fit your run in to your day. Something will probably have to be sacrificed but it shouldn’t be your sleep, your dinner or your sanity. You could eat a ready meal though, and does the baby really need a bath? She smells lovely to me.

8. Don’t try and write a blog about your running at 4am. Even if you manage not to publish a blank or half written version (sorry about that) what you do manage to write will not make sense to anyone, including you when you read it the next day.

‘I am the Resurrection and I am the Light’, or, I Had the Baby and Went for a Run

Today I went for one of the most important runs of my life.

The day was nothing special: overcast, still, and cool for June. My running was poor: slow and careful, 35 minutes with a little break to catch my breath after 20. The route was an old one, to Finsbury Park, though the grass was newly littered with bottles and cans from last night’s Stone Roses concert.

Nothing was special, but everything was different. On 30th April 2013 I had a lovely baby girl and I have a feeling that running, like many things, will never be the same again.

For the last six weeks (well, for the last six months), I’ve thought about this run everyday. In labour, in hospital stuck inside for the fourth day, in the shower at home contemplating my strange deflated tummy, in bed awake at 3am, in exhaustion, in happiness and in stress. I have waited for this moment, placed so much importance on it, that when it came, when I decided it was time, I realised I was shaking. Lacing up my trainers, feeling their unfamiliar stiffness from months of neglect, I shook with nerves. What if it wasn’t how I remembered? What if I couldn’t do it? What if I didn’t enjoy it?

I don’t know why I worried. I mean, it’s me. It’s running. I left the house and within twenty steps it was just the same. It didn’t matter how many steps I took, or how fast I took them. Every step I took was one closer to feeling like myself again. My muscles were tired and my lungs were sore but I wasn’t pregnant! When I asked my body to do something, it responded. I could see my feet, move my hips and run up hills (slowly, but I could do it).

I have a long way to go until I’m fit again. Finding the time and energy to run will be hard, but I will find it. Running makes me happy. It’s part of who I am. It makes me me.

In 35 minutes I didn’t think about my daughter once. Should that make me feel guilty? I was just a body moving through space. My brain was free.

Being a parent is a massive responsibility and a huge privilege. Running is freedom. I hope the two will get along nicely together.

Counting the weeks…

12 weeks since I last ran.
34 weeks pregnant.
6 weeks (ish) til I give birth.
12 weeks til I can run again (hopefully).

It feels like my life is all about statistics at the moment, but like all statistics they’re mostly meaningless. You could easily spend 9 months obsessing over percentage chances and due dates and centimetres long and pounds gained and be none the wiser or better for it. The only sure thing is that at some point within the next 8 weeks a baby is going to arrive and I will no longer be pregnant. I am very excited about this for a number of reasons:

1. I will no longer feel like a weeble when standing up. At the moment I have to force myself into Tadasana pose at all times when upright, or the muscles in my bum tense into agonising pain. This is harder than it sounds, particularly when leaning forward to do basically anything you need to do standing up (washing up, making dinner, selecting chocolate bars in tesco).

2. I will be able to turn over in bed without having to wake up and perform a 5 step procedure involving lifting and lowering my knees and moving 30 degrees at a time.

3. I will be able to drink a cup of tea without needing to take an ice bath afterwards to cool down.

These are not complaints- I’ve really enjoyed being pregnant and it’s forced me to slow down and appreciate life in a different way. I put so much pressure on myself to get stuff done, tick things off. When you can’t physically do things it makes you question why you need to, which is good, though does mean I may never shave my legs again (who cares?).

Of course, the main thing I’m looking forward to is running again. I don’t miss it, because the thought of doing it now is like landing on the moon- I appreciate that others have done it, but there is no way I could even if I wanted to. No, I don’t miss it now, but I do miss what it used to be like and I’m excited about what it will be in future. We’ve got many years together to look forward to, running and I.

And if the running doesn’t work out, there’ll always be the baby…

I am Not a Plastic Bag

Last night I raced a plastic bag home and lost.

I was running along Brecknock Road with the wind behind me when a white shape hove into view on my left, at knee height. It was a thin plastic bag, filled with air and ballooning in loops above the pavement. I believe it was from Sainsburys.

La Sainsbury was a formidable foe. She edged ahead of me a few times, taunting me with her speed and agility. Dancing hypnotically, she dashed back and forth in front of me like a chaotic metronome. I almost ran into a bollard. Turning a corner, the race got interesting. La Sainsbury dashed into my legs, wrapping herself around a shin. I tried to kick her off without breaking stride, like a can-can dancer who’d had enough. I failed. The old bag clung on, then dashed away, then lodged around my shoe.

We continued our tango for about half a mile, La Sainsbury and I, but in the end only one of us could triumph. Just before Tufnell Park tube she sailed upwards on a gust of wind ahead of me and out into the night.

I plodded home.

EDIT – a friend has pointed out that Sainsburys bags are orange. I like the way La Sainsbury sounds however, so I am letting it stand.