This week in running – Page 2

Weezer and Chips

I don’t drink much coffee. In the mornings at work I sometimes have a cup of milk with a splash of filter coffee in it. A Diet Coke is a risk for me. On Saturday I had a caffeinated gel one hour in to my 18 miler and I was high as a kite for the rest of it. It contained 63mg of caffeine (a can of Coke has 32, Red Bull has 80).

By mile 10, colours seemed sharper and I was struggling to keep my pace down to 8:15, never mind the planned 8:30 a mile. By mile 15, I was bounding up York Way singing out loud to The Sweater Song. I gave up the pacing and ran home as fast as I could manage.

I paid for it afterwards. Caffeine + 4 beers + Doom Metal gig = massive headache. It was good to run long on Saturday, rather than Sunday, though. I went to a party, ate a massive plateful of pie, then went to the gig and ate an 11pm portion of chips.

Those gels are coming with me on marathon day, for sure. I’ll save one for mile 16 in the hope that it’ll carry me through the remaining 10. It and Weezer. And the promise of chips.

Monday: rest
Tuesday: 5.5 miles (short intervals)
Wednesday: 8 miles (at marathon pace)
Thursday: 5.5 miles (don’t remember)
Friday: 5 miles (easy)
Saturday: 18 miles (2:29)

Total: 42 miles

The Running Blues

Spring is here in London, but my spirits have not lifted with the weather. My heart did not skip a beat with the clocks this weekend. Despite running along paths lined with daffodils, I’ve been feeling blue.

I’ve still got 6 weeks of training left before the North Dorset Village Marathon, and have been running hard for the last 8 weeks, so decided in advance to have an ‘easy week’ last week. Sadly it turned out to be a necessity rather than a luxury.

My creaky knees have been creaking a more than usual, and they’re making me worried. I dropped the mileage from 40 to 28, cut out all sessions and took 3 rest days. They’re still creaking. I know what it is (runner’s knee), and that if I rested for a few weeks and built up my glutes and inner thigh muscles (which I’m sure have a name) then I could sort it out. But that’s not really an option for this race.

Hopefully the quieter week will make its presence felt next week and Sunday’s uncomfortable 10 miles will be a low point. Hopefully…

Weekly summary:

Monday: rest
Tuesday: 5 miles easy
Wednesday: 8 miles at marathon pace
Thursday: rest
Friday: 5 miles easy
Saturday: rest
Sunday: 10 miles easy

Total: 28 miles

Anticipation, Procrastination and Dread

I ran 18 miles yesterday. It was the first ‘proper’ long run of this marathon training schedule, meaning longer than 13 miles. A mere half-marathon? Pah! I laugh in your face. I could take you on any day. An 18-miler, however, means preparation.

I had planned to run mine on Sunday. Actually, I didn’t plan it, the plan dictated it and I didn’t question it. On Friday night, however, I checked the weather forecast: sun and mild on Saturday, rain, wind and cold on Sunday. At this point I had already drank two beers. I had to stick to the plan. On Saturday morning I went for a miserably lovely 5 mile run in the sun. I ate toast and bread and pasta and cake. I drank litres of water. I spent all day in a bad mood.

On Sunday morning I woke to the sound of rain. I cheered myself with the thought that every minute that went by was a minute closer to it being over. I got out the vastly expensive pink rain jacket I never wear and my camelpak water bottle holder and put them on the bed. While I brushed my teeth, Bill S Preston Esq sat himself on them and looked up at me. ‘Who goes out in this?’, he seemed to be saying.

It wasn’t a bad run. It was wet, my running gels were disgusting, but I stuck to my pace of 8 minutes 30 seconds a mile and it felt ok. It was a lot better than the same run when I trained for a marathon in 2010, when I can remember thinking my legs were going to snap off my hips like a broken barbie. Having already run 26.2 miles, you know that in a long run things will hurt, you will panic about being injured, then mysteriously they will stop hurting. Then something else will hurt. It really is just pain, and it really will go away.

Getting back home, filthy, soaking and stiff, I was elated. It was over! I could actually start to enjoy my weekend; the relief was instant. I have now learned my lesson. Sunday long runs are out, Saturday long runs are in. Subject to weather forecasts.

This week’s numbers:

Tuesday: 6 miles (intervals)
Wednesday: 4 miles (easy)
Thursday: 6 miles (steady)
Saturday: 5 miles (with 3 mile tempo)
Sunday: 18 miles (2 hours 32 minutes)

Total: 39 miles

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.

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

50 Words For Snow: None Of Them Printable

Reading other blogs written by runners in colder climes, I feel like a wimp for complaining about the cold. It is almost as common and dull as moaning about having a cold, but I must get it off my chest.

Thursday’s and Friday’s runs were done at -2 degrees C and -4 degrees C respectively, and Sunday’s 12 miles were slugged out through 4 inches of wet snow. I thought I had something to complain about after Friday morning’s run – in Alexandra Palace Park the freezing fog was like having a bulldog clip clamped to each ear – but after Sunday’s nightmare all is forgiven.

It was, quite simply, the hardest run I’ve ever done. I cried for the whole last mile. I screamed with frustration as I plunged ankle-deep into my 15th icy puddle of meltwater. I was still cross about it when I went to bed last night. It was 1 hour and 55 minutes of hell, if hell is London streets covered in a sloppy swamp of slush. And it is.

You may be wondering why on earth I ran at all. I had three reasons:

I love snow. It’s so pretty. I went for a few snowy runs last winter and the winter before and they were gorgeous.
We left the house early thinking we would avoid any slush, as it was snowing all night.
I couldn’t run on Saturday so I really had to get the miles in.

Unfortunately, it did snow all night but the temperature rose, meaning that new snow was already soft and wet. Even areas untouched by the late night clubbers, kebab eaters and random salt-scatterers of North London proved tough-going. There was none of the lovely crunch and scrunch you get when it’s cold; my feet went straight through the white stuff to the squelchy slime beneath.

In summary, it was like running in mud for two hours. Not as dangerous, perhaps – I didn’t fall over – but, because it took as much energy to pull my legs forward as is it did to push them back, just as exhausting.

My rage knew no bounds. Poor Mr Notajogger got the worst of it. He runs in a very upright way, with a short gait and straight stride. I do not. At the end of every step on the slushy bits (ie half the run), my right foot slipped off behind me and had to be reigned in before the next step, making me very slow. Mr N trotted away, unperturbed by the shifting ground. This made me cross. All the other runners (there were surprisingly many of them) looked jolly and rosy cheeked and bouncy. I felt like I was running at half-speed, stuck in a slow-motion crime scene reconstruction. I was certainly feeling murderous.

Totals for the week:

Monday: 7 miles (un-steady)
Tuesday: 6.5 miles (hills)
Wednesday: (5 miles easy)
Thursday: 7 miles (steady-ish)
Sunday: 12 miles (very very slow indeed)

Total: 37.5 miles

On the Seventh Day, She Rested

In 6 days, you could get a lot done. You could read War and Peace. You could walk from London to Edinburgh. You could drink 12 glasses of wine and eat 51 KitKats (if you were a woman obeying UK guidelines). You could even create the Heavens and the Earth.

I couldn’t. What I could do was run every day and give my training plan a good kicking. A mid-week interval session gave me thigh burn of the first degree, but I pushed through it with two consecutive days of slow ‘recovery’ running and made it to Sunday’s long run feeling surprisingly fresh.

A summary of the week is below. Annoyingly, life might get in the way of this week’s running, making me struggle to get to 35 miles. I want to be running 40, but I do have 14 weeks to go, so think what I could achieve in that…

Tuesday: 5 miles (easy)
Wednesday: 6 miles (steady)
Thursday: 5 miles (with intervals)
Friday: 4 miles (slow)
Saturday: 6 miles (easy)
Sunday: 10 miles (slow)

Total: 36 miles

Things I have learned in the last week:

Tiredness may not be due to running, it might be the start of a horrid virus;
Chocolate oranges do not offer the same immunity benefits as actual oranges;
Films featuring small dogs in a central role should win Oscars;
Skipping two days’ running in favour of lying in bed is good for the body but not the spirit;
Running with a mild fever helps counteract the effects of icy weather;
Though really isn’t to be encouraged;
I mean that, stay in bed folks;
Kendal mint cake is the new running gel;
Just because you can run 10 miles doesn’t mean you’re cured;
A hot toddy is the answer, no matter what the question.

Approaching 30…

No, not me, my mileage. I’m still 21*.

Marathon training starts on 16 January, one week away. My aim over Christmas was to get up to 30 miles a week by now. Or was it 35? Either way, I ran 30 miles last week. Actually I ran 29.7, but given the margin for error on the mapmyrun app, this was definitely over 30.

Probably. During Sunday’s run the disembodied Voice of the App announced that I had run “distance: 3.0 mile” twice, so I’m taking her pronoucements with a pinch of salt. Mysteriously, by mile 8 we were back on course.

I ran twice this weekend: a 5.5 mile trot on Saturday and a supposedly slower paced 9 miles on Sunday. In actual fact I ran them both at the same pace, though Sunday’s felt much easier. There was no logic to this, and certainly no plan behind it. I should have been more tired on Sunday and it felt like I was running much more slowly.

When the training starts I must be stricter with my pace. Faster sessions will have to get harder and easy runs will need to be just that. The long Sunday runs should be 1 minute per mile slower than my planned marathon pace so I will be spending a lot more time on my feet. I may need some new podcast recommendations.

*A lie.

Weekly Round-Up, Race Climb Down

My training has been going well, though last week I only managed four sessions, and I was looking forward to trying for a sub-43 minute 10k on 6th November. Last night, however, I decided to postpone this world record* attempt until 2012.

Nothing dramatic, I’ve just recently started a course of medical treatment which is leaving me really tired. I’m perfectly able to run, but running at full pelt and high mileage seems foolish and probably counter-productive. It’s time to put my health first and at the moment that means running less and sleeping more. Ho hum.

I was really enjoying running a tempo, hill and interval session every week so hopefully I can pick it up in the New Year once I’m off the drugs (this makes it sound like I am currently having a lot more fun that I really am).

Pre-race postponement, I managed a 10 mile run to Regent’s Park on Saturday and thoroughly enjoyed it, though it did wipe me out for the rest of the day. Had we not had visitors on Saturday night I would have been in bed by 7.30pm. It’s non-stop party in my flat.

*world record for fastest 10k run by a 36 year old woman from North London with two cats called Bill and Ted