Running – Page 23 – Not a Jogger

Back to Life…

Bump. It didn’t take long to come down to earth after the race. It took two hours to get home from deepest South West London with salt still crusted on my face, by which point the joy had somewhat worn off. By the time we ate lunch I had started to feel faint and sick and my healthy glow had turned into a greenish pallor.

The week after a race is always strange, “you must be so pleased you don’t have to run now”, people say, “put your feet up!”. After my marathon, I was and I did, but a half-marathon’s just a slightly more intense weekend run. Why would i stop running afterwards? I took a day off to recover, but that was enough.

I wanted to get to the gym tonight to stretch my muscles and check everything still worked. I haven’t been there in weeks, the weather’s been so dry. It’s good to be an occasional visitor, I find, rather than a frequent flyer. Exercising on the machines still feels like a novelty and I get excited by the toys (dumbbells! Swiss balls! Lots of other things I don’t recognise and will never use!). All the music videos are new to me too, though I see Hollyoaks is still going. Watching that programme, even without sound, makes me quite depressed. It’s so shallow, meaningless and obsessed with youth, thinness and visible underwear. Perfect for the gym.

Race Report

Hurrah, it is over! I am really enjoying the post-run endorphins and feeling pleased with my performance. I ran 13.1 miles in 1 hour, 36 minutes and 7 seconds, which I think is my third fastest time and only a couple of minutes off my best.

I felt good at the start, so attempted a few miles at target pace (7mins, 15 secs). I knew that my cold would tell towards the end though, and at 8 miles I decided to slow down rather than speed up over the last few. To be honest, that made it a bit more enjoyable. I was hanging on, but not really pushing myself too hard. My main concern was to keep going, not have to stop and not kill my lungs.

It was a good race, I thought. Lovely scenery, fast field and totally flat. On a better day I could have smashed my Pb, but it feels good rather than disappointing to know that. Next time!

Here’s a pic of the medal and my time (my watch is so advanced it can’t measure hours).

Be Prepared

I’m writing this on the train to Richmond, where we’re staying the night before the race. I still have the cold, my legs ache and I haven’t run a decent mile all week, but I’m carrying on as if none of that mattered, in the hope that it won’t (it will).

Whatever, in 15 hours the race will be underway and in 17 hours it will be over. I’m as prepared as it’s possible to be. I have vaseline, sticking plasters, tissues, jelly babies, foam bananas (secret weapon), real bananas, pasta for dinner and my race number.

Wish me luck!

Wake up and smell the facts

No change with the cold.
Ran 3 miles from work, slowly.
Used many tissues.

Two and a half days to go to the race and I need to face facts: I am not going to be able to run a best time if I still feel like this, and I am probably still going to feel like this.

I will finish the race, however, and if I can do it in less than 1 hour 40 minutes that’ll be just about acceptable. Anything over 1.40 and I’ll definitely be questioning the wisdom of Mr Hall and his training plan, phlegm or no phlegm.

It is at about this point before a race that I start to wish I weren’t so competitive. It’s a very handy thing in training, pushing myself to work harder, but more likely to result in self-flagellation than congratulation on the big day. Previously, when a race has gone to plan, rather than being delighted with my new time I just feel relieved I didn’t mess it up.

So, maybe it’s a good thing I’m not on top form. I might actually give myself a break and enjoy the run. A tour of leafy London suburbs with a few hundred sweaty loons on a Sunday morning, what’s not to like?

Like Rain on your Wedding Day

It isn’t ironic, I don’t think, that I have a cough 4 days before the race after 9 weeks of pretty good health. It is, however, really annoying and something of a running cliche.

Attempting a 5 mile run with a 20 minute tempo section today, I only managed 4 and 10. Each of those miles was punctuated by several stops to cough, spit, blow my nose or clear my throat. It wasn’t a good day for pavements. Or passers by.

I have 3 days to get it all out of the system, or sunday’s race will be long and slow. Tomorrow I’m breaking out the wasabi peas.

Weekly Rrrrrround-up

OOPS.

Last week marked the penultimate week of my half-marathon training, during which I managed to go running 5 times and write about it 0 times. In my defence, it was an odd week, bookended by two public holidays, with a royal wedding, a hen night, and a real wedding in the middle. I could and should have squeezed in writing about my running as well as running itself, and will promise to do better in future.

To summarise progress, one week from Race Day:

I ran 31 miles;
my pace is looking good, averaging 7-minute miles during Friday’s 6 mile tempo run ;
my health is looking bad, with a cold contracted mid-real wedding, which continues to gather its own pace;
the weather is still amazing; and
running just before a Royal Wedding begins is a lovely, though quite lonely, thing to do.

Here’s a photo from my 10.30am run on Friday, looking down towards the city from Ally Pally park. I saw one other person in the park, he had a thermos of coffee and a stack of newspapers and looked very pleased with himself. He was not wearing red, white or blue.

Summer is here: Happy Easter!

I’m sitting in my garden on an April evening, wearing shorts and still feeling too hot. Yesterday I actually had to go and buy an ice lolly to cool down. It’s lovely to be outside on this long weekend but it does feel wrong to be worried about your Easter eggs melting in the sun, in April, in England.

This morning, this weekend really, was all about the 12 mile “race-sim”: 6 miles easy, 6 miles fast. I took it seriously enough to forego the booze and eat a decent pasta meal last night. I even bought an energy gel last week to have on the way (I usually just stick to jelly babies). None of this helped. Or if it did, then I dread to think what the run would have been like without them. I felt exhausted from about 2 miles in, the energy gel was like sucking down half a tube of warm orange toothpaste and the last 2 miles were as tough as the end of any real race I’ve done. I guess that is the point of a “race-sim”, but compared to my lovely Dorset run two weeks ago it was grim.

Forcing myself to be positive, we managed the 6 fast miles at a pace of 7min 20 secs per mile, which was good given the temperature and fact that some of them were along the Seven Sisters Road. That road should not be part of any fast run- It was like Ski Sunday today: churchgoers with Easter baskets walking three abreast, bins, lampposts, winos and scampering pitbulls. I should be thankful we made it back in one piece.

Back on the Horse

So I was feeling so down after my terrible run yesterday that I popped down to Camden and scored some heroin. That stuff is moreish!

What I might actually mean by the title of this post is that I got over my terrible run last night by eating some cake and then getting up and going for another one this morning. Another run, that is, not another cake. Although I could go for that too, now that I’ve got a 3.5 mile run under my belt today. That must equal about six cupcakes in calories, right?

It may not have been a long or a hard run, but size is not important. It got me back on the running horse and (sort of) prepared for Sunday’s 12 mile “race sim”. Bring on the Easter eggs.

Pride comes before the Wall

I love these light, bright evenings. Instead of getting home and having to force myself into running kit and out of the door, I walk in and can’t wait to get out back out again, trainers on.

At least, this is how I felt last night. I went for a 5 mile “easy run” around Crouch End and Muswell Hill and it really was easy. Wow, I thought, I’ve reached the point in my training where even when I’m tired my legs can carry me along without too much effort. Running up Mount Doom at the end, I felt like I was being pulled up the hill by an invisible ski lift.

This evening, however, the ski lift was nowhere to be found and I was flailing in the gutter. It was the dreaded tempo session (hard): 35 minutes (5 miles) with 1 mile either side. It was hot. It was hell. I managed a pathetic 10 minutes of the tempo section before realising that if I carried on I might actually die of exhaustion. I can’t work out what went wrong, everything hurt at once. I managed to keep running for the whole distance, but could only manage two short bursts of speed and ran the rest at a snail’s pace.

Apparently Kenyan runners are famous for their tempo runs. They run them for 10-20 miles. I don’t think I am a Kenyan.

Giving your all

So Ryan Hall, of training plan fame, came fourth in the Boston marathon on Saturday, with a time of just under 2 hours 5 minutes. Not bad I suppose, but was he running up Shepherd’s Hill at 5k pace this morning before 6.30am? No he was not.

Of all the hard sessions in his excellent plan, interval training is still the one I’m most comfortable with. The thought of a tempo run before breakfast turns my stomach, but I quite enjoyed the intervals this morning. I suspect I was running them (5 x 1k at 5k pace) more slowly than I would have at 6.30pm, but I was going as fast as I could and only cut one of them short (the last, and only by 30 seconds).

It was a warm morning and the sky glowed pink over blue Crouch End rooftops as the sun came up. When I got home I was too hot to face breakfast, but had to force down some toast just before leaving for work to avoid fainting on the tube. This is most unlike me, usually I am eating within 5 minutes of finishing a run.

I really felt for all the London marathoners on Sunday, running in unseasonable heat. It’s the one thing you can’t do anything about – I saw two elite runners vomit after they crossed the finish line, one of them pretty copiously. Good for her, I thought, there’s no doubt now in anyone’s mind that she gave it her all. The proof is in the puking…