Marathon Training - Week 13

Another enforced break from blogging due to busy weekends.

Since the last blog I have completed three long runs of 20 miles, 20 miles and 22 miles. I had struggled in the 20 mile long run previous to these which I put down to a lack of sleep and possible jet lag so I was worried that I would continue to struggle. Fortunately this wasn't the case. I learnt my lesson and made sure that I had a good night's sleep before each of my runs. Rest is an extremely important aspect of marathon training and one which I have taken to heart, making sure I get at least 7 hours the night before any run.

The first 20 mile run took me down to the Thames and along the path towards Teddington where I crossed the river and came back towards Ealing via Hounslow. I wasn't familiar with the route so used Google Maps and Streetview to help me recognise landmarks where I had to change direction. On this occasion I knew I had to turn where Streetview said there was a pub called the Horse and Groom. Unfortunately since the photo was taken the pub had closed down and been turned into a Tesco Express so I managed to completely miss it. It was lucky I had a general sense of where I was and managed to make it back to the A4 which leads back to Ealing. The upside of this was that I was so concerned with trying to find my way back that I ate up the miles without really noticing and before I knew it I had completed my run! Here's the route as recorded by my Garmin (by the way the turning I missed was the A314, you can see that I ran straight across it!):




The next 20 miler I stayed on more familiar ground and ran through northwest London down towards Paddington then turned round at Baker Street and back along the Uxbridge Road to Ealing. This time I didn't get lost but did run into a bit of trouble trying to find a toilet! Without going into too much detail running does have a habit of moving things about inside. On this occasion I realised after 3 miles that I would need to stop off for a toilet break. Could I find a toilet at 7am on the Harrow Road? Could I hell! I tried petrol stations and supermarkets and had no joy. Usually when this happens I look for a hotel but there wasn't a single one, not a Premier Inn or Holiday Express anywhere! It wasn't until another 8 miles when I got to Paddington that I managed to stop at the Hilton Metropole. A rather posh place to stop but any port in a storm etc. etc. My run back to Ealing was rather less eventful and I managed to finish in a quicker time than the week before. Here's the route:




My final long run, a 22 miler, was to be the longest run I will do before the marathon and I was looking forward to it for a couple of reasons. The first being that it would be the best test of my fitness and would let me know what sort of form I was in for the marathon. The second reason was that I would do a route that I did 18 months ago when training for the Brighton marathon. It would take me down Hyde Park, past Buckingham Palace, the Houses of Parliament, across the Thames to the London Eye, over Blackfriar's Bridge and back via Hammersmith. This time I didn't get lost and I didn't have to look for any hotels for an unscheduled stop! It seems odd to enjoy a 22 mile run but I really did. I managed to finish strong and pushed my heart rate up a bit more than I was happy with but I figured this was because I don't take any water with me on training runs so was becoming a bit dehydrated towards the end. I do take a couple of gels though so I can practice my fuelling strategy. I reckon I will need to take 3 gels on the day of the marathon, taking one every 10km. I may take an extra one just in case I'm flagging at the end. Here's the route:




Again, I managed to increase my pace compared to the previous week so this is promising.

There is a rule of thumb that says that a 22 mile training run takes about as long as the marathon when run at race pace. If so then I'd be ecstatic since it would give me a qualifying time for the Boston marathon, although I think it might be a bit ambitious. Finishing under 3:30 would be brilliant and just to get under 4 hours would be pleasing.

Anyway, that's caught up with what's happened in the last three weeks and now I enter the three week taper period before the marathon where I reduce the mileage bit by bit although I maintain the intensity. Next week I will run an 18 mile long run which is pretty much the only long run I've got left to do before the marathon on the 9th October. Finger's crossed that I don't pick up any injuries over the next 21 days.

Putting the Vibrams away, for now

What a difference a week makes. I have decided to shelve my plan to run using the Vibram Five Fingers since it is putting far too much pressure on my calf. It would only be a matter of time before I caused myself a major injury and do not fancy resting for another four months while I lose more and more fitness, saying goodbye to any marathon I want to run this year. This decision came after I had to abandon my run on Friday morning because the strain on my right calf became too much.

My new plan is to carry on running in my normal running shoes (at the moment these are Brooks GTS10 and Asics GT 2150) and to continue following the run/walk plan until I’m back to full fitness.

This morning my run was 65 minutes at 3 mins run/2 mins walk. This covered just over 10k and although I could feel my calf fatiguing towards the end of the run it managed to survive. I’ll stretch it out and use my massage stick to keep it from stiffening up.

I’m writing this on the day after the Brighton marathon. A whole year has gone by since I ran last year’s race and it will be another six months until I run my next marathon in October. I’m hoping to beat my time of 3:44:46 (to be honest I’m hoping to beat 3:30) but that all depends on my calf.

I’ve also been thinking about other challenges. This came about after watching the James Cracknell trilogy on the Discovery channel. He ran the 150 mile Marathon Des Sables and finished twelfth which is the highest placing ever for a Brit. He then followed this up by attempting to run and cycle the entire way across America. Unfortunately he was knocked off his bike five days in to the attempt. He narrowly avoided death and was laid up in a hospital for a month while his brain and body recovered. After this, and still with some frontal lobe brain damage he entered and completed the 430 mile Yukon Arctic Ultra cycle race which is run in insanely cold weather. If you want to understand the limits of what the human body can do I seriously suggest watching this series of programmes.

Anyway, with this in mind I’ve been thinking about what challenges I would like to do. Not necessarily in the next year or two but as a bucket list of challenges I would like to do before I get too old to do any of them. Off the top of my head I came up with this list:

• London Marathon
• Boston Marathon (via qualification, not charity or a sports tour package)
• Cycling from Land’s End to John O’Groats via the most southerly, easterly, westerly and northerly mainland points of Britain.
• Compete in an ultra (maybe Comrades in South Africa or even the MDS!)
• Compete in an ironman (not really looking for a finishing time, just to be able to finish)
• New York Marathon
• Marathon du Medoc (where the water stations have wine! What’s not to like)

Runner’s World has an article on its website called “20 Races to do before you die”.  There’s a number in there that I wouldn’t mind doing such as the Ethiopian 10k.

Here’s the link, I think it’s accessible to non-subscribers:

http://www.runnersworld.co.uk/racing/20-races-to-do-before-you-die/3594.html

Anyway, here’s my run from this morning.

First post! Not the last.

Hello. I'm a forty year old runner living in Ealing in West London. I'm hoping that by keeping this blog it will give me both a useful journal of my running activities and general thoughts about the world at large.
I've never kept a blog or even a diary before so will have to see how this goes. I've been reading other runners' blogs and thought how hard can it be? Well, pretty hard since it's taken me months to get from idea to reality. I think the problem is what to write.
Let's start at the beginning. I've been running "properly" for the last three years. Before that I would train for a couple of months for a 10k race and then do nothing else for the rest of the year before the next 10k race the next year. This all stopped in August 2008. I had signed up for the Nike 10k race in London and had trained for three months. Finally crossing the line in 65 minutes my usual pattern would mean hanging up my running shoes for another nine months and digging them out for the next Nike 10k. I have no idea why but this time I decided to carry on running two or three times a week. Before I knew it it was Spring and there were a plethora of races to enter. 10k race times came down and within a few months I was going sub-50 minutes. Progress! After 10k races came the half-marathon which whetted my appetite and I decided to go for the big one. So it came that on April 18th 2010 I found myself lining up for the inaugural Brighton Marathon. All the training came together and 3 hours, 44 minutes and 46 seconds later I found myself crossing the line. I vowed never to run another marathon again. I kept this promise for six weeks and then ran the Chester marathon! In October 2010 I ran the Cardiff Half-Marathon in 1 hour, 35 minutes and 6 seconds.
Then disaster struck.
While on a training run with my girlfriend I pulled my calf muscle. Nothing much I thought! How wrong could I be. Four months later and too many physio sessions to mention I am now able to run again. That's when I thought I could keep a blog to track my road to recovery as well as the road to my next marathon in Chester in October 2011.
The added twist to this is that I am going to change my running style completely and run wearing Vibram Five Fingers Bikila shoes. More on this in a future post but for now let me say that in order to do this I will have to start my training as though I have never run before. From running 6 days a week and averaging about 30 miles I am going to be following a run/walk training programme so my feet, calves and joints all condition themselves slowly. It may get frustrating but I'm hoping that slowly, slowly will indeed catchy monkey.
To that end here's my first training run using the run/walk method in my "finger feet" as my girlfriend calls them:



As you can see I'm not exactly smashing records yet!
That just about wraps up this post. I'm hoping that I'll find more of a style as I write more and more of these posts so if this one feels a little dry then give it time and before you know it I'll be a regular PG Wodehouse!