Back To Life, Back To Reality

I've been home from my holidays for about a week and a half and completed 9 runs. I have come to the not very earth-shattering conclusion that I am very much a temperate weather runner. Going out for a run at 6am and the temperature is about 12C is much, much better than running at temperatures twice that.

Both of my pairs of running shoes have come to the end of their lives. They've now gone to the big running shoe shop in the sky, otherwise known as the local charity shop. I'm now using two pairs of running shoes that I had used for about a month before I had to pull out of marathon training because of injury. Why I had bought new running shoes when I started another training plan instead of using these two pairs I cannot fathom but at least I'm using them now.

I'm also taking what may be a risk. I bought a pair of race shoes back in 2010. I used them to run a 10k and a half marathon (getting PBs in both) but after using them I had peroneal tendonitis. They are incredibly light but I used to overpronate and this is what my physio believed caused the issue. It's been almost three years since then and my running style has altered. I think I am now a bit more of a neutral runner. With this in mind I have used them for an 8 mile run and a 4 mile run. Both times I came through with flying colours. I think I'll use them once a week until the marathon with the hope of using them for the actual marathon itself as I believe the lightness of the shoe will give me a big advantage come race day (such hubris!).

I've followed the training plan religiously since I've been home. My long runs have been 18 miles (with 14 at marathon pace) and 17 miles respectively. Because my watch was being fixed I had to guess my marathon pace. By the time I got home, loaded the route up into the computer and checked it I found that my guessed marathon pace was 4:45 minutes per kilometer which is about 15 seconds quicker than what I should be running if I want to get under 3:30 hours in the marathon. Result! Not that I am going to run at 4:45 per kilometer but it's nice to know that I am capable of it.

This morning I ran 17 miles down to Richmond Park, around the trail path along the edge (following the marathon route from 5 months ago, albeit in reverse) and back via Kew Bridge. My watch (third time replaced, third time lucky?) ran out of battery for the last three miles (my fault, should have checked last night) so I had to run them effectively blind although I've been running the streets around here for the last five years and know the distances very well. I had run a 10k "race" yesterday so today's run was on tired legs to simulate the last miles of the marathon. I enjoyed it a lot. There were moments when I wanted to just stop and walk but kept going instead and managed to complete the 17 miles in 2:21:06 which is a good pace even if the last 3 were estimated.

Next week is my last major week of training ending with a 20 miler. Then it is three weeks of taper until the race itself. Looking forward to the taper, it will almost feel like a holiday but without the stupidly hot weather!

Go Big Or Go Home

Last week my running schedule was pretty much written off, or at least half written off. This week I am returning home from holiday on Wednesday before which my training plan has me doing two runs, an 8 miler and a 9 miler. I was planning on just running a 5 mile loop but this would mean that this week's schedule would also be affected and at would hurt my OCD sensibilities too much.

In the end I decided to push the 9 miler back until Thursday when I am in the UK and I would go all out and run the 8 miler while I am here in Cyprus.

On Sunday I managed to run 6 miles without dying so I thought that 8 miles may just about be possible if I got up early enough to avoid the heat.

It turns out it was possibly my favourite run of the entire holiday. I had mapped out a loop route that would take me from my hotel 2 miles along a coastal path, then cut inland for 4 miles around the back of the hotel where it rejoins the coastal path again for another 2 miles to bring me back to the hotel. Up at 5:45am, out by 6:15am and just over an hour later I was back at the hotel changed into my swimming shorts and cooling down in the indoor pool for 10 to 15 minutes. I got to watch the sun come up over the hills east of Paphos and it looked beautiful, such are the bonuses of running in a foreign land.

So on this holiday I have done 5 runs in total, which is 27 miles, about 30 fewer than my schedule required but given that over 18 weeks I will have run about 800 miles I guess that 30 miles is no great issue.

Looking forward to getting home again. 10 nights is just about right for a beach holiday I reckon. We have done pretty much nothing apart from sitting by the pool reading and swimming a bit to cool down. Not my usual sort of holiday but I have to say I've really enjoyed it. It will be nice to get back home and see the cat again, although I doubt she's missed us at all.

Location:Pafos,Cyprus

Feeling Hot, Hot, Hot

I have so far managed two runs on my holiday (out of 5 days). A 4 miler and a 5 miler. Both have finished with me covered head to toe in sweat. The humidity is so high in the morning that the sweat doesn't get a chance to evaporate so just clings to you. Very uncomfortable. The alternative is to wait a few hours so that the humidity goes down. The flip side is that the temperature soars. Robbing Peter to pay Paul.

My marathon schedule is not being followed. It would be nigh on impossible to do so in these conditions so I am just maintaining fitness instead of increasing it. Once I get back home next week I'll get back on track.

Another problem is that my watch has broken again. This is the replacement watch that I had because my touch screen became semi-responsive. Well this time the touch screen has become totally unresponsive. It's barely four weeks old! To be fair to Garmin I contacted them and they've agreed to replace it again no questions asked. I can still use it as a fancy stopwatch that also tracks my GPS but that's about it. I'll send it off when I return home.

Having said all of that the running paths around here are very pleasant. Pretty much flat as a pancake and nice coastal views. Tomorrow I think I'll try a 6 miler although I'll probably end up as a puddle on the floor.

But now it's time for breakfast and then to hit the pool!

Location:Pafos,Cyprus

Holidays

I'm writing this from a balcony in a hotel in Cyprus. So far I have not missed a single training session but this may well change over the next 10 days. Running on holiday is a curious thing. The intention is always to get out and carry on with the schedule as if nothing has changed but as more drinks are consumed in the evening it becomes more and more clear that things are not the same. Namely that I wouldn't normally be waking up at 6am nursing a hangover in order to go for an 8 mile run to avoid the heat of the sun.

Here in Cyprus there appears to be a very small window in which it is comfortable to be able to run (for me at least). The humidity is incredible. I have put a pair of swimming shorts out on the balcony to dry and by the morning they are still damp! The temperature is around 24C at 6am and this rapidly rises to 30C by 9am. This means I have to either a) get up in the middle of the night to go running or b) adjust my expectations of what I think will be achievable while I am here.

I am sure that if I can get out and run 4 or 5 miles every other day (or more) then my fitness will be maintained and I can get back on the schedule when I return home next week.

There is always the option of using the running machines in the hotel gym but I'm not a fan.

As I write this I can see a path between my hotel and the beach that is being used by many runners. I'm not sure if any of them are training for a marathon or not but at least it's a popular route. It's always good to run on holiday when possible as it gives you a different viewpoint of the place you are saying (I'm pretty sure I've said that before on this blog somewhere). The problem is getting the legs out of bed to do it.

Up until now my training has been going brilliantly. I've got two 20 mile runs in the bag. The second of which I ran 5 minutes faster than the first one which is always a good sign of progress. Last week was my biggest training week so far, 55 miles. Even the mid-week medium long runs don't seem that long anymore. Which must mean my fitness is building up. Lets just hope that I don't lose it during this holiday!

Location:Pafos,Cyprus

Summer Breeze, Makes Me Feel Boiling Hot!

I'm writing this from my garden. The barbecue is on the go, I have a beer in front of me and the cricket on my ipad (England vs Australia, although with all due respect to my Aussie friends, it's not much of a contest at the moment).

The weather has been glorious. Maybe a little bit too glorious. Britain is in the middle of a heatwave. I feel sorry for those runners who like to run in the evening. The radiation heat off the pavement built up during the day must be dreadful. Fortunately I run in the morning. It's generally cool although the thermometer has topped out at 20C at 6am which is basically unheard of in the UK. Even so, I've not missed one training run yet which makes a difference from my last marathon where I must have missed about two weeks' worth of running in the 16 week programme.

My runs are getting longer and longer, even in midweek. This week I had to run an 11 mile midweek run which meant me having to get up at 5:15am just to get out of the door by 5:45am. These extra miles have made a noticeable difference though. Normally a long weekend run would seem quite daunting but due to the midweek runs being in double figures mileage-wise the weekend runs are not really much of a deal.

This morning I had to run 18 miles. I had a bit of a hangover (went out for lunch yesterday and then stopped off in a pub on the way home and got sidetracked by a blues festival in our local park which we stopped to watch for a couple of hours with more beers naturally!). My back has also been a bit poorly this week. I have pulled a muscle on the left shoulder blade and it has been annoying me for the last four days. It does that clicking noise every time I rotate my shoulder when I think it should be helping to sort out the pain but probably does nothing at all.

Anyway, I set off this morning on an 18 miler. I had planned a route to take me down to cross Kew Bridge run along the south Thames Path all the way to Putney Bridge, cross over and head back to Ealing via Hammersmith and Chiswick. The first two miles were a bit of a struggle as I had a bit of difficulty finding my pace. Once I did though it clicked. And not just in "Oh this is a nice pace" but in the way that you want to run for ages. You feel like this is the best run you've ever done and what a great day to choose to come out and run along the Thames to see it in the morning when it is at it's best. I ran over Putney Bridge and decided then and there to come back along the north Thames Path to take me back along the Thames to Kew Bridge and home to Ealing. I love those sort of runs and I really feel that it's because of the new training plan that my fitness is greater and why this run felt so great. I'm looking forward to next week's 20 miler. I just have to decide what route I want to take. If I can make it as half as good as this morning's route then I will be one happy camper.

Here's the route map:

Parks and Recreation (and Canals)

Sleep, run, eat. And repeat. That's how it's felt for the past few weeks. The P+D training plan is really kicking in on the distances. After four weeks my weekly distance is about as much as it was during the height of my previous training plan. And I like it! I must be a masochist.

I've noticed on my midweek runs that I don't venture far from home. Even if I'm running 10 miles I will choose a familiar circular route that keeps me within a couple of miles from my front door. Yet on the weekend I will happily forge a new route that takes me miles away. I take my Oystercard and some money just in case I get injured or have to stop for some reason. I used to take my iPhone with me to listen to podcasts which meant I could call my wife to come and pick me up should I get into trouble (not that I did!). But now I use an iPod Nano because it's much lighter so leave the phone at home. Anyway, I think the midweek runs top out at 14 miles so maybe I'll be forced to go far from home. Maybe it's just a psychological thing but it's worth mentioning.

I used to have issues on about 90% of my runs where I would feel the need to take a "comfort break" for want of a better euphemism. I'd either have to stop to compose myself or find a nearby hotel, both of which were a major disruption. In my quest to prevent this I've started getting out of bed about 15 minutes earlier and having a cup of coffee. So far this has done the trick and I'm able to go out on my run a happier, lighter man!

Two long runs since my last blog. The first was 14 miles and I mapped out a route that took me around the Grand Union Canal that surrounds Ealing. I managed to plan it such that 10 of the 14 miles were on the canal itself. The advantage of that being that it's flat as a pancake. At that time in the morning (6am on a Sunday) there were three other types of people sharing the canal path - runners, anglers and drinkers on the way home from a late night party. It's a beautiful time to run the canals. All the water birds are out. Coots, moorhens, herons, ducks, geese and swans. Although the swans and geese tend to sit in a big group together on the path which can be quite alarming and requires a bit of careful negotiation to wend a path through them, especially as a lot of them have young. A duck with a little gaggle of ducklings - cute, a swan with a gaggle of cygnets - potential death!

Here's the route (you'll notice that my watch's battery died just at the end during the last mile):

The second long run (today) took me down to Richmond Park for the first time since the marathon two months ago. It was a 15 mile run on a beautiful summer morning. There's a bit of a climb to get into Richmond Park but apart from that it's a flat route. It was one of those mornings were I didn't know precisely where I was going to run. I'd thought of three of four potential routes and in the end just went where my feet took me. Richmond Park on a day like this seemed like perfect sense although I didn't see any deer this time. My fitness is definitely improving and hopefully it will improve again over the next three or four weeks.

Here's the Richmond Park route:

Next week I'm going to be in Chester and will need to find a 16 mile route to run either on the Saturday or Sunday morning. At the moment we don't know which family member we will be staying with so I can't start planning any routes yet.

New marathon, new training plan

Chester marathon is on the 6th October. That is 16 weeks away which is the usual amount of time given by pretty much all the marathon training plans. All except the Pfitzinger and Douglas training plan which is 18 weeks long.

Why change training plans for this marathon? Couple of reasons.

1. I've used the Runner's World training plan for the past couple of years. Familiarity breeds not exactly contempt but I know it too well and needed to do something different to keep things interesting.
2. A lot, and I mean a lot, of people online swear by it as the training plan that gave them the big boost that enabled them to run a PB.
3. I bought their book a couple of years ago and always wanted to try out the plan.

They have a couple of plans based on varying amount of experience and time available. I've chosen the up to 55 miles per week plan because I've looked at the others and they require a hell of a lot of commitment timewise that I don't think I can give at the moment.

So what's it been like for the first two weeks? At the moment, great. The biggest difference I've noticed is that I run fewer days per week (4 or 5 as compared to 6 in the Runner's World plan) but the runs tend to be longer and at a faster pace. My midweek medium-long runs are currently 10 miles which means I have to get up at 5:30am in order to fit them in before work. Also, the runs tend to be broken up into more speed variations. So for example I may run 8 miles but in the middle will be 4 miles run at half marathon pace. Or on my weekend long run I may run 13 miles but the last 8 will be at marathon pace. This is supposed to get the body more used to running faster and in a tired state. I'm hoping the benefits will show as the weeks go on.

I've also decided to run according to heart rate this time instead of pace. From comparing the runs I've done I can see that my pace is still pretty much the same as if I was running to pace. But since this is early days I am hoping that as I get fitter I am able to run at the same heart rate but a faster pace. Time will tell.

The new Ealing half marathon course was published this week so since my run this morning was a 13 miler (last 8 at marathon pace, see above) I thought I'd give it a go. It's still as hilly as last year but I like the slight alterations they've done from the previous course. Anyway, here it is: