Wednesday 7 October 2015

2015 Berlin Marathon Race report and week 20 of 20 weeks to sub 2:20?

M Rest
T 8 miles (6:21mm)
T 5 miles (6:44mm)
F 4miles (6:33mm)
S 3 miles (6:42mm)
S 27 including 2015 Berlin Marathon

Total 53 miles (5:57mm)

Pre-Race
This was my standard taper week, seeing a massive reduction in miles with a smattering of quality to keep reminding the legs that they were going to need to run quite quickly on the Sunday. There’s a fair bit of preamble/waffle below so if you just want to get straight to the race go to paragraph 12.

I have to say I do find this last week a real battle mentally. There is the anticipation and excitement of the big event coming up that you’ve focused on and trained so hard for but there’s also the doubts that start creeping in about how big a challenge you have ahead of you. I said in my blog following the GNR that I was unsure of how I could possibly run twice the distance in a slightly quicker pace. Those thoughts were further amplified this week! At least when you’re in full training you have the reassurance of running every day that you’re doing something that will contribute to your success. In these last few days all you can think of is how unfeasible the whole challenge is! The only respite you get is when you go out on those few short runs to try and give you a bit of confidence but then the doubts creep back in shortly after you’re home and hosed.

As ever I did the carb deplete focusing on trying to rid my muscles of any remaining glycogen in the muscle. This leaves one even more irritable than normal and in a way contributes to the catastrophic thoughts of impending doom that one can have! I have to thank Hania for being solid as a rock for me through this few days as I knew it would get better as soon as I started  consuming the carbs! The runs actually went well, including 2 miles hard on Wednesday morning despite running on empty. This gave me confidence that my body was clearly adapted so well to fat burning as I could still maintain MP despite there being literally no sugar in my system. A positive sign.

Then to the carb load, which was enjoyable for all of about 6 hours, after consuming my 16th slice of banana Soreen for the day! Oh well crack on, it’s only three days of gorging myself on high carb, low fat and it will do me good.

I flew out to Berlin on Friday and met up with Dave Archer and Andrew Challenger (Hallamshire Harriers) at the airport who were both racing. Andrew was hoping to take a sizable PB and Dave was running effectively his first (although he did do one when he first started running but it didn’t really count apparently). It was great chatting to the guys to hear how things had gone in the build-up and just general chewing the running fat.

Picked up my number with not too many issue on Friday evening although they make you walk just about 26 miles to get your number just to make sure you don’t go in under trained. The whole expo thing does cheese me off a bit to be honest. It’s basically the biggest shop for running related stuff you could ever possibly imagine. The last thing I want to be doing 24-48 hours before a marathon is spending hours walking around looking at running stuff that I could buy on the other 364 days of the year.

On Saturday morning I did my last pre-race run which took in a bit of the course including a little MP test to see how it felt on the streets that I would be racing the very next day. Thankfully it felt great and I knew I was ready to go.

Much of Saturday was then just spent hanging around waiting, thinking and planning how I was to approach my race. To be honest it didn't take much thinking about as the plan was simple; run as well I can and always think about how the effort feels. Not be scared to push on but importantly not be scared to hold back. Patience was going to be the name of the game. I even wrote it on my hand the morning of the race to remind myself! The goal was as always just to be the best as I could be on the day. Outside of this I met up with friend and runner Andrew Leveson for coffee who was also racing and hoping for 2:23:30. Then in the evening I went out for a bit of pasta with a couple of other guys Ben Martin-Dye, Keith Russell, and Keith’s mate Dave. Ben was running but he had decided to have it as a jolly having not done much training over recent months having got married in the summer. He did entertain the thought of running round the streets of Berlin waving a big rubber Bratwurst to gee up the faithful but settled on a running in a pair of very tight-fitting lederhosen instead. Keith had trained and indeed spent some time in Kenya getting into great shape but unfortunately through a sequence of bad luck meant injury and illness he had taken the wise decision to pull out.

As ever I wanted to make sure I got as much sleep as possible before the race but know now that this is unlikely. I got to bed around 9pm and dropping off about 10:30 so if all went well I would get about 7 hours before going through my usual pre-race morning routine. I woke up some time later feeling like I hadn’t had much but was expecting the clock to say something after 3:00am so at least four hours which wouldn’t be ideal but OK! I was shocked to see the clock say 23:56! And I felt wide awake. I knew I was then in for a rough night of trying to trick myself back to sleep. Nothing would work. As the night wore on, I gave up and started to read my book hoping that it would send me off to sleep. It didn't work, so I thought I’d catch up on the previous week’s Question Time which I’d downloaded to the iPlayer. Listening to  Elizabeth Truss of the Conservative party allowed me to drop off for 20 minutes, so at least that’s one thing to be thankful to the Tories for. I soon woke up again though and there was nothing left for it but to accept I was unlikely to get any more quality sleep so decided to watch the latest episode of Great British Bake Off.

In a way I was pleased when it was finally acceptable for me to get out of bed and go in search of coffee! I went down to the hotel lobby but their coffee machine was broken. This whole thing seemed destined to failure. I then ventured out but wasn’t hopeful of finding anywhere that would sell a decent coffee. Luckily I found one without too much problem at a bakery a short walk down the road. The lady behind the counter almost seemed angry that I’d come in to purchase something though. Despite my very best ‘Guten Tag, eine kaffee mit milch bitte.’ She looked at me like I had asked her to go to Columbia to harvest the beans herself. 

Got down to the start via U-Bahn and I was struck how cold it was, so took the decision to wear my gloves. I stupidly hadn’t actually packed a top to keep me warm that I could easily discard at the start which was a bit of a schoolboy. Anyway, jogged for a bit, did a couple of half-hearted strides, relieved my bladder for the fourteenth time that day before finally taking my spot on the start line. Then my Garmin decided it didn’t want to latch on to a satellite signal so with rousing music blaring through the speakers and about 30 seconds to go I was still frantically waving my arm about in the air like a former German dictator. 

Race Report

0-5K
Off we go and it takes me a few seconds to get over the startline. That’s fine as it’ll mean I don’t hare off. Patience is the name of the game! Ideally I would like to get settled in a group in this stage of the race and it takes me until about 4K to catch up with the leading elite women who have a nice group so decide to stick in with them. There had been some talk of them looking at pushing for sub 2:20 so I figured if the effort felt OK then it would be good to stick with them. That said I also knew that the two favourites Gladys Cherono and Aberu Kebede were quite evenly matched so would likely be racing for the win rather than going specifically for the time. Mike Baxter had suggested that I look to split each 5k in around 16:40 so it was nice to see the first one come in at 16:42 (5:22mm)

5-10k
As we passed the 5k marker I find myself feeling incredibly easy and indeed ended up floating off the front of the group with one other chap who seemed to be working somewhat harder than me. As the course goes back through the centre of Berlin this is a part of the course where there is quite a lot of support but again I kept telling myself not to get carried away and to be patient. Around the 10k mark I look back to see that the lead women are probably only about 25 metres back and know that it makes sense to drop back in with them as they’re clearly now operating at the same sort of pace as me and this other chap so take the decision to drop back and jump on the train! 5k split of 16:34 (5:20mm) (10k in 33:16 – remember that 10k at Askern that was all out in 33:05? This feels like I’m jogging relatively!)

10-15k
This is a very unmemorable part of the race for me as I do my best to ‘sleep to halfway’ and indeed the only thing of note really is that Gladys Cherono has very sharp elbows as she tries to take me out as we go round a corner and she nearly knocks me flying into some barriers. 5k split of 16:42 (5:22mm) and all feeling very good. A wry grin comes on my face as I know I’m running really well and feeling incredibly strong and looking good for a PB. I take a gel at 11k which settles nicely. 15k in 49:58.





15-20k (and halfway)
Again a very unmemorable part of the race as things are just ticking along really nicely and feeling like I have a great rhythm. I’m enjoying having the benefit of the lead car that leads the elite ladies which is giving helpful km splits and a projected finish time. The projected finish time is gradually coming down into the mid 2:20:xxs which is nice. 5k passed in 16:35 (5:20mm). 20k in 1:06:33 and then halfway in 70:10. At this point I’m thinking wow it’s on I really do have a great chance of sub 2:20 if I can stay strong and keep with this brilliant group. I am getting reassuring readings from my HR monitor which confirm I’m working far less hard than I have done at a similar point in any marathon to date. 


20k – 25k
During this period we catch up  with Jonathan Poole, a  guy that runs for the Serpentine club in London. I follow him on Strava and knows he’s in good shape. He asked me if we’d picked up the pace, I said maybe slightly but I think mainly he was worried that he had slowed. We crack on and still I feel effortless. I have another gel just after halfway and again this is fine. It is a great experience running along with the elite ladies. Two genuinely World Class athletes, running sublimely alongside me! It really is surreal thinking back to just a few years ago when I got ‘hands on knees’ tired at climbing a broken escalator at St Paul's Underground once! 5k passed in 16:34 (5:20mm) and 25k in 1:23:07.

25-30k
It is in this stage of the race that I tend to think about what sort of finish time I can be hopeful of. At this stage I am very confident, perhaps a bit cocky that very close to or sub 2:20 is very much on as I definitely feel easier than I have done at this point before. Sure it is becoming harder but I still feel good and full of running. I have subsequently watched the full race video on Youtube and there are various clips of me running with the lead ladies. This seems to confirm how I was feeling at the time. I just look incredibly strong. I then have a Powergel around 28k which is what they were handing out on the course and at first it seems fine but shortly after my race starts to go a little bit awry! 5k in 16:31 (5:19mm) so we have sped up a bit and hit 30k in 1:39:38.


30k-35k
As we go through 30k I find myself becoming detached from the group I’m in and can’t quite get back to them. It’s a very strange experience because I don’t feel that tired and my legs feel OK but within just a few hundred metres I have developed an agonising stitch which really starts to affect my form and ability to keep pace. I try not to panic and keep at it. I was telling myself it was just a rough patch and it would soon pass. The truth is I have never suffered a stitch in a marathon before and didn’t know how to deal with it at the time. Frustratingly it didn’t really ease off completely at all from now until the end. I just got my head down and ran as hard as I could given the discomfort I was in. 5k in 17:08 (5:31mm)so I had slowed a lot in that section but given how far up I was still confident of getting a big PB. 35k in 1:56:46.

35k – 40k
As I reach the 35k mark I’m now starting to see if I can reel anyone in that is dropping off the back of the group I was in and do go past a few but I’m hurting  a lot and know I'm slower still. There's just so much discomfort that I feel like I’m running like Pheobe from Friends! It's amazing how quickly a race can turn around. Despite going past a few folks my head is starting to drop because try as I might I know my pace is slipping a lot, my watch confirms it. 5k split in 17:33(5:39mm!) to 40k in 2:14:19.

40k - finish
I do a quick calculation in my head and realise that even the chance of a PB is slipping now. How could that be? I was so confident just a few short miles ago that I was going to obliterate it and possibly get under the magic 2:20. I had caught a guy up within the previous 5k and now it was going to be a race to the bitter end. We could work off each other to push each other to the finish. This was a different kind of marathon pain than I'm used to but I simply was not prepared to let myself not PB. I hadn't worked this hard and put all that work in, not to get a PB. Racing toe to toe with this guy I think helped as we really raced each other to the line. I managed to pick up the pace a little for this section 7:32 (5:31mm), 42.195k in 2:21:51 (5:24mm) and a PB by a whopping 21 seconds!

On the final straight: I appear around 9:50 into the video 

My initial reaction is one of simple relief that after all I'd been through in the last 12k I had still managed to PB! As the minutes pass I see Andrew Leveson (2:25:37 - also had stomach issues but from very early on), Dave Archer (2:25:40 - a solid time for a first proper effort at the distance) and Andrew Challenger (2:26:07 - a sizable and well deserved PB after some great training).



It was then back to the hotel for a quick shower and back out to the pub where a big group of us got stuck into another kind of marathon. One things for sure I'm not that good at pacing a marathon involving beer. :-) It was fantastic to relive all the war stories of the day, including some great PBs from most in attendance. I was delighted to hear first hand of John Gilbert's great run (2:15:49) as well as those from Jonathan Poole (2:20:38), Phil Sanders (2:30:30), Paul Griffiths (2:31:59), Stuart Beaney (2:38:37) and Thomas Musson (2:48:38). Ben Martin-Dye had also had a Wunderbar time (2:54:19) trotting leisurely around the German capital.


Race Reflections

Now it has all sunk in a bit I am still proud of how I had dug in so deep to eek out a PB with the hand I was dealt on race day. Of course I am a little frustrated that my body let me down with the stitch which prevented me from going as quick as I believe I should have. I honestly think it probably cost me at least 60-90seconds, maybe a little more. In fact my legs have never felt so good after a marathon and I do think that it's because I simply couldn't push them to the absolute limit! That said I was still always conscious of my glute and hamstring issues throughout the race so if I can get that resolved then I should be running smoother and quicker still.

Whilst this whole 20 week build up started with the loose arbitrary goal of going sub 2:20 as race day approached in a strange way I didn't really know whether I was capable of a sub 2:20 time. Indeed I had decided sensibly to race the race as it came and with the fitness I found myself in on the day. Obviously I didn't manage to go sub 2:20 on the day, but I am now more confident than ever that I definitely do, in fact whilst one should never take anything for granted in athletics (anything in fact?!) I believe I can go quite a bit quicker than that. But first and for the next 12-18 months I am going to focus on getting much quicker over the shorter distances as that should translate to quicker marathon times in the future. I'm pleased to say that I am also formally going to start working with Mike Baxter as my coach as I have thoroughly enjoyed his support and guidance of recent months and if there's a bloke in the sport that knows how to toughen folks up it's him!

Thanks to anyone that has followed my inane blog over this period (and to Hania for putting up with me!). I'm sure I'll keep the blog going with periodic postings but for now it's back to the drawing board - big plans are afoot.

Sunday 20 September 2015

Week 19 of 20 weeks to Sub 2:20?

M 9 miles (6:29mm)
T 10.5 miles (6:23mm), 5 miles (7:04mm)
W 8 miles (6:52mm)
T 11 miles including 15X1minute on/off (5:53mm)
F 7 miles (6:50mm)
S 9 miles including Northern 6-stage relays (5:04mm)
S 14 miles (6:03mm)

Total 74 miles (6:26mm)
Weight 138.7 lbs
Body fat 9.5%
Aerobic efficiency 941 beats per mile

So into the first week of taper which sees a big reduction in mile from last week down to just over 70 for the week with a couple of sharper sessions.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that the legs seemed OK following last Sunday’s Great North Run efforts and was ticking along quite nicely in my early runs in the week. Thursdays session was one that Mike had encouraged me to do before London as it gets a bit of speed into the legs and the recoveries aren’t true recoveries but at a more steady effort. I had decided however that I would take it a little easier than pre-London with the Northern six-stage relays in mind, which would make up my second session of the week. The 1 minute 'on' efforts averaged between 4:37 and 5:01 pace and the recoveries were anywhere between 5:45 and 6:13 so all in all a very nice session.

It is in this week that you hope you will start to see a bit of freshness returning to the legs and I was pleased to see on Friday that my recovery run felt virtually effortless, ticking along at 6:50 pace almost asleep! It’s these encouraging runs in the taper that really help build the confidence that it’ll all be good on the day!

Then to Saturday and a trip over the Pennines to sunny Blackpool for the Northern Six-Stage relays. I managed to find myself in the A-Team such is the current list of injuries at the club and I was to run the fourth leg over a course of 6.6km. As any readers of my blog will know I don't tend to do too well at the shorter stuff so this would be a good test with the added pressure of trying to ensure I didn't mess things up for the team! I took over from Patrick Vis who came in in eighth position and although the guy in seventh was only about 5 seconds in front there was a big gap in front of him so I knew it was to be a tough leg to try and get back closer to the guy in sixth, if at all! I caught the guy in seventh after half a mile and got my head down and ran really strongly all the way to the finish. Again, I didn't clock watch which made the whole thing very enjoyable. I just raced. I finished in 7th position having closed the gap to 6th and passed over to Dominic Easter. My leg was timed at 20:47 which is about 5:04 per mile pace. We ultimately ended up in 5th position which wasn't a terrible outcome but certainly with a full strength team we would expect to have been up there. This was a really pleasing run for me personally and good to see some freshness returning. Although I don't think I could have run much quicker, I felt strong at the end almost as if I could have gone around again, albeit a touch slower with a couple of minutes recovery. Of course I didn't and just did a couple miles jog to warm down.

Whilst this week has gone well and I am incredibly relaxed about the race itself and can’t wait to get going, I do actually struggle with this bit of the taper for other reasons. I have suffered with pretty bad anxiety verging on depression this week and the strange thing is it’s not about the potential outcome of the race. That will take care of itself I know that but without wanting to be too melodramatic it almost feels a bit like grief. Grief that the process is almost over. What will I do after? How will I cope without this goal to focus on? I’ve felt miserable, been incredibly irritable and have struggled to see the point in lots of things. What was the point in training this hard and putting everything in to it for it all just to be over? This whole build up and race has completely consumed me for the past few months and in a few short days it’ll no longer be there. How will I move forward and what will I look to do after? I will be OK and my darling wife Hania tells me it will all clear. The fog will rise and there will be other running targets to look forward to. Sometimes I do just wish I wasn’t so obsessive about these things though! I mean it doesn’t matter does it? It only really matters to me. Whatever I run has no bearing on anything in the world and nobody really cares apart from me. Sure if I run well people will be pleased for me as I am for others when they achieve what they want to but no-one can be as attached to your own goal as you are. It just doesn’t work like that and rightly so. Something makes me want to get up at 5am and do the hard miles training twice a day, something drives me to do that, something in my brain tells me it’s what I need to do for my sanity. The reality is that marathon training is a selfish sport and despite me trying to make my training mostly invisible to my family, it isn’t completely and it can’t be. It consumes everything you do. You live and breathe it for weeks and months on end. So maybe this feeling is partly guilt of my own self-indulgence? Whatever it is, it is definitely the darker side of running. It'll probably get darker still as I have already started my carb-depletion before the reload starts in earnest on Thursday. I just have to hope that I can avoid all last-minute hiccoughs and do my hardest to ensure that it all comes together like a dream next Sunday.

Friday 18 September 2015

Week 18 of 20 weeks to Sub 2:20?

M 12 miles (6:23mm), 6 miles (6:49mm)
T 8 miles (6:54mm), 5 miles (6:57mm)
T 11 miles (6:22mm), 6 miles (7:01mm)
F 7 miles (7:00mm)
S 6.5 miles (6:44mm), 4 miles (7:17mm)
S 20.5 miles including Great North Run in 70:52 (5:24mm)
Total 113.5 miles (6:26mm)
Weight 139.5 lbs
Body fat 9.7%
Aerobic efficiency 958 beats per mile


So here it was the final big week of training and I was absolutely determined for it to go well after last week's poor track race. It was to include the biggest session of the campaign as well as a hard but controlled effort at the Great North Run on Sunday as part of my final long run.

I took last Sunday as a complete rest day, simply to try and regain focus for what would be the hardest week with the combination of the volume and the intensity of the two sessions I had planned. I was pleased I did as although I hardly sprung out of bed at 5:00am on Monday morning, I was pretty pleased to be running quite nicely at a strong pace for a 12 miler to start the week. Tuesday was taken a little bit easier as ever to try and have reasonably fresh legs for the big monster marathon session on Wednesday.

When you first see the sessions on paper, you think oh yeah that seems OK but as the day approaches you realise just how hard they're going to be! Especially when you have built up a level of fatigue from the previous weeks' training. Although I was excited about the session the day before you do feel a bit like you do before a big race; unsure of how it's going to go, a little anxious of how tough it is going to feel and also wanting it to go well to give you a strong feeling that all is on track.

I did this session before the Yorkshire Marathon last year and also before London this year too and although it went well pre-Yorkshire, it was pretty much a disaster before London although I did manage to complete it. I did the session then whilst on holiday in Poland and my legs were just absolutely ruined. For the second stint at MP I could only muster 5:36 pace which considering I was hoping for a MP of quicker than 5:27 obviously left me a little unsure of where I was at the time. The outcome of that session though was that it just allowed me to focus on what everyone should focus on and that is to run the best with what the fitness they have on race day and don't force for arbitrary targets. That said I still managed to PB at London so it all ended up fine in the end. So with all that in mind, I was still keen to nail it this time around as if it went well I was still sure that things could yet improve a little further with the freshness the taper brings back to the legs.  


The first 30 minutes was quite good and I was ticking along really well at 5:26 pace around my tempo loop. The 5 minute efforts came in at 5:09, 5:05, 5:04, 5:04 so really strong fro me and what should be theoretical 10k-10M pace.These 5 minute efforts are really quite nasty as they do get the legs really nicely fatigued for that last MP effort. That said I started off the next 30 minutes really strongly. In fact, the pace felt easy because it was a lot slower than the previous efforts but as the interval progresses it really does become hard work and the concentration levels required are very similar to what you have in the closing stages of the marathon. The legs are jellifying and you have too really focus to keep form, etc I managed to hold it all together for a very pleasing average of 5:27 pace. After last week's disappointing track race I was so keen to get a good confidence booster and this sure gave me what I needed. The session was marginally better than pre-Yorkshire marathon as the shorter efforts were slightly quicker on average and as a whole it was miles better than pre-London. Mike encouraged me that there was no reason to have a confidence wobble anyway as he quite rightly reminded me that there is no such thing as a perfect build up. He recalled Charlie Spedding's build up to the Olympics in LA in 1984 and how he had a few shockers/ sub par performances along the way.


Then on Sunday I had my last long run scheduled which was to include the Great North Run as a bit of a tempo effort. Of course I was going into this really rather tired from the cumulative weeks’ training and a massive session on Wednesday. This was never going to be a PB attempt for a couple of reasons; 1) it is too close to Berlin to properly recover from and 2) I wanted to still get in big volume for the week so I wasn’t going to be fresh for it at all.  I stayed up in Newcastle the night before at the University Halls which was absolutely perfect for the start. I couldn’t have been any closer really. I had managed to wangle an ‘elite entry’ off the back of my 2:22 marathon and was luckily enough to have my name on my vest rather than a number, which always seems a little cool. I must admit it felt a bit strange lining up with guys that I consider genuine elites. Guys like Mo Farah (who was just in front of me at the start line), Ryan Hall, Stanley Biwott, Mark Kiprotich, the list goes on! It was also humbling to share the start line with Ian Hudspith, a genuine British Road Running legend, who just shy of his 45th birthday ran 66:08. Which is around 5 minute miling. Truly astonishing and a time that I can only dream of.


 

So having done a 7 mile warm up and 100 miles in total before the B of the Bang, I knew it would take a while to get the legs going again! Despite the downhill start and a couple of quicker miles, the legs really were tired and I knew it was going to be a struggle. I found myself clock watching in the early miles as I had been thinking to run at a fairly steady 5:25 pace for the whole race to bring me in somewhere around 71-72 minutes. After about 4 miles I wasn’t really enjoying it too much as I had focused on the 5:25s a bit too much rather than just running how I felt so took the decision to just run and enjoy it. So thereafter I ran hard but controlled to the finish without glancing at the watch and it became much more fun! I started reeling in folks that had gone off too quickly and I finished really strongly. I was pleasantly surprised to finish in 70:52 (5:24.5 per mile) and feel that I could have done another three or four miles at that pace on so I absolutely wasn’t flat out. That said, I was tired, very tired and the legs were achy to say the least but then they should after a run (and a week) like that. I was somewhat surprised at the course as I had expected it to feel quicker but it definitely felt quit a challenge and was more undulating than it looks the times I’ve watched it on the telly!
With the last week of big training drawing to a close that is all the training in the bag and I have to say it’s a relief,to get to this point relatively intact. Of course I do have ongoing niggles and cant remember the last completely pain free run with my glute and hamstring issues but at least I can run! Looking back to pre-London at the same point I do feel I am in marginally better shape, but running just under 71 minutes for a half marathon feeling as it did makes me wonder how on earth it is at all feasible that I will run twice the distance at a slightly quicker pace in two weeks time! The jury is still out and thinking rationally I won’t go under 2:20 this time but as I said last week the race will take care of itself now and I can’t wait to see what happen. Thankfully the marathon isn’t always about rationality; it is also about dreams, how much you want it, your hunger, desire and heart. I believe I have those qualities in spades and trust it will all come good on the day. One thing is for sure I will give it absolutely everything to get the best possible result. The taper can do miraculous things to the legs and I just have to trust the training and trust the taper. As Mike pointed out for Berlin, I won’t have run 100 miles the week of the race, I won’t have done a 7 mile warm up, I won’t have done a humungous session just four days before and I will be racing flat out all the way.

Weight has drifted down another notch so now I am at ‘race weight’ and think I should lock the scales away in a cupboard to prevent any last minute worries about how much timber I’m carrying.

Wednesday 9 September 2015

Week 17 of 20 weeks to Sub 2:20?

M 10 miles (6:31mm)
T 8.5 miles (6:34mm), 6 miles (6:59mm)
T 8 miles (6:39mm), 6 miles (6:48mm)
F 7.5 miles (6:50mm)
S 10.5 miles including BMC 10,000m Track Festival 32:26 (5:13mm)
S Rest
Total 74 miles (6:32mm)
Weight 140.5 lbs
Body fat 9.7%
Aerobic efficiency 950 beats per mile


After last Sunday’s win at the Halifax Marathon, the main aim for this week was to make sure I recovered sensibly and then race hard on Saturday at the British Milers Club 10,000m I had planned. I had been put in the B-race which seemed right judging by the other names on the start list and I was confident of smashing out a quick time to beat my road PB of 32:05. I’ll discuss the race shortly but first the rest of the week….

I had always planned on reducing the mileage a little this week to try to be fresh(er) for the track 10k but still wanted to get some decent steady running in. On Monday I was pleasantly surprised to find my legs were in good shape and I was feeling comfy around the 6:30 per mile mark for a 10 miler. Similar happened on Tuesday which gave me confidence that Sunday’s marathon effort hadn’t taken too much out of the legs. I then wanted to get my long run done on the Wednesday with one eye on next week, which is scheduled to be the hardest of the whole campaign. I was really pleasantly surprised to knock off 17 miles in 6:16 pace just clipping along really nicely.

As well as the ongoing physio I have been receiving on my pelvis and sciatica I decided following a suggestion from Mike that it was probably sensible to have a general sports massage which I did on the Thursday. My legs have been ok when running and my injury is definitely improving but I was feeling really rather tight in some places, namely my left calf and right hamstring. Stewart Sanderson, the sports masseur is a semi-pro rugby league player so is quite useful at ironing out creases and he successfully found a few more achy bits that I didn’t even know existed.

And so to Saturday where I had set a target of 31:59 for the 10k but let me be honest with you, I thought I was being conservative. I am a two-time 2:22 marathoner and so theoretically I should be able to run 10k in something around 30:30. Even in heavy marathon training I thought I should be able to get reasonably close to 31 dead. So the strategy as discussed with Mike was to head off at roughly 76/77 second laps which should bring me in under 32 and if I felt strong I could pick it up in the second half but the main thing was to be patient and try to maintain concentration through the hard middle laps. Fail! Off we went and there was a good bunch from Highgate and a few others that were targeting sub 32 so stick with them I thought and for the first few k things were just going swimmingly. Aerobically I felt fine, and the legs were OK if a bit tired. At no point did I feel like I was starting to dig in too deep. I got to half way pretty much bang on 16 minutes and my first thought was that I would easily go under 32 as it still all felt comfortable. When I have done all out 10ks in the past I have been acutely aware of how spent I feel at halfway. Of course you’re not and you can nearly always muster pretty much the same again in the second half but for this time I felt  relatively fine. K splits were 3:12, 3:12, 3:11, 3:11, 3:13. It was perhaps this cockiness of obliterating my target that was my downfall as the 6th k was a 3:13 so OK but starting to slip a little. And then all of a sudden the group gradually pushed past me. I think at this point I just lost my head and a total lapse in concentration meant my race was quickly over. I really should have been focusing to hold on to the group but before I knew it I was isolated and after that it was really hard to even get close. I am ashamed to say I think I gave up a little at this point. The 7th and 8th ks were both in 3:20 (my hoped for Marathon pace for goodness sake!) and then I managed to rally a little in the 9th and 10th ks with 3:18 and 3:15 to finish in 7th place in 32:26.50. I was really annoyed with myself immediately following the race and it did worry me initially that I thought there would be no way of getting to PB shape for Berlin in time, but now things have sunk in a little I’m a little more pragmatic about it. What will be will be and whatever happens on the day, I just want to do the best I can. I am not one to make excuses for my performance when training sessions or races don’t go to plan as I know when I’ve run poorly but on further reflection there may be other factors which resulted in such a woeful effort; 1) I am tired as I’m at the business end of marathon training and did run a hilly marathon last Sunday, 2) I’m not used to racing on the track – different mind-set, not used to the bends, and different surface to tarmac and 3) The sports massage I had may have left me a little less fluid (clutching at straws ;-) ) and 4) I just had a rubbish day. If it was all four of those then I might still be OK for Berlin! If you are at all interested and/or really really bored you can watch the race here on Vincosport. The outcome of the race did really annoy me though and I took the decision to take a complete rest day on Sunday to try and refocus for this coming week, which is to include the biggest session of the campaign as well as a run out at the Great North Run as part of my final long run.

Weight has dropped another half pound to 140.5 lbs and my aerobic efficiency is back down to the sweet spot of 950 beats per mile average. As someone who has quite an obsessive personality (and I know lots of other runners suffer from this too!) I have also become quite obsessive about my weight recently which isn't that healthy and doesn't help with my mental fragility but I do know being as light as possible, within reason, will help with my pace on race day so I am trying to still lose a little bit of weight but reasonably sensibly whilst still having the occasional treat. I have decided however to stop weighing myself every day as it plays on my mind a little too much. I will still take measurements but less frequently and probably on days when I'm feeling most lean!

As a final note for this week I really do believe marathon training to be such a battle of will. Yes, you have to avoid injury as much as possible and be consistent but mostly you just have to keep on keeping. You have to believe that it will all come good on the day. It means taking the crap days with the good and I still believe that I can get into PB shape, whether it’ll be the arbitrary 2 minutes 13 seconds I ideally want I don’t know. One thing is for sure is that when race day comes I am pretty good at keeping the doubting thoughts at bay, in fact I would go as far to say that I don’t do self-doubt on marathon day. ‘10k on the track’ day is maybe a little bit different though. ;-)

Sunday 30 August 2015

Week 16 of 20 weeks to Sub 2:20?

M 8.5 miles (6:46mm), 5 miles (7:11mm)
T 18 miles including 4X18mins (3mins) (5:54mm), 6 miles (7:04mm)
W 10 miles (6:31mm), 6 miles (6:51mm)
T 9 miles (6:24mm), 6 miles (6:56mm)
F 7 miles (6:22mm)
S 8 miles including 2 at MP(5:26, 5:22) (6:26mm)
Total 113.5 miles (6:29mm)
Weight 141 lbs
Body fat 9.7%
Aerobic efficiency 972 beats per mile

So after feeling in the depths of despair last week, I was keen to have a more confidence building week this week. All in all it went really quite well - some decent miles and a couple of good marathon specific sessions.

I had the Halifax marathon penciled in as my long run for Sunday and wanted to be reasonably fresh for it given I wanted to do it at a steady effort and knew it to be a hilly course, so did my marathon session on the Tuesday this week. The session was 4X18 minutes at cMP with three minutes recovery. I had taken the decision to try to ease in to the session a bit more than I typically do hoping that I would end up feeling surprised with the output of pace as it progressed. The first interval was at 5:27 pace, the second at 5:26 and then the third at 5:24. I was pleased with how things were progressing and was confident of hitting target race pace (5:20s) for the last stint but it wasn't to be. All of a sudden I had terrible gut issues and really needed to 'go'. After that the legs just seemed to give up and my mind was taken up with concentrating on not disgracing myself! That ended up as a relative jg of 5:39 pace. On reflections I was still quite happy with the session, it wasn't perfect and the legs were a little mullered, but I think that was largely down to residual tiredness from last week rather than anything too sinister.

The rest of the week was steady running until the marathon on Sunday. I looked back at my training log from last year and realised that I had been running my steady mileage a lot quicker then than now and so took the decision to put a bit more effort in on my easy days. Strangely my legs seemed to thank me for it as they felt a lot fresher throughout the week than they have done recently from general plodding.
I had spotted that the Halifax marathon was on a few weeks ago and thought I could use it as my final big long run before Berlin. Give it was a 'race' I knew it would feel more enjoyable than a typical solo long run - maybe I should just pin a number on before every long run! I had heard the course was particularly challenging and so it turned out in terms of the undulations. According to Strava, not far of 2,800 feet of ascent in total. That's basically over half a mile straight up which is a little bit ridiculous, given I generally try to avoid hills at all costs! Anyway I really enjoyed it as something different and put in a very even effort all the way around finishing in 1st place with a time of 2:47:30ish feeling very comfy apart from a slightly tight left calf. Looking at my Garmin trace it looks as though it was a perfect even split too which shows I judged the effort really well. Mile splits varied from 5:25-7:45 which shows the extent of the hills! I had to stop for a couple of pee breaks too (not in the 7:45 mile strangely - that was just a mountain!) which was a helpful reminder that I really shouldn't drink anything within three hours of the race. The course did spark a bit of interest in my mind of what  I could do if I raced it all out. I suspect it would probably have been 13-15 minutes quicker so maybe I could be relatively good in hilly races? Certainly something to consider in the future and someone has already mentioned the Snowdonia marathon which may end up being a target in the future....



Weight has come down another touch this week and I have lost a bit more body fat apparently. Aerobic efficiency has taken a step back a little again. I suspect the figure is swayed quite a lot because of the Halifax race and the undulations meant my heart was having to work harder for the pace output, given I usually run flat routes. I feel a lot happier about this week than last and am confident that things are really coming together. I am doing a track 10,000m in Stretford next weekend, so that should be fun. I've never done a 10k on the track before so it's a bit of an unknown quantity but hopefully I should be in good shape to at least threaten the road PB of 32:05!

Tuesday 25 August 2015

Week 15 of 20 weeks to sub 2:20?

M 12 miles (6:38mm), 6 miles (7:15mm)
T 8.5 miles (6:50mm), 5 miles (7:01mm)
T 10 miles (7:12mm), 6 miles (7:24mm)
F 6 miles (7:38mm)
S 10 miles (6:55mm)
S 17 miles (6:35mm)

Total 103.6  miles
Weight 141.5 lbs
Body fat 10.1%
Aerobic efficiency 949 beats per mile

I went into this week’s training super motivated after a strong over distance run last Saturday and on my runs on Monday and Tuesday my legs felt really good giving me confidence that I had recovered really well. I had noticed however that my cardiovascular system was struggling a little as my heart rate was a little higher than it has been recently for the pace output. It didn’t click at the time but I should probably have taken this as a prompt to perhaps take a couple more easy days in the week before trying a session. I didn’t do that and bowled straight into the session which was 24mins, 18 mins, 12 mins, 6 mins, 3 mins the plan being to start at roughly marathon pace and gradually get quicker. The session itself went well with the first section coming in at a nice 5:18 per mile, the second and third at 5:13s and then 5:08 and 4:58 for the six and three minute efforts respectively. It was super hard towards the end and I do think I overcooked the first a little meaning the rest were a real battle of survival. I then felt pretty smoked for the rest of the day and although tried a recovery run, it wasn’t pleasant.

On Thursday and Friday I was in a world of hurt, my legs were in absolute bits and I was completely wiped out so although the plan was always to run easy on these days, the easy was a lot slower than I have been used to recently! I just wanted to run as easy as my body would allow without doing any more damage. By Saturday I was starting to feel a little bit more normal and Sunday’s run was good from a CV perspective despite the legs still feeling quite tired.

Mike had initially suggested putting in a tempo session on the Saturday but we decided that there was just no point even starting it given how wrecked my legs were and also took a shorter long run to ensure proper recovery.

Marathon training is hard and sometimes it is ridiculously hard. I was in a pretty dark place Thursday through to Sunday but think that the easy days that I have taken will hopefully allow my body to absorb some of the hard work of recent weeks and I am confident that I will come through the other side, stronger than I have been before. In a way, I think the ideal marathon build up is to stress your body as much as possible with specificity to the event without breaking. If you can do that and get fresh for race day, you give yourself the best chance of running a stormer.

Weight is starting to drift down a touch and I am getting a little leaner which is really positive and I still have quite a few weeks before I need to be at my leanest so that’s all positive. Aerobic efficiency dropped back a little this week and I think that was probably due to me just being completely knackered from the hard run last Saturday. I will continue to monitor. c950 as an average is still a good place to be but I would like it to get back to c930 as an average before Berlin.

So on reflection of the whole week, it wasn’t quite what I hoped for mileage wise but I am glad to have another 100+ mile week with a top session ticked off. It is the whole campaign that counts and at least I am putting some good consistent work in which will hopefully pay dividends come 27th September.  Of course, I hope I don’t have any more weeks that are that hard as I say Thursday - Sunday did leave me wondering whether all this hard work was really worth it at times. Each time that creeps into my mind I just have to remind myself of how good it feels on race day; the whole event, the excitement and then trying to deliver on all the hard training.  And then getting a little bit drunk afterwards. :-)

Sunday 16 August 2015

Week 14 of 20 weeks to Sub 2:20?

M 9 miles (6:35mm), 6 miles (7:13mm)
T 7 miles (7:11mm)
W 11 miles inc. 10X60s(60s float), 5 mins easy, 10mins MP (5:56), 5 miles (7:11mm)
T 10 miles (6:45mm)
F 7 miles 7:14mm)
S 7 miles (7:09mm)

Total 90.5 miles
Weight 142 lbs
Body fat 10.4%
Aerobic efficiency 936 beats per mile

For anyone that read my blog last week will know that it contained two pretty big sessions so it was always the plan to have a bit of a cut back this week and let some of the hard work soak in. Of course, it wasn’t all easy and there were a couple of workouts that are worth discussing! The main focus became the Saturday long run which was to be a full distance run at a reasonable pace. The aim of this really is to have a good length of time on the feet, but not to plod it out either. Rather run pretty steady and pick the pace up a bit towards the end. Of course, I quite like doing these runs largely fasted as it helps the body utilise fat a bit more as a fuel which is imperative for a good marathon. So with an early alarm call, a quick banana and a double espresso I was out the door.

Anyway, the run started off quite nicely and I had in my mind that I wanted to average approximately six minute mile pace as I had done when I'd done the run previously. I do the course on my tempo loop and for the marathon distance it is 18 laps and the stretch back to home! It is both irritating and fun in equal measure counting up and down the laps. I do find it is a good place for this type of run though as it is quite flat and I can just concentrate on hitting steady mile after steady mile without huge fluctuations in heart rate. My word it can get a bit boring though! I think this is quite good for the mental aspects of marathon racing - it is likely that you will have large segments of the race alone, especially in the second half. To be honest I've never minded running on my own in a marathon unless the weather is really bad where you can get some occasional shelter if running in a group.  All was going well and my legs were moving very well and the pace was hovering around 6:05 per mile. I decided to keep at this sort of effort until half way to see how I felt then. I felt really strong and as boredom was setting in a bit I thought I'd pick up the effort a little over the next seven miles to see how it felt. It felt great and my legs felt really strong, stronger than the last couple of times I've done this. This could be down to the easier week in terms of miles. I ran it well the last two times I did but this felt a lot more controlled. Indeed as I got to 20 I decided to pick the effort up a bit more and was seeing 5:45s for the last 6.2 miles or so with the last mile being my quickest at 5:31 feeling like it was solid but nowhere near all out was really encouraging. My HR averaged 158 for the run so about 20 beats below marathon Heart Rate. It's quite funny doing this type of run and comparing it to for example last week's tempo. I found this so much easier than running 15 miles at a pace just 15 secs per mile quicker. Now this could be due to a couple of reasons such as I was tired from the outset of last week's training run and two I am starting to see some of the benefits of previous weeks' training coming through. In all likelihood it's probably a combination of the two. What it also suggests to me is something I have been pondering for a while is that my endurance clearly seems to be pretty strong (I feel I could have run another 10 miles at 5:55s in my full distance run), my speed is OK but my speed endurance is probably my weakest link, so this gives us something to really focus on over the next few weeks. Don't get me wrong this run was not easy and 26 miles is always a long way and at a reasonable pace it will take some recovering from and I couldn't run at this pace every day but as a specific session within the build up I think I pretty much nailed it.



The other session of note this week was an easier session on Wednesday, which was a slight deviation from the plan. Mike wanted me going in fresh to the long run so we cut it back and put in a bit of speed. It was 10X1min(1min at 6:40), 5 minutes easy, 10 minutes at marathon pace. It was a really fun session, in fact it barely felt like a session at all after last week's hard training sessions. The minute efforts average about 4:45 on the Garmin so could be a bit out but even so that's quick running for me and it felt really controlled rather than sprinting! Then the 10 minutes at target MP.... Well I really had to hold back on this as despite my ongoing niggles the pace felt so comfortable. This may have been due to me knowing it was only 10 minutes of effort but it could also be because of the faster minute efforts got the legs moving quickly that 5:15s ended up feeling like a relative jog!Of course I don't expect race day marathon pace to be 5:15s but I wouldn't mind if it was! Let me confirm now that if 5:15 ends up being my marathon pace this time out I will gladly eat my hat.

My weight has dropped very slightly this week which is nice, but could do with a bit more dropping off yet. I was however really pleasantly surprised to see my aerobic efficiency take a giant leap forward to an average of 936 beats per mile, around 30 better than last week. Looking back over my previous training this is the most efficient week I have ever had, showing that some of the hard work of previous weeks is starting to kick in and hopefully that I am starting to bring myself to a peak of fitness that I have never been in before. 

Thursday 13 August 2015

Week 13 of 20 weeks to Sub 2:20?

M 13 miles (6:36mm), 6 miles (7:11mm)
T 8.5 miles (6:52mm), 4 miles (7:10mm)
T 10 miles (6:50mm), 6 miles (7:14mm)
F 9 miles (6:58mm), 5 miles (7:18mm)
S 20 miles including 15 miles at 5:41mm (6:01mm)
S 10.5 miles (6:21mm)

Total 116 miles (6:36mm)
Weight 142.5 lbs
Body fat 10.5%
Aerobic efficiency 964 beats per mile

Quite a chunky week this week with two big sessions of 8X1M on the Wednesday and then a long progressive tempo run as my long run on Saturday.

Firstly the Wednesday session which I was looking forward to as Mike and I had discussed it was worthwhile trying to keep in touch with some of my speedier running during this specific phase and this session would allow me to do that. The aim was to run the miles at about 5:10 pace for the first 6 and then pick the last two up if I could! This was made more difficult by the fact that the recoveries were more of a float steady run than a true jog shuffle type recovery! They ended up being about 6:40 pace so still reasonably nippy, in fact a touch quicker than most of my other general mileage throughout the week.. The miles went well and I was pretty consistent only really struggling on the last one, but even so it was still pretty quick for me given the combined volume and intensity of the session. The miles averaged 5:06 pace, which should be roughly my theoretical 10k pace. Shame I’ve not yet run a 10k that fast! I also actually need that to be closer to my theoretical half marathon pace for 5:20 as a marathon pace to be at all realistic. We can all dream….

The next session had originally been planned to run as a solid tempo run within a 20 miler of 15-20s per mile slower than MP. But Mike decided it’d be ‘fun’ to try and do it progressively;  so increasing the pace each five mile block. I started at 5:48s and I was already feeling it if I’m honest, the legs were quite tired and I could also feel my pelvis and glute issues again. The next five miles I increased the pace to 5:34s and I was starting to grow in confidence that I may be able to go quicker still in the last five mile section. I was wrong. Despite my best efforts I just couldn’t get the legs to turn over quickly enough. Aerobically I was quite comfortable and the HR data suggests the engine wasn’t under much strain, it was just a problem with the wheels! Even though the pace was really drifting I held it together to average 5:41 meaning the whole 15 mile tempo effort also averaged 5:41 which is still within c20s of goal marathon pace. This must still go down as a very good workout and as Mike reminds me this has such relevance to the marathon as it is so specific. The way my legs felt the last couple of miles I have to agree with him, it did feel like those last few miles of the marathon when you feel like you’re sprinting but really you’re starting to tread in treacle… It is intended to get another of these longer tempo type runs in before Berlin.  I then did a decent steady 10 miler on Sunday to round the week off at 116 miles there or thereabouts which was another pleasing step in the right direction.

My weight doesn’t seem to be budging for some reason and I could do with getting leaner as race day approaches and I am sure if I keep doing what I do it will gradually drop off with the heavy sessions and mileage. Aerobic efficiency has improved very marginally this week so not really much change over the last three weeks for some reason but it is still at a decent level.

Reflecting on this week in isolation I am really chuffed as I got a lot of miles in, two pretty monster sessions and all this whilst on a week’s holiday from work doing touristy things around Yorkshire so spent a lot of time on my feet outside of running too which I wouldn’t ordinarily do. Maybe the odd additional holiday treat I have been having (fish and chips, pizza, the odd pint with my mate Adam who was visiting from Poland) may have something to do with the static weight situation. I am slightly concerned to see the return of my injury issues but luckily it is not stopping me from training, it’s just pretty damn uncomfortable most of the time! I will continue to see the physio and do the work she suggests to try and correct my issues. 

Introducing Adam to a pint of Leeds Best. He liked it. So did I!

As a whole I am now seven weeks away from race day (well six and a half if you excuse the tardiness of publication of the blog!) and I am generally pleased with how things are going. It is not perfect but things could be far worse. I am running much better than I was a few weeks ago and I am gaining in confidence. Sub 2:20 still seems a long way off right now but that’s no bad thing. I know I can peak well when it matters and of course I will run the hardest I can on the day and take whatever result comes from that. But there’s a tonne of work to be done before then and I’m looking forward to every minute of it.

Tuesday 4 August 2015

Week 12 of 20 weeks to Sub 2:20?

M 11 miles (6:53mm), 6 miles (7:13mm)
T 8 miles (7:07mm), 4 miles (7:21mm)
W 15 miles including 4X15mins (5:47mm), 4 miles (7:19mm)
T10 miles (6:49mm), 6 miles (7:20mm)
F 9 miles (6:48mm), 5 miles (7:18mm)
S 24 miles (6:24mm)
S Rest

Total 104 miles (6:43mm)
Weight 142.3 lbs
Body fat 10.5%
Aerobic efficiency 966 beats per mile

This week I decided that I was going to go cold turkey on caffeine. Bad idea! And I wasn't successful at all! My friend and fellow runner Jamil Parapia had recommended at least cutting down as it could potentially help me get leaner. Something to do with cortisol levels and the timing of the caffeine intake. Anyway Monday seemed to go OK although my head did start to throb a little bit in the afternoon. By 20:30 I was crawling into my bed absolutely exhausted. I thought I was coming down with a horrid cold, little did I realise at the time what I was experienced was sever caffeine withdrawal. I didn't think I even drank much generally; three maybe four cups a day. I awoke after sleeping for near enough 10 hours feeling dreadful, but went out for my run regardless which was just awful. My muscles were so stiff, I was completely bunged up, massive headache.  I was convinced I was coming down with the lurgy just as my proper training was about to begin. Damn! I then had a physio appointment and the phsyio was doing the usual manipulation on the pelvis area and she told me she had straightened me out quite a bit. To be honest I did feel somewhat less crooked but the proof would be in the pudding on my next session which was scheduled for Wednesday morning. To be honest I didn't know whether I was going to be in good enough shape to do it! As Tuesday wore on it did start to dawn on me that I may be suffering from my lack of tea/coffee intake and so I looked up common withdrawal symptoms on the internet and all became clear. I went straight to the kettle and had a good cup of Yorkshire Gold. 15 minutes later, I felt fine! It was a good job I realised this as I had to drive to Luton Airport and back to pick up my Brother-in-Law who was visiting from Poland. Not sure I'd have made it without caffeine.

Then onto the Wednesday session. One always has a bit of trepidation as the big marathon sessions start. This was to be 4X15minutes with 3 minutes recovery and Mike Baxter had suggested I start them at the same pace that I did the session pre-London and then pick up the last two if I could. Well, the sessions went really well. the first 15 minutes was at 5:25, second at 5:23, third at 5:21 and fourth at 5:18. In the session pre-London I averaged about 5:25s for these so a significant improvement. Although to be fair the last one maybe a little flattering as I had to head home(so marginally downhill!) as could feel the onset of tummy troubles and as my tempo loop is in a residential area, I didn't fancy having to pop for an Al-fresco! I cant emphasise enough how much confidence this session gave me. I was running freely probably for the first time in months and the physio has most definitely corrected something, hopefully it'll stay that way. It is also worth pointing out that to break 2:20 for the marathon I will have to average 5:20.6 or quicker per mile so this was encouraging. Not sure I can say it felt like race day marathon pace just yet though!

The rest of the week went well, a couple of easy days before a decent steady 24 miler on Saturday. This did feel really comfortable. I am making sure my days between sessions and long runs are sensibly easy to ensure I am recovering appropriately and not overreaching. In hindsight although it all ended up OK in the end at London I do think my pace on my easy days meant I was hitting sessions a little more tired than I should be. As a result I didn't get the absolute best out of most of them.

I missed a planned run on Sunday but this was no bad thing really. We had more visitors arriving late on Saturday night for my Daughter's baptism on Sunday and so with a very full house I decided it was pretty futile going out early and had an extra 45 minutes sleep instead.  The legs would have been happy to but I was pretty shattered so it was a sensible decision. Still happy to get my first 100mile+ week in of the campaign though. It all feels like it's going in the right direction. Fingers crossed it continues to.

Weight and aerobic efficiency has been pretty much static this week as last which is fine although I hope to see some improvements over the coming weeks as race day approaches. Other than being off work this week and doing Yorkshire touristy stuff I don't think I have too many social events to go to between now and Berlin so hopefully I'll be able to get on top of my diet a bit more. Last weekend a little too many pies and cakes were consumed!


Sunday 26 July 2015

Week 11 of 20 weeks to Sub 2:20?

M 10.5 miles (6:36mm), 6 miles (7:13mm)
T 17 miles (6:37mm), 4 miles (7:17mm)
W 11 miles (6:59mm), 6 miles (7:08mm)
T Rest
F 6 miles (7:17mm)
S 10.5 miles (6:43mm)
S 22 miles (6:24mm)

Total 94 miles (6:46mm)
Weight 142.4 lbs
Body fat 10.6%
Aerobic efficiency 966 beats per mile.

This week was the first week of the marathon specific stage where the aim was to just get in some decent miles in and ready for the proper work to start this coming week with a big session, big mileage and a big long run!

From a training point of view it went fantastically well. My health is much better than recently and my easy runs are now actually feeling easy, which makes a difference from struggling to go quicker than 7 minute miles just a few weeks ago. I decided to slightly front load the week with miles as I was in London on Thursday with work and knew I would be coming back with a hangover so I would only get minimal miles in on Friday. I had been planning on doing my long run on Saturday but to be honest still felt a bit rough from the wine fest so moved it to Sunday instead. The aim was to get my first 20 in with it not feeling too much of a struggle. I was really pleasantly surprised to be running really well and aerobically I felt incredibly strong. The legs weren't tired either despite the uplift in miles this week. The only thing that was bugging me was my ongoing niggles. A visit to the physio on Tuesday confirmed what I thought in that I have a tilted and twisted pelvis which is causing bad sciatica down my right side and a lot of tightness in my right hamstring/glute. This is basically exactly the same injury I had just over a year ago but the other side. The physio doesn't quite know why it has happened as there has been no specific event or trauma that caused, it has just sort of gradually got worse over the last few weeks. Maybe I just need to make sure I stretch a bit more and get the foam roller out more frequently.

Weight is down about a pound from last week but my body fat has increased slightly (although I doubt that and is probably just a flaw within the scales!). Aerobic efficiency is really good at 966beats per mile average, a similar sort of level that I had at the beginning of March when I was starting to come into some decent fitness.

The big work starts here now with nine weeks to go. I just hope I can get in what I intend to without too many interruptions!

Monday 20 July 2015

Week 10 of 20 weeks to Sub 2:20?

M 7.5 miles (7:26mm), 6 miles (7:09mm)
W 5 miles (7:25mm), 8.5 miles (7:15mm)
T 7.5 miles (7:16mm), 5 miles (7:03mm)
F 5 miles (7:20mm)
S 9 miles including Podium 10(?)k - 31:42
S 6miles (7:10mm)
Total 76 miles (6:57mm)
Weight 143.2 lbs
Body fat 10.5%
So the final week of the phase whereby I am trying to build some speed before embarking on the marathon specific phase. It was all to culminate in a 10k race at Barrowford in Lancashire. This is a race that has been set up on a completely flat and smooth tarmac cycling track. It should be a quick course, if you can cope with laps and the weather is kind. It ended up being perhaps quicker than I was expecting but more on that in a bit…
I was keen to still get reasonable miles in for the week given various inconsistencies of the last few weeks and only had one session on the Tuesday before the race. This would be a helpful gauge of what sort of shape I was in for a 10k race. I did 4X1mile with a half mile jog recovery within a run. The mile came out at 5:04, 5:02, 5:03 and 5:06 and they hurt, especially the last one! This told me that my somewhat optimistic target of 31:30 was probably going to be too optimistic so decided that I would settle for aiming to beat my longstanding PB of 32:05 instead and hoping to creep under 32 minutes.
So quite a lot of easy running to freshen up for Saturday. Race day arrived and I was keen to make sure I ate a sensible amount pre-race and didn’t hit the start a little bloated which I think I may have done at Askern and Stretford races earlier in the summer. The weather was dry and cool for a mid-July evening but there was a pretty strong wind. Thankfully it wasn’t as strong as had been forecast 48 hours earlier but still I think strong enough to make a material difference to the times that would be run on the night. The A-race kicked off and there’s a decent field of runners with Ben Fish leading off the front. I found myself in a nice little group with Matt Shaw and Nathan Kilcourse for the first few laps. After a while I could see a couple of runners, one including Frank Beresford starting to drop off and so I gave chase to try and pull him in. I gradually caught up with him and despite thinking I would probably go past him Frank held firm and we raced hammer and tong for about four laps towards the end. I felt really good up until the mid-part of the race when I really had to try and hang on. By the 8th k it really was starting to slip and Matt and Nathan caught back up and went past . I could then no longer hang on to the pack as they pulled away. On finishing I was incredibly surprised to see the clock at 31:42. It didn’t feel like a PB run, surely I hadn’t got into that good shape in the space of a week? I ran 15:51 last week for 5k on a track in slightly more favourable conditions. I checked the watch and it read 6.15miles. This is in when the doubts started creeping in. I like Garmins, they’re very useful training aids but I don’t trust them in races or to truly reflect distance run. In fact they’re far far more likely to measure long given the technology of how GPS devices work. One has to trust that the course has been measured by a qualified course measurer with wheel. Now, I am not sure how it happened but looking at the course measurers site the 5k is apparently exactly 4.8 laps of the course, therefore the 10k should have been 9.6 laps. We simply did not run 9.6 laps of the course on Saturday evening. My estimation is that we ran 9.35-9.4 laps. So I believe the distance I ran on Saturday was equivalent to around 9.7-9.8k probably adding 45 seconds to my time is about right so around 32:27 which given the windy conditions (perhaps worth 20-30 seconds) I still think is an OK run. I am in roughly 10k PB shape 10 weeks out from a target marathon but it would be disingenuous of me to claim this as a PB as I just don’t believe it was!
 

Hammering it out with Frank Beresford
Photo credit: Jamie McIlvenny
 
Although I got to be nowhere near as quick as I was hoping to be this summer I have not arrived at 10 weeks out from a target marathon in as good shape as I am now and I am very grateful to the support and guidance of Mike Baxter who has taken me through this different approach to my training. I look forward to doing the same sort of thing in future training blocks.
Other things of note this week was that I went to the doctors to get a print out of my recent blood test results. They tested for literally everything! It was very interesting trying to decipher what everything meant and having accepted that I was probably a bit too thick to do just that I wrote to Phil Townsend (coach with Leeds city and also a GP) to ask for his view. In a nutshell I had a low (compared to the general population) haemoglobin concentration of 135g/L, below range Haematocrit 0.39 and below range red blood count and above range mean cell haemoglobin level. To be honest this struck me as odd as I thought the number for haemoglobin and RBC would be higher for a runner who is trained. But apparently that value can be low due to the blood being a little thinner than a sedentary persons. The doctor had assured me I was ok so I initially went home a happy bunny. I double checked with Phil as I just couldn’t make sense of it all though and while initially we thought it may be that I had a bit low iron, my ferritin level was good. Apparently ferritin is an acute phase protein that gives a decent indication of how much iron is in the body so I probably don’t need supplementation although ferritin levels can be raised when under the weather/fighting off an illness. So maybe I was ill when the test was done which showed a higher reading than what it actually is? After playing with it in my head for the best part of 24 hours I decided that it wasn’t worth wasting my energy on. I have gradually started to feel a lot better recently and am nowhere near as exhausted as I was a few weeks ago. So basically I will continue to eat a varied diet, try and stay off the booze and hope I continue to just feel better. I have my Echocardio gram on Saturday which I am hoping will show nothing untoward. That said I am looking forward to it as I continue to learn more about my body!
 
So now starts the 10 weeks to the big race. I will take a week of easy running, but with reasonable mileage with no sessions before really ramping things up next week and returning to the Steve Way type sessions I (and many others) have had success with in the past. Back into the blog will come the monitoring of my weight, aerobic efficiency and now percentage body fat. This will not be that accurate given it’s from the bathroom scales but it’ll be interesting to see the changes for added geekery. I will also stick in the odd different thing training wise like mile intervals and some hills sprints as recommended by Mike Baxter to keep in touch with my speedier running.
All in all I’m really excited to get going now with the specific phase. I just have to hope that a niggly pelvis/sciatic issue that seems to have been gradually getting worse over the last few weeks can be quickly remedied by the physio!

Monday 13 July 2015

Weeks 8 and 9 of 20 weeks to Sub 2:20?

W/C 29th June
M 10.5miles (6:42mm)
W 7 miles (7:02mm), 5miles (7:20mm)
T 9 miles (6:58mm)
F 10 miles acceleration run (6:18mm), 5 miles (7:19mm)
S 15 miles (6:35mm)
S 7.5 miles (6:58mm)

Total 79.3miles

W/C 6th July
M 5 miles (7:07mm)
T 6 miles including Trafford Open 5,000m (15:56.82)
W Rest
T 10.5 miles (7:01mm), 6 miles (7:26mm)
F 17 miles (6:53mm), 6 miles (7:22mm)
S 10 miles (7:07mm)
S 4miles (7:48mm), 7.5 miles including Northern League 5,000m (15:51.3)

Total 73 miles

Last time I wrote about getting some checks with the doctor as I’d not been feeling all too good for a number of weeks both in myself and especially in my running! I am happy to report though that my blood tests came back as normal so that’s great news. This has coincided with feeling quite a lot better in myself and more energy generally. I have had an ECG and am waiting for a referral for an Echo so no diagnosis has been made just yet on whether there is anything untoward with my heart.

This past couple of weeks has been a bit of a rollercoaster again though! Leaving me one minute thrilled that I’m in great shape, then the next minute feeling like I’m a 90 year old arthritic with a heart condition! Still, I finish the two week block in a positive frame of mind.

The Tuesday session I did on 30th June was quite simply one of the best of my life! In equatorial temperatures at the track with a bit of a gust I was knocking out interval times I didn’t think I had in me. Full details are on the link above, but I felt quick and with splits of 2:55, and 2:54 for the k’s and then c1:25s for the 500s I was really running well. If only I could convert that into a race performance….. The rest of the week I was quite wearisome probably due to how hard I had pushed in that session and an acceleration run I did on the Friday whilst OK was by no means spectacular and my legs felt tired from the off.

It was then onto last week where my two sessions would effectively be two 5,000m races. The first of which was a planned Trafford AC open race and the second was a late call up for the Northern League meet at Scunthorpe where I would be the B-Runner with Leeds City legend Alan Buckley taking his place in the A-string. At Trafford I was a little disappointed to be put in the B-race and although I wouldn’t have been in contention  in the A-race I would have had a lot more people to try and hang on to! I had gone there with the intention to do some damage to the 15:51.5 PB and although it was windy felt I was in a good place to knock some chunks off it! The race started quite slowly and perhaps I panicked a little but I was keen to get back on pace so took the lead up about 300m in and then tried to push on. As you can see from the splits above it was not the most brilliantly paced race and indeed I was disappointed when eventual winner came past me with about 1k to go and I didn’t have the minerals to go with him. I was hating every stride if I’m honest and couldn’t wait for it to be over. That said I still thought I would PB. I was wrong! It just shows if you lose concentration for a few minutes it can really ruin the outcome. I finished in 15:56.82 and really disappointed with how it had all panned out. The result was the least of my concerns though as I could only jog a quarter mile to warm down as my left foot was in in real pain having stubbed it on the bed on Sunday morning! It had some pretty nasty bruising so I went to get some ice form the cafĂ© where I was surprised to see Dave Moorcroft asking me if I wanted a free coffee on behalf of the BBC (they were filming a piece for Join in UK, an organisation that promotes volunteering). I learned later that evening that it was exactly 33 years to the day that he broke the World 5,000m record. He really is true legend of the sport and his coffee making skills weren’t bad either. I urge you to watch this video with the last few minutes of that record breaking run – it’s simply breath-taking.



I took Wednesday off as my foot was just too sore but thankfully it gradually got better over the following days. Then onto the Northern League 5,000m where another windy day was in store. The primary goal was to win the B-string and secondly to try to run a quick time too. I was pleased to achieve the primary objective winning the B-race finishing 2nd overall a long way behind Alan but my time was still poor. I finished in 15:51.3 so a bit quicker than Tuesday’s effort and an official PB by a whopping 0.2seconds but still some way short of what I should be capable of. This was OK, especially given the miles in my legs from Friday and Saturday but on reflection I really should have been braver. I perhaps had the opportunity to push on and try and get back to Alan when I found myself in second place about 20 metres back but instead I allowed the pace to drift. As I wasn’t checking splits other than at the km mark I didn’t know until it was too late. I'm learning that these shorter distances really are supposed to hurt from very early on and I think if I can accept that I should be able to run one quite a bit quicker, especially if I can get some good conditions! All this is really good prep for Berlin though and I do feel that what I have been working on with the support of Mike these last few weeks is working, I just haven’t seen the results in a race yet. Next Saturday I am racing in the Podium 10k and I really will be looking to put myself in the hurt box. I would love to have a real confidence boosting run before the long steady mileage starts in earnest. But only I can be in control of that.