Stability Through Motion

A run / walk in Fforest Fawr, near Brecon. Up Fan Nedd from the beautifully isolated Maen Llia standing stone, across deep bogs to Fan Gyhirych (2,300ft), then plummeting down to a disused railway track back south, meeting up with the Beacons Way and Sarn Helen eastwards again to Maen Llia. Some stunning scenery, better revealed later in the day when the sun started shining.

17 miles, 4 hours. First hour we only travelled 2.5 miles!

Followed this on Sunday with a nine mile plod round the parks. I’ve developed a slightly tight ITB (Illiotibial Band) so decided to rest it a bit this week.

Oh yes, and I really did get up to my knees in the bog and had to be hauled out! As a result my garmin footpod has completely died on me

Wahoo! Somewhat tempered by the knowledge that some heroes had only just finished running the full 85 miles of the Ridgeway in under 24 hours non-stop running, I managed my longest run ever on Bank Holiday Monday.

Princes Risborough to just below Ivinghoe Beacon and back again – only missed going up the Beacon because I got lost in the woods above Wendover – very annoying! Brief route description: Parked at top of hill in the big car park and looked for the Ridgeway acorn post to start me off. Great up and down hilly route as far as Wendover – via Coombe Hill, and past Chequers. Lost in the woods above Wendover for ages, crossly consulting the compass at every turn. Bit of a slog then to Tring, then through the broad alley of trees shown blurrily on the left, down to the station, then uphill towards Ivinghoe.

Lots of stops – to find my way, to chat to college friends I hadn’t seen in over seven years, both on the way and on the return leg where I caught up with them. Popped into a shop as I ran out of water at 25 miles.

Mood: good until about 21 miles, tough thereafter, although near the end I actually felt I had more energy again. Food was a bit of an issue – my stomach shut down after 4 hours and I really didn’t feel I could eat anything more, even though I knew I would have to.

But that’s it – the longest training run required, from now on it’s taper time!

Distance: 31.5 miles approx (measured by currently unreliable Garmin footpod)

From: White Horse, Uffington car park

To: Barbury Fort, near Marlborough then back

Mostly a grey day with drizzle for about an hour, then the sun came out and burned my shoulders AGAIN, grr. The trouble is, after four hours of running, you don’t even notice that kind of thing and forget to put the lotion on – stupid, very very stupid.

I’ve learned that you can have downs but get up again, mentally that is, obviously there are ups and downs on the run because it’s the Ridgeway, and there are hills. Right, so after three hours or so I felt pooped, especially after the drag up from Ogbourne to the top of the Ridges again, and a couple of miles of rutted tracks. But following the downhill over the M4, I really picked up again. Was it to do with the oat biscuits? Simply a matter of fuel and energy? By 28 miles I was okay, but 30 to 31 was tough, and I had to walk the final 300 yards to the car park, slightly uphill.

Stiffer legs than usual when I got out of the car at home, but I managed a couple of fast circuits on a track the next day, proving that the old legs are managing to keep up with me.

My first race over marathon distance, though not really a race, was the Downland Challenge in July this year. A tiny event running 30 miles out and back from Clayton (near the Jack and Jill windmills on the South Downs Way) and Rodmell, further east on the SDW.

Since I’d already run 28 miles with no significant damage a couple of weeks earlier, I was hopeful this would go well, although I knew the South Downs were a tougher proposition than the Ridgeway. Much much hillock-ier, lots of up and lots of down and hardly any flat. What I didn’t bargain for was the heat – 28 or 29 degrees most the day, and cloudless. Ugh.

I might have made it round in the heat, it’s difficult to say because I’d made the mistake of tying my shoelaces too tight earlier in the day and walking round in my running shoes. By mile one I was already noticing the effect and stopped to re-tie the laces. Too late ! The damage was done. By mile 20 I was hobbling down the hills, the very bits I was most looking forward to at that stage, nice freewheeling breezy downhill stretches were agony to me.

TOP TIP: check your laces before you set out on a run – loosen them around the bridge of your foot, especially if it’s a hot day or a long run.

So, I made the sensible decision to pull out at the last available checkpoint, 7 miles from the end. A nice guy in a truck gave me a lift back to the start where I refuelled and chatted. I wasn’t the only DNF (Did Not Finish) by any means, many suffering from the heat alone, but I was really annoyed that something so simple as lacing could trip me up (hah hah!). The same shoes with the same lacing had never given problems before, but I guess the heat just made my feet swell. A week without running at all followed, but I’m now convinced that, lacing aside, hot July runs in the middle of the day are not a good idea for me.

I run because I love it, to reach that floaty feeling you get sometimes, that you could just drift along for hours with a small pack on your back, admiring the scenery. OK, sometimes I run too to feel the adrenalin rush, and speed past people when I can. But I don’t run so I can suffer draining heat, cramps, pain, blisters, excessive sweating etc.

To get back to the point, this means I will never ever ever run the Marathon des Sables. You can hold me to that. It’s just a pointless exercise in will and determination over pain and chafing.

. . . I’ll be running 40 miles this September to celebrate an appropriate birthday.

The High Peak 40 race is on September 20th this year, in Buxton. This will be the furthest I’ve ever run in a day, and probably the furthest I will run until I’m 50. This madness is inspired by the great fun I had at Swaledale, running on tracks and through fields in beautiful countryside. It may hurt the quads but it’s a lot more enjoyable than running on dual carriageways in Antwerp! Next year, the plan will be to return to road marathons, and get my times down further, but for now it’s ultra madness.

I’ll be seeing a lot of local footpaths in the coming two months, as I increase my long runs up to 33 miles.

Of course, for some purists, a race isn’t officially an ultra unless it’s 50 miles or over (so twice the marathon distance). But as this route is largely off-road and has 5,000ft of climbing, I think we can be forgiven for calling it an ultra. After all, no one outside the small band of loonie runners even knows or cares how far a marathon is, so who’s counting!

Broadway Tower (above), on top of a bliddy great hill – Fish Hill. You just try running up that, go on, I dare you! 19 miles on the Cotswold Way, absolutely beautiful, but I decided not to wear my orthotics for some reason, and now have blisters on my feet, grrr. Still, 51 miles total last week, so I’m doing well, and can afford a little break.

Despite two pints on Friday night I made it outside at 7.30 for the first of five 20 milers in the next five or six weeks. Decided on the door-to-door country route taking in just the one hill, at Beckley. A grey morning, the earth still wet and the fields all clarty. Saw not a soul until I re-entered Oxford at Shotover. A very slow start because of the terrain, but once I hit the downhill tarmac at Shotover I picked up the pace, trying out the MacMillan technique of running  your last five miles at marathon pace-ish. All felt great this week, and a smug feeling of satisfaction stayed with me all day as I attempted to do some work but kept half an eye on the rugby.

 

Too much too soon. I tried two experiments this weekend. A ten mile slow run on Friday followed by an 18 mile slow run on Saturday. I also tried the Saturday long run with no fuel on the run, and not much beforehand. The result – complete knackered-dom. Compounded by a lack of sleep. I haven’t been so tired at the end of a run since 2006 I don’t think. I won’t be doing that combination again in a hurry. My time for the 18 miler was 15 minutes slower than when I did it last year.

Off to Brighton this weekend for the Half Marathon, my first real test of any improved speed. I’m aiming at 1:30, or 6m50s pace per mile, but I’ll be happy with 1:32 odd, still 5 minutes faster than my PB.

Inspirational run today -  along the Malvern ridge from North Quarry down to British Camp and back. It should have been a bit further, but I didn’t print out enough map, so was worried about getting lost! That was far enough anyway, what with the 1700′ ascent, and some of those ascents were hard work. Two groups of walkers shouted wierd things at me, something about a license plate (? – didn’t understand that one), and something else completely unintelligible in the gale force wind on the ridge. The promised snow didn’t arrive, so it was a glorious sunny and freezing day with views for miles around. This reminds me, if I ever need reminding, why I run – you’ve got everything you need to hand, you can travel distance with no car, no bloomin’ shopping bag, no jacket, not worry about getting muddy or wet because it simply doesn’t matter. Just some dried mango, or jelly babies, and a bit of water, though I didn’t touch a drop today. Oh, give me the hills!

The run: 21.5 miles, Princes Risborough to Wallingford along the Ridgeway.

The time: 3h 20m.

The shoes: Saucony Jazz Grid (now at 450 miles – time for a new pair, oh joy!)

A great run, accompanied for the first hour, then P turned back to collect the car to pick me up from my destination – Wallingford. There were no coffee shops in Wallingford! What a crazy town, half occupied by a posh and empty Waitrose, but almost everything else was shut.

Inevitably I got lost at one point but was put rightly by a horse person near Nuffield. I finally followed the path below the dramatic chalk cutting along the M40, between Watlington and Chinnor, miles of muddy quagmire (quaggy mudmire?) near the quarries, red kites circling above, then quiet beech woodlands near Christmas Common, and lost in the Swyncombe Downs, finally over the golf course and downhill to Wallingford along Grim’s ditch.

So it seems I’ve given up on speed for the moment, and am reverting to distance. I did push myself on Tuesday to six 800 metre bursts on the treadmill, at 3m12s each. They call those Yassos, after Burt Yasso who came up with the mad idea you run 10 x 800 metres with jogs in between, then average your times. If you’re aiming at a 3h15m marathon, you should be running each 800 metre segment in 3m15s. Sounds crazy? Apparently it can be a good indicator, but that’s alongside actually putting in a lot of running the rest of the time   Anyway, it was damn hard work on a treadmill.

I think as a result of the extra long run last weekend, combined with this speed session, and a lack of sleep, I felt absolutely knackered by Thursday and took two days off training. It really worked, as I was full of beans again on Saturday, and Sunday’s long run was excellent.

Here’s my current schedule :
Monday: cross-train, 1hr biking usually
Tuesday: intervals or hill work (speed) running
Wednesday: cross-train, 1hr biking
Thursday: tempo run – increasing mileage each week
Friday: rest day
Saturday: easy run, 5 miles or so
Sunday: long run, keeping around 20 miles, or race day