The Joy of Spectating: Watching the London Marathon 2015

This year I have been lucky enough to have the joy of watching my fiancée- Gem- run the 35^th London Marathon this Sunday 26^th April 2015, after having completed my own marathon at Brighton. Not only does this mean that I get to relive the joys of the marathon atmosphere; I also get to a see a loved one pursue something we both enjoy, I can appreciate (arguably) one of the world’s best marathons and am reminded of why I run. There is also the added bonus of seeing Paula Radcliffe make her return to the London Marathon for one last time.

Brighton Marathon 2015: Triumph over adversity

This is my account of the Brighton Marathon 2015.

Sunday morning- 02:00hrs (12^th April).

Things were not going according to how I had envisioned on the morning of my first attempt at running a marathon in under three hours. Below my hotel room was the steady thumping of disco music combined with the cacophony of voices, laughter and cheering from a party that the hotel was hosting. I won’t try to pretend to you that I remained calm. I wished I could say I had, but even my intensive meditation this week could not contain my anger at being placed right above a party. I had even asked the hotel to put us in a quiet room. Things started to deteriorate for me when I started to hear the plumbing from various other rooms. In the end I went down to complain to the duty manager of the hotel; call me a spoil sport but they had a number of  other guests staying who were running the marathon that day and I felt well within my rights. Luckily I managed to squeeze in four hours sleep, but I knew things were not going according to plan. I knew I wasn’t in the right mind set, there was no doubt I was feeling sorry for myself and was very frustrated, but I tried to be positive. I thought about how champion runners would have dealt with the situation and realised they would have got on with the job.

08:35hrs

The final step to the start line: Tapering.

“I had as many doubts as anyone else. Standing on the starting line, we’re all cowards”. Alberto Salazar.

Running, being in general an individual sport, means that things can be quite lonely. Compared to other sports I have played, e.g. rugby, I find from time-to-time I have a certain yearning to share the highs as well as lows of what my training has been like or how a certain race went. This is probably the reason for this blog, is that I like to share what I have been through even if it only helps one other person in their running journey; but also to record how I felt at a particular time or what I have learnt from training. In this post what I am beginning to understand is that tapering is as much a mental battle to believe in the goals you have set yourself for the marathon, as well as being a chance to look at what you have achieved through training and how you will run the race you have prepared for.

Training finished, into the taper

If it was easy, everyone would do it.

It’s strange sitting here typing up this blog post about how my training has been since January 2015. The main reason is my hard training finished two Sundays ago (29^th March 2015), so I have had a chance to think about how my training regime has affected me and what my thoughts are after calming down from the constant varying workouts and mileage. So you could say it is more of a training memoir rather than a diary entry; whatever you call it, it is certainly retrospective. By its nature looking back on something means that you can recollect what happened, but may not feel what it was like as intensely or at all. For me this is certainly another cause for feeling slightly dislocated from writing about training, as I feel pretty much rested and am waiting to run my marathon. So in some ways it is hard to conjure up the initial feelings of surviving such a long and specific training programme.

Though my thoughts and emotions are distanced from completing my training, I can definitely tell you even after resting that it was a lot, lot harder than I expected. I say this to you without any guilt, but there were days when I really didn’t want to run, let alone do any speed work or distance running. If I had to pin down one part of training that I began to dread as the weeks progressed through my plan; it would definitely be the tempo running session. This is where you run at your 10 mile race pace for a certain amount of time. I got very worried about making sure I did this correctly, so I ended up running on the treadmill so as to ensure I kept the correct pace. Not only was this hard, but I also found it immensely boring and led to me using music to get me through the session for the first time in my running career. However by the end of the training I had definitely got the hang of tempo running and in a funny kind of way came to love it. There were also days were I didn’t feel like I had given my all to training, such as when I hadn’t eaten enough beforehand or hadn’t rested properly. For instance, on my last long training run- around 21 miles- my blood sugar levels completely plummeted and I found it hard to put one foot in front of the other. This was not the way I would have liked to finish my last long distance training run, but I stuck with it, did not stop and sometimes that’s all you can ask for. So in a lot of ways my training has not just been to prepare me to beat the three hour mark at Brighton, but has also been a great (if sometimes steep) learning curve about running.

The Shadow that stalks every runner

‘My worst thoughts then, were confirmed. The blackness of eternal night encompassed me. I struggled for breath. The intensity of the darkness, seemed to oppress and stifle me. The atmosphere was intolerably close’. Edgar Allan Poe, The Pit and the Pendulum (1850).

There is an anonymous, widely quoted saying about life that the only two things that are certain about it are death and taxes. For runners this could be translated to the fact that during their ‘career’ there can be many things that happen to them, but due to following their passion at some point they will encounter injury and illness. This is the topic behind the title of my post. I know that both sayings come from a pessimistic viewpoint about life and running, but there is also an element of experience to them. We run for a whole variety of reasons, just go on Amazon or Google “running” and you will find a huge number of books with explanations by their authors about why they run; but we rarely appreciate how much that simple action of putting one foot in front of the other at varying degrees of pace impacts our lives. I would go as far to say that running is almost like any of our other physical functions, that it is almost a reflexive action. Even the person who says that they don’t like running, you will still see them running for a bus or scurrying across a busy road to avoid cars. Like it or not running is something that we can spontaneously do without having to involve ourselves in thought or engage with complex gym equipment. Therefore it is quite a shock to most people when they become ill or injured, and for a time, cannot run like they used to. Indeed one of the reasons for my long delay between posts recently, is due to illness and a few niggles. This may sound silly, but even as I type this post I shudder at those things that hampered my running, as though they could return at any time. 

This is what I mean about a ‘shadow’. For most of us when we are young, we care very little about potential dangers or injuries of sport. It is only when we first encounter a setback in our training programme or an incident in a race that we realise there are things that can hinder us, be they something beyond control or an aspect that we could control. It is from this that we enter into a fascinating paradox about running; it is only when we are not able to run at our best/ or not at all, that we fully appreciate what we have been doing. After we have recovered we are grateful to be able to run to our full potential again, but we come to understand that life can throw obstacles in our way and these are never far away- like a ‘shadow’. My personal experience was in February during some of my hard training for the coming races leading to the Brighton Marathon. I had common cold or what I would refer to as ‘man-flu’. I had muddled through my training programme the previous week and had ignored the signs, leading to the cold spreading to my chest. On Tuesday when it came to my track session I finally acknowledged that I was in no fit state to do anything and ended up having to take Wednesday off sick. Having pushed myself through my training programme the previous week, I also had a number of tight muscle areas where my body had simply needed a rest rather than being pushed any further. At this point I felt dejected and worried about my running. I couldn’t understand how all this training, which had been going pretty well up until this point, had led to me laying down on a sofa taking as many cold remedies as possible.

 Once I came to realise that I would not be doing any serious training for the next few days I reflected upon my setback. My first insight to being ill was that there are two parts to it; the physical and mental. For me it can be quite difficult to separate the two, as I have found that I tend to become quite sad when I start to become ill. The first physical signs of my cold where that when I tried to stand I became dizzy and it was also almost as though the world was one fluid revolving merry-go round that did not stop. Every time I tried to turn my attention to something I couldn’t seem to find a focus and this became increasingly jarring as I could not find the energy to concentrate on anything for long enough. Besides the tight muscles, which I mentioned above, my body felt sore and ached all over. All-in-all I was feeling sorry for myself and annoyed that I could not train. You want to do something, but you can’t because you know that action will only make things worse. It is at this moment, when you cannot do anything physically that I found a battle in my mind took place.

It is hard to describe the thoughts that occur whilst recuperating from an illness or injury. When you are sitting there frustrated the best feeling I can liken it to; is when you have a nice, long, warm bath and come to the realisation that you are not comfortable anymore. The water is tepid, even cold, and you do not want to be there anymore but you cannot move yet. You begin to worry about how you will perform once you have returned from you injury or illness. For some people this can go as far as depression, but for many it will just be a general sense of anxiety. Horrible scenarios enter your head coming and going as the please, with no rhyme or reason. Silly questions start to form in your mind: do people at work think I can’t handle my running training if I get this ill? Is it worth trying to beat the 3hr marathon mark if I get this ill? There are so many runners that are better than me, why should I think I am special? 

These negative thoughts come in waves and to be honest with you can be quite tricky to combat in my opinion. This is partly because the illness/ injury you are going through is generally not making you feel great and when you are in that situation you fail to question the assumptions that are passing through your mind. I also found that my negative thoughts would come in waves and every time this happened I would try and steel myself from letting them affect me. Scott Jurek has an excellent four step process in his book Eat and Run, which I have shared below:

1)      Acknowledge the feeling or emotion you are in.

2)      Analyse your situation, don’t just react to it.

3)      Look at what you can do to remedy the situation.

4)      Seperate your thoughts from reality, i.e. don’t dwell on negative feelings.

Not only do I think this is very practical advice, but it also comes from someone who has raced an ultra-marathon with an injured ankle. Of course you need to practice at these steps to feel benefits. Like a lot of things it won’t just happen overnight, but it is a good way of stopping yourself from falling into a negative cycle. Then one day you can gradually begin to feel better. This can be a small step you take where you don’t feel any pain; or like the tides of the ocean gently lapping a shore, your mental as well as physical wellbeing can imperceptibly improve. It is during these times of recovery that I begin to realise that my injury/ illness will not be permanent and there will be a way out. Not immediately but eventually.

Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face- Mike Tyson.

The quote above by Mike Tyson may seem obvious and blunt, but in my opinion it really does sum up how we react to life. We can all imagine our ideal situation where we have our ‘Hollywood’ moment and achieve something with everyone cheering us on. Though it is really the moments where we are alone, and possibly even despairing, that help us find out who we are and illuminate our inner reserves of strength. What I am alluding to with Tyson’s statement is that you should be prepared for a few setbacks or that things may not always turn out the way you expect them to. It is when we have suffered an injury or illness that we begin to understand how much we want to achieve something. Essentially it is about being able to adapt to the circumstance that we find ourselves in and understanding how we can keep moving forward. This is a lot harder than it sounds, for me it was wanting to train but realising I couldn’t because I was ill, and it is about developing your own solution to the circumstance you find yourself.

So what have I learnt from injury and illness:-

·         This may sound obvious and a simple thing to do (this article is proof of that), but listen to your body and rest. Sometimes you have to take one step back, to take two steps forward (excuse the pun!). If you think you have a serious injury or something that is not going away then a physiotherapist or osteopath is a great place to start.

·         Besides listening to your body a good thing to try is working with your body to see what helps you recover. I have found yoga, stretching, foam rolling and weight training all help in their own way to getting your body to race another. Other things that I haven’t tried, but people have recommended to me is pilates, swimming and cycling as alternatives to running when your body is aching. The Lore of Running- advocates a number of solutions for solving injuries and Born to Run emphasises correct running form to prevent hurting your body.

·         When you have got an injury or illness a simple thing to get you through it is to be kind to yourself. When I couldn’t train I tried to find ways to see how I had messed up, which was highly negative, eventually realising that I just had to accept it had happened and find a solution to it. I have mentioned meditation in a previous post and I have found this to be one way of being kinder to myself.

·         I have realised that I like to stick with a plan, but learnt that you have to modify it when circumstances dramatically change. Ultimately we must persist, endure and keep the faith when faced with a challenging setback.

‘Nor had I erred in my calculation- nor had I endured in vain. I at length felt I was free’. Edgar Allan Poe, The Pit and the Pendulum (1850).