Readying for London

“What did you hope to achieve out here?” this was what I was asking myself, as I ran along the Lee Valley canal. The words were partly a philosophical thought process, as I struggled through my club’s Sunday long run, but mostly influenced by me seeing The Lost City of Z. I found the film itself to be really refreshing, it wasn’t just a simple plot of hero rescues damsel/ city/ world/ treasure from a danger, but an exploration of why as human beings we push ourselves to seek danger and uncertainty in our lives. This is what I think running was about too. We are usually struggling for something that is just out of reach- whether it be a time or distance. Like the film we are usually trying to explain this to everyone around us, about why we run and why it is such a good thing to do; when to most people it looks like such a slog. Therein to me lies the paradox of running; it is only as we approach that moment of complete exhaustion- be it on a long run or during a lung busting tempo run- that we get a glimpse into why we really run. To find that fine line during a good workout/ race where we feel both at peace and in pain, whilst being so totally focussed on the task at hand. So it was on this long run last Sunday that I was starting to question what I really wanted from all of this training. The first and most obvious thought was: ‘I want to get an amazing time!’, but after that I realised that all I wanted to do was run the London Marathon to the best of my abilities. To put all of the training that I had done since December 2016 to the best possible effect and come to the end of the 26.2 miles feeling satisfied. Though marathons don’t work like that and this is what makes them so exciting and scary, not knowing what the outcome will be. 

So February and March have really been about answering those nagging questions that were swirling round in my head on my last Sunday long run. Doing some of the hardest training- for me anyway- to date; that involved a longer weekly mileage, attempting higher speeds and ultimately hitting the goals I had set for the races I had entered for preparation for London. These were the Watford Half Marathon, the Finchley 20 and the Reading Half Marathon.  I also scheduled in the final Met League Ally Pally race, as some cross-country seasoning, between Watford and the resuming of my heavy training.

Watford Half

The plan was for Watford to see if I could maintain my target marathon pace around a relatively tough half marathon after a heavy week of training. It was the first time I had gone to a race and treated it as a time trial, rather than going flat out to attack it. I have to say that this approach really works and if I can have the same approach to when I run London then I think I will benefit massively. The main benefit I found is that you concentrate on yourself and how you are feeling, that allows you to know when you are going too fast and forget external issues that could negatively affect. A secondary benefit is that you don’t worry about being overtaken by runners during the race. In fact I ended up only being overtaken by one runner in the end, who was quite clearly racing as hard as he could, and didn’t have the usual panic that I have with halves- of worrying about whether  I had gone  off too fast. It was also the first race where I tried yerba mate, which certainly has some interesting effects. All I would say is that certainly gives the same ‘buzzing’ feeling that drinking a cup of coffee has, but keeps going for longer. I ended February with the Ally Pally cross country race, which besides being hard was very fun. It was pretty muddy, which suits me to a large degree.

February and March seemed to coalesce into session after session. One thing I have taken away from upping my mileage and trying to run faster; is not just the physical fatigue that sets in, but the sheer mental endurance that you have to go through to keep improving on each session. I love running, but I can’t imagine how people who take on a marathon as purely ‘bucket list’ challenge or to just say they have done it get through the training. There seem to be loads of benefits to running and especially running marathons, but when you are in the thick of training it can seem like quite a difficult enterprise. I think second to upping my weekly mileage is running without a pure rest, whereby I still log a recovery run rather than having a day off entirely from running. This may seem quite an easy thing to achieve, but it is something my legs have found hard to adjust to.  My theory is that reveals how a person reacts under a period of mental and physical fatigue, whilst juggling whatever life has to throw at you, whether this is an injury or a busy job.  

Finchley 20

My next race was the Finchley 20, which is actually held in Ruislip. I had set myself the daunting task of running the first 5 miles at 7 min/miles and then the other 15 miles at target marathon pace (6:35 miles). Everything about this race seemed to go right and it was the first five miles that seemed to be the most challenging, as I hadn’t seen how my legs were going to hold up, once I started to push to 6:35 min/ miles, I was pleasantly surprised to find the pace manageable going round the undulating terrain of Ruislip. 10 miles turned into 15 miles, and before I knew it I was pushing hard to the 20 mile mark. Overall there was immense relief that I had run the race to plan and had been able to execute my marathon target pace. It is sometimes very easy to overlook in running when a session or a race goes perfectly to plan, as in my experience this is something that rarely happens.

I mentioned earlier in this post about dealing with fatigue and this was the key challenge after Finchley. The day after Finchley my mind and body felt tired from the effort that I put in, which was unlucky, as my body decided to start breaking down and my workload increased during that week. This led to what will probably be my lowest mileage week of the marathon cycle, as I battled to ensure that my right calf and ankle would be in good working order. I managed to achieve this, but a combination of relatively long hours at work and not getting enough sleep led me to line up at Reading feeling the effects of Finchley in my legs. If there was one area of marathon training that I needed to improve it was getting more sleep!

Reading Half

For some reason I had put a lot of pressure on myself for Reading. I had a number of good track, as well as tempo, sessions behind me and Finchley had indicated that I could push myself further than I thought. It was a big half marathon, so there would always be other runners around to run with. Despite there being an air of excitement at the start line, I felt quite stale and what I mean by ‘stale’ is that I didn’t have the same urgency or hunger for Reading compared to what I felt when I lined up at Finchley.  Even so it was great to meet up with so many other London Heathsiders, and it is always heartening to meet people you have been regularly training with at such a large event.

In retrospect I should have adjusted my expectations to how I felt on the day and accepted that it may not be my day to get a personal best.  That said hindsight is a wonderful thing and when you have so much training under your belt, you want to do well. I think where a slight error made a tough situation worse was that I let my race nerves get the better of me as well; so as the half started I went off too fast for even my target time of 1hr 22mins.  

With all the warning signs I mentioned above, it wasn’t long before my body decided to let me know that I was operating beyond my capacity for that day. Reading has a few small hills/ undulations in its course, and it was at the first of these that I realised I was finding the race harder than I expected. From there on in things became harder and it was at mile 7 that I knew I was in for a long slog to finish this half. I knew that 1:22 was out of the question, but was determined to hang onto to salvaging a respectable time from the half. The remaining 6.1 miles of the race consisted of me trying to surge back to my original target pace, but soon realising that my body couldn’t handle that pace. I finished Reading in 1:24:13, which was five seconds off my personal best.  This scene from The Thick of It sums up how I felt:

At the time I was quite disappointed with myself, especially with setting off to fast, but as I am now writing this post I have taken a number of positives from Reading. Mainly I managed to keep going when all I really wanted to do was stop and not finish. I had two out of the three target races that I had aimed; I also realised that if I was going to take risks to get better times I knew that I was going to have to be prepared to fail at some point. It was admittedly not the race that I wanted to run, but as it had not gone to plan, I felt good that I had managed to come within five seconds of my previous best. Even though it felt uncomfortable at the time I think it was good that I had some ‘humble pie’; in the sense that it was good for me to realise that it was not so easy to just be able to run at whatever pace I so chose, and realise that there is a thin line between running a personal best and blowing up.

I have started reading From Last to First by Charlie Spedding this week. I think I may have found the answer to my question that I posed at the beginning of this post, and just as importantly how I want to feel when I line up at the London Marathon: I have prepared for this marathon to the best of my ability, it is a wonderful opportunity and no one else can stop me from running my best marathon time.