In the Mouth of the Wolf

I have probably hesitated about writing this post for too long, as it was not only a recap of how I did at the Valencia marathon but also of the year of running for me in 2019. To say that it has been an eventful year for my running is an understatement. A cursory glance at the improvement in my times at various distances would confirm that. Along the way I have also learnt a lot about my strengths and weaknesses. More importantly, when things have got really tough, I have remembered why I like running and what it means to me.

The importance of running came almost as a revelation to me as I was listening to the Marathon Training Academy podcast, a show I think it would be fair to say that is predominantly aimed at people new to running. In this particular podcast the hosts were providing helpful ways for people to increase the consistency and frequency of their running, especially after achieving a big goal race; stating that besides focussing on the process of going out on a regular basis to run, it was also about understanding that races and times are just one part of what makes someone a runner. It occurred to me that I had never looked at my running in that way, and even though I had some of my greatest successes in 2019, I still had a lot to learn about why I ran as well as what motivated me deep down to continue to run. Nowhere did this become more apparent than when I was injured in 2019. Hence why this final entry for 2019 is not just about Valencia, but a review of my running as a whole and how in many ways Valencia was a culmination of the many ups and downs of running for me in 2019.

Leaping into the Unknown

The beach in Norfolk- besides me, my wife and my friends- is empty. The white foam topping the cresting waves and smothering the beach line, is the only thing that separates the steel blue sea from the grey sky stretching out to the horizon.

I walk along near my friends, with my wife further back and feel curiously detached. I think to myself is this what it feels like to be relaxed, or maybe I am just alone? The roaring of the waves and the whistling of the wind should make it hard to think; but in a strange way it is almost seems like white noise, slowing down my thoughts and giving me time to be present. Sort of like listening to one of those sea shells that you can hear the echo of the sea in.

Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness by Scott Jurek and Steve Friedman

A personal and revealing account of one of the greatest runners within ultramarathons. Jurek manages to blend his phenomenal running with a good argument to at least try to experiment with eating a vegan diet, which is made even more compelling by the fact that he advocated veganism before it became a part of today’s mainstream discourse on diet. Ultimately Jurek’s account goes beyond what it takes to succeed at the highest levels of ultra-running, and provides us with an insight into the man who came to dominate the sport in the 1990s and 2000s.

With the current running boom that we are experiencing it can be hard to find a reason to buy another book about another accomplished runner. How many times can one person read the same template of: I set the goal to win this major event, trial and tribulation ensues and finally victory occurs? Furthermore this notion to write running memoirs has spread to the everyday runners of our time, so that we can recognise the story of ourselves within them, finding a common suffering with the author we are reading. In many, but not all of these accounts, we find very little in the way of who these people actually are; in that we don’t know about what molded them or the uncomfortable parts of their running. This is what is so refreshing about Jurek’s book, we get to learn about the man behind the runner and how that has shaped him. This includes the uncomfortable moments of his personal life as well as his running.

Why the London Marathon can’t win and an annoying tick

I’m standing in one of the start pens of the Great Eastern Run 2019 (also known as the Peterbough Half Marathon); it’s cold, windy and everyone has been standing around for 45 minutes. We were meant to start at 10:30am, time is ticking away and we have only been drip fed information by the race organiser. The tannoy announcer asks for everyone’s attention and says that the race has been cancelled, due to a recommendation by the police. It is my first time at this race and it is not a great introduction, as runners go off in all directions; some go to get changed and others to do their 13 miles at whatever the cost. It turns out that the reason for the cancellation was because of a man acting suspiciously at mile 11, though the exact reason for why the police decided it was a threat will remain a mystery. From my personal perspective the race organisers could have been more adaptable to how they dealt with this problem. That said in this day and age of social media witch-hunts being conducted on a regular basis, it would have only taken one thing to go wrong and then the race organisers would have been crucified for not exercising caution. So after my initial frustration I can see why the race was cancelled.

Smile and say PAIN!

I feel like I want to throw up, as I am bent double and retching in the finishing funnel of the Middlesex 10k. The tight knotting in my stomach combined with the lack of air, makes me feel dizzy as I try to make my way down the funnel. Strewn around me are other exhausted runners, who I am guessing didn’t feel the need to be as sick as me. I always knew that September was going to be hard month of racing, and once I had understood the full implications of my torn hamstring; it was going to be a different sort of challenge. Whilst the way races went and the results haven’t gone how I would have planned or liked, I am still glad that I attempted this month of racing. If only for completing on the challenges that I set myself post-London Marathon, as well as the mental battles that I have found myself in.

Someone I ran with once said: “the distance of the race is not important, it’s how hard you choose to run it”. At the beginning of September I don’t necessarily know if I would have agreed with that statement. I may have cited the Buddhist monks who run to achieve enlightenment or Sri Chinmoy’s now (in)famous 3,100 mile race round a small square piece of land in New York for 60 days. Whilst I doubt that I will do anything as amazing or extreme as the examples shown above, I have come to learn the challenge of pushing myself at shorter distances than a half marathon. In some ways bringing more of a challenge for me than running a marathon. In short, and to potentially save you from having to read the rest of this post, racing shorter distances- when not fully fit- has tested me in more ways than I could imagine, but specifically and most acutely in my mental game.

Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger

American Football collides with racial, economic and personal tensions; in a book which is ostensibly about a high-school football team, but really about the meaning of sport and its place in our society.

You could be forgiven when reading the cover of Friday Night Lights, that it is another clichéd heroic rags to riches story about a high-school football team. The sort of story where despite economic hardship and various other obstacles, the power of positivity and just believing things will go well wins the day; the type of story that doesn’t hold up well in the harsh light of reality. Friday Night Lights is not that book, it is a far deeper story going beyond what American football means in small-town America; to what sport (of any type) means for us.

The story takes place in Odessa, Texas, 1988. Right from the outset of the book Bissinger tells us that he moved his family to live with the people of Odessa, to understand what football meant for them. It sets the tone for this non-fiction story of a compassionate, but gritty and realistic, account of a season with the Permian Panthers. Bissinger hints at the fall-out the book created, and the bonds of trust he may have broken, to create this portrayal of Odessa; indeed we will never know in what guise Bissinger inserted himself into Odessa and what explanation he gave to the subjects of his book. Whilst some may question the impartiality of Bissinger, it is clear that he has gone to great efforts to paint of realistic picture of what high-school football means for the people of Odessa.

Augustments

What happens when you have to make adjustments to your August running schedule? You have a month of Augustments.

July to August has been a month of ups and downs for my running. Around mid-July I had managed to get both of my hamstrings healed and had started to ease back into structured training. It was a humbling process, as I had to start at paces that were slower than when I began training for London 2019. I was grateful to be training again, though I felt sluggish and tired from trying to play catch-up with my training for Valencia. It was just as I was trying to get back into full swing with my training, that I caught a horrible chest infection in the final week of July.

Born to run: The hidden tribe, the ultra-runners, and the greatest race the world has never seen (Christopher McDougall).

Fleet of foot fantasy about the joys and marvels of running.

If you are completely new to the sport of running by way of signing up to your first marathon or parkrun there is no better way to feed your running bug than by reading this book. McDougall is an excellent story-teller, taking the reader along a wonderful ride through the predominant lens of ultra-running. The story that McDougall weaves is at once fascinating and exciting, as he explores the reasons why we run and what enables us to achieve such feats of endurance.

The story revolves around the now famous Tarahumara (a remote Mexican tribe), some eccentric characters such as Caballo Blanco and famous ultra-runners of the likes of Scott Jurek to name a few; and the race that takes place between Jurek and one of the Tarahumara. I won’t digress into the narrative, as that would ruin the book, however McDougall uses this so-called epic race to put forward a number of significant statements about the state of modern running.

Ultimately McDougall presents running in a sort romantic tradition, i.e. before the technological and commercial aspects were introduced to running, there was a pure or natural way of running that meant people could run for as far as their bodies would allow them to. The strongest part of this arguments comes from McDougall citing the Harvard academic Daniel Lieberman, who argued that humans were designed to run long distances to gradually wear down prey (e.g. deer); who could sprint in short bursts away from humans, but did not have their capacity for endurance. If this was as far as McDougall was willing to go by linking this research with the Tarahumara race, as well as the tribe itself, then that would not be so controversial.

Unplugging from the Narrative(s)

The Meaning of Existence
Everything except language
knows the meaning of existence.
Trees, planets, rivers, time
know nothing else. They express it
moment by moment as the universe.

Even this fool of a body
lives it in part, and would
have full dignity within it
but for the ignorant freedom
of my talking mind.


from
Poems the Size of Photographs, 2002, by Les Murray

To ITB or not to ITB

The world of English literature and running would be a very different place if William Shakespeare had written these- potentially immortal- words:

To ITB, or not ITB, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the legs to suffer
The hamstrings and Achilles of outrageous fortune,
Or to take massages against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them: to die, to sleep
No more; and by a sleep, to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That runners are heir to? 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished.

Darling Buds of May....

Before you ask this isn’t some obscure reference to the recent events in British politics, rather it is my attempt to understand where my training should be heading next.

Reset

It’s been a strange time for me post-London. The main goal for the whole year had been to see whether I could hit a sub-2:50 marathon time, I did this at London, and now feel lost. This wasn’t something that I had planned for. The plan I had envisaged after London was to train hard for a number of 10ks, which would culminate in obtaining a personal best at a half marathon in October or November. This would potentially lay the foundations for deciding whether to go for a Winter marathon to see if I could improve my time from London. There is no reason why I can’t continue with this plan for a revised time for a Winter marathon, but I am still thinking about how and what the commitment will look like post-London.

After having some good exchanges with my coach about new paces that would be needed to get a personal best in the Winter, I have to say that I was pretty shocked at the new speeds I would need to be training at. I knew that I would need to work harder than I did in my training for London, but if I am completely honest I had never even considered running at those paces and what they would equate to for the shorter distances I intend to run over the Summer/ Autumn.

I think that’s partly where the feeling of being lost is coming from; in that I had never thought about running at those paces before that came as quite a shock. Indeed the time I ran at London was a shock to me as well. So there is definitely an element of not feeling entirely confident with what I have got to do next, which I appreciate is a key component of achieving my goals. If I don’t believe or cannot know how I can complete my training, then it’s certainly not going to help when I line up for a race.

VLM 2019: a day of reckoning

"Surely you are on for a personal best at London this year?", "just take it easy if you don't feel that good on the day" and "remember if the weather is like last year don't push too hard". I am sitting with my family on a warm Easter weekend in a homely Italian restaurant. The discussion has turned towards how everyone thinks I will do at the marathon. I have found- surprisingly- that my family have become uncannily good at predicting what I will do at each marathon, on the basis that they have been following my training and build-up races to that particular marathon. Numbers are banded around and bets are taken; with 2hrs 50mins and below even being mentioned as an outside chance for me. I laugh and say that would be a dream for me if I was to get near those times at London. My repeated attempts at reaping, what I would consider, a great run have yet to be the outcome from two years' worth of training. My stomach is full and my body feels relaxed (one of the many benefits of the taper period); so my thoughts- are quite naturally- turning to when I can lay down to sleep off all the food I have eaten.

Nevertheless the discussion about my potential times at London this year cause my stomach to tighten, various parts of my legs tense up and my mind to drift off to the all training I have done leading up to this year's London marathon. I still stand by Charlie Spedding's dictum- in his book 'Last to First'- that the London marathon is not a marathon for first-timers to be doing if they want to race it well. From previous experience the crowds that are meant to carry you around the course, lure you into a false sense of speed as you are carried along the course without even realising that your precious energy (and personal best potential!) is being sucked out along the first half of one of the greatest marathon courses in the world. By the time you are over half way through the course, it's too late and that feeling of ease in the first half turns to discomfort. The crowd becomes a wall of noise distracting you from the painful task of finishing a race that you have badly misjudged. You are a fighter who has walked into the harsh sting of an exquisitely timed counter-punch. That surprise is getting to and from Canary Wharf, so by the time you have made it back to the continuous crowds from mile 21 onwards your final remnants of willpower have been eroded and you are clinging on to the thought of just getting these last miles done. Yes I have definitely fallen prey to the temptation to go out too fast at London. Yet I have seen so many people achieve such wonderful runs and times at London, that I still hold out hope that I can do the same...

Stick or Twist?

What is the greatest challenge that runners face? I ponder this thought, as I lie in the bath looking at my big toe, which no longer has a nail due to my latest cycle of marathon training. I have been for my final long run a week before the London Marathon 2019, though at eleven miles it doesn't feel that long. I return my thoughts to the original question. At first I turn to the addiction to constantly obtain personal bests (PBs)from each race one takes part in, however I can't in all honesty say that I think this is the hardest obstacle a runner faces. We all have different versions  of PBs that we are looking to achieve in our running; be that distance, fundraising, time or simply just a running streak. So what about avoiding injuries? Yes that was a big part of why we eat healthily, stretch, foam-roll, sleep and have sports massages; however it is something that in one way or another all runners (in fact people playing any sport) accept as part of the taking part in that particular pursuit. So in my opinion it wasn't injury either. I thought about what I knew about running now, as compared to when I started running for the Brighton Marathon in 2014. There are so many things that I wouldn't do now, that I did back then, and I wonder if learning more about how I train is a perennial problem that all runners face. I dispel that thought, as I think anything that if you are pursuing any sort of passion you will always be learning and becoming aware of your limitations.

No I decided that the biggest quest a runner faces is when to push on or when to hold back? Ultimately about how we as runners find our balance, and by that I don't mean being balanced all the time; but knowing when we have gone too deep into our training. I finally landed upon this answer when I was watching the Netflix documentary Resurface.  It is a documentary about a surf instructor who uses his talents to help American Afghanistan and Iraq veterans recover from their physical and mental injuries by learning how to surf. The strength of this short film lies in its understatement, there are no dramatic moments or music pulling your heartstrings; just these ordinary men describing how the war affected them. Whilst watching the film I was struck by a comment one of the veterans said about what he learnt as he progressed in his surfing ability. The veteran stated how you have to constantly respect the ocean, you can be surfing on the edge of that wave, but if you aren't aware of everything you are doing you can fall into the ocean and it chew you up and spit you out. He goes on to say how ultimately you come to realise that the ocean is bigger than you and it will always be there, no matter what you do. Whilst I wouldn't directly compare marathon running and training to learning how to surf. It did strike me how we are always trying to find that 'edge' ,where we are looking to consistently improve our performances whilst avoiding injuries. In that way I think running and surfing are similar in that both sports are trying to find the ever elusive spot of perfect balance. It could also be said that their fates are similar as well. The surfer either successfully rides out of the wave or is subsumed within this huge natural event;  the runner successfully completes their race to their expectations or falls short (either during the race or through not being able to train properly for it). 

March Madness

We exchange worried glances with each other; I don't know whether the old man I am running past is concerned or just bemused at the face I am pulling at mile 16 of my final long run. Or is it mile 17? At this point I don't really care, my legs and I seem to be having a constant argument about why we can't just go home and lie down on the sofa instead of doing this long run. So far I have managed to keep them under control, but I start to wonder for how much longer.

March has been a busy month for me. Not only I have managed to train consistently and progress, but also I have been able to race well over two consecutive weekends. Namely the Reading Half Marathon and the Oakley 20. 

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Reading Half Marathon

Reading was starting to become a sort of nemesis for me, as I came away from the last two times I had attempted to race it feeling frustrated and disoriented. My training had indicated so much more for me those previous times. It seemed like Reading was some sort of implacable and silent foe, every year thwarting my efforts to peak at races during my marathon training. Rather like Ryan Gosling felt in Only God Forgives below (of course he knew how I felt...):

Now and then...

I have been thinking a lot about dialogue during February, and not just because of Brexit. To me the constant barrage of abuse and dogmatic belief from both sides regarding the UK's potential exit from the European Union, has highlighted the importance of continued listening and constructive debate between two sides with opposing views. I have also been thinking more about this with my running. 

I tend to find February a tough month to adjust to in my marathon training; it's when the intensity of my speed and tempo session goes up a level, whilst the mileage increases as well. The combination usually leads to me becoming fatigued- whilst I adjust to my training getting harder- and being susceptible to man-flu. It was whilst I had my head covered with a towel over a boiling bowl of Vicks enhanced water, suffering with the aforementioned man-flu, that I listened to Joe Rogan's podcast with Lance Armstrong. I had heard about this episode through the Marathon Talk podcast and it intrigued me. First of all because a lot of the running podcasts tend to focus on the positives of the sport they talk about, and secondly because I haven't really listened to a podcast interview yet where there is a disagreement between the two people talking. The interview with Lance did both of those things: it was about someone who had done something seriously wrong within an endurance sport and Joe wanted to understand why he had cheated, whilst not entirely agreeing with the reasons for why Lance did it. I thought it was a fairly balanced interview, though at some points I thought Joe was being too sympathetic to Lance's stance.I did come away, however, from the interview with a better grasp of how the cheating had occurred and what I genuinely think is a more nuanced view of the systemic problems that cycling/ running faces. An even better example is the Western States 100 Synchroblog Project. I think it is something that should be done more often in running and would allow for a more constructive debate, rather than people getting angry across social media or when an incident happens at a race.

Planning for the future

It's 5 January 2019 in Stratford, and I am running my first 10k of the year. The treadmill has been replaced by the park near the Olympic Stadium and people out on their morning stroll stare aghast at why anyone would put themselves through running on a cold Saturday morning. I am in a small group of runners near the front of the race, and I can hear their various rates of breathing; some people are huffing and puffing, whilst others have a more even breathing pattern. Whilst we hurtle around  the course and down to the River Lea, I am just grateful that things seem to be going okay and my breathing is noticeably better than anticipated. I had expected the heavy deep gasping from my treadmill training in November 2018 to follow me round this course, but I feel in control and my mind feels calm. It is just over a month since I have started receiving coaching, and I urge myself to not get overexcited at the thought of achieving a personal best at this race; don't ruin your race by getting focused on the outcome! I am just happy to be running with people and almost start to have a chat with my fellow competitors and then laugh inwardly at myself for thinking such things.