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...

I snap back to the present moment, at mile 17 at the London Marathon 2019, as I run through a shower of water that brings welcome relief to my mind. My brain is cycling through hundreds of thoughts and possibilities, which centre around the theme of have I gone out too fast? I had been more present to the need to hold myself back during the beginning of the marathon, which I had duly done. I had tried to be as present as possible when taking in the crowds, sights and sounds of the course. It was only as I approached Tower Bridge that I had clocked that I had the potential to be going through half-way in around 1hr 23 mins. Luckily I had applied the brakes at this point, but I was concerned the damage had already been done to my capacity to see the final stages of the marathon out at my current pace. I go through halfway in around 1hr 24 mins, a year or two ago that would have been a great personal best for me, I ask myself whether I am going to regret going through at that time (especially after wittering on about knowing when to hold back or push on earlier in April)?

I pass family and friends at mile 14 and then things start to become difficult between miles 15 -18. In my last blog post I had mentioned that I made some interesting discoveries about my previous marathons. Well one of these is that I seem to have a critical dip between miles 15 - 18 on all the marathons I have done to date. I say critical because it can either be momentary- whereby I make the correct adjustments to my pace and go on to have a good race- or that dip becomes a steep, dark descent into marathon oblivion. London also seems to further damage upon runners to feel as though they are going through a bad patch, as I have found the miles leading to Canary Wharf to be the quietest and least-well supported. This combined with the phenomenal crowds at Tower Bridge and up to mile 15, make the contrast even greater. 

I had rightly anticipated this dip in morale between those miles, but what came as a surprise to me was the pain in my left calf and hip at mile 16. I nearly laughed out loud as I was running along; I had spent the last five to six month ensuring that the right side of my body stopped causing me problems with my running. Now I saw the grim irony that my marathon could be scuppered by a problem that had never arisen in training. Had I gone out too fast again? Was I about to injure myself? These and other thoughts were running through my head, as I started to feel bad about inviting friends and family coming to watch me. Why do I keep putting them through this?

I continue to run and remember the training that I have done; telling myself that the marathon was always going to become harder as it progressed. I start to approach Canary Wharf and I can see some runners starting to slow. A few are peeling off to the side of the road to stretch or in some cases even walk. The classic signs- to me anyway- that we are as a group are entering the beginning of the business end of the marathon. I remind myself that I have been through this mental dip before and once I begin to leave Canary Wharf I should start to get a second wind. I remember the David Goggins interview with Rich Roll that had kept me going through training over all these months:

I pass mile 19 with the argument between my mind and body now resolved, they both agree that I should stop running. I think about how Goggins approached pain, and decide that for the next seven miles I am going to have to welcome it as my guest for the ride. I try to reframe how the run is going. I try to focus on keeping my form in the same shape as it had been when I started running and try to focus on individual parts of the course I had memorised to keep me going. I decide to ignore what I am feeling and what my mind is telling me, instead deciding that I will check in with myself at mile 21. This is when I will see my friends and family again. The pain in my left leg has subsided, it now comes in waves instead. 

I knew everything hung in the balance as I approached mile 21. On the one hand the pain I was starting to feel was something completely different to anything I have felt before and genuinely questioned whether I could keep it up for that long; on the other I had been in this scenario many times before during my training. Convincing myself to hold for that last five miles so that I could complete my training week on a Sunday. At points I almost found myself recalling those moments on the Sunday runs to take my mind off what was going on in that present moment. So it is hard to put into words how good it was to see my family and friends at mile 21. They also provided me with two vital gels for the final leg of my journey.

Miles 21 to 24 became probably the darkest part of the marathon for me. I saw a runner at mile 22 who had completely collapsed face down and was being attended to by medical staff. I felt a shiver go down my spine, as I realised how hard everyone was pushing themselves and took in a gel. Ahead of me I could see the way to mile 23 and to the left runners who were just getting to mile 14. I wished them the very best and concentrated on the task in hand. Through miles 23 - 24 I could see more runners walking, some clutching various parts of their lower body, people steadily slowing to a walk, others veering from side-to-side as their final remnants of energy deserted them. Whilst I was incredibly well supported by fellow club members and the crowds, it was where I could really feel the fatigue starting to set in. I could feel my form slipping away from me, I found myself conducting more of an internal dialogue about the merits of why I run marathons than taking in the support from the crowd and I was starting to lose the visualisation of the course that had helped me round so far. I growled at myself out loud about how this wasn't over yet, luckily everyone around me was too tired to either notice or say anything about my outburst. 

It was at this moment that my mind was simulateaneously present with the crowds and the pain; whilst I thought how I  was injured for most of the Summer and Autumn of 2018, the problems my wife and I have had with purchasing our first house, how I had really enjoyed my five months of training, the personal bests that I had achieved during that period and that most importantly this pain would be over soon:

It was just after mile 24, as I could see Big Ben, that a sort of peace with the pain I had been feeling descended over me. I knew I was going to finish London. I snapped back to the task in hand and realised that the crowd was silent, as I and my fellow runners ran along Birdcage walk. I roared at it to give us some support and cheers, which they duly did. Part of me felt stupid for doing it, but at the same time I didn’t care. I had just executed my best marathon to date. All the personal bests in 2019 had led to this moment. I had even managed to get marginally quicker in the second half of the race. I couldn't quite believe the time as I attempted to sprint down the Mall, though to most people it would have probably looked like someone running in a very drunken state for the bus than a runner executing a sprint. I crossed the line in the most pain I have felt in any sport I have played, whilst feeling completely at peace; an almost blissful emptiness had descended on me. I had left everything out there on the streets of London.

PERFORMANCES OF THE MARATHON:

I can sum up from my own perspective the performances of the marathon in one word: women. I know this must sound strange, but in the part of the marathon I was running in the ratio of men to women was at least 10:1. I don't want to get drawn into a debate about equality wihtin the running community, but what I would have liked to see is more women around me. I have no evidence to back-up this proposition, I just think it would make for a better marathon (both for the runners and spectators); in terms of bringing a welcome dynamic to the race and for female spectators who are thinking of getting into running (e.g. in terms of role-models to aspire to). Furthermore, and without wishing to sound patronishing, I do wonder what it must be like for a lone-female runner amongst a group of men. Personally an enduring image for me was going along the Embankment and watching as a lone female runner picked off a number of tired men towards the end of the race; a classic example of expert pacing at its best.

On another note, when we saw Mo Farah do too much talking and not enough running. I thought the two performances from these women below were spectacular:

Hayley Curruthers gave everything to VLM 2019 this year with a heroic performance, that captured everything it means to give your all to running a marathon. I challenge you not to be moved by the video below!




Charlotte Purdue ran a phenomenal time of 2:25:38 at the VLM 2019. What makes it all the more remarkable is that for sections of the marathon she was running on her own without being part of a pack.

WHAT I LEARNT FROM VLM 2019:

I mentioned previously that I had been analysing my past marathons, and had noticed a number of interesting patterns about my running at the VLM. I hope these insights will be of use to other runners:

• VLM will punish you if you go out too quick. This may sound like the most blindingly obvious thing to tell any runner, running at a distance longer than 20 miles, but until you are part of this amazing event that is the London Marathon it is hard to describe how it can affect your running. Even running the race that I did on 28 April, I still found myself going out too fast in the first half of the marathon; and that was after loads of preparation to stop that from happening;
• Really get to know the course, so you are not pulled round too quickly and you can pace yourself. The easiest way to do this is speak to people who have run the course and get their opinions on how the marathon affected their pacing, or visit review sites/ forums to see what other people have thought of the London Marathon. I found the 2013 video of the London Marathon to be very useful in visualising how I would run the course. It was especially useful as it allowed me to memorise parts of the course to stop myself from getting sucked along by the crowd;
• I upped the number of gels I took on the course and started taking them earlier. Previously I had only taken around four gels as a maximum in my last seven marathons, and only from around mile 14 owards. This time I took my first gel from around mile 9, and had around five to six gels across the whole course; and
• I mentioned above that by looking at my previous marathon performances, that across a variety of courses and different times of the year, I had experienced significant dips in my pacing. I recognised that this was more than likely to happen at London and factored it into my training and subsequently my running on the day. Just allowing the bad patch to come and then go was immmensely useful when dealing with this London this year.