A Game of Cat and Mouse

Again I find myself with a mild niggle; some sort of pain in the right hand side of my lower back. It's a bittersweet moment as I am glad that I have recognised the problem as soon as it started, but irritated that I find myself once again not being able to run for a few days. The irony of this current issue is that I think it was caused by doing my rehab exercises too many times, whilst I was still too tired from the previous day's training.

The main thing I am aware is that I do not want this to start becoming a mental problem as well. From my previous experience of injury I find it is quite easy to start slipping into a pattern of thinking that my running will always be like this; essentially projecting into the future without seeing any positive change. Already thoughts like: "Is this what it's going to be like for all my running for the future?" or "I am just going to have to accept that I will always be injured" are bouncing around my head. It's a tricky process as there is no point in trying to silence those fears, they will always pop up every now and again. Though I don't always have to listen to them and can recognise that they don't have to dominate everything I do in my running. In any case the most important thing for me is to be patient in the process of recovering.

Injury strikes again

Summer training was going well; I was near a personal best for my 5k time at the Serpentine end of the month race and got a personal best at the Regent's Park 10k race in August.

Unfortunately injury subsequently struck a few days after the 10k race. After speaking with my physio I seem to have acquired IT band syndrome on my right knee, which was incredibly frustrating as I felt great about my running at the time. I don't think it is as bad as the calf injury I got at the beginning of 2016; partly because I can still walk without pain and also because I managed to recognise that I needed to step back from running as soon as I started to feel the pain. This was something I didn't do when I injured my calf.

The London Marathon 2017

So where do I begin? I know that I have been absent for quite a while from my blog, but wanted to use my account of how the London Marathon went to restart it.  Well, for starters I won't keep anyone in suspense; I achieved my dream of completing the London Marathon 2017 in 2hrs 55mins 07 secs. 

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. 

Marathon Videos for Spring 2017

It’s the end of January and for many runners they have begun or are beginning marathon training for the major Spring marathons; whether it be in the UK, Europe or the US. Whether it’s your first marathon, you are still chasing that golden personal best or fundraising for a great cause; marathon training can be tough. From the initial euphoria of clocking up the mileage, it can quickly become a very tiring enterprise. What seemed like a relatively easy plan to follow can become a slog and the long weekend runs can start to seem like out of body experiences, where low-blood sugar and overall tiredness start to play tricks on the mind.

This isn’t to seem negative about marathon training, far from it, I enjoy the consistency and purpose to one overall cause. I may have gone a bit over the top this year by avoiding cross-country to not get injured for the London Marathon, but there is something I find so amazing about how all-consuming marathon training is. That’s not to say that training for 10k or half marathon races is easy, but there just seems to be something about trying to run as fast as you possibly can over 26.2 miles that leads us on an endless path to see how far we can really push ourselves.

Bah Humbug: An Alternative view of the Christmas Festivities.

It certainly has been a crazy year and with it drawing to a close, I was going to open with some sort of Dickensian opener like: “it was the most interesting of times, it was the most frightening of times”; however my better judgement managed to overcome my poor sense of humour.

I will start with saying that I am not the biggest fan of Christmas (and the Boxing Day/ New Year sales for that matter) as it currently is. It seems that everywhere you go you are encouraged to spend ridiculous amounts of money on objects, which are meant to make us happy. Yet this promise of gaining happiness by spending money on physical objects is as empty as the promise of someone telling you that there will be snow across the whole of the UK every Christmas. Yet each year the same message is broadcasted and everyone is expected to have the same type of Christmas celebration. This is another flaw with the way the Christmas season is presented to us, in that we should be expected to celebrate Christmas in the same way; when we all know that as humans we are incredibly complex and diverse. So why be forced to do things in exactly the same way?

It is important for me to state that I do not think the meaning of Christmas is a bad thing or that the idea of caring for your fellow man is something that we shouldn’t aspire to. It’s just that I can’t help thinking that these noble sentiments have been corrupted by companies wanting to make as much money from consumers’ generosity. This has led to people placing way too much emphasis on how much they spend over the Christmas period, rather than the things that truly matter to them. Of course I am making a sweeping generalisation, in that I know not all people have the urge to just spend loads of money over Christmas; it is more to illustrate how Christmas is presented to us on TV, in magazines, newspapers, social media, etc.  Furthermore, I am not immune from wanting to indulge myself and others with Christmas presents; I have a special weakness for Ashmei running gear, so realise that I am criticising the very thing that I am partaking in. I also realise that using social media, whether it be posting pictures on Instagram or Facebook is another aspect of the constant consumerism that surrounds us on a daily basis, so again I am part of the system that I feel uneasy about.

So if you have managed to read this far, you may be thinking why is this person having a go at the Christmas season? I suppose what I am trying to put forward is that I believe that Christmas is not about looking at your credit/ debit card bill and seeing how much you have spent or how many objects you have bought. It can be about connecting with your fellow man, looking back on the year you have had, catching up with those closest to you and hopefully getting a moment in the day-to-day hustle and bustle of our lives to think of those who have been less fortunate than us.

I have tried to put this into practice by volunteering for Crisis during the Christmas period. I don’t want to go into too much detail about what the volunteering entails, for fear of sounding sanctimonious and self-righteous. That aside, it is truly an amazing experience; and it is quite surprising how much satisfaction you get from doing certain tasks at the Crisis centres. There are also some truly unique moments that you get to experience (a notable one being Chris Martin visiting one of the centres). What I found truly humbling, was speaking with the guests at the centre I was at about their lives and being thanked for what we were doing. In a city such as London, where public transport consists of an endless round of people bashing into you or being rude to you; it is very moving to find someone who doesn’t have a roof over their head and very few possessions , to thank you for what you have done for them and wishing you a happy new year. I hope I can take this humility with me into 2017 and not care so much about what possessions I do or don’t have. 

My Running Slump

‘What I ended up with was a sense of lethargy, and before I knew it, I felt covered by a thin film of, something I’ve since dubbed runner’s blues…. I lost the enthusiasm I’d always had for the act of running itself. Fatigue was a factor, but that wasn’t as clear as before’- Haruki Murakami, What I talk about when I talk about Running.

I haven’t really been running properly since I did the Abingdon Marathon in October and I cannot seem to shake this feeling of being indecisive about whether I run or not. That is why I began this blog with a quote from Murakami, as he so effortlessly describes the feeling a runner has after their own accomplishment. Admittedly Murakami was talking about 62 mile race, and I am talking about a marathon, but I genuinely believe all running achievements are relative to the person doing them (be it a Parkun or the Barkley marathon).  I think part of it was down to simply having a slight burnout from running solidly from June to the end of October, something that I realised I have never done before. Another reason is that I have lost that feeling from running, which tends to come with a successful marathon training cycle, which is primarily that of progress. What I mean by that is you feel like you are improving second by second, minute by minute, race by race or mile by mile during your training. It can be ordinary moments as well; like running for the bus or up the stairs and finding that it is reassuringly easy. All those tiny moments make me think how great running is and after Abingdon I felt like I had lost that. 

Indeed I was completely surprised by my result at Abingdon and in some ways achieved the goal of this blog, which was to run a marathon in under three hours.  I am still immensely proud of the time I achieved at Abingdon, but I am worried that it could be a one-off event and in some ways it feels like a distant memory. I mean this specifically to the training that I was doing and my worries about getting injured in the build up to London. I suppose I just made the assumption that I could just make under three hours or just over it at Abingdon, and then have another go at London. In that sense it has made me re-evaluate what I want from running, but at the same time I feel quite lost about it.

‘Perhaps all these various factors had combined into a mysterious cocktail inside me. As the person involved in this, it’s hard for me to analyse it objectively. Whatever it was, runner’s blues was my name for it’- Murakami.

I realise how lucky I am to be able to be able to run London next year and also have the option to run London in 2018 as well. I just want to be sure I approach it in the right way. One of the most common pitfalls I have seen, partially experienced and heard about is runners setting unrealistic running goals; then not enjoying their marathon because they didn’t achieve their goal, despite running well. I don’t want to do this at London. I remember how amazing the Brighton Marathon in 2014 was, where I didn’t have any goals and it was simply to enjoy the city and the marathon for what they were.  In marathon timescales, London is looming in around five months’ time. For most people that may seem like a long time; but to properly build your base and then once you have done that to train hard for two to three months, it is actually a relatively short period of time. In this context I will just have to see how I feel at the beginning of January and take it from there.

More than anything I just want to get back to enjoying running. Believe it or not, the time I got at Abingdon was just a by-product of an amazing training cycle and being very grateful to be able to run long-distance races after an injury.

So that is where I will start with my running, with the patience that I employed when I had my injury. Building back up slowly, but surely. For now I will not be thinking about what personal bests I want to aim for, what races I need to tackle before London and what paces I should be targeting for my training. It will just be about putting one foot in front of the other.

‘Now I feel like I ‘m finally getting away from the runner’s blues fog that’s surrounded me for so long. Not that I’ve completely rid myself of it, but I can sense something beginning to stir…as I lace up my running shoes, I can catch a faint sign of something in the air, and within me’- Murakami.