Do marathon runners dream of muddy shoes?

It’s been a far more consistent period of running for me, since my last post here. My weekly mileage has been moving up to 40- 45 miles per week, with the usual decent key sessions spread over the week. Hopefully I can start to make a venture into the low to mid 50s in the next month. In some ways it’s more than just being able to do the mileage again, it’s about having that confidence to be able to run hard without the fear of a niggle turning into something worse.

A number of things have helped during October, which were in some ways sparked by going to see Blade Runner 2049:

I am big fan of the first film and the sequel certainly didn’t disappoint. What I really like about the film is how it questions what it means to be human, what constitutes our identity and ultimately can we trust our memories of the past. In relation to running what it got me thinking about was how I thought about my running. I realise that I may have come to think about my marathon running in a way that is too narrow. What this has meant in practice is that I would only try to work around a training plan that catered for marathon running, as well as the training that went with that, and any other races that were built towards that 26.2 mile race. Simply put anything that wasn’t specifically to do with my marathon training I didn’t pay much attention to it.

That has now changed from my experiments with different approaches to training over the Summer. Whilst the Summer of 2017 did not result in the best races, or training progression for that matter; it did show me the benefit of increasing my mileage during the week ,and then doing a quicker but shorter long run over the weekend. After my marathon training at the beginning of 2017 I thought with the slightly lower mileage it would be easier. In fact I found it pretty damn hard, as the training fatigue combined with the heat made me quite tired. My track and tempo sessions weren’t great for this period, but what it gave me was a way of focussing on those workouts and I how approach them. 

This has benefitted me greatly coming into the cross country season. Obviously it was not fun spending most of August and September recovering from ITB issue. Most of all I am grateful to be just running consistently again and looking forward to running through serious amounts of mud.

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.