Ten weeks ago, I boldly instructed my spreadsheet that this was it. "Starting over".
A week later, I tried again, and this time actually put in a good week of easing-back activity: just one leisurely 3½ mile run-walk, but supplemented with a couple of good bike rides, a trip to the gym, and 1½ hours of gardening. A total of five and a half fairly sweaty hours. Good start.
But that was it. The following week, I resuccumbed to the usual summer disease — beer and cricket and sunlit idleness — and I’ve pretty much stayed there ever since.
The trouble is, this indolent lifestyle is not quite so pleasant as it seems. Ot at least, it’s subject to the law of diminishing returns. What starts off as a luxurious penthouse, with gratifying views over past effort, eventually becomes a piss-drenched mattress in a basement squat. The fatter and more breathless I’ve become, the less fun it all seems.
Last year, I had something I called the "Lewes hamburger moment", when I was suddenly forced to confront my chronic lack of fitness. Just this week, I’ve had a similar experience. It doesn’t deserve a name, but it came when I had trouble finding a pair of trousers that I could fasten round my bloated midriff. The scales told me I’d invited 25 pounds or so on-board since the Boston Marathon. Time to show them the door again.My resolve was stiffened by an email from Phil Chalmers, the sports therapist who helped me stay injury-free in the weeks leading up to Boston. He wrote:
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Have been peeking into your log on & off but not noticed any updates. Hope it’s because the training’s been going so well you’ve not had the time to update it.
I completed my longest race to date over the weekend. It was the 85 mile Ridgeway Challenge (doubling as the UK Trail Running Championships) – I came home 22nd out of 70+ starters in a time of 20hours 48min.
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A couple of vigorous bike rides followed, and a trip to the gym this morning. The 20 minute cross-trainer session was tough, but it was the 25 minutes on the treadmill that revealed just how far I’d sunk. My plan was to follow a plan glimpsed in the Furman FIRST schedule: 12 x 400m, separated by 90 seconds recovery. Perhaps the pace I set for the running spells were way too ambitious for my current state (11 km per hour, 08:45 minutes a mile). I reckoned that at 400 metre bursts this should have been doable, but I miscalculated. By the halfway point, I’d had enough, punching the off button, and heading home, surfing along the road on a tidal wave of my own sweat.
It hurt, but it had to. I’ve had enough revivals to know that I need to fight through a jungle of pain before catching sight of the sunlit peaks of my running goals. And what are my running goals? Phil’s email had me hesitantly fishing for what I’d announced a few weeks ago. Hmm. Well, an autumn half marathon isn’t going to happen at this rate, though there is a splatter of shorter races. I’ve accepted the invitation thrown at me by Seafront Plodder to take part in the Crawley 10K on October 18th. I’m also, as ever, signed up for the Brighton 10K in November.
I’ve noted the two immediately post-Christmas races I like to do (injury prevented me last year): the 6-mile, hilly Cliveden cross-country, and the New Year’s Day Hyde Park 10K.
In between, there’s still a chance of a half, though one I had my eye on, Barns Green, is now only 7 weeks away, which is probably 3 or 4 weeks too soon. I could possibly have made it if I’d kept my weight right down, but as usual, I have two tasks to deal with: shedding blubber, and getting race fit. They are related of course, and chipping away at one automatically assists the other, but I still have to plan for them as separate challenges. Looking at last year’s health drive, which started around the same time of year as this one, I managed to lose 15 or 16 pounds in in the first seven weeks. I’d be delighted to match that. On the running side, after seven weeks I was up to about 8 miles as a comfortable weekend run, so a long way short of the half marathon distance. It looks highly likely that Barns Green won’t happen for me.
The big challenges, as always, come next spring, with a batch of halfs to knock down. Almeria is 20 weeks away today — more than enough time to get down to fighting weight, and put in a decent time.Ten weeks after that is the half in Connemara. In between is the Reading, which I’m always embarrassed to admit is one of my favourite races. Plus all those other candidate events that flood the calendar around then.
And what of the athletic elephant in the room? What become of the marathon?
I had a chance conversation with someone recently. The fabled "bloke in the pub". I poured out my running neuroses, and he had a word for it. Three words: the "Blackburn Rovers syndrome".
He was dead right.
