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Friday 10 February 2006Almeria was a grand weekend, and life hasn't quite returned to normal. Perhaps the apres-race took it out of me. Whatever it was, I seem to have taken my eye off the ball. Last Saturday I had a difficult 18 miler. The first 12 or 14 were OK, but the rest was cold and dark and slow. For the first time in a long time, I began to wonder about the wisdom of marathons, and these long preparatory runs. Why not stick with halfs, I started to think? Next day, with M away at the in-laws, I popped out for a few beers and watched Chelsea play Liverpool on TV at the local pub. What a gloomy experience that was. Added to the unsatisfactory run the day before, it made for a ruminative Sunday evening. To round off a bad few days, I woke on Monday with a severe pain in my lower back, and had to take an extra couple of days rest from running. Since then, things have perked up. I've crawled back on the wagon, and while the back has remained painful all week, by last night the discomfort had begun to ebb away -- enough to let me out for a club run. It was a good 4½ miler, and fell on the 'cure' side of the Kill or Cure ultimatum I'd given myself. Cold and dark again, but the company helped to sugar that pill, and anyway, the run wasn't long enough for fatigue and disillusionment to drill its holes through my spine. This recent disruption means my training plan is up the spout, but what's new? It happens every year, 4 or 5 weeks in. I've been thinking about it. The first temptation is to attack myself for my indolence or weediness of spirit or physical incompetence, or some other real or imagined defect. I'm not the perfect athlete, it's true, but there's something more here. Could it be that the plans I follow are unrealistic? I wouldn't dismiss training plans of course, but I do wonder if the one-size-fits-all tendency is too crude. It's not that I think that the Novice plans are too rudimentary, say, or the Intermediate plans too advanced. No, I've wondered whether the plans I adopt don't take races into account the way they need to. So it's not that the plans are at fault per se, but that they are too linear, that they demand a steadiness, an evenness of advance that is unrealistic once the racing season comes along. Races are the raison d'etre of running for me. Yes, I glory in the joy that fills the aftermath of an ordinary training run, a pleasure that warms you through like a blast of strong sunshine -- but I still think of them as small steps on the road to some greater destination. Training runs are the snacks; the bread and potatoes. Races are the smoked salmon, the lobster, the vintage Bollinger. They do more than satisfy our hunger; they nourish the emotions too. It's running alright, but with all the missing bits added. February to April are the big racing months. Tough months, but the period that feeds the rest of the year. Each race I do seems like a landmark; another mysterious Station of the Cross. They hit me hard, partly because I'm old and fat, and partly because I'm a bit of a girl. It's a potent cocktail; the hallucinations are tremendous. On the downside, it's exhausting, mentally and physically. Imagine this. There's a gleaming, glossy training schedule on the wall. We keep throwing ourselves at it. In the early weeks of winter we are too hard and dry and crumbly. We bounce off the chart; bits get knocked off us. We soften up, and after a while we stick to the plan. This lovely phase lasts for a few weeks but then, passing through late winter and into spring, the races start to appear. Too much emotion, too much effort. Now I'm at the other end of the spectrum: wet and weak. I start sliding off my schedule again. Which is why I wonder.... is it the me that's wrong (as I've assumed)? Or is it the schedule that's wrong? Wrong for me, I should say. Next time I copy a training plan into my spreadsheet, I'll do so with the knowledge, the assumption, that as races get plugged in here and there, the plan and the expectations must be amended. Next up is the Wokingham Half Marathon on Sunday. Not a dish I've sampled before, and all the more exciting for that. Bon Appetit. Comment
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Sunday 12 February 2006 - Wokingham Half Marathon The lobster was off; the vintage Bolly a little sour. The Wokingham Half was a race that didn't quite do it for me.
It isn't the organisers' fault. There are one or two minor organisational grumbles, but nothing that merits an assault on them, and there was plenty to thank them for and congratulate them on. But this race broke me in half. The quest for perfect race preparation goes on. I add or remove an ingredient each time, hoping to produce the perfect recipe. I've never run the day before a race, for instance. I worry that it will make me feel tired before I've even started. So this time I tried it, going for a leisurely 3½ miler on Saturday. And guess what? It made me feel tired before I even started the Half. Pre-race nutrition and hydration is a game of one-man chess. If I eat and drink too much, I'm bloated and lethargic. If I eat and drink too little, I worry that I'll run out of energy. So I thought, how about eating and drinking plenty, but doing so a bit earlier? I tried it, holding a secret little dorm party in what seemed like the middle of the night. Malt loaf, cereal bar, banana, sports drink. The runner's Holy Communion. Verdict? When I did eventually get up, I felt, yes, bloated and lethargic. I woke at 5, then at 6, 7, and 8. Every time I drifted back to sleep, I hoped that the weather crying and moaning outside my bedroom window would have shut up next time I opened my eyes. But when I got up at 8:30, the window was still rattling and that trickling sound could still be heard outside. Soft and peripheral, like a whispered threat. Nine o'clock, showered and kitted, sitting in the warm kitchen, lacing my shoes. The branches of the buddleia were tapping the window, and when they reach that far, I know it's windy out there. All I really wanted was to go back to bed and sleep, but instead I was about to step out on a cold, wet and windy day and run a half marathon. I knew I'd feel better once I was out there, but just then I felt tired and fat, and unenthusiastic. I considered throwing myself to the floor and sobbing loudly, but never carried it through. Instead, I sighed, put my fleece on and left the house. When I look on a map I see that Wokingham isn't far away - probably 10 miles. But to drive there seems almost impossible, and bizarrely involves heading in the opposite direction at times. There are few road signs to guide you, and they often conflict. No one can ever confidently tell you how to get there, and as a result, it's a town that's rarely visited by representatives of the outside world. This was a rare occasion when I succeeded in getting to it, though it did involve a number of U-turns and multiple visits to the same roundabout. Thank god for Radio 3. I don't listen to it much, but one of my minor traditions is to have it on while driving to a Sunday morning race. Five Live and Radio 4 are just too wordy and frenetic at that time on a Sunday. What I need is a calm head and relaxation. A spot of Gregorian chant or echoey avant-garde jazz or some sprightly Vaughan-Williams is just the thing when grappling with a trip to Wokingham. Characteristically, the organisers' map didn't bear much resemblance to the actualité. They were in on the conspiracy. I felt like Sergeant Howie in The Wicker Man. Yes, that's it. This wasn't the Wokingham, but the Wicker Man Half Marathon. A chill ran down my spine. I drove through the empty streets, looking for evidence of 2000 people about to run 13 miles. It reminded me of that time in Huddersfield, trying to locate the 10K race, but having no idea where it was to start. I had to drive around the town, looking for suspicious demographic patterns. I needed groups with a disproportionate number of training shoes in evidence. Shorts and water bottles earned extra points. I got there eventually. (When I later told my wife this, she said: "Why didn't you just ask someone?" That hadn't occurred to me.) Back in Wokingham, I mused over that old nightmare scenario: suppose they had a race and no one but me turned up? And then I spotted an elderly gent in purple, lycra leggings and trainers. It wasn't much, but was all I had to go on. I parked up and followed him at a distance to avoid suspicion -- and was eventually led into a park where in the distance, I could at last see a crowd and hear a crackling tannoy urging us to find a place in the start line. It was still teeming with rain though the wind, at least, had died down. My bin-liner wasn't doing me a lot of good. I must write to the manufacturers of these things, and urge them to think about the runner with the fuller figure when next considering a re-design. 1700 people flapped and chattered for a bit before the hooter liberated us. It took just over a minute to cross the start line, and we were away. Almost. Barely a minute into the race, we all stopped again, as the path narrows into a funnel, and only the fleetest get through before the bottleneck blocks the massed field. The enforced dawdle had a grumpificatory effect on us, but on reflection, was probably a good thing. It kept the pace of the opening half mile down to a modest warm-up. The organisers had saved us from ourselves... I still didn't feel up for the race but tried to put a brave face on it. Yes it was cold and it was raining, but I was here and I had 13 miles to run, so I may as well batten down the hatches, get on with it, and do the best I can. Life slowly got better as I thawed out. I began to tick off the miles. 3,4,5 came and went and I was starting to get into my stride. I chatted to a chap in his 60s who had a "100 Marathon Club" teeshirt on. Around 6, I had a spot of banter with a policeman about the rain, which led to a natter with a personable girl called Hannah from Hereford, running her first half marathon and aiming for London, where she'll be running for the Alzheimer's Trust. As I tend to do, I gave her loads of advice that she hadn't sought and which, let's face it, I'm not particularly qualified to give. Pre-race nutrition, training plans, race strategy. Hardly things I can feel that I've mastered. Dazed by this uninvited barrage of information, she politely urged me to go on ahead if I wished... The Wokingham Half has the reputation of being topographically pancakesque. Perhaps it was just me, but I definitely spotted a few inclines and bumps and rising road bridges over the motorways. Nothing too taxing though. Despite the occasional motorway scenery, this race turned out to be a pleasant countryside run. Very Berkshire. Dense woods, lanes, neat hedges and beaming rich people standing in their front gardens, hands decently gloved, politely clup-clupping. They looked so wholesome and normal that I couldn't help feeling deeply suspicious. What were they concealing? What were they really up to? I couldn't get the Wicker Man image out of my head. And then it hit me. Passing the overgrown front garden of an empty house, I spotted the key to all this: a tattered "Vote John Redwood" poster flapping on a pole. Of course. Planet Zog's most famous export made his home here. That says it all. That was the shameful secret that these wretched people were hiding. John Redwood. It brought to mind a snippet from a House of Commons debate featuring Redwood and the Beast of Bolsover: Mr. John Redwood (Wokingham): The Chancellor now tells us that some Departments are leaving it very late. He says that some do not know how to tackle embedded systems and telecommunications--[Interruption.] Hon. Members should listen, because this is very serious for the services that they and their constituents will want.Back on earth, after 9 miles, I was still on target. 10 minutes per mile, that's all I was aiming for. I passed the 9 mile mark bang on 90 minutes. But after this point, it got harder. I did manage to do the 10th in 10 miles too, but this time it felt different. What had seemed like an even plod before, was now a rather more painful struggle. Hereford Hannah caught me up again, and we chatted some more. I told her about the website. She asked me what a blog was. I find it strangely reassuring that there are still people out there who aren't up to their armpits in the internet. It might partly explain why she said "Wow! Is that the M4? That's cool!" as we did nothing more exciting than run across a bridge. A few minutes later, we parted company again, though this time it was she who struck out and went ahead. 
I chugged on. Words on signposts like Hurst, Binfield, Bracknell, Shurlock Row gave me plenty to think about. These are places that once meant things to me. Binfield in particular. The name was already rolling around the back my brain when the smell of woodsmoke hit as I passed a row of cottages, and together they gave me a small jolt. Who would have thought, back then, that 27 years later, I'd be running a half marathon along this lane? Crazy idea. I don't suppose my 1979 addled, hassled head could have absorbed the notion. Stories for another time, my friends. Those last three miles were tough. Mentally tough too. I stopped for a pee without trying to put it off. Normally I decide to hold on till the end, but there was suddenly a sense of "who cares?", and I trotted off up some path into the forest without worrying about the minute or two it would cost me. I got round, of course, but the end of the race gave me plenty to think about. A lot of questions passed through my mind. Why do I bother? I find it hard to improve. Is it worth the effort? Can I expect to just keep getting better? Am I too old? Perhaps I should adopt the John Bingham outlook, and forget about times and targets, concentrating on the participation and the social side instead. Perhaps I shouldn't bother with distances over 10 miles? Still it was raining. Just like in that movie, Seven, where it rains in every scene. No one seems to notice that. It also rained in every scene of the Wokingham Half. Was this why there were worms everywhere? I've recently developed a heightened worm awareness, for reasons that I won't bore you with, but even so, was I the only person to notice that the roads were filled with desperate earthworms? I must have seen hundreds of the poor creatures, some 6 inches or more long. Where were they going? From where had they come? Why this sudden urge to move? Migrating from one side of the Henley Road to the other must be like me moving from England to Easter Island. Or even more bizarre, from Easter Island to England. I wonder what happened at Mile 10? All I know is that before then I was OK -- working hard, but OK -- and after that, something punctured. Something inside me broke. I could almost hear the glass shattering, the scaffolding buckling and clattering to the ground, taking me with it. There were one or two positive hits in those final miles. A group of runners came past me wearing teeshirts saying "Gosport Joggers". A pretty young girl with a fantastic grin and a beautiful bottom called out "Come on Reading, nearly there!" I could have hugged her. If only I could have caught her. Story of my life, boys... I passed a solitary, laughing squaddie. Why was he laughing? He clapped furiously as I approached. "Well done", he shouted. I called back: "Well done to you too". He slapped his thigh and laughed yet more uproariously. The thing is, he wasn't laughing at me. I could tell. He was just laughing because he was a man who loved laughing. I could still hear him guffawing loudly as other people passed him, behind me. It cheered me up. At long last, the end was reached. At least, I presumed it to be the end, because a smiling girl handed me a medal in a plastic sleeve, and I could see temporary barriers and sweaty groups of red-faced people standing around in huddles so close that their dangling medals jangled against each other. Where was the finish line? I don't know. I shuffled on for a bit, but eventually turned my watch off and carried on walking. No goody bag, no consoling Mars Bar to mainline some sugar into my rattling frame. That was the anticlimactic it. I walked on through the wind, on through the rain, though my dreams were tossed and blown. In 7½ weeks I'm lining up in Zurich, having to get a decent PB just to be allowed to finish the race, and be deemed worthy of a teeshirt and finisher's medal. If I manage a PB by 9 minutes there, it won't be enough. Can I do it? I don't know. My suspicions about the Wicker Man Half weren't immediately dispersed by the journey home. As I drove away from the race area, there were no signs for anywhere more than a couple of miles away. So I was now in The Prisoner too. Eventually I came to a T-junction. One direction was Henley, the other Bracknell. I didn't want to go to either of these places. As the hoots behind me got louder, I plumped for Henley. A mile or so further on, I came to a sign saying straight on for Bracknell. No mention of Henley. I decided it didn't matter, and just kept going. I didn't see Bracknell or Henley mentioned again, and I never reached either place. Later on, ruminating over a glass of Unwin's cheapest Champagne, I looked back on the day. It's a funny thing, but while I often get fed up in a race, I usually recover after a shower and a small tumbler of shandy. This hasn't happened with Wokingham. I felt gloomy then, and I feel gloomy now. And yet... despite what you might think, I'm not a pessimist. I hate negativity. It gets us nowhere. What gets us somewhere is a plan and a good attitude. And some inspiration. And on a damp and dismal day, I found plenty of inspiration. I found it in anxious, first-time Hannah. I found it in the grinning Gosport lass, and I found it in the laughing soldier. Thanks to all of them. Click Here (Speakers on.) Comment
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Saturday 18 February 2006No wonder I felt knackered after the Wokingham Half. The results show that I did the race twice. Someone with my name, race number and club finished in 1:50, then apparently went back and did it again, this time trailing home in 2:18. I feel better about my performance now.I've been wondering about my falling energy levels. Is it a hideous portent of my nightmarish appointment with the Grim Reaper....? Or a lack of carbohydrate? I've decided to pile my money on the latter hypothesis. I've not mentioned that I've shed about 20 pounds in the last couple of months. I've not starved myself -- far from it -- but perhaps I've been a bit carb-averse. Thinking about it, I've eaten little but fruit and veg. And not very carby veg at that. So not much running fuel, and not much protein either. This week I've hit the problem head on by pigging out at every opportunity. Meat, fish, pasta and rice have been stuffed into every appropriate orifice. On the downside, I've run only twice: a casual 3½ miles on Tuesday, and a more testing 5 or 5½ miler with the club on Thursday. I dripped in last as usual, but it wasn't a bad outing. After 3 days and nights of compensatory over-eating, lubricated with plenty of beer and wine, this was never going to be easy. Sure enough, after 200 yards, stuck at the back of the straggly field, I was puffing and panting, and preparing to discover some mystery injury that would justify my wimping out of further torture. I hung on for a bit, then hung on some more. Eventually, the usual running miracle worked its wizardry, and instead of sinking further and further into self-pity and weediness, actually started to feel better. By the time I finished, more than 5 miles later, I'd almost caught up with the rump, and felt stronger than when I started. Five miles is one thing, but tomorrow, there's a 20 mile race to absorb. The Bramley 20 is one of those events I've meant to do for each of the last 4 years. I've always managed to find some excuse to duck out, but alas, not this time. It's two laps of a 10 mile circuit, and the event offers the chance for inadequate weeds to limit themselves to 10, or hold out for the glory of the whole enchilada. There's every chance that I'll turn out to be an inadequate weed, but we'll see. If I managed to do the Wokingham Half twice, who says I can't polish off the Bramley 10 at least a couple of times? Comment
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Sunday 19 February 2006 - Bramley 20 Miler"Ooooh, what a grey day".Another week, another aimless plod through rural England. The Bramley 20 is a bigger undertaking than last week's half marathon, but the tale is a simpler one. The running landscape was much the same as last weekend. Workaday agricultural land, patches of dense wood, humourless farmers, mazey lanes, rutted farm tracks. Grey skies. Foggy and cold. Lying awake at five o'clock this morning, I mulled over what to try this time. Like most hopeless plodders, I tell myself that all I need to do is shuffle the pieces into the right order, and Bingo! Today I was a Mourinho, not an Eriksson. I threw everything up in the air then snatched at a few things as they dropped again. Today I would...
So the big question -- did it work? -- remains unanswered. I set my sights low for this race. To do a sub-5 hour marathon, I need to clock up 26 miles at around 11:27. My aim at Bramley was to finish the race at this pace. The first 10 miles were good. I felt strong and capable, but not happy. It was a dismal day. An overcast, monochrome day. Gusty, with a freezing edge to the wind, I never felt cosy or pleased to be there. I've railed against those who listen to radios or MP3 players during races, but on this occasion I didn't eat my own dogfood. I just couldn't face 20 blank miles on a day like this. So I strapped on my new iPod Nano, and listened to 3 episodes of the Ricky Gervais shows currently doing the rounds, interspersed with a random selection of tunes. There was something grimly appropriate about me of all people, in the second half of the race, pulling out the iPod and setting it to Shuffle. It's exactly what I did for the second 10 miles. 12 miles in, the heavens opened, and the cold, gloopy rain never stopped. Man, it was bad. Cold, wet and weak. Pissed off. I chugged and I chugged, each mile walking for one minute. But I got round. The last 2 or 3 miles were pretty murderous; as hard as the tail of any marathon I've clung to. Part of me is pleased of course. I don't want to do myself down. Let's face the facts: I ran a 20 mile race in the pouring rain, on a bitterly unpleasant wintry February morning. This wasn't a sheltered urban course, but open countryside. Allow me to do something I rarely do -- give myself a shred of credit for sticking at it, when all my instincts told me to forget it. 20 miles is an achievement. I came in at 3:49 which means my pace was, yes, 11:27, precisely the rate I need to achieve to get round my marathon in 5 hours. This may seem like good news, but the second 10 miles were much slower than the first. Instead of giving me hope for my Zurich task, it seemed to do the opposite. I had to wonder why I was doing this to myself. Perhaps I should act my age, and lower my sights. Comment
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Tuesday 28 February 2006Six weeks to Zurich, and things are ropey. Bumping along on your arse like this is painful, but it must be about as bad as it gets. I fell asleep back there, and missed my stop. Now I'm just waiting for the bus to slow down long enough for me to jump off, and begin the long trek back.Another lesson learned the uncomfortable way. Maybe races aren't always such a good idea. It's not easy to predict their impact. A good race might be a non-stop ticket to nirvana, but a hard race will mash your spirit like little else. There were times in the last few miles at Bramley when I could hear my own skeleton rattling. When you hear the wind moaning like a harmonica through your own bones, you need to ask yourself some hard questions. I talked about races a few entries ago, when I mentioned the peculiar effect they have on training plans. In a fit of grinning self-delusion, maybe I varnished the point. The spin was too positive. When they go wrong, good intentions are not just rerouted, but shredded. The last few weeks have knocked me right off balance. I've been doing this long enough now to know I should have clung on tight and kept going. Instead I wilted, and stopped off in that dark, warm cosy hole where the bar never shuts and the chocolate, cheese and ice cream dispenser never stops chugging in the corner. Wooh! It feels good in there, but when you venture outside once more, as you surely must, the light is just too bright for comfort. So I've had an indolent 10 days. No running; too much low-life high-living. In my defence, work has been hectic and taken me to Germany again, and Manchester; I've even seen the bright lights of Milton Keynes on a couple of occasions; but these trips needn't be disruptive, even if they're over-nighters. Particularly if they're over-nighters. The chance to run in an unfamiliar dawn should never be turned down if at all possible. Bah. One bad week is one bad week. I've not quite hit the buffers, but I'm in a siding, in need of a few repairs. Just at the moment, it's hard to feel confident about Zurich, but a few days of twilit plodding, vegetable-crunching and general goody-goodiness, and all will be well on Planet RC once again. So, no more alcohol till the afternoon of Sunday April 9th, when a long, glistening schooner of something cold and Swiss awaits. It's my final warning. Comment
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