Ooooh me legs !!! Toral 2005

[Riazor Blue]

On Thursday though a customer told me something which made me think. He has run over 30 marathons, his best being 2h36. He said though, that it took him until his thirteenth marathon to learn how to run them. He was talking about negative splits. So we chatted about this, about doing too much in the first half ( his worst was 1h14 for the first half, finishing in 3h15, whilst aiming for 2h40). We talked about the psychology involved in having half the runners passing you in the first 15 kilometers, but knowing that you’d be passing them when it mattered most. He told me that having the discipline to run so conservatively to begin with is the most difficult part. What else? His eyes also told me that he thought that 3h06 would be really hard from the time I had in Betanzos. On Thursday and Friday, then, whilst trying to digest all those carbohydrates, I also tried to digest this advice.
Speaking of carbohydrates, there was the small matter of the carbo loading. My secret weapon was to be Kelloggs All-Bran bars, then lots of pasta on Thursday, rice on Friday and mashed potato on Saturday, all this washed down with flagons of water and isotonic drinks. There were sardines on Thursday night aswell, as it was the feast night of San Juan: a night where barbequed sardines and cheap wine are king. It’s my favourite festival here in Spain, it’s Spanish bonfire night mixed in with mid-summer night and a bit of hallow’een. In La Coruña, the bonfires on Orzan beach are the most famous, having been given the status of ‘fiesta of national importance’ last year (sadly it pissed down with rain last year). We had our traditional sardiñada with the Peña David in Plaza España and then fought our way along the seafront to see the bonfires.
I thought I would enjoy the carbo loading, but the reality was that I was bloated and uncomfortable right up to Sunday morning. It didn’t help that for the vast quantities that I was eating, there wasn’t much coming out the other end. Still, I carried on. Bea, being over six months pregnant, had been told to cut down on all the things I was now eating in vast quantities. I think she was as envious of my spicy indonesian rice as I was of her mixed salad.
On Saturday morning the achilles was still a little tender, I had been massaging it with an analgesic to see if that would help, but there hadn’t been much improvement. I decided that it was probably more mental than physical as I can remember a spurious knee pain last year and a phantom bout of shin splints before San Sebastian a few years ago, none of which caused me problems on the day. Even if there was a bit of pain, I thought that my long Paula socks would provide all the support needed (however silly they look).
After lunch on Saturday we headed off for Toral de los Vados, the car was loaded to the hilt. Apart from the normal , there was my post race bag, the beach bag for the river after the race, the sun tan lotion bag, there was the food and drinks bag, plus the bag with the pillows from home. During the journey I was still deciding on how to run on Sunday, what pace should I go for? Should I aim for a negative split, and if so what pace for the first half? We were a little concerned in the hotel that there was no air conditioning in the rooms. I had asked for air con because of Bea, and was told that the hotel had it. What they didn’t tell me was that air con was in the public areas and not in the rooms. The Bierzo in Summer is quite a bit hotter than La Coruña, indeed, on Saturday afternoon it was five degrees hotter in Toral than in La Coruña. The hotel room, though, felt like an oven.
Heading off to collect my race number, we had arranged to meet up with Simon and the Baggie family. We spent a couple of hours with them on the terrace of a bar in Toral, Bea and Rosana talking babies and pregnancies, Simon and I talking running and beautiful baby Lara just looking beautiful. I don’t think that I actually mentioned what my strategy for the race would be in the end, I think that both Simon and Rosana were a bit concerned that I was going out to half kill myself. I had almost decided on my plan, and it was going to be fairly conservative.
After a late (and enormous) supper we headed off to bed at around midnight. It was too hot in the room to sleep, we opened the windows and it was just as hot, plus we could now hear the traffic on the main Coruña – Madrid highway which was in front of the hotel. We closed the windows, swapped sides in the bed to see if I’d be able to sleep. Bea dropped off, but I lay there sweating, counting cars, and deciding on my pace for the morning.