5 Weeks Left.

[Riazor Blue]

Here we are on Wednesday. My mini taper for the Vig-Bay half on Sunday hasn't quite gone to plan, but I'm aiming to rectify that in the coming days.

Monday - enforced rest day, due to lots of other things happening.

Tuesday - enforced rest day, due to lots of other things happening.

Wednesday - enforced re... no, no, no... I managed to slip a sneaky 8km in this morning along the esplanade. They say that for the most benefit, one shouldn't just do easy stuff while tapering, so the idea for this morning was 8km at 10km pace, more or less. Well, 34'55".

400 metre series tomorrow I hope, 10km easy on Friday and a day off on Saturday. That's the idea, let's see if it's effective.

In the few spare moments I have no, I've just booked my hotel for Madrid. It's a bit far out, near the Bullring. 80€ per night for a double, the same for a single, I'm still hoping that the girlfriend can get the Saturday off work. It's called the Rafaelhoteles Ventas.

I checked last night on the MAPOMA wbsite and I'm finally registered as entered. I was getting worried that the sports shop had not sent off my free adidas entry form. I think that if one still has not entered by 1st April, the price goes up to something like 80€ or more - I didn't want to be paying that.

On a sad note.... Poor old Deportivo. Things look tough now. Who am I kidding? It's next to impossible to qualify now. How are we going to win 3-0 against Milan? Impossible.

Crystal Palace are still in with a shout of the playoffs though.

[Riazor Blue]

OK. A change of plan. This is it you see, I don't actually have a plan. Practically everybody in the world uses a training schedule for the marathon. On the other hand, I do what I fancy. I know more or less the type and intensity of training that I should be doing and strangely enough I have the motivation to get me into the shorts and out the door. Of course, it's possible that I train too much, but so far the body has not started complaining.

Where my problem lies is in the fact that as I read more about training methods, and as I chat more with othere runners I think to myself "That's a good idea, I can incorporate that into what I do". Of course I cannot go changing tack every other day so it's a challenge to stay with what I know to be more or less effective.

Yesterday I went for my 400m series, completing 10 x 400m. Each 400m taking 90 seconds, with 60 seconds recovery between series. Added onto this was a 2km warm up and 2 more to cool down after.

My change of plan comes today. I have decided on a rest day today instead of the easy 10km. Tomorrow I will do 13km easy instead. The reasoning is a slight tightness behind my right knee. I know, as I have had this before, that with a couple of days with a neoprene support and lashings of MediKramer Hot-Rub that the knee will be better than ever by Saturday.

[Antonio247]

Hello, Brian

I´m sorry you´re feeling some discomfort in your leg. I think that if you are going to run Vigo half marathon on Sunday, you shouldn´t do such a long distance on Saturday because at the race you might feel more uncomfortable. I´d do just 5 or 6 kms very very softly and a lot of stretching after training. Thus, on Sunday you´ll feel great. Although this week you´ve reduced your mileage, the series are quite tiring.

I remember that for Almería half I couldn´t train much that week because I had a strong cold and I felt stronger because my legs hadn´t suffered much the previous days.

Good luck and get better!

Antonio

[Riazor Blue]

Vigo is 100 miles from La Coruña and the clocks went forward at the weekend. The half marathon began at 11.00 which is fairly civilised. However I had to pick up my race number beforehand, which meant being there before 10.00. As it was a friend’s bithday on Friday, we took the opportunity stay the night with her and her husband in a village about 10 miles from Vigo. We picked up another friend on the way, part of my support crew and met up on Saturday night in a bar in Vigo.

Naturally, being someone’s birthday one has to celebrate, and as the bar was one of the many Irish theme bars that have sprung up all over the world one has to celebrate with guiness. Then of course after watching the rugby it’s time for dinner. Pizza, wine, coffees etc. Back to Porriño, a quick beer while chatting and the next thing I know is that it’s 2 in the morning.

So my pre-race preparation was not exactly perfect. Luckily, while the rest of the household was showering, having breakfast and so forth, I managed an extra ¾ hour sleep. I arose at 8.45 had a quick cup of cofee with a couple of excellent shortbread biscuits made by my friend Belén and off we all set at 9.00 (or 8.00 in real time).

The morning was clear, bright and cold. The thermometer in the car indicated 5 degrees. We arrived at the starting line in front of the Grand Hotel on Samil Beach at 9.30. There was a list with the runners names and numbers stuck on the window. I found mine and collected my bag with race number, t-shirt and timing chip. By the start was a stand giving out aquarius, an isotonic drink made by coca cola, so I grabbed one of those. We found a café on the beach and had cofee and croisants.

After emptying the system it was time to warm up a bit, which was quite difficult considering it was so cold. My cheer squad had retreated to the car. I queued up to activate the timing chip and ran a few lengths of a little road perpendicular to the start. We were called to the start line at 10.55, I put myself just past halfway, probably in position 600 out of the 1,100 runners (of whom 50 or so were women). We waited at the start for 10 minutes, a delay of only 5 minutes is something quite unusual here, normally it’s a fair bit longer. Just as my arms began to go numb in the cold the starter fired his pistol and we were off.

We ran just over a kilometer up the road to a roundabout, turned round and ran back to where we started, turned round just beyond the start and carried on past the roundabout.

At this point I should describe my tactics for the race:



:

[Riazor Blue]

OK then, I did have a bit of an idea of what I wanted to do. In the blurb about the course it said that after the first four kms there was a climb of about 100m over the following 5km. After that it was steadily downhill to the finish, again at sea level. My idea was to run steady, using the first 4km to guage my tempo. My aim was 4’30” per km. If possible see if I could push on in the last 8km ( 8km, psycologically speaking is the easiest training run I do, so it should be a breeze).

I went through the first km in 4’45”, the second in 9’00” the third in 13’30” and found my rhythm. During the first 4km I passed a few runners, only for them to pass me again ½ km further on. After this happened a few times, I decided to stick with a group and see how things went. I have to say that something didn’t feel quite right in those first few kms. There was something missing. Perhaps it was 2 hours sleep. Or I was carrying something extra (guinness). Normally I have a pouch of Isostar apple sports food before a half, but as I had the sports drink I decided to wait until the first water station. Perhaps that was the problem.

We passed 5km in about 22’30”, I was so interested in trying to get my bottle of water I forgot to press the lap button on the watch. We had already had a couple of short hills, and now were moving a little inland. The sun was warming up at last and by km 7.5 I was glad to see the sponge station. I had decided to wear a short sleeved lycra style t-shirt for the race as it had served me well in chilly races such as San Sebastian and Santiago. Even at the start line, with my numb extremities I thought I had made the right decision. By km7 I wished I had worn a running vest. I don’t know, but I think it was about 17 degrees in the sunshine.

We passed through a few small aldeas before reaching the next water station at 10km in the village of Nigrán. We passed over the second timing mat of the course and again, with the distractions of the water station, timing mats and dodging bottle tops I forgot to check the watch. I looked a little later and we had passed the 10km in about 44’45”. The main part of the climb had finished at this point, but I could see an incline streatching out in front of me for about 1km. The description indicated that it was downhill from 10km, but we had received a note along with the race number which said there was a change in route due to roadworks, perhaps it was this part of the course.

After 11km we started to descend, only gently, but that’s the best way to descend. I had changed groups a couple of times on the way, the first group abandoned me at the first water station as I struggled to negotiate my water and Isostar Actifood. I had then tagged onto a couple of veteran runners from Ferrol whose club colours were flourescent green. A good job that I was wearing the sunglasses. By km11 I was tacked onto a mottely bunch of runners, some were in club vests, others wearing the freebie Vig-Bay t-shirt and a lady runner. She had caught up from behind and was the first I had seen since the starting line. Some of the group tried their hardest to impede her race, she was obviously faster than them and they didn’t like it. There was another welcome sponge at 12.5km, I was definitely too warm in my umbro T, and thought about taking it off , but knew that running bare chested is not a good idea.

Passing 14km, I decided to increase the pace a little, we had just left the main coast road and were descending to the beach road at Praia América (where there are good Atlantic rollers in Summer – the beaches along this part of the Rias Baixas are excellent). The lady runner managed to pass the group at around 15km and I followed, she had her sights on a girl from the Cambre Cycling Club, about 300m ahead. We rejoined the main road and in the distance I could see the castle in Baiona that now houses the Parador. There were more sponges at 17.5km, just before we crossed a bridge that crosses a small inlet alongside an older roman bridge.

By 19km we were entering Baiona, we had passed the camping site where I spent a few days over the festival of St. James last Summer. My lady pace runner had nearly caught her competitor, and had left me about 30 metres behind. I was determined that I would not be passed by anybody from there to the finish. Ok, so an old boy chugged past me puffing and panting, but with that kind of effort, he deserves to beat me. And then another one, a guy about 30 years old who was sat rubbing his feet at 15km passed at 19.5km. I passed three or four on the way, so it wasn’t so bad.

I hadn’t looked at my watch since around 12km. I wasn’t really enjoying the race, it had been harder than I thought, what with the lack of sleep, the heat, wine & beer etc. At km 20 I sneaked a look at the watch and it said that I had only to run the last 1.1km in six minutes to complete the race in my secretly desired time of 1hour 35 minutes. I was now running alongside the CCC girl, I had tried to pass but she speeded up. I thought to myself that really, she’s in a different race so what the hell. We passed a roundabout just after 20km, and on exiting I felt a sharp, sharp pain in my right ankle.

The first thing I thought, and the anke hurt a lot, was; “S**t, there goes the marathon”. Now, it would have been sensible to pull up at this point. I knew that I would do 95 minutes if fit, so why bother continuing? Because I’m a stubbourn idiot. I had slowed with the pain, but now it was gone. I don’t think that CCC girl had noticed, I was still just behind her. Then the pain again. Like being prodded by a knitting needle. It subsided and I continued. I couldn’t wait for the finish line. I could see an inflatable coke advert arch, like they have at the finish line of races, but the runners continued running through it.

And it continued like this for the last half a kilometer, me breathing down the neck of the girl from the Cambre Cycling Club, her speeding up to avoid being overtaken, me sticking in behind with no intention to overtake, while every 70 metres or so OUCH. I crossed the line with 1hour 33 minutes and 44 seconds on my watch. So there was my new PB, a full 6 minutes faster than my previous best in Selbly back in October. And all I could think was “you idiot, why didn’t you pull up? You don’t know what damage you might have done”

My cheer squad was waiting for me, not understanding why I was so thoughtful. For them, being non runners, it’s logical that after running 21.1km that something is going to hurt. It would have been futile trying to explain that this was a different sort of pain, this was the pain of something that probably will not disappear in a couple of days. That this is the sort of pain which may mean that I have wasted 3 months of hard training.

Last night and today I have been applying ice every couple of hours and the anke feels a bit better. I think that I will not be running much this week, if at all. I am sure that it’ll be alright on the day though. With my wonder hot-run and the ice treatment, no probs. So, the day after a bittersweet race, I can look back on the acheivement of a new PB 1:33:44, run at 4’27” per km, which is what I had aimed for (well, I aimed for 4’30). With a bit of care and attention I will get to run in Madrid. If the ankle is OK, then running at 4’45” per km is acheivable, so that will be the aim.

And now…. Back to the ice.

[Antonio247]

Congratulations, Brian! It´s a pity you got injured but I hope your ankle will get better soon. Take it easy. We´ve got still nearly four weeks for Madrid.

Best wishes.

Antonio

[Antonio247]

Hello, Brian

How are you? Are you getting better from your injury in your right ankle? I hope so although I´m worried about you. Please, tell us something.

Good luck! ¡Buena suerte!

Greetings from Almería.

Antonio