Almeria 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.
