A perfect running day in late autumn: bright and sunny, but cold. No run is ever flawless, but today’s was as good as I’ve had in a long time. Like Brighton last weekend, I set out with low expectations, but arrived home feeling pleasantly surprised. This could become a good habit.
If you stick at it, there seems to come a time in almost any repetitive activity when suddenly you start to get it, and pass from self-conscious, frustrated neophyte into some other identity; some interim stage on the road to expertise. As a fledgeling marathoner, I entered this happy state once or twice, though I never pushed on from there onto a higher level, preferring to adopt the behaviour of the Victorian pyramid explorers who would discover a new vault, take a quick look around, then seal it up again, intent on returning at a later date to investigate more fully. I won’t ever become a running virtuoso, but I am aiming to make better progress than I’ve managed up till now, and with that goal in mind, today was a breakthrough.
Considering I’ve been plodding on and off for 7 years, including a few marathons, it’s hard to explain to myself, never mind anyone else, why today’s 8.67 miles can be considered so significant. It’s true that I’ve been down this track before, but after the long break that began not just this summer, but probably on June 30 last year, or perhaps even on the day of the Zurich Marathon, 2½ years ago, I do feel that I’m almost starting all over again, even if it can never be quite the same as the first time.
We talked about this last Sunday, during out post-Brighton 10K lunch. Andy (SP) is a more extreme case than me. As far as I can recall, his plodding days fizzled out sometime after Almeria in 2005. The shock of edging in front of me at the climax of that race provided a laurel on which he has smugly reclined, glass in hand, ever since. As all readers of the forum will know, he is back in the jogging saddle, and aiming for Almeria 09 (albeit the 10K, rather than the grown-up’s race). But anyway, we were agreeing that once you’ve done a half or a marathon, the prospect of doing another, even after a long lay-off, will never be as daunting as that first time. You’ve done it already, so the tension of uncertainty doesn’t exist.
A caveat is that I’d like to progress further than I’ve managed before, so there is an element of doing something new. But that’s enough of that. I’ve daydreamed in public too often before, so I’ll leave that thought half-concealed for the moment.
Back to today. I pushed on from last Sunday’s 6.2 miles to 8.67, which was heartening enough. But unusually for me, I went for the hilliest local route I could come up with. It starts with a flat 3 mile canal jaunt as a warm-up, before turning off onto the Bradfield road, where it quickly spirals up into a Loch Ness monster-style series of inclines and falls. The graphic from mapmyrun.com (below) doesn’t do it justice. There are 6 distinct hills — a couple of them particularly long and steep by my standards. They appear in two clumps spread over about 3 miles, leaving a final flat 1½ miles as a warm-down. I’ve run this route several times over the years, but not recently. What was notable about today is that it’s the first time ever I’ve run the entire way without having to take a walk break — or to just stop for a breather.
The first incline is particularly severe, and I nearly didn’t make it. I don’t recall ever fighting for breath like this before. I was filling my lungs, but it didn’t seem to be quite enough. Despite the struggle, I made it up without stopping, before an equally steep downward slope gave me another set of problems. The surprising thing was that as I continued, instead of feeling weaker and gloomier, I seemed to be gaining strength and confidence. By miles 5 and 6, I knew that nothing was going to stop me getting round without a break.
It was a stunning vindication for the gym sessions I’ve been doing. All that stepping and cycling and cross-training during the 22 visits over the past few weeks have made a clear difference. As well as strengthening muscles ignored by normal running on the flat, they’ve made me fitter: increasing endurance and stamina. Today’s run was the first opportunity to prove it. Best of all was the feeling that, as I finished, I knew I could have gone on to do more. I read enviously of people finishing a run with “more in the tank”. It’s something I’ve rarely experienced.
I won’t embellish or analyse this further. I just want to record that it’s the best run I’ve had in a long time. I can’t think of a better one since Zurich in April 2006.
