Creaking

Marathon training builds to a crescendo in the highest mileage weeks, quietens down through the tapering process to give your body a chance to recover, before the finale of the race itself. This has been the week of the crescendo, and it has been the week where I have begun to feel like everything is creaking a bit. But I have got through it.

Last week was my highest mileage of the plan – running a total of forty two miles from Monday to Sunday – and boy have I felt it this week. My midweek runs have been a bit of a slog. I have felt quite a few niggles along the way. I have felt generally a bit tired. At the end of the week I had the longest single run of the training programme planned so that was playing on my mind. Oh, and one of my big toenails was showng all of the signs of wanting to detach itself. Other than that it has been great.

“an enormous challenge”

But this is what marathon training is all about. It is so off the scale nuts when you compare it to the training load for shorter distances, that it is bound to test you. This is the whole point. If the training is not testing you, pushing you to do things that perhaps you would not otherwise do, making you think about why you are doing it, then there is a risk that you turn up on race day without a true appreciation of what lies ahead. And what lies ahead is an enormous challenge, but with glory at the conclusion.

After my twenty mile run last Saturday, I dragged myself back out on Sunday for a 10km run with my friend Cara down at Aberdeen beach. This might sound a bit nuts of course – but as I say, marathon training IS nuts – but the Sunday run really helped loosen my legs off from the rigours of the previous day and it was a lovely, if breezy, morning to be out.

Mondays and Fridays have consistently been my rest days throughout this training block and they were never needed more than they were this week. I think psychologically, the prospect of this week, coming on top of last week, gave an added emphasis to my runs over the past couple of days. It was almost like my body was saying to my mind “hey, I have been bearing the burden for the last wee while, time for you to ship up and do some work”.

This is why the mental side of running is so important. There could have been a thousand reasons NOT to go out and run this week, loads of excuses which could have been trotted out about resting up, about giving myself a break, about enabling me to recover better, but they would have just been that. Excuses. What this week was about was overcoming those thoughts and ploughing on. It is mental strength – as well as physical fitness – which will get me to the finish line in Rotterdam. You cannot have one without the other.

“felt a bit of tightness”

With my JogScotland group I really had to push myself through a tough 10k on Tuesday night – I also felt a bit of tightness in a couple of places which was not great – then the hill reps on Wednesday night, and then another 10km on Thursday night. It would be wrong to say that all of that left me dreading my long run, but it sure as heck was not exactly helping me feel that I was going into it well rested.

“time to trust the process”

This is something which I think people training for a marathon, particularly their first, forget. When it comes to the race, I will be doing very little running in the week leading up to the event on Sunday. This week (and last) I had already banged out loads of miles and then had to go out and crunch out a twenty miler (or more) on top of that. It is easy to get to the end of the long runs just now totally exhausted, thinking about how am I going to manage another six miles or so on top of that on the big day, but that denies the reality of the fact that you are going into these runs already with some serious mileage in your legs. This is the time to trust the process,

The one positive thing I had to look forward to with my long run this week was the prospect of a different route – without my usual two or three miles uphill – as I was going to be running with a friend, Emma, who lives in the city centre, who is training for her first marathon event.

It was not easy. Long runs are not easy. But the route – while flat by Aberdeen standards – had more elevation than both of us will face in our races (Emma is running the Manchester Marathon) and so we both need to take the confidence that we were able to take from the run into the race day itself.

The longest run of the marathon training plan

I have been so fortunate through this training block to have had the support and the opportunity to run with a variety of different running friends, and all of them have played their part in helping me get ready for the race, so it was great to run with Emma and to pace her to her longest ever run. Thankfully, the weather this morning was half decent – saying it was good would be too much of a stretch as we still had a strong headwind for most of the first half of the route as we headed north and a little bit of rain – and just that variation of route meant that soon after we got going, the struggles of earlier in the week were forgotten and it was just another long run. We were both delighted to make it past the twenty one mile mark.

Long run – done

The other thing I enjoyed about this week was finding finish line photos from a timelapse video which the Inverness Half Marathon posted from the race a couple of weeks ago. One of the stills captures me crying out in delight at my time from the race. Love it, though I equally accept it may also look like me just being delighted that it was over and I could get out of the absolute downpour in which I finished!

That finish line feeling

The longest runs are therefore done but there are still a few weeks to go before the race so what now? Well now is what is known as tapering for the marathon. This is a period where you reduce your running to give your body a chance to recover, to help, to rebuild itself from the battering it has taken for the past three months to get ready for the supreme effort of the big day. This is also the time when you slowly begin to go crazy because after weeks of doing nothing but running, you now need to stop running as much!

There is science which lies behind this, but it can be a challenge to get through. This week I am actually traveling with work for a few days so that will interfere with my running plans, but will also distract me from thinking too much about the race itself. Beyond next week, I will really begin to wind things down and just keep things ticking over. The bulk of the work – and the hardest work – is behind me. There is very little I can do now that is going to make things better. I am glad to get to this point. Now it is all about finishing it off. Three weeks to go.

Control

A year ago this weekend I was in New York to run the half marathon. It was a great event and I absolutely loved it. Running through Brooklyn then into Manahattan, through Times Square and a finish in Central Park. I gave it my all, a real “eyeballs out” effort, and I came away with a time of two hours and two seconds. I could not have run harder, it was the best I could do. And I walked away from that race thinking that my days of running sub two hour half marathons had passed. I was wrong.

I went into the Inverness Half Marathon – a race I also did last year when I paced a friend round for her first half race – knowing that I was in better shape than last year. The weeks of marathon training, particularly the hill reps and, of course, the longer runs, going much further than the half marathon distance, meant that I was approaching the race with confidence. The goal race is Rotterdam though, so while I was keen again to try to break the two hour barrier, I also went in recognising that this is just a stepping stone to the bigger race.

The forecast for the event had been up and down all week, ranging from heavy snow to freezing temperatures, but in reality, it was a half decent day for early March. It was not warm, and there was light drizzle at the start but nothing to put off anyone who had trained through the Scottish winter to get there.

As we lined up, my regular long run partner Jeanette and I had a chat and we agreed that we would run our own races. If that meant we ran together that was fine, but if one of us felt they could push on, there was no obligation on them to stick with the other.

We are very much the “Little and Large” of running

As we set off, the initial part of the course, along the River Ness is quite narrow, so there were quite a few occasions where we got boxed in by other runners and it took a while for the pack to thin out. When it did, Jeanette was quite some distance ahead, but in some ways they gave me a target to work back to as we headed out in the early miles of the run. From mile two to four in Inverness we ran steadily uphill, with mile four in particular quite steep, so by the time we came to a part of the course which continued uphill towards mile five I had caught Jeanette up and we ran together to help each other to the halfway point. After that the course was pretty much flat and downhill.

“I kept going up”

The weird thing was, though this section was entirely uphill, and I was working hard. I felt pretty comfortable, even if I was running sub nine minute miles through this section, so we were well on track for a sub two hour time. Genuinely, as headed up the steepest sections of mile three I told myself, “right, this is what all of these f’ing hill reps have been about”, as I kept going up.

The middle section of the race is through houses, so is not particularly interesting, but this was where it was just about relaxing and maintaining the pace we had established. We stayed together through this section, and as we came to mile nine, which had a couple of short climbs on it, we were side by side.

From mile nine onwards the course began to head back downhill towards Inverness City Centre, initially on a sharp descent, but then running down a more gradual slope (as we got back to the part which we had run up earlier in the race). It was in this section that I gradually began to pull away from Jeanette.

“get yourself through it”

As I got into this section, things were beginning to hurt, but again, this was where my marathon stamina began to come into play. I talk to myself quite a lot, so I told myself, “listen, you only have to put up with this for another two or three miles, it is not like you have another eight to run today, so you can get yourself through it”.

I really felt well in control. I was not pushing things, I was maintaining my pace but was not pushing it. This was not the “eyeballs out” job which New York was. This was much more controlled. And “control” was what I kept saying to myself as I got beyond mile ten. I was very focused, concentrating on the next landmark to reach, the next corner to get to, the next bridge to cross over. As I got beyond twelve miles, I knew there was the rather tortuous part of the race to come, where you run round the outskirts of a park, before running round the stadium to locate the entrance to the track for the final few hundred metres.

“running through a monsoon downpour”

I was totally in the zone now. So focused. So in control. I never even glanced across to the stadium as I came to this section. I just looked towards the end of the road, focusing on trying to overtake other runners who were ahead of me. It was also at this point, that the weather turned and the heavens absolutely opened. Prior to this point conditions had been great, now it was like running through a monsoon downpour.

We turned towards the stadium, I began to push, focusing on the next corner I was heading towards. Now, unfortunately, I was so in the zone, I totally did not see and therefore ignored my wife, Fiona, who was braving this downpour to cheer me on!! (And what was even worse about this was when I got into the stadium I began to wave at someone I thought was her before realising it was not her, sheepishly taking down my waving hand, and desperately hoping no one had noticed!!).

“such an awesome feeling”

I knew by this point I was going to be under two hours. It was such an awesome feeling in the stadium. I high fived one of the volunteers on the back straight of the running track, I rounded the final bend (after the embarrassing wave) and sprinted (well as much as I could sprint) to the line. As I crossed it I let out a roar. I knew I had done it. My chip time? One hour fifty five minutes fifty two seconds. My second fastest official half ever and my quickest half in four years. That high has got me through this week.

The picture does not do justice to how wet it was at this point!

Jeanette finished a couple of minutes behind me. A great effort from her and it was lovely to see her at the end, even if we were a couple of totally drowned rats. Total kudos to everyone who finished after us as they had to run in the worst of the conditions.

It was soooo wet

Returning to how the high of the race has helped, this week has been one of the biggest weeks of the marathon training plan, culminating in a twenty mile run at the end of it. If I am honest, I have felt pretty tired this week, so was not really feeling it as I headed out for the long run on Saturday morning in cold, foggy and damp conditions.

I was so glad of the company of my friends Cara and Susan who joined me for the first ten kilometres of the run, and after a couple of miles, another friend, Maxine joined too. She had planned to run up to about half marathon distance and then I would finish off the run myself. Weather conditions were similar to Inverness though it was probably wetter than during the race, so it was less than ideal.

“running by feel”

Twenty miles is a big milestone in marathon training terms, for many people this is the furthest training run they do, but I had a bit of an equipment malfunction which made things even more challenging. I wear a Fitbit but for some reason it would not connect to my phone today, so the readings of distance on it were completely out. I usually use this to focus on my average pace, ensuring I do not go out too quick, so with that not available, I ended up running by feel, just guessing the pace we were going at.

As we reached about fifteen miles for me (I recorded directly on Strava on my phone) and about a half marathon distance for Maxine she said she would keep going for another couple of miles. Then she said she could go a little further. Then she said she would just keep going until we got to the end. It was cold and it was wet, and those last few miles are uphill but we got through it. Twenty miles for me and seventeen and a half for her.

Almost at the finish of the run

It was only after the run was finished and I was back home recovering that I realised one of the main reasons why I was probably feeling so tired. Over the past seven days I had run more than fifty miles. If you include the run I did last Saturday before going to Inverness, I had run more than fifty four miles. These are very much the peak weeks of marathon training.

And there is one more big week to go before tapering for the race – that period where you let your body recover before the big effort ahead. I will plan a route for twenty one miles next weekend, just going slightly beyond what I ran this week. If I can get through the week just past, surely I can crunch out one more seven day effort. Every week, my rest days become more and more valuable. Four weeks to go.

Risky Business

A few weeks back I was talking to a friend, also training for a marathon, and I mentioned to him how lucky I felt to have done the ones I have run, and how luck plays a huge part in just getting to the start line. This was brought home to me on Tuesday night.

Our street on Tuesday morning

This was the scene which greeted us when we woke up on Tuesday morning. Heavy snow overnight, treacherous road conditions and pavements covered in snow. As Tuesday is one of my regular JogScotland days for running, I thought at this point the prospect of running that night was less than zero. But the snow abated and as the day continued, conditions continued to improve until it looked like this by early afternoon.

A big contrast to the morning

Sun out, snow and ice melting, pavements in the main part of Bridge of Don where I live were clear. While this would mean avoiding side streets, conditions would be ok in which to run. What we did not factor in was how much those conditions would change once the sun went down.

A few of us duly headed out for our 10km group, which I was leading, but it became clear that certain parts of the route, even on main roads, had begun to ice up. We crossed a road, we turned to go slightly downhill and the next thing I knew I lost my footing and landed on my side.

“really bad memories came flooding back”

Luckily, most of me landed into the snowy grass which bordered the pavement I was on, with my right knee and wrist taking the brunt of the fall. As I hit the ground, I instantly recalled falling four weeks out from my first marathon and severely damaging my ribs and lots of really bad memories came flooding back as I tried to gather myself and assess what damage had been done (And yes, if you are wondering, almost the first thing I did was pause my watch, I am THAT kind of runner).

I was winded, my knee felt scraped but as I was wearing running leggings (which were not ripped) I could not really see any damage. But I was ok. A little shaken, a little sore, but fine. I got up, wiped the snow off, and set off again. We got through the rest of the run taking it very gingerly (another friend fell but again, luckily, she was ok) but it really brought it home to me about how fortunate I had been that things were not worse. When I got home, my wrist felt very stiff and there were various graze marks on my knee with some blood but that was it. But the morning my wrist was fine and though my knee is red and has bruised up a bit, it is only a minor problem. With only five weeks to go until the Rotterdam Marathon (and the Inverness Half Marathon this weekend) this could have ended everything I have been working for over the past few months.

“resetting expectations”

Having come through this with nothing more than a skinned and bruised knee, then it was a case of resetting expectations. This should be one of the biggest mileage weeks of my training, but conditions were the same on Wednesday so I took it as a rest day, then on Thursday, although the JogScotland run was cancelled, I drove to the beach in Aberdeen to get some miles in there, along the flat and non-icy beachfront pavements, but not as many as I would have done if I was following my plan to the letter. The plan is the plan until the plan changes. And this week, the plan changed.

Dark, cold, breezy and snow flurries but safe from the ice

This brings me back to luck. While I have had injuries in the past, none of them have prevented me doing a race, and that is an extremely fortunate position to be in. Conditions have probably been among the worse this week that I have experienced in recent years, certainly when I have been marathon training and it brought home to me the importance of being realistic, not taking risks, not chancing things to get some miles in when the truth is that a missed run and a missed few miles are a heck of a lot better than picking up an injury which potentially rules me out for a lengthy period of time.

I mentioned earlier how this week should have been one of my biggest mileage weeks, so while I had not initially been planning to run on Saturday, I took advantage of the bright and sunny morning to get a four mile run in with friends Maxine and Cara before heading off to Inverness, where my wife and I are staying overnight ahead of the run. The beach was at its sparkling best and again, with no ice, it was totally fine for running.

A great morning with great friends

It was such a beautiful morning, even if there was a biting cold wind driving into our faces from the north on the outward stretch of the run, that it made me, once again, appreciated what running has brought into my life. Friends, fitness and time spent outdoors – what is not to like?

I do not have any great expectations for the Inverness Half tomorrow. I would like to get a time towards the two hour mark – even better if I can go under that – but as I have said all along, everything is a stepping stone to Rotterdam. That is the big goal for the year and every run is building towards that. Once Inverness is done, then it is back for the final two really big weeks of the training plan. These will be the weeks where I will aim to get to twenty miles in a single run and perhaps slightly beyond that, before winding things down before the big day.

Back in January, I really doubted I would have made the progress which I have made. The hard miles then are paying off now. This week emphasised again that I am lucky guy in so many ways. But the progress I have made needs to continue. Nothing is certain in a marathon until you reach the finish line. Five weeks to go.

The Message

It was not a long message. It was not even a very detailed message. I had not been expecting a message, but that made it even more special. The message had two lines and a photograph, sent via Microsoft Teams by a work friend.

The picture was of him out for a run on the beach close to where he lives. The message read:

A lot of friends from work, who have know me for a lot of the near sixteen years I have worked for the company, knew me in the days when I was a lot less healthy than I am today. Overweight, eating and drinking too much, using the extensive traveling lifestyle which I lead as an excuse for the way things were. They also know how I have worked to turn things around.

They know about by running, they see my medals on work Zoom calls (they are displayed on the wall behind me in my home office) and some, like this friend, have even taken up running, citing my efforts and the changes I have made to my life as the reason for why they are doing it.

“doing something for yourself”

Sadly, I do not see my work friends anything like as much as I used to, so the opportunities to run with them are extremely limited these days, and this friend I have not seen in person for more than three years as they live thousands of miles away in another country, but that does not mean that we do not maintain a connection. Not just a work connection, you understand, but another connection. One which is about doing something for yourself, about doing something which will benefit you in the long term, doing something which can help you through the struggles of life.

I should also point out that I certainly do not see myself as any kind of inspiration to others. I am a very ordinary runner, trying to do my best and to make the most of the benefits which running has given me. To have someone say that their run was inspired by me is really humbling and makes me quite emotional to think that someone sees me in that way.

“what a boost”

I wrote some months back of how hurt I was when, while working at a trade show, someone made unkind comments about my weight (this was in the blog called Harsh) and how the power of words, even if not intentionally meant, can really play on someone’s mind and badly impact their self esteem and view of themselves. I still occasionally think about those comments and that day, but now I have the perfect counterbalance to that. I have these two lines and what a boost they gave me as I went through another of the biggest weeks of marathon training so far.

I said to my friend that his words would inspire me on through the tough parts of my long run this weekend, and they did, and boy was it tough in parts. Coming at the end of a week where I had already run more than nineteen miles through my two JogScotland runs and another hill reps session, this month will be the key one in terms of how I improve what I would call my “top end” fitness – the fitness that you need right at the end of the race; giving me the belief that I can get through to the end.

“mentality and finding resilience within”

In order to do that, it is about being tested – both physically and mentally – and the weekend run certainly did both of these things. While my long training runs try and focus on easy pace, I have deliberately made the last few hilly and quite hard. Living on top of a hill guarantees either a two mile or a three mile uphill stretch to reach home, so that is always going to be tough, but throwing in extra elevation through the run also provides another challenge; the challenge of getting through it, knowing there is more tough stuff to come later. It is about mentality and finding resilience within.

This was the elevation map for the run – and it is also worth pointing out that the elevation on this run was greater than I had planned due to unexpectedly getting a bit lost at about ten miles in and having to head back uphill to get back on track.

The elevation chart for the run

The plan was to run eighteen miles (I ended up running nineteen due to the unintended detour) and that would be tough enough on a flat course, but to add in the elevation is to find out more about yourself during the run. A great example of this was, at around the fifteen mile mark, I was beginning to struggle a bit. Legs were getting heavy and my breathing was becoming a bit erratic. The important point here was that I recognised this was happening and I did something about it. I tried to relax (difficult to do as I was about to embark on the three mile climb home) and I slowed down a bit. I also had another bite to eat of my peanut bar that I take with me on long runs (I also take gels), and I told myself to take it easy up the hill.

“I felt more in control”

Now, of course, it was not easy up the hill, it was really tough, but as I got towards the final part of the first climb, I began to realise that my breathing had evened off, I was beginning to come through the bad patch, and from there to the end of the run I felt more in control, more in charge of what was happening to me and how I was responding to what was going on. This was something I had definitely struggled with towards the end of the Venice Marathon where things became very, very hard.

What I could not control through this stage was the weather. It had been a pleasant, if cold, and for a short time early one, slightly wet, run, but for the best part of the last seven miles we were heading into quite a cold northerly wind and then with about a mile and a half to go, we were hit with a torrential shower of first rain, then sleet and then hail just to top it off. But we got through it. Somehow.

It was great to have company again on the run with my friend Maxine joining me and my regular long running partner Jeanette for the first twelve miles and then Jeanette and I getting to the end together. On these long runs, it really makes such a difference to have a chat on the way round.

Quite how Jeanette and I are smiling in the picture with just the two of is beyond me as this was immediately after the hailstorm I just mentioned! I think we were just glad the whole thing was almost done.

And we did get it done – seventeen miles for Jeanette, nineteen miles for me – and another long run marked off the calendar. It has been a long road already from the dark days of early January where I was struggling so much to build up the fitness I had lost through injury in December, but at least next weekend there is a race to break up the training.

The Inverness Half Marathon is one of the first big events of the Scottish racing calendar and it is great to have this as a bit of a change from the usual training regime. The weather forecast is not great for the week ahead, so we need to see how that plays out – though I am more concerned about the road conditions for the drive up and down to Inverness than I am about it being a bit cold and wet for the actual race. I have not really thought much about Inverness as I am much more focused on Rotterdam, but it will be another important step along the way. Six weeks to go.