Warning: super long blog!

It’s been a busy week, but I have finally had time to put some thoughts together.

First of all, what an epic training block. 15 weeks. 1st January 2024 to 14th April 2024. It was so all-encompassing and such a bubble that I feel a bit bereft without it!

During this training block:

• I started the block with a 5k PB of 26:23 (set in December 2023); via weekly fast efforts at parkrun, I whittled it down to 24:05.
• I started the block with a 10k PB of 54:23 (set in October 2023); in week 13 of the block, at the North Tyneside 10k, I took it down to 49:34.
• I started the block with a half marathon PB of 2:14:52 (set in September 2023); in week 6 of the block, at the Valentine Half Marathon, I took it down to 1:59:31.
• In week 11 of the block, I ran my first ever ultra – the 34-mile Tyne Bridges to Boundaries Ultra.
• Through careful prehab habits built up over time, I never allowed any slight niggles to turn into injuries, and managed to get through the whole block without missing a single planned training run.
• Following years of attempting to fuel with gels and chews that made me feel sick, I appear to have cracked long-distance fuelling (for now at least), having switched to Active Root ginger gel mix.
• I went through three tubes of Deep Heat, in addition to using up all the sample sachets collected from race goody bags over the last few years.
• In global running news: Kelvin Kiptum sadly and shockingly passed away, Camille Herron broke the women’s six-day record, Jasmin Paris became the first ever female finisher of the Barkley Marathons, Nicki Clark was awarded the first ever parkrun 1,000 milestone shirt, the London Marathon tightened up its GFA times, and Russ Cook became the first person to run the length of Africa.

A typical week during this block:

• Monday: TMBR social run (3-4 miles) in the evening.
• Tuesday: speedwork session in the morning, strength session in the evening.
• Wednesday: rest day one-mile streak saver.
• Thursday: long run.
• Friday: TMBR social run (3-4 miles) in the morning.
• Saturday: fast effort at parkrun.
• Sunday: medium long run (2 miles solo, 6 miles with TMBR, 2 miles solo – 10 in total).

Most of the plan was just adapted from my usual routine. I based the long run distances and speedwork sessions on the Ben Parkes improver plan, but I didn’t do any of the marathon goal pace work recommended within the long runs – I kept them all easy and focused on hitting the distance. This was because the distance itself still felt a bit out of my comfort zone, as I hadn’t attempted a marathon for two years. I decided to include both a long run and a medium long run in the weekly schedule because I felt I should keep the mileage high in order to prepare for the ultra. I knew it wasn’t ideal to plonk my first ultra in the middle of a marathon training block, but it was an event I really wanted to do!

On weeks when I had B races (weeks 6, 11 and 13) I swapped the Tuesday and Thursday sessions round in order to give myself a slight mini-taper before each race. I also only did 10 miles for my midweek long run in week 11 instead of the scheduled 20, as I knew the ultra would provide more than enough mileage for that week.

Random maranoia niggles during the taper:

• Bruised calves from sports massage #1 in week 13 – these were tender for days and gave me a bit of a scare! I do think the massage contributed to my 10k race result that week though.
• Wisdom tooth / gum pain, which I haven’t had for years. Every time I thought it had gone away, it would reappear on the opposite side of my mouth. This went on for a good fortnight leading up to the marathon.
• Right hamstring – this felt like it had pulled as I was walking off after my final fast parkrun effort, 8 days before the race. Cue PANIC, though my mind was eased a bit when there were no issues with it during sports massage #2 in week 15.
• Ankylosing spondylitis symptoms – I haven’t had any spondylitis symptoms since I started my current treatment 11 months ago, so having twinges of the old familiar back pain and sciatica was really scary. It was this that cemented my decision to skip the calves during sports massage #2 – I asked the physio to work on my lower back instead. However, I could still feel the dull ache in my back on the tram of the morning of the race, and I was almost in tears when Geth went off to his start pen – I was convinced, despite everything that had gone right during the training, that the spondylitis was going to descend and scupper my race yet again.
• Uveitis – I haven’t had any uveitis attacks since starting the current spondylitis treatment, as protecting against uveitis is a (happy) side effect of the medication. However, I kept getting itchy eyes in the final few days before we were due to travel to Manchester, and similarly to the spondylitis, I was convinced that it was all happening again. (Nevertheless, I did run my very first marathon (London 2019) three days after being diagnosed with my first uveitis attack and was stopping to put in eye drops once an hour during the race, so I knew it could be done if necessary!)

Race weekend, then.

We arrived in Manchester on the Friday, as the last time I did a long drive the day before a marathon (Edinburgh 2022) I felt it contributed to issues during the race. We stayed at a hotel at the airport rather than in the centre of Manchester so that we’d have an easy place to park; unfortunately, the hotel wasn’t great and the food selection was limited, which meant we weren’t as ideally carb-loaded as we would have liked. Definitely a lesson for the future.

We did my ideal ‘pre-marathon Saturday’ that had worked for me in London in 2019 and 2021 – shakeout parkrun (Wythenshawe – parkrunday catchup blog to follow!) and then back to the hotel to get everything sorted for race morning and rest as much as possible. I prepped my gel mix flasks in advance, as I had done for the ultra, as it takes a while and I didn’t want to be faffing with that on race morning.

I was surprised to find my nerves had gone when I woke up on Sunday. I suppose I was just laser-focused on the race morning logistics. Breakfast in the room (brioche! I have crumpets in training but brioche is my marathon race day good luck charm), kit and numbers and warm layers on, tram from the airport to Trafford Bar. The circuit round Old Trafford cricket ground to drop our bags off and get ready was fine, as there was lots to see (including the finish straight) and lots to keep my mind occupied, but I found the next two hours of waiting for the start incredibly difficult. Geth’s wave started a full 45 minutes before mine and was called 45 minutes before that, which meant I had 90 minutes of being on my own and worrying about the race. I tried to focus on moving through the process to the start line, but there was a lot of standing about and time to think. This really wasn’t helpful mentally, and in future we’ll either make sure to be in the same wave or travel separately.

Because of trying to keep moving through the process whenever I could, I was right at the front of my wave. When we finally set off, of course there were the usual slight panicked thoughts about having a long way to go, but as soon as I was running I instantly felt better. I had made the decision a few days previously that I wouldn’t panic about pace for the first few miles as I did not want to be constantly looking at my watch – whatever was comfortable was comfortable. What was comfortable turned out to be quite fast, but I was okay with that – the aim for this marathon was just to see what I could do.

My electrolyte water supply (soft flask in the front pocket of my Naked band) was driving me nuts by the end of mile one, as it was bouncing all over the place. I managed to swap it with one of my gel flasks, which instantly made everything more comfortable. However, this meant the heavy flask of water was now on my lower back, which has been a spondylitis trigger in the past, so I made the decision to lighten the load more quickly by drinking only from my electrolyte flask rather than the water stations until the later stages of the race. Mile two was my fastest of the whole race because I unconsciously run faster when I’m faffing about with stuff in my running belt – I think it’s because it feels like the faffing is slowing me down so I try to make up for it!

In terms of the general feeling of a marathon being a long day out, this was a world away from the marathons I had run in the past, which ranged from 6:26 to 7:13 in time. With me being so much faster now, the miles were ticking by so much more quickly, and mentally it felt like a much shorter race. This really, really helped. It really drove home to me how different a mental challenge it is to complete a marathon as a slower runner trying to finish the distance versus as a faster runner trying to get the best time possible – the mentality I used to have to build around it was more comparable to the ultra I did in training than to the race I ran on Sunday. The ‘be out on your feet all day’ mental challenge and the ‘run this long distance at a fast speed’ mental challenge are absolute worlds apart, and so in many ways I felt like a marathon newbie all over again, because I had never run a marathon in this way – I had never ‘raced’ one before.

I had some gel every four miles and some electrolyte water every four miles, alternating at two-mile intervals. This meant that I was never more than two miles away from the next ‘treat’ and broke up the distance really nicely.

I got a small stone in my shoe at mile seven. It was annoying but not painful at that point. I knew it would undoubtedly sting a bit later in the race, but I did not want to stop running to get rid of it. I had found a good flow and I was doing well.

The Manchester crowds were incredible – for me the most atmospheric crowds I’ve ever experienced, and I’ve done London in person twice and GNR in person seven times! All I could hear was my name being called over and over, and at some points I found it a bit overwhelming. Because of this, I stuck with my plan to chunk the race up by starting some podcasts on my headphones at the mile ten marker. I’ve never felt the need to listen to anything in a race before, but on this occasion it did really help, and I’ll probably consider it for future marathons.

I was still running 9ish min miles at the halfway point, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold it for the second half, so I let go of any wild dreams of sub-4 (that’s for a future attempt!) and focused on running the best race I could. The course was beautifully flat, and the infamous hill in Altrincham (mile 16, not mile 17 as I’d been told) was barely a hill – it was over before I knew it! In the next couple of miles, I did start to slow quite noticeably. I didn’t know what pace I’d be able to hold for the rest of the race, but one goal was now at the forefront of my mind: run the whole marathon nonstop without stopping or walking. This was something that had previously seemed impossible, but I still felt strong and knew I could do it if I was determined.

Whenever I felt tired, I focused on my form, which felt good. I was in my Nike Vaporflys, which I only wear for fast races; this was a minor gamble as I had only run up to half marathon distance in them previously. However, I was confident that they would see me right on race day, and I was correct. In regular shoes over a long distance, my feet always hurt eventually – it feels like the bones on the sides of my feet are painfully rolling against the ground, which can be agony. This doesn’t happen with the Vaporflys. Of course they give the speed benefit as well, but it’s the comfort factor that has really made them my go-to race shoes. Still surprised that speedy carbons like that seem to suit me, but that’s why you try everything once!

The spondylitis didn’t… not show up. I did feel that stiffness and discomfort in my lower back in the later stages of the race. However – and this is the important thing – it didn’t stop me running or cause me any additional slowdown. I am glad that I drank my carried water quicker than planned, because I think it helped prevent it being any worse – I didn’t use the water stations until after about mile 18. If that’s as bad as it’s going to get in marathons, I can 100% live with it. Hopefully, though, this marathon was just a slight aberration and the medication will go back to doing its usual job of keeping the condition completely at bay.

I had considered switching from podcasts to music at mile 20, but stuck with the podcasts as I felt music would be too much for my overwhelmed brain. The final few miles did really hurt. A few thoughts of ‘can I really do this again so soon?’ (having already signed up for the Yorkshire Marathon in October). Counting down the miles, trying to work out how much difference there was going to be in mileage between the course and my watch, digging deep to hold on for a nonstop run, sighing slightly as I let the 4:15 pacers go (might have managed a better time if I’d run with them from the start… but I don’t regret starting faster to see what I had in me). And the soleus pain in both legs. OMG, the soleus pain. This was a niggle that had briefly arisen in January before I fought it off with my copious nightly application of Deep Heat, and I hadn’t heard a peep out of my soleus muscles since. Not even during the taper, when every other part of my body was flaring up just to mess with my head. Now, though… they ached so badly with every step. But I kept running. I knew I could keep running, even though I was getting slower and slower.

I even kept running during the AGONISING few seconds when the stone in my shoe flipped itself over and jammed itself directly into the cumulative blister that had first developed during the ultra four weeks previously and revitalised itself during every long run in the intervening period. I nearly screamed out loud, but I kept running. I was so close now.

The great thing about the Manchester finish line is that you can see it from more than half a mile away, after you turn the last bend. This is also the bad thing about the Manchester finish line. I ran and ran and ran and it still looked far away. But somehow, eventually, I was there, and the timing mats were under my feet, and finally, finally, I could stop running.

4:21:28. More than two hours off my marathon PB. And the nonstop marathon – no stopping, no walking, no breaking stride – that I had worked so hard for in the last few miles.

I didn’t quite hit my time goals, but I was so proud of what I’d done. I collected my medal, held it the wrong way round for the official photographer, walked what felt like a very long way before they gave us any water, collected my t-shirt, collected a can of Erdinger for Geth, and saw my sister-in-law Heulwen before I entered the cricket ground, which was a lovely surprise. At the bag drop, I collected my bag and reunited with the newly sub-4 Geth, who asked how I was doing.

‘I am broken,’ I said, because I was. I put on my warm layers and had my bottle of water and my bottle of full-fat Coke and my protein bar (good thing I brought that because there were no snacks to be had at the finish!), and I shivered uncontrollably because I get post-run freeze and the harder the effort the worse it is, and then we hobbled out of Old Trafford in our Oofos, fought our way through the crowds and the queues, got on a packed tram for one stop, and then got a lift with Heulwen the rest of the way back to the hotel, which was hugely appreciated.

I have learnt a lot from marathon experience #5. This is a distance that requires so much study and I think it will take a few more goes before I get it right. But it’s also a distance that I find strangely fascinating and I’ve sort of fallen in love with – for the exact same reasons. It’s a fulfilling distance precisely because it’s so hard to get right and it takes so much work and it feels like such an achievement.

During training, I listened to an early episode of Marathon Talk where someone said ‘the hardest thing about the marathon is that you have to wait for so long to put a bad run right’. I have had to wait for two years since my disaster at Edinburgh. While I still think there’s a lot of room for improvement, I certainly feel that I put that bad run right. I’m glad I won’t have to wait nearly so long for the next one.

Things I will do differently in the next marathon training block:

• Marathon goal pace efforts during long runs. I’ve always done all my long marathon training runs at easy pace because that’s what you do if you’re just trying to complete the distance – and I want to do more than just complete the distance now.
• I will have a better idea of my goal paces. At the start of this block, I had absolutely no idea what my goal paces should be, because I was improving so fast and my running was so different to what it had been the last time I’d attempted a marathon – so I just had to wing it and guess at a pace when my speedwork sessions called for ‘tempo pace’ etc.
• I will fuel with Active Root from the start! I’m glad I discovered it in the latter stages of this training block, but I still had to suffer through a lot of bad long runs where I felt sick and had no energy.
• Additional strength and cross-training. I did quite well with this, but I want to improve it.
• Fewer B races, as they do distract from the training. I’ll do the GNR as usual in the run-up to Yorkshire, but nothing else (and certainly no ultras!).

Things I will keep the same:

• Mileage. In fact, I might do even more. I was averaging 50-60 mile weeks at peak and I’ve never felt so strong.
• My general weekly routine. It’s nice and varied and really works for me.

I won’t be marathon training again until July though. Yes, I still feel bereft! But in the meantime, it’s 10k season. I have three 10k races and a 5.8ish mile race (Blaydon Race, which is an odd duck distance-wise but a lot of fun) in the next two and a half months, and the goal is to have a bit of fun with speed during that time… and try and forget about my long-distance dreams for a little while!