It took a bit of preparation, but I feel so much better for having my day off to play videogames yesterday. I’m going to do that at least once a month from now on.
It’s a busier week ahead for me now, but I’m excited to get on with some game creation (finally). It’s been getting away from me all summer and I need to make it more of a priority.
Hopefully I’ll squeeze in a few dribs and drabs of videogaming too!
A while ago, I came across the concept of ‘Shouldless Sunday’ – a scheduled day where there’s nothing on the to-do list at all. This post at Apartment Therapy explains the idea, though most of the things it suggests (crafting, cooking etc.) would not be things I would choose to do with such a day – those are most definitely things that go on the to-do list in my world!
My first reaction was that such a thing would be impossible for my life as it is now. I manage the things that are important to me (running, blogging, cleaning etc.) by doing a tiny bit of work on them every day – I find that if I break a daily habit or streak, the whole thing falls by the wayside (for instance, in the form of the six-week winter running slumps I used to have every winter before I started my daily run streak). While these important things are enjoyable hobbies, they require a fair amount of productivity, and so there’s always an extent to which they will feel like a chore sometimes. Nevertheless, I keep up my habits, because it’s the end result (being able to run a marathon, having a solid portfolio of blog posts, keeping a clean house etc.) that makes it all worth it.
However, I’ve not been able to get the idea of a completely free day out of my head. I have very nostalgic memories of being twenty, on summer break from university with no commitments whatsoever, and just rolling out of bed whenever I woke up, playing videogames all day long, and going back to bed when I was finally too tired to keep playing my game (i.e. usually about 5am). I dream of a day like that again – just one day (though I don’t think I’d be awake till 5am nowadays). As such, I’ve been having a think about how I could fit it in and still maintain my streaks. The weekend after the London Marathon seemed like a perfect time to try it out, given that I wanted a quiet weekend anyway!
The plan is this: first, minimise my daily list down to the absolute essentials – which, if pre-prepared, will take less than an hour, including a short streak saver mile run. I already do this on days that are very busy with work, big races (like last Sunday) or social commitments. Next step: on the Saturday night, stay up a little later than I typically do, and get this short list completed between midnight and 1am (the short run will be on the treadmill). Final step: off to bed, good night’s sleep, and wake up with absolutely nothing on the to-do list for the day. Living the dream!
Other than the midnight hour, I also won’t be turning on my laptop (which is something that I’ve done every day for years and years) or looking at my phone all day on Sunday, because if I do, I will just disappear down a social media rabbithole, which will waste time and cause stress. I’m instead going to disconnect from the world and stick with my videogame consoles. This makes me a bit nervous, because I always make sure to answer work emails promptly, even at the weekend – but it will just have to wait till Monday morning this time round.
This post is going out in the first hour of Sunday morning. I’ll be back online on Monday! Until then, I will be in a different (digital) world somewhere else…
Back on the Moor this morning for my slowest parkrun in years. My legs are still fairly unwilling to move and I’m taking close to forty minutes to get round at the moment. This isn’t just post-marathon stiffness – it’s been the case for a few weeks, and my daily foam rolling doesn’t seem to be improving things, so I’m going to try and book in for a sports massage as soon as I can.
It was really nice to be out though! Lots of people to chat to, and a few other London Marathon shirts to spot en route.
Back to Jesmond Dene for the monthly volunteering slot next week!
Just a quick post today because I want to get into some game creation later this afternoon. It’s been a fairly quiet week by necessity because I needed to spend a few days eating, sleeping and dozing after the marathon, and I’m looking forward to an even quieter weekend.
Two weeks’ worth of earworm playlists:
Saturday 25th
Wham! – ‘The Edge Of Heaven’
Elton John – ‘Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting’
Sunday 26th
Blue – ‘All Rise’
Girls Aloud – ‘See The Day’
ACE+ – ‘Riki The Legendary Heropon’
Ocean Colour Scene – ‘Profit In Peace’
Monday 27th
Melanie C – ‘Northern Star’
Tom Jones and The Cardigans – ‘Burning Down The House’
Tuesday 28th
Duran Duran – ‘Ordinary World’
Duran Duran – ‘Starting To Remember’
Wednesday 29th
Tom Jones and The Cardigans – ‘Burning Down The House’
Anita Ward – ‘Ring My Bell’
Thursday 30th
Sacre – ‘The London Marathon’
Friday 1st
Melanie C – ‘Northern Star’
Saturday 2nd
Tina Turner – ‘Proud Mary’
Sunday 3rd
Abba – ‘Dancing Queen’
Spandau Ballet – ‘Gold’
Monday 4th
Avicii and Aloe Blacc – ‘Wake Me Up’
Kiki Dee – ‘Star’
Tuesday 5th
Sacre – ‘The London Marathon’
James – ‘Come Home’
Wednesday 6th
Sacre – ‘The London Marathon’
Thursday 7th
The Sugarhill Gang – ‘Rapper’s Delight’
Friday 8th
Sacre – ‘The London Marathon’
The Power Station – ‘Some Like It Hot’
Limahl – ‘The Neverending Story’
Meat Loaf – ‘I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)’
Here’s a phone box that Mum and Dad found in north-east England a couple of weeks ago.
(Coordinates 55°19’74.2″N, 1°64’84.4″W.)
This one still has a working phone, which may indicate it still gets some use in its small village setting. The box itself is also fairly well-kept, so it seems the local council gives it some love every now and then.
Another village phone box next week!
I have still got a LOT of aches, pains and stiffness in my legs, but there’s a tiny bit of gradual recovery every day. I’m managing to shuffle round my daily short run route at a very slow pace, and hopefully I’ll be able to plod round parkrun on Saturday without taking a horribly long time. I was able to brave the foam roller again as well after my run this morning, and hopefully continuing the habit of doing that every day will keep the stiffness at bay long-term.
I have a slight bit of post-marathon blues now. I think it’s because I don’t know if or when I will ever be able to run London again, and it’s been such a long journey that I feel sad it’s over. I think I will feel a bit better when I run other marathons and take on more of a mindset that there are lots of great ones out there, but London really was something else, especially this year when I had such a great experience. I will definitely be throwing my hat in the ballot for future editions. Maybe some time in the future I’ll get lucky again.
I’m taking this week very easy and slow. I’ve got a bit of day job work and am doing some initial prep for the software development course I will be starting soon (very excited! Will blog about that properly soon). I’m also looking forward to an incredibly quiet weekend once Geth and I are back from parkrun! I have plans for emptying Sunday to the extent that I don’t have to do anything at all 😀
Life was going at a million miles an hour all summer and into the early autumn, so it feels a bit odd that this week it’s just… quiet. It’s much appreciated though!
After months of worrying about various ailments, struggling with long runs due to the hot summer, mental games, highs and lows, and readjustment to a world that contained races once more, it was finally marathon day. I accepted the place for my second London Marathon nearly two and a half years ago. That is a long time to think about a single race. I don’t really know how I’m going to adjust to NOT thinking about it.
But on Sunday, it was time to stop thinking about it and actually do it.
I had a three-goal sequence for this race, as recommended:
(The idea is that if it all goes wrong and the wheels fall off, you can still hit the second or third goal and feel like you succeeded.)
Geth handled the London travel logistics on the day. This is an important part of his crewing role in these situations because it means I don’t have to waste mental energy working out tube times and so on. We got off at Maze Hill, which was the station recommended by the official app for the green start, but it would probably have been quicker getting off at Greenwich. I’m noting that here so that if either of us ever do the London Marathon again, we might have a chance of remembering!
The walk to the start was well signposted…
We arrived about half an hour later than the app told us to, which was quite deliberate. Most runners like to use the portaloos a couple of times before the start, so they need lots of extra time! My magic bladder is a bonus in these situations… Anyway, I didn’t want to be hanging around getting anxious for too long, so we aimed to arrive about ten minutes before my wave pen opened, which was perfect. We spent a few minutes watching some of the red start runners getting underway before I said bye to Geth and headed into my pen.
I only had to wait about ten minutes before my wave got going, which was such a contrast to 2019 when I was shivering in the queue for over an hour! It was fairly easy to find my comfortable marathon plod pace as well, as most other people in the wave were also ‘back of the pack’ runners from 2019 and lots of them were walking. This was a big improvement on my GNR start three weeks previously, when I went out far too fast for the first mile due to a surplus of adrenaline!
We quickly joined the faster runners from the blue start after a mile, which really increased the atmosphere, and mile two was just as fun as it was in 2019…
We even had a GNR-style ‘oggy oggy oggy’ chant from the marshals at hump seven! I’m so glad I was able to switch from the red start (I’ll explain more about my pre-race logistics in a later post) as I would have missed this bit if I hadn’t been on the blue/green route.
The first quarter of the race (slight downhill into Greenwich town centre, slight uphill towards the meridian) was really just about comfortable plodding and taking it step by step, as there’s still a long way to go at that point (though I absolutely was not thinking about that. Mile at a time – that’s the only way to think during a marathon, otherwise you’ll go mad!). My foot pain showed up between miles four and seven, but I stayed calm, as I knew from training that it would go away after a while (I think this is because it eventually goes a bit numb). Better to get that out of the way in the early part of the race, rather than it being a problem in the later stages when also dealing with other issues.
After the Cutty Sark point at mile seven, my foot felt a lot better, and I was able to continue ticking off the miles using my practised strategy of fixed-distance walk breaks and refuelling at every mile marker. Miles eleven and twelve were recognisable because we’d walked along the same route for parkrun the day before, and I was really looking forward to the nearly-halfway point at Tower Bridge because I knew I would be able to see Geth waving from our hotel room window!
The bit after Tower Bridge is one of the toughest, because you can see all the faster runners going through the twenty-three-mile marker when you’re only at mile thirteen! I was looking out for our friend Ed at this point but I didn’t spot him. He did apparently spot me though!
I knew the bit around the Isle of Dogs (roughly miles fifteen to nineteen) would also be tough, because it’s a fairly depressing area and there’s not as much crowd support. However, there were enough people around me that there was still a good atmosphere (something that was not the case in 2019), and while I was getting very tired, none of the issues that had plagued me in training were acting up. I was really pleased to get through Canary Wharf and past the twenty-mile marker, though I did have a bit of a mental stumble at that point, as six point two miles is roughly 10k and so it sort of felt like there was still a whole long race to go! I really had to focus in order to keep hold of my ‘one mile at a time’ thoughts.
I was also starting to feel really nauseous by mile twenty-one, for a couple of reasons. In the run-up, the London Marathon organisers had encouraged runners to carry their own water so that people would use fewer water bottles at the stations, and so I wore my hydration vest for the race as I had done in training. However, because it was such a long day out, I was getting more and more bloated from the water intake, and so the straps on my pack were getting very tight (though I didn’t realise this till later!). I was also taking a lot of energy gels – eight in total, as I take them every three miles – and I’d only taken five maximum during training runs. All of this extra gel was really upsetting my stomach.
Due to feeling a bit sick and faint, I took an extended unscheduled walk break for parts of miles twenty-four and twenty-five. I was really, really tired by this point, and the only thing that got me running again close to the twenty-five mile marker was the knowledge that if I ran the rest of the way, I would be able to get the sub-6:30 time I wanted!
Big Ben was the last photo stop. After that, I ran. I ran past all the phone boxes I’d photographed in 2019, and I ran past Geth cheering me on from St James’ Park, and I ran past Buckingham Palace without taking a picture (still don’t have a picture of that! One day when I’m not on the finish straight of a marathon, maybe…). I’d expected to speed up a lot at the finish, but I just didn’t have much of a sprint in me. That’s a good sign, to be honest – it means I gave it my all during the race.
I finished in 6:26:41, smashing my A goal and beating my 2019 time by 47 minutes and 3 seconds. I know I can build on that in the future and keep getting my times down, but I am so, so thrilled with that time for this race, especially as I had such a tough training block this time round.
Edinburgh Marathon is the next big one, and I will start training for that in January. But first, I am going to have three very well-deserved months off from marathon training. I have two 10k races left in 2021 (neither of which will be PB attempts, just keeping the race legs ticking over) and that is more than enough.
I am still processing yesterday’s marathon and have so much to say about it. However, I am still fairly tired at the moment (especially after travelling back to Newcastle today), so I will leave the race review for at least one more day.
At least I have the energy to post a picture tonight…
I have not been allowing myself to get truly excited about Hallowe’en until after the marathon (though I did give a nod to it during the race by wearing my new spiderweb Locket leggings), because Hallowe’en generally involves being cosy on the sofa, watching scary films, eating sweets and doing a lot of other sedentary things that aren’t running. The marathon is done now, and so it’s time to curl up and get spooky. Lots of guilt-free sofa time this week while I recover!
I had expected to do Highbury Fields again as my pre-marathon shakeout parkrun, but Geth and I were moved from our usual hotel to a different one due to the first hotel being closed this week. There were a range of parkruns we could have done, but Southwark was the closest, and it looked nice and flat for a gentle trundle round.
It’s a leafy three-lapper with a lake, meaning it was reminiscent of both South Manchester and Gateshead for me, as well as last week’s location, Leazes, to a smaller extent. There’s a good out-and-back section for keeping track of how other runners are getting on, and a short extra loop that you only do on the first lap.
I can tell that it’s a fast course, so if I’m in London some weekend when I’m not doing a marathon the day afterwards, I’ll maybe give it another go and get some speed up!
Next week I’ll be back home at Town Moor, hopefully wearing a very special T-shirt…