I’m a week past the Amsterdam Marathon now, and it’s been a difficult week. Physically, I’ve felt like I haven’t bounced back like I usually do – I’ll be sticking to short efforts (no more than 3 miles and usually 1) for at least another week. Mentally, I’ve felt terrible. I wouldn’t say I feel ‘disappointed’ about what happened in Amsterdam – that’s the wrong word, because I do feel proud of what I did to handle the circumstances on the day – but I am sad, because it was a bit of a wasted chance to do well (the weather was perfect and it’s an amazingly flat course) and frustrated, because this nausea issue is going to be difficult to solve (and it feels like as soon as I solve one issue with marathon running, another crops up, and this is just the latest).
Amsterdam debrief
I think there were three main reasons why Amsterdam didn’t go to plan:
1) The nausea, which was the main problem. This was caused by my fuel, as was the case at the GNR.
2) Fatigue around halfway, caused by going out too fast, caused by running with pacers. I think following the pacers was probably a bad idea (especially on an already congested course like Amsterdam because running with a pace group means you waste energy tripping over feet and manoeuvring around people). I don’t usually run with pacers, so I don’t know if they always go off a bit fast, but it was the case on this occasion. I need to get better at pacing myself.
3) I believe my easy pace in training was too slow, especially on long runs. A frustrating piece of advice people tend to give is ‘there’s no such thing as running your easy runs too slow!’. I absolutely run my easy runs too slow, meaning that the gulf between easy pace and race pace becomes insurmountable after a certain point in marathons. I also take too many breaks on my long runs and then wonder why it feels hard to run nonstop on race day.
Sorting these issues out
The fuelling issue
Race fuel I have tried that doesn’t work for one reason or another:
- High 5 gels: nausea (I took eight during London 2021, felt sick during the race and had to throw up afterwards to feel better)
- Science in Sport gels: nausea (this was so bad during Edinburgh 2022 that I became unable even to drink water)
- Clif Shot Bloks: nausea (caused more post-race vomiting after GNR 2023)
- Active Root gels: nausea (this is now the case with both the gel mix and the gel packets; it’s especially bad with the caffeinated version. The regular gel mix used to work for me but no longer does. Also causes breathing/asthma issues due to the consistency)
- Kendal Mint Company gels: nausea (like the Active Root, it’s meant to settle your stomach rather than aggravate, but this doesn’t work for me)
- ‘Real food’ like bananas, gummy sweets, Kendal mint cake: too difficult to chew during fast running (it’s fine on ultras or training runs where I can stop/slow down, but chewing during a fast effort is a no-go due to my breathing issues)
- Tailwind: too much water to carry (I started taking this last month after the GNR and it’s not caused any gastric issues YET – and due to basically becoming flavoured water it also doesn’t cause any asthma issues, which is a real bonus – but in order to take the optimal recommended amount during a marathon I would need to carry two litres of water with me, i.e. 4x 500ml flasks. I don’t like running fast with a hydration vest on so this would probably require two waist belts and might thus trigger spondylitis flare-ups, as those only generally happen now when I’m carrying too much weight on my lower back)
(Side note: people who say you can ‘train your gut’ also get short shrift from me. The only thing my gut seems to be able to train itself to do is to become LESS tolerant of fuel types over time.)
Some strategies that I could try in marathons going forward:
(Most of these are based on the assumption that I will continue to have no gastric issues with Tailwind, which is not at all a guarantee based on my history.)
- Consume the optimal recommended amount of Tailwind water by having a crew along the course who could swap my bottles out (this would be a bit fiddly but with planning it could be done)
- Consume only half the recommended amount, as some fuel would be better than none (this would probably be the best bet if I am able to continue with the Tailwind)
- Consume no fuel at all (this was a strategy I googled in desperation earlier this week to see if anyone has had success with it. I do believe that if I hadn’t fuelled at all on Sunday, I would have finished with a better time than I did – but, of course, still far from an optimal one)
None of these are ideal but they’re all I have to move forward with for now.
Learning to pace myself better
This is sort of the easiest thing to fix and also sort of the hardest. I hate pacing myself because it requires constantly looking at my watch and getting really stressed (I’m not capable of pacing on feel). But I need to try. It may be helped by the next fix.
Making my easy pace faster
I’ve written before about my slow easy pace and the fact that friends doing similar race times have faster easy paces than me. I have always believed that easy pace should be ‘what comes naturally’, and for me that is highly variable from day to day (mainly due to the spondylitis). However, I am really starting to feel that bridging the gap from slower than 11 min/mile on easy long runs to 9ish min/mile on marathon race efforts is too much to ask of my body. I’ll be doing more work over the next year or so to speed this up, which will probably mean cutting out some of my weekly social runs and focusing more on solo running.
Changes to the running plan for the next couple of years
Focusing on half marathons
A large part of planning out the race season is liaising with Geth on the races we want to do, as it’s nice to do race weekends together, even though we’re generally working on different goals. He was also unhappy with the way Amsterdam went for him and wants to take some considerable time away from marathons (probably longer than I want to take!). Pre-Amsterdam, we’d already planned a marathonless 2026 as we both already felt in need of a break and a year dedicated to shorter faster efforts.
As such, next year is already planned out, though I will be tweaking it to increase the focus on half marathons. After that, Geth is keen to start collecting the SuperHalfs. They’re all tough to get into now so that will likely be a project that goes on for a decade or more, but it will be a fun one and will scratch the same ‘race weekend’ itch as travelling to do big city marathons.
As I say, I will be changing next year’s schedule slightly – I looked at it immediately post-marathon and thought ‘why am I planning to run so many 10ks? I hate 10ks!’. (I have a 10k as my final race of 2025. We’ll see if that changes my feelings but I doubt it.) I may run as many as four half marathons, and I’m also considering an extra race at the end (see ‘New rules’ section below).
New rules
As Dua Lipa sang, I got new rules (I count ’em). I do not want to be in the place I was during the Amsterdam Marathon again. Next time, I want to give myself a much better chance at the sub-4. As such, before I am allowed to sign up for another marathon, I have to achieve the following things:
1) Be able to run consistent 1:50ish half marathons with the same ease that I can currently hit consistent sub-2s. One of the warning signs during my preparation for Amsterdam this year was that I failed to hit my time goals on both my half marathons, coming in at 1:56:00 on both occasions. I knew I needed a 1:50ish to have any hope of converting to a sub-4 marathon and I didn’t get it. I should have heeded that warning and adjusted my expectations a little.
2) Further to this, run a half marathon PB that is closer to 1:45 than 1:50. The aim is to add to the consistency and confidence.
3) Race a metric marathon (26.2 km i.e. 16ish miles – I am looking at the Chester Metric Marathon for this, possibly as early as next year) at marathon goal pace effort without significant fading and without fuelling/nausea issues.
4) Following this, race a 20-miler (race suggestions welcome!) at marathon goal pace effort without significant fading and without fuelling/nausea issues.
The idea is that I basically take what I can already do in the half marathon (stay fairly steady the whole way) and build it up gradually through the distances. It’s a big jump from half to marathon, and I don’t think solo training runs have been enough to bridge that for me. Perhaps race efforts will.
Why, after all this, am I still so keen to do marathons?
As I mentioned in my race blog, my memory of the actual race effort in Amsterdam is very blurry and fuzzy, especially the very dark nausea-ridden miles from 15 to 21. However, one memory does come to the fore, mainly because I remember begging myself to remember:
Remember how horrible this feels. Please don’t do this to me again. We already ran two nonstop marathons last year – we’ve achieved that goal. We’re not doing that today, but it doesn’t matter. We’re not hitting our goal or even getting a PB today, but it doesn’t matter. Please let’s just get to the end and then never sign up for a marathon ever again.
So why, from the comfort of my sofa, am I planning (long-term) not to listen to that memory?
Of course I’ve already forgotten how horrible it felt physically. That’s human nature, because we need to be able to keep doing things that are physically hard. But I haven’t forgotten how I felt mentally. I felt wretched and broken and like a failure, and yes, I absolutely don’t want to feel like that again. But I know, from occasional previous efforts – well, at least one – that it is possible to run a marathon and not feel like that. Or not quite that bad, anyway.
If I had achieved my sub-4 at Amsterdam, the five-year plan would have continued onwards, and I would have kept the spark of hope that I could achieve a London GFA while in my current age category. That plan has gone now – I recognise that it is too ambitious for the place I’m currently in, though I’m still hopeful that I will be able to maintain enough consistency to achieve it in some future decade.
But I’m still dead set on a sub-4 for another reason: it’s the last of the big mid-pack time barriers I still need to break. Sub-30 5k, sub-hour 10k, sub-2 half – they all fell some time ago, and while I’m still eager to whittle down the 5-minute increments, it’s not quite the same. Short of a genuine miracle, my 5k PB time will always start with a 2, 10k with a 4, half with a 1. The marathon is still there for the taking. I know it’s only a number. But numbers can haunt you, and this one haunts me.
It’ll have to haunt me for a while yet though. There’s lots of work to be done.