Getting more used to my Monday schedule now and feeling less strange about leaving my run till the evening. I hope that future Mondays will be a bit less distracting though! Between the political events and the wait for the London Marathon ballot, there are a lot of excuses to drift off and check email / social media / etc.
All of these things are also distracting me from Hallowe’en (my favourite celebration of the year) in a week’s time, so I will try and ignore them as much as possible. Work is quieter this week (so far!) so the plan is to get on with my Hallowe’en game and enjoy some spooky music, TV and films.
Just a short run this morning followed by the London Marathon coverage on the TV while getting on with a few things. A little bit wistful as it’s the first time since 2018 I’m not running London, but hopefully I’ll get to do it again one day!
A busier couple of days ahead but I’m eyeing a good end to the upcoming 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 😀
I saved up so that I could have a couple of blowouts on the Hallowe’en and Christmas Locket collections this year! I have so many new spooky leggings to wear this month, including these pink cartoony ones.
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:
Goal A: sub-6:30
Goal B: beat my 2019 time of 7:13:44
Goal C: finish
(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…
These ‘please do not pee’ signs were everywhere on the way to the start. Some people forget basic manners when it’s race day, unfortunately.
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 looked as nervous as I felt.
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…
The hump marshals at mile two are one of my favourite parts of the whole race. Their call-and-response warnings are endlessly imaginative.
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.
The skies behind the Cutty Sark were a lot brighter than the last time I did the race!
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!
Geth took this photo from our hotel room window. I’m on the far left.
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!
That is the ‘halfway’ sign in the background. Mixed feelings here certainly – it had already felt like a long day out at that point.
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!
I was disappointed in 2019 to find that Big Ben was covered in scaffolding, but even more disappointed in 2021 to find that this situation hadn’t changed in 889 days!
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…
Geth found me this pumpkin biscuit in the Costa at King’s Cross this morning. Hallowe’en is coming!
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!
Very short post today – I’ll update properly tomorrow. Just to say that I DID IT, I ran the marathon and I got my desired time and I am really, really happy.
So much to tell you when it’s not late and I’m not sleepy!
I have finished work for the week and am all packed up for London this weekend! I am very excited and very nervous. I wonder if marathons will always feel like this. (Last time I did this, I was certain it would be my only marathon. I now feel very differently!)
I’m panicking about lots of things I don’t really need to panic about, but one of the main things is that I obviously don’t want to pick up a last-minute injury or illness! I’ve been doing my short runs on the treadmill for the last couple of weeks as it’s gentler on my legs; I’m doing lots of yoga stretches and foam rolling after every run to try and get rid of all the niggles from training; and I’m being very careful every time I go up and down the stairs and get in and out of the shower. So paranoid I’m going to injure myself! Only a few days left to worry about it, thankfully…
Implements of torture / miracle tools that will get me to the start line in one piece.
It was absolutely right for me in this marathon training block to take a five-week taper rather than the standard three-week one, but it has certainly given me a lot more time to worry about the race. I’m worried about various issues with my legs and feet and how they’ll hold up on the day; I’m worried about various logistics around the weekend; I’m worried I’ll have blown my stamina by tapering too early… Objectively I know it’s likely to be absolutely fine (though of course it will be tough), but I can’t stop thinking about all the things that could go wrong. One of the things that I am most looking forward to in October is NOT worrying about all this stuff anymore. I’ll be taking three months to enjoy running a bit more aimlessly before the next marathon training block starts in January. (In the future I am only going to do one marathon training block at most within a twelve-month period, but pandemic rescheduling has meant that I’ll be doing Edinburgh Marathon about eight months after London. I’ll be glad to settle into a more regular schedule of exploring different spring marathons going forward!)
With one week to go, it is also getting so close now that I am quite excited about the non-scary parts of our trip to London. Geth and I have identified a nice Italian restaurant for carb-loading, are planning some interesting routes for short runs, and will be choosing a non-challenging new parkrun to visit the day before the race. It’s all coming together… I just hope that the marathon itself will be (at least mostly) a good experience!
Six weeks to go until the London Marathon. Three till the Great North Run. I’m finding the long runs really tough but I’m getting there. There have been several main issues plaguing those long runs recently:
Foot pain – this has been a real saga. I’ve always suffered with burning pain and hotspots in the balls of my feet on long runs due to my shoes not being wide enough for my feet, but during this training period I have been so fed up with it (as it’s so painful that it stops me running) that I’ve been trying to find some way to stop it happening. Through the purchase of a ridiculous number of new pairs of shoes, I have discovered that running shoe companies don’t actually make shoes wide enough for my feet, but one or two of the pairs are at least a bit better than what I had before. I’ve also been experimenting with various sock types, moleskin tape and metatarsal gel pads, but I haven’t found the magic combination yet. I really hope I find it soon, as it’s making me pretty miserable.
Recurring hip issue – this was a real problem when I started running, but vastly improved when I lost a lot of weight. I’ve put a bit of weight back on during the pandemic and it’s really starting to niggle again, especially when my form suffers due to the aforementioned foot issue. I’ve been doing my yoga/Pilates stretches to try and ease it, and for this morning’s run I took an ibuprofen twenty minutes before starting and didn’t have any hip pain en route. The ibuprofen strategy is not ideal, but if it gets me round on the day then that’s what I’ll do.
Water logistics – I previously carried two 400ml bottles in the front pockets of my running rucksack, but it’s been a hot summer and I found on my last super-long run that it wasn’t enough. I’ve also had those bottles since I started running and they’re getting a bit old and manky now, so Geth recently bought me two 500ml soft flasks as a replacement. I tried them out this morning (a six-mile run) and was surprised to find they felt about twice as heavy as my old ones! That extra 200ml really makes a difference. They’re nice to use though once you get the hang of them. The only thing was that they weighed down my pack and caused it to rub against the back of my neck more heavily than it usually does. This settled down after a while, but I’m a bit worried about chafing on longer runs, so I’m going to start carrying a spare multiuse just in case.
Lack of energy – on my last super-long run I felt really tired. I can’t say that this is stopping me running though (it’s been the hip and foot pain that has done that) – it’s just slowing me down a bit. I’m hoping that this issue will disappear with better fuelling.
To keep me semi-occupied during runs I’ve been listening to podcasts (I treated myself to some Aftershokz bone conductors, which have been a godsend – and yes, you can wear them even if you’ve already got glasses, hearing aids and a multiuse on, it just requires a bit of careful arrangement!). The mental game has been tough during this training period though. I’ve had to stop doing lapped routes and spider/crossroads routes because I often just don’t have the fortitude to resist cutting the run short when I go past my house again. Another thing is that, as part of trying to deal with the foot issue, I started following an online tip to take a walk break once per mile. Unfortunately this has given me mental ‘permission’ to walk when it’s hard, meaning that the last few miles of most of my super-long runs have been mostly walking. I’m not sure how to deal with these issues.
I also keep seeing the advice (which has become more prominent over the last couple of years) that even slower runners shouldn’t be doing more than three hours in training runs. This advice is bad and is starting to annoy me, to be honest, as it shows a real lack of understanding of the way slower runners train. At my current ‘stop for walk breaks/water/gels every mile, run really slowly the rest of the time’ pace, three hours wouldn’t even get me to half marathon distance. I need to build up to a 22-mile long run like a faster marathoner, even if the longest long runs take all day, as I need the mental preparation of doing that distance. The real plus point about this current training period is that I’m recovering from runs really quickly (barely any soreness the next day), which has never happened before, so I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing.
I have three big runs remaining before the marathon itself: an 18-miler (this Thursday), a 22-miler (two weeks later) and the Great North Run (three days after the 22-miler, so no, I am not expecting a PB!). The shorter runs on the schedule (3-6 miles, plus a couple more 12-milers) will all be about continuing my experiments to find a footwear setup that doesn’t hurt. It’d be nice if I managed that this Tuesday so I don’t have to do the 18-miler with foot pain!
Sprint finish at parkrun, 14th August 2021. If I can sprint finish like this at the London Marathon, it means I’ll have done the rest of the race too slowly! Photo (c) John Cooke 2021.
I’ll update again closer to the marathon. I know my result will be far from my original goals for this marathon back when it was scheduled to happen in spring 2020, but if I beat the insanely slow time that got me a second chance in the first place, I’ll be happy.
A version of this post first appeared on Fetch Everyone on 6th October 2020.
On Sunday 4th October last year, I completed the Virtual London Marathon 24 hour challenge (a 1.2 mile run every hour on the hour for 24 hours) that I had been planning for several months. It was a lot easier physically than I expected – my legs still felt absolutely fine and fresh 20+ miles in – and probably slightly tougher mentally. I knew what I had to do and I was able to keep getting myself out the door, but it just felt like it went on for such an insanely long time.
The middle of the night… sometime during the 24-hour period!
(1) While there were a lot of runners out and about, I only spotted one other guy who was definitely doing the marathon (i.e. had a running number on). I must have looked like I was struggling at that point as his exhortation of ‘keep going’ had a bit of a worried tone to it.
(2) I don’t have much luck with phones and the London Marathon. In 2019, when I staggered round the real race in 7:13, my phone spent so much time in my sweaty back pocket that the outer layer of whatever-they-finish-phone-plastic-with started rubbing off, leaving a mottled effect. I was happy to leave that as victory scars on the phone in 2019, but rather less willing to do the same with the completely smashed screen on my new phone in 2020, so the phone went into a repair shop a few days later!
I hope to do many marathons-in-one-go in the future, and maybe even organised longer endurance events, but I don’t think I’ll ever attempt to do such a long challenge as this just by myself (or with occasional accompanying Geth) again. There were a lot of very lonely laps out there. I’m really glad I did it, though, just to see what it was like and prove to myself that it was possible.
Two days after the event, I wrote:
‘I think it’s going to take me all week to recover from doing this – it was really intense, and I don’t feel like I’ve caught up on sleep or processed it properly yet. Hoping to feel marginally normal again by the weekend!’
In hindsight, it was a mistake only to take one rest-ish week – I ended up burning myself out later in October and needed two rest-ish months as a result – so I’ll bear that in mind for the next one!
(The ‘next one’ – the in-person London Marathon – is scheduled for October, but you just never know with this pandemic, so as I’ve mentioned before I just have to hope very hard!)
