My first proper virtual for 2021 (other than the LEJOG accumulator I’m doing, which started on 1st January and lasts all year) was a 10k run that I did for the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation’s Retro Run Series. I’d seen these virtual runs advertised online last year, and as an ’80s obsessive I was really keen to do the ’80s version.
You can sign up to do a challenge for any decade from the ’60s to the ’00s, or even do all five if you’d like to go for the supermedal! You can also choose any standard distance from 5k upwards, and can change your mind about the distance if necessary before the virtual (as the medal and t-shirt aren’t distance-specific). I decided on 10k, as I really wanted to complete a 10k in January 2021, having not managed to do so in November or December 2020. As it happened, because of the snow, the only 10k I managed to do in January was on the treadmill, and I wanted to do a road 10k for the virtual. I eventually managed to get my ‘official’ 10k in on the first weekend of February – I was really glad that you could choose to do it any day before the end-of-February deadline! The website now states that you can do the runs at any time up to the end of May 2021, so still plenty of time to get those retro runs in if you’re interested.
I was really pleased with the run itself – my running had all been very slow over the winter, but on the day my legs clearly decided it was a race and so I managed a time that was fairly close to my official 10k race PB. One of a number of recent signs that are very promising for when I get back to doing real races again.
I didn’t listen to the ’80s playlist provided during the run, as I generally prefer to run without headphones. I will have a listen at home at some point though! Bling-wise I donated extra in order to get the t-shirt – I don’t normally bother with a t-shirt for virtuals as I have so many from real races and my drawer is getting a bit full, but the Retro Run Series ’80s t-shirt is a fantastic design, with a reference to the infamous Frankie/Hamnett knockoff slogan on the front, and a nice synthwave-esque neon/car/sunset motif on the back.
The medal is also great, with the featured ’80s item being a ‘Sonny’ Walkman (avoiding a legal issue maybe?) and some nice ’80s colours and fonts that are a very welcome addition to my medal collection. Going to display this one with pride.
The Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation are going to be doing another virtual series later this year, so I’ll be waiting with interest to see what they come up with!
One of the many types of virtual challenges that have sprung up during the course of the last year is a medal challenge with the option to pick a (standard) distance and date and just go for it. There are many companies online that offer this kind of flexible challenge to help with motivation during the long wait for races to return, including my running club, Lonely Goat RC, who are the biggest affiliated running club in the UK due to being based online. They started offering the option to sign up to virtual challenges in autumn 2020, but with so many other virtuals on my schedule at the time, I didn’t end up signing up to one of their challenges until December – a time when I really needed a bit of motivation to get out the door.
5k is usually a distance that I run or surpass two or three times a week, but during November, I didn’t manage the distance at all. I had overtrained slightly for the Virtual GNR and Virtual London, and I found that my body needed a break. Prior to starting my daily running streak, I would usually find that I had a ‘winter running slump’ every year where I didn’t run at all for three to six weeks. This period from late October to mid-December 2020 was my equivalent this winter, although I did run at least a mile every day to keep the streak going!
As such, signing up to do a 5k on 27th December felt like an actual challenge! The roads were clear that morning (a rarity this winter) so I was able to go out and run my usual 5k route. I was fairly happy with my time too, considering my running had taken a back seat for a couple of months.
A few days later, the medal arrived. Bling is one of the things I miss most about races, and also one of the main reasons I’ve been doing virtuals to tide me over:
It’s a really hefty, weighty medal, well worth the cost! (You can sign up to Lonely Goat challenges for free and pay for a medal as an optional extra.)
They’ve slightly redesigned the medal and ribbon for 2021, so I will be having another crack at a Lonely Goat Virtual Challenge later this year. Distance to be announced at a later date…
This December challenge was the second (and last as of now) of the Great Run Solo accumulators that I’ve entered, following October’s Hallowe’en event.
It followed a fairly similar formula to the Hallowe’en version, this time requiring participants to complete twelve runs between the 1st and 25th of December. Usually you don’t get the medal until the following month, but on this occasion they sent them out early (before most people had even completed the challenge) so that we could all use the alternative ‘tree decoration’ ribbon to hang them on our Christmas trees!
There were three medals designed for this challenge, and it was a surprise as to which one you would be sent. Mine was a Santa medal, but I’d have been equally happy with a snowman or reindeer!
A little bit of extra sparkle for my 2020 tree!
The basic challenge wasn’t really a challenge for me as I run every day anyway, so my main interest was in seeing how much mileage I could rack up. It wasn’t as much as I would have liked as I was still on a bit of a post-London slump, and so I only managed the lowest of the three certificate levels, but anything was a win in the first part of December.
Post-Christmas I was a bit more refreshed and was able to move onto slightly bigger challenges, which I’ll discuss in the next few weeks!
However, I also miss medals, and doing virtual races and challenges means I still get medals during this strange time. Furthermore, it gives me extra running motivation, which can never be underestimated, especially in the colder months.
Since summer 2020, with all Great Run events cancelled or postponed, one of the things the Great Run company has been organising is a series of accumulator challenges, starting with the first Great Run Solo challenge over the summer and then monthly since October 2020. Accumulator challenges involve aiming to run (or sometimes walk / cycle / swim) a particular distance or number of runs over the course of a longer period, rather than all in one go.
October’s Great Run Solo accumulator was Hallowe’en-themed – and I LOVE Hallowe’en, so I thought I might as well give it a go, especially as it meant I would get a Hallowe’en medal at the end!
The option was there to log my runs on the Great Run website, but I found it much easier just to log them on Garmin Connect and Strava as usual and then confirm the total mileage / number of runs on the website at the end of the month. In order to finish the challenge, you had to complete fifteen runs, and if your mileage was over a certain amount then you could download a certificate. There were three levels of certificate to aim for, and I think I managed the middle one. Not bad considering I needed a break after the Virtual London Marathon!
I didn’t bother ordering the t-shirt as I have plenty, but I was really excited for the medal to arrive…
I feel autumnal again just looking at it!
It glows in the dark (or bits of it do, anyway), which will be interesting when I finally finish putting up the medal display on our bedroom wall!
This challenge set the pattern for the Great Run company’s monthly accumulators. I’ve not been doing them every month, but the Hallowe’en one wasn’t the last. More on that next week!
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!)
Finally getting round to reviewing a virtual race from last September – one of the highlights of my running season in 2020!
I keep referring to this race officially – in Strava logs and the like – as ‘Virtual Great North Run 2020’, as it keeps things neat. However, I fervently hope that there will only ever be one ‘Virtual Great North Run’, that the race can go back to normal(ish) in 2021, and that appending the ‘2020’ will forever be unnecessary!
A picture from happier times, in South Shields after the Great North Run in 2019.
For most of 2020, despite the fact that in-person races had to cease along with everything else when we went into lockdown in March, I avoided virtual races. Virtual races have been a thing since long before the pandemic – the idea is that you pay the ‘race entry’ fee, run the distance wherever you like, send in your Strava log or similar as proof, and receive a medal in the post for your medal hanger/kitchen drawer/wherever you keep your medals. I’ve never been keen on the idea, because in normal circumstances I don’t see the point. If I’m paying a race entry fee, I want the experience of a real race – the crowds, the adrenaline, the excitement, the music, the fact that I automatically go faster when running with other people, the cheering spectators, the sights along the route, the atmosphere of the finish line… I could go on and on. I really, really miss real races 🙁
For some people, though, virtual races are ideal. There are people who can’t attend races on Sunday mornings due to other commitments, or who don’t like being in crowds – so it’s great that virtual races exist and can cater to these people. I’m just not the target audience, in normal circumstances.
However, we are far from normal circumstances.
The big coronavirus-related anxiety for me over the summer was the question of whether the rescheduled October date for the London Marathon would be going ahead. In a nutshell, as I already blogged lots and lots about this at the time: they took ages to announce; they eventually announced it was going virtual for 2020; I was able to defer my ‘real London Marathon’ place to 2021; I also accepted the invitation to run the virtual race in 2020 as I wanted to do it as a ‘mile(ish) every hour for 24 hours’ challenge. Sorted. I had signed up for my very first virtual race.
There was the option to print out your own race number. Now framed with all my others!
The Great North Run had cancelled their in-person race and announced they were going virtual for 2020 quite some time before the London announcement. When this announcement was first made (in June, I think?), I didn’t expect to do the virtual. Every cancelled race I had originally been signed up for in 2020 had invited me to do a virtual version in exchange for a race entry fee, and I hadn’t taken any of them up on the offer – because, as explained above, I don’t normally see the point in virtual races.
However, after signing up for the Virtual London Marathon, I felt that it would be a good idea to commit myself to a half marathon length run, as it would be good training – even though I knew I would be running the marathon in a different way that wouldn’t require quite as much all-in-one-go endurance. I had kept meaning to run half marathon length runs over the summer, but none of them had ever transpired due to lack of motivation, so I decided to sign up to the Virtual GNR in order to make sure that I actually did it.
The other reason was that the excitement of planning my 24-hour challenge had made me realise how much I was missing races. A virtual race, while still a glorified training run in my world, would at least help to give some structure to my running over the next couple of months.
T-shirts from previous Great North Weekends (2015-2019). I did the 5k the first year we lived in Newcastle, and have done the full GNR every year since.
A few days after signing up, I happened to bump (not literally, I am a good social distancer) into a running friend while out on my Sunday long run, and as a result was invited to join the informal Sunday GNR training runs that were being organised by members of the local social run group. I’d attended a couple of the group’s formal runs around late February, just before everything shut down, but hadn’t realised that there were still some informally-organised socially distanced runs going on. (They’ve had to stop again since the lockdowns have become stricter over the autumn and winter, sadly!)
All set for the Virtual GNR. Club vest and special Lucy Locket Loves GNR leggings on!
I enjoyed the Sunday training runs, which were at a pace that was a bit faster than my usual solo bumbling, but manageable for me, and decided to run the actual race with the group as well. It was a great atmosphere at our ‘starting area’, with perhaps fifteen or twenty people from the group all running in a socially distanced way (this was before even the ‘rule of six’ came in, let alone the return to full lockdown… so much has changed again in the last few months!).
Start line marked in chalk on the pavement!
The group’s starting pace on the day was a little fast for me, it turned out. The first 5k of the race was the fastest I’d run since before parkrun shut down, and the first 10k of the race was a lifetime 10k PB for me of 1:03:30. This is really promising in terms of my aim to manage a sub-hour 10k in 2021… but was absolutely not something I should have been doing in the first half of a half marathon! I was focusing too much on keeping up with the group rather than running at my own pace – and, as I did know the route, I should maybe have told them to go ahead and fallen back to a more comfortable pace for me.
As a result, I burnt out and fell apart a bit in the second half of the race. The rest of the group gradually disappeared, and at about ten or eleven miles in I told group leader Alan (who was lovely and kept waiting for me) that he could go ahead and I’d finish a bit later. The last couple of miles were pretty difficult and slow and I kept taking walk breaks, which I hadn’t needed to do in a half marathon for some time. Geth came to meet me at about twelve and a half miles, and I just about managed to run-walk to the end of the planned route. My official time as measured by the GNR app was 2:25:29 – only a couple of minutes slower than my PB from the Inverness half in the different world that was early March, so I had to take that as a victory given everything that had happened in 2020! I stopped my watch at about 2 hours 29 minutes once it said I’d done the full half marathon distance, and I think I ran over the planned route finishing line at about 2 hours 32 minutes. All of those times were faster than any other half I’ve done apart from Inverness, so in terms of finish time, I can’t complain.
The Virtual GNR t-shirt is one of the nicest yet.
I was a little disappointed with myself about the pacing as I like to finish strong in races, but to some extent it was out of my control. I originally planned to do another half marathon distance run before the end of the year, just to see what I could do when completely in charge of my own pacing, but I ended up needing a couple of months to recover from my 24-hour challenge/Virtual London Marathon. I need to build up again over the first few months of 2021.
Nice heavy medal for the effort too!
Besides, I’ll also be focusing on 10k training for the next couple of months, with the aim of being ready to get that sub-hour result later this year. It doesn’t look likely that I’ll be doing any real races any time soon… but it turns out a virtual race isn’t the end of the world, so I’ve signed up to do a virtual 10k later in January.
It was meant to be the start of a fantastic race season. Training was going brilliantly for my second London Marathon, and I was also looking forward to improving my PBs at all my usual spring races before spending the autumn exploring a few races that I hadn’t done before. While the Tokyo Marathon had been cancelled for all but its elite runners a couple of weeks previously, it just didn’t seem likely that the coronavirus pandemic would have that kind of effect here in the UK.
That was early March, of course – we had absolutely no idea what was about to hit us – and six months down the line, with everything else now officially postponed to next year, it is definitely the case that the Inverness Half Marathon was, and will remain, my only race of 2020, not counting the two virtual ones that I will be running in the next month.
I’d probably better get round to reviewing it, then, seeing as how in hindsight it was the highlight of my ‘season’!
My initial, fairly modest, aim for Inverness was to run sub-2:35 (for context if you don’t know, I’m a slow runner who has been gradually bringing my half marathon times down from 3:46:45 in my first Great North Run in 2016). I had run a new PB of 2:36:32 at the 2019 GNR, and at that time had set the goal for my next half as sub-2:35, with the additional hope that I would further improve this to sub-2:30 by the end of 2020. (There were a lot of half marathons planned for 2020… sigh.)
However, the combination of my London Marathon training and my new habit (started on New Year’s Day 2020) of running every day meant that my pace was really improving, and it was starting to seem possible that I would be able to run closer to 2:30 by the time of the Inverness half. Geth was predicting an even bigger improvement of 2:25 based on my recent times, and I knew that if I had a good race I would probably be able to do it. However, I kept my goal time modest, because – as is always the case in half marathons – I was worried about pushing myself too hard and burning out. I promised myself I would be happy with anything under 2:35, which would be a good PB.
All ready to run! Pre-race in the sports centre.
Inverness is a great course. Most of it is fairly flat, with the exception of a long-ish climb round about miles 4-5. This climb is early enough in the race that it feels like you’re getting it out of the way early on. The middle section is a bit suburban and twisty, but the first and last couple of miles feature stunning views of the River Ness (the last mile back to the stadium is a bit of a slog, but you just have to power through at that point!).
It was cold on the start line (though not as bad as 2019!), with everyone eager to get going. As such, I went off far too fast for the first mile, and it took until about mile 3 for me to settle into my target pace. I was a bit worried that this would come back to haunt me; however, I was able to maintain my pace really comfortably for the rest of the race. I finished in 2:23:42 – a huge PB of 12 minutes and 50 seconds. This was massively promising for the rest of the year!… at the time.
Obviously, that planned ‘rest of the year’ did not transpire, and I have a general rule of not thinking about the parallel universe where coronavirus didn’t happen, so I’m not going to dwell on what might have been this year. However, I’m hopeful that when races finally start back up again, I will be able to get back to chasing down those PBs – my next scheduled in-person half marathon is Edinburgh in May 2021, which is meant to be really flat and fast. 2021 could be the great race season that 2020 originally promised to be, assuming that things continue to move slowly back towards normality.
Plus, of course, I’ve got the Virtual Great North Run this Sunday with the local social run group – and my long runs with them have been promising pace-wise, so you never know…
I’ve had a week to digest this year’s Great North Run now!
First of all, it feels like it was absolutely the right decision for me to make the Great North Run the final race of my running season for 2019. I’ve finished on a high, at a point when I’m still really enthused about running, so I really feel like I have a good chance of avoiding the winter running slump this year, as I won’t be burning myself out training for races later in autumn.
The weather was ridiculously hot for the fifth year running. What is up with that? I first noticed it in 2015 when it poured down as I was doing the Great North 5k on the Saturday and then got stupidly warm in time for the main event on the Sunday. It’s the north-east of England – it shouldn’t be guaranteed hot weather in September!
However, it was the first time I felt properly in control during a half marathon. I went out too fast in the first two or three miles – probably due to starting in a faster wave – and I did slow down a little during miles eight to eleven, but I had planned for that, and I knew I was still on track for a PB. In the end, my time was 2:36:32, which was four minutes and seven seconds off my previous best. I was really happy with that! Next target: sub 2:35.
This one gets a little weightier and more colourful every year!
I will definitely be back next year for the 40th Great North Run!
I’m a week late with this review, but it did take me a while to get over my cold/general grogginess this week! Better late than never.
Race t-shirt was really nice this year!
So, last Sunday I ran the Blaydon Race for the third year running. It was announced fairly early this year that the course would be a little shorter than usual due to roadworks taking place in Blaydon, so I was hopeful that I would beat last year’s frustrating 1:00:35 result.
Things did not turn out the way I planned.
First of all, my watch died when I was trying to adjust it before the race, so I had to record Strava on my phone instead. This meant that I didn’t have an easy means of checking how far along the course I was during the race. I really need to get a new running watch.
Secondly, last year’s bottleneck problem – caused by the course at the start in the middle of Newcastle city centre being far too narrow for the number of runners – was even worse this year. It was about a hundred and fifty metres into the race before anyone was actually able to start running.
Thirdly, I had come down with a bad cold – which I had spent about a week trying not to catch from Geth – in the middle of the week before the race. By Sunday, I was over the worst of it, but the digestion/stomach issues that colds always cause me meant that as soon as I started running, an immediate painful stitch clamped its way around my abdomen and just wouldn’t let go for the entirety of the race. It was probably the most uncomfortable I have ever been during running, and I seriously considered giving up at various points.
As such, I was about three and a half minutes slower (1:04:09) than last year, despite the shorter course. I’ll just have to hope that I’m in a fitter condition for next year’s race.
For the third year running, Geth and I did the EMF 10k this last weekend. We were both saying before the event that it would definitely be our last one, because Geth wanted to move up to the half marathon next year (I, meanwhile, am not sure which distance I want to do next year – I’m just getting a bit sick of running up Arthur’s Seat having done it in two Great Winter 5ks and three EMF 10ks now!).
THE EMF finisher medal. It’s cute but a bit lazy, because they just do the same finisher medal for all the races and add a wee plastic tag to say which race it was!
Our friend Kieran was doing the race with us this year, so after a very early start (the race is at 9am, which is great for getting it over and done with, but it does require a 6:30am alarm!) we met up on the bus and headed out to Dynamic Earth, which acts as the hub for the Saturday races.
Since the London Marathon, I’m finding that 10k races are feeling very short. As such, once I was over the hill, it was a lovely quick amble in good running weather, and it felt like I was finished in no time. However, it turned out that I was two and a half minutes slower than last year, so maybe it would be good to do one more attempt in a year when I don’t still have a marathon in my legs.
Following the 10k, we all regrouped and found a good spot to watch our other friend Sharpy, who was doing the 5k. He managed it in super-quick time, so we were soon in a taxi back to Morningside for lunch in the pub!
I will definitely be back at the EMF next year – I just don’t know which distance I’ll be doing. After I informed everyone of the existence of the mad people who do all four races over the course of EMF weekend, there was some talk of doing the Saturday 10k/5k double…so we’ll see!
