Bit of an out-of-sorts day coming up tomorrow as I’ve got the Blaydon Race in the evening, which means I won’t be doing my usual daily run in the morning. That’ll feel strange! But it means I can get stuff done first thing, which I’m not used to.
I’m very nearly done with my current game incarnation – just a few things to sort this evening and then I can send it to the next round of testers. Glad to be hitting that milestone as it’s taken a bit longer than expected.
The marathon has taken quite a lot out of me and so I’m a bit out of routine this week. I spent a lot of today flat out in bed, not sleeping but feeling too out of it even to look at my phone! Appetite hasn’t properly returned yet either. Hoping to feel a bit more alive by the end of the week.
I’m already quite excited about the Blaydon Race next Thursday – it’ll be nice to do a shorter race again. It won’t be a fast one as I’ll still be recovering to some extent, but I’m looking forward to the atmosphere. It’s been a big miss for the last couple of years.
Quite a lot to unpack with this one. My official time was 6:37:32… but there’s a slightly complicated story behind it.
Issues that arose during the 20-week training block for this marathon:
1. Energy gels, which only previously caused problems when I took eight of them during the London Marathon last October, now make me feel sick more often than not. Water with electrolyte tablets in it also makes me feel sick. On a bad day, plain water by itself also makes me feel sick. (Spoiler: marathon day was a bad day.)
2. The chronic-for-over-a-decade-now pain, stiffness and inflammation that affects my lower back, hips and piriformis is, unsurprisingly, not going away. I am in the process of hospital investigation (they suspect it’s spondylitis due to the inherited HLA-B27 gene I have that causes my chronic uveitis), but this process is a slow one.
3. The biggest interruption to my training, however, was an overuse injury affecting my right calf and hamstring. I had successfully completed every run on the plan during the first ten weeks; however, my right knee was becoming so stiff and painful that I was hobbling every time I set off, and so I made the decision to rest it for ten days leading up to the Sheffield Half Marathon. After that, I went to the physio, who said that I shouldn’t do any runs longer than two miles for a few weeks. I followed this advice (and started doing a lot more strength training) but it meant that I couldn’t get a lot of my important longer runs in during the second half of the plan. I was able to do a 14-miler and an 18-miler four and three weeks out, respectively, but I would really have preferred to do a lot more than that. I also wasn’t able to get a lot of the other weekly mileage on the plan done during the second half, as I was nervous about triggering the leg injury again – it got a lot better with rest, but the niggle never went away completely.
My eventual plan for the marathon pacing strategy:
1. As a slow runner (6:26:41 marathon PB at London last year), I was terrified about getting caught by the sweeper bus (which, the race pack told us, would be travelling at 6 hour 30 minute pace behind the pack after the last runner had crossed the line). As such, I planned to start off doing sub-13-minute miles for the first nine miles, keeping to sub-14-minute miles for the next nine miles, and then trying to keep to sub-15-minute miles for the last nearly-nine miles. This, I hoped, would give me a bit of a buffer and allow me to finish within the cutoff. That was my C goal (or, as I described it to Geth, ‘not getting arrested for getting in a fight with a sweeper bus driver’ – I was genuinely worried about how I’d react if the bus caught me, because I knew how upset I’d be!).
2. My A and B goals were sub-six and a PB, respectively, but I knew that at least the first one was fairly unlikely. Something to hold over for the next marathon attempt.
What actually happened on the day:
1. I went out faster than I planned. I really did try to keep it slow, but the first few miles of the Edinburgh course are all downhill, and so I was averaging 11:30-minute-mile pace for the first five miles or so.
2. After that, we hit the flat bit along the seafront, so my pace settled down, but I was already beginning to feel extremely sick from the gels I was taking at four-mile intervals. I had been experiencing nausea after I got back from my long training runs, which I had identified as being a result of the gels, but I hadn’t experienced it during an actual run before – or at least not so badly or so early on in the run.
3. The five-mile point was also roughly when my hip seized up. I was surprised and disappointed about this, because the daily 30-minute strength sessions I’ve been doing for the last four or five weeks have been really improving my back/hip issues on the whole, and I’ve been walking a lot better and moving better in general. I had taken some pre-emptive ibuprofen before the race to prevent this from happening, and normally this strategy works, but yesterday it emphatically did not. My hip pain and stiffness didn’t ease up until about mile 22.
4. By the halfway point, two things were making running very difficult: (a) the fact that I felt like I was about to throw up at any moment; and (b) my completely-seized-up hip turning my running form into a horrible misaligned shuffle that was most definitely nowhere near the goal pace for that part of the run. However, because I was starting to take extended and frequent walk breaks in order to mitigate these issues, I realised powerwalking was a non-ideal solution to both: I didn’t feel quite as nauseous when I powerwalked, and my powerwalking pace at that point was quite a bit faster than my attempted run pace (though, again, nowhere near goal pace). Powerwalking seemed to be the best option of a bad lot, so that’s what I did for the rest of the race.
5. Mile 18 was probably the point at which it couldn’t really be called ‘powerwalking’ anymore. I had given up on the gels after mile 12 due to the nausea, and I felt so sick I couldn’t even drink much water (especially not from my own flasks – the rubbery taste caused by the flask stoppers, something that normally doesn’t bother me at all, was absolutely vile to me in my nauseous state), so I was becoming under-fuelled and under-hydrated. However, mile 18 is also the turnaround point where you head back to Musselburgh, so it did feel like the end was sort of in sight – I just had to keep death-marching.
6. The marshals on the course were all absolutely lovely, and every single one of them gave me an encouraging ‘not far to go now!’ along the long stretch home. As such, even though I slipped outside the 15-minute-mile average pace at around mile 21, I really believed I was home free from the sweeper bus – after all, the marshals wouldn’t be so encouraging if they were just going to DNF me, right? They were just going to let me finish now, surely? I was so close, and getting closer and closer and closer…
7. The sweeper bus caught me at 24 and a half miles. I felt like I was going to cry. ‘You’ve done really well to get past 24 miles!’ said the nice lady on the accompanying motorbike. ‘But we have to close the finish now.’ They offered me two options, which I wasn’t expecting and totally caught me off guard:
The first option was horrible and demoralising because of the idea of having come all that way to be faced with an empty, packed-up finish line. The second option was also horrible and demoralising because it felt like cheating – a really weird kind of cheating where the race officials were asking us to do it? I know it was them being nice and basically saying that they considered us to have near enough finished to be given a result, and I do appreciate the gesture. Nevertheless, I knew that in my head, it would never fully properly count as a completed marathon if I did 1.5 miles of it by bus. It had been a very long day, and I was definitely not mentally all there by that point, and yet I had to make this very difficult decision on the spot.
8. I got on the bus. A very subdued bus full of people with expressions matching mine. It felt, for the sake of my own immediate mental wellbeing, like the lesser of two evils.
9. I got off the bus, and found enough energy to shufflerun down the finish straight, and collected my medal and goody bag. None of this felt like the victory it usually does. It felt hollow.
Aftermath:
1. I’ve been feeling pretty rubbish for the last day. I know there are positives to take from the experience but I’m struggling to find them at the moment. I keep agonising about the decision point, feeling like I should have just gritted my teeth and soldiered on and taken the moral victory and accepted the DNF. But in that moment, I didn’t have the mental fortitude to do that. I wasn’t strong enough to face an empty finish, and I wasn’t strong enough to keep running when I felt really sick, and I wasn’t strong enough to stick to my fuelling strategy when it was making me feel sick… I keep dwelling on all the points where, if I’d just pushed a bit harder or stuck something out for a bit longer, I wouldn’t be feeling like I do now.
2. I know I have to move on from this, but it’s going to take a while. Still, I can at least identify some of the lessons to take away for next time.
The beginnings of preparation for the next one:
1. After my streak saver shufflejog this morning (day-after-marathon streak savers are one of the hardest things about maintaining a daily running streak!), I (slowly and stiffly) did my usual 30-minute strength training routine (and optimistically observed on Strava that ‘prep for the spring 2023 marathon starts here’). I’ve only been doing it for a few weeks, but I already feel so much better for it, even if it didn’t quite save me from the hip issues yesterday. It’s going to be an absolute cornerstone of my routine for the next year, and will hopefully limit my risk of niggles and injuries. I’m also considering checking in with the physio more often for a bit of prehab, even when I don’t feel injured. One positive I can take from yesterday is that my calf/knee/hamstring niggle didn’t bother me at all, and I think that’s because I’ve been strengthening it in accordance with the physio’s advice.
2. I want to focus on faster running for a while. My only remaining big race of the year will be the GNR in September, and I would like to get back down towards the half marathon times I was doing before the pandemic. (My PB is 2:23:42, set at the Inverness half in March 2020, and I would love to get close to that again!) I want to start doing speedwork again (there wasn’t any in either of the marathon training plans I’ve been following most recently, and my usual parkrun is hilly and non-speedy, so I’ve not really done any speedwork in over a year).
3. I need to think carefully about the training plan I follow for my next marathon, because none of the ones I’ve done have really suited me and they’ve always gone slightly wrong. I need to work in distance rather than time (because I’m so slow that I don’t get the necessary mileage done if I follow a time-based plan); I need a decent weekly interval session or similar (the last couple I’ve done have contained no speedwork, as mentioned above); and I’ve found in the most recent block that five focused sessions a week are too much for me, so I need to find a plan that only has three or four. I also need to remember to factor my rest day streak savers into my weekly mileage. Running every day is important to me for reasons of routine and I want to continue doing it, but I didn’t twig during this last block that it meant I was doing two extra miles per week on top of what the plan was asking.
4. I need to learn to fuel during the run with real food. I’m never taking another energy gel again – it’s not worth it. Mini chocolates used to work for me before I decided I was going to be a real runner who takes gels, and friends have recommended bananas and cereal bars. This might require a lot of experimentation, but I’ve got a year to do it.
5. The only thing that has ever properly mitigated my lower back pain has been weight loss. When I’m at my ideal weight, I barely notice any pain. However, I don’t find that maintaining my ideal weight is possible without feeling fairly hungry and deprived, especially when I’m doing a lot of exercise. I’m going to need to put some serious thought into finding a happy medium on this issue.
In conclusion:
I’m still rubbish at marathons. Yesterday was an especially bad experience. But I want to get better, and I’m going to keep trying.
It’s nice to get the 2022 season started, but I was a bit nervous about this one. For the week and a half leading up to the race I’d been taking a break from my marathon training plan, as my knee was really starting to hurt whenever I ran. During my break I mostly stuck to short treadmill runs and gentle walking, and discovered via lots of prodding with the foam roller / massage gun that the root of my knee pain is in my stiff calves (as ever). By Tuesday last week, I was able to run without pain, but I could still feel where the trouble spots were and so I was a bit worried that the issue would flare up during the race. I just had to wait and see.
I knew from the elevation map that the first five miles of the race are all uphill, but I didn’t quite expect that there would be no flat reprieves at all during that stretch! It was pretty relentless, and I’d been worried about my leg on the uphills due to it hurting a lot during a short sharp hill in Edinburgh the previous weekend. However, it went the opposite way – the leg held up okay on the uphill section, but it did hurt quite a bit during the remaining eight downhill miles! I had to be really careful to stick to the middle of the road during miles six to eight out in the countryside, as the camber of the outside edges made things worse.
Mentally, I had a bit of a pity party at mile ten. Two years ago, in early March 2020, I was in my best shape ever and achieved my half marathon PB of 2:23:42 at the Inverness half. I was training for the London Marathon and it was going perfectly… and then, boom, COVID, and two years later I’m nowhere near that shape and it feels like I never will be again. I had a real moment of doubt at that ten-mile marker, as it was looking like I wouldn’t even get under three hours, and I wondered why the hell I do this to myself when I’m so pathetically slow and bad at running, and what on earth the point of it all is when I’m always trailing at the back like this, and I’ve always got aches and pains that make the whole thing a bit miserable, and everyone else doing this pace is either much older or much heavier than me, and why can’t I just be average instead of utterly appalling…
And then I had a gel, and gritted my teeth, and picked up the plod for the last three miles, and staggered in at 2:58:44. I must have looked absolutely dead when crossing the line as I was instantly accosted by a first aider with a sopping wet towel, who unceremoniously squeezed most of the water down the back of my neck and sternly told me to keep the towel on until I was out of the finish area. Race volunteers are amazing.
Post-race, I’m still treating the dodgy calf (plus the bonus hamstring twinge and the recurring hip issue that has flared up again… it’s a bit of a circus down there), and I’m a little unsure how best to get back to my marathon training plan. The marathon is just under nine weeks away, and I’ve got the competing worries of doing too much too soon (resulting in continued issues with the leg) and not getting back to it quickly enough (resulting in losing fitness and motivation). I need to find some kind of balance, and I’m not 100% sure how to go about it.
I’m really pleased I got this half done though. It was a tough one.
I’ll do my full review post on today’s Sheffield Half Marathon tomorrow. I’m knackered this evening and just want to get to bed! Geth and I had a relatively good morning out though, and have just been eating and dozing since we finished the race. It would have been nice to mooch around Sheffield for a bit, but I’m never any good for Doing Stuff after a long race. Back to running at home tomorrow.
Last race of the year… and it was certainly an interesting one!
Having navigated the seemingly-permanent North East road disruptions and got myself comfortably parked at Dalton Park Retail Centre, I collected my number and retreated to the car until it was nearly time for the race start. The weather was as you might expect this time of year – freezing, blowing a gale and pouring with rain – so I didn’t want to have to stand out in it for longer than necessary! Unfortunately, the race start was delayed by about ten minutes as the starter had been sent to the wrong place… this had a fairly big knock-on effect on the rest of my race.
I was expecting to finish in 1:15:00 or just over. I finished in 1:20:18 at the North Tyneside 10k seven weeks previously, but on that occasion I was having a really bad day with my suspected spondylitis, so I was dragging my leg most of the way. I would have finished quicker today if not for a few issues.
First of all, the 5k runners – who were meant to start fifteen minutes after the 10k runners – started on time, only about five minutes after us. This meant that I (the last runner, as it was a small field and I’m slow) was being overtaken from about one and a half kilometres in, and so by the time I got to the marshal at two and a half kilometres, I was well mixed in with the 5k lot. This meant that the marshal assumed I was doing the 5k and directed me to turn back around the cones – which was the wrong way. I realised fairly soon after that something had gone wrong and returned to clarify that I was doing the 10k, but this added an extra half a kilometre (about three or four minutes at my pace) to my race.
Once I got to the lapped lollipop part of the route, I felt a lot better as there were lots of other 10k runners doing the laps – until the final part of the second lap, when I was most definitely on my own! It was a long, lonely stretch back to the start/finish area, and the final hundred metres were made a bit dicey by the fact that they had also started the junior 2k race off bang on time. The juniors were meant to go ninety minutes after us, and if we’d started on time I would have been finished and back in the car by the time they set off. Unfortunately, due to the ten-minute delay, I was running face first into a bunch of very surprised-looking kids as I struggled up the finishing straight – which was pretty hazardous on a steep hill! Thankfully they’d all passed me by the time I made it over the timing mat. Just have to hope there’s no chip confusion as a result (it looks like it might take a day or two for the results to be posted).
The finish volunteers didn’t even notice I’d finished for a couple of seconds (I think they were quite understandably distracted by having just set the juniors off) but quickly found me a 10k medal, water and some much-appreciated Celebrations! I’d picked up my t-shirt along with my number before the race. They were also keen for me to take a Santa Dash medal, but I declined – I only need one medal per event! On my way back to the car, I was also offered a very soggy extra t-shirt (presumably also a Santa Dash one!), but again I don’t need any more of those. I’m not sure whether the ‘Santa Dash’ referred to the 5k or was a different event that they’d either (a) cancelled or (b) ordered too many medals and t-shirts for.
My Garmin tells me I finished in 1:21:44, which should be roughly my gun time (I started my watch when they said ‘go’ and crossed the timing mat about twenty-five seconds later, so my chip time should be a bit faster). I’ll find out my official time when they post the results and will update this post then. I’m a little disappointed about going the wrong way as I could have been a few minutes faster, but the real victory today was gritting my teeth and doing the race in those conditions. I feel really happy now that my race season is finally over, though I’m already looking forward to the Sheffield Half Marathon, Edinburgh Marathon and twice-postponed Blaydon Race in spring and summer 2022. While Geth was not at all jealous of me running in the wintry conditions today, it did remind him that he’s not had a decent 10k attempt in a while… so hopefully we’ll get a few 10k races in during summer 2022 as well!
I definitely won’t be doing any more winter races, though. Winter running, going forward, will be a time for treadmills, post-parkrun hibernation weekends, and the bit of marathon training that’s short enough that you don’t have to be out for very long.
I hadn’t done the North Tyneside 10k before, but it was a while coming. Geth and I originally booked our places nearly two years ago for the 2020 race (it normally takes place on Easter weekend), but of course the race got postponed… three times. Anyway, we finally got to run it today, eighteen months later than originally planned. I wouldn’t normally schedule a 10k race a fortnight after a marathon (even though it did work out quite well once before), but due to all the COVID postponements and reschedulings, race season was not planned out this year – everything just had to fall where it fell.
On my gentle jog to parkrun volunteering yesterday, I found that my sciatica was playing up badly for the first time in years. (I was told years ago that it wasn’t sciatica, but earlier this week a doctor described it as such, so I feel vindicated… anyway.) I hoped that it was just a one-off as I have been absolutely religious with my post-run stretching and daily foam rolling for weeks and weeks now. However, I slept badly with it last night, and woke up with a fairly useless leg that could barely bear weight, so I was more than a little worried about today’s race. I took an ibuprofen just over an hour before the race, and that seemed to ease it up a bit.
The first mile or two were fine, but over the course of the race, my leg got weaker and weaker and I am amazed that I didn’t fall over at any point during the later stages. I used to call this ‘collapse-y leg’ when it happened a lot before I lost weight, because that really is what happens – my upper leg just starts to collapse under my weight. I generally avoid falling over by quickly shifting to my other leg, but obviously this isn’t great for my form or my leg health. I am hoping that a combination of losing the lockdown weight, physio treatment and an ongoing hospital referral will help to mitigate this issue.
I finished in 1:20:18, which is my slowest 10k time in years – but that’s fine given today. I do feel like I could run that race a lot better, so I expect I will try it again sometime – when I’m in better shape and not coming straight out of a marathon training block!
It’s the weekend but it’s going to be a pretty busy one! Geth and I are volunteering at parkrun tomorrow morning, then I’ll be following the opening day sessions for my course tomorrow afternoon, and then we’ve got the North Tyneside 10k on Sunday. Fairly full-on week next week too with starting the course modules, so I expect I’ll be scheduling another Shouldless Sunday next weekend in order to relax!
I’ve been able to get a good chunk of work done on my new game this week as well, which has been great. Coding for that should be done by the middle of next week and then I can get started on the bells and whistles. I need to fit it in with coursework and day job work, but it’s all going really well so far, and I feel like I’ve got a good planned balance for the next couple of weeks. Hallowe’en will be a really great celebration of getting it done… I hope!
Speaking of which, the decorations may be coming out this weekend. I loved having them up for two weeks last year and I think that will become the norm…
This week’s earworm playlists:
Saturday
Sacre – ‘The London Marathon’
Sean Paul – ‘Get Busy’*
Mark Knopfler – ‘Local Hero’
VNV Nation – ‘Fearless’
Avicii and Aloe Blacc – ‘Wake Me Up’
Sunday
Sean Paul – ‘Get Busy’
Monday
Avicii and Aloe Blacc – ‘Wake Me Up’
Howard Jones – ‘Like To Get To Know You Well’
Tuesday
Sean Paul – ‘Get Busy’
Hans Zimmer – ‘He’s A Pirate’
Wednesday
Sean Paul – ‘Get Busy’
Yuzo Koshiro – ‘Battlefield: Storm’
Mark Knopfler – ‘Local Hero’
Thursday
Sean Paul – ‘Get Busy’
Bill Withers – ‘Ain’t No Sunshine’
Lady Gaga and Beyoncé – ‘Telephone’
Friday
Robert Burns – ‘Auld Lang Syne’
Travis – ‘Driftwood’
Meat Loaf – ‘I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)’
Rod Stewart – ‘Maggie May’
Bill Withers – ‘Ain’t No Sunshine’
*Judi Love and Graziano Di Prima danced to this on Strictly a couple of weeks ago and I have not been able to get it out of my head since 😬 It takes me right back to dancing in dodgy clubs in my late teens.
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.
Sunderland is a favourite running event. I did my first 10k there in 2016 (slow and painful but I did it!), moved up to the half in 2017, didn’t enjoy it, and have been sticking to the 10k ever since. The 10k is a great course. It’s mostly flat and I always get a PB there without fail. I had reason to expect that this year would be no exception.
Until this morning’s trip to Sunderland, I hadn’t raced a 10k since the Great North 10k 2019, nearly two years ago (thanks pandemic). My previous 10k PB was 1:09:13, set at Sunderland in May 2019. However, I managed a 1:03:30 10k split in the first half of last September’s Virtual Great North Run (not sensible! I was trying to keep up with faster runners), and more recently have been consistently running around 1:10 during easy 10k training runs. I knew, even with the weight gain and loss of fitness that has come about during the last fifteen months of lockdown, that a PB was almost certain. I also believed, judging by my recent running, that sub-1:05 might be possible. However, I didn’t want to put too much pressure on myself, so I told myself I would be happy with a PB of any amount. I’m not sure I ever really believed that though!
I went off a little too fast, but that was expected. I need to get used to running races with other people again, and not letting others around me set my pace for me (this is a really difficult balance as I also use this initial atmosphere as a boost to get me into the mindset of running faster than usual, and so I’m not sure I’ll ever get it 100% right). However, I kept up really well for the rest of the race, and didn’t burn out. I tired a little in the last couple of miles – I’d made the 5k marker in 31 minutes and was convinced sub-1:05 was on, but in the last mile I really didn’t think I would do it! However, the finish line appeared sooner than expected (they move it around slightly from year to year), and I was able to sprint – sort of! – for the line, finishing in 1:04:41. I am absolutely over the moon.
The great thing is that I’m now considerably closer to something that’s been a goal for the whole six years I’ve been running – a sub-hour 10k. The two 10ks I’ve got lined up in the autumn/winter are tougher courses, so I don’t think I’ll do it this year, but if I train hard and lose the lockdown weight then I think I’ve got a really good chance of getting it at Sunderland next year.
I’ve been really wiped the rest of the day – surprisingly so. I don’t think I’ve ever been this tired after a 10k before. However, I’m going to take that as a good sign, as it means I raced it properly!
No more in-person races now until the Great North Run in September. London Marathon training will keep me busy in the meantime…