Tag: Running

Warning: super long blog!

It’s been a busy week, but I have finally had time to put some thoughts together.

First of all, what an epic training block. 15 weeks. 1st January 2024 to 14th April 2024. It was so all-encompassing and such a bubble that I feel a bit bereft without it!

During this training block:

• I started the block with a 5k PB of 26:23 (set in December 2023); via weekly fast efforts at parkrun, I whittled it down to 24:05.
• I started the block with a 10k PB of 54:23 (set in October 2023); in week 13 of the block, at the North Tyneside 10k, I took it down to 49:34.
• I started the block with a half marathon PB of 2:14:52 (set in September 2023); in week 6 of the block, at the Valentine Half Marathon, I took it down to 1:59:31.
• In week 11 of the block, I ran my first ever ultra – the 34-mile Tyne Bridges to Boundaries Ultra.
• Through careful prehab habits built up over time, I never allowed any slight niggles to turn into injuries, and managed to get through the whole block without missing a single planned training run.
• Following years of attempting to fuel with gels and chews that made me feel sick, I appear to have cracked long-distance fuelling (for now at least), having switched to Active Root ginger gel mix.
• I went through three tubes of Deep Heat, in addition to using up all the sample sachets collected from race goody bags over the last few years.
• In global running news: Kelvin Kiptum sadly and shockingly passed away, Camille Herron broke the women’s six-day record, Jasmin Paris became the first ever female finisher of the Barkley Marathons, Nicki Clark was awarded the first ever parkrun 1,000 milestone shirt, the London Marathon tightened up its GFA times, and Russ Cook became the first person to run the length of Africa.

A typical week during this block:

• Monday: TMBR social run (3-4 miles) in the evening.
• Tuesday: speedwork session in the morning, strength session in the evening.
• Wednesday: rest day one-mile streak saver.
• Thursday: long run.
• Friday: TMBR social run (3-4 miles) in the morning.
• Saturday: fast effort at parkrun.
• Sunday: medium long run (2 miles solo, 6 miles with TMBR, 2 miles solo – 10 in total).

Most of the plan was just adapted from my usual routine. I based the long run distances and speedwork sessions on the Ben Parkes improver plan, but I didn’t do any of the marathon goal pace work recommended within the long runs – I kept them all easy and focused on hitting the distance. This was because the distance itself still felt a bit out of my comfort zone, as I hadn’t attempted a marathon for two years. I decided to include both a long run and a medium long run in the weekly schedule because I felt I should keep the mileage high in order to prepare for the ultra. I knew it wasn’t ideal to plonk my first ultra in the middle of a marathon training block, but it was an event I really wanted to do!

On weeks when I had B races (weeks 6, 11 and 13) I swapped the Tuesday and Thursday sessions round in order to give myself a slight mini-taper before each race. I also only did 10 miles for my midweek long run in week 11 instead of the scheduled 20, as I knew the ultra would provide more than enough mileage for that week.

Random maranoia niggles during the taper:

• Bruised calves from sports massage #1 in week 13 – these were tender for days and gave me a bit of a scare! I do think the massage contributed to my 10k race result that week though.
• Wisdom tooth / gum pain, which I haven’t had for years. Every time I thought it had gone away, it would reappear on the opposite side of my mouth. This went on for a good fortnight leading up to the marathon.
• Right hamstring – this felt like it had pulled as I was walking off after my final fast parkrun effort, 8 days before the race. Cue PANIC, though my mind was eased a bit when there were no issues with it during sports massage #2 in week 15.
• Ankylosing spondylitis symptoms – I haven’t had any spondylitis symptoms since I started my current treatment 11 months ago, so having twinges of the old familiar back pain and sciatica was really scary. It was this that cemented my decision to skip the calves during sports massage #2 – I asked the physio to work on my lower back instead. However, I could still feel the dull ache in my back on the tram of the morning of the race, and I was almost in tears when Geth went off to his start pen – I was convinced, despite everything that had gone right during the training, that the spondylitis was going to descend and scupper my race yet again.
• Uveitis – I haven’t had any uveitis attacks since starting the current spondylitis treatment, as protecting against uveitis is a (happy) side effect of the medication. However, I kept getting itchy eyes in the final few days before we were due to travel to Manchester, and similarly to the spondylitis, I was convinced that it was all happening again. (Nevertheless, I did run my very first marathon (London 2019) three days after being diagnosed with my first uveitis attack and was stopping to put in eye drops once an hour during the race, so I knew it could be done if necessary!)

Race weekend, then.

We arrived in Manchester on the Friday, as the last time I did a long drive the day before a marathon (Edinburgh 2022) I felt it contributed to issues during the race. We stayed at a hotel at the airport rather than in the centre of Manchester so that we’d have an easy place to park; unfortunately, the hotel wasn’t great and the food selection was limited, which meant we weren’t as ideally carb-loaded as we would have liked. Definitely a lesson for the future.

We did my ideal ‘pre-marathon Saturday’ that had worked for me in London in 2019 and 2021 – shakeout parkrun (Wythenshawe – parkrunday catchup blog to follow!) and then back to the hotel to get everything sorted for race morning and rest as much as possible. I prepped my gel mix flasks in advance, as I had done for the ultra, as it takes a while and I didn’t want to be faffing with that on race morning.

I was surprised to find my nerves had gone when I woke up on Sunday. I suppose I was just laser-focused on the race morning logistics. Breakfast in the room (brioche! I have crumpets in training but brioche is my marathon race day good luck charm), kit and numbers and warm layers on, tram from the airport to Trafford Bar. The circuit round Old Trafford cricket ground to drop our bags off and get ready was fine, as there was lots to see (including the finish straight) and lots to keep my mind occupied, but I found the next two hours of waiting for the start incredibly difficult. Geth’s wave started a full 45 minutes before mine and was called 45 minutes before that, which meant I had 90 minutes of being on my own and worrying about the race. I tried to focus on moving through the process to the start line, but there was a lot of standing about and time to think. This really wasn’t helpful mentally, and in future we’ll either make sure to be in the same wave or travel separately.

Because of trying to keep moving through the process whenever I could, I was right at the front of my wave. When we finally set off, of course there were the usual slight panicked thoughts about having a long way to go, but as soon as I was running I instantly felt better. I had made the decision a few days previously that I wouldn’t panic about pace for the first few miles as I did not want to be constantly looking at my watch – whatever was comfortable was comfortable. What was comfortable turned out to be quite fast, but I was okay with that – the aim for this marathon was just to see what I could do.

My electrolyte water supply (soft flask in the front pocket of my Naked band) was driving me nuts by the end of mile one, as it was bouncing all over the place. I managed to swap it with one of my gel flasks, which instantly made everything more comfortable. However, this meant the heavy flask of water was now on my lower back, which has been a spondylitis trigger in the past, so I made the decision to lighten the load more quickly by drinking only from my electrolyte flask rather than the water stations until the later stages of the race. Mile two was my fastest of the whole race because I unconsciously run faster when I’m faffing about with stuff in my running belt – I think it’s because it feels like the faffing is slowing me down so I try to make up for it!

In terms of the general feeling of a marathon being a long day out, this was a world away from the marathons I had run in the past, which ranged from 6:26 to 7:13 in time. With me being so much faster now, the miles were ticking by so much more quickly, and mentally it felt like a much shorter race. This really, really helped. It really drove home to me how different a mental challenge it is to complete a marathon as a slower runner trying to finish the distance versus as a faster runner trying to get the best time possible – the mentality I used to have to build around it was more comparable to the ultra I did in training than to the race I ran on Sunday. The ‘be out on your feet all day’ mental challenge and the ‘run this long distance at a fast speed’ mental challenge are absolute worlds apart, and so in many ways I felt like a marathon newbie all over again, because I had never run a marathon in this way – I had never ‘raced’ one before.

I had some gel every four miles and some electrolyte water every four miles, alternating at two-mile intervals. This meant that I was never more than two miles away from the next ‘treat’ and broke up the distance really nicely.

I got a small stone in my shoe at mile seven. It was annoying but not painful at that point. I knew it would undoubtedly sting a bit later in the race, but I did not want to stop running to get rid of it. I had found a good flow and I was doing well.

The Manchester crowds were incredible – for me the most atmospheric crowds I’ve ever experienced, and I’ve done London in person twice and GNR in person seven times! All I could hear was my name being called over and over, and at some points I found it a bit overwhelming. Because of this, I stuck with my plan to chunk the race up by starting some podcasts on my headphones at the mile ten marker. I’ve never felt the need to listen to anything in a race before, but on this occasion it did really help, and I’ll probably consider it for future marathons.

I was still running 9ish min miles at the halfway point, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold it for the second half, so I let go of any wild dreams of sub-4 (that’s for a future attempt!) and focused on running the best race I could. The course was beautifully flat, and the infamous hill in Altrincham (mile 16, not mile 17 as I’d been told) was barely a hill – it was over before I knew it! In the next couple of miles, I did start to slow quite noticeably. I didn’t know what pace I’d be able to hold for the rest of the race, but one goal was now at the forefront of my mind: run the whole marathon nonstop without stopping or walking. This was something that had previously seemed impossible, but I still felt strong and knew I could do it if I was determined.

Whenever I felt tired, I focused on my form, which felt good. I was in my Nike Vaporflys, which I only wear for fast races; this was a minor gamble as I had only run up to half marathon distance in them previously. However, I was confident that they would see me right on race day, and I was correct. In regular shoes over a long distance, my feet always hurt eventually – it feels like the bones on the sides of my feet are painfully rolling against the ground, which can be agony. This doesn’t happen with the Vaporflys. Of course they give the speed benefit as well, but it’s the comfort factor that has really made them my go-to race shoes. Still surprised that speedy carbons like that seem to suit me, but that’s why you try everything once!

The spondylitis didn’t… not show up. I did feel that stiffness and discomfort in my lower back in the later stages of the race. However – and this is the important thing – it didn’t stop me running or cause me any additional slowdown. I am glad that I drank my carried water quicker than planned, because I think it helped prevent it being any worse – I didn’t use the water stations until after about mile 18. If that’s as bad as it’s going to get in marathons, I can 100% live with it. Hopefully, though, this marathon was just a slight aberration and the medication will go back to doing its usual job of keeping the condition completely at bay.

I had considered switching from podcasts to music at mile 20, but stuck with the podcasts as I felt music would be too much for my overwhelmed brain. The final few miles did really hurt. A few thoughts of ‘can I really do this again so soon?’ (having already signed up for the Yorkshire Marathon in October). Counting down the miles, trying to work out how much difference there was going to be in mileage between the course and my watch, digging deep to hold on for a nonstop run, sighing slightly as I let the 4:15 pacers go (might have managed a better time if I’d run with them from the start… but I don’t regret starting faster to see what I had in me). And the soleus pain in both legs. OMG, the soleus pain. This was a niggle that had briefly arisen in January before I fought it off with my copious nightly application of Deep Heat, and I hadn’t heard a peep out of my soleus muscles since. Not even during the taper, when every other part of my body was flaring up just to mess with my head. Now, though… they ached so badly with every step. But I kept running. I knew I could keep running, even though I was getting slower and slower.

I even kept running during the AGONISING few seconds when the stone in my shoe flipped itself over and jammed itself directly into the cumulative blister that had first developed during the ultra four weeks previously and revitalised itself during every long run in the intervening period. I nearly screamed out loud, but I kept running. I was so close now.

The great thing about the Manchester finish line is that you can see it from more than half a mile away, after you turn the last bend. This is also the bad thing about the Manchester finish line. I ran and ran and ran and it still looked far away. But somehow, eventually, I was there, and the timing mats were under my feet, and finally, finally, I could stop running.

4:21:28. More than two hours off my marathon PB. And the nonstop marathon – no stopping, no walking, no breaking stride – that I had worked so hard for in the last few miles.

I didn’t quite hit my time goals, but I was so proud of what I’d done. I collected my medal, held it the wrong way round for the official photographer, walked what felt like a very long way before they gave us any water, collected my t-shirt, collected a can of Erdinger for Geth, and saw my sister-in-law Heulwen before I entered the cricket ground, which was a lovely surprise. At the bag drop, I collected my bag and reunited with the newly sub-4 Geth, who asked how I was doing.

‘I am broken,’ I said, because I was. I put on my warm layers and had my bottle of water and my bottle of full-fat Coke and my protein bar (good thing I brought that because there were no snacks to be had at the finish!), and I shivered uncontrollably because I get post-run freeze and the harder the effort the worse it is, and then we hobbled out of Old Trafford in our Oofos, fought our way through the crowds and the queues, got on a packed tram for one stop, and then got a lift with Heulwen the rest of the way back to the hotel, which was hugely appreciated.

I have learnt a lot from marathon experience #5. This is a distance that requires so much study and I think it will take a few more goes before I get it right. But it’s also a distance that I find strangely fascinating and I’ve sort of fallen in love with – for the exact same reasons. It’s a fulfilling distance precisely because it’s so hard to get right and it takes so much work and it feels like such an achievement.

During training, I listened to an early episode of Marathon Talk where someone said ‘the hardest thing about the marathon is that you have to wait for so long to put a bad run right’. I have had to wait for two years since my disaster at Edinburgh. While I still think there’s a lot of room for improvement, I certainly feel that I put that bad run right. I’m glad I won’t have to wait nearly so long for the next one.

Things I will do differently in the next marathon training block:

• Marathon goal pace efforts during long runs. I’ve always done all my long marathon training runs at easy pace because that’s what you do if you’re just trying to complete the distance – and I want to do more than just complete the distance now.
• I will have a better idea of my goal paces. At the start of this block, I had absolutely no idea what my goal paces should be, because I was improving so fast and my running was so different to what it had been the last time I’d attempted a marathon – so I just had to wing it and guess at a pace when my speedwork sessions called for ‘tempo pace’ etc.
• I will fuel with Active Root from the start! I’m glad I discovered it in the latter stages of this training block, but I still had to suffer through a lot of bad long runs where I felt sick and had no energy.
• Additional strength and cross-training. I did quite well with this, but I want to improve it.
• Fewer B races, as they do distract from the training. I’ll do the GNR as usual in the run-up to Yorkshire, but nothing else (and certainly no ultras!).

Things I will keep the same:

• Mileage. In fact, I might do even more. I was averaging 50-60 mile weeks at peak and I’ve never felt so strong.
• My general weekly routine. It’s nice and varied and really works for me.

I won’t be marathon training again until July though. Yes, I still feel bereft! But in the meantime, it’s 10k season. I have three 10k races and a 5.8ish mile race (Blaydon Race, which is an odd duck distance-wise but a lot of fun) in the next two and a half months, and the goal is to have a bit of fun with speed during that time… and try and forget about my long-distance dreams for a little while!

The final B race of the spring marathon training block!

This was my first 10k race since Leeds Abbey Dash last October, and my parkrun times have improved by a few minutes since then – so I expected a PB, even though I’m not in ideal 10k shape at the moment given all the marathon training miles in my legs. The hope was that I would knock two or three minutes off my Leeds time (which was 54:23), giving me a good benchmark for going into my summer 10k races and hopefully getting a sub-50 time by July.

As is generally the case at the moment, the logistics were almost more anxiety-inducing than the actual race – especially given that the clocks were going forward the night before – and so I didn’t sleep well. I arrived at the Metro station early, which was for the best, given that the train was also eight minutes earlier than advertised! I’d have had to wait another half hour if I hadn’t caught it, which would have made it very tight to get to the bag drop in time.

As it happened, though, I had plenty of time, and after dropping my bag was able to find all my TMBR clubmates and chat for a while before the start.

We got a bit split up heading to the start, but Ed and I were able to get fairly close to the front, meaning we were over the start line about half a minute after the gun – though there was still a lot of weaving to be done for the first couple of miles. I focused on feel, trying only to look at my watch on mile splits. The pace was quick but comfortable to settle into, and I overtook Ed about two miles in, after which I concentrated on trying to keep up with people in front. I’d run the North Tyneside route on a couple of long slow marathon training runs recently, and so it was fresh in my mind, though of course racing it feels very different to plodding it!

Ed then overtook me again at around the five-mile mark, and so I focused on keeping up with him for the last mile. It was getting hard and so it was good to have someone to chase! I kept up right until the final turn onto the finish straight at the lighthouse, then I sprinted – or tried to, anyway, I didn’t have much energy left! On the finish line I was amazed to find that my watch read 49:35 (49:34 official chip time). I’d managed the sub-50 that I hadn’t expected until later in the year! Ed was just a second behind me to the line (we got the same chip time) so it was nice to finish another race together after the ultra a fortnight ago. We got our bags and waited for the others to finish so that we could have the traditional celebration photos.

I couldn’t have asked for more from this race. I’m absolutely floored to have got my 2024 target 10k time already, and now I don’t really know what to aim for when I’m specifically targeting 10k races in the late spring/early summer… just keep trying to chip away at the PB, I suppose!

This race has also been a real measure of how far I’ve come in the last couple of years. When I first did it in October 2021 (the version originally scheduled for Easter 2020 and postponed three times), I had a bad day with my spondylitis and dragged a dead, painful leg round in 1:20:18. My second attempt in April 2023 was a good day with no symptoms, but that was still purely down to luck (it was the following month that I would start on the medication that has rid me of the chronic pain and has finally allowed me to train properly for the last ten and a half months). I finished the 2023 race in 1:05:07 and was thrilled – it was my second fastest 10k race to date at that time – but the fact that I’ve been able to take more than 15 minutes off my course time in the space of less than a year is mindblowing.

Onto the final couple of weeks before the marathon, then. All my excuses for avoiding thinking about it yet are well and truly gone, and the first nerves are starting to hit. Onwards we go.

An all-day adventure!

I was up at 4:20am for this one (couldn’t sleep) and was parked at the race start soon after 6am, mainly because I was more nervous about getting a parking space than about the run itself. I’m glad I went so early because it meant I had an hour or two in the car to decompress with a magazine.

I got myself set up and warmed up and found my friend Ed at the start, and soon we were off along the banks of the Tyne. It was fairly busy for the first few miles of the run, and it mostly seemed to be locals – lots of people using it as a training run for The Wall ultra in the summer. The first few miles ticked along fairly quickly, and I was glad I knew this bit of the route from doing my recces during the last couple of months of marathon training. It didn’t feel like long before we reached the first checkpoint at Wylam, 11 miles in (though the race guide had listed this as 8 miles in – there were quite a few last-minute route changes!).

The next section felt a bit lonelier as people started to spread out, and Ed and I started taking the odd walk break as the route became trailier. I hadn’t done this bit in training, which meant that it felt longer as I didn’t really know where I was. The race guide was slightly off in distance again for the halfway checkpoint at Stocksfield – advertised as 16 miles but it was 17.5 miles in. It felt like it took a while to get there! I was really grateful for the banana and cola on arrival, but we made sure to get going again quickly.

More wooded trail sections awaited us on the south side of the river for the next stretch, including a few muddy paths that were fairly unrunnable! Again, I didn’t know this section at all and had now adjusted my mental schedule so that the checkpoints were approximately a mile behind their advertised position and the total distance was 33 miles rather than the advertised 32. In addition to the checkpoints (where we had our ‘brevet cards’ stamped) there were also pieces of information we had to find along the route and note down. By this point these were about a mile behind schedule too. At the end of this section, we briefly crossed back to the north side of the river to visit the Wylam checkpoint a second time at 23 miles in.

I knew that the east end of the Ryton golf course marked 9 miles to go, as I had recced that section on an out-and-back 18-miler a couple of weeks previously. It seemed like it took a long time to get there (the golf course is massive!) and by the time we did, it was clear that the total distance was going to be about 34 miles. I found this a bit of a challenge as I had mentally prepared for 32 – and you wouldn’t think 2 miles would make much of a difference for an ultra, but it really does in the mind. I just started counting down the miles instead of counting up, and I really appreciated having scoped out this bit of the course as I knew exactly how far it was back to the Quayside.

Ed and I did a lot of walking in the last few miles as it was getting very tiring! We picked it up again in the last couple of miles as we were approaching the Quayside bridges and knew we didn’t have far to go. Geth was waiting for us at the finish and filmed us as we came in – 34.2 miles, just over 8 hours. It had been a very long day but a good adventure, and I’m so proud that I did it and can call myself an ultra runner.

While there were some very hard parts of the run, I know from experience never to say never again when it comes to running, and I expect I will do more ultras (and probably repeat this one next year!). However, there are a few things I’ll know for next time:

• Ultra distances are not necessarily as advertised! In future, I’ll be mentally prepared to do a few more miles than expected.
• I need to add walk breaks in from the start so that my overall pace can be a bit steadier. We weren’t deathmarching in the final sections – we were still doing a good walking pace – but I would have liked my run/walk splits to be a bit more even.
• Next time, I’ll train specifically for the distance. I’ve been training for Manchester Marathon (my spring A race) and thought that adding in an extra weekly medium long run of 10 miles in addition to my weekly long run and other sessions would be enough for the ultra, especially as I’d got up to 20 miles on the long run and everyone says you don’t need to do anywhere near the actual race distance when training for an ultra. However, the extra miles felt like a lot (especially when it transpired during the run that the extra 12 were an extra 14!) and I think I would prefer to have at least run a recent marathon before tackling this distance again.

Geth asked me the minute I finished the race whether I’d do it next year. I gave a lot of ‘ifs’ similar to the above list, but I didn’t say no, so I think the likelihood is that I will.

In the meantime, though, I’ll be glad to be able to give Manchester my full attention for the next four weeks! I managed a marathon PB within the ultra (my existing marathon PB is 6:26:47 from London 2021, and I hit marathon distance in under 6 hours yesterday) but I have much bigger plans for that PB as my training has been so good lately. Fingers crossed.