May Marathon Madness

I've decided what I'm doing for my birthday next year. (It's only 7 months away, after all). And I'd like to issue an open invite to anyone who'll be around to join me for a few drinkies. I will explain.

It doesn't look like I'll be running FLM next year. My cheque hasn't been cashed. There's still a tiny outside chance that my cheque is being processed very slowly by my bank, or that I'll get my hands on a club or charity place (as long as it's one without stupid fund raising targets), but realistically the ballot was my best chance, and I don't think I was successful. There's no real surprise about that, I'll just have to wait another year or five for a chance.

But anyway, assuming none of that comes off, I've been thinking of what else I want to do instead. And I think that I have a plan. I've been dithering over whether I want to do a spring marathon at all or just leave it until autumn, but I've seen an option that is very very tempting.

I've been weighing up the logistics of various options for a while. Getting there and back, staying over, not having to work on the Monday. There are some races I'd happily take a day off work to recover from and do a bit of sightseeing on the Monday and others that maybe just aren't quite special enough for me to want to do that. If I'm going abroad then I'll happily take an extra day, but spending a Monday morning in Blackpool, for example, isn't as exciting. No offence to Blackpool, but I've spent far too much time there in the past for it to be a big draw now.

Then, out of nowhere, I spotted an advert for something that works nicely with the rest of my plans. It's on a bank holiday weekend, and it's somewhere where I'd quite like to spend a long weekend. It's not hard to get to, with fairly regular trains and it's driveable if I fancy doing it under my own steam. It's also a couple of days before my birthday, so I get to have a birthday weekend away. I've had a quick look and there are some nice looking, reasonably priced hotels available.

It looks perfect. Almost.

There are just two slight drawbacks. One is that entry is officially on a "ballot" basis. However, from a bit of background research on the RW website it seems that the race doesn't actually fill up, it's just that by advertising it as a ballot the charities can try to flog "guaranteed" charity places at a premium. The ballot closes pretty early too, so it's more of an early entry type thing than a genuine ballot. So if you go through the ballot you'll almost certainly get a place apparently. And I think (although it's not clear) that if I get my running club number through it's guaranteed entry for club members anyway.

The other drawback worries me slightly more. It would involve doing two marathons in two weeks. Gulp. I've applied to do the Moonwalk which is a walking marathon, and the one I'm looking at now is the week after that. I'm hoping that walking a marathon won't take too much out of my legs (and at least it will help me deal with the temptation to run too much during the taper!). I don't know whether I'll actually get a place in the Moonwalk anyway, I posted my entry but haven't heard anything. If I do, fingers crossed that walking the distance won't slow me down horribly the week after.

So, I can now announce that (subject to confirming the details and not being rejected by the "ballot") YP's European Marathon tour will be paying a visit to...

EDINBURGH

on 27 MAY 2007

Now for the fun bit. I know that there are some Edinburgh girlies who check up on me every so often, so here's the plan. I'll probably come up on the Saturday and go back down south on the Monday (bank holiday). I won't really want to do much on the Saturday other than going to the expo, eating carbs and sleeping, but on the Sunday night I wouldn't say no to meeting up for a meal and a few drinks to celebrate (a) finishing and (b) my birthday, which is the Thursday of the following week. Of course, you may all have fantastic and exciting plans for the bank holiday weekend, in which case I will entertain myself without too many worries. It won't be anything too rowdy, but it would be lovely to see anyone who is around that weekend. (I'd be even more delighted if you stand along the course to cheer me on and hand me jelly babies, but that would just be greedy! Or even if you decide to join in!)

There are no firm plans yet, but if you're interested make a note of the date in your diary, let me know you're up for it and we can sort out the details closer to the time.

In praise of running club

All bow down to the mighty power of a club training run. Last night's run was a half marathon training run for the brave, or the normal 5 - 6 miler for those who didn't fancy it. I foolishly said I'd probably be up for the half when I left on Monday. I won't manage a long run at the weekend, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to do one midweek. Come yesterday afternoon it was pouring with rain, and even 5 miles seemed unappealing. But I had my stuff in my bag, and I'd said I'd be there. So I went.

In the end only three of us turned up for the 6.30 start (there was also an option of doing it faster at 7, or the short run at 7). Me, the person who introduced me to the club (and who is slower than me) and one older guy. Everyone else chickened out. I have to say that I didn't really blame them, but I was going to see it through.

Before I set out I did consider putting my car keys in my pocket. I get the bus to running club and my car was at home, but I knew that at about the 6 or 7 mile mark we'd pass within a mile of my house before heading back to the leisure centre. It was tempting to go out with the fallback plan of running 8 miles, picking up the car and driving back to pick up my stuff. I managed to persuade myself not to do it, I was in for the long haul (although admittedly Jill did bring a mobile with her).

When we set out we realised just how bad the rain was. Within minutes my socks were soaked and my trainers filling with water as I trudged through the unavoidable puddles and perfected the technique of pulling one leg through the spray sent up by the other foot as it hit the water. I was utterly soaked very quickly, and it somehow seemed pointless trying to move away from the edge of the pavement as a bus headed towards a puddle, because it couldn't have made us any wetter anyway.

Our pace was slow, slower than I'm used to doing long training runs. Because it was dark and wet and there were only three of us, we stuck together pretty much all the way round. There were times when I'd run ahead and then stop and wait for the other two to catch up, but I realised that I kept warmer if I was continuously moving, however slowly, than if I ran a bit faster and then stopped entirely. You got cold very quickly once you stopped. There were times where we ended up running in the middle of the road because of puddles that covered the pavement as well as the edge of the road, and times where we just ran through them. Dodging the traffic on a busy dual carriageway was also interesting.

I was surprised how easy I found it at that pace. We still averaged just over 11 minutes per mile, which isn't tortoise speed, but slower than my normal pace of nearer 10 minutes per mile. After 6 miles or so I was, apart from being soaked, feeling pretty fresh, and breezed up a hill that I'd never had the guts to run before (I usually plan my runs so that I run down it and come back a different way if I'm heading in that direction). Or maybe thinking about the wetness stopped me thinking about the distance? Anyway, this morning my legs barely felt like they'd done anything (a huge difference from how they felt after the Amsterdam half!).

Well, with one big exception. About a mile or so from the end, I stood on a random piece of car bumper that was on the pavement, and it threw me off balance. I spent the next four or five steps trying to prevent the inevitable. I knew I was heading towards the pavement, but just wondered if I could stop myself. I couldn't. Luckily there was no major damage. I was covered in grit, which stuck to my sodden clothes, and I had various grazes, but nothing was broken. We walked for a while, then started running because it was too cold to walk in such wet clothes, and it was close enough to the finish not be a daunting run with a slightly sore leg. It was painful to sleep on that side of my body overnight, and this morning I felt like I had a huge bruise down the side of my right leg, and my right palm is pretty grazed, but I suppose I got off pretty lightly with that one.

I've never been so relieved to go inside as I was at the end of that run. Not least because despite our relative slowness we beat the faster 7pm group back (I'd been expecting to be overtaken). My palm was stinging, I was soaked to the skin, and I just wanted to smother myself in towels and sit somewhere hot with soup or hot chocolate. Instead I peeled my clothes off (harder than you'd think when they've been stuck to you for the past 2+ hours) put on some vaguely dry clothes, immediately soaked my dry socks by putting my trainers back on, and headed to the pub to wait for the bus. They don't do anything particularly warming in the pub though (real working man's club type place - beer, beer or beer), so I had a very quick pint and headed back out for the bus. When I changed buses I've never been so glad to see a bus turn up 5 minutes early, cutting the time I had to wait outside between the two!

The great thing is though that I vaguely enjoyed it and I'm certainly glad I did it. I'd never have run a half marathon (or a "nearly half" marathon - the main loop is 12.5 miles, but there are a couple of detours to make up the distance which we didn't do) in that sort of weather, in the dark, after work, on my own. Possibly there are good reasons for that. But it proved to me that I can run better than I thought (I was easily the strongest runner in our little group most of the way round), that I can stick runs out when they feel horrible, and that I don't need to run for shelter at the first sign of raindrops. If joining a club can give me the accountability and incentive to head out for runs like that (and finish them), then it could be one of the best decisions I've made.

Energy and desire

I'm feeling strangely energised at the moment. I don't know whether it's eating better or running with company, but I'm really enthusiastic about my exercise again. I had a great run with the running club on Monday evening, outrunning a couple of people who were faster than me last week, and I even managed a hill I'd never dreamt I'd be able to run up (I've driven it before, but never run it). We have the option of doing the Leeds half marathon route tomorrow (or a shorter run if not), and I'm not trying to find an excuse to get out of it, I'm up for it. I'm doing 2 workouts some days (gentle swimming before work, and running afterwards), and I'm feeling much better about myself and my running than I have done for a while.

It sounds strange, but I almost regret doing Berlin. I don't regret the fact that I've done a marathon, and no-one can take Berlin away from me, but I do think that I rushed into it too soon, and without enough of a running base to cope with it. I got round, and I'm glad I did it, but would I have found the whole experience more enjoyable if I'd waited a while longer? I got a bit carried away with my rush towards doing ever longer and longer races. In spring I was enjoying my running, and getting faster all the time. I then focussed on distance, struggled, and lost a lot of the speed I'd acquired over winter.

Marathon training was just a bit mechanical and structured. There was no time when I could just get out of bed, see what I fancied doing, and just run. I always had to push myself to get in those extra couple of miles over what I actually felt like doing. Because I was at the top end of my comfort zone, it always felt like hard work. There were no really easy runs to help me recover, because even the short ones were pretty long compared to what I was used to doing. I was trying to run too fast, too. There were occasional moments of enjoyment, but there was a lot of hard slog.

I couldn't dream of a 47 minute 10k at the moment, which is what I managed in April, but I'm starting to see light at the end of the tunnel, and believing that I can get back into that sort of shape again.

This weekend, I just went out with no clear idea of where I was going or for how long, and I just ran for the fun of it. On Saturday I ran for longer than I expected, because I got to the lake and it was a beautiful morning and the lake looked amazing, so I ran round it. On Sunday I did a shorter run, because it was colder than it looked outside, and my legs were getting cold in shorts. Both days I modified my route on the way round a couple of times, taking bits away, adding bits, according to how I felt at the precise moment. At running club I know that I can run at whatever pace I feel like, because there are always people faster to chase, or slower to recover with. I can cover the distance having a leisurely chat, or I can really go for it. Or I can go for a mixture of the two on different legs of the run. There's usually a group which heads back early too, if I want a shorter run, and you only need to decide after the first mile or two.

At the moment I have a vague weekly target of 20 - 25 miles, but I'm not too fussy about how I hit that. I run because I want to run, and I have time to swim, and do weights, and mix my exercise up far more than I did over summer. It's nice having that freedom

Apparently if I've got into FLM I should know on Friday, because that's when the cheques usually clear if you've got in through the ballot. But, heresy of heresies, I'm almost wondering whether I'd be better off not doing a spring marathon next year, and waiting until autumn, or even until the year after. I suspect that if I do get in, I'll go through with it rather than deferring until 2008, but I'm not convinced that would be the best thing for my running. Ah well, it's pretty unlikely that I'll get in anyway.

Belonging

Today I parted with £21. For that I get running club membership, a club vest and a reflective bib.

I did it, I signed on the dotted line and signed my life away. Or at least the running part of it. That's a price worth paying for race discounts, a vest, training runs with company, extra chances to get into big races and friendship with like minded people, surely? It will keep me out of trouble over winter, and get me what must be close to the cheapest pints in Leeds (hmm, not so sure that's an advantage, thinking about it...)

It feels odd though, committing myself to a team, complete with team vest and its name alongside mine in race results from now on. I kind of feel like I should have some connection with a place before wearing their colours, something more than them training at a relatively work and bus friendly time and place. If I'm going to represent a team, I want that team to mean something to me, so I care about doing well for them*. What real connection do I have with Kirkstall? Should I be representing them, and should I be committing myself so quickly to a club with an ethos and values I haven't really discovered yet?

But where do I identify with? Where else, if not Kirkstall? Where I grew up, and haven't lived for over 10 years? I wouldn't exactly make training that often there. Where I went to university? Snap. Where I lived either side of university? Snap. Where I live now? Where the closest club is ultra competitive, and awkwardly located? I don't have strong roots in any one place, and there's nowhere I particularly feel like I "belong". Ironically, Kirkstall probably is one of the closest clubs to where my grandparents have lived all my life, but is still that one step removed, taking the name of a slightly different suburb of the city. These small differences can make all the difference when it comes to belonging and identity.

At heart, I suspect that part of my indecision comes down to my reluctant Yorkshire-ness. I've always been acutely aware of the fact that I'm half Lancashire, half Yorkshire. While old county rivalries aren't maybe ingrained as much as they used to be, this is still a big one, and one that keeps rearing its head in a joking way in rugby circles at least. I've always had the "born down south" get out, but as time goes by, and I spend more time in Yorkshire I'm less and less inclined to move over to the other side, even though I still have family and a rugby club to support over there.

By wearing Kirkstall on my vest I'll be slipping irretrievably into Yorkshire-ness. At races in Lancashire I'd be marked out as from the other side of the hills, and I'd be giving out a signal that I belong to Yorkshire now. Is that, or is that not, the most pathetic excuse you've ever heard?

So I tried to put those thoughts to the back of my mind, and paid the money before I chickened out. I enjoy the runs, I have no problem with the pace (I'm not the slowest, but there are plenty faster than me to aspire to keep up with). It's easy to get to, and it's good value.

And now it's done. I'm signed up, and I will belong, whether I want to or not.

*Incidentally, this may help my racing, if I can start to feel like the club matters. At the moment if I don't think I can do a PB I ease off far too much after about 2/3 of the race and just potter to the finish. If there's a possibility of getting team points, or beating other club members then maybe it will keep me going so I at least perform as well as I can on the day, even if it's not my absolute best.

I did it!

I went to a running club! And it was OK! I wasn't the slowest, or the fattest, or the most unfit. I kept up with the group I was in with no problems, and there weren't any scary running freaks there. Even the fast group seemed relatively normal (and not too fast by the standards of some of the more serious clubs, so not too daunting).

It worked quite well in terms of splitting up into different groups and doing slight variations on the route so the faster runners could cover a bit more ground and meet back up with the slower groups. It did seem quite strange only running a mile or two at a time, then stopping and waiting for everyone to catch up, but it means you can run the different legs at different speeds if you want, so I could try to keep up with a faster group at some point during the run and recover with a slower group at other points.

Plus afterwards they meet in what must be the cheapest bar in Leeds. £1.64 a pint! I managed to restrict myself to a single pint of lager, and a soft drink. I'll try not to spend too long in the pub in future, because there's only 1 bus an hour home it meant I only got back at 10.30, and 9.30 would be a lot more manageable in terms of getting some sleep.

I haven't signed up officially yet, and I haven't got my natty purple vest, but I suspect that by this time next week if I've been to two more runs in the meantime, I may well have done.

And then I really will be a proper runner, with a membership card to prove it.

Amsterdam...

...was fun, but not my best race ever. Although to be fair I'm somewhat impressed with my race prediction skills. I suspected that after slowing down during Berlin training I'd be somewhere around the 2 hour mark, and came in at 2:00:29. I'm gutted not to squeeze under 2 hours or get nearer my PB (1:53), but I'll take that as still a respectable time, and something that I can start building on as I try to get some speed back in my legs over winter.

Saturday was great fun, meeting up with Kylie and Jen (with my mother in tow), wandering round Amsterdam, carb loading (v. important), eating fondue (with lots of bread - see carb loading) and getting a nice early night being rocked to sleep on a houseboat. Having company took my mind off the race a lot more than when I was in Berlin and the race was the only thing I really thought about, but that might also be a reflection of my training (or lack thereof) for this one - it was basically a case of turn up and see what happens.

Sunday was odd, with the race starting at 2pm. We found an eat as much as you like breakfast buffet, took it to extremes and aimed to get through to the race with just a bit of a snack around lunchtime. The plan worked pretty well actually, although at lot of Sunday did seem to be spent just hanging around waiting for the race to start. I like to get them out of the way then there's more time for eating and drinking later. Particularly when you have an evening flight home.

Once we'd said goodbye to Kylie in town, we headed for the start. We ended up taking our cases down to the race with us because there were no lockers at the station, luckily it wasn't a "use the designated bag" sort of baggage storage facility, and they happily took 2 cases off me so Mum didn't have to sit with them for the whole race. We sat her down in the Olympic Stadium, watched the finish of the marathon and eventually headed off to the start. I was in a different pen to Jen and ended up standing freezing for about half an hour waiting for the gun to go. (Why is it that it was really cold all weekend until about 2.15 on Sunday, then the sun came out as soon as we got going?)

I started surprisingly well. From memory I got to 5k in about 27 minutes, 10k in about 54 minutes and 15k in about 1 hour 23. From that you may gather that my pre-race plan of taking it easy until the last 3 miles didn't exactly come to pass. Quite the opposite really, I set off at a pace I couldn't maintain. Not faster than I've run before, but before the start I worried that I wouldn't be able to sustain my normal half marathon pace for the full distance at the moment, and I was proved right. From about 16k on my hip started to niggle and, even more worryingly, the Lucozade I was carrying so that I didn't have to risk Gatorade wasn't agreeing with my stomach either. Not in a Berlin style, but there was a bit of a reaction that I didn't want to aggravate. I started to slow down and take little walk breaks. When my hip hurts I find that the best way to sort it out is to walk about 100 metres with a very deliberate and correct walking action, and that sorts it out for a while. My lungs and leg muscles could have carried on running, but I didn't want the hip pain to get too bad so I took a couple of walk breaks.

After 16 or 17k the 1:55 pacers went past me, and I knew that this wouldn't be a PB run. One thing I really want to sort out is that once I know that a PB or my pre-race target time is out of the window I have a tendency to give up mentally, and stop racing. I still get to the finish but I don't put too much effort into it. The same happened, and my slow down got a lot slower, bringing me home just outside 2 hours. I wish that I'd put just that bit more effort in so that my time started with a 1, but overall I can't be too disappointed. It might be a PW, but some people would like a PB of 2 hours, let alone that being their slowest time.

And I had a fun weekend, which was what this race was all about. We waited for Jen to finish, got the bags back and then I headed back to the airport with mum while Jen went back to the houseboat to meet up with Kylie again. I managed a bit of soup and some apple cake at the airport (why does running halves and above always kill my appetite?), would have fallen asleep on the plane had the flight been more than 40 minutes long, drove home from the airport and went pretty much straight to bed. Back in work on Monday morning, another European race done.

--------------------------------

However, fun as Amsterdam was, the big breakthrough was with mum. She's never seen me run before and I think yesterday she finally saw how much it means to me, and how finishing a race can light up someone's face, no matter how long it takes. I didn't actually tell her about Berlin for ages because I didn't want to worry her or make her fear for my sanity. But far from worrying about me running marathons or thinking I'm stupid for attempting it, she saw a couple at the expo that appealed her as city break/running combinations (she wants a family trip to Barcelona and for me to run there!), and quizzed me on the way home about other places I might want to run in future.

Even more worrying, she forwarded me a link to an ultra this morning. Actually, that's not the worrying bit. The worrying bit is that despite me always thinking that a marathon is far enough and I'd never want to go further than that, I'm actually tempted. The Trans Gran Canaria October West-East route looks fantastic, and it finishes metres from her house (which is about as far as I'd be able to stagger after 67k and a 2000 metre climb on trails through the mountains). Actually, it finishes outside a row of bars which might be even better... I've been reading through the information on the website (or as much of it as I can understand) and it looks like there's a 24 hour cut off which should be possible, even with a lot of walking. The first woman this year took over 10 hours, so it's not something where you're expected to be particularly fast, and I imagine it would be a fantastic experience.

Stop. Right. There.

Did I, or did I not, say that a marathon was as far as I'd go? No ultras. Particularly not hilly ultras. (And when I say hilly, just look at the course profile by clicking on La Carrera and scrolling down).

Ahem.

But it is very tempting, and it's a big enough goal for me to be able to work up to it over a couple of years, to replace the marathon as the big one. October 2008 at the earliest, maybe 2009 (on the basis I'm planning a trip to Australia in October 2008). If I want to do it, I need to build up for it properly. Even if I don't run it, it's still a long way, and one hell of a climb. So that means more marathons (and maybe making them a bit hillier). It means another go or two at the Belper 30k. It means doing the Three Peaks walk (40k-ish and 736, 723 and 694 metres for the three peaks) a few times - first as a walk and then, later, attempting to run bits of it. On a practical note it also means improving my Spanish so I can understand the instructions.

Did I just say that? I'm sure that there must be a limit to my insanity somewhere, but I'm not quite sure that I've found where it is yet...

In the Club

I've actually summoned up some enthusiasm for Amsterdam now. I still have no idea how I'm going to run, but have come up with some vague race tactics to suit how I'm feeling (basically the recommended "don't go off too fast, then push the pace in the last 3 miles or so if you feel good"), and I'm hopefully in a fit state to get under 2 hours, even if I don't get a PB.

The big news though is that after months of dithering I'm getting closer to join a real life running club (and not one in Hampshire this time). As the mornings get darker and darker I'm realising how much nicer it would be to have company when I'm running in the dark. For safety, but also for motivation to get me out there when it's cold and wet.

Before my main motivation for joining a club was for the discounts, and it would still be nice. But increasingly I'm actually interested in how it would help my running and get me through winter.

I have had two big blocks to get over with running clubs to date. The first is that they train in the evening at times that aren't particularly convenient for me. I'm a morning person anyway, and I just can't get out to a club on the outskirts of the city by about 6.20 on a weeknight, particularly by public transport. The club I'm looking at now still trains in the evening, but it's closer to the office (yet still on a bus route that passes within a km or so of my house), and it meets at 7 rather than 6.30, and in rush hour that extra half hour could make all the difference. It doesn't train too late (I saw one that meets at 7.45, which would be a bit late for me really), but it's not too early either.

The second block was just my general shyness when it comes to breaking into a group of people I don't know and turning up for the first time on my own. This might be sorted, I came across Kirkstall as a recommendation from someone I chat to on a running forum, so even though we've never met in person, we have a bit more of a "relationship" than just sending off an email to the contact address on the website and getting a standard response that doesn't answer the questions I asked. (This is also reassuring because I know she's slower than I am - with current goals of getting under 60 minutes for 10k and under 2:15 for a half - and I therefore won't be the slowest there).

I'm actually quite keen on the idea at the moment. They train two nights a week so assuming I could get along regularly that would mean that I would only really have one midweek run to do on my own in the dark, if that (based on 4 - 5 runs per week, with 2 in daylight at the weekend). There would be the social side too, and some more structured coaching if I wanted it. It just about works logistically, and hopefully vaguely knowing someone would take away the anxiety about turning up for the first time.

I'm not going this week because I've done all my pre-Amsterdam running, but next week might be a possibility depending how my legs feel.

Unless I chicken out before then!

Don't let me do it...

I had a really good 9 mile run today at a decent, yet pretty comfortable, pace. I'm feeling ready for Amsterdam half now, and might even be able to coax a PB out of it if I'm lucky.

Except there's a problem. It's possible to register for any of the races on the day. And one of the races is a full marathon. I want to do another one, and maybe my legs still have enough left in them to try again.

It would be a stupid stupid idea, and I think that I'll see it for the insanity that it is, and just go for the half, but part of me wonders whether with no cold, no period and no heatwave I might be able to improve on Berlin, even without training specifically for it...

That sound you just heard was me hitting myself to knock stupid ideas out of my head.

I will run the half, and that's it. Stop me if you see me heading towards the marathon registration desk...