Saturday, March 29, 2008

Decisions

This week is the hardest week of marathon training, in my book. Three weeks out you're torn between the temptation to make up training sessions you haven't done, and the feeling that you should really start tapering. And if you do taper, you instantly feel lazy and fat and slow.

I've struggled more than normal. For the past two weeks I've been struggling with a leg injury, and although I've got 10 mile and 20 mile PBs, I haven't done much else other than the races. I came into this week knowing that if I didn't do another long run, my last long run before London would be 4 weeks out (too far), but equally knowing that if I didn't shake off the injury before the big day I would have no hope of doing sub 3:45.

Do I rest and let it heal, or do I try to squeeze in just one more run. The temptation to do that was added to by the fact that both the races I've done have been while I've been injured - essentially I can still run without doing too much extra damage, I just don't seem to recover as fast as I do when I'm not injured.

My sub 3:45 schedule had me doing 18 miles, which seemed quite a lot for the first week of the taper, but it added to my temptation to go for it this week then cut back more drastically for the next two. But I still wondered whether I wouldn't be better relying on the training I'd already done (and after Spen I was pretty confident that it was enough) and trying to heal.

In the end, despite running about 5 miles every couple of days to keep me ticking over rather than resting completely, my leg started to feel much better and I felt more positive this morning. I headed out aiming for 18, but with the fall back plan that I'd decide at 15 how my legs felt and if necessary stop there. As it turned out, I felt fine, carried on to 18 and could have probably done more had it not been for the common sense that kept on shouting taper at me from inside my head.

So overall I feel a lot more confident. I still feel like I'm slower than I was a month or so ago, before the injury hit, but even being a bit slower I'm still running at 3:45 pace so I will not allow my head to start telling me I can't do it. For me it seems to be all in my head. If I believe I can do it, I will. If I don't, I'll allow myself to slip to plan B midway round and sabotage myself.

So don't let me say anything other than 3:45 is on...

Monday, March 24, 2008

Do You Like Hills?

My 10 mile PB is slow in comparison to most of the rest. For some reason I only ever manage to fit in hilly 10 milers. I do flat halves, and tear my 10 mile PB to bits in the process, but I can never manage to get to flat 10 milers like St Annes or Snake Lane.

I thought I'd found one. In Lancashire, not too far from Blackpool. I signed up, then found out it was hilly.

I got to the start. Someone asked me whether I'd done it before. I said no. In a concerned voice, they asked "do you like hills?". It worried me slightly when I saw runners from scary clubs like Keswick turning up. They like their hills up there, that's for sure.

The weather wasn't great either. A bit of everything, with an honourable mention for the gale force winds and hail parts of proceedings.

The first 2 miles were great. A few uphills, but mainly down. And the wind must have been behind us. Then it started going up, but I was still mocking. Is this what Lancastrians call a hill, I thought? After 5 miles we still seemed to be going up. I was getting a bit sick of it, but thinking that while it was a long slog, at least there weren't any really steep bits.

Then we got to the really steep bit. I may have given the Lancys some credit at this point, but I consoled myself that we must start going down soon. And indeed we did, a nice downhill. The only problem was that you could see the people further ahead going uphill on the other side of the valley. That hill at 8 miles wasn't horribly steep, but it was at the point in the race when you'd rather not head back uphill again.

And finally downhill to the finish. It was a net downhill course, but there were plenty of undulations between the start and the end (they joked at the start that it was "fast, flat and accurately measured". Judging by the laughter, no-one expected it to be any of them - although my Garmin made it spot on 10 miles at the finish). I actually managed to collide with someone at the finish. At the end he was doing a bit more of a sprint than I was, and didn't expect me to lift my elbow as I reached for my other wrist to stop my Garmin on the line. He ran straight into it. In the results we were on exactly the same time, but they put me first. Yay!

It was a PB by about 7 minutes in the end, which says more about my previous 10 milers than about that course. I've still done faster over 10 miles in a half marathon, but at least there's a bit less of a discrepancy now.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Confidence

What a difference a week makes. Last Tuesday I set out to run to work, and got 0.75 miles down the road before I decided that my leg hurt too much, and I got the bus the rest of the way. This Tuesday I'm absolutely and completely filled with the belief that I can get GFA this year. It won't take a fluke, or for everything to go better than the plan, it will just take me not doing anything stupid between now and London.
I think this is the first time I've got to the taper feeling like I've done enough training, and that the best thing for me to do is to reduce the intensity and let my legs recover. In the past I've always felt like I should do one more long run, one more hard session, and I've struggled to persuade myself to taper properly. I remember feeling like this before my first half marathon. I knew that I'd done enough training, and I started to feel a lot more relaxed about it. I've never felt like this before a marathon though.
A lot of it comes down to my race on Sunday. During the week I was unsure whether I should run it or give my legs chance to recover, and before the race I changed my race plan from "attempt to run it at marathon pace" to "attempt to finish". My legs were hurting, and I knew that it was a hilly course so I wasn't keen on the prospect of running it. I got myself to the start line by telling myself it was a two lap course, so if necessary I could drop out at 10 miles. That's how confident I was.
But I did run it and, what's more, I ran it just slightly faster than 3:45 pace. Admittedly I struggled a bit towards the end, and in the marathon I'll have to keep that pace (although I could go slightly slower) going for another 6.2 miles, but in the marathon I'll be properly rested, my legs won't be as sore, and the route won't involve the sort of hills Spen did. (On that subject I'm more than a little pleased that despite most of my marathon running club mates running the East Hull 20 instead of the Spen 20 on the basis that Hull is much flatter than Spen, I managed to run the fastest 20 mile time of anyone from the club who did either of the races. Incidentally, the others were all men)
However, the race did remind me of the difference between a 20 miler and a marathon. They say that 20 miles is the half way point of a marathon, and I'm starting to believe it. Although my legs hurt after the race and yesterday morning until a swim loosened them up, this morning I ran just over 8 miles, and I've got a hilly 10 mile race planned for Friday. There is no way on earth I'd do that after a marathon despite it "only" being 6 miles longer. I know that as you train more you recover faster, and I have been able to run a bit in the week after a marathon, but no more than 3 or 4 miles, and certainly not with any intensity.
It's just under four weeks until the marathon now. I know that I've done the training, and I know I'm fast enough. All I need to do is to run at my normal standard on the day. I don't need to do anything exceptional, I just need to put everything I can already do together. It would be nice if the weather was on my side, as training over winter means you don't get any experience of running in the heat, but apart from that pretty much everything else is under control. I'm at the stage where I worry that doing too much more will do more harm than good, and as long as I do enough not to lose the training I've already done, I don't feel like I need to do a huge amount more.
That's a nice place to be in, a really nice place. I feel comfortable about what I need to do, and this time round, weather permitting, I feel sure that I can do it.

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Overtraining?

I'm having a bit of a wobble at the moment. A lot of people I know seem to be getting injured, and my legs have started to feel tired all the time. I'm worried that I'm overdoing it a bit, but I'm trying to judge how much tiredness is good (it teaches me to run on tired legs) and how much is too much. Difficult.
I know that last week I overdid it. Because I knew that I wouldn't run much over the weekend, I crammed a lot into the first part of the week. After a half marathon PB on Monday, I went to running club on Monday, did a tempo run on Tuesday and then attempted a long run on Wednesday, after a heavy lunch. Unsurprisingly, the attempt failed and I gave up just after 10 miles (having already had an unscheduled toilet stop after 6). But I'm consoling myself with the fact that even if I didn't do a long run last week, I also didn't injure myself attempting it. So it could have been worse.
After a bit more rest (from running, at least) over the weekend I tried to get back into it, but my legs still feel a bit sluggish. Having said that, they did seem to get a bit better towards the end of my 10 miler this morning, as though they needed a few easy miles in them to get them back up to speed again. It was scheduled as 11, but I only had time for 10.3 before work. I'm sure it's close enough. My hamstrings feel nowhere near as sore as they did yesterday, so fingers crossed a couple of good stretching sessions after my runs have sorted them out.
I know that I'm down to the last three or four weeks of hard training, and the end is in sight. But these three or four weeks are hard, and important so I don't want to be fighting off niggles to try to get through them. I suppose I need to take my own advice and listen to my body, but it's hard sometimes when you want to train as hard as you can, and when you want to turn out for things like cross country - with the temptation that when they don't fit into your schedule you do them in addition to what you're meant to be doing instead of moving things around.
Note to self: rest is training too.