Go Figure!

How come two weeks ago I ran a marathon pain free and with relative ease, and since then I've cut back on mileage and I suddenly develop an excruciating pain to the top of my foot? Has anyone else had this?  It seems to have come from nowhere.  Wednesday night I was coaching the Sweaty Betty running club and had no issues.  But later that evening my foot started to hurt. By Thursday morning it was really painful.  I decided (perhaps stupidly) to go for a run around Coldham's Common to see if the pain would ease after a mile or so.  It didn't, so I limped home. The crazy thing is that I had also been for a massage on Tuesday.

At home I stretched the top of my foot (very painful) and did lots of foot massage for the underside of my foot with a variety of massage balls (we have a massive selection in my house).  A soft massage ball felt good.  A spiky massage ball was also good.  A very hard ball was torture.  I stuck to the spiky ball.  After a bit of ball massage and stretching things started to feel better.

On Friday I ran with a client and I seemed to get through the session ok.  I, therefore, believed the massage and stretching had worked.  I decided to rest yesterday anyway, just as an extra precaution.  I couldn't sit still all day today so I decided to go for an 8 mile run to test things out (I had originally planned to do about 18 miles today).  It was all pain free for 6 miles, then on the last 2 miles I had some twinging, but no pain.  However, I got home stretched and showered, and then stepping out of the shower it was suddenly excruciatingly painful again.  It was like someone had just turned on a switch to inject a dose of pain directly to the top of my foot.  So how does that happen?  It's beyond me.

Last weekend I had a completely run free weekend.  On Saturday I was fully engaged in accompanying a crew of female rowers on a trip to Portsmouth and watching over them whilst they rowed 26 miles in the Solent from Portsmouth to The Needles on the Isle of Wight.  I've been training the girls and getting them into shape since February.  Originally they should have rowed the Channel in May, but this was postponed due to bad weather.  Then their rescheduled event in June was indefinitely cancelled when the French decided to ban all rows across the Dover Strait.  So instead they did a longer row in the Solent.  They did a fantastic job and set a great time of 4 hours 36 minutes.  You can read more about it on their blog:

http://channelcrew2013.blogspot.co.uk/

Grafham Water Marathon

Today's marathon was my fourth marathon of the year, but the eighth long run, given that I've also run four ultras.  My intention had been to just go along for a nice steady run and to not even think about a target time.  Saying that, I realistically expected to finish in about 3 hours 30 minutes.

The event is in it's second year, and is reasonably low key with a 500 entry limit split across both the marathon and half marathon.  For the marathon itself, there was just 70 or so runners taking part today, quite possibly the smallest field of marathon runners I've ever been a part of. One of those other runners was a close friend, James, taking part in his first ever marathon. I congratulate anyone who signs up for a low key event as their first ever marathon.  It is definitely a lot harder to keep yourself motivated over those last six to eight miles of a marathon with no crowd support and with very few, if any, other runners around you. So well done to all the first timers today.

Me and James at the start surrounded by half marathon runners

The marathon actually started a few minutes earlier than the advertised time, which was fine by me given that it was freezing cold and blowing a gale at the start area, with the wind coming right off of the lake.  The marathon runners were set off about 10 minutes before the half marathon, and as soon as we were away we pretty much settled into a long, thin line of runners.  I found myself running in about seventh place, but still determined to not take things too seriously and to not push myself too hard.

By about four miles it was already feeling like a very lonely run.  I could just see one runner ahead of me, with another not too far behind, but that was it.  The running order didn't change for the first half of the race.  I caught up with the runner ahead and had a little chat with him for a mile or so, but I then had to stop for a loo break.  I didn't see the runner behind me again, I'd obviously pulled a long way clear from him.

The view at about 4 miles - looking ahead. That tiny white speck is another runner.

And looking back towards two marshals and one other runner.

I had expected to be overtaken by some fast half marathon runners before I reached the halfway point, but this never happened.  Clearly the event hadn't attracted fast half marathon runners.  I crossed the halfway line in a time of 1 hour 34 minutes, a lot quicker than I'd intended.  I perhaps should have been concerned that I was running too quick, but at that point I was feeling pretty good.

The route itself only followed the shore of Grafham Water for about 3 or 4 miles in total.  It then deviated away from the lake and ran mostly on footpaths around the edge of farmland, with a few short sections on tarmac road.  It could have easily turned into a quagmire if it had rained hard.  Fortunately for me, I finished just before the rain arrived.

On my second lap I started to catch a few runners that were ahead of me.  At about 15 miles I went past the guy who had been just ahead of me the whole way.  Shortly after that I passed another runner, who seemed to be struggling.  With about 6 miles to go I passed a third runner who appeared to pull up with cramp.  I asked if he was ok and he told me he'd be fine, so I left him to it.

I was feeling really good, so I tried to up my pace a fraction for the last six miles.  With four miles to go I started to overtake some half marathon runners/walkers.  For the last mile and a half we had the wind on our backs pushing us to the finish line, which explains why my last mile was the fastest mile of the day.

I crossed the finish line to a chorus of cheers from a few dozen spectators.  It seemed that some thought that I was the first marathon finisher.  I knew that this couldn't possibly be the case, but was greatly surprised to learn that I was the second person to finish the marathon. Apparently two runners who had been leading up to halfway both had to pull out with an injury. So the runner who should have been third found himself promoted to first, but to be a winner you first have to make it to the finish line.

I was very happy with my day's run.  I'm not sure what my official time is, as I forgot to stop my watch at the finish line, but it was around 3 hours 8 minutes.  I suspect I might be back to give this one another go next year.

At the finish with medal and goody bag

Back to Training

I had my two weeks of almost complete rest following the Mountainman, if you count a couple of easy paced 5 mile runs as rest, and last week it was time to pick up the training again.  On Tuesday I had a rare evening off so I went for a 9 mile run around Cambridge with two old running friends, Suzy and Jamshid.  The two of them picked a couple of long straight sections of road were we picked up the pace for a mile or so.  It felt good to be running fast again and I was pleased with how my legs felt.

Wednesday was Sweaty Betty running club night.  I got the girls to do 8 x 40 second sprints, followed by a relay race where each girl had to run four sprints in a team of three, i.e. girl 1 tags girl 2, who then tags girl 3, who then tags girl 1 again, which is then repeated until each girl has run 4 legs.  I found myself having to take the place of one girl to cover her last leg as she developed a slight muscle pull on her third leg (her third relay leg, she's not  a mutant with three legs!).  The team I had to help out were in 4^th place, but I managed to get them into the lead from my single leg.  I know, I shouldn’t brag.

I had intended on doing about a six mile run on Friday, but got caught up in doing admin.  Plus it wasn’t a particularly nice day, so I didn’t feel too bad about missing a run.  Yesterday I returned to Milton Country Park to run in the Cambridge Parkrun.  It’s been four months since I last ran a 5k Parkrun.  I wasn’t expecting anything too quick, and I deliberately started further back in the pack than usual.  I always get a lot more nervous at the start of a Parkrun than for any other distance I run.  I don’t know why this is.  I’ve thought about it many times and try to tell myself that my nerves are completely irrational, but it never helps.  As soon as we’re off I feel fine.  I focus on settling into a nice steady pace for the first 500m, then I start to pick out a few runners ahead of me and decide who I am going to target to catch – if anyone.

Yesterday I told myself I was just going for a steady run around with the aim of finishing in about 20 minutes.  There was a 20 minute pace maker in the pack, so I thought I’d stick just a little ahead of him.  Of course, as soon as we were running my usual competitive impulses kicked in and I couldn’t help overtaking runners ahead of me.  I was very happy to finish in a time of 18 minutes 33 seconds, ninth place overall out of about 350 runners, and the first man over 40.  My time was a minute slower than my PB, so I need to start working on getting that little bit of speed back.  Hopefully I can now start adding some speed work back into my training.  This has been missing recently as I’ve been mainly focusing on the mileage. 

I have a couple of other runs already booked for the rest of this year, but I won’t be taking either too seriously.  Next weekend I will be running in the Grafham Water marathon.  And in November I’ll be running in the three day Druid Challenge, which covers 89 miles of the Ridgeway Path from Ivinghoe Beacon in Buckinghamshire to Swindon in Wiltshire.  I will hopefully also run a marathon in October and quite possibly the Portsmouth marathon in December.  Watch this space.

As Grafham Water marathon is just next week I decided to go for an 18 mile run today.  In an ideal world I should have done a long run last weekend, but I didn’t quite feel up to it.  I perhaps didn’t need to do a long run at all.  It could be taken for granted that I have plenty of endurance fitness in the system, given the recent ultras that I’ve run, but I felt like getting one long run in just to test the legs.  Thankfully, my legs felt pretty good.  I’ll be resting tomorrow and then probably doing some fast 1 mile repeats on Tuesday.  I’ve said it, so now I’d better get out and do it.

Reflections on the Mountainman

Three weeks have now passed since the completion of the Swiss Mountainman Ultra.  The week after the ultra was spent mostly relaxing in Luzern.  It took me a good four days before my legs felt anything close to normal.  For three days I hobbled around like an old man, and by the fourth day there was just some mild residual stiffness left in my legs.  Fortunately, Luzern is a pleasant place to kill a few days, with enough interesting museums and galleries to keep Ruth and I occupied, and more than enough cafes to keep my cake stomach replenished.

Of course, now that three weeks have passed my memory of how hard the Swiss Mountainman Ultra was is starting to fade.  I’m starting to think that the 100km CCC race around Mont Blanc shouldn’t be too much of a challenge (one of my goals for next year).  Having done the 80km Swiss equivalent, the extra 20km should just be a formality! Right?  Every now and again I have such thoughts and then I have to remind myself that there were times when I doubted if I’d finish the Swiss Alpine run.  I thought I’d share with you what helped motivate me through those dark passages when my legs and feet throbbed with pain and all I wanted to do was find some form of transport to carry me to the finish.

The thing that kept me going was actually the thought of just how much Ruth has sacrificed so that I could run in this event.  As a runner it is easy to focus on one’s own efforts; the hours of training, the nights of declining drinks from friends, or even not going out at all, the watching what you eat and the early mornings.  It’s easy to forget that our commitment to our hobby has an indirect effect on our partners, i.e. the impact it also has on their social calendar and the not being there to help with household chores.  In Ruth’s case my running obsession meant she was not involved in deciding where we’d spend our summer holiday.  Fortunately, she was more than happy to visit Switzerland.  But once on holiday my race affected what we’d do from one day to the next.  If I hadn’t been running we would have walked more in Grindlewald.  The trip we did to the summit of Pliatus to check out the race finish was pretty much just for my benefit.   Ruth then lost most of one day of her holiday by coming with me to race registration, and then she lost another day by spending several hours on the summit of Pilatus waiting to see me finish. 

Whilst I was suffering on the run I realised just how much I owed to Ruth for me even being there and that if I didn’t finish I would be letting her down as much as myself.  This was my primary motivation that helped me push through the pain barrier and drag my body to the finish line.  If Ruth hadn’t been waiting at the finish I’m not sure I would have made it.  Of course, I have thanked her many times since finishing the run, but I thought I should share these thoughts with you.  And if you also have a partner that puts up with your running obsession (or golf, football, needlework, etc) maybe you should also remember to thank them every now and again.