In 2017 I managed to run a total of 12 marathons, including
2 runs slightly over the marathon distance.
So far this year I have run 10 marathons, which includes the 2 day
Pilgrim Challenge on the North Downs Way (66 miles in 2 days), and the 3 day
Devil’s Challenge on the South Downs Way (96 miles in 3 days). My main goal for this year is to reach my 100th
marathon and join the 100 marathon club.
My progress towards this target has been greatly aided by discovering
the Franklin Method.
I started training as a Franklin Method level 1 educator in
May 2016 and qualified in April 2017. I
am now studying to be a level 2 educator.
The Franklin Method is a way to learn how the body has evolved to
function and to use this knowledge along with mental imagery to improve the
function of any movement, whether that is running, weight lifting, dancing or
whatever. Providing some form of
movement is involved the Franklin Method can be applied to improve the function
and quality of that movement. The aim is
to be more embodied when practising your movement and more aware of what is
going on and recognising you can create positive change with the power of the
mind. There is slightly more to it than
this, but this is perhaps the key feature of the Franklin Method.
In this blog I will aim to describe how I used the Franklin
Method to overcome the heat at the 2018 London Marathon, which was the hottest
London Marathon on record.
One of the first things we learn on the Franklin Method
course is that we can access our mental toolbox and use a range of imagery
tools to aid our movement and hence our physical performance. You might not be aware of this, but as humans
we tend to use one such tool on a daily basis without knowing it, but it is
also the one tool you perhaps don’t want to use. That tool is negative imagery, or negative
self-talk. Humans are exceptional at
focusing on the negative. It is said
that up to 80% of our daily thoughts can be negative or have negative
connotations. You might not think this
is true, but think about how we like to complain about the weather. It’s always either too cold, too hot, too
snowy, too wet, too windy, etc. You very
rarely hear people say the weather is just right or perfect. We can also be very good at complaining about
our work, our boss, our neighbours, the neighbour’s dog and even our friends. Having a negative outlook can greatly affect
your health. I bet you can think of two
people who represent the extremes, someone who seems highly negative, and
someone who always seems very positive.
I can bet you that the negative person is ill more often.
It is possible there are very sound reasons to be
negative. Certainly the temperature on
the day of London Marathon was much hotter than anyone would have liked, but
dwelling on this can affect your performance, as well as your enjoyment of the
run. My strategy was to acknowledge that
it was a hot day, change my goal for the run and to adopt the best strategy
possible for dealing with the heat and not ending up dehydrated.
Which brings me on to goal setting. One of the things we learn on the Franklin
Method course is that there are three types of goals, and these are:
- Fixed outcome goals
- Performance goals
- Process goals
From my experience runners typically have a fixed outcome
goal, although they are perhaps unaware that their goal has such a label. At the start of any marathon you will
typically hear runners ask, “What is your target for the race?” The answer will be along the lines of, “I’d
like to get under 3 hours 30.” Or it
might be a very specific, “I am aiming for 2 hours 52 minutes”. Which was one of my goals once upon a
time. I was devastated when I ‘only’
achieved 2:54, even though it was a PB.
Fixed outcome goals can be the most stressful and lead to the biggest
disappointments when they are not achieved.
I also think of Paula Radcliffe in the 2004 Athens Olympic Marathon. Her expectations for that race were high, but
when she found herself in fourth place she immediately pulled out and was
clearly distraught. To me, and most
runners I know, Paula will always be a hero, and we wouldn’t have felt any less
of her if she had finished that marathon without a medal. But watching the race unfold on TV it was
clear to see how damaging it can be when the outcome is adrift from your expectations.
A performance goal is less stressful than a fixed outcome
goal. A performance goal is simply being
able to compare how well you complete a task today with a previous attempt. For a runner this could be completing a
similar event in similar conditions.
This is a more realistic measure of your progress. It’s not realistic to compare your time from
a 25oC marathon to a marathon completed in temperatures of 17oC. You wouldn’t compare your flat road marathon
time to an off-road mountainous marathon event.
A process goal is the least stressful of the lot, but I can
guarantee you’ll never hear of runners talking about process goals. A process goal requires focusing on perhaps
just one small element of a performance and working to perfect it. This could be a dancer focusing on one small
element of a dance move, or a javelin thrower working solely on their run
up. You might say running does not
involve such processes, but I say it does.
When you understand running biomechanics you can focus on small elements
of those biomechanics to ensure they are working at peak efficiency, and this
is where the Franklin Method really starts to pay off.
One of the very first things we learnt about on the Franklin
Method course was what we call the bone rhythms of the pelvis. There is perhaps more movement in your pelvis
than you are aware of, and the pelvis is moving and changing shape when you
run. If you think of your running stride
starting from your hip sockets then you are missing out on some extra stride
length by not fully utilising your pelvis.
By mentally imaging the movement of the pelvis when running you can
increase the efficiency of your running stride and perhaps also reduce your
injury risk (it is said that 60% of lower body injuries can be attributed to
issues coming from the pelvis). I found
that by focusing on my pelvis when I ran I became a much more efficient runner
and even changed the way I run. I used
to be an over pronator and always needed running shoes to correct for
this. But after about three months of
running and imaging the actions of my pelvis my gait changed to a neutral
running gait. I’ve not needed corrective
running shoes ever since. We call this
embodied movement, or embodiment of function.
Eric Franklin (founder of the Franklin Method) has a host of sayings and
one is, “Embodiment of function improves function.”
These days I aim to practise embodied running whenever I
run. As well as focusing on my pelvis I
also pay attention to my knees, my spine, the movement of my abdominals and
ribs, my ligaments and even my fascia.
All can play a part in increasing your running efficiency. Now, I don’t focus on embodiment all the
time. I do have to let my mind wonder
and also take in my surroundings. But I
do try to be aware of how I’m feeling and focus on a particular embodiment as and
when needed. So if I feel a twinge
behind my knee cap I will focus on the way the patella is supposed to be moving
when I’m bending and straightening my knee and the twinge will typically
disappear in less than 200m of running.
You’re probably thinking this is too far-fetched, but mental imagery has
been shown to enhance neural activity in the correct part of the brain for the
movement being imaged. This falls into
the world of brain plasticity and how the brain can be retrained to improve human
motor performance.
So the goals I set for myself at the London Marathon were:
- Ditch my original target time of sub 3 hours 5 minutes, as it was unrealistic in the heat.
- Drink water whenever available and pour water over my head to stay cool.
- Focus on the process of running rather than have a target time.
- Enjoy the run.
At the end of the run my time was 3 hours 9 minutes, so not
too far adrift from my original target.
I can also say I really enjoyed my run, probably more than most. I was constantly aware of people moaning
about the temperature and complaining that there is nothing you can do to train
for it (negative self-talk/imagery). I
did my best to ignore them. I also
witnessed many people pulling out of the marathon, probably because they were
behind on their target pace. They
certainly didn’t look like they absolutely had to stop.
I think the successfulness of using the Franklin Method can
also be neatly demonstrated by comparing one of the statistics from the 2017
London Marathon to the 2018 edition. You
get some good stats from London, one of which is how many people you overtook
and how many overtook you in the final stages.
So in 2017, over the last 7.2km I passed 183 runners and 179 passed
me. This is a fairly typical result for
me, i.e. the number of people I pass is very close to the number that passed
me. In 2018 the information changed to
the whole of the second half of the race, so for the last 21km I passed 1108
runners and a mere 28 passed me. I think
this demonstrates how well I coped with the heat, which was achieved by being
positive, not dwelling on the temperature and staying focus on the process of
running.
This post is now long enough. London Marathon was my 83rd
marathon. I have run another 5 since,
all in the month of May. My next
marathon is the Midnight Mountain Marathon in the Brecon Beacons on 23rd
June.
The following is a list of all the marathons and ultra
marathons I have completed since my DNF in
the TDS (Traces du Savoie) in August 2014.
65
|
03
April 2016
|
Paris
Marathon
|
03:13:32
|
66
|
16
October 2016
|
Maidstone
Marathon
|
03:23:21
|
67
|
08
January 2017
|
East
Hanningfield Trail Marathon, Essex
|
04:31:22
|
68
|
26
February 2017
|
Cambridge
Boundary Marathon
|
03:23:37
|
69
|
11
March 2017
|
Thames
Meander
|
03:09:21
|
70
|
23
April 2017
|
London
Marathon
|
03:10:42
|
71
|
07 May
2017
|
Shakespeare
Marathon
|
03:16:20
|
72
|
04 June
2017
|
Coniston
Trail Marathon
|
03:52:23
|
73
|
01
October 2017
|
Clarendon
Way Marathon
|
03:41:36
|
74
|
14
October 2017
|
Pony
Express day 1 - New Forest 28 miles
|
04:04:44
|
75
|
15
October 2017
|
Pony
Express day 2 - New Forest 28.5 miles
|
04:03:45
|
76
|
28
October 2017
|
Norfolk
Coastal Marathon
|
03:33:24
|
77
|
02
December 2017
|
Dark
Peak Trail Marathon
|
04:48:06
|
78
|
31
December 2017
|
Liverbird
Marathon Double – day 1
|
03:20:59
|
79
|
01
January 2018
|
Liverbird
Marathon Double – day 2
|
03:30:10
|
80
|
03
February 2018
|
XNRG
Pilgrim Challenge day 1 - 33 miles
|
05:18:33
|
81
|
04
February 2018
|
XNRG
Pilgrim Challenge day 2 - 33 miles
|
05:35:49
|
82
|
18
February 2018
|
Marriott's
Way Trail Marathon, Norfolk
|
03:19:45
|
83
|
22
April 2018
|
London
Marathon
|
03:09:05
|
84
|
05 May
2018
|
XNRG
Devil's Challenege day 1 - 31 miles
|
04:58:51
|
85
|
06 May
2018
|
XNRG
Devil's Challenege day 2 - 35 miles
|
05:45:38
|
86
|
07 May
2018
|
XNRG
Devil's Challenege day 3 - 30 miles
|
04:55:09
|
87
|
13 May
2018
|
Halstead
Marathon, Essex
|
03:08:48
|
88
|
27 May
2018
|
Neolithic
Marathon, Wiltshire
|
03:27:49
|
