Author Archives: Tom

Jantastic January

Jantastic

I mentioned previously that I had signed up for the Jantastic challenge. Jantastic was set up last year by former international runner Martin Yelling (husband of Olympian marathoner, Liz Yelling) and Tom Williams, MD of parkrun, who co present the MarathonTalk podcast. In Martin’s own words

Jantastic is a New Year fitness challenge and it grew out of our desire to offer motivation and encouragement to runners as they strive for consistency towards their spring running goals.

The challenge runs for 3 months and the set up is simple: in the first month, set a target number of workouts you will aim to complete each week. In the second month, you still set a target number of workouts but also add a distance target for a single run each week. In March, the final month, you add a time target for a single run – something to aim for after hopefully completing 3 months of training, inspired and motivated by taking part in the challenge.
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Back to life

Winter clouds

2014 was one of those years that I’m happy to draw a line underneath. My running never really took off after the marathon – if anything, it nose-dived into oblivion as I ended up being plagued by a piriformis related injury (the piriformis is a muscle involved in external rotation of the hip). It came to a head in a 5 mile club trail race at the beginning of July; the run started out well but after 3 miles, I was in such pain that I had to pull out and was left with nothing but the ignominious walk back to the start. After that, it never really came together. I did run more but mostly running felt difficult and painful and by October, I’d more or less given up.

The end of last year saw me stop running for two months. This in itself isn’t unusual – my running career has never been what you might call consistent – but for the the last 10 or so weeks of 2014, just even thinking about running made me cross. I stopped going to the gym, didn’t do any training or exercise, lost my fitness, put on weight and got into a spiral of decline. I was frustrated and unhappy and had got to the point where I was ready to give up on running altogether.

Running and I were finished.
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London Marathon – April 13th 2014

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At 2:23pm on Sunday 13th April, I crossed the finish line of the 2014 London Marathon in a time of 4 hours, 18 minutes and 37 seconds. I had a smile on my face and agonising pain in my legs but I had successfully completed the task that a few days beforehand I wasn’t even sure I was going to attempt. It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t fast but I finished it and, all things considered, I’m happy with that.

The run itself went as well, if not better, as I expected. It was a beautifully hot day (well, apparently not that hot but it felt like it was well over 20°C) and I started the race calm, relaxed, happy and pain-free. I had stuck to my plan of having no plan and had resisted the urge to bring my Garmin “just in case” because I knew that if I was wearing it, I’d start stressing over pace and time which I didn’t want to do. I found a comfortable pace early on, easy to do when surrounded by so many people, and stuck to running comfortably – low heart rate, easy breathing, barely pushing it. I was stunned by the sheer exuberance of the crowds even in the first miles through Woolwich and Charlton. Early sunday drinkers crowded outside pubs that had inspirational music – well, “Eye of the Tiger” – blaring from speakers; masses of people lined the streets cheering, shouting encouragement and holding signs of support while children held their hands out to be high-fived by passing runners. It was incredible and unlike anything I’d ever experienced and enough to put a smile on even this old dour face.

The miles started slipping by and the first 10km seemed over in no time as we passed the Greenwich Naval College (scene of the final showdown between Chris Hemsworth and Chris Ecclestone in “Thor: The Dark World”), past the Cutty Sark and then up through Surrey Quays. I kept an eye on the clock at each mile point and worked out that I was roughly sticking to 8:30 miles which I was happy with.
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Winging it

The London Marathon (2014 edition) is now only three days away, or two days and three nights if you prefer pedantry, and I will be at the lining up at the start.

I’d be lying if I said I felt ready for it. Since the Berkhamsted Half, my running has been hit and miss and aside from 15 miles across two runs in one day, I spectacularly failed to manage a long run of any distance at all. Between work and personal life building up, training has fallen by the way side. Mentally my focus has been elsewhere and even as recently as Monday, after an otherwise enjoyable run left me in copious amounts of pain, I was considering deferring until next year.
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Berkhamsted Half Marathon – March 2nd 2014

I’m a bit out of kilter with race reports. As I mentioned in the last post, I have raced a couple of times since last year but have yet to write about them but I’m starting with the most recent because it’s so fresh in my mind. Well, fresh in the same way that a pack of supermarket chicken bought from the discount counter and is a few days past its Best Before date is fresh. But before I talk about that race, I want to share some feelings about a race of sorts I did back in November – of sorts only in that it was a club only race and counted towards the club Off-Road championships but there were numbers and times and places and everything so it counts.

The race, which takes place on the route of the popular Ridgeway Race which our club holds annually, is a trail run through the beautiful National Trust woodland and is just shy of 10 miles long and takes in about 775ft of elevation (according to Strava). I was excited about the event because a) I’d never done it before b) it was my first real challenge after injury and c) I love the course. It’s a handicap race with all runners setting off at different times – slow to fast – with the aim of having everyone finishing at about the same time (although this hasn’t yet happened in the events history to my knowledge). The winner is the first one home, irrespective of the time it took them.

All told, the race went well for me. I set out too fast and paid for it later and still don’t manage ascents that well even though they’re relatively benign compared to anywhere outside the Home Counties. But I pushed myself as hard as I felt comfortable, maintained focus and managed to run my fastest time on that course (even allowing for the fact that, technically, a route change made it 0.1 mile shorter), finishing as I did in 1:18 on the nose (so an average of 8:17 mins/mile). It would have been faster too if not for the extra challenge of getting caught behind a couple of ladies riding horses down a narrow path – this slowed the group of runners I was with down to a walk for a couple of minutes. Perhaps the enforced rest did me good and enabled me to push the last couple of miles a little harder than I would have done otherwise. Any which way, I got a time I was pleased with on a steep and muddy course and, more importantly, I really, really enjoyed the run.

So what does this have to do with last weekends half marathon?
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Time Marches On

It’s March and I find myself once again in an all too familiar and depressing situation – whether or not to pull out of a race because of injury. It’s a little depressing that I am once again writing this sort of post, especially when I have several race reports to write up because, yes, since recovering from breaking my foot last year, I have raced. Unfortunately, it’s as a result of the most recent one (report coming soon) that I am sitting here wondering what to do.

But first, some background. At the end of November, at our club AGM, we had the annual lottery for the London Marathon entries allocated to the club. (Read more information about that scheme on the VLM website). On a last minute whim, I put my name into the hat and, yes, you guessed it, won a place. Then, three days later in a rather foolish and ill-advised foray back onto a rugby pitch, I pulled my right calf muscle quite severely. Why was I on a rugby pitch? Don’t ask and I won’t tell (although I wasn’t playing a game of rugby – I never made it that far). The injury was serious enough for me to be relegated to crutches for 3 or 4 days and so December became a month of enforced rest.
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C25K: A review

It’s a measure of how my mind works that once I’ve moved on from something, I tend not to know what to say about it. I cut my C25K training short after week 6 because I felt I’d got what I needed from it and I didn’t feel that persisting with the steady state runs in weeks 7 to 9 were going to be of benefit either physically or mentally. Regardless, here’s a quick recap of week 6 for reference.

Week 6 of C25K is the second microcycle that has three different runs. Day 1 is a 5 minute-8 minute-5 minute set of intervals with 3 minutes RI and day 2 is two 10 minute runs with a 3 minute RI. I did both on the treadmill and both went well enough. Day 3 is another long run, progressing up from w5d3 to 22 minutes. My training went mostly to schedule – the intervals were fine but I cut the 22 minute run short because I messed up the pacing and poor shoe choice. (“They’re the Wrong Shoes, Gromit!”). I was a little disappointed to not be able to round out that programme with a good run but having already done a 6 mile run earlier in the week, I very much felt like I was going through the motions.

Overall my personal experience of C25K has been good and useful, especially coming back from injury. The most useful part was being able to follow a structured program with a purpose that only required me to run for 20-25 minutes at a time and yet still felt like I was making progress. I can see the benefits of the program as an easy, good and accessible way of getting people into running, following the basic principles of starting easily with a run/walk sessions and building up to running continuously for up to half an hour at time.

Having said that, I don’t think there’s anything particularly outstanding about the C25K schedule that sets it head and shoulders apart from other beginners programmes. I also feel that it might benefit from some tweaks to the week 4 schedule as the run/walk intervals in that week seem to be based more on making the numbers look nice (the walk intervals are half the length of the run intervals). I will accept, however, that as I was working at a set pace rather than just running free, I would need more feedback from people to make a better assessment. It’s also just a matter of details.

I think I’d also prefer to suggest a running plan which did not have so much repetition of sessions. I think a lot of the challenge of starting to run is not so much physical but mental and I have a feeling that new runners would be quite able to cope with – and benefit from – a gradual progression for each run. C25K is perfectly fine, however, and some new runners may prefer it. An added bonus is that there are accompanying smartphone apps that can be used by runners to time the intervals and that may be a swaying factor for some people.

So there we have it, my C25K adventure is over. Time to move on.

#C25K Week 5: Brain Training

Week 5: the one that everyone talks about. This is the first of two weeks where each workout is different, gradually ramping up the effort until the w5d3 continuous 20 minute run. For me it was going to be about concentrating on pace. Once again I took to the treadmill for day 1, 3 intervals of 5 minutes with 3 minutes RI. I went back to my planned pace on this and, for the most part, stuck to it. The only time I didn’t was briefly during the last interval when I hopped off the treadmill for a couple of seconds, nominally to catch my breath. I got straight back on and then stepped the pace up as penance – a way of making up for the lapse in focus.

I still struggle with this habit – of giving up and easing off when the end is so very nearly in sight. It’s like my brain screams “No more!” and I have to take a brief respite by hopping off the treadmill or walking during a race. Yes, I will admit again that I have yet to finish any race without walking at some point! Ultras, obviously, are forgivable but even in 5k/10k/HM I’ve stopped and walked. But it seems providence was waiting for me when I got back from the gym as I found a link to a Runner’s World article about “building mental muscle”. The article referenced Tim Noakes’ “Lore of Running” which, coincidentally, I’d been reading the night before.

The article made me reassess my approach to the next two sessions.
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#C25K Week 4: Roadblocks

Week 4 of the C25K is where it starts to ramp up with quite a sharp progression to 16 minutes total running in two sets of 3 min run, 90 sec walk, 5 min run with a 2.5 minute run between sets. Excluding the cool down, it’s the first time that the program demands more time running than walking. The step up is also quite considerable; if you recall, C25K week 3 only has 9 minutes of running so week 4 nearly doubles the time. An alternative way of breaking down the challenge is to focus on the time running in one go is only increased from 3 minutes to 5. That shouldn’t be too bad right? Right?

For me, it turned out that the real challenge was the 90 second walk recovery between the 3 minute and 5 minute runs. Having worked out a more structure pacing plan based on the FIRST plan and sticking to it through week 3, I knew what I was aiming to do: 3 minutes at 6:30 min/mi and 5 minutes at 6:45 min/mi. Best Laid Plans and all that (soon to become a subtitle of this blog, I’m sure – in fact, I might even get it inscribed on my gravestone!)

W4D1 was hard!
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Archive: Windsor Half Marathon – 25 Sept 2005

A race report from the archives of an old blog. I ran my first Half Marathon with only two weeks notice after a neighbour pulled out at the last minute. It was one of those spur of the moment decisions I said yes to because, well, why the hell not? I recall being in fairly decent shape, all things considered, but I certainly hadn’t trained for it. Another case of “Kids, don’t try this at home!” Then again, this is still my PB time for the half.

Windsor Half Marathon

It was 20 degrees yesterday which I would call rather hot for the season. Or I would but I seem to have a memory of September always being quite hot. Admittedly, never quite 20 degrees hot but still.

Anyway, a friend and I drove down to Windsor where we joined 5000 people to do the Windsor Half Marathon. I’d like to say that another reason I haven’t been around much is because of the copious amount of training I’ve been doing for this race but that would be a lie and you know it. The truth of it is that I only agreed to do it two weeks ago after someone I know who had entered pulled out and offered me their place. I haven’t run more than about 10k all summer and this was twice as far.
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