My Mission to Break 2:45 for the Marathon and What Happened Thereafter
In the end I couldn’t resist the temptation of a fast, flat city marathon, so this evening I entered the Rotterdam Marathon, booked a hotel and ninety percent of the necessary travel.
Quite an expense, but I hope it will be worth it as the most likely course available with my work restrictions to secure a 2:45 marathon.
My rather hastily scheduled training plan had me down as doing twenty miles today, despite doing a XC race yesterday. At six o’clock last night with legs pretty stiff I wondered the wisdom of attempting such a run, so I had a few glasses of red wine to aid the recovery.
I woke surprisingly fresh, and after an hour or so to consume breakfast and allow the worst of any ice in the ground to melt slightly, I headed out on a cold and frost covered morning – probably the coldest morning of the winter so far – which says little about our winter except how warm its been as it was barely below zero.
To my surprise I felt pretty sprightly from the off, and apart from having to be quite careful on some icy patches I was running far more freely than I’d expected. I was thinking that if I had a good run is average 07:40 per mile; I went through the first mile in 07:30, the second in 07:14 and the third in 07:02. I was on a good one.
The opening miles were slightly uphill on the A607, but that stretch of road feels quick in either direction. What was more pleasing that the run up from Denton to Knipton retained the pace and even when I’d reached Belvoir at nearly 460 feet (I began the run at 170 feet) I felt fresh and it all felt easy.
Dropping down into Woolsthorpe the average was spot on seven minutes. I’d turned to face a slight headwind which wasn’t strong enough to slow but sure was cold. Onto the Grantham Canal and I went through a half marathon in 1:31. The next four miles on the canal were the hardest of the run – it’s a little uneven in places underfoot and with numerous puddles turned to ice I was frequently chopping and changing my stride. I even managed to slightly twist an ankle near the end of the canal; thankfully the pain quickly subsided.
Leaving the canal I’d covered 16.5 miles and I knew I’d have to do a little running around the houses to bring the distance up to twenty. This can be a little self destroying but thankfully I found myself feeling the best I’d done at any point in the run – knocking off the miles in comfortably under seven minutes.
I arrived home having covered 20.3 miles at an average of 06:57 per mile. An excellent first real long run of the year and bodes well hopefully for the weeks to come.
I’d not run cross country since a rather miserable affair back at Birmingham in February 2013, when I was 15th or so for Kenilworth Runners, running hurt and running with little enthusiasm. As a second claim member for Grantham Running Club I’m not eligible to compete for them in the underwhelming Lincolnshire Cross Country League, so to get my cross country fix I need to represent the green and black of the club I’ve been with now for 13 years.
The last few times I’ve run Birmingham Leagues at Coundon Hall Park in Coventry, it was just a five minute drive from front door to the course. Now a Grantham resident, it took an hour and twenty to reach Coventry, then, rather embarrassingly, another 30 minutes to find the park, as the hard earned knowledge of Coventry roads in all the years seemed to desert me completely in just the four months its been since I left there.
Arriving late it meant I had little time to say hello to my clubmates, most of whom I’d not seen since saying farewell back in August. I imagine some had assumed I’d left for good, so were a little surpised to see me there, especially as my dislike of cross country is a barely hidden secret. In fact within seconds of walking along just a fraction of the muddy and pretty flooded section of the circuit, I began to wonder what on earth I was doing there.
Running late, the warm up amounted to little more than a 3/4s mile jog. Five minutes before the start of the race, there was a minute’s silence for Tipton Harriers’ Andy Holden, who had sadly recently passed away. It was said we were running as a tribute to his memory and fitting it would be as he was a figurehead of Midlands athletics and grassroots cross country.
Whether his memory would be well served by the Coundon Hall Park course is a mute topic. Essentially a lap is navigating through and around a series of football pitches, pretty flat and featureless were it not for the vast swathes of flooded or extremely muddy sections. There was once a moderately interesting section through a small copse. This, alas, was sacrificed a few years back in the name of health and safety, rendering the course – all three laps of it – a largely tedious affair.
At 2:30 prompt the starting horn was blasted and we were off. Perhaps because the ground was wet and boggy from the off, the usual kamikaze cavalry charge was somewhat less pronounced than in many cross country races. I found myself in the early stages around tenth Kenilworth counter – this for me is something of a very rapid start, preferring greatly to start slowly and come on strongly hopefully in the closing stages.
Despite the lack of warm up, after a couple of minutes running I felt quite sprightly and strong, easing myself past club mates Pete Bryan, Alex Atkinson and Matt Dyer. For the first mile I was within spitting distance of Connor Carson and Stephen Page. They though showed far greater prowess over the muddy conditions and soon eased away.
I set my sights on another team mate Jim Sawle, who was in cracking form for the first third of 2013 before spending much of the rest of the year injured. Approaching the end of the first lap, I was told by spectator Mick Williams I was seventh counter for the club that being the first B Team counter.
Sniffing a possible A team position, I began to close down on Jim over the course of the second lap, overtaking him at the far end of the course. A quick nod of encouragement to each other and it was head down, trying to establish a gap on him and close down guys from other clubs.
It was around about then I began to suffer stomach cramps, nothing too severe, but enough to not want me to commit 100% – they would ease off quite a bit if I likewise eased off the pace a bit. Approaching the end of the second lap I began to tire quite noticeably – the combination of the soft, muddy and wet conditions I’m not comfortable with, and coming off a four week base training block – meant that I couldn’t quite maintain the pace of the opening lap. This doesn’t work too well for me, I tend to run better if I can come on strong in the closing stages rather than battle the demons whilst hanging on as best as possible.
I nervously glanced around and saw it was no longer Jim behind me but Kev Hope – a runner who’d joined Kenilworth in 2013 and was, I believe, making his XC debut for the club. He’d clearly paced the race better than I had and was slowly but inexorably closing down on me.
Around the third lap I pushed on as hard as my tiring body and delicate stomach would allow. I thought with a quarter of a lap to go, I’d maybe put enough of a gap on Kev and would score a rare A team counting position. Alas in the final sprint, he came past me like a train, not just passing me but around four or five other runners.
Initially disappointed to just miss out on sixth spot, I was soon pleased for Kev and the club as he’d been able to make up precious positions that I was unable to take. I was also pleased that this is comfortably the best Birmingham League Cross Country race I’ve done in this second week of January slot, and it all bodes well for the months and hopfully year to come – especially as there was barely a whiff of pain or discomfort in the legs.
Overall the club didn’t have the best of days – three of our strongest runners were missing and the quality at the front of the field was pretty fierce. Still, I was glad I’d made the effort to represent the club, at least once, in arguably the best cross country league in the country.
A couple of miles warmdown with a handful of club mates, and it was time to say my goodbyes and to head home, looking forward to the Nationals in February where I will meet up with many of them again. Stripping the mud sodden socks and preparing a protein shake for the journey home, I thought already of the twenty mile run I had planned for the following morning.
Some proper Japanese style base training during the day courtesy of the double school run. Over seven miles walked, not all of it flat out mind you, as the little one wandered along mostly in her own little dream world.
As for the run proper, it was back to putting in just shy of 4.5 miles alone before meeting up with the GRC guys. This felt fairly pain free, apart from a liquid stomach, although it felt like I was working a bit harder than the pace suggested.
Once on the club run, it was the usual mix of mostly easy miles chatting along, some proper running conversation mixed with some stuff better left on the run. At the drop out of Barrowby I allowed the legs to relax and flew down the hill. It was there I saw the green eyes, thanks to the head torch in the total darkness, of what may have been a feral cat. Didn’t hang around too long to see if I was correct in my guess of species.
Once onto the A607 I decided, with the cross country race fast approaching on Saturday, to allow base slow running rules to be relaxed for a mile or two to out in a bit of a stretch at marathon paced effort. What was pleasing, apart from a return of the nagging ache in the left hamstring, was that it felt very easy to knock off the complete mile on the stretch at 06:08. It felt like a pace that was entirely sustainable for some distance and is encouraging going forward once training commences properly in earnest.
That quick bit done it was back to a comfortable pace back to club, then after some chatting, the 1.6 miles or so back home. Boy did the legs stiffen up in those 10 or so minutes of inactivity. It took a minute or so of uneasy shuffling before life returned to the pins.
Sixteen miles covered in as near as dammit two hours of running. Exactly as planned. Decided to follow the plan and rest Friday ahead of the race on Saturday. Apart from the Japanese style training that is.
I’ve guessed at what day this is – applied some bad maths from when I last knew what day it was and hoped for the best.
Frankly I don’t care much about the running, after much tearing of hair out before Christmas trying to get links and URL working for this blog, an hour or so this evening with a cider and suddenly some a moment of clarity, a few lines of code, and voilà! Everything seems to be fixed. One day I’ll have all the fancy menus and graphics that other people have, but for the time being, I’m happy to keep it fairly bare-bones.
As for the running, Tuesday evening, I knew that GRC were doing hard hill efforts and the base building part of this training plan strictly forbade this. So instead I went off on a pretty easy paced 8 and 1/4 mile run, aiming to find a route that 1. wasn’t too hilly and 2. was pretty much totally lit for the entire run for the purpose of being able to easily do marathon paced runs in the coming weeks. Thankfully I found it. If you look at a map of the run it is a bit north and south north and south along different roads, but thankfully it doesn’t need a head torch and usefully a couple of miles here and there can be tacked on.
Running steady easy miles is a little dull so I plugged in the earphones and enjoyed some tunes, ignoring all those sensationalist warnings that you must never do so outside in hours of darkness. I’ve never quite understood the exact logic for this, and so carried on blissfully ignorant of any unaware dangers I posed myself.
Wednesday morning had eight easy miles on the plan, so, I plugged in again to the mp3 player and headed off – running an eight mile loop I’ve done a couple of times before, but really jazzing it up to dizzying heights by…. running it in the opposite direction…. For some reason in all my years of running, except for Kenilworth Runners’ winter circuit, which we always alternated between clockwise and anticlockwise depending on whether it was a Tuesday or Thursday (but I NEVER ran it clockwise on a Thursday and vice versa), I’ve been fairly loathed to change the direction of a looped run once it had been run for the first time in a certain direction. No idea why, it’s just the way its been.
Other than this crazy direction switch the run was entirely unspectacular. The niggly right groin was a bit more niggly than yesterday and after the run I was quite stiff and sore. Maybe being able to run some quick miles again will alleviate these aches and pains…