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Day 50 – There May Be Trouble Ahead

Day 49 was a rest day, although rest is something of a fluid term as it involved seven and a half miles of walking kids to and from school and a trip to the supermarkets. I ended the day perhaps more tired than had I just done an easy six in the morning.

Tuesday and the plan had an easy six in the morning followed by eleven at marathon pace in the evening. The wife is totally snowed with work at the moment so I decided to switch, doing the marathon paced run when the baby was napping and then doing the six later in the evening once I’d put the kids to bed.

The morning walk to and from school was a lethargic affair – not pained, just slow. I had to work myself up to get out and running especially as it was to be at a fair pace from the off. At least the skies were blue outside, although the stiff breeze that has numbed the face for the past few days was a persistent feature of the day.

The opening miles of the run were routine enough; I was swift out of the box and pain free, knocking out the first mile in a sprightly 6:24 – quicker than I plan to run the opening mile come marathon day. The second mile was harder, but faster, as it was mostly into a head wind, and the third mile was mostly uphill and into a headwind, which made it the slowest of the run. I had a warning sign with a twinge in the right hamstring approaching four miles, the pain subsided soon enough so I carried on. Miles five and six were spot on marathon pace despite being partly uphill.

After a pit stop at the sports centre I continued sprightly and keen to knock out the final few miles. Things though got tough on the way to Barrowby and leaving the village the twinge in the right hamstring and in the inner thigh increased in intensity. It didn’t slow me too much in the final couple of miles, partly as they were mostly downhill, but they knocked the impetus out of the run – it felt as if something could go at any moment.

I made it home without too much distress; after a stretch I went to play with the massage tools – looking for signs of trouble. There was plenty to be found: from the hip to the knee, quadricep and hamstring – there were sore points everywhere. I massaged for around twenty minutes, then after lunch walked to collect my daughter from school. The hamstring ached for much of the walk near the knee. There and then I abandoned any notion of running again in the evening – hoping that an evening of massage and sleep can alleviate the symptoms.

This pain first struck last Tuesday at the mile reps – something on the right hand side doesn’t like running at pace. Hopefully I can find the problem soon before Project Sub 2:45 begins to potentially derail.

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Day 48–Following A Black Line

I wanted to try a new route for my long run this morning, so last night I went to Garmin Connect and went about plotting a route. After a couple of attempts I settled on a 22 mile course that took me southwest of Grantham utilising roads I’ve mostly not been on before.

This morning and after initially thinking I’d have to endure a 6:30am start it was decided the best way to utilise the day with work and stuff was for me to head out when the baby was having her morning nap. So at 11 and after two attempts to upload my course to the Garmin I headed out.

Within a few minutes of running it was apparent I was somewhat dehydrated, a nagging feeling of thirst that peaked around eight miles into the run before subsiding somewhat, only to return in the closing stages. Too late to return I carried on, legs pretty stiff for the first few miles, especially as the route was upwards for much of the first three miles.

Like yesterday it was a gloriously sunny day with only a few clouds in the sky. But also like yesterday it was windy – perhaps windier than yesterday and it was going to be a headwind for the opening half of the run. On rolling roads with the odd short sharp undulation it was a case of digging in as best I could as the wind battered me relentlessly on the exposed roads surrounded by farmland. At least the roads were quiet, the occasional car and groups of cyclists the only company.

At halfway I reached Sproxton and with a sharp left I was faced with a stiff climb and the stiff wind now blowing behind me. Once I hit the top of the hill I began to fly; the miles that were outside seven minutes in the first half of the run were now comfortably under seven minutes and edging closer to 06:30. After a couple of miles that were gently downhill the terrain became far more undulating, and on the Grantham Road – now deserted but showing all the signs of being a road of some significance, there were a couple of steep climbs that numbed the legs.

All the while I was religiously following the little black line on the Garmin, telling me exactly where I should be running and reminding me (All too frequently thanks to a little bug on the 910XT) that I was inches off course and then back on course. Another quirk of this flagship Garmin device is that when you are using the watch to guide you on a course, it is prone to infuriating delays in actually deciding which way you should be heading and even, on occasion, completely turning the device off whilst running. What makes this more galling is that the old faithful 305 had no problems with courses – a device that celebrates its tenth birthday next year and in some ways, like this, is superior to the best Garmin currently offers.

Moaning over, and I was running fairly well, with just the pelvis aching a bit and the top of the right foot aching where the tongue on the frees irritates (A shame as in every other respect these are my favourite trainers). At the end of the Grantham Road and when the Garmin finally refreshed itself to decide I should head straight over the main road and onto a dirt track which had signs quite clearly stating not suitable for motors. There was a certain irony then when on this mile long or so deeply pot holed track three cars passed me, the same number that had passed in the last seven miles.

Leaving the dirt track and I was on the road to Little Ponton, one I’m now very familiar with. I put the Garmin out of its misery and stopped the course mapping, which finally gave me a chance to look at the regular pages of data I have scrolling whilst running. It told me I was averaging 07:02 so I had a little work to do to achieve my target of breaking seven minute miling over the final four miles.

I was thirsty and tiring but the lure of the sub seven willed me on, made much easier once I was down the final steep hill (Which was really painful on the foot) and running through town. I came home having notched up 22.1 miles averaging 06:58 per mile. It meant I’d run 82 miles for the week, which is half a mile down on my record week set the week before Christmas last year. Not bad for one that I had intended to be a step down week.

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Day 47–Blowin’ In The Wind

I was meant to be out of the door and running by 7:30 but when the alarm went off at 7am it was swiftly turned off and I was back under the covers – it was cold out there! And I was tired. Really tired.

I finally got out at 11am. I had been up for several hours mind you, just the first opportunity to run with the littlest one having a sleep and the other one watching CBeebies on the tablet whilst mum worked – I pointed out to her how implausible this would have been when I was a child, but it didn’t appear to register.

The run was a perfunctory affair – at least the skies were blue even if the cold stiff wind battered me at times to the point of literally being blown off course. It felt like I was eight minute miling for the eight or so mile I ran, it was pleasing therefore to see I was actually knocking out low seven minute miles.

Apart from the legs feeling a little lifeless and suggesting they needed a day’s rest (planned now for Monday) there was little sinister save for the right groin nagging away again. This seems to come and go as it pleases – hard to determine exactly where the issue is. All the while it doesn’t actually slow me I won’t fuss too much over it, but I know these things can change quickly.

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Day 46 – 314 For 1

I was planning on making today a rest day – Friday has been my most frequent day off from running for some years now and with the final day of F1 testing in Jerez, the only chance I would have got to head out and run would be in the evening: a Friday night run is something I can count on the fingers on one hand I have done.

But the planned rest was planned before I realised yesterday I could break my mileage record for a calendar month. After yesterday’s effort I calculated I needed to run seven miles. As the day wore on I found myself less inclined to head out; the weather looked and sounded truly horrible – wet, windy, and, by all accounts, cold. I tried to talk myself out of it but in the end the lure of a PB of sorts proved too great and so it was, at 7:30pm, I left the comfort of my home to run seven long miles.

Once again this week I got lucky in that the icy cold rain had relented and all I was faced with was a stiff wind, which, although cold, was thankfully not the arctic blast I’d been hearing so much about on the TV weather forecast. the first couple of miles were a real trial – the legs were stiff, bits ached, and the mind was constantly asking why? why? as I struggled into the wind and up the first of two climbs.

Salvation came, not for the first time this week, from the Sansa Clip, who almost seemed to sense my mental frailty and chose  to play, once again, Kingdom of Rust by Doves. Despite my legs determination to not run easily, the song seemed to override the pins and before I knew it I was running 7:20 miles and getting quicker. It helped too that I’d literally turned a corner and the wind was a cross come tail wind that began to blow me ever quicker back towards home.

Heading up to Barrowby Gate, it was Strava’s turn to will me on as I knew there was a trophy to be had if I just upped the pace a touch along this hilly road. That tackled, the run was psychologically as good as done with just a mile and a half of downhill or flat running to tackle. Before I knew it I was home – seven and a half miles run, Best of all, I managed to make it indoors just as the heavens opened again.

I barely had time to shower before I was uploading my run to Fetcheveryone and Strava. Fetch was the most important, official confirmation of my mileage was up and there for all to see.

Official Confirmation314 miles – two more than March 2012 when I was training for the London Marathon that I was unable to run and then took part in the Shakespeare Marathon that wasn’t (That story is for another day, it took many months to come to terms with that one and it still winds me up just thinking about it…).

Hopefully this year my marathons go to plan. If they don’t well at least I have my Strava Gold Trophy for Barrowby Gate to treasure (although someone could easily beat that). January is done. All in all a very good month, as good as I could have hoped for, and well on track to, hopefully, Sub 2:45.

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Day 45–Obsessing with the Mileage

It wasn’t just because I’d uploaded nine years of running data to Strava that I was obsessing over mileage on my run. A quick look on Fetcheveryone showed that if I ran 16 miles this evening and then 6 or so tomorrow evening then I would break my all time record mileage for a calendar month. It wasn’t going to be easy though as covering the F1 testing meant that I couldn’t leave for my run as early as I’d have liked to. I think I left even later than I did on Tuesday, requiring a 6:41 opening mile and then half a mile at 6:12 pace to just make it to the club before they left.

Thankfully there was a couple of miles of easy paced running where I could recover from those early exertions and concentrate on the miles ahead. I wasn’t concentrating leaving Queen Elizabeth’s Park though, having splashed our way through I stopped my watch to allow all the runners to pass, I forgot to restart my Garmin. I didn’t realise until I neared Belton House, which turned out to be around 1.2 miles but at the time I wasn’t sure how far I’d lost.

After four or so easy miles, on the dark lanes towards Londonthorpe I put in a couple of quickish miles, made harder as they were all uphill. Thereafter I settled in a small group of three, running between 7-7:10 minute miles along eerily misty narrow country lanes. We maintained this all the way back into Grantham which was significantly quicker than in previous weeks and gave a good workout. Once in Grantham I tried to add some miles to bring the run up to 16. I had to guess somewhat, and ended up around a third of a mile short.

Legs were pretty good, although right abductor was still tight at times and the right hamstring is pretty sore to touch after I found some tight and tender spots during some Stick massage.