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2016 English National Marathon (London) Championships Training – Pre-Base Base Training

Quite often come the beginning of December and with a Spring Marathon planned I put in a period of heavy base training – lots of long runs at a comfortable pace and not an awful lot else. This year though was going to be similar, if slightly different. I went into the start of the month with a niggling calf injury sustained at the Chester Marathon in October and a dodgy left hip / groin / hamstring issue which was making fast running in particular very uncomfortable.

I endured what was probably the most painful massage I’ve ever had at the start of the month, which did a fantastic job on clearing down scar tissue in the calf, but the hip / groin issue was still a concern. I began the month with the Nene Valley 10 (Race report elsewhere) which concluded my 2015 racing campaign in pleasing manner, albeit tinged with the unavoidable fact that I was barely able to walk at the end of the race.

In desperation I turned to a little star purchase I made at the start of the year from, of all places, Aldi. They were selling sports and fitness related books – yoga, pilates, weights etc. at a low price. I bought all six of them and flicked through them all. The one that saw the most attention was a book on stretching. It was interesting as it was written by a ballet dancer and had stretches for the entire body, many of them not your typical running themed stretches. Many were frankly impossible to carry out properly for a body rendered totally unsupple with tens of thousands of running miles, but some I found particularly effective. So, for three weeks in December I set about religiously going through the 30 minute or so stretching routine and at the end of the year there was definitely improvement, to the point that I could extend my run home from Belton House parkrun mostly pain free rather than hobbling pathetically home.

Apart from the two parkruns there was not much in the way of quick running and a fair amount of moderate distance runs at an easy pace. The most satisfying run of the month was probably a 10k brick effort following the only long bike ride of the month (60 miles) which saw me average 6:36 pace and felt effortless. The best run of the month was definitely the GRC Christmas Lights run, which was a festival of all that is good and wrong with light displays and a visit too from none other than Father Christmas! I got the opportunity to dress up as the man himself on the club’s Christmas Eve run, which earned a fair few toots of the horn as I ran briefly beside the A1 on the way to Ponton. A heart-warming social run was made more challenging by some pretty terrible weather but it was a cheery way to begin the Christmas holidays.

2015 saw all my remaining running goals broken – a cycling goal I created mid year was on the gym’s spin bike. Having not used a bike that read your watts before, I was intrigued on my first session to hit 2.7 watts per k/g. That quickly rose to 3.1 and thereafter set myself a target of hitting 4.0 w/kg – a figure I vaguely recalled meant you were an okay cyclist.  Come the beginning of December I was tantalisingly close with a brace of 3.9 w/kg rides. The 14th December session saw an extra determined effort which saw me clock, by a watt or two, 4.0 w/kg. The jubilant scenes were almost as great as when I broke 2:45! I backed this up with an hour ride on 23rd December, where I clocked 3.9 w/kg. Not sure how much higher I can go but it will be fun trying. What is worth noting is that the efforts are having a great showing on my road cycling – I am much stronger than I was at the start of the year, and hopefully I can carry this forward into 2016.

Training over Christmas is a political and logistical minefield and I set no goals or targets and opted for an eat and drink loads strategy to help with the fat burning training in January…. The pre Xmas weekend with the in-laws saw a welcome innovation with the introduction of Boston parkrun – I felt dreadful and somehow mustered second. I felt better the next day and ran 17 windy miles with a sub six minute final mile to finish, followed by 14 even windier miles the following day. There was no Christmas Day run – that has been lost to the children – but I did get to run parkrun on Boxing Day. Travelling to Minehead on the Sunday, there was a couple of ten mile runs on the Monday and Tuesday, the hills coming as something of a shock to the body but otherwise not too bad considering the levels of food and drink consumed.

The spanner in the works came courtesy of a fiery sore throat which meant that my last run of the year on New Year’s Eve was looking  very unlikely before I decided to risk it and put in 7 very slow miles, thankfully with no ill effect. New Year’s Day was a hungover 5 mile run with my brother who now lives in Canada and was finding the 6C so warm he saw it fit to run it in a vest – which made my full thermal attire look a little weedy.

The last two days of pre-base base training came in the form of a ten mile run on the Saturday which was a little uncomfortable with the sore throat and a little concerning with how tubby the body felt. I could have done though with a little more body fat on the Sunday morning when I took part in the first Witham Wheelers ride of the year. It began overcast but shortly before the coffee stop it began to rain and I struggled to stay warm. The ride was cut short by around 20 miles because of some fairly atrocious weather, I cycled in with the quick boys simply to try and keep some warmth in the body. It took me until well into the evening before I felt like I had warmed up.

With that and with no plan about what marathon training for 2016 should actually consist of, I ended pre-base base training and went straight into marathon training – which will begin with a period of more base. It’s all about the base.

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Race Report – Nene Valley 10, Bretton, Peterborough, Sunday 6th December 2015.

For the second race in succession, the final decision to take part in the Nene Valley 10 was made very late in the day – this time it was made the morning before rather than the morning of the race. Once again the dithering and non-committed attitude was as a result of niggling injuries that have plagued me ever since I passed the 19 mile mark of the Chester Marathon.

A few days after the first Belton House parkrun I was out for a six mile run when, after four miles, my right calf tightened to the point of it being very painful and barely able to run on. I took a couple of days off running and things felt much better, so I headed to Belton again for another stab at parkrun. There was little amiss in the calf for the opening mile – I ran a 5:28 and was in the lead. I then let a guy behind me take the pace as we approached a section of headwind. Passing Belton House itself, I suddenly felt a sharp pain in the right calf as it tightened again. I stopped at the start of the second lap and massaged for a couple of minutes before jogging the second lap and jogging home. Running on the calf was painful but bearable. Still, fearful of something serious amiss, I took two weeks off running and hit the elliptical trainer once again.

Two weeks later I began with a two mile run and over the next week gradually built up the distance, running eight miles on the Friday, two days before Nene Valley and the day after one of the most painful massages I’ve ever endured. The upshot was there were numerous parts of my right leg that was very tight. My right calf was more or less okay after the massage and the run; the bigger pain was in the left groin which appeared to be suffering courtesy of issues with the TFL and most likely the lower back.

My Nene Valley 10 place had been given to me courtesy of fellow GRC runner Scott, who couldn’t take part as he was lead singer at a Christmas party gig on the Saturday night. To add to the dilemma of whether I should race, Scott offered me a ticket to the gig. I was sorely tempted, but a good stretching session on Saturday morning and I decided I’d give the race a go. That said I hardly prepared in the most diligent manner – an hour on the elliptical trainer in the morning, then a few glasses of red wine in the evening and a much smaller pre-race meal than usual. All that and Storm Desmond was sending battering winds through the area that would make racing all but impossible.

Thankfully in the morning the wind was still strong but nowhere near as bad as it had been on the Saturday, and nowhere near the worst I’ve raced in. It was a relatively relaxed affair pre-race – cereal rather than cereal bars for this non-key race. I arrived well ahead of the race start and firstly went about changing my race entry from being a 16 year old to a reluctant veteran runner, courtesy of an administrative issue. I then went for a short warm up run where it was obvious the left groin was going to be a source of consternation during the race. I spent much of the next 40 minutes or so frantically stretching, trying to put off the inevitable pain in the race for as long as possible.

Some welcome relief came in the form of meeting by chance fellow Kenilworth Runner Martin, who I’ve known since I first ran with the club back in the year 2000. A few years older than myself but a consistently fine runner, Martin was my favourite training partner for his innate ability to churn out metronomically paced miles. Having not seen him since moving away from Coventry over two years ago, it was great to catch up with him again.

The Nene Valley 10 is very much a race that would be a good example of how races were put on in the 1980s and that is mostly a good thing. A no-nonsense, few thrills, good value race with the vast majority taking part being club runners. The two lap course is something of an oddity though, for although it is classified as a road race, only around 400 meters of the entire course is run on road.

The remainder utilises footpaths, alleyways, underpasses, parkland paths and pavements. A fair amount of the race even uses trail through woodland. The one section of road at the start and finish was open to traffic, so you had racers in the middle of the road dodging cars (and buses) coming in all directions. This would have been perfectly normal 25-30 years ago but is a more unusual occurrence these days.  There are plenty of twists and turns and finding a rhythm is hard work. That said the course is flat and fairly fast – my 57:20 PB for ten miles was set there two years ago.

The start was a curiously slow affair – perhaps influenced by the man holding the official clock, who nonchalantly strode to the start and plonked it down by the start line with twenty seconds to spare. Despite the field featuring Aaron Scott – one of the quickest runners in the area (and by my reckoning winner of every race except one that I have taken in within a 50 mile radius of Grantham in the past two years) we appeared to almost jog the opening 200 meters or so. Either that or I was feeling remarkably strong – for a moment I thought I may try and take on the pace – just as Aaron remembered he was in a race and buggered off into the distance for yet another victory.

The adrenaline of a race start meant little ached for the opening mile. For the majority of it we had the strong wind blowing us along, so although the 5:33 was quicker than planned, it wasn’t alarmingly fast. I soon found myself isolated and as we turned slowly into the headwind I decided it would be pointless to try and fight the elements alone and so eased up a touch to allow a group of four runners to close. Through mile two in 5:52, we hit the twisty stuff through the woodland and I slowed to allow a runner past, tucking immediately into his slipstream to take shelter from the wind. The third mile was hard work: 5:57 was scant reward for our efforts.

The fourth mile saw us turn and head back to the start line and we had a tailwind again. There were two short climbs as we firstly tackled an underpass, then a footbridge over a busy road. I was the strongest of the four of us on the second climb and decided to push on – breaking decisively the group. The fourth mile was a 5:45; the fifth, despite some severe twists and turns, was exactly the same time. I passed five miles in 28:40, which with my dodgy maths I calculated would mean a PB equaling time if I could match my performance over the second lap.

I knew within seconds of starting the second lap that that would not be possible. One of the runners who I pulled away from a mile or so earlier had passed me and eased away, to be followed half a mile down the road by another. I was able to keep them within spitting distance (with the tail wind, that is) for the rest of the race, but didn’t have quite the muster to reel them back in. It was a combination of lack of running miles in the past couple of months coupled with a left groin that by now was really aching quite a lot and enough to take the edge off my running. The right calf too was now just starting to ache and, unbelievably for December, I was feeling quite dehydrated thanks to it being a balmy 14C and the two drinks stations being all but useless thanks to having no one handing out the water and the drinks tables being literally no more than 50-60 cm off the ground.

The sixth mile (wind aided) was a solid 5:38, but as I turned back into the wind, the seventh mile was 5:55 and the tough eighth mile was a pedestrian 6:08. I rallied for the final two miles when the wind was again a friend, I dragged my tired body through a 5:52 ninth mile and finished with a 5:48 final mile, where I caught and just held off another runner in a sprint finish.

My finishing time was 58:08 which I was really rather pleased with considering the lack of preparation put into the race and the niggles I carried through it. I could though barely walk though after the race with the groin pain and so settled myself near the finish line to watch Martin finish. We chatted for 10-15 minutes before I headed abruptly back – I had a narrow window to collect an eBay auction win.

I found out later I was third veteran finisher, a frustratingly short amount of time behind the second placed vet and the prize money that would have netted me. More pleasingly I found out three days later that the time netted me an age grading of 80.01%, which is most satisfying for a race I all but forgot about hours after racing it.

A possible parkrun or two aside, that’s it now for 2015. It’s been quite a year!

 

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Parkrun Report – Belton House parkrun #1 – Saturday 7th November 2015.

A mediocre performance at a free to enter timed 5k run would not normally merit the honour of a rare post on this blog. Belton House parkrun #1, however, was perhaps the one of the more important events I’ve taken part in.

Over a year in the making (and nearer two if you include the previous failed attempts), Grantham finally had its parkrun, albeit as close as it could physically be – technically Belton House being in the small hamlet of Belton on the outskirts of Grantham. Although I was privvy to the details in how the parkrun was founded, I only played a very minor role in its establishment.

Originally it had been suggested that Grantham would have its parkrun at Wyndham Park. As a Grantham Running Club committee member I played a role in dismissing the proposal as I saw the course as overly twisty and narrow in places – with three passes of a footpath known locally as dog shit alley perhaps not conducive to encouraging new runners – part of the ethos that makes parkrun such a success. There were also issues with a cycle path running through the route, a lack of any toilet facilities pre-run and inadequate parking.

Belton House, on the other hand, had almost everything a parkrun could wish for: generous hosts in the National Trust who would provide parking, toilet, and cafe facilities. An almost entirely off road route with some exceptional scenery and the ever delightful herds of deer that always bring a smile with their grace when jumping fences as they flee when you run towards them.

It was many months of negotiation between the National Trust, Grantham Running Club and Grantham Athletics Club, before the go ahead was given for Belton House parkrun. A route was finalised and rehearsed a couple of weeks before the first official run. I was racing on that day, but had the opportunity to recce the route a week before, on a wet and windy morning. I was impressed with the land that had an astonishing draining ability. Local roads were flooded, you would barely know it had been raining for nearly three days solid.

It was a similar story when I awoke for the first Belton House parkrun. Wet and very windy conditions prevailed. For the first time since moving from Coventry to Grantham two a and a bit years ago, I enjoyed the ability to be able to run to a parkrun rather than face a lengthy drive. It was tempered by a lethargic feel and some distinct stiffness in both hips, but all the same I was glad to be out running.

There were plenty of familiar faces at the start line as most of the parkrun volunteers come from Grantham Running Club or Grantham Athletics club and I spent the minutes before the start chatting with a number of them. There were whispers I would be the sure-fire first place finisher but I knew there were at least two other runners who on paper are significantly quicker over 5k than I am.

There were around 200 runners taking part, which is not a huge number, but a manageable amount for a first attempt and impressive given the miserable conditions. The pre-run speech by Event Director Gordon was long and mostly inaudible (He had forgotten his loudhailer) but it was respectfully observed by the field. A few minutes later and the countdown was given and we were off.

The start of the inaugural Belton House parkrun. Picture Courtesy Graeme Reynolds
The start of the inaugural Belton House parkrun. Picture Courtesy Graeme Reynolds

With hips a little stiff I set off as swiftly as I could while not making quite the suicidal start that some around me made. As seen in the picture above, around a minute into the run, I (in the white long sleeve top – no club colours for me at a parkrun (it’s not a race!) was around fifth, with the eventual first place finisher, but not the winner, Jake Richardson on my far right, also making a sensible start. The picture shows clearly the rain that has fallen, it doesn’t illustrate the near gale force wind that blew directly into us for the opening section of the two lap course, before we thankfully turned left and onto the grass section of the lap.

I passed the child who had slipped ahead of me and found myself fourth, running comfortably, but not that quickly. Matt Emery was a clear second halfway around the first lap and the early leader Philip Nind was around 5 seconds ahead of me. The first two were uncatchable with my tight hip flexors. I would normally have settled for fourth but I fancied the distinction of finishing in the top three of the first Belton House parkrun, so I spent the remainder of the first lap slowly hauling in Philip. I caught him as we started the second lap. I thought for a minute about tucking into his slipstream into the wind, but felt the time was right to put in a surge and break his tow, so this is exactly what I did. By the time we passed the golf course for the second and last time I had a clear gap which I could relatively easily maintain.

I had the rest of the lap to try and enjoy the run as best I could – the last remaining deer fled over the fence as I passed, and I began to lap the backmarkers – with far less difficulty than at other venues such as Newark and Peterborough. With not so much a sprint finish but a slight increase in pace, I finished third in 18:44, just under 50 seconds behind Jake in first and 30 behind Matt. The times were not quick but I reckon the wind was worth at least a minute on the final times. A quick handshake with those finishing ahead and behind me and it was off to watch the rest of the field come home.

Passing Belton House. Picture Courtesy Graeme Reynolds
Passing Belton House. Picture Courtesy Graeme Reynolds

I spent the next fifteen minutes or so watching the rest of the runners finish, each passing runner emphasised the overwhelming merits parkrun has in encouraging runners of all abilities. I then jogged home, very slowly as the left groin had tightened significantly and the wind had, if anything got stronger. Happily though the pain was temporary. The first of hopefully many Belton House parkruns was done.

 

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Race Report – Worksop Halloween Half Marathon, Worksop, Sunday 25th October 2015.

The weeks following the Chester Half Marathon were not an incident free, painless period of post race jubilation and recuperation. The supposed cramp in the right calf was in fact a calf strain that was impossible to run on for two weeks and was only tested, with a brief one mile run three days before the Worksop Half Marathon.

The days were not spent entirely idly however, plenty of hours on the elliptical trainer, a few spinning sessions at the gym where I worked on maximising my watts per kg figure (now up to 3.7 for a 40 minute session), a ride spent in one gear with Witham Wheelers thanks to a cable failure, and a couple of short sessions on a recently acquired Nordic Ski Machine.

The injury woes were compounded a week after Chester by a bizarre late night feinting incident – caused by low blood pressure – saw me fall awkwardly, killing a few more brain cells and wrenching loads of muscles in my neck and shoulders. Although you don’t run with your arms, the upper body plays a surprisingly important role in running, and I found on the short runs before the Worksop Half that bio mechanically things felt not quite right and the left hip especially was giving some cause for concern.

The calf, after a four mile effort the day before Worksop came through with an ‘okay’ rating; the hip would be reviewed in the evening. Working on the United States Grand Prix (or not working as much as planned on Saturday with qualifying washed out) I packed Saturday lunchtime for two eventualities: race at Worksop or cycle with the Witham Wheelers.

I certainly wasn’t taking the race as seriously as others, my Saturday diet was distinctly risky compared to my usual fare of Margarita Pizza – a mild curry was the dish of the day. Sunday morning awoke with more non-racing dietary habits, a full bowl of cereal rather than cereal bars. At 7:30 am I was still undecided, but by 7:40 I decided to risk the body and head to the race and, if necessary, treat it not as a race but an easy Sunday morning run.

I arrived in Worksop 90 minutes ahead of the 10 am race start and followed all the others to collect my race number. I queued briefly for the first toilet trip of the morning, then changed in what seemed to be the town hall, before dropping off my bag and heading out for a warm up. My warm ups are rarely a dynamic affair, this one was among the all time greats in lackadaisical efforts. A half mile jog out, a stretch to try and loosen the tight left hip, and a slow half mile jog back straight to the lengthy Portaloo queues.

With nothing better to do for 20 minutes in the queue other than pick out the runners who’d gone to the trouble of dressing up in ghoulish Halloween inspired paraphernalia, I proceeded to quite vigorously massage my right leg and IT band in particular. The reason for such vigour was I felt a tender spot that referred pain right to the point of the calf where I’d continued to get nagging pain. The downside was that when I finished the massage the right leg felt a bit like it had been hit by a truck!

I left the Portaloo with five minutes to the race start, which is a good effort by some recent standards. It did mean though I couldn’t actually get into the start pens and had to join a large number of runners hanging around the side of the barriers hoping to jump in when the gun went. It took quite a while for the gun to fire – the chip timers seemed to be fretting a touch and then the mayoress gave a lengthy and largely inaudible speech before giving a five second count down to the start.

We were off and as I eased my way into the mass of runners I quickly got up to a comfortable speed. The first mile at Grunty Fen and Nottingham a year ago was around 5:40, I started off at 6:30 pace and as the first mile and half was so all uphill it remained at that pace. The good news was that the pre-race massage had eased the calf ache significantly. The flip side was that the IT band and thigh in general felt distinctly sub-par for the first few miles.

I’d still no real intention to race hard even when I found myself easing past tens of runners up the steepest section of the opening mile. Indeed I think I would have resigned myself to a gentle training run were it not for an unfortunate incident which had a positive (for me) outcome. At just before two miles I pulled alongside and past a group containing the lead female runner. Running in the middle of the wide road I unintentionally drifted slightly to the left, perhaps as a result of the neck injury mentioned earlier affecting my running stride.

The incident would have gone unnoticed were it not for a rather irate runner muttering something along the lines of ‘why did you f***ing stop in front of me for? Incredulous I pointed out in a rather blunt manner that I hadn’t stopped nor had I even slowed down. I may have inadvertently chopped his stride in drifting across the road (Something that happens a lot in races) and would have been happy to have apologised had he not decided to call me a c**t.

I replied a little ashamedly in a similar vernacular before the surge of adrenaline from the unwanted encounter saw me quite rapidly leave the potty mouthed runner, with a final retort from myself along the lines of ‘come on then, keep up!’ (He couldn’t and didn’t, which left me with a smug sense of victory in a rather regrettable affair). This incendiary encounter certainly stoked the fires within. The first mile was 6:28 . The second mile (Mostly adrenaline free) was 6:06, the third was 5:41. In reality if you believe Strava GAP the third mile was actually slower with hills taken into account than the opening two, but I now felt as though I was racing and not going through the motions.

The reality of this race was that it was barely quicker than my marathon pace for the most part at Chester. It was though, thanks to the injury niggles and fatigue, feeling much harder than most of the Chester Marathon. What tempered the discomfort was the glorious surroundings of Clumber Park in Autumn and the perfect autumnal weather conditions for racing. As is usual I overdressed in long sleeved top and gloves, but it was cool enough to not overheat but not too cold as to see muscles struggle to keep warm.

Running through glorious Autumn scenes. © Mick Hall
Running through glorious Autumn scenes. © Mick Hall

As we hit Clumber Park the runners I passed began to thin out, but was probably still averaging one or two a mile. We passed some fantastically dressed marshals who I couldn’t help but thank for their support, and along a long straight road in the ninth mile (Following a near mile long drag uphill) there was the most extravagantly celebrated sponge station I’ve ever witnessed.

I’ve posted before the lament I feel for the almost total demise of the sponge station. It is as though the organisers shared my fondness for them. There must have been five signs warning us of the impending station then another 5-10 warning us of the dire consequences of stealing one of the sponges. These were interspersed with around a mile’s worth of humorous messages that certainly provided a welcome antidote at what is often a difficult part of a half marathon. Some may say it is ironic that I decided not to take a sponge after singing their praises for many, many years. Part of me thinks the organisers including a sponge station at a race that is more than likely going to be held in cold and / or wet conditions, is a work of irony in istelf.

Miles 4-10 were run at pretty consistent pace given the constant undulations, peppering six minutes per mile. By the eleventh mile at a race I wasn’t going to race, then was going to take part in with no consideration of time, was now an effort to break 80 minutes. My basic arithmetic said it was going to be close, but a 6:06 mile didn’t help. I doubled the effort to run a 5:55 twelfth mile, which Strava reckons was the fastest of the race if you take the hills into the equation (5:46).

Hanging on at 11 1/2 miles. © Mick Hall
Hanging on at 11 1/2 miles. © Mick Hall

The final mile was a repeat of the opening mile but in the opposite direction, so a long uphill drag became a swift downhill descent to the finish. This would normally be a fantastic way to end a race but my legs are still seemingly susceptible to cramping on such gradients and, sure enough, halfway down the hill the quads and hips began to cramp.

I wasn’t going to let a bit of cramp stop me though, especially as I had another runner in my sights just up the road. There is many a race where I would not have chased down a runner for one position. Now at the race I wasn’t going to race, then was going to take part in with no consideration of time, which became an effort to break 80 minutes, was now an all out effort to beat a runner for twenty-fifth position.

Ignoring the cramps waving up and down my legs, I surged past the 25th placed runner with 400 meters to run and continued to ramp up the pace before putting in a full sprint for the final 100 meters. The thirteenth mile was the quickest of the race (5:37), the last 0.1 of a mile a shade under five minute mile pace. I was rewarded for my efforts with that cherished 25th position, not only a sub 1:20 clocking but a sub 1:19 (1:18:59 chip) and hips that refused to respond to my requests to walk….

I was also rewarded, as was everyone else who finished, with a rather snazzy Halloween themed technical t-shirt, a medal and a lengthy wait as the well-meaning volunteers at baggage struggled to find my small rucksack (not helped that I described my black and yellow rucksack buried in a sea of similarly small rucksacks as grey and blue…)

With F1 deciding to run qualifying at 9am Austin time I had no time to hang around and watch others finish. Instead it was a walk as fast as the failing legs allowed back to the car, a quick chat with new Strava friend Matt and jumping in the car back to Grantham just in time to witness Lewis eventually crowned World Champion, which meant a marathon slog of a work stint that saw eyes closed finally at 4am. By that time the legs were so stiff the stairs were an effort, but all in all, with seemingly no long lasting damage done, it was a long and relatively successful day.

 

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Trainer Obituary – Nike Pegasus 30 (Green) – 18 August 2014 – 5 September 2015.

Nike Pegasus 30 (Green)
Nike Pegasus 30 (Green)

The green pair of Nike Pegasus 30 replaced the Nike Pegasus 29 and the numerous incarnations of the Pegasus that have been worn over the years. As usual they were the every day trainer worn for a variety of sessions, from recovery runs to longer efforts and even the odd interval session.

They were used at the first ever Melton Mowbray parkrun in January 2015 and they were worn when I won the Maverick Original Somerset Trail Race in August 2015. They therefore own the honourable distinction of being the only pair of trainers thus far I’ve owned that have actually carried me to victory.

Like most pairs of Pegasus’ I’ve owned they died a rapid death not long after reaching 500 miles. They battled on to 562 miles but after a 10 mile training run on Saturday 5th September left my right Achilles somewhat sore they were declared knackered and deceased.

With new Pegasus costing a veritable arm and leg (And apparently not feeling the same as old Pegasus’) they were replaced by a pair of Nike Vomero 9, which feel very much like old Pegasus’ and not at all like old Vomeros. They are though currently on sabbatical having allegedly caused an ankle injury shortly before the Chester Marathon.