A Gallop on the Fens in the Heat

After last week's exertions this week was a little more low key, although I did still manage to keep my weekly marathon-plus long-run streak going. I usually play 5-a-side with some work colleagues on a Monday evening, and last week's match really finished me off after all the miles covered over the weekend. I decided I'd earned a bit of a rest after that, I had a sports massage booked for Tuesday evening and then took it easy on Wednesday and Thursday.

So, Friday was the first run of the week, and it was not a good one! Just my standard 10k route, but my calves tightened up almost instantly and stomach cramps kicked in after a couple of kilometres. I managed to resist the temptation to abort half way round and stuck it out for the full 10km, by the end I was faring a bit better, but still a struggle overall. I didn't go to Parkrun on Saturday as I was ringing in the morning, so the weekend's long run went ahead on Sunday. The plan was similar to last weekend - enter a race a good distance away from home and run to and from the event, rather than driving. The event this time around was the Fen Gallop, a 10km race, mainly off road, around the village of Willingham on the fens north of Cambridge. I ran the race a couple of years ago and so I knew it would be a nice route with a good atmosphere. I also knew that a couple of other Tailenders (yes, there is a running club for bellringers...) were running the race too.

I set out around 7.30, I'd calculated it would be about 20km to get there, through the city centre and then out to the north on the guided bus way. I made it in plenty of time for the start, but could tell it was going to be a tough day as the temperature and humidity were already high on the run out, before the sun had really broken through the clouds. I met David and Cecelia on arrival, David would normally be far too speedy to keep up with, but since he was nursing a thigh injury we decided to all run together. The race itself was a lot of fun, and included several photo opportunities.

 Looking fresh at the start

 Some off-road action on the roller-coaster of doom

This was near the end, I think I was having a better time than Cecelia at this point...

(Photos: David Pipe)

The three of us got round in about 57 minutes, which was pretty good considering the heat and humidity. I felt reasonably good as I set off after a short break to begin the homeward leg. Luckily a bit more cloud cover came in for the first hour or so of the run back, otherwise I would probably have struggled quite a lot in the sun. I made it to the 40km point without too much bother, but soon after I started flagging, and the final 8-10km was stop start and quite a struggle. I think this was likely due to a combination of ambitious pace, heat and not having quite enough fluid on board (although I was not seriously dehydrated). However, overall I was quite pleased with the morning's work considering the tough conditions.

Sneakily edited to avoid showing the slow split times towards the end!

This week has started well - no football tonight, so chance for a recovery 10km run. As runs on the day after a long run go this one was amazing, a nice steady 5:30 min/km pace all the way through, felt very comfortable and legs felt fine - a very nice start to the week! I've got a 50km race coming up this weekend, and since it's timed I'll probably aim to do a decent time. Will I succeed? Or will I crash and burn? Find out next week!

Stephen

A Week of New PBs

Hi Everyone,

I've had a good, but tiring week since the last update. I've been aware as training has proceeded that I've never managed to cover the full 100km distance within a week, let alone in a single day, so this week I'd set my sights on breaking that barrier. 

I entered the Bassinbourn half marathon (which was yesterday) a couple of months ago, with the plan of running to and from the race to make one long run. A quick Google Maps calculation showed it was about 11 miles to and from Bassingbourn from home, so adding a half marathon to that meant I was looking at about 35 miles (or 56ish km). With a 10km run in the rain on Tuesday evening that left me with 35km to find to hit the magic 100 mark. The solution: A run to and from Wimpole for on Saturday morning. Initially I'd intended to run Parkrun too, but as usual there was an email requesting volunteers early in the week and I decided that a rest between running there and running back would not be a bad thing.

So, I set off bright and early on Saturday morning for Wimpole via the Cambridgeshire countryside. I've run the route before but managed to take a wrong turn (in my defence, the field I ran into looked very much like the field I should have run into...), which added about a mile to my route and made me a bit late, although still in plenty of time to get to my marshal point.

View from my marshalling point, not bad!

As always, I really enjoyed marshalling, I did my best to encourage everybody on their way through, from the stupidly fast at the front to the hero at the back who was walking with a full head and neck brace on! Once the tail walker was through it was back to the start to return the fluorescent arrows and then back on the road to head home. The run back was fine - in the past I've tended to struggle a bit towards the end of the return leg, but no such issues this time, quite possibly due to better hydration and more food taken on board during the run - the importance of eating and drinking enough during long runs is becoming more and more apparent!

No getting lost on the way back!

The biggest issue after 35km? Toenails. Some of you may be aware that I have freaky toes - my second toe on each foot is significantly longer than my big toe (don't worry, no photos of feet on the way!). This means that it's my second toes that take a battering, and both of them are currently debating whether to continue with this whole toenail idea or not. At the moment the right one is going for the no-nail option (I think this is probably the way forward), but the left one is stubbornly sticking to the classic look, which, whilst aesthetically more pleasing, is currently quite painful! I was concerned that this may affect my plans for the next day, but fortunately with a bit of rest and a different choice of shoes it didn't feel too bad by Sunday morning.

Another early start! Legs felt OK, toes felt OK, sun was shining, nice cool breeze. Couldn't ask for much more! I had a nice run out, but only just made it to the start of the half marathon in time, partly due to not quite being sure where to go when I got to Bassingbourn, but mainly due to a nasty section of windy country road out of Meldreth which was much busier at 9am than I thought it would be and involved lots of hopping onto the grass verge to keep out of the way of cars. However, I pitched up at 9:27, perfect timing for the 9:30 start! The race was really excellent, only a small affair of around 450 people, but really well organised, a nice route and a really friendly atmosphere. I clocked 2 hours 22 minutes, my slowest ever officially-timed half marathon, but overall a great experience.

Looking happy at 3km (22 total)

(Photo: www.paulholtom.co.uk)

Not so happy at 16km (35 total)

(Photo: www.paulholtom.co.uk)

I was feeling a bit drained by the time I made it to the finish line and was a bit concerned about the remaining 20km, but after a cheeseburger, plus the post-race energy drink and apple, I was ready to set off for home. Obviously I was taking it steady and managed to navigate the nasty section back to Meldreth without too much hassle. I was expecting to start to struggle at some point on the way back, but actually found that I was able to keep up the steady pace for most of the way without too much trouble. I did take a couple of decent walk breaks to eat a bit and have a good drink, but overall I felt good and added a few kilometres onto my distance PB. Most importantly, I just managed to push over that 100km mark with a total of 102km for the week!

This week I think I've earned a little bit of a rest, but I should manage another long run at the weekend and hopefully keep up my current streak of running a marathon distance or more each weekend (3 weekends in a row so far).

Thank you as always for reading, and don't forget to click the sponsor button to the right if you fancy donating some money to MacMillan!

Stephen

A Long Overdue Update!

Hello!!

A full three weeks after my last post I've finally got round to writing another update. Fortunately the absence of blogging has not been due to a lack of training. I spent a nice week and a half in Cologne, part spent at a research conference for work, and a few days extra as holiday at the end. Cologne is a really nice city, and being on the banks of the Rhine it is perfect for some picturesque running. So naturally I took advantage of this, including a long run that ended up being almost exactly marathon distance!

Last week was very busy, so running during the week was minimal, but yesterday I managed to make up for that by getting in a nice long run. The biggest bell ringing event of the year - the National 12 Bell Striking Competition - was taking place at Southwark Cathedral, so I took the opportunity for a bit of Parkrun tourism at Bushy Park and then a jog into London along the River Thames, checking out the first part of the race route (in reverse) and then carrying on in to finish at Southwark.

That was the plan, and overall it was successful! Bushy Park is the original Parkrun, with the first one taking place in 2004 with just 13 runners. In 2005 Mo Farah ran, and won, his one and only Parkrun there and these days they regularly get over 1000 runners on a Saturday morning. I managed to find somewhere to park and get to the start just in time, as we set off about 30 seconds after I arrived, although I was just in time to snap a photo of the extensive start line before I got swallowed up into the masses.

Since I was going to be running for several hours I took it nice and steady, finishing in just under 29 minutes (and in 796th place out of 1196!), and then funnelled through the incredibly organised finishing system before setting off on the remainder of the run. The overall conclusion after another 5 and a half hours was that the Thames is long and twisty and I didn't take enough food or water (this was partly due to a broken Camelback). Consequently I was very happy to hear the bells of Southwark Cathedral after a total of 50km. Legs are a bit achy today, but not too bad!

The end, finally!!

So, that's everything up to date. Sponsorships have continued to come in, despite minimal effort from me so far, and I'm now over £300 and close to the £350 that I need for the minimum donation. Needless to say I'll be taking a more proactive approach as the race itself gets closer and I'm excited to see how much I can manage to raise for this excellent cause.

Thanks for reading!

Stephen

Longest run, but still a long way to go!

It's the end of another week already, and now only just over 3 months to go until I'm faced with 100km of riverside path to negotiate. I've had another good week of training, which fell just short of 90km total distance covered. This does include the bank holiday Monday run that was mentioned in the last update, which was followed on Tuesday by a nice 20km on a beautiful sunny evening.

The main event this week was a new distance PB on Friday. I was back in the Midlands for the weekend staying with my sister (Clare) and her fiance (Joe), including a day's holiday on Friday. I suppose one of the ways you know you're a proper long-distance runner is when you start spending your days off out running rather than relaxing! Since the River Severn is just down the road from Clare and Joe's house, I decided to get a bit of riverside path experience under my belt by taking the Severn Way from Bewdley up to Bridgnorth. The plan was to meet Clare and Joe in Bridgnorth, have some lunch and then see if I could make it all the way back on my own, with Clare on rescue duty if I didn't.

Would only just be over half way on the day!

The conditions were ideal for running, it rained a little bit for the first hour or so, but then turned into a nice cool, overcast day, with the rain only returning towards the end of the run, at which point it was actually quite welcome! The run itself was very pretty, with the Severn Valley Railway following the river pretty closely most of the way, so I saw several steam trains throughout the day. I made it up to Bridgnorth without any major issues, the only bad part of the run being a wade through about half a mile of thigh-high vegetation around the outside of one of the wheat fields, resulting in full length nettle stings from ankle to thigh. Still itching two days later!!

Upper Arley, about 10km in

 Horses sheltering from the rain under a tree

I managed to keep the pace nice and steady on the way out and kept well hydrated, which meant that by the time I met Clare and Joe I was actually quite hungry and ready for some food - this was encouraging because on previous longer runs when I've been pushing harder I have struggled to stomach more than a few bites to eat, which is not great when you need enough energy to carry on for hours longer. Unfortunately I ordered (and ate) far too much food, and regretted this decision for the next couple of hours!

Looking back down river from Low Town in Bridgnorth 

I did not buy any seeds

I managed not to get serious cramps on the run back, but did have to slow to a walk at regular intervals to allow my stomach to manage the situation I had put it in. I also had to negotiate my way back through the nettles and managed to fall head over heels over a big, glaringly obvious, yellow pipe lying across the path, fortunately I survived unscathed! Despite all of that my legs actually felt fine, and once the indigestion passed I managed to resume a more consistent pace. I sped up for a bit of a 'sprint' to try to hit the 50km mark before my watch ticked past 6h30m and then took it easy for the last couple of miles, which included the hill back up to Clare and Joe's house.

A Severn Valley steam train passing by 

Muddy and nettle-stung, but home!

The final reading on my Garmin was 54.7km (almost exactly 34 miles) in a little over 7 hours total elapsed time, which is my longest ever run, surpassing the 32 mile Roseland August Trail that I did last year, in about the same overall time. I survived without major injuries, surprisingly no blisters to speak of and I even managed Dudley Parkrun on Saturday morning in just 22:10, a time that I'd be pretty pleased with any weekend, let alone the day after a 7 hour run! Although I'd still have another 45km to go in September (that's a little over a marathon), I do feel that I've made very good progress so far. The next couple of weeks will be a bit quieter on the training front, as I'm off to Cologne for a work conference, but I'll hopefully be able to fit in a few runs whilst I'm there and come back ready to cover some serious miles during the rest of June and July.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to sponsor me!

Stephen

Another Successful Week of Training

Training continues to go well. I knew that this week I wouldn't be topping last week's 80km total distance, but in the end I wasn't all that far off!

I've never been a huge fan of running in warm weather, especially in the sun when there is no shade. The biggest issue is hydration, and with the weather we've had this past week there have been a few tough runs and my Salomon running pack has been seeing some action to make sure I have plenty of water on the longer jaunts. I managed a mid-week 20km on Thursday night, evening running is definitely a good way to avoid the worst of the heat and this ended up being a nice run, albeit at quite a steady pace. 

The main event this week was Wimpole Parkrun (my 45th, only 5 to go before I get my 50-run shirt!). Since Parkruns are only 5km I'm going to need to try to beef them up a bit over the next few months. So, instead of jumping in the car (or on my bike, as I have done in the past) I headed out at 7:15am via country roads and trails to Wimpole. 

A Strava map resembling a small rodent on a long umbilical cord!

It was a beautiful early summer morning, the sun was out and the temperature was already in the high teens, so I was fairly warm by the time I made it to Parkrun. Fortunately I was in enough time to have a brief rest before the run started, during that time the storm clouds blew in and by the time we started there was thunder rumbling in the distance. I suspect that a lot of the other runners were a bit annoyed that their Saturday morning 5km included a drenching, but I was very grateful for it! After a bite to eat and a refill of my water I set off home. The clouds hung around for about half of the journey back, which was fortunate because when the sun came back out it was baking and the last few kilometres were a real struggle in the heat! Overall I was satisfied with the run, and also made an important discovery that I can't really stomach Lucozade Sport after 3 hours of running, so will need to stick to water in my bottle from now on (I know this sounds insignificant, but it's very important for me to find out how to rehydrate and refuel during these longer runs).

The rest of the bank holiday has been pretty lazy, but I did manage a decent 10km loosener today to get rid of the aches in my quads following Saturday's exertions. I'm heading back to the Midlands this weekend and should be able to fit in one good long run - just have to decide where I'm going to go!

Finally, I'm now half way to my initial fundraising target of £500 and this is entirely due to the generosity of you, my friends and family. Thank you so much to those who have already made donations, and those who haven't are very welcome to join the club :)

Thanks for reading!

Stephen

A Positive Couple of Weeks

I've finally got round to sorting out a long overdue blog update. The good news is that things have gone pretty well over the last couple of weeks. Thank you to everybody who has sponsored me so far - with minimal effort on my part to publicise the JustGiving page you've already managed to get me up to £220!

I have no doubt that I'll make my initial £500 target with no problems, and I'm excited to see how far past that I can go!!

I also got hold of a few photos from the Wings For Life run the other weekend, and for those of you who aren't on Facebook here they are (you hopefully can work out which one was taken after I'd been caught by the car! And yes, that man really was having a chat on his mobile as we ran!).

So, to bring things up to date on the training front... I had concerns about my left knee following Wings For Life and decided to rest up for a week. Therefore my next activity was last Saturday, and rather than a long run I decided to dust off my road bike (which included removing some significant cobwebs) and ride out to Wimpole for Parkrun. My knee didn't feel too bad on the 5km run, so I decided to take the scenic route home.

Although I cycle to and from work every day, I'm not sure my cycling legs were quite up to a combined 60km ride plus a 5km run, even on the flat roads of Cambridgeshire, so by the end of the ride I was going rather slowly!

Since I couldn't really afford to take another week off running I decided to get back on the road again last week and, despite some initial discomfort with the knee, things fortunately seem to have settled down and I managed to clock up 80km (50 miles) total for the week, 50km of which were split across the weekend, 20km yesterday (half of which was in torrential rain!) and 30km today, in much better conditions. 

This weekend has been particularly satisfying because not only did my legs manage 30km a day after I'd done 20km, but I also felt that I could probably have pushed on for another 10km today if I'd really needed to - hopefully this indicates that I'm becoming more accustomed to the longer distances. I'm currently choosing to ignore the fact that even if I'd done that extra 10km I would still have only covered 90km in the week, still 10 short of the full 100km distance!!

I have a slightly busier week this coming week, so I think it's unlikely that I'll reach the heady heights of 80km again, although the long weekend should give me plenty of opportunity for a couple of good long runs!

As always, thank you for reading, and don't forget to sponsor me if you think I'm doing a good job.

Stephen

An Afternoon Running from a Car (Driven by David Coulthard!)

Overall I've had a successful week since the last update, I'd planned a couple of weekday evening runs, but in the end I just went out for 10km on Tuesday evening, which was tough just 2 days after my weekend long run but I made it round.

Yesterday I was out at Wimpole Estate for parkrun, including a last-minute volunteer. At Wimpole they have a separate dog start for the canicross runners and so they have a separate briefing. Trying to communicate over 20 excited dogs barking constantly is pretty difficult and I feel like I was largely surplus to requirements, but I was able to do the run with everyone else, so no big deal. Also saw quite a few other members of the bellringer's running club, the 'Tailenders', so all in all a good morning!

Tailenders post-parkrun photo (stolen from David)

So, onto today, the Red Bull Wings for Life World Run. It's an annual event sponsored by Red Bull that raises money for research into spinal cord disease. The premise is simple - you start running, half an hour later a 'catcher car' (driven by David Coulthard, who was also giving out hi-fives at the start line) sets off from the start line at a set speed and gradually increases its speed in increments as it goes. You keep running until the car catches and overtakes you, after that your race is over! It is a global event that takes place at 25 locations worldwide simultaneously, so not only are you racing against the people in Cambridge, you're also running with about 80,000 other people all over the world.

I ran this last year, on the same weekend in May. It was unseasonably warm that Sunday, the temperature was about 26C and blazing sunshine. It was a really tough afternoon and I got caught after 1h 50m, only managing to make it to 20.4km. The key to this race is a steady pace; because the finish line is not fixed and depends on how fast you're going relative to the car, any drop in your pace means that the car can end up catching you a lot sooner than you think. My aim this year was to average 5 minutes per kilometre - this would mean being caught at exactly 27km. 

We started from Parker's Piece in the city centre, pre-race was a bit disorganised - there weren't enough toilets and the queue for the bag drop point was huge. As with most big races they tried to separate the runners into different pens based on predicted speed, with the faster runners nearer the front, but as usual there were plenty of people in the first two pens who clearly were not going to run at the pace they were supposed to. This is one of my big bugbears about these big races where there are thousands of runners, it just means that you spend the first 10 minutes or so trying to make your way past slower runners and it generally causes a bit of chaos for everybody. I was through the first kilometre in just over 5:30 and then managed a few slightly quicker km splits to regain the lost time. We headed north out of the City along Huntingdon Road and then through Girton out onto the fens. This first part of the course was the same as last year, but this year, instead of heading right out into the fenlands, we went into the old RAF Oakington base and then began a loop through Over and Willingham that would eventually bring the faster runners back into Oakington via Rampton and Cottenham and they would then repeat this loop until caught. 

I definitely preferred this new route to last year's (except for the Longstanton bypass, which was just a long featureless drag into a bit of a headwind), although in many places the course was very narrow and did not leave a huge amount of space for the catcher car to pass. I was feeling pretty good until about the 21km point (at 1h 45m half marathon pace I was expecting to make it that far reasonably comfortably) but I definitely started to fade after 22km. This was not surprising - if I'd been able to slog on for another 4km I'd probably have taken about 10 minutes of my best 30km time! Another problem was that the refreshment stations only had water in cups. Anybody who has tried drinking from a cup whilst running will know that it doesn't work, so towards the end, when I could feel the dehydration kicking in, I had to stop and walk for a while to actually make sure I got some fluid on board. The combination of fading legs and slowing down for water meant that I was eventually caught on a tiny little road half way between Willingham and Rampton having managed to pass the 26km board (my official distance was 26.26km (16.3 miles), only 3/4km off my target). Unfortunately this point turned out to be about halfway between the two nearest bus stops where runners were picked up to be taken back to the start, so I had to walk a mile or so into Rampton to actually make it to the end of the day's exertions!

My run route (minus walk to the bus stop)

Back on Parker's Piece with medal and confused woman in the background

The male and female winners in Cambridge made it to 68.8km and 55.14km respectively, and the worldwide winners managed 68.21km (female winner, in Santiago, Chile) and 92.14km (Male winner, in Dubai). Absolutely incredible!

Overall I was very happy with the race, I was very close to the target I set myself and a good 6km further than last year. A slight concern however, is that the niggle in my left knee has definitely not settled down, and if anything is getting slightly worse. It's still not causing me significant pain, either whilst running or during normal day-to-day activity, but the ligaments over the inside of the joint are certainly inflamed and not 100% comfortable. These sorts of things are always worrying - it would be a real setback if it did turn into a proper injury that required significant recovery time. Therefore, I think I'm going to rest this week and maybe look to do some cross training with a decent bike ride next weekend. Then fingers crossed I'll see if I can ease back into the running and gradually build up the miles again without aggravating things too much. Ultimately if this does turn out to be a big issue then I know that I can easily switch to walking the 100km, rather than running, so I don't intend to be coming up with any excuses!

On the plus side, I've had some very generous donations to my sponsorship page this week, and I'm currently up to £140, which is very encouraging and certainly makes all of this running worthwhile!

Watch this space for next week's update!

Stephen

A Week of Ups and Downs, and Rain

After last week's cold I've managed to get back on track with the training this weekend, but with varying levels of success. It was a slow start to the week due to a trip to see the GP and a course of antibiotics to try and clear my sinuses, which were still giving me quite a bit of trouble. Fortunately within a couple of days they had done their job and I finally started to feel back to normal.

The first run of the week, on Thursday evening, was a bit of a disaster. I'd decided to head out for a steady 20km loop, the downside of which is that the first third of the roue is directly away from home. Unfortunately after about 6km I started to get a stitch, initially not a huge problem, but as soon as I stopped I got a twinge in my left knee and spent the next few minutes limping along. Some of you will know that I've had trouble with my knees in the past and at first I wasn't sure whether this was just a niggle or an actual injury. I opted to start heading towards home and tried taking a shortcut, which turned into getting lost! After finally finding my way back to the main road my knee was feeling better (I could walk normally without it hurting) but it had then started to rain heavily. I set off on a jog again to try to keep warm but the stitch came back. Eventually I made it home, cold and wet, after walking most of the way back. Not my greatest run ever!

By Saturday I was in Torquay for the weekend with the Old Hill and Wordsley bell ringers on our annual outing. The last couple of years the closest Parkrun to Torquay was about 20 miles away at a National Trust property called Parke (so, it's Parke Parkrun!). However, a few months ago a new event started in Paignton, so I decided to test my knee out there. It's an unusual course - two laps around a sausage-shaped cycle track and then a lap around a playing field, right through a set of football pitches which were full of children playing matches! Although my knee felt a bit tight, it wasn't hurting and I was quite pleased with my time of 21:35.

Since the knee issue seemed to be just a minor niggle, and the cold had finally cleared, I decided to go ahead with my planned long run on Sunday, despite the fact that the weather on the English Riviera was not exactly clement...

The route was straightforward - follow the coast path from Torquay to Brixham, via Paignton, Goodrington, Broadsands and Churston, dodging bikers and pirates on the way (BMAD Festival and Brixham Pirate Festival), meet my friend Felicity there for a refuelling stop, and then retrace my steps back to Torquay.

When I set off it was absolutely chucking it down and within a few minutes I was soaked through, it did ease off after a few miles and I'd pretty much dried out by the time I reached the outskirts of Brixham, but then another downpour drenched me again, and the planned sandwiches on the seafront ended up switching to huddling in the car. The jaunt back to Torquay was better, not too much rain by that time and a slight tailwind most of the way, although the last mile or so was at walking pace as I was getting a bit tired and had some rubbing from the shoulder straps of my bag.

Overall a successful weekend, I'm very relieved that my knee seems back to normal now, even after a 20 mile run yesterday, and also that I haven't had significant aches or pains whilst walking around today, so it seems I can tackle 20 miles at a steady pace without adverse effects - a good platform to build on over the next few months!

This week I'll be aiming to fit in a couple of weekday evening runs and then tackling the Wings for Life World Run on Sunday, a full account of what that entails will follow in due course. I've had my first donations on my sponsorship page this week - thanks to Robert and to Mum & Rob for their generous contribution, if anybody else wants to follow suit the link is just to the right of this post.

Thanks!

Stephen