Not Quite a Marathon... But please sponsor me!

So, my sinuses have continued on their mission to produce copious amounts of luminous green gunge. However, any thought of slacking off and not getting a few more miles covered went out of the window thanks to my inspiring friend Justine, who completed the London Marathon today (her first) in 3:57:42, despite struggling with injury for the last couple of months. Not only that, but she has also raised nearly £5000 for the charity Cardiac Risk in the Young, which I know is very close to her heart. An incredible achievement, and I hope you don't mind indulging me with a Strava map and photo that I am very jealous of..

If anyone is interested in Justine's story then her fundraising page is here: http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-web/fundraiser/showFundraiserProfilePage.action?userUrl=justineshotton

Justine is not the only person I know whose family has been affected by sudden cardiac death, and this is a very worthy charity, so if you have a couple of pounds weighing down your wallet/purse then you know what to do.

Huge kudos to anybody else who ran in London today - in comparison my evening 10km was just a walk in the park! If you've been paying attention to my runs then you'll notice that I'm pretty boring as far as route-selection goes. Running the same loop appeals to my slight OCD tendencies and helps me a lot to pace a run, as I now know where all the kilometre splits come and exactly what is around the corner. I am aware that some people would find this approach intensely dull, but I think that one of the key things about training is finding a routine that suits you. If that involves trailblazing a new route on a regular basis then that's (literally) the way forward.

Anyway, thanks to the inspiration of those runners this morning I decided to laugh in the face (full) of mucus and trot out around my standard 10km loop. A couple of minutes faster than yesterday, but still quite a challenge given my bunged-up airways. It also appears that hay fever season has kicked in, which means that for the next few months my runs will all involve a decent amount of wheezing. Fortunately I have an inhaler which keeps things pretty well under control, and I'll mainly be concentrating on longer runs at slower pace this summer, but anybody who's experienced that feeling of a tight chest whilst running will know that it's not the nicest of feelings!

I'll be hoping to manage a few more runs this week before a long run next week whilst I'm on my annual spring visit to Torquay with the Old Hill/Wordsley bell ringers. By then this cold should be properly cleared and I can stride out a bit further than I've managed this weekend.

Finally, as I mentioned yesterday, I have changed my nominated charity to MacMillan Cancer Support - this was necessary because unfortunately Maggie's are not supporting entries to this particular race this year. Therefore, I switched to the other charity that Sam said had been helpful for them over the past few months since his diagnosis. There is now a sponsorship link to the right of this post and I'll be plugging this on the blog and via Facebook plenty over the next few months. If you would like to sponsor me then please visit my JustGiving page, any donation will be very welcome, no matter how big or small. I've also linked to the MacMillan homepage at the bottom right of the page, so do pay them a visit to find out more about what they do.

If you've made it this far, well done! Hope you've all had a great weekend and I'll be updating again soon.

Stephen

First Run in a Week

Anybody who runs regularly will know that some runs are great - your watch tells you that last kilometre was really fast, but you still feel like you could carry on for miles. But then some runs are the complete opposite - you're out of breath after 5 minutes, your legs ache, you feel like you're running through treacle and then your watch beeps to tell you that you're only managing a snail's pace.

Today's run was more in the second category. I've been laid low with a cold all week, including a cough that's made me sound like a chain smoker, and today was the first day that I've been brave enough to venture out for any sort of exercise. Combined with the start of my hay fever symptoms, this meant that the first few kilometres were accompanied by a fair bit of coughing and spluttering. Also not helped by getting a stitch and having a kamikaze fly targeting the back of my throat. I did resist the temptation to give up at 5km and pushed through the last half of my loop and towards the end I was actually starting to enjoy myself a bit more.

Still, 10km is hardly the sort of distance I'd been hoping to manage this weekend, I may try to fit in another 6 miles tomorrow morning. Hopefully I'll be back on track with another long run next weekend and in the meantime I should be setting up my sponsorship page in the next few days, which will be for MacMillan Cancer Support (not Maggie's, as previously advertised). More on that to follow!

Easter Long Run

This morning was my first proper long run for a few months. I'm in Devon at Mum and Rob's for the Easter weekend and decided to combine the long run with a bit of Parkrun tourism. I've done the Bideford parkrun once before, and it's only about 5km from the house, so I decided to look a bit further afield to the Barnstaple run. The Tarka Trail runs along the estuary from Bideford to Barnstaple, which provided a nice level and easy roue to follow. I did a quick estimate on Google Earth of the distance to the start of the run - looked to be about 10-11 miles. 

A timely update email from Sam reminded me why I was getting up at 6:45 on a Saturday morning and made sure that I resisted the temptation to turn the alarm off and go back to sleep. I had aimed to set off at 7.15, although that ended up being 7.20 in the end. I had a little bit of trouble initially with the bridge crossing the river not actually having a pavement, and then locating an access point to the trail, with a bit of road-running along a fast country road! Once I got onto the old track-bed it was straightforward, although it soon became clear that I had left it a bit late and was going to miss the start of the Parkrun. This meant that I pushed a bit harder than I'd have liked and upped the pace for a few kilometres. 

I made it to the start about 5 minutes after everybody had set off. It's a 2.5 lap course, so there was general confusion as I got lapped by the leaders whilst catching and passing the people towards the back. I logged easily my slowest Parkrun time, but quite enjoyed sauntering round. Whilst I waited to have my barcode scanned I managed to eat some food and then set off home. I was not so surprised when I started struggling at around 35km - this has happened before - and by the time I made it into Bideford (taking the longer route to cross a bridge with pedestrian facilities) I had run out of water and felt like it was probably best to call it a day. Fortunately Mum was free to pop down and pick me up! 

Overall I'm fairly pleased with that as a first long run. My feet are not too bad and my legs coped fine with a walk on the beach with the dog this afternoon. I also tried out my new Salomon running pack this morning, it has a much bigger capacity than my previous running vest, was fairly comfy for the whole run and I think has been a good investment.

Going Slow

After the excitement of the weekend it's back to normal this week. I think this is the shortest period I've ever had between a (competitive) half marathon and the next run. I guess it goes to show how much of a difference regular training makes, in the past I'd still have been hobbling around with DOMS and sore joints, but at the moment it seems I can cope with 21km without too many adverse effects. 

Tonight I tried to run at a slow pace, which is actually a lot harder than it sounds. My limited experience of long distance running to this point has taught me that the worst thing you can do is start out too quick. For the 50km Roseland August Trail last summer I set a 'maximum pace' of 6 minutes per kilometre, any faster than that and we needed to slow down. That seemed to work pretty well, so I think I'm going to work with that again for the 100km. I don't think I'll know the optimal race pace until I've got some 50km+ long runs under my belt, but initially I'm going to with the 6 minute km and see how I go.

With that in mind I had a nice easy 10km jog tonight just slightly faster than that. Needless to say it was pretty comfortable (I'd be concerned if it wasn't, as it's only 10% of my target distance!) and there was a lovely sunset to admire as I loosened up some tight muscles after Sunday's epic hill climb.

I'm off to Devon for the Easter weekend and hopefully will manage my first long run. I have a new running pack to try out, so I'm planning a jaunt up the Tarka Trail to Barnstaple parkrun on Saturday morning. An update will follow!

Sheffield Half Marathon Report

Following my misty morning at Wimpole I set off up to Sheffield for the Plusnet Yorkshire Half Marathon this morning. I ran the race last year and it is a very pretty course (helped by the fact that last year the weather was very nice). As you'll see from the course profile below, it's not exactly a flat course - the first five miles is almost all uphill, with some pretty sustained steep sections. After that, barring a few short climbs, it is pretty much all downhill to the finish (Full race details on Strava to the right of this post).

Last year's time was 1:43:52. I didn't really know what to expect this year, I was a few minutes off my PB at the Cambridge half last month and I decided that if I could get round in 1:45 then I'd be happy. It was another glorious day and I was concerned that it may get a bit too hot, but fortunately there was plenty of shade around the course. My plan was to stick with the pacer all the way round, but this went out of the window straight away as I was about 200m behind the pacer by the time I made it over the start line. By 2km I was almost caught up, but his pace up the hill was too much for me, so at the top of the climb I was pretty much back to where I started! Last year I expended a bit too much energy on the hill and struggled to take advantage of the downhill second half, but this year I felt pretty good once I'd recovered from the ascent and finally caught and passed the pacer at around 18km. There's a nasty little uphill kick in the final kilometre, but I managed to finish strong and cross the line in 1:42:22, a full 90 seconds faster than last year, so I'm pretty pleased with that. It also bodes well for the Wings for Life World Run, which I'm taking part in next month in Cambridge. More on that soon, but I'm aiming for a 5 min/km pace over 27km, if I can manage 4:50/km over 21km with a big hill in the middle then hopefully an extra 6km on the flat fens of Cambridgeshire will be doable.

Finally, having run this race twice now I would definitely recommend it to others - well organised, very scenic course that is also a real challenge and the support from the people of Sheffield is amazing. I'll be back again next year!

A misty morning marshal at Wimpole Estate parkrun

Since I'm doing a half marathon tomorrow I decided to volunteer at parkrun this morning, rather than running. Cambridge was very foggy when I set off, but by the time I got to Wimpole it was misty but brighter (apparently in Royston it had been completely clear all morning!). My marshal point was quite close to the start, so the field came through almost in one long line. There were 404 runners today, the most ever apart from the Christmas Eve run last year. By the time I made it back to the finish the sun was out and it was warming up nicely. I always enjoy marshalling at Wimpole, it's very picturesque and great to have a chance to cheer on all the runners, from the leader to the tail runner.

Training has officially begun!

This evening was my first run since entering the challenge, so I guess I can now say that I am in training for the 100k. Tonight was just a short 10k, only 10% of the final distance, averaging just under 5 minutes per kilometre (at that pace I'd be done in 8 hours and 20 minutes!!).

My rough training plan to begin with is to try and run at least twice during the week, anything from 5k-20k, and then do my best to get in a long run every weekend. Long run now takes on a different meaning - 10 miles used to be a long run, and I'd do that once or twice in the build up to a half marathon, but now I'm looking at long runs being anything from 20 miles upwards!

I'm starting off easy this weekend with a trip up to Sheffield for the half marathon there. I ran it last year, it's a really pretty course, uphill for the first 5-6 miles and then downhill for the remainder. The weather forecast is good, so I'm looking forward to a nice run. Part of the advantage of training for a longer distance is that when I enter races now I'm not so worried about being fast or aiming for PBs, and with that (self-imposed) pressure gone I can actually enjoy the races and the running a lot more.

I'll report back on Sunday with a post-race update!

Stephen

The Challenge Begins

Hello Everybody,

Today I have entered the Thames Path Challenge 100km race, which will take place on Saturday 9th September 2017. Full details of the event can be found here:

http://www.thamespathchallenge.com/

In a nutshell, I'm going to try to run a very long way for a very long time! The furthest I have run in one go to date is 32 miles (just over 50km) on the Cornish coast last summer. Obviously 100km is a big step up from anything I have done before and my initial aim will simply be to cross the finish line. If all goes well (a big if!) then I would expect this to take somewhere between 12 and 14 hours.

The obvious question is WHY?! The answer to that is partly because I want to see whether I am capable of taking on a proper ultramarathon, but mainly because I am lucky to currently be fit and healthy enough to consider putting my body through such an ordeal, whilst others are not so lucky and have to deal with the much bigger challenges of illness and disability on a daily basis. A good friend of mine, Sam Barker, has recently been diagnosed with late-stage bowel cancer. He is not much older than me and has a wife and two young children. It's been extremely humbling to see how Sam and his family have responded to such devastating news with grace, hope and good humour, and it really puts my own problems into perspective. I have no idea what it is like to have to cope with cancer, but it must be completely awful. I also have no idea what it is like to run 100km, but I imagine it's not half as bad as the cancer. If Sam can take on cancer then surely I can take on 62 miles of English riverside footpath? I certainly hope so, because I'll be aiming to raise money for Maggie's, a charity that runs cancer support centres throughout the UK and offer invaluable help to patients and their families dealing with the daunting list of issues that arise following a diagnosis of cancer. Their webpage can be found here:

https://www.maggiescentres.org/

I've decided to start this blog to track my training over the next 5 months as I try to build up from my current level of fitness (i.e. half marathon - fine, full marathon - at a push) to the race itself. If people read it and want to leave comments, either of encouragement or telling me to pull my finger out and work harder, then that will be very welcome, but ultimately I hope to use this mainly as a reminder of why I am doing this and how well I am doing on my path to ultramarathon glory!

Stephen