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