On injury and writing

What's the connection between injury and writing?

Here's a little backstory: Yesterday, at the Surrey Men's League race at Epsom Downs, I fell down on my right knee (and then all the way down) while taking a hard right turn about a quarter of the way through the race. It was muddy and slippery, and I was wearing road shoes, and I took that turn WAY too fast. I already had a niggle in that knee too (probably a mix of ITB and runner's knee).

That race yesterday was a victory, despite the price I paid in injury. It was my fastest pace so far, at 7:16 per mile over 4.9 miles, beating my previous 7:18 pace at Croydon, for a Surrey Men's League race. A PB of sorts if you will, even if the uneven, rough, technical terrain held me to my third best 5k time. It was a great day, guts and glory, mud, blood, etc. The Epsom Downs site is beautiful, and the mixture of sun/rain with bursts of light and thunder booming through the cloud-curtains and bulbous rain cumulus was quite spectacular. This, with excellent moral support from fellow runners and the crowds.

(here's a link to the run on Strava)

The long and the short of it, though, is: I'm injured. Now, this is not as depressing as when you find yourself injured for the very first time. Now you know your running career is not over. But you also know, once you're ready to actually admit that you're injured, is that you have to give yourself enough time to recover. This is easier said than done, especially if you're just a little bit addicted to running like I am.

What's the best way through this impasse? How do you force yourself to give yourself enough time? By which I mean, absolutely not running for two weeks or more so that you can achieve a full recovery? My strategy is twofold. I cross-train and I read/write. This blog post is a case in point. The fact that I'm writing it means I'm coming to terms with my injury, that I'm NOT running, and therefore that I'm getting just that little bit better.

You have to keep this going somehow. Last time I was injured, after the Endure24 race in Reading, I started using my bicycle a lot. Two things about the bicycle: you have to ride a LOT and HARD to get anywhere near the return that you do from running (like 20 miles minimum). The second thing is that if I do in fact ride a lot and hard, I find that bicycling gives me hemorrhoids. I'd rather run a marathon with full-bore ITB than sit for one single hour on my ass with a hemorrhoid. They're horrible.

I do yoga and pilates with weights for strength and mobility. This never fails me, and I know for certain that I will always have this practice to fall back on. The other thing I know I will always have is reading, and reading always precedes writing. Both (well, all three, yoga, reading, and writing) are an excellent way to spend time while you're injured.

Here's a list of what I've been reading, and what I'm planning on reading (through injury and beyond):

1 Stephen King, On Writing
This book is very straightforward to read, and it is full of excellent advice. The brilliant thing about it is that it is told as a story, making it compulsively readable, a lot like King's novels. It packs in much of the standard advice about how to write but in a way that makes you feel like you are being swept along in an adventure. You come out of it wanting to write, and there's a harrowing personal story of injury as an appendix. An absolute must-read.

2 Timothy Noakes, Lore of Running
I've mentioned this book a couple of times in the past when I was part way through it. The truth is, this is many books in one. It is the foundation of knowledge for runners, even if it can be improved upon in each of its parts elsewhere, the base of evidence utilised here, and the breadth of knowledge produced is truly astounding. I have found that this book re-pays a close reading of its details, especially around running strategy at different distances, on how individual elite runners have approached training, on how this is applicable for everyday and amateur runners; how not to overtrain; what to do when you do overtrain; the psychology of running addiction and injury; how to avoid becoming a selfish runner; stretches, grids, medical advice, the lowdown on de-hydration v hyponatremia, etc etc etc. There is so much in here to assimilate, it is beyond what one might call a runner's bible. It is a runner's garage, toolbox, and clinic, all in one.

3 Adharanand Finn, The Way of the Runner
I read this first, before the seemingly more popular Running With the Kenyans, because it really really intrigued me. First, I just wanted to know what IS the way of the runner, and once I got sucked in, I found myself just fascinated by the levels of support Japanese corporate and popular culture find themselves willing to provide (even if the running itself is often very grim and repetitive, this just increases the fascination for me). Finn is an excellent writer, very straightforward, to the point that you find his book ending all too soon. He also makes it compelling despite multiple failures to connect with his Japanese hosts, and I know first-hand from my own experiences doing ethnographic fieldwork how hard it can be to keep moving forward when things fall down like this. It is inspiring at multiple levels, and worth multiple reads.

4 Richard Askwith, Today We Die a Little: Zatopek, Olympic Legend to Cold War Hero
This book seems to occur in two parts. First we have the part where Zatopek is young and training hard. Zatopek seems to have invented the idea that speed-training is the most important aspect of training for ANY length of race. He took this philosophy to extremes, in terms of the number and speed of repetitions he undertook to run, doing the standard 400 and 800m segments at a variety of speeds, but most crucially, at absolute TOP speed. He broke all the shorter distance records very quickly, but then he won the Olympic Gold Medal in the very first marathon he ever ran. It was the speed-work that did it. The second part of the book is about his decline. As Noakes has noted (see above), hard years of training over a runner's lifetime can take their toll at the end of that life. Zatopek's wife, a javelin-throwing Olympic medallist, for example, looked ten years younger than him in her final decade, and they were born on the same day.

5 Scott Jurek, Eat & Run
This book will get you thinking about ultras, if not just in theory, then in practice too. One of the first things you notice is that it is a VEGAN cookbook, and that Jurek, one of the top ultra-running racers of all time has this amazingly healthy diet that is like rocket fuel to his running. He also references a great deal of other literature, and subscribes to Noakes's 'central governor' theory, whereby it is the brain that controls how fast and how far we can run. Training resets that central governor to higher levels allowing for greater and greater levels of performance. Having a healthy and well-thought-through diet doesn't hurt at all either. Find inspiration and fortitude in this memoir of a life in running.

6 Chris McDougall, Born to Run
This is the one that started me on my reading about running journey. It will get you thinking about why we run, and why we run in the ways that we do, with good dollops of history, anthropology, and riveting descriptions of and stories about real races run, mostly of the 'ultra' type, with star appearances by some of the top runners in the world, but almost always, here, in quite obscure locations in both the US and Mexico. This is the story of the world's greatest runners, and about what they eat (beans and corn), and what they wear on their feet. Read it!

Next on my reading pile:
-Adharanand Finn, Running with the Kenyans (can't wait to read it)
-Christopher McDougall, Natural Born Heroes
-Anna McNuff, The Pants of Perspective (A woman who runs 3,000 miles across New Zealand)
-Adrian J Walker, The End of the World Running Club (science fiction about running).

Conclusion: I have lots to do to keep me busy while I'm recovering from that injury!

My path to 'ultra'

I'm conducting an experiment. On 8 December 2018 I plan to run 50km, and I want to see if I can do it in under 6 hours.  If I'm being honest, I don't think it will be that difficult a goal to achieve, but I don't think I'm setting the bar low either. After all, if all goes to plan, it will be my first 'ultra'.

I didn't want to keep this a secret this time (see my previous post, 'My Secret Marathon'), but at the same time, I probably wouldn't have been able to keep it a secret even if I tried! Because all my runs are posted to Strava, and clearly something's up when you start doing 20 mile runs on Sundays!

My plan is to incorporate both walking and eating into the race itself, which will be one of those repetitive-segment-along-the-river-style races put on by Saturn (the last one I did was a Phoenix event). The way Saturn sets it up is that they give you six hours to run back and forth just over 5km per segment, repeated 8 times for a total of 42.4km by the end.

But they let you keep running for whatever distance you want up until a 6-hour cutoff. I will go for 31miles/50km which means I need to do another couple of segments (i.e. at least one more back-and-forth). If I incorporate a walking break after every back&forth section (or after every individual section later in the race), and if I continually provide my body with nutrition through the whole time, especially from early in the race to its mid-way point, this, as mentioned above, is a very achievable goal.

And if I'm successful what will it prove? It will prove to myself that I can do it; it will prove to myself that I don't have to hit a 'wall' if I don't want to; it will prove that bigger things are possible, and that I can keep pushing myself towards big goals that don't kill me, but make me much stronger, both physically and mentally.

This is part of my continued strategy of reading into the literature (my mental game as I described in my previous post) as deeply as possible to develop theories that I can then test on myself in the field.  I will be 49 years old in a month, and I want to see what I can do now, and what I can do in the next decade.  There will clearly be a trade-off between continued improvements in fitness against the erosions of age, and for now I think the former will be winning.

The 'ultra' may be just the solution as well, as I've noticed lots of books out there on runners taking on big long-distance challenges, and some these athletes' age does not seem to be a limiting factor; on the contrary it might make the crucial factor accounting, in some cases, for both taking the initiative in the first place (because time is running out) and for ultimate 'ultra' success.

This points to a larger, long-term theory to test (in part on myself of course): that hard-won lessons of age might account for some of the mental fortitude required to see through multiple day/week/month-long 'ultra' running challenges. My hypothesis is that for a certain fraction of the population the fact of age introduces an imperative to the idea of a long running challenge, because not only is time running out, but also because hard-won life experience can be put to the test.

How I trained for the Windsor Half Marathon

Photo by Chris Houghton

Strength, speed, stretching, and sustenance: How I trained for the Windsor Half Marathon

It was a cool partly overcast day, the last day of September 2018.  I lot of people I knew had been training hard: doing hills and speed work through winter and summer, and the hard work paid off with more than a handful of PBs both for the (tough) course, and for the distance (13.1 miles). 

I followed a pacer, and at the end of the race, I had a handful of PBs myself (pretty much everything between 1 and 13.1 miles was a PB for me). It was my best run for both the course and the distance. In 2017, I did WHM in 2hrs 07mins in hot conditions, and essentially without training. This year (2018), I did it in 1hr 41 mins. In terms of distance I beat my half-marathon previous best achieved at the Thorpe Half Marathon by around 13 minutes.

In addition to the conditions and the pacing being perfect, I undertook a training program, starting in the winter of 2017, that included the following elements: strength training; speed and hill work; stretching, and tinkering with diet (not least, eating prior to and throughout the race); as well as keeping a training diary.

Strength

Here I follow the Vertue Method (Yellow Kite Publishing), which uses a combination of weights and pilates/yoga movements to build up musculature and strength in the hips, glutes, abdomen, and arms. Using a 10kg kettle ball I do a daily (5 times/week) exercise routine with warmups. There are 10 warmup moves that include glute bridges, yoga lunges, caterpillar to plank, resistance band squats, hip/heel thoracic, and down-dog walks.

The main part of the ‘pilates’ workout includes a 1/3/3 group of sets. The first single set includes standing/sitting with weight, single-leg alternating lunges (15/leg), chair push-ups (15); and weight-lifting (15 per arm). The second set includes 3 reps each of 15x single-leg glute bridge with 10kg weight on the hip, per leg; and a side leg-lift to work the glute minimus. The final set, with 3 reps each, is for the abs, and it includes pushing arms-extended 10kg weight towards the ceiling (from lying on back position); leg crunches (again towards ceiling); and 30 ‘bicycles’.  I finish off each set with 5 ‘cobras’ and side-planks.

The strength training that I do has noticeably improved my core firmness and flexibility, and I can feel the difference when I am running, especially through turns, on hills, and in the linkages between shoulders/arms, and legs. I went from having lower (leg) strength only to having a balance between my upper and lower halves. I do not have ‘grid’ lines on the tummy, as these have very little correlation with running well (thanks to insta/Shona Vertue for this observation), but there it is pleasant to feel fit, and to notice a little bit of body shaping and sculpting through arms, to stomach, and down through the thighs.

Stretching

Before doing the strength work I do stretches from Hobrough’s Running Free of Injuries (Bloomsbury Publishing). I actually met and briefly spoke with Paul Hobrough, who has worked with Mo Farah.  From his book, you do (daily, 7 times/week) a set of stretches: oyster (3 times 15/leg); calf (45 seconds per leg against a wall); a set of 3 different hip-opening moves; single-leg squats (3 sets of 15); and 2 minutes of towel grabs with the toes. The latter (foot exercises) are really important because not only did they help with a nerve/metatarsal injury I had, but they build up strength in this often-neglected area: the feet!

The feet are literally the only point of contact between our bodies and the ground (when running), and yet we tend not to exercise the feet per se. We barely think about our feet, except perhaps when buying shoes.  Even then we are kind of just coddling them, swaddling and over-protecting with fancy technical materials, when what we need to be doing is making them stronger.  With this said, I’m not a huge proponent of barefoot running due to having injured myself prior to Endure24 2018 after a little barefoot session.

The Hobrough moves described above literally saved me, and might be the single most important thing listed here, because they got me out of an IT Band ‘hole’ before and after my first marathon. Not only did they vanquish the ITB thing, but I’ve continued doing these stretches every single day (and will continue) way past the point where the pain was gone. 

Speed work

This happens weekly, usually on Tuesdays, and more consistently throughout the winter. It comes in a variety of forms, from repeating 200m (20 times), 800m (8 times), or ‘pyramids’ (200, 400, and 800m in ascending and descending reps), with short recoveries in between. I try really hard not to miss these sessions, as for me they result in the most noticeable and quick improvement in running performance.

The other side of doing speed work is hill work, and the reason I say this is that if you do both you will get much faster at running up hills, to the point where they don’t feel difficult. This last WHM I don’t remember the hills much at all, because they weren't really an issue.  What I remember is running down them, really fast in the case of the ‘pink house’ hill, where I was ‘released’ by my pacer (a fellow Runnymede Runner), and took off to smash a bunch of PBs along the way to the finish line.

Sustenance

I’m not on a diet, but I’ve lost 40 pounds in the 2.5 years since starting running. I eat as much as ever, but at the same time, I’ve upped my miles. Also, at the same time, I’ve changed what I eat. My diet contains more beans and corn; and fewer sugary desserts, though I indulge nightly in a ‘smoothie bowl’ of yogurt, honey, berries, cereal, and milk.  I eat oatmeal with milk and berries for breakfast every weekday morning, and on long-run days we usually have a big brunch afterwards.

According to Noake’s Lore of Running and Jurek’s Eat and Run (Bloomsbury), I need to eat while I run, especially in the early part of the race.  I did this in the WHM this time.  I ate oatmeal with peanut butter, chia seeds, blueberries, and milk first thing (6 am). At 7 am I ate two pieces of whole grain seed bread with peanut butter; and a banana.  Between 8-9am I ate a couple of small granola bars washed down with Lucozade. By 9:30 I’d had a toilet break, and had my pockets loaded with one small (Nakd) granola bar, and a handful of Fruit Jellies.  Before each hill I ate 2-3 of the latter, for a total of around 20 of them.  I drank water at each and every aid station, ad libitum.

My sworn enemy for the race was hypoglycaemia, and with the running-diet I’d implemented (i.e. constant eating), I successfully avoided the problem of low blood-sugar that has plagued many of the races I’ve run before (especially the longer ones).

Training Diary

I keep a record of all of the above in a training diary where I can note variations on the routine, comment on how I’m feeling, on other things that are happening in life, and on things that might affect running performance.

Reading

Through reading I trained my mind, and this is the biggest, yet oddly most counter-intuitive part of the training undertaken so far. This big stack of books I’ve read (and am still reading in the case of Noakes) has upped my mental game. The brain controls Noakes’ ‘central governor’ the set of neural structures in your brain that shuts things down when you overheat, under-eat, or run out of energy.  It keeps you from killing yourself while you run.

I’ve finished the first 265 pages of Lore of Running, all the parts that get you through the physiology.  Moving forward I feel armed and ready with medical knowledge, and can’t wait to see what he has to say about training.

I’m way beyond wanting to follow any kind of ‘grid’ now for training.  It’s now about miles (without overtraining), quality, pace, and distance.  I’m signed up for Brighton in April, and that is my current grail.  I’m shooting for a sub-4 marathon time.

My 'secret' marathon

For my second marathon, I knocked an hour off my personal best time in hot (~30C) conditions.  I didn't tell very many people about this marathon beforehand because I didn't want to over-think it, just to enjoy the 'zen' moments it had to offer.  I still had all that great advice from my Runnymede Runners coaches and fellow-runners, from my first marathon 4 months ago when I completed Southampton sub-6.  Now I'm in the sub-5 club, and I credit this to running injury-free, and to having done both strength training (Vertue method) and intensive daily (Hobrough) stretching over those 4 months (I figured these out too late for Southampton).  These things have resulted in what is essentially 8 months training (including a winter of speed and hill sessions with RRs) for the marathon I completed yesterday, experience, and confidence moving forward.

This time I think I really figured out the nutritional & hydration aspects of marathon-running (though I'm no master -- I just think I got it right).  When I realised I was dehydrated yesterday, I describe the sensation as "it's closing in on me" like a faint aura in a circumference around my direct line of vision.  As soon as I had this sensation (which I've had before on long hot runs, and occurring usually right after a long hot exposed section of tow-path) I reverted to walking.  I drank a whole bottle of water, had a gel, and ate a nutrition bar, and within 10 mins or so I was running again.  I repeated this two more times (as my hands would begin to tingle as well, a sensation I had to get rid of) before the finish.  Contrary to my first marathon (not injured w/IT band problems this time), I was actually able to pick up and run again.  I realised that the food/drink combo at the right time, with salts & sweets, is crucial.  When your tank is empty, it is empty, just like a car, and you must re-fuel or you will stop (the tank has a specific capacity that can't be changed).  The water is even more important in way because, as that 'aura' was telling me, you will black out if you run out of water and keep trying to run through it, just like a car over-heating when its radiator dries out.

The second key thing I did to let me keep running through the whole race (and I had a strong finish, could've kept going...for a bit), was to change the way I ran, taking smaller steps, altering the rhythm, once I'd restarted.  This change in rhythm was a way of activating new muscles to recruit the ones not yet depleted.  I got this tip from Brewer's excellent Run Smart.  

On the social side, there were some really fun people there, some of whom I chatted up as we waited for the prelim-spiel at the XCel Leisure Center in Walton.  One woman was running 12 marathons in 12 months (there were quite a few doing this type of thing, or the even more rigorous 100 marathons in 100 weeks), at the chill pace of 6-ish hours per race.  These were chilled people.  Another woman (there were four of us clustered around a small table at a cafe in the leisure centre, all strangers or semi-strangers to each other) had done a sub-5 at her previous Phoenix event and was shooting for a sub-4.5 this time (which I think she did achieve).

So, having made some new friends, and now having to run back & forth between two locks along the Thames (a nice route with lots of shade mind you), repeating the route 8 times (4 up & 4 back) we could cheer each other on each time we passed -- which we did, and it helped.

At the end I finished, I finished strong, and was less sore than after my 21.2-mile training run in Parksville BC two weeks before.  The finish line was basically a pub so I went in and ate a full round of carmelised goat's cheese on a bed of salad, with a pint of something refreshing.  There were finishers and supporters all around.  This was a glorious day in a month I don't really associate with races, and that had been looking to be dry of them until I found this Phoenix one in the Runner's World listings.  I'm very glad I did it.  

Endure 24 2018: Born to run

My left foot is elevated and iced, I'm resting and sipping water at home as my camping gear dries out in the garden.  Endure 24 has wrapped up for another year and I had a blast.  I barely ran, in fact, and managed to consume more sausages and laughs than miles.

This event is really incredible and the fact that I injured myself very early on had no real impact on my enjoyment of it.  It was just a different experience: social in a different way because I could now 'switch' teams with ease, offer support more generally, and have a lot of laughs around the campfire without the stress of a run looming.  Plus, I got a good night's sleep!

Don't get me wrong: I'm gutted I couldn't run more.  Ask anyone in the club: I absolutely love running (I ran 45+ and 53+ miles the two weeks before Endure 24), and these days feel like I live to run.  No, I feel like I was Born to Run (maybe a bit like Forrest Gump).  What this means is that a lot of the time I run on my own, but it also means that the club and the social aspect is even more important.  An isolated runner might not last long.

I had been planning 5-6 times around the course this year (maybe more, as I had been recruited to the men's fast team a couple of days before the race, an offer that perhaps my ego found difficult to refuse).  What I'm thinking now is that next time I might go solo, see how many times I can get around, partly because I see how social that option actually can be.

Staines 10k 2018

My first Staines 10k.  Someone in the grocery store who told me she's run this race ten times, but now is a spectator and watched her daughter run it this time.  I mentioned the excellent conditions we'd had and my time and we agreed that different weather would have made it a very different race.

As it was, it was very fine.  I got my 'recovery' cappuccino and, with the bacon, eggs, and flour (for pancakes) I'd just purchased, headed back home for a victory brunch.  I'd rushed back home for some last bit of visiting with friends in for the weekend from out of town. 

It had been a very good day.  I got a PB for 10k, beating my previous time by well over 3 mins.

This was a consistent 7:30/mile pace, with not a trace of pain.

I have to say I like this race, not just because it is so well organised by the Runnymede Runners (it is also great because of that), and not just because it's flat (that too), but because there's a great energy to this day, and I definitely want to do it again, including the part where I help to set up beforehand.

The whole thing is just a lot of fun.

Bears Rails

One of my Runnymede Runners coaches first showed me this route, described by him as one of the toughest Windsor Great Park has to offer, and I agree, it is challenging.

I ran the route again last night, and the dirt road down the first big hill had a fresh layer of soft, almost pillowy, sand that made it really nice to run on.

This route has deer, Egyptian geese, and far fewer people on it than most runs in the park, especially for the part where you pass the place on the map by the pond labelled 'Bears Rails'.

The painting above claims to be a painting of that place and I can kind of see the resemblance of what I know of it, where you come around a bend at the bottom of the sandy hill, through some big trees just before coming around to a big field on the way to The Long Walk.

Why am I talking about this route?  Well, it is quite beautiful and serene and you usually have the place to yourself, geese and deer aside.  And last night it made for a great run, confirming once and for all that I'm recovered after my marathon.

As if I needed this: I did an 8:30 min/mile handicap last Thursday; and an 8:15 min/mile hill session on Tuesday this week.  Bears Rails clocked in even better at 8:14 min/mile, my fastest around that route yet.

I think I read on one of the sites that it was some kind of workhouse in Victorian times, but I've never actually seen the old building.  I made off-colour jokes at first, calling it 'Bear Grylls,' because the name kind of sounds like that, and even joked that you'd have to drink your own urine at one point (as in the infamous BG episode).

But all that aside, it's just one of the great runs of the WG Park, even going past the old millstone around halfway around, on Queen Anne's Ride (at the end of which is another copper horse statue).  I had joked that that was where the wheel was invented because the millstone in question, in the village, looks like the stone wheel from the comic "BC".

And so we finished up just to one side of the polo fields, across the long expanse of lawn that sits between those fields and Savill Garden, ending a beautiful cool mid-spring day on a good pace and a definite high note, in the excellent company of Runnymede Runners.