Endure 24 2019

[Note: Since signing up for Endure 2019 back in the autumn of 2018 we've moved to Bracknell permanently and I now run with Bracknell Forest Runners. In my next race, Race to the Stones, and in subsequent races, I'll be sporting the BFR running shirt/logo.]

***

I ate a lot, I ran a lot, I slept very little.

It was Endure 24 again, and I was composing stories in my head to keep myself awake at 2am. The faint coals of a neglected fire pulsed and glowed in the empty ring of camp chairs.  I pulled myself out of my tent where I had been nestled, fully clothed in hoodie, running gear, trousers and jacket under my sleeping bag and extra blanket.  A thin rain was just starting to spit.  My fifth run was coming up.

Unzipping the tent fly my legs trembled and I stumbled to get up to standing position. An unshakeable stiffness, my left calf and ankle making themselves known, my right hamstring announcing its presence, but none of it anything like an oncoming injury.  Just the evidence of the four runs that had come before.  I'd done each of them in under 40 minutes, with a round 1 time of 34:59.

But this second upcoming night run would be interesting.  I had a moonset and a pre-sunrise to accompany, and sounds of the very first birds waking followed me round the hills, the mud, the Rock & Roll cabin, past the Red Bull refreshment stand, up Heartbreak Hill, across the glow in the dark roots and fairy spirals, down the slippery hill and around.

At the end of each 5 mile lap is a handover spot where you give a small plastic wristband to your team-mate for them to continue accumulating laps for your team. It doesn't stop: there's always a member of your team running.  This year, with a 5-man (I now run with Bracknell Forest Runners, but signed up for the race back in 2018 when I still lived in Egham, see the note at the start of this post) team we managed 35 laps averaging 42 minutes each.

Walking into camp just after 4am I placed a long inflatable tiger outside the next-plus-one runner's tent door and quite audibly announced that I had returned and that his delivery was ready for his own handoff in about 35 minutes.

My second night run, and my fifth lap overall, took me 52 minutes, a big jump from my previous set of under 40s.  The hour nap I'd had had done something to my legs, making them stiff and leaden.

The sunrise came, not brightly, but with a hint of a beam now and then.  I caught rain showers through both of my final two runs, but it rained very little when I was at camp.  The sensation of running through the forest, with water streaming across your body, ensconced in a stream of fellow runners, with mud splatting the backs of your legs and gravel crunching around corners and through hills is pretty amazing.

Once you get your head of steam it's hard to stop.  I even started walking up the hills, getting a little more feedback from the runners in my immediate vicinity.  There is a serendipity, an element of chance to the aspect of with whom you'll find yourself running at any given moment.  A glance, a sign, a slight movement left or right gives acknowledgement of the other's presence, that you're giving way, or that you want to push through.

That's what characterised my first four rounds, was passing pretty much every single person on my horizon. It was an empowering feeling, smashing the speed barrier, whooshing down hills without holding back, only being passed a total of four times in four laps.

Then the final three, being passed in turn by at least as many as I passed, seeing that urgency amassed in all those competitive bodies hoping their own team will move up in the rankings.

We finished twelfth overall, out of 52 teams (see http://www.chipresults.co.uk/live24/index.aspx?cat=3M&eventId=30 ). This despite my own sense of dragging at the end. Maybe it was the two bacon/egg rolls; tub of yogurt; massive hamburger; tuna/pasta salad; half-liter of kefir; four Lucozades; and countless other small bits of food that contributed to the later sluggishness: I actually gained weight by the end of the weekend. In this respect I think it's quite different from running a marathon: you have loads of time to eat and recuperate.

But mentally, in some ways it's much harder than a marathon because you have time to stop and think, to get down, to question yourself and not want to do it.  This is what makes doing more than five laps a tiny bit 'ultra'. And it's why, in my opinion, walking can be much more part of the equation in a good performance than in a marathon (though of course walking in a marathon is perfectly fine too).  It's just that in an ultra you kind of have to factor in a bit of walking, even if it's just a small amount.

It's done for another year. How soon we forget the pain, the boredom, the indigestion.  How vividly the people, the camaraderie, the sun and moon did (and still do) shine.

Brighton Marathon 2019

I did only two very long training sessions to prepare for Brighton. One was a 16 mile walk (4 hours) and the other a 30 km run-walk that included 3min30sec runs with 30sec recoveries (x45). I did an early 1/2 marathon training run in February after which I was too injured to run for three weeks; and another one in early April after I'd recovered (and after those longer training runs mentioned above). Overall, I had only two weeks above 30 miles during the 3 months of training prior to April 14, 2019.

The struggle this time was to get to the start line, but when I did get there I was only slightly undertrained (it had been an intense season, Surrey League XC to be sure so I was still fit); was, crucially, uninjured; and I was very well rested and confident. This much I have learned about training and marathons to arrive in this state, at the Brighton start line in 2019.

At 9:20am I sidled up the Yellow holding pen to the front near the big screen and loudspeakers. I bobbed my head to Queen along with images of Wayne & Garth as the emcee very successfully got the increasing numbers of arriving runner very thoroughly pumped up on a cold Brighton morning.

In the Red pen (3:30-4hrs) next to us (here in the 4-4:30hrs pen), I saw one of the pacers I'd met the day before in the event village, and with whom I'd had a brief discussion about what to wear for the race (thin long sleeve shirt and shorts) but, to my chagrin, he was in a faster lane than the one I'd signed up for.  I watched as the 4hr pacers (there were four of them) bobbed away ahead out of sight, the Red pen having been let go about ten minutes before us.  Still, I figured I could catch them without subjecting my marathon to a disastrous "too fast" start.

I managed to catch them 5 miles or so later, once we'd wound around the city centre for a while and come out on the long grassy/beachy section on the coastal part just to the east of town. From here I stuck fast to the pacers until the final five miles.  And it felt like a race because of the constant jockeying for position, the pylons, the slowing runners emerging ahead of us who, when sighting the red 4hr pacer balloon might briefly rally but then slow, holding the steady-pacers back if they didn't push past.  

The field was crowded for its entirety, with a constant cluster of paced runners hanging out behind those red balloons. For a while that big red ball was bouncing off my head in the constant and shifting wind off the coast, a wind that funnelled up the city sections through which we threaded our paths on the western segments in the latter half of the race.

I kept my pace steady from 5 to 21 miles, constant as clockwork, not even thinking about the act, about what my feet were doing through that whole long middle section.  I was on auto-pilot, taking in the sights, and enjoying the ride my feet and legs were giving me, almost like they belonged to someone else, to a machine that was pushing me around of its own accord.

The final five miles were hard, but not as hard as you might think. I turned the final corner, and saw three of my fellow-paced running companions (as I'd come to think of these strangers, now oddly familiar, running beside me) up ahead of the red balloons, and I decided to follow them, to pick up the pace.  About a half dozen of us broke ranks and surged forward, each on our own individual initiative and accord, into the very cool and not insignificant buffeting headwind of the home stretch along Brighton beach. It was, as our pacer had said just moments before (he was otherwise not chatty) "the shortest way home".

We surged again significantly into that wind, way down below sub-9min/mile pace, onward to the finish line, the absolutely manic cheering spectators helping dispel fatigue on the final push. 

Here's what worked  so well overall for me to achieve a time with which I'm very happy (3:54:35, a PB):

1 I actually used a mantra along the home stretch: "fatigue is a state of mind", was what I said to myself over and over running towards the dual beacons of the Brighton i360 tower and the pier. It helped a lot.

2 I held my achieved mile/km count in mind as a positive, and never allowed myself to dwell on the time remaining. So, after 15km I thought of that number; after 20miles I held that in mind (not the amount remaining). After the start of the race, I always had less than a marathon to actually run -- this made a big psychological difference.

3 The temperature was a big factor, and what I wore in relation to it. I almost wore pocketless running tights, but switched on the morning. I know now that I would've been hotter and less well-organised had I gone with those. The gloves I wore I only took off after 15 miles, and probably should've put them back on again in the last five but didn't. I was comfortably cool the whole way around, never feeling any extreme of hot or cold. It was ideal.

4 Nutrition is a factor I handled really well. I started getting low blood sugar right away, in the first mile, and drank a whole bottle of Lucozade in the first five miles just to keep the tingling out of my fingers. I'd had a relatively small breakfast of four oatmeal packets with nuts in  the hotel room along with a pre-race granola bar. I staved off hypoglycaemia by eating almost constantly the whole way round: in total, 2 Lucozade; 9 jelly babies; 1 Stoats granola bar; 1 Trek granola bar; 1 Zero get provided by the race; and for hydration I also took advantage of water and/or energy drink stations at least 5 times. I came around the final cold bend on the beach energised in my core and in my legs.

"Fatigue is a state of mind" indeed. Thinking/saying this, visualising, eating, and staying positive, all these things, and the great companionship of my running club (Runnymede Runners), my wife Diane, and the cheering crowds of Brighton itself, got me around to the finish line.

Self-tracking and Science Fiction

"'The data becomes a "prosthetic of feeling," something to help us sense our bodies or the world around us. These senses can become uncannily reliable.' @ginasue ([Neff and Nafus,] 2016, page 75). I use a Garmin watch but rarely look at it during a run. My body takes over from the watch quickly now"

"As my senses become uncannily reliable I find, also, that I can start to depend upon the reliability of the uncanny as well...subtle hallucinations in the landscape & ghosts of past runs/ruins"

(@gwilymeades tweets, February 15th and 19th, 2019, respectively)

My twitter profile picture

I've been using my GPS watch, and its function of being able to map and track my running, as a way of generating science-fictional and uncanny outcomes.  Aside from the fact that I do occasionally experience very brief hallucinations when I'm on an especially long run, this might seem a bit of a stretch. It seemed that way to me too, for a time.

I've since come around, and am now a firm believer in the power of GPS to produce what Suvin might have called 'cognitive estrangement'.  I did a bit of a 'lit. review' in the area just to see what titles I could come up with related to the search term "science fiction and running". The top hit was Walker's End of the World Running Club, which has a (possibly apocryphal) tweet-review by Stephen King.

Actually, it is interesting that King is, himself, a dedicated walker/runner, but it's not entirely clear if that has affected King's fiction beyond possibly making it more consistent or somehow more clearly motivated.

In On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, King of course tells the true story of how he was struck and almost killed by a vehicle while he was out on one of his long walks; about his ideas around writing-as-telepathy (an idea that clearly, for King, has a firm grounding in belief aided by evidence from his own strong sense and ability in the power of writing to communicate); and his (pretty clearly not-apocryphal) observation that he does not remember writing Cujo on account of excessive alcohol- and cocaine-ingestion during the writing process.

Aside from being related clearly to my previous post "On Running Addiction," these observations on King's own senses of the uncanny in walking/running/writing, there's a parallel between the ways in which both SF and running 're-wire' the brains of its participants. Suvin, a Marxist, realized the revolutionary potential of this fact, in relation to science fiction (and not, of course, running).

But actually I think you can take any activity, performed obsessively, and find claims in relation to improvement of mental health. Take knitting, for example.  There are whole books dedicated to how the physical, repetitive, activity related to knitting, and the counting of rows and knots, 're-wires' the brain of the knitter to improve their sense of health and well-being.  (I am also a knitter, by the way).

But I think Suvin was really onto something and, philosophically at least, he gathered a good deal of academic and 'cognitive' evidence to back up his claims around the transformative power of SF. Technology has the power, after all, to structurally re-classify our senses of (well-)being. It can change whole orders of social spatiality with implications for class and senses of empowerment.

The era of self-tracking, evidenced by the rise of fitbits, watches (e.g. Garmin or Apple), and mobile apps that track our every movement, footstep, and trace, is taking us, in the digital age, well-beyond what earlier 'technologies' were able to do, and not necessarily in a good way.

I am part of a class of 'elite' that can not only afford a Garmin watch, but I also have so much extra time and energy, that I freely burn a great deal of 'extra-curricular' energy beyond what the necessaries of what my job entails.  I don't stack bricks for a living, I stack ideas, and beyond communicating those ideas to large lecture halls, my job mostly involves sitting at a desk.

Cognitively, then, I am part of a class that is privileged enough to be able to experience cognitive estrangement to the point of hallucination.  Reading science fiction often has the same effect.  It makes me see the world in such a radically different way that there is an order of magnitude of difference (at least) between the way I saw the world yesterday before reading, for example, Solaris, and the way I now see the world having experienced that deeply unsettling work.

Lem's work was the starting point, the fundamental turning or Archimedean punctum, around which much of Suvin's discussion of science fiction revolved. He went as far as to argue that the novum of Solaris represents a kind of zero-degree, or absolute-zero, starting point for the genre, the literary equivalent of 0 degrees Kelvin or absolute zero. In other words, the innovation of Solaris is so fundamental to, and so fundamentally changed, the genre that everything thereafter could not help but be in some way defined by it.

We are in a somewhat similar situation with both King (as writers) and with the 'Garmin' watch (here standing in for all self-tracking GPS-watches). Our activity is so fundamentally different after the introduction of the key innovation that there is no going back.

With surveillance capitalism this is a scary fact. I am positing here that one way of resisting 'capture' by corporations that benefit in both an Orwellian and a more liquid sense from the free-harvest of our individual and collective data-exhaust is through the use of counter-mapping and more subjective auto-carto-ethnographic (self-mapping-writing) techniques.

By this I mean mapping ourselves across the expected and inscribed boundaries of power through the transgression of that expectation and boundedness.  I want to promote unbounded senses of estrangement through the production of spatial hybridities and mobilities that are enabled by seemingly obsessive-addictive activities as running and science fiction (and why not, knitting!).

This is not (just) a justification for my continued use of Strava, cross-linked to other social media platforms like twitter, facebook, and instagram. If it's about self-promotion, then self-promote outside of your comfort zone, into the event-horizons of the unknown.

There were several weeks in a row where I was writing a science fiction story while a ran. I was structuring the story loosely upon Markson's book Wittgenstein's Mistress, imagining myself to be the last person on earth as I made my way north towards Datchet Bridge along the Thames.  The quality of light and burnt-autumn vegetation spiked into my imagination, and I invented new terms, new species of being in my head.  It is a meditation on solitude, mental health, and language.

It is also a meditation on moving through to new phases of experimentation, on being constantly on the move, both physically and cognivitely, and of finding new kinds of productive estrangement in that fact.

References:

Neff, Gina and Nafus, Dawn. 2016. Self-Tracking. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Suvin, Darko. 1979. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre. New Haven: Yale University Press.

On running addiction

Running addiction means that even though I'm injured I feel compelled to push myself to run. The injury itself is a result of overtraining, one symptom of running addiction. Running addiction is not itself, however, an injury (like runner's knee, from which I currently suffer). It is a state of mind.

What is it like to be addicted to running (subjectively speaking)? Running is obviously doing something for me and, whatever that something is, I want more of it. More fitness, more PBs, more positive feedback, more miles, more Strava maps...these are all great things.

But I also want more: endorphins, seratonin, endo-cannabinoids, and whatever other kind of chemical constituents of the runner's high I can lay my hands on.

There are internal and external motivating factors as well. Why do I run? Internally, it makes me happy. The running is itself the goal, not the time or the distance. It is the running no matter the weather, rain or shine, no matter who is with me, alone or in a group. It's all fine.

Actually, the social group runs have really been motivating because they're often surprising. For example I'll learn things about people and what makes them run, their backgrounds, where they're from.

Another thing that has been happening lately is I'll surprise myself by running with people who are a lot faster than me. The surprise comes when I actually keep up with them for a considerable period of time. You reset your sense of possibility to a higher level when that happens. And you really get the runner's high then too (like a hit of all those brain chemicals all at once, buoyed up in a sea of sociality).

External motivating factors are the PBs and the numbers, how fast I ran and for how long. Strava enables a lot of the externality of running, of the goal-driven, social media side of it. Strava is unique for a site of its type, not at all like twitter or instagram because it is based on achievement. Everyone who posts has achieved something, great or small, it really doesn't matter.

Strava feeds the addiction, but so do medals, and times, and gear. I love getting a new pair of trainers knowing that if I run a lot a new pair is closer to being mine. I recently purchased an all-weather waterproof running jacket, rationalising that it's winter, and that I'd had a bad run a few weeks back in wind and driving rain. In this way 'want' becomes 'need' the more you run.

But there's something more to it, and I can't quite put my finger on it.

Why did I run 58 miles two weeks ago? Why have I signed up for four marathons in the space of just over one year? Why do I run to the point of injury?

Part of the answer is selfishness. But this is not the whole answer. I am selfish about running, sometimes. I run when perhaps I don't always need to, to make the time mine. It is inviolable time, no matter what happens. And then sometimes, too, when I'm injured, only then do I feel like I've earned a rest.

It's caught up in trying to prove that I'm working hard enough, and this is clearly related to other aspects of my life. The fact that I run has a tangible, and often a very positive, effect upon my career and sense of confidence outside the actual run.

Running has a knock-on effect into other aspects of life. It drives an energy wedge into things, and dispels hesitation, low self-esteem, and other confidence-destroying things. If you can smash your PBs in running, you can smash them in your job, your relationships, and in your relationships with time (and space) and money too.

After all, running is essentially free. There are very few startup fees, and only small barriers to entry. And you can build up both your body and your gear over a span of years. It doesn't have to happen all at once.

Conclusion: I'm addicted, but (mostly) in a good way. I'll keep monitoring myself, and reflecting on when I'm running for the right reasons or, conversely, when I'm pushing myself too hard.

For the time being (and for the foreseeable future), however, I'm really enjoying my addiction.

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.