'Tis The Season..

'Tis the season to be jolly - jolly well wrapped up in several upper body layers, thermal leggings, jacket, gloves and a woolly hat if you're going out running, that is. It's been absolutely perishing over the last couple of weeks, and I've been caught between the need to keep warm and the need not to overheat after a couple of km. 

And it's not just me. At my local parkrun last weekend, there was enough alpine apparel to clothe an Everest expedition. At the start anyway. By the time the first lap of the course had been completed, the clothing was coming off faster than a dodgy striptease in an East London pub. Gloves, hats, sweatshirts all strewn across the path as the runners wrestled with their outer layers in a desperate bid to keep their body temperature under control. It's quite an art stripping down to your vest while trying not to break stride.
Working out what to wear isn't the only problem we cold-weather runners face. Snow and ice on the paths and streets is a seasonal hazard - though not as much in London as it is elsewhere. A few years ago, I went out for a run in Philadelphia, which was still recovering from one of the huge blizzards that hits the east coast of the US every winter. The run began ok, but the further I went, the less the paths had been cleared, until I found my feet sinking nearly knee-deep in the snow. At which point, the only thing you can do is give up and build a snowman. Ice is, if anything, worse. Nothing dents the desire to go running more than crashing head over heels at top speed. 
The cold does tend to adversely affect my performance, as well. Some runners I know absolutely thrive on it and do their best times in the winter. As for me, I've noticed a regular seasonal dip in my timings, which I'm convinced is something to do with the blood vessels constricting to conserve body heat, thus restricting the amount of oxygen you can pump round your body. That's the excuse I'm using anyway. 
So I don't expect to be setting any PBs before Christmas. I hope to get a few more training runs in before the festivities start and the mass consumption of food and drink starts in earnest. And then I'll be looking forward to the new year and setting myself some running goals for 2018.
In the meantime, happy Christmas and wrap up warm.

Injury Time

So the official photos from the Thames Path Half-Marathon came back and I thought I should share this one with you. I said photos? I meant photo. The only moment the photographers managed to capture of me was the precise moment my calf muscle tore and I pulled up in agony. Well done, guys.
I think this was actually the fourth time it popped, in the final straight, when I was trying to hobble/sprint to the line. I love the complete lack of concern from anyone in the crowd - I can only presume that because by this time I wasn't actually shouting with the pain, just grimacing and gulping and rather over-dramatically throwing my arms in the air, they hadn't noticed the poor bloke in the orange shirt crippling himself but bravely refusing to give up. Either that or they're a bunch of heartless bastards in Walton-on-Thames..
I hate being injured. So does everyone, I suppose, but I know there are runners who look on it as a chance to take a break, rest whatever niggles they've incurred through running, work on their fitness levels in other ways, and come back stronger. I've never managed to make that work for me.
This is what happens when I have an injury break:
1/ After telling myself that, while I'm not running, I will be working on stretching muscles and building up my core, I instead spend the time watching TV with my feet up (Rest! Elevation! It's what the doctor ordered - or would have ordered if I'd been to the doctor) and comfort eating chocolate biscuits. 
2/ When I do get back to running, I'm slow and can't go very far
3/ I put on about 3lbs (see chocolate biscuits)
I returned to my running about 10 days after the injury this time, partly because it felt as if it had healed and partly because I was bored. It's always a cause for concern after a muscle injury because it's very difficult for you to work out whether it's fully mended. Even professional athletes, with expert medical attention and x-rays and all, can never be entirely certain what will happen after a muscle tear. Put it under too much pressure too quickly and it'll snap again and set you back a few more weeks. It's why you often so footballers playing a bit slowly and gingerly in their first few games back from, say, a hamstring injury. There's an unspoken circumspection about pushing yourself to the limit because you don't know what will happen.
My first run was a rather timid 5k at a pace that it would be flattering to call gentle. I was a bit sore afterwards but my calf stayed in one piece, so I've returned to my normal schedule of a run every two days. I upped the distance to 10k this week (though I was knackered at the end - I've got my work cut out trying to rebuild my stamina levels to what they were last month). I've even managed to go to a couple of Wednesday night training classes at the park, where the coach Maggie interval-trains us to exhaustion. 
Good news is my calf muscle appears to be fine. Bad news is I appear to be getting slower each time. I'm going to blame the biscuits. 

34 Seconds

34 measly seconds. Less time than it takes to boil a quarter of an egg. That's all that got between me and managing to hit my target of a sub-two hour half-marathon this weekend.
It's hard to describe how annoying that is. Three seconds faster each mile and I'd have been inside the two-hour mark. One and a half seconds each kilometre. If only I hadn't been held up at the start by the pack of runners in front of me. If only I hadn't stopped for those two drinks breaks. If only I'd  been able to go a bit quicker at the finish. Regrets? Like Frank Sinatra, I've had a few.

No excuses though. Not even the weather. It was a glorious day for the Thames Path Half, sunny but not too hot, bracing but not too windy. Conditions couldn't have been better - which came as a surprise as we'd driven there through torrential rain which miraculously cleared up just as we got to the start at Walton-on-Thames. 
I was running with two parkrun pals - John and Dee Churchill (in the pic below) - which is always nice. Running 13 miles can be a lonely business sometimes, and it's a real comfort to have a familiar face or two alongside you, helping you pace yourself and offering encouragement and support.
Or, in John's case, berating me loudly for going too slowly as he galloped past me at the 12km mark. He's a strong believer in tough love when it comes to running, and he's also faster than me, so I tend to get quite a bit of berating. But it's good for me - so he tells me.
I started well (or in John's words "set off like a demented jackrabbit"), hitting and exceeding my targets for the first few kilometres. I'd hoped to run at about 5.30 mins per km, at least until the halfway mark, thinking this would allow me to run the second half at a slightly slower pace and still make my set time.

It's not an easy half-marathon to run, to be honest. When you're running along the river, the path is narrow and packed (especially to begin with), when you're running through the town the roads aren't closed, so you are somewhat at the mercy of cars and shoppers despite the marshalls trying to keep your way clear.
But I was still some way ahead of schedule at the halfway mark, managing to reach it in 57 minutes. It was after that things got sticky.
I made a fatal error, deciding to take a walking break to reward myself for being a minute or so ahead of where I'd planned. I should know by know this is dangerous psychologically, because it gets you out of the rhythm of running - that one-pace-in-front-of-another metronome that keeps us all going when we're tired and lacking strength. And having lost that rhythm it's hard to get it back.
I started losing pace and found myself needing to take continual short breaks just to keep going. At the ten-mile mark, I was still - just - ahead schedule, but the next tortuous four kilometres put paid to that. As the last mile post came into sight in the distance, some way up the towpath, I knew it was going to take an extraordinary effort to break two hours.
And then, POP! Something like a small explosion happened in my right calf. I shouted out, more in surprise than pain I think, startling the other runners around me. I'm always anxious about stuff like this, ever since I tore my hamstring a few years back, so I hobbled for a little and then gingerly started running again.  
At first it felt OK, so I took a wild guess at it being cramp. When I did my hamstring, I could hardly walk for about half an hour, let alone run, so maybe this was nothing serious. Then 300 metres further on - POP! again. Twice more before I gratefully stumbled over the finish line in 2 hours 33 seconds, each time making me wince and pull up before carrying on.

So I ended up, just outside the 2-hour mark, about a minute off my half-marathon PB, with a mystery ailment in my leg. What does this all mean for my chances of being able to comlete a marathon? I'm not sure. I do know that right then and there I couldn't have run another step.
And what about the mystery ailment? Having read up about the symptoms, I'm reasonably sure that it was a muscle tear of some sort. There's a thing called a "calf heart attack" when the calf just gives out like that, which involves tearing some of the muscle fibres. The cure? The usual - rest, ice, compression, elevation, with the emphasis on rest. A serious tear can take anything up to 2-3 months to sort out. Run on it again too soon, and you disrupt the fibres as they heal and put back your recovery.
This, thankfully, seems to be minor. I've iced it and rested it for 10 days and it feels fine. Today is the day when I put it to the test again. A nice gentle - and definitely short - run. Let's hope it stays in one piece.

  

My Favourite Week

This is undoubtedly my favourite week in my running schedule - the one before a Big Run. Sunday sees me attempt a half-marathon for the first time in two years, so the last few days have seen me concentrate on just two things - Tapering and Carb-loading. Or as I like to interpret that, Not Going Running and Eating Chips.
Tapering is actually a fancy name for cutting back on your training programme for a defined period, to avoid putting your body through undue stress and to make sure that it's not drained of resources you're going to need on the big day. 
So, in a nod to that, my last really long training run was last week, when I tried doing 15k before work. I was thinking of doing 20k, but I woke up late and lost half an hour. It was a bit of a shambles, to be honest, very slow and several walk/rest breaks - but it'll have to do. This'll be the first time I've tried to do a half-marathon without having done at least one 20k training run in preparation, so let's hope the old legs can go the distance.
This week, I've run just the once, a gentle 5k just to keep the joints working. Any other time my conscience has tapped me on the metaphorical shoulder and whispered "You know, you really ought to go for a run today", I've just replied very firmly: "No chance, mate. I'm tapering!"
Carb-loading is supposed to be a way of storing glycogen in your muscles. The science suggests you should be doing it 2-3 days before a long race, not a whole week before. Also, chips is not on any nutritionist's recommended menu for endurance athletes that I can find. This is unfair and chipophobic. There are carbs in chips. Lots of them. Anyway, carb-loading is also a good excuse to eat mounds of pasta, so I will be doing that as well.
As to the race itself, it's the fancily-titled Thames Half Marathon which advertises itself as a "flat, fast and scenic" run, largely along the Thames towpath between Walton and Hampton 

 Court - presumably the scenic bit doesn't include the sewage plant at the 6/11 mile stage, but let's not be picky.
I had sort of forgotten exactly how far 13 and a bit miles is until I looked at the course on the map, and am currently feeling a bit daunted. Can I do it in a decent time? I'm really not sure. The other day, when I'd done 10 miles in an hour and a half, I was feeling quite cocky about it. This week, not so much. Under two hours is my nominal target. Just finishing is perhaps a more realistic one.
We'll find out on Sunday. For the moment, I've got some more tapering and carb-loading to get on with.

Smashing It At Shoreditch

Quite frankly, I'm not entirely sure where that performance came from. I wish I did, really. It'd be nice to be able to point to a dramatic change in my training regime, or an ingenious high-protein diet, or a fancy new bit of equipment, and say "Aha! That's what helped me smash my personal best" - and then keep on using it.  

But I can't. All I know is that the Shoreditch 10k run last weekend was an absolute blast. To begin with, it's a lovely course twisting and turning through the back streets of the area - flat as a .. well, I've had pancakes with more inclines.
It's the first one staged by Adidas in their "City Run" series, so they were determined to impress as a host and they did a pretty good job. Although forcing everyone to wear the same T-shirt emblazoned with the City Run logo was a little strange - and I could have done with some free water bottles before the start.
I was determined not to repeat mistakes made in the 10k I ran in May, and settled into a nice easy pace from the off. I started alongside Roger, a friend from my local Parkrun, but he's a much faster runner so I was unsurprised to see him head off into the distance after the first 200 metres. 
I think I mentioned in my last blog entry that I'd have been pleased with any time under 55 minutes, which is an average of 5.30 minutes a kilometre - easily achievable in theory as long as my stamina holds out. In contrast to the May 10k, I was - I thought - keeping it steady in the first few km, so I was quite startled when I checked my time at the end of the third. 15.05. I was running about a minute and a half faster than I'd thought.

Two possible outcomes. Either I was going to blow up spectacularly like I did in May, or I was actually on course for what would for me be a ridiculously fast time. I mentally checked how I was doing. Felt fine. No aches and pains. Breathing well. Legs not feeling heavy yet. Not much of a sweat. It might not last, but I could keep this pace up for a least a little longer.
Then, just in front of me, I caught sight of my Parkrun buddy Roger - a very good sign. If I was within catching distance of him, then I knew I was running well. I resolved to keep him in my eyeline for as long as I could. Not so easy, mind, when everyone's wearing the same T-shirt - it's hard to keep track of individuals. Luckily for me, Roger was wearing a very bright pair of lime-ish green shorts, so even in the sea of Adidas blue, he was difficult to miss.
At halfway, I was still OK. Didn't even slow down at the water stop. Could still see Roger's green shorts. At one point, I even caught up with him and overtook him (for about one stride before he restored the natural order of things). I'm still running at about 5 minutes per km, and I'm getting to the stage where I'm actually believing I can keep this going. As usual, half (if not more) of the battle is psychological rather than physiological, so that belief is vitally important.

Finally the turn for home, and the last couple of kilometres. I start feeling that ache across the thighs as your body tries to tell you it's done about all it can. My pace dips to about 5.20 and, most, importantly, there is no longer a pair of lime-green shorts in sight. I've lost Roger. I'm going to have to get to the finish on my own. I start mentally counting down the distance, in little parcels of 100 metres ("1200 to go, just 12 more of these, you can do this"). I start to up my pace, knowing that it's nearly finished. With about 300 metres to go, I start sprinting - too early, I think to myself. I pass a trio of fit-looking young women who are playing some banging tune out loud while they're running. I hear one say "Right ladies, 300 to go, let's kick it up" and the beat seems to increase a notch. Well, if they're going to start sprinting, I can't slow down, I'll just have to go faster. By now I'm flat out and I have no choice except to keep it going to the end.

I round the last bend and there it is. The finish line. Paradise. I'm practically falling over my feet now and I sort of half-sprint, half-stumble my way over it. I look down at my Garmin and I can't believe the time. Two minutes faster than I've ever run a 10k before. That's unreal. That can't be true. But it is. 
I look up and there's Roger, who's finished about 15 seconds ahead of me. And I think to myself, you know, Rob - maybe you actually can run after all.

Holidays In The Sun/Stamina In The UK

There's a lot gone on since I last updated this blog. For one thing, I've been on holiday. Generally, I'm not a huge fan of running on holiday. It's either too hot or too hilly. Or in the case of one vacation in Portugal a couple of years back when I thought I was going to pass out on the run back, both. The last time I was out of the country for any length of time was the fortnight I spent in Goa back in January, which was a particular challenge. You could only really run if you got up at dawn and headed straight out, or timed it just as the sun was dipping down below the horizon. Then you had a choice of a strength-sapping slog across sandy beaches or, if you tried the roads, a dangerous dodgem course round vagrant cows, flea-bitten dogs and the ubiquitous tuk-tuks. 

Lloret de Mar "stadium"

So I was expecting the worst, running-wise, when we took the kids to Lloret de Mar on the Costa Brava - but I couldn't have been more wrong. Right outside our apartment was a municipal running track, in a rather ramshackle little stadium, open pretty much all day and completely free to use. Its main customers appeared to be groups of elderly Catalans performing mid-morning exercise walks on the outer lanes, which meant I pretty much had the inside lanes to myself.
Some of my running friends tell me they hate doing laps of a track - too boring, no scenery and so on. Me, I love it because you're only ever 400 metres away from being able to tick off  another "segment" of the run. Also I love the bounce of the track under your feet - such a relief after the hard pounding your soles get from pavements and concrete paths. True, age and overuse had taken much of the bounce out of this particular track (a feeling I'm sure many of us can sympathise with), but even so, it was an unexpected delight.
I did mention in my last entry to this blog that I'd been upping my distances recently. So one morning in Lloret, I managed an epic 30 laps of the track (12k, or 11.95k according to my fussy and overly pedantic Garmin GPS). And that's just the start. Since returning to the UK, I managed this effort which I'm rather proud of:

It seems I've finally got my stamina back. Which is useful for a would-be marathon runner really. I've slowly been pushing the distances up, and am hoping to hit 13 miles plus by the end of the month (16k is about 10 miles for those without an imperial/metric converter to hand). 

So how did this happen? Well, I tried a lot of things but in the end it came down to stopping caring about pace. I gave up worrying about how fast (or to be more honest, slow) I was running, stopped berating myself if I was a couple of minutes slower over 10k, say, than the time before, and concentrated on enjoying my runs. Well, not enjoying exactly, but going at a pace where I wasn't exhausting myself too early. 

I start with a nice easy lope for the first few kilometres. If I feel I'm beginning to go at a pace which is seeping too much energy, I deliberately rein myself in. So by the time I'm in the last third, say, of my run, it doesn't feel like purgatory to continue.

And weirdly, not only did my stamina magically return, but after a bit, so did my pace. I'm now hitting times that are at or pretty close to my best, even with the first part of the run being at a slower pace than I was doing before.

There is a theory I've read that might help explain it, which says that at slower speeds your body burns fat rather than sugar, so that short-term energy stores remain relatively undepleted, and so by deliberately training at a slower speed for longer, you can "coach" your body to burn fat rather than sugar for longer. God knows whether it's true or not, but it did make a kind of sense.

Anyway, onwards and upwards. Huge month for me - I have two races to look forward to. One is the Adidas 10k in Shoreditch on Sunday,

at which I'd like to run under 55 minutes; but the big test is at the end of October, when I run the River Thames half-marathon - my first 13-miler for a couple of years. Training times would suggest I might be heading for about 2 hours, assuming I actually finish. I've still got a little way to go distance-wise before I'm entirely confident I'll be able to. I'll keep you posted.  

I Got Rhythm (just as soon as I find my earphones)

As I was setting off for a 13k run the other day (YES! 13k! I appear to have my stamina back again - but more of that good news another time), I was struck by an unsettling and potentially unanswerable question - namely, which light-fingered little sod has nicked my earphones?
I like my earphones. I pay a lot of money for them, in the probably baseless hope that they will last longer if they're more expensive. They have a little case they live in, which sits on my desk. Or rather, in this instance, appears to have been removed from my desk by person or persons unknown.
The upshot is that I faced the prospect of an hour-plus run with no music. This I find difficult. I have a special "running" playlist on my phone that helps take my mind off the aches and strains of pounding the pavements and stops me checking my Garmin every five seconds to see how much distance I have or have not covered.
It's a bit of an esoteric playlist. Other runners seem to have ones featuring some banging grime from Stormzy, house/hip-hop mashups, and the odd classic up-tempo funk number. Mine's mostly late 70s/early 80s new wave. It's fair to say my musical tastes have not advanced greatly from my 15th birthday onwards.

There is some newer stuff on there. One of my particular favourites is Vampire Weekend's A-Punk, which never fails to make my feet pick up the pace. The only trouble with it is it only lasts 2 minutes. I used to be able to time a 5k run to last almost the whole of VW's debut album, with the final sprint to the tune of their barnstorming gig closer Walcott. I run a bit too fast to do that these days. 
There's also a few from indie rockers The Vaccines on there, a couple from The Killers, and a whole swathe from my favourite punky-folk musician Frank Turner, most of whose songs are about coping with pain and anguish, which seems somewhat appropriate to listen to while running.
But the great majority of entries on my playlist are from the three or four years I still regard as the golden age of pop music, or at least the golden age of jumping about to three or four lads whacking the knackers out of three chords and a basic one-two drum beat. The Clash, The Jam, The Undertones and Blondie are all heavily featured. In addition to that, there is a heavy preponderance of 2-Tone and ska, which will surprise no-one who knows me. Ranking Full Stop by The Beat, for example, always manages to lift me up when my spirits are sagging somewhere about the seventh mile.

But my all-time favourite, the one that picks me up and drives me forward with new energy and verve is Show Me, the 1981 soul classic by scruffy Brummie scamps Dexys Midnight Runners. It's a song that hits the ground not just running but sprinting, the sax and the horn sections cracking into a furious feet-tapping pace from the opening bar before lead singer Kevin Rowland launches into a plaintive rant about the whereabouts of the wild boys of his childhood, topping it off with a heartfelt chorus calling for a return to the spirit and energy and adventure of youth. And I can't help feeling that's exactly what I need as I force my tired, creaking joints through another interminable kilometre.
Anyway, the Mystery Of The Missing Earphones has been solved. It turns out they were still in the bag I'd put them in a couple of days before on my way to work. I plug them into the phone, press play (and yay, it's Sally MacLennane by The Pogues up next), and away we go.