The good thing about having a week off work is that you have enough time for the really important things in life. Like browsing your Power of 10 profile and making playlists on Spotify.
Whilst doing this yesterday I noticed a great feature that I wasn’t previously aware of. As well as finding your head-to-head record against any British athlete (0-1 against Mo Farah, 18-0 against my mate Tim) and ranking all your performances by age grading, you can also list your performances by position. This is what my collection looks like:
1st 31 times (mostly at my local parkrun)
2nd 11 times
3rd 10 times
4th 3 times
… and so on. Great though this list is, it bothers me by not being complete. For example, Power of 10 tells me that in the 111 races I have finished I have never come 10th, the only position missing from the top 13. Strangely I have never come 20th, 25th or 30th either. This is annoying.
So I have come up with a plan to fill in the gaps. Next time there are exactly 9 people ahead of me in a race I am going to settle for my position rather than trying to chase a couple of runners down. If you see me in 14th, 15th or 16th in a race, make sure I don’t give chase.
This project shouldn’t take too long. My lowest ever position in a race is only 501st.
Good race? Good time? Happy with that? You’ve got to be pleased with that time, right?
I’m as guilty as any one else of asking these questions, but when faced with them myself, never really know how to respond. But surprisingly I knew the answer yesterday, and even more surprisingly, it was ‘yes.’ I ran exactly 32 minutes for 10k yesterday morning, which is a 22 second improvement on my previous best time. My target for this year, set a few months ago, was to break 32 minutes by the end of the year. Strictly speaking I haven’t done this, but I can see very clearly where that extra second is coming from (though the end of year target is now likely to revised downwards). My training recently has mainly been 3k and 5k pace work and I haven’t really done anything 10k specific, so I know that with some of that under my belt I can get comfortably into the 31s. I will probably have another go at the end of the summer.
But back to the point of the post, being happy. Runners are rarely happy with their performances in races. Satisfaction is often mistaken for complacency amongst my type and as a result we are usually very self critical, often ridiculously so. It is not unknown for athletes to set a personal best and complain that it was still outside (insert time). I managed to avoid doing this yesterday. Runners are unwilling to express satisfaction with their progress for fear that it might lead to stagnation. Bizarrely the feeling of inadequacy is just the thing that spurs some athletes on. But there can be a middle ground, being happy and wanting more; the two needn’t be mutually exclusive. I am very happy with the progress I’ve been making since I started training with a new group 6 weeks ago but am fully aware of what I need to do in order to be a better athlete. In fact, training and racing against people much better than me, for example the 39 people who finished ahead of me yesterday, has made me realise that there is a long way to go. It has also reminded me of the importance not putting a limit on what I think I am capable of. Targets should be a floor rather than a ceiling.
So with that in mind, I plan to race again on Wednesday night, provided I can recover sufficiently. 3000 metres on the track this time. The floor is 8:55. The ceiling is, wait, there is no ceiling.
I’ve been toying with an idea for a while but have only recently started putting it into practice. The idea is that I plan my training as little as possible and just go with the flow a bit more. This might sound like a step backwards for an athlete who is trying to improve, but in my opinion, that is outweighed by the feeling of not being shackled by a pre- determined training schedule. So I’m trying it.
There is a training group who meet on a Tuesday evening when I normally do a track session, and who I had avoided joining for a long time. One runner said to me a couple of months ago “You run at the same time as us and at the same pace; why are you flogging yourself on your own? Train with us.” Some of my friends had already started doing this and were getting some really good fitness gains out of it. My response to him was that I wanted to see how far I could get with my own training. There’s a great deal of satisfaction to be had from planning your training, executing it and getting good results. But now I’m happy to follow other people’s lead, and when running on my own, to be flexible. In short, I’m going to be less precious about sticking to ‘the plan.’
Whenever I have been to club training sessions in the last few years I have always enjoyed the anticipation of what session I was going to be allocated and just having a go, not really worrying about what it would feel like. On the other hand, I’ve had times when I’ve planned all my week’s training in advance and been thinking about a session I have to run for days before hand. The last two weeks, I’ve run with the Tuesday group led by the university coach and really enjoyed it. The efforts, recoveries and even the target pace have been dictated to me and I’ve quite liked it. There’s also the added benefit of being towed along by a group, which always makes a session easier.
I also hope that I can be less rigid at other times. Last Thursday I went to the track on my own with the vague idea of doing a tempo run. I set off at a steady pace and stopped when I felt like I was starting to approach a race effort. I then finished the session off with some 200s to get my legs turning over fast. It wasn’t the session I had in mind when I stepped out my front door, but I have no doubt it did me some good.
Let me be clear though – being more flexible does not mean I’m any less focused or goal driven. I still aim to run close to 15 flat for 5k and to break 32 minutes for 10k by the end of the year. I want to be a better track and cross country runner and I want to beat people I’ve never beaten before. I still have a spreadsheet on my laptop with all the races I plan to compete in. The only difference is that it doesn’t tell me what to do in between. Unlike before I have no idea what session I will be doing in three Saturdays’ time, or when my rest days are going to be for the next 6 months. And I feel no worse off for it. Surprise me.
For the club runner in this country, spring and autumn mean one thing: the road relays. While the autumn brings the area and national 6-stage events, the spring is all about the 12-stage. My area is the midlands, and our event takes place in Sutton Park, a huge expanse of green space in the north of Birmingham which is also home of the national event 3 weeks later.
Next Saturday my clubmates and I will be taking the short journey up to Sutton to compete in the Midland 12 Stage. The event alternates between long legs and short legs, the difference being made up by a long out-and-back section where you can see just how far ahead of or behind the nearest runner you are. Our team manager Richard always puts me on a long leg so I am well acquainted with the course, which is approximately 5.4 miles or 8.7km long. It is this unconventional race distance that appeals to me so much. You have no idea what kind of time you should run for that distance other than the time you ran last year (28:14, seeing as you asked), there are no mile or km markers and the course has sharp turns and hills from start to finish.
All of which means that when you wait on the start line for your number to be called, you know you’re not there to run an even-paced time trial, you’re there to race. Unless you wear a GPS watch (I’m still old-school and don’t have one) you have no idea how far you’ve gone or how far you have left to go. All you know is that there is a guy in front of you who needs to be behind you, and that there’s a guy behind you who definitely can’t go in front of you. It doesn’t always work out that way, of course, particularly when you take over from a much faster athlete who gives you an artificially high starting position. But that’s part of the fun. You chase and chase and take on whoever tries to run beside you. It is a race, and it is sport at its purest. If you’re on leg 10 at the national it’s not quite the same story though, and it is common for athletes on this leg not to see anyone for most of their run due to the large gaps that normally form by that point. Either way, it is a true mental and physical challenge.
As I write I haven’t yet seen the email with the team list, but I suspect it will contain the rules, as stated every year by Richard:
1. Go out hard.
2. If someone catches you, hang on to them for as long as you physically can.
3. Run the tangent around every corner.
4. If you’re smiling when I see you, you’re not working hard enough.
So next Saturday afternoon I will be going out hard, hanging on, running the shortest possible line and all with a grimace on my face. Can’t wait.
On Friday I went out for an unexpected day time run in the snow after being sent home early from work (not for disciplinary reasons I might add – it was snowing heavily) and made my way down the canal towpath.
Not long after leaving the house I passed a group of four guys. All of them were probably slightly younger than me, and their manner of speech and their aroma suggested they had just ingested enough drugs to fuel the US Postal Service team for 3 weeks in the Alps. They stepped aside as I ran past them and made the usual comments questioning my sanity for running in such conditions. So far so good, but shortly after I heard the words “I’m gonna get ‘im” being uttered from one of their mouths. I’ve been chased before whilst running and kids will often run along side me for as long at they can manage, but I wasn’t sure whether this particular person meant it in a friendly or manacing way. This is Birmingham after all.
Not wishing to take any chances I put the burners on as soon as I heard his footsteps coming towards me. The chase was on. From a 20 metre headstart, the gap had shrunk to less than 10 metres and he was gaining on me. I ducked past the umbrella of another pedestrian and carried on sprinting through the blizzard. I could still hear him behind me but he was breathing heavily and I suspected he was approaching his limit. As I approached a tunnel the sound of his footsteps on the thick snow was replaced by the welcome cry of “you fucking killed me man!” followed by, well, nothing at all. I kept looking over my shoulder though, to check he hadn’t had second thoughts about conceding the win. He hadn’t, and I continued my run as planned, albeit at a much slower pace than I had just been going.
First of all, I got a huge adrenaline rush from it. Your body really does go into survival mode when forced into a situation like that. The guy probably wasn’t going to stick a knife in me but there was no way I was hanging around to find out. My legs, sore from the previous evening’s tempo run, felt light and powerful and I was able to run much harder than I would normally be able to. It’s amazing how the human body reacts to different situations.
Secondly, it got me thinking about whether I could outrun anyone. It was satistying to leave someone trailing in my wake, just as it is when I’m racing, and I feel fortunate to have trained myself to a high enough level of fitness to be able to do that. My bet is that I could outrun somewhere between 95 and 99% of the population given the same headstart. But how about those I couldn’t run away from with a 20 metre headstart? For a start, any distance runner better than me would get me; even if I could sprint faster (unlikely) they would have superior endurance. Obviously any sprinter would catch me if they wanted to. My ability to run hard for 25 miles would count for little if they were to catch me within 25 seconds. If I had to design the perfect hunter human, they would look like an 800/1500 runner – the perfect blend of speed and endurance. But I’d fancy myself against anyone else.
However, it’s unlikely to be a problem I have to deal with soon. As my friend pointed out this morning when I told him about the incident, the type of person who could outrun me is not the kind of person who would want to, and vice versa. He argued that the two are pretty much mutually exclusive. How many knife wealding drug takers with their hoods up also happen to possess well honed fast-twitch fibres?