Sunday 13th May 2012
See the ground from far away
And it’s progress, progress if it’s made
– Balance and Composure: Progress, Progress
It’s been a great weekend. On Saturday afternoon we went out for a bike ride from Birmingham to Stratford-Upon-Avon along the canal towpath; 50km of nothing but beautiful scenery and my wife’s company. Perfect. Sunday was just as much fun but for different reasons. I attended my former university’s reunion race in the morning, a trail race of approximately 5 miles where former and present students compete for bragging rights, and of course have a good catch up. In full sunshine, we got started and everyone went bombing off down the first hill. I ran along side another runner who was at university around the same time as me and by a couple of miles in we were away at the front, moving along at as even a pace as we could manage over rough terrain and churned up fields. I began to pull away in the final mile and ended up finishing first, which was a pleasant and unexpected bonus on a day that was only really meant to be about having fun and seeing old faces.
But that’s not to say I’m not competitive. In fact, I take training and racing very seriously, which sometimes causes me to lose perspective. All runners know that if you train hard and train sensibly you will usually get better. If we didn’t believe this we just wouldn’t bother, would we? We all believe that you reap what you sow; this is why any signs of a lack of progress can cause huge frustration in runners. I can think of several examples just in my own experience. Three weeks ago I ran a 5 minute personal best in the London Marathon and was annoyed with myself for not breaking 2:35. I won my hometown half marathon and after the initial joy of victory, reminded myself that I didn’t even come within a minute of my time from the previous year. Personally I think this attitude, this inability to be 100% satisfied with a performance, is what drives us and motivates us to get better. If you think you’ve achieved all your goals there is no incentive to improve, but a positive attitude can be very important too. Athletes need to look for positives rather than just seeing the negatives in a race or a session. For me today, this was reminding myself that I had just finished ahead of several guys by whom I would regularly have my arse handed to me in my university days. Granted, this is no absolute measure of progress; some of them might not be as fit as they once were, but there’s no harm in reminding yourself how far you’ve come.
I might not be as good a runner as I was 5 weeks ago, but I’m certainly better than I was 5 years ago and as long as the overall trend is an upwards one I’ll be happy. Please remind me of this next time I moan about having a bad race.
Sunday 6th May 2012
I want to see this film, so much so that I emailed our local independent cinema to see if they would consider screening it. Fingers crossed….
Tuesday 24th April 2012
I’m taking a day off running today. Just as well really; It’s raining outside and I’m tired. In fact, I’m planning to take the whole week off running. I don’t think I’ve ever taken a full week off running, not even when I’ve been injured, so this is a new experience for me.
The reason? Well, I ran the London Marathon on Sunday and this time round I am trying to give myself a proper recovery before starting my next training block. That means one week off, a second week of easy jogging and then at least 4 weeks of slowly building up the mileage with easy runs and a couple of controlled tempo efforts to strengthen my body before hitting the hard stuff again. The oft-quoted cliché amongst runners is that ‘you’ve got to build your house before you can live in it.’ I’m sure there are many more like this. The idea is that you can’t try and attempt tough sessions without building up to them. The body needs to be ready for hard training, so building your base is extremely important. Arthur Lydiard famously insisted on a prolonged period of aerobic conditioning as preparation for his athletes; even his middle distance athletes were logging triple figure mileage during their base period. And with great success. Without this base, you cannot manage the hard runs that make you a faster runner, nor do you have the strength to recover from them quickly. Now, I’m not saying my training is perfect (far from it), but my training logs from the last few years are littered with examples of trying sessions I’m not ready for or will not benefit from.
I had this conversation with Mark, one of my training partners, when we were down in London at the weekend. We had spent the evening chatting to other runners about training, racing and injury and the two of us were unanimous in our belief that a large number of the problems our fellow runners faced were due to racing when not ready or attempting overly challenging sessions for their condition. They had tried to live in their house before it was fully built. It’s hard. Everyone likes instant gratification, and it is difficult to adopt a patient approach when training. Your instinct is to rush, to push yourself too early on, and to seek assurances that you are training well with day-on-day gains in fitness. I should know; I’m as guilty of this as any other runner.
Mark also pointed out the fact that as well as the base you build in each training cycle, all your training contributes to your ‘lifetime base.’ In no distance does this theory hold truer than in the marathon. The 2:38 I clocked on Sunday was a decent enough time, but the suspicion lingers in my mind that it still isn’t quite in line with my times for the shorter distances. I’ll get there though. The strength gained with years and years of running doesn’t just disappear. I like to think of my running ‘career’ as a mountain with several smaller peaks on the way up. Whilst you need to come down off each peak, you find that when you start to climb again you are slightly higher up then you were the last time round. If I keep going, I’m sure my times over longer distances will come down even further.
No humour this time round, no tales of determination and suffering, just some thoughts that are going through my mind as I take some much needed downtime.
Tuesday 10th April 2012
In athletics, as in other sports, there are some things that make you sit up and say “where the fuck did that come from?” In recent years, Usain Bolt jogging to a world record in Beijing comes to mind, as does the memory of Ibrahim Jeilan chasing down Mo Farah in the final lap of the World Championships 10,000 last year. Or for those who have more interest in longer distances, Moses Mosop ran 2:03 last year on his debut at the Boston Marathon and didn’t even win.
Moments like these are what makes our sport so exciting. Of course, there are the predictable moments, but unexpected results and performances happen often enough to keep most fans interested.
Some might argue that anyone who had followed Bolt’s progress as a junior athlete, or that anyone with knowledge of Jeilan’s career in Japan shouldn’t have been too shocked. Maybe they are right, but the wider public still sat up and took notice.
This happens to average Joe athletes like me and my friends too. A couple of guys in my training group refer to something called a ‘Lazarus run,’ a training run or race that seemingly comes from nowhere, the kind of run you don’t deserve, haven’t trained for, and frankly, pull out of your arse.
A couple of weeks ago, one of my regular long run companions (let’s call him Dan) decided his hip injury was too painful and didn’t join us for the usual Sunday 20-something miler. Just to clarify, Dan is no slacker. If a man who regularly needs 3 digits to log his weekly mileage avoids a long run, it’s usually because there is something wrong. We met up the next day for the usual Monday recovery run and Dan surprised us all by recounting the story of how he went out the evening before and knocked out a 10 miler in under an hour. He couldn’t explain why his hip had recovered sufficiently to run a hard tempo run but it had.
I had a similar experience a few days ago; my Jeilan moment involved running a 10 mile PB in training despite feeling pretty terrible when leaving the house. Again, where the fuck did that come from? But just as the good runs (and races for that matter) can come along unexpectedly, so can the bad ones. All runners have a stinker now and then and I had a prime turd of a run this morning. After two days of easy running I was pumped for my session of 3 x 1 mile with 90 seconds recovery. Leaving the house to go to the park where I train, I felt stiff and sore but kept going, last week’s tempo run acting as motivation. The heaviness still hadn’t cleared after my warm up so I settled for my back-up session of 4 miles at marathon pace. How hard can it be, I thought to myself. Very, came the answer from my quads 100 metres after I started my watch. It hurt. I convinced myself that I could work my way into it and speed up but after a while it became clear that wasn’t going to happen. After busting my balls to run a 5:50 mile I stopped my watch and gave up. I ran home. In fact, to call my homeward shuffle a run would be an insult to proper runners the world over.
Next week I’m running the London Marathon. I’m hoping for a ‘where the fuck did that come from?’ moment. But only if it’s the good type.
Thursday 5th April 2012
Saturday’s entry in my training log reads much like any other Saturday’s would, albeit with a bit more detail due to the fact that I was taking part in the Midland 12-stage relay:
Saturday: Midland 12 stage relay. Leg 1, 5.4 miles. 13th on leg, 22nd fastest of the day 28:14 (PB). Team 7th (11)
I was really happy with my race. Although it is not a common race distance, it is one I race every year when the road relays come around so I am happy to call it a PB. The time, set on a hilly course, is probably equaivalent to a mid to low 32 minute 10k. It’s just where I want to be at the moment. Just as a bad race provokes an athlete to reflect on what went wrong, it is also important to reflect on the good races. So that’s what I will try and do.
The conditions were good for road racing, still and cool, which made it easy to maintain a quick (by my standards) pace. I was also given leg one, traditionally the leg all teams put their fastest runner on. Having loads of fast people to pull me along made a huge difference. Oh yes, and I’ve been training a lot too. But I think the main reason was something else, something psychological and something not related to my training. Music.
I never listen to music when I’m out running. My twin passions never occur at the same time. I like to enjoy them separately and undiluted. But that’s just me. However, I do still like to get a good song stuck in my head just before a race. On Saturday it was Thursday. No, that’s not a typo. I mean the band Thursday, now sadly disbanded. I love getting pumped up before a race and for me there is nothing better to get me running fast than loud guitars and the words of the angry Geoff Rickly resonating in my head. ‘Counting 5-4-3-2-1’ was the last thing I listened to before embarking on leg 1, a song about wanting to get out of a city you’ve lived in all your life.
All his life he lived in this same house.
Same white fence surrounding him, he swore he would get out.
But he can’t cause his foot got caught in between the rails.
And all his friends were up ahead
They can’t hear him yelling, yelling for some help.
Other artists who get my legs turning are System of a Down, Thrice, Placebo and Alkaline Trio. In fact, anything with guitars and drums, catchy vocals and a fast tempo is enough to get me going.
After the race it is different though. Running, for me, is a form of release and relaxation. Before a run I feel wound up and tense; after it I usually feel calm. ‘Understanding in a Car Crash’ isn’t going to do it for me once I’ve finished pounding the tarmac. As I walked away from Sutton Park and back to the station on Saturday afternoon, my headphones started up again with the end of A City by the Light Divided playing. I pressed stop immediately and scrolled through my music library for something else. From T I went upwards, through the R’s (not in the mood for Rise Against), through the P’s (not today, Pearl Jam) and skipped the N’s altogether (No Use for a Name isn’t going to do it for me right now). I stopped at M. M for Mighty Mighty Bosstones. Now that’s what I want to hear. A nice big slice of Boston ska-punk, music with less hatred and more humour in its lyrics. As my train pulled away, my ears were graced with the sound of ‘All Things Considered,’ a song about an old man who has a habit of embellishing the truth.
The truth is what he used to and
What he’s had to do and
What he’s seen (and what he’s done)
All things considered, what he’s telling us
Isn’t hurting anyone
It is amazing what difference 28 minutes of running can make. This phenomenon does not just extend to music though; running has a profound effect on my state of mind. My wife will testify that during the short moments between me returning from work and pulling my trainers on I can be an absolutely hopeless human being. I can’t think straight, I am tense, wound up and frustrated and the only thing I can see with any clarity is the route I am going to take to the track. My ability to converse and think rationally disappear and there is only one way to get them back. Afterwards I am much more pleasant to be around; I calm down and can hold a proper conversation. I’m more Bosstones than Thursday. All things considered, running makes me a better person.
Now where are my trainers?