This week I ran more miles than I have ever run in a week. From Monday to Sunday, 101 miles of track, road and trails passed beneath my weary and battered feet. Coupled with the fact that there were only 167 hours this week due to the clocks going forward (no more running in the dark – great news!), this total gives me my best mile per hour average of any week; about one for every hour I’ve been awake during these 7 days.
Now, the reason I felt the need to write about this is that the recording of my weekly mileage has never required a third digit before, and I have wondered for a while now what a hundred mile week would feel like. I know it isn’t a huge achievement; the proof of the pudding is always in the eating and mileage is meaningless if it doesn’t help you go faster on race day. There are people I know who regularly hit this kind of number so it isn’t a particularly impressive feat. Any man who is anti-social enough and has a forgiving enough wife (mine is wonderful) can run high mileage if he builds up to it. However, I still feel quite pleased to have pushed myself through it.
This wasn’t really a week of junk miles either. All my ‘in between’ runs – Monday, Wednesday and Friday were run at a decent pace and I hit some good sessions too. Tuesday was a 10k time trial, run solo on the track. The most boring session in our programme, it is never easy and always requires a sizeable dip into the reserves of mental strength. I ran it in 33:06, which is a personal best. I know that you should never race in training but my ‘proper’ personal best, by which I mean run in a race, is one of my weakest and doesn’t really reflect the shape I’m in now. Wednesday was a double with a tiring day at work sandwiched between the bread of a 4 mile easy and a half marathon. I had nothing in my legs for Thursday’s 300 and 600 session with the club, but put in a decent set of reps.
I tried something new on Saturday – my South African training partner’s ‘Elana Meyer’ session, a workout used by the Olympic medallist in her marathon days. It involves doing 1200m, 5000m, 1200m, 5000m and 1200m on the track with 45 second recoveries. The idea of the session is to run the 1200s hard to build up lactic acid in the muscles and try and hit the 5ks at marathon pace or quicker. The tiredness this causes in the legs is a fairly good simulation of the last few miles of a marathon when you really do need to concentrate on keeping the pace up. I managed to hit my target splits, with the exception of the last 1200. I felt like I was wading through treacle on this one and was much slower but it didn’t matter as much, as it is really only there to stop you running the second 5k too fast.
Today’s long run was a drag. I had heavy legs and didn’t really want to push the pace and fortunately my group were more than willing to go slowly too. I normally finish a week on 80 miles, not start my long run having done that many already. It was the last one before London.
The next three weeks are taper weeks, so I’ll be having some rest days and cutting a few miles off each run. It will be a strange feeling – my body has got used to running a lot – but it should mean I am fairly fresh on the 17th April.
Training’s banked. Now I’ve just got to do the business on the day. Easier said than done.
“every time I run, it’s with the mindset that if I die at this race it’s OK”
This week I was totally won over and inspired by the new Japanese distance running sensation Yuki Kawauchi.
Sunday 27th February saw the latest edition of the Tokyo Marathon, a race increasing in popularity and set to rival the world marathon majors before too long. The withdrawal of Haile Gebrsellassie meant that the race was wide open, and in its role as a Japanese trial for the 2011 World Championships in Daegu, was bound to be a competitive one.
Kawauchi’s story is compelling. On graduation from university, he rejected a contract with one of the Japanese corporate teams in order to run as an individual and be flexible with his training and races. He took a job in a school and decided to fit his training in around his 45 hour working week, often meaning that he could train just once per day.
Last weekend he took part in the Tokyo race where he had placed 4th the previous year. I will not try and attempt to describe what happens, as Brett Larner does it better than I ever could in his Japan Running News blog (the video alone is worth a watch). In short, he ploughs through the field in the last 10k, passing several professional runners – most notably the much fancied debutant Yoshinori Oda – from the corporate teams to finish third in 2:08:37, bagging himself third position prize money, a BMW and a spot on the Japanese team for the World Championships in Daegu.
But what makes Kawauchi’s story so inspiring? He didn’t even win after all, finishing a whole minute behind the Ethiopian victor Hailu Mekonnen. Why is the running world going crazy about a man who is just one of many sub 2:10 men in the world today?
The reason his story is so gripping is that people can identify with it. Though I could never claim to be a working class hero myself, his tale of dedication and perseverance combined with a ferocious work ethic in training strikes a chord with me as I try to fit my training in around a demanding job (in a school like YK himself, coincidentally). His training reportedly consists of a 2 hour morning session before his shift at school which usually takes place between midday and 9pm, with other sessions fitted in whenever possible. It was also reported that the morning after his heroics in Tokyo, he had to do his recovery run before 6am in order to get in early to process applications.
At the time of writing he is in the process of negotiating time off with his employers so that he can take up his place in the World Championships team in August.
His attitude is a throwback to the amateur era before athletes began earning money from athletics, and it shows that if you work hard enough and are committed enough to your training you can be successful. Clearly talent and luck play a role, but a minor one in comparison to hard work. My coach is well known for his assertion that running is “90% above the shoulders” and Kawauchi confirms this. It is heartening to know that by training your body and mind to go further and faster than ever before you can be successful. The look on his face as he storms through the final 3km of the Tokyo Marathon is a picture of agony, a picture of a man so far into the hurt zone that he’s nearly coming out the other side, but most of all a picture of dedication.
I won’t be running 2:08 any time soon, but every time I race I will be attempting to ‘do a Kawauchi.’
I’ve been training hard. I’ve run two 90 mile weeks back to back and yesterday was my first rest day in 19 days. It is tiring but the experiment with higher volume seems to be working for me. The main benefit I am starting to feel is that I recover from runs so much more quickly. Often in the past it was difficult to get any quality in until late in the week because of the lingering effects of the Sunday long run. Now I feel I am running my Tuesday and Thursday track sessions at a higher intensity than I was before.
Mentally, everything seems to be falling into place for London, which is now only 54 days away. I ran a hilly 21 mile loop with my club mate Martin on Sunday and we covered the distance in 2:06, faster than my previous marathon pace and only slightly slower than my target pace. What pleased me more than my capacity to run at that pace, which I didn’t doubt given the right conditions, was my ability to push myself and stay focused for longer. Last month I blogged about the merits of doing long runs in groups compared to solo efforts, and the group long run every Sunday is really starting to pay dividends. The first of these was Sunday’s 2:06, a time that led Martin, as well as some of my American fellow runners on the Letsrun Marathon training forum, to revise his prediction downwards from 2:35 to 2:30. This does seem like a big step, given that I only broke 1:15 for the half recently. I am racing in a half marathon next weekend and then testing out my pace in a 20 mile race the following weekend. These should be good indicators of the shape I’m in.
If I can run 1:12 I will know I need to be targeting about 2:32 and will set my pace (5:48 per mile) accordingly, but if the time is closer to 1:15 then I will stick with my 2:35 pace of 5:55 per mile.
Of course everything depends on how I run on the day. I could set off too fast, I could be tripped, I could get ill or injured the week before. You can do all the training in the world and still have a bad day. I just like to think of hard training as something that reduces the probability of that happening. As the famous golfing expression goes: ‘The more I practise, the luckier I get.’
Mile reps are one of my least favourite sessions and this week’s session was no exception.
My training partners and I are roughly following a cycle for our Tuesday sessions that goes: k reps, mile reps, 2k reps, 3k reps, time trial, which means that it’s about a month between similar sessions. The beauty of doing sessions on a 4- or 5 week cycle is is gives you a monthly update on the progress you are making. When I’ve got time I’ll also trawl through the 2010 sessions to see how my times compare to a year ago.
The update this week was a promising one, which I see as an indication that the high mileage experiment is starting to pay off. I feel stronger and more able to run on tired legs. No surprise really, given that that my legs are rarely anything but tired these days. I managed 5 reps, compared to 4 last time, and this time off the back of a heavier preceding week. The splits were also better, with an average of 5:12 compared to an average of 5:15 in January. This was mainly to do with the presence of a clubmate running them at a similar pace to me. We shared the work out. Well sort of. We ran at a comfortable pace for 3, I did one on my own and then tried in vain to chase him down on the fifth.
This session was probably the toughest I’ve done for a while. I probably haven’t trained this hard since the Autumn when I did 10x1k on my own. Heavy wind and rain added an extra challenge that was probably more mental than physical.
I can’t say I enjoyed it but certainly got a lot out of it. 8 weeks until London!
Monday 14th February 2011
Perfect Monday morning viewing.
This is a perfect reflection of the amount runners think about running and how little other people understand, and it sums it all up in just under 6 minutes, which is just about my mile pace for the marathon. Oops.