I’ve just returned from an amazing, invigorating, inspirational run camp. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a good get-together with other runners and it was much overdue. It was great to talk to other runners about their races, their training, their experiences – I’ve come away with ideas about how to improve my training, other races to think about racing, and with plenty of inspirational stories ringing through my head.  And with two tough speed sessions on Saturday (including my first ever standalone 5k!) and a very slow and muddy and windy off-road long run on Sunday it’s reminded me of how much I love to run.

In my desire and need to become a better cyclist and swimmer by this summer, running has very much come in third place.  I’ve got a place in this year’s Boston marathon (and am going!) but will not be racing it.  And that’s not me sandbagging – I’m not doing enough running to race it, and I don’t want to give myself the recovery time afterwards.  I want to get back to training as soon as I get off the plane in the UK, and so Boston for me will be many many things – a get together with friends and my mother, a celebration of running, a desire to be part of the response to last year’s terrorism – to show that terrorism will not diminish us, or scare us. But it will not be a race, and I’m good with that.

Inevitably, while talking to people at the weekend, we’d talk about races, about times, about PBs, and about goals.  Some of the people on the weekend were very fast (Liz Yelling was there, who has a 2:28 and change marathon PB, and Louise Damen who is representing Great Britain with a 2:30 PB) and some were not so fast.  And one woman  in particular brought up a topic that has been swirling round in my head for the past weeks.  She told me of a moment that had occurred when she was working out with other runners where she had felt so much slower than the others that she had burst into tears.  The person leading the workout had gently pointed out to her that, while she was slower, she was working at least as hard as the others in her intervals and that all he, as the coach, was interested in was effort.  She rallied and her running (and confidence) has gone from strength to strength.  In simple terms, she came to believe that she was a runner regardless of how fast she was.  And once she had that self-belief in place, she could tackle all sorts of challenges.

I’ve recently had this conversation with Adam who’s started crossfit (I stopped after one session but more on that another time).  There was a point where he felt he was the weakest, the slowest, and the oldest person in the “box” (I just can’t deal with that word, but anyway).  He asked me whether he was just being an idiot but I said no – he was not.  But he was dealing with a tough situation – it can be hard to appreciate your own efforts when you feel they fall so short of what those around you are doing.   And of course – coming round to me – you knew I was going to get there – this is something I struggle with a lot.  I am working hard, really hard, but am still painfully slow in the pool and on the bike.  I feel like I’m surrounded by talented, fast, people, and to nobody’s surprise, I am not one of them.   I regularly have to fight my desire to give up.  Not because a workout is too hard, but because I think “why bother? Who am I kidding?”.  Right now, I would dearly like to see some progress but all I can see is that I’m running slower than I have in a long time.  My head knows that this is how it’s going to go – that the progress will come, but it will be slow, and that my running speed will suffer.  And my head is okay with it.  But my heart struggles.  So many well intentioned friends ask me about my training and share their well intentioned views “you should be cycling much further by now”, “you should be cycling must faster by now”, “you should be swimming much further by now”, “you should be swimming much faster by now”.  Honestly, the tears often brim behind my eyes.  Thank god for my coach, who’s on the receiving end of many a panicky email.  Thank god for my other training friends, who know how it feels to be so out of your depth.  Your Lululemon bag may exhort you to “do something that scares you” but I tell you – when you’re doing something that scares you it’s an extremely frightening experience.

So here I sit, with legs that are battered from this weekend’s running and a mixed-result long bikeride today. And I am going to tell you why, despite all the above, I am doing something I’m not very good at:

• because being good is relative.  To others.  Remember when I won my age group in a marathon last year?  That was amazing.  And I could and did focus on that.  But I could also focus on the fact that it was a small race.  That there weren’t many in my age group.  And I could tell you that the woman who came in just behind me told me that she thought she would have beaten me if she hadn’t been breastfeeding.  But that day, she didn’t beat me.  This year she probably will beat me.  So all you’ve ever got – right up until Olympic level – is where you are on the day, and where the others are relative to you on that day.  I’ve said before that I want to stop comparing myself to others, because, apart from anything else, it’s such a pointless exercise.   There ARE faster people out there.  And I’ve just go to deal with that, and put it one side.  And focus on myself.
• And related to that – why does it matter that I’m not very good at it? I’m not making a living from this.  This is my hobby.  I keep bringing myself back to this.  Pushing myself beyond my personal limits is what I like to do – what makes life interesting to me. This is what takes me on journeys, mentally and physically.  What leads me to meeting all the people – new friends – I met this weekend.  That’s why I do all of this.  To experience life to the full.
• And the final reason I can think of why I am doing something I’m not very good at is because I’m a mother.  My kids are constantly being made to do stuff they’re not necessarily good at.  Academic work they may struggle with, social situations they have never faced before, sports they find difficult or not enjoyable.  Little of this is a choice as a child – you just have to get on with it.  As you get older, you get to choose more.  The subjects you study, the sports you do, and more and more, the social situations you are happy with.  And that’s a really good thing.  But it can also mean that you get my age – 42 – and you forget a) what it’s really like for your kids and b) just how much you are settled into your comfort zone.  Learning something new when you’re older is really hard and often precisely because you’ll find yourself surrounded by people who have been doing it for a long time and / or are very good at it (lord do I wish I had been a swimmer in my teens).  But I want to show my kids that you are not “done” at 42 – that my character and interests and limits have not been finalised yet – in the hope that they will always realise that they too have far more options available to them than might sometimes be apparent.  Especially if they can get over the part where they’re not very good at it…

So I’m back at it.  Back in the game.  I do this because I want to do it, and I do it because I love it.  The running weekend reminded me of that and for that I am truly grateful.

As those of you who have been following my blog for a while know, 2 1/2 years ago I changed careers (again!) and qualified to be a personal trainer.  Yup, in a period of immense change and upheaval for my family, I decided I needed to add something to my already overloaded plate and live and learn in London every week.  It was tough, on me and on my family.  I never really blogged about that at the time, because I felt badly enough about that as it was and I didn’t want to dwell on it.  Let me just say it was a difficult and tiring and interesting and fun and challenging time – all at once.  I don’t seem to be able to rip myself away from making moves like that…

However, the point I was going to make, bringing this up, was that prior to this time I had no experience of a personal trainer, or really, of a coach.  I had used someone to coach me for Boston 2011, thinking it would make me run faster, but I don’t think I knew what questions to ask, or what goals to set, and so the experience, while fine at the time, didn’t leave me thinking that having (or being) a coach was something I ever wanted.  If I’m really honest, when I started my course in London I kind of thought I was onto a little wheeze: I couldn’t really understand why people needed a personal trainer (after all, I’d coached myself off the sofa and eventually to a BQ without one, and managed to lose a mass of weight in the process) but hey – it was something people would pay for, so why not?  As so often when I think the laugh is on others, this one backfired on me.  Even in training, on the course, I could see how much harder and how much more focused I would work when others were watching me.  I would do things I would never have done on my own (even going into the weights part of a gym – that had never been something I was comfortable with) and, because someone was helping me and managing what I was doing, I was willing to try things I was afraid of.

Fast forward to the spring of 2013, and after futzing around for some months with the idea of triathlon while struggling to get my own business off the ground, I decided to once again get a coach.  This time I was more focused.  I wanted my coach to understand my goal – to complete a half ironman – and to have done this herself.  She has.  But more than this, I wanted my coach to appreciate that this goal, of completing a half ironman, was completely outside of my comfort zone.  I had not done this before, and was terrified.  I wanted her to understand this.  I wanted her to understand me.  And she does.  She too comes from a background of not doing that much and then turning to endurance athletics.  She blogs brilliantly and honestly about her own training.  She is a kindred spirit.

I’ve been reflecting this week on how great it is to have a coach.  Finding a coach is a tricky thing – I know plenty of people who go through one coach after the other.  Like any other important relationship in your life you need to just click – there needs to be some kind of understanding.  Lots of my friends have coaches, or are coaches.  And I can see that all of their relationships with their coaches are different.  For me – after 18 months with the same coach – I’ve realised some truths about myself and how I like to be coached.  In a nutshell: I am needy.  High maintenance.  Not for me someone who just says “warm up, do 10 x 800 at marathon pace”.  Oh no.

• Sometimes I’m needy because I’m not working hard enough and I whine because I want someone to let me off the hook;
• Sometimes I’m needy because I’ve worked really hard and I want some praise;
• Sometimes I’m needy because I’m all screwed up comparing myself to Chrissie Wellington and I find myself falling short.

So my coach basically can rely on 3 phrases:

• HTFU – get moving girl and quit making excuses.
• well done.  Good job.
• STOP BEING SO HARD ON YOURSELF!

Time these comments correctly, and coaching Petra is done.  And she does – and more.  Point is though, overall – figure out what works for you.  My coach likes lots of feedback, and I like giving lots of feedback.  She’s very detailed on what she wants me to do in each workout – and I like that detail.

Beyond the generalised therapy point (an important one for me), however, being coached has other advantages:

• coaches design a personalised periodised training plan.  Have you ever done that?  I have.  It’s hard.  I like paying someone else to do it for me because lord knows I’d procrastinate the hell out of mine and NEVER get it done.
• it makes you accountable.  I don’t run with a group, occasionally I cycle with a group.  The only thing I do on a regular basis with others is swim.  So having to update my workouts every day means I can’t futz around and pretend I’m doing what I’m not.
• Coaches with experience have experience.  Duh – but it’s great.  I can ask my coach anything.  Nutrition, what to wear while doing Ironman, managing pee breaks, periods, transitions, technical stuff – there’s reams of things I have questions about and who better to ask than a woman who has qualified for and raced Kona?

And finally – there’s an element of handing over control.  Once again I am staring a big scary goal in the eyes. I can’t say that, at this point, Ironman seems any less daunting than it seemed when I first signed up.  Sure, I’ve been swimming and running and biking for the past 4 months, but good lord! – 140.2.still seems such a terrifyingly long way to go.  But this is where my coach is amazing.  I don’t know Ironman.  But she does.  She has done this.  She has trained lots of people to do this.  So if she thinks I can do this, then I can.  When you get your coach right, it gives you confidence.

Bringing you all down to earth now after singing her praises – I don’t only have a coach, I also am a coach.  It’s a little bit like being a new parent when you’ve had great parents.  The standards I set myself are sky high and my mistakes shine brightly.  Given all the above, being a coach is quite terrifying.  The trust that my clients put in me sometimes takes me aback.  But, feeling the fear and doing it anyway is how I’m rolling these days, so I’m going with it.  And, as so often happens, I’m loving it.  In this past year I have learned, to my enormous surprise, that it really is as good when your clients (who are all friends) do well in races that they’ve trained hard for as when you do well yourself.  It’s incredible to watch someone grow in ability, speed and confidence and to see them bring all that to race day.  To do, in whatever way, something they often didn’t believe possible.  So, inadequate as I sometimes feel at it, I’m going to take what I can from my coach and give it to my clients / friends – passing the good stuff all round. So apply as appropriate: “HTFU! Get moving girl / boy and stop making excuses / Well done. Good job / STOP BEING SO HARD ON YOURSELF!”.

When I last updated this blog I was all excited and happy – training was going well, I felt like I was finally making some progress and all was good with me and my world.  Very little has happened since …  except that training kind of fell off a bit.  A few of you commented that I was already training kind of long hours this far away from my target race – and that threw me into a bit of a tailspin.  I know a lot of people – probably more serious ironman competitors, to be fair – who are putting at least 10 hours a week in already and whose distances covered are demoralisingly long.  But I get what you were trying to say – it’s kind of hard to keep that kind of focus and intention for a long time.  To be fair, some of the training time I was putting in were workouts with my clients.  My clients are strong and fast, and workouts with them are workouts for me.  However, they are, in most cases, not focused Ironman workouts.  Overall, my specific Ironman training load is not so heavy.  And in the past weeks, it has not been heavy at all…  Usually I’m great about keeping up marathon training in the holidays. This year?  I took my eye off the ball.  I overcommitted myself socially in a way only I seem able to manage. In general, I veer between behaving like a hermit and wanting to be the life of the party – I spent a little too much time on the far side of that equation this holiday.  I did not treat training like my job, and, of course, it promptly fell off the end of the list.  However, it is what it is and here I am on January 1st filled with determination that between now and July training is my job. The job that needs to be done first, importantly.

Which leads me into what I’m going to share with you today.  Instead of telling you about my new year’s resolutions, I am going to share the things that I know are true but which I seem to choose to sometimes forget about and pretend I don’t know are true.  This year, I’m going to try to acknowledge these truths and not waste endless time and much emotional energy rediscovering these truths every time.  And feeling like an idiot when I do.

• I am a morning person.  I need to train first thing in the morning.  This works best for me, for my family and with my job.  So no procrastination – those of you who see me on FB first thing in the morning feel free to ask me if I’m procrastinating and need to get on my bike / out on the run / into the pool.
• Comparing myself to others is stupid and a complete and utter waste of time. I know this.  I really know it.  But I still waste endless time feeling incompetent comparing myself to faster, better, better-looking, more disciplined others. (not just when it comes to triathlon or running but in all aspects of life).  That just has to stop.  Any tips?
• I need to write about stuff.  Writing about stuff, whether here about my training or in my journal about life in general, helps me find more direction in my life, helps me to think about how I’m living my life and to ensure that it’s in line with my bigger goals.  When I don’t blog or write in my journal, I become very reactive.  I’ll do my training, but without considering why and often not pushing myself hard enough.  In life, I find myself caught up in endless errands and paperwork, with no clear prioritities.  In both aspects of my life I then make little progress and get even more frustrated.  5 minutes a day of figuring out what I’m intending to achieve that day, as an athlete and as a mother, wife, friend and trainer makes life feel so much more focused.

And my final word is this – I am slowly, slowly beginning to realise just how much I am able to affect my mood and overall wellbeing myself.  How much difference a change in attitude can make.  And so that is my resolution for 2014 – to remember that, when the crap hits the fan (which it inevitably does, for all of us) I always, always, can change my attitude.  Let’s see how that goes!

Have you ever left anything so long that you can’t get back to it, even when you want to, because the fact you’ve left it so long means you don’t know where to begin?  Can you guess what I’m talking about?  This blog, maybe?

The only way to get to this, is, I think, to yadda yadda yadda a great deal of the past 3 months.  Bullet yadda for me:

• I did what I said I was going to do.  I took a break.  I went on holiday.  I ran a little bit, but mostly I sat or I walked and I talked and I canoed and I drank beer and I laughed and I got hot and bothered and very occasionally I cried – I basically lived for a good 6 weeks where life went on and I didn’t have a schedule.  And it was good.  I slept in, we traveled and I felt released from the feeling of “I’ve got to get my run in” or “get to bed on time because tomorrow’s a heavy day”.

  

• September was a bit of a rude awakening – the kids went back to school and I was faced with a pile of admin that had been cooking for a month or two and two quite big stressful situations.  I won’t bore you with the details and none of it is life-threatening, but for the first time in my life I have found myself having to use a lawyer to resolve a work situation and, rather awkwardly, a lawyer to resolve a US immigration situation.  Both situations have been hugely stressful and I have found myself completely swept up in the drama of it all.
• A couple of highlights in there – I met Chrissie Wellington (oh yes!).  An incredibly inspiring woman, particularly because she has led such a rich life beyond sport and so has incredible perspective.
• And my main man, my wonderful husband ran his first marathon last Sunday.  What a day!  He did so well, ran to plan and finished (almost) strong.  It was my first time spectating and man, I love it! It was amazing and so inspiring to see everyone out there.

And what of Ironman, I hear you ask?  Well – there’s the rub.  I wanted a challenge and I really seem to have picked it.  So far, the training has not been too tough and I have been able to hang on with most of it.  I’ve managed to pick up a shoulder injury with swimming (which is now spilling over into my biking) but even that is kind of manageable.  I think.

The real rub is my attitude.  Life has been busy and I have not taken the time to reflect.  Taking the time to write in a journal, or on my blog (which is basically a journal) seems like yet another thing to do.  And when you’re busy you’re just charging through your to-do list, you know?  Except.  Except that when I’m really honest plenty of time is wasted even when I am busy.  And more pertinently – not setting out any intentions, or directions, for myself means that I end up living in a very reactive way.  And training in a very reactive way.

The real challenge with this Ironman training is going to be the place it takes up mentally in my life.  I’ve got used to fitting in marathon training around the rest of my life.  But this is a different beast.  Ironman training takes up more time – to train, but also to prepare to train (bike rack on car, check bike over, helmet, shoes, water bottle, keys) and to recover from training.  And I hadn’t really realised that until this week when both children are home from school and suddenly I’ve struggled to fit in my training.  I’ve got to prepare.  (Not one of my strengths).  And prioritise.

And most importantly, I’ve got to focus.  I need to focus on the workout I’m doing, not just do it.  And if I want to do the things I do besides Ironman training – be there for my husband and kids, cook good meals, read books etc – then I’ve got to focus. And I’ve almost been avoiding taking the time to do this.

So this totally uneventful blogpost – sorry – is my call to arms.  To myself.  Focus Petra.  Figure out what I have to do, and how I’m going to do it.  Stand by people.  Because this is all going to start happening!

It has been 5 weeks since I have blogged and I’ve kept away because, well, there’s not that much news.  I’d worked so hard, physically and mentally, to get to my goal time, my goal race this year.  When I finally did it, I was done.  Cooked.  Finished.  Tired, emotional, and just done.  I took a week or so off from running which didn’t feel hard – I could barely move for days.  And then, like a mad squirrel, my mind started doing a number on me.  Prompted by some extremely unflattering race photos I went into a mini tailspin of self-loathing and cock-eyed plans for completely overhauling my life (style).

And I know, I know.  You’re all going to tell me it’s about the angle, and that I don’t look bad at all – and you’re right, I know.  I was in a double maelstrom (another great word, sadly underused) of self-loathing – on the one hand I was just whining: “Why do I look like that?  It’s not fair!  Why do I have short stubby legs? I work so hard? Why can’t I look like Kara Goucher running and wear some of those tiny little pants and look all amazing and lithe instead of like some farmer’s wife (oh irony) who could pull the plough when the cow gave up?”.  And on the other hand I was SO angry with myself for thinking this crap “FGS woman you just ran a hard and fast marathon, you’r strong, you’re healthy, this IS your body and it’s serving you well, why are you succumbing to all this outside pressure of how you should look when not matter WHAT you do you will never have longer legs (really? No!) and celebrate what you are and have done instead of whining about what you don’t have”.  Yes, so this whole episode was just super productive as you can imagine and you’ll be delighted you’re not hearing more of my internal monologue.

Strangely enough, after a few days I realised that this kind of unpleasant mental torture is pretty much to be expected.  I had been working towards a goal for so long that letting it go was hard.  My brain was just futzing around with nothing to do but this kind of ridiculous mental torture. I was trying to come up with all sorts of new goals (go vegan! Ironman! Ultramarathons! ) and then I realised I just needed to stop.  If I want to have any level of success with whatever I do next I need to take time off.  I need to focus on letting go of goals.  Sounds difficult, but essential.  And while I struggle with that kind of balance, realising that I needed to just concentrate on not concentrating meant that I could do that.  So what have I been doing?

• I have been running. My first ultra is in a week and to say I feel unprepared is an understatement.  Navigation is necessary (I bought a fancy schmanzy new compass) but can I use it? Ugh. Girl Scouts was a loooong time ago (and I don’t think I ever did get my navigation badge).  Also 30 miles?  Very much off-road?  Not even trails all the way – sometimes just brambles and gorse? Hills?  Not to mention that it is finally finally finally summer here (and I have vowed not to complain about it) but holy heat, hills and loooooong distance..  Next Saturday is going to be a very very long day.
• I have cleaned up my diet. I have never (I think) talked about diet on this blog.  You know that I lost weight to get to where I am now and you probably figured out I did that by eating less.  Beyond that I have rarely wanted to talk about diet – I feel so much of online diet talk on blogs, websites and social networking sites is faddy, gimmicky, fat-shamey and completely unscientific.  However.  I have been eating a lot of crap recently – primarily sugar.  The past months have seen a lot of driving and I was basically getting through these long drives with sweets and caffeine.  I have stopped doing that.  Instead I fill the car with water bottles (and add an extra 30 mins onto my drive for the pee breaks), fruit and small packets of nuts.  I am just, basically, cutting the processed stuff out of my diet.  I have been suffering with some major GI stuff on and off for the past 6 months (in the days before London I could barely take on any nutrition) and I’m also having some tests there.  Boring, but hopefully it will resolve the situation and I will get back to feeling on top form.  And, like so many female runners I know, I am anaemic and that’s not helping either.

Beyond that – I’m ready for a break.  I have some ideas about what’s next in terms of a big hairy-assed goal, but am letting it percolate a bit.  It would be a HUGE commitment and I need to be rested and well to contemplate doing it.  So I head to Canada and the US for 2 weeks at the end of this month and intend to just do the odd run here and there (can’t not run along the waterfront in Toronto, or in Central Park) but other than that it will be some much needed time off.  Stand by my friends – big things are coming!

On Saturday, I got it right.  It was my 10th marathon and I took lessons from each previous one. And on Saturday it all came together.  Most things worked, and I was able to handle the things that didn’t.  What worked for me:

• the course.  17 laps of an undulating, tarmac-ed bike course allowed me to pace myself accurately.  After a few laps I knew where my pace would drop and where it would pick up on the course, where the wind would hit me and where the steep climb would be.  I could plan for what lay ahead.  There was no real sense of gaining on people or being gained on – people would lap me and I lapped others but it simply meant you ran sections with different people – you were never on your own and you could encourage each other as you wound round the course.
• the atmosphere.  It was a small race – 322 finishers – and a new race and the race director was the friendliest, most approachable race director I have ever come across.  His determination to make this a great race for the runners meant that it ran like clockwork and everyone responded to his attitude by being incredibly friendly and approachable.
• the weather – beyond my control but it was overcast (though my sunburn tells me there must have been more sun than I realised) and breezy.  I HATE wind despite training in it year round but for the first time ever – in training or racing – I just set that aside, and actually ran strong into the sections with headwind, telling myself it was cooling me down when I needed that.
• music.  I’ve never raced with headphones on before but in the spirit of doing something different from what I had done before (remember, the opposite of me is a BIG thing for me when life is not working out as I wish) I did borrow my son’s iPod and loaded it up with Scissor Sisters and Lady Gaga, just in case.  As soon as the going got tough (mile 16ish?) I put on the headphones and focused on the music whenever I could feel myself slipping.  It really, really worked. I don’t think I will race with music much, but it really helped me this day.
• nutrition.  Over the past 2 marathons (Boston in 2011 and London in 2013) my coaches have persuaded me to eat more than I want to in a race and Mary is particularly adamant about it.  I suspended my own judgement and chugged down a gel every 30 mins (I know!) and even forced myself to down a gel at 3h 20mins when I hoped to not have much time left to run – and I think they helped massively to keep me going.

The few things that didn’t work me, but that I managed to handle were:

• not enough water. Surprisingly, given that it was easy to set up water stations on a lapped course there was only one water station.  To be fair to the race organisers they allowed us to set up our own water and feed stations in a specific zone but I had decided not to do that.  Bad decision as the water was in flimsy plastic cups that I could not drink from without stopping (costing me precious seconds) and I found I wanted water when I was not near the water station (for a salt tab or a gel).  If I do this again I will set up a feed station with some hand held bottles for myself.
• cramping.  Not as bad as in London but in the last 4 or 5 miles I definitely cramped up in my feet, hamstrings and quads.  It seemed to affect me particularly when I was running uphill but I made myself run through it and it tended to die down a little again when the surface flattened.  After the race, however, it was something else.  For about an hour or so after the race, cramp kept shooting into my legs and a few times I cried out in pain and had to ask strangers to straighten out my feet or legs.  Any tips on this?
  

  A new pair of lucky pants – what more could a girl want?

 

The big thing that worked, however, was me.  I just had my head together on Saturday.  Driving down to Kent on the Friday afternoon I listened to Talk Ultra and they interviewed various runners in the Transvulcania race.  They’re all incredibly impressive, thoughtful, funny and surprisingly modest interviewees – just so happy to run! – but the interview that really stuck with me was an interview with Cameron Clayton.  At one point he says that he’ll probably set off a bit too fast in his upcoming Western States 100. Asked about this he says”I’m totally willing to take a risk and blow up if that’s going to happen (..) it’s worth it to me.  To go out there and (..) put yourself on the line – if it doesn’t work out at least you can say you did it and if it does work out you do something stupendous so both win wins for me.  I mean, one has a lot more suffering than the other”.  I actually replayed the podcast a number of times in my hotel room so I could write this down.  Sometimes you just hear the right thing at the right time, and this was exactly what I needed to hear.  I have written before on how I never have done much competing in any field and have always shied away from it.  Recently I’ve come to see that I sometimes give up on something early – because I’m so scared of giving it my all and then “failing”.   That is ridiculous behaviour and I know it.  So what I took from Cameron’s message was to really put myself on the line and put myself in a situation where I might blow up and not be afraid.  I went into this race knowing that there was a possibility I could (as coach Mary put it) bang out the 8:15-8:20 min/miles.  And I did it. I banged them out.  At about 16 miles I got my usual dehydration panic (shivery skin in hot sun) but instead of slowing down or even stopping I just told myself “no – you are putting yourself out there – just do it!  You might just do something stupendous (I LOVE that word) but it’s going to hurt so just deal with it”.  And I did – I just did not let my mind go to dark places and just kept telling myself that it would be worth it.  When my legs started to cramp up again I felt like slowing down and I again I told myself “no – there will come a time when you can stop but that is not now.  You want that 3:38 and you are going to have to keep banging out those miles if you want it.  And you want it.  So do it”.  I crossed the mat at 3:37:39 (chip time) and collapsed into a chair for a good 10 minutes, before going up the race director and thanking him for making me my pace band.  Only for him to tell me to stick around as I had won the Female Veteran 40 prize!  ME! A PRIZE! I HAVE VERY VERY RARELY WON A PRIZE!  EVER!  IN ANYTHING!   To win a prize in a marathon is incredible to me – I was just SO made up.  As you can see – the smile is just about busting out of my head.

I am still on cloud nine.  About all of it.  About running a race and loving it, about pushing past my own self-limiting behaviour, about believing in myself and the hard work I’ve put in in the past 5 months, about getting that elusive sub 3:40 time I so wanted.  And getting a prize is the icing on the cake.

So – what’s next? Right now I’m still limping up and down stairs I’m in pain where the cramping was and I imagine that will last a few more days.  I now have what I wanted – the opportunity to apply for a Boston place in 2014 in the qualifying time +5 minutes group.  If that gets me in, I will be in Boston.  If it doesn’t get me in that’s fine too.  I can live with however it works out.  When I finished London I knew I was not done.  Right now, I am done.  Done with chasing this goal.  I’ve achieved my goal and right now I’m not sure where next to take things.  The ultras this summer (Intro Ultra on July 14th and Thames Towpath 50K in September) will keep me running and I’m happy to let go of big goals for the time being.  I know I need the mental break from chasing a time but if anyone has a suggestion for a good race to run or a goal to train for – let me know!

Getting my stuff together for this weekend’s race it struck me that, over the course of the past 10 years in running so much has changed.  My first marathon was the New York City marathon in 2005 and woah – was it a huge deal for me!  I had a 5 year old and a not-quite-3 year old at home. Getting the training in was tough.  I trained following a Hal Higdon method, on my own, on the trails on the farm where we live.  The arrangements to get away were elaborate.  My parents flew across from the Netherlands to look after the kids and Adam and I tagged a week’s holiday onto it.   I ran a fairly slow race (4:55) but loved every minute of it and basked in the glory of doing something I had never believed within my abilities.

I followed that race with Chicago in 2006, Amsterdam in 2007, White Peak in 2008 (I think? The race I didn’t train for.  Won’t do that again!), Chicago in 2008, London and Berlin in 2009, Boston in 2011 and London again in 2011. Over the course of that time my running goals changed.   From running to complete I slowly (and slow is the key here – it took me a long time!) transformed into running to compete.  My training changed – I introduced speed work and tempo runs.  In the past 6 months I have introduced strength work and core work.  I have added cycling and swimming to my cross training.  And I have got faster.

But that first race was about so much more than just doing a marathon.  I was astonished by myself and what I could do – that this formerly fat girl, who had let go of a bit of her zip and her drive when she moved to the country and stopped working and started having babies – could actually turn things around, turn herself around.  That all this stuff about believing in yourself and being the change you want to see was true!  In those first years, I also raced to have a break from my adored but demanding small children and to have a grown-up holiday.  I traveled to Chicago with my mother in 2006 (still a memorable holiday – so glad I did this) and met up with blogging buddies there 2 years later.  Running and racing gave me an outlet, a goal, a community to connect with that I credit with the enormous growth and development I feel I went through in my 30s.

While I’m happy to overshare on the details of my life, I don’t often talk about the specifics.  Often, they are just not necessary for you to understand where I’m coming from.  But I have come to realise that moving to rural England when you’re an educated, professional, essentially urban girl with a very international background, is not an easy thing.  I jumped in with two feet at 29 – and with no idea of what I was giving up (a career, friends in London, a whole way of life) or what I was getting into. It’s quiet round here.  Empty.  Many of the people we know socially through our kids school or locally don’t run.  The predominant interest of many women in my position round here is horses.  Followed by gardening.  And I respect both of those hobbies but don’t share them.  I happened upon running out of desperation, as a way out of the loneliness and boredom and fatness that I was feeling.  And it has repaid me not only with weight loss but with travel when I needed a break from my life here, goals when I was struggling to redefine myself away from the working world, and friends.  Near and far – I have met so many of you and hope to meet so many more of you.  A community of like-minded people whose lives are often extremely different in every way who share this love of running and where it can take us.  Ultimately, running has led me to build up a new career as a personal trainer that is rooting me here in the countryside in a whole new way and which is so much more fulfilling than the path I was on professionally in my late twenties.

This Saturday’s race is not a destination race (the race course is wedged between a motorway and the trainline for the Eurostar to Paris).  Nobody I know is coming with me (though the other runners and I are already making friends on the runnersworld events pages). I’ll travel there alone, sleep in a motel, get up, race and go home again.  I am racing this race to race, to test myself.  To see how the work that I put in will come out.  To see if I can face that demon that always comes along and tells me I can’t do it and face it down.  To see how hard I can push myself and to discover something within myself that I won’t see in any other aspect of my life. And strangely enough, I’m looking forward to this race as much as I looked forward to the New York City marathon in 2005.  Bring on Saturday!

So, as soon as I sat down on the timing mat at the London marathon I thought “this is not how I want to end this training cycle”.  The PR was fantastic and hard, HARD-fought.  But the experience of the race was so very unpleasant.  I have never before run a race and wanted to quit right away.  Anyway.  You know all that – you read my race report and enough of that jeremiad.  Looking back I think various things contributed to this really unpleasant race – I have had ongoing GI issues which really erupted in the days prior to the race and which may have left me more depleted than I had hoped, it was far hotter than any weather I had trained in, and, well – it just wasn’t my day?

Waaaaaay back in January, when I was seriously doubting that I’d ever be ready to run London in April, I entered a “just in case” marathon.  I searched high and low for a marathon with PB potential some time after London.  That way, I figured, if I wasn’t race-ready by April, I’d have another bite at the cherry a few weeks later.  I settled on the Kent Roadunner Marathon. I picked it because it’s very different from the London marathon.  Only 300 entrants, to begin with.  And more than that – the race is run in laps on a 2.493 km smooth tarmac cycle course.  17 laps.  I didn’t give the matter much thought but I’m always up for something different, and the race is a certified course so I booked a hotel, put it in my diary and put it all to the back of my mind.

Until 3 weeks ago.  Usually, after a marathon, I take a couple of weeks off completely.  I might run, but it will be a jog. There will be no schedule, no plan.  Mentally and physically I will feel done, done for, and cooked.  But this time I really wasn’t.  I knew I had to take it easy for a week or two, but 10 days into it I emailed my coach “I want to do this marathon in Kent!”.  She probably shook her wise head all the way over in Massachusetts and thought “she’s crazy” but off we went.  Now here we are -6 days away from the race – and I’m feeling good to go!  I’ve done a 16 miler, a 19 miler and a 14 miler as long runs, I’ve done some hard speed work and some decent hill workouts.  And this week I’ve suddenly got this feeling of what I call “juice in the box” – when I set off to run easy, I’m running fast.  I’m having to hold back.  It’s a great feeling.

And I won’t sandbag this- I am hoping that next Saturday I can get under that 3:40 mark. I have no issue with running laps – most of my long runs are run as lapped runs to make fuelling easier – and I’m hoping that the laps (and my custom pace band – working out my pacing without mile markers but on each 2.493 km lap) make it easier to stay consistently on pace, rather than let my pace race all over the place like I did in London.  But most of all, I want to enjoy this race.  I know that running that pace starts hard and gets harder but – at points in the race – I want to smile while I’m hurting and feel “right” again. Here goes!

And after this, I’d better not be feeling done, done for and cooked.  Because mid-July I run my 30M ultra, and after exploring a tiny part of the course there last weekend I realise I’m in for a challenge and may have bitten if not too much to chew, about as much as I can handle.  The challenge is not just to run the 30M up and down the heather-covered hills and through the swampy bits at the bottom, across the rocks and sometimes off the trails (umm) but also to navigate.  I had a very spendy Saturday last week buying a new compass, race vest (which I LOVE – why have I not had one of those before?) and new rain gear which is compulsory for these races.  And, luckily, this week the weather has been so hideous that I got a chance to test my gear out in gale-force winds, hail and 5 degree C temps.

So there we have it – it’s taper week, once again.  I’m on it, I’m into it, I’m ready.  Bring it on!

 

I really don’t know what to write here.  I’m writing to gain some clarity rather than to present you with an overall edited view of the past 2 weeks, as I really don’t know what I think or feel.

The week leading up to the London marathon was overshadowed, rightly, by the events that occurred at the Boston marathon. Much has been written about that by others far better qualified than I to pass comment on what happened, but like so many others I found it an upsetting and unsettling time.  Worry for friends running the marathon (all of whom, thankfully, were safe) was followed by horror once the extent of loss of life and serious injury became clear.  One of the consequences of terrorist actions like these, taking place somewhere where they are so unexpected, is a sense of all-encompassing anxiety and fear – a realisation that there is no safe place.  Terrifying horrible events like this don’t just happen elsewhere, they can happen to you, right here.  Of course, the idea that we are somehow safe is often an illusion anyway, but one many of us rely to get through our days, to send our children to school, to get on planes and walk into city centres.  Or to cross marathon finish lines.

I had no real fear about safety at the London marathon.  I knew the response would be heightened and also, sadly, terrorism has been a threat in the UK, especially London, for decades.  Our police and emergency services are experienced in securing mass events overshadowed by the threat of terrorism.

And by Friday evening, when the bombers had been caught, it felt like the time was right for the London marathoners to run a race that acknowledged the tragedy that occurred but also that defied terrorism generally – to run, in public, in a big city marathon, was to say “I am not afraid”.  Picking up my race number at the expo on Saturday morning was as exciting as it always is – the sense of expectation and excitement, this feeling that the moment I’d been building towards had finally arrived.

Prep-wise, I did it all right this time.  Didn’t walk around too much on Saturday but did enough to make me tired.  I slept like a baby Saturday night and woke up an hour early which was fine.  Breakfast, travel to Greenwich – yadda, yadda,yadda – nerve-wracking as always but fine.  For the first time in months, it was a cloudless day that promised to be warm.  Like so many other places, England has been so cold these past months and it felt amazing to see the sun and feel the warmth on marathon Sunday.

Waiting around at the green start was a revelation – like other big city marathons, London is huge and divides their runners into 3 different start.  The green start is tiny – it’s the good for age runners and the celebrities – that’s it.  I’m terrible at estimates but it certainly felt like not much more than 1000 people there which was amazing in a race with 35000+ runners.

The pens were tightly policed and as soon as the gun went off, I could set off at my race pace.  But almost as soon as I crossed the start mat, I could feel that today was not my day.  I just had this feeling of dread.  I wanted to cry.  I really did not want to run.  I told myself that I was just warming up, this was just how I was meant to feel and to ignore these feelings.  The first miles felt physically easy, though I was mentally already counting down the miles (am I nearly at 6 miles?  Only 20 more to go. I know I can run 20 miles).  This feeling of unhappiness did not lift.  I was running hard and beginning to feel the warmth. I didn’t perk up until mile 14, when I had crossed Tower Bridge and had seen the elite men come the other way.  I suddenly felt like smiling at the people cheering (the crowds were immense) and I could feel myself, mentally, opening up.  I was still on pace for a 3:38 by mile 18 and, finally,  happy to be there.  And then I started to feel exactly what I felt in Berlin in 2009 – this feeling of shivering and sweating at the same time.  The heat (it felt like heat after the winter we have had) was wearing me down and I gulped water and salt tabs.  And then my quads suddenly seized up.  I could feel the cramps coming up and, just like that, I had to slow down.  The pain was intense. I so wanted to stop.  All the happiness I had felt for about 4 miles there had gone.  I thought about pulling out.  And then I thought about my friend Lizzie Lee, whose Boston marathon had been cut short by the bombings.  We have been blogging friends for years and have both pulled through some very tough miles drawing on each other’s experiences.  Her mile 17 in Boston was dedicated to me.  My miles 18-26.2 were dedicated to her.  I thought about how Lizzie would have given anything to have run her last mile or so and cross the finish.  For so many reasons.  And how I owed it to her to finish in whatever way I did.  So I gutted it out – that’s the only way I can express it.  I grimly pushed myself mile after mile, managing to squeeze in a surprise sub 8 minute mile between my overall pace which had dropped to 9:30s.  When I saw Dawn at mile 25 I cried.  And when I crossed the finish line I sat down.  Immediately.  I was helped to my feet by a volunteer shouting that I could not sit down, there were 30,000 people behind me.  But I was done with this race.  I was done with it at mile 1, at mile 3, at mile 7, and for most of the rest, but I fought that the whole way.  I lost my 3:40 goal, but made it to 3:41:45, a 4 minute PB over Berlin 2009 and a narrow BQ.

I was met by lovely friends afterwards and my wonderful husband and feted and admired and looked after.  I got such lovely texts and emails from so many of you and I really appreciate every one of them.  And all I could think of was “thank God that is over”.

Now – 5 days on – I have regained some perspective on it.  I can see that a 4 minute PB is wonderful.  I’m 41 and they are going to become increasingly tough to find, so I am, finally, celebrating mine.  I set out to BQ, long before the bombings, and I have done so.  I still don’t really understand why I had such a miserable time out there.  And maybe there is nothing to understand.  Maybe it was just a bad day.  We all have bad runs, and maybe, for once, for marathon number 9, I had a bad race.  I just never “felt it”.  I so enjoyed my recent race at Ashby despite the weather and the hills but this was nothing like it.  I was just down the whole way round.

I’m not sure what to do next.  I have my first “beginners” ultra booked in July.  30M in the Derbyshire hills.  This is going to be an entirely new challenge and one I am really ready for.  Way back, when I doubted whether I would be fit by London, I also booked myself in for a marathon at the beginning of June.  I am considering doing this – not so much to get my 3:40 but just to try to have some fun again.  I know that I miss training – I’ve loved training for this marathon and don’t want to stop.  Any advice, tips, insights from any of you would be really welcome.  And – before you worry – I am fine!  I really am!  I had a rough day out there and I don’t want to lie to you and say I enjoyed it – I didn’t.  But that feeling has gone and here I am ready to consider the next thing.  Onwards and upwards, always!

That’s right.  Like all those big, long-term goals this one has crept up on me.  The Virgin London marathon is nearly here – Sunday April 21st is raceday.  

It’s been 2 years since I last ran a marathon and I feel very similar to the way I sometimes feel at a birthday or another anniversary – a desire to process  what’s happened in the meantime.  

• I’ve retrained as a personal trainer.  Doing a course in London and being away from my family during a period of change and upheaval for them anyway was tough – I didn’t realise how tough until afterwards (but isn’t that often the case?).  I realise that a lot of my malaise and constant self-doubt last year was the hangover of emotion of being away from my family, of feeling constantly torn by guilt, and that feeling of just hanging in there for dear life.  Nevertheless I loved my course and made some great friends, and the career choice was the right one for me.  But it almost frightens me to think how deeply I now feel “never again”.  Those three months at the end of 2011 were too much.  Too much for my family and too much for me.  
• I took time off from running.  Triathlon was a great big scary thing for me and again, in retrospect I am astonished by my desire to throw myself straight into the unknown just after finishing my personal training course.  It would have made sense to stick with something I knew and was moderately good at so I could boost my self-esteem, but instead I did all this stuff that was new and intimidating.  And that I was not particularly good at.  But it didn’t kill me, and it did make me stronger.  

And here I am, about to head into my final week of tapering before the race.  My training has been very different from the marathon training I’ve done before – lower mileage, more strength work and now less of a taper.  I’m tapering (when I can stop myself from training with clients) but not as much.  I think that’s a good thing, as I think in the past I have sometimes switched off totally in the taper and not really woken up in time.  

The biggest change though is my mental one.  As you know I have really struggled with competition and competing and dealing with my own expectations and fears.  I know it’s not all about PRs and I know I’m not all about PRs but somehow I put that weight on my shoulder and I have not really found a way to deal with it.  Then, yesterday, I was explaining the concept of “sandbagging” to my husband and telling him proudly that I had “sandbagged” to someone – i.e lied to them about the time I hoped to run. He looked at me and asked me why I had done that.  And it’s taken me until this afternoon to really think about that.  Why would I lie and say to someone I was hoping to run a 3:45 when that’s not the time I am training for?  Fear of failure.  Why?  Honestly, sometimes I want to take myself outside and slap myself around a bit.  Failure?  What failure? Of setting yourself a goal and not achieving it?  How is that failure?  Would I judge another friend if she, for whatever reason, didn’t make the time she set out to make?  Is that what I want to teach my kids – lie about your goals so that nobody knows if you don’t make them?  Honestly.  I can be such an idiot.  Instead, I am probably setting myself up for “failure” by never even stating out loud what I am going for. The professional runners set out to win this thing.  They may well not win it, but they certainly won’t win it without believing they can.  And dammit, I am setting out to run faster than I have ever run before .  

So here’s the truth.  My PB, achieved with blood, sweat and some time in the medical tent in Berlin in September 2009 is 3:45:47.  This year I have trained for and am aiming for a sub 3:40 marathon.  I have a strategy and a plan, cooked up with my wonderful coach, Mary, who has held my pathetic, moaning, self-pitying hand on too many occasions over the course of this training cycle.  It is NOT an easy goal for me, it’s hard.  Things need to go my way for this goal to work out.  But I know from my experiences in previous races that I can handle adjusting my goals in a race if I have to. In Boston, where I also aimed for a sub 3:40 I had to slow down at 21 miles because I just did not have it in me and I just ran and enjoyed the city for the last 5 miles.  Look at that photo above.  Is that someone who is disappointed with herself?  My race strategy for the recent Ashby 20 is another case in point.  What my coach and I had in mind was undoable on that course on that day.  I reset my goal and still managed a massive PR.  The point is – I know I can handle it if I don’t make my goal.  I’ll figure out what to do.  But if I want to actually be in with a shot of making that time, I need to say it and I need to (forgive the Oprah-ism) own it. 

As someone told me just before the 2009 London marathon – “you’ve trained for months for this day, no point in going in gently and seeing what happens.  It’s time for balls to the wall”. So there you have it – April 21st – it’s balls to the wall!