petra runs

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!  

 

It’s been a loooooong time since I posted a race report. September 2012, in fact, for my half ironman.  And it’s been even longer since I reported on a running race.  Because I haven’t actually run a real running race since, uhm, Boston 2011.  And really, after last week’s rant on issues mostly unrelated to running I bet you’re all relieved to see me returning to talking about what this blog purports to be about – run Petra RUN! (And stop ranting!).

So this is a fresh one – I ran the Aldi Ashby 20M race today in Ashby-de-la-Zouche, Leicestershire (and yes that name seems weird to us in the UK as well).  It’s billed as the ultimate pre-London race and it is, in that by now everyone racing London is doing 20 mile runs and you might as well do them with water stations and company.  It isn’t great preparation in that it’s hilly which London isn’t. But I guess that means it’s harder than London in some respects, so that’s a good thing (ehmm).  Anyway.  I’ve done this race twice before (2009 and 2011) and each time I’ve really enjoyed it.  What I also really enjoy is that you get a hooded sweatshirt at the finish.  I know it’s not all about the goodie bag but when it’s a good one I’m happy.

Coming into this race I was feeling a bit jittery as my coach had set me a target time and pace – warm up for 2M, run 8M at 8:15 min/mile and then 8M at 8:00 min/mile, then 2M maybe a bit faster.  While I have run those paces as part of a long run, I have never run them for anywhere near those distances and I was feeling very nervous about it.  On the one hand I wanted to trust my coach but on the other hand I vividly remember trying to push too ambitious a pace on this course 2 years ago and coming completely unstuck.  I was internally dithering whether to follow her instruction or whether to run by feel and running the first two miles downhill in around 8:30 min/mile did not inspire me with confidence that I would be able to run much faster.  After 2 miles my Garmin beeped and within .2 of a mile it had started to beep at me that I was not on pace (I was heading uphill at the time).  I made the decision to switch off the planned workout and just run with speedy Sally as long as I felt able to.  I had been dreading this moment of abandoning my race plan for days and yet making that decision, so quickly into the race, felt like an enormous release.  The pressure was off.  And so we ran and ran and ran.  It started off dry but then it started raining. By mile 10 I could see the rain was freezing and soon it started to sleet and snow.  By mile 12 I lost Sal but by then I was in my zone – I felt myself running hard but just about hanging onto the pace.  I was trying to remember what I’d run at this race before (I thought it was 2:55) and thinking that, unless a disaster happened, I would beat my course record.  I ran past the point where the wheels came off in 2011 (it really stuck in my mind because I haven’t been here since) and felt great to be running strongly past it.  By mile 14 I had stopped looking at my watch – I could feel I was running hard and I didn’t feel I would be able to push any harder without risking a real slowdown before the finish.  Moreover, the strength and conditioning class I had taught on Thursday evening (with lots of squats, lunges, burpees and mountainclimbers) was making itself known – I have never had such painful and tightening hamstrings and glutes in a race before!  I was worried that if I pushed it any harder I would start cramping (though I have no idea whether that makes sense – I could just feel how painful and stiff and tight they were) and so I just hung in there.  The final 2 miles are uphill which was unwelcome but I made it across the finish, cold and wet and tired and sore, in 2:46: 52.

The only real downer of the day came when I was walking back to my car with two other runners and we got lost.  The elation of finishing soon wore off and I felt so cold and tired and sore.  We ended up having to climb over a few fences (a bit of a challenge after the race) to finally find our way to the carpark and our cars.  Where I, perhaps to the consternation of other runners, stripped down to my underpants to get my wet tights, socks and shoes off.  I was so cold I didn’t care and drove the whole way home with my seat heating blasting out and the car heating jacked to the max.

But the great news of the day came when I checked my previous race times while I waited for my bath to run – I have never run a 2:55 on this course, instead I ran 3:06:56 in 2009 and 3:07:36 in 2011.  So today was 20 minute course PR!  I am SO thrilled!  After all my jeremiads about getting older and slower it seems there is life in this old dog yet!  It’s particularly interesting because my coach has me on a much lower mileage plan than I was doing in those 2 years.  I rarely top 40M a week at the moment and was getting a bit concerned that I wasn’t doing enough.  But she’s very meticulous about my training and it seems the quality works!  The only other thing that is different from those years is that I am doing more strength work than I was doing then (I was doing NONE then) and I wonder whether that is keeping me stronger towards the end of a race?  It certainly made me stiff for this one – no more mountainclimbers before a long run – but it might improve my performance generally?

So much more to talk about and it feels weird to be posting something which doesn’t have much of my usual ponderousness in it but there you have it – when you’ve run as hard I did today it’s impossible to feel anything other than satisfied and tired.  And happily one-dimensional.

Oh man.  A part of me really regrets the post I put up a few days ago.  I’m ashamed and embarrassed about the self-pity I threw out there for everyone to see.  Sorry folks.  I thought about taking it down but your comments – I need to keep those up.  Up on the post, out there on the web, and right in front of me.  And they wouldn’t be there if I hadn’t had a public hissy fit, so my little tantrum will stay out there.  That’s right – you really get to see all of me – not just the pretty parts…

So you.  Onto you all.  I got fantastic comments on the blog, on FaceBook and also some private emails from people.  Thank you.  They felt like hugs – and some were – but there was also a lot of real, meaty advice in there that has helped, really helped me to progress mentally.

I realise, first off, that I am going to step away, for now, from focus on a PR or a specific time.  It induces anxiety (just a bit!) and more importantly, it’s actually counterproductive.  I spend so much time in my metaphorical bath stall crying and having my little panic tantrum that I’m not going to make it that I forget to just pay attention and get my training in.  Not that I haven’t been training – but I have not been focusing on that.  I have been focusing on my goal.  Not – as Ana Maria so succinctly puts it, focusing on the process.  The process is everything – it’s getting the runs right, it’s dealing with the challenges dealt by the weather, by flu, by fitting it around the rest of my life.  The result will then be what it is.  And ironically, the process is what I really enjoy.  Running here and now, the workouts ahead of me this week.  Building up the miles and the hard workouts, putting juice in my tank.  And then there is NOTHING I love more than race day, when I get to finally burn up ALL of that fuel that I have been storing, where I get to use ALL of my training miles, slow, fast, hard or easy.  And really and honestly – I know that once in that zone, I will run what I can run. And I will be completely filled up and fulfilled with that.

Another friend commented that “what we focus on, is what we become”.  I am still grappling with that one, but I can see that I have been too lazy, mentally, with my training.  I am being coached by my coach, Mary, and so am not in control of what I’m going to be doing, week on week.  She is. But I think that I’ve been, subconsciously, letting go of stuff I should have been in control of – while she tells me what my workouts are, I need to deliver – 100% – to make them count.  I need to be present – mentally – and not hand all control over to her.  I can’t just do the workout and then just moan and say “why did that not go so well?” I need to take ownership of my runs and figure out, every day, what the purpose of my run is and what I’m going to get out of it.  That purpose can be to improve my speed, my endurance, but also to improve my mood, or just to enjoy being outside, or feel empowered by battling the elements.  Point is – I need to take charge of those bits of the training I am in charge of.  Self-pity and the accompanying apathy (won’t someone help me?) has pervaded my training as well as my blog.

As to why I am so slow – in all my flapping around I have ignored the boringly prosaic reason my coach has been giving me for weeks – I am doing too much leg strength work with my clients.  I have got so used to working out with my clients that it is going to take more focus for me to help them, to demonstrate, but not to do the  repeated mountain climbers, burpees, squats and lunges I have been doing with them.  Because while all the triathlon stuff petered out last year, and the running stuff took up again, I have discovered – wait for it – strength! I have never done weights in a gym or in a class until this last year and only really have started doing it because I ended up volunteering to teach a strength and conditioning class for my triclub.  Fed up with my procrastination about my business, I decided that I would just do this – these two things that scare me, teaching and strength – because I was so bored of my own whinnying about it.  And I know, I know, colour you surprised, but I have started enjoying it.  Teaching, and strength work!  My once weekly class is a cross fitty / tabata styled workout which has pushed me way beyond what I thought I could do, physically and mentally.  But in enjoying that I have not considered fully how that class, on top of the one on one sessions I do with clients, affects my running.

Having a week off this week – because I cancelled everything – has given me the chance to really consider what I can do to put all my eggs in my running basket – to focus on the process of training:

• I will consider how my work affects my training and adapt in a way that does not take away from my clients’ experience but means that I do fewer workouts myself;
• I will give some extra time to each workout, every day, separate from setting it up on my Garmin or driving there, to consider what I’m doing the workout for, and what I’ve taken away from it;
• I will take rest and nutrition and recovery seriously.

Finally – I got a message last night from an old friend who knows me from way back at university, when I smoked and drank and could barely run down the hall and then later, when I was overweight and so unhappy with how I looked and felt; “I think you are focusing too much on your PRs and not the whole journey you have traveled. 8 years ago this summer I visited you and you told me you were unhappy with you baby weight and you were going to run a marathon (I do recall a pair of bribery shoes from Adam may have been involved). You have done that and then some more.” This was powerful stuff – she reminded me of where I came from and why I came to running.  And then she tells me “you are the inspiration that leads me to believe I too can do a marathon.” Ok. I get it.  I’m opening the curtains, tidying up the pity party streamers, and getting my head straight.  In focus.  Thank you everyone!

 

I’m 10 weeks away from the London marathon.  I’ve done just over a month of consistent marathon training after taking 3 weeks off at Christmas.  Before that I worked on a decent build-up to marathon fitness.  But oh – the wind has been in my face this past month, figuratively and literally, when it comes to running.

No surprises here but the weather has not been amazing.  The cold is not so bad, though ice and snow have slowed my pace.  As soon as the temps rise a bit round here, the wind starts blowing.  It’s been so windy I have literally been blown off the road recently and again, this has made paced work difficult.

More than that though, I have been mentally feeling the wind in my face about running recently.  I have been so determined to be consistent with my training and I would say I am getting about 90% of my runs in.  But ugh.  They are slow.  I am slow.  I keep thinking back to what has become, in my head, the season of my life – 2009, when I trained with the Pfitzinger / Douglas book for the first time and PRed by 25 minutes in the London Marathon and then BQed, despite spending time in the medical tent, at Berlin.  I didn’t start that season off superfit and so, at the beginning of this month, I assuaged my doubts about starting the season off a 3 week break by telling myself I could easily get back in shape.  But I don’t feel I am making much progress.  I am slow.  My longer runs are hard.  I don’t feel my pace picking up – at all.  And to top things off – and I really am feeling sorry for myself now – I’ve got the flu.  I tried to ignore it yesterday and go out for a 15 miler but had to concede at 8 miles when I felt the chills and the pounding headache – I ran home and got into bed.  Where I have been ever since.  I am doping myself up, giving myself plenty of rest and fluids and hoping that I will be well enough to run the Stamford St. Valentine’s 30km race next Saturday.

But my head is filled with gremlins right now.  I think “how am I going to run 30km?  The longest I’ve run this cycle is 13M and that was painfully slow?”.  I think “I’m never going to get another PR”.  What has been eating away at me for some time now is a conversation I had with another runner.  We met a mutual friend’s party and got talking about running.  She asked me about my PB and when I told her she turned to me and said “I’m going to have to beat that time now”.  In all seriousness.  I really don’t think she meant this in any way as a challenge to me – I think this is just the kind of person she is – competitive.  She is very successful in her field and clearly wants to do well in everything she does.  Admirable stuff.  But I’m really uncomfortable with competition.  Really uncomfortable.  Maybe it is because I never competed as a child.  In any sport.  I took part, sure, but never ever was in the running.  Those type A competitive girls didn’t even register my presence.  My honest instinct, when somebody is openly competitive like that?  Is to pull out. Which I know is a crappy response.  I should either rise to the challenge, or not care.

I want to not care.  I want to not care that my runs are so slow.  And in a sense, I don’t.  When I’m out there running on my own, I’m happy.  I’m enjoying just running, haven’t missed the bike and am happy with my once weekly swimming lessons.  But when I start talking to others, I do care.  I feel enormous pressure to PR and to be constantly better than before.

So my wise running friends – help me.  Send me some words of wisdom. I don’t usually end my blogs with a question but I genuinely want to know from you all – how do you cope with not getting PRs?  What do you do when you’re just slow? How do you cope with competition?  How do you handle this and maintain a sense of enjoyment away from your times and paces? 

Yes, my trip to Indonesia was everything I could have hoped it would be.  It was amazing.  Those of you who are my friends on FaceBook have had the opportunity of seeing 100s of photos of our trip.  We had a fantastic time.  Trekking around 4 islands in Indonesia with 2 children was not always for the faint of heart – there were some early morning getting to train stations, some hot waits for rickety boats on a beach and packing 4 people up every 2 or 3 nights is not something I’m great at. And 4 strong-willled individuals who were in each other’s company for virtually every minute for 3 weeks did occasionally disagree – but overall it was great.

I set out, in part, to show my husband and kids where I was from. And I did that, and I think that worked.  But the trip proved about so much more than that – so much of the experiences were new to me as well and so having this incredible experience together with my husband and kids was an very bonding thing to do.  My advice to you would be just do it.  Take your kids and go travel.  Be adventurous!  It will work out and you will all gain enormously from it!

For the first time in years I did not finish a holiday ready to go home.  There is so much more to see in this huge friendly beautiful country and we will definitely be back to explore more.

An added bonus of being away for 3 whole weeks over Christmas and New Year is that you kind of miss the holiday season.  And if that makes me sound like the grinch – well, I guess I’m kind of turning into one about Christmas.  I mean it is, seriously, so much hard and thankless work and I did not miss it. At all.  No trips to hysteria-inducing packed supermarkets with lists as long as my arm, no constant assault of boxes from Amazon, no hours of cooking – none of it.  Not to mention the lounging around waiting for Christmas to begin, the crap on tv that everyone insists on watching and ugh.  I know.  I am the grinch.  I’ve already promised my kids we’ll be home for Christmas next year and I will do all the big and little things I need to do to feel like a good mother creating memories for her offspring but in the meantime – man! This was good!  We had pizza on Christmas day!  We swam and sunbathed and read and had smoothies.  None of which I shopped for, prepared or cleared away.  It was Christmas for me, definitely.  And New Year was the same – we went to bed before midnight (after a new year’s eve buffet which featured – bizarrely – turkey!) to get up in time for an elephant ride. 

But I did miss out on resolutions, and I love resolutions.  I’ve been trying to catch up on all of your blogs (still a work in progress) and I know that not everyone likes resolutions but I do.  I like them at New Year, I like them at Easter, I like them in November – the act of resolving is an act I like.  And while I used to beat myself up for putting some resolutions on my list year after year without actually doing them, the benefit of getting older is that I see that I tend to eventually get round to doing what I resolve.  Some things just seem to take years to germinate.  So my resolutions for 2013:

• to dare greatly.  I think many of us lose the confidence to try something we’re not sure will work.  Fear of failure gets in the way of trying things.  I don’t want to do that – I want to be bold and brave and pick myself up after I fall and try something else.
• to train intelligently.  This is one of those resolutions I make again and again but I’m just going to hammer it until it sinks in.  So yes to rolling and stretching and core strength and strength strength (and I am actually doing those last 2 now so that has finally sunken in) and to seeing the osteopath before I get injured.  Yes to backing off if I feel a niggle rather than persevering until it’s an injury.  Yes to good food and good rest.
• to be kind to myself. Not to let myself off the hook when I need to haul myself up, but to stop beating myself up over stuff I shouldn’t beat myself up over, to be a little less harsh on myself .  Maybe to be a little less quick to judge – myself and others.

That will do – won’t it?  And so, in the spirit of that last resolution I won’t be downhearted or dispirited by the fact that 3 weeks of not training (gaawwd! Can you believe that?) have made my first week of training slow.  Heartrate high, pace slow.  I will have faith in my coach, who says it will come back, and stick to the plan.  2013 is my year of running and I’m loving it!