New Forest marathon - #107

Plan A - beat 4:09:26 (previous course time)
Plan B - beat 4 hours
Result - 3:47:41, a 22 minute course best

I really liked this race when I did it two years ago, but suffered with a dodgy stomach and ran 10 minutes slower than I wanted to. I wasn't sure if 4 hours was on because it's a hilly course and I only did 3:56 on the flat Vilnius course a few weeks ago. As it was a training run, I decided to run fairly comfortably in the first half and see what happened after that, ideally without too much of a positive split. Ideally, I'd run all the hills and not stop to stroke the ponies.

It was great to see some old friends with lots of 100 clubbers out. I had a nice chat with Dave Lewis (who beat me by 8 seconds, another 1/4 mile and I would have had him) who wondered if I'd lost weight lately. I made some comment about not carb loading quite as often as I used to. I know I'm a fraction smaller at the moment but didn't think it was noticeable, christ, maybe marathons were making me a bit of a porker  After a few foreign races, it was good to be back in a UK race where you see people you know all the time.

My right ITB's been tight for a few days and my hip's playing up as a result. By 15 miles or so, it was pretty sore and by 17 miles I was having a reasonably sized wobble, it was hurting quite a bit, there were more hills, I was hot and dehydrated and low on energy. But that's standard at 17 miles no? I had one of those elevenses bars (not the nice ginger one, the sickly chocolate one) and got half of that down with a lot of water. By 19 miles, I was feeling much better. One of the marshals had told me I was 25th lady at about half way which works two ways. You're not going to get on the podium, no matter how good your second half is, but top 25 isn't too shabby. That extra bit of motivation kept me running up all the hills, even the big nasty one at 22 miles. As I went up, a supporter starting shouting "Whoo, go lady runner!" (there was a lot of encouragement to the girls, we must have been few and far between) but I was tracking down a girl ahead of me and shushed the supporter, pointing ahead of me and putting my finger on my lips. She thought this was hilarious and mimed shooing me up the hill. I passed the girl about two thirds of the way up, she hadn't heard me coming.

I knew it was all downhill from 23 so stepped on it a bit, last 3 in 8:38, 8:26 and 8:15 with the last 1/4 mile at 7:30 pace. I took out 3 or 4 other ladies in that stretch and finished 18th of 150 ladies, sod the legs!

Race notes:
Lovely course, with lots of very scenic stretches and loads of ponies
Loads of water stations, but nothing else on offer
Some great support for a smallish marathon, especially the signs up the hill
Directions to parking were rubbish
It's a bit galling when they have free food for "runners" but all the half runners have scarfed it before you get there. They've only run half the distance too!
The only good thing about the goody bags was the Waitrose bag for life. Has whoever makes those oaty biscuit bars ever sold one? They're in half the goody bags across the land!
Fab 3 mile downhill finish, though it doesn't feel very downhill when your legs are about to fall off
Extra mentions to the men with a Viking warship and the firefighters with oxygen tanks. Very impressive.
And thank you to the marshal at the turnaround point who made me laugh when he pointed at me and said "I'll see YOU at the finish"

Vilnius marathon

Some time ago, it seemed like a good idea to use marathons as an excuse to visit lots of places I wouldn't ordinarily have gone to, ie. an excuse for a lot of weekends away. Flights were cheap, short haul journeys swift and painless, small European cities charming and dirt cheap. Sadly, in these times of high commodity prices, flights are not a total bargain (still cheaper than visiting my mum near the Lake District by train), short haul journeys are a total pain in the arse if you fly through Luton or Heathrow and the euro has priced most of us out of EU cities. On the positive side, they're still charming, especially as the tourists can't afford or be bothered to go there any more.

I've run Nottingham a couple of times and fancied a marathon somewhere different this weekend, and the choice was Wroclaw, Tallinn and Vilnius. I can't remember why we chose this one, I think it might have been the cheapest and didn't involve running around a traffic cone. Or so we thought, there was one turn around a traffic cone, repeated 4 times, policed by a chip mat and a bloke in army fatigues lying in the bough of a tree looking supremely comfortable and half asleep. The sod.

So we ended up in Lithuania, and it's quite nice really. The local dishes are terrible and makes you wonder just how bad the food was before they had any money but the city is rather sweet, full of crooked streets, ankle turning cobbles and millions of churches. Saturday is definitely wedding day, we saw a lot of shiny puffy frocks that you wouldn't want to wear near a naked flame. Maybe love is in the air, as we walked along the banks of the river, the Lithuanian for "I love you" and "I love you too" were planted into opposite banks with flowers. The effect was dampened slightly by all the broken glass about and the scary looking down-and-outs dangling fishing rods into the river.

I wasn't looking forward to Sunday's marathon in the slightest and because I was avoiding thinking about it so much, overdressed on autopilot purely because it was a bit nippy at 9am. Two layers, capris and Mark's gloves were huge overkill especially by the finish when it was pretty damn hot and the freebie tech t-shirt that acted as a second layer chafed a big gash under my arm within 5 miles. I had to carry it the rest of the way which made me look like I had a giant pink boxing glove on.

The race was quite nice, 4 laps of a loop down the river and around the town with plenty of company from the other races. The relay runners were generally shit, each leg was 10.5km but hardly any of them seemed to be capable of running the whole lot without stopping. I passed one walking about 6km in. In the full, there were a few ladies knocking around at my pace and a 100 clubber complete with cowboy hat I didn't recognise who turned out to be an American, running about my pace and told me to call him Cowboy. Seemed a bit familiar, but I suppose you should respect local customs. My strategy was to have a solid training run and ideally pick up the pace each lap. It didn't really happen. My pace felt very comfortable for the first half, to the point where Cowboy said "Jeez, you're so quiet, I can't hear you breathing!" I lost him after some time and started to pick off the odd lady but only because they were falling behind rather than because I was speeding up. It was the usual put more effort in to maintain the same pedestrian pace.

I'd hoped to speed up in the last lap but I was too knackered and dehydrated by then, the water stations were spaced really poorly and only gave you a thimble of liquid in each cup. Fortunately my pacing meant no walk breaks were needed and that my pace didn't slip too much. Sub 4 was a bit tight though, I managed 3:56:56. To be honest, the 3:30 seems impossible at the moment. It was enough for 7th lady of 28 (about 250 runners in total, it's not a girl's game round these parts). After the Cyberman style walk back and a shower, we'd cleverly booked into the spa to which our apartment was attached. A light massage was blissful, it got rid of just enough soreness without making you chew the pillow. A calm dark room, no sweaty kit, loads of fluffy towels and no smell of liniment were far from a brisk rub down in a gazebo from a chatty physiotherapist. I got the better deal than Mark whose "herbal ball" massage seemed to consist of hot towels being slapped on him. His paper g-string made me giggle too.

It's now 4pm and I have been awake for 14 hours due to the obscenely early flight where I sat next to a giant Russian-looking man who seemed to gradually expand and fill more and more of my seat as time passed. His forearms were bigger than my biceps and I wouldn't have been surprised if the girth of one of his thighs was as much as my waist. He snored too. I was too scared of him to elbow him in the ribs so just had to push Mark towards the aisle. At least if I stuck behind him through security, I wouldn't be the one having my bags searched.

Helsinki marathon

I've just read this back and it's boring. Sorry kids.

I can't comprehend how I've run over 100 marathons, or why. It's so bloody far and takes hours. I am quite out of practice, it being 3 months since my last marathon, the longest gap in 2 1/2 years, and have had to do long training runs for the first time since then. 2 had gone ok and 2 had gone appallingly so Helsinki was likely to end with a whimper rather than a bang, even if I did resist the temptation to go bombing off.

Continuing to get my excuses in early, it was a 3pm start which isn't right for all manner of reasons. I'd had a long day on Friday, only arriving at the hotel after midnight, and then had to walk to the start, back to the hotel and back to the start again before the race, which was over 90 minutes in total. It was also pretty warm and windy. Not terrible conditions but a fair bit is over the islands and waterways and quite exposed. I decided to run to feel and try to enjoy it.

It was an enjoyable race, the Scandinavian countries are brilliant for running with all their cycle ways and their races have a great atmosphere. None of that aggression in French races, nor the stinkiness of German races. This was very civilised and polite, with hardly any argy bargy even in the first k. It amused me to notice I was wearing one of 3 pairs of Stella McCartney running shorts within 5 square metres in the start pen. I've never seen any in a race before, other than my own, and here were 3 of us, all in virtually the same ones.

The route was rather nice, some of it in the city centre but a lot just outside, over small islands and some very pretty bridges in the later stages. Luckily it wasn't too big a race so the cycle paths weren't too crowded. There was quite a bit of gravelly path too, and not a small amount of cobbles. It was largely flat with a few bumps, noticeably a steep 50 metres at 15km, a longer climb at 40k and a hoick up a small bump just before the 42k marker that wasn't at all welcome. Running into the stadium for the last 200 metres was great, especially as I had my name and club called out. No matter what I think about the marathon being devalued, I was quite proud to be announced as a member of the 100 club.

My legs had indeed forgotten how to run for the best part of 4 hours and got slower and slower throughout. Half way in 1:49 was steady but likely to be followed by a positive split. It was feeling really really really long though, glaciers were traversing valleys, layers of rock being laid down on the Jurassic coast and whole continents were separating from each other in the time it took to get round this race. I'd been drinking loads of lemon Gatorade (much more refreshing than sticky orange flavour) and chucking water over myself at each of the very frequent water stations and was now walking through them for a bit of a break. The distance was a bit too much for me though, and I need a few more goes at the full 26.2 before I have another bash at the PB. How I used to do this every weekend, or even on consecutive days is baffling.

When I finished (3 hours 50) and had collected my drinks and stuff (including a delicious yoghurt drink, and chocolate weetabix, not sure why they gave us that), I lay on the grass of the stadium trying to get the pain to subside. It was awful. How had I normalised this distance so much that I forgot how much it hurts? I had the shakes really badly so decided to get back to the hotel for a hot bath rather than try to find 10 in 10 Chris and his daughter who was running her first. It took a lot longer than the usual 30 minutes, in fact, I got overtaken by an old lady with a stick by the lake. She had the inside line, but still, that's embarrassing.

Oh yes, I had reindeer meatballs for lunch yesterday. They would have been nicer if they hadn't been so undercooked.

Stockholm marathon - #104

This was meant to be a PB race and I'd done all those things you're meant to do for races like getting expert advice and training and tapering and thinking about strategy and stuff. I even had a pacer which was one of the thing worrying me the most, I have been known to get grumpy in marathons and it would have been a bit rude to have a go at the person trying to help me out. So all the ducks were in a row for Saturday, they'd even brought the race start forward to 11.30 and the weather was perfect apart from being a bit blustery.


The plan was for 7:55s and we started off right on pace. You usually have to hold yourself back in the first mile no? Especially if it's downhill? Not this time. Curious. The route is a very handsome one indeed in Stockholm, lots of long stretches along the water and a nice chunk through the park. It is, however, two laps with the first half of each lap net downhill and the second half net uphill and including a stonking big bridge. There's also a strong and admirable environmental aspect to the race, but water in cups rather than bottles and only on one side of the road makes for lots of congestion and many elbows. The Scandinavians are tall and the bulk of these elbows are inconveniently at female bosom height. Ouch.


The pace was feeling quite fresh very early on which I didn't like, I wanted the first half to be easy or at least easy enough to be able to have a bit of a conversation, there were some extraordinary outfits on show which I pointed and went Ugh at. Mark seemed quite happy trotting along beside me but soon looked a bit bored. By the time we'd done the first lap at 17k, I was already having to concentrate on my form and by the time we got into the park at 20k I was trying very hard not to panic. I have no idea why the effort level was so high but I've run enough of these marathons to know that you can have all your ducks in a row but you still need a bit of luck on the day and my legs weren't cooperating.


Anyway, we got through half way in 1:46 which indicated the 3:30 was off given how shit I was already feeling. I didn't mention any of this to Mark of course. The next target was 25k, then the dreaded 25-30k, my least favourite chunk by far. Ideally, you coast through to 25k, have a wobble in the next 5k (it's so FAR! I don't need to do this any more! I don't want another sodding medal!) then mentally it's all downhill from 30k. But getting to 25k wasn't easy and the undulations and cross wind in the park didn't help. Mark was now looking really really bored especially when I fell off the back on every single incline. I felt responsible.


So what do you do? You just keep going as best you can, while feeling like you're letting your coach down and boring the pants off your pacer. Shame I didn't get to try the pickled gherkins at 21k, or the vegetable stock at 33k but I was putting everything into it and was already feeling a bit sick. The camber was screwing up my right ITB and glute and the incline up the bridge raised a bit of discord. This was the only point where Mark urged me to put some effort in. I thought this was deeply unfair because if I wasn't putting any effort in up a 30m ascent in less than 1/2 a km, then I'm not sure where else I could have been. If he'd bullied me on the flat then maybe I could have worked a bit harder but not up that slope. Luckily I was too disappointed with myself to get grumpy so I just felt a bit more morose.


Off the bridge, right hip now really sore, Samba band on the corner (all the blokes drifted to the left to look at the young girls who looked quite chilly, and quite bored, giving me the first clear run round the racing line to the right), then on and on and on and on until the longed for coke oasis. It was flat and out of a huge, lorry sized container but it tasted like nectar. The sticky floor afterwards made us laugh too. The last 5 or so k are all uphill and it was all a bit tired. Very nice finish on the bouncey track in the Olympic stadium, shame the garmin came out quite so long (normally get 0.2-0.3k long, this was almost 0.6k extra), shame the medal didn't have a ribbon, shame I couldn't walk the 200m to the race village without slumping onto a bit of ground in a lot of pain for 10 minutes. At one stage, the waves were washing in and out, you know when you can hear the rushing in your ears and the sick rising in your throat because it hurts so much? Yeah, like that. I had to go down a ramp backwards. What a knob. The DOMS is still pretty bad and I think I may have been running on a broken toe (it's been uncomfortable for weeks but now is suspiciously immoveable, unweightbearable, very sore and very swollen). Why race a marathon and end up in such a mess when you can ease off a bit, only add 10 minutes to your time and have a great day out, eating gherkins, mocking all in one lycra jumpsuits and looking at the scenery? I feel like I missed out a little bit.


Oh yeah, the time, almost forgot about that. It was 3:38:37 which I'm not all that disappointed with to be honest, I don't think I could have run that much harder. Sure, the 3:30 was possible on paper but for whatever reason it wasn't going to happen on Saturday. I do know that I ran my legs off, and that I didn't think oh fuck it and start walking, and that it bloody hurt from about 19km, and that I had a very good pacer who could possibly have been a bit tougher on me but probably doesn't want to see me suffer too much. I'd quite like the 3:30 to happen when I'm not looking, like my other 3:3x PBs but there are plenty of other races.


Apart from that, it was a great weekend. I like bagging marathons in new countries especially in cool places with excellent company. Fuck the carbon footprint. And the cost. Did you read Mark's blog? 

Shakespeare marathon - #103

Having had a couple of shockers at Brighton and London, I really wanted a decent run at Shakespeare. It wasn't a target race, but was my last long run before Stockholm in 3 weeks and important for my confidence, as even an attempted 20 miles last weekend ended up with me crawling home totally wiped out and very demoralised. It wasn't going to be easy, even at 9:00 minute miles, as I'd done some really tough training sessions during the week: a hilly off road 10k in 7:40s on Monday, 7.5 miles of 6 x 4-minute intervals on Tuesday, 11 miles at target marathon pace on Thursday, and an "easy" 5 miles on Saturday, that became 7 miles at 8:30s. I was rather tired.


The plan was to set off very slowly and this was achieved thanks to the many many thoughtful people who had placed themselves right up the front and set off at about 11 or 12 m/m pace. Our fault for getting to the start so late but my determination to be totally relaxed meant I was so laid back we almost missed it, particularly because it wasn't where we thought it was. Mark had forgotten his chip and had to run back to the car too. No stress here! After a few miles of jostling and tripping over people it got fractionally clearer but there were still dozens of people with earphones. They seemed keen on running about 4 yards out from the kerb when we met the main road too. Time penalties for all of them.


I wasn't paying much attention to my garmin this time and was keeping myself slow by chatting to people, there were loads of 100 Clubbers out, a few Fetchies including one (apologies, I didn't catch your name) who was pacing a mate to a 1:50 half. Poor mate was blowing out of his arse by 3 miles and down on his target already, I hope he didn't suffer too much, but suspect he did. I spent the hillier mile chatting to 10 in 10 Chris, and blame him fair and square for my slowest mile of the race  Nah, not really, it was a slow mile the second time round (though not quite as slow!). 


The Greenway was fine on the first lap, the rain had taken most of the dust out of it and it was still reasonably cool and still. It got a lot sunnier and claggier on the second lap, with a wind coming in from the side, rather vexing as it ought to have been behind us after being in our faces on the way out. The second lap had gone really well, legs were feeling pretty comfortable and the inclines manageable, and I was feeling positive. The Greenway is rather a test as it's long and straight and goes from about 20 to about 25 miles so you know this is where things can go a bit wrong. Luckily I was feeling fine, and knew I only needed 10 min/miles for a sub 4. I wanted to push the last few miles if I could but wasn't getting much acceleration (only the last mile was an 8:12) but was still passing loads of people, only one took me back in the last 6 miles, so that was a nice confidence boost.


Having worked through the last few miles, sub 3:50 was possible and I finished in 3:48:34, faster than either of Brighton and London, and a negative split of 1-2 minutes. Very very pleasing. I'm not sure how on earth I'm going to run almost 20 minutes quicker than that in 3 weeks' time, especially given the state of glutes afterwards (they really really hurt  ) but it was a good training week. Intervals tomorrow 


PS. This is the sort of freaky leg thing that happens when you do too much running. No, I don't have metal struts in my legs. 

I had another disappointing run at London. Having started ok, if not terribly fresh, it became clear at 12 miles that it would be a long haul. The incline over Tower Bridge is nothing more than a slope, and yet it felt like hard work! The last 10 miles of the race were a bit of a drag but luckily there was a superb collection of cheering Fetchies at 22 miles to look forward to, and to provide a blissful G&T, all ready mixed and in a sports bottle so I could take it with me. It certainly helped me get through the last 4 miles! The 4:02 finishing time was woeful and left me thinking that I ought to retire from marathons after Stockholm. I'm definitely not entering any autumn races for the time being. 

Spotting the G&T after 22 miles

Brighton marathon - #101

It wasn't a very auspicious start when I missed my train out of Victoria, the Boris bike got me there with 10 minutes to spare but I couldn't find a docking station, and the one I eventually found was full. The nearest one was a 5 minute walk away. I wasn't too fussed as it gave me time to get a cup of tea but it did mean I missed a few people at the start. It was the first outing for my 100 club vest and the occasional reaction was wonderfully positive, especially the people who said something along the lines of "blimey!" when I went past (of course it could have been something else entirely they were commenting on). It made me feel like it really was worthwhile, and I had a few people comment on how young I seemed to be to be wearing it. 

Bit of a Where's Wally pic, but this is the best one of me in my vest that I didn't have to pay £25 for

The plan was to run the first half at 8:20 - 8:30s, then the second half at 8:00s. The start of the race felt very fresh and comfortable but sticking to 8:30s was proving near impossible, having to bounce up and down a lot to keep the pace down. It was also quite tiresome having to be so glued to the garmin, I was checking it 2 or 3 times a mile and it was doing my head in a bit. I think I would rather have run this one to feel rather than to pace, but it was an experiment, and progressive running had worked for the Finchley 20.

The first half was in 1:48, only 2 minutes faster than planned, so that was fine, but as soon as I tried to accelerate it felt difficult. I got to 16 ok in around 8:00s but had to stop for a loo break at 17, no chance of waiting another 9 miles. I'm not really sure what went wrong after that. It was ok to 19 and Fetchpoint which was fabulous, thank you Fetchies, but I was feeling a bit drained and heavy. After that, my rhythm went out of the window, had to tie a shoelace at 20, got a bit hot and grumpy around the power station (I do still like this bit), had severe CBAs. A pacer would have helped. By 23, I knew I'd run the last 3 in about 27 minutes and knew the support would really help too. The time wouldn't be what I wanted but it would be sub 3:45.

Just after 24m however, I saw a runner on the verge of collapse. I'd already lost my PB so felt I should help her get to the next St John's, along with a chap called Jon. She was pretty much delirious, made no sense whatsoever, and was staggering around in any direction other than forwards. Not in a good way. But there were no St John's until the finish so we had to part run, part drag, part coax, part bully her over the next 2 miles, sometimes pulling her by her hand, or pushing her from the back, or occasionally jogging backwards in front of her to get her head up. The spectators quite liked that. It would have been much better to leave her with a medic, she was bad enough that she should have stopped and any further back it would have been the best thing to do. But she was so close to the finish and there were no medics about and I didn't want to leave her. She did manage to run the last 400 metres to the finish and pip a very sweaty looking Chewbacca to the post. I had to apologise to him for making him a target - "you CAN'T get beaten by a bleedin' Chewbacca!"

I have mixed feelings about it, on the one hand, I couldn't have left her as she looked so bad, but on the other, more selfish side, I do feel like I chucked away a half decent time (it could have been 13-15 minutes faster). Not very gracious really.

By the time I got to the pub my mood was pretty grumpy (not helped by having seen the last person I would have expected to see, and who had been extraordinarily unpleasant on our last encounter, and by being bashed into by dozens of spectators, Brighton does need to sort the finish out), only to be cured by large applications of alcohol. Nothing to do with being disappointed and having low blood sugar or anything. The wine was terrible, the burgers were fortunately a lot better than the uncooked veggie sausages and there was no outdoor space (we'd probably had enough of the sun by then) but enough people turned up to make enough noise to empty the rest of the pub. Next stop, the Chandos. Just 26.2 miles to get there.