1087 miles: my 2011 in running shoes

What started with a broken promise ended with mixed emotions. I knew that my 2011 in running shoes would be the biggest, toughest and hopefully the most rewarding yet, but I wasn’t ready for how it would finish.

Pivoting on the San Francisco Marathon, all my training, racing and writing was focussed on getting into the best possible shape to run one of the most brutal road marathons in the world. My madly overambitious plans to start with the Lochaber Marathon were sensibly sidelined in favour of the usual crop of half-marathons and parkruns in the first half of the year, including a brilliant weekend in Campbeltown for the MoKRun.

My annual tradition of PB’ing in Alloa despite (or perhaps because of) being violently sick entered its third year, modified only slightly this year by a rather more exciting end to the day. But before both of those was the last-minute slapdash effort at the Meadows ‘Marathon’ in Edinburgh, which of course was only really a half marathon, run over seven laps of the Meadows in Edinburgh.  It may interest you to know that the organisers are planning a full length-marathon for 2012, covering a soul-sucking fourteen lap course (details here). You won’t be seeing me there.

San Francisco loomed large and arrived on my doorstep at the end of July. With the miles in the bank, hills in my legs and a Union Jack on my chest I was ready to run the best race of my life, and was rewarded with a hugely satisfying 3:49 PB. I’ve wasted enough of your time already on eulogising about this incredible race – go back and read it all again if you’re interested.

I came back from the USA with an enormous medal and two more goals on the horizon. My commitment to run the Great North Run for the Alzheimer’s Society, coupled with my wild over-commitment to run it barefoot, made for a superb combination of a world-class event and another tough challenge complete. Two weeks later I toed my final start-line of the year, accompanying the one and only Ben A. Nicholson around the Loch Ness Marathon, to complete my fourth lifetime 26.2.

 It was a good year for meeting heroes. I met round-the-world runner and adventurer Rosie Swale Pope in Campbeltown before the MokRun, then elite ultramarathoner Michael Wardian and prolific marathoner Dane Rauschenberg in San Francisco, and finally world 5,000m champion and British Olympic hopeful Mo Farah in Newcastle before the Great North Run.  If you’re interested, Michael and Dane were the friendliest. Rosie was busy at a book signing but very kind. I think I might have annoyed Mo – he was out for a drink with some mates. Sorry Mo.

Mike Wardian (after winning the SF Marathon)

Mo Farah

I was delighted to publish articles in Runner’s World UK again this year, reviewing the Alloa Half Marathon, the MoKRun and the San Francisco Marathon.  RW has a readership of almost 400,000, which, as I’ve said before, is almost as many people as read this blog (pfft!).  I very much look forward to publishing more in future. It was also a joy to watch this blog's readership grow and diversify - thank you for sharing it as widely as you have, it means a great deal to me.

Perhaps best of all was watching others achieve and succeed. It was a pleasure to run with my brother the day of his wedding, a delight to see that my sister completed her first 10k, an honour to accompany (and eventually be beaten by) Ben Nicholson in his first marathon. I took a Dalmatian and her owner to the top of Arthur’s Seat. I trained with future marathon world champ Megan Crawford, when she slowed down enough for me to keep up. I even coaxed the Crew Chief out on one or two occasions. I ran in Scotland, England, Portugal, California and New York, covering a total of 1087 miles and wearing out two-and-a-half pairs of running shoes. Here are the final stats:

miles run: 1087, parkruns: 6, races: 6, 

miles biked: 159, metres swum: 1225

I had a great year.

Except the hernia bit. That was shit, and still is.  Not long after the Loch Ness Marathon I started experiencing a great deal of pain whilst running.  By early November it had become unbearable, so I hastened to my GP. She thought it was probably a hernia, and ordered a surgical consultation (which still hasn’t happened, by the way).  In the meantime my running has dwindled to almost nothing, and at times it seems genuinely impossible to think that I have trained for and completed two marathons and four half marathons this year, as well as a few hundred miles on the bike. At times, genuinely, I can barely walk.

Swings and roundabouts, eh?

Happy New Year

Dave

2012 to date: miles - 3 (painfully)

How to spectacularly break a promise to your girlfriend

Dave: Linds, I've been thinking.

Linds: Makes a change.

Dave: Instead of running lots of races next year, which cost a bit to enter and also have travel costs, 'require' new kit, and generally involve spending lots of money, I'm only going to enter one big race instead.

Linds: Oh. How [yawn] interesting.

Dave: Oh indeed. And I think we should go to the USA and I'll run a race there as part of a longer holiday. I'll use the money I save by not racing to help pay for the trip and all will be fine and dandy.

Linds: Oh! How actually interesting! A big exciting holiday to America, hooray! And no other races for me to graciously pretend to be interested in! Hooray Hooray!

Dave: Hooray Hooray indeed.

Here follows my 2011 race calendar. You'll notice it has slightly more than one race in it...

I reckon designing a good race calendar involves finding the right balance between racing to ordinary life, allowing enough time for training and recovery, a spot of travel, a contrast between big-city pazzazz and rural idyll, and ensuring that I end up with an eclectic collection of commemorative tat and freebie T-shirts by the end of the year. A mix of distances, terrains, locations, types, topography and style. A blend of races that are free to enter and round the corner, races that are the other side of the world and cost the earth, and those which fill the enormous gap in between. Races, in short, which keep things interesting.

I've been making these plans for a while, and I still haven't gotten round to registering for any of them except SF, but here is my tentative schedule for 2011:

March - Alloa Half Marathon (Clackmannanshire, Scotland). This will be my third year running Alloa, a professionally-organised 13.1 mile road race usually entered by around a thousand people. More of a serious club runners' outing than a fun runners' jaunt, but a good show all round and at £17 a bargain. This is where I set my half-marathon PB of 1:37:03.

April - Lochaber Marathon (near Fort William, Scotland). This is probably the least finalised of all my plans, as running a full-length marathon should really involve a bit more commitment and planning than I've put into this idea so far... But, seduced as ever by the prospect of entering a race that friends are running, this is a definite prospect as a warm-up marathon. Warm-up marathon, I know. Who even am I? Lochaber's race typically has a few hundred entrants, and follows an out-and-back course along the banks of Loch Eil.

May - Edinburgh Half Marathon (Edinburgh, Scotland). Part of the audaciously self-styled 'Edinburgh Marathon Festival', I've run the relay part of this event for the last three years. I find quite a lot lacking in certain aspects of the Edinburgh Marathon and its spin-off races, so I really should vote with my feet and give it a miss, but I can't quite bring myself to ignore a major race going on in my home town... So I've chosen the half this year, all being well.

June - Seven Hills of Edinburgh (Edinburgh, Scotland). A madcap race that's part orienteering, part hillwalking, part running, part guesswork and completely hills. Starting from Calton Hill in Edinburgh, racers have to summit each of the city's seven hills in the correct order, which is verified by having your race number time-stamped by a marshal at each checkpoint, before slogging back up Calton Hill to finish. There is no prescribed route, the roads remain open and more or less anything goes. Accepted wisdom suggests that it covers about 14 miles and a total ascent/descent of 2200 feet. 

July - San Francisco Marathon (California, USA). The jewel in the crown of my race calendar, and the 'one big race' alluded to in the convincing scene laid out at the start of this post (also the only one I've actually registered for so far). 26.2 miles of staggering scenery and rolling hills. Starting with a few miles along the Embarcadero, then over the Golden Gate Bridge and back, the course then loops into central SF taking in parkland and some pretty funky hills. So funky, in fact, that the Wall Street Journal dubbed this 'the race even marathoners fear'. The race's own tag line is 'Worth the Hurt'! I'm running this race during a two-week holiday to California and New York that Linds and I are taking in July/August, and if I get enough hill training in and get some proper speedwork done I hope to run a very strong time here. Running a marathon is a staggering achievement, running a second and racking up a PB is a proud moment, but running a truly strong time in the race even marathoners fear will be worth the hurt. 

September - Great North Run (Newcastle, England). A hugely tentative proposition - entry to this incredible half marathon is by an extremely competitive ballot (I've been rejected twice already), or alternatively by getting hold of a charity place, which I'm hesitant to do. With 54,000 runners the GNR is one of the biggest races on the planet, with a fast course, incredible support and live TV coverage. It's one of my ultimate aspirational races - I'll get a place one day...

October - Dublin Marathon (Dublin, Republic of Ireland). I have unfinished business with this marathon. And I've heard rumours that certain guest bloggers are keen to tackle Ireland's biggest 26.2...

On top of this lot will probably be quite a few parkruns and any other free stuff I can sneak into. What are your plans for 2011? Want to join in any of these? Let me know!

Here's to an epic year. Happy running!

Dave

P.S. Sorry Linds. Love you.