Race Report - Virgin London Marathon 2013

Some people criticise distance running for being a solitary sport. I learnt this weekend that they are wrong.

My Virgin London Marathon started with a bit of a wobble and ended in minor catastrophe. I’ll spare you any attempts at witty hyperbole about my race-week prep,  travel to London, race registration and the rest of my lengthy and exhaustive weekend, but I’ll paint you this picture:

Saturday night before the race, the Crew Chief and I are tucked away in a corner of a Pizza Express in Greenwich. I cannot eat and can barely speak as I am such a bag of nerves about finally running the VLM the following morning - a race I have been trying to enter since 2008. A plate of pasta and pesto and lightly grilled chicken is gently cooling in front of me.

I am ostensibly worried about my knees. They’ve been a little painful recently, but I had taken solace in the fact that the pain didn’t actually stop me running – in fact I had done my last 20 mile training run with a dull ache throughout. I’d seen a sports injury professional who specialises in knees just a few days before and he had given me some light treatment and a green light to run. But there are other worries. The enormity of the pacing challenge has hit home as I’m now in possession of the rucksack/harness that will hold the pacing flag. It’s not the pace I’m afraid of – I have run many thousands of miles and dozens of races including multiple marathons much faster. It’s the pressure of maintaining that pace consistently, of being accountable and reliable and watched and scrutinised. Barriers around the Cutty Sark and the naval college are being built up around us and my stomach fills with dread at the prospect of the task.

My psyche lurches in the opposite direction on the walk back to our comedy-basic hotel. I regain utmost confidence in my abilities and am certain that the race tomorrow will be easy. Just another marathon. Just another long run really. No biggie.

I drifted through race morning in a daze. People recognised the pacing kit and started asking me questions immediately: Where is pen 6? Where are the toilets? Where should I put my bag? Will you be running that pace exactly? WHERE is pen 6? It’s my first VLM and I don’t know the answers to these questions. The crowds are huge and buoyant and excited and I felt my enthusiasm swelling with them as we get into our pens. A portly runner in front of me was wearing a yellow T-shirt that read ‘Dave – Believe’. I took it as a sign. A very literal sign. This was going to be excellent. A 30 second silence before the off in memory of the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings reminded me to count my blessings.

Mercifully I was not alone – Sam Murphy, the author of Runner’s World’s column Murphy’s Lore was also pacing this group. Between us we got the first few miles under control, all within seconds of our 10:18/mile target. There was little hope of us staying side-by-side as the field was densely packed and we seemed to be doing a lot of overtaking. I saw the Crew Chief as planned at mile 5 and progress was generally looking good. Our only confusion came when the race’s three starts (red, blue and green) merged, because there were pacers in each starting zone and we were running to very different chip times. Sam and I overtook a 4:45 pacer to much muttering, but there was no way for us to explain to the runners around us that we were both right. But I understood their confusion and sympathised – in the sense that all I could do was to keep banging out 10:18s as best I could.

Elsewhere on the course I was privileged and grateful to see old friends cheering me on. Ben, Jess, Sarah, Ed, Tom, Erin, Heather, Adam, Louise, John, Bernie (also Rach, Matt, Ross and Thea probably, though I don’t remember seeing you) – each a friendly face picked out of the monumental crowd that made the whole thing seem worthwhile. The Crew Chief saw me more than I caught sight of her, and became rather more acquainted with the tube than any non-Londoner would really want to on a Sunday. I don’t think I’ve ever run a race with so many friends out supporting, and it changed my mindset and attitude for the better. They reminded me that people believe in my ability to do these things.

But I was struggling. Nothing seemed to click. I remember seeing a sign at mile 9 saying ‘17 miles to go’ and silently despairing at the prospect. The only thing keeping me focussed was the relentless pursuit of 10:18 minute miles, something that Sam and I were still achieving. We rolled over halfway perhaps 10 seconds early.

It wasn’t until around mile 15 that I had to concede that I was suffering, and, more dangerously, slowing down. Lurching to a fence I stretched my thighs and wrenched a gel out of my rucksack. I yanked the knee supports off my knees, as I felt they were limiting circulation to my thighs, and set off again, feeling renewed and refreshed.

I caught up to within 20 metres of Sam but found myself in a congested part of the race, content to hold my place just behind her. The field hadn’t thinned out and in places spectators were spilling onto the road, narrowing the course. I felt a little closed-in and conspicuous with a giant flag on my back. The pacing gear was generally good and relatively lightweight, but the flag was a sail in the wind and a nuisance in tight spaces. As the day heated up I sweated like a turkey at Christmas and the straps started to rub painfully on my neck. I thought of other things. Oddly, I struggled to enjoy or appreciate the crowds and the sights. This is what I had come to London for: a big city marathon with all the trimmings, but for some reason I couldn’t appreciate it. Tower Bridge didn’t even do it for me. All I wanted was for it to be over, preferably in exactly 4:30.

As the pain set in and 17 then 18 miles rolled around I lost some self-awareness, instead focussing on the rhythm of my pace and the number of miles left to go – now in single figures. I recited mantras and zoned out the noise of the crowd. Tough though it was, I reckoned I could stay in this blinkered existence for the next 8 miles. I felt like things were going well.

Things were not going well. The Crew Chief was waiting in the crowd around mile 18-19, though I wasn’t looking at the crowds and didn’t see her.  She burst into tears when she saw me, mournfully hauling myself through Canary Wharf with grim determination and apparently a pronounced limp.

The next thing I know I am leaning on a metal fence, arms locked straight and thighs stretching, with my eyes closed and head down. A number of people – I couldn’t say how many – are asking me a lot of questions. I tell them that I’m fine and will be continuing shortly. My legs and the people disagree.

Next I am in a wheelchair, eyes still closed, a mixture of relief and shame pounding my head along with three letters: DNF. Did Not Finish. So many people were expecting something of me in this race. Runners’ World. My contact there, Kerry McCarthy, who has been ridiculously generous to me professionally. Sam, the other pacer. My brother. The Crew Chief. Christ, she would be unimpressed by this. All those people out supporting. All my friends out supporting. Hundreds – if not thousands - of people wanting to run 4:30 who were looking to me for some sort of expertise. The 450,000 readers of this blog. My 2.2 million Twitter followers. My parents. My colleagues. Myself.

I lay on a stretcher inside under an awning erected on one side of a St John’s Ambulance. The paramedic took my temperature, looked at the thermometer and shook his head. He got a different thermometer and took it again. I was 41.1 degrees Celsius. Stripped to the waist, they covered me in soaking wet blankets in an effort to cool me down. My legs cramped up and I could barely move anything from the neck down without huge pain – I suddenly realised how painful my back was, presumably from the rucksack. Painkillers and electrolyte replacements and more cold wet things. Attempts at banter from my part were probably delirious ramblings.

After 40 minutes my temperature had gone down to 40.2. Over the next hour it quickly dropped down to a normal, safe, human temperature. The ambulance crew looked less worried and administered two cups of coffee and three Jaffa cakes, which I devoured greedily. My sister-in-law Erin was the first one able to answer her phone so she made it over to see me first, and went more or less straight back out to buy me some dry clothes. The Crew Chief arrived not long after, tearful, relieved and livid and relentlessly practical as always.

Unbelievably, my mobile rang. A doctor was on the line, telling me not to worry. Strange, I thought, I’ve got a doctor right here saying something similar. Turns out he was calling from the medical station at mile 22, where my brother Nick, sorry, my identical twin Nick, had suffered exactly the same outcome and was exactly the same temperature. Ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. Erin dashed off to attend to her second Haines twin emergency of the hour, and left Linds to mop up the pieces of my VLM attempt. They would later emerge and get on the sweeper bus at the back of the race, left to endure the longest and slowest bus ride in London. Nick advises against this if you ever find yourself in such a situation. He also later reminded me that in the latter stages of a marathon, 'DNF' really means 'Did Nothing Fatal'.

A complicated and expensive logistical exercise to get back to the airport in one piece and with all the right bags was totally, utterly saved by Louise’s selfless help in moving all our junk around London. Unable to offer suggestions or make any objections, I did as I was told as Lou and the Crew Chief installed me in a hotel near London City airport for an hour’s sleep before our flight, while between them they picked up suitcases from Waterloo East and returned the blasted rucksack to a hotel in St James.

After speaking to my parents in Qatar and my sister in Southampton, I put a note on Facebook explaining what had happened, unable to face the prospect of fielding dozens of individual queries. My phone palpitated with messages of condolence and love and support over the next few hours. It might have been the exhaustion but I burst into tears reading them, in the middle of a hotel lobby. No-one was disappointed. No-one cracked a joke. Everyone wanted me to feel better, not to worry, to look forward to next time, that they knew I would bounce back shortly. One person said I was an inspiration. My dad said he was proud of me. The Crew Chief said she loved me.

Running is not a solitary sport. I promise never to forget that.

Happy running

Dave

2013 to date: miles run - 412.14, races: 2 and a bit, parkruns: 1, miles biked: 18, metres swum: 500

Identity

It is a blog cliché to start a long-overdue post with an apology for not posting more often, but here it is: I’m sorry. Thing is, this is a blog about running and runners, and recently I have done much of the former or felt like one of the latter.

Almost two months ago I headed out for an easy five-miler along the river, when, as so often happens in such circumstances, I ran into trouble exactly halfway through the run and, consequently, when I was as far away from home as I could possibly be. A deep, dull ache gripped around my mid-section like a vice and tightened, making every step agonising. It was as if I was wearing a cummerbund of misery and pain and gross inconvenience. I paused a moment, almost winded by the shock of the pain, and decided to walk instead. But walking was even more painful, so, with great effort, I forced myself into a pitiful, laborious trot and headed for home.

The pain lasted for days. I’ve run two marathons this year and barefoot half marathon – I know a thing or two about pain – but this was by far the worst. I ached when I walked, stairs were agony and I could barely put on a pair of socks without wincing. This was torture. I live an active lifestyle: I walk to work most days, two miles each way, and am used to putting in anything from 15 to 50 miles a week running, as well as some time on the bike, too. I am rarely still. I fidget and pace and meander. I’d sooner walk than get a bus and rather sprint than miss a train. But this new injury put paid to all of that, or rather, made all of that hurt like hell. I even stopped walking to work - the discomfort made me nauseous.

Since then the pain has never been far away. Every run has been the same; starting well but deteriorating rapidly, the dull ache growing until I couldn’t take it anymore and ran for home as fast as my confused legs could carry me. My GP had no answers but plenty of scary words, like hernia, appendicitis and ‘surgical consult’. The fact that my injury only kicks in during a run seemed to annoy her – she suggested that I run until it hurts then present myself at A&E. An absurd notion. My physio decided that my back was to blame and spent an hour systematically demolishing it, to no noticeable effect. I’m still waiting for that surgical consult, by the way.

So I’ve been running horrendous, pathetic miles. 10 miles a week. Then seven. Then five. Last week just two; the kind of miles that I am ashamed to put in my training diary. The kind of miles that make me embarrassed to look at this blog.

He looks happy.

And so we reach identity. What is a runner? To me the only criteria have always been that you run because you love it, because you know what it means to have adrenalin surging through your veins as you haul yourself uphill into driving rain, because you have no shame in beaming and whooping and laughing as you hurtle down a snowy hill, because you get to the end of a long run beaten, battered and broken and triumphantly glowing with the sense of accomplishment you deserve.

I haven’t felt any of those things for weeks.

If you’re fit and well, then please, for goodness sake, go for a run this week. Somebody should.

Jog on

Dave

2011 to date: miles: 1077, parkruns: 6, races: 6, miles biked: 159, metres swum: 1225

Reflections (3:49 and all that)

I’ve done a lot of thinking about SF. So much happened in such a short space of time that it’s taken me a while to get my head around it all, and particularly to contextualise that new PB. On a basic level, cutting such a large amount of time off my personal best in one race is unusual – it would have been much more comprehensible to have taken off 5 or maybe even 10 minutes. 15:31 is a long time when you’re waiting at a finish line.

The main reason I’m struggling to get to grips with that time is mainly that I never allowed myself to believe that it was possible. You might remember that I promised to be ecstatic with anything from 3:48 to 4:04, but a little niggle of doubt never really let me believe that I could run the lower end of that spectrum. I had my fingers burned in both Paris and Brighton, when I became so obsessed with running sub-4 that I almost forgot to enjoy the experience and ended the races a little deflated when I failed to achieve that goal. The marathon became a wily, sneaky adversary which I just couldn’t quite figure out. I allowed myself to believe that my training had been good but mitigating factors had ruined both races, often telling people (albeit truthfully) that I tripped over in Paris and had a chest infection in Brighton*, and that otherwise I would definitely have run sub-4.

I now know that this isn’t true.

The simple fact is that for my first two marathons I was only adequately prepared. Looking back over my running log from those crucial pre-race months I realise that I consistently took the route of least resistance (sometimes literally), setting myself unambitious training schedules and then failing to complete them anyway. SF was different. Perhaps the massive over-commitment of a 12,000 mile round-trip, compounded by the enormous entry fee and contextualised by the knowledge that this was a very, very hilly course made me wake up and smell the fear. On training runs this year I would actively seek out the toughest, hilliest courses Edinburgh had to offer, whereas for Paris and Brighton I meticulously planned the flattest routes I could find. 

For SF I made greater sacrifices of time and energy, pouring my all into training. I spent hours studying course maps, videos, elevation charts, weather patterns and memorising the location of aid stations. I cross-trained and took vitamin supplements and had sports massages and invested in new gear. The result is that seven months of training was focussed completely on success at that course, on that date. I could not have been more ready for SF, and I’m a little embarrassed to think of how relatively unprepared I was for my previous marathons.

All that said, and I’m struggling to type this: I know I can go faster.

Because I was so reluctant to commit to a finish time goal, I only designed a race strategy up to 20 miles, planning to ‘just hang on’ thereafter. I went through 4 miles in 34 minutes, 10 miles just under 1:26, halfway in 1:52 and 20 miles in 2:50, all absolutely according to my carefully-composed plan. But I allowed myself to ‘fly blind’ in the last and most important 6.2 miles, giving me no reason or motivation to reach particular markers at particular times, which also impaired my ability to predict finish times on the run. The result was that I just bargained with myself, struggling lamppost to lamppost on some occasions. If I had decided that I needed to be at 23 miles after 3:16, for example, I’m pretty sure I could have done it. I reckon I might have lost as much as 5 minutes as a result.

Furthermore, remove the long haul travel, jetlag, early start, non-ideal race week and some of the more aggressive hills from the equation, I’m pretty sure I could pick up probably 15 seconds a mile, which is another 6 and a half minutes over the whole thing.  Ecstatic and humbled though I am by 3:49, I guess I’m saying that sub-3:40 is realistic in the not-too-distant future.

Crikey.

Happy running

Dave

2011 to date - miles: 845.28, parkruns: 6, races: 4, miles biked: 78.47, metres swum: 1225

*I really was ill - when I dug out my fuel belt ahead of SF, which I last used in Brighton, I found a Dequacaine tablet in there left over from the race. Dequacaine is a super-strength cough sweet, which more or less gives your throat a local anaesthetic. I think I had it on prescription. What the hell was I thinking running a marathon in that state!?

Why I love (and hate) going to the doctor

Earlier this week, during my traditional pre-marathon crazy hypochondriac freakout where every niggle and ache must be face cancer or bubonic plague or megadeath, I actually identified a genuine health concern that merited quite a swift trip to the doctor. Nothing major, just a stomach upset which persisted over a few days, but enough to push me towards the waiting room post haste.

Sparing you the details, the doctor was quite confident about the cause and prescribed some pills to settle my stomach. While I was there, in a killing-two-birds-with-one-stone mentality, I decided to mention the pains in my chest, which have been present in one form or another over the last two years but recently had something of a resurgence. It was at this point that I had to admit that I was planning to run a marathon in just a few day's time.

With thanks to www.savagechickens.com

I braced myself for the usual abuse. Doctors hate runners. We are terrible patients, refusing to rest, refusing to do anything which compromises our training. Most of our ailments are caused in some way by running, or could be cured by desisting from running, neither of which we are prepared to accept. Marathon runners in particular must be a nightmare to treat - why on earth are we planning to put ourselves through an ordeal which is guaranteed to put our bodies under excessive stress and trauma? The doctor draws in air through clenched teeth, like a builder sizing up a hefty quote for a small conservatory, and shakes his or her disapproving head, wishing that you stayed relatively fit but didn't go so far as to actually run races.

But nothing happened. My doctor smiled and nodded approvingly. She listened to my chest with a stethoscope, calmly remarking 'you've got a good slow heartbeat'. 'You're obviously very fit'. 'You'll be fine to run the marathon, you clearly know what you're doing.'

Silently I whooped and motionlessly I leapt around the room in joy. A medical professional was endorsing my fitness level and general lifestyle! I wasn't being told off for putting myself through a dangerous ordeal, I was being commended for my clean and healthy existence. I was completely made up.

Because of the chest pains, and just to be sure, my GP referred me to the hospital for an ECG. The process was fairly quick and ruthlessly efficient, and as the technician gazed approvingly at the machine's printout and told me all was well, I wondered whether my doctor had sent me here just to show off how fit and well her patients were. Fine by me.

For those reasons I truly love visiting my doctor. Her respect for amateur athletes is huge, and I feel vindicated and jolly when I see her. But I can't help but notice that she hasn't actually treated my chest pain, other than with compliments. To her, perhaps, because the cause isn't immediately evident and the authority of the ECG is reliable, there must be nothing wrong with me. Maybe she's right.

...

But what if it *is* megadeath?

Happy hypochondria.

Dave

2011 to date - miles: 774.37, parkruns: 6, races: 3, miles biked: 58.38, metres swum: 1225

Quite the weekend

So I’ve had rather an exciting few days since I signed off the LIVE blogpost on Sunday morning.  I ran the Alloa Half Marathon, during which I took nine phonecalls, broke two PBs, accrued three vicious blisters and lost my breakfast (twice). If you haven’t read the wonderful and bizarre tapestry of information that came out of the LIVE event then I urge you to go and read it now. 

Also, go back to this blogpost and read the comments, as one LIVE update was mistakenly posted there (it’s a cracker, too).

The start line, unaware of the horror to come.

The finish line, ecstatic that it's over!

I don’t think I need to add much more on my Alloa experience. I had a very, very difficult race – my shoulder was aching from a golfing injury, I was wearing too many layers and I set off at a -literally- blistering pace which for some reason, I hung on to. My digestion was all wrong and ended in disaster.  I started the race wearing gloves that I had to ditch after 3 miles.  The first two miles were dispensed in 6:43 and 6:44, which is just absurd. The pace only slowed a little until I hit the hill of ultimate death 11 miles into the race. I don’t know what came over me.

But I PB’d for the 10k in 43:34, taking a hefty 2:07 off my previous mark, then went on to smash my half marathon PB by 2:19, recording an official time of 1:34:44. I would have finished at least a minute quicker if it hadn’t been for the stomach upset. I have to be clear though: this was the hardest I’ve ever run, the most effort I’ve ever put in to a race. This half marathon ruined me - I am blistered, sore and broken. Walking is still quite uncomfortable. Those two PBs came at a hefty price, which I’m not sure I will be willing to pay again. Though running a fast time has its advantages: within two hours of the gun firing I had finished the race, showered, changed and made it back to the car to head off into the distance. The last runner still had almost an hour left to go as Linds (head cheerleader, crew-chief, chauffeur) and I left town, heading for St Andrews for the afternoon.

The LIVE concept was fun and I’m proud of the finished product  - even though I played a relatively small part in it!  I’d like to apologise to those who tried to call but couldn’t get through, and even more so to those who did get through and were rewarded only with wheezing, grumpiness and general malaise.  Everyone who posted an update is awesome, you all win an official I run because... t-shirt (or, you would, if they existed).  To those who had suggested that taking calls on the run would slow me down, I say – you should have been right, but I’m glad you weren’t. I might do another LIVE event, but no promises...

Then, my weekend got better. On Sunday afternoon, on a windy, beautiful beach in the East Neuk of Fife that we both know all too well, I asked my girlfriend and long-suffering crew chief to marry me.  I am still beaming at the fact that she said yes. I would like to write a hundred thousand things about that moment and the four and a half years before it, but this isn’t the time or the place. Suffice to say, I have something in my life more important than running.

Happy everything

Dave

2011 to date - miles: 275.65, parkruns: 3, races: 2, miles biked: 12.85

How I ruined more or less all of my toes

Good news! On Thursday, on a whim, I called my GP's surgery to ask whether my X-ray results were available. I only had the scan on Monday, and everyone had insisted it would take 7-10 days before they would have any news for me, but I thought I'd give them a call on the off-chance and it paid off. The result - 'normal'. One word.

'Does this mean I don't have pleuirsy?' ... 'You have pleuritic symptoms.' Right.

Annoyed at the inefficacy of the health service, whose crowning achievement in treating me was an instruction to take a lot of painkillers and wait until I was better, I did what I always do when I need to let off some steam and do some thinking. I went for a run.

Yeah, yeah, I should have been resting and relaxing and waiting until I got better, but that just doesn't seem to work for me. I took four days off running and whilst the pain in my chest was fairly constant, I was getting grumpy, lethargic and cramp because I wasn't running. So I went for a run. There's still a little pain in my chest, but to be honest, otherwise I feel fantastic.

A short outing on Friday night after work, then a well overdue return to parkrun on Saturday morning. Then another run on Saturday afternoon. And a long run this morning (Sunday). OK, might have overdone it slightly.

There are two main indicators that I ran too much in too short a time this weekend - first, my calves are tight and tough, and second, I've ruined most of my toes. This is because, on a whim, I decided that yesterday's parkrun was going to be my first 'barefoot' race. Barefoot in inverted commas, because I ran in my Vibram FiveFinger shoes, which look like this:

My Vibram FiveFingers, which evoke an interesting range of responses, from fear and distrust to a weird state of near-arousal...

I went for the Vibrams over my normal road shoes because the Sauconys I usually run in are on their last legs - after 551 miles they're ready to be replaced, and there's so little cushioning left in them that I may as well be running barefoot anyway. So I thought I'd use the Vibrams, guarantee myself a new, barefoot PB, and I ended up having a fantastic race.

I ran much of the course on the soft grass verges rather than the tarmac, and apart from the pain of stepping on a few broken sea shells which had washed up on Cramond promenade, I had a great race. Conscious of the dodgy state of my respiratory system, I wasn't gunning for a particular or fast time, but when I glanced at my watch at the 2km mark I was amazed to see it showing just over 8 minutes. Feeling on top of the world, I pushed on and overtook a ton of people, much more aware of the optimum racing line as I was looking for the soft verges to run on. I finished in 20:34, just 5 seconds off my shoe-wearing PB, looking rather like this:

Photo credit (and with apologies to!) Ron Russell. I'm not on the grass because I'm just about to enter the finish 'chute'.

As you can see from the photo, the barefoot experience doesn't seem to be improving my running style - I'm still a heavy heel striker. When I got home and peeled off the Vibrams, I discovered the full horror caused by my indiscipline: two major blisters on the underside of both big toes. I lanced them, then patched my feet up as best I could, but really I was just wildly delighted with the endorphin hit that I've been missing this week.

Since my barefoot parkrun I've run 12 miles in my knackered Sauconys, and the blisters have got much worse, as well as having been joined by new ones on both little toes as well. The worst one, under the big toe of my left foot, has been drained four times already. Meanwhile, the pain in my calves is a bit of a disaster, and there's an interesting complaint coming from my hip. I can barely walk.

I am a runner again.

Dave

2011 to date - miles: 136.46, parkruns: 2, races: 0 

Bad news for the mileage log

Oh bloody hell. Not again. Chest pain, short of breath, appointment with the GP, referral for a chest X-ray, antibiotics, painkillers, morose tone of self pity. Yes, that’s right, all signs point to pleurisy again, and this is bad news for the mileage log...

As regular readers of this blog will know (having read this and that), I have had my running disrupted by this particular ailment before, last time in spectacular fashion just days before a marathon, ending in a couple of trips to A&E and one severely unimpressed brother toeing a start line all by himself.

This time is different. The pleurisy now is a much milder case, with less acute pain and the underlying symptoms having more or less already cleared. I took myself to the doctor this morning after conceding that I was in too much pain during my runs over the weekend (a pleasing 10 miles on Saturday and another 5.5 on Sunday), and that the chest pain was disrupting my sleep, which is much better than being taken to hospital in an ambulance having fainted into one's breakfast. I’ve no races planned until the Alloa Half Marathon on March 20^th, so no-one's going to be disappointed that I’ll miss anything. In short, I can afford to take it easy for a week or so.

But one pseudo-important thing will suffer: the stats. I’ve been holding back from telling you about how pleased I am with my training so far in 2011 because I didn’t want to jinx it, and more to the point, I wanted to get a good couple of months done before I started bragging about how well I was doing. But here we are, five weeks into the year, and already I’ve been derailed by forces beyond my control. So we’ll have to celebrate just these slightly-above-average five weeks, as follows:

Week one: 11 miles (still easing back in after Christmas, New Year etc)

Week two: 22 miles (and a ski session!)

Week three: 26 miles (looking good!)

Week four: 28 miles (great trend!)

Week five: 30 miles (first 30 mile week since August! Wahey!)

As you can imagine, the first five figures produce an extremely pleasing graph which was promising for the weeks ahead. My weekly average currently projects that I would total 1219 miles this year, a solid 368 more than in 2010, with an upward trend indicating that much more was to come. Things were looking rosy...

Week six: 10 antibiotics and a million painkillers, please

Now I know that this shouldn’t matter – a week off or with only a few miles in it isn’t the end of the world. But I love my stats and I love logging the miles, and I hate seeing that pleasing graph assaulted by the banalities of illness and injury. So for the next few days, I will mostly be on the sofa (when not at work) and giving my running shoes a break. Sigh. If you're lucky enough to be fit, well and healthy, then do me a favour: go out for a run this week, just because you can.

Happy running

Dave

P.S. - I think I might start signing off with a Bridget Jones-style summary to my posts, rather like this:

2011 to date - miles: 117.25, parkruns: 1, races: 0 

(NB My running year started on the first Monday in 2011, which was January 3rd)

I need goals

I’ve been a bit under the weather recently. Nothing major, just a bit of a chesty cough and a chronic case of feeling-rather-sorry-for-myself. So my grand plan to launch into 2011 with a few high-mileage weeks has been shelved and instead I’ve scaled back my time on the roads. I hate doing this, but luckily I don’t have any major races looming so I can afford to take a break and let my immune system do its thing.

So I’m doing exactly what I always do when I’m taking time off from regular running – thinking about my running and getting a little carried away from reality. Specifically, I’m thinking about my goals. Runners are usually goal-oriented folks, and running-based goals are, to my mind, the purest form there is. Some people, usually city-boy types, are driven to distraction by their work-based goals – targets, quotas, promotions, ‘making partner’ (whatever that means) or ‘landing the Henderson contract’ (who is this Henderson? and why is he handing out so many contracts on American TV?). But however driven and talented you are, no matter how many TM Lewin shirts you own, a goal you set for your professional life can always be affected by any number of factors beyond your control, like the economy, your employer’s priorities or your colleagues’ behaviour.  

Running goals are different. No-one else can accomplish your running goals for you, and no-one else is to blame if you can’t achieve them. It’s just you, a pair of trainers, and the target you’ve set yourself. But there is one thing that others can do in pursuit of your goals – they can make you accountable for them. Since I started this blog I have been avoiding doing something which I think most runners should.  I have avoided writing down, and thereby becoming accountable for, my ultimate goal. 

I’ll be honest, I’m not sure I want to tell you what it is. You’ll know what my aspirations are, what I’m working towards, and what measure of success I’ve chosen for myself. You might laugh at my delusions of grandeur, or baulk at the madness of it all. You’ll be able to sit there, on the sofa, half an eye on the TV, laptop gently overheating next to you, and judge me for how far I’ve progressed (or not) towards what I want to achieve. You’ll be able to witness my success or failure. You’ll have all the power, and I’ll be the one doing all the work. It hardly seems fair.

But I’m going to tell you anyway. Because I want you to have the power. I want you to quietly judge me and silently bully me into achieving my goal. Nobody made me choose this objective – it was entirely my own decision. Your role, as guardians of public consciousness, is to make me feel incredibly guilty if I’m not taking steps towards reaching it.

But first, to contextualise my goal.

Runners fall into two broad categories: those with time goals, and those with distance goals. The former are tenacious in that they put in a lot of work to improving their form and technique over particular distances. The latter are tenacious in that they’ll just keep going further and further until they reach a ceiling of endurance for one reason or another, and eventually join the former category.

I have always been a ‘distance goal’ runner. With less than a year’s experience of running, in a haphazard and fairly lazy way, I had registered for a marathon. I reasoned that since I couldn’t run faster than most people, I would run further instead. I ran my marathon, got my medal, but crossed the finish line with an odd lack of satisfaction. I think I suffer from a dangerous combination of being a distance goal runner and having oddly low self-esteem. I crossed that line thinking; ‘if I can do this, it must be easy’.

I ran another marathon in pursuit of that satisfaction, thinking maybe that if I ran faster I would reach a sense of completeness, that I would have properly achieved something. I ran the second one just a minute faster than the first (partly to do with a chest complaint similar to what I have now) – which didn’t help, but still I knew that my goals needed to be further, not faster.

Paris 4:06:43

Brighton 4:05:24

The night before I ran that second marathon, I read the first two chapters of a book by some random bloke called Dean Karnazes. His memoir, ‘Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner’ has, in no small way, changed my life. ‘Karno’ as he is known in the world of ultrarunning is a very public advocate of a very little-known sport – racing over distances further than a marathon. Google this kind of nonsense and you’ll discover a wealth of 50k, 50 mile, 100k, even 100 mile races and beyond.

Karno has been near the top of this sport for the last 15 years, and has been at the forefront of innovating mad new events and challenges for a similar amount of time. He’s run marathons at the South Pole. He swam across the San Francisco bay. He ‘regularly’ runs more than 200 miles non-stop, without sleep, without more than a few minutes’ rest, eating on the run. He once ran 100 miles through the night to enter a marathon, arriving at the start line 5 minutes before the gun fired, then completed the race in 3:15 (‘not superfast, but pretty good’ he adds). He ran 50 marathons, in 50 days, in 50 US states, then decided to run back home, from New York to San Francisco, unsupported. (He got as far as St Louis, Missouri, before deciding that he missed his family and hopped on a plane back to SF). He’s like Chuck Norris, except that he has actually done those things.

One of the longer passages of his first book is devoted to a race called the Western States Endurance Run. A 100-mile race over mountain ranges in California, including snow-capped peaks and bone-dry, desert-like valleys, a total climb of 18,000 feet and descent of 23,000 feet. Competitors aim to complete the distance in under 24 hours, putting themselves through almost unimaginable torment just to earn a silver belt buckle for their trouble. Here's a video illustrating some of this utter insanity, featuring people who make it look easy along the course and at the compulsory checkpoints. Note that they're running on taxing mountain trails, not lovely smooth tarmac or carefully-maintained footpaths:

I want to earn one of those belt buckles.

Entry to the Western States is by lottery, with extremely high qualifying standards. Essentially one has to be an experienced ultramarathoner, with fast qualifying times over a minimum of 50 miles. Those 50 miles have to have been completed on a course similar to the Western States, i.e. great big fuck-off mountains. One often has to be an experienced marathoner and hill runner just to qualify for the races which would qualify you to enter the Western States. This race is for the best of the best, and even then only 75% will finish at all.

So where does a mediocre marathoner like me start? By running a lot of races, for one. A lot of marathons really, and before too long, a lot of ‘ordinary’ ultras, too. I am provisionally planning to tackle my first ultra in summer 2012, most likely by entering a 40-50 mile race like the Devil o' the Highlands Footrace or the Glasgow to Edinburgh Double Marathon. Training will become life – no more the leisurely trot home from work, no more the lazy, slow adventure run on a Saturday afternoon. If I’m to achieve my goal I’ll need to be running 70+ miles a week minimum, and make significant adjustments to my nutrition and sleeping habits. Earning that belt buckle will take years.

I am terrified of this goal. Not just because of the many challenges I’ll face on the way, or because of the pain and suffering that the race will almost certainly cause. But because I know that when I cross that finish line in Auburn, California; broken, bleeding, ruined, traumatised, possibly having gone temporarily blind (as happened to Karno at his first Western States) or simply drained of all life, but somehow sneaking under the 24 hour cut-off and earning my silver belt buckle, I’m going to look at it and smile sadly.

Then I’ll probably say in a croaking, broken voice, to no-one in particular: ‘If I can do this, it must be easy’.

Happy running.

Dave

On Nick's running adventures, and my running misadventures

Hello!

After a very great deal of extremely positive feedback from My brother runs, I thought I should thank Nick again for writing that extraordinary and slightly heart-wrenching race report, and elaborate slightly on my own perspective. His post is fascinating and insightful - if you've not read it yet then go back and read it now.

Read it? Good. Then continue reading this one.

Just to be clear, Nick ran the Dublin marathon while I stayed home doing myself permanent lung damage in October 2009, not 2010. It would have been my second marathon in the space of 6 months. My various breathing problems are more or less resolved now, though I can still feel the scar tissue on my lungs when I'm running really hard. I think I probably always will.

A few things happened as a result of Nick's marathon glory and my respiratory misery: Nick ran a marathon, on his own, for one (quite a big one). It was his first race ever. I am incredibly proud of him and what he achieved by his own sheer force of will, and it inspires me in my running more than any elite performance could. Meanwhile I sat at home and felt incredibly guilty, but also very, very angry. My muscles were toned(ish) and ready to go. I'd committed to carb-loading and tapering. I'd broken in a new pair of running shoes. In short, I was ready to run a marathon (fluids and holes in my lungs notwithstanding). This anger led me to do two things. First, I got very upset and disgustingly jealous of Nick's achievement. And second, I decided that I had to run a marathon, as soon as bloody possible.

I dragged my pathetic frame over to a laptop and explored a few options. I quite seriously considered the Marathon de La Rochelle in France at the end of November, including eye-wateringly expensive flights and hotels. I actually got as far as signing up for the Bexhill Poppy Half Marathon just a few weeks away, a local and small scale race on a lapped course that I knew I wouldn't really enjoy. I even considered running a marathon distance, on my own, on a random Sunday in my home town. I mapped a route and planned my own aid stations. But as the dates for these plans and races approached I remained weak and unwell, and had to concede that I wasn't going anywhere in running shoes any time soon.

Setting my sights instead on the spring running season, I was very lucky to get a late entry into the 2010 Brighton Marathon. This really was lucky, as there were only a few hundred places up for grabs and they sold in under an hour, and more importantly I had a goal to work towards and a marathon in the pipeline. But it would be another 6 months before I had the opportunity to toe a start line and make up for lost time. It wasn't enough to lift my spirits. I decided that I could somehow atone for missing Dublin by running as many races as I could afford. I entered the Alloa Half Marathon, the England Kilomathon, the Great Edinburgh Run and the Edinburgh Marathon Relay. 5 races in 10 weeks from March to May 2010, over a total of almost 70 miles. Suicide.

But it wasn't suicide. It was glorious. I ran 5 PB's in 5 races, and at every race I had friends competing or supporting. I met Rosie Swale-Pope in Brighton. I got my photo in the paper in Edinburgh. I ran a time which ranked me in the top 500 in the world for the Kilomathon (it was the world's first Kilomathon...).

They were the highlight of my calendar, and I had a truly epic few months. I think it was this time of my life that I went from being a fairly casual runner to an obsessive. It was that combination of Nick's hard-won achievement and my own vicious annoyance that drove me forward. And now there's no going back.

So what I'm really trying to say is: pleurisy has its upsides.

I really need to work on my conclusions.

Happy running!

Dave

P.S. I'm getting a steady stream of guest submissions to this blog, and they're really all excellent and very welcome. I promise to publish every single one, though you may have to be patient until I've collected enough to make up a post. Do keep 'em coming!