Visualisation is often mentioned as an important tool used by successful runners. This is how I visualise my first run after my six weeks "sabbatical", only after some gait analysis and the purchase of a pair of state of the art trainers, of course.
Sunday 24 February 2013
Vicarious Runs #1 The Baldock Beast
The Baldock Beast was the first scheduled half marathon of my faithfully followed marathon training schedule in 2012. It was also the first race I'd done with a deliberately intimidating name (I'd previously avoided races with names like the Greenford Grievous Bodily Harmer Half Marathon or the Levenshulme Leave You on the Roadside to Die 10K), it was also the first ever Baldock Beast.
After some half hearted and failed attempts to persuade running club acquaintances to join me I went alone to deepest Hertfordshire and lined up on the start line with a few hundred other race pioneers.
This was the third half marathon of my late starting career. I wasn't expecting fireworks after the triumphant personal best I'd achieved at the pancake flat Great Eastern Run the previous autumn, what with this race being a hilly, multiple-terrain Beast and everything. Some moments I may have been able to recreate tomorrow, if I'd had the opportunity to demonstrate everything I'd learnt from being an "experienced" runner of the Baldock Beast:
1. If you find a stranger carrying or wearing merchandise for your favourite football team, offering to kiss said badge is a great way to bolster your chances of a record breaking run.
2. Pretending not to notice the official race photographers so you look relaxed but focused in the official race photographs tends to lead to no one bothering to take your picture. It also causes you to spend days afterwards searching fruitlessly for the relaxed but focused runner amongst the hundreds of photos on the photographer's website.
3. Hertfordshire villagers are friendly and encouraging. However you're even more likely to be helped along to a personal best if just one old woman, her Sunday morning shattered by a few people running down her high street, shakes her fist at you, repeatedly shouting "Get out of my village!".
4. Developing private, irrational grudges against runners you've never met is a great way to boost your performance. The man who looked a bit like Russell Brand in exactly the kind of trainers Runners World tells you to ditch before thinking about starting your sofa-to-startline programme proved to be one such irrational target. Men in triathlon kit, especially those with Ironman tattoos on their calves were also red rag to a bull for the uncharacteristically angry in-race persona I adopted (I eased past Mr Ironman mid race and wheezed past Mr Inappropriate Trainers on the downhill stretch to the finish).
So Baldock Beast tamers, 2013, I'll be with you in spirit. Bear my tips in mind - some of them helped me to a personal best (1:53:33 since you're asking)
Tuesday 19 February 2013
Running on Water
A couple of days ago I paid a visit to the local swimming pool with the aim of doing a few lengths of freestyle. Before taking up the running thing, swimming was pretty much the only sport I had any competence at and was the "easy" bit when I tried a triathlon in 2009.
What struck me most last Sunday was how regular running only really prepares you for yet more regular running (unless a stress fracture strikes in which case it doesn't even prepare you for that). My 9 year old daughter swam up and down the lane with me and soon left me in a cloud of chlorinated "dust". Clearly I have some catching up to do on the swimming front.
Towards the end of my session I remembered talk of running in water in a number of injury recovery programmes I'd consulted so I had a go. Without knowing the details of the technique, I swam to a place where it was too deep to stand up and started running on the spot. It was hard work with my legs going in big exaggerated circles, a bit like riding a massive penny farthing. I kept it up for a couple of minutes and then grabbed the poolside, knackered.
I've since checked on how I should have done water running the proper way but was initially shocked to discover that this was just the first stage of a journey to the ultimate skill - running on water.
Thursday 14 February 2013
Double check on your stress fracture - run for a train
I've had a nagging doubt over the past few days. Maybe I'm suffering from a minor niggle which I'm now over and the suspected stress fracture was merely a phantom injury. I went to the GPs a couple of days ago in the hope she might agree to send me for an x-ray but she refused, pointing out (correctly) that stress fractures are invisible until they start to heal. She also suggested I may have the dreaded shin splints but I think that was more the result of my inability to properly describe my symptoms, including not being able to show her exactly where it hurt. My conclusion - I have an injury or do I?
Despite yesterday's return to the bike and a lot of walking around in clumpy office shoes, the lower left leg has felt totally normal over the past couple of days. Walking to the tube station this morning I was absent mindedly thinking about pulling out the running shoes and doing one last double-check around the block later on, when a train pulled in, easily catchable so long as I ran over a footbridge and onto the platform. So run I did and the lower leg twinges started as soon as I'd leapt onto the train and they've been quietly nagging me throughout the day.
The return of the twinge has not been all negative - it's reminded me of the promise I'd made - to get stronger than I was when I was during my last "Run". So tonight I did my first "Runner's Circuit" which you can find in Sam Murphy's book Running Well - I did all the ones which didn't involve leaving the ground: lunges, calf raises, one-leg dips, step-ups, hamstring hacks and squats. The good news was I could do the required 20 of each. The bad news was that I've learnt that my knees have developed a highly embarrassing crunching noise every time they bend.
Next stop: the swimming baths?
Despite yesterday's return to the bike and a lot of walking around in clumpy office shoes, the lower left leg has felt totally normal over the past couple of days. Walking to the tube station this morning I was absent mindedly thinking about pulling out the running shoes and doing one last double-check around the block later on, when a train pulled in, easily catchable so long as I ran over a footbridge and onto the platform. So run I did and the lower leg twinges started as soon as I'd leapt onto the train and they've been quietly nagging me throughout the day.
The return of the twinge has not been all negative - it's reminded me of the promise I'd made - to get stronger than I was when I was during my last "Run". So tonight I did my first "Runner's Circuit" which you can find in Sam Murphy's book Running Well - I did all the ones which didn't involve leaving the ground: lunges, calf raises, one-leg dips, step-ups, hamstring hacks and squats. The good news was I could do the required 20 of each. The bad news was that I've learnt that my knees have developed a highly embarrassing crunching noise every time they bend.
Next stop: the swimming baths?
Wednesday 13 February 2013
The "Don't Run" regime kicks in
Four days is a long time in the life of a temporary former-runner. Despite the inclement weather there seem to be extra runners of all shapes and sizes, out and about, pounding the pavements, deliberately winding me up with their "We can run, you can't" expressions.
Otherwise, the "Don't Run" world looks largely the same, apart from the particular drawer in which I keep my running clothes. It's bursting at the seams now with newly redundant garments. During my "Run" period, half of the clothing, particularly the favourite items were draped over radiators, or in the washing machine. The "Don't run" life has reminded me how much of this stuff I own.
In an effort to preserve my hard earned running fitness I've been flirting with the kind of activities that I should have been doing all along but couldn't be arsed. Sunday night combined a super-sized roast dinner with some core strength exercises including the dreaded planks.Today I did my first bike commute for over a year giving those legs a 27 mile round trip a serious without all that running related bone bashing. The £8.00 saved from the Underground journey was unfortunately ploughed into an unnecessarily large lunch to steel me for the journey home which showed me how out of practice I was when it comes to the cycling game. All in all it was good to get back in with London's yellow jacketed cycling community. However I was still jealous of the people who deliberately chose a route to run to and from their places of work which gave them the chance to taunt me with their high impact sporting moves.
Tonight I've been toying with the idea of standing on one of those little platforms and doing some leg strengthening exercises but the rehydrating beer might have put paid to that...
Otherwise, the "Don't Run" world looks largely the same, apart from the particular drawer in which I keep my running clothes. It's bursting at the seams now with newly redundant garments. During my "Run" period, half of the clothing, particularly the favourite items were draped over radiators, or in the washing machine. The "Don't run" life has reminded me how much of this stuff I own.
In an effort to preserve my hard earned running fitness I've been flirting with the kind of activities that I should have been doing all along but couldn't be arsed. Sunday night combined a super-sized roast dinner with some core strength exercises including the dreaded planks.Today I did my first bike commute for over a year giving those legs a 27 mile round trip a serious without all that running related bone bashing. The £8.00 saved from the Underground journey was unfortunately ploughed into an unnecessarily large lunch to steel me for the journey home which showed me how out of practice I was when it comes to the cycling game. All in all it was good to get back in with London's yellow jacketed cycling community. However I was still jealous of the people who deliberately chose a route to run to and from their places of work which gave them the chance to taunt me with their high impact sporting moves.
Tonight I've been toying with the idea of standing on one of those little platforms and doing some leg strengthening exercises but the rehydrating beer might have put paid to that...
Sunday 10 February 2013
Run Don't Run - Maiden Post
On 21st April 2013, I will not be running the Virgin London Marathon for the first time. I was going to run the Virgin London Marathon for the first time, but on 9th February 2013, after having my body manipulated on an osteopath's couch for an hour, after much tutting and shaking of the head on her part, my Google-diagnosis of "stress fracture" was 90% confirmed.
So ended a short but intense burst of pretty serious preparation on my part - five sessions a week, muddy stomps in the forest, long runs in the snow, intervals and threshold runs at dawn, retail therapy at Niketown and so on.
This will therefore be my attempt at a running blog that's initially not about running. It will be about what a previously confirmed anti-sportsman, who discovered running way after reaching the status of "veteran" for the purpose of racing, does when his recently discovered favourite pastime is cruelly snatched away because of a tiny crack in the middle of his left shin.
Ultramarathon hero Scot Jurek takes 4-6 weeks off each year on purpose. My enforced "don't run" era should only be 6 weeks long but let's see what can be achieved during that little lay-off - hibernation or rejuvenation?
So ended a short but intense burst of pretty serious preparation on my part - five sessions a week, muddy stomps in the forest, long runs in the snow, intervals and threshold runs at dawn, retail therapy at Niketown and so on.
This will therefore be my attempt at a running blog that's initially not about running. It will be about what a previously confirmed anti-sportsman, who discovered running way after reaching the status of "veteran" for the purpose of racing, does when his recently discovered favourite pastime is cruelly snatched away because of a tiny crack in the middle of his left shin.
Ultramarathon hero Scot Jurek takes 4-6 weeks off each year on purpose. My enforced "don't run" era should only be 6 weeks long but let's see what can be achieved during that little lay-off - hibernation or rejuvenation?
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