Big Town Half Marathon and Joining the Club

A great incentive for me is finding a training partner to share the pain and alleviate the boredom of running by myself.  Having someone to run with is a great distraction, especially for a long run where instead of concentrating your mind on every little ache, pain and niggle and potentially baling out part way through, you forget about how it feels and chat your way through a good steady run.  I always run better with friends, further and at a better pace too.

Another great incentive is to have something I've never done before to look forward to.  What can you do as a runner?  The answer, easily, is you can always go further or faster or enter a race you haven't done before.  I entered the Reading Half Marathon in December 2010 giving me 3 months to train for it.

Sandhurst Joggers
So to get some running in with other people mid-week I joined both Sandhurst Joggers and Berkshire Hash House Harriers.  Sandhurst run every day of the week except Saturday and I chose to start running with them on their beginners and improvers Tuesday night run.  In the winter months the run routes are around the roads of Sandhurst and neighbouring Crowthorne, Yateley and Blackwater with groups doing 4, 5 or 6 miles. It seems to be mostly ladies running on a Tuesday, so us male running geeks can practice social interaction with the fairer sex without too much risk of boring them to tears talking about injuries, trainers and diets.  Hardly any women on the Tuesday night runs took to sprinting off in to the distance when I had been running next to them.

Hashing
Berkshire Hash run on Sunday mornings in the winter always ending up at a good pub.  As they say, and this is probably a cliché that all hashes bring out, they are "a drinking club with a running problem".  The runs they do are all about 10k and nearly all cross-country with the exception of the run nearest Valentine's Day which is the Red Dress Run where everyone (men and women) has to run wearing a red dress.  For this run the aim is to go for maximum embarrassment and have it set in the middle of Reading.  They are a decent bunch of people, and if you have worked overseas you will recognise the characters in any hash as I think a lot of hashers got their first taste of it as ex-pats.

So, doing these runs I was at least getting some longer distance in, and getting out with a friendly bunch of people.  Still the distance was no more than abut 6 or 7 miles.  Not having a training plan I decided one day to jog home from work, which was just under 10 miles and mostly up hill.  I managed that OK just feeling tired near the end, but pleased that I had run further than I ever had done before with just over 2 weeks to go before Reading HM.  

Disaster
With exactly 2 weeks to go disaster struck. I was out on a hash run in woods around Barkham near Wokingham.  It was a tricky run with lots of stopping and starting and tight twisty paths among fallen trees.  Jumping over a tree trunk near the end of the run I felt a sharp pain behind my right ankle.  The final 2k back to the pub was really uncomfortable.  By the time I had sat down for an hour to have lunch, I could barely walk.  I had my first Achilles injury.

For the next 2 weeks I did no running at all.  I rested, strapped, iced and tried stretching a bit after a few days. Then I got back to cycling to work and on the weekend before Reading HM, cycled 50 miles to and from a friend in Tadley for a barbeque. 

Reading Half Marathon 2011
I made it to the start line having not run at all for 2 weeks, not knowing if I would last the first mile, out of condition and never having run the distance before.  I placed myself just between the 1:50 and 2 hour pacers and set off. The first mile I was not thinking at all about pace, just what was my Achilles feeling like?  A little ache, but nothing too serious and I managed to get up the first of the 2 hills on the course before the 3mile mark with no ill effects.

I tried to keep it steady and managed a pace just around 9:00/mile until about 5 miles in when the 2:00 hour pacer went past me.  I decided that finishing was better than keeping up with him.  I picked up a sickly sweet Lucozade just after 3 miles and had a bit of it but didn’t like the sticky taste and probably had the equivalent of 2 more small cups of water and no food over the first 10 miles.  

I had never run more than 10 miles and I now know that that is just about as far as I can go with little water and no extra energy intake.  I think that lack of experience and lack of training did for me because with 3 miles to go I really started to suffer with pains in my hips and upper thighs.  I just couldn’t lift my legs and had no energy.  The stretch from mile 10 to the Madejsky Stadium where the finish is seems interminable – one enormous long straight that never seems to end. Then when you get to the stadium, you turn off right and run for nearly a mile round behind the stadium before turning back to arrive where you left off at the last little rise into the stadium.  People who are on that last mile are just 2 steps away across the central verge and I started to play out in my mind how I might stop at the verge and then just join the flow with the runners on the other side of the road. 

I struggled on still in much pain, made the turn realising that there were no short cuts anymore and I just had to go for another 10 or 15 minutes to finish.  A bit of a mental cloud lifted then and I managed to pick up the pace a bit, made it to the rise onto Hoops Way and ground to a halt again.  This was getting desperate, but I managed to get into the stadium at least looking like I was running OK.  Finished in 2:07.

I met the wife and kids, wrapped them up like superheroes in space blankets and went for a massage. Damn that was painful.  But at least it wasn’t Achilles pain.  I was a bit disappointed with my time and the state I found myself in at the end.  I had really wanted to cruise into the stadium with a smile on my face well inside 2 hours having enjoyed the race and the atmosphere, which is what marks Reading out as such a great race.  I spent the whole time either in pain or thinking about it, waiting for my Achilles to give way.  I suppose just finishing my first half marathon was achievement enough.

Next time The Road to Recovery

Frimley Lodge parkrun and the Joy of Six

The week after my first Reading parkrun I was car-less again and, searching for another run, found a parkrun just 6 miles away from home and an easy cycle ride away.  So, Saturday 26^th June 2010, I arrived at Frimley Lodge Park to be greeted by Steve Osbourne who, because I was early, assumed I was a volunteer and dumped a load of stakes in my arms to go set out the finish funnel.

Steve is a bit of a single minded character with a very hands on (or fingers in everyone's pie) style of managing things.  At the time even I thought FLP was moulded in his image of what the event should be.  The fact that that clashed with what the parkrun organisation wanted it to look like eventually saw the end of Steve’s involvement with parkrun.  I have to say though it was Steve who encouraged me to try other events, go on hash runs and look at what local running clubs had to offer.  So he had a positive influence on my developing running hobby.

Frimley Lodge parkrun is set in an attractive park alongside the Basingstoke canal with a real mixture of surfaces including grass, gravel and forest trail along the canal towpath, through woodland, grassland and round football pitches.  In winter it can get really muddy and becomes a proper winter cross country course.  It’s now my home parkrun and I love running here with all the friends that I have made.

The first time I ran the course was in a time of 27:50 and then over the next four weeks had consecutive PBs to take my time down to 25:13.  Keeping up a midweek run and cycling to work and parkrun was keeping my improvement going.  I had my first sub-25minute run while on holiday in the New Forest with a 24:59 at Eastleigh parkrun’s old course and then returned to FLP to smash my PB there with a decent 24:24.  That was a good day and I put a special effort in after getting a great surprise in the pre-run briefing by being nominated as Sweatshop runner of the month for setting 4 PBs in a month while also cycling to the event and volunteering as well.  I still run in the free pair of trainers that got me.

I turned to improving my 10k times and entered Mortimer again and the Julian Farrell for the first time.  Neither of these are what you would call good PB courses though as they both include huge hills in them.  Mortimer was held on a hot day in September and I got round about a minute quicker than last year (53:46) and had the minor achievement of running the whole course with no walking up the big hill. 

The Julian Farrell 10k is named after a past president of the Camberley & District Athletics Club and is held in early October.  It's run on roads between Camberley and Frimley, starts with a few km on undulating housing estate roads before climbing up the mountainous Portsmouth Road past Frimley Park Hospital. You get to the top at about 6k and then drop on a long downhill for another 2km before that last run round the local houses with the finish in the grounds of King's International College.  Felt crap going up the hill going solo with no-one around me that I knew and got round in a time of 54:17. I struggled with that one, but other people I know coped pretty well with the cool wet conditions of the day, in particular Louise Brooks who beat me by a good 45s).

After this I set myself what I thought was an ambitious target of getting under 24 minutes at FLP by Christmas.  For a couple of weeks I was nowhere near it, then blasted a 23:50 on a cool day in mid-October.  I was elated and kind of concerned at the same time - where to from here?  I thought about a sub 23 minutes 5k target, but as it turned out I wouldn't get another PB at Frimley for another 18months. I also thought about stepping up to a half marathon.

I had plateaued and on the back of a 6 or 7k mid-week run, a parkrun and a bit of cycling to work week in week out I wasn't going to be able to just run faster 5k or 10k times on a whim. The only variable was what I did on a Friday or Saturday night as one beer and a late night would put me in a mental trough on race morning with loads of negative thoughts before I had even got to the start line.  I took a long time to get out of this situation.  I now classed myself as a runner, but what little I was doing was becoming a chore.  Something would have to change.

Next time: Big Town Half Marathon and Joining the Club



 

The Wilderness Months and Running Bug Pt 2

What happened after Mortimer? I looked back at my parkrun stats recently and I didn’t do another parkrun between the end of September 09 and June 2010.  The kids went back to school and back to swimming lessons on Saturday mornings and I went back to cycling to work and playing midweek football.  Basingstoke and Reading parkrun were too far away to cycle to and Frimley Lodge hadn’t started up yet and, as we are a 1-car-family, I couldn’t get to a parkrun.  So I spent Saturday mornings being one of the few dads who went to watch their kids taking lessons at Bracknell leisure centre.  Running slipped into the background.

Forward to May 2010 and I think I was getting a bit tired of having lumps kicked out of me playing football and I realised I hadn’t really got good value from the purchase of my trainers.  As a rule of thumb I like to think of good value on anything I buy as getting at least as many uses out of it as it cost in pounds to buy.  Spend £100 on a cheap suit for a funeral and never use it again = poor value.  Spend £500 on a really nice suit and wear it to work every day for a couple of years = good value. I don’t think I had quite got there with my £80 shoes in the 6 months since I bought them so it was worth me getting out on the roads and trails again.

I usually like to plan things and know what I’m going to do ahead of time, saving frustration and accidents.  That works pretty well when you’re doing a plumbing job or changing the brake pads on your car.  Like many people who run, however, as soon as you put on a pair of trainers all sensibility leaves you.  How many people have finished a race in pain and injured, but you just had to finish coz you damn well spent money to enter!  You know everyone would be sympathetic to you pulling out injured and applauding your good sense in doing so why put yourself through that much pain?  Sometimes running is more like an addiction or a mental illness.

I had the use of the car for a Saturday morning so I decided to go to Reading parkrun.  I had done no running in nearly 8 months except trotting around the 5-a-side pitch once a week, but still just went for it.  8am Saturday 19 June 2010, I put my trainers on to the sound of a chorus of angels and an ethereal glow coming from around my feet. 

It was sunny but not too warm by the side of the Thames.  Reading parkrun is a nice flat and picturesque course by river and woodland along grass and gravel paths.  It has a long straight by the river before crossing a narrow bridge and sweeping round a bend and into woodland trails.  I was a bit caught up in the thrill of it all and set off a bit quick and by the time I had got into the woods was being passed by a few people.  I hung on, resisted the urge to walk a bit when I felt totally spent and tried to at least look good crossing the finish line: 79^th out of a field of 118 runners in 27:56.  The running bug had bitten again and I was born again as a runner.

Next time: Frimley Lodge parkrun and the Joy of Six (miles that is).

Discovering parkrun and The Road to Mortimer

I have learnt that I need an incentive to keep running. Just plodding up and down streets for the sake of getting fit is a dull and lonely experience.  Back in 2009 this is just what I was doing and it was no fun and really had no point to it.  I had done my couch to 5k, got a medal and a Tshirt and to give me a challenge I started looking for another race around 5k to have a go at. I couldn't find any, only fun runs for kids while the grown ups were doing a 10k or 10mile.  I chose the Mortimer 10k road race (organised by Reading Road Runners).  I had about 2 months to prepare for it.

Googling 5k run in the Berkshire/ Hampshire area returned parkrun with the nearest to me being Basingstoke.  So, after registering I turned up on 15^th August 2009 at my first ever parkrun about 45minutes early and helped out setting up flags, course markers and finish funnel.  We had the pre-race briefing during which I was cheered for being a new runner. What a great feeling and what a happy place to go for a run. 

Basingstoke is a course that is part tarmac, gravel paths and grassy field and undulating.  I managed a sprint to the finish line suffering in the heat panting, a Niagara of sweat streaming down my face, which was red as a beetroot.  At least I stayed on my feet to get a finish number token and didn’t vomit on anyone. So I had turned up, ran and didn’t die: Success! Time 26:29.

Now, anyone who knows about parkrun is familiar with the usually slick operation of registering your run.  It’s all about barcodes – print and bring your runner’s barcode, run, collect a finish number token with a barcode on it and go get them scanned. All done without fuss.  Back then barcodes were just a twinkle in Paul Sinton-Hewitt’s eye.  You got a metal token with a number stamped on it then queued up to drip sweat on the poor volunteer who’s responsibility it was to log your name and finish position on to a laptop.  Sometime later in the morning, after visiting the local café, the runner’s finish places would be combined with the finish times using a fiendish piece of software before being uploaded to parkrun central.  You might get your result mid-afternoon or the next morning.  Now, with the barcode system and new software, all the results can be assembled, checked and uploaded within half an hour of the last runner crossing the line with results texts winging their way to runners before 10:30. Amazing.

I ran there three more times over the next six weeks as training for Mortimer.  I think we actually had a summer that year and I suffer in the heat and, as I was probably carrying 5 or 6kg of extra insulation than I am now, I only managed to improve my time by 2 seconds in those four runs. 

As I had found out from looking up some training plans, you don’t need to run a marathon when training for a marathon and I thought I could apply the same logic to a 10k.  That’s novice runner thinking at its most optimistic. As I could manage an 8k run I thought I was reasonably well prepared for Mortimer.  Actually all that meant is I would be able to finish the run.

Mortimer is a really well run nice family event.  There’s loads to do for spectators with stalls and rides set up on the fairground on the edge of town.  Race day for me didn’t start well.  I decided to bring the family along to witness my great achievement, but the excitement, or just the twisty roads, were too much for Alfie’s breakfast to cope with so it decided to jump ship.  I got dumped at the venue with my kit while Julia and the kids went home for a clean up.  They did get back before the start though. 

The race had 460 runners of all abilities, so a good happy crowd set off in sunny warm conditions.  I knew nothing about the course, which was probably just as well.  It starts off flat doing a lap of the fairground and local houses then heads north along undulating roads before looping back and passing the fairground again at 5k.  You then start going downhill for about 2k. At first I thought this was great, a welcome bit of relief, but after 10 minutes of this I thought “Bugger, I’m pretty sure we’re going to have to get back up all this before we finish.”  There was about 1.5k uphill.  The kind of uphill that kids you into thinking it’s over before revealing another stretch of hill just round the next corner. I found myself jogging and walking and being overtaken by 70 year old ladies. At last the hill was over and I managed to stagger over the last mile to the line in 54:34.  

At the time I thought that wasn’t great, I was placed 232 out of 460 and just into the lower half of the table, but looking back at that run now, it turns out to be quite a reasonable time.  First 10k completed and something to be proud of.  I have the medal pinned up at my desk at work.

Next: The Wilderness Months and Running Bug pt 2 

Getting the Running Bug pt1

When it all started?  February 2009, running around the local park, feeling the belly and back flab jiggling around me and getting out of breath after 5 minutes trying to run a football round with number-one-son.  Being outrun by 5yr old Alfie was a sobering experience.  Now, at the time I knew no runners at all and didn’t think to look up local running clubs, so after some online research found Sweatshop in Reading and went to buy some running pumps.  

I spent £80 on some bland looking Adidas Sequence shoes and then rushed home, put them on and went out for a 7km walk with a couple of minutes jogging thrown in.  Came home with a big blister on my heel which you can still see a scar from today! 

That could have been it for running, but as I am from tight arsed northern stock I thought there's no way I'm letting 80 quid go to waste, there must be a better way than this and I found a couch to 5k training plan.  Looking back at that time I’m amazed at how little I knew about running and that there was so much information out there from clubs and websites that could help build you into a decent runner with the minimum of pain and not a little enjoyment. Obviously I just thought you would get some shoes, put on shorts and a T-shirt and go. Well, I went, got about 500m from my front door and nearly collapsed, red faced, blowing, with a stitch and hammering heart.  

Having got the plan, I stuck with it; a series of gradually increasing intervals working up from 5 minutes to 25 minutes of continual jogging, running up and down the hills between Sandhurst and Crowthorne.  Most of the first 3 weeks I had to cunningly time the intervals so I was walking up the hills and jogging down the other side.

About this time I was thinking that just plodding up and down the same piece of road was getting rather dull.  I needed more motivation and found it in a fun run in Swinley Forest run by 3:09 Events.  I entered the 2.5mile run and made sure I could at least do a continuous 3miles in about 30minutes by race day.  

Come the race I found myself on the line with a dozen kids, their parents and a few other novice runners like myself.  We set off on the hilly course through the forest with the kids blazing a trail out front. After 25minutes I had passed only a few of the kids and I was thinking “Where the hell’s the finish, I must have taken a wrong turn!”  When I eventually crossed the line in 5^th place behind 4 lads all under 12, I heard the commentator saying “Let’s have a big cheer for the first adult over the line! We said it was 2.5miles, actually it was more like 4miles. Well done!”

We got finishers’ medals and a goody bag and after everyone had crossed the line we had presentations for the male and female winners.  Then I got a prize too – a T-shirt for coming in 5^th place overall and being the first person across the line big enough to fit the shirt!  I was a little embarrassed about taking the shirt, but got over it soon enough.

Next: Discovering parkrun and the Road to Mortimer