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
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