Ups and Downs - Running and Illness

At Last - a Plan
Following on with this Spring running season's theme of joyful chaos instead of a training plan, the end of April will find me at Bracknell Half Marathon.  This comes 1 week before my target race for the Spring season - Milton Keynes Marathon - so would normally be a tapering run in any sensible training plan.

With a month to go before the marathon and having not had any structure to training, I decided to plan a couple of long runs (15 and 18 miles), hill sessions (4 to 5 miles) and a quick parkrun to get me into race trim before tackling Bracknell Half.  Fortunately this fitted into the Easter half term holidays when I had a long week off.  On the Monday before Easter I did the 15 mile run from Sandhurst, south along the Blackwater Valley path until it meets the Basingstoke Canal, then along the canal to Frimley Lodge park followed by a lap and a half of the parkrun course to make the distance to a nice round 15miles.  Perfect. I felt great at the end of the run, met the family in the park and, after a picnic lunch and recovery icecream, had a kick around playing footy with Julia and the kids.

More bike riding, swimming and playing footy in the park with the kids over the next few days (aka cross-training) and then a hill session on the Sandhurst Joggers handicap course in Crowthorne and, with a day off on Friday, I was feeling fresh for a go at a quick run at Frimley Lodge parkrun.  Most of my parkruns this year have been run with Elinor (8) and it has been great to see her enjoying her running and improving.  However, since January I have attempted only 3 quick parkruns and managed to struggle round in a best time of 24:10, two minutes off my best from last October.  So, I did a deal with the kids and told them I would run once a month by myself, once with Alfred and twice with Elinor.

Smashing parkrun
The Saturday of the Easter weekend was cool and sunny and the course was in perfect condition.  I took up my usual start position wide on the left and near the front so I can get across the start line quickly but keep out of the way of the faster runners for the first right hander around the field before the canal section.  Everyone's tactic for Frimley is to go like the clappers round this first field then settle into your race pace on the canal, hopefully not being blocked in by slower runners.

On the canal I could see Duncan Ball and Chris Peddle 30m ahead of me and decided to try and keep them in sight, which I managed all the way on to the 2nd lap, when I caught up to Duncan at about 4k and he urged me on with a call of "Go for it coach!"  With 500m to go I could just see Chris 100m in front so tried to pick up the pace - he was still a target.  All this time I hadn't once looked at my time, just concentrating on my breathing and trying to keep the pace even all the way round and I decided I wasn't going to make a grab for my watch until after crossing the finish line.  When I did hit the Garmin it read 21:46 and I nearly hit the floor in shock - a PB by nearly 30 seconds and one of my goals for the year achieved (a sub-22 parkrun).

Not very long after Alfred and Elinor came in within a minute of Elinor's PB after running together, with Alfred saying how well little sister had run (will the aliens who abducted our son please give us the real one back?!) and then saying how proud he was of Dad's new PB.  Brilliant, and topped off with Julia getting a new PB, taking another 30 seconds of her best time.

Heart Worries?
Banging out a PB like that is a great indication of form and fitness, I think, so it was a real boost to my confidence with a marathon coming up soon.  Two days later and I was setting off for an 18 mile run and eventually learning an important lesson.  18 miles is a long way and you have prepare for a training run like that just as well as if it was a race. So a day or two carb loading, then a good night's sleep and up 3 hours before the run for a decent breakfast and drinks to get properly hydrated. Not this time - no carb loading, didn't sleep well and had a drink and a banana before setting off.  Also, after my parkrun heroics, I felt like I had an allergy or flu, with sneezing and a runny nose for the rest of Saturday.  I felt a bit weird and unbalanced for the first 3 miles of the run, then OK up to 10miles then completely drained for the next 3, so I baled out and called for a lift home - better doing that than trying to go another 5 miles and doing some damage.

Maybe I had had a 24 hour flu thing and this was nothing to worry about?  The problem was that I felt strange the rest of the day and also back at work the next day.  Even though I had been drinking and eating well, I felt a bit dizzy and off balance with a noticeably high pulse.  Worryingly, every few minutes I was getting a strange "missed a beat" feeling followed by good old thump in my heart.  That was something I've never felt before, so I decided to book a doctor's appointment to get checked out. The earliest appointment I could get was the next Tuesday (a week away!) and after a planned 10k training run at race pace followed by Bracknell Half.

Well, the 10k run on the Frimley Hospital route went well, as did Bracknell Half (more on that next time) and I went to the doc's feeling fine.  I went through the symptoms and mentioned doing Bracknell Half and his first question was did I run a quick time? I suppose that would have to be a good sign that I had got over any illness and hadn't done any damage by running while ill.  Blood pressure and pulse checked out OK and I learned some interesting things.

If you are ill and you are feeling aches in joints and muscles, then definitely DO NOT RUN.  This seems obvious, but runners are not normal people and will do almost anything to get their running fix.  The aches in your muscles are due to damage that the virus is doing and, as the heart is a muscle, it can be affected the same way. Stressing your heart by going for a run can lead to much more serious and possibly permanent damage to the heart muscle.  Try knitting or parkrun volunteering instead!

Your heart does not beat completely regularly and misses a beat and resets itself on to its regular rhythm and this happens often, maybe a few times a minute.  Also, while the heart is not beating it is filling with blood, so if it misses a beat it fills up even more and the next beat back will be extra strong.  Most of the time you never feel this, however, if you are an endurance athlete, you will have a larger heart than the average idle layabout and one that beats slower too, so these missed beats and reset pulses can be much more noticeable.  This can be even more pronounced if you are ill or have been over-training when the extra stress your body is feeling raises your pulse.

So, the weird heart feelings were just normal.  More importantly I know I haven't done any damage by training hard in the week and racing at Bracknell and I can go into my next marathon without worrying about keeling over in the last mile.  Things are definitely looking up.