Relax, don't do it

The last couple of weeks have marked the inevitable ‘not enough hours in the week’ point of my marathon training.

Anyone who’s trained for a marathon knows the feeling. If you’re training for your first marathon, you’ll experience it soon enough. You might have a mental week at work. You might be visiting friends. Or, you might just have the perfect storm of training, work and an uncharacteristically busy social life hit in a week.

 
Sometimes, I’ll check Twitter at breakfast and see people have been out and done 10 miles or speedwork and it’s not even 7am. These people can always fit a run in. They are superhuman. I am not superhuman. I have to sleep. Otherwise I find when I run I trip over because I’m too tired to look where I’m going. I have learnt the hard way that tripping over and hurting yourself is bad for marathon training morale.

Marathons do not run themselves so somehow you have to fit in miles. That’s why marathon training is so much harder than the race itself. Sometimes, no amount of planning can help: the simple question is – when on earth am I going to fit in a run?

Here are some of my tricks for fitting in miles and staying sane when the diary gets full.

1.     Concede.

Depending on your race target, your plan will likely have you running between 4-6 times a week. Whatever the training schedule I have set myself, I am unlikely to be able to stick to it for 16-18 weeks in a row. My life will take over at some point. My work will have to take precedent at some point. My loved ones will have birthdays, emergencies or generally demand that at some point they come before the lycra. I will go on holiday or visit friends who think I'm crazy (or antisocial) for running every single day.

Don’t sweat it. So what if one week you only run two, three four times? The training police don’t come and arrest you. Just don’t make a habit of it. Hal Higdon reckons if you do approx. 85% of your training, you’ll be fine. This is a good rule of thumb which I use when I’m feeling stressed about the demands on my time.

If there genuinely isn’t any space to fit in a run, I just shrug it off and try to follow my schedule as normal the following week. Don’t try to squeeze in extra miles to make up for missed runs. That way injury lies.

2.     Quality not quantity.

If you must concede miles or runs for the week, focus on quality not quantity. I always aim to fit in speedwork and a long run, no matter what the week throws at me. For example, last week I knew my total mileage would suffer so I ran a tough testing intervals session on Tuesday evening with my club, Ealing Eagles. It took me a good couple of days to recover properly, but that was ok, because it was a good couple of days before I could fit in a run. I also ran a few miles later in the week at race pace, and did a long run on Sunday. So, although I didn’t tick off 100% of my mileage, I felt like I had achieved some quality sessions that would help my progress.

If I’m on holiday, I do a long run the day before I leave and the day after I come back, so I don’t have to do them while I’m away. Long runs on holiday are only acceptable if you holiday alone. Otherwise they might ensure that you end up holidaying alone.

 3.     Commute.

Ask yourself, can I commute to or from work? Note: not ‘can I be arsed to commute to or from work? That is a different question!

Many people can’t do the run commute because of distance or logistics. But many of you can. So, if you can, do it. It’s a simple way to kill two birds with one stone.

If you have office shower facilities but they get a bit hectic in the morning (which is the case at my work), take your stuff and run part or all of the way home. A couple of weeks ago I ran part way home on Tuesday and all the way home on Wednesday. It was the only way to fit my miles in, but it meant I avoided the stinky BO fest that is the Tube and was still able to attend a social event in the evening.

Run commutes are particularly useful for marathon training long runs, if you’ve got a busy weekend coming up. I’ve scheduled 19 miles for the Friday of the Bank holiday, as I have family christenings and birthdays for the rest of the weekend. By running home to start the weekend, I’ll bank the miles and have the rest of the weekend to recover.

Remember, if you can’t fit the miles in one week, it’s not the end of the world. If you can’t fit the miles in for two weeks, it’s not ideal but it’s fixable. If it gets to 3-4 weeks, and you’re not able to run even though you’re actually fit to do it, you might need to consider a different training plan or race target that fits better with your lifestyle. Running should be a pleasure, not a chore.

Running in the footsteps of legends, next to a bellend

Today a lucky few of us that made it through the website crashes to get a place in the National Lottery Anniversary Run got a chance to finish a race in the Olympic Stadium. For just over 300m, we could be Mo, we could be Jess, we could be Jo, we could be Hannah, we could be David. It was an incredibly special experience, one I am lucky to have and would want to repeat over and over again.

Most runners will never get to experience a stadium finish, a crowd roaring you on towards the finish line. Those of us that could run, walk, guide or be guided, push or be pushed today can say we have heard the cheers. I can only begin to imagine how much the noise of a full stadium, roaring them on, must have propelled our Olympians forward to their haul of gold.

The crowd waiting in the stadium was a welcome relief from the total lack of support on the rest of the course. The Olympic Park is essentially a building site at the moment, a work in progress, and members of the public can’t move about freely, let along cheer on their loved ones on the course.  So it’s the first time I’ve ever run a race with no supporters, and it’s an eerie sensation.

Arguably, the run up to the track was more exciting than the final 300m. Before you head onto the track, you run into the stadium and inside, through a tunnel, to get into the centre. The organisers had come up with an ingenious idea to keep the runners motivated in the echoing tunnel space – while I ran through, speakers played the Chariots of Fire theme, cut through with Steve Cram’s commentary on Mo’s first Gold at London 2012. For me, who has ‘Steve Cram commentating on my race finish’ at about no. 11 in my bucket list, this was incredibly inspiring. I spent most of my time in the tunnel either laughing like a loon or grinning like one of those Special Brew-addled loonies on the 207 bus, but I didn’t care. I loved every second.

The race was so much fun, even Mr Condescender couldn’t spoil it. Everybody has seen these people in a race, and many women will have suffered them (I don’t why, but the ones I see seem to think women are in greater need of their encouragement). You know the one: he runs next you, telling you how far you’ve run or how far you’ve left to go (because you can’t see the mile markers and do the maths, as you’re a woman). He tells you ‘you’re doing great’ or assures you ‘you can do it’. Most of the time, I think this is misguided but quite sweet. Today I was on the end of it, and I didn't feel quite so charitable.

I’d already heard him doing his mile marker impersonation to a couple of women at the 3 mile mark. After that, I’d gone past and thought I’d seen the last of him, But then he came up alongside me for the first time.

‘good pace, good pace’

It was good pace. I was bloody delighted with it, actually. So I accepted this compliment cheerfully and gracefully, then gradually accelerated to leave him and his neon headband behind.

Then he came up alongside me again under the Helter Skelter construction,

‘You’re breathing a bit hard, you should save a bit for the end’

Ok, complete stranger, I thought. Thanks for the coaching. I’m just off trying to maintain my pace on an incline so yes, I’m breathing a little bit heavier than usual but feeling great, thanks.  But I told myself he meant well and I assured him I was fine. For this, I got another round of ‘good pace, good pace’ so I left him behind again for a bit of peace.

But there he popped up again, just before the 4 mile marker.

Him: ‘You ok?’

Me: ‘Yes, thanks’

Him: ‘good girl, good girl’

It’s a testimony to what a wonderful time I was having and how excited I was about my impending arrival into the stadium that I didn’t a) smack him round his neon headband or b) scream ‘I’m a 40 year old woman, not a bloody pet dog.

I wasn’t going to let a bit of casual sexism ruin my day.

Because it was a bloody marvellous, once-in-a-lifetime one.