Running

Half way.  Half way to Berlin.

Really, it’s over half way as this week I’ve finished my 9th week of a 16 week training plan. Only seven more weeks to go. Now, a race that seemed so far out in the future it didn’t seem real is truly becoming a reality. Hotels have been booked, plane tickets purchased, and in the past 9 weeks I’ve accumulated enough miles to have run from Oxford to France.

Not surprisingly, it’s been pretty quiet around this space lately. One thing I’ve learned about marathon training over the recent weeks is that it is time-consuming, a big commitment that pushes other things down the to do list. When I’m not running or working or looking after the little man, I just want to go to sleep. Rest up, recover, and start again the next day.

I look back on my training for the half marathon and it feels easy. And I’ve already had moments of panic when I wonder WTF I was thinking when I signed up for this. But when I confess my doubt and panic to Coach Julia, she first says “CHILL OUT”, followed by reassurance that Yes, I can do this.

“I promise you that in a few months, years, you’ll look back and feel slightly nostalgic about the whole preparation – so enjoy!” 

So the next 7 weeks will be all about enjoying the journey.  I mean, I’ve been training for 9 weeks and have not had to run in the rain once.  In England.  Surely this is a positive sign?

And, as an unexpected bonus, marathon training has transformed the way I consume books.  To combat the boredom on long solo runs, I listen to audiobooks and catch up on reading I wouldn’t have time for otherwise.  (Most likely because I would just fall asleep after a few pages.)  Books like the excellent but weighty Shantaram which transports me magically to India through its lyrical prose. Only 30 hours left to listen!  My challenge is to finish it before Berlin.

Bring on Week 10!

Running with friends is more fun.

After a year spent running races on my own, I was lucky enough to run this year’s Oxford Town & Gown with my friend A.  And I it was my favorite race yet.

This time, I didn’t wander around aimlessly killing time at the start.  Instead, there were stupid selfies, conversations, and silly faces at the race photographer.  We commiserated when the octogenarian woman who regularly runs in my neighborhood left us in the dust.  And we both hoped that we’d be fit enough to run 10K when we’re her age.  (And no rest for her by the way.  Two days later she was back pounding the pavement.  Little old lady with the quick step and the orange running shirt, she is one of my personal heroes).

And, I’m thankful for the fellow runner who took this photo.  Though it did dawn on me later that I’d handed my phone to a complete stranger who was running away from me.

Since the Reading Half, I’ve been struggling to find my running mojo.  And, that’s certainly not where I want to be as I get ready to start marathon training.  But this race proved to be exactly the right medicine.  It restored my confidence and reminded me that sometimes you need to let go of the pressure for PBs and just have fun.

And, a sprint finish holding hands with a best friend?  That’s probably the only PB worth having.

First, before I get into my recap of the Reading Half Marathon, Tony the Fridge.  I passed him in the early miles and, dude, respect.  Over a distance in which I could barely carry the weight of my own body, Tony ran with a refrigerator strapped to his back.  And, next, he’s running 4 marathons in 1 day! Why not show him a little love and donate to help him fight cancer?

I honestly don’t know where to begin with this race diary.  Getting to the Reading Half Marathon has been a year-long journey and I feel like there are so many things to share about the experience.  And maybe many of those stories belong in posts of their own, things I’ve learned about myself and about running.

I followed a 12-week training plan, starting at the beginning of December. And in the first couple months I had tons of enthusiasm, energy, and mojo.  But then in the last few weeks of my half marathon training, when those long weekend runs were so key, I found myself in a major training slump.

Work commitments exploded in my life like a nuclear bomb, making it more difficult to schedule my runs.  Oxford was drowning in flood waters and many of my favorite running routes were underwater.  I was running the same routes over and over and over again or diverted into the city center where cars, crowds, and cobblestones greeted me.  And I firmly believe that anyone who says they love running in cold, dreary, wet weather is a stone cold liar.

My colon was on amber alert, all the time.  Maybe it was a flare up of the Crohn’s, maybe it was the introduction of various energy gels into my routine.  I don’t know. But I do know that I’m thankful I could do loops from the house or take a long runs that included McDonalds, the train station, and secluded areas of thick vegetation.

Any nothing speaks to the glamour of running more than spitting out some post nasal sinus drip mid-run only to have it land on your hand.

There have been moments when I wanted to give up.  Sleep in.  Stay dry and warm on the sofa eating tubs of ice cream with a big glass of wine.

But here’s the thing.  Most great things and experiences in life don’t come easy. The more you put yourself out there, the more you get in return.  And that feeling of euphoria when, 13.1 miles after I started, I ran into the Madejski Stadium and crossed the finish line to the cheers of a crowd of strangers, that wiped away every moment of despair I felt during training.

So what happened on race day before the finish line?  Well, travelling to a race with about 20,000 runners presented a host logistics challenges.  I totally missed the memo that said I had to book parking places near the start/finish ahead of time. Oops.  Plan B was to take the train and then catch the free shuttle bus from the station to the start.  Turns out there wasn’t a single train that left Oxford early enough on a Sunday morning to get me there on time.  In the end, I drove and parked in the train station car park, still taking the shuttle.  Which, worked great but meant that I was up and out of the house by 6:30 am, peanut butter, banana, and honey rice cakes in tow.

The shuttle bus dropped me at the foot of the Madejski and I followed the crowd into the stadium to survey the finish.  I was plenty early, so stood inside the stadium for a while taking in the atmosphere as families gathered and staked out prime seats near the finish.  Best thing about the stadium venue? Toilets everywhere.  Because no matter how many times I go for a wee before a race, I can always go again.

Outside the stadium, the race village was filled with vendors selling their running wares, shoes and running kit.  The weather was overcast and dreary but thankfully not bitterly cold or raining.  I had friends running in the race as well and we met up to chat and commiserate about our training before we finally headed for the start, about a 10 minute walk from the stadium.

My friends were faster runners than I, so I bid them good luck as they joined one of the starting pens for the faster runners.  I headed further back to the slower groups. I took advantage of the port-a-loos one last time and then joined the huddled masses at the start.

One of the things I find humorous about these big races is the pre-race warm up. Some uber-enthusiastic fitness instructor stands on an elevated platform leading thousands of people through a series of warm up exercises.  Warm up exercises that require at least one foot of personal space when in fact you have about one inch of personal space.  Knee lifts?  Lunges?  No thank you.  I don’t want to kick someone in the groin.

My hope was to crack the 2 hour time.  And the 2:00 race pacer was in my pen, just in front of me.  I tried to manoeuvre myself as close as I could get to him, thinking that if I could stick with him from the start, I’d have a chance.  In the end, I just couldn’t get close enough and once everyone started running through the start, the 2:00 pacer was just too far ahead and I could never catch him.

So I was left to pace myself and, for the first half of the race, this worked great.  I knew what my average pace needed to be in order to hit 2:00 and my Garmin had this nifty feature called the Virtual Partner, a little virtual person that I configured to run at that pace.  My watch then showed me whether I was ahead or behind my Virtual Partner.  And for most of the race, I was bang on pace.  The support from the crowds all along the race route in Reading was amazing and certainly helped me stay motivated.

But by about mile 9, I just couldn’t keep it up anymore.  Maybe that was a flaw in my race strategy, trying to maintain a constant pace throughout instead of starting a bit slower and finishing faster. Plus, where did I get the idea that this race was flat?  It wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination.

It was also around the 9th mile that my feet just decided to rebel.  Despite the fact that I was running in the same shoes I’d been completing long runs in for a couple of months, suddenly every step sent sharp pains through my forefoot.  And my legs.  The muscles in my legs began to ache with every step.  A clear message that my future training regime needed to include more strength training.

So I stopped.  I stopped at a water station and walked and sucked down my energy gel (I can’t run and consume food at the same time anyway).  And it felt really good to stop.  Then I regrouped, said “I can do this”,  and started running again.

The finish of the Reading Half is a big tease.  At about mile 12, you’re back at the stadium where you know the big finish is.  But then you’re forced to run past it, down a long stretch of road back to the start and then doubling back on yourself. And the route around the stadium was a serpentine of twists and turns, I dodged parked cars and lamp posts.

My legs wanted me to stop.  Other racers were dropping like flies.  But my brain said “don’t you even think about stopping.  You have worked too hard to stop this close to the finish.”  So I carried on, through the tunnel and onto the weird plastic surface covering the pitch of the Madejski.  The crowd noise was electric and I sprinted as fast as my exhausted legs would carry me across the finish line. Official time, 2:03:47.  Oh so close!

That stadium finish was amazing!  Running into a crowded stadium to the finish really made me feel like a proper athlete, like this was a really big deal.  And it was.  I did something I’d previously never imagined I could do.  I ran 13.1 miles!

Then I stretched, a good long stretch to provide some relief to my tired aching legs. Afterwards, I followed the herd of exhausted runners, clad in their electric green thermal wraps, back into the real world to collect my bag and head home.  Being a woman really paid off. The queue for the men’s bag collection?  Enormous.  The queue for the women’s?  Non-existent.  I collected my bag and then piled on some of the layers I’d stowed away, grateful to be reunited with my warm fleecy jacket.

And then the journey which I’d completed with such ease at the start, all fell apart. The queue for the shuttle bus back to the station, gigantic.  I stood huddled in line for at least 45 minutes waiting to board a bus which was then standing room only. And I stood on the bus for at least another 45 minutes as it navigated through the gridlocked streets of Reading.  I realised too late that I would have been better off just walking the extra miles back to my car.  Lesson learned.

So I did it!  And, I’ll do it again.  In fact, I’m running double this distance in September in Berlin, a full marathon.  Yikes!  But I’ve learned a number of lessons running the half that I hope will help me prepare.  Training for these long distance races is hard work.  But the reward it gives me back is immense in terms of my health and fitness, mental outlook, and sense of personal achievement.  As Christina Rosalie recently wrote:

You can pin a hundred photos of gorgeous abs, but until you start doing crunches, you won’t get your own.

You’ve got to do the work to get the reward.

The Reading Half Marathon marks the end of my 12 month running challenge for Crohn’s and Colitis UK.  I started running races back in April of 2013 and I’ve ALMOST run one every month since. My original challenge was to run a 10K race each month for year.  But the 10K I was scheduled to run in January was cancelled due to the floods and in February I just didn’t feel well enough and felt rest was more important.  However, as I added in the BUPA Great South Run (10 miles) and the Reading Half Marathon, I still feel as though I achieved what I set out to do.  I still ran all the miles and made running part of my everyday life.

Importantly though, I exceeded my fundraising target for this challenge, raising over £1500 for Crohn’s and Colitis UK, 128% of goal.  I want to thank everyone who donated to my cause over the past year. Friends, family, colleagues, and, amazingly, people I’ve connected with on the internet but whom I’ve never met in person.  To all of you wonderful people, I’m grateful for your support and encouragement!

Now, Berlin, here I come!

It was Halloween night, when I received the email.  I’d just walked out of an osteopath appointment and was sitting outside in the dark checking my messages for about the hundredth time that day.

It’s interesting how technology has changed us.  In the days of letters, before email, you still might anxiously anticipate the arrival of important mail.  But if it wasn’t in the day’s post, you could just move on, the postman wasn’t coming again until the next day.  Now though, it’s “technically” possible that the email you’ve been eagerly awaiting has arrived 60 seconds after the last time you checked.  And I’d been obsessively checking my email all day long.

Finally, there is was in my spam folder.  I opened it.  And then I had no freaking idea what it said.  “Herzlichen Glückwunsch” it said.  What?  Is this good news or bad news?  The first half of the message was entirely in German and it took me a few moments to scroll down to the second half of the message where it was in English.

The pre-registration phase has come to a close, the lottery wheel has been spun, and the winners from among the 74,707 applications have been randomly chosen. We are delighted to be able to inform you that you were selected to participate in the 41st BMW BERLIN-MARATHON 2014!

OMG!  OMG!  I can’t believe I got in!  Shit!  Fuck!  Now what?

Well, now 2014 has become the year that I take my running to the next level.  The idea of challenging myself with a marathon has been in the back of mind for a long time.  But it honestly wasn’t until this past year that I even considered it possible.  On a whim, I’d first put my name in the lottery for the London Marathon.  Putting my name in the hat for Berlin was an after thought, something I could hold out hope for if London fell through.  I really didn’t anticipate getting into either as they are both enormously popular marquis events. And when the London Marathon rejection magazine arrived in the post, I wasn’t surprised.

But Berlin, success!  And, honestly, I’m glad I got into Berlin instead.  I’m grateful for the extra time to prepare myself for this challenge, Berlin is in September, London in April.  This also means that over the winter months I can instead focus on the half marathon distance which I’m scheduled to run at Reading in March.

What have I gotten myself into?  Even after a couple of months, I’m still not sure I understand what this all means, other than a lot of running.  All I’ve thought about so far is travel plans.  This will, without a doubt, be the most challenging thing I have ever attempted and right now that challenge is filling me with more excitement than anxiety.  No matter how I finish, this will be an amazing life experience.

And at this stage I have little perspective on how long it will take me to finish the marathon.  But I do know that the elite runners will be finished, showered, dressed, and sitting down for a nice recovery meal long before I cross the finish line.  To put this in perspective, Laura shared this entertaining video of people attempting to run on a treadmill at the marathon pace of elite runner Ryan Hall.

Now, in my training, I regularly run at this pace.  Over a distance of about 100 meters.  And then I don’t know which starts screaming first, my legs or my lungs.  I am in awe of the hours upon hours of training these athletes have put in and the fact that they can run that fast for 26.2 miles.  It boggles my mind.

So while I haven’t consciously chosen a word to represent my 2014, maybe I have a word anyway.

Laufen.  Run.