Category: Training

Posted on

Rubbery-Jubbly

The life lived in Lycra is quite a sweaty one, I’ve found, but it’s not as sweaty as a life in rubber. I went swimming in a lake for the first time on Friday and the first mistake I made was quite a basic one. I got into my wetsuit far too early on one of the warmest evenings of the year so far. Rubber is not breathable, famously so, Wearing black rubber on a warm, sunny evening meant I soaked up the heat like the first gecko in spring. I thought for some reason it would feel a bit like wearing a condom all over and it really, really didn’t. It felt more like being inside one of those basting bags which seal in all of the flavour, in this case the flavour of armpit and groin sweat seasoned with a soupcon of BodyGlide. Only a barest smidgeon of BodyGlide because I’d forgotten to buy a new stick. It’s on the list for next week along with talcum powder.

I buddied up with Colin and Linda who were good enough to allow me to join them and waded a few steps into the water. I was expecting it to be cold but it wasn’t too bad. In fact the top two or three inches were oddly warm which meant that my hand had the sensation of passing through the warm surface layer and down into the colder water below. After two or three doggy paddle strokes I tried putting my face into the water. I was expecting to see nothing in the murk. I fact, I could see my arms and hands through the water. When some water inevitably entered my mouth, it tasted thin somehow. Chlorinated pool water tastes thicker.

I’m used to swimming for about 20 strokes then taking a break as I push off the side of the pool. That obviously wasn’t happening this evening. I still stopped for a break and trod water or floated on my back for a few moments to get a break or find my way. I tried to concentrate on my stroke and breathing, blowing out bubbles. It didn’t always work. There were times when I couldn’t push any air out at all and I have no idea why. I tried humming but got hung up on what tune I should hum. Handel’s Water Music seemed appropriate but I couldn’t remember exactly how it went, not with my head under water. Humming at least stopped me shouting for help which would no doubt have brought instant attention from the lovely men in the canoes.

I enjoyed having the extra buoyancy of the wetsuit. I sometimes forgot to kick and it didn’t seem to matter. My legs were floating up easily. It was actually difficult to do breaststroke in the wetsuit, so very slow was it. I hardly made headway at all. I only did it for two or three strokes at a time to get my bearings. I also had problems swimming in a straight line. I’m so used to following the blue lines on the bottom of the pool at Green’s. I kept pulling to the right like the cheapest hire car at the airport. I had to make a conscious effort to keep left. Linda had to keep calling to me to swim to the left a bit more. The old adage about men drifting to the right as they get older seems to be true after all.

I’d like to upgrade my Garmin to one I can use in the water too. I like to have the time and distance logged. I also like my toys. I have a PoolMate swim watch just now which is very good for swimming indoors. Its accelerometers allow it to count the number of strokes per length that you swim. It assumes that the pauses in a set are your glides at the start of a length so it counts the lengths you swim too. It’s a clever bit of kit but it doesn’t have GPS so it can’t work outdoors. The Garmin Swim watch doesn’t have GPS but there are a couple of Forerunners which are intended for multisports but I’ll have to save up a bit before I can buy either of them.

I have a lot of work to do if I’m even going to finish the swim at the Cambridge Triathlon in a scant few weeks but it was a good first session. I need to be less of a wuss about swimming crawl in murky, cool water. I did enjoy the session. I think I swam between 700 and 800m.I intend to build up to swimming an entire lap of the lake – about 1.4k – by the time of my big race. It’s a little shorter than my race distance but good practice.

My thanks to Linda and Colin for swimming with me and to the rest of my new clubmates at BRJ Run and Tri for laying on such a wonderful evening’s swimming. I’ll be back at the lake next Friday, lubed up, talced up, rubbered up and raring to go. I might even remember not to be quite so keen to get into my wetsuit.

Share This:

Posted on

On Mutlow Hill

I’ve done a couple of really long training runs this month, both of them on Fleam Dyke and the Roman Road. I love being out on these old, old routes. Fleam Dyke is a Saxon construction which runs for four or five miles south east from just outside Fulbourn. It’s more or less parallel to the Roman Road to the south and you run along the top of it. There are fewer people on it than on the Roman Road. I didn’t see another soul the first time I ran there at the beginning of the month and yesterday I saw less than half a dozen people in two hours, all of them round Mutlow Hill.

The Roman Road is a thing of beauty. It’s my absolute favourite place to run. You pick it up just south east of Cambridge where it runs parallel to the modern road towards Linton. It runs almost all the way to Haverhill. There is a circular route which was established by the Friends of the Roman Road and Fleam Dyke which joins the two together. I use the Icknield Way or Harcamlow Way which runs through Balsham to get from one to the other.

Well, I try to anyway. I get lost whenever I leave the straight lines of the Dyke or the Roman Road. I know that where I need to be is somewhere “over there” but then the path I’m on goes all wiggly on me. I’m going to have to start carrying a compass and map with me. I check the route I want on a map before I set out but it never quite matches the terrain or I forget a turning or something. Anyway.

I’ve now done two runs over 20 miles along these routes and I’m smitten. The Roman Road is wide and relatively firm underfoot for most of its length. Fleam Dyke is narrow. You’re running along the top of the dyke and there are places where tree roots are a definite trip hazard for tired legs. There are steps up and down breaches in the dyke. I think it’s what experienced trail racers would call a “technical run.” It’s also breathtakingly beautiful in places.

Yesterday, I stopped for my final gel and a drink on Mutlow Hill. If the archaeologists are right, then people have been stopping here for 4,000 years. It’s a Bronze Age barrow and was an Anglo-Saxon meeting place. It’s one of the most beautiful places around here. I had one of those “who the fuck do I think I am” moments standing by a tree at the top of the hill. I thought that while it was very beautiful, the greenery was a bit sparse and yellow in the heat. The chalky, disturbed soil must be quite poor up there. I had completely forgotten that just because there was a path and a handful of people around, that even although people had been managing this landscape for four millennia, it was still a wild place. What reminded me was the sight of a couple of butterflies intent on a spot of lepidopterile rumpy-pumpy. It was windy up there and they were blown past me quite quickly but they still gave me pause: who am I to criticise the butterflies’ love pad?

Share This:

Posted on

Duathleticism

I have committed cycling the last couple of weekends. I know. I always said that cycling was basically cheating. I used to hate those smug bastards with their two-wheeled ways, spinning along merrily in sociable bunches of two or three, chatting away easily as they cruised past me on my long runs. I was the one working hard. I was the one who was making a real effort. Not them. Not them with their silly helmets and their carbon crotch rockets and shorts Linford Christie would think twice about putting on. They didn’t appear to be doing anything at all. Cycling? Pah! It’s for people who weren’t hard enough to run.

Ummm…

I have silly shorts you have to smear unguents into now. I have shoes I can only wear one one bike. I have two bikes. I have one bike made from carbon fibre and air and the other of aluminium and spite. I have to wear different shoes for each bike because the pedals are different on each bike. I have a helmet which makes me look like a weird hybrid of Alien and Scot. I have discovered new ways to spend money I really, really don’t have on stuff I’ve found that I really, really need. And sometimes I properly need things like food instead of gels and to pay a bill instead of a new tyre and things become all tense and angsty.

I am obsessing over my time up the hill to Fulbourne. I have become a slave to Strava. If you don’t know about Strava and you like your stats or are a bit competitive but already have a full online life, do not – and I can’t emphasise this enough – do not look at Strava. Don’t.

The last two Sundays, I’ve run in the morning and ridden in the afternoon. It was easy the first week. I’d just bimbled round the Gogs and Wandlebury in the morning and I was still feeling quite fresh. Yesterday was different. Yesterday, I smashed myself in a PB attempt at the Cambourne 10k in which I went off a little too hard and died on my arse at 4k. God knows how I held on. For the rest of the race, I kept Stuart Mills’ words of wisdom in the front of my mind, “It’s not pain. It’s a challenge.” The TORQ Trail Team selection doobrie paid dividends. There was a strong wind at times, and some insidious climbs at least two of which were into the wind but I just about kept it together. The bit I normally enjoy is a downhill section around a lake just after 5k. Yesterday, that was straight into a 20mph headwind and it was tough work. I was running at the front of a group for most of it because nobody else would take on the wind. I got round in 44:41 for 81st gun time (44:31 and 83rd on the chip), over a minute faster than last year when I was 143rd. I was completely broken by the end. The sprint finish I needed to stay in front of a group who were chasing me down finished me off. I took one place from a woman on the line but lost two to other blokes in the final couple of hundred metres. I thought that one of them was a club mate who had started beside me but they were a bit further back.

So, how do you recover from that sort of effort? Recovery drink, a massage, a proper protein and carb meal and the afternoon in front of the telly watching a re-run of the F1, right? I suppose you could do that. What I did was have a cake, a bit of milk shake, a cup of tea and a couple of rice cakes with peanut butter before I anointed bits of myself with chamois cream, got into those ridiculous shorts and headed out for a 30 mile ride. In the end, I cut it short because I couldn’t face the climb up to Balsham into that headwind yesterday. I did just over 30k in an hour and ten.

Cambourne is my anniversary race, the first one I did when I started running so it’s a bit special for me. When I’m Dictator Presidential Emperor of Earth for Life, I’m going to have the New Year start on the same weekend as the Cambourne 10k and make everyonel celebrate by running around a beautiful 10k course instead of getting drunk and having inadvisable sex. The first year I did this race, I spent the afternoon eating pancakes with cream and Nutella. Last year, I celebrated my PB by sitting in a jacuzzi. This year, I flogged my guts out on the bike because I could. I was shouting at the wind and singing songs to the grass verges and having one of the best afternoons of my life – not actually spent in the intimate company of my beloved wife – and I didn’t feel like I was cheating at all.

Share This:

Posted on

I’m All Torq

I feel slightly sick. I spent a chunk of today learning about nutrition strategies. TORQ Fitness, purveyors of fine nutrition products to the running and cycling classes invitied me along to an assessment day for their new trail running team. I spent a fascinating few hours learning about nutrition for exercise, psychological strategies for success and a little bit of injury prevention. I put all that to good use this evening by not stretching after my run this afternoon, driving home, getting cramp in my calves, eating pizza and half a family-sized tub of very nice Green & Black’s vanilla ice cream. With maple syrup. I’m pretty much every kind of awesome.

I’ve been thinking a lot about nutrition for performance of late. Julie Pashley at GCAN put together a couple of coach workshops on nutrition for beginner athletes and elite athletes respectively. They were excellent. There was lots of science I didn’t understand at the time. I’ve had to go away and do more reading on physiology and energy use in the body. I love that, I really do. I like it when one thing that you read leads you to another and another and then you find yourself reading and learning about things that you never expected. I haven’t done that since since I was at university and lost weeks because I tried to read Fleurs du Mal instead of getting on with Chekhov and the collections of really, really dull 19th Century Russian verse I was supposed to be reading. My French wasn’t up to Baudelaire but that didn’t stop me. I was enjoying the intellectual journey too much.

The nutrition session today was what originally attracted me to take part and it was excellent but the highlight for me was Stuart Mills’ talk on the psychology of success. Stuart is an ultrarunner, a Kiwi who has represented Great Britain in the ultradistance world championships. He is also an academic as in sports science and has a blog which I’m looking forward to reading immensely, If I remember what he said accurately – and I wasn’t taking notes so I may get things very wrong in places – his attitude to race preparation is to concentrate as much on mental preparation as on physical training. He might acknowledge negative thoughts and feelings but only to find positive strategies for dealing with them. Pain is a negative. Challenge is a positive. Live in the moment even if the moment is full of pain, or challenge as he would have it. Don’t count down the miles. For example, when you get to Mile 20 in a marathon don’t think “Great! Only 10k to go!” We run because we love it. Why would we want the run to end?

I try to turn that into a positive. I’ve reached 20 miles. How fucking incredible is that? I’ve been running for about three hours and I’m still going. For someone who didn’t run three years ago, that’s tremendous. I do get a huge kick out of movement, rapid movement. Well, rapid for me. There is joy in movement even when continuing that movement is a challenge. To answer the question about wanting the run to end, we have a goal in every race that we do. It’s usually a time goal, and one that’s tied to the end of the race: 26.2 miles and not our time at Mile 20.

Positivity can only carry you so far. You need the physical preparation, the long runs, the tempos and hill session and the run until you puke reps on the track. Confidence is good. I have my “Train hard. Rock up. Run like fuck.” thing going on. I think this is the common ground Stuart and I share. He notes that training hard gives you confidence which leads to an improved perfomance. It’s not the training which improves your performance so much as the confidence that training engenders. It’s an interesting idea. My performance at the Cambridge Half was all down to a couple of really good training sessions in the week before the race which gave me the confidence to rock up and run like fuck. I could have run 1:42 and change but I just sneaked under 1:39 because I was feeling incredible.

There’s a lot to think about and a lot to process. I really want to carry on with this process and having the support of the TORQ Trail Team would be a help. I might spend even more time training on the Roman Road. I’ve entered an 18 mile trail race in the Lake District in August as a way to relax after the stress of the Cambridge Triathlon. I’m contemplating another in October after the Great Barrow Challenge. I could do 25k reasonably easily but today has got me thinking about doing the 50k instead. I’ve said I’m not doing a marathon this year but I didn’t say anything about not doing an ultra.

Share This:

Posted on

Less Than Handy

I am a complete plonker. Everybody who knows me knows this. Most are kind enough not to mention it, at least in my presence. I’m a clumsy plonker at the best of times and during the winter things only get worse. I can guarantee falling over at least a couple of times when it gets slippery in spite of wearing grippy shoes and trying really hard not to. I usually fall over in full view of attractive women or men with a physical sense of humour.

I was supposed to be running the Folksworth 15 on Sunday. The race was canceled because the very sensible organisers thought that they would have lots of Richards on their hands had they gone ahead with it. Instead of flogging my sorry arse round fifteen miles of hills through wind and snow, I headed off with some mates for twelve gentle miles around the Gogs, the Roman Road and Wandlebury.

It was beautiful. There was snow on the ground and more falling as we set off. The car park was icy and treacherous but once we got onto the snowier surface of the dog park, it became much easier to move. The route Phil chose is one I know a bit since it uses the same trails as Alan B does for his 9 Miles of Hills. The surfaces on the trails were mostly snowy and grip was good in the Saucony Peregrine trail shoes I was wearing. Things were a little more difficult when we came off the Roman Road and headed down the road from Worsted Lodge towards Babraham. The tarmac surface was as icy as the car park had been,

I fell over. Of course I did. I fell over like I have dozens of times. I was jogging gently down a slippery part of the road and had just told Andrew to be careful around here when my legs were no longer where they should have been. When I was at school, I once had the chance to play a set of kettle drums. I liked the resonance when I beat the skin and held the side of the drum. Ever since then, I’ve thought of kettle drums when I fall over. There is a proper thump of stomach and lungs and bladder and bowels all the other cavities of the body when you go down in a oner. I didn’t notice putting my hand out but I must have done because my left middle finger wasn’t bending inside its glove. I gave Andrew – who was asking me if I was all right – a very crooked bird and said I probably wasn’t.

We’d been right at the back of the group and I tottered the rest of the way down the hill to meet up with the others who had crossed the main road. I showed off my very crooked bird, the sight of which was beginning to make me queasy. It wasn’t painful at that point but I thought it might become painful when the endorphins began to subside. I worked very gently from the knuckles and pulled the finger straight again. Some of the others wanted to head back with me to make sure I was okay but I didn’t want to spoil their run further so I set off on my own back up the side of the main Cambridge-Haverhill road. My hand felt funny from time to time but it wasn’t painful and I began to push the pace a bit. Because we’d been bimbling along and chatting my legs were fine in spite of having run five miles or so and I was able to push a bit back up the hill.

A&E at Addenbrookes dealt with me swiftly and competently. I was in and out of the hospital in less than an hour and a half and that included about half an hour of me wandering around a silent and empty, Sunday morning hospital. They checked out my finger, x-rayed it, spotted a teeny-tiny chip floating around in the joint, gave me advice about keeping it mobilised and icing it from time to time and sent me on my way.

I woke up during the night with pain in my wrist. I couldn’t move my hand much in the morning so I headed back to A&E. I explained what was going on and again I was seen very efficiently. I couldn’t have more x-rays immediately but I was given another assessment. I had a second round of x-rays which showed a chip from my triquetral. I may have damaged my scaphoid as well but it would require bone scans to be certain since the images from my x-rays aren’t clear. My wrist wasn’t hurting on Sunday morning which is why I didn’t mention it then.

I haven’t trained since then, not really. I had a kettlebells class booked for today which I couldn’t attend. I won’t be going for a while. To add slight insult to minor injury, the very nice cross-training gloves I ordered arrived this afternoon. I ran on a treadmill at Green’s this evening and it was horrible. I’d planned a 50 minute session but could no longer be arsed after five minutes. I stuck it out for a mile, the absolute minimum I could justify as a run for the purposes of Jantastic. I managed a few Russian Twists having assured myself that I could hold the medicine ball and some planks resting on my elbows and toes. I couldn’t do the rest of that workout because it all involves resting my weight on my hands – twisting planks and press-ups and all that torturous modern jazz.

I’ll be doing more running on that dreadmill, at least until the ice disappears. My joy is as palpable as dysentery. For the first time in my life, I really, really want the thaw to come. So come on, I’d like a nice calm westerly and mild weather for the rest of the winter. No more snow days. No more ice. Sorry, kids.

Share This:

Posted on

Of Punishment Beatings, Kettlebells and Magic Rubber Pants. With Additional Christopher Biggins.

I ache this week. I’m also bone tired. I haven’t felt this tired since… Let me think. Oh, that’s right. I haven’t felt this tired since last January when I was in marathon training. I’m not doing a marathon this year and I’m certainly not doing one in April or May.

So why do my legs feel as if they’ve been used as practice pieces for apprentices on the Provisional IRA’s Introduction to Punishment Beatings course?

“Declan, Declan! You’re doin’ it wrong again, ye feckin’ eejit. Knees first, then ankles.”

“Sorry, sir. He just won’t lie still, like. An’ he keeps goin’ on about refuellin’ strategies for a half marathon being completely feckin’ useless. I think he’s a bit mad.”

Now there’s a City and Guilds course specification I’d like to see.

Anyway.

One of the reasons everything hurts quite as badly as it does is probably the kettlebells class I had with Will of Cambridge Kettlebells on Wednesday night. A little bit of history here. Well, I say history, but I’m going to make most of it up. History isn’t just the story of the past, it’s the stories we tell each other to learn from the past. Once upon a time, not so very long ago, the Russian army was a brutal place for its young recruits. One of the punishments meted out to to these poor sods was carrying cannonballs around the place. When cannonballs became scarce because of the introduction of newer forms of artillery which used different ammunition, one of the brighter NCOs started to hoard the old ones at his dacha just outside Yaroslavl. He welded handles to them because he thought he would be able to abuse recruits more efficiently if more of them could hold onto 20-kilo pieces of shot without dropping them onto their own feet or lobbing them at the back of the head of the poor sod in front of them and the kettlebell was born.

One day, he defected from the Russian army to a fitness studio in New York where he found that he no longer received complaints from people when he tried to punish them with his little cannonballs. Instead, they called him a fitness guru. His classes were filled for months ahead of time with people eager to be given the sort of punishment he used to dole out to someone found molesting the regimental horse. He was confused and slightly saddened but soon perked up when he was given a large pile of cash for his stash of ratty cannonballs.

Will isn’t a Russian army NCO. I could detect no sociopathic tendencies. I was surprised to be the only other bloke there. Kettlebells seem a little macho but I was as wrong in this as I am in my historical research. Will warmed us up, showed us how to lift a kettlebell safely then started to run through some basic exercises. We did double-handed swings. If you do it right, all the power you need to move the kettlebell comes from what Will called a “hip snap.” I thought immediately about the hip thrust in Time Warp from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Of course you can’t get the swing right if you bring your knees in tight.

We did some squats and sumo squats and single-arm swings and changed from one single-arm swing to the other and at the end of the hour I was completely wiped. I did love it and I can’t wait to go back next week but it was harder work than I’d expected.

Anne Christmas present for me arrived this week. It’s not every day that a man is happy to receive rubber pants from his wife. Mine are made by Zone3 and they’re buoyancy shorts, made from wetsuit neoprene and intended to give swimmers a little extra help to float nice and flat in the water. Aside from feeling slightly kinky wearing black rubber in public for the first time, I enjoyed using them. I took them to the pool after the kettlebell session. They’re not as buoyant as a pull-buoy so I’m slower in them over 50m than I am with the pull-buoy but much quicker than I am with no aids at all so they do work. I was too knackered to do more than a handful of lengths on Wednesday but I’ll use them again when I go to the pool later today and for tomorrow’s swim.

What I’m not going to do under any circumstances ever is wear them while doing the Time Warp. Oh no. Not me.

NB There’s a gratuitous Christopher Biggins sausage appreciation shot in that clip. You have been warned.

 

Share This:

Posted on

It’s Always the Last Mile

I had a lovely run today, 13 miles of it. Well, it was lovely for the first 10 miles, quite hard for the the next two and just woeful for the final mile. It’s always like that for me on training runs. Today’s was special for me for two reasons: it was my first longish run for a while and I completed it with my friend JuliaD, who made sure I got to the end of it just when I was dying on my arse. For those of you who don’t know, Julia and I started our running career in the same running group two years ago and she’s the real source of a lot of my supposed thoughtful comments on running and life.

We set off at what felt like a very easy pace but was actually well under 5:45 per km. Julia was planning 33km so I thought that would be a bit quick for her. I was only planning to do about 12 or 13 miles so I thought the pace was fine for me. Julia and I were jogging along, step-for-step. I was trying to put Helen’s advice on efficient running into practice and it seemed to work, for the most part. I was concentrating on keeping my stride short, my cadence up, allowing my shoulders to counter-rotate and my legs to swing from the outside of my hips. My feet – not yet in my new inov8 shoes – were relaxing into the surface of the road and I was allowing them to feed energy back into the next stride. The entire concept of free energy is intriguing.

We paused after 50 minutes to take on a gel and some water. I had shot blocks with me but I forgot about them. I turn into such a burpy man for a few minutes after I’ve had a gel. I like the Gu ones but I find even they become unpalatable after 20 miles. It’s one of the reasons I tend to do my long runs on my own: I’d rather not inflict the product of my gastric tract on my friends. I like them too much.

We got to a foot tunnel under the A14 at about 10 miles which was flooded following yesterday’s thunderstorm. The thunderstorm was a stonker. Anne and I were shopping in Tesco when it hit. We waited for a few minutes but it showed not the least sign of abating. I decided to make a run for the car and bring it round to collect Anne. Now, I’m not the world’s best sprinter but running through the torrents was an intense experience. I felt as if I was flying, my feet only just kissing the ground, my knees lifting high and my heels coming as far up behind me as ever they have done. I covered less than a 100m and it was only a fleeting few seconds but they were some of the best seconds of my life.

Swings and roundabouts…

The roundabout to yesterday’s swinging time was that flooded foot tunnel under the main road. We couldn’t cross the A14. It would have been suicidal. We tried to find another way through the hotel but only found a succession of dead ends. Finally, we just got on with it and splashed through the ankle-deep water in the tunnel. It was a bit squelchy for a couple of hundred metres but the cold water soon drained away and our feet soon warmed the cold water still soaking our socks. We settled into the same rhythm again quite quickly but I was beginning to tire. I was trying to keep my steps light and quick and managed until the final mile when my form went completely. I was just clinging on by then. Julia got me home in the end but she effortlessly breezed away from me in the last 400m.

It’s always the last mile which gets me. I know that’s an obvious thing. I wouldn’t be much of an endurance runner if I died in the first mile. I always want to finish strongly but I think that today I was just too quick earlier in the run. I was carried away running with my friend. I just wanted to keep up and blew up instead. Next time, I’ll make sure the last mile isn’t a complete disaster.

Share This:

Posted on

Barefoot Rich

I had an athletics bootcamp this evening with Coach B. He started it six or so weeks ago since when it’s become my usual start to the training week. He sends out a training schedule each weekend which invariably starts with a swimming session at 7:00am. I’ve never made it to that. I don’t think I ever will. Swimming is not something I can face first thing in the morning.

We did our usual warm up followed by quite a strenuous series of dynamic stretches. There were some bodyweight exercises intended to strengthen our glutes, quads and hamstrings. Single leg squats and lowering ourselves from a single leg squat onto a bench were particularly horrid. It’s hard to control the downward movement steady and lower yourself gently onto a bench. You need to make sure that your leg is straight. Try it. It’s really, really vile. The drills and skills were designed to get us used to lifting our knees a little higher when we were running hard.

The run was a quickish set of 5 x c600m which we were supposed to do in the same time on each rep with a variation of no more than 5 seconds on each rep. Mine varied between 2:43 and 2:56. The first rep was the slowest. It usually is when I do these interval sessions with Alan. It takes me a little while to get used to the idea of running that hard. I was chasing Carla on the first four reps and she is much quicker than me. She wasn’t there for the fifth rep and I was leading the group round for most of it. I wasn’t pushing quite as hard without Carla to chase, even though I had Izzie close behind me all the way round.

We did a sixth rep barefoot on a slightly shorter course missing out the really horrible bare ground and keeping to the grass. It’s only the second time I’ve run barefoot and I’m hooked. I don’t force my foot to do any work at all. I can feel it relax into the ground. My foot works as a foot, as Helen would say. I can feel it gather energy and feed it back into the next stride. Even sprinting is suddenly easy, effortless. I can relax into the run from the ground up.

The video at the top of this post is a bit of a giggle but it contains a truth: there is a lot of shit around barefoot running. I enjoy the feeling of freedom and the ease of running I get when I’m barefoot. It probably won’t suit everyone but it’s a reminder that you don’t need to have plastic and rubber around your foot all the time. Even for someone writing a blog for a company selling footwear, that’s a valuable lesson to remember.

Share This:

Posted on

Lost, and Left Behind

I have been banging on on Facebook and Fetch about yesterday’s run so I suppose I ought to write about it here. I’d spent a big chunk of the day running the Fetch Everyone Marathon Talk Busway Purgatory Magic Mile On Tour At The Track In Cambridge Especially For Glenn. For clarity, I organised the event and not the race. It was quite a stressful experience and we were onto the 400m by the time I was calm enough to run. My 400m PB is very soft so I probably would have beaten it even in my current condition. Nevertheless, I chose not to take part in the 400m, the 800m or the final and traditional 100m sprint. I hadn’t warmed up and even on a hot day like it was yesterday, it would have been too much to expect my legs to cope well with caning it round and round the track.

I had a very pleasant run in the evening instead with DeaJay. We met up in a picturesque layby just off the A14 and had a run around Quy, out along a stream towards Lode then looped back to Horningsea. DeaJay was navigating up to this point which was why it was going so well. We could have turned right when we came up onto the road, run up to the bridge and run back down to Cambridge along the towpath. We could have done that, but I suggested turning left and trying to find a footpath down to the river instead.

Mistake.

We found a footpath towards the river which didn’t, in fact, reach the river. There is no footpath on that bank of the river in any case. We had a bit of a stomp through some nettles and thistles and round the edge of a field before we headed back the road. I decided that Diane really ought to navigate from there on. It would be so much easier.

We came back into Cambridge through Fen Ditton. Diane took us down a narrow footpath to the river again. It lead to the recreation ground then back to the church. We went through Fen Ditton and along the bike path to the Newmarket Road Park & Ride. From there we picked up the pace a little. We’d been trotting along at a decent pace. DeaJay was easily able to hold a conversation all the way around but I was struggling after the first few kilometers. I have a problem with my endurance in that I don’t really have much. I’m okay over shorter distances up to about 10k. After that, my pace falls off. DeaJay said that I just need more slow miles. She’s probably right. There’s no point in putting in 400m repeats all the time if you want to run a good half marathon.

Anyway, we had about 1km to go as we passed the roundabout at the top of Airport Way. I asked DeaJay if she wanted to push the last stretch and kicked for home before she said yes. Any thoughts I had of dropping her faded quickly as she responded easily. I pushed harder and harder and still couldn’t make any ground on her. She was moving easily and breathing evenly. I was heaving breath again. It wasn’t quite as bad as at the end of the KH 5k on Thursday night because I was moving more easily but I couldn’t get the zoom into my legs I needed. In the end, I applauded as DeaJay left me for dead. Sometimes, there are things which give you too much joy not to respond with happiness.

I was wearing my new inov-8s but the the big story for me was not the shoes but the fun I had on the run. I was practicing the efficient running techniques I’ve been learning and I found a difference in the final burst of speed. It wasn’t as hard to find speed as it usually is, it was just hard to find enough speed to stay with my friend. I didn’t mind in the least. It was a joyful, joyful run and I loved every step of it. Runs like this are why I love running.

Share This:

Posted on

Separated By A Common Body Language

I think I was joking when I said in my last post that kilometres were bigger in the US than at home. Now I’m not so sure. I went out again on Saturday because the weather was cooler at last. There was some cloud cover and Chicago was doing its Windy City thing when Anne and I went out for breakfast so I thought I’d fill my boots – or at least my running shoes – with miles. My new inov8s hadn’t arrived in the hotel so I wore my Green Silence racing flats with their Union Jack design all over them. I didn’t look at all like a tourist. No, I had Union Jack shoes and my Thunder Run t-shirt. I was sorted.

I really wasn’t sorted at all. One of the differences between running in Cambridge and running in Chicago is that other runners do not acknowledge you. There are runners out here, ruining their knees, feet, ankles and the Sweet Baby Jesus alone knows what else on some of the least forgiving concrete pavement I have ever come across. They just don’t seem to notice that there is someone else out there with them. I tried nodding. Nothing. Waving. Nada. Saying “Hello!” or “Good morning!” Pointless. The last one especially because everyone had earphones in. I’d have thought you needed all your senses available to you when running around the city but Chicago’s runners evidently think differently. Anne thinks it’s just life in the Big City. You don’t engage with strangers in case you end up stabbed, shot, robbed of your iPod and Garmin and trying to describe your assailant to cynical cops in the back of an ambulance while a paramedic tries to pour some blood back into your body. I really hope that isn’t true. I prefer to think that it just isn’t part of the running culture over here in the same way as it is at home.

I ran out south again, this time along the path on the lake front. There is a marina with some large boats in it. There were some parties happening on a few of the boats. Northern Illinois were playing Iowa at Soldier Field and you’d have thought it was a home game for Iowa. Maybe it was. There were yellow shirts everywhere while I only saw about a dozen red NI shirts all day. I ran beside the lake down past the Field Museum, the aquarium and the Adler Planetarium. I was slow again. The atmosphere was quite humid. All I could really feel was the sweat in my hair and on my skin. My breathing was fine but I couldn’t get my legs to turn over. I was doing better than most of the others I saw out there. I was continually passing men and women taking walking breaks. There was one young man with cyclist’s calves who was running quite hard with a rucksack for about 500m at a time. He would come past me at a hell of a lick then stop and walk for a bit during which time I would catch and pass him again. He did this three or four times before our paths diverted and he headed away from the lake and into the city. He was wearing headphones and didn’t acknowledge my wave.

It’s my custom to ask runners who are walking or who have stopped if they are okay. Judging from the reactions of those I asked on Saturday, this doesn’t happen often here. I tended to get a look of either mild surprise or complete incredulity followed by a muttered “Yeah, fine” for the most part. One woman who had stopped to stretch out her hamstring by the pavement in Grant Park gave me a big smile and a wave in return. Must have been a tourist.

It started to rain just as I passed Soldier Field. I’d only done a little over three miles and I was bumping along at about 8:30 per mile. It was under marathon pace but well over the 7:45 per mile I’d been aiming at. I didn’t want to get caught out in the open in a thunderstorm so I turned and headed back to the hotel much more quickly. Suddenly, I had speedy legs. I tried to keep Helen’s words in my head as a kind of mantra: light feet, high cadence, counter-rotation, upright stance. I found my feet kissing the concrete as I kicked on for home. I abandoned my usual lean forward and felt myself stand more upright. I relaxed a little more and allowed my shoulders to counter-rotate the way they wanted to. I landed on my mid-step on each stride, allowed the foot to relax into the ground until my heel just touched down then felt the energy my foot had gathered push me back. In spite of the horribly surface, I hardly heard my footsteps. There was a light psh, psh, psh, psh instead of a heavy slap of rubber and plastic on concrete.

When I went to see Helen last week, she said that I could be a speedy runner. Now I know what she meant. I wasn’t suddenly running at 5:00 per mile pace but I was cracking along at less than 6:30 and feeling effortless. I know what it’s about now. I want to have this feeling each and every time I run. I just need more time, more coaching, more practice and the fear of being struck by lightning.

Oh, and the temperature at the end of my run? 27 degrees. No wonder I was sluggish on the way out.

Share This:

Visit Us On TwitterVisit Us On FacebookVisit Us On Youtube