Month: August 2015

Training during my week off

Jess Guth1 Comment

I’ve been on leave this week. Kath has been working and it has been a busy busy week for her. Dad is staying with us and we’ve been going on little day trips here and there. I was wondering how the running would fit into our lives when we’re not in our usual routine but it worked fine. We even went for 3 maintenance runs this week rather than the 2 – I feel better about no longer having a gap on the training schedule!

So here’s what we did

Tuesday: A relatively good pace for us of 12.14 minutes per mile running a total of 3.68 miles. I can’t even remember which way we went. I think we went up past the sheep and then along the canal but I couldn’t be sure. I don’t remember much about the run really.

Wednesday: We left our house, went down the hill and then along the canal towards Bingley. It felt really hard and I didn’t really enjoy it much. Having said that I must be getting better because in spite of not enjyoing it, I did see quite a lot. Dogs playing and getting their owners all tangled up, the acknowledging nods of other runners, the many cyclists who came flying past, ducks, a swan or two and Hugo the heron. It was, it turns out our fastest 45 minute run to date. 11 and a half minutes per mile exactly. 3.91 miles. We have gone faster once but that was on a 3 miler. This is encouraging!

Friday: Yesterday was a mixed bag. We tried out our new backpack/hydration system (more on that later) and I was struggling with a slightly dodgy tummy on the run (more on that later too). We slowed down a bit and ran 3.61 miles at a pace of 12.24 minutes per mile. It was a bit of a struggle particularly at first. With 6 run sections to go we turned for home along the canal and I settled into a really nice steady rhythm. It actually seemed easier to just keep going rather than stopping to walk and start again and the even rhythm was settling my tummy down. So I kept going, and going, and going and the first time I thought ‘a little walk would be nice’ there was only one left and it seemed a bit silly to take that one. So we ran to the end. 18 minutes of solid running at a completely even pace with just a little bit of an increase in speed for the last 30 seconds. And the most encouraging thing: I didn’t feel like I absolutely had to stop. I could have kept plodding along at that pace for a while I think.

The runs this week have been really tough mentally and physically but also really enouraging. Our early ‘really fast’ pace is now our normal ‘running fairly hard but looking about’ pace and our fast pace is getting faster. We are also getting stronger and are able to sustain our slower place for much longer. And, importantly for me and my ‘you can’t do this’ gremlins, our slowest, ‘dragging our butts up steep west yorkshire hills’ pace is still faster than the minimum pacing requirement of 16minutes per mile for the RunDisney Marathon.

Next up – 7 miles tomorrow. I’m not dreading it.

Getting Excited About Disney

Jess Guth3 Comments

I don’t quite understand why I like Disney World. I am not a massive Disney film fan, I hate all that is corporate America and I don’t even really like theme parks and yet there is something. Escapism. I like that for the duration of your stay magic really does exist and anything is possible. I know how that sounds, I know it makes no sense but there you have it. I am excited about going to Disney World and I am exctied about running at Disney World.

We’ve spent some time over the last week or so looking at places to eat and decided to book a few places for those meals where timing and type of food might be most important – the day before our run and the day of our run. As we have signed up for both the half and the full marathon to keep our options open (we are obviously aiming for the full) we  have booked dinner before both as well as somewhere to go once we’re done and have done the initial re-fuel at the race retreat.

If you are not in the slightest bit interested in Disney, stop reading now or skip right to the end. Here’s what we’ve booked with the running in mind:

Dinner the evening before the Half Marathon (which is Plan B but dinner will be lovely whatever!): Dinner at the Crystal Palace in the Magic Kingdom. I think we have previously only had breakfast here but I may be wrong. The buffet makes sense because we can both choose what we want and they have plenty of runner friendly food to choose from.

The day of the half marathon (which is also the day before the marathon!) –  Breakfast – we have booked the race retreat so will see what our fuelling experiments discover. It may be that we have some peanut butter on toast or it may be that we have a banana or it may be that we take our own stuff to Florida with us. If we are not running, we’ll just have breakfast in the Wave at our hotel – should be ok not booking. Dinner is booked early at Tony’s, also in the Magic Kingdom – we both like it here and pasta seems like an excellent plan before the marathon (or just generally!). If we have run the half then we will add an early lunch in somewhere but we’ll book that nearer the time if we need to.

Marathon Day – Breakfast – we’re not messing about with trying out new stuff on the day. We have the race retreat so – as with the half, if they do stuff we have trialled and are happy with we may take advanatage of it, if not, we’ll have something with us. We will also be able to re-fuel at the race retreat immediately after the run which will be great. There’s no point in booking lunch – I might well still be running (crawling?). Instead we’d like to take advantage of the cool down party at Downtown Disney and celebrate what will hoepfully be an amazing running success. We have booked a table for early dinner at the Boathouse which looks like the perfect place for a celebration. If all goes well we should have plenty of time for a post-run bath and little snooze before heading over to the restaurant to eat. After dinner we’ll see – party or bed?

For the day after the marathon we have booked breakfast at the Crystal Palace – I like the breakfast here  – it’s a nice atmosphere and lovely building (try and hide the bacon from piglet!) and it is within crawling distance of our hotel but will make us leave the hotel and walk a little bit even if we are very sore.

Looking through the restaurants, reading the reviews, scanning menus and booking a few meals was fun but also a little scary. It is all getting to be a bit real now. This is happening. We are actually doing this. It’s more than just planning a holiday somehow. It’s hard to explain but the planning and looking what we might do and see around the marathon weekend keeps me motivated. I want the trip to be special and the running is part of that and I want to come back having successfully tackled the distance and having enjoyed it. Keeping that in mind helps with the ‘nah I’ll go tomorrow instead’ feeling.

I feel differently about the running now than I did a couple of months ago even. I don’t feel more confident exactly, I still have my demons, my ‘you silly fat cow, you can’t run’ voice and I often think it is absolutely right but I also have a slightly obsessive determination now. I’ve gone from ‘wouldn’t it be hilarious if I actually managed to do this’ to ‘ I am going to do this’. That’s not to say that the idea of me running a marathon isn’t utterly ridiculous, it is. It absolutely is – but somehow that really doesn’t matter. After all, it’s Disney. There’s nothing that can’t be achieved with a bit of fairy dust.

Don’t like fast – do like food

Jess Guth2 Comments

And by fast I mean fast for me, not actually fast. Our weekend run this week was only 3 miles. We have previously talked about extending the ‘short’ weekend runs to 5 miles just to get some miles in the legs and get more comfortable at that slightly longer distance but then we decided that we would use the 3 miles to work on getting a bit faster instead.

I got up not long after 8am an got ready to go for the 3 miles. The first run section didn’t go well, I’d obviously not tied my pants properly so at about a minute in my belly had escaped and I was desperately trying to pull up my pants, keep running and not get cross at Kath who was, with some justification, falling about laughing. At the walk break I tied a knot in the elsastic to keep my pants up come hell or highwater – it will probably have to stay in there forever.

I struggled on the run from the start really. I think possibly the less said the better. It was quite fast for us – 11.24 minutes per mile. 34 minutes 11 seconds. I’m happy with that but I didn’t enjoy a single second of that run. The good news – I’d recovered pretty well by the time we got home.

The guys over at BritsRunDisney are following a very similar training plan to us to get ready for the Wine and Dine Half Marathon soon. They’ve been thinking about fuelling for their runs and we’ve been thinking about that too. We need to get better at eating the right sort of things before and after running to help us on our runs and to help recovery. We’ve been on with that, experimenting with what to have before a morning run (we’ll get to the afternoon/evening runs eventually but they seem less crucuial as our marathon will be a morning run). What we haven’t yet got our heads round is fuelling during a run.

Pre-Run

Kath quite likes to do the morning runs on an empty tummy. I struggle with that (it was ok today but it was a short distance). I like a banana about 15 – 20 minutes before we start. If I am going to be up much longer than 40 minutes or so before heading out then porridge 90 minutes to an hour before, followed by a banana about 15 minutes before works well. I also want to try peanut butter on toast and see how that works – bascially I just like peanut butter.

We will have to start thinking about the day before etc soon too but let’s take one step at a time

Post-Run

We’re relatively good at this as we both like things like tuna steaks on quinoa with a bit of salad or just a big salad with feta cheese and seeds or a chicken and avocado salad. So for the longer runs we tend to plan a pretty good recovery meal in.

During Run

Hm, we are rubbish at this. So far we haven’t even been taking water. I haven’t felt like I needed it yet. I try and drink a bit before we head off and I drink quite a lot of water when we get back. As the distances get longer we will have to fuel as we go though. Our attempt at taking the Camelbak water bottle the other week failed (the belt and little bottles that go with it are now in a charity shop donation bag). Carrying a hand held water bottle for any distance doesn’t work either so I’m not sure what the solution is there.

As for anything other than water – I don’t like the idea of the gels. I don’t really know why, I just don’t. we might try jelly beans – I was given some giant ones as a present a while back – they might work. We might also try some dried fruit and nuts, something like a trail mix or something. I suppose using a run/walk strategy means that any nibbles can be comsumed during a walk break making it far easier than trying to learn to eat on the run. Whatever we ultimately come up with, it needs to be something that I can take with me to Florida because having to find something else when there will probably mess with my tummy and will almost certianly mess with my head.

Oh Sunday Weigh-In. I lost a whole two ounces – we’ll call that staying the same!