Category: Training

Kingfisher taking us home

Jess Guth7 Comments

So, 20 miles is a long way! Our long runs haven’t exactly gone to plan so it was good to get out and get it done today. We were sort of hoping we might get 23 in but that would have meant going quite a long way past home and coming back and I just wasn’t up for that mentally today.

So, here’s how it went:

  1. Wake up repeatedly in the night worrying about not being hydrated enough and to go to the loo because I clearly was hydrated enough
  2. Get up at 6am, pull on running gear, eat bagle with peanut butter, drink mug of hot water.
  3. Drive to Mum’s place at the bottom of the hill, get bus to station, get train into Leeds.
  4. Toilet stop, bottle of water and a short walk to the Leeds-Liverpool canal and we were off.
  5. First bit of Cliff bar (oh my goodness, the sugar rush) at about 6 miles
  6. Going quite well along the canal for a bit longer
  7. Canal towpath shut with diversion instructions next to useless – couple of miles or so of randomly following road/footpath vaguley in the right direction. Mentally really struggling with things not going to plan – walking a fair bit
  8. Met lovely bloke with lovely dog who gave us directions. Ran a bit
  9. Found canal
  10. 10 miles- first niggles and some additional walking
  11. Oh my goodness we made it to Shipley! More Cliff bar and a mobile catering van for water
  12. Saltaire – but shop boat shut so no more water
  13. Reversal of intervals – running one minute, walking 2. Hips now very tight and back beginning to ache
  14. Mentally nothing left. Resisting urge to call up in a ball and cry
  15. Called Mum to give her an ETA with 3.5 miles left
  16. Don’t remember – it hurt a bit but I just put one foot in front of the
    Common_Kingfisher_Alcedo_atthis
    This photo was taken by Andreas Trepte at http://www.photo-natur.de. I got it from Wikipedia

    other and then I saw the now almost familiar flash of blue. For about a mile or so we ran with a kingfisher. It kept flying out and then stopping a little further down the canal. We stopped to watch it just sitting on a branch and when it flew off we followed again. It kept me going.

  17. Half a mile left – I ran for 3 minutes.
  18. Less than a quarter of a mile left – we ran out of intervals on the garmin and had to restart it.
  19. 4 hours, 59 minutes and 20 seconds after we started we completed 20 miles. Slow but within RunDisney required minimum pace.

What did I learn?

  1. We need more water along the way. The small bottle to start and one at Shipley wasn’t enough, we both felt the lack of water later on
  2. I need to fuel more in the second half of the run – I had a bit of my Cliff bar at 6 miles and at 11ish but then nothing. Partly that’s a water issue, I don’t like eating anything without water. I only had about half the bar – I’ll need a full one for 26 miles – possibly even 1 and a half.
  3. I am mentally struggling at the minute – I’m tired and I don’t have anything left to push through when the running gets tough. I didn’t deal well with the diversion – it zapped all my energy
  4. I also didn’t deal well with the fact that I couldn’t keep to the intervals – I really wanted to be able to do that and not doing so zapped more energy because I started second guessing my ability to do this thing.

We got to Mum’s, had some water and a banana and then drove home. We did some stretches, had a bath and then great recovery food – a chicken breast on quinoa and mixed grains with avocado and cherry toms. Yummy.

Chicken on quinoa
Chicken breast on quinoa with avocado

I feel a little sore but I can move, my feet are in one piece and I suspect my hips are going to be tight tomorrow but let’s see!

6 miles on a week night

Jess GuthLeave a comment

So, final page of the training plan. Here we go

image

Well I was in panic mode, possibly due to not having done the long run last weekend. I feel like we need to get some miles in. I don’t feel prepared at all. So we decided that we could get some additional miles in and some confidence back by upping at least one of the maintenance runs to 6 miles rather than the 45 minutes.

So off we went for 6 miles today. We did ‘cheat’ a little because we had to feed the sheep. We ran there (9.5 minutes), stopped the watch, fed the sheep and then set off again. I hated going down the golf course, walked most of it. It was wet, muddy and slippery and I am rather embarrassed to say that I let out a proper girlie shriek at one point. We went our usual route but then kept going along the canal.

I was fine running to the sheep, then fine once I got onto the flat and then we took a walk break because Kath was struggling with a stitch. After the walk break I couldn’t get going again. I took the next walk break too and then managed a bit longer. At 3.5 miles I wanted to cry. At 4.5 miles I felt ok. At 5 miles I took a couple of walk breaks and then we ran to the end. I did find it tough but a sort of manageable tough. A sort of ‘not a big deal’ tough. The pace ended up 12.40 minutes per mile which I think is pretty good given my complete downhill incompetence early on.

I like looking at the last page but I do need to confess- we still need to do the 20-23 miles we didn’t do last weekend. Hm

Wimping out (sensibly?)

Jess Guth3 Comments

I have spent much of the night listening to the wind and rain. At just before 6am we gave up on sleep and instead studied the weather forecast and radar pictures. There is a weather warning in force for this area for wind and rain and the forecast radar looked wet indeed. So we decided that being out in this weather for several hours wasn’t a good plan. It did say that the rain would clear by midday and give way to showers but that would still mean running for 2.5 ish hours in heavy rain and then still have another 2.5 ish hours to go – possibly in showers and definitly in a biting, strong wind. Going later doesn’t work either because we’d run out of daylight. No 23 miles for us today.

At this point I really need to get to the start line without injury and without any major setbacks. Getting a cold because of being soaked and cold for 5 hours would be a major setback and sustaining an injury because of slipping on the mud would be a disaster. So the plan is to do a 23 mile run on whatever day looks more favourable next weekend. Thinking about it we should probably have prioritised the run over the walk this weekend – we would have been wet but it was probably doable yesterday…

The thing is, I am oddly calm about the distance. I walked 10 miles yesterday and I feel no different today than if I hadn’t walked at all. No tightness or soreness, not even in my right calf muscle. 26.2 miles will be fine – it will be slow and it will be tough and I’m sure there will be times along the way where I just want to stop but it will be fine. How slow exactly it will be might well depend on the weather over the next few weeks and how much confidence I can get from a couple more long runs – or not

I was perfectly happy with the decision we made but now it has cleared a little and I am second guessing. Maybe we should have got organised to go… although just as a type that it’s started persisting it down again..

I feel like I’m wimping out but I also feel like that might be a sensible sort of wimping out.

Happy Sunday

 

 

 

Walking in the Rain

Jess Guth3 Comments

The marathon training plan had a 4 mile walk yesterday and a 10 mile walk today. I was quite looking forward to both of these because walking isn’t scary – I can walk. The 4 miles yesterday we did once Kath had finished work and we fed the sheep on the way – it was just a nice little walk really even though neither of us could really be bothered. We just walked round in almost, but not quite, grumpy silence and ticked it off.

Today we had the 10 miles to do. We walked the 5 ish miles to Saltaire, had lunch and looked round Salts Mill (I bought a pair of shorts!) and then walked back. It’s probably a bit more than 10 miles door to door because the 5 miles were measured from the canal rather than from home when we ran it I think. It was drizzly on the way there but on the way back it was raining quite heavily for most of the way and we got soaked to our knickers. Still, it was nice to be out.

Walking doesn’t help with my depression/anxiety in the same way running does. Running gives me clarity and headspace that I am very conscious of, walking just helps me not think about anything at all. It’s probably at least as valuable because I suspect it is just letting my brain do its thing to get itself better. I noticed that after a little while surrounded by people I was overwhelmed by noise and busy-ness in my head. I was desperate to get back onto the near deserted canal towpath.

It was a good day for seeing birds along the canal. We saw a kingfisher early on and then a kestrel a bit further on. There were lots of ducks, geese and a few swans on the canal and we also saw some gulls. There were the usual blackbirds and blue tits, a few chaffinches and great tits but we also saw goldfinches and long tail tits. I do like them, they’re like little darts whizzing around and they always sound cheerful

It was good to get home and get into a warm bath and thaw out. It is funny how perception of distance changes – walking to Saltaire used to feel like a really really long way. Today walking there and back didn’t feel like such a big deal really. I was ready to be home with about a mile to go but that was just because I was soaked and getting quite cold. We’ve had a lovely tea of pasta with feta cheese, avocado and chorizo and are now both resting and drinking stupid amounts of water ready for our 23 mile training run tomorrow. I’d rather not think about that too much…

Minus 5 plus hills

Jess Guth6 Comments

I didn’t want to run today. Not-at-all. But there is something magically pulling me towards that marathon and making me go. I needed quite a nudge to get me out the door today though and I have to say a big thanks to my friend Liz who sent me a message asking if I’d got my trainers on yet at just the right moment.

Once I got out there I actually felt better than on the last run. Because of limited daylight hours it made sense for me to feed the sheep on my run.  I ran to the field, stopped the watch and fed them and then carried on running. When I got to the point where we normally do a little ‘there and back’ thing I really couldn’t face running the same stretch twice so I turned left across the canal bridge and therefore significantly shortened the loop. I kept plodding to the next bridge and hadn’t even hit 30 minutes yet.

I kept going over the bridge and started heading for home and that way home starts with a bitch of a slope. I don’t think I’ve ever run it before but I got to the top of it  – which is also the bottom of an absolute killer of a hill. I walked up that and then started running again once I got to the top and then kept going until I got home – including running up the slope leading up to our road. I looked at my watch and it said 40 minutes. I wasn’t prepared to run round in circle for 5 minutes for the sake of it so stopped at our front door and nearly scared a woman delivering something for Kath to death as I stepped onto the drive right behind her but didn’t have enough oxygen left to announce myself.

So I didn’t run the required 45 minutes and I had a break after the first 10 minutes to feed the sheep –  but the plan said nothing about hills. So there, I’m minus 5 minutes but plus some serious slopes.