Tag: marathon

Reading about running, watching running and the day after 9 miles

Jess Guth3 Comments

When I logged on this morning this was actually the blog I intended to write but then I got side-tracked with the award and doing the last post so I never did. So now you get two posts in one day.

It’s Sunday – that means weigh-in. Last week I forgot and was grumpy. I never did go back to check my weight then but I suspect it was up. This week I did remember and I have lost just about 2 pounds (from where I was 2 weeks ago) so happily going in the right direction. We are now making more of an effort on the food front and have pretty much cut out the booze so that helps. Food plans for the week include a risotto, a quorn chilli, pasta parcels, a home made curry and a meal out on Wednesday. We’ve got fruit and salad stuff and I will make a banana loaf later on to satisfy our sweet tooth.running free

This morning I finished reading Running Free by Richard Askwith (published in 2014). Kath read it and suggested I might like it. Hm, it’s bizarre enough that I am actually running but reading about running? Step too far? Well actually I really enjoyed the book. For a start it is well written and in some parts laugh out loud funny. My favourite line in it actually isn’t about running but about getting lost (it’s funny because it happened to me too):

“…but I have been lost indoors – not just temporarily disoriented, but properly sit-down-and-cry-and-wait-to-die lost – on a disastrous visit to the Birmingham branch of Ikea”

I can identify with that – mine wasn’t Ikea, mine was the old Health Studies department of my university where I went to do some interviews. Anyway, there is much in this book with which I can indentify and much with which I would love to be able to identify and lots that confirms to me that I am not really a runner and much that confirms that I am. Richard Askwith clearly loves running. I wish I did. I always thought I hated running but that might not actually be the case. It’s something I find incredibly hard and sometimes it makes me miserable but often it also makes me happy. Initially just the having done it made me happy. Being able to say I had and doing something I was always fairly sure I couldn’t do made me happy. Now though it is sometimes the running itself that makes me happy. Not on every run and never for very long but every now and again I get a glimpse of some of the things Askwith describes: It’s not so much what he says about how running makes him feel or clears his head – it’s more about his description of his runs which focus on what he sees and hears and the emotions that that creates. That’s what I get a glimpse of, the hightened awareness of the natural surroundings and the response I have to it. I recognise his descriptions not because I know the places but because I am beginning to notice the same kind of things on some of my more positive runs. I recognise these emotions:

‘Happiness spread through my being like warmth. Within minutes, it was as if none of the morning’s difficulties had taken place’

‘And part of the appeal (or scariness) of running in wolder contexts – outside the illusory reasurance of civilisation – is that it forces us to face up to uncertainty’

I also read his take on ‘Big Running’ with interest. It has always struck me that running gear is incredibly expensive and that this whole industry has turned something that should be free into huge business. I too can be sucked in by gadgets, marketing promises and shiny new stuff. I could spend a fortune – except that until very recently most of the mainstream shiny new stuff wouldn’t have been available in my size, or only just. I am a bit bemused by it all and at the same time part of me has bought into (or sold out to) Big Running. I am running with the one ultimate goal at the minute – the Disney World Marathon. What could be more corporate or more big running than that? And I am doing it because I want to be able to say that I have done it. Reading the book made me wonder whether that is the only reason. If it is, I’ll likely achieve my goal and then not run again. That, I am beginning to realise, would be a shame. Askwith runs without a watch, he doesn’t time his runs and he runs in the countryside and not in the gym or along roads. All of that appeals. I am not sure about tackling fields etc round here and I don’t really know why I am not sure (and slightly irritated by not being sure – I want to be the kind of person who happily runs through muddy fields)  but I’ll take the canal bank or the trails at Bolton Abbey over a running track, road or treadmill any day. I am not really interested in racing. We have signed up for a few events but for me it isn’t about pitching myself against others. Running is about me and not even about getting better, just about me doing it. Askwith talks about running in an environment which makes you happy and running round here where I live makes me happy and if I am going to run a ‘race’ then I want to do it in places that mean something to me or are somehow special. So the upcoming Nottingham Half Marathon will evoke memories of the year I lived in Nottingham, the Scarborough 10km after that will allow me to enjoy the stunning views across the sea and the Disney World marathon – well that’s just another leve altogether and we’ll be doing that to raise money for an amazing charity. Big Running – yes but also Jess Running. Anyway, read the book. It made me think about my running journey, appreciate it and it somehow made me enjoy my running more even if I am not quite ready to give up the outcomes focused recording of time, distance and pace – and I want my stickers for each completed run. I don’t think Askwith would mind that, I think maybe he’d acknowledge that we are in different phases of running and I think he’d encourage me to just keep getting out there – and by out I mean off road.

I have also been watching a bit of athletics – I often have sport as background noise when working at home. It’s a distraction that keeps me focused (if that makes sense). I watched Mo Farah take the 10km Gold (that’ll be 10km in a faster time than I can run 5km), I watched Usain Bolt win the 100m Gold and I’ve also seen other bits and pieces over the last couple of days.. As I watched those elite runners I suddenly thought how lucky I am. There is no pressure on me to run and when I do there is no pressure on me to go fast. There is no pressure to go for a certain distance or keep going for a certain time. I decide. The elite runners are phenomenal, of course they are but I’d rather be me. I’d rather have the freedom to plod my way along the canal bank and watch the herons flying ahead. As I watched Mo cross the finish line I realised I had tears running down my face. The win obviously meant a lot to him, being good at winning medals obviously means a lot to him and just running, however pathetically slowly, means a lot to me – in a really funny and conflicted way.

I’m still feeling pretty smug about the 9 miles yesterday and my body seems to have recovered very well. The weak point is my knees. That’s perhaps not surprising – I’m heavy, many might say too heavy for running. However, they are not what I would call sore, not injured as such, just a bit weak and creaky. I am planning a  yoga session this evening and that will help recovery further. I am also looking forward to my next run.

Going further than I ever have – apart from once

Jess Guth7 Comments

Training re-cap for week ending 22nd August: Monday – stopped half way through, Tuesday – did it! 45 minutes at Bolton Abbey, Wednesday –  rest, Thursday – got less than 50 metres before calf muscle twinge, icepack, Friday – more icepack, Saturday 9 MILES.

Yes that’s right. 9 whole miles, 14.48 km. That is the longest distance I have ever run. Oh actually no it’s not, there was the half marathon 3 years ago but when we trained for that we never got past 10km. So it’s the longest training run I’ve ever done and I almost certainly ran far more of the 9 miles today than I did of the half marathon. Apart from 2 little glitches we managed to stick to running intervals of two and a half minutes with a 30 second walk rest. The glitches involved starting the walk break a little early. The 9 miles took us 1hr 56 mins and 10 secs with an average pace of 12minutes 55 seconds per mile. I am really happy with that for such a long distance. I also think that if we stick to the Jeff Galloway training plan we’ve been following, I will be able to keep going at that pace for much longer which means I can probably stop panicking about the minimum pace required at the Disney World Marathon which is 16 minutes per mile.

Anyway, the run. We got the train out to Skipton and ran back home. The entire route is along the canal and you can get onto the canal just opposite the station car park. No navigation required – just keep running next to the canal. There is quite a lot of info on the Leeds Liverpool Canal online and the section we covered today is detailed on the Skipton to Stockbridge section of a website all about it. There area lot of pictures so you can see where I was running. I do have to keep reminding myself that we are pretty lucky to be able to run in this part of the world!

I was a little concerned about this run, not just because of the distance but also because of my calf muscle twinges and slightly creaky knees over the last week. The first three miles were ok actually. I settled into running quite quickly and I enjoyed being out and being by the canal with its colourful canal boats (some with brilliant names like Soggy Bottom), its dog walkers, its ducks, swans and moorhens. My legs felt ok. I started to struggle at roughly half way, I was feeling tired and struggling to focus on enjoying it and it all just felt a bit like plodding. I do wonder if I need to think about eating something at roughly 5 miles, I may try that on the next long run. Anyway I desperately tried to hang on to why we are doing this and tried to focus on how much progress I had already made. I took a slightly longer walk break somewhere just before 6 miles (not that I knew that) and then Kath told me we had gone past 6 miles. We’d done two thirds! Then I really just kept plodding, my thighs and hips were tight (but not my calf!) and it seemed a huge effort but I never felt like I wanted or needed to stop the run. I needed another longer walk break because I just couldn’t get my legs to move but shortly after that we were in familiar running territory and running along a section of the canal we have done before. I couldn’t take the walk breaks out but I did keep going to the end. It was so good to have done it. I was surprised to have done it at what is for me a very decent pace over the distance. It didn’t feel at all comfortable but I’ve sort of forgotten that now. I remember a field full of calves lounging about in the sun. I remember the heron (not one of our ‘usual’ herons, it was smaller and lighter in colour, maybe a young one), the miserable looking cyclists and the happy ones, the rabbits in fields and the just being outside.

We finished the run and then had to walk home from the canal. It took a very long time and as we got to the top of the golf course I actually felt quite poorly. Kath had taken her backpack with hydration system. I had ignored it for most of the run but I did then take time to drink some water. The walk route took us past Kath’s mum’s house and Kath stopped off and grabbed me a banana. A bite of that and I felt much better.

Once home I did some stretches (actually I spent a long time in Child’s pose and lying on my back with my knees to my chest but I did stretch too) and had some icelandic yoghurt with fruit and then a cool bath. My legs are tired, my knees are a bit grumpy but not much actually hurts. The exception to not hurting is both middle toes which seem to have taken a battering and which are bruising under the nail. I’ll do some yoga and stretching later and we’ll see how bad it all is tomorrow

A good run with lots to learn – I need to drink more during the longer distances, I should probably eat something for enegery too and, perhaps most importantly, however hard and horrible it gets, a few hours later I really just remember having done it and a few of the nice things seen along the way

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!