Tag: marathon

On Being Tired

Jess GuthLeave a comment

I am tired. I have been all week. I ran a half marathon a week ago and it went really well and I worked hard – so being a bit tired is normal. But I’ve been proper tired.

I took my planned rest day on the Monday with ‘just’ our yoga class in the evening – that’s an interesting experience on half marathon tired legs and on Tuesday dragged my butt out for the 6 ‘easy’ miles on the plan. Actually getting out was a win. It was after work, I’d been in Leeds, I was running out of steam a bit but it did me good to get out. Even though I grumbled about it being hard and horrible I did run it without walking and I did run the uphill – all of it until I hit the 6 miles beep. Then I walked .2 of a mile home.

Wednesday I was soooooo tired – I moved my speed work to Thursday and accepted I needed an extra day. Thursday I felt broken kind of tired. I felt like every time I sat still for more than 5 minutes I’d fall asleep. I was also quite tearful and anxious. We went for lunch and then I slept for nearly two hours. I did go to my yoga class in the evening and that helped me feel like I had at least achieved something that day.

Actual Running Selfie

Friday was the start of a 26 mile weekend on the plan. I think I sort of knew that it wasn’t sensible to try that but it hadn’t quite filtered through to my conscious yet. Friday was 4 miles. I did 4 miles. I had toyed with the idea of doing the missed speed work but I didn’t really feel up to it. Instead I thought I’d see if I could just manage 4 miles at roughly marathon pace and I tried my Mind T-shirt for fit and comfort. Miles 1 and 3 are perfect. Mile 2 is a little on the slow side and Mile 4 which included the uphill pull was too fast by about a minute. So all in all the average ends up bang on marathon pace. It felt good to have done something positive. I still felt tired though.

Saturday. 8 miles on plan. I thought I’d set off and try really slowly. Because Kath is not very well and we’d volunteered at parkrun all our timings for food and everything were all out and I had too big a lunch. I should have left it even longer to go run. For the first mile and a bit everything felt awful. My tummy was unsettled and I wondered if I was going to have to stop at Kath’s mum’s or my mum’s or both. By 2 miles it had settled down and by 2.5 miles I was in a nice little rhythm. I was really tired though. I thought I’d be sensible and aim for 6 miles rather than the 8. I turned round to head towards home and a little while after the turn my left achilles tendon started niggling. I agonised over what to do for a couple of strides and then decided nothing was worth risking injury now. I walked and it immediately felt fine. I walked a minute and tried running again and the niggle was back. Ok, ‘walking it is then’, I thought. Overall I covered 5.5 miles but 2 of that was walking, stopping, stretching, oh and going to the co-op to buy crisps for Kath.

Sunday. When I woke up this morning I had in my head that I was going to do the 14 miles the plan said. I had conceded that I might do it run/walk although I was really tempted to try and run it all – it would be the furthest I have ever run without walking. Anyway. Kath was struggling this morning so what I wanted to do training wise became very unimportant very quickly and we instead tried to find a way we could get Kath unstuck from the sofa and doing something positive in spite of still feeling quite poorly. We settled on Bolton Abbey where we had options in terms of distance, where there were facilities and where walking would be perfectly fine. I thought I could always make up my miles later in the day.

Looking for woodpeckers

Oh my goodness the run was as awful as the day was stunning. It felt like I had never run before in my life, like I couldn’t really breathe and like my legs had no clue what they were supposed to be doing. It was properly awful! However, it was a gorgeous sunny day and the River Wharfe was beautiful in her stillness. The ducks were pottering and there was a heron watching over the pottering. We also saw a dipper and heard woodpeckers. It was lovely to be out. We plodded slowly and walked the hills. We did the short loop and called it a win at 3.5 miles. There is no way I am making up miles today. The real or perceived niggles in my calves and my left knee and the general awfulness of the run tell me that I didn’t need a 26 mile weekend. I needed what actually would have happened if Kath hadn’t been ill – a very low mile weekend. We were meant to be going to see our friends and we would probably have run a short loop on Friday before we set off and another one on Sunday when we got back but that would have been it. That’s what I needed. I’ve still run 13.2 miles this weekend. That’s not nothing! (In fact it is more than I ran in all of February and all of March 2017!)

So why am I so tired? Well, I think there are a number of things going on here. The obvious one is that I am 63 days out from the London Marathon and I have very diligently been following a training plan that is quite different from anything I have been used to. I have been working an academic full time job and trying to settle into a sabbatical with the usual tiredness and frustration that can bring. I have been slowly working my way through an episode of depression which has its own special brand of tiredness. And, and this may be a big And, it’s the end of February. One of my fellow #Run1000Miles runners reminded me of the lovely German Word Frühjahrsmüdigkeit which probably captures exactly how many of us feel at the moment – tired, a sort inexplicable tiredness that hits us as winter slowly starts giving way to spring and we are getting used to longer days and fewer excuses to hide away and hibernate.

So the running – the plan we are following has higher weekly miles than I have ever done before and also more ‘themed’ (there’s got to be a better way of saying that but my brain is tired) sessions. It has a speed session each week – they swap to what they call strength in March and then lots of easy runs and the long runs and the odd tempo run thrown in. It’s 5 days of running a week. The attraction of this plan is that the longest training run is 16 miles. 16 miles is so much more manageable in terms of time than the usual longest of 20 or 23. You might think that another 4 miles makes little difference but when you are running them at my long slow run pace another 4 miles is almost another hour. It matters. So I have gone from training for Dopey which had 2 x 45 minute runs during the week and then back to back longish runs at the weekend with miles increasing every 2 weeks to a 5 day a week plan including speed work and tempo runs and much longer mid week runs. It’s a different sort of training and running.

The other thing is that since we got back from Dopey I have not been using run/walk intervals. I have mostly just run. I still have walk breaks – the Harewood House half was a good example of that but mostly I am trying to run the distance and only stop to walk for specific reasons – like because there’s an actual hill. I am therefore running more and that has got to make a difference too. I also have a huge number of miles in my legs. I have run over 300 miles in the last 3 months. To put that into perspective it has always taken me at least 5 months to run 300 miles before and that’s based on last year which was my fittest and furthest running year ever. In short, it is not surprising I am tired, I have run a bloody long way in a pretty short period of time and it has been a massive step up in weekly miles for me.

Plan: Do as Shack-cat does

So what happens now? Well, I think having a bit of a rest this weekend has been good. I have a rest day tomorrow and I have banned all thoughts of catching up on missed speed sessions. I am dropping back into the plan tomorrow and tomorrow is a rest day. I will reduce the 6 miles easy on Tuesday to a ‘sheep loop’ (about 3.25 miles) run on Tuesday morning before I go to the theatre with mum and then, all being well I will pick up the speed work on Wednesday – but going back to the next one on the list rather than the one set for that date. I will keep trying to eat well and fuel for the miles that I am doing and I will keep trying to properly rest when I am not running. I will also give myself one almighty kick up the arse to get better at stretching and strengthening – my yoga classes help but they are not enough. I need little and often. And on that note I am off to dust off my yoga mat!

It’s at times like this, when you have to come off plan, when things don’t go quite as they were mapped out and doubts start creeping in when remembering the WHY is so important. You can help me and Kath to keep our WHY in focus by supporting us to support Mind. Sponsor us here.

Hanging On

Jess Guth3 Comments

So here’s a thing: I am running phenomenally well. Yep, I am. I am running with ease, I am running without walk breaks for far longer distances than ever before (including a 10 miler last weekend which was grumpy but easy) and I feel fitter and stronger than ever. I ran over 100 miles in January and I enjoyed most of them.

Here’s another thing: I am hanging on and only just about keeping my shit together. I don’t know why. There was no obvious trigger. I got pummelled by jet lag when we arrived back from Florida two weeks ago. It took me the week to feel vaguely normal again. I slept lots. I went to London for work last Saturday and that was the first day I felt like the jet lag might be lifting. But maybe it wasn’t all jet lag. This last week wasn’t better. I stopped being hungry at random times and was just always hungry and I stopped being tired at random times and was instead just a general, heavy and dark sort of tired. I liked the sofa, I spent a lot of time on it. Too much time. I struggled to work to anything like capacity. I spent a week maybe doing 2 easy days of work. I got annoyed with myself.

So as I do battle with my black puppy I can’t really be bothered to do anything much and I can’t think. I’ve had lots of stuff to do that is either already late or with very imminent deadlines. I’ve been a grumpy sort of indifferent about all of this. Irritated by the existence of obligations, deadlines and things to do. When I’m busy or have to do things, I want to run, when I have the time to run, I can’t be bothered. But yet I have. In the same way that you might not really want to take a tablet but you just do, I have just run. I have clung to the marathon training plan like it is the one thing that might just pull me out of the darkness and help me regain my ability to think. And maybe it will.

I ran today. I didn’t want to really. I’m scared of slippery surfaces but driven on by something, by wanting to feel better and not foggy, by wanting my little grey cells to whirr round and have ideas and make connections which I can express in gorgeously crafted sentences which make sense… anyway, driven by something…. As I plodded along trying to stick to the least compacted snow I tried to encourage my mind to heal and just go where it wanted to. This is where it went. There was a definite shift around a mile in.

  1. You’re a bit crap at this
  2. You’ve got too much to do, just give up now
  3. oooh you’re super slow today
  4. Your work stuff isn’t going well is it
  5. What’s the point of your sabbatical – you’re just going to mess it up anyway
  6. Careful, icy
  7. Bloody hell sooo slow
  8. What, what was that – 1 mile beep? Hm
  9. Breathing a bit heavy there? Oh no actually you’re not
  10. Still got 5 miles to go – can you do that?
  11. Careful, icy
  12. So that work stuff? What do you mean not now?
  13. What do you mean it’s pretty
  14. What? You’re running and taking a picture? – You’ll fall
  15. Oh you didn’t fall
  16. 2 miles. What. Oh.
  17. You finished that article
  18. Still slow – oh yes, it’s meant to be slow. Plan says slow
  19. In fact you could slow down
  20. 3 miles. Wow. Nice running
  21. Look how lovely it is
  22. *No idea where it went for a while then
  23. Hill. Oh goodness, hill
  24. Yay, top of hill. Not far now
  25. Done

So where does that leave things? No idea. The fog lifts a little when I run. I can appreciate the beauty of the snowy hills. It also lifts as I sit and watch the birds coming to our bird feeders. The long tailed tits are my current favourites. It also lifts a little as I sit on the bed and fuss the cats and feel more than hear their purr. But mostly it lifts when I run. When I run I feel like thoughts process normally. So stick with me while this works itself out, keep encouraging me to run, be patient if there are no posts for a while. I’ll get there, little step by little step.

Dopey 2019 Reflections: The Celebrations

Jess Guth3 Comments

Our celebrations started with a long sleep like most good celebrations do. Then we went for a lovely dinner at the California Grill which is located at the top of our hotel. It was a lovely celebration meal with gorgeous food, a blissful glass of wine and gallons and gallons of water. We watched the Magic Kingdom fireworks from the viewing area at the top of the hotel, had chocolate cake and went to bed. After that Dopey joined in.

Coming with us to all the parks

Drinking ALL our booze

Then he got a bit silly including behaving inappropriately in the toilets (probably Stitch’s influence)

So we limited him to beer and made him drink lots of water and coffee and put him on a time out

Once he’d calmed down a bit we let him come with us and play in the parks until he got a bit tired

So we thought we better feed him

He likes cake!

Dopey 2019 Reflections: Rest and Recovery

Jess Guth2 Comments

Just over a week ago I finished the Dopey Challenge with a personal best marathon time in spite of really struggling with the heat and humidity. You can read about that here. For those of you who thought I was done with Dopey posts – nope. I’m going to milk it a little longer. I want to tell you about the rest and recovery that got us through the challenge in this post and then the celebrations and the medals in the next.

So the first thing to think about it how much sleep you’re going to need. Dopey is tiring and I think we managed to make the challenge enjoyable in part because we slept loads. We had an afternoon nap every day during the race weekend. It meant not playing in the parks but it was the right thing to do! Work, Christmas, travel and all of that meant we were tired anyway, add early starts and running increasing distances for 4 days in a row. You need to sleep – at least you do when you’re me!

So afternoon naps and early bed helped massively and that pattern didn’t stop – we slept after the marathon. On the Monday after we played in the parks with lots of sit downs and stops and we came away quite early. On Tuesday we went to the parks early but then came back and slept before heading back out, same on Wednesday. Thursday we managed a full day in the parks without a nap and were sooooo proud of ourselves, Friday we were back to resting if not napping!

The only thing that really got me was chafing. I shall spare you the details but trust me when I say you should never be that conscious or that worried about exactly where your underwear sits. It all happened during the half marathon when we had a pee stop. Sweaty lycra pants are tricky to get back up properly and they never sat right again. The full just aggravated the already raw areas. As much as it freaks me out, this was a job for vaseline. I hate vaseline, the texture, the smell, everything… but vaseline it had to be.

I am sure that being relatively active helped recovery. We walked a fair bit and kept those legs moving. I also spent quite a while lying down with my legs up in the air and overall I think I did pretty well. After the half marathon I was fine. After the full I was tight and my feet were a bit tender. However nothing really hurt. My lower back on the right side and into my right hip were niggly on and off but nothing too bad. I suspect that could have been avoided completely if I had stretched more. In fact this is the one thing we really neglected. We’re idiots! We hardly stretched at all which is just daft because that actually makes a massive difference and I think would have avoided the soreness that we did experience. Live and (probably not) learn.

The other thing that probably wasn’t ideal is food. We fuelled relatively well during the challenge having chosen our restaurants carefully but even then the portions were too big and we probably had too much. The days after we could probably have made better choices to help with our recovery. We didn’t go crazy and kept the booze within relatively sensible limits but Disney portions and menus that kept enticing us to have three courses meant that we had far too much and too much of the wrong stuff. I can’t tell you how excited I was to find some actual green vegetables! The food was amazing and part of our celebrations but it was really not a healthy week!

I was worried about how I would mentally deal with finishing Dopey, recovering and then starting running again. I mostly did quite well. I was overwhelmed and had little cries every now and again but I recovered well mostly. I had one major wobble. It didn’t come until Tuesday when we were queuing to get into Hollywood Studios. There were a few Dopey runners and marathon runners around and many of them looked very sore. I was feeling ok. I suddenly thought, wow I clearly didn’t work hard enough, I’m not sore, I should have done so much more… and I started thinking about points where I could have pushed harder. I soon snapped out of it but every now and again my mind goes back to that. I also forget or fail to recognise that Dopey is a pretty big deal. It can’t really be because I did it. And I don’t do things that are such a big deal.

I was also worried about getting back into running after Dopey. I struggled with that last time and London Marathon prep suffered as a result. I was concerned that I won’t recover enough to train properly. The first test came on the Thursday after Dopey. We decided to try a little run on the Contemporary running track. I didn’t have any preconceived ideas about how far I would go or how fast. I just wanted to see if I could still put one foot in front of the other. I could. I was incredibly tired and my legs felt pretty heavy. I trotted round a mile and a bit, took some pictures. Right at the end I felt my hip niggle a bit so I stopped. Overall, it was a good first trot out.

Dopey 2019 Reflections: why I’m (probably) done with Dopey

Jess Guth4 Comments

Dopey 2019 has been awesome on a whole load of levels. I am loving having done it. I am loving walking around the Disney parks with the Dopey medal. I am loving pausing every now and again to remind myself that we did something pretty special a few days ago. I am excited that I improved my running and fitness levels to a point where even the marathon was not totally miserable. It has been great. However, I’m pretty sure I’m done with Dopey. Here’s why.

1. Training for Dopey is pretty tough. Not significantly worse than for a marathon actually but Dopey training happens as the nights draw in, days are short and daylight limited and then there’s Christmas towards the end of the training. It’s not a great time to be training for a multi day running event culminating in a marathon.

2. I’m really really not a marathon runner. I will have one more go for the London Marathon but I don’t have anything to prove here and I think there are other challenges out there for me that I will enjoy more. I want to get off road more. I want to be a more confident trail runner. I have said before that I like half marathon distance because it’s a serious distance but it doesn’t break me. That is absolutely true and I think with a marathon there is always a risk that it will break me and put me off running. I have learned never to say never when it comes to running but at the minute I feel like I have achieved what I wanted with Dopey 2019. There is no unfinished business. I am more than happy to take this Dopey and remember it as the marathon weekend that helped me believe that I can do the impossible.

3. Dopey is brutal in two unexpected ways. It’s not the running. The running I would do again in a flash notwithstanding the comments above. The first is the early morning starts. Even with the help of staying on U.K. time, getting up at 2.00am ish for 4 mornings in a row is tough and you get more and more tired and reluctant to get out of bed with each day. The second is the waiting around. There is no getting away from it really, at least none that I can see. Thousands of people have to get to the start line and then into the right corral etc so you have to set off early on the transport provided, then you have to wait. Waiting takes its toll. There is a lot of sitting around, standing around, just waiting and that actually makes running more difficult because even with a good warm up routine you end up standing around for at least another 30 minutes after that and most likely much longer. If you are a middle to back of the pack runner it can take another hour to cross the start line… I don’t think I want to do that again. Not for 4 days in a row.

4. Florida weather in January. It can be anything! So in terms of running gear you need to pack everything. It might not be warm. This year it wasn’t. It was cold, really cold for the 5k, the 10k was marginally warmer, the half was just nice and for the full, well it’s been the only really hot day we’ve been here so far. It was humid too and clearly I don’t function well in humidity. While dealing with whatever weather for one day is doable, having to run 4 races on consecutive days in potentially completely different conditions messes with my mind. Perhaps I don’t need that again.

5. Dopey is not to be underestimated. If you also want a Disney holiday and you want to play in the parks, it’s tough to do that during the race weekend. At least it is for me. We needed naps on each of the race days and we headed to bed early. We have a full week after the race weekend to do stuff which takes the pressure off and means we can still do our favourite Disney things. But we are tired. We had naps on Monday and yesterday, we have had a lot of downtime today and we are going to bed early. I’d like to combine a runDisney event with a holiday again but maybe with a half marathon, not with such a huge mileage challenge. Something that I can recover from more quickly and which means I don’t have to spend my holiday napping. I don’t feel like I am missing out because I’ve been here several times before and because we have prioritised our list of favourite things to do. I think if you combine Dopey with one of your first Disney trips you really need to be careful not to do too much and exhaust yourself. Disney can be full on and exhausting even without any running!

6. What are the chances of running three personal bests during the Dopey Weekend – one in all but the 5k race – again. Probably zero! I think I’ll quit while I’m ahead! For anyone else thinking about it though, it’s phenomenal, it’s magical and it is great to have done it. Just don’t rely on pixie dust alone! It’s a serious challenge and a serious achievement and I will wear my race shirt and my medal (and possibly the ears too) with pride!