4 in 5 weeks – am I mad?

This Sunday sees the 7th race in my 10 race challenge. I will be heading to the capital of Cornwall for the Truro Half Marathon. The race is a multi terrain effort so hopefully it won’t rain too much as I am not sure if my shoes will cope if it is muddy. Having read a review of the course, which is new for this year, it would appear to be a couple of uphill sections, a couple of downhill sections and some flat bits. Sounds OK but the report suggests that the top of the hills will require breathing equipment and, quite possibly, a Sherpa!

I suppose I should have expected that given that the race is in Cornwall!

This race will give me some idea of my recovery powers and whether I need to update my will before taking on races 8,9 and 10 in consecutive weeks!

I am stocked up on energy gels and will be getting through a lot of isotonic drinks over the next month and a bit. Even though the finish line is in sight, I am quite nervous. The first run after a half marathon is usually quite ‘lumpy’ so I have no idea how I am going to cope with a half marathon 7 days after the previous one.

On a positive note, the good people at the Cardiff Half Marathon blog have asked me to write another piece as the last one had lots of page views. Keep your eyes peeled.

Big City Life

Bristol Half Marathon – done

I left the house at around 6.30am at the end of a week of very broken sleep (thanks to our windy 6 month old) to find that it was persisting down in Exeter.  It was also persisting down when I got to Bristol which was nice as all forecasts leading up to the day said that it would be cloudy and warm.  After a few wrong turns, I found a free parking space within 5 minutes of the starting line so decided that the omens were good for the day.

The organisation of the start was good and the only thing that they couldn’t control was the weather.  Standing around for 15 minutes in the rain with no cover was not fun.  Another gripe is the insistence of some races to draft in an instructor from a ‘fitness studio’ to do a warm up.  Cue a handful of people stood there waving their arms and marching on the spot.  I want to get to the start and run.  I know how to warm up – I don’t need someone to tell me.

And so we were walked to the start and suddenly a big gap opened between the mass of people and the start line.  Some kept walking, others jogged and some set off at speed.  Within the first half mile, some were walking and others were looking for their chips which had fallen off their shoes.   I settled into a comfortable pace and started picking off the slower moving runners.  My Garmin bleeped to register the time for the first mile with the official mile marker still ahead of me.  When I reached it, the GPS had registered 1.03 miles.  The weaving in and out was threatening to make it a longer race!  By 2 miles, I had travelled 2.05 miles.  Those extra 80 metres are important!

The rain had stopped but it remained cloudy – perfect for running.  During the first section of the course, heading out of the city, I was overtaken by a banana and a chicken.  Although I did overtake a purple dinosaur.

Drinks stations were plentiful and there were portaloos dotted around – although not enough for some people including one lady who almost ‘did a Paula’ but managed to, just, hide behind some bushes.  Once we got back to the city centre, the course got a bit congested and spirit sapping.  The section around Queen Square (where I used to work) saw me getting a stone in my shoe for the third race in a row.

Some of the sections of the course at the end involved watching runners coming back in the other direction which gives a false sense of the distance that you have left to run and made the last 2.5 miles seem much longer.  My legs decided to stop running for half a mile between 11 and 12 which was no bad thing as it meant that I could then manage the rest of the race at a plodding pace.  That mile was my slowest at just over 13mins.  All others were sub 11mins which was great.

Over the last mile, three marshals at the three different points informed us that there was only ‘half a mile to go’.  Please, marshals, unless you know it to be a fact, do not say this.  It is very dispiriting to be told again and again that the finish is actually further away than it seems!

We were then into the final stretch and among the big crowds again.  And lo, the finish line did appear and I plodded over it to record another 2 hours 23 time – but crucially 45 seconds faster than the last race so a new seasons best.  This despite my watch telling me that over the course of the race, I had run ¼ of a mile extra!!

Great medal but huge disappointment as they had run out of foil blankets.  Amy, apparently, loves the material so to come away without one was gutting.  Also the organisation for getting people back to their backs on College Green was very poor.

Two weeks now to Truro which, I have learned via a Cornish club site, is not as flat as organisers would have us believe.  Better get my hill legs out of storage then!

What a difference a race makes

I am just finishing my prep for the Bristol Half Marathon.  Vastly different to that for the last run.  Indian Queens was a two page Word document detailing the course, directions to the race and other general info.

The Bristol race info is a glossy multipage booklet with advertising, road closure info etc

I am in the pink wave (pink = really slow) and have to assemble in my ‘pen’ before the race.  There will be around 15,000 running so I am not expecting a great time but having worked in Bristol for 4 ½ years after leaving university, it will be good to see the place again.

Course should be reasonably flat for the most part and has 6 drink stations including 2 energy drink stations.  Apparently, I will be offered a foil blanket at the finish.  I am a runner and I love freebies (like all runners) so I will be accepting one J

Training has gone well.  I now have a shiny new Garmin Forerunner 205 so that I can track my pace and workouts and be able to look at graphs and things.  I am an accountant – I like graphs and things.

And the Cardiff Half marathon people have asked if I would like to write another blog piece for them.  Nice ego boost before the coming slog

All roads lead to Cardiff

Here is a guest post that I wrote for the Cardiff Half Marathon blog – thought I would sling it up here as well.  Enjoy

For me they do anyway.  At the back end of last year, I decided to ‘give something back’ and raise some money for charity.  I decided that a sensible way of encouraging people to part with their cash was to set myself a challenge for 2010.  That challenge was to run 10 half marathons during the year and to raise money for Parkinson’s UK.  For a bit more info on this, my running blog is here – http://10in2010.wordpress.com.

The final run of this challenge will be the Cardiff Half Marathon.

So far, I have completed 5 half marathons this year with varying degrees of discomfort and exhaustion!  I am no running expert – just a keen amateur.  So, for those reading this blog and approaching their first half, what have I learned?

1. In the weeks leading up to the race, practice drinking while on the move.  It is a skill that you need to learn especially if you plan to only use the water stations as they usually hand out plastic cups.  It is not uncommon to see ¾ of the water on the floor and the rest over a runners t-shirt.
2. As Ian Hoskins says in his blog post, make friends with some hills.  The Cardiff course looks to be very flat but it will be of benefit to get some hill work in as it will add some strength that could be enough to carry you when it starts to hurt.
3. At the start of the race, a large number of runners new to half marathons will tend to race off at a pace that leaves them walking by mile 7.  If you are planning to finish in a certain time, then run at the pace that you planned when you were setting your goals.  Ignore the podgy bloke that has rocketed off into the distance leaving you questioning whether you have done enough training.  You will catch him before the finish.
4. If you see a camera – any camera, smile.  Most races have official photographers and there is a good chance that you will end up on the Internet looking like you desperately need the toilet because you didn’t smile at the right point.
5. Drink.  If you do not keep yourself hydrated before, during and after the race, it can become hell on earth.  One theory for the cause of migraines is dehydration.  I know that if I don’t rehydrate properly afterwards, I can get splitting headaches.
6. Congratulate yourself at the end.  Whether you achieved the time you wanted or not, you have just achieved something that the majority of the population has not.  13.1 miles is not to be sniffed at so give yourself a pat on the back.

Cardiff will be my third half in a three week spell so if you are somewhere near the back, please say hello to me as you stroll past?  I’ll be the bloke in a Parkinson’s UK vest trying to stay upright.

8 weeks to go

This Sunday (22^nd August) will see me 8 weeks away from the end of this running journey.  Basically, that means that I will be running 5 half marathons in the next 8 weeks

 2 weeks to Bristol

4 weeks to Truro

6 weeks to Burnham

7 weeks to Eden Project

8 weeks to Cardiff

 And then it is all over.  I take my Garmin watch, my compression socks and other accoutrements and waddle off to do something else.  I am pondering the option of doing a full marathon next year but will have to see what condition I am in after the Cardiff race!

With recovery time, there is very little training time left so I am going to have to rely on residual fitness and a good refuelling strategy after each race.

It is going to be interesting to say the least

Reflection and a decision

As I am now half way through this challenge, I thought that it was about time that I did a review/summary for anyone who looks at the blog now but cannot be fussed with reading back through my months of wittering.  It will also give me the opportunity to realise what I have done so far.

I started the year with the aim of running 10 half marathons in 2010.  It’s not an Eddie Izzard sized challenge and there may well be people out there who will do that number of half marathons for the fun of it.  However, I haven’t run properly and regularly for a long time and have, to put it nicely, padded out around the middle slightly.

I ran one half marathon while at university, finished in 2hrs 7 minutes and that included walking most of the last 2.5 miles.  In 2008, I ran two more – both finishing times were 2hrs 20mins and a few seconds.  Following the second one, during a post race training run, I experienced very sharp shin pain and ended up going to see a podiatrist to try to figure out what was happening.  Two appointments, a pair of orthotics and £300 later, I was heading for new shoes with the knowledge that I had shin splints.  I had signed up to the Bristol Half Marathon that year and had booked accommodation for my wife and I.  We stayed in the accommodation – Brigstow Hotel – very nice and has a TV in the bathrooms – but I only watched as runners plodded around.

2009 involved no half marathons and no other races as I wanted my legs healed as much as possible.

Fast forward to 2010.  I started signing up for races with the first being in April.  Any before that were discounted due to my wife being heavily pregnant with our first baby.  In mid March (around 3 weeks before the first race and two weeks after our beautiful little girl arrived), my doctor rang to confirm that the x-rays that he had sent me for showed that I had a stress fracture.  Amazingly, he told me to carry on running but to stop if it was still hurting within a month.  I took him up on the running part.

So on the 10^th April. Baby (6 weeks old), wife and I head off to Oxfordshire for the first race not knowing whether I am going to make through the whole distance or whether my challenge will start and end on the same day.

On the 11^th I completed the first of the 5 that I have now managed to finish.  I have been through a fair amount of torment but the fact that I have reached my sponsorship target is a huge help.

Not bad, so far, for a fat lad existing on much less sleep than he got before.  Five races to go and within those comes the decision.

The Burnham-on-Sea half marathon will be the 10^th entry on the list (although not the last on the list).  This will mean that I will be running 3 half marathons in 3 weeks and finishing in Cardiff in mid October.  What this will mean (other than me being exhausted), is that I will effectively have run 10 half marathons in 7 months not 12.

Better get on with the training then!

5 down and 5 to go

On a grey and damp day in August, over 600 runners descended on the village of Indian Queens. All preparing themselves for the physical and mental challenge of 13.1 miles of running.

The field gathered together at 9.55 ready for the off and following a bit of loud hailer squealing we were given some race instructions. You know that you are not in a big city race when you are told that there may be cows around but that they are docile so just dodge them!

And, after waiting for a latecomer or two, we set off at just past 10am with a gentle rain falling. That gentle rain was to get slightly heavier and kept falling for about 11.5 miles of the race – obviously for the speedy runners it fell for the whole distance.

I set off at a steady pace, for a change, and at 5 miles used one of my energy gels. Carried on plodding along and feeling comfortable. Energy gel two was used at 10 miles and the first walking stint started just before the 12 mile mark. I don’t know whether it was hearing the electricity zinging in the pylons nearby or the energy gels but that is the furthest that I have ever run continuously!

I had to stop to get some stones out of my shoes but ran roughly 12.5 of the 13.1 miles and finished in 2hrs 23 by my watch. A whole 15 minutes quicker than the horror show that was the Launceston race.

Having check the results, I was further forward than I was in Launceston and I actually felt quite good at the finish rather than wanting someone to shoot me!

T-shirt, bottle of Lucozade sport and banana in hand, I walked (not staggered) back to the car.

Great race, some hills but nothing compared to the previous three races and well organised. If you are heading for Cornwall and looking for a race then I would definitely recommend this one.

And to top it all off, someone – you know who you are – asked me whether I wrote a blog and said that they had read it. I don’t know whether the run or the comment was the highlight of the day although they didn’t say whether they thought it was any good :O)