Charity place secured for London Marathon 2014

So some more excitement – got myself a charity place in the London Marathon next year!  I’m sooo pleased and get a little happiness every time I think about it.  Get to run London for a 2nd time!!

The charity is Look UK, who are a small, national charity helping families and carers of children with visual impairments.  While I believe that virtually all charities do good work, I’m especially happy to support the smaller ones that haven’t got the big advertising budgets that the larger ones do.  In fact, I only found out about this place via a post on Runner’s World.

I LOVE London, and was thrilled to run it in 2013.  I wasn’t planning on running it again until I got another ballot place, but I thought I’d miss it so much next time I couldn’t resist.  I’ve got a target of £700 to raise (plus the £100 registration fee), which is a lot but far less than what most charities require which is closer to £2000.  So it’s doable, and with a bit of sweet talk with the marketing and events team at work, may even be able to get some support for a decent cake sale event for the students.

Go on the runnerworld.co.uk forums and there are plenty of people who don’t like London, or say it’s not worth it.  Even to say that you’ve got a place results in a deluge of comments such as “oh – last time I checked there were 100 other UK marathons to choose from nowadays!” or “it’s just a circus through Deptford”.  Plus a lot of complaints about how people think there are too many charity places and not enough for “real” runners (although figures released last year did actually show there were almost twice as many ballot places as charity places!).  Hmm well everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and many people don’t like the hype around London, but I do!!  Out of the 5 I’ve run, it’s by far the best – only Berlin comes close.  I love the electric atmosphere, the famous landmarks, the capital city, and the way the spectators come out in their millions to watch and celebrate a great day of British sport.  As I was running it last year, I was thinking about how I would certainly love to do it again next year.  At the time, I was saying to myself I’d do anything to run it again in 2014!!  (Although by mile 20 I was vowing NEVER to run a marathon again!).  Afterwards I thought I would certainly love to do it again, but probably only if I got another ballot place somewhere down the line.  But I changed my mind when I found a charity willing to accept a much lower target than usual, and signed up again!

So that means next spring I get to run five marathons!  I’m starting to freak out a bit, but as long as I stick with the idea of running 4 of them purely for fun and not chase any target times I’ll be happy.  There are 2 back-to-back weekend of marathons – Brighton then London at the beginning of April, and then Liverpool then Kent at the end of May.  Half way between the two is Milton Keynes!

The plan is to train to run back to back longer runs at a slower but steady pace, so I can get round each but then recover as much as possible in between each race.  Ideally I’d like to run Brighton at a reasonable pace, around 5.05 – 5.20 (my PB is 5.03) and then rest for the next week with a few walks in between.  Seeing as London is just one big street party I will just aim for anything between 6.00 – 6.30 as it will be a chance to simply enjoy the atmosphere.  There will be so many first time novice runners going for that sort of time so I won’t be at the back!!

Then 3 weeks until the MK Marathon.  I’ll be able to get a decent few runs in, maybe up to about 10k, and just check out how my legs are feeling and avoid injury.  I’ll aim for anything under 6 hours! 

Another 3 weeks til the Liverpool Marathon.  I really only signed up for this for the atmosphere as there are loads of bands along the way, so I’ll plan to run/walk this one and maybe have a bit of a dance at each band – one every mile!  I’ll see how it goes on the day but it will be another slow one, so around 6 – 6.30 will be fine.  Finally, just 6 days after that (not even a 7th day of rest!!) it will be the Kent Marathon.  There won’t be the bands or crowds to pause and dance to this time, so I will pretty much need to do this one at a steady pace all round (which is why I’ll need to take Liverpool slowly so I can have a bit of a chance to recover). 

Not sure if this is actually going to work, or whether my legs will fall off halfway across Tower Bridge!!!  The thing I’m looking forward to is just an opportunity to run a few marathons purely for fun and not worry about a time – but it’s a bit of a step up as I’ve done half’s for fun but not full’s!  No doubt I’ll start regretting this mid-May! 

So by the looks of things, Kent should now be my 10^th Marathon, well within the target of 10 before I’m 30 J

The Roman Run 26.2

Last weekend I acquired a medal from an old local race, the St Albans Marathon from back in the 1980’s that no longer takes place.  I think it was cancelled back in the late 80’s or early 90’s due to low numbers. Now we have a regular annual half marathon and 5k, but no full marathon.  I was interested in this race and felt that since I had now come into possession of the medal I must now run it – by remembering it in this way, it would make a training run feel really special.  I will call it The Roman Run.

I realised I was able to do the run on the correct date (7^th December) which was really good – just 27 years too late….!!  But it did not give me much time for find out the route so I had to guess a lot of it but tried to include what I knew.  

To make it a special run but also keep it realistic and not let it totally screw up the rest of my training, I put some rules/targets in place.

1.   - Try to start and finish at the same place that the original marathon started.  However this was not really feasible due to new buildings, shops etc. in that area and making driving/parking then running there a nightmare.  So I decided to start and finish the run from home but ensure I passed through that area when I did parkrun.

2. -  Include Parkrun.  It was our 100^th parkrun so there were a lot of extra people turning up. I could not miss this and with it being so close to the original marathon’s start it I could run there, and then begin Parkrun as if it was the start of the marathon.  It was also good to run with a big group although I did feel a big over-kitted out for a 5k – with running backpack, energy gels etc. and got some funny looks! (I was also quite near the back this time and having run it at marathon-training pace did not get a particularly impressive time!).

3. -   Try and include as much as the original route as possible.  This was very difficult in the end as having only a couple of days to plan, I did not find out the route.  However I knew that the route went up one of the steepest, harshest roads up towards the town centre so thought I should better include that!  I had also heard the route went out towards one of the nearby towns, but as this was now all dual carriage way with a massive roundabout to cross, it would be very difficult to run it without the luxury of closed roads.  Instead I decided to keep as much of the route within the city as possible and include local landmarks.

4.  -  Keep it as a training run.  I didn’t want to push too hard and injure myself as the proper marathon training starts again after Christmas.  I’m running 4 marathons next spring (1 serious, 1 semi-serious and 2 for fun) and keep quite a high mileage all year round anyway so figured that if I did this very slowly and ran/walked part of it then I could get some early low-risk miles in the bank.  Therefore my only target time-wise was to finish before it got dark, and would take walking breaks frequently from early on!!  This also meant I would not count it as a marathon but just as a logged training run of that distance.

So early Saturday morning I set off for the first part of the run.  5.5 miles to Parkrun, then when I got there it was only 8.55am so I had to stop and hop on the spot for a few minutes before we got going.  Had a fun Parkrun – I imagined to myself it was the beginning of the marathon!  Afterwards I had a quick catch up with friends (trying to bribe them into running the next 10 miles with me but to no avail!) and sadly turning down the usual post run coffee and cake.  When they heard I had another 17-18 miles to run they told me to get on with it or I’ll cramp up!

The main part of the run was now underway.  Realising I had actually gone out too fast for the first part and then getting very cold in the queue to scan my barcode, it was suddenly feeling very tough.  A very steep uphill mile into town past the cathedral had to be walked, then into the face of busy Christmas shoppers in the marketplace meant I got more odd looks!  I even took a wrong turn here and started running my regular run out of habit, and had to double back!  This was despite having a map pinned to my running belt!  It was good to tick off lots of local sights, including:

The park that was old Roman capital city and remains of the surrounding wall

The remains of the Roman Theatre

The city Cathedral and grounds

The Marketplace, Clock Tower, various old pubs and inns

Old Roman roads still in use today as major routes into London

Other more local landmarks which have since been closed or decommissioned (including the old railway line and nunnery).

The lack of proper marathon training made this an interesting, if tough experiment.  With a proper plan I got round the Berlin Marathon in September in just over 5 hours, but now 2 months later I was walking long stretches by mile 14.  No worries though, I was not in it for a time today!  Miles 15-20 were very hard with a lot of hills.  It was quite lonely too now, Parkrun being several hours earlier and the excitement long gone.  I stopped off in Tesco for a chocolate bar and tried not to collapse at the tills (more odd looks!).  At mile 20 I saw a friend from work.  She thought I was mad but wished me luck.  On the home stretch now.  Strangely at 21 miles my body decided it was feeling ok again and I was back to running (well, slow jogging).  I think I was getting a bit confused by now as kept losing track of what mile I was at, or the time (somehow I thought I was at 5 hours when really I was at 6!), or even what street I was on.  Finally I reached my road, 26.2 miles!  I got in the house and had the best post-marathon goodies ever – a pizza, tub of ben & jerries, a bubble bath, a DVD and the 1986 medal.

So overall it was a great feeling to re-enact this old marathon which may or may not ever take place again, and a good sightseeing tour of places I rarely bother visiting in my home town.  In the afternoon I was able to go into town (in the car!) not only to do present shopping but get the medal cleaned up a bit and the ribbon repaired.  Post-run I felt very tired but nowhere near as sore as after a race marathon which was rather nice.  Total time including waiting for Parkrun to start, queuing for barcode afterwards, a quick chat, 2 tesco/loo stops was about 6h25m from leaving the house to getting to the end of my road (to think I am happy it was under 6 & a half hours!!!).

Thank you to the original organisers back in the 80s for holding the original marathon and inspiring me to run this time, and also to Parkrun for our 100^th run!

Christmas Countdown

So we are now in December, can't believe how fast this year has flown by!  I'm so pleased to have been able to finish 4 marathons, 7 triathlons and plenty more races of different distances and training in between.  Never thought that a year ago that would have been possible!

So hopefully December will be a quieter month to try and rest before the marathon training starts up again in January (there is one little plan I have though for next weekend, but not quite committed yet so will say no more!).  And as for carb-loading, time to swap the potatoes and pasta for a few mince pies and chocolate perhaps?

The next race I have is the Pednor 10, a small, local race between Christmas and New Year.  I did it last year and enjoyed it.  Other than that it's just training run/sessions and parkrun. It's a bit difficult to get out on the bike much now, as trying to cycle into work down dark, pot-holed roads to and from work is a death trap!  And let's admit it, I'm definitely a fair-weather cyclist anyway!

My place of work has a good scheme going on though, where you can join in certain "Active Students, Active Staff" sessions at the gym and around campus - weekly in term time and completely free!!  This is great as it means I've been able to add some different cross-training in focusing on strength, toning and core but without being another hard CV workout.  There are loads of sessions from football to burlesque fitness and are aimed at beginners and novices so a lot of fun to try something new.

So lately I have been trying gymnastics and pole fitness.  I mentioned the gymnastics in my last post, and today I went again and we did cartwheels, round offs and handstands.  Can just about do a decent cartwheel and round off but handstands are tougher than I remembered - I don't think i used to get dizzy when I was 15!  Plus my back was getting worse and worse after every round off which did not help.  There were a few more experienced students also training, to think i used to be that good!!

The other class I went to was pole fitness, which is basically a sporty version of pole dancing in the gym studio.  After an aerobic warm-up, we got into groups of 3 according to our experience level (me being total beginner obviously!) and went to a pole.  We were given various moves and stationary poses to try including simple spins and sitting on the pole.  Plus a lot of strengthening work such as pull ups!  if you think pole fitness is just twirling round a pole looking sexy, think again!  My arms were really sore afterwards and it required a lot of upper body and core strength.  I really enjoyed it though, it was great fun and when it starts back up in the new term i will try and go regularly.

Finally we had out triathlon club Christmas dinner which was really good.  It was good to meet up with people outside the gym/pool/parkrun etc and see what everyone looks like when not in lycra!  I even won 2 awards for the club race series league!  Novice female winner and 3rd female.  It was great to be recognised in my first season and good to know that some the races I had entered counted for something towards club points as well!  Next year I will try and enter another 1-2 races that count as well as our members-only races.

Tonight I have swimming, and tomorrow will be running and circuits.  Next week i hope to move running back to Monday lunch times as it will no longer clash with gymnastics, and it's nicer to go to circuits fresh having not done a run as well that day.