Longest Run – 17 miles

Last Saturday I did my longest run to date – 17 miles. I followed similar route to the 15 miler I did the previous week, aiming to stay on grass almost the whole time. This route took me round my local school playing field, then park, then rugby pitches, followed by a route around the local nature reserve – Paxton Pits – and then straight back home.

The target time was 2 hrs 55 mins, and I was pleased to get home after 3hrs 01 mins of running. It was pretty straight forward except for two things, mud and mud!

Mud #1
Some of the paths in the nature reserve had turned to wet and slippery mud. I have no problem getting wet and muddy feet, but this mud was so slippery that the only way to get across it with twisting an ankle or knee was to walk. Even though I had to spend some time walking through the mud (maybe 25 mins in total) I made up the time by picking up the pace when I was back on solid ground.

Mud #2
To turn last weeks 15 miler into a 17 miler, I identified a reservoir in the nature reserve that would give me a 2 mile loop. Unfortunately, when I got to the reservoir, there was 10 foot of mud piled up at one end, that meant I could not navigate round the waterside. Thinking that a mud pile wouldn’t stop me, I climbed up to the top with the intention of picking up the path on the other side. What I had not been able to see clearly on the Google Map satellite picture I used to plan the route was that the 10 foot barrier was preventing casual passersby from falling into an open quarry! I could not progress along my pre-planned way.

So on my way back out of the nature reserve, I worked out roughly what extra loops I needed to get my 15 miler up to 17 miles, and circled back round the local rugby pitches and park to gain the 2 miles necessary. On checking this route using my faithful route-planner (gmap-pedometer), this worked out at around 2 miles extra so I got away with it (just!).

Next weekends schedule has a 10k race through Woburn Safari Park (those lions make you run quick), but finding a route for the 19 miler in two weeks time is going to give me a real headache as I have had enough of mud. A circuit of the local park (which has a great steep hill in it) is 1.6 miles – perhaps I could do 11 laps of the park for 3 hours. At least I would not have to carry any water with me.

Limited Capacity

As the runs get longer my time for updating the blog (and many other things) is getting less and less.  In addition, work is getting busier as I have picked up a whole load of new responsibilities over the last couple of months that are taking more of my time and energy.

What has really stopped me blogging, though is the strict approach I have been following to my post run routine over the last month.  To reduce the risk of injury and the general aches and pains, I am now spending 30 mins+ after each run applying ice and heat to my calves, achilles, knees, ankles and thighs (in fact I am doing this on rest days as well as it seems to help alot). This may not sound much, but here is a typical breakdown of a day so you can see where my time goes:

5:30am – Get up (most days my three year old gets up too,  so I give him breakfast whilst I get ready for work)

6:20am – Catch the train to London (I start working on the train)

4:30pm – Leave work (I am still working on the train on the way home!)

6:00pm – Walk in the front door.

6:00pm – 7:30pm – spend time with my two kids (bath, bottle and bedtime stories)

7:30pm – 7:45pm – Get my stuff together for my run and talk to my wife

7:45pm – Head off to the gym or start stretching for my evening run

9:45pm – Return from gym or come downstairs after showering and reheat the dinner my wife has made for me

10:15pm – Finish dinner.  My wife gets another 10 minutes of attention before she goes to bed

10:30pm – Waiting for the adrenalin rush of exercise to ease off and my dinner to go down, so spend the next hour getting my work stuff together and applying ice / heat to my legs

11:30pm – Get ready for bed and try to get to sleep before midnight, before it all starts again.

As you can see, this does not leave much time for blogging, let alone all the other stuff I used to do with my personal time (like paying bills, online grocery shopping, catching up on emails, doing taxes and sleeping!). Luckily, my family are both supportive and flexible so I can get away with this for another 2 months, but some things are getting less attention than I would like – I am sure that when I come to finish training, I will wonder what to do with all of my spare time!

Fundraising update

I have been messing around for a while with the widget that is supplied by the fundraising site I am using (justgiving.com) – I should be able to insert a realtime update onto these pages of my fundraising progress.  Unfortunately this does not work here, as the widget uses inline frames and that is not supported by WordPress due to security issues.  The justgiving.com site is very good though, as it is easy to use for both the fundraiser and, crucially, for those taking the time to visit the page to donate.  Oxfam had recommended an alternative site (bmycharity or something), but I did not like it for a number of usability reasons, but mainly because the URL is difficult to remember!

So instead of inserting some flashy graphic with my fundraising total, I will just write it instead.   Thanks to the generosity of a number of my family,  friends and work colleagues, I have so far raised £1,356. This includes a £500 matching donation from my employer.  Only £650 to go ’til I hit my target – there are still quite a few people that have not sponsored me yet, so they will all get a chaser in the next few days.

To all those that have sponsored me already: many thanks for your generosity and the support you are showing me by handing over your money for my cause.  Your donations will make a difference to me and the thousands of people that benefit from the work that Oxfam does all over the world.

Learning when to eat

Zappoman posted previously about the need to practice eating while on a training session – I have found over the last couple of months that there are lots of things I have needed to adjust, learn to do differently or just practice to get right for my training.

One big thing I noticed after a couple of weeks into my training schedule was that additional exercise was clearly burning lots of calories and that I was getting really hungry in between meals when I had just a breakfast, lunch, dinner with a few healthy snacks in between. I was finding that at work, I would get hungry mid-morning and mid-afternoon, and that I was filling my need for extra calories with crisps and other unhealthy snacks.

To avoid this, I now have two (slightly smaller) lunches – one at about 10:30am and another about 2pm, with at least 5 pieces of fruit in between all of my meals. This has worked really well as I am rarely so hungry that I want to snack on something I shouldn’t, and it avoids the post-meal slump brought on by eating a big lunch.

As I am eating lots of fruit at the moment, I tend to carry it around with me – partly as it is cheaper to by in bulk from the supermarket at home than buy it from the outlets in and around my office in London, but also because it means that I always have something healthy to hand wherever I am (I work between two offices and commute for an hour each way by train) so when I am tempted by the vending machine, I can always dip into my fruit selection.

One problem that this has presented to me is that my favourite fruit and the athelete’s best friend, the banana, is difficult to transport in a bag with a laptop, bottle of water, work documents and other paraphernalia without it getting squashed. I have ended up with mushed banana in my bag a couple of times and it is not pleasant!!

I have now found the answer – the Banana Guard! From their website:

Are you fed up with bringing bananas to work or school only to find them bruised and squashed? Our unique, patented device allows for the safe transport and storage of individual bananas letting you enjoy perfect bananas anytime, anywhere.

The Banana Guard was specially designed to fit the vast majority of bananas. Its other features include multiple small perforations to facilitate ventilation thereby preventing premature ripening and a sturdy locking mechanism to keep the Banana Guard closed. The Banana Guard is of course dishwasher safe for easy cleaning.

This is an odd-looking but great item, that allows you to take that all-important recovery snack with you in your kit bag, keeping it safe and fresh for when you need it. Be careful with it though – it can attract some strange looks!

Germs!

My family have been suffering from various colds over the last few weeks – with two small children there is always some bug or other going round our household.  I have been trying my best to avoid picking up any of the sniffles that they have had by taking extra vitamin C and Echinacea tablets as I aware that increased exercise can weaken the immune system.  I find echinacea pretty effective for preventing and shifting colds quickly.  Unfortunately, you can only take echinacea for two weeks at a time before you should take a two week break.

Guess what happened after I stopped taking echinacea on Monday?  That’s right, I came down with a nasty cold on Wednesday!!  I had to take Thursday off work as it blocked me up completely and gave me a pounding headache.  I was back at work today, but not fully recovered.  This week has also coincided with bad snow and ice in my area, but with this cold I have had no running since Monday.  Clearly this is not part of my training plan, but I am treating this enforced layoff as an extended rest, so I am expecting that my legs will be fully recovered next week and I will gain benefit from a low mileage week.

Perhaps a couple of short runs this weekend to keep my muscles warmed up and stretched out, and then back into it next week.  I am not worried yet!

What’s on your running playlist ?

John Rankin asked on his blog “What’s on your running playlist ?” There have been some great responses from various people on what they listen to whilst running and some great music choices.

At the moment, most of my running is taking place in the evening in the dark, so headphones are not really an option as I need all of my senses to make sure I do not get run over (despite wearing a yellow safety jacket!).  However, weekend runs and treadmill sessions mean that my iPod is in use.

For fast runs or interval sessions, I usually listed to either Fat Boy Slim (You’ve Come A Long Way Baby) or the Arctic Monkeys (Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I Am Not).  For me, these two albums have the right mix of uplifting tempo but also allow me to slow down for the jog recoveries.  I can get away with only choosing between two albums (even though my iPod has a few more on there that I use when I am at work to help concentrate) as my intervals sessions or pace runs are rarely performed at a time that I can use headphones (as I mentioned, it is usually a dark, night-time run).

For my long runs, though, my iPod is always charged and synced with iTunes, because I love listening to Podcasts whilst I run in the daytime.  I have a long list that I alternate between, so in no particular order:

• Radio Five’s Fighting Talk (topical sports chat)
• James Richardson’s Football Weekly on Guardian Unlimited
• Manager Tools
• Newsnight
• Chris Moyles Radio 1 show
• Russel Brands Radio 2 show
• 43 Folders (personal productivity podcast)
• The Project Management Podcast

These are all spoken word podcasts (no music) and serve the purpose of taking my mind off the running.  Having said that, over the last few weeks I have realised that as I have become more focused on pace and less on HR zones, I am concentrating more on running and not taking in everything in the podcasts.   It still works though, as my mind needs to be occupied when it is not thinking about the run.

A new button on the treadmill

Today’s run was an interval session: 1 mile jog + 8 x 400m (2mins) with 200m (90 sec) recoveries followed by another 1 mile jog.

I had looked into using the track that is across the road from my gym but I couldn’t get details of opening times and don’t have enough time in the evening to investigate, only to find that the track is closed.  Instead, I did the interval session on the treadmill.

I was not looking forward to this session, as the model of treadmill at the gym does not allow you to type in your speed so you have use arrow keys to increase and decrease the pace.  This can be awkward to do when you are running a fast interval every two minutes.

When I got on the treadmill, I decided to investigate the Speed Interval button (there are also buttons for Hill, Random, HR Zone, Fit Test and so on).  The last time I used the Interval programme on a treadmill (a few years ago now) I had to program each interval into it – not something that I wanted to as there were 17 intervals in total on tonights session.

It turned out the interval programme on this treadmill just asked for the running speed and the jogging speed.  It then instructed me to press the Speed Interval button to toggle between the two speeds.  This was great, as it meant one press of button and I was running the fast interval or slowing down to jog.  It also meant that if I wanted to go a little faster than the target, I only had to hit the up key a few times – and I did on most of the sessions as I find short interval tough but enjoyable.

I now need to work on the long intervals – but that’s Thursday’s session!

Some good running this weekend

Two good runs this weekend.

Saturday: 11 miles in 1hr 51mins.

Had an energy gel half-way round and had no real problems getting through this long run.  Even more impressive is that the aim for this session was to run 10 min / miles – I didn’t really know where the mile markers were, so only had an idea of pace at miles 1, 2, 5, 10 and 11.  Still managed to get back home within a minute of my target time!

Sunday:  4 miles in 42 mins.

This was intended to be a recovery run from the long run the previous day.  Even though I had done 11 miles on Saturday (the second furthest I have ever run!), this was an easy 4 miler and very enjoyable as it was a cold day with very bright sunshine – exactly my kind of running weather.

This is TRULY amazing

The link from PhilK’s blog to this amazing story now does not work. So I have pasted the story and video below. Read the text and watch the video – I am speechless.

Strongest Dad in the World

[From Sports Illustrated, By Rick Reilly]

I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans.
Work nights to pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots.
But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck. Eighty-five times he’s pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he’s not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars-all in the same day.
Dick’s also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?
And what has Rick done for his father? Not much-except save his life.
This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs.
He’ll be a vegetable the rest of his life;” Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. “Put him in an institution.”
But the Hoyts weren’t buying it. They noticed the way Rick’s eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. “No way,” Dick says he was told. “There’s nothing going on in his brain.” “Tell him a joke,” Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain. Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? “Go Bruins!” And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, “Dad, I want to do that.” Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described “porker” who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. “Then it was me who was handicapped,” Dick says. “I was sore for two weeks.”
That day changed Rick’s life. “Dad,” he typed, “when we were running, it felt like I wasn’t disabled anymore!”
And that sentence changed Dick’s life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.
“No way,” Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren’t quite a single runner, and they weren’t quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year. Then somebody said, “Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?” How’s a guy who never learned to swim and hadn’t ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 10-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried. Now they’ve done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii. It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don’t you think? Hey, Dick, why not see how you’d do on your own? “No way,” he says. Dick does it purely for “the awesome feeling” he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.
This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992–only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don’t keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time.
“No question about it,” Rick types. “My dad is the Father of the Century.”
And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race.
Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged. “If you hadn’t been in such great shape,” one doctor told him, “you probably would’ve died 15 years ago.” So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other’s life.
Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every
weekend, including this Father’s Day. That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.
“The thing I’d most like,” Rick types, “is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once.”

I can’t run downhill…..

Thursday 1/2

Schedule: 5 miles in 45 mins (9 min/ miles)
Actual: 45 mins  45 secs

My evening runs are based around a 4 mile loop on lit roads from my house.  There are a number of smaller loops I do on these roads to add 1, 2, 3 or 4 extra miles as needed, but essentially the main part is run on the same loop.  This is great as I know exactly where the mile markers are which is essential for pacing.

I normally run the route in the same direction, as it ends with a very steep half mile uphill and is good sense to have the extra effort at the end of the run when I am tiring. This week, I decided to run the route in reverse each night, to make sure I do not get too used to the route and start to take it easy.  This meant that I started the run with a steep half mile downhill.  Logically, I assumed that this would be a really easy warm up and should make my first mile quicker than normal.  I have found that this actually does the opposite, and my first mile is much slower than I expect (regardless of the pace I am aiming to run).  For example, my Thursday night run of five 9 min miles broke down like this:

Mile 1: 9 mins 35s

Mile 2: 9 mins

Mile 3: 9 mins

Mile 4: 9 mins 20 secs (there is a longish steady climb here that slowed me down)

Mile 5: 8 mins 50 secs

A similar thing occurred on Weds when I did five 10 minute miles.

The route undulates all the way round, but I found that I was slowing up as I went down hill and felt I was running faster uphill.  Perhaps the uphills feel faster because of the extra effort required to maintain the same pace, but it seemed like my legs went onto autopilot as I was going up hill and I had to force myself to maintain the pace when going down hill.  Add in the slow first mile on the steep downhill and it makes me realise that I find it hard to run downhill!

This is all probably something to do with my natural running style that I cope with up hills better, but it really feels weird when I have to force myself to pick up the pace on the downhills.  I guess it is better this way than not being able to run up a decent hill!!