How to be entertained on a treadmill

I have been suffering from a bad cold this week and as a result have missed one training run, and replaced a pacy 6 miles with a steady 5 miles.  I am trying to balance not overdoing it against not training at all. I know I won’t lose any fitness by skipping a few sessions, but with only 3 weeks to go I won’t gain any fitness either if I don’t run.

On Monday and Tuesday, my cold was slipping down on to my chest.  I know this means it is definitely not a good time to train and hence I missed Tuesday’s interval session.  Wednesday’s schedule was a steady 7 miler.  Normally I would do this outside in the evening.  My cold had drifted off my chest and back up above the neck, so as a compromise  I decided to do this session indoors on the treadmill at the gym.

I know many runners hate running on the treadmill, and the thought of 70 mins without a change of scenery and not actually going anywhere is more than some can bear.  I am increasingly finding treadmill running difficult and demotivating.  In the past, I loved treadmill running, as it meant I could set my pace and forget about it; when running outside I always ran too fast too early.

The experience of completing over 50+ runs in the last 12 weeks has now given me the ability to set an 8 0r 9 or 10 minute mile pace without thinking about it.  Now I find treadmill running restrictive, as the pace is so monotonous.  Running outside, I get the choice to run slightly faster up hill, ease off for half a mile or so when I need to recover (knowing I can gain the time back by upping my pace later on) and get my breath back whilst running down hill.  Running on the treadmill, I find running at exactly the same pace without deviation mentally quite tough and boring.  I still like short interval sessions on the treadmill (less than 1 mile repeats), but otherwise I now avoid the treadmill as it invariably ends with a bad run.

So how did I cope with 7 miles on treadmill with a bad cold?  Well, I had a great run and the time flew by (even though I had to stop halfway and reset the treadmill as the max run time is 60 minutes and I wanted 70).

How come it was so enjoyable? I chose a treadmill right in front of the bank of 8 large plasma screens with Sky Sports showing, knowing that the England vs Andorra Euro 2008 qualifier would be shown.  Anyone who saw that match will know that it was not a great game and unlikely to hold anyone’s attention for a long period of time.  I neatly avoided this problem, as two other screens directly in front of me were also showing football: Italy vs Scotland and Republic of Ireland vs Slovakia.  So I had 70 minutes watching 3 international football matches simultaneously and completely uninterrupted!!

If I could have this kind of set up at home, I would quite happily sit on the sofa with 3 TV’s going – bliss!  Add to this then that I also managed to do my mid-week long run meant it was a great evening (even if the football was patchy).

Mick n’ Phil – Sign the Petition

I have just come across an item on GeekboyUK‘s blog: he has posted about Mick n’ Phil, a father who pushes his wheelchair-bound son around many half and full marathons in the UK, and the petition to let them run in the London Flora Marathon. I met Mick n’ Phil at the St Neots Half last year (actually we exchanged hello’s as they ran past me!) – they are an inspiration and I have posted about them before.

GeekboyUK put it eloquently enough, so I will quote him:

Mick has been pushing his son Phil at many races in a wheelchair. Phil has Cerebral Palsy and Sodium Valproate Syndrome and the two of them are reaching near celebrity status in the local runners community.

Hearing Mick shouting “EASY!!!!” when I was struggling last year in the Bedford Half Marathon and watching them surge past was a real inspiration and spurred me on.

They run in lots of races (approved) and have no problem with entry… Flora London Marathon is different, they won’t allow them entry!

Flora London Marathon – the one event where people often dress up in silly outfits and wacky costumes. There have been nurses pushing a hospital bed, a man dressed as a Dalek (the suit is huge), another took a week walking in an old fashion diving suit…

Mick’s not allowed to push Phil for “health and safety” reasons according to the organisers…

Mick has mentioned that because of his age this year may be his last chance at running it with Phil.

Please sign the petition:

Mick n’ Phil for London Marathon

Take a look at their site and then please sign the petition!

People put the miles in…..

Two other people that have been putting in the miles recently have got my respect:

Rahim Rahman recently completed the Shamrock Marathon in Vancouver.  Rahim is an animal when it comes to distance running: he has done 52 laps of a car park to get the mileage in during the recent bad weather in the States and has qualified to be a member of the Marathon Maniacs, so running another marathon should be no big deal.  For me, preparation for a race, or even a training run, is really important – I have to eat and drink right the before the run to make sure I do not get caught out.

Rahim spent 25 hours travelling to Virginia Beach for the Shamrock Marathon, about 19 hours longer than he intended.  In fact, his prep was so bad that even he thought he wouldn’t make it to the start, so went out on the town til 1am the night before the race to celebrate St Patrick’s Day.  Somehow during the hours of drinking Guiness, he decided that it would not be such a bad idea to run the 26.2 miles the next day, and turned up on the start line after 4 hours sleep!!  Despite doing the opposite of everything you would normally do when prepping for a marathon he had a great run – way to go Rahim: you are a machine!

Secondly, a friend from work has been training for the Playtex Moonlight Marathon – a 26.2 miles walk for women (and men too!) that is completed wearing a only a bra (although before you get too excited, they do wear shorts / trousers / tracksuit bottoms!) to raise money for Breast Cancer.  I know how hard it is to find time to put in the long runs (and the short ones), but she is already covering the kind of distance at walking pace that I cover on a long run, so I know this is taking some serious time!!

Today, she covered 16 miles on her own in an area between Luton and Dunstable that I know well as I lived there for the first 18 years of my life – not scenic and probably not that relaxing, but she stuck at it and got the miles in: a real test of mental attitude and tenacity. Good for you Tracy, keep going – I am impressed at what you are doing but not at all surprised as I know your tenacity only too well!

19 Miler (ii)

Long slow run today was another 19 miler.  Having done one already and found it a challenge, I was anxious about this one.  Taking the “I’ll do one mile at a time” approach, I set off just before 11am, following exactly the same route as previously as this makes it so much easier.  By the time I hit mile 7, I was bang on 10min 15sec pace (this is a long slow run after all!) and feeling great.

At 7.5 miles I stopped my watch whilst I waited for a space in traffic to run across a busy dual carriageway.  I have run to this point a number of times – it is on my normal Sunday route.  Every time I get to this point (Diddington on the A1) I am always nervous about crossing the road, as it as a very busy dual carriageway. As it turns out, it is always easy to cross I am never in any danger.  I do worry about the drivers of the cars though, as I know that if I saw someone running across the A1 whilst I was driving at 70 miles an hour, it would cause me to slow down sharply – and probably more likely to cause an accident than the pedestrian.  Anyway, it can take a couple of minutes to get a gap in the traffic, so I stop my watch whilst waiting.

On the other side, I easily covered the next 3 miles to the cafe at Grafham Water (a man-made reservoir)  where I stop and top up on water.  Again, I was bang on the 10m 15s pace at 10.5 miles.  Getting started again after a 5 minute stop was tough – it took me until mile 14 before I got back into the rhythm again – a sure sign of the effect of lactic acid build up in my legs.  I then cruised all the way back home, hitting the 19 mile marker in 3hrs 20mins – a full 25 minutes faster than last time and very close to the target time of 3hrs 15mins.

The weather has changed now – it really feels that spring time is about to hit the UK.  Last weekend at Silverstone I was dealing with 30 mph winds and hail stones, but at least it was consistently bad weather.  Today, it varied between being too warm for long sleeves and leggings, and too cold for only two layers and gloves.  I used 5 energy gels, a litre of water and 0.5 litre bottle of Lucozade sport to get round. I don’t like running in warm weather as I get really hot. I ran out of fluids with 2 miles to go.  I suspect I could have finished even stronger if I had been carrying more water.

I felt ok covering the last 5 miles, but it was by no means easy.  This got me thinking about whether or not I will hit The Wall in Marathon.  Having experienced a great run at the half marathon last weekend, I think there are a few things in my favour:

1. Running with people around is much easier – the hardest part of todays run was where there were no people around.  The need to be seen to be running when there were people around (dog-walkers, cyclists, families, etc) made me keep running, despite how my legs felt.  When running through deserted countryside, the desire to take a break was so much stronger.  I know that running in the throng at the London Marathon will have a massive motivational effect, as it is did at the Silverstone Half.
2. Hydration – carrying enough water for a 3hr+ run is hard.  Even stopping to buy more water has a negative effect, as it fools the body into thinking that it has finished working and the muscles start to stiffen up.  Knowing that water will be available at FLM on every mile marker is reassuring.  I will be plenty hydrated and this will make a big difference.
3. 90% of this run was off road on tracks – running on uneven ground is much more tiring on the legs than running on smooth, flat tarmac.  I found that the 13.1 miles on the smooth course of Silverstone race track a breeze, but 10 miles off road today was much harder.  The London Marathon is mainly on the road (they have even removed the cobbled section after Tower Bridge), so again it will be much easier.  I aimed to run off-road on purpose, to lessen the impact on my joints, but I am now finding that as it is a more difficult way to run it is a better way to train because my training runs should be harder than the real thing.

Overall, it was a great run – I covered the distance easily and probably could have gone faster. I stuck to the pace though, as this was supposed to be a long slow run.  It left me confident, but not so confident as to leave me believing that next weeks 22 miler will be  easy!

London Marathon Pack Has Arrived!!

My Flora London Marathon pack arrived at the end of last week.  Of course I opened it straight away and read through it, but with my focus on the Silverstone Half Marathon, I kind of forgot about it.

The pack itself does not really have any information that I did not really know: for FLM they do not send out the race numbers, you have to go the Marathon Expo in the three days before the race to pick this up – I guess 40,000 postage stamps is alot of money to save.

Best thing about the pack though was a pair of red laces.  For every runner that crosses the finish line this year with the red laces in their shoes, Flora will give £1 to charity.  I bought my marathon shoes about a month ago – same as the Saucony I already have, but they came with a red trim instead of blue, so these red laces look great on my shoes.  Wore them to Silverstone thinking that I would see lots of other runners with red laces and would know they were also running London on 22nd April.  Surprisingly, I didn’t see any.  Maybe people were being sensible and not trying something new on a race day – it did cross my mind that re-lacing my shoes before a 13 mile jaunt may not have been the best idea, but then how hard can it be to lace your shoes?  As it was, my shoes were fine and I had no problems (although the red laces did not help with the weather at Silverstone!)

Silverstone Half Marathon (and Weather) Report

I ran the Adidas Half Marathon at Silverstone Race Track today and experienced everything that the British weather could throw up! Before the start, it was bitterly cold with a 30mph wind blowing everyone around – in fact it was so strong I had to hold on to my wife whilst crossing one of the bridges to the start as she literally was being blown away.

Once underway though, the wind either died down or had less of an effect as I was surround by (6000+) runners. As I passed through the Pits onto the starting grid at the sub 2hr sign, I walked straight into the Runners World Pace Runner for 9 min miles. Fantastic!! This was exactly what I wanted to prove that I could keep a 9 minute mile pace going for an extended period. He was a great guy and stuck to the pace perfectly whilst carrying a sign 3 ft above his head so we could track him in the crowd.

He served two other really useful purposes too:

1. I found the first few miles a bit dull – however they flew by as I was so focussed on not losing sight of the pace runner. I was constantly dodging people to keep the Pace Runner close enough to me. Some of the corners are so sharp at Silverstone that I found that where I was running next to the Pacer before a corner, I would be about 20ft back after the corner as everyone moved onto the racing line and cut me off!
2. It was so windy that most (if not all) of the mile markers had either blown over or blown away – I think I managed to spot 4 out of the 13 in total. Luckily the Pace Runner was experienced and (most importantly) was wearing a GPS so was able to shout out where the mile markers should have been. Also, as I knew he was sticking to 9 min/miles, I was able to gauge distance by looking at my watch

There was a point around 4 miles where I asked him about the lack of mile markers and he said he was sure about his pace so not to worry. At this point, a little gap had opened up in front of us (I was running next to him at the time) so it kind of felt like we were running on our own. He looked over his shoulder and shouted “Is everyone alright?”. There was a loud chorus of affirmation – it was then I realised there were about 40 people trailing him in a large group – it reminded me of that scene in Rocky when Balboa is running through town as part of his training and he suddenly realises there are a load of people running with him!!

The weather was astounding – it cycled between wind, sleet, rocket-powered hailstones and hot sunshine all the way round. The route was pretty much 3 laps of the Silverstone race track, so at least every head wind had a corresponding tail wind to push me along.

The worst part though was the heavy hail storm after about 75 minutes. At this point I was running level with the finish line and heard the cheering as the first lady (Liz Yelling) finished. She was then interviewed over the tannoy – I was pleased to hear that she was out of breath and said that the weather was really awful and made the run really hard. Given that she finished just as I was passing halfway, I took comfort in this: if she found it hard then it was ok if I found it hard.

I really enjoyed the run though – I had chosen my clothes wisely (gloves, long tracksters and a longsleeved cotton t-shirt over a technical fabric t-shirt) – I was warm when it was cold and cool when the sun came out and the wind died down. The wind was tough though. During the last 3 miles the wind absolutely pushed me along before turning on me completely and pushing against me for the last mile – there was no sprint finish from me.

I am not a great Formula 1 fan, but I did enjoy running round the famous race track. Having experienced the tight corners on foot, I can appreciate the skill required to manoeuvre a car round them at 90+ miles an hour. Also, I was surprised that the course was not as flat as I expected. The hills were by no means steep, but I could still see and feel the gradient changes.

As expected, it took a while to get in the car park and to the start. We had all been warned, so I arrived with about 40 minutes til the starting gun and had no problems warming up and getting the start on time. My wife had been watching from the Grandstand, but retired to the car after the start as the weather was making her really cold. She told me that there were still people going to the start some 20 minutes after the gun – and even people still coming into the car park with the 10 minute walk from the car park to start line ahead of them.

Overall, this was a great race. The Pace Runner was a brilliant idea (thanks to him and Runners World for that) and I really enjoyed the race. The race organisation was good – slick, well laid out and no problem finding the start, finish and drinks stations, plus a great goody bag (I really enjoyed the Granola biscuit thing).

After spending the last week a little tired, my confidence is back up knowing that I can keep the 9 min mile pace up for two hours in some really bad weather. Other plus points, some people were trialling their fancy dress for the Flora London Marathon – I ran past Bob the Builder (complete with tool belt and safety helmet), saw a lady dressed as a Lucozade bottle, saw Supergirl, avoided the congestion of a Prisoners’ Chain Gang and – the one and only time I will be able to claim this – beat Nigel Mansell in a race at Silverstone.

Hope everyone else enjoyed it as much as I did.

19 miler

Still catching up on sessions from last week: last Saturday, I did a 19 mile long slow run.  Before I started this run, my legs were feeling pretty tired, mostly I guess as a hangover from the 3 great mid-week runs.  Given that this run was scheduled to take 3hrs 15 mins, my wife had arranged to go out for the day with her mum and the two kids. giving me the day free.  If it hadn’t been for awkwardness of re-arranging the logistics, I would probably have postponed this long run for a day, to give me an extra rest.

I headed out for the run anyway, using the approach that once I was started I might feel better, and if I didn’t, I could always come back.  The difficulty of this approach, of course, is that I was doing a straight out and back, so if I didn’t feel up to finishing the whole distance after 10 miles, it would be too late, as I would still have to do 9 more miles to get home!

As it was, the run was ok – my legs were tired, and I took a few walking breaks to stretch them out a little and ran pretty slow.  Miles 7 to 15 were on a new route that I had not been before – I find there is a psychological impact of running a new route: I am reluctant to go at a steady pace in case I find a big hill round the next corner, so take it easy.  I did ok though, and covered the whole 19 miles in 3hrs 45 mins, with no real after effects.  I actually felt that I could have gone for 4 mile recovery run the next day as my legs were fine, but decided to give it a miss to be safe.

Not the pace I wanted to run at for this run, but I am now confident that I will cover all 26.2 miles at the London Marathon (eventually!).

A 3rd Great Run

Finishing off my midweek runs last week, Thursday was a 10 miler.  In my mind I thought this would be easy, 10 miles at 10 min/mile would be no problem.  As I was putting on my shoes to head out the door, I realised that the schedule actually said 10 miles in 90 minutes.  That’s 10 miles at 9 min /mile pace – not something I really thought I could do.  I decided I would see how many 9 minute miles I could hit.

I chose a slightly different route than normal on the other side of the town I live in – there are some steep hills on that side of town, so I knew it would be a challenging run.  I ran just under 9 minutes for the first 5 miles, and then dead on 9 minute miles up to mile 7.  I was amazed that I had maintained the pace!

Between mile 7 and 8 I lost the pace altogether – I think this was because this section was flat: no ups or downs.  I still don’t know why, but I much prefer running up hill as this seems to make me run faster.  Anyway, mile 8 saw me about a  minute and a half off the pace as my energy and confidence was flagging.  Luckily the next two miles were mostly up hill and the finish line was in sight, so made the most of it and finished with two more 9 minutes miles.

The target was 10 miles in 90 mins, and I hit the 10 mile marker at 91m 34s.  I was very pleased with this time – in fact, I could not believe it!  I felt it the next day though, as it was my third night in a row of really pounding the concrete and my legs were starting to get tired.  Rest day on Friday ahead of the 19 miler planned for Saturday, hoping that my legs would recover in a day.

The Benefits of Blogging & Google Bookmarks

There are lots of reasons why people blog and I am recording this account of my training for a number of reasons. A particular benefit for me is that my training schedule is accessible to me where ever I can get an internet connection. My training is on my mind alot, but I do not have much time at home to really plan out my week to make sure I get everything in. Because I can access my blog at work, I can check my schedule whenever I need to plan a late meeting or if I want to be sure what my run is that evening.

I do not really like doing out and back runs – I much prefer a circuit route that starts and finishes at my house and does not go along the same road twice as this is more interesting. Planning these routes is hard, so I use gmap-pedometer. Finding time to prepare these routes is even harder, so I have been using my lunch break at work to map out a route (my work PC and internet connection are much faster than my home PC, so it is relatively quick). I now have around 20 different routes and partial routes that I can piece together to quickly identify a run for the required training session, and all these route are stored as Favourites in my browser.

Accessing these routes from work and home is made much easier my bookmarking them as Google Bookmarks, as this means I can call them up from any internet connected PC. I have been using Google Bookmarks for some time, but I received this great, brief overview of the Google Bookmark function the other day from the PC Mech e-mail newsletter that I subscribe to:

If you already use the Google Toolbar, then you are probably familiar with the Bookmarks function. Whenever you bookmark something, it becomes available from anywhere via http://www.google.com/bookmarks. All you have to do is log in with your Google account and you have access to all your bookmarks, from anywhere. If you do not have the Google Toolbar installed, you can always manually add your links, however the toolbar makes it significantly easier.
I absolutely love this feature as I have been able to get to my temporary bookmarks from public computers to help fill some time. If you are not already using this feature, be sure to check it out.

Every little helps!

Two Great Runs

As I posted previously, I ran a 10k race at the weekend and made a real effort to get a PB (which I did).  This left me pretty tired on Sunday after the race and I could still feel it on Monday (which was a rest day).  So when I looked at the schedule for this week and saw that Tuesday was an 8 mile run (including 6 miles of fartleks in 55 mins) and Wednesday was a 6 miler (also in 55 minutes), I wasn’t sure I would be able to hit the pace targets for these runs and was not looking forward to them.

As it turns out, I have had two great runs.  The fartlek run I started with great trepidation as I prefer short intervals.  I planned to mix up it up by doing short fartleks for the first two miles, followed by longer intervals for the second two miles, and then back to short ones for the last two.  The long intervals were hard and I dropped off the pace on my miles splits on these.  However, I made up for it on the short intervals and completed the fartlek session in 54 minutes!

The 6 miler in 55 minutes also had me worried – this pace (9m10s per mile) is only marginally slower then the pace I ran for the 6.2 miles of the race on Sunday and that was hard.  I chose a route that has some long steep up hills (as I seem to like up hills) and set out hoping to keep close to the pace.  As it turned out, I burned up the miles and was about 3 minutes ahead when I hit mile 5.  I took it easy for the last mile (mindful of the 10 mile run tomorrow night) but still finished in 53 minutes.  I know that I could have gone all out for the last mile as I still had plenty of strength left and I would probably have beaten my 10k PB from the weekend!

These two runs have really boosted my confidence as two weeks ago I don’t think I could have achieved the targets.  I put this down to a few things:

• My overall fitness is really improving – I guess training 5 times a week for 10 weeks will do that!
• I have got over a slight illness that has been bugging me for a few weeks – my resting heart rate has dropped about 10% in the last week: a sure sign that my body was not right
• I have been focusing really hard on taking on enough water during the day
• I have been using a recovery drink after every run in the last week to replace the glycogen in my muscles straight after my run has finished

Knowing that the things I have been doing have been making a tangible difference, I can now head into the last 6 weeks of training feeling really good!