199 miles

After a nice gentle 4 miles this morning, I was looking at my running log today and I saw that I had done 199 miles for the month.
I'm not quite sure how this has crept up on me, because I don't really feel like I have done that much more running.
And yet it is my single longest mileage month - since I started running!
And yet '199' is a slightly uncomfortable number. I'll be out later for a slightly faster one just to ensure that it tops 200.
I am also approaching 400 miles in my road shoes. They were something of an experiment really, as they are designed as Trail Racing flats. But as experiments go - they have been a revelation! They are incredibly comfortable. They are great over the marathon distance, as I discovered at Langdale. And for shoes with soft sticky 'performance' rubber on the outsole, they are lasting really well.
I'm not sure that I'll get 500 miles out of them, but it will be pretty close. And with the consistent mileage that I'm going to HAVE to do for this challenge, those 500 miles will come upon me pretty quickly

So this mornings run.
Plan was 8:00-8:30's for between 3 and 5 miles

What I DID was:
4.17 miles
34:44
8:20 min/mile
Splits: 8.22 - 8.16 - 8.29 - 8.13 - 8.16

How it all began.

I'm not going to write about my bread-and-butter training runs. When all is said and done, long-distance running isn't a very interesting activity, is it? It's an ideal hobby for solitary navel-gazers, surrounded as it is by ritual and analysis and self-flagellation. Cold baths? Sports massages? Dry-fried egg-white omelette in a bagel with a few cranberries on the side? I'd rather be a sofa-spud, thanks all the same.

When I was at school, if my classmates had been asked to point out the person least likely to take up running as a hobby, every finger would have been pointed at me. I was The Slowest Runner In The Class (21.9s for 100m - and even now people who couldn't touch me over a mile can leave me eating their dust at 100m). I was a weak swimmer and had poor ball skills (although, unaccountably, I was quite good at table-tennis). I found a million ways of avoiding the humiliation that was school PE, or organised sport at university.

Which is not to say that I wasn't active. I walked and cycled for miles in the evenings and at weekends, and contentedly pottered up and down the swimming-pool for 40 minute sessions without stopping for breath. An athlete I wasn't. An endurance-monster I certainly was, even then.

Fast-forward a couple of decades, to September 11th 2001. Yes, that date DOES ring a bell. Bear with me! By then I'd qualified as a doctor, fallen into the habit of working 200 hours a week plus overtime, married my first husband, briefly interrupted my career to have four children in less than 7 years, and discovered that two of those children had autistic spectrum conditions.

On 11th September 2001, I had a half-day at work. I came home in the early afternoon to a mailshot containing the National Autistic Society's Christmas catalogue with an insert that suggested that I might like to run the London Marathon to raise funds. "It's not Christmas and I don't run," I thought, and, this being in the days before we had a recycling depot on every street corner, put the whole thing in the bin.

Then I popped out to the shops, and when I came back I had a 'phone call cancelling a market research interview I was supposed to be doing later in the day because the American clients had had to down tools and rush home because ... haven't you heard what has happened? You haven't? What planet are you on?

I have to confess, my first thought was irritation at the loss of the interview fee. When I was in the high street, I *had* seen people clustered in front of the windows of the electrical goods shop, and repeated images of a tower-block collapsing in a heap of dust, but if I'd thought anything at all I'd assumed it was a movie. As soon as I was off the 'phone I dived for the television, and was completely overwhelmed by the evolving story and the scale of the sum of all the individual tragedies and the global implications.

I still don't know what it was about that disaster that prompted me to ferret through the bin, fish out the invitation to run the London Marathon for the NAS, call the number given, and ask, "What is this ballot of which you speak?"

Nine days later I went along to the local gym for an induction and told the duty instructor - a pleasant young man called Mark - that I wanted to run a marathon 7 months hence and hadn't run a step since my teens. "That's a new one," Mark said. "Most people say they want to lose weight and get fit." "I'm fit and I don't need to lose weight," I said, possibly slightly sniffily because I was mightily pleased with myself for having shed most of the weight I'd put on during my last pregnancy a mere three-and-a-half years after the baby was born. "I just need to learn to run."

Mark put me on the treadmill, and put the treadmill on at 12mm pace. Half a mile later, I realised that I *could* run. What a revelation!

I kept going back and practising, promising myself that if I could run just ONE ten-minute mile on the treadmill I would send off my FLM 2002 ballot application. Three weeks after starting to run, I hit that target.

Next, it was time to get out of the gym and hit the road ...

(To be continued.)

Running easily

Part of the reason for doing the JW Ultra, was to spend a decent amount of time thinking about and practising running using minimal effort for the pace. There are many schools of thought about this and I have looked in some depth at many of them. In different ways, they all aim for the same thing - to give runners the tools to run as efficiently as possible.

Today, with there being no chance of a run during the day with Lorna, I decided to do one of our 'bread and butter' 8 mile loops - the Long Tesco Loop.

Anticlockwise - because I prefer it in that direction..!!

This is a cracking little run. It is undulating in a Flat Run kind of way and there are very few road crossings and junctions to worry about, which makes it an ideal run to simply get into a nice rhythm and run!

My legs were feeling nice and springy, testament to the fact that the 29 and a bit miles of the JW hadn't taken too much out of them, and I'd planned to pace myself at 8:00-8:30 pace as long as it felt really easy.

It did!

I use my breathing - depth and rate - to gauge my intensity level. And I started off at 4:6 and 6:8 - and reasonably shallow.
The hardest I worked corresponded to 4:4 and that was up the one steeper undulation on the route. So I was taking it really easy.

That gave me the opportunity to look and work at my form. Light steps with a short stride and a high cadence, relaxed body, and 'peeling' my support foot off the floor to subsequently place it gently back down again.

I was really surprised that I was finding this as easy as I was. The only residual 'niggle' from Saturday being a slightly tender inner ankle/arch which I'm now pretty sure is just a little bruising from the uneven ground, and I didn't even notice that until I reached 7 miles.

This was a fabulous run.
The weather was perfect - sunny with a cooling breeze.
The Traffic Gods were on my side too, with favourable lights and relatively low volumes of vehicles on the roads.

The numbers:

8.04 miles
1:05:02
8:05 min/mile

Splits: 8.01 - 8.01 - 8.01 - 8.07 - 8.11 - 8.03 - 8.07 - 8.09

Enjoyed that!

The JW Ultra -

There is something very good about doing something where there is absolutely no pressure to 'perform'. And this fabulous little trail race fell perfectly into that category.
We weren't racing.
We were aiming to simply get some good quality aerobic miles into our legs
We were planning to enjoy ourselves, no matter what.

In a way it does illustrate the relative 'madness' that runners as a breed demonstrate
You'd think that "30(ish) miles", "Running", and "Fun" would have no place being uttered in the same breath.

And yet....

Up nice and early for the traditional porridge (made with 'proper' milk) chopped banana and Maple Syrup..
And 2 cups of coffee..
Ambled out to the Bus stop for the 10 minute journey to town..
Wandered to the train station marvelling at the number and variety of people who were up and about and wandering around the City Centre at 07:45 on a misty Saturday morning..
Purchased tickets and used the well appointed and refurbished 'to look like they may have looked 100 years ago' toilets..
Then waited on the platform for the train.

We met up with some of the names and faces, that we knew from the Fetch and Runners World sites. It was all very civilised :o)

There was a slight delay to the journey, communicated to Mark the organiser - who assured us that he'd hold the start of the race for us to arrive - and we arrived with a few minutes to grab our numbers and get changed.

Lorna and I had decided ages ago that we wouldn't race this... so it was always going to be a nice run along a nice route, in the company of a number of other people - and friends and family dotted about the place roaring support at 'their' runners!

The sun came out after about 7 or 8 miles, and on went the Buff!
I'm a fair skinned (almost translucent at times) individual, and the experience of a sun-burned head and the unpleasantness of heat stroke is something I try to actively avoid!

When Lorna and I are fresh - and running - we find it reasonably easy to run together. Her easy pace is slow for me, but comfortably runnable. And there is NOTHING better than running side by side through the countryside at a pace and intensity that allows us both to either chat or, more commonly, simply soak up the atmosphere in surroundings we love, doing something we both really enjoy, in silence.

The race itself, and OUR race, seemed to break down into 3 very distinct sections
Up to the first checkpoint and just shy of 10 miles were we running really easily and fluidly. The cool and misty start gave way to a watery sun and stunning views, and we were running very nicely at 9:30-10:00 min/mile. Just after 12 miles we needed an unscheduled toilet stop, and from that point we both started to get a little 'stiff'. Nothing untoward, just not moving as well as we had been. And a little slower at 10-10:30's.

By the time we stopped in the 19th mile for a longer loo stop, my legs had loosened right up again, and running was really easy. And running slowly was easy! We had some fantastic heckling at the second checkpoint, which simply added to the quality of the experience as a whole!
I knew before we started that this whole event would be a chance for me to really concentrate on running form, especially once I started to tire. The kind of tiredness that comes from being on your feet for a long time. And much of that tiredness is from concentration. Legs felt fine but there were still miles that had to be 'ground out'.

After this break the pace dropped and there were more walk breaks than before. Lorna has this ability, when her 'running legs' decide they need a rest, to walk at an incredible pace. I simply can't keep up! Over time we have got to this understanding that if she needs to walk - she does so at the pace that is good for her, and I let her go... and when she starts to run again, I do the same. It gives me a chance to 'rest' my legs by running a little quicker, and it means that we cover the ground more efficiently!
It works well!

So when we came to the run-in to the finish, where there were a small, but VERY noisy and enthusiastic group of supporters waiting - most of whom we knew. We were able to run that bit out nice and relaxed - smiling - and genuinely having had an absolute ball.
The icing on the cake was coming through the finish to a couple of bottles of water - a packet of crisps (unexpected, but an inspired choice) a couple of bananas, and....

A JW Ultra Buff.

This is a piece of kit that I shall wear with pride!
This race - conceived, organised and run by friends and colleagues of John Ward - is a really fitting tribute to a man who clearly loved running, and was held in such high regard.

AND - it matches my road-running shoes!!

I'm glad it wasn't 31 miles :o)

The JW Ultra, that is. Instead, it was a 30-miler that was actually 29.44 miles on Leon's Highly Accurate Computer Software Programme.

Leon and I weren't planning to set the towpath alight. We hadn't trained, tapered or carbo-loaded in the manner of people preparing to race an ultramarathon, and in one of my more limpetty moments I'd asked Leon to run with me instead of at his own faster pace. But we were looking forward to a good day out (especially when we saw the weather forecast), meeting lots of old and new friends, and seeing parts of the canal we haven't visited before.

I knew it would hurt. I knew there would be difficult patches. I thought it might even get a bit boring. And, given that my return to training has not been accompanied by a return to the low-fibre diet that I need to eat to keep my cantankerous bowel from complaining about my silly hobby, I had a suspicion that I'd need to dive into the undergrowth occasionally. Bring it on, I said. Brain training :o)

Paul (who had stayed at our house the night before), Leon and I were porridged-up and at Moor Street Station by 8am. It was still cold and misty, and my hands were freezing. I went to buy some cups of coffee to wrap them around, and met loads of people that I hadn't seen since I last went to a Runners' World London Social in ... that'll be February 2006. Time flies! Meanwhile, the contingent from www.fetcheveryone.com were congregating down on the platform.

The train was held up by an accident involving a bus and a bridge. When the first announcement was made about the delay, Leon 'phoned Mark, the race organiser, who said he'd put the start back for us if needed. What a good man! It probably helped that about 25% of the race field was on that particular train. In the end, the delay wasn't too bad and the start was only held up by about 10 minutes.

And off we went.The first two miles were marked by twists and turns and bottlenecks that ensured a slow start for us back-of-the-pack runners. Then we settled into a nice 9.30-10mm pace for the first section.

By the first checkpoint at just under 10 miles, the coffee I'd drunk before the race was in my bladder, with interest, and I started looking out for suitable vegetation to dive into. There was plenty of undergrowth. Unfortunately, most of it was stinging nettles. An opportunity arose in Mile 12 and I was more comfortable after that. We started eating jelly babies, washed down by the water we had been given at the checkpoint.

I was aware that I was slowing up, though. Each mile was taking over 10 minutes now, and that slight drop in pace translated into a huge increase in my perception of how long each mile took to cover. I started setting little targets. I would run at least until 15 miles (tick). I would run until the second checkpoint (fail). Those were to become "I will run until the next bridge" and "I will run until the Garmin bleeps another mile" by the last section.

"This is a Bad Patch," I told myself. "Bad Patches pass." That's been one of the biggest lessons I've learned as a runner. Starting to stiffen up or getting mental gremlins isn't the start of a slippery slope to 40-minute miling. It's just a Bad Patch and it won't last forever.

From Mile 15, I realised that my prodigious fruit'n'veg consumption yesterday, combined with the running, was causing my abdomen to fill up with big soggy farts. Anyone who has ever had a bad dose of runners' trots will know that there is no more delicate description - "intestinal distress" just doesn't convey the full picture. I had a very long sit-down in a pub loo at 18 miles, and lots of people passed us, including two lady runners of our acquaintance whom we came upon again when they stopped to wibble at a big puddle. "I was RIGHT about the trail shoes!" Leon crowed, ploughing straight through. I wasn't about to come over all twittery, so I followed him. In Vaporflys. And shiny new socks. It wasn't to be their only mud-bath of the race.

We stopped for a while at the second checkpoint because there were lots of supporters there and we couldn't resist having a chinwag. Then when we set off again, we were soundly heckled by some friends on the bridge. "The hills are killers," Leon told Evil Rich the Fell-Runner. "Just as well you aren't doing it, you'd never cope."

From there on, it was a matter of grinding out the miles at a shuffly 12+mm run/walk. Staying side by side was more difficult now, because I can walk faster than Leon and I suspect he found my running pace uncomfortably slow, so he let me go ahead when I walked and then caught up when I started running again. Memo to self - don't put the poor soul through that again.

(We don't plan to run any of the 10-in-10 marathons together, so I might as well get used to it. And goodness knows I've run enough races on my own in the past.)

During this last section, although it was hard work, I was able to stay positive. Sub-6 was in the bag, barring disasters. My tired brain couldn't be bothered making my tired legs run and wanted me to walk, but nothing actually hurt beyond slight achy stiffness. So I told my tired brain that the harder it pushed my tired legs, the sooner it would be wrapped around a cup of tea and a flapjack.I was also conscious that although I was working hard, the effort wasn't really taking much out of me, and that I would recover in no time at all. So far that appears to be the case, although I may be yelping a different tune tomorrow morning.

Boredom? Nope, Boredom didn't come out to taunt me today. The glorious weather undoubtedly helped.

Gremlins? Just one brief visitation. Around 13 miles in, Leon was running ahead of me on a single-file section and I saw the sign on his back that says, "If it weren't for you ... ". I laughed in the gremlin's face and the sign melted away.

Training needs identified? Absolutely! We slowed up from 9:30mm to over 12mm pace over the course of the race. The only thing that will put that right is more long training runs. I'm confident that our early pace was as conservative as it needed to be.

I'd known before half-way that sub-5 was out of the question, and sub-5.30 looked to have slipped away too until ... glory be, it's the FINISH! It's SHORT! We ran the last third of a mile as if it were our first, smiling for the photographer and because we were happy and endorphined up to the eyeballs. 5:29:58 on my Garmin And, as I said at the start, 29.44 miles.We cheered people in, drank water, ate crisps (I hardly ever eat crisps, but after walking past the box the first time I realised that they were exactly what I wanted) and chatted, then made our way to Rowheath Pavilion. There were no showers for the ladies, but I was delighted to find that I was still agile enough to clean my muddy feet in the washbasin.

The winning man and lady were two of our excellent Birmingham ultra-runners, Matt and Alayne, but there were special "achievement" prizes for Ruth ("in excess of 85 marathons"), and two Bournville Harriers ladies who had been involved in the organisation of the event last year and had run it this year. Well done all round!

What a fabulous race this is. Small, well-organised, friendly, uncomplicated, and over a beautiful off-road course. I think the eponymous JW would have been delighted with his enduring memorial.

The underfoot conditions were muddy and stony and rough for much of the race, and the leg-sapping effect of running on this terrain creates greater physical demands than a 30-miler on the road. We went through 26.2 miles at 4:50-ish. We did the Great Langdale Marathon in 4:43:53 two weeks ago. Therefore, the JW Ultra is harder, mile for mile, than the Great Langdale Marathon, despite having only 170m of ascent and 50m of descent in total.

I fancy doing the hilly 22-mile Clent Clamber tomorrow, but I think we may compromise by going on a long bike ride with lunch somewhere nice instead. No point burning out before May ;o)

JW Ultra

We are back from running the JW Ultra
fantastic day, and I'll write a report later.... :o)

A Hybrid Run - and then another one!

Training is going to have to be focused in a number of different areas over the coming months. The primary goal is going to be building a strong and reliable endurance base, and easing the body though an adaptation process to get it accustomed to being ON feet for a long time for lots of consecutive days.
The other thing is going to be pace.

I have a rough pace goal in mind for the 10-in-10 at present, which will - as is the nature of these things - be reassessed depending on the progress I make and the realities of that which my body can actually achieve over the coming months.
Needless to say - I won't be aiming to simply jog-out the 10 marathons. I have higher expectations of myself than that, and there is a part of me that thinks that if I'm going to do this thing, I'm going to do it well.
And I will make sure that I justify my place on the team by aiming as high as I can!
To that end, I'm going to need my Run All Day Every Day pace to be a little quicker than it is now.

Yesterday 'life' kinda got in the way of training. Lack of time, driving and tiredness constraints meant that I didn't get to do the run I had planned yesterday - 10 miles at 7:30's - and instead did a very nice 5 miles at 9:30's with Lorna.

I love running with her. It's often in silence, or just the occasional word, but the thing about it is that it is a time when we are completely together! There are no external distractions, and really is a time when we are in a time/space bubble, and we are simply "us".
Fabulous!!

I contemplated doing two hard sessions today - one really early and one later - but knocked that on the head with Lorna coming home at lunchtime, and the possibility of a run with her.
As it turned out she didn't have time at lunchtime.

That gave me an opportunity to get out and do a quicker one on my own.
The question was - WHAT..?
The 10 miles at 7:30's from yesterday
or 6 miles at Tempo pace (7's ish)

What I ended up with was a sort of hybrid run - a mixture of the pace I'd planned for yesterday with my Tempo Pace.
As I couldn't really decide what to run at, I decided that IF I hit 7:10 or less that would be fine - and if not - that would be fine too!
What I ACTUALLY tried to do was to run really relaxed at a pace that was easily sustainable at an effort that was easily sustainable.... and this run is what resulted.
It was good to give the legs a decent stretch - I'm glad I didn't push it out for any more distance with JW on Saturday.
But everything was working well. Pleased with this run!

6.64 miles
35:21
7:09 min/mile average
Splits 7.20 - 7.08 - 7.05 - 7.20 - 7.02 - 7.03 - 7.07

AND I had plenty left for a run with Lorna when she got back from work - Perfect.

Come the evening we went out for a short one. Lorna's legs had less bounce than they have had for the last couple of runs, and we had a time-constraint at home.
Every run has a purpose. This one was a recovery pace for me, and an opportunity to concentrate on maintaining good running form.

3.5 miles
35:21
10:06 min/mile

Splits: 9.58 - 9.46 - 10.47 - 9.43

Tomorrow I think that a Rest Day would be prudent.
We are participating in the JW Ultra - a 30 mile run from Straford-upon-Avon to Bournville - as a long run on Saturday.
So eating and resting are the order of the day!

The sponsorship trail also starts tomorrow.
I think that is going to be just as difficult as the training. The work that Brathay do is particularly close to my heart, and I want to ensure that we do as well for them in this venture as is humanly possible.
I'll explain why in due course!

Laying the Foundations.

We do, of course, have *some* idea of what we need to do to prepare to run 10 marathons in 10 days. Mostly, it involves a great deal of running ;o)

Some of the preparation has already been done. We're no strangers to back-to-back hard days. When we go ski-ing, we ski our quads into a state of neuromuscular shutdown for six consecutive days and fit in the occasional evening run in the snow. Given the opportunity, we go out running, walking and climbing on the hills day after day. We completed the District Double in 2007 and 2008, and most recently we ran the Langdale Marathon the day after a recce of the Langdale Horseshoe Fell Race route (Leon's doing the race, but as with many off-road challenges I'm just not fast enough over that sort of terrain). We're good at finishing the day exhausted, having a meal, a bath and a sleep, and waking up fully recovered.

We need to build on that in order to be able to run the tenth marathon as strongly as the first, and our training will revolve around back-to-back long runs. Opportunities are necessarily limited by the fact that on at least one weekend in two we have all of our children staying with us, and we have agreed that our training will not be allowed to sabotage "children" weekends. That restriction is probably a good thing, allowing us time to recover between these big glycogen-sapping, mentally and physically exhausting sessions.

Between times we'll aim to run most days, maintain a reasonable mileage, do some sessions separately to allow Leon to do some speedwork. I might do some too, but only if my butt is given a hard kick.

The most important piece of infrastructure hasn't been our training, though. It has been ensuring that we have the support we need to allow us to spend 12 days in Cumbria, away from work and family, focusing on running and recovering. Last year it was logistically impossible. This year everything has come together. The most pleasing aspect is how interested and enthusiastic our children are.

For me, physical training is only a small part of the picture. Some runners run with their heads. My head does everything it can to sabotage my running. I cope particularly badly with boredom. Our next race is the JW Ultra, a 30-mile run mostly along canal paths. Unless I've seriously misjudged the nature of the event, it will be an excellent opportunity to look boredom in the face and tell it to do its worst. Watch this space ...

So how DO you ...

... train to run ten marathons in ten days?

For the pedants out there, that's one marathon a day for ten consecutive days. Specifically, it's the Brathay Windermere Marathon route once a day for ten consecutive days, with the last race on the same day as the main Brathay Windermere Marathon event, which is probably the best marathon in the UK.

Becoming a brain donor is not an option. When Leon and I discussed entering the Brathay 10-in-10 Challenge, we agreed that we wouldn't be riding on a "nutter" ticket. This is our target event for 2009. It will be the biggest test to date of our physical and mental strength. More importantly, the aim of the Challenge is to generate funds for, and raise the profile of, The Brathay Hall Trust. We are determined to justify our selection as participants.

We'll blog more about The Brathay Hall Trust and its life-transforming activities in time.

It's not entirely uncharted territory. Sixteen people have undertaken the Challenge since it was introduced in 2007. Fourteen people have completed it, two of them doing so in both 2007 and 2008. But none of the books about marathon-training (believe me, we've read most of 'em - we like books *and* we like marathons) has a chapter about how to prepare to run a marathon, then, instead of taking a month's break from hard training sessions to recover, get up the next morning and run another marathon. And another. And then another ...

In fact, the kindest comment we've read about multiple marathoning is in "Advanced Marathoning" by Pfitzinger and Douglas, in which the authors begrudgingly observe that running marathons only a few weeks apart is not in the same league as clubbing baby seals.

We trust that previous finishers will share their wisdom and experience with us. We hope that our own training record will be of help to future participants.

We have eight months to train. Eight months is a long time, and we have to ensure that our training stays interesting and enjoyable and allows us to do most of our sessions together despite the fact that Leon will run the ten marathons considerably faster than I will.

And this lady, who likes to soak in a hot bubbly bath after a long race, has eight months to get used to the idea of sitting in the chilly River Brathay instead.

And so.... it begins!!!!

On the 18th September 2008, Lorna and I received an email from Scott Umpleby at Brathay Hall informing us that we had been invited to participate in the 2009 Brathay 10-in-10 Challenge along with 12 other fortunate souls!

Heart rate suddenly doubled and I found myself pacing about nervously and looking in the mirror, I saw that I was quite flushed!!!
"How ridiculous", I thought, "the event is MONTHS away."

Over the previous week or so, I'd convinced myself that for one reason or another that we wouldn't get in. So I was prepared for being disappointed. And when the email flashed up on my PC that was what I'd expected!.
To say that I was pleased that we were IN is something of an understatement.
We'd thought about the possibility of doing the event last year, but circumstances were never going to make it feasible, so in reality, we've been looking towards May 2009 for well over a year!

Well - it's all very real now, and there will be no place for messing about with the training. To successfully complete 10 marathons in 10 days is going to take some very structured and focused event-specific training.
And my personal goal is not going to be to simply complete the event, but to do it at a level that I'll be able to look back to with a great deal of pride and satisfaction!

:o)