Athletes Trenchfoot

Strange to think that a viable alternative to getting soaked whilst out for a run is to head for the swimming pool instead...

It's been a strange week. Torrential rain & gale force winds struck the Bristol/Bath area, water levels rose, rivers burst their banks, drains couldn't take the volume of water that was flowing, trees blew over, and work went onto a 'war footing'... Essentially that meant that the volume of work, enquires from the public, & out-of-hours emergencies went through the roof, and I was placed on-call for the grave yard shift of 1am-9am... The knock-on effect of all this was that training/keeping fit suffered. Training runs had to be altered to fit in with time scales, some running routes had to be drastically altered to avoid flooded areas (sometimes in the middle of the run), and the local swimming pool, handily located almost next door to the office, through necessity, became the training venue of choice.

One run that did happen was an off-road run of silly proportion. A work colleague had entered this years Bath Hilly Half Marathon (it's hilly, muddy, frantic, dangerous in places, exhilarating - I finished 5th last year) but had no off-road shoes. Desperate to try them out I agreed to take him for an off-road run one lunchtime. The original route was quickly abandoned when I discovered that large parts of the route, along the river from Keynsham to Hanham, were under water. Not to be deterred I improvised a route across flooded fields to Meadow Wood which got sillier the wetter we got. Splashing our way around the wood, scaring the wildlife (we saw deer) and getting muddier with each passing moment - all with Cheshire Cat grins on our faces. On the way back to the office we decided to cut through Keynsham Memorial Park and ended up wading, thigh deep, in the flood waters. As Mr T would say "I pity you fools".

But, back to the swimming. When I was a kid I hated swimming in the pool. Whenever my mum would give me a pound to go to the pool I used to buy 10 Players No.6 cigarettes & a bag of chips instead. I learnt to 'swim' by splashing about in rivers with my school mates. Consequently I never learnt to swim properly. This is what I've been learning to do in the local pool. So far, so good, and I'm definitely improving. Which is lucky because I also entered next Mays Westonbirt Sprint Triathlon - just a mere 4 weeks after the London Marathon. Obviously the words 'rest' and 'recuperation' don't exist in any dictionary that I've ever seen. I may even squeeze in a couple more over the summer months... And the requisite 16 lengths needed for a sprint triathlon that I mentioned last week? This very evening I broke my PB for the distance again with a time of 9:44. The first time I've ever recorded a sub-10min time. Chuffed is an understatement...

Wind, rain, & mud came, once again to the fore on Sunday. Although it wasn't raining, the Brent Knoll Race was a very wet & muddy affair. I'd originally planned to run this with AT aka 'Squeaky Pip', the Warmley Ironman, but on the day he decided to spectate/support at the Bath Hilly Half, leaving just 4 Bitton runners to face the climb up the 137m knoll. Fact of the day: The word 'knoll' usually means a small hill or hill-top. The name Brent derives from the olde English word "brant" meaning "steep". In plain English it means bloody steep hill covered in mud. (Last time I did this race it actually meant bloody steep hill covered in snow & ice...) Anyway, 'running' to the top of Brent Knoll, from the BASC in Burnham, was a torturous affair with runners grabbing handfuls of mud, grass, fencing etc in order to help pull themselves up some pretty muddy slopes. I reached the peak in 23 minutes and, as always, the view from the top was exhilarating. There was, however, no time to sight-see as I knew that I had a suicidal downhill to run. The first section of downhill was, well, scary. I scree-scrambled sideways until gravity took over & I fell, sliding past a surprised Bristol & West runner & nearly crashing into a race marshall. Quickly back on my feet & running as fast as I dared I did a quick headcount of the runners in front of me and reckoned that I was in 7th or 8th place. Pushing on I gained on the runners in front, catching up with them as we traversed a stile at the top of the second, and steepest, decent. Dropping down to a crouch I started to slide down the hill, picking up speed, trying not to crash into the runner in front. Once I got myself into a position where I thought that it was safe to get up & started running, I did so. Big mistake. Gravity hadn't finished with me & I began to almost sprint down the hill. Until, that is, I hit a large tuft of grass and took off into fresh air. I flew past one runner, hit the floor, and bounced past another. Coming down again, this time I affected a barrel roll, came up on my feet and carried on running. It must have looked damn impressive because later, after the race, one of the guys I passed complemented me on my downhill technique. I think he may have been taking the piss... Anyway, back on fairly level ground I pushed on as hard as I could. Another quick head count: 5th? 6th? No idea; just keep running. We went over a bridge & a guy from Clevedon went past me. I tucked in behind him & we both passed a runner from Langport. We turned into the penultimate section of the race, heavily rutted farm tracks full of water and heavy clay mud, and caught up with a runner from Nailsea RC. Nearing the end of the tracks they slowed to traverse a large boggy section. As they did so I accelerated and splashed my way through the middle. Right, now, push as hard as you can you bald bugger... I kicked hard as we entered the final section, a grassed field. I could hear my better half shouting at me to keep going. Why do people always shout that at runners? Do they think that we're going to stop to admire the scenery? I turned the final corner, crossed the finishing line & fell to my knees retching from the effort. Then some bloke is asking if he can have a photo of me with a couple of other runners for the local paper. Why? I asked. "So we can get a photo of the first three across the line", he replies... Hang on, first three? Wow, I don't think I've ever been top three in a race before. Fastest in my age group, yes, but never third overall... And the moral of that story is that even when you're long in the tooth and short of hair, sometimes you can still surprise yourself. Even if you are caked in mud...

Weekly totals: Run miles: 23.41  Swim lengths/metres: 193/4825m  Cycle miles: 0

Postscript: An old drinking buddy/Gashead friend of mine, Dan H, has launched his own blog charting his aim to run a marathon before his 25th birthday in 2014. I have suggested the Gloucester Marathon to him, offering my support if he needs help with getting himself marathon fit etc, and promised him that, if he wishes, then I shall run it with him and treat it as a long training run before my own Spring marathon... You can follow Dans quest at On The Road To Running.

That was the week that was...

In writing a diary/blog I could, in classic Bridget Jones stylee, write my weight & consumption of cigarettes/alcohol. That'd be easy - Cigarettes: None since December 2009; Alcohol: I've now run out of both red wine & all the bottles I've won at the Bridge Inn 5K series; Weight: Nowhere near race weight, but then again I'm not surprised as a) I'm not in 'training mode' at the moment & b) I'm still sampling the delights of food that I can't/won't eat when in 'training mode'. Although, saying that, two vegetable pizzas & a load of garlic bread in one sitting was just being greedy...

This past week I have been still exercising (well, it is an 'addiction') but the emphasis has been on enjoying myself & having fun... Strength/endurance came from slotting some runs in during my lunchbreaks, such is the beauty of flexi-time, a 10miler on Wednesday & a 7.75miler on Friday, both of which took in the sights, delights, and hills of the Compton Dando area (including the infamous Peppershells Lane). I also included a run in the dark on Tuesday. Wearing a headtorch, hi-viz & off-road running shoes I ran from Netham Lock to the Lock & Weir. In the dark. Along a wet, muddy, slippery, footpath. Next to a river. In the dark. I must need my bloody head read... (I'll probably do it again this week).
I've also managed to fit in a few swimming sessions, either at lunchtimes if I'm not running, or after work. From being a virtual non-swimmer a few months ago, I am now strong enough to swim about 30 lengths of front crawl. 32 lengths is roughly half a mile so I am rather chuffed with what I've managed to achieve in such a short space of time... On Tuesday I managed to get my 16 length PB down to 10:32, then followed this up with a 10:18 on Sunday. Why 16 lengths? Because that's the number required in a sprint-triathlon...

Saturday saw me enjoying a leisurely cycle out to Bath, along the Bristol-Bath Railway Path, with my better half, and enjoying a coffee and a CHICKPEA & potato pasty in Baths Abbey Courtyard. I write chickpea in capital letters as when I put that on FaceBook the predictive text informed the world that I had betrayed my vegetarianism and was eating a chicken pasty...!! After a salivating visit to Total Fitness we cycled home along the hillier road that leads through Kelston village - just so I could 'dance' on the pedals on the uphill sections & power through the downhills. Well, who isn't a big kid at heart?

Sunday saw a return to the mud, this time, alongside clubmate MG, to the beautiful Wiltshire village of standing stones fame, Avebury, a a race that has long been on my 'to do' list - the Avebury 8. Luckily for us runners, the course took us away from the village, the tourists and the hippies trying to connect with the cosmos through the power of the stones, and out into some lovely countryside on what turned out, after a cold, frosty start, to be a wonderfully sunny morning. Lots of mud was to be found, along with plenty of puddles of freezing cold water, in a race that fulfilled all my expectations. I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone. For once my asthma didn't rear its ugly head & I surprised myself by finishing in 7th place with a time of 53:43.

All this on a 'quiet, non-training week'. Next week? Probably more of the above...

An incredible wheeze...

Sometimes I find the human body to be a strange thing...
I've had asthma since I was knee high to a grasshopper but I've always, through a mixture of luck & prescription drugs, been able to, nore or less, keep it under control. There are times, however, when the pollen count is high, when the temperature suddenly drops, when the air is hot & dry, when I cough too hard, or for no obvious reason at all apart from the moon & tide are in alignment with Gallifrey, and it's at times like that that I almost sound like I'm back on forty cigarettes a day. Either that or a broken squeaky toy... Just ask my mate Andy who once thought that there was a steam train chasing him up & down hills at the 'Dundry Thunder Run'...
Over the course of the last week I have discovered that my body is strong but the lungs are weak. Twice, on two seperate runs, I had to stop and use my ventolin inhaler. That in itself is unusual - but the first time was on a fairly flat 6.5 mile run on a lunchtime, and the other was during a 4 mile 'easy run' on Thursday evening!! This really annoys me because I know that I can, and have, run race after race with no breathing difficulties whatsoever...
Why can't I buy a new set of lungs on Amazon? Preferably a set that don't come with a raspy wheeze setting...

It's about time...

It's a blog. It's a training diary. It's both of these things, but most importantly this is the diary of a journey. What could be simpler? Probably a lot of things but, then again, I never seem to be one to take the easy option. Just ask my wife…

I really want to use this blog to document a journey through time. Not in a Doctor Who sense, obviously. The only way I can become a madman in a strange blue box that seems bigger on the inside is to throw my toys out of the pram in Ikea. No, I mean a journey through time that takes me from now (November 14th 2012) to a specific point in time (slightly before 12:45 on April 21st 2013) and a specific place (The finish line of the Virgin London Marathon on The Mall).

Now, why might this be interesting? Well, it might not be, but at least by writing a blog about my journey I will be able to vent my spleen upon the interweb of cyber space… And what's with the specific time 'slightly before 12:45'? Well, look at the photo. This was my third attempt to run a sub-3hr marathon & the chip-time was 03:00:30. Good if you like symmetry in numbers, but not much cop if you were desperate to go 31 seconds quicker than you actually managed (or 1.19231 seconds per mile if we want to get really anal about it). My previous attempts at the magic time barrier had both been in 2011, firstly in Edinburgh (03:04:41) and then in Wolverhampton (03:04:16). As my marathon debut, in London in 2007, resulted in a 04:58:09 finish, the turnaround is nigh on miraculous... 

So... My London Marathon training schedule begins in 19 days time, on December 3rd, just 36 days after my last marathon which was in Snowdonia.

So until then I'm making the most of my 'recovery' time. I'm eating & drinking what I want; beer, wine, pizza & chips, (all a massive no-no for me when I'm marathon training) are back on the menu. I'm running for fun, not to a schedule, so certain distances & terrain are no longer a requirement. Speed is unimportant, unless it's one of the 7 races that are dotted around my 'month off'. And I'm swimming a lot more - after London I aim to lose my Triathlon virginity, but that journey may have to become a postscript...