Learning From The Past Part II

Okay, first things first, this was never intended to be a two part blog. You can probably tell that from the fact that I published a completely unrelated blog in between the two parts, and due to the fact that the first part wasn’t titled ‘Learning From The Past’ but rather Running Scared. However, today is the final day of October, and at the end of each month, I like to look at my Garmin statistics and take stock of how the month has gone. October pleasingly has gone very well. There have been signs of improvement in terms of my pace and I’ve also enjoyed running a lot more than I have at other stages this year. It was also a good month in terms of mileage, having covered 141km, making it my 4th best month of 2019 so far. Also, if you exclude the April to July period when I was injured in 2018, October was also the first month in which my mileage in 2019 exceeded my mileage in 2018, and by more than 20km too.

However, when comparing October 2019 to previous Octobers, I discovered that October 2017 was actually the month when I covered my record monthly distance of 193.9km. Looking at the stats for that month was very interesting and highlighted a few important lessons which I’ll be looking to apply to any extended training periods next year, by first a little context would be useful. 2017 was a year when I was essentially injury-free all year, and my only illness of note struck me down at Christmas. I started the year in shape to challenge any of my P.B.’s and just missed my Marathon P.B. at the Greater Manchester Marathon in April. However, I was pretty lax over the Summer, and whilst I was running regularly, many of those runs lacked focus. I also ate and drank rather too much across the Summer, putting on several pounds, and although I never had any intentions of chasing a time at the Delamere Half Marathon in September, my time of 1:45 highlighted the fact that my fitness had dropped off considerably since the Spring.

With the Tatton Park Half Marathon looming in November, I decided to make as much of October as I could in the hope to getting back to the type of shape to push for a fast time (I managed 1:30:40, which to date is my second fastest Half Marathon time, albeit a fair way off my P.B. of 1:25:40). Recording a record monthly mileage was never a target – had it been, I’d imagine I would have tried to squeeze in an extra 6.1km to hit 200km for the month, rather than falling tantilisingly short of that landmark. Mileage was important as I knew I had to build endurance and would also help me to lose weight, but I also wanted to work on my speed too, so quite a few of my runs were short and sharp rather than long and steady.

I feel like this context is important, because if you are simply looking to cover as many miles as possible over a given period, there are better ways to achieve that goal than the training programme I used. However, if your goals are focused more on performance than mileage, hopefully the lessons below.

1. It doesn’t have to be everyday

I’ve never been a fan of the concept of run streaks. From a performance perspective, there is a lot to be said for the occasional rest day, and I also think that a healthy lifestyle includes balance and variety, with time for different activities. I actually only ran on 15 of the 31 days of October, never ran on three consecutive days and only ran on consecutive days three times during the month. I had two consecutive days off in the middle of the month and three consecutive days off towards the end of the month. Running does need to become a regular activity if you want to see real progress, but quality over quantity is still an approach worth following.

2. Avoid peaks and troughs

With plenty of rest days fitted in within my month, you might expect that when I did run, I covered some very long distances. However, I surprised myself when I learnt that my longest run during October 2017 was actually 22.5km. My average distance across the days when I ran was 12.9km, meaning that a lot of my runs were across broadly similar distances (albeit, as I’ll cover in point 3, not necessarily run in the same way). If you are building up to a longer distance, you do need to be putting in those longer runs. However, if you feel comfortable over the distance you are preparing for, as I was over the Half Marathon distance at the time, you can adopt a much flatter schedule. The advantage of this is that although I gave myself plenty of rest days, I generally felt like I could run the next day if I chose to. That can be seen with my longest run, which was backed up with a total of 14.5km the following day. By not going too deep on any single run, I was able to go fairly deep on every run, allowing me to accumulate a record mileage by the end of the month.

3. Every little helps

One of the reasons why my average daily distance was so high was the fact that my short runs actually ended up being long runs. Let me explain that. Each Wednesday I was attending the Run Knutsford interval sessions, and the meeting point for those runs was 3km from my house. I therefore used the run over as an easy-paced warm up. We would then run to the place where we were doing the intervals that night, was normally at least 1km away (or, if not, I was forced to run a longer route to get there so that all of the runners arrived at roughly the same time) and at times could be up to 3km. So, I’d covered 4-6km before the intervals actually started, albeit all at an easy pace to save my energy for the intervals. During the intervals, distance became a secondary consideration behind pace and intensity, but invariably we would end up covering 3-5km across the various efforts. Once the intervals were complete, I would jog home slowly as my warm down. The distance would vary depending on the location of the intervals but could again be as much as 3km. This meant that almost every interval session actually involved more than 10km of running for me, though it never felt like a 10km+ run because of the varying intensities and the fact that the run was broken up into smaller chunks. Therefore don’t overlook those little runs to and from a particular section or your warm ups and warm downs, because whilst they might not seem like much at the time, over time they can build into something very significant.

Time For A Rebrand?

I love a project. Every stage of the process appeals to me, from the excitement you get when you dive into the initial stages, all the way through to the sense of satisfaction you feel once the project is complete. I enjoy learning and developing skills and exploring beyond my comfort zone. Perhaps most of all though, I love the sense of adventure which comes from a project, especially those which start off without a fixed final goal in mind.

My novel would be a perfect example of a project which evolved over time and almost took on a life of its own. It started life as an idea for a graphic novel, though as someone who has never actually read a graphic novel, I had no idea how to realise that. I did however know how to write a blog, so decided to turn the central narrative of that idea into a blog mini-series. However, I then realised the scale of the narrative was rather bigger than a blog mini-series, so decided to turn the project into a novel instead. Whilst many of the elements of the initial graphic novel idea remained, characters evolved, locations changed and the entire third act was revamped. Each change felt exciting, because each change was a sign of a clearer vision of what the project should be.

My latest project is the EPL Plus Minus Football statistics website, a project I announced in January before launching in March. If you read that announcement blog post, my intentions at the time were to launch a website built solely around the Plus Minus statistic and applied to the Premier League, hence the name of the website. Yet whilst the Plus Minus statistic still remains at the heart of the website, already it has grown beyond that initial concept. I started recording substitution impact statistics at the start of this season, and this week have added points gained/lost following substitutions and game winning goals to the site. These are statistics which I find interesting, can calculate and update very quickly and are generally not found elsewhere, and hopefully by including them on my website, it can become a useful resource for people like me who find the more niche statistics the most fascinating.

By expanding the website beyond the initial idea, I’ve also opened up a range of potential options for the future. Could I feature more leagues on the website? How about other sports? The Plus Minus statistic could easily be applied to Rugby Union, whilst there are other sports like Athletics which offer the potential for a level of statistical analysis well beyond what is currently readily available.

There are options aplenty, though exploring any of them takes the project even further away from the initial concept. Which I’m certainly not opposed to, though it does mean that what seemed like a good name for the website in January in terms of doing exactly what it says on the tin (always a good option in an online world dominated by search engines) is now starting to feel like a constraint.

I’ve paid for the domain name for a year which will take me through to July 2020, so any changes to the website will be evolutionary rather than revolutionary until then. An important part of any project is seeing it through, and I feel like I need to stick with the original concept for the full Premier League season in any case. I potentially might add one or two more statistics to the website as I have done this week, but I certainly won’t be taking anything away.

Once we’ve reached next Summer though, I’ll be looking to do a full rebrand. As well as the content of the website, I’ll change the look and navigation, the name and potentially even the tone as well. The name and tone need to be coherent. A name like ‘Scorpo’s Stats’ would work well if I decide to move towards a more light-hearted tone, but if I keep the tone as it is, something a little more functional would be more appropriate.

Right now, I don’t really have any idea what the website will look like this time next year, and that’s exactly how I like it.

Running Scared

There are times when you have to look to the past in order to see the path forwards, and it definitely feels like that is the case with regards to my quest to regain my lost pace. Discovering that pace in the first place was a very gradual process of more than a year, yet losing my pace happened a lot quicker than that. Therefore whilst there are lessons to be drawn from that period of progress which should help me, arguably it is the period of decline which is the more relevant period to consider.

My decline can be attributed to two main factors. The first is the fatigue I have encountered during the 12 in 12 Challenge. The Dorney Lake Marathon in March was the first time I’d arrived on the start line of a Marathon feeling tired. From feeling extremely comfortable running at 5 minutes per kilometre at the end of 2018, a general sense of lethargy meant that my pace slowed during my long training runs to around 5:15 mins/km in the build up to that Marathon. Having always tried to start my Marathons at the same pace as my long runs previously, I decided to dial things back and aimed for 5:30 mins/km from the start of the Dorney Lake Marathon.

As race strategies go, it was very successful. My pacing looks erratic due to the wind, but I reached the end of the Marathon still feeling reasonably good, which was a huge positive considering how I felt at the start. The problem, if indeed that is the right word, is that when you run at a certain tempo for a long time, your body becomes accustomed to that pace. Before the Greater Manchester Marathon, my pace across my longer training runs had slipped to 5:30 mins/km. Having had success with my strategy for the Dorney Lake Marathon, I again set my target pace slightly slower than the pace I’d been maintaining on my longer runs, this time at around 5:40 mins/km, and until I fell and cut my knee, I was again doing a good job of executing this strategy.

And so this pattern continued, with my slower pace in training necessitating a slower target pace for the next Marathon, which in turn led to a slower pace during the next training block until a couple of months ago I was finding maintaining a pace of 6 mins/km tricky if the run lasted more than about 30 minutes. Given my average pace during my Marathon P.B. was 4:40 mins/km and my average pace during my Half Marathon P.B. was 4:04 mins/km, to find 6 mins/km challenging was the point at which I resolved that enough was enough. I started prioritising speed sessions, having previously dismissed speed as a concern which could wait until after the 12 in 12 Challenge. Through hard work during my speed sessions, I’ve seen the benefit not only across shorter distances (I broke one of my Strava sgement P.B.’s this morning which had stood since May), but on my longer runs too, with my time at the Yorkshire Marathon last weekend my fastest since April.

Fatigue really shouldn’t be a major obstacle during 2020, at least not during the early months of the year. I’ll mainly be looking to take part in events across shorter distances until mid-Spring, so that is something I shouldn’t need to find a solution to. What I do have to find a solution to is the fact that my pace didn’t start declining this year, the decline had already begun in 2018. I made my Parkrun debut in January 2018 at Beckenham on a half-grass, half-tarmac course wearing some relatively heavy trail shoes, having spent about 4 hours the previous evening on public transport and only had the chance to do the briefest of warm ups pre-run. My time was 20:07, so on the right course with good preparations and a full warm up, I probably could have challenged my 5km P.B. of 18:55.

Fast forward to November 2018, and I arrived at the Congleton Parkrun with everything pretty much perfect. I had my lightweight racing shoes on, was able to get in a full warm up, weather conditions were ideal and I had chosen Congleton because it was a mostly flat course without any grass to negotiate. Yet I was only able to manage 21:05, almost a minute down on my time from Beckenham despite much better conditions.

In between those two Parkruns I had suffered my I.T.B.F.S. injury, and had latched onto the advice from my physio that full sprints were to be avoided during the rehabilitation period. I followed that advice fully, but it stuck in my head for a long time after the injury had healed. Prior to that injury, I had never worried about picking up injuries whilst running. Yes, occasionally I did have a fall or turn my ankle on an uneven surface, but those injuries were easy to manage and I could normally recover quickly from them. Now I had experience of an injury which had stuck around for about 3 months and could only really be managed by holding myself back, and I knew that if it flared up again, it would completely ruin my plans for the 12 in 12 Challenge.

So, for more than a year, I found myself running scared. Not so much during my longer runs where my pace would always be steady in relative terms, but certainly during my interval sessions and shorter events. I didn’t push myself to find my limits, because I was worried about the consequences if I went beyond those limits. From pushing myself so hard that my feet were covering in blisters at the end of most events, I’d find myself able to hold a conversation moments after the finish. Running at 90% might be a sensible approach from an injury-prevention perspective, but you don’t find progress that way.

Am I over that worry now? Truthfully, I don’t know. I hope so. I’ve tried to push as hard as I can when it has been appropriate to do so, but it’s difficult to gauge when it’s my conditioning which is holding me back and when it’s my mentality, given that my pace is so far off what I’m used to. Ironically, it might take a spectacular failure to confirm that I’ve overcome this psychological hurdle, because at least if I go out at an event so hard that I blow up before the finish, I’ll know that I wasn’t holding anything back. Though I might hold off on testing that theory until after I’ve completed the 12 in 12 Challenge!

The Runner’s Asterisk

One trait common amongst many runners is the need to qualify a time they have recorded at an event with an explanation behind that time, particularly if things have not gone entirely to plan. If you take a few minutes to browse through activities on Strava, you’ll find so many runners doing this, either in brackets during the activity title, or in a bit more detail within the activity description. It’s as though they are placing an asterisk against the time – please don’t judge me on the time without reading the context behind that time.

I am just as guilty of this as anyone else, perhaps even moreso. These blogs often serve as extended explanations about why I recorded the time I recorded. If I was to actually place asterisks next to my Marathon times this year, I’d probably only leave the Liverbird New Year’s Day Marathon and the Yorkshire Marathon as times requiring no further information, as in both instances the time was a fair reflection of both my preparations and how I ran on the day. In every other case, I’d probably add an asterisk to my time.

Darwin Day Marathon – 4:26:03* (*Missed the timing strip once leading to an extra lap. Ran 44.5km in total and was demoralised by the prospect of having to run an extra lap to achieve an official result)

Dorney Lake Marathon – 4:18:30* (*Gale force winds which blew as a headwind for a 1km stretch of each of the 8 laps)

Greater Manchester Marathon – 4:27:10* (*Fell and cut my knee, had to wait at First Aid station for 8 minutes to get it cleaned and bandaged)

Roche Abbey Marathon – 4:45:25* (*Trail Marathon, stopped during final lap to take ‘Grim Shower’ under a waterfall)

Dartford Midnight Marathon – 4:46:47* (*7pm start, body felt like it was shutting down at around 10pm and found it very hard to take on food and drink after that)

Hallow 12 Parish Challenge Marathon – 6:54:45* (*Trail Marathon with limited signage on the course. 712m of elevation and ended up running 45.9km)

Birmingham Canal Canter – 5:55:22* (*Missed a 7km loop entirely, ended up walking around the car park on my own to make up the additional distance required)

New Forest Marathon – 5:04:25* (*Struggled with heat stroke and/or dehydration during the final 10km)

The question that could and perhaps should be asked is why runners like me feel the need to explain their time? Whilst it is a trait I’d prefer to get away from, there are times when I feel like it is justified. The wind conditions at the Dorney Lake Marathon for example was a factor completely beyond my control. A few gusts is one thing, but when you’re running into a headwind which was actually strong enough to knock over a portaloo, then that is going to have a significant impact on your time. Not only was the resistance from the wind costing me as much as 45 seconds per kilometre during the headwind stretch, but I was also using up a lot of extra energy to do that. My time therefore wasn’t a fair reflection of either my preparation for the event or how I ran the event.

However, some of factors listed above did not have a significant impact on my time, whilst others were factors within my control, so adding the asterisk does feel like making excuses. For the Roche Abbey Marathon for example, nobody forced me to take a shower under the waterfall and had I been in the least bit concerned about my time, I wouldn’t have done so. I stopped because my goals were to finish and have fun, and taking the shower looked like fun…and it was! The Dartford Midnight Marathon was another example of this habit of looking for an excuse. Yes, the start time was a challenge, but these were issues which I should have anticipated and adjusted my strategy around. It’s nobody’s fault but my own that I didn’t do that, though at least I should be better prepared if I ever attempt another night Marathon.

It’s a habit I want to get away from. Here’s hoping that when I write about the Phoenix Remembrance Sunday Marathon, I just write about my experience at the event and don’t feel the need to write an explanation for my time instead.

 

Two To Go

Whenever I’ve entered a multi-lap Marathon, it has invariably been the penultimate lap which I’ve found the hardest. You can will yourself through the final lap with the knowledge that you’re passing each point for the final time, but on the penultimate lap, you know that you still have to do it all again.

I’m anticipating that the final stages of my 12 in 12 Challenge will be a similar experience. I’d be surprised if I found the final Marathon tough mentally. As things stand I’ll be running it on my own, but it is on a course I’ve designed, a course which holds a lot of good memories for me and a course I haven’t run on for almost 3 years. And if those factors weren’t enough, I’ll know throughout the run that once I reach the finish (which will be outside my childhood home), I can enjoy a nice long break and then turn my attentions towards my 20 in 2020 Challenge. I’ll also have flexibility regarding the start time and date, so if conditions are terrible I can delay until they improve.

By contrast, the Phoenix Remembrance Sunday Marathon is one which I expect will be possibly my biggest mental challenge of the year. I have no connection to the area and it’s a multi-lap course, so I won’t be able to explore much of it. I’m not anticipating much in terms of crowds, and in early November there is every chance the weather conditions could be poor.

Bigger than all of these obstacles though is the fact that the Marathon is now less than 3 weeks away. That’s the shortest gap I’ve ever had between Marathons, with 4 weeks being my most common gap throughout the year. Those 4 week gaps have proven particularly tough, and I can’t remember ever remember feeling in the type of condition needed to run a Marathon 3 weeks after one before.

The shorter gap also means I cannot rely on the training schedule I’ve used throughout much of this year and will have to figure out what that should look like. Right now, I’m really not sure which approach is best. Should I just focus on rest and recovery, or should I try to fit as much in as possible? The former sounds more sensible, with a few short but relatively intense sessions probably the most beneficial strategy, but ultimately I just need to listen to my body and be adaptable. The Phoenix Remembrance Sunday Marathon doesn’t need to be fast. It might very well be my slowest road Marathon to date. I just need to finish in one piece, and then I can enjoy the final leg of the challenge.

The Yorkshire Marathon 2019

Feeling good on the start line of an event requires the combination of good conditioning and a positive mental state. Whilst the former can often help with the latter, it doesn’t guarantee it. It was therefore a relief to find myself on the start line feeling as good as I’ve felt in either category since my first Marathon of the year.

Whilst I’m certainly not in peak condition, I really noticed the benefit of an extended rest after my last Marathon and felt like I made good progress across the training block. The mental side of things was made much easier by being back in York. That’s always enough to put a smile on my face, but being familiar with a city makes the night before a lot less stressful. I know the best places to eat, know the best places to relax, know how early to get to the start and know the best way to get there.

When I arrived at the start, I was greeted by a crisp but sunny morning. Only a slightly strong wind prevented it from being perfect conditions, though I didn’t ever feel like I was running into a headwind strangely and the contrast to the constant heavy rain last year was stark. The forests in particular were much nicer to run through with sun shining between the leaves, rather than huge drops of water falling off them.

The only slight predicament I faced was that the 4:15 pacer I was expecting to be able to follow was nowhere to be seen. Obviously I could have followed either the 4:00 or 4:30 pacers instead, but neither felt like the pace I wanted to start at, so I slotted myself roughly halfway between the two and just tried to follow my own pace instead. The downhill first mile did set me off at a slightly faster pace than I’d planned, and despite efforts to slow I couldn’t manage it, so I went with the pace instead, and was rewarded with the boost of completing the first 10k inside an hour, despite taking my only toilet stop of the race.

My pace did eventually slow, significantly from around halfway onwards, and it was this stage of the Marathon that I was most proud of. Whenever I adopt a run/walk strategy, my walk lasts 10 deep breaths and then I set myself a target for where I want to be by the next walk. That’s always a minimum of one kilometre up the road, sometimes 3 or 4, though so often I find myself walking again sooner than I’d hoped. Yet today, I always managed to push through as far as I’d planned.

Marathons and Ultras are less about your maximum pace and more about your minimum pace. During my last Marathon, my minimum pace (excluding toilet breaks) was 10:57 for the kilometre. Today I got that down to 8:01, and that resulted in an improvement of around 20 minutes in my time. Whilst I’d expected some improvement as York is a faster course than New Forest, I had the same thoughts going into both the Greater Manchester Marathon and the Dartford Marathon and neither saw an improvement over the previous month. Therefore to improve but such a big margin was a very welcome sign – in fact, it was my fastest Marathon since the Greater Manchester Marathon in April, so a lot to be pleased about.

On Yoga, Meditation and Veganism

Five years ago, yoga, meditation and veganism were amongst a range of things I was highly sceptical about the benefits of. However, during 2018, I decided to try all three in an effort to live a healthier and happier life. Today all three still have a presence in my life, albeit to varying extents.

Yoga has been the one thing I’ve adopted which I would thoroughly recommend to others. My previous scepticism was due to a lack of understanding of what yoga actually was. I thought it was all about holding positions for minutes on end and breathing deeply, and was surprised when I discovered how much variety there is within yoga. If you think yoga is little more than light stretching, try some power yoga to see how wrong that can be. It has done wonders for my flexibility and core strength, has made me more resistant to injuries and has helped me recover quicker when I have encountered an injury. And most importantly, I’ve enjoyed it. Without that enjoyment, I’m not sure I would always make the time to do a session, and I’m practicing virtually on a daily basis now.

Meditation is also something I do on an almost daily basis, though I sometimes have to talk myself into doing it. I meditate before going to sleep, and sometimes if I’ve had a long day, get in late or have to be up early in the morning, it can be tempting to skip meditation. In these situations, I have to remind myself that investing time in meditation will save me time later. That’s because whilst meditating doesn’t guarantee going to sleep quickly, if I don’t meditate it always seem to take an age to get to sleep, and my sleep doesn’t feel as deep either. So, I meditate because I know it’s what’s best for me, even if it’s not always what I want to be doing.

Then we come to veganism, which is something I wanted to work towards yet never really got very close. The 12 in 12 Challenge has taken a lot longer for my body to adapt to than I anticipated – arguably I’m still adapting now – and adapting to a radically different diet (I also tried to go gluten-free) was a step too far for me. I’d started eating meat again by March, and once I moved in with my parents in May, insisting on vegan meals wasn’t something I was interested in.

Instead, I’ve continued to try some different vegan or gluten-free foods to get a better idea of what I like and don’t like, whilst trying to eat more vegan meals than I did previously. I’ve enjoyed this approach a lot more than I enjoyed trying to maintain a vegan diet, so even once I’ve completed the 12 in 12 Challenge, I’ll probably just look to increase the number of vegan meals I eat rather than completely committing to that diet. That being said, given that 5 years ago I never anticipated doing yoga, meditation or trying a vegan diet, you never know what the future holds.

Looking Ahead To The 2019 Yorkshire Marathon

It is always a relief when you arrive at the final week before a Marathon feeling good about your running. That certainly hasn’t always been the case this year, but a 6 week gap in between Marathons rather than the more frequent 4 week gap allowed me to take a few extra days without running, followed by a slighly extended training block, and I’ve really felt the benefit of those two factors. My pace might still be slow, but I’ve only had a single run which has really felt like a slog, and I think that was more because of a poor night’s sleep than anything else. The prospect of returning to York always puts a smile on my face, and even though long-range weather forecasts are never especially reliable, right now conditions are looking almost perfect.

Plenty of reasons to feel optimistic then, but how optimistic should I be in terms of my pace? Part of the 12 in 12 Challenge was to face new experiences, and though I ran the Yorkshire Marathon last year, this year’s Marathon still offers me the chance to do just that. This will be just the second Marathon this year I’ve taken part in where pacers will be running, and just the 5th time overall that they’ve been present at one of my Marathons. Previously I’ve always ignored them and tried to follow my own pace, a strategy which admittedly worked pretty well last year where my race execution was about as good as it has even been. However, pacing is something I’d quite like to try in the future, particularly over 10k events or Half Marathons, so I feel like Sunday is a good opportunity to follow a pacer and gain a better understanding of the role.

So where to set my sights? Last year, I ran 3:33 five weeks after the New Forest Marathon, where my time was just over 20 minutes slower. Both of those runs came off the back of a light workload over the Summer as I recovered from the I.T. Band injury which blighted my Spring, meaning that I had decent speed in my legs but somewhat lacking in terms of endurance.

This year, I know my pace rules out thinking about anything starting with a 3. My time at the New Forest Marathon was outside of 5 hours, and even though I lost a lot of time across the hilly last 8 miles when the temperatures also picked up, the first half took me around 2 hours 13 minutes, so anything faster than 4 hours 30 minutes was always unlikely given the pace I set off at. With pacers at 15 minute intervals, do I follow the 4:30 pacer in York?

That’s a decision I’ll make in York, but right now I’m looking more towards the 4:15 pacer. York is a faster course than the New Forest, so I should be capable of going through the first Half 6 minutes faster without paying for that pace too much in the latter stages. A 4:15 Marathon means kilometre splits of around 6 minutes, which has felt pretty comfortable in training, so with the benefits of group running and no traffic to negotiated, should hopefully be a sustainable pace. One factor which would suggest a more cautious approach might be better is the fact that I have just 3 weeks after York before my penultimate Marathon of the year, though I’m not really sure how much quicker I’d be able to recover from a 4:30 or 4:45 Marathon compared to a 4:15 Marathon, so I’m inclined to put that concern aside.

1:59:40

We’re now 24 hours onwards from the first sub 2 hour time for the Marathon distance, and it has been interesting to see the online reaction to Eliud Kipchoge’s landmark. Some have celebrated it as one of the greatest feats of human kind in recent memory, to be celebrated not only alongside sporting feats such as Roger Bannister’s sub 4 minute mile, but also alongside wider human achievements like landing on the moon. Yet others have sought to discredit the feat as little more than a publicity stunt (I’ve even seen the word cheating used). So why is there such a divide?

I feel like one of the reasons for this divide is that it is so hard to get your head around the physical demands of running 42.2 km in less than 2 hours. Before I started running regularly myself, Marathon times were just numbers without any real context. For a non-runner, perhaps the best way to understand what was achieved is to consider that a lot of the treadmills you’ll find in gyms will only go up to 20 kph for safety reasons. Kipchoge ran faster than that for almost 2 hours.

Having done plenty of running over the last few years, it is easier for me to contextualise that pace. The fastest kilometre I’ve ever recorded in an official event was 3 minutes 34 seconds during the Hyde Park 10k, when I finished in 6th. In training, the fastest kilometre I’ve recorded was 3 minutes 15 seconds, with a fastest pace during that kilometre of 3 minutes 8 seconds. That was on a road circuit at night, during a period when I was training for a Half Marathon, so perhaps in peak shape, on a track, having focused on the kilometre distance for at least a month in training, I have the potential to get close to 3 minutes for a kilometre. Perhaps. Kipchoge was averaging 2 minutes 50 seconds per kilometre, so even at my absolute best, I would only have been able to follow the pace for about 2 minutes. That’s what the gap between a 3:16 Marathon runner and a sub 2 Marathon runner looks like. His first 5 km split was 2 minutes 41 seconds faster than the fastest time at the Warwick Racecourse Parkrun yesterday, and only 22 seconds outside of the Parkrun World Record.

For people to seek to discredit the achievement on the basis that it was not an official Marathon is something which I find bizarre. Firstly, the rules of a Marathon are often fairly arbitrary and subject to change over the years. One of the three main reasons why it was not considered an official Marathon is the fact that the food and drink Kipchoge took on board was provided to him via a bike, whereas in an official Marathon, food and drink stations are only permitted at static points along the route. Yet whilst it clearly would not be safe to try to provide food and drink for everyone taking part at something like the London Marathon via bikes, whenever it is safe to do so, I feel like it should be permitted. The runner isn’t gaining time in a real sense via this method, but rather saving time which they would otherwise lose at the feed stations.

The second reason why Kipchoge’s feat was not an official Marathon was the fact that the pace makers were able to swap in and out, meaning that he was always surrounded by a team of relatively fresh runners capable of running the pace he required. This ruling again feels fairly artibtrary to me. I can see the case against pace makers, which links into the next point, but if pace makers are to be allowed, I don’t really see the case for putting limitations on how they are used. Also, I think a lot of those criticising this as a publicity stunt fail to understand the impact of running in a group. Yes, it is beneficial to have others buffer the impact of the wind, but drafting doesn’t have anywhere near the impact in running as something like a cycling peloton. The effort levels required to achieve 1:59 within a group are only marginally down on the effort levels required to achieve that time solo, highlighted by the fact that Kipchoge’s official World Record is only 99 seconds outside of 2 hours.

Indeed, the only reasoning behind why this was not an official Marathon which I personally agree with is the fact that it was not an open competition. Kipchoge was the only participant, and this was not a standard event with a pre-determined start time and date. Had conditions been poor in Vienna yesterday morning, the team had the open to delay the attempt until they became more favourable. In an official Marathon, you have to take whatever conditions you encounter and make the best of them. Therefore I do believe it is correct that this is not considered an official World Record, though to me that in no way reduces the scale of the achievement.

Indeed, I personally believe that such concerns may become moot over the next 1-2 years in any case. Kipchoge now knows what it takes to run a Marathon in 1:59:40 and knows that is within his capabilities. If he runs the Berlin Marathon next year (which, unless he opts to run in the Olympic Marathon instead appears likely), then he will have a fast course in what are usually pretty favourable conditions for Marathon running. Given the right quality of pace makers, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see him go sub 2 in an official Marathon before he retires.

The Warwick Racecourse Parkrun

There are days when finding the motivation to step outside and go for a run is a challenge. Thankfully, today was not one of those days. Over breakfast I watched the start to Eliud Kipchoge’s ulitmately successful attempt to become the first man to cover the Marathon distance in under 2 hours, and if that wasn’t motivation enough, I also had a brand new Parkrun to look forward to. And not just any new Parkrun, but the first Parkrun it has been feasible to run to from home.

Since moving to Barford earlier this year, I’ve rotated between the Coventry, Stratford and Leamington Parkruns, all of which I can drive to in 20 minutes or less. Which has been handy, though the option to run to the start hasn’t been there. Running to Stratford or Leamington via runner-friendly roads would be a journey of around 7 miles, whilst Coventry would be around 12 miles. Warwick Racecourse isn’t exactly on my doorstep, but with a house to start line distance of around 6km on a runner-friendly route, running to a Parkrun is now an option.

Running to the start demanded an earlier start. I ate my breakfast (a large pot of porridge) at around 06:45 and left home at 08:00. The breakfast was still a little heavy in my stomach when I started to run, so I might have to move my breakfast further forwards if I want to repeat in the future, though I had planned on an easy pace to the start, so thankfully this didn’t cause any issues.

If you choose to run to the start of a Parkrun, you need to decide on what time you’re aiming to arrive. You don’t want to leave things too tight, but at the same time, you’ll arrive already fully warmed up, and don’t want to then get cold before you start running. Today I chose to run 5km, then walk the final kilometre to the start line, and had just finished my light-stretching in time for one of the largest first-timers briefings you are likely to see (this was only the second Warwick Racecourse Parkrun and the first one which was actually advertised prior to the event). These timings worked pretty well today, but given that I won’t need to attend the first-timers briefing again, in future I’ll probably leave 10 minutes later and run all the way to the start.

A 5km run to the start is a bit longer than you’d ideally want for a warm-up, and with the same distance to cover to get home again, trying to push for a fast time seemed like a wasted effort. Instead, I tried to maintain a steady pace across all 3 legs of my morning run, just as I would aim for doing a 15km run outside of a Parkrun. If you adjust for the wind, terrain and traffic, my pace was pleasing consistent across the 3 runs. I perhaps went slightly faster than I needed to during the Parkrun and found the final 2km of the run home fairly tough, though after more than 13km fatigue is only to be expected. Indeed, I surprised myself by how fresh I felt by the end of the Parkrun given I’d covered 10km by that point, which hopefully is a positive sign ahead of the Yorkshire Marathon next Sunday.

Finally, onto the Parkrun itself, which is an out-and-back course which takes you on almost a complete loop of the inside of the racecourse. This includes a brief deviation away from the main path for the first/last 500 metres or so, which includes a less substantial path, today covered by some large puddles. Whilst the surface wasn’t ideal, it allows the course to include an extra little rise and fall, which actually helped to spread the field out a bit. That’s important on a course which is never much more than 4 runners wide, and indeed other than the first 500 metres, I felt like I could run at my own pace throughout.

Warwick Racecourse should be a fairly popular course for people looking to run a P.B. The main challenge is a hill just before/after the turning point, which is a nice gentle uphill gradient as you are going out, before a slightly steeper gradient when you are coming back. It’s not enough of a gradient to really break up your rhythm though, and also means that you have a net elevation loss of around 10.5 metres across the final 2 kilometres, something which will help that final kick for home. Some days the weather may demand that you delay that kick a little bit longer, with the course rather exposed to the wind and running into a headwind down the back-straight pretty common. However, even when this is the case, you’ll have enjoyed a tailwind on the way out and then should again have a tailwind for most of the final kilometre, so there are benefits to the exposed nature of the course too. Today’s 1st finisher managed a time of 16:51 and there were 10 sub-20 times in a field of 321 runners. I was content to come in sub 30, and at least should have some course P.B.’s to look forward to over the next few months!