# Here we go again then.

After another long break, here goes for the annual restart attempt at this blog.  There's going to be a concerted effort this time though so lets see how long this can last.

It's been about a year since the last update but instead of trying to catch up with what's happened in that year today will just be about the lessons learned in that time.  A more detailed catch up can follow soon.

# Lessons Learned

* Listen to my body - I've learned that the easiest way to overcook things and make myself ill is to push myself just at the time when i'm feeling at my fittest.

* Weighty Matters - I'm much faster and life is much better all round when sub 180 lbs rather than at 190 lbs.

* Patience - Don't rush things, play the long game and let improvements come naturally.  I went for the improve rapidly / get injured approach last year and this year i've seen plenty of others succumb to it.

* Execution is almost as important as fitness - In general i've been really fortunate to execute most of my races pretty well so far.  Having seen others who haven't this is something that i hope to keep being the case.

So that's it for now.  Hold me to this but i'll be back next week to do the start of a review and to talk about kit.

Catch up on a busy week

Bit of a funny week this.  Let's back up a little first though.

I've been struggling and feeling a little under the weather for the last few weeks.  This started a few days after setting my new mile PB of 5:52.  Just a few days later i ended up detonating on a club run, proper detonating mind you, full on hanging out of my ass, dead last type detonating.  The next day i felt a little under the weather so took a few days easy before having a shot at a parkrun 5k time trial that i'd been targeting for a little while.  The parkrun was a disaster, i really, REALLY wanted sub 20.  I ran a 20:23 in May off a 6:08 mile pb and in general feel in significantly better shape now.  It wasn't to be though and again i detonated and ended up with a 21:19, i wasn't happy and there's a chance some toys ended up outside of the pram.  This was a mystery to me and i'd already scheduled a rest week from training to clear up some niggles and figured that it was best to go through with that and see where it left me.  

The rest week was great, felt a little flat in work and the evenings but was so strong on the bike which was a pleasant surprise.  After the week was up however, running training was a disaster.  I felt slow as can be and was having to maintain excessive work levels just to run 8:30 miles.  This continued for a week with only very gradual improvements, i was putting a low 7 minute mile in on each run but it was feeling much harder than it should and evenings were regularly spent completely wiped out.  I figured i was probably slightly ill but nowhere near enough to merit a trip to the doctors.

That brings me to last week.  I've had a long standing target of a fast mile inspired by Marathon Talk podcasts Magic Mile promotion.  So i spent last Sunday evening killing myself around a track in the hope of finding out where i'm at speed wise.  Probably, needless to say it didn't go well.  Major pacing errors made me cut short my first attempt at 800 metres much to Sean's amusement.  In my defence it was a little windy but the extent of my timing foolishness was staggering, i think i did the first lap around 5:25 pace.  Second time around wasn't much better and i ended up downbeat again with a 6:25  

So, bad start to the week followed the next day by a long slow run, again with Sean.  The plan was for a slow, easy, reconnaissance run around the upcoming Where Ravens Dare trail marathon.  Well, it was slow.  Again, i ended up hanging out my ass.  Sean was patient but it must be fair to say he got a little bored waiting for me for the last three hours.  At least the course was good and i did enjoy myself in a sick way, i've been conscious that in my opinion i've been a little under-miled through the summer so the chance to inflict a good few hours suffering was something that won't do me any harm.  

Completely wiped out the next day, so had a rest day before getting a slow 8 and a slower 4 in over the next couple.  The general wiped out feeling returned though so yesterdays run turned into a bike ride instead.  Was beautiful though and i got to play with the Panorama feature from Ios6.

Followed up with a fantastic Coffee#1 Machiatto and a lovely walk by the river with Lis' and the kids.

I'll leave it there for now, i'm going to mull over strategies to deal with this tiredness and will post some thoughts soon.

Shoes and bike kit

So, what have i learned about shoes in the last year?  Coming from more than a decade where biking was my main interest i was always going to be interested in the equipment side of running.

The biking world is pretty obsessed with kit.  You only have to look at any of the huge number of bike sites online to get a feeling for just how kit dependent biking is.  Looked at from outside it seems kind of strange the levels of expense and obsessiveness riders will justify to save a pound of weight.  This from the same riders that have nowhere near exhausted the self generated skill or body improvements that would produce much larger returns that any amount of expensive tinkering.  

The counter argument to this is that our whole economy is based on smoke and mirrors anyway so why not buy nice things that we like?  How many of us really buy only the things we need?  I am after all writing this on a new iPad when i had a perfectly good first generation model.  The people buying those nice bike parts are spending their disposable income in a way that allows them to feel good, and in the great scheme of things in a way that is pretty healthy.  Is that really so wrong?  After a year away from the bike and after having the opportunity to view this behaviour from afar, one of the first things i did after picking up a rigid singlespeed was to replace the stem and seatpost.  :-S

So, onto shoes.  Over the next few weeks i intend to offer my thoughts on some of the shoes i've tried.  I'm not going to pretend that my opinion is going to be relevant to whether a shoe is right for anybody else.  I think i've come to realise that in terms of shoe choice, much more important than reviews of individual models, is an understanding of what type of shoes work for you.  

I've bought at least three pairs of shoes that in hindsight were mistakes.  All three were fantastically reviewed, and indeed, i still really like two of the three pairs concerned but i just don't get anything like an adequate amount of use out of them.  I now know i ended up buying them out of the desire to follow what i thought i needed at the time.

First up was the Adidas Adizero Boston 2.  Straight after finishing my first ultra and having decided i really enjoyed this runnning malarkey i thought i'd better get some road shoes.  With some biking hangover i figured that lighter was better and spent some time researching well reviewed bargains on the internet.  When they arrived they ticked all the boxes, boy were they light...and bright!  Within a fortnight though it was obvious that they were both too narrow and too firm for me.  £50 lesson number one learned, my feet are quite wide in the forefoot and i need them to not feel cramped.

It wouldn't be fair to call either of the other two pairs of shoes a mistake but that doesn't mean they don't offer valuable lessons.  

At around the same time as the Adidas i picked up some Inov8 baregrip zero drop, minimal, off road shoes.  Again, these are far too narrow for my feet, one of the perils of buying shoes online.  I still got some use out of them last winter doing speed and form work on local playing fields but i'm kidding myself if i trying to justify an £80 outlay for 20 miles in 9 months.  

Finally i picked up a pair of Nike Free 3.0's.  A friend had great experiences with these and managed to put over 300 miles on a pair and i couldn't help myself being interested.  Whilst nowhere near as bad a decision as the Adidas or the Baregrips, nevertheless they haven't represented good value.  I find the Frees completely comfortable for wearing in general life but ouch do my feet hurt if i run more than 3 or 4 miles in them.  The problem with this is that i only ever run less than that distance if i'm doing speed work of some kind yet the very flexible soles of the Frees mean that i'm mega slow in them.  As such they have been relegated to being a very comfortable, very good looking, very smelly pair of casual shoes.  Bugger.

So have i learned my lesson.  Sort of.  I'm on my third pair of Kinvaras now which shows that my urge to try shiny new things is at least under control and for trail stuff i've recently bought my second pair of NB110's as they offer a great fit and fantastic value for money.  But...  The new Inov 8 Trailrocs look rather fantastic don't they?

So, one year later...

I'd like to resurrect this blog as a means to provide motivation and perspective on my training.  In the 11 months since my last post running progress has been pretty good but has undoubtedly plateaued lately.  

The last year has been a really interesting learning experience.  I came into it with no real adult running experience though with relatively good all round fitness.  Translating this fitness to running whilst trying to avoid injury has certainly been a challenge.

The year has included another Ultra (42 miles), a marathon, and a few shorter races.  I'll not try to catch up with all of those in one go but perhaps look at each in turn.  I think i've learned that relatively minimal shoes work well for me, though there's always the nagging doubt in my head that i started down that route for fashion reasons and am now too scared to change for fear of messing things up.  Good advice i've read though says that if it ain't broke...

Shoes have also not been cheap.  in the 13 months since i started running, the total shoe bill adds up to around £470.  Ouch, hadn't quite worked that out before. As my mileage log only extends back to March i'm not sure of an accurate amount of miles in that whole period but i'd be pretty sure it's not more that 1500.   That's about 31 pence a mile!  Double ouch.  Though there probably are 400 miles left in a couple of the shoes i'm currently using.

Finally, it hasn't all been fun.  i did a parkrun a couple of weeks ago whilst feeling a little under the weather, unfortunately there's a photographer present for these events and the photo below shows just how much fun i was having.

So, that's an ultra marathon then?

Well, first of all, to put you out of your suspense.  I made it. :o)

I'm not sure what odds I would have given myself 8 weeks ago when i started this of completing the run but i'm pretty sure they were no better than 50 / 50.  And the optimism i did feel was based on ignorance.

But sometimes ignorance works.  I've been on a recovery week since Saturday and that obviously has included blogging as well as running but let me fill you in a little now.

Sean and I had a bit of a debate in the run up to the day as to what time we should start our journey.  I felt that his 0515 start time was earlier than strictly necessary and had more than my share of grumbles about it. For the record, he was right.  Not only did we not have loads of time to spare up there but also i couldn't sleep anyway and was up from about 0330.  From his point of view he was only half right though because apparently he was having a lovely dream about getting everything ready right up to the point where he sprung out of bed just before five and had to rush like mad.  He, he. ;o)

So, we got there in the dark, with some rather large ominous shadows of mountains accompanying our journey.  The weather forecast was pretty bad.  Bad in that it was forecast to be pretty hot, 25 degrees centigrade when all my training had been in the sub 20's.

At the briefing my first thought was that everybody looked fitter than me, bugger.  Slowly though i found around half a dozen people who could accompany me at the back.  Because of my dodgy knee my plan was to start slowly and walk the majority of the initial mile and a half of asphalt so i was pretty sure i'd be attacking the race from the rear.

I think i look scared. :oS

And so it proved.  I'm pretty sure that for a few seconds half a mile in I was actually dead last.  Ahem.

Things got better though.  I'm normally pretty good at executing my race plan and to the most part that saw me through.  My strategy was not to go too far into the red at any point on the basis that 30 miles is a pretty long way and i managed to stick to that.  I also managed to not get fazed by the fact that the hills were a little more brutal than i'd expected.  Even having grown up in the mountains I was still surprised that the race course was quite as steep as it was in both directions.  I didn't let it get to me though and this helped a lot because some people around were really struggling mentally.

I was pretty strong from about 8 miles to mile 20, passing probably a dozen people and eating and drinking well.  At mile 20 things started to get a bit harder, i'd drunk well all race but had obviously been overdoing it as i had to stop to pee around every 45 minutes for the rest of the race.  It was really frustrating to keep having to pass the same people over and again because of pee stops.  In my defence it was hot and it's better to be safe than sorry.

I also at this point mistimed my painkillers.  I'd planned all along to drop 2 paracetamol and 2 ibuprofen at this point but just clean forgot it.  It was only whilst moaning to a fellow runner about my sore feet that he asked did i have ibuprofen?  Bugger, of course i did, the strategy has served me well in all my other endurance events yet here i'd forgotten all about it.  Thanks Neil. :o)

It just got harder and harder from on though, the painkillers were behind the pain curve in the soles of my feet and were fighting a losing battle.  A short brutal uphill at 28 miles was a tentative battle against cramp the whole way up and the few miles road drag down the valley were a frustrating battle between feeling relatively good overall and really sore feet.

In the end i finished in 8 hours 40, which was an hour and 10 minutes slower than i'd have liked.  Mitigating this though was the fact that the course was 33 miles long not 30 and the weather really was unusual.  The hottest UK October day on record even! 

In the end i finished 65th out of 86 starters which means I was relatively comfortably out of the bottom 20%.  The winning time was just over 5 hours, so again i'm happy with my performance in that perspective and it's given me the urge to carry on with some targetted training.  

But not until i've really enjoyed this week of doing nothing first.

The big day.

So, it's four thirty in the morning and today's the day. Need to be up at this ungodly hour to leave at 5.

8 weeks of running and the preparation has gone as well as I could have hoped for. Reckon I've given myself a decent chance of pulling this off without hurting myself.

Weather has turned properly bad though. It's been a rubbish summer here in Wales so all my running up to the taper was in mild damp weather. Today however is going to be plus 25 degrees centigrade, the hottest October day in many years. Bugger.

Sorry about the lack of posts during the taper, not much interesting to say and loads and loads to do. I mistakenly though that running would be much more affordable endeavour than biking but that's not how it's working out so far.

So, wish me luck, I may need it.

Big practise run :o)

Time has been playing games with me this week.  Being a horribly busy week between the babies being back in school, my Mum back in hospital and needing to do a last big run before my taper.  As such, updating the blog had to take a back foot, sorry.

Anyway, Thursday was the day for the big run.  I'd done a couple of leg openers in the evenings as well but Thursday was the tester that was to decide whether the 30 miler is feasible.

I'd decided on a testing 20 mile run off road between Pontypridd and Treherbert figuring there was no point making it too easy and set to sorting my feeding strategy.  Leaving things late didn't allow me to buy things online so there was a Wednesday trip around the local pharmacies trying to secure salt tablets and isotonic drinks.  It does however seem that Ponty is more suited to providing supplements for steroid boys than more useful aids for endurance sports. :oS

So my kit list was

Nike 3/4 running tights (oh so unflattering).
Endura base layer.
Windproof shell jacket.
Captains cap.
Salomon Speedcross.
1000 mile socks.
Camelback mule with stabilising strap removed. (more later).
Isotonic drink tablets.
Glucose Tablets.
Dioralyte sachets.
Cereal bars.

I'd taken a day off to make the long run possible and had hoped for reasonable weather at least.  The run was all on tracks that i'd ridden in the past on a MTB but despite knowing what i was in for i still didn't fancy what the weather could threaten at nearly 600 metres.  On the day, the weather certainly looked reasonable, hence the decision to go with a windproof shell that offered no rain protection.

The plan for the day was to start off with Arch, nice half mile walk to warm up then over a 250 metre climb and a a 100 metre climb to some spectacular clifftop singletrack before descending to meet Lis' and drop off Arch after 9 miles.  Oh yes, the stop was also going to involve curry and chips.  :o)

View of Porth at top of first climb

Top of clifftops over Williamstown

Now i know this doesn't sound like the most traditional energy food but i figured salt and carbohydrates, got to work right.  The 9 mile stop also allowed me to refuel at what is the best chip shop in Wales, and we have a lot of chip shops. :o)

Lis' walked with me for half a mile while i ate and then it was time for the big climb of the day, a 450 metre climb at which point i'd top out at around 580 metres.  Almost inevitably the weather closed in me and to the amusement of an old guy walking his dog there hung over me the very real chance of a good soaking.  Bugger!

Fortunately though it didn't come to pass.  The drizzle intensified to heavy rain which lasted for a grand total of about twenty seconds.  I was relieved, the coat really wasn't even water repellant and i'd not brought any sort of protection for the phone.  My iPhone may have survived a trip to the bottom of a full bath but i knew it didn't have the stomach to survive another soaking.

Now i'd ridden these tracks a number of times before on my MTB though not for a couple of years now, nevertheless i was confident in my routefinding.  This confidence was misplaced.  It seems like one of the fire roads has been diverted to accommodate an upcoming round of the World Rally Championship, unfortunately i only realized this when i found myself coming down into completely the wrong village.  Doh.  In a sign of things to come and a decision that probably wasn't the brightest due to fatigue and slight dehydration i decided to use the GPS to hack across open ground to the right road.  Like i said, fatigue is my excuse but i was lucky to get away with just losing ten minutes stuck in a swamp before back tracking.  I went down a number of potholes and could easily have turned over an ankle and screwed things up.  Hopefully a lesson to learn.  If you're in a hole stop digging.

Classic Rhondda view from the top of the Bwlch Mtn

Back on track i approached my favourite part of the route.  The descent into Blaencwn is fantastic.  The track is steep and technical in a few places and the views are about as spectacular as you can get in South Wales.  To say i enjoyed this section is an understatement.  If i ever need reminding why trail running is so cool, this is the place i'll come.

Blaencwm in the distance, literally the land of my father

The descent into Blaencwm was a little wet

I know it doesn't look it but this is soooooo steep and tricky.

Off the mountain and down the road to my parents house and the original plan was complete.  21 Miles done and I still felt ok.  I had however been cooking up a back up plan of adding a couple of miles as the valley is in the fortunate situation of having a train station every two miles all the way back to Ponty.  It'd be silly to not cover a Marathon distance now i was this far in and feeling relatively good.

This is when i realised how quickly things change 330 minutes into an effort like this.  I went short of salt again and despite realising it still managed to bypass two shops in a stupor because i didn't want to spend 5 minutes stopped.  Another lesson.  Massive moodswing then with salt and calories has me singing aloud to Bruce Springsteen as i ran through the village where i grew up before hitting another wall and hanging out my ass for the last mile before i finally stopped at a train station.

So, 26.8 miles it was.  More than a marathon. :o)
20 miles of it offroad including 2 technical singletracks, one large technical climb and a large technical descent.  I got what i needed out of the run but it has left me with a healthy respect for the effort needed next weekend to cover 30 miles in hillier terrain.  Time to taper and eat now. :o)