Back To The Grind
It’s eight weeks to London Marathon. I don’t feel on track, although my fitness score on TrainingPeaks says I am. I haven’t posted here since before Christmas. That doesn’t mean I’ve been doing nothing, rather that I’ve been focused elsewhere—more of that to come on another blog. I carried on running after my recovery from New York Marathon. To be honest, I didn’t hit every session, but equally I certainly wasn’t MIA and I kept a decent fitness level up.
TrainingPeaks gave me a surprising stat as a Christmas present. While most apps tell you what you did in the year, this one told me what I had done since I started using it, some 15 years ago. I was trying to climb out of a just turned 50 and depressed, overweight and fat stage, and bought a bike and started to train. In that 15 years, I have trained, on average, every alternate day. Bike or gym. Pleased with that. I don’t like to think what my health would be like if I hadn’t.
My proper Coach Parry marathon training block started a month ago, and I flubbed my first long run, given I was in Paris for the weekend, and travelled on Sunday. But since then I have been hitting the plan. When I have missed, it’s been the gym session; I’ve nailed all my running sessions. Indeed my long run last week was 2 hours 40 minutes. All good, the numbers say I’m on track.
What’s Different
But I am dragging, that’s for sure. Today is the last day of my deload week, and I don’t feel recovered at all. My 45 minutes easy run yesterday was tough. Sounds silly right?—training for a marathon and a short run feels tough. If I look at my Fatigue score you can see I am still recovering after a big week last week. I can only assume my body is recovering and adaptation is happening.
Take another look at the scores, and you can see that my fitness score is better across 28, 90, and 365 days.
As mentioned above, I trained all winter, and you can see that in these scores. I was also fortunate to skip the winter cold/flu/man flu this year too, which helped.
But my head is different leading into this marathon. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been down this road before. Training for New York, my first marathon, was a novelty. I didn’t know how hard the training would be. Now I’ve experienced it, I tend to step into my ASICS shoes thinking, “not this again.” Anyway, eight weeks to London Marathon, I can’t skip any sessions now.
Oh No, Not Again
If you’ve read this blog, you know that I decided to do Paris and Berlin Marathons this year. Then my body and my osteopath starting mumbling about longevity, so I stepped back and decided to start a longer term health regime. More emphasis on the gym and the all important strength training. Less emphasis on running, and mainly 5k runs, with the odd 10k thrown in. All the science points to this being the best approach for me, if I want to live a long time and in good health. As opposed to living a long time and being frail.
So I canned the two marathons and started my new regime. For a week. Then I was kindly offered a London Marathon spot by Dan Strang and Pete Cooper, the founders of the Coopah training app. I pretended to reflect carefully on it for a few days, but my inner mind had decided. Do it. I think a marathon career of two events, run in my seventh decade, and it being the two biggest marathons in the world is cool.
People around me have given up trying to understand whether I’m running, not running, retired, or talking to myself in tongues. London Marathon it is. Last one. I promise. No really, this time. Eight weeks to London Marathon. Then I quit. That’s it.
Cardiomyopathy UK
I ran for charity last time, and raised over £6,000 for Sir Chris Hoy’s Tour de 4 charity. I want to raise money for a good cause when I do these daft events. So this time I am raising money for Cardiomyopathy UK.
Cardiomyopathy is a disease of the heart muscle that can affect anyone at any age—including fit, apparently healthy people who have no idea anything is wrong until it isn’t. It’s the leading cause of sudden cardiac death in young people, and yet it remains largely invisible to the public, underfunded, and underdiagnosed. That’s why this charity resonates with me—the notion of fit young athletes suddenly dying is something we should address.
Cardiomyopathy UK exists to help change things. Supporting patients and families through what can be a devastating and isolating diagnosis, funding vital research, and pushing for earlier detection. It’s the kind of charity that works quietly and without fanfare, which is exactly why it needs people willing to make some noise for it.
So I am slogging the 55,000 steps around London in the hope I can raise money for this great cause. My page is here.
Lace ‘Em Up
Enough talking. Eight weeks to London Marathon and I need to hit the road. I’ve got a brand new pair of ASICS Kayano 32 shoes. I’ve used these shoes for a long time, as they give a great balance of support and comfort for a big unit like me— 6’5” and 101kgs. I am now taken hostage by them, oddly. My feet grew by a full size in my 1,200kms of pounding the road and I am now a size 15 UK shoe. And the only people in the UK making a true size 15 shoe suitable for a marathon are ASICS. I’m in the footwear version of Stockholm Syndrome.
Time to shut up and hit the road. I will check in regularly from this point. Thank you for reading, and if you could drop £10 in my fund raiser and you say “blog” I will match the £10 with a donation of my own.