The beginner: Carol Williamson
It feels like the washing machine is constantly humming with sweaty kit and my alarm is relentlessly blaring at 6am, but there are less than six weeks to go now which engenders a feeling midway between relief and outright panic. I have a feeling this will be my first and last marathon, as this one has completely taken over my life.
The worst things? Probably the constant early mornings, no late nights, no processed food, no time/inclination for other forms of exercise, aching legs, no holiday anywhere hot over the Easter bank
holiday as I need to run that weekend … the list goes on. A friend who has done London assures me all this will be worth it when I head down the Mall on April 26, and I have to believe that’s true.
I think the real low point was doing my weekly five-mile run from
Westminster to Canary Wharf on winter mornings. The Embankment is a fairly miserable place at 7am when it’s dark and drizzling. Happily I had a friend to run with on days like these (one who is not even training for the marathon, so clearly just has masochistic tendencies). Having someone to chat to made all the difference between turning up and staying in bed.
Now the weather has picked up and spring seems to be tentatively on its way, I’ve exchanged the misery of running in the dark and rain for a new challenge: enduring the long runs. It was such a beautiful day on Sunday that I headed off to Richmond Park for my 15-mile run. I managed it (barely), but was practically crawling by the end of it. For the first time since the early days when I took up running I was in some serious discomfort, and even slowed to a walk a few times in the last mile or so. My hips and glutes were really aching and an inner voice was insistently crooning:
“Come on, why are you doing this nonsense? Accept the fact that your body just isn’t up to it, stop or do one lap not two – no one will know.”
I blocked out The Voice and laboured on at a grim clip, but it was hard. This bodes ill. The marathon is a further 11 miles and I do not see adrenalin/the crowd/a stretcher carrying me that far. I spoke to Sam Murphy who calmed me down somewhat, and offered the following advice. It is all really helpful and I will put it into practice this weekend:
1. You did this long run after a full week of training, which you certainly won’t be doing come marathon day.
2. You took no energy on board during the run. NOTE: You need at least three gels for a run this long.
3. You were probably dehydrated. You would need in the region of one litre of fluid during a 2.5-hour run.
4. Sunday was HOT.
5. Walking breaks are a GOOD idea, not a failure.
Clearly I am a mental weakling, so I would be interested to hear any motivation tips for long runs when boredom, pain or despair start to set in.
I’m trying a different park this weekend for my long run – Central Park
(my 18-mile run coincides with a long-ago booked girly weekend to New York). So cocktails will have to be sacrificed on Friday night and a 6am start is planned so the run doesn’t take over the whole day. I have a feeling The Voice will be looming large, but hopefully the new surroundings, proper hydration, three gels and a couple of new tracks on my iPod (yes, I’m still using it for some runs) will drown it out.
If I manage it, Saturday night will SO not be cocktail-free …
The improver: Matt Kurton
There was a point during my first marathon when everything fell apart. After about 17 miles of running around Stratford-upon-Avon, I suddenly slowed to a halt, my energy levels destroyed. I vividly remember having two thoughts. One was: “Would it be OK to just lie down on the pavement for a minute?”, and the second was: “I would do almost anything for a cup of tea right now.”
I’d started too quickly, I hadn’t trained enough, I wasn’t mentally ready for a race where you spend a lot of the time with no crowd and very few other runners in sight, and there was nowhere to get any tea. It was a low point. As were the next nine miles, a messy mixture of running, staggering, walking and concerned/scared looks from passers-by. Crossing the finish line was amazing. It just took a while to get there.
A few years on, things are much rosier. Writing a blogpost about the worst bits of training for the marathon feels totally counter-intuitive, because while I’ve always enjoyed running, I’ve now grown to love it. Really love it. And because of that, a lot of the things you might think would bother me just don’t. I don’t mind getting out of bed if it means I can run before work. I like running up hills. I like finding out what happens when you push your mind and body 26 miles out of their comfort zone. And by now I’m used to the unique taste of energy gels and the unique sight of myself in Lycra.
It’s very possible that all this makes me quite odd, and you might well feel inclined to suggest as much below. But the things that came to mind when I started thinking about running lows were actually things that get in the way of a good run.
Top of the list is the wind. There’s nothing that can be done about that one, obviously. Unless anyone’s in the process of inventing an anti-wind machine like the one they used to blow away rain clouds during the Beijing Olympics, in which case you’ve got your first investor. After being buffeted around Milton Keynes during a half-marathon a couple of weeks ago, I’m very ready to put my hand in my pocket.
Then there are injuries. I now try to do the right thing when I’m injured (rest, ice, listening to doctors – basically everything I used not to do). But I’m still unbearable when I can’t run, and I still haven’t quite learned that people aren’t always interested in hearing every detail of how my leg feels now, compared to how it felt 15 minutes ago. As someone once told me, if you’re injured, the best way to deal with it is to actually do the stretches and exercises you tend to ignore as soon as you leave the physio, rather than banging on about your troubles to your friends and family. If you’re anything like me it’s not easy, but they’ll definitely appreciate it.
The third thing that came to mind is slightly different. It’s something I’ve heard other runners talk about – Sam Murphy included – and I’d be interested to hear your thoughts. It’s the strange feeling that can come in the days after a marathon, when the jubilation fades and is replaced by a sort of listlessness. Maybe it’s the result of focusing so completely on one thing, and not really thinking about what comes next. Maybe it’s a post-exhaustion thing.
Whatever the cause, it’s an odd one, and one that means I now make sure I’ve got plenty to keep me busy in the couple of weeks after a marathon, when you can’t run too much. I also like to make sure I’ve got other races planned in the near-ish future because, yes, running is a sort of addiction. It’s a difficult one to describe – runner’s ennui, anyone? – but I’d be curious to hear if anyone knows what I’m on about, and how you go about dealing with it.
What’s been your lowest training ebb? Or should runners stop complaining and get on with it? Let us know in the comments section below
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