Playing the Long Game

Long time no blog...

Where were we...

Two weeks ago I'd just done an 18 mile run at the end and for the following few days i felt pretty awful and had very sore legs indeed. Following the cup final I had a painful right ankle which prevented me from playing the following week. Since then I've completed two 20 mile runs in 3:20 and 3:09. After both I felt pretty tired but hadn't suffered from any cramp. However, after my latest run I have started to develop shin splints, almost predominantly on my left side, as well as what feels like it might be 'Runners Knee' or ITBS (Iliotibial band syndrome) in the same leg. As things go I've been pretty lucky with injuries in my sporting life, I've never broken anything bigger than a toe. I've had a few bad ankle sprains and the only other injuries I can remember were a subluxated (fancy word for nearly dislocated) shoulder and a rib problem from playing rugby. The rib injury which wasn't very pleasant as it limited my ability to expand my ribcage meaning it was a struggle to breathe! Thankfully a bit help from a physiotherapist friend sorted that out, only for me to then undo his hard work by throwing myself on the floor whilst playing with his son! This is typical of my behaviour when it comes to injury, when I hurt my shoulder it was during a warm-up drill at an introduction for Chester Romans American Football team a few years back, what did I do? I kept going for the full 2 hour session despite being in pretty bad pain because I didnt want to miss out. The same thing has been true when I've sprained my ankle, I always went back to playing football to soon and often made it worse (I didn't convert to rugby until I was 24). So for me making the descision to miss 2 out of our last 3 rugby matches of the season was tough to make and left me feeling pretty pissed off. Without the final goal of running 69 miles being quite prominent in my mind I probably would have played both weekends, risking further injury but at least getting to be involved. Now, I might have come through unscathed but just as easily I could have put myself out of training for an extended period, this would have seriously dented my chances of achieving the goals I have set for myself in participating in the Wall Ultra Run 2013. This tends to be true in general life too, set backs tend to occur when I've been trying to do too much and not taken the time to step back, have a break and put things in perspective. Training runs when its cold and wet, eating and drinking the right things, sticking to a training schedule, all important elements in preparing for a long distance running event, but there needs to be a balance. If you're full of cold and it's raining cats and dogs then there's no point saying 'my plan says I've got to do a 90 minute run today, so off I go!' rest and recovery is just as important as the training. So I'm trying to listen to my body, its telling me 'your knee is not right, have a break and sort it out' so I'm not playing rugby on this beautiful Saturday afternoon and instead I am sat at the laptop writing this. At least this is better than being there watching and not being able to play, that's just like torture! 

Any way there's plenty of people who have made it though the training and are getting ready to compete in tomorrows Virgin London Marathon including a colleague of mine Liam Jones who has gone from being a non runner to 26.2 miles over the last year. He is raising money to aid the expansion of the Neonatal Unit where his daughter was cared for at the Countess of Chester Hospital. You can support Liam by going to www.justgiving.com/ladiesmanlondonmarathon. 

There was also the sad news from the Boston marathon this week, my thoughts go out to anyone affected there. My inspiration for this blog came from Haruki Murakami who entered the Boston marathon on several occasions he considered it one of his favourite marathons, also whilst travelling last year we met several people who had taken part in the marathon, hopefully one day I'll get the chance to enter myself. 



Until next time, best of luck to all those taking part tomorrow!

Wake Up Call!

Last week I mentioned how I felt stronger at the end of my long run compared to the week before. This most definitely was not the case this week. If you remember last weeks long run was mainly on a canal path meaning it was pretty flat (or easy).The plan this week was to do 18-20 miles off-road, the route I'd planned on doing was a long loop including two local hills.  

With the future wife left tucked up in bed (She'd just finished her own run of nights) I headed to Frodsham to get going. It started off pretty well, I was enjoying the views from higher points after scaling Frodsham hill and despite the remaining snow the temperature was pretty mild. My navigational skills let me down once again as I ended up on a different path to the intended one and I decided to make an alteration to the planned route as I didn't fancy my chances at getting back on track. My feet had got soaked, as some of the lower points were flooded from the melted snow, but thankfully I didn't get any blisters. My amended route took me along the Sandstone trail to Delamere forest where, as it was a sunny bank holiday I had to share the trails with many dog walkers, other runners and mountain bikers. I particularly enjoyed overtaking some mountain bikers, while they were struggling up a steep incline, as they'd come whizzing past earlier and sprayed me with mud!

My halfway point was Old Pale Hill, which some may remember as the first section of the Hell up North trail running event (they might have moved it to the end now). It was pretty tough getting up there due to the slippery compacted snow and I did some pretty impressive flailing around a few times to avoid falling. Coming back down the other side was just as treacherous. I'd felt pretty good despite the inclines and had been using my energy gels roughly every 20-25 minutes up until about the 10 mile mark, when I started to feel myself tightening up a bit. I was carrying my energy gels in a new bottle carrying bum bag I purchased as a back-up/replacement for the leaky hydration pack. I was also using some pink grapefruit flavoured High5 electrolyte replacement tabs in my water bottles (which, if nothing else, taste really nice). Despite these supplements I began to feel pretty tight around the 12 mile mark and got pretty sore in my quads during the uphill sections of latter stages. Then at around 16 miles cramp started to set in, first in my calves then in quads. I felt like if I stopped my legs would completely seize up so I kept running for as long as I could despite the pain. About half a mile later I had to kneel down and do some stretching at the side of the road, finish the last of my pink grapefruit flavoured water and thankfully after a minute or so was able to jog again and then finish the last mile and a half. 

Can you feel my pain?

This was probably the first point at which I thought 'hmm.... 69 miles, that's gonna be tough!'. I had (naively) felt up until that moment that it would just be a case of mind over matter and that I'd be able to just will myself through the miles. I now realise that I'm going to have to get myself really well conditioned for the challenge and even then my body might let me down. As leg cramps are caused by dehydration and electrolyte imbalance I can only think that I had not drunk enough a) because I wasn't thinking about drinking, I got distracted by not being sure of my route and focusing on taking the energy gels at the right times and b) because I only had about 1500ml on me. Just another lesson learnt to take into next weeks training, also the positive fact that despite getting cramps they resolved quite easily and I was able to continue running, I think I'd be more worried if I'd had to walk the last mile back to the car.In the end I did a total distance of 18 miles including 750m of ascent, I'd say roughly 80% on muddy, snowy paths, the rest on roads.
3 days later I played rugby for the first time in a few weeks in the Cheshire Bowl final, we lost 17-18 to Crewe & Nantwich. My legs probably weren't quite up to it after this last run and I wasn't anywhere near my best form, so all in all pretty disappointing day (for match report click here).
 Since then I've had a closer look at the profile of the The Wall Ultra Run, and the individual stages and found that the longest stage is 17 miles and it includes a total ascent of 520m, and the majority of the stage is road or tarmac path. With this in mind I doubt I'll do quite as much ascent in one run again. Next weeks main run will be around the same distance possibly up to 20 miles, and on mixed surfaces around 50:50, road to trail.

A weights session on Tuesday (including matching my PB on the bench press for the first time in a long while), an intervals session on the bike on Wednesday, and a game of squash this morning round off the last seven days of training for me.