Running – Page 6 – ROSE RUNS

January 27, 2015January 27, 2015

From Monaco to the moors

I travel to odd places frequently to research odd things and am known for it. But last week’s travel to an odd place for an odd thing was actually not really my doing. One of my mother’s friends, John, who lives in Australia, is on the board of the World Circus Federation. He has been fascinated with circuses since I’ve known him, as has the rest of his family. I visited them when I was 18 and remember his stepdaughter had a juggler for a boyfriend even back then. When my mother was visiting them in Australia this year, and John said, why don’t you come to the World Circus Festival in Monaco? and my mother said, “er…” and ten minutes later he had booked the hotel, that was that. My mother asked me to go and who would refuse to go to the circus?

I packed my suitcase for all eventualities: warm clothes for a Big Top, glamorous clothes in case we had to drink with Grimaldis (Princess Stephanie is the director of the festival), and of course running kit. We stayed overnight first in Manchester, and though I had no time to run in the morning, I still salute Crowne Plaza for this:

I looked as usual on walk jog run and such for good routes, and as usual they were little use as they have no elevation. Once our plane pilot had decided not to land in the stunning blue Mediterranean, as it seemed like she was going to, and once we had got through the airport, past the machine-gun-carrying French soldiers who were ostentatiously standing around looking threatening, although their rather bonkers berets gave a different impression, and once we had paid €20 for a short bus trip from Nice to Monaco, and once we had left Nice and I saw the height of the cliffs and the narrowness of the roads and the beauty of the dramatic coast, but also the limited flat land to run on: after all that, I thought, I’m not running up these cliffs. We got to our hotel, checked into our room, a lovely spacious one with a view of superyachts in the harbour (that was only the beginning), and settled in.

The circus show wasn’t until the next night, so the following morning at 7.30, I took the map that the hotel receptionist had given me, left the hotel, turned right and just kept going. This is what I was running on:

I ran all the way along, up into Cap d’Ail, down some steep steps into a cove which was the end of the path. It wasn’t cold, but it wasn’t t-shirt weather either, so I paddled, then ran back. Along the way I saw women in fancy kit doing very little exercise with very tiny dogs. I saw some runners, none of whom returned my greeting or smile. I saw a woman – I swear this is true – doing a morning walk in white designer jeans and a fur cape. I laughed and ran on. It was only about 4 miles in the end, not nearly long enough according to my training plan, but I don’t have the discipline to get to the end of a route and turn and run back, so I didn’t. Instead, I went for a chilly swim in the bay near the hotel, in my running kit, then walked past dripping. I ate a mountain of eggs for breakfast, then persuaded my mother to come all the way back on the walk with me. Which she did.

The circus was that evening. It was clearly a huge Monte Carlo event. I’ve never seen so much fur or Botox in one place. Prince Albert and Princess Stephanie were both there; not only is she director of the Festival, but she once ran away with an elephant trainer before marrying an acrobat. I think it’s safe to say she likes circuses. So do I. It was exciting to walk into the big top – le chapiteau, in French – past a brass band of clowns.

Not before I had a balanced and nutritious meal though. Now I know that a toffee apple in French is une pomme d’amour.

Some of the circus acts were extraordinary. The athletic ability and strength of some performers was dazzling. At one point, a two-man act were 30 feet up hanging only on ribbons, and one of them was holding both their body weights only on his wrist. The trapezists on both nights were amazing.

But I hated to see the animal acts. I hated, hated, hated it. I do not understand why we must watch elephants standing on stools, or lions sitting on a trailer on the back of a motorbike. I don’t understand why this is presented as a form of human achievement. I couldn’t walk out, as we had been invited there as guests of my mother’s friends, but I sat in my seat seething. The use of wild animals has been banned in many countries, though not in mine, and I wish it were. Of course people who support the use of wild animal acts go on about the wonderful bond between the animal trainers and their captives. But they also talked in one newspaper article about the “parc” which the elephants had to roam around in while they waited. I saw that parc. It was a tiny yard near Monaco’s heliport. Disgraceful.

The following night, there was a fancy cocktail party in the hotel lobby, and Prince Albert was meant to attend. I decided to go a do a strength session in the tiny shabby gym instead. I finished just as the party was in full swing, and there was no access to the lifts except through the lobby, so I walked through the hotel entrance in my gym vest and shorts, and every head turned, and the crowd parted for me as if it was the Red Sea.

Ah, Monaco. Absurd tax-dodging toy-town in a beautiful landscape. Despite the ocean and the view, I won’t be hurrying back.

I was glad to come home. And I was glad that the next day I was going to be running for four miles over Yorkshire moorland. It was the perfect antidote to the ugly wealth and Botox brigades of Monte Carlo. I’d been meant to run the Four Villages Half in Helsby, in Cheshire. But after a long trip home from Monte Carlo via Munich, then a three hour drive, I wasn’t going to get in a car for another few hours just to run a half. And it was a good decision, as the half marathon was cancelled because of ice. Instead, I chose to do the Stanbury Splash, a Woodentops race up at Haworth. But the Splash became the Stoop, another Woodentops route (and the same as Auld Lang Syne), because the rivers were too frozen. I was given a lift in a 4×4, so we could park up on the tops. The snow was plentiful and then it started snowing again. So base layer and vest, but I still ran in shorts. I was nervous again, as I’m still not too sure about my fell running technique. Also I’d forgotten my watch, but my expert fell-running boyfriend lent me his, as he knows the route – and any route – backwards. I wish I had his astonishing ability to photographically recall routes even if he’s just driven or run or walked them once. But I don’t.

So, we registered, we got our three mini Soreens (malt loaf is what the race is famous for). I queued for the only toilet (the portaloos hadn’t made it up the icy road). I found my fellow Harriers, we did a team photo:

then, because fell running is not like road running, we all sang happy birthday to someone, and we were off.

I didn’t learn my lesson. I set off too far back, and I got stuck behind walkers, a lot. It was a lovely run, and the moors were beautiful, but I wish I could have run more. Because there was so much snow, it was extremely difficult to know what was on either side of the path, so it was hard to overtake. At one point, a woman in front of me, walking very slowly, was taking her jacket off and adjusting all her kit. If you’re going to do that, and there’s a huge gap in front of you, and a long line behind you, then surely you step aside?

But I’m still learning fell etiquette. What I do know is that I need to have more confidence. The finish was on a hill back up to the car-park, and I overtook two or three people and still felt at ease. I shouldn’t have felt at ease; I should have been busting a gut. So, room for improvement.

The next week, I actually did all the runs I was supposed to, though I sneaked in a cross country at the Northern cross-country championships. It was 5 miles around Pontefract racecourse, a nice flat course on grass, except the Senior Women ran after 5 or so junior races, and the juniors had nicely churned up the course for us. Also, it was fast. I was hungover and not in the best form, having stupidly had curry the night before, so I just stuck to my team-mate Marion. I mean, I really stuck to her. I was on her shoulder. She must have found me very annoying, but I knew she was going to be going at the right pace, and I didn’t have the energy to overtake her and stay in front of her. Sorry, Marion. She tolerated this until the last half mile then kicked and off she went. She finished five places ahead of me. I still managed to overtake someone near the line, so I’m pleased. Not bad with a hangover. Then the next day I got up and ran 14 miles from Bingley to Leeds. Back to the canal.

And on the next day, I rested. Really.

MILES RUN THIS WEEK: 32
BOTOX BOOKED: NONE
INJURIES/NIGGLES: Sore toes; black toe-nails; slightly aching right ankle

January 9, 2015January 9, 2015

Lost

I have thirteen weeks or so to go before the Manchester marathon. That came as a bit of a shock when Jenny handed me my plan. I’m not worried. I think I’m half-marathon fit (I hope so, as I’m doing one the week after next), but even so, the thought that Marathon Training is back is odd. One of my New Year resolutions is to dance more, but the other is to learn the difference between “could” and “should”. Marathon training has a lot of “shoulds.” But they are shoulds and not coulds because I want to do what I want to do, which is run a marathon in 3:50. I can do it, as long as I train and as long as I don’t get injured. Oddly, for the past few weeks, I’ve noticed that I’m running naturally on my forefoot/midfoot much more. I’ve no idea why. My shoes are quite minimalist, but I am not actively trying to run forefoot. Anyway my feet like it but my calves don’t.

So, last night, after I’d been on deadline all day, I thought: I’ll have a dark city streets run. I haven’t done that for a while. It seems that these days I mostly run in company. But I do like evening winter runs on streets, as long as I get choose the right streets (not Harrogate Road, for example). Pavements are obligatory. At 6pm, as I told myself it was now or never, as the wind was starting to get up, I got my kit on and got myself out of the door. I put my housekey in my jacket pocket, and set off. I had a route planned, up Harrogate Road (the bit with pavements and civilization) to the Alwoodley Lane junction, then right along Wigton Lane, back down Shadwell Lane and back home. A nice 7 mile loop, as my plan required. I enjoyed it. I like running past people who are walking home, and wondering what they’re thinking. I like running past the huge posh houses on Wigton Lane and wondering what on earth possessed them to build something so expensive yet so banal and with quite so many ugly columns. I wonder at whether the families inside these big houses are happy, or whether the husband has seen his mistress at lunch-time, or the wife has got close to her massage therapist or colleague (horrible and presumptuous of me, but Wigton Lane does seem a stay-at-home mother kind of lane). Those imaginings keep me going for a couple of miles, until the end of the lane. Then right-turn past the pub and the convenience shop, and I got to the junction where I knew I had to take Shadwell Lane. So I did.

Now there is a curious thing about Leeds. I grew up 9 miles away in Dewsbury. I have lived here now for nearly six years. But I still don’t think I know it well. I know bits of it. I know bits I live in, and bits I work in and bits I run through. But there are villages and parts of it that, unless I’ve had cause to go there, I know not at all. I ran along Shadwell Lane, thinking, this is great, I get to know Shadwell Lane, which is a road I’ve only taken about once, and that was in a car. I carried on, past fields, and more fields, then some cottages, then a pub, then a bus terminus (as in the bus got there, turned around in a turning circle and then set off again), then to the other end of the village. At this point, after running for two miles down the lane, I thought, I should have reached the ring-road by now. Suddenly my vague running brain thoughts – such as “I didn’t realise there were so many fields so near the city centre” and “it looks very rural round here, or it would if it weren’t pitch dark” and “oh I’d better run on the side of the road with houses on rather than dark fields and footpaths except there’s no pavement on that side” – all came together to the shocking realisation that I was going the wrong way.

I was going in completely the opposite direction.

I know that my geographical and spatial orientation and understanding is very poor. My brain just doesn’t retain it. There are people who can immediately tell me that we are facing a north-east direction, but I am not one of them. (I’ve just bought Tristan Gooley’s book “A Walker’s guide to Outdoor Clues and Signs” to try to improve.) But standing at the far edge of Shadwell Lane, peering at a road sign that said Wetherby in one direction and the A58 to Leeds in another, in darkness, with no-one around, I thought:

1. Why on earth didn’t I bring my phone?
2. Why on earth didn’t I bring any money?

I know why. I’m out of the habit of solo running and just forgot. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I had a few choices: I could run down the A58 to Leeds, but being geographically and navigationally challenged, I couldn’t remember where that would take me.

Did I mention that by now it was 7pm and I had an important meeting with someone (ie actually a work meeting) in Chapel Allerton at 8pm?

I thought: I can ask someone where I am. But there was no-one about. So I did the only thing possible: I set off back in the same direction. This is never fun for a runner, especially when you have carefully planned a loop in your head. Never mind. I ran up to the bus stop, saw that the bus only came to Shadwell and turned back to Leeds, and that it set off in the direction I’d come from. So there was only one thing to do, and that was add a four mile detour to my six mile run, put my head down and just bloody run.

I just bloody ran. My calves were yelling at me. I was warm, then cold. I was extremely thirsty because I’d drunk only one glass of water all day (another resolution: HYDRATE MORE), and I was trying desperately to get home in time to shower and have some food before the 8pm meeting. So as I ran back, this time the right way down Shadwell Lane, my thoughts were:

1. How quickly can I make spaghetti?
2. How quickly can I eat spaghetti?
3. But I’m trying to cut out processed food, is there anything else I can eat apart from spaghetti?
4. Sod that. How quickly can I make spaghetti?

I ran, and I ran, and I ran. I got home at 7.45pm. I ate Weetabix. I didn’t wash. I went to my meeting, an important one, and I yawned all the way through it. Today, my head and my legs are tired, and although there is a should on my plan, it’s turned into a “could,” because tomorrow is the West Yorkshire cross country championships, and my legs will get battered enough.

At least I know where Shadwell is now.

—

DISTANCE: 10.55 miles (I meant to do 7)
TIME: Quite a bloody while
LESSONS LEARNED: Several

January 5, 2015January 6, 2015

Fells

I’ve been saying it for so long, I began to bore myself: I’m going to start fell-running. I’m going
to start fell-running. Why? Because the fells are there, and they are magnificent, and I love mud. And because one day I want to look like Victoria Wilkinson:

But it’s not just that. I love all sorts about fell-running, or what I’d heard about it. I liked the fact you can turn up and pay £4 and get infinite tea and biscuits when you’ve finished. I like that
sometimes the registration takes place in someone’s car. I like the camaraderie. I like the mud. I like Inov8s. But mostly I like the scenery.

I do love road-racing, and I’m proud that this year I’ve done many firsts, including my first
marathon (which I followed with another one), and my first sprint triathlon. And, finally, my first fell
race. The Burley Moor Run is part of Burley’s summer festival, but in November, obviously. I didn’t sign up, because another great thing about fell races (though not the big important ones) is how many you can enter on the day, but I wrote the date in my calendar, and then got more and more nervous. This is what I do with new things: the London marathon terrified me, as did the triathlon, which gave me nightmares the night before of endless bloody swimming pools (yes, I WILL go to our club swimming coaching sessions soon). But it was also because I’d been reading Richard Askwith’s Feet in the Clouds, about fell-running, and my reaction was a) my mild-mannered editor Richard at the Independent was a proper fell runner and he’d never even given a hint of it and b)oh God. It’s steep and terrifying and I’ll be last. I’ll definitely be last.

I looked for advice on the Fell Runners Association website. I asked club-mates who run fells for some wisdom. One of them said this: Train for fells. “Even the entry-level races require a base level of fitness that is very diff erent from normal ‘social’ running. If you want to be a fell runner, you have to train properly. Go out and run hills. Not short sprints, but something that will take you 1-2 mins of hard effort. Run 5-8 ofthem, recovering inbetween. It will feel absolutely horrendous but that feeling should be embraced because it is you improving and becoming a fell runner!”

So of course I didn’t do any of that. Or at least, I didn’t do any special hill training beyond the ones that you have to do living and running in Leeds. I did have a good level of fitness, but still: these were fells. Or at least, Burley Moor, and 10K to run around it.

Then there was the question of kit. I had fell-shoes. I had my stripey socks. But what of all the compasses, whistles, taped seams and stuff that are listed on the FRA site? Luckily Burley isn’t an official FRA race, and I was assured that a kit check was unlikely, so I packed my waterproof (with taped seams) into a borrowed waist-pack and set off. The race was in Burley, somewhere, but I hadn’t written down the post-code, so I just followed my usual race orientation of following people I saw walking along in high-vis (not the ones who are running; they’re just out running). The weather was cold but not awful. No-one else seemed to be running with waist packs, but I kept mine anyway because I was going up onto the moor, and you never know whether the heights will turn wuthering. The route was kind at first; a fairly flat track, and then we started to climb. And here was my first surprise: nearly everyone around me was walking. It was a very narrow track, and it was a steep climb, but if I hadn’t been stuck behind so many walkers, I’d have tried to run it. I’d made the error of starting too far back, out of nervousness.

But at the top we could run again, and it was glorious. Wind, scenery, moor: it’s a visual and sensory treat. It’s like cross-country on drugs: you have all the stunning scenery, but you’re having to concentrate on your feet because the terrain is so varied. I learned that “technical” means “watch your feet even more closely.” I learned that fellow fell-runners, if you ask them if that’s the last hill, will lie to you. I learned that on that not-the-last-hill, to run with smaller steps and to think about breathing, and at the top to try to a) take in oxygen by breathing through my nose and b) take in the view. That’s what we’re there for, surely? But it’s surprising how many fell-runners, even if they’ve stopped to catch breath, didn’t have a quick gawp at the gorgeousness of the moors.

I loved it all. And as I was hurtling down the final descent back into Burley, I remembered the woman I ran near in one PECO or Vets race, who hesitated at every patch of mud and tried to run around it. Finally, as I nearly ran into her again, I said, “embrace the mud! Pretend you’re 7 again.” She didn’t but on Burley Moor, I did. I wasn’t a 45-year-old with an aching hip, but a kid on a hill, going down at top speed, careless of everything but the thrill of the descent. There was no chip timing, no crowds, no bands, no water stations. But it was captivating. I’m still going to do road races, but this is the year I’m getting up the fells, with bells (or Inov-8s)on.

Three tips for fell-running

1. If you see a photographer, i.e. the ones with zoom lenses, then look at the ground, not at the camera: He or she is probably at a spot where runners are likely to fall, as it makes a better picture.

2. On a vile day where the registration is in someone’s car, remember you can print out a blank entry form for FRA races and fill it in beforehand, so you’re not standing around outside someone’s car door for ages in howling rain and gales.

3. Surround yourself with people who encourage you to train and push you outside your comfort zone. Avoid people who constantly refer to the fells/fellrunners as mental, nutters, crazy, “you must be mad” etc. You’re not!

I’ve also been spectating a few fell-races recently. And one day, once I’ve managed to run like Victoria Wilkinson, I’ll have a go at running like Alistair Brownlee, Olympic triathlon champion.

Alistair with his brother Jonny run the Auld Lang Syne fell race in Haworth every year. This year they brought some Olympians along too. Where else but God’s own county could you run a 5 mile fell race alongside people dressed in the most extraordinary fancy dress (Baywatch and the shark was my favourite and, please remember, THEY RAN FIVE FREEZING MILES IN CROTCH-HIGH BOGS DRESSED LIKE THAT):

and then go to a pub for prize-giving where chocolates are lobbed at amateurs and Olympians alike, the Olympic gold medallist in triathlon gets a crown, and everyone has a right good laugh? Nowhere.

October 17, 2014October 17, 2014

Yorkshire marathon

I did it. I wanted to do it in under 4 hours, and I did it in under 4 hours, in 3:59.04. Which is a bit of a miracle as my training had not been perfect, as I have travelled about 8,000 miles in two weeks, and as on the day my left hip decided to become very painful at mile 19 and continued to be very painful until, well, now.

Pre-marathon weeks
September and October have been busy and filled with travel. The last couple of weeks included a trip to Louisville, Kentucky, then Glasgow, then Cheltenham, then Cyprus, then London. I got home from all this at 11pm on the Friday night on marathon weekend. It was not the best marathon preparation. But I did try to keep my training going despite the travelling. I ran along the magnificent river in Louisville:

I ran until the riverside path ran out at a cement factory and then I turned around and ran back and along the way discovered that one of Louisville’s many beautiful bridges has been pedestrianised. The Big Four bridge starts in Louisville and ends in Indiana, and it’s wonderful.

On the way over I tried to take a selfie – or as my mother calls a selfie, a “meesie” – and managed only to look petrified. I wasn’t petrified, just hot.

All of Louisville’s riverside park is pretty great. Especially, as I had set off without water AGAIN and it was getting hot, that there were open, clean toilets at frequent intervals, and drinking water fountains! When do you see drinking water fountains anywhere in British parks any more? I don’t hold with Britain-bashing, which I hear far too often. I think that a country where you don’t die before the age of 5 from an easily preventable disease, where you can get education and healthcare is, with all its problems, a highly enviable place in which to live. But I do object to the wholesale removal or neglect of drinking water fountains. So well done Louisville Water, which has a great campaign to get people to ditch bottled water in favour of tap water called Louisville PureTap. I approve in principle, and when I was parched after 7 miles and couldn’t find a shop, but I did find drinking water freely available, I approved heartily on the spot too.

From Kentucky, I flew overnight to London, didn’t sleep, flew to Glasgow and almost immediately went onstage at the Infection Prevention Society’s annual conference. Then I slept for about 16 hours. The next morning: another run. I love that hotels increasingly have running/jogging maps for guests. Well done to Crowne Plaza Glasgow. I set off along the river, this time the river Clyde. The sun shone – really! – and it was cool and lovely. Along past early morning rowing crews, and people getting to work early, and walkers and runners, to the People’s Park. A quick picture of the shoes that I couldn’t resist buying in the US because they are so cheap – many thanks to the kind man from Waterstep who drove me to Dick’s Sporting Goods in Indiana to buy them – then back and home to Leeds, finally, but not for long.

Then it was down to Cheltenham for 24 hours for the books festival, back home, then to Cyprus for 48 hours for the AGM and annual conference of the Women in Shipping Trade Association (WISTA). They invited me to give me an award for raising the profile of the shipping industry, which was lovely. And I got to run along the very fine beachfront promenade in Limassol from my hotel, which was right on the beach.

So, unlike in Leeds, I could run four miles, take off my running shoes and jump straight into the gorgeous, warm, delightful Mediterranean. I flew to London then to give a talk at the annual supporters’ meeting of WaterAid, who I was running the Yorkshire Marathon for, two days later.

Pre-marathon day
I got home late on Friday night from London, lazed around all Saturday and got increasingly terrified. I just didn’t feel that I had done all the training. Perhaps it is retrospective revisionism, but I remember feeling much fitter before London, though I was equally scared. This time, although I have done a lot of training, I’ve been ill, I’ve been injured, I’ve been not as assiduous as I should have been. I was running the marathon with my friends VeggieRunners i.e. mother and daughter Janey and Bibi. We all had our WaterAid vests, although it wasn’t an official WaterAid race, so there would be no massage or great snacks unlike at the Great North Run, which I missed. Of course I had to customise my vest to show my priorities:

(I’ve requested that WaterAid add “toilets” to their running vests the next time they order some.) Anyway by Saturday evening I had got all my kit ready. Namely:

To run in
Vest, with number pinned
Carefully selected shorts (Brooks)
Carefully selected socks (Sock Mile, with Run Mummy Run leg compression sleeves)
Carefully selected shoes (Brooks Pure Connect)
Carefully selected pants (the ones I always run in: more on those later)
Gel belt with 6 gels plus one extra just in case
Electrolyte tabs

For before, during and after
A flask of black coffee
Flapjack
2 bagels with cream cheese and gherkins
1 litre of chocolate milk
Change of t-shirt
Change of pants
Change of trousers
Change of socks
Change of shoes
Flip-flops

Of course the night before I realised that my Garmin charger was not as I thought in my house but probably in a hotel room somewhere in Kentucky, Glasgow or Cyprus. And that is one of the many, many reasons that I love belonging to a running club: a quick Facebook request and I had a borrowed charger within half an hour. Thanks, Claire and Russell!

Marathon day
Oddly, I slept OK. I’ve been sent a Bodyclock by Lumie, which wakes you with light, which is supposedly far better for your body as light switches on the right hormones in the right order and with the right pace so you wake up refreshed rather than startled. I did wake up quite gently, and even my cat seemed to have taken my timetable to heart and woke me at the perfect time of 5.50am. Breakfast, although nerves were making nonsense of my appetite, was toast and peanut butter and rhubarb jam. Fling everything into a bag, last toilet visit, prepare a flask of coffee and off I go to pick up David then Janey. There had been fog warnings the day before, both from the weather forecast, and from the Yorkshire Marathon people via text. So there were fog nerves to add to race nerves. Plus parking nerves, as David and Jayne were sure they would find somewhere to park near the start, and I was not sure. But the fog was fine, we got there in good time and parking was easy, as most people had obeyed the marathon organisers’ request to park in park and ride so there was plenty of space for early-arriving rebels.

The marathon was based at the university, and it was very well organised. Clear signposting, somewhere warm to wait – there was fog and mist and it was cold – and no queues anywhere, except at the toilets and those queues were crazy. But Jayne and Bibi had run last year and remembered which building to go into that had toilets on the first floor, and off we went, to Real, Warm Toilets with no queue. Well done Jayne and Bibi. And no, I’m not going to tell you which building it was or you’ll all be going there next year.

Baggage dropped off, foil blankets wrapped (around Bibi and Jayne, I hadn’t thought to bring anything beyond my throwaway charity shop sweatshirt), a last toilet visit “for the last 10 millilitres” and we headed to our start pens. Zone 2 for me, Janey and Bibi; zone 1 for David and Adam, the fourth member of Team Veggie. David was aiming for under 3:20, Adam about the same. We did a bit of the warm-up, stood around and chatted and got nervous, then lined up. A young lad next to me said, well done for running for WaterAid, and that he had interned for them for two months over the summer. A couple of days after the race – which he did in 3 hours 30 or something impressive – he wrote to say he had found my website and already ordered my book. So that’s how to sell books: run a marathon.

The start was on time despite the fog and pretty soon we were running on cobblestones into York city centre. There were shops and cobbles and people on the streets and then suddenly this:

and it was pealing bells and well, that was enough propulsion for the next few miles. We had decided to run together, and having the company of Janey and Bibi was wonderful. We talked sometimes, and sometimes didn’t. Our conversation ran from intellectual to what pants we liked wearing. We met other runners sometimes, including a man who had come from Surrey and who ran behind us for a couple of miles before he mentioned that he was aiming for 3:45. Oh. We’re not. And off he went.

What I loved most about this marathon compared to London, was the space. London had 30,000 runners; Yorkshire had 7,000. There was space to run! Of course there was overtaking, but generally, people seemed to have been in the right pens. There wasn’t so much weaving, which is tiring. It wasn’t like Edinburgh where even at ten miles I was overtaking people who were seriously slow (and not because they were walking or tired). Edinburgh was shambolic. Yorkshire was impressively organized.

The only thing I’d have liked more of was support. London is a sensory overload, and marathon day was hot, and Mo was running, so of course there were thousands of supporters. Yorkshire was on an autumn day and there was fog. So there were miles where there was hardly anyone. That meant that when there was support, it was great but I’d just have liked more of it. Thank you though to the bagpipers, to the students – I presume – who had all passing runners shouting Oggy oggy oggy oi oi oi behind us, to the man in one of the very beautiful villages we ran through, who rang his doorbell – a real bell, not a button – constantly as we ran past. Thank you to everyone who had jelly-babies, and to all the volunteers and marshals, who were encouraging and great. Thank you to everyone who bothered to get up on a Sunday morning just to encourage perfect strangers to do something as simple as running.

The water stations were every three miles. There were gel stations too but we couldn’t remember where they were, and Janey had lost some gels on the way (a common sign on marathons is abandoned gels on the ground). Luckily we ran past a very organized runner who had brought along a map. An actual map! So we figured it out. I’d discussed race strategy with Jenny and decided to go for 10 miles without gels then to take them every three miles. I think I started at 9 then pretty much followed the strategy though at about 15 miles it’s hard to think logically about anything. Anyway I didn’t hit the wall, again, or at least not because of lack of glycogen so I must have got it right.

At one of the water stations, the first volunteer had got backed up, so that he couldn’t quite get the bottles handed out fast enough. It didn’t matter because as always there were plenty of other people handing out water ahead of him. But a man running behind me said “for fuck’s sake!” and I was furious. It’s quite hard to turn round at 9 minute mile pace and say “don’t be so bloody rude, he’s a volunteer” but I did. I apologise to all marshals and volunteers for his oafishness. What a ******.

Miles 13-18 were tough. I can’t really remember them, except for the switchback at 16-18, where you run for a long way against runners coming in the opposite direction. Janey said, “‘I didn’t like this bit last year and I don’t like it this year,” and there wasn’t much to like about it, as you’re not only looking at faster runners who are farther ahead, but you’re noting that the return on the switchback seems to be going uphill. The marathon is described as “undulating,” which can mean all sorts. But it was. There were inclines, and it certainly wasn’t as flat as London. I was busy looking for the Kirkstall Harriers supporters at mile 18. I missed them and they missed me, but it kept me occupied. And on the uphill stretch my left hip started to really hurt. That is, it was worse than discomfort. But I kept running. I didn’t want to lose my company and I knew the last 6 miles would be when I needed company most. But my hip got worse and worse. It was sore, then it was painful, then my leg started to give way. Finally it felt like I was limping while running. I had to stop, so Janey and Bibi went on and I didn’t see them until the finish line. From then on, I had to stop every half a mile or so to do a glute stretch. It was weird; I never get problems on my left side. But I was running in my Brooks Pure Connect, and though I had done lots of miles in them, I’ve never done 20, so I suppose my hip got tired and decided to make a point. I kept trying to run through it but after half a mile, it would get so painful I had to stop. At one point I stopped and leaned on a marshall to stretch out. Thank you to her.

The next thing to look forward to – and it’s important to have something to look forward to – was Osbaldwick village at mile 24, because that’s where my brother lives with his family. My mother had also mentioned that she might come up and watch, as she had wanted to come to London but hadn’t in the end. She hadn’t answered me when I asked if she was going to come, which meant, I thought, that she probably would (she has form for surprise arrivals). I couldn’t greet my cheering party while limping or they’d all worry, so as we came into Osbaldwick, I stretched again, and then managed to run past them without hobbling. A quick hug to my mother, who of course had come, my god-daughter Alice, our family friend Bill. I didn’t notice that my brother Nicholas and nephew James were taking pictures, because I didn’t dare stop. And then it was just onward, to The Hill. “You went off like a bomb,” said my mother. My subterfuge worked (I had to stop half a mile later as usual).

People had talked about this hill. It ends on a hill, they said. It’s a big hill. It’s hard and horrible. Some people have to haul themselves up it using the barriers. So I was expecting something like this:

which is Post Hill in Pudsey. But finally, as we got to the last mile and turned the corner, there it was. And it was fine. I belted up it, because for the last few miles various kind supporters had shouted “You’ll still make sub-4!” and I thought, perhaps I will. Up the hill, and then a sprint to the finish. It’s amazing what legs can do. I forgot to smile for the cameras, because the clock said 4 hours had just passed but by then I was on automatic. Over the line, I had to really limp, so I limped to get my goody bag, I limped into the recovery area to find Bibi and Jayne and then suddenly there was a text from the marathon organizers saying I’d done it in 3:59.04. Chip time. I’d forgotten about chip time.

I drank the horrible protein shake in the goody bag, because as usual, I had no appetite at all. I never do. No appetite then an hour later totally ravenous. We all found each other again by the cafe, and Jayne’s partner Zsolt and our friend Wendy turned up with a bottle of fizz. So, chocolate, fizz, and some happy pictures of the WaterAid ladies, as loads of supporters had called us:

Thank you so much to everyone who has donated. If you haven’t and you’d like to, here is our donation page for WaterAid.

That’s that, until April. And now, up to the fells.

September 16, 2014September 16, 2014

Chest, rest

I fell ill. It began in Stockholm. I had a sore throat and a dry, tickling cough. I remember thinking, oh no, no, no. Not this week. Not with the Great North Run on Sunday. On the last run I did, I had to stop and cough a lot, but I was hoping that it didn’t get worse. By “worse,” I mean that it didn’t go down into my chest. The runner’s rule: anything above the neck, you can probably run. Anything below it, don’t. Or, chest equals rest.

On the Friday before the Great North Run on Sunday, I felt OK. I decided to do Parkrun on Saturday as I’d missed a run and wanted to work my legs. I cycled over to Roundhay with my running club-mate Andrew, and I set off with no intentions of being fast. In fact I was a minute faster than I have been for a while, which when you’re running for under half-an-hour, is more significant than it sounds. I don’t do Parkruns very often. I love them, I really do, but I’ve just had other running priorities. And much as I love their inclusiveness and encouragement of all runners of any ability, I do find the wearing of 50 and 100 t-shirts and Parkrun-totting-up to be a bit odd. Or at least, not something I must aspire to, as I’ve only done 11 in three years and I don’t think there’s a t-shirt for that.

After the run, as we gathered at the bandstand, I began to cough. Oh dear. And it was a different cough. This was not tickly and in my throat, but sending stuff up from my lungs. My cough had become what chemists and manufacturers of cough syrup call “productive.” I got home, delivered a marrow to the allotment association show, then lay on my bed and worried. I felt unwell, but how unwell? Was I bad enough not to run? But I had raised sponsorship for the run for WaterAid. I was supposed to be running with my mate Elliot. He was expecting me in Newcastle. I packed my things and set off up north. First though, I called at the designer outlet in York which I stupidly thought was on the way, as I always forget that to get to York from the A1 you have to go sideways. At the outlet, I felt worse and worse. My head began to pound. I was coughing. I phoned Elliot and he said, are you sure you want to run? I wasn’t. I set off in the car, intending to drive to Newcastle and then if necessary, cheer people on if I was too unwell. But then realised I had to take the road heading towards Leeds to get back on the A1 to got north, and it was raining, and I felt crap, and I just kept driving until I got home. I phoned Elliot, I went to bed, and I was sick for a week. I watched the Great North Run on TV, and thought Mo Farah’s victory was pretty suspicious, when it seemed clear that Kigen could have even only slightly kicked and trounced Mo. But I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to run. That’s how I knew I was ill. The thought of running even a mile horrified me.

That’s not like me.

I was unwell for a week. I went through bottles of cough syrup and packets of paracetamol. I couldn’t talk on the phone without collapsing into coughing. But after a few days, I began to feel better. Then I knew I was really better when I wanted to run again. Jenny, my trainer, suggested doing a couple of six mile runs on the weekend. But I was still coughing, and it was still in my lungs. I consulted my running mates, because I didn’t know what else to do. I’d done enough Dr. Google research to know that if I went to my GP, she’d tell me to start worrying when the cough had lasted for more than three weeks. I didn’t have three weeks to spare: the Yorkshire marathon is 26 days away, and my training has already been worryingly hit and miss. I remember at this point in my London marathon training I felt knackered but fit. I was leaner and stronger than I feel now. My club-mates mostly advised caution, except for Laura, who said, do a half hour hilly bike ride and if you feel crap, don’t run. She admitted that probably wasn’t scientific. And Adam, who said he didn’t believe in the below/above the neck thing and if I ran without putting up my heart rate, it might be alright.

But I didn’t. I went to my allotment instead and madly gardened. The fresh air did me good. And on Monday evening I ran. And I loved it. Oh, I loved it. Not necessarily because I was running, but because I was exercising. Afterwards I felt like this:

That feeling continued even into this morning’s training session with Jenny. I usually start clock-watching halfway through. I admit I did look at the clock when she started me on atomic press-ups early on, and I realised how quickly I’d lost strength in my arms. But last night I ran easily and happily. I felt good. Now I just have to work out how to do a marathon.

September 8, 2014

Unmarathon

I went to France for August. I ran a lot. I ran in the heat, on the flat, up hills in the rain. I did 16 miles along a converted rail track, la voie verte, that runs from my house to the very beautiful city of Mirepoix, which I have visited so often, usually with visitors, that I have no pictures of it. I did though take a picture of the railway track.

Then I came home, and confronted a strange fact. My marathon training has somewhat gone wrong. My personal trainer Jenny is great for keeping my core strength up and my consumption of meringues with double cream down, though not entirely. When I did the London marathon this year, I followed her plan to the letter. I was at first nervous and then scared stiff of running the longest I’d ever run, and so I wanted all the help I could get. It worked. I had a great day on the marathon, and so I signed up for another one. Also, I did London in 4:07, which I was happy with (or so I tell people), but actually I was aiming for under 4. So, back to the marathon drawing board. I entered Yorkshire Marathon in October, and thought, this will be so much easier. No wet winter runs in the dark. Lots of beautiful summer training runs around Eccup and Harewood at 6am, with swallows fluttering beautifully around my head as I trip along at an 8 minute mile pace.

That was the plan. Jenny first drew up a new marathon plan about three months ago. It had several phases: anaerobic conditioning first, then aerobic conditioning to get my speed up and then the long runs and more conventional marathon training started at 16 weeks away. It was such a beautiful, carefully thought-out plan. I know how long I’m supposed to run, and when, and at what pace. Those of you who are more relaxed about marathons will be wincing at that, but I found it useful. In theory. Because it turns out I’ve been rubbish at following it. As Andrew Kirby said, it’s like when you make a cake or something: the first time you take real care, and the second time it’s more slapdash. I’ve been slapdash. And I’ve been complacent. So instead of doing the paces, I’ve done what I felt like. I haven’t got all the mileage in, leading to Jenny saying things like “you’ve missed 25 miles last week,” although I’d done 20. Jenny is not a sociable runner – or at least, sociability while running isn’t important to her – and she is very disciplined. But I think sociable running is essential, and I’ve made that clear again and again by entering race and after race, even when they don’t remotely fit with my training plan that week. I can’t resist a Yorkshire Vets or a PECO or an Otley 10, even though they don’t fit in my training plan, and I haven’t resisted them. 14 mile training run on the plan? Oh, I think I’ll do Eccup 10 instead. A hard interval session? But a Golden Acre Vets race sounds so much more fun!

So every week I have felt guilty for not following the plan, but every week I continue to do things like enter a sprint triathlon and run 5K, swim 400m and cycle 21K rather than do a 12 mile long run. Of course it doesn’t really help that I’ve been travelling so much but that’s no real excuse, particularly when it’s to places where jetlag gets me up early and you end up lying in bed wide awake at 4am counting down the time until you can go running. And I haven’t been as bad it sounds: I have been disciplined enough to keep running while travelling, so I’ve done runs around a lake in Dallas, Texas with the lovely Lake Grapevine Runners and Walkers:

along the river around Stockholm:

and up 16% gradient hills in Cornwall.

I did actually do three weeks of the six weeks of interval speed training that I was supposed to, and I loved it, and I got faster. I did do my 16 mile runs, although as one of them was in the company of Andrew “where is it on the map” Kirby, it ended up being four hours via the very beautiful Timble fell.

But now I’m nervous. Suddenly 26.2 miles seems like a very long way. So I followed the Leeds Country Way Leg 3 last week (even though it has HILLS, Marion and I came 5th out of 21 teams) with an extra 6 miles along the lovely roads of Tong. That was hard. This weekend I was supposed to do the Great North Run, and I was going to do an extra 5 miles beforehand. But instead I’ve picked up a chest infection and cough. The rule of running is that if it stays above the neck you can run. I was in Stockholm last week, and all week I had a sore throat and tickly cough and was begging it to stay above the neck. I did Roundhay Parkrun on Saturday morning to give my legs a try out and though I did it pretty fast for me, I paid for it. I immediately started with what doctors call a “productive cough,” i.e. sounding like I’m coughing up 25 years of 40-a-day cigarettes. (I’ve never smoked.) I set off for Newcastle on Saturday hoping that the drugs would work, but somewhere near York I felt horrible and turned round and came back. I’m so disappointed that I couldn’t run, but I also feel so unwell I can’t face the thought of even running a mile. I have no idea what this means for my marathon training but it can’t be good.

July 27, 2014

Tri

When I lived in London, I was a swimmer. Not a competitive one or even much good, but swimming was the exercise I took, because I lived around the corner from the London Fields Lido, renovated and re-opened in 2006. It is 50 metres long, outdoor, beautiful, and heated. I would go there to swim in summer, but also in winter, when it was so cold that you saw steam rising from the pool. It was a wonderful, wonderful place to swim.

When I moved home to Yorkshire in 2009, I stopped swimming. There was no outdoor heated swimming pool round the corner, I don’t like swimming in crowded leisure centres, and I just stopped. I became a runner instead, slowly, and mostly by doing half of a couch to 5K programme on my container ship in 2010. And I never really swam again, except on holidays or business trips now and then. But even then, there were lots of occasions where I could have swum and I didn’t. I lost heart and interest.

Then I did the London marathon, and signed up for another marathon, and swore to myself that I would become a fell runner. It seems to me that most people who do marathons follow five paths:

1. They never do a marathon again
2. They do LOTS of marathons
3. They do ultra-marathons
4. They become fell-runners
5. They become triathletes

I signed up for the Yorkshire marathon so I suppose I belong in number 2, but I wanted to belong to number 4 and haven’t. And I had no intentions ever of doing a triathlon. I have two bikes and love them. In France, I cycle quite often, though less now that I run so much. But I would never choose to go on a cycle ride when I could go for a run. And I still hadn’t got back into swimming.

Then Janey and Bibi of Veggie Runners told me they had signed up for a sprint triathlon in Leeds, and would I like to join them? I looked it up and said, no chance. £48 for a sprint triathlon? No. But the organisers, Xtra Mile Events, kindly let me have a place and I said I would try to write about it, so I signed up. And then decided to undergo a training programme which consisted of:

1. Hubris
2. Denial

Hubris: I used to swim. I cycle four miles to my studio and back frequently, and two of them are brutally hilly. And I know I can run. The distances weren’t daunting: 400m in the swimming pool, a 21K bike ride up Harrogate Road, and a 5K run around Leeds Grammar School, where the triathlon would be based. So I signed up, borrowed some tri kit from my lovely club-mate Marion, and then basically forgot about it, deliberately. I had travelling to do, to Dallas and Cornwall, and a marathon training plan that I still wasn’t doing properly. So I got on with that, and didn’t do any Bric (bike/run or one of the two) training. By last week in Dallas, I thought, I’d better see if I can swim, so I put on Marion’s tri gear and got in the pool. It was only about 10 metres, and not much use. I tried again in Cornwall, where I was staying at a spa with a very nice 25 metre fitness pool. I set off doing front crawl and bam.

Panic.

I suddenly remembered this from my swims in the London lido. Towards the end of my time in London, I would start panicking when I did front crawl. I would panic that I wasn’t getting enough breath, and then the panic would ensure that I didn’t get enough breath. And here it was again. I did what I did when I panicked in London Fields, and switched to breaststroke. After four lengths, I thought, this is tiring. I did another couple, but I’d intended to do the full 16 and didn’t. That was very stupid, because I spent the next three days panicking about the swim. Last night I slept horribly, partly because of the heat, partly because of my noisy neighbours in their garden, and also because I was dreaming about the triathlon. I was dreading the swim.

I got up at 5.45, with the help of my cat alarm clock. (That is a cat who licks my neck to wake me up, not an alarm clock shaped like a cat.) I ate toast. I showered. And I got more and more nervous. I’d decided to cycle up to Leeds Grammar School, because I remembered it being only a couple of miles up the road.

Up. UP the road.

I’d not really thought about that bit. So when my lactic acid started burning, and I hadn’t even got to the event, I thought, I haven’t really thought this through. This feeling continued when I realised I’d forgotten my photo ID, the first item on my checklist. I’d remembered everything else:

helmet
goggles
sunglasses
talcum powder to talc my shoes & socks, the better to get wet feet into them
gels
bananas
water bottle
puncture kit
allen key
bike lock
bike bottle cage which I still hadn’t fit on my bike
protein shake for afterwards
towel in a distinct colour so I could spot it in transition (I took the black one I was given after the ten mile Bluebell Trail)
change of clothes

I thought for a minute they were going to make me do a four mile round trip to go and fetch my ID, but they were nice and let me through. Outside, a few ectomorph men were sponging on their tattoos (nobody told me that triathlons are where all the handsome men are). They had the kit, but they said they were all novices too, and a bit nervous, and we all got on fine. I’ve never had a sponge-holder before, so thank you nameless man, who also cheered me when we passed later on Harrogate Road with, “COME ON LOVE!”

Janey and Bibi turned up soon with their partners Adam and Zsolt. Adam has done a few proper triathlons; I asked Zsolt if he was tempted and he said, “god, no.” Adam acted as our bike tech and fixed my bottle cage to my bike. Janey managed to put her tattoo on upside down.

But eventually we were ready and walked our bikes round to transition. This is where all the bikes are racked. There are so many rules to triathlons; the instruction booklet was about 15 pages long. The ones I remembered were that you can’t get your bike on or off the rack without your helmet being in place. It wasn’t a huge transition area, only two rows, so I didn’t have to memorise where my bike was by doing some geolocation with a fixed recognisable object. There were hardly any people there because the whole tri was done in waves, and we had asked for a “mates’ wave,” where you can compete against or compete with your mates. We were in the first wave, and due to swim at 8.

Leeds Grammar School is beautiful and looks very expensive. It has a very nice swimming pool, and after we’d got our briefing – more rules – we got in the water. You can’t jump in (another rule). There was no-one to count the 16 lengths which was worrying, as I often drift off mentally when I’m swimming. There were three people per lane, but our first swimmer hadn’t turned up. I still wasn’t sure what stroke I would do; I wanted to do front crawl but hadn’t done 400m since my London fields lido swimming, and I was already feeling so nervous about the swim. I’ve never liked swimming in crowded lanes, and the rule about overtaking – you tap the person’s foot, then the slower person hangs to the side at the end of the lane so you can overtake – made me anxious.

I asked Janey if she wanted us to stick together or if we were going to compete. She looked hesitant, and then we both said, “let’s see what happens.”

Then the whistle went, and ten seconds later the second whistle went, the man in my lane set off, and then ten seconds later off I went. He was doing breaststroke, which I was delighted about. I set off front crawling, I think, but soon switched. I intended to switch back, but the breaststroke was really comfortable, even with all the tall ectomorph men around us (Janey, Bibi and I were the only women in the wave) doing Alpha Male Crawl, so I carried on with that. I’d put down an estimated time of 12 minutes, having no idea how long it would take me, and that was one of the things making me anxious. I remembered when I went running Kathmandu with X (I suddenly can’t remember her name), who told me that she had done a triathlon in Islamabad (because she is an amazing woman which makes it even worse I can’t remember her name), and she was the last person swimming in the pool. This is what I pictured. My co-swimmer finished before me, but he would: he was about 20 years younger and he had longer, stronger legs, even doing breaststroke. But I was only two lengths behind, and though for a minute or two I thought I was the only person in the pool, I then thought, I don’t care, and just carried on swimming. I was so little concerned with getting a good time that I had no idea what a good time should consist of.

I finished, I got out, I walked to the far end of the pool, then I ran on the gravel to the transition point. I didn’t even think about stopping to wait for Janey, so obviously I do have a competitive spirit hidden beneath the phlegmatism. I put on my helmet, put my feet into the talcum powdered shoes and socks, drank something, got my bike, and dawdled a bit. I just wasn’t going to be stressed out by losing time in a transition. I’ll save that for my next triathlon. And off I went. I haven’t done a bike ride longer than about 5 miles for ages. In France I sometimes do a 20K loop, but I hadn’t done that for a while either. Before race, both Janey and Bibi had said, with some horror, “have you seen the elevation of the bike route?” I hadn’t, but I could imagine it. I knew it was uphill to Harewood. I didn’t realise there was loads of uphill after that too.

One of the rules that the organisers were very firm about was no drafting. You can’t cycle in someone’s slipstream, but you have to hang back and then overtake within 15 seconds. I didn’t think that was going to apply to me. I was the first woman out of us three to leave, but I knew Bibi wasn’t far behind, and I couldn’t see anyone in front of me. But then I could, and he got closer and closer. He was slow on the hills, so that’s where I caught up with him, and that’s exactly where I didn’t want to have to overtake. So I hung back, and I hung back and then I thought, sod this, and overtook. My legs were sorely taxed, but there were enough downhills and sort-of-flat bits to recover from the hills. The man caught me on the downhill and overtook. On the way up to the roundabout a few miles north of Harewood House, the other men in the wave started coming back on the other side. That’s where I got my COME ON LOVE. So I did. I went on.

And I overtook the slow-hill-climber again, and he didn’t catch me. I saw Bibi on the other side, and she told me later she thought I wasn’t very far ahead but she couldn’t catch me. Thank goodness for my hockey/Hoy thighs. The turn-off for the school came quite quickly, and I cycled to the dismount sign, dismounted (unlike one bloke who kept cycling at top speed and then had to do a comedy brake-screeching stop, apparently).

Bike on rack. Helmet off. Frantic search for gels. Fast mouthful of a fruit bar. Drink of electrolyte drink. Off.

In my moments of tri-panic, I’d read lots of newbie tri forums. One tip was to let your legs hang straight on the final strait back if you can, so that your hamstrings get used to the different muscles that are used for running. I remembered this, but there was no time to do it, and I didn’t want to contravene some rule that said you had to have your feet on the pedals at all time, so I didn’t. But when I set off, I got the predicted jelly legs, but it was my calves. They were tight and complaining. For a while, it felt like I was running on someone else’s legs.

The course was two laps around Leeds Grammar School grounds, which are large and have nice grass paths. I didn’t see any other runners until someone passed me on his second lap. I’d left my Garmin in my bag and had no idea what pace I was doing. It felt like I was trudging, but actually I did it in 25 minutes, which, when my 5K PB is still 23 minutes, isn’t bad. I said “shut up legs” a few times, out loud. I looked at the posh housing, and the nice playing fields, and just kept going. I felt tired, and my stomach was rumbling. I should have had a gel, but I just felt hungry rather than having dead legs.

I kept going, and I got round, and I was the first woman back. I know, only out of us three in the first wave, but still. I’m pleased. And I won’t dread my next triathlon. Because there will be a next one.

Bibi wasn’t far behind me, then Janey. There was some confusion over our times, which you could print out as a receipt. How cool, I thought, until I noticed I’d done the swim in 5 minutes. I had no idea how long the swim took but 5 minutes seemed ridiculous. Finally the man in the timing tent realised that someone had written down that we’d set off swimming at 8:08 instead of 8:03. So I’d done it in ten minutes, which I was delighted with. And I did the whole thing in about 1:35. I was shocked by my bike time. I would have said I’d been on the bike for half an hour, but it was 56 minutes. That wasn’t particularly slow: a big strong man next to me had done it in 53. I supposed it just passed fast.

Afterwards we went for protein breakfast at Filmore & Union in Moortown, and the food was delicious. Then I went to bed and slept for two hours, happy.

–

(Thanks, Marion, both for this picture, and for turning up to cheer and take pictures. I was pointing at my shorts and saying, “GREAT KIT” as I passed her.)

July 23, 2014

Running on the run

I’ve just returned from Dallas, Texas. I say, “Dallas, Texas,” because it sounds better, not because there is another famous Dallas other than the South Fork one. I was at the Mayborn Conference, a gathering of rather prestigious non-fiction writers and journalists. It is held at the Hilton Grapevine Lakes conference centre, which is nice enough: there is a small lake, tennis courts and such. But it’s ten minutes from the airport, next to many highways with no pavements, and it is not the best place to figure out how on earth to stick to my marathon training plan and find a 12 mile running route.

Yes, I’m back in marathon training. I’ve been pretty crap at sticking to my plan so far, and I’m ashamed about it. Partly that’s because book festival season has started and I’m all over the place. I was in County Cork for the West Cork literary festival the other week. It was fun, and a full house of people turned up at 1pm on a Friday to hear me talk, which is always delightful. And on the morning that I needed to run 9 miles, I happened upon a man at the door dressed in running gear, and we looked at each other, and I said, are you running? And he said, yes, and I reviewed your book. It was Blake Morrison, and off we went to run together for a very pleasant six miles. No, I didn’t do my nine.

There are two reasons I haven’t been sticking to my – very carefully planned – plan. The first is the travel. The second is that I can’t stop signing up for races. Jenny is very patient when I say things like, “did I tell you I’m doing the Great North Run?” or, “I’m doing a sprint triathlon on Sunday, did I mention it?”. I’m nervous about but looking forward to the triathlon, though I’ve done no Bric training (i.e. bike then run). I suppose I could rectify that by cycling to Golden Acre park tonight, where I’m doing a relay with my club, and then running 5K, but I’m worried my jetlag will manifest itself as slow legs anyway so I don’t want to give them even more to deal with. So far my swim training for the triathlon has consisted of doing a few short lengths at the hotel in Dallas, thinking, “right, I can still swim,” and hoping for the best. It’s only a 400m swim – 16 lengths – in a pool, but when my club mates say things like, “make sure you kick hard at the end of the swim because blood pools in your legs and you may feel giddy,” I start to get a little worried.

So in Dallas my plan required me to do some fartlek runs, and a 12 mile long run. On my first morning, even though I slept through to 7am when I usually wake up with jet lag at 5, I decided to run around the hotel. I knew there was a half-mile “jogging track,” so I asked the receptionist where it was, and set off on it. But then at the side of the track I saw a track going off into some woods, then another track, then I found another track that led to a paddock with horses (the hotel had a “ranch” bit).

I managed to make a 2-mile loop out of the half-mile jogging track. I was lucky with the weather. It’s usually infernally hot in Texas at this time of year, but a weather front similar to a polar vortex but not actually a polar vortex had brought cooler weather, so that when I sat outside, I had to wear two sweaters. I am not complaining: I much prefer to run in cooler weather than hot. Though with the ferocity of the air conditioning inside, I never got to remove my sweaters even when it did get hot again.

For my long run, I couldn’t face running the same loop ten times, so I did my Kathmandu technique. I searched for Grapevine, TX runners, and found the Lake Grapevine Runners and Walkers (RAW) club. Lake Grapevine was five miles from the hotel, and apparently has a 60-mile perimeter. RAW did 8 and 12 mile runs on Sundays. So I wrote to their email address and within five minutes Joe, the club president, had written back and said I’d be most welcome to join them, and that they met at their clubhouse near the lake, and could I come a few minutes before they set off at 7?

I could. I did. And it was great. The sun was already shining hard by then (the polar vortex was on its way out), and at the clubhouse I found a couple of dozen people in rather fine and colourful running kit – I LOVE buying running kit in the US – ready to run or walk. They were going to do 8 miles, but said I could do another 4 after that. We set off. Joe was a walker, so I set off running with a lovely Parisian woman, 20 years in Texas, named Helene. I carried a water bottle, because after all this was Texas, but then after a mile, lo: RAW sends out a volunteer before every run to put out water stations! How cool is that? I know that we don’t have much cause for water stations in Leeds temperatures, but still, I was very impressed.

The route ran on roads skirting the lake but not on lake paths. The paths were quite busy: early morning is exercising time in Texas. Later when I went to the nearby shopping mall, I was flabbergasted at how many obese people there are, as I am every time I go back to the US. I was also shocked to see two TV ads that starred obese people, but that were advertising products totally unrelated to diet (one was for Febreze). So the obese people were there to denote the norm. That is shocking. It’s so odd, because the US also has such a strong health and fitness culture, which is why so many people were out running, walking, cycling at 7am on a Sunday morning. I know how to solve America’s obesity by the way: cut every portion in half. Every portion of food I was served could have fed three people.

So I had a great run with the RAW lot, and invited them to come and run in Leeds or the Yorkshire Dales (which of course I rarely get to) if they ever come over. I won’t bang on about the tribe of runners, but it is great to know that exercising and running and being outdoors can be something that brings total strangers together. I never did do the extra four miles though.

And it’s always good to come home:

June 24, 2014

Grief

It’s been a horrible week. I have two cats who I got from Leeds Cat Rescue in January. Mother and daughter, Tamcat and Dora. I love them both very much. They are funny, affectionate, curious. On Friday Tamcat was killed by a car a nearby road, which she was crossing to get to the park. I was out, but my neighbours recognised her body and phoned me. They had very carefully wrapped her in a towel, placed her in a box and sellotaped the box so that foxes couldn’t get in. But I had to bury her: it was 10pm on a Friday night and I didn’t know what else to do and didn’t want to leave her out for foxes. I unwrapped her and saw that she had a massive head injury and her legs were broken. There was blood coming out of both her ears and her eyes were open. I really hope that means that she died instantly, and I think she did because my neighbour Natasha had been stroking her only five minutes before some other neighbours told me they thought the dead cat on the road came from our terrace.

So I buried her, and cried a lot. Her daughter Dora seemed OK. She is eating and sleeping, though also sniffing and miaowing. And the reason I’ve put this in a running blog is because I wanted to write about grief. I really loved my cat, and I am grieving for her. And I would have thought that meant that I immediately went off and tried to get rid of my grief by running. But I didn’t want to run. Not at all. It seemed inconceivable. I was supposed to run a 15 mile race on Saturday and I’d been really looking forward to it. On the phone on that Friday night, my mother – whose usual reaction to my running is “don’t overdo it” – said, “I think you should run,” and I snapped NO. It was a violent reaction but I couldn’t think of anything worse than driving an hour to a race and then running. So I withdrew from the race and spent the day quietly, hanging out with Dora, seeing friends, drinking too much. And I still didn’t want to run.

On Sunday though I did. I ran with Norrie and Dean around Harewood again, and it helped, even though we cleverly waited for the hottest time of the day to do it and even though we had planned to do two laps and only just managed one. It helped enough that even after doing a hard training session on Monday morning at the gym, I ran five miles in the evening with Veggie Runners.

I wish I could think of something more profound to write about exercise and grieving, but I can’t. I’ve encountered too much death in my life and I don’t think I’m getting any better at grieving. But I’m sad, but I’m running.

June 19, 2014June 19, 2014

Post Hill

Ten days. Quite a lot of running. Not a lot of writing. First, an adjustment: I was actually running at the right pace for the intervals, as I saw when I uploaded the Garmin data. Damn.

But first. Nothing on Saturday as I went down and back to Oxford for a commemorative service for departed members of my old college, Somerville, which included Louise. I must salute here the deputy principal, who read short obituaries of 45 people, in ascending order of their age, and managed to make each one sound interesting. (“Somervillians are known for their great achievements. After graduating, X became a librarian in Norwich.”) (Oh, that sounds like I don’t rate librarians. I do! I do.) It was an endurance race for the audience – I started to get dizzy by the time we got to the 90 year olds, and a lot of Somervillians reached 90 – but a triumph for her.

Sunday: A text from Andrew. “Do you want to run 20K up to Bramham park on Sunday?”
A text from me. “No.”

Andrew has been injured and off running, but he gets his fitness back quickly and then he goes ambitious. I managed to restrain his Scott Jurek tendencies, and we arranged to meet at 8 to run around the Leeds Country Way. The last time I did that route was with Janey in horizontal driving rain. This time it was raining, but also warm. For the first few miles all was well. Nobody was about, the rain stopped, the view was serene. Then we ran through East Keswick, up the hill (which I walked: more later on why), and got on to the path that leads down to the River Wharfe.

A jungle. Everything had grown lusciously and insistently. It looked like my allotment mixed with the Amazonian forest, only there were nettles instead of tropical plants. We got to the river OK, ran along it, then switched to running in a field. I stayed in the field, Andrew ran on the path, as they were parallel, and then suddenly they weren’t, and I had gone too far to get back to the path. I carried on going. Andrew’s shouts got fainter. I found myself like Dante Alighieri:

Nel mezzo del cammino di nostra vita
Per una selva oscura
Che la dritta via era smarrita

Ie. In the middle of dark wood in the middle of my life, lost. I am in the middle of my life, probably, but the wood wasn’t dark, it was just a forest of nettles. There were banks and banks of them, and I was in my usual summer running outfit of vest and shorts. Eventually though as I had no idea where to go, and it seemed going through the wood was the only option, I had to push through a bank of nettles, walk through a wood, climb over a barbed wire fence and lo! There was Andrew running up to meet me.

We carried on, running through a field of sweetcorn, then broad beans (these are facts I know now, having an allotment). Neither of us could recognise the path any more, because the views had all become greenery. Everything seemed to attack us. Spiky comfrey, sticky sticky weed, ever-stinging nettles. The best thing to do is persevere, so we did, and then at the end of the field, after I had spent half an hour wishing my crops looked like those crops, there was the track up to Harrogate Road. I walked it, because once again my legs were knackered. I’ve been trying to adjust my diet because I’m eating too many processed carbohydrates and not enough protein, so maybe that’s why. Or I’ve not been drinking enough and am dehydrated. Or it was just one of those days.

On Harrogate Road, there was a huge amount of traffic, but most of it was beautiful classic cars. We ran past some Downton Abbey ones, ducked into the permissive path through the magic garden gate. “Shall we do a lap of Harewood?” asked Andrew.

“No.”

The nettle stings still hurt today. Andrew’s legs were red and covered in angry bumps. I got home, covered my stings with anti-histamine cream, ate, slouched, then went to my allotment and dug for hours.

Monday. My artist mates Norrie and Dean, fellow-studio-holders at East Street Arts, and seriously talented artists both, are supposedly my team and I am supposedly their coach, an arrangement that grew from me nagging them about running. (Amazing. Really? I nag about running?) I’ve been running with Dean once, up around Eccup, but although Norrie talks about running a lot, I’ve never seen him do it. I know he plays football once a week, but he also eats and drinks a lot of crap. So when he said on Monday morning that he felt like doing a run later, I didn’t take him seriously. But then, at 7pm, there we were in the car driving up to Harewood. The route was their idea: I’ve run around bits of Harewood but never the whole route. That’s fine, I thought. I have to do intervals, and it’s quite flat.

No. It’s not.

That was the first surprise. Hills. The second was that of all three of us, Norrie was the fastest and most fluid. I was astonished and impressed. Dean also did well considering that – as he’d been intently sculpting all day – he hadn’t eaten anything except for a couple of biscuits. I looked at him aghast when he said that, being obsessed with my food these days, and how it can fuel me better. But he still did seven out of the eight intervals. It was a stunningly gorgeous evening and the grounds of Harewood Estate in evening sunshine are so magnificent I almost can’t run through them because I want to stop and gape. I will be back to run around it again, but not to do intervals.

So, well done team. We did eight half-mile intervals at 7.20 minute mile pace, ish. Except for the hills. I told Jenny and she said, “you’re taking too long to rest.”

Damn.

About my food obsession: I have never been on a diet. I have never wanted to be someone who counts calories. But now I do count calories. I look at what’s in Twixes and then I put the Twix down, sometimes. This makes me unusual in my running club, where blithe eat-anything, drink-anything is the prevailing attitude. And I wish it were my attitude, because I don’t want to count calories. And I shouldn’t have to, right? I train five times a week.

But I’ve put on half a stone since the marathon, and I don’t like how that feels. Apparently it’s common: your marathon appetite, which is huge, doesn’t change even when your training drastically diminishes. Also, I developed a bad habit of eating Greggs’ chocolate eclairs. Result: the scales are going up and up. I liked how I felt when I was lighter. I liked how it felt when I ran. But it’s taking me a while to get rid of my new bad habits. So today I have ordered a copy of No Meat Athlete, by Matt Frazier. Not just because of my calorie-counting and the eclairs, but because I want to fuel myself properly. When I gave Jenny my food diary, after failing to do so for ages, she pointed out that most of my meals were heavily carbohydrate, and that I was getting hardly any protein. Oh. So I made a big effort to eat protein, but now I think I’ve gone in the other direction. I ran a fast – for me – ten mile race around Otley last Wednesday, in which I got a PB despite it having three miles of hills. And generally I’ve been feeling tired and even with all my training, lethargic.

So something’s not working. Or perhaps it’s just in my head. As Andrew said when I complained of feeling a bit weak on the run: what can you blame now? Your glutes, your piriformis, your food, your sleep, your hour of squash. Just get on with it. He’s a scientist. He’s straightforward. When I asked him why I was coughing after running, he said, it’s from the bug you had, your airways are irritated, it’ll clear up in three months, that’s my diagnosis. It did. Not bad for a microbiologist.

On the other hand, this weekend I’m running a 15 mile race, and I’ve barely thought about it. That’s probably arrogant. I’ll be blithely doing marathons next.

(Unlikely.)

Then at my club run on Wednesday, I finally encountered the dreaded Post Hill. In our club, this is talked about with the reverence according to a Kraken or Minotaur. It was a beautiful evening, but hot, and we ran up through delightful Armley to Pudsey, then into some woods, and along a bit, and there it was. It’s named Post Hill after the Yorkshire Post, and even motorbikes have difficulty getting up it. So did I.

A postscript
I realise I use names of running friends and others in here without always identifying them. Here is a cast of characters:
Andrew: fellow Kirkstall Harrier
Janey: co-founder of Veggie Runners along with Bibi, & my marathon training partner to be
Norrie, Dean: artists & studio-holders at East Street Arts, where I have a studio, & my team
Jenny: my personal trainer & director of Motiv8 North

—

TRAINING
Wednesday: Otley 10 mile race
Thursday: rest
Friday: a.m. one hour squash, p.m. 3 x 0.5 mile intervals, 3 mile tempo run
Sunday: 8 mile run
Monday: 8 x 0.5 intervals
Tuesday: Personal training session
Wednesday: 8 mile club run including Post Hill & other hills. Too many other hills.