Make It Easy On Yourself

Make It Easy On Yourself


Hello again!

After enjoying a long weekend which lasted until Wednesday, what with one public holiday and another, I got a good week's running in. My easy staple runs are now of 7-8 miles when only recently they were no more than 4-5, the pace seems to be improving with no perceptible increase in effort, and my longer workout of a Sunday is up to 12 miles. The weekly total this time round was 38.8 miles (62.5kms), so everything is going to plan.

On Saturday I decided to revisit what was a kind of tradition in my marathon training a few years ago, a tempo run. I always used to do these on a Saturday, starting with a 4-5-mile effort and gradually building up to 8-10 miles as the weeks passed. They are hard work but doable, and while they leave your legs tired for the long Sunday run, that is A Good Thing, apparently, as it replicates the sensations of race day, when you are necessarily going to run a bloody long way on tired legs and just keep going anyway.

Before I went out on Saturday I had a look through my past training logs to see the kind of thing I was doing and to be honest, I wish I hadn't, because it frightened me a bit to see what I was capable of in those days, compared to now. But if I've learnt anything in all this time, it's that you have to be realistic about your goals and be patient in building up to them. So I decided that I would do a 1km warm-up, do 7 kms (4.4 miles) hard-ish and then cool down with a final kilometre.

So I did exactly that on the mean streets of Ventanielles, Oviedo, which are at least flat, and found to my surprise that while the pace was nothing to write home about (4:19/km on average), I was always in control and could have gone faster and longer. Nonetheless, the idea (from one of the respected training gurus whose name escapes me at present) that you should never try to "beat the session" is a wise one, so I left it at that, and instead resolved to build on that distance and intensity over the coming weeks and months.

I felt great all day Saturday, but then it came to Sunday morning and as soon as I woke up I knew I was going to be in for a struggle. It was another beautiful morning but cold this time, around 5ºC, as I headed out of the house and up to the city centre. I have mentioned before on here that the first couple of miles are always a bit grim, but that then I tend to settle into a decent pace and just let the miles fly by. This time, however, my legs let me know in no uncertain terms that they were not happy, and it wasn't until about 9 miles (14kms) that I finally started to feel any better and was able to lengthen my stride a touch and pick up the pace for the final stretch of the run. In the end I did 11.9 miles (19.1 kms), at an average 7:43mm (4:48/km), and it just shows how rubbish I was feeling that I couldn't even be bothered to complete the round 12 miles for statistics' sake!

The truth is, it hurt, and more worryingly, my knee hurt. It was more than the usual level of discomfort. My knee is in a terrible old state:


Can you tell which is the dodgy one?

I actually felt real pain, and while it wasn't enough to force me to stop, it was the only thing I could think about as I dragged myself around the city for an hour and a half. Looking on the positive side, after I had taken Ibuprofen, iced it, and had a hot bath, it felt better, and I was able to go out walking round the city en route to A Good Lunch.

But there remained - and still remains - this general sensation of feeling beaten-up and bruised, and so I am going to do two things about it.

This week I was supposed to be Week One of my prescribed 18-week training plan, but instead I'm going to follow some more time-honoured advice and listen to my body for once. It is clearly telling me to take it a bit easy for a while, so this week I'm not going to do very much at all. I definitely do need a few days to recoup, mentally as well as physically. This morning, I made a cup of tea. Nothing unusual in itself, that, but whereas normally I would swill it down, lace up my trainers and head out the door, today I took it back to bed with me. Oh, the decadence!

The other thing I'm going to do is bin my trainers. I mean, just look at the state of them:

Note particularly the way the left heel is worn down to nothing. This is what's visible , but I shudder to think just how little they've been protecting me over recent weeks, given that the cushioning must be absolutely battered into submission by now. I've done more than 700km in them, which is a lot for a heavyweight like me,

So it's a very good job that the new shoes I ordered arrived about an hour ago. Typically, I had waited at home all morning for the courier to come. I thought it would be safe to leg it out to the supermarket and get some water (the whole neighbourhood has been without water supply since last night, with no warning), but just as I got back, there he was, just driving off. I managed to flag him down and stop him, and so happily, I have got my new trainers after all. Compare them with the old ones (ignoring the colour difference, of course):

I would just rest up for the whole week, and damn well enjoy it, too  but on Saturday afternoon I have another of my favourite races of the year, the 8 Kilómetros de Castrillón. Curiously, it's not 8kms at all, but 8.460kms, something I wish I'd known the first time they changed the distance! My final, desperate sprint for the line, or what I thought was the line, made me look a bit ridiculous as I realised too late that I had to turn a corner and keep going...

Anyway, as it's the last event before Christmas, there's always a festive atmosphere, with 1,600 participants. There are kids' events beforehand, so many people come with the whole family in tow, meaning the crowd support is excellent, especially at the finish. It also means another trip to the seaside for me, as the race goes from the nondescript town of Piedras Blancas to the beach resort of Salinas, and back again.

Therefore I suppose if only for confidence's sake I'd better do some sort of training this week. I'll probably get out tomorrow morning to see how I feel, and then do something involving bursts of something approaching speed on Friday morning.

So, next time I'll be back with the gory details of the race...and of my work's Christmas dinner which follows it on Saturday night. Will I make it out on Sunday for another 12-miler, as optimistically planned?

Thanks once again for reading, and until next time, take care and enjoy yourselves.

Bye for now!


Make It Easy On Yourself