So I am a quarter of the way through my training schedule and so far I can’t complain, it has gone pretty well. By the end of the week I am feeling pretty tired, I have the aches and pains I would expect and I know the 2nd month is going to become more difficult, especially the long runs, but overall I am in quite a buoyant mood.
The one thing that helped me immensely during the first month is simply being organised. I’m sure most of you are in the same boat, juggling work, family, social life and more work. In December my wife bought a family planning calendar. When I say family planning calendar, it isn’t a calendar with images of various methods of contraception plastered all over it, no one wants to see a festive looking diaphragm in December. What I mean is, a monthly planner for the family, so Mum, Dad and children each have their separate columns to fill in their important dates, appointments, meetings and so on. Physically writing out my training regime actually helped me mentally prepare for it.
There is an old football cliche which you may have heard before. It’s normally used in post match interviews, when players just want to be in the changing room celebrating with their team mates, but instead they get hauled in front of those ridiculous advertising boards with about a hundred different brands all vying for your attention. Most of the time I sit there not listening to the player being interviewed, but thinking to myself, ‘I could really do with a Mars bar right now?’ or ‘I must pick up some Castrol GTX when I’m in Halford’s next time.’ The reason I drift off is because those interviews are full of cliches (to escape the tedium, why not play footballer cliche bingo with friends? It doesn’t take long to get a full house). One of the most prolific cliches, which is used in approximately 96.4% of interviews, is where the interviewer refers to a future fixture. He will ask ‘So, great win today, you must be looking forward to the derby match in two weeks time?’ The player replies, ‘Erm…..y’know……erm… we’ve got a tough game next week….erm… away from…erm… home so we’ve just gotta take it one game at a time….erm.’
I know I am mocking footballers a little here and deep down I would really like to see them try and take on two games of football at one time, but in some ways I have applied this cliche to my running schedule. It is easy to be overawed initially when you plan marathon training. I used to drown my palms in sweat at the very thought of months 3 and 4. Now though, with a month of solid training in the tank, I can safely say, concentrating on the next run ahead of me, one run at a time has made me more confident about reaching my goal and allowed me mentally to manage the volume of training.
I’d like to share a couple of highlights with you all as I am sure you don’t want an account of every one of my training sessions so far.
If you’ve read my blog before, you will know that my Dad has been a keen runner also for 30 odd years. He is always a good sounding board for training ideas and has helped coach me over the past few years. I was talking to him about planning my long runs one day over a pint in the pub and he told me how he used to plan his long runs back in the day before GPS watches and smartphones were readily available. He used to ask his Dad to pick him up from his house, set the trip meter in the car to ‘0’ and drive out randomly until they reached the desired mileage he wanted to run that day. So as soon as the trip meter showed 13 miles, my Dad would hop out, wave goodbye to my Granddad and run back in the direction they just came from. That way he could be sure that he was doing the correct mileage and reap the full benefit of the training session. This sounded kind of fun to me. I never want my long runs to become stale, so I try and change the route as much as possible so this appealed to me.
We made plans that the following Sunday, he would pick me up from my house and drive out into the countryside for 9 miles, kick me out and find my own way back. Now, I live on the edge of town in a small village, so my location is pretty rural anyway, but my Dad proceeded to drive to a place that was so rural, the people that live there didn’t even know it existed. At 9 miles I jumped out, said my goodbye’s and proceeded to look around me. There was nothing but countryside and a road. Off into the distance I could see a wind farm, but the only wind farm that I knew of locally was in a different county altogether, which was a little disconcerting. Before I started to panic, I knew that I was only 9 miles from home, I’d looked at the trip meter before I left the car, this was definitely 9 miles from home, so I was not particularly far from my destination and I thought I’d paid enough attention on the way here to work out my route back.
So I followed my nose back home with vim and vigor and also a touch of trepidation. The wind was taken out of my sails almost immediately by three fairly sizable hills to navigate, but once I’d cleared those I was nicely warmed up and ready for the challenge. That sense of being slightly uneasy with my surroundings helped me pace the run well, I noticed at the half way point that I was running quicker than planned, but felt good, so I continued. Once I’d located where I was and felt comfortable with my surroundings it was a pleasant run, apart from a few parts where road and path turned into muddy track, long grass and finally squelchy, rain sodden turf that swallowed me up and spat me back out. So if you ever get bored of your long weekend runs, maybe this idea will spice things up for you.
To help with motivation during my marathon training, I decided to join a running club last year and it is something I would thoroughly recommend. My running has come on leaps and bounds since I joined my club and it has given me the opportunity to meet a whole bunch of like minded people I would have never of met. Running is now not always a solitary past time for me, with regular organised club runs every week, if I don’t fancy trudging around with just ol’ muggins here for company, I don’t have to. Running during the winter months can sometimes be soul destroying, but now I have a support and motivation network which helps immensely. Our running club is quite diverse as well, it caters for all ages and abilities. The club also doesn’t discriminate based on how you earn your living. Most of the members hold regular 9-5 jobs or they’re tradesman, teachers, nurses, that sort of thing. However, there is the odd exception. We have recently had a magician join our ranks. We might have to watch him closely though if club records start to tumble. A week after Paul Daniel’s joined we welcomed another new member, who predominantly works away from the UK protecting vessels at sea from Somali pirates. Chalk and Cheese, but that’s what makes clubs such as ours so interesting.
Keep on running and fundraising Team Lullaby!
