Marathon - AnnaTheApple

September 22, 2014

Drowning iPhones, beetroot and chocolate fudge cake

One week, one week, one week…before the Berlin marathon. To say I’m terrified is something of an understatement.

The weekend was nice and relaxed though thankfully. Friday night we went out to Nando’s again with friends. Nando’s is becoming dangerously addictive! On Saturday morning I was tempted to go to parkrun to do an easy gentle 5k but after running 10k on Thursday night and cross-training Friday I decided to be super sensible and go pool running instead.

Float time in the swimming pool…

Like last time I took my waterproof iPhone cover and Bluetooth headphones so I could listen to music and keep myself entertained. I was just doing my thing when suddenly my music stopped. I looked over to the side where I left my iPhone and saw it had vanished. Uh oh. I looked down in the water to see it glowing at the bottom of the pool. A small child had managed to knock it in accidentally. He stood there looking all guilty and said “Shall I dive down to fetch it?”… “err yeah” I said, trying my best not to panic. Luckily it was fine and the child lived on for another day. Whew. So 35 minutes of pool running went OK other than that incident.

The rest of the day was non-descript but in a lovely “got no plans” kind of way. Lots of walks with Alfie and watching Kings of Summer (which I highly recommend).

Sunday morning was long run time. I set my alarm for 8am and decided to test out a possible pre-marathon breakfast. My plan is to have two of the Beet It flapjacks before the race. They’re 235 calories each so my thinking was two would be perfect for a good breakfast and I get the whole beetroot benefits (boosting endurance).

Alfie was very interested

I’ve tried the bars before but just at work when I fancy a snack. They’re so tasty – kind of earthy but sweet and crumbly. Anyway I had two and then got myself ready and took Alfie for a longer walk than I usually would before a run, just to give myself a good amount of digestion time.

My tummy felt a bit strange after eating two bars. Not like I was sick or anything would happen, but just not completely right. I instantly regretted eating the bars and decided there and then to stick to my usual porridge before the marathon. I was sad about the bars but it was worth a shot.

On the actual run though my stomach was fine and I just got on with, well, running. I aimed to stay at around 8.30mins/mile as this is nice and easy. I felt quite slow if I’m honest but on my second mile I looked at my watch and found I was storming along 7.30-45mins/mile! I immediately slowed down. I continued letting my mind drift and listen to my podcast and realised I had sped up again.

But it didn’t feel tough at all. This was dangerous territory to be on and I snapped myself out of it and forced myself to slow down. This is not the time I want to have the best run of the month – that’s next week I hope! I need to save it for then, not on a training run.

Anyway the run went fine. No shin discomfort. Just a normal run – woooohooooo! And afterwards I just felt normal aches and tiredness like I would after a long run. And even today I feel fine! I can hardly believe it.

Now this might be completely coincidental but I could it have been the beetroot bars that helped? I felt so fresh and good on the run and even when I was running faster I felt like I was running a minute slower. Now I’m confused. But I do still have the Beet It shots which give the same amount of beetroot power as the bars and then I can still have my porridge. So I need to trial a shot before a morning run this week…

After the run I got showered and we headed to a local pub to have lunch with my parents and Ben’s mum.

Family lunch

I realise my choice of food is odd but hey ho. I had a mango chicken salad to start and, er, a chicken, beetroot and goat’s cheese salad for main…with sweet potato fries 😉 You might have thought I’d have had enough beetroot at this point. You would be wrong.

And pudding…oh pudding, how I do love you. I had a hot chocolate fudge cake with ice cream. Need I say it was to die for?

It was such a lovely lunch.

And cheers to my dad for the lovely ski whiffed photo!

After walking Alfie when I got back, this is pretty much what I felt like for the rest of the afternoon:

Knackered

What did you get up to this weekend?

Are you good with small children? Or children in general really? I am not.

Are you a starter or a pudding person? It really depends for me, usually I will only go for one but I was quite hungry. Normally it’s pudding if they have something good.

September 17, 2014

Tapering? Don’t make me laugh

I just wanted to say a big thank you to the Tweets and comments regarding my last post, it’s given Ben a lot to think about! The fact of the matter is, we’re going to Berlin come what may. Whether both of us or one of us runs the marathon is anyone’s guess at this point.

If all continues to go as well as it is for me then I will be running it. The only thing that will stop me running is if I go on a run and there is sharp pain. At no point have I actually felt any pain – it’s all discomfort and tightness, like a pulling on my shin. A few weeks ago I stopped a run because the discomfort was so bad. It wasn’t pain per se but it was just so uncomfortable to run on – does that make any sense?

Anyway, after seeing my physio last week and Kyle, my go-to sports massage therapist – both are confident I will run the marathon and have said that my shin is fine now. Just need to convince my over-working over-analysing brain…

Anyway, I thought I might update you on my ‘marathon training’ considering that I haven’t done that in a while and hey why not considering it’s less than two weeks away. Now that the injury has passed (TOUCH WOOD) I just have the simple worry of actually getting round the marathon. Like for Paris, I’ve set myself a realistic target (well, apart from just finishing!) My planned pace is very realistic (in theory) as it’s very much an easy pace for me.

So this is last week’s training:

Monday: 6 miles easy run

Tuesday: 40 minutes on the cross-trainer/elliptical machine (5 minute warm-up, 45 seconds hard, 1 minute easy repeated, 5 minutes cool down)

Tough!

– 2.5mins plank
– 4x 15/leg single leg squat
– 4.5mins crab walk
– 4x 26 Russian twists
– 200/leg clams with resistance band

Wednesday: One hour of yoga (loving this!)

Thursday: 3 miles easy run at lunch and 15 miles speedy (to me!) bike session

Friday: 30 minutes on the cross-trainer/elliptical machine. Didn’t have as much time as usual so tried to blast it.

– 2.5mins plank
– 15x 4 single leg squat

Post workout happy selfie

It was one of those workouts that I felt great about! I really enjoyed it and felt amazing afterwards.

Saturday: One BORING hour of pool running. It all started off great with my waterproof iPhone cover and my Bluetooth headphones listening to a podcast trying to ignore the small people splashing around on floats (I tried to limit my Death Stare a little). Then my headphones ran out of battery.

See the float in the background? I had so many of those things bump into me.

Honestly, nothing is more boring than pool running. I literally stared at the clock. I even did intervals just to pass the time quicker. I felt like this was a seriously successful workout not only in terms of fitness but psychologically – it really tested my mental endurance.

Sunday: The long run I’d been dreading… 11 miles. I was going to do 10 but then I realised two weeks before Paris marathon I did an 11 miler and superstition told me to do that extra mile if I felt good. And I did, so I did. No shin issues before or after…bit of tightness the day after but nothing hugely remarkable. Fitness-wise I feel good. Endurance-wise? Eh…no idea really. I didn’t feel like I was dead on my knees during or after this run, wasn’t tired in the day and the next day I had no muscles aches – it was like I hadn’t run. Good sign? But only 11 miles…! Apart from endurance my big concern is the effect of the pounding on the roads that running does…nothing but running proper can train your body for that.

What workouts did you enjoy last week?

Do you need music/entertainment to get you through some workouts?

Are you superstitious? I didn’t think I was until now!

September 15, 2014September 15, 2014

A post from a husband needing advice…

Today I am taking a back seat on the blogging front and letting my husband take the reigns as he needs some advice…

Hi everyone, I’m Ben. You know of me as Anna’s husband if you read her blog! I’ve been running for 18 months now. I gave up smoking last march and running keeps me off the cigarettes. I’ve run 2 marathons – both disasters! For Portsmouth I had a torn hip flexor and was in pain from mile 8 (read about that fun time HERE). And for Paris I had cramp from mile 4! Berlin was going to be my “good race”.

I have been struggling with an injury for some time and I always expected it would recover weeks, if not months, before the Berlin marathon. However, here I am less than 2 weeks before Berlin and I haven’t ran in over 5 weeks! I need some blogger advice from runners so I thought I would hijack Anna’s blog to ask anyone reading this…

It all started surprisingly enough in marathon training. I went out and ran an 18 miler, averaging 40secs per mile slower than marathon pace and I felt my hamstring get a bit tight. It wasn’t enough to stop me but was enough that I could feel it. The day after it was tight but I thought it was just a tight muscle so took an extra rest day and then ran a local RR10 (local 4-5 mile race). Again after the race it was tight so I took another extra rest day before running Ultra 12 (a 12 hour through the night relay race).

Did I mention we won it? I’ve never won anything before in my life! I don’t run to win; I’m not a fast runner so this was a big deal.

I ran 4 x 5 mile laps and after each one my hamstring was agony. That was the start of my break. I took 10 days off. In that time I went to physio, he wasn’t bothered and said take time off. The hamstring was tight because of an issue with my back. That was also causing pain in my knee which was more painful than the tight hamstring. I listened to him and decided to take time off, not run, I kept my fitness by cycling and occasionally swimming. I expected to be running within a few weeks.

The last 6 weeks have been a pretty bad time for me, I know Anna has been injured on and off for a while and I have tried my best to support her throughout that time but it is tough to support an injured dejected runner. When it was my turn to get injured my usual positivity around injuries was replaced by negativity and almost a defeated attitude. I haven’t eaten well and have drank more alcohol than usual. Mainly because that’s what I do, if I can’t run I eat cake, chocolate, fast food and drink beer and wine.

Anna’s drink of choice (squash) and mine (wine)

Anyway, enough of that. There is a light at the end of the tunnel and it looks like I might be able to do a run this weekend. My hamstring is still ridiculously tight but I have to at least try the run. If it goes badly then I will have to admit defeat and say Berlin is off. I will go and support Anna and get absolutely obliterated on German beer.

But what if the run goes ok? I have kept up my fitness so that I can run the marathon but can I actually get around 26.2 miles with such a lack of miles in my legs? My plan if I run it is to go out at 9 min miles (3:57 marathon time). Ironically if I ran this consistently then I would PB. But I am not going for a time. Anyway, if I go out at 9 min miles (which is a comfortable pace for me the last time I ran) then I push that as far as I can – hopefully 15-18 miles. The next 11-8 miles are then going to be a world of pain, walk running to get to the end. I know the sensible thing would be to not run it but I mean seriously – this is Berlin. I am not after a time, I just want to get around.

What do you all think?

September 4, 2014

Where’s my head at? Marathon woes

Hurrah, Thursday! Unfortunately yesterday felt like Thursday to me…which is slightly annoying today. Hey ho!

Tuesday I saw my physio again. He says my shin seems a lot better. It does feel better but it still doesn’t feel completely right. It’s weird. It’s not a pain or a sharp feeling. It’s more like a discomfort and a tugging at my shin, if that makes any sense? If I push quite firmly at it there are tender areas but no sharp jump-out-of-my-seat pains. On the runs leading up to having time off I’ve felt it as a kind of nagging discomfort, until finally I knew I had to stop because if I pushed through it would turn to pain. Then afterwards it feels tender and I could feel it when I walked – that discomfort and pulling sensation.

Anyway, he told me I could run the next day – nothing crazy, just three miles. He said to stop if I feel any sort of pain or sharp stabbing feeling. A certain level of discomfort is fine though. I was going to run Wednesday morning but after a 20 mile bike ride the night before I decided to leave it until Wednesday evening after work. Also this way my body would be nice and warm and loose rather than all tired, cold and tight from being asleep so recently.

I felt sick all day thinking about running. How did I get here? How did running become such an anxiety for me? I was literally scared to run. I didn’t want to run but knew that it would be worse if I didn’t because I would continue to wonder how the shin was. I had had just over a week off of running, two sessions with my physio…this run was, on paper, set up to be good.

As soon as I started running I felt weird: stiff, strange…but the shin felt fine. I felt fine. As the run continue the shin did niggle from time to time but nothing like before. It didn’t alter my gait or speed. After the run it was tender but nothing horrendous. I stretched and iced. Today it feels OK. Not amazing but not as bad as it has previously the day after a run.

I have no idea what this means though. Really the test will be the next time I run, which is Saturday and again just three miles. I look back at my ‘training’ for Paris and I’m trying to compare it to understand where I’m at.

I’m happy (‘happy’ being a very loose word there) to run Berlin as long as the shin issue has gone. I can’t plough on through 26 miles in pain or discomfort and then be out for months afterwards. That’s not how I roll. But if the shin issue goes and in the two weeks leading up to the marathon my runs are feeling relatively normal (I’m under no illusion that everything will suddenly feel absolutely perfect) and the shin is not getting any worse then I can run Berlin. Any ideas of improving my times or hitting any certain goals obviously are gone, but just to enjoy the run like I did for Paris will be more than I can dream of at the moment.

It is four and a half weeks from Berlin. For Paris I had sprained my ankle when it was four weeks from the marathon date, and had to take two weeks off. But that was an acute injury that disappeared quite quickly. Who knows about this shin issue?

If you were me, what would you do?

Have you ever had shin splints?

Any advice out there would be marvellous!

August 28, 2014August 28, 2014

Ice bucket challenge and fitness trackers

Winter is coming. It definitely feels like it anyway. Blimmin’ freezing, intermittent rain, darker evenings, darker mornings.

Perfect timing for my ice bucket challenge one evening after work after being nominated by my lovely husband. I sat outside and I was so cold before it had even begun. We’ve both donated to the Motor Neurone Disease Association (find out how to donate HERE – or text ICED55 to 70070 ).

It was absolutely freezing and one of the worst experience I’ve had in a while. But I’m glad I did it. I squealed like a girl and ran inside straight away.

I think these challenges are brilliant for raising so much money and awareness for MND, ALS (the US version of the charity) and other charities too. Though I agree that millions of people (myself included) throwing perfectly good drinking water over their heads is a bit of kick in the teeth to the water charities trying to get sustainable and clean sources of water to developing countries. I think Matt Damon’s ice bucket challenge was a good example of raising awareness of this and watching it made me feel bad afterwards. Perhaps I should have run into the sea like I’ve seen quite a few people do? Either way, money is being raised and that’s something at least.

I am trying not to panic too much about the marathon at the moment. I’m living in a little bubble of apathy. I have about 4.5 weeks to go. The furthest I’ve run is 13.1 miles. I’ve run this quite a few times and feel good in terms of endurance. I only ran a few 13 milers (and one 15 miler weeks and weeks) before the Paris marathon. My concern though is that I’m banking too much on how good my experience was for Paris…surely I can’t be that lucky again right?

I can’t run for 10 days (well less than that now) and honestly I don’t even know what to think. If I dwell on this too much I get very sad. Why does running hate me so? Maybe I should have had a long time off after Paris? Probably. But I can’t dwell on what I should have done at the moment. I can’t dwell on it at all otherwise I will get very down – and I sound like such a broken record I’m sure. One thing for certain is 2014 has been an epically bad year of running for me so far.

I’m keeping my fitness up by cycling, using the dreaded cross trainer in our gym at work at lunchtime and have just purchased a floatation belt for…aqua running. I have no idea how that’s going to pan out but I plan to find out at the weekend. My physio said it’s a great idea as it’s still running but without the impact. I can run as much as like in the pool with no ill effects on my shin. Hurrah. I’ve also bought a waterproof iPod holder because I’m pretty sure it’s going to be about as exciting as watching paint dry. And I’m under no illusion that it won’t be hard work either.

On a more exciting note…Ben and me bit the bullet and bought the Garmin fitness tracker the Vivofit.

We originally had the Fitbits but Ben’s started to play up and there were different things about it that we disliked. For example, you can’t see how many steps you’ve actually done without looking at your phone (though there are lights that give you some indication of how close to your goal you are). You can change your goal but it’s a manual process. Normally it’s 10,000 steps. It does track sleep and it has a nice little vibrate on it for an alarm that you can set.

The Garmin is just so much more superior though. It actually has the time on it, the date, how many steps you’ve done, how that equates to miles, how close or over your goal you are and how many calories you’ve burnt (which I guess is taken from your personal data and steps). It auto updates your goal so if 10,000 is easy for you it bumps it up, or bumps it down if you’re not hitting your goal. You don’t have to charge it every week which was so annoying about the Fitbit. The battery for the Vivofit lasts a year and then you buy another battery. I also use a Garmin watch to track my runs so it uses the same Garmin Connect app which is nice.

And it tracks your sleep as well.

All very interesting. I love stuff like this as it honestly encourages me to walk and move more. As I can’t run I’m very conscious of the activity I do and take Alfie for longer walks and move more at work.

I’d really recommend the Vivofits if that’s your thing. I’m a data geek so it really appeals to me! I could hook my HR monitor up to it as well (more data!) but I’m still nursing my sore chest (least that will heal nicely before I ravage it again running!)

Have you done the ice bucket challenge? What are your thoughts?

Have you ever done aqua running? Any tips?

Do you own or want a fitness tracker?