Running - AnnaTheApple

June 9, 2014

Here we go again…

Today starts the first day of the rest of my life. Alternatively, the first day of Marathon Training.

Oh Running God, high on the fluffy track clouds in the sky, please let this training cycle go better than my last. Please let me not get injured and miss weeks of training. Please let things go smoothly. I don’t mind being tired or bored or fed up. I don’t mind getting up before 6am to run. I don’t mind getting rained on, running in heat, wind, or snow (it’s Britain, who knows). I don’t mind getting blisters. I don’t mind gaining weight with excessive food consumption, more muscle (fingers crossed) and water retention. I don’t mind getting insatiable runger.

I just want to train. Yes I am fully aware it will be tough but I am mentally ready. I don’t think though that my mental state can cope with another injury. Niggles, aches, tiredness – fine, I can deal with those. But a proper injury. PLEASE NO.

Got that Running God? Good. Now let’s get down to business.

The Plan

This time around it’s going to be a bit different from my last plan for Paris. Well, the plan I had aimed to do but never actually because I got injured and had to slapdash a lot of it. Clearly I am an injury prone runner (*cringes*). To tempt fate with running very long runs is probably not a good idea for me. I know it’s important for ‘time on your feet’ but honestly I think it’s just going to push my body over the edge. In the future, when I’m more experienced and my body is stronger, then fine but not right now. I also don’t think I need to run 18+ milers to calm me psychologically. I know I can run a marathon now.

I also won’t be doing big weekly mileage. Ideally I top out at 37 miles but I’m also happy to lower that depending how things go. My plan is more about consistency than pushing my body to the limit.

Maybe this plan sounds fairly basic and ‘beginnery’ but at this point, after all my stupid injury issues, I think this is the best way forward. A cautious approach, if you like.

As you can see, there’s between 4-5 days a week running depending what I’ve got going on. A fair few races as well (RR10s and half marathons). I wanted to make sure I had two strength sessions a week as well. These are 45-60 minute weight sessions focusing on glutes, core, hamstrings, calfs/shins, etc. This is to aid injury prevention (here’s hoping).

I’ll do a speed-specific session on Tuesday (either with the club or on my own), a tempo run Thursday mornings and Parkrun on Saturdays (but not necessarily racing them). My Sunday longer runs and anything in between will all be easy paced (except for my goal half marathon in Maidenhead).

There’s no cross-training in there. I don’t want to overload my body. I found spinning with running a nightmare mix and just made me more inclined to get injured. Maybe the odd bike ride or swim will appear but nothing crazy.

My longer runs top out at 16 miles. But I will be running fairly medium distances the days before so this should (in a bastardized Hansons method approach) tire my legs, replicating what it will feel like in a marathon. I didn’t want to go the whole hog with the Hansons method because I’m not ready to run six days a week and the mileage goes higher than I’m comfortable with. So I dropped the Monday run and lowered some of the other runs.

Another main change for me will be not running with the running club on Thursday evenings. The majority of my runs (apart from Parkruns) will be solo runs in the morning. As much as I love my running club and love the Thursday night sessions, I find that I stop listening to my body and run faster and further than I should. By running on my own I can stay in tune with any niggles and pace my run exactly how I need to (hold certain tempo paces for a certain time for example). I’m sad about it but I know it’s for the best. Plus I love running in the morning rather than the evening.

None of this though is set in stone. My main aim for this marathon training is consistent injury-free running. So regular sports massages will hopefully happen as well to keep things in tip top shape as much as possible.

Whew. So that’s it. Who knows if it’ll work. I do have a time aim in mind for Berlin, but I’ll keep that to myself for the moment. It’s nothing dramatically different to Paris. Paris has given me the confidence that I know I can run a bit faster because I felt so comfortable all the way and finished without feeling like I was at death’s door. But we’ll see!

Anyone else training for a specific race or marathon?

What are your top tips to staying injury free?

What have you learnt about your body over the years when it comes to exercising?

June 6, 2014

Running ain’t cheap

Being ill really sucks. I couldn’t believe that I woke up Monday morning, after getting back from North Wales the afternoon before, feeling incredibly sick. I thought it was just something I ate but as the day progressed I just felt worse and worse. Luckily (?) I had the day off from work anyway so I just laid on the sofa in a miserable state of achiness and lethargy.

All that fresh air and I get ill! Unbelievable. Well it took until Tuesday evening before I felt human again. Ben woke up feeling rough on Tuesday as well so we had a day off work together, both pathetically lying on the sofa. At least we’d recently signed up to Netflix so we just watched a lot of Breaking Bad (sooooo good).

I went to work on Wednesday feeling much better. We had another RR10 race that evening and had planned on going but I got stuck in ridiculous traffic (how many times have I moaned about my commute??). I think this was actually probably for the best as I’m still gently getting back into running and decided to do a solo run on my own instead when I got home.

As soon as I got moving I knew I felt terrible. My legs felt like they had weights on the bottom of them. Everything just felt so hard. I guess I wasn’t fully healed from my illness. Ho hum. I just hope I start feeling a bit better for Sunday as we have a 5 mile race (the Beer and Cake race – we did it last year and loved it. Here’s my recap). I know I need to adjust my expectations for it though as I am no where near the shape I was in last year.

Interestingly Ben had a very similar run to me on Wednesday evening. He decided to go for the RR10 (he got home in time – the joys of only working 20 minutes away). He said he felt very lethargic and it was a rubbish run. Guess we both need to take more time before jumping back into running post illness!

Before the illness swooped down and knocked me over, on Monday morning Ben and me headed out to buy some trails shoes for the RR10 on Wednesday (thinking I was going). We got buy one get one free on trainers so Ben got another pair of road trainers and I got some racing flats.

This means recently we’ve bought new road trainers, new trail shoes, racing flats and walking boots for us. Four pairs of new shoes each!! I cringe at the cost of all this…Don’t tell me running is a cheap sport!

In a month these are the things Ben and me regularly buy or spend because of running:

New running gear – whether that’s trainers, socks, tops, shorts, runderwear, etc.)
Race entries – this year we’ve entered a total of 14 races each and this is likely to increase as the year progresses. Some are local and cheap (£9 what a bargain!) to Jesus are you serious (hello, Great South Run – over £40!)
Physio and massages – thanks to seeing Kyle and him being so damn convenient it’s very easy to have a massage every week to keep our legs fresh and cheerful. But then the bad times mean serious physio visits to fix injuries, which are more expensive (£40 a pop).
Gels and hydration – we’re big fans of High5 gels and water tablets and when we get into marathon training we’ll be getting through them again (though I plan on avoiding too many gels this time around, more on that another time).
Food – more running = more food needed. I am like a food (cake?) machine when it comes to running longer distances and higher mileage weeks. And Ben (and maybe me…) just rinses out our chocolate fridge shelf (everyone has a chocolate shelf right?).
Plasters – for every run Ben uses two blister plasters for his nipples (he’s going to kill me for putting this on the blog). Don’t get me wrong, they’re not expensive but do you know how many boxes of blister plasters we get through?? They have to be specifically blister plasters as well – normal ones won’t do apparently!
Cross training – road bikes, gym memberships, swimming sessions, etc.
Misc – cost of parking for races, petrol to get to races (flights & hotels even), cups of tea after Parkrun in the coffee shop, Vaseline/chafing stuff, the amount of extra washing we do with running gear, going for a meal after a big race…

Yeah it isn’t cheap. Oh sure we could knock a load of stuff off that list but at the moment it’s OK. We don’t have children, don’t plan to have children for a fair while, and we both have decent jobs. I suppose you could say we work to run!

But it’s our passion. We don’t go out boozing every weekend and we don’t spend lots of money eating out regularly. We’re fairly boring in that we like to run, so we run a lot. And that’s just the way of life for us right now.

What passion do you have that isn’t free?

Do you spend a lot of money on workout gear?

Do you workout when you’re ill?

May 21, 2014May 21, 2014

Netley 10k

I think we can agree that the weekend was a hot one. Sunny, beautiful, but fairly warm. Ideal BBQ and chilling weather but not ideal running conditions. I’d rather run in rain or freezing temperatures than heat (and wind; wind sucks your soul away). Sunday morning, Netley 10k race day, began very warm.

Netley 10k was set in the beautiful location of Royal Victoria Country Park. If you’ve been reading the blog for a while you might realise this is our usual location for parkrun (and a recent RR10 race). It’s about 10 minutes from us so the morning was very leisurely, getting up at 8am.

This 10k was our club championships. Basically prizes were going to be awarded for the below categories:

Ladies Champion
1st, 2nd and 3rd Ladies Senior (under 35) <—my category
1st, 2nd and 3rd Ladies V35 (35 to 44)
1st, 2nd and 3rd Ladies V45 (45 and over)

Men’s Champion
1st, 2nd and 3rd Men’s Senior (under 40) <—Ben’s category
1st, 2nd and 3rd Men’s V40 (40 to 49)
1st, 2nd and 3rd Men’s V50 (50 and over)

As I said in my previous post, I wasn’t sure if I was going to run or not because of my [insert expletive here] hip. I woke up and it was the best it felt all week. In an ideal world I reckon 2-3 more days of rest would have 100% sorted it. But obviously I didn’t have that time. I decided to run it anyway. I popped some Ibuprofen and thought “to hell with it”. Kyle, the sports massage therapist, gave me some good advice and told me it wasn’t a tear or anything crazy bad like that and running on it would aggravate it, of course, but wouldn’t knock me out of running for weeks or months. Ordinarily I wouldn’t have run on it but this was important race only happening once a year and I had a shot at getting a prize. And nothing planned afterwards (apart from RR10s which I could miss if necessary).

Going into a race knowing that you’ve got a niggle that’s been nasty all week is not how I like to start a race, believe me. I did a warm up with Ben and some of the other running club guys and it actually didn’t feel too bad. Not as bad as before and not as bad as Alton last week. But the warm-up wasn’t at speed so I was still in a bit of turmoil.

The course was three laps of the park. We said goodbye to my parents who had found a good place to stand to see us and we headed to the start line.

The race started at 10.30am in a big pack of us. It wasn’t chip timed so I found a spot near people I knew who were roughly my speed – don’t want to be that annoying ‘plodder’ who gets trampled by the ‘elites’ 😉

I told myself to aim for around 7.20min/miles but see what happened (i.e. go slower if needed). The course had a couple of hills/gradual inclines which were annoying considering we had to do them three times, but otherwise it was a nice and scenic on-road race with lots of support.

To begin with I got really confused in my adrenaline-fuelled brain. For some stupid reason I panicked myself thinking it was 10 miles not 10km until realising no, no it was 6.2 miles. Thank God. Because each lap was around 2 miles I decided to segment the race that way in my head, trying to convince myself it was just a tough parkrun (yeah right).

I was so pleased that running felt fine. Maybe a slight hint of a niggle but nothing to change my gait or bother me. In fact, as the race continued I felt better and better (adrenaline? pills? magic??)

(Thanks to Gary in our club for the great photos!)

This was just after the first lap and first water station. I’d dumped a water on my head at this point as it was just so hot. I hate 10ks. They just go on forever and the pace is just so hard. I never enjoy them. Mentally you have to stay focused. I tried to keep people in my sight and either not lose them or gain on them.

There’s my dad in the background cheering everyone on, bless him

It was tough, I’m not going to lie. To keep the pace up and also mentally to just stay focused. I was chuffed to catch up to a few people who I didn’t think I could beat on the final lap, and then it was the home-straight to the finish.

I think I faded a bit towards the end but otherwise I’m over the moon with how I did.

My official time was 44:04, 14th female and 1st female in my club. I felt pooped afterwards.

Sadly Ben didn’t have quite as good a race as he’d hoped. In his words, he prepared badly the day before (bike ride, not drinking enough water, and drinking too much wine the night before). And with the heat and the undulating course it really did help.

He finished in a time he wasn’t happy with (48:10). Though obviously I’m proud of him regardless, I do understand why he was unhappy (his PB is 45:01). Us runners are too hard on ourselves about hitting targets and we’re perfectionists. We will ruthlessly beat ourselves up when we get a less than stellar result. When I saw people finishing that I knew Ben would ordinarily beat I knew he’d be unhappy. After he finished, he became the Grumpy Runner (like I was the entire week before).

To be fair though, the race wasn’t easy and barely anyone got a PB. I’m proud of how far he’s come – this is the guy that gave up smoking and struggled to run a full mile when he first started running just a year ago. One race is not an indicator of ability.

After chilling for a bit after the race (and obviously eating a slice of rocky road that our ladies team captain had brought – thanks Kelly! ‘No Cake’ is over!), we headed back to get showered, me to have an ice bath and then go back to Netley for a running club BBQ.

The men-folk obviously crowded around the BBQ doing men-things: poking and re-arranging meat – a far more complex process than the regular cooking us wives do 😉 (Stereotypes ahoy! Apologies).

Doing a fine job

And then the prizes were handed out. I was awarded 1st Ladies Senior and Ladies Champion. Obviously I’m over the moon but I must just add that one of our speedy runners is currently pregnant and therefore graciously allowed me to claim the prize 😉 She’ll be back next year to win it back I’m certain (and another speedster is suffering from shin splints).

And then I enjoyed a lot of chicken! And Fanta Zero…I could live off Fanta Zero, it’s my nectar. But I had a banging head ache the next day – too much sun and Fanta. Rock and roll, people. After a fun game of rounder’s we headed home and collapsed on the sofa. Job done.

Have you ever gone into a race knowing you’re injured? My hip isn’t necessarily a ‘proper’ injury, but running a hard race on I’m sure didn’t help it one bit. The next morning it ached a lot.

Would you give up a good race if you’re injured or just run it anyway?

How do you console someone who had a bad race/result? There was nothing I could say to Ben to make him feel better. I do understand as I know nothing would make me feel better; it’s all in your own head.

What’s your perfect BBQ food and drink?

May 14, 2014May 10, 2016

A long way to go

This year has been very strange in terms of running. I started the year feeling absolutely pants, recovering from a stubborn injury. I got back into running fairly slowly when my knee started to hold up and began gaining back speed and things were going well.

Then after the Reading half (not many weeks before the marathon) I was struck down with another injury (sprained ligament in my ankle). Luckily because it was such an acute injury it went away as quickly as it appeared (just over two weeks). But it knocked my training and made me readjust my expectations for the marathon.

The marathon happened and I did so much better than I could have dreamed. No issues, a GFA and a great experience. Off the back of that though it has been quite a tedious time with running. I love it still, don’t get me wrong. But gaining back speed has been a tough old slog. I’m nowhere near where I was this time last year in terms of my parkrun times and I don’t feel as confident a runner as I used to be.

I’ve been going to regular club training sessions, parkruns and the odd race but things don’t seem to be there as easily as before. I know it’s just time, but I’m so impatient. Though I’m over the moon for my running friends and husband getting PBs, it’s frustrating for me that my PBs were achieved last year when I was in peak condition so my chance of beating them soon are slim.

This was evident when I really tried to go for it at parkrun on Saturday. I had my game-face on, the course was the flat five laps around the cricket pitch, and I was feeling ready.

I got 21:32 (2nd female) which is over a minute away from my PB. I really pushed it and felt shattered afterwards.

I know I can get the speed back if I consistently train and do the right sessions, I’m just having a moan. I know I am very lucky to be able to run and enjoy it – don’t get me wrong. Since my numerous injuries, I am very grateful for every run and I know injuries are so easy to get. My runs could be numbered at any point. I just feel a bit useless at the moment with my running.

I also had the worst run of my entire life. I’m taking part in our running club’s league races (Hampshire RR10s) and we had one last Wednesday night. The races are typically 4-5miles long, off-road and undulating. This one was in the New Forest.

Ben and me met up with the rest of the club and warmed up.

Ah those happy faces, unaware of what was to come

I started ridiculously fast. Like stupid fast. It was downhill and I was just like “la, la, la, I’m so speedy”. Then hit the wall and the wheels came off spectacularly on mile two. It was painful, horrible and I thought at one point just to stop.

Thankfully, I didn’t. I zipped up my woman-suit (girl version of man-suit) and just persevered. There was so much thick mud to get through it was a nightmare. Then a lovely long hill for 3/4 mile at the end. Joy.

My lovely new Run Mummy Run compression socks fully Christened with mud on their first outing

I’ve never been so glad for a race to be over. I’m not joking when I say I’d rather do the marathon again than that race. Too fast, stupid pacing, too much mud. A silver lining at least was that I got 11th female and first female in my club.

Because I knew that I worked very hard at the RR10 and I was also aiming for a good time on Saturday’s parkrun, when Ben and me signed up to the Alton 10 miler race on Sunday I knew straight away I didn’t want to race it. But Ben was keen to go for a PB (honestly, that boy is on fire. He got a PB at parkrun! I’ll be watching my back soon – he was nine seconds behind me). Ben’s 10 mile PB was 1:26:xx but that was last October and he’s made some great improvements since then so it was clear he would PB (providing all went well). It just depended on by how much of a PB it would be. He wanted 1:18. So I said I’d pace him as that was still quite a comfortable speed for me. Not an easy run, but not a racing speed (my PB is 1:15, of which I’m not happy with but let’s not go there).

The run was well organised and the course was very scenic – think traditional little British villages and farms. But undulating and windy on the day.

We ran fairly steady. I struggled a little bit due to a slightly niggling hip (let’s not talk about it) but other than that it went fine. Ben ran well and achieved his goal with time to spare – an 8 minute 1 second PB.

He was over the moon, as you can imagine. Two PBs in one weekend. Nice work, hubby!

Running is never easy. You really have to put a lot of hard, consistent work in to get good stuff out. I know I’ll get there again, it just takes time.

Have you ever felt frustrated with your ability?

Is your other half into sports or fitness? Do you compete against each other? I never want to race against Ben. I’m sure he’ll get faster than me at some point but I don’t mind. I’m happy that he’s doing so well. I never want to compare his performance against mine. It would be silly anyway considering he’s male and I’m female!

Have you ever been paced or have ever paced someone else in a race?

April 28, 2014January 5, 2017

Last week’s workouts

Last week was a weird running week. I sandwiched a tough run (the first RR10 race) between two fairly easy runs.

I took Monday off as a complete rest day. I think it’s so important to rest your body. It can be so tempting to just run all the time but I know from experience that this never works out well for me.

Tuesday I could have gone to the interval session with the club but I had the RR10 on Wednesday night and really wanted to try hard. So I went for an easy 6 miles after work. Nothing remarkable.

Wednesday was the RR10 in the evening. This is basically Hampshire’s set of league races that are around 4-5 miles long and tend to be fairly hilly and off-road. Like clockwork the rain started as soon as I left work about two hours before the start.

Ben dropped me off at a fellow club friend’s house so I could do a mile warm up run. I can’t just start flat-out race speed without warming up first. My legs de-friend me that way. Ben’s knee was giving him a bit of grief so he declined the extra running.

The RR10 was located at our local Parkrun in Netley Abbey so I was familiar with the area.

Sadly the toilets were locked at the time of the evening and I was desperate for a wee (sorry for TMI) It wasn’t even like a safety wee, it was a ‘genuinely-required-pee situation’. I had to dash off to find a bush, which was such an effort as most of the bushes were a bit scarce in their foliage and there were so many flipping dog walkers. Anyway, I found one of the necessary criteria. Hmm a whole paragraph on my peeing situation – apologies.

We did a bit more warming up. Anyone else just feel terrible during warm ups? Like every ache your body has ever experienced rears its head. I felt so de-motivated and tired.

Anyway we all headed to the start (our running club was looking strong with it’s red white and blue vests and such a great turn out). I planned to line up fairly near the front so I wouldn’t get caught behind people (RR10s are based on positions not time). Then we were off.

It was painful, fast, muddy, slippy and the whole time I was just thinking “this is hard.” and “I could slow down, that would be nice”. I decided not to look at my watch because a) I was concentrating on not falling over with all the mud and b) I just didn’t have time. It was one of those races I just kept my head focused the entire time.

Amazingly I came 10th female, and first female in my club. Judging from how tough the race felt and my race photos, it’s clear I worked hard for it!

Source

Still have my name on my vest from the marathon. All the cool kids are doing it 😉

Source

Are race photos ever flattering? This is on the last 100m. I remember seeing the photographer and in my mind briefly thinking “Oh jeeze this is going to be bad” as I desperately tried to sprint to the finish.

The next photo is one of my favourites. Not because I look nice or anything like that. It’s just the evil daggers I’m throwing at the photographer.

Source

I look seriously grumpy!

I was so chuffed with my position and after grabbing a drink I stood and cheered as other club runners finished.

Ben finished 192nd out of the men. There are always a lot more men than women unfortunately for Ben. He was chuffed though as his knee hadn’t caused him any issues. Whew.

Safe to say it was a very muddy run!

Then cakes appeared. Well, obviously I was there in a nano-second. Would you be surprised if I said I had four cakes? Yeah I’m not either. To be fair though two of them were quite slim biscuits. The other was a regular sized (amazing) cookie (with mini eggs in it?? WOW) and a slice of iced sponge.

I went home buzzing as you can imagine!

Source

It took ages to fall asleep that evening. Maybe it was the cakes or my aching legs but I really struggled.

Thursday I woke up tired and achy, but in a satisfying way. That evening I went to running club with the absolute iron intention of an easy run. I ran the mile down there at a nice relaxed pace enjoying the sunshine. I tagged along with the normal group I go with but telling myself over and over again not to go to fast. My options were limited with groups – it was either an off-roader (the one I went with) or a 7 mile 8-8.30min/mile group, or the much slower (than me – it’s all relative!) groups.

In the end I think I’d chosen well as we took it nice and easy and the terrain was very similar to the previous night’s RR10 so speed just wasn’t an option. Whew. But my legs felt very heavy and tired. I almost dashed off home as we past near where we live. It was a good 8.5 miles though in the end with an average pace of 9mins (a couple of those miles 10mins so that was good).

Friday was another rest day. I had intended on a strength workout (this week has been terrible for that) but it just didn’t happen sadly. You win some, you lose some. I did have a sports massage though on my calves. My left calf was feeling tight and almost a little niggly so I wanted to nip that in the bud quickly.

Saturday I got up earlier than usual and ran the 4 miles to Parkrun to help set up. I ran the extra miles because Ben and me were off to a wedding later in the day so a Sunday run was never going to happen 😉

On starting the run I felt so tired and my legs so heavy (still!). I was not feeling it at all. I made Ben make me a coffee that he’d take with him so I could drink it when I got there. He’s lovely like that.

He took me a black coffee and my water bottle. Very handy having him go by car. I saw him pass me when I was about 0.5miles away and it definitely made me run faster “need coffee!!!”

I got to parkrun, we helped set up and I was dragging my feet a bit. It was cold and I just wasn’t in the mood. However, when we lined up I put some music on and just got into it. I ran 22 minutes flat! It was crazy, I suddenly just decided “let’s do this”.

Not my fastest, but the course is the three laps with the hill and some fairly boggy grass so I was chuffed. The effort was definitely there! I was pleased I went for a speedy run.

After that, it’s two days off and then strength workout tonight (Monday night) and then hopefully intervals with the club Tuesday evening.

How was your week in terms of work outs?

How do you motivate yourself to work hard? Music tends to help me and also the ‘race environment’ gets me going.

How often do you work out and what’s your balance between cardio and strength? I try to do at least two strength sessions a week and usually 4-5 runs.