Marathon Talk Run Camp – part 2

On to the Sunday of the Marathon Talk Run Camp at Sandy Balls in the New Forest, we had a 10 mile “eliminator” style run planned.

*Catch up with Part 1 of the Run Camp here!*

So the idea was that we had a 10 miles race, but there were two stipulations (asides from a set course over the New Forest countryside – following a similar route to the Heartbreaker Half): one was that we had to finish at 12. You were given on point for every second you finished before 12 and two seconds for every second after 12. The more points the worse you did. The second stipulation was that you weren’t allowed to wear a watch, or if you did it had to be taped over. Essentially you had to pace yourself on feel only.

This did make me somewhat anxious. Not knowing my pace or the number of miles I’d done… I mean, what! I already knew I was going to run it as an easy long run but this meant I really had to tap into my body as to what easy actually was without having any paces fed back to me. Tough. Especially as I do tend to run quicker than I should for easy runs. I decided to go with starting at 10:40, to give myself an hour and 20 minutes, which would mean 8.30min/miles…not that i would be able to properly tell!

In the morning, the lodge was all up around the same time. John decided not to run to be super sensible about a pesky niggle he was experiencing – very wise of him. But the rest of us would be running and would be leaving at different times because of their different paces they’d be running and time goals. I didn’t have any breakfast as I never do before long runs so could have a little bit of a lie-in (thank god for finding my ear plugs). James, Michelle and I walked down to the start area together as we were roughly going around the same time and wanted to walk. I mean, just to be clear, I wasn’t going anywhere near as fast as those guys  but it was nice to have the warm up walk beforehand together.Unfortunately I left it a little too late and literally arrived at the start with about 20 seconds to go before I needed to start. Happily my fried Ade was there starting at the same time (what a nice coincidence!) and a very lovely lady called Jenny. We all decided to run together which was great. None of us wanted to push the pace so it was a good conversational run. Because the course was a T shape it meant there were a few out and back sections so we could cheer on other runners who had gone out before us and were coming back down a path we were running along, making it a lovely social run.Unfortunately, because we were talking so much we missed the TWO turnaround arrows on the floor. We didn’t realise until we reached a car park – about 0.25 miles on from the turnaround. We quickly headed back in a bit of a panic (no wonder it had suddenly got quiet with no other runners about!). This meant we’d added about half a mile to our route. As if pacing 10 miles wasn’t hard enough with having no watch, we now had to either quicken up to make up the over-distance or find a way to lose 0.5 miles.We were now no longer plodding along happy as Larry… we were brainstorming where to turn early or what time it was or what pace we were doing. Argghh! We decided that we’d turn around early at the next part of the “T”. I was concerned I hadn’t seen Michelle or James… when we finally saw them heading back along the other “T” they looked at us confused as this was far too late to be seeing us now. We decided a few minutes further to turnaround because at this point we’d never catch up with the main group of people – and therefore would not finish before 12.God, honestly it hurt my brain to try working everything out and adjusting ourselves to other people. Of course we assumed everyone else had their pacing strategy perfect which of course invariably they did not, making it even more of a mess.We even panicked further on thinking we might not even make 10 miles if we’d have turned too soon. What would be worse than finishing too late would be finishing the run having not even completed the 10 miles! So we collectively decided to turn around again and do a tiny out and back to make sure we’d hit 10 miles…just to be safe as we were worried we’d turned around too soon. We agreed we’d rather do over 10 miles than under. This did make us look a bit silly as other runners passed us… they must have thought we were trying to cheat which just mortified me. I tried to explain what we were doing but mostly people just looked bemused at us. Dear oh dear.Regardless of this silly mess-up (the curse of running with the idiot that is Anna? Quite possibly), it was a lovely lovely run. The sun was out, the views were beautiful, it wasn’t that windy and we were still enjoying each other’s company. Despite feeling somewhat stressed and generally in a state of confusion (my natural state perhaps), I was thoroughly enjoying the run. As we got closer to the finish we picked up our speed. The end finishes on a horrible horrible steep uphill. James was at the top looking all chilled and fresh having finished about 10 minutes before (he over-shot it) while we scrambled up, everything burning, and me trying not to look like I was dying. Probably failed there ha.
In the end we finished 1 minute and 40ish seconds over 12… so not too bad considering we’d also run 0.6 miles over the 10 miles!! Ahh what idiots we were 😉 But we all agreed we enjoyed the run, chat and the farce of trying to figure out how to rectify the situation. Smiles all round. John was at the finish cheering us all in which was nice.James and I then walked back to the lodge… James had forgotten that he’d been looking after Chris and Kate’s key for their car so while we were walking back, blissfully unaware, another car caught up to us with Kate in it asking for the key back as they couldn’t drive back… oh dear. For once not an Idiot Anna Move – not my fault at all ha.

We got back to the lodge and I got into the shower pronto as I needed to wash and blow-dry my hair (I was so grateful that the guys let me go first, very kind of them – sharing a shower between six people is tough!). And then we headed off to the lunch with the Marathon Talk crew – a delicious Sunday roast dinner with all the trimmings. Delicious!Then it was a case of saying goodbye to everyone. Obviously this also meant getting my standard photo with Martin and Tom…I’ve now done this every year I’ve been and the motage is quite cool.I know this is going to sound like overly sentimental guff (of which I rarely like to do) but Marathon Talk is such a fantastic community of people. I’ve met so many good friends through it and had such brilliant times with the different events (not to mention the actual podcasts themselves being a good listen). I hope to continue being involved in more events they put on! So big thanks to them.

For once I’d decided this year to stay until Monday as James, John and Michelle were too and it was nice not to rush off. So we headed back to the lodge to chill for a bit and then later we decided to head to a local pub down the road for dinner…the roast dinner clearly hadn’t touched the sides.Happily a few others joined us: Mark, Vicky and Stuart from the Austria Run Camp and Mark’s friend Caroline. Such a lovely bunch of people!I went for rump steak with a jacket potato and Stilton sauce….SO good. Followed by a large wedge of bread and butter pudding with ice cream. Perfection. We said goodbye to the others who were leaving and then headed back.The next morning, we got ourselves sorted. Michelle, the crazy girl, went out for a 5k run while James, John and I went for a walk to find the actual Sandy Ball, which I didn’t realise existed! The weather was lovely and it was a perfect way to end such a great weekend.Happy legs, happy tummy, happy heart.

Are you involved in any running or fitness communities?

Have you met friends through running that you stay in touch with?

Have you ever gone wrong in a race?

Marathon Talk Run Camp – part 1

Marathon Talk Run Camp in Sandy Balls (yes Sandy Balls) is one of my favourite running events of the year. It’s run by the Marathon Talk podcast, hosted by Martin Yelling and Tom Williams and is basically a weekend of very relaxed and fun running activities.

I’ve now done it four times, and it’s been running for five (I missed the second one). I’ve met some solid friends who I’m sure I’ll be friends with for a long time. This year there were lots of familiar faces going, from both previous Sandy Balls camps and also the Austria Run Camp I did last year. So a very cool crowd and I was super excited. It’s just such a relaxed event – you don’t have to do any running if you can’t/don’t want to, but you get to socialise with other runners and have a bit of a jolly.

Happily I was sharing a lodge with some of these fantastic people. It was a brilliant bunch, and even sharing one bathroom between the six of us didn’t mar the occasion (something I’d probably have been super stressed about before). We had lots of banter, discussions and cake. I was sharing with James, John and Michelle and a couple (Kate and Chris) who I didn’t really know beforehand but who were just lovely.I arrived on Friday night straight from work. I had a teeeeeeeny mishap of missing a few turnings which caused me a lot of stress (*cough* I’m not blaming anyone buuuuuut someone told me to not listen to the SatNav because of a road closure and well, that didn’t work so well for my brain. I may have gotten a little stroppy…).  Anyway, Anna-isms aside, I finally made it and eventually the whole lodge gang met up with the rest of the Marathon Talk crew and caught up and chatted away. Martin and Tom were there and it was a very relaxed and fun evening.The next morning we were up relatively early to head out to Moors Valley parkrun as a big group (we’re talking around 100 people here). I’d had a terrible night sleep because the lodge is quite loud (creaking and loud doors with thin walls) and I’m such a light sleeper but I was raring to go. It was cold though. Very cold. We carpooled to Moors Valley and then stood shuffling around in the coldness moaning about the cold, as you do.
My friend Ade was at the camp this year again which was nice as he’s been a previous years and it’s always nice to catch up with him. We then had the standard Marathon Talk group photo and then headed to the start. Jo Pavey was there too (as she was there for the Marathon Talk weekend to give a Q&A and just generally be involved) so it was cool to line-up with her. Luckily Moors Valley had been pre-warned about the arrival of 100+ extra people descending about them so it wasn’t a shock. I wasn’t intending on running very fast as I’m just coming back from my hamstring/calf debacle. Unfortunately I’d put myself far too close to the back though that as we started it took about 30 seconds for me to actually start running…and then a kilometre of winding round people as politely as I could (always awkward).

Photo credit: Moors Valley parkrun Facebook page

As I got into the run I found my legs felt good (everything feeling nice) and I had a bit more energy than I thought. Moors Valley is on compacted trail and is fairly flat, asides from a few gentle undulations. It has a nice out and back bit so you can cheer on faster and slower runners which I really liked, especially when I knew so many people. I managed to maintain a fairly steady pace without rinsing myself, making me feel very really good that I haven’t lost everything since being semi-injured. I finished 22:35. Very pleased indeed.Happily Michelle and James are super fast and we’d already previously had a Lodge Team Meeting to tackle the always annoyingly long cafe queue. The queue was only long due to the sudden influx of people but I’m remember waiting a long time last year so Michelle and James had been deployed to grab us a spot in the queue as they’d be fairly near the front running super fast. It worked out perfectly asides from John arriving just a tiny bit too late (he’s sort of injured at the moment and was taking it easy) and missed us orderingMy fry-up was, as always, delicious. As I knew we wouldn’t be eating again properly until later it was a good way to tide me over. Then we headed back to the lodge to chill for a bit (have a million cups of tea, foam roll, loll about in front of the fire chatting) before meeting back up and hearing a talk from Tim Cruse-Drew, who was the physio for Eddie Izzard during his amazing 40 marathons in 40 days through South Africa adventure.It was fascinating stuff to hear him talk. He explained how under-prepared Eddie was: he hadn’t drunk enough water, hadn’t done enough running prep or anything and yet was embarking on this incredible feat. Tim also mentioned how he swears by Sun Salutations as a great way to get the body warmed-up, blood circulation going getting the body to go through a full range of movements. He also said we needn’t bother with ice baths as there’s barely any difference in the benefits between ice and warmth in terms of what it actually does. Ice will just numb any pain rather than remove inflammation. Good to know!!Then we headed out for our second run. My legs felt good and I wanted to be involved so decided to join but take things nice and easily. IMG_5079Happily John felt the same so we decided to stick together in the same group (we all divided ourselves into pace groups of your goal 5k time). I went in two groups slower than my (current) goal PB with John (must have been about seven groups below John’s usual time ha!).We gently ran to a lovely nearby area in the New Forest where there was a 1k loop and 400m loop. The idea was to do 1k at comfortably tough and then 400m balls to the wall. John and I kept to conversational pace for the 1k and then sped up slightly for the 400m. It was nice and I enjoyed running and chatting. We did four repeats (with breaks in between) before jogging back. I was happy to have survived the second run (something I don’t ever do) and happy with over 8 miles for the day.IMG_5098We returned to the lodge and everyone showered and got ready for heading back to the main bit for dinner with the rest of the gang.

Dinner was a buffet and I filled my boots, now feeling very hungry (tho I did have a sneaky small sandwich after the intervals because I didn’t want to turn up the buffet and feel super hungry and grumpy – or have “hangxiety” (hungry anxious) as Kate called it. Love that term. I do actually get really anxious (hangxious) at buffets… something about the fear of food running out. And I’m greedy.But the food was more than plentiful and tasty. This was followed by a really interesting Q&A with Jo Pavey. Martin and Tom asked her loads of questions and it was just fascinating. She is so down to earth and normal. A lovely (and amazingly talented!) woman.She gave us insight what it was like to be a busy mum while also being an Olympic athlete. How she would have to find new ways to train, being flexible and adjusting her schedule. She also mentioned that when she won the gold medal she only put her arms up halfway as she didn’t truly believe she’d won. I mean, whaaaat! She also said how frustrated she was regarding the doping situation and how it ruined things for clean athletes. She clearly loves the sport and hates the negativity that stuff like this brings.After Jo’s talk, the ever amazing and inspiring Tony Audenshaw (Bob from Emmerdale!) conducted his running-themed quiz. Tony is such a legend. He is literally he nicest person. The nicest. And so funny. The quiz was fantastic. Our team won the bingo round which was great as it meant we got some Ferrero Rochers…yum! But we only Cake joint third in the quiz. Suspiciously Martin and Tom’s team won… uh huh 😉
Then we headed back to the lodges. There was a night run to do (a very very easy 4K plod) but my lodge and I were up for just chilling with a hot drink, midnight cake and chatting. I love these downtime moments of running camps. It’s just nice to chat to such lovely like-minded people.

Do you ever do double running in a day?

Have you ever tried ice baths?

What athletes inspire you?

Marathon Talk Run Camp 2017 recap

So this was my third time going to the Marathon Talk Run Camp in Sandy Balls in the New Forest. Marathon Talk is a running-focused podcast hosted by two genuinely lovely and knowledgeable guys, Martin Yelling (running guru for lots of publications and races) and Tom Williams (MD of parkrun).

I love listening to the podcast on my long runs and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the previous two run camps I’ve been on so I pretty much signed up straight away as soon as it became available. I knew a few others who were going, though some of them couldn’t make it in the end which was such a shame 🙁 but I still got to see my running friend, Adrian, who went to the last one and I ran Fareham parkrun with a while ago.

I arrived on Friday night and met my fellow housemates. There was a married couple and two female friends who I was sharing with. What was nice was that I got a room to myself as the friends were happy to share their twin room.The cabins have a little kitchen, two bathrooms and a lovely lounge area with a fire. It’s very cosy but fairly basic. Sandy Balls is a holiday camp set in the middle of the New Forest so the scenery is beautiful with forests all around you.

That evening we headed out to meet other Marathon Talkers around a fire pit and toasted some marshmallows.It was nice to chat to lots of different people. I got to chat to Dan from Xempo, who does all the Marathon Talk clothinig. He was so lovely. A really nice and funny guy. I mentioned to him that I was considering running to the Moors Valley parkrun the next day as I wasn’t going to be able to stay for the Sunday long run. He said that his fellow housemate, Andy, was thinking of doing the same. Funnily enough I realised I knew the Andy he was talking about from Twitter. Though I found out he was a sub 2:40 marathoner so that concerned me a bit that I might hold him up a bit!

After chatting to Andy I managed to persuade him to definitely run it…and he handily said he’d figure us out a good route (the route I’d planned was all road and a bit dodgy with the traffic, true Anna-style planning of course!). He wasn’t entirely happy about getting up earlier than he’d need to for the parkrun but I won him round 😉

The next morning we met after 7am and headed out for the 9 mile planned run he had. This run was fantastic. The route was perfect. It went pretty much all along New Forest trails so off-road and through beautiful countryside. Over styles, along a river, through boggy areas… it was fantastic! We saw lots of wildlife and even had a dodgy moment of almost getting stampeded by horses but it was fiiiiiiine.

Though it was snowing when we set off, I’d worn too many layers and by mile two was feeling rather hot. The pace was good though probably faster than I would have run on my own – but that was nice to be challenged a bit. And there were several stops of jumping over styles and things like that. Though I did worry that I was going too slowly for this marathon pro!We arrived at Moors Valley parkrun with a good amount of time to spare. My pace is all over the place due to the trails and hills.Just enough time to lose our lovely warmth and get cold again! Our smugness of being nice and toasty while everyone around us was shivering quickly disappeared.We had a quick Marathon Talk group photo and then headed to the start. Moors Valley parkrun has definitely expanded since I last did (a year ago) as there were so many people – and not just the influx of 100 or so Marathon Talkers!

Source: Marathon Talk Facebook page

I was going to run with Adrian as he was semi-injured so would be going slower than normal (he’s normally a lot speedier than me!). We positioned ourselves badly though and the first 200m we were stuck behind a lot of people who were going slower than us. This was our fault not ours and we managed to politely (I hope!) navigate past them and get into a good stride.

A lovely woman, Pippa, ran with us too which was nice as did Andy. Then Andy dropped us as he speeded ahead, then Adrian and I peeled away from Pippa, then Adrian peeled away from me! It was quite funny how that worked out. I just didn’t have a sprint finish in me at all on my heavy legs.In the end I got 24:30 (151st! So many runners) which I was happy with after the 9 miles.Then we headed to the cafe to have some breakfast. I’d already decided on a fry-up because I was really craving one. And I knew I wouldn’t be eating lunch because by the time we got back and I got sorted we’d be heading out for another Marathon Talk chat and then interval session. I wanted to do the intervals (gently) as I wanted to increase my miles for the day. I’d done 12 already but I ideally wanted 16 as I wouldn’t be doing a long run the next day.The fry-up was perfection. I got to talk to Scotland’s parkrun ambassador, Terry, which was really interesting. He’d been to a previous Run Camp so he was a familiar face. it was interesting to hear about what an ambassador does and the differences with Scottish and English parkruns.

Then I thankfully got a lift back with Pippa and her husband and then chilled in the cabin with my housemates chatting about random running-related stuff. One of my housemates, Patricia, is also doing Tokyo so it was interesting to speak to her about it. She got a good for age place which I didn’t even know existed! This would be her final Marathon Major so she’d be picking up her amazing HUGE medal as well as her Tokyo one. How cool!

Then we headed to the conference area where we had a talk from Liz Yelling and Professor Andy Lane (one of my housemates!).
It was fascinating to hear Liz talk about her training, the mental and physical sides of being an elite runner and now being a non-elite and adjusting to that side of life. Professor Andy was really interesting as well, as he was last year. He talked about the psychological aspects of training and having several goals for a marathon rather than one. And not just having outcome goals but process goals so you’re hopes aren’t stacked against one thing that is in the hands of so many elements, not just your ability. For example, run with good form (like if you know the way you swing your arms needs correcting, focus on that) or focus on having fun and taking photos rather than I MUST GET SUB-4. Because ultimately a marathon is such a long way to go and there are so many factors that are out of your control that it is really setting yourself up for a fall if you just have one time goal… good stuff!Then we headed out for some intervals. I wasn’t planning on doing a full effort session but just wanted the extra miles and to “be involved”. We headed out a mile very slowly in convoy to an area just outside Sandy Balls. The views were amazing!We were divided into groups depending on our 5k time and I made sure I sand-bagged my time so I wouldn’t be tempted to go full effort. The session was 1k at tempo speed with 15 seconds break before a 300m full-on effort, then 5 minutes break – four times.In the end though I did run faster than I would have but it was nice to have some speed on my legs, even if it was fairly tough. I did feel a little bad as everyone was in pieces around me but I was OK relatively speaking.Then we headed back for a mile cool-down back to the cabins. So a total of 18 miles for the day! I felt pretty damn pleased with myself. I had a nice hot shower back at the cabin and then chilled out again next to the fire while chatting to the others about social media, races and life in general. It was great.

I was SO hungry though by 6.30pm when we all met up again for dinner. Annoyingly though we were one of the last tables to get called to go up and get our food. I was practically climbing the walls with runger. Yes, my own fault as I should have planned food better but there never seemed to be a great time to eat something – either having just run or about to get running. I did have a few snacks but obviously nothing huge.I made up for that by piling my plate high with chilli and chicken curry (weird combination but to be honest at that point I didn’t care) with rice and salad!We then had another talk from the truly inspiring and amazing Vassos Alexander who told us all about his ultra running craziness. Like how he ran around London ALL NIGHT before heading to his breakfast radio show in the morning. He said he stopped for an espresso but otherwise just kept running. He was such a lovely, lovely guy. I’ll definitely be buying his book! And he’s currently in the process of writing another one. What I liked was how he said he was offered money to write a kind of sports “tell all” book as he’s interviewed so many sports stars but he really didn’t want to as he wanted to remain trustworthy and genuine.I went up to him afterwards to speak to him and he was just so nice. I did have a bit of verbal diarrhoea though by blurting out how I didn’t actually listen to Radio 2 but was more of a Radio 1 listener and how my dad would kill me not getting a photo with him. He found this amusing thankfully!

I also got my usual photo with Martin and Tom… I do feel awkward asking for a photo from them but they’re so lovely that they didn’t make me feel like a silly fan girl.After a fun quiz, which our team (the Camp Runners) did terribly at, I had to go home. I had lots to do the next day and I needed a proper lie-in. I was sad to leave and sad to miss the next day’s fun but it had to be done. I loved the time I did spend though. I will be signing up straight away for the next one as it’s just so good. So much fun, so much good advice and information, so many nice people and a way to connect with other runners. I love it. I fully recommend coming if you can!

Have you ever been to a running camp?

Do you often do intervals?