Ah, I should have kept this up. I'll give it another shot. I feel like I've let you all down, you've been and missed some of my key races. But some people said nice things about my write-ups and I thought I should put fingertip to keypad once again.
So, as if it weren't bad enough last time, I signed up for Keswick to Barrow again! Why? WHY?!! I couldn't work out en route last time why so many people had apparently voluntarily done it again, but the very next day, I looked at my splits on the old iphone, and I thought "I can do better than that". This was about something that a number of people told me I would probably die, and I couldn't disagree with them. This was something I mapped out, planned, and stuck to the plan, and a number of other people were incredulous (rightly so, in fact: I have no idea how I managed to stick to the race plan). But, and here's the nub: I felt superhuman for months after. Literally, there was no task you could throw at me that I didn't think was going to be a walk in the park compared to MY achievements. If I'm honest - I wanted that back.
While we tried to build our team up, I sent my blog to a couple of people so they could see what to expect. One of them dropped out immediately. (The other one later confessed that he hadn't read it.) I also read it myself. Frankly, it terrified me, but I tried not to think about it. My plan for training was that I'd signed up for a marathon a month earlier. All being well, I would have trained hard for that and bagged a pb on it - I'm seriously trying for a sub 4 hour, I've got to reverse last year's Year of the Personal Worst. I mean, personal worsts are not entirely bad, they give you something to beat, but actually, every race I ran was a PW last year. I also found out that now I'm officially old, I need a 3h50 to qualify for an automatic place in the London Marathon. I thought that was stepping it up a bit from my PB of 4h13, so I'd go for an intermediate step of sub 4h first. Anyway, back to the plan - I'd have done a good marathon, be in fully trained up condition, and I'd have a month to get in one or two long runs. I'd have run this marathon in 9m/m or thereabouts, so really, I'd be in full fighting form for this Ultra.
The world did not go according to plan, however. In January, I bought a new pair of shoes, in readiness for the new training schedule, and also joined the Nene Valley Harriers. This is a very fast running club in Peterborough. Sally said she didn't know who I was any more. I signed up for her 4 hour marathon training pack. Unfortunately, right off the bat, I realised I was stuffed, because I was supposed to already be able to run at 9 m/m, which I was a long way from. I still blame last year's personal worsts on the K2B, which mentally slowed me into a torpor. But anyway, there it is. I started running short, fast runs, and my knees started really hurting. Both of them. Moustachioed Chris gave me some advice, which I didn't take immediately: change the shoes. But after a couple of weeks, when people in the office were commenting on my hobbling gait, I cracked under the strain, and took the shoes back. The shop said they could look at replacing them, but they'd have to be sure it was the shoes that were the problem, after all, every runner gets knee problems from time to time. I booked into their physio, who spent an hour examining the bendiness of my knees, and finally professed that he couldn't find anything wrong with my knees, and my legs were, and I quote, "perfect". Needless to say, this made me extremely happy, and I told everyone, multiple times, including people I didn't know and had never met before, that I had perfect legs, in the professional opinion of a physiotherapist. One of my friends accused me of placing too much faith in this professional opinion, just because of this statement, but I don't think that's fair. Can there be "too much faith" in such a statement?
Well, the long and the short of it was that the shoe company replaced my trainers, back to the Brooks that I'd worn out, and I started running again. It was a slow process, and I followed advice that I read from a guy that Sally seemed to rate (in a passing comment she made once) called Matt Fitzgerald, who said if you had runner's knee, a good way to deal with it was to run slowly right up to the point that it hurt, and then stop immediately. Each time you run, you should be able to build on this. I got from 0.8 mile to 2.5 miles in this fashion, it took a while. I realised that I wasn't going to run the marathon I was booked into in a personal best. I wasn't going to run it at all, at least not injury-free. I deferred.
This meant that a week before the Connemara marathon took place, I realised I had 5 weeks to get up to 40 miles, from pretty much a 2 mile start. It wasn't the position I wanted to be in. The best laid plans of Mice and Men aft gang agley, so I've heard, but I wasn't ganging anywhere. I stepped up to 6 miles, then a week later ran about 16 (at this juncture, my runkeeper went slightly bananas, so all distances were estimates), and got hugely bad groin strain (clearly from increasing my distance too quickly). Once again, terrified that a la Sally, I would stress-fracture my pelvis, which I really didn't want to happen. Notwithstanding the fear, I stepped up to 23 miles the following week. This time, it involved quite a bit of walking, but as I said at the time, I felt pretty strongly that stopping and starting had to be an integral part of my training. Furthermore, the longer I was on my feet was advantageous in training terms, for spending time on my feet on the course. Conversely, the faster I did it was also good training for speed, so I literally could not lose (unless I injured myself). The following week, I had a huge dilemma. Technically, a runner tapers for a fortnight, but I did feel quite strongly that you have to taper FROM something, and I was on poor ground there. I hadn't done enough training to taper. Also, I had gotten groin strain, but a bit less, from the 23 miles, and I thought I might be able to nail it on one more training run. Against advice, I did it. I ran 20 miles the weekend before K2B and I didn't stop and walk (hardly), and I didn't get groin strain, and furthermore, even more impressively, I didn't even feel the need to collapse on the sofa and not move for the next 5 hours (which is a not infrequent event post-running). I was READY!
Or not. I mean, I'd failed to order any more gels, my phone was on its last legs in battery terms, I'd lost the lead to the battery pack/mobile charger, I hadn't planned my logistics, I wasn't sure about music or not, I didn't have comfortable headphones, and furthermore, I was terrified. I remembered pain, predominantly. I saw running Dave in the office, and he was in pretty much the same state - somewhere between denial and terror. Why? I mean, really, why?
