Enigma Track Marathon race report

When I entered this many months ago it was my intention to go hard at it and see how fast I could go, knowing that if I blew up and couldn’t finish, that I wouldn’t be stuck on a course miles from the finish line. After seeing my physio for a sports massage this week, I had decided to just run it at a comfortable pace and pull out if I needed to. This was due to him having to release all the trigger points in my lower back, hips and glutes as my body was completely twisted to the left (the first time and hopefully the last where he has made me yelp in pain). He has no idea what had happened and neither do I… I suspect I pulled/twisted something in my 20 mile run the week before and made it worse by finishing the run.

Anyway, I set my alarm for 6:45 so I had time for a brew and breakfast before going to pick up a fellow runner that was also crazy enough to be running around a track for 105 laps. It was a bit rushed as I hadn’t been very organised and needed to get my gear together. I picked up my friend (only 5 minutes late) and we headed off to Milton Keynes. When we got to the running track it was a little disorganised as the caretaker had only just turned up to open up the security gates. This resulted in a delay to the start time of 15 minutes but it gave us plenty of time to change and get our race numbers and chips. Everyone huddled around the changing room building as it was a bit brass monkeys outside. It was perfect running weather for me though, about 5C, dry and no wind to speak of; it also made the choice of top easier, I’d been struggling to decide between a t-shirt or long sleeves… very glad I went with long sleeves and gloves!

We headed outside to place our supplies on the outside of the bend following the finishing line, I did a few stretches and then it was time to start. Everyone lined up (more mingled) at the far side of the track to do the extra 195m required over the 42k (105 laps), the bell was rung and we were off….

Now, I expected this to be as mentally tiring as physically, but as it turned out, it wasn’t as boring as expected. I got into a comfortable rhythm and chatted to a few people as we went about ticking off the laps. I’d decided to aim for 1m54s laps as this worked out at about 7:40 min/miles and see how far I could get before I started to feel it. I’d also decided to split my energy gels evenly to one every 20 laps. I was wearing my Garmin, not for distance measurement as they are notoriously bad at that on tracks, but so that I could hit the lap button every time I crossed the finish line. After taking my first energy gel at lap 20, I grabbed my mp3 player when I set down my water bottle the next lap and settled down to some tunes. The next 50 laps were pretty uneventful, I took my next 2 energy gels on schedule and there was a diversion to the changing rooms at half way for a toilet pit-stop, I could have held on probably but as I wasn’t going for a PB or anything I thought I may as well be comfortable. Even though I wasn’t trying for a PB, I was still knocking out 1:50ish laps and was still feeling good.

Although 105 laps of a track sounds daunting, having a marker to tick off every 400m, rather than every mile on a road course, kept things moving along nicely. The downside was constantly turning left and seeing as I’d had the problems my physio had sorted out, it wasn’t ideal.

As such I started to feel my left glute tightening up from lap 70, so when I took my last energy gel at lap 80 I decided to walk backwards whilst consuming it, it took the pressure off of my left side and after 100m I broke into a backwards jog. I’ve never run backwards before but I’ve seen others do it in marathons; it’s surprisingly easy and it did seem to stretch out my calves and hamstrings. I don’t think it’s something I’d try on an uneven road course, but around an outer lane of a flat track, with no danger of running into anyone and the lane lines to keep me straight, it was good. I did another backwards lap for lap 96 and I was only 30 seconds slower than I had been going forward. I heard a few grumbles from the runners I was passing though, haha!

Running forwards… not sure which lap but obviously hadn’t spotted the camera!

As mentioned already, I had been meaning to do this as just a run, not race it, but I had just gotten into a rhythm. The last 25 laps were slightly slower, around the 2 minutes a lap mark, but my core strength seemed to hold on well and I didn’t hit “the wall”. The main reason for my slowing was that after my backwards lap to ease my left side tightness, I just didn’t want to push it and pick up an injury. I think I could possibly have pushed myself and kept the quicker laps up, but I’ll never know now.

Coming up to the finish line with 2 laps to go I thought I’d shout out to the lap keeper just to check and as they looked down at their laptop they realised I was starting my last lap, I was given the bell and I thought I’d finish in style, flying round the last lap in 1:33 (it felt like flying at the end of a marathon :)) I crossed the line and immediately asked to make sure I’d definitely finished as my lap counter on my Garmin said I still had a lap to do… after checking later it turned out that I must have forgotten to start a new lap around lap 60 as there was one that was double the time of the rest around it, oooops! 🙂

When I stopped my Garmin it stated 3:23:38! What! A six minute PB!! No way, there must be a mistake, I feel okay, I wasn’t pushing myself. Turns out my official finish time was 3:25:27, but thinking about it, my Garmin auto paused a couple of times when I pulled over to pick up a gel and it didn’t kick back in instantly; it must have also stopped when I went for a toilet pit-stop. So I’ll have to just settle for a 4 minute PB then, haha.

If I’d not had to stop at the side of the track to pick up gels; pick up/set down my water bottle; gone for a pit-stop; pushed myself in those last 25 laps; I may well have troubled the 3hr20 barrier. But then I also may not be sitting here relatively unscathed for my efforts. I’m happy with my new PB and I live to run another day! 🙂

A very nice triangle shaped medal, with centre spinner, was the reward for my efforts. A bit different… I like it!

Race bling

Would I do another track marathon?? I’m not sure to be honest! There is obviously massive PB potential; I found that a track is not as harsh to run 26.2 miles on as the road (probably why I didn’t seem to tire as much); as something different it was good, how many times can you do 105 laps of a track before you lose the will to live though?!; it’s not great turning the same way the whole time as you end up running a bit lopsided… unless I get as quick running backwards, then I can alternate laps, haha! 🙂

Vielen Dank Berlin

My ‘D’ in GCSE German told me thank you in German was ‘danke schon’ (and I’d be right), however, adding Berlin to the mix changes it complete… who knew! Lucky I checked the translation online; wouldn’t want to be grammatically incorrect. 🙂

 

After trying to destroy myself on Monday I have had a mixed week.

Exercise wise:

Week 5 Post Chicago – Week 1 (of 15) to Seville

Mon – 20 mile (Long Run)

Tues – Rest

Weds – Stretches

Thurs – 4.6 mile (Treadmill Intervals – warm up, 1mile (15.5k/h pace), 1.2k (16k/h), 800m (16.5k/h), 400m (17.5k/h), 400m recoveries, cool down)

Fri – Rest

Sat – Stretches

Sun – Stretches

Too many miles on Monday has restricted the rest of the week to very little. Without Monday’s run I still wouldn’t have been able to do much though. Monday to Thursday night shifts, with day shifts yesterday and today, has left little time for anything other than work. I did head to the work gym though before a night shift. I really hate running in the gym, I’d much rather be out on the road, even if it’s cold and raining. There is one thing treadmills are good for though, intervals!

12 hour shift work doesn’t mix well with marathon training! Does pay for nice running trips away though. 🙂

 

Away from running; I have done all my Christmas shopping! 12 hour shifts with online access are good for something, haha! How organised am I ?! Turns out not very as I decided I’d have some sent to my old address… an address I left a year ago! What a numpty!!! Unfortunately I only realised an old address had been auto-populated a number of days later and as they had already been dispatched I couldn’t change it. A visit to my old address on my way to work Thursday ensued with much embarrassment on my side! Two parcels had already been delivered but had been refused as they didn’t have any way of contacting me (fair enough). They have taken my details for when last item arrives though. A few emails later and the other parcels have been found and will be re-delivered… phew… Christmas saved. 🙂

My Friday night off was spent in London catching up with some mates… beers, good food, good banter and double vodkas… good night. Getting back to the local train station just after midnight and having to be up before 6am for work resulted in me thinking it would be a good idea to jog the 2 miles home. After running home in boots without any padding, the balls of my feet weren’t too pleased after sobering up!

The exciting news of the week though… and the reason for the title… I received an email from the Berlin Marathon on Thursday; after being unsuccessful in the ballot to get a place in next year’s race, a second chance ballot was held for any places not accepted from the first ballot. At what had to be worse odds in this second ballot, my name was picked out and an email was sent… congratulations and follow this link if you would like to participate… hell yeah, sign me up! 😀

If I get there fit and healthy it will be World Major number 3 ticked off. I’m already thinking that I want to go sub 3hrs20… knocking 10 minutes off my marathon time in a year is possibly a tad ambitious; we’ll see!

Post Chicago… and the dangers of heading out for a run without a planned route!

What I’ve been up to since Chicago……

Week 1

Mon – 25 minutes on treadmill (hate them but better than stop/start at every block on Chicago streets)

Tues – Stretching

Weds – Recovery sports massage

Thurs – 13.85 miles on mountain bike

Fri – Rest

Sat – 15.2 miles on road bike (new toy)

Sun – Rest

Ran day after marathon on physio’s advice, just 25 minutes to turn legs over, did spend most of the rest of the day on my feet though site seeing in Chicago. After a long flight home, had a much needed massage, then did some low impact exercise for remainder of week.

new toy

 

Week 2

Mon – 5.5 miles (easy)

Tues – Rest

Weds – Gym strength work

Thurs – 6.2 miles (tempo)

Fri – Rest

Sat – Stretches

Sun – Rest

Didn’t do a great deal this week, just a couple of short runs to test legs.

 

Week 3

Mon – Stretches

Tues – Gym strength work

Weds – 5.2 miles (tempo)

Thurs – 4.4 miles (1k intervals with running club)

Fri – Rest

Sat – 11.9 miles (LSR)

Sun – Rest

A couple of short runs again this week with a long slow run at the weekend. I was in the Lakes for a few days for my parents anniversary though, so that long slow run went over some rather large hills. Also had my first experience of runners bleeding nipples; heavy rain = wet, heavy top = bleeding nipples… ouchy! Plasters or bodyglide a must in the future!!

First outing with running club in a number of months, was good to be back; no easing back into it though with 1k intervals, thanks a bunch! 😉

 

Week 4

Mon – 6 miles (easy)

Tues – Rest

Weds – Stretches

Thurs – 4.2 miles (easy with a quick Strava kilometre) & 3.3 miles (speedwork with RC)

Fri – Gym strength work

Sat – Stretches

Sun – Rest

Few more short runs; no long run this weekend due to being on shift, will do it Monday.

A number of us from running club have gotten in to Strava and there are timed sections around Stotfold. If I’m running with someone I’m not greatly competitive, I have found though given a time to aim for or a leader board and that competitiveness comes out big time… this could be trouble! 🙂

It has been good to get back to running club though as this is somewhere I haven’t been for a lot of this year, since I was in physio from March anyway. For a couple of months I wasn’t running, then had to be very specific with the time and distance of runs for a while and afterwards it didn’t really fit in with work or my training for Chicago.

 

As you can see there hasn’t been a great deal of heavy work. In one way the lack of mileage has been good as it has given my body a chance to recovery properly from the Chicago marathon; however, with a track marathon less than 2 weeks away I needed to get some mileage in… and this is what led to me heading out for a long run this Monday as I headed into week 5. It was raining, but with a week of nightshifts on the horizon it had to be today or not at all. After my first experience of bleeding nipples a few runs ago I prepared myself properly this time; fully ‘bodyglide’ anti-chaff stick’d up I started my mp3 player and set off. I didn’t really have a plan (regretted later!), just to do about 14/15 miles, first half at comfortable 8 min/miles, then second half pushing the pace to sub 7:30’s. This is because I want to train myself to negative split over longer distances (theory I want to test). Anyway, after setting off at what felt a nice comfortable pace I checked my watch when it informed me of my first mile completed… 7:19, ooops! I carried on at what felt a nice and comfortable pace and continued around the 7:30 m/m mark; oh well, a long run at consistent pacing it’ll be instead then.

I’d headed off with a route in mind but I wasn’t really feeling it, I’d done parts of it quite a lot during my recent training and I get bored covering the same ground all the time, so I made an impulse decision to head off-piste. I ran past my turning at mile 7 and headed off into the distance. Now, I did actually know where my new direction was taking me, unfortunately I didn’t realise it would add quite so much extra mileage on. For the next few miles though it was a joy to be running; my left glute and hamstring had been feeling tight but they had finally loosened up (or maybe just gone numb) and even though it was drizzling, I was in out in the countryside, fresh air, empty mind and just feeling lucky to have the health to be able to do what I was doing.

Just before mile 11 I turned off to take a single width country lane back towards home; it was at this point that I saw a sign that said 4 miles to Ashwell, which was fine apart from the fact that I knew Ashwell to be 5 miles from home… hmmm, this run was possibly going to be slight longer than 14/15 miles.

It wasn’t ideal to jump my mileage this much but I still had another gel to take and plenty of water so there was no point worrying about it. This 4 miles to Ashwell won’t be high on my list for future runs though; it was just a flat lane, running between fields that appeared to go on for miles either side. On a warm sunny day it might be quite nice, but on a cold and wet day with no protection whatsoever from the wind whistling across the fields, not so much fun! For a narrow 4 mile road between two small non-descript villages it was also rather busy and being barely the width of a small car (let alone the lorries using it), there was lots of jumping on to the lumpy grass verges to escape being mowed down by vehicles! (okay, not quite that dramatic, but how about some common-sense motorists! You don’t own the road! Grrrr!… Haha :))

Having made it to Ashwell in one piece this is where my run should have been stopping mileage wise and my body was wanting it to as well. My core strength was seriously lacking and I noticed this was causing my hips to fall forward, lengthening and flattening my stride… not a good thing for me as this causes me to heel strike and run flat-footed, which ultimately was the source of all my problems that started last November. I was 5 miles from home though so there was little I could do other than concentrate really hard on trying to keep my core tight, stride short and picking my feet up as much as possible. Luckily there were a number of hills in this homeward stretch and going uphill is about the only time I naturally run with a proper stride, so I struggled on until I had to stop to cross a major dual-carriageway. This is where I found out how much certain parts were actually hurting and getting going again the other side wasn’t much fun. My right knee was hurting quite a lot.

Now being the sensible person that I am, I just got through that last stretch to home and recovered. Erm, no! Putting what I actually did in writing is slightly worrying; I think I may be nuts 🙂

As I got back into Stotfold the direct route would have taken me through the churchyard to my street and a much needed ice bath, however, as I looked at my Garmin it told me I would have run just under 20 miles. So what; I’d run much further than I had planned (or should have run), but I was so close to 20 that I might as well round it off right? No I shouldn’t, but I did anyway. I ran the longer route home so I could get to 20 miles, where I proceeded to stop my Garmin and walk the rest of the way home… yes I am THAT stupid! Haha 🙂

I stretched and had an ice bath when I got home, feeling a bit worse for wear during my shift that night. Luckily after a day’s sleep and some more icing/heating of my right knee I’m not feeling too broken. Now to take things easy for a couple of days and put in a few shorter runs before my meeting with the track… should really try and get out on my bike or in the pool for the cross training I need to do as well… just not enough hours in the week 😀

consistent splits until I hit ‘the wall’ in mile 18

What can I take from my last few weeks……

Don’t run in the rain without protecting my nipples.

Have a route planned before I head out and stick to it; no going off-piste.

A round mileage on the Garmin is not important.

Strava = competitiveness

I really need to focus on building my core strength.

That after two and a half years running I’m still learning!