Planned an LSR Saturday, anywhere between 22.5 and 30 miles. I knew with the missing miles in previous weeks that I wouldn’t reach 30 miles, that would cause all sorts of problems, but I’d see what I could do.
However, I had session #2 of Running School on Saturday morning, and that meant a couple of miles on and off the dreadmill, so I decided to put the LSR back to Sunday morning. The school helped me continue to think about form – leg strides, heel height, knee driving and also a little about arms and overall posture. All good things to work on. It still doesn’t feel like it’s going to be easy to replicate that good form when running slowly over 50+ miles, but it feels good to do – and the exercises tuned to improving my form I’m convinced will help.
On Saturday a couple of Bosh friends of mine, Luke Ashton and Kevin Smith, were running the Thames Path 100. It was the first 100 mile race for both of them, and much of Bosh were rooting for them on Facebook. Around 7pm I could see via RunKeeper Live that Luke was heading towards Shepperton, so Billy and I drove out to see if we could find him and wish him well. We stopped in Shepperton when we could see a couple of runners with head torches, and had no real idea if Luke had gone on already or was behind these two guys. We waited in the cold for five minutes or so, and then saw a headtorch moving towards us, and then when we could actually see it was indeed Luke, it was too late to wave to him. So back in the car, drove half a mile and waited – as he approached, Billy waved his Bosh flag and we shouted some words of encouragement. Luke came over and shook my hand, looked a bit dazed (I think he was about mile 60 at this point), and I told him he was about fourth and a couple of guys were just five minutes ahead. He said “Is that all?”, then thanked us and ran on. Billy shouted “Good luck!”, and was pleased to get a couple of thumbs-ups in response. I realised afterwards that this was the first time I’ve met up with someone in the middle of an ultra. He looked strong and up for the rest of the run. We got some fish and chips and went home. When I got up in the morning, at 6am for my COD LSR, I loaded up Facebook and found out he’d come second in the race, some four minutes behind the winner. Amazing, inspiring stuff.
So, dedicating my LSR to Luke, I set off, toast and jam in hand, UltrAspire pack on with a litre-and-a-half of water, a couple of gels and a bag of assorted nuts, raisings, flapjack pieces and Jelly Babies. Slightly annoyed that I couldn’t find my 2XU tights, or gloves, but still – I would go far today.
Rather cold, I headed down the towpath towards Guildford. Felt bright and breezy and soon warmed up. I got to about five miles in about 45 minutes and started to feel a stomach ache coming on. I would normally go for a… number two… before heading out on an early morning run, but I hadn’t this morning for some reason. It was hitting me quite quick and I knew I had to do something about it. I was in a quiet area, I hadn’t seen anyone all morning, and there was a handy remote clearing that was reasonably free of brambles. Cursing myself for not packing any TP, I sought out a few big dock leaves and did the quick business. Feeling much better, I decided to turn back at that point and head back past my house and towards Walton Bridge on the towpath. That would mean I get to my house at about 10 miles, and then see where I go from there – but importantly if my stomach got bad I wouldn’t be far away from home and a proper toilet. I had a gel and some food, and then a couple of miles later stopped for the call of nature again. More dock leaves desecrated 🙂 However, I really did feel OK then, so when I got back to the canal lock close to my house I felt good about running towards Walton.
I’d run to Walton Bridge before, it’s about five miles from home and it’s a nice run – mostly towpath with a little bit of tarmac as you go through Weybridge – and it has the added bonus of ending up next to the Thames. I hadn’t realised this beforehand, but when I saw the sign “Thames Path” I realised that this was the same bit of route that Luke and Kevin had run the night before. Muddy as can be, and really quite difficult to run on – like a skating rink in places – I thought about how tough it must have been to have gone past here a total of three times at something like miles 10, 50 and 70 of a 100 mile race. Respect. I felt good, and ran to just over 15 miles before turning back toward home, knowing that pushing on could cause problems – particularly injuries, which I fear most of all with the ultras coming up!
I got back home with 21.5 miles on the clock, pretty tired but happy. I’d taken 3-and-a-half hours, but that’s not too bad particularly with a couple of poo stops. On the negative side, I realised I still had quite a bit of water left in my pack, which with hindsight wasn’t great; and although I’d eaten both gels and taken an S! cap, I still had quite a bit of food left.
Next day, I rested (again at work) and went for a sauna and steam at the local gym. Felt great. Slight niggly pain in left Achilles, but nothing to worry about.
Tuesday I rested again, and in the evening I started to feel a little rough. Slight sore throat, slight fever. Uh-oh. I knew what this meant. On Alick’s advice Wednesday I went and bought echinacea and lots of vitamin C to blitz my system. Continuing to rest, I also made a big decision about diet. I realised that over time I’d been eating quite poorly. Most mornings I’d have a pastry of some sort and a cup of coffee, then a sandwich (a good quality sandwich, but still a sandwich) at lunchtime. In the evening we usually eat well, but overall during the day I had been eating very little fresh fruit and veg, lots of carbs and protein but not many vitamins. Little wonder, then, that after a big run my immune system could be down, and surrounded on the train, tube and at work with coughing, spluttering people, I get another bug.
So I determined, from Thursday, that I would eat better. Porridge, muesli and/or fruit for breakfast most mornings, or at least avoiding pastry. Big salads for lunch. Cut down on snacks. More fresh vegetables in the evenings where we can. I rested the rest of the week, doing some core strength exercises on the Friday. I bought Manuka honey and started having a couple of spoons of that per day, I bought coconut water, chia seeds and lots of other good stuff to follow some good recipes from Scott Jurek’s book Eat and Run. Not sure where this will take me, but I figured I’d been eating badly, so to try eating better for a month at least would be good for me.
Total miles planned: 34
Total miles actual: 23.5