Right… remember me?
I’ve not sat down to write a blog post since… wow, September!
I posted in February,
but I was already sat down when I wrote that. On a bus. To Gatwick. To fly out
to run a half marathon in Italy. Which…
…got cancelled due to adverse weather conditions. Not
the organisers’ fault. Not that weather’s anyone’s fault, but the race permit
was revoked by the local authorities. I’d flown in on the Friday and the Due Perle HM wasn’t officially
called off until Saturday evening, much to the disappointment not just of yours
truly but of many others who’d travelled for the weekend, albeit without
requiring a passport. That said, at least I’d taken out an insurance option…
…no, not a financial one! On the Saturday I entered
the Portofino
Run 10k: virtually the same out and back course, but just the one lap thereof. 40’26”, so 69” PB. Happy
enough with that, and with hindsight better to PB over 10k in the dry than to
struggle through a HM to bring back a mediocre time. Not that I was thinking
along those lines at the time, having taken two days’ leave for the jaunt…
…at least I don’t need to take time off to get up to
Manchester and back! And besides, it was nice to spend some time with my
parents and my Nonna.
Huh? What’s that?
Ah yes. Manchester.
That’s right: it’s Greater Manchester Marathon
weekend. My fourth. Results to date:
28/04/2013: my
first ever marathon. 3:31’18”.
06/04/2014:
epileptic seizure at mile 20: DNF.
19/04/2015:
the week before The Fling when training for The WHW Race… 3:08’56” (10’28” PB)
3:08’56” still being my PB. Unsurprisingly, given the Manchester marathon’s as
flat as they come. Indeed, hopefully elevation is still less than the 777ft
(30ft/mi) showing on the race
Strava page, given that last year my 410 reckoned it was 215ft: now I
know they’ve changed the finish (which will feature a little incline), but
surely it can’t be that drastic!
Now, last year’s event was a diversion from my A goal,
which was, as I may have mentioned, the West Highland Way Race. In turn, my key
training race for WHW was The Highland Fling, which I ran six days after Manchester.
So, whilst I’d done some marathon training in the weeks building up to April
19, ultimately my focus was elsewhere, on something fundamentally different.
Whereas, this time round…
…this is my 2016 A race.
As the summer of 2015 came to a close, I set my eyes
on sub-3. Then autumn came, and I really struggled with pace. I ran three
marathons in October, racing one of them (York), and caught some pesky bug
while we were out in Italy for Nonna’s 100th. Even once the mucus had long
found its way through sewers and into front garden soils, the pace that had taken
me to my maiden sub-90 HM in September was nowhere to be seen. I felt obliged
to review my goal and duly upped (lowered?) it to 3:05’. This remains an
ambitious target, and would represent a 2’56” PB: but it doesn’t have the
daunting yet irresistible lure of the defining sub-3 mark. Of membership of a
club over what, like many others, I, someone who’ll lace up for anything from parkrun
to ultra, consider to be the defining
distance. Which is why, Ladies and Gentlemen…
. . .
Correct. I will be going for sub-3 in Manchester. It’s
Thursday as I type: but I won’t be publishing this till I’m on my merry way, if
not later. I’ve long been maintaining my goal is sub-3:05’ (kinda in between
current PB and sub-3) and that’s all you needed to know. Till now.
OK, so some of you know the truth. Four of you, in
fact: Graham (from parkrun), Paul,
Mike and Chris. I told Graham as we warmed up for
Saturday’s parkrun, mainly to see how it sounded when I said it out loud. I
told Paul when we were frankly discussing our respective goals. I told Mike for
some valued feedback. And I told Chris because…well, we might end up spending
some time together later.
Here’s what I volunteered to Mike:
“Yes, I
do plan to go out with the sub-3 pacing group. But not because I think such an
attempt is likely to be successful. My reasoning is different - and threefold:
1. To give
me an idea of the gap between where I'm at and where I need to be for a more
realistic sub-3 attempt later in the year;
2. Because,
having run The Bath at 6'41"/mi, I know I can run 13.1 at 6’52" and
get halfway in 1:30'. So I could still set a PB running the second half in
1:38’55” at 7'33".
Now, we
both know (least I do) the impact on lactic-heavy legs of a fast-fading goal.
Nevertheless, hopefully the pursuit of a PB would help me carry on at
7'33". And…
3. ...if
neither mind nor legs fail, and by the grace of God I do manage to stick with
the sub-3 pacer... if Group Effect, Audience Effect, nutrition, weather,
stubbornness and taperschmaper all combine to create a perfect storm
within which I do go sub-3… and it would take all of those… as well as the
benefit of running freely, without watch-watching, placing my faith in the
pacer (none of my sub-19 5ks have come through checking time, and I do
genuinely run faster when not scaring myself by looking at how fast I’m
running)…
...well,
then I’ll be able retire from running a happy man. If not necessarily
on Sunday evening. More likely in three decades’ time or so. But I’d have…
you know… joined The Club. The one which, for me, is the ultimate Runners'
Club.
So:
Gold Goal:
sub-3:00’00"
Silver
Goal: sub-3:05'00"
Bronze
Goal: sub-3:08'56"
Not sure
this will necessarily surprise you. Truth is, if I do PB, whether I
do so at 3:00’01" and 03:08’55" makes little difference to me, in the
great, long-term, dream-pursuing scheme of things. I’d rather come away
knowing how short of *that* landmark I came and plan for Chester and/or
Nice accordingly.”
Quite frankly, there isn’t much to add to that. Although
granted, later on in the e-mail conversation I did spell out that “I'd rather end crushed by the side of the
road than wonder “what if?””. On the basis that I’ve ended crushed by the
side of the Manchester route once already, it’s probably no bad thing that Mike
didn’t respond.
But why am I only publishing this with the race
underway?
Because I know what would happen if I did so. I’d be
inundated with best wishes on social media, with dollops of “you can do it!”
and the occasional sprinkling of “nutter!”. I’d be overwhelmed. Literally.
See, the minute I waved goodbye to sub-3 as a goal I
felt a reinvigorating sense of relief. Not long after, my pace picked up again.
Bizarrely, this appears to have been helped by my upping my weekly mileage back
into the 70s from the 50s into which I’d descended to achieve that very goal. I
ran 250 miles in January, my fastest parkrun coming on the 30th: 19’33”. In
February (a month which began with a taper for the HM that never was and was,
even in a leap year, shorter than any other), I ran 284 miles: 3.1 of those, on the 27th, in 18’47”,
a 17” 5k PB. Since then, hovering around the 70mi/week mark, I’ve run five more
parkruns and gone sub-19’ on three occasions, my PB now 18’32”, set at Burnham
and Highbridge parkrun. As for the other two, one was on the eve of Bath Half and thus
duly taken steadily, whereas the other was at Ashton Court with its
331ft of ascent, where 19’57” still represented a chunky course best for me. And
was the second in a series of three consecutive first V40 placings at three
different parkruns: proof, if ever it was required, that waving goodbye to your
thirties can be the best thing that happens to you as a runner.
If you believe race predictors (such as the RunningForFitness one),
my 18’32” 5k time suggests I am capable of a 2:57’28” marathon. Now, I can see
how a race predictor can set a runner a realistic goal, but I don’t believe its
short-term accuracy. And I certainly think the 23.1 miles separating parkruns
from marathon represent too great a leap for faith to be warranted. Equally, on
the basis of my 1:28’10”
HM PB in Bath the same predictor thinks I’m capable of a 3:04’29” marathon.
Which is probably not far from where the clock will stop for me on Sunday. But…
…heck, I’ve trained for months. It’ll be six months
before I get to run another one. That’s six months (well, four, anyway) f
turning down alcohol and cake, of planning my training around a very tight and
unforgiving goal… wouldn’t it be good to get it over and done with, once and
for all?
Because trust me: should I ever join The Sub-3 Club,
that’ll do me nicely. I wouldn’t focus on running 26.2 in twohourssummat again.
It could happen, but only whilst my focus was on different challenges. Not that
I need to look far, anyway: I’ve got Conti
Lightning Run on May 1 and its big brother Conti Thunder Run on July 23, with Classic Quarter’s
44 miles along the South West Coast Path on June 11 sandwiched in between the
12- and 24-hour runs in Derbyshire. I want to enjoy those three and do well,
but actually my second key goal for 2016 is more modest, at least in size: I
want to break 40’ over 10k. Which is harder than it sounds, if well within my
reach right now given my 5k times. 38’34”? Now there’s a prediction I’ll
believe. Well, give or take 1’25”, anyway. Indeed, ‘give’ only.
. . .
I’d wondered whether typing this and committing to
screen words in which my belief had been growing would bring back the pressure
I shed around the turn of the year. Truth is, it hasn’t. I’m still pondering
over everything I eat, over the exact length of every taper run… I’ve lost
track of how long I’ve spent starting at MyFitnessPal,
let alone Strava… but I’d be doing that regardless of the run. What I am
looking forward to is putting all my faith into a complete stranger and trying
to follow him for a little under three hours. Not having to think about pace
should free up a little energy; not looking at how fast I’m going will make the
effort feel a little lighter. And, if I’m to tick this box, it’s going to take
all the energy I can muster: mentally, as much as physically.
Heck, if I were relying on my physical ability alone I
wouldn’t bother at all. If anything’s going to see me cross that finish line
the right side of noon it will be my mental strength. My stubbornness remains
my best asset. And hopefully some of the nuggets I picked up in Matt Fitzgerald’s latest offering “How
Bad Do You Want It?”, which I devoured last week (zero calories!), will
come in handy. Let’s just hope my brain behaves, unlike 2014, eh?
Right: I’m done. By the time you read this, I’ll have
lined up at the start of the 2016 Greater Manchester Marathon well aware that
far better runners than me have had to invest multiple attempts (with related
training) to break sub-3 over 26.2. That my recent long runs suggest I am in PB
shape but not sub-3 shape. So, when I return to the ether later, if I’ve not
hit my gold goal I won’t be in any way disappointed. If its foolhardy pursuit
has compromised even my silver and bronze goals, so be it. I can live with
failure. It’s the failure to find out that I don’t want to experience.
Indeed, I expect to fail. But I won't fail to expect. My. Very. Best. If that
. . .
If noon on
Sunday, April 10 has long passed, you should be able to navigate your way to my
result starting from here.
Oh, and please
support my local parkrun, which is under
threat from the local council, by signing this
petition. At a time when obesity and diabetes are making the news for all
the wrong reasons, it’s hard to view the council’s stance as anything but
short-sighted.
Great read and congrats on your time.
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