My experience with... maranoia!

Pre-Scriptum I: I wrote this post last week. But I knew too many people who were running Greater Manchester Marathon, including two runners for whom it was only their second marathon, to risk freaking them out with my experiences close to race day! So I put this on hold… and they both duly went on to smash their PBs, Mark in 3:08’40” in and Matt in 3:21’47” – as did the more experienced Simon in 3:27’03”. Well done Lads!

Pre-Scriptum II: I was going to publish this yesterday (Monday). But I’ve since had a severe bout of maranoia myself… so severe that a little copy rework has been required!

A year… almost an entire year… that’s how long has passed since I last posted! Haven’t you lot been lucky?!

In my defence, I spent around half that time writing a book, and the latter half not knowing what to write about having just published a book. You did know I have a book out, right? And that you can download it here? For just £2.48 – probably less than your last drink at the bar?

Anyroad…

…I came up with an idea for a new post, so thought I’d give it a go. It is spring, after all. Which means buzzing insects all over the place, chuffin lawns that need chuffin mowing – but also brighter mornings and, of course, Spring Marathon Season. Which means long’uns, spilling over from winter, training plans (for some), dreams of PBs…

…and, as race day approaches, maranoia.

Sometimes referred to as “taper madness”, disappointingly ‘maranoia’ isn’t in the dictionary. But here are a couple of definitions that may help those who’ve never experienced it (i.e. who’ve never run a marathon) understand what I’m going to be waffling on about:

Runner’s World: “mental anxiety found in marathon runners, characterised by the irrational belief that last-minute disaster is imminent.”

Rachael Woolston: “mental anxiety found in marathon runners who become convinced they are injured or ill. Sometimes associated with an unwillingness to leave the house for fear of tripping up, having a car land on their head in the days before a marathon. Some reports of runners wearing vacuum suits on trains to avoid germs.”

And my favourite, by Captivations Teamwear:

“The nervous state during pre-marathon taper that amplifies every sniffle into PB-dream ending pneumonia, and every twinge into a debilitating chronic injury…”

Basically, it’s the fear that hits us when we start tapering, i.e. reducing our mileage after weeks of building leg strength with long runs as the focus shifts to reaching the start, if not the finish, with those legs feeling fresh. It affects all marathon runners differently, and is ultimately just an indication that a 26.2-mile race matters to us.

More eminent minds than mine have tackled this topic. And this is not my attempt to shine brighter lights than sport psychologists or professional athletes might do. This is just me jotting down my thoughts about what worries me, and what doesn’t, as race day approaches. Some of it may resonate, some of it may just sound daft. Take it all with a pinch of salt. And don’t go changing any of your habits in any great hurry based on my warblings: indeed, if you only take one thing away from this post, it should be that maranoia affects us all differently, and that we all need to develop our own techniques to deal with it. Here’s what I become acutely aware of over the final fortnight leading up to a marathon, and how I go about limiting its impact on my sanity.

Note: The Urban Dictionary defines ‘maranoia’ as “A state of temporary paranoia while under the influence of marijuana”. That’s not the maranoia we’re talking about here. Hope that’s OK.

DISTANCE

“How far out should I run my last long run?” and “Am I training hard enough?” are two of the most common questions runners exchange in the weeks building up to a marathon. The two most common answers to the former, assuming you are targeting a marathon for racing purposes rather than treating it as a training run or comfortably pacing someone, are probably: “three weeks” and “two weeks”. Whereas the most common answer to the latter is: “probably not”.

I believe in tapering, i.e. in reducing your weekly mileage ahead of a target marathon. Really, I do. Not that everyone would think so: but then it’s all relative, and my weekly mileage is generally around the eighty mark. With my A race (Rotterdam Marathon) on Sunday, I cut my mileage down to 67 miles this week. Which, I’m aware, represents a higher figure than many hit at any stage during their maratraining, let alone a week out. But then my body is used to high mileage, and I don’t want to give it too big a shock. My mind is equally accustomed to high mileage, and has been known to fret when I’ve tried to reduce it, as I did in early 2016. Result: my pace decreased. So I increased my mileage again and set PBs across all distances. I’m weird like that. Equally, my mind is worried that my body may get heavier… but more of that later.

The good thing about this particular taper is that I can look back at “what worked before”, i.e. to how I tapered ahead of my sub-3 last November. Y’all know I ran a sub-3 last November, right? November 13, 2016: Marathon des Alpes Maritimes, from Nice to Cannes. 2:59’38”. And I did so having run 70.7 miles between October 31 and November 6, in turn almost twenty miles fewer than the week prior. Not that I am treating these numbers, or their daily components, as binding: but it helps my confidence to know that they led to a PB. Which is not to say they weren’t too many, or indeed too few: so, even with that knowledge, experiments continue. Hence the slightly fewer miles this time round…

The above paragraph and image should answer how long I believe a taper should be. Two weeks works for me. The picture below, in which the red circle is my sub-3 marathon, should back that up. But if a 3-week taperschmaper works for you, run with three. I would freak out that I might put on a few pounds, but then I don’t worry unduly about injuries or heavy legs…

(Oh: and when I refer to it as ‘taperschmaper’ it’s with nothing but affection. Honest.)

PACE

Reduce distance, not intensity. Reduce distance, not intensity. Reduce distance, not intensity.

If I were to give three pieces of tapering advice, in Blairite fashion they’d be the three above. Which is not to say that I don’t treat myself to a few easier runs than usual in the final fortnight. But then, as a runstreaker, pushing myself to the limit every day makes no sense. So I do throw in some 10ks at around a minute over my target marathon pace (‘MP’). But equally I try to keep most of my training runs around MP+30”, and even to sneak in some shorter, faster runs. Which I find really hard, as I race far better than I train. The fact that races don’t begin at 6 o’clock and average 40ft/mi of elevation probably helps with that…

…in a nutshell: I like to approach races with the target pace a relatively close friend, not some stranger I’m encountering for the first time. But sure, we’ll have to try and hang around each other a bit longer on The Day, that’s all. That’s all. That’s…

(Presumably, followers of training plans don’t worry as much about pace and distance. Someone’s done the worrying, and the planning, for them. It won’t surprise you that I do a lot of planning: it’s just that, rather than follow strict plans to the letter, I create my own schedules based on my own experiences. Which isn’t to say they’re perfect: but I feel more comfortable this way than I would following a book. I just need to continually strike the balance between “feeling comfortable” and “slipping into a comfort zone”, as there is always room for change and improvement. After all, as runner we don’t stand still, do we?)

NIGGLES

What’s the difference between a runner with niggles and a runner without any?

One of them has a race coming up.

This is probably the area where having run ten of these blasted things before helps the most. Because I’ve not only run ten, I’ve prepared for ten. Indeed, I’ve prepared for eleven: but let’s not mention Manchester 2014, eh? Suffice to say that I didn’t complete it… Oh, and can we also gloss over the fact that 2013 and 2015, as well as 2012 (which I didn’t run), were later deemed to have fallen 380m short of the mythical 42,195km distance? I’m still counting them!

Right: back to niggles of the physical type…

A 10-mi run generally requires putting one foot in front of the other over a dozen thousand times. And each and every time we do that we’re putting pressure on our feet, our joints, our bones… we’re risking twisting our ankle, or falling…

…running is one of the most natural acts in which we could engage. Which is why it’s at its most dangerous when we switch out of automatic mode and think about it.

I have run on niggles, but have never run on an injury. Considering I’ve run every day for the past 1,635 days, that tells you how lucky my body has been over the past four years with injuries. And how comfortable my mind has become in dismissing niggles.

They’re just part of the running package. I’ve never told anyone till now, but I had a niggle for around four weeks ahead of Nice-Cannes. Somehow the plant of my left foot didn’t feel right, especially at the start of a run. This left me with a choice to make: go online and self-diagnose myself with plantar fasciitis before putting the running shoes away for a few weeks, or carry on running and see if it got any worse. I carried on running. It didn’t get any worse. I PB’d.

I’m in a similar situation now. There’s ‘something’ I’m aware of which I’d gladly make disappear with a magic wand, or even a magic sponge. But I can’t. It’s been there for over a week now, during which time I’ve set a new 5k PB and logged some gratifying training runs. Most importantly, it’s not got any worse. It’s ‘there’, but it’s not affecting my running. So why worry?

Besides, this is another example of how the more we run, the more we learn how our body works. The panel on our water filter’s lid no longer indicates when the cartridge needs changing. But then I never did pay much attention to it. What I did go by, and still can and do, is whether any calcium is left flowing at the bottom of the kettle. When that becomes the case, I change the cartridge. Equally, I don’t go by Strava e-mails nor manufacturers’ recommendations in deciding when to retire a pair of shoes. Upon becoming aware of this latest niggle, I knew exactly what the problem was: I needed to retire my second pair of Saucony Virratas. I’d felt a similar niggle just before retiring the first pair. Only now am I checking the mileage I got out of both pairs, confident that they will back up my argument. The ones destined for next week’s recycling have covered 870 miles. The ones I retired fifteen months ago, having bought both pairs at the same time (January 2015 sales!), had covered…

…831 miles. I’ve genuinely only now checked. And a 39-mile difference makes perfect sense considering I had tried to slip back into my first pair after that 95-mile ultra, when my legs probably needed a wee bit more support than now…

04/04/2017: Right, remember that definition of maranoia I highlighted at the beginning? Namely the one describing it as “the nervous state during pre-marathon taper that amplifies every sniffle into PB-dream ending pneumonia, and every twinge into a debilitating chronic injury”?

After a highly encouraging 15-mi run on Sunday, I was out on a comfortable 10k recovery run yesterday when my right calf suddenly felt ‘wrong’… in a way I’ve never experienced before… I wasn't pushing, I wasn't running far, I was just ambling along on what should have been the most innocuous of runs…

…I soon stopped and stretched a little. Not knowing what else to do, I did what I usually do when I don’t know what to do: and ran. I was 2.3mi into the run at that stage: I could have done a lot worse than heading straight home, which would have probably made for a round 5k anyway. But I carried on. Sunday’s run had featured my first sub-90’ Half in training; yesterday was just about loosening up, running progressively faster miles but none in less than 8’10”. And the mile splits suggest I achieved that goal perfectly. However…

…the pain increased once I’d got home and stopped. The fact that it’s race week no doubt heightens awareness: but for most of yesterday heading up the stairs entailed turning the right foot outwards and taking the steps one at a time. Walking on the flat wasn’t pretty, either. Maranoia didn’t help, but the pain was real…

…out came the ice pack, and I asked Mike for advice. This resulted in a hot bath and a couple of texts to Karen pleading her to pick up some Ibuprofen gel. Mike backed the “cheap generic form from Tesco”; Karen picked up an even cheaper, equally generic form from Home Bargains. You know it’s cheap when she doesn’t ask for her money back…

…I headed this morning, with an open mind: anything between a mile and 3.1 miles (5k). Not least because I wanted to pay Tesco a visit, I ended up running 5k: and they were nowhere near as pretty as yesterday’s 10, although not as bad as I’d feared last night. I certainly didn’t hang around once I got home, heading straight for a hot bath. Another will follow later. Compression socks are on, courtesy of advice from Alex and others on Strava, where, after yesterday’s reluctance, I shared my woes. This also prompted Ciaran to drop me a line suggesting a stretching technique that’s worked for him: it doesn’t seem to be doing me any harm, so far…

…if how I go about heading up the stairs is my KPI, then things are improving. Time alone will tell whether they improve in time for Sunday’s race to remain a PB attempt. I will definitely travel, and I am 99% confident of running: should the 1% materialise, I’ll support Mike, Sarah, Philip and Steven from the sides with Judy and the two Lucys. But, with another marathon (London) coming up a fortnight later, deferring my PB attempt is an option. One I probably won’t exercise. But one which is helping alleviate maranoia, right now… as I try desperately to not aimlessly seek to alleviate frustration through snacking, especially given my maranoid weight gain concerns…

Fortunately, I’ve now raced enough to know that no training I put in this week is going to boost my form ahead of Sunday. It’s all about fine-tuning now. So, whilst I’d love to slip in a few miles around Sunday’s target pace, I’m not going to stress out if I don’t. I have to trust the training to date: and I’m happy to do so, because it’s been good training. If I get to Sunday’s start line with no grand pains, I can still give my goal a shot. If.

Right: that’s it as far as today’s addition goes. The rest was all written before I was struck down by maranoia. Or a trapped nerve. Or a tight muscle. Or whatever it is. Given my right knee had been hurting for a few weeks, maybe the pain’s just trickling down my leg, with a view to leaving for good once it’s ensured I keep the miles down this week…

SNEEZUMS

Offices don’t suddenly fill up with sneezing colleagues in the build-up to a race. It just seems that way.

Fortunately, I work from home, so I don’t worry about germs floating all over the pace. Not until The Boys come home from school, that is…

…I did worry two weeks before my first marathon, mind. We went out for Mother’s Day and my brother-in-law brought his stomach bug along. I survived, but it did play on my mind. By that stage of proceedings you’ve done the bulk of the hard work, and you know it – just like you know the recovery window opens as wide as a roof window, and can be just as hard to reach. There is little you can do but believe in your immune system, or in the nature of someone’s stomach bug being such that it won’t easily transfer. But there’s no denying these are two weeks when working from home is more appealing than ever, even if last week I did run 13.1mi into my office with an 8kg backpack. Can’t see that happening over the next few days…

NUTRITION

Another staple favourite of runners’ conversations…

I’ve got some cracking books on running nutrition. “Training Food”, “Performance Nutrition For Runners” and “Go Faster Food” all contain some awesome recipes. My favourite?

Hmmm… let me cook one of them and I’ll let you know.

I’m genuinely sure I’d love most of the dishes featured. But here’s the snag: I can’t cook. My wife can, but is fairly traditional, not least as we both have to balance our culinary preferences with raising two young boys. Their preferences go a long way in shaping our weekly meal plan: and, considering that when I return to Italy I always give advance notice to my 101-year old Nonna as to what I’d like her to cook, I can hardly grumble. And it helps that we eat fairly well anyway: pasta, rice, chicken, pizza, fishcakes… a runner could be far worse off. Although, after last weekend’s fishandchipsandmushypeas, I can’t wait for the next time I treat myself to them, post-Rotterdam…

Where carbloading is concerned, I again look to take a balanced view. Ahead of an Ultra, I’d start on the quinoa three or four days before the event. But, ahead of a marathon, I try to steer relatively clear of carbs during the first half of the week, to deplete (or at least reduce) my glycogen stores and not feel too bloated, before going a little more carb-heavy for three nights ahead of the race. Which doesn’t mean stuffing my face, rather increasing the percentage of carbs within my usual calorie intake. Not that it ever seems to fall below 60%, taperschmaper or not: it’s pretty much the rule. It reflects what we like in this house. In the thirty-six hours ahead of a marathon I’m just a bit more aware, and may give whole-wheat pasta precedence over the usual stuff, or indulge in a Clif Bar just ‘because’. To some extent, this has become part of my routine, which generally entails a lengthy journey by air or rail for which I like to ensure I have my own food and am not at the mercy of what’s around me and when. It’s a routine I’ve come to enjoy: the race may take three hours (or so), but its appeal owes a lot to the build-up and the aftermath. That’s why, and how, over the past four years I’ve come to forge my own little rituals, from stuffing bagels, packing cereal bars and scheduling when I should eat them to planning the race-day breakfast I’ll eat in my hotel room. It’s not just about the science… it’s about the peace of mind, too!

And still, for all my habits I’m far more relaxed now. I began taking my own food with me after Chester 2014, when, on the Saturday Mike, Sarah, Alex, Dani and I struggled to find a table to eat as early as we’d have liked. But a week on Saturday I’ll be sat in Spaghettata in Rotterdam with Mike, Sarah, Phil, Judith, Lucy, Steven and Lucy. The key difference? This time we’ve booked.

Carbloading isn’t the answer to all distance running challenges it is something portrayed to be. Failing to carbload isn’t synonymous to failure. Just be sensible, and don’t panic. As much as anything, eat something you know you’ll digest easily. Which, fortunately, ties in nicely with eating carbs.

WEIGHT

This is where maranoia still gets me…

As per the section above, I don’t get hung up about what I eat. But, as you may have gleaned from the stats I just quoted, I do calorie-count, and not just during taperschmaper time, to keep my weight in check. The mere act of having to log something helps me avoid snacking more than I already do, a genuine problem for the homeworker whose hand somehow seems to always end up in a cereal box whilst the kettle’s boiling…

In the week building up to Nice-Cannes, I spent Monday to Friday in Warsaw on business. Prior to flying out, I was terrified I’d find myself putting on weight as a result of eating out four nights in a row and indulging in work lunches. Truth is, I was able to eat delicious food but not to excess, as dining out does away with the temptation of second helpings, if not thirds… and the broad-ranging menus meant I could take in more proteins during the first few nights than had I been home in sunny Portishead.

According to the likes of Running For Fitness, my marathon time should go up or down by 2’10” for every kilo more or less I take to the start line. Roughly speaking, that’s around 5”/mi. That may not sound a lot to the uninitiated, but sounds like a lifetime to members of the Marathon Runners’ Club…

130”/kg. That’s heavy stuff. Do I believe it? Am I going to spend the next week desperately trying to shed as much weight as possible?

No. I do want to shed a pound or so, yes: and that sounds a bigger challenge when decreasing mileage, which is one reason I just can’t help myself from running seventy miles a week ahead of a marathon. However, in my own personal experience I’ve pulled it off, mainly because Strava overestimates my calorie consumption and therefore I am more likely to shed a little weight when both estimated calorie burn and intake are lower than usual. But I still need to live…

Some people worry about how I go about logging weight. That I’m obsessed. Which I am, yes: but with data and stats, not with weight (and fat percentage, water percentage and BMI day) itself. Yes, as raceday approaches I weigh myself more than the usual once a week: but that doesn’t alter the fact that weight has become a secondary stat for me. It was the primary one when I took to running: had I not weighed nigh on a hundred kilos when I was operated on in November 2011, I may never have laced up five months later. Today, however, all stats bow to running indicators. Am I a bit heavier than twelve months ago? Yes. Am I a bit faster? Yes. And guess which bit matters most to me? But I still like keeping an eye on the numbers, if only to keep the other eye out for correlations between how much and how well I’m running and what the scales say.

Moreover, Running For Fitness’ own Owen Barder, who’s behind the excellent site, lays out the perfect disclaimer:

“The calculation assumes that everything else is held constant – so that the body’s capacity to turn oxygen into energy is otherwise unaffected. This means that VO2 max would change in direct proportion to the percentage change in weight. The predicted performances are derived by simply calculating the predicted race performance at the new VO2 max.

In real life, however, everything else would not be constant. A reduction in weight might be accompanied by:

• a higher background level of training;
• lower muscle mass;
• reduced immunity;
• reduced glycogen stores;
• lower levels of hydration

All but the first of these would be expected to lead to a deterioration in athletic performance. These changes would have to be offset against the direct benefits of the weight loss.”

Couldn’t have put it better myself. But still… 2’10”/kg…

SLEEP

Tip: get some.

Ahead of my first marathon, I read somewhere that you should look to get a good night’s sleep two nights ahead of the race, as the chances of you sleeping well on race eve were slim. As simple pieces of advice go, one of the best. And all the truer for me, as two nights before a race I’m generally in my own bed, whereas on race eve it’s usually a Premier Inn. The mattresses and pillows live up to their “Good Night Guarantee”, but some of their walls have proven thinner than ideal – especially with a 5am alarm set..!

Fortunately, I don’t lose sleep over the risk of losing sleep. I’ve generally always been good at dozing off; and I may even have improved in recent weeks, since reintroducing an old friend to my cocktail of drugs. Anti-epileptic drugs, that is. My consultant advised me to take Phenobarbital just before I go to bed, and I can certainly see why. Whether I feel slightly less springy the following morning is down to the med or to the general state of things, or indeed whether I feel thus because I was warned I might, I don’t know. But I have set 5k, HM and 20mi PBs since starting to take it again just over a month ago, so it can’t be doing any harm…

COURSE DISTANCE

C’mon, let’s not deny this…

As I mentioned earlier, the first two Greater Manchester Marathons I completed were belatedly called short. By the time that news broke I’d set a new PB, at the 26.2mi 2016 event: but, for many runners, it meant the history books were being rewritten. Times were changed. Some who’d sprinted below the magical three-hour mark found their revised times to still begin with a 2, but felt cheated and robbed nonetheless. And thousands for whom this was probably going to be the one and only marathon were left wondering if they’d truly joined the Marathon Runners’ Club.

I went to tweak my Manchester 2016 PB in Nice some eight months later. I was fortunate to stop the clock a full 22” before the hour counter changed to 3, and probably around two minutes before suffering an epileptic seizure. My GPS watch, however, recorded the distance as 26.4 miles, as did those of most other runners whose activities I subsequently glanced at for this very purpose. 26.2 is the shortest possible distance in which you can cover the course, and bends and fellow competitors mean you will generally run a little further. But what if that ‘little’ turns out to be enough to deny you your goal? After all, only last week news broke that last year’s Brighton Half Marathon was 146m short… two months after Edinburgh HM was discovered to have been 149.7m short… how hard it is to measure a course? Please, please, please get it right!

(Not too worried this time. We’ll be in the Netherlands. In the city of Phillips, for that matter. They won’t let us down. Or short.)

LOGISTICS AND KIT

As epilepsy prevents me from driving, I rely on trains and planes to get me to my key races. They’ve yet to fail me yet: but then I do build plenty of cushion time into my plans to allow for delays…

Linked to this is the fact that I can’t just fill up my car boot with running gear. I have to pack selectively yet comprehensively, generally allowing for multiple weather scenarios. As with most things, this is an area where experience helps: hence none of my bags have matched the size and weight of the one I packed for my first marathon, duly labelled in that four-year old post as “The World’s Heaviest Bag Ever (‘TWHBE’)”.

It’s worth highlighting that one reason for my decreased packing maranoia is that, amongst the many things races have taught me, one is that the running community will always take care of its own. I now travel knowing that, if I have forgotten something, another runner will be able to help me out. As did Mike with ShotBloks in Chester… but the same would hold true about kit, I’m sure. Much as it’s a theory I don’t wish to test, that’s not due to lack of confidence in it.

Of course, the critical piece of kit, the one you might be able to borrow but really wouldn’t want to, are your shoes. Which are often the last thing I pack, purely to reduce the impact of their smell on everything else! Now, there was no travel packing required for last month’s Bath Half Marathon: indeed, had there been I might have raced in the shoes I’d planned on wearing. But I only realised I’d put on a different pair when Jonathan, my traveling companion for the day, pointed out I’d not tied my timing chip to them. And even then it took me a short while to realise it wasn’t a case of the chip having slipped off, rather of the shoes on which I’d placed it not having been slipped on…

…a few stressful minutes ensued, but I ultimately managed to get a different number and, later in the morning, a PB (1:25’58”). I’d long been pondering between the shoes I left behind (Saucony Fastwitch) and those I grabbed (Saucony Kinvara 7): the former felt nippier, the latter comfier. A nippy run in the tighter Fastwitch two weeks before the race had left me with a blister that, whilst not life-threatening, I wasn’t keen to test unduly. So grabbing the Kinvaras was probably a blessing in disguise, even if it did cost me £15 in the shape of a new number. I’ll let you guess which pair is coming to the Netherlands with me. Well, which pair I plan on taking, anyway.

(The design of the Kinvaras is such that you would be forgiven they’d suffered a rip near the tongue. Especially when maranoia’s about. Not that I thought that when I put them on for Sunday’s run. No sirree. Not me.)

WEATHER

Last but definitely not least…

This is a tough one. When an extra second matters, so does an extra rain drop or gust of wind. Not that we can influence the weather any more than we can assess the course length. But that doesn’t stop us from constantly refreshing our apps, hoping it’ll show a few white fluffy clouds!

Adverse weather conditions, by which I don’t mean a tad of wind and a couple of drops, can render months of training fruitless. It’s a sobering thought. I’m generally good at not worrying too much about what I cannot control, but I’ll own up to being an addicted weather app refresher. So much so that I can tell you that the current forecast for Rotterdam on April 9^th indicates a sunny day, with highs of 15 and a 9mph Easterly-South Easterly breeze. I’d gladly swap that for the forecast for twenty-hours prior, with a few more white fluffy things hanging around, a high of 14 and a 7mph wind. Equally, I’ve long stopped believing in weather forecasts…

…I don’t know if this is climate change-related or not, but their reliability has been declining, least in my neck of the woods. So I should be pretty successful in holding off the app for a good few days. After that, I can but hope it’ll be dry and not too windy. All the better if it’s not too hot, but growing up in Italy may rescue me, as will the numerous water stations. 

. . .

There you have it: what I worry about, what I don’t waste mental energy on. Weather excepted, I generally worry about what I can impact, and don’t let what I can’t impact worry me. And there’s nowt wrong with worrying about something you can do something about, as long as you do something about it. Which is why I’ll be showing restraint when we sit down for lasagne later.

Hope that was worth your time. It was fairly easy to write, with ten marathon finisher’s medals by my side. Fewer than many, but more than many more… and the preparation for each and every one of them has taught me something, whether because successful or a failure.

I can vividly recall the build-up to my first, four years ago, when I was hanging on to every magazine article and every piece of advice on social media, which is easier said than done, when you routinely come across conflicting advice. But that just goes to show how we learn what really works not by reading, but by running. By preparing for races, by planning our strategy, by how successful we are with executing it or adapting it. It’s not that there isn’t a manual: there are thousands. We just have to pick up nuggets here and there and write our own. Then refine it until we’re truly comfortable with it. All along, of course, whilst continuing to seek out elements that we can improve, or that need tweaking because of specific circumstances about the race or the shape in which we find ourselves approaching it.

No matter how much we discover about ourselves through running, we can always discover more. And tapering’s no exception. So, if you are preparing for a marathon, no matter how far out, good luck with the training leading up to it, with the taper itself, and with the race that is the culmination of it all. I know which of the three I find hardest.

Right – I’m off to stretch… again! Then it’ll be almost time for more Ibuprofen… and I’ll make sure I manage another hot bath tonight! And I'll go OTT with the Radox, having restocked this morning. I badly felt I needed to score another bottle yesterday. I've never smoked nor drunk to excess, but I did feel like an addict close to running out of his drug of choice...