Tuesday 10 March 2009

Monday 19th January - Sunday 25th of January

This week I was a little caught between wanting to ease up for racing and continuing on with the good progress I'd been making in training. With the Southern Cross Country Championships on Saturday, (over nine miles of muddy fields), I knew it would be a real test of my fitness. To go into them tired was asking for trouble, but I wanted to build on my fitness and all round conditioning. You always want more, with every hard run you feel faster and stronger, with every easy recovery run you feel your fitness is just treading water.

I decided to keep working hard on Monday and Tuesday and then make a decision based on how my body was feeling with regard to how much and how hard I should train for the rest of the week.

So on Monday I ran a reasonably hard double header of 35 and 45 minutes. I felt strong and relaxed for both, which is relatively rare when I work hard twice in a day. Normally the second run is more of a chore. I feel lethargic and know I'm working a lot harder than I should for the pace I'm running at. But not on this run - it all flowed. They were both the type of runs where you just feel you could keep going forever.

After running hard twice on Monday I took things really easy on Tuesday morning. The run was OK, but I often find it quite tiring to run slowly. And I was running so slowly that I didn't really enjoy it. Unlike yesterday's runs I wanted it to be over almost as soon as I'd begun. But I got it done and it helped flush my legs out ready for the evening's session.

For my speed work my coach had set out another broken session. We began with a two-kilometre rep. I felt really good. I was lapping just shy of seventy two second laps which I was happy with, especially as it was a freezing cold night, far from ideal conditions to stretch out the muscles. We then tackled two sets of five x four hundreds. Again I felt good, dipping under seventy seconds, without ever hitting top gear. I began to feel a small build up of lactate in my legs towards the end of the set, a sure sign that fatigue was beginning to set in.

With Saturday in mind I decided to ease back a few seconds for the next set and run closer to race pace. I tried to slow down to an easy seventy three seconds per lap, running within myself, listening to my body, but my times were always up. I had to push myself to the back of the pack to slow myself down, forbidding myself to overtake anyone. Finally I was hitting my self-imposed lap times. I finished just how I'd intended, feeling that I'd worked hard but with gas in the tank and freshness in my legs.

On Wednesday I did a fairly easy fifty minutes. It felt OK, but my calves were a little tight, possibly due to the cold temperatures the previous evening. I didn't want things to get any worse so I decided to take Thursday off rather than Friday. The sooner I eased out the stiffness the better. So Thursday was a hot bath and stretch day, not the hardest day's training I've ever had! But it had the desired effect.

Friday was just easy running, nothing I did today was going to make me any faster in the race; it would only have the opposite effect. So a couple of relaxed twenty-minute runs, with some relaxed strides thrown in, did the job.

The race was held in Uxbridge on some college playing fields, which were, for the most part, covered in ankle deep mud. With a dozen races run before the senior men the course was churned up nicely so it was going to be a mud bath. After an initial burst to get ahead of the masses and avoid the bottleneck around the first sharp bend, I took things easy. With nine, long, country miles to run, a cautious start was the order of the day. After the first lap I was comfortable sitting around fortieth. I would like to have been higher but I just didn't feel my body was with me one hundred percent. I made my way through to a position with a group battling for a place in the top thirty on the second lap. I felt comfortable after my cautious start and was gearing up to move through the field some more. On the long slog of a climb that greeted us at the start of each lap I started to feel uncomfortable, a dreaded stitch was beginning to form. I made it to the top of the hill without losing position and hoped that on the flat the stitch would disperse. Sadly I was wrong. It only got worse. I started losing a few places as I struggled to breathe and run normally. The pain soon got so bad there was nothing for it but to stop and with it any chance I had of getting into the top twenty in the South of England.

I walked and stretched, which eased the pain until I could jog, but I was over-taken by more and more runners. I felt like it would never go. I managed to get up to some sort of speed but people kept passing me. As I was slipping back and being passed I kept to the inside of the course, out of the way, occasionally running just inside the flags, but without any advantage being gained. This wasn't good enough for one runner who accused me of cheating in a rather ungentlemanly way as he passed me. It was red rag to a bull and I pursued him, letting him know what I thought of his gesture. It would seem that shouting is the miracle scientific cure for stitches. No sooner had I finished telling him my point of view, noting that as I did so he cut a corner, than my stitch was gone. I couldn't believe it. I slowly started passing people, not wanting to get carried away in case it returned. I waited till the final lap to push again. I now felt great and was full of running. My legs were fresh and I started climbing back up the field. Having dropped to somewhere between seventieth and eightieth place I worked my way back to finish 54th.

I was so disappointed thinking about what could have been. If I hadn't had to stop I'm sure I would still have felt full of running on that last lap having saved something in the early stages. Top twenty was on the cards and would have shown me a good improvement year on year in my progression.
There was a lot to be pleased with, yet so much disappointment at an opportunity missed. I hit Sunday’s long run hard, frustrated, as I wanted to be faster and stronger for the races that lay ahead. Ninety minutes flew by as I played things out in my head. Running has got to be the best stress relief going. I made sense of everything on that run, putting things into perspective. I finished exhausted but my mind was at ease. I had a good weeks training planned and I know things will come good for me eventually if I just stick with what I'm doing.

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