Marathon Training begins

Today is the start of my 28 week training campaign towards the Greater Manchester Marathon.  After almost a week off, I'm full of enthusiasm to get into my training plan.  Regular readers will know I'm doing a combination of plans.  Jeff Galloway's 3:45 plan from his book How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon, and Hal Higdon's Intermediate 2 plan from his book Marathon, and also freely available from his website.  Together With this I will incorporate strength work and stretching from P&D, as well as creating my own strength program using kettle bells.  There are many technical aspects to Galloway's plan, so I will try and get on here each day this week to explain the sessions, and as new ones come up later in the schedule, I will explain those too.

Here is the plan for week 1:

Monday: strength work/cross train

Tuesday: 30 minute run including cadence drill

Wednesday: 40 min run including cadence drill, acceleration glider and pace

Thursday: 45 minute run including acceleration gliders and hills

Friday: rest

Saturday: rest (usually would include strength and core workout)

Sunday: 5 miles with 3 hill repeats

You'll notice the lack of long run.  This is because during the early weeks of Galloway's plan, the focus is on form and building strength, and so the long runs are on alternate weeks, with hill work in between.

So, today was a rather pathetic attempt at a kettle bell circuit, with only 7 exercises.  I did 2 sets of 8-12 reps depending on the exercise, then I did some core work.  The good thing about kettlebels is that some of the functional exercises really count as cardio too, so I find it a bit more fun than regular free weights...

The eve of my marathon training run - 10 miles inc Essex way

Tomorrow, I officially start my training schedule for Manchester and London marathons.  It's a combination of Jeff Galloway's plan to train for a 3:45, and then switches to Hal Higdon's intermediate 2 when there are 18 weeks to go, but keeping in the technical aspects of Galloway's plan.  More on each in a future post.

Today was for a fun run.  I had had the last week completely off running, trying not to think about running and eating whatever I felt like too, which lead to some poor choices, but today, I just wanted to get out there.  I think the good weather helped with that.  Given Manchester is a flat course, I think most of my long runs will have to be on the flat, so that I get used to fatiguing the flat running muscles, so rather different to my training for Halstead.  I had initially planned to run my usual long run route along the Wivenhoe trail, which largely follows the river Colne out toward Brightlingsea, but given today I didn't need to worry about pace, I thought it would be fun to do a more exploration type run.

I decided to do part of the Essex way, but in the opposite direction of the relay race, so I didn't bother with taking the printed route instructions.  I  took a look at the local map and saw that the Essex way crossed many footpaths in the area I used to go on walks with my dad, in the fields behind my parents' house.  I could then find my way back home on the roads, hopefully making an approximate 10 mile loop.

I jogged along to meet the Essex way near west Bergholt church.  Took a little while for me to find it, but I'm getting used to navigate by waymarks.  I looked out for one, and eventually found it at the entry to a dark overgrown alley, and away I was.  After a few hundred metres, it opened out into a field, and lush countryside:

There were a couple of direction changes that were obvious, and then I came out onto a clearing with a ruin. The next part wasn't so clear, and there wasn't a way mark, but there was an arrow, so I went with it.

Eventually after a couple of miles on the footpath, I started to recognise things, like footbridge to the cow field 

And Fordham hall estate

I was concerned about when I would meet the roads I knew, I thought it was very close to my mums house, but then I saw this sign, and knew exactly where it would meet the road:

Continued on and saw another runner, a walker and a man walking his dog, so clearly I was getting rather close to civilisation now, and another sign to assure me I was on the right path:

Eventually, I got out onto the road, and the pub, which unfortunately shut down a couple of years ago. A shame, as my parents and I would often take a little stroll to have a pub lunch there.

Bt I was now on the main road that goes through the village my mum lives in.  I stopped in to see my mum and refill my water bottle.  She insisted I had a look at the apple tree:

And take some with me, but I could only fit one in my bum bag.  I also looked in to say hello to the guinea pigs:

They're very camera shy.

I went off on my way to take the road route home.  On road, my pace was much quicker, but when I was up to 8 miles, I could really feel my legs were getting tired.  This surprised me, but I guess I hadn't eaten all that much this morning, and I have raced every weekend in the last 3.  Also I usually use my compression socks on a long run.

Paces:

Mile 1: 9:45

Mile 2: 9:59

Mile 3: 11:07

Mile 4: 11:38

Mile 5: 12:56

Mile 6: 10:51 (on road but uphill)

Mile 6.18: 9:13

Mile 1: 9:18

Mile 2: 9:27

Mile 3: 11:22 (as well as tiredness a few major roads to cross)

Mile 4: 10:01

Marathons are like buses

It's been a few days since Ipswich half. My last race of the 2013 season (unless I enter any others, which is unlikely due to many wedding related commitments).  I've been going around like a grump as I thought it would be a good idea to have a week off running, but have also been plotting a crazy challenge of a marathon a month in 2014, or at least entering a few more than 2, although only planning to race Manchester.  The tentative plan is that many of the others would be off road, or themed in some way so that the pressure to get a good time wouldn't be there.

I've even devised a tentative race calendar which looks like this:

March: Colchester half, Essex 20, Orion 15

April: greater Manchester marathon

May: Halstead and Essex marathon- enter on the day if I'm recovered, and need something to take my mind of impending nuptials

June: Wales trail marathon (unrealistic as I won't have enough holiday and Wales is far)

July: TR24

August: Thames Meander marathon

September: Bacchus marathon... New Forest? Loch Ness?

October: Norfolk Ultra

November: Cyprus International 4 day challenge.

I haven't committed myself to any of these, though in my mind I'm definitely doing Bacchus and the Cyprus 4-day- excellent fun holiday with @mia79gbr, and of course Manchester, which I entered last week.... 

Today, one of these arrived:

One of the reasons I entered Manchester before waiting for this is the date of the 2014 London marathon is 1 day before the 2 year anniversary of my dad's death, and I thought it would just be too hard to do myself justice to try and get a GFA time with the emotional state I may be in...  But then this arrived.  I told twitter and Facebook, and I now think that doing the race for fun (bear in mind I find running pbs fun too) might be ideal.  London is such a great marathon, the best in the world, and I feel very lucky to have got a place for 2014.  Plus it's in reserve for racing if anything happens to stop me from racing Manchester.

So, I guess I'll be running London (*slowly)... Who's coming to watch?

Ipswich Half Marathon

Firstly, for the benefit of @mia79gbr, here are my new shoes:

I know what you're thinking, bad idea to wear new trainers in a half marathon, having only run 2.5 miles n them on Wednesday- but I had a few more bad ideas up my sleeve.  A terrible headache all day yesterday and not managing to keep anything down until after lunchtime probably wasn't the best state to go into a half marathon, nor setting off too fast, thinking this was a flat course.  Here is the logic:

East Anglia is flat.  Ipswich is in East Anglia.  Therefore, Ipswich half marathon is flat.  Right?

WRONG!

Toughest road race I've ever done.  I should have stayed at the start area for 3 hours bouncing on this:

Given the early start, David didn't come with me, he would never have known.  But since I've decided to have the next 7 days off running, I figured I better get a race in.

I actually woke up feeling as if I had enough sleep, which was an unusual feeling at 6am- incidentally, this is the time my alarm goes off on weekdays too, but it's usually followed by my rolling over to have a snooze.  I got up to prepare the breakfast of champions.  Porridge!  After eating half of it, I'd had enough, but then I remembered 13.1 miles is quite a long way to run, and I better fuel up.

Now, Ipswich half marathon had organised free parking in the NCP car park.  Awesomeness- 10 minute walk from the start.  I wish more races did more for decent parking.  I've found the local races exceptionally good in that matter.  

I didn't expect to see anyone I know, but the beauty of Parkrun is that I did see a bunch of people I recognised and a couple I know.  Most Essex based runners were doing the Pleshey half today, as its part of the Essex championships.  I thought that Pleshey was hilly and Ipswich flat.  So I chose to do Ipswich.  D'oh.  Turns out my geography degree does not extend to knowledge of geography of my local area.  All of this rambling is to avoid reliving the experience of this race.

Here is the course profile:

It looks as if the last mile is predominantly downhill.  It didn't feel like that.

Here's the course map:

Not how I would plan a half marathon course, lots of twists and turns, some really sharp, back on yourself and uphill.  Really really tough course.

My fastest mile was mile 2- 7:52

Slowest was mile 8- 9:26. I had given up at this point.  I managed to get through halfway in 1:49 pace, and then considered I could slow down a lot to get a pb.  This was bad, I was meant to be racing even paced, or negative split, but what's so great about a negative split if u get the time you want.  I was going to defy sports science and get a positive split... Yeah, it was all my choice, not that I was getting tired and it hurt.  Another lady runner caught me walking and encouraged me.  This got me going again and I kept her within my sights.  Now, during the hills, I had remembered an article I read recently about hill running technique.  Both on the up and down hill, it was important to shorten your stride and increase leg turnover.  It worked, and both ways I overtook people doing this, including this girl on the last downhill.

However, the uphills in the park around mile 10-11 really got me, and I stopped to walk again, she overtook me, but not for long.  No matter what the race, I can always get myself going again when there is less than 2 miles to go.  I did. But I couldn't get any pace.  12 mile sign, and downhills, yippee! But I was suspicious, I remembered seeing the 13 mile sign on a distinctly uphill portion of path, and I was right, with half a mile to go, uphills started appearing, and I just had nothing to push with.  800m to go, and I was 1 min 30 under 1:50... If I could just get some pace, I could do it.

O no! Another steep uphill bit with a turn back on yourself corner! Seriously, this was silly.  It was gone, all these twists lost me so much pace.

Eventually I crossed the line in 1:50:20, and I just felt relief.  A pretty purple medal and downed a bottle of water.  I went over to watch others finishing. And saw a casualty happen, a man tripped and fell literally 5 metres from the finish line, but then he didn't get up.  It was quite scary.  One of th spectators got him into the recovery position as we were all calling out for first aiders.  It was quite scary, but thanks t the course, there was no danger of anyone managing a sprint finish.  I get quite squeamish, and there were so many people helping him at this stage, that I didn't want to watch, I just hope he's ok now.  I turned to look st the finish line, and omg, there was a celebrity there, but damn, my phone was n my bag, which was still in baggage drop.. Did I go and say hi, or did I go for getting my phone and what I really wanted, which was a photo.  Well, I picked the latter:

What a great Sunday morning... A half marathon pb by almost 6 minutes, and a photo with Colin Jackson, who looks like he's trying to be cool despite the smelly mess standing next to him... :)

And now, to hang my trainers up for a week...

A little secret, new shoes and an update on my goals

Well, that's a long title.  I have been thinking all evening about what to blog about as I have so many little things to say, and that I've been thinking about in relationship to my running, so, I thought I'd say them all.

First, my new shoes arrived yesterday.  A particularly painful sports massage yesterday confirmed that my legs have been taking the impact rather than my running shoes for quite some time, so my shiny new Nike lunar eclipse got their first outing this evening for my interval training, where I had to wear my head torch rather than my sunglasses.  They definitely provided a nice amount of cushioning, and aside from needing to adjust the lacing, I think they will do nicely for my half marathon on Sunday.  The intervals were 5x400m with 90s rest.  I decided to walk the rest intervals tonight, so I could properly work hard at speed.  Can't tell you the paces right now, as I can't log on to garminconnect, but they were all around 6:45, except for the 4th, which was 7:01.

An update on goals.  Well, the major open goal for this year is to complete 1000 miles of running.  I am currently on 690, so I require fairly consistent training of 21 miles per week or thereabouts to achieve it.  Now I've realised how tight the goal is, I have a new dedication to my training, which certainly wained a bit once the possibility of running Bournemouth marathon went away.  I think a good one for next year might be to reach 50 parkruns run.  I've done 6 so far, and will have an opportunity to add to that before the turn of the year.  I'll keep thinking about that one.

And now the secret... I've locked down my spring marathon and entered the Greater Manchester Marathon, which will be on 6th April.  It's a fast flat course, and will hopefully give me the best chance of going for that London GFA, which is why the new shoes were so necessary, becoming my training partners at least for the remaining 310 miles I will run this year as I begin to gear up for marathon training.  I have devised a schedule which takes elements of Galloway's and Higdon's training plans.  Doing a lot of work on form for much of this year, before getting into high mileage weeks through the spring.  I'm looking forward to this journey as its one I start fully fit off the back of many pbs.  So hopefully I'll be smashing that marathon pb too!

Dedham 10k run

Ello all, well I thought I'd better write something as the races are where we see the results of the training and whether its working, but I don't feel like I have an awful lot to say, as I was really working as hard as I could on this race.  So focused on running that I didn't really see anything apart from the road and other runners.

This was a nice late starting race, at 11am, so although I woke up at a usual early time of 7am, I rolled over and went back to sleep until 8:30.  I had been worried it would be a washout, but actually it was a bright sunny, though cool, morning.  I got up and yay, I could have warm porridge.  So much easier as a pre race fuel than trying to find something cold that's easily digestible yet provides enough energy.  I had that together with a cup of tea, a cup of oj, and sipped on 500ml water with an SiS hydro tablet in it.  I felt a bit dehydrated after the couple of gin and tonics the night before.

I had to pick up my race number from race hq, so was getting a bit irate when David wasn't ready to leave when I was, as it was cutting into my warm-up, and I knew a decent warm up could make all the difference in a race this short.

Still, I wasted more time trying to figure out which queue to get into.

Is it normal to label the alphabet backwards? Or to have to go to the left of a sign to be in the right queue?  Because of the backward alphabet, I just couldn't figure out which section I would be in.

When queuing for the toilet, I realised this was the field where I started my Essex way run out to Harwich a few weeks back ( I saw the way mark on a post).  At 10:45 they started calling runners to the start- damn! I was hoping to warm up.  I had a quick run around the field before going down to the start.  At least this would hopefully be enough that I would be working aerobically at the start of the race, rather than 5 minutes in.  I saw lots of the local club runners, though not many from Colchester.  I noted there was one girl from Colchester Harriers though, and I wondered how I would do compared to her.  I lost her in the start area though.

As usual, I started a bit too far back for my intended pace, and spent the first half mile dodging people trying to get up to pace of 7:50.  At times during the first mile, the garmin said my average was7:40, but there was a steep uphill toward the end of that first mile, which tempered it a bit to 7:55.  I had to go faster if I was going to get some time in hand, as I thought I would need if I wanted a pb.  I knew the last mile was downhill, so that would help. But I also knew the course was fairly hilly.  The 2nd mile was mainly downhill, and when garmin said 7:20ish, I was scared I was overcooking it.  Bt this was my last10k for a while, and my pb was only 2 months old.  If I had any chance of breaking it, I had to push really hard! The second mile came in at 7:23.

This is where the course started to get interesting.  The hills in this course were mainly steep and longish, rather than rolling.  To add to this, there was a long section alongside a field (one of our cycle routes too) that was incredibly windy.  I still felt like over taking people but then there was a strong gust, and I decided drafting 2 taller and wider men was a better idea.  They were going 7:46 pace, so I decided to stick with them for the rest of the race.  This plan was slightly scuppered when I attempted to drink water from a cup without stopping at the halfway point.  I tried to swallow, but ended up breathing it, coughed and choked and it was dribbling down my face.  This is where David shoved the camera in my face... Great!  Those 2 men had got about 5 metres ahead now, and There was a really really steep hill! I started to have doubts and thought about walking, but then remembered its only another 5k and a walking stop would probably negate pb potential.  I was running hard anyway, so I didn't want to waste the energy expended doing a hard 10k, if I wasn't going to fight for that time.  I still had a few seconds in hand from the 7:23 mile 2, so I gritted my teeth, started breathing deeper and pumped my arms.  I managed to pass a couple of people going up that hill, but the men I had been drafting before were still well ahead.

At the 7k mark, there was another drinks station.  I could feel my breathing was getting tough and my hr was. Really high, so I thought a little walk break and some water would be a good plan.  I walked a long time before actually drinking it, as I didn't want to risk it when my breathing was so heavy.  This did give me decent energy to start running again.  Now it was about catching people.  I'm sad to say in that last 3k, I only passed 6 people and 3 passed me- one in the finish funnel.  I think that gives an idea of the quality of runners in this race- they had clearly all paced it well, so I couldn't catch them.  Still they dragged me to the finish strong, and I crossed the line in 48:05, a 97 second pb for me!  On a hilly and windy course I'm most impressed with this, and also curious what I could have done on a flatter race, or if I had carried a water bottle with me and not lost time at those drinks stations choking or walking.

Afterward David met me, and first we stuck my legs in the air to drain them a bit- I really had pushed hard as they were showing the signs of cramping I get at the end of a marathon! Then we went for a tea and scone in one of the Dedham tea rooms, whilst we waited for our car to become free of the race.

So the paces:

Mile 1: 7:55

Mile 2: 7:23

Mile 3: 7:45

Mile 4: 8:05

Mile 5: 8:01

Mile 6: 7:15

Last 0.24 - 7:08

The uneven splits are completely acceptable once you see the elevation profile:

Chip time 48:05- really happy with this as race time prediction services now suggest a 3:42 marathon time.  So I should probably be looking at faster than 8:20 pace for my half marathon next weekend.

Fuelling the long run

I am always delighted to find out that people are reading my blog.  I find that the writing of it gives me extra motivation to train, as well as figure out what to change for optimum performance.

One of my friends and a reader of this blog is currently training for his first marathon, and asked me to put up a post about fuelling for his long runs.  Little did he know, I have recently completed a course in Sports Nutrition, and am happy to provide personalised advice.  If you're interested in this, you can contact me at angela.isherwood.health@gmail.com 

So, marathon training.

I like to think of marathon training as having 3 sides of a triangle, all of which are equally important.  These are:

1) actually putting in the training, the hard miles

2) recovery and injury prevention- this includes strength and stretching work as well as massages, ice baths, compression clothing etc

3) nutrition- what you are eating and drinking

If you are training for a marathon, you are likely to be running significantly more than you ever have done, and for your first one, your body will feel it.  The nutrition side of things can really help feed into your recovery, allowing your muscles to rebuild stronger, and ensuring you get a wide variety of micronutrients to help protect your immune system.  Intense marathon training can cause your immune system to become depleted, so anything that can help counter this effect is worth doing.

The athlete's diet.  

For marathon training, by far the most important macronutrient is carbohydrates.  Whilst general health guidelines recommend your macronutrients take the following proportions:

Carbohydrate: 50-60% Fat: 25-30% (no more that 35%) and Protein: 10-15%

A marathon runner should look to ensure their proportion of their diet formed from carbohydrate is at least 60% or 5-7grams of carbs per kg of body weight per day, and that their proportion of diet from fat is on the low end of that range- no more than 25%.

Where should the carbs come from?  Starchy carbs- potatoes, rice, pasta will probably end up making up the bulk of your diet, but you should also ensure you get a full rainbow of fruits and vegetables- as well as providing carbohydrate, this is where you get your micronutrients which will have various other beneficial effects such as protecting your immune system, preventing joint inflammation, preventing muscle soreness etc.  if your typical diet is meat and 2 veg, where meat makes up the main feature of all your meals, you may want to adjust this.  Whereas the protein is important, the fat content in meat can really mess with your optimal nutrition balance, as well as leaving you fuller, which may prevent you from consuming enough carbohydrates to fuel your training.

Fuelling on the long run.

Typically most runners will do their long run at the weekend, which makes it an ideal scenario to prepare for their race.  Especially in your first marathon, I would use some of the long runs to practice a race fuelling strategy.  This involves the pre-race carbo load, fuelling during the race, and post-race recovery.

During the pre-race carbo load, for a marathon I would spend at least 2 days prior to the race, possibly 3, aiming to top up the glycogen stores in my muscles- I would be in my taper, so a much reduced training load, and I would ensure that upto 85% of my food intake was carbohydrate.  In the day before, I might also look to reduce fibre to avoid any tummy problems during the race, so this might mean a day of pasta, jacket potatoes, bagels with jam/honey etc.  generally this high GI, high sugar diet is not recommended, but prior to a marathon, you want to ensure your body has as much energy stored as possible.  I would consume this in 6 small meals, as well as sipping on squash and water throughout the day.  For training, you may want to modify this to just the day before your long run, and perhaps only practise it for 1 in 3 long runs, so you can start to understand the effect it has on you.

During the run/race, we use our nutrition strategy to prevent the onset of 'the wall' this is where glycogen stores become completely depleted and the body starts to metabolise fat for energy- this is a much slower process and results in slower running.  My personal strategy consists of a combination of the following.  I mix up a 500ml drinks bottle of SiS go energy drink, and put in a teaspoon of chia seeds, I carry SiS Go electrolyte gels, including 1 with caffeine.  I used to use lucozade gels, but they are very sweet and sickly and you have to drink loads of water with them, whereas the SiS gels, although bigger to carry, do not require you to consume water in order to be able to digest them.  Once I have started the run, I will consume my energy drink and/or water to thirst, and I will take an energy gel every 45 minutes.  Typically if you are well trained and going at the right pace, you wouldn't feel as if you need energy at 45 minutes in, but the fact is, there is virtually no way you can replace all the energy you are using by running, so you are implementing a strategy to try and prevent 'empty' on the carb stores.  I'm a female of 60kg and this works for me.  If you weigh significantly more, or significantly less, or have more or less running experience, you may wish to adjust frequency of energy intake accordingly.  The caffeine gel is the one I take when I've run approximately 2 thirds to 3 quarters of my run or race, and this is to give me a bit of extra energy when it's potentially really hurting, but the end is still far away.  There are many other products in the market.  Some people use jelly babies and squash.  If you are going to make up your own squash, rather than buy a commercial sports product, it may be worth adding a pinch of salt to the drink to help you replace electrolytes and prevent dangerously low electrolyte levels in your blood.  This is especially important if you sweat a lot.

After the run/race- this is really really important for recovery and if you do nothing else I've suggested, do this.  Consume a snack that is approx 4/5 carb, 1/5 protein.  Examples include, 500ml chocolate milk, 2 slices toast with peanut butter and 250ml fruit juice.  Whatever works for you.  And rehydrate! This will help clear the waste products in your muscles.  The snack ideally is consumed within 30 minutes of finishing, which is why the liquid versions may be more palatable.  And have a proper meal perhaps 2 hours later, once you've bathed, stretched etc.

Bacchus Half Marathon

This race was amazing and I would commend it to anyone.  Much of the week leading up to the race, I had been suffering from ibs, something I had never experienced before, nor want to again!  On the drive to Surrey on Friday night, the dartfford crossing on the M25 was closed for 7 hours due to a security scare, but we weren't aware when we left home,  so ended up sitting in a tailback for 4 hours. Our expected arrival at 8:30pm became 1:30am.  All in all, not the best preparation for a half marathon.  All of this, together with the fact I have two 'A' races in the coming weeks meant I was going to use this race as a training run.  I would take the first 8 miles steady, with 4 miles at half marathon pace (8:20mm) and then I would take advantage of all the fun part of the race after- wine drinking whilst running!  This was a copycat of the famous Medoc marathon, so everybody was encouraged to wear fancy dress, and wine was served from the Denbies estate, which is the largest vineyard in England, established in 1986.  David dressed as a giant banana... I dressed as a TR24 competitor, as my name was on that shirt :)

The race started at midday, so there was plenty of time beforehand to potter around the gift shop and have a second breakfast, of an iced bun.  David tried on some yellow sunglasses in his banana suit and the man selling them took a picture and said it would appear on the bloc website/Facebook page.

I started with David and enjoyed looking at all the costumes.  We all know I like elephants, so I was particularly pleased to see a man sized elephant,

but David wouldn't let me go and give him a cuddle, so I had to stick to cuddling bananas (who cuddles bananas? Weird, right?).  I started toward the back of the field with David as I wanted to ease into it.  A third of a mile at 14mm pace and I got irritated and ran off- clearly lots of people ahead of us were planing on walking this one.  I managed to get ahead of most of them in the first mile or so, and got up to a 10mm pace, which with averaging was probably more a 9mm pace after the 14.  This was nice, we were going steady and I got into a rhythm.  There was a slight uphill around 1.5 miles, but everyone around was running steady, then there was a downhill on a slightly rocky path clearly someone ahead who doesn't like downhill had stopped to walk, and as the path was so narrow, this held everybody up.  I was thinking why aren't you using gravity, surely running downhill is much easier than running uphill, but I guess I've had a lot more off road experience than a lot who were doing this race.

Eventually got past them and joined a footpath running across a field.  This is when I decided to up the pace for 2 miles.  At times it was difficult to keep up as the path wasn't conducive to overtaking, but I managed mile 3 at 8:15 and mile 4 at 8:33, given the off road and overtaking issues, I was very pleased with this.  I think the rain that started at mile 3 and continued for 20 minutes really helped this.  Back down to a steady pace, and some of the people I had overtaken started to overtake me, I wondered if they were thinking (she went off too fast) as I often do if I catch someone up who's passed me so early in the race... Little did they know that was my intention!

5 and 6 were steady again, and I did stop to take on some electrolyte drink.  I really struggle to drink from that bottle at the half marathon pace, so I need to find a good drinking strategy for Ipswich.  Hopefully it will be that much cooler that I don't need to worry about drinking so much.

7 and 8 and back up to pace.  I managed 8:15 for 7, then my garmin started bleeping at me that it was running out of battery.  Mile 8 and I blew up.  The course started going significantly steeper uphill and I just couldn't maintain pace.  Now I look back at garmin connect, and the first 8 miles were pretty much all uphill, so no wonder I was tired by this point.   I switched the garmin off when it clicked past 8 miles and took it easy from here, stopping to take photos of the beautiful scenery.

At the top of this very steep hill, I guess it was 8 and 3/4 miles, I stopped at the fuel station, first to fill my bottle with water, then to gorge on some orange slices- there was an amazing selection of food! And finally to sample some wine.  

This was the rose hill Rose and I had 2 of the sample shots. I waited up here for quite some time, hopefully I could meet up with my giant banana, and do the rest with him, but up on the hill, exposed to the wind and having done a hard 8 miles, i started to get pretty cold, so decided to get on with the rest of the race.  Before this, I had been thinking about running hard for the whole thing, but I hadn't prepared by taking on extra fuel, plus, with my illness and tiredness, I thought it best not to push it.  I took the next 5 miles really really easy, walking when I felt like it and rehydrating, as well as enjoying everybody's costume.  I really started to find it difficult on mile 10 and 11.  This is certainly the point where a strategic energy gel at miles 5 and 9 would have helped me.

The fuel stop at mile 10 had red wine- I didn't take notice of anything else.  This was not great to run on, and with my slightly dehydrated running self, I didn't enjoy it as much as I normally enjoy a red wine, so only had one taster.  The last drinks station at mile 12 had sparkling wine. This was absolutely delicious! I wish I could have had lots more of it, but as I had said David could drink as much As he wanted and I would drive after, I decided not to.  I wish I had remembered the name so I could buy some.

Much of the last mile was downhill.  After some nice dirt paths you came out to a hard concrete road alongside the vineyard.  The steepness meant it was very hard on your feet running down hill, soi jumped onto the grass.  I started winding up for the finish now, and had loads in me.  Wish my garmin was on so I could see pace, but I went flying past everyone I saw in this home stretch, and around the corner for a sprint finish.  At the end, I was greeted by superman (a grey haired superman)- i think he must have been the race director.  This was a really nice touch- he shook our hands as we finished.  Then I went to have my timing chip removed and the lady who removed it noticed a lot of pieces of plants attached to my socks and started removing them for me- how lovely.  Next was picking up the medal, a nice chunky silver medal with giant 13.1 on it, and the t shirt.  Bright yellow technical T.  Unfortunately a man's t, so another night dress for me rather than running top.  Then wow, what a spread!  All sorts of fruit-I had a chunk of pineapple, my favourite.  There were lots of cakes too, which I think were homemade.  It had become quite overcast so I went for the hot drinks stand and had a coffee- free tea and coffee!  Again a really nice touch.  I finished in 2:21- given I did up to 8 miles in 1:16 you have some idea of how easy I took the last 5 miles :)

I was getting really cold now, so went to get my baggage, and put on David's joggers and my waterproof ride London top.  This helped for a while but then it got really really really cold and started pissing down with rain.  Some of the full marathon runners were starting to come through the finish, but there was no sign of my giant banana and I started to get worried.  Eventually after about an hour, he started running through the finish chute.  It was really raining hard now, but the top of the banana costume was keeping him dry and warm.  We got in the queue for the hog roast, and a full glass of wine and gorged on that.

This was a fantastic event and great value.  At first I thought £46 was a bit much for a half marathon, but with free parking, as much food as you want, as much wine as u can drink on course, and free hot drinks, it was really good value, especially with that hog roast lunch.  I think the cost to enter the full marathon was the same, and I will definitely go for that next time.  The course was challenging, but not as impossible as off-road races can be, so I think it would be a nice one to amble around in 5 hours, enjoying the food and wine along the way:)