Looking how far I've come

This time of year is really tough for me.  The Boat Races on Saturday were a reminder of what was an incredibly emotional week.  Highs of spending time with family we don’t see very often followed by the lows of the end of a terminal illness.

We watched the boatraces with my Aunty and Uncle who had visited from the States when my Mum was in Nigeria for the 1 year anniversary of her mother’s death.  It was that one that had to be stopped as that chap jumped in the river ahead of the racing crews.  Mum returned home on the Tuesday, and on the Wednesday night, Dad had to be taken into hospital.  I was told when I was already at work on Thursday 12th April, so rushed back home to Colchester knowing this could be the end.  April 13th 2012 was the last day I spent with my dad.  He died on April 14th.

As such, I’m having a pretty shit day!  It doesn’t help that where I’ve worked to build myself up in a completely new industry for the past year has had an unfair card dealt such that our premises will be shutting down at the end of the month, so strangely, running has not been a priority.

The emotion and stress of it all have made all my runs in the last 10 days feel awful.  I’ve had tightness in my glute which seems to be impinging my running form - amazingly that disappeared yesterday after a massage from my hubby.  I’ve been out for runs, and had to stop and walk after only a couple of miles.  Yesterday I ran 8 miles with 3 or 4 quite lengthy walking breaks.  It was quite windy and my paces were ok, but it felt awful.  One person who saw me running said I looked strong, and a customer of my gym told me she saw me looking strong out running yesterday, which further confirms that a lot of this might be in my head.

I’ve decided to write this down for its therapeutic effect.  With less than 2 weeks to go until the London Marathon, the race that is hopefully going to be the realisation of my dreams that I started this blog with, I know that I need to be in a much better head space.

When my clients are feeling low, or disappointed with themselves, I always try to help them look back to see the progress they’ve made, so I’m doing the same for myself.

So, here goes.

When I started the blog, my fastest marathon was 4:33 in Berlin in 2011 - I had an awful year of running after my Dad’s death in 2012, so my next marathon wasn’t until spring 2013 - I ran 4:18 in Halstead, just 3 minutes slower than my goal at the time.  A year later, after applying all I’d learnt by studying nutrition and to being a Personal Trainer, I ran 3:39 in Manchester.  This was a perfect race, where everything went right.  It was the first and only marathon I’ve ever run without stopping to walk at all.

Other race times - my half marathon pb has come down from 1:59 when the blog started to 1:36 a few weeks ago.  10k was 52 (although more like 56 at the start of the blog) and is now 44:06, and my 5k is now 20:52 - it was 24:01.

I’m starting to win awards in races, and was even 4th lady in the Saltmarsh 75- a 75mile ultra marathon.

Weight- my weight has never been a key focus in my training, as I’ve always viewed exercise as a way to stay healthy.  My work in the gym has always been about training to be better at a sport, whether its Rowing, as it was at university, or Running, which I took up when I started working in London, as 12 hour + working days weren’t conducive to team sport, but I wanted to stay healthy.  My personal trainer then was a marathon runner and was fab at prescribing me exercises that would aid my strength in running, which is how I got a 52 minute 10k in my first ever running race.  A PT I had more recently, however, didn’t listen to my goals and assumed weight loss was my goal when it wasn’t - this was the start of my injury problems in 2012 as I was doing way too much high impact and intensity work for the volume of mileage I needed to run for marathon preparation.

However, I know that I was about 65kg (for my height =overweight) when I started this blog and am now about 54kg (for my height a healthy weight -bmi of 21.4).  Whilst weight loss was a focus ahead of my wedding last year, its not a constant focus.  A lot of the change has come from a change in lifestyle - I no longer work a desk job, so I don’t buy a coffee and a muffin every morning followed by lunch out and a snack on the train home to get me through to dinner, and then wine.  (I still have wine!).  I’m much more mindful of what I’m eating and how it will impact on my running.

Training - in general, my training has been much better, until the last 2 months.  It was near on perfect last year as I was focussed solely on running marathons, so I ran and I strength trained for running.  Now I’ve got a half iron triathlon at the end of August, I had been trying to fit in cycling and swimming too, which on top of strength training and running pushed me into symptoms of overtraining syndrome in February, so I’ve cut right back and focussed purely on running again, which is probably why this glute issue developed as I have not been doing enough strength work.

That said, I have achieved some great things in this training campaign.  I’m most proud of my run at Tarpley 20, where I managed to run 4 miles easy/ 4 miles marathon pace, alternating, with the last 4 miles as 2 miles easy and 2 miles race to the end.  I nailed it, with my marathon pace miles being 7:50mm, and my easy miles being 8:30s.  Runs in the last two weeks would make me question whether than was actually me running!

Speedwork has gone well too, with 1ks under 4 minutes, and yasso 800s under 3:15.

Work- well, I’m not working in finance anymore - I’m in charge of my own time and started my own business as a personal trainer.  This is scary and challenging all at the same time.  Whereas I was bored out of my mind working in the City, I don’t find spending time with people, who want to improve their lives in some way, boring at all.  I get a lot out of training people, and rarely struggle to get out of bed in the morning, even at 5:30am!  When I was planning my exit from the City a couple of years ago, I wrote down in a book what I would like out of a different path and what things I wanted to do with my Personal Training and Run Coaching qualifications.  One of them was to have an online run coaching business.  I could see how the things I was learning were benefiting me, and I wanted to help others.  There’s much more to marathon running than just the training plan, and thats what this online coaching business was about.  Well, you guessed it, my dream is a reality: irunsuccess.co.uk

So, with all this down, I feel less like crying than I did when I started writing.  The question I have to ask myself to bring some sanity, is, does it really matter if I don’t achieve my goal at London?  In all honesty, no.  The only thing I can do now to change the outcome is to change my attitude.  If I don’t buck up soon, I’m sure to fail, but if I can remember how far I’ve come, and the good lessons about fuelling appropriately and pacing, as well as making sensible adjustments in case of adverse weather conditions (Heatwave anyone) then I will have done my best, and that’s all I can do.

So, in light of this, the gold, silver and bronze targets….

When I started this training campaign, I was training toward sub 3:20, however, a few hiccups along the way mean I’m sure this is unrealistic, however, I do think 3:25 is achievable, so that’s gold.

Silver is the BQ = sub 3:35  (If its super hot, this is where I need to focus)

Bronze = a pb - so sub 3:39

The quicker you are under the BQ, the more chance you have of actually doing the race as they open up the entries to quicker qualifiers first, which is why I’m not just taking the easy (well its a marathon so never easy) option of pacing conservative for the 3:35.  I want to do my best, and that means quicker than 3:35.

Phew - so this was all about me.  It is my blog, so I’m allowed.  But what can YOU take from it?

Sometimes life is shit.  That doesn’t mean you have to be.  Trust in the training and don’t be shit.