Niggles

About now most marathon runners will pay a lot of attention and listen to their bodies.  This usually happens right up to the big day.  Ignore or listen?  Tiredness or injury? Self-doubt can start to creep in.  For me, this week, my legs have been telling me to slow down or they will punish me soon.  I decided to listen but still got carried away.....

Tuesday: schedule was calling for a long tempo - but just too tired.  An easy run called for but ended up at 12m, with 5 miles added to meet people at AROs Running club then tanked it around another 7 with BenK and Lee.  Amazing that once you are running it's not so bad.

Thursday - UltraJ has been monitoring his own health pre Ultra season which is coming up soon - starting with a 30miler on the Whitlow Way (as usual he managed 31m.) A little easy short jog out turned into a  10 mile head-torcher down the Nikki line.

Jet lag and last weekend finally were shrugged off, but decided to take 2 days rest before Oakley 20 - last long run pre-VLM.

Race Report:  standard pre-race prep seems to consist of a late night party with friends ending at 1am - oops sorry 2am as the clocks went forward.  Also seemed as though I'd picked up the start of a cold being very hot overnight.

Left at 8am with Viddy who was back from Saudi and had already managed 40 miles this week.  Race plan was to run with Viddy for 1st 12miles then see if I could manage more and run the rest at my own pace.

The 1st half mile meant dodging a load of runners who'd piled in towards the front to reduce their chip time (electronic timing from starting gun to crossing the line).  Normally the pace would have averaged quite slow - but we did quite below the target pace... We then started picking up places - generally catching them on the hills.  We eventually caught the 2nd lady at 6m and had a good chat and banter with her for 30 mins until I decided that it was time to see whether I could do some negative splits.  I did OK until 18m when an attack of cramp hit my right calf.  No warning just WHAM!  Stopped and stretched, then someone I had overtaken went past and I told myself I was only 2m from the end.  Managed to pick off him again and another,while ignoring the cramp.

2 miles to go... and levitating

Result:  2:07:10 for just over 20m (as course was long) coming 12th.  2nd lady 45 seconds after (actually 1st lady as other had just been aiming to do 12m and then drop out). Viddy came in about 4 mins later (having tried to tailgate the 1st lady) and picked up Men's Veteran 50 award in 25th place.    Happy with the performance as just below marathon pace and stopped a couple of times, but now wary of the cramps that seem to be back.

Typical laughs with Viddy being a big softy (self-confessed) about his aches and pains (in his big toe... what is left of it) and my post race masseuse getting kicked by a reflex action from my leg as she managed to push the calf cramp further up into my butt cheek.

Lessons learned

1) make rest time part of your training schedule

2) I stopped to drink the cups of water - seemed to work better than taking a shower in it

3) did it without any energy gels - but did the lack of them cause the cramp or was it diet or the overheating the night before?

Taper starts now - and just waiting for the Ibruprofen gel to work its magic on the calf before running again