2018 Is Shaping Up!

2017 was a difficult year for running.

At the start of the year, I ran Country to Capital for a 3rd time and it was an utter death march to get to the end of it. My slowest showing on that route, despite the pretty good conditions. I needed to grit through it despite having nothing to prove, I did need to use the experience to feel the discomfort of finishing in pain when I just wanted to stop. It wasn't going to cause lingering injury, so it was fine to push through it for 24 miles of unpleasant slog to learn how to do it for when there is actually something to prove. Then I was persuaded to run The Moyleman (which I'd failed to finish the year before - I'd had enough at half way and got a lift to the finish), which was actually quite fun despite the fact I'm not much of a fan of the South Downs. After that, it was a few longish weekend back to back runs before getting on with the job of running the length of the British mainland, from bottom to top (Land's End to John O'Groats - LEJoG).

Things didn't go 100% to plan with that, and I had to take a few weeks out in the middle which extended the impact of it further into the year than I'd intended. I did finish and I have a lot of writing about it that I need to find time for still as well as dealing with all of the photos, but it was now mid-August and I had nothing planned for the rest of the year. With no idea of how LEJoG would go, if I'd be injured, or need weeks or even months of recovery, I deliberately kept the calendar empty. 4 weeks after finishing, with no target or pressure to do anything in particular, I entered a half marathon on a whim while I was abroad for work. And pulled out a PB, got cocky and entered a local marathon which I promptly DNFd (did 3/4 laps - just didn't fancy finishing in the dark and the laps were getting tedious). The final race of the year was another half marathon, at which both my husband and I managed to fall over and scrape up our knees. And that was the last run of any note in 2017.

My Training Plan (red = not done, yellow = sort of done, green = done correctly)

And I lost my mojo. The following weeks I found it harder and harder to get out for a run. Despite having recovered physically just fine from LEJoG, I was getting tired a lot and making poor eating and drinking choices which didn't help. Though I'd already decided that I wanted to train for a faster marathon in the Spring, I just ran out of giving a crap about running enough to do much of it, or with any decent quality.

However!

Strava featured me in a couple of their social media posts, which brought a few more folks to see my long run of the summer, then they featured me in their "2017 in Stats" blog post which was nice. And in the same breath as Sandra Vi who just beat the trans-America running speed record. (though they somehow decided I'd broken a world record with my run, which I haven't and never said I did anywhere, and that I'd run top to bottom, which is back to front! I'd also had to stitch together the individual days running into one GPX file and call it a "hike" instead of a run so it didn't mess with my annual running stats as I wanted to keep the individual day entries with the photos and messages from other people)

And RunUltra posted an article of my run (word limits are hard!)

And here we are, in the last days of 2017 and 2018's running calendar is shaping up pretty well actually! I've entered a few races and have a few targets to hit:

• April - Rome Marathon. Targeting London Marathon Good For Age (03:49:59)
• May - Cape Wrath Ultra. 8 days, multi-day, 250 miles
• August - GB Ultra, Race Across Scotland. 214 miles in under 100 hours
• October - Autumn 100. 100 miles, aiming just to finish

So the first few months of the year will be training to try to get me quicker again (it's a long time since I managed 22:36 for 5000m) but without losing endurance base for the longer stuff that comes afterwards. And I'll want to chuck in some fun stuff before, in between and afterwards - there are some work trips abroad which could present some fun race tourism opportunities.

Oh, and I've been nominated for a Run Ultra Blog award, so if you like what you've read here, please cast a vote for me (and you could win a shiny, new Suunto watch)!

*tiny thermonuclear explosion of joy* @virginactiveuk @teamfreespeed

Somebody pinch me; I can't believe it's real!  I, er, won.

Thanks Heather, I don't look 40 in this one :oD

I am now the 12th member of  Team Freespeed Virgin Active.  11 high performance athletes and me.  I am so unbelievably happy, scared, excited, nervous, honoured, fired-up... it really is a dream come true.  11 of the best amateur athletes in triathlon at the moment and I'm going to be able to spend a bit of time with them, talk with them, race with them, be part of their team and it is all because of the generous gift from their sponsors Freespeed and Virgin Active.  There is lots of support and kit coming my way, with a membership to the gorgeous Chiswick Riverside site of Virgin Active health clubs and I'll be racing in team kit at the Virgin Active London Triathlon and Prudential RideLondon-Surrey 100, as well as Valencia Triathlon a bit later in the year.

I need a little bit of a lie-down and some time to make sense of it, but right now I'm on cloud 9 and want to start to channel some of this phenomenal, new enthusiasm into mojo for training well.

Traintraintraintrain

It's been almost 2 weeks since IM 70.3 UK and I've been doing really well.  Training consistently and getting some strength sessions slotted in, which I'd really been missing.  As a result, I'm quite tired.  Work, chores, training, commuting, sleeping - balancing those is a fine art at the best of times and when some of those are unpredictable, you have to get clever around scheduling and making provision for opportunistic dealing with chores or training.

I missed one run and added in 2 strength sessions - pretty pleased with that

I've found a way to make the shorter, working day training sessions work.  I do spin/bike and strength sessions in the morning before work, unless I'm in the rural office when I do runs instead.  Swims happen on the way home from work and runs can happen as part of my commute home from work (when I'm in London).  Longer bikes and runs happen at the weekend with options on an added swim or strength session.  It's working pretty well!

The red sessions are today's ones I've not yet done - swim will go green later!

The Virgin Active London Triathlon is 4 weeks away and I'm feeling pretty darned good for it.  As long as nothing catastrophic happens, I'm very much on track for a great race on a really lovely course.  It's an Olympic distance race and almost completely flat with just a few roundabouts for fun in it, so I'm looking at using my TT bike with my spanky HED Jets for extra go-faster (well, they -look- cool, so it'll make me -feel- faster and that makes me actually put in more effort :o)) vroominess.  Last time I did London, I didn't do too badly given I had no training plan, just ran a bit, biked 15km every now and then to my old work and back (each way) and swam when I rememebred to:- 02:45 and I think my run at the end was just over an hour!  I think we can do better than that this year :oD

So, I'll be getting out on my TT bike when I can; I find it a bit tricky to get familiar with the handling of it where we live and last year I ended up doing most of my familiarisation on it in races (closed roads, no traffic to worry about).  And doing my best to keep on top of training sessions and fitting them in where I can when work goes off piste (keeping gym and swimming kit in my desk drawer really really helps!) and not get stressy if I end up having to miss a session that I can't fit in, or doesn't logically fit in, at another point in the week.



Now... I just need the results of the Team Freespeed Virgin Active competition to be announced (oh please, oh please!) so I can stop having un-resolved stuff hanging over me and job's a good 'un!

Objectives achieved. Data acquired.

A last-minute decision to go on a training camp was always going to be a bit of a gamble for a number of reasons.  I've been avoiding swimming and getting outside on my bike since I was pronounced OK to do so by the doctors after the crash of Sept 2012.  I'd skip sessions, wuss out of being on the road on my bike with the excuse that it wasn't safe, though the real reason was that underneath it all I was shit-scared of it.  The only training I was actually happy to do was running.  So, heading out to a training camp for a week in Spain seemed like the perfect opportunity to get me out of the funk.

The coaches asked what my objectives were:-

Hi Mike,

my objectives...

1 - regain bike confidence and handling (sub-objective of simply hours on the bike)

2 - get my ass in the pool and stop hating the thought of it - get ideas of and work on positivity around swimming
3 - health-check running technique, work on any problems there

 And I packed up, got on a plane and headed out.

Firstly, EasyJet isn't as bad as I thought.  I paid for extra leg-room, which wasn't a huge addition to the cost and the 3ish hour flight was perfectly comfortable.

We arrived at the golf resort where we were staying (sadly the original accommodation hosts had to cancel our visit at the very last minute, due to a landslide blocking the road to the mansion) and rather than go for a ride or a run as per the schedule, we went for our first swim because it was a bit cold and windy.  And lo, my second objective was ticked off straight away; on the first day, within hours of getting off the plane!

(thanks to TheTriLife for taking photos - I took all of 3 in the whole week!)

We did a technique set in the pool and as the coach:athlete ratio was so high, I got a lot of personal attention and almost immediate results from two stroke form changes.  From that moment, my attitude to the pool swung from "gnnngh, do I -have- to!?" to "let me in there! when can we swim next?".  Though it was quite tiring initially, because my left arm is shockingly weak (to me) having done pretty much nothing with it for months, it quickly became easier over the days to do more and longer sets and sessions.  Over the 6 swim sessions of the week I started off being able to manage 1200m (already 20% more than recently) up to 3,500m in a session and in not too shabby a time either.

The other, more difficult problem, was the bike.  Since I crashed, I'd been out on the road twice; once to the sorting office and once down to the local sprint tri route and back.  No more than 40km on the road in 6 months!  I'd done 50min-120min turbo sessions, but that's so very different to being on the road and my bike handling was never great in the first place, now it was shot to pieces and my confidence non-existent.  So, ride number 1 on camp was a case of "STFU, buckle-down and get on with it" for me.  A big exercise in shutting up part of my brain that does risk analysis and it took quite some effort.

But I didn't die. I managed some hills and a top speed of 52km/h down a hill at one point.  It may sound trivial to most, but it was a huge step forward for me, mentally more than anything else.

One of the villas at the resort

The week ticked by, gaining in endurance and confidence in the pool and on the bike.  The only difficulty was the food provided.  As we were at a golf resort, there was little understanding of the needs of athletes training around 25-28 hours in 6 days.  They did try, but some were left running low on fuel and from my low carb, high fat dietary preference point of view, I sorely lacked in vegetables through the week - just about ticked along with the lunch-time salad, but dinner was very very poor nutritionally.

With each ride, I was gaining confidence and increasing top speed down the descents, getting stronger with handling - moving back to being able to signal and take a drink while free-wheeling - and stronger/confident up the hills. (ride times posted here include stopped time and faff at the start)

A typical hill road - pretty, huh?

Ignore the time, that's including a coffee stop and forgetting
to turn off after we got back

With each swim, I was gaining familiarity with my modified technique, improving endurance, strength and even speed.

And then, after 7 days straight of training (including the day before camp and the travel day when we swam in the afternoon) and 19 hours of training on a diet of 30-50g carbohydrate per day, I found a limit.  Day 6 of camp had a run scheduled in the afternoon after a morning swim.  I was supposed to do 3 laps of a 5km route at a relatively easy pace.  Others in the group had 1, 2 or 3 laps to do depending on goals.  We were all to head out at the same pace and stay together until the first turn on the route, about 500m from the start.  Within the first 30s I knew something was wrong.  Everyone else was pulling away from me and I couldn't do anything about it.  I felt fine, good mood, legs strong, lungs working OK, heart rate... stuck below 156bpm.  I willed myself to go quicker, but nothing happened.  The day before, I'd done 3 laps of a shorter route, 1 easy, 1 a bit under race pace and 1 above race pace.  That was fine for the first 2 laps and I pushed a HR of up to 168bpm, but the 3rd lap faded and ended up being no faster than the 2nd (which was a bit quicker than it should have been).  This day, nothing was happening.  I just couldn't go any faster.

So. As I trotted gently, I mused what might be happening and thought back to my calculations for the London Ultra with my carbohydrate reserves and where the changes in fuel ratio happen. 155bpm is a knee point in the graph.  It's where I go from burning almost no carbohydrate at all to needing to get 2kcal/min from carbohydrate.  Bingo.  I'd finally completely run out of glycogen in my body.  I guess it had happened during the run the day before and the small amounts I got from the evening meal that night (from the veg and a bit of gluconeogenesis from the protein too) didn't give me anything to be getting on with once I put my body under load.

(this is old data, add 10bpm to the right axis when reading the graph)

During a normal training week I'd do about 8 hours training and mostly at low intensity.  If you consider my body's glycogen stores to be a bathtub of water, I'd be emptying it with anything from a teaspoon to a coffee mug while filling it with a soup ladle and maintaining a reasonable level of water in the bath.  This training week, at a higher intensity and much more load than usual, I was emptying it with a bucket and filling it with a coffee mug (harder to keep the carbs low while in Spain, plus I was having a glass or two of wine every night and a lot more milk than usual).  After 7 days, my bath was empty and I was sitting in the bottom and reaching for the tap... I had a burger, potato wedges and a chocolate brownie with ice-cream for dinner on day 7 (6th day of camp).  And the next day, stormed on out for a 3.5km endurance swim at an average HR of 155bpm, peaking at 170bpm and then a 2.5 hour bike ride peaking at 175bpm.  Sorted!

I've had a bit of a think and I don't need to do anything differently around my normal training weeks, but what I may want to do in the couple of final days of training before a longer race, 70.3 and up, I'll refuel after a hard or long session with a big ol' glass of milk to get some carbs in without going crazy.  And if I end up with a heavy week again, go on a camp or similar, I'll keep an eye on the hours and intensity vs. food going in.

Good week.  Very good week.  Swim mojo back.  Bike mojo getting there.  Fuel better understood (more data still required).  Let's go!

Back

I'm back in the UK after a training camp in Spain.  The short version:- it was great.  All of my objectives were achieved and I learned more about training for endurance sports on a low carb high fat diet.  More on that when I've collected my thoughts on it properly. (suffice to say there's an analogy that involves bathtubs coming up :o))

For now, I'll leave you with the best ride of the week:-

20km of continuous climbing up to Bedar

Max speed 59.4km/h - mojo coming back!
(ignore overall time, I forgot to turn it off and we stopped for a coffee)

Pretty terrain

It got *warm*