Race Report: Country to Capital 2017

Country to Capital is a landmark in the race calendar to kick off the year. Starting in Wendover, winding through woods, back lanes and fields to Uxbridge then on canals from there to Little Venice,. 43-ish miles in total, there's a lot on tarmac in the first section,;the rest can be muddy and slippery and the unrelenting flatness of the last 23-ish miles pretty harsh.

It was awesome to know the course pretty well.  Having run the race twice previously (2014 and 2016) and gone for a recce run of the first 13 miles on Christmas Day, there was no need to worry about route finding at all.  Yes, the route isn't marked, but if you know it already that doesn't matter.

We'd agreed we'd run this one together as a "nice day out". Unfortunately it wasn't that nice really. The forecast of overcast then sunny and dry didn't pan out. It started off chilly and breezy, then it started raining, which turned into snow. The cold set in early. We zipped through CP1 without stopping, only slowing to get our timing chips checked in. The checkpoints at this race are pretty limited in terms of food choices (which is good, as my strategy is in-out-gone): mainly cake and jelly babies, but some savoury at CP3 and the end (mini pastry snacks - pork pies, cheese and onion things etc.). They're really good at checking runners through and helping to fill bottles, but beyond that it's pretty minimal and nothing hot, which is hard on a day like this.

I noticed my breathing wasn't quite right early on - breathing too hard for the effort level.  Then my right hamstring got niggly and my brain wasn't being supportive of running well. I got a bit whiney, but MrTOTKat stayed mostly within earshot and waited every now and then for me to catch up. Darkness in the brain was telling me to give up, but that's actually quite hard to do on this route. Checkpoints are far from any useful transport options and as it's point to point, once you're beyond a certain distance you may as well get to the end anyway for the time it would take.

From well before hitting the canal at Uxbridge, I was finding it hard to run the flats all that much. So we were run/walking already before 20 miles in.  Compared with the 2 previous runnings of this race I've done, I was in much worse shape at this stage. Food didn't help and the cold was causing difficulties with my hamstrings. Even when it stopped snowing, it was still really chilly.

MrTOTKat was awesome. I was whingey and petulant even at time, but he was encouraging and supportive; if he'd not been with me, the last 23 miles of the race (and in particular the last 12 or so) would have been miserable instead of just difficult. We jog/walked until the last checkpoint, where it turned out we were 65 mins or so ahead of the cut-off time so we could walk the rest in if we really needed to.

We crossed the line together, freezing cold and in the pitch black. Almost last, but together and in good spirits. It took warm food, many hours and an additional 3 layers to stop shivering hard with the cold. The medal was nicer than last year's, but I think I might have finally realised after three times with this race, that I simply don't enjoy the route. I need to remember that when I'm next tempted to sign up for it.

Race report: Wales Marathon 2014 - What an awesome marathon!

The Wales Marathon - part of the Long Course Weekend, where there is a 2.4 miles swim on Friday, 112 mile bike ride on Saturday and a 26.2 mile run on Sunday.  Many people sign up for it as part of their training for Ironman Wales later in the year.  Many people say it's far harder to do those distances over 3 days than all in one.  I kinda agree.

However, I was "only" going to be doing the run on the Sunday as a part of my longer distance running training.  The plan was to run "comfortably" after the last few runs that haven't been so great, and hike hills if they were hard.

So that's what I set out to do.

We walked to the run start for the 10am start, expecting a mostly overcast, warmish day.  The sun blazed down on us in our vests and shorts and I thought; "OK, I'm gonna burn to a crisp!".  The gun went off and off we trundled over the line.  We decided to stay together through the twisty, narrow town section and then see what happened after that.  MrTOTKat was on a pacing strategy he was trying out for the Ironman later in the year; run 9 mins, walk 1 min.  I was on "run comfortably".  So we stayed together for a bit until I didn't want to walk when the beeps for MrTOTKat to start walking happened, and I pulled ahead.  As all the runners passed through the section of town near the station, we could smell some absolutely divine curry and there were plenty of comments about it amongst us.

I needed a wee from the first km.  Damn.  Thankfully in the 4th km there were public loos that loads of people were diving into, so I took advantage and was relieved to do so!  MrTOTKat had overtaken me in that time (11 seconds!) and it took me a good 2km to catch up with him again.  The terrain had been mentioned in the race briefing at the start and we were expecting quite some incline to get up to the Ridgeway... and there it came!  Time to power walk and fly past people who were walking normally up it :o)

Fun hill!

It was a good learning experience to power walk/hike up the steep hills as, though my heart rate stayed roughly the same as if I was running, it used different muscles and allowed for stretching out my calves and achilles which I think made a big difference later on in the race.

MrTOTKat and I saw each other a few more times during the race, I was surprised a couple of times as I thought I was pulling away more and more and in the end it turned out I was.

After the first hour of running I really felt great.  I started to run up inclines I'd normally use as an excuse to walk, and it felt easy.  It felt awesome.  I was absolutely loving it!  And my heart rate was a lot better controlled than in Rotterdam, where it dropped off like a stone and I felt awful.  I got to about 16 miles in and thought that things were going nicely and if they still were at 20, I'd think about what to do at the finish in terms of meeting up with MrTOTKat.  He'd mentioned it might be nice to cross the line together and as our strategies and aims for the day were different, I thought it might not happen.  So, I decided that if he hadn't caught me again by 23 miles, I'd walk from there until he did, so we could cross the line together.  I'd've ticked the boxes I wanted to tick in terms of objectives by then, and had absolutely nothing to prove.  The hardest thing would be letting people I'd stormed past in the last few miles, just go past me as I sauntered.

I carried on trucking, running up hills and down them, passing lots of people; power walking up only two more hills and finally coming to a really really mean downhill section at around the 22 mile point where I heard a guy just ahead of me shouting "this is the 1 in 4 bit!".   At this point, that sort of downhill was pretty harsh on the knees and I found it a bit hard and a bit painful.

Nasty little descent!

Soon after that was the 23 mile marker where I said I'd start walking if MrTOTKat hadn't caught me by then.  And he hadn't.  So I sauntered really really gently.  In my head I was a bit worried that he might have blown up somewhere or got hurt (I'd heard two ambulances in the distance behind), so I wanted to give him as much time as possible.  I got loads of comments from people jogging past me "almost there love, keep going!".  Mentally, that's really heard to hear when you're feeling pretty fresh and perky and perfectly capable of overtaking them and running happily to the finish.  After a few minutes of walking, I came across a couple of marshalls at a corner sheltered from the breeze, so I decided to stop with them and wait where I shouldn't get too cold.

Pretty course profile - blimmin' lovely to run

Happily, I didn't have long to wait before the fluorescent orange vest of MrTOTKat hove into view and we trotted off together on his continuing run/walk strategy to the end.

As we crossed the roundabout at the bottom of the last hill into Tenby, we came across another chap who chatted with us a little and as we started running again at the top he happened to mention we were 5 minutes to the 5 hour time boundary, so we picked things up a bit.  The final little run into Tenby, we weren't sure we'd quite make the 5 hours, but then realised that we had time to cross the timing mat at the start so the time on the pace car wasn't quite right for us and we started to sprint through town, giggling like kids.  It was great fun!  We were loving it!  And as we hit the red carpet, MrTOTKat grabbed my hand and we ran hand-in-hand along the red carpet at full tilt and over the line - hard to do, but awesome fun!

We crossed the line in 04:59:49!  Not that it matters, but it was such great fun sprinting through town for the last few hundred meters.  The time was utterly immaterial to me due to the plan for the day and what I decided to do at 23 miles in.  I thoroughly enjoyed the course (despite it being 100% on road).  I thoroughly enjoyed the brilliant local support; as ever the people of Pembrokeshire are brilliant when it comes to supporting hundreds of amateur athletes they don't know from Adam!  I thoroughly enjoyed sticking to my plan, feeling awesome once I'd warmed up, drinking water when I felt thirsty, eating nothing until after the race, sprinting through town at the end, easily running up hills I'd normally use as an excuse to walk and crossing the line with my sweetie.  I also love that the pace was only a couple of seconds per mile slower than at the London Ultra in 2013 when I was fitter, running faster in general, 4kg lighter and better at sucking up pain, but hurt quite a bit towards the end of it compared with this race where I had no pain in my quads at all.

The pink highlighted section is the race itself on this graph.  The massive drop off in heart rate towards the end is the 23 mile point where I walked then stopped and waited, and you can see the lovely sprint finish to a peak of 180BPM at the end very clearly!

Building blocks

I feel great.

Like really great.

This morning was my first session with Athletic Edge.  These guys specialise in functional, relevant strength and conditioning work for athletes; from rugby players through triathletes to sprinters etc.

Having seen the work they've done with Mr TOTKat over the last year, how much stronger and more resilient he's got, I decided they were the solution to my feeling weak and soft.  It's hard getting to the gym on your own schedule; if you've committed to a session with someone who's going to really pick over exactly what you need to be doing to move forward then it's far more likely to happen.  Even when that means getting up at 05:45 to do that.

So.  Initial thoughts are that my lower back is a bit over-enthusiastic and, under certain conditions, tries to take the load that my glutes and hamstrings should be taking.  My hamstrings and calves are a bit tight and that's limiting some exercises before we can load them up at all.  And I have good control in the main, which is a good platform to start working on good technique and then progressing the exercises.

Ben put me through some fairly gentle, easy exercises this morning but I know I will have some DOMS tomorrow and Sunday mainly because I was using muscles in ways I've not done in a while.  I look forward to it!  Hello endorphins, I've missed you :o)

Weight Loss: How to do it

How to lose weight successfully

I'm featured as one of the weight loss "success stories" on the Weight Loss Resources web site.  And as a result of that I've had a few questions, mostly around "how did you do it?"  and "I've tried and tried and I can't seem to get the weight to come off and stay off, how did you manage it?".   So I wrote a little piece on it.

This is pretty much how I did it, but not what I'd recommend for everyone now I know a lot more...

Example Food Diary (WLR)

It's both very simple and really difficult at the same time.  The real keys are brutal honesty with yourself and planning.  The final bit is maintenance; the changes you make to lose weight must be sustainable as you will need to hang on to those changes to keep the weight off forever.

• Logging - if you are trying to lose weight by calorie counting, it is very very very important that you brutally honestly log absolutely everything that passes your lips, having weighed it to be certain of how much you've had.  That last couple of spoons of yogurt from the kids' dessert at dinner -does- count; that bite out of your best friend's hot-dog while you're out at the cinema -does- count; but it is -so- easy to forget that you had them, forget to log them and then wonder why the numbers seem to add up but the weight loss isn't happening.  It is a well known phenomenon that people almost never log everything they eat, not because they want to lie or cheat, but because they actually do forget things because their brain doesn't see it as important at the time.  So, if you're out and about and don't have access to your online logging resource (in my case Weight Loss Resources - WLR), keep a notebook, write things down and then enter them into WLR when you can. And weigh everything. Portion sizes do matter.  Go here for an interesting documentary that includes a section on this.

• Exercise - can make it harder to be sure of staying inside your allowance; the calorific value of food is a reasonable guess, based on burning food to see how much heat it gives off.  Not exactly the same way your body processes it, but near enough for an estimate.  The same is true for exercise; the effort required for two different people of the same size, weight, height and age may differ based on so many other factors.  The estimates in WLR for exercise are quite variable and if you want to be closer to a more accurate estimate, invest in a heart rate monitor if you can.  But -do- exercise as it will help to maintain your existing muscles while you're losing weight; it's no good losing lots of weight that's muscle as you won't get any definition in your shape and it's less "good" for you to be losing weight through muscle loss than fat loss.

• Snack.  Regularly.  Seriously.  If you don't allow yourself to get hungry during the day, by eating little and often, you end up eating less overall to feel satisfied and lower the likelihood of splurging.  Or to put it another way, if you leave it too long between meals you will most likely eat bigger portions and with less careful choice in those meals.

• Planning - Plan your food and exercise at least a day in advance, if not for the week.  If you plan, it's harder to have little "oops" moments and you can plan in for treats to keep you from straying too far off the path or help you make informed choices when spontaneous things happen. 

• Eat as cleanly as you can - foods you prepare from scratch/original components, rather than prepared foods and packaged meals.  This is a key point.  

• Eat enough - It can be worth trying for a slower pace of weight loss as you may not be getting enough energy to keep your metabolism working properly.  Many people have switched from 2 or 1.5lb loss rates to 1lb loss rate and suddenly the weight starts coming off properly.  It varies a lot from person to person and giving it a go for a few weeks is really the only way to find out what will work for you.

• Have a "down" day/week every now and then.  I was lucky that I never really needed to do this, but very many people find that their bodies are clever and cotton on to the fact that they're getting less food/more exercise and adjust your metabolism to deal with the reduced intake vs. output.  Keeping your body guessing (but do stay on or under maintenance kcals) can help break out of that learning behaviour and kick your metabolism back to where it should be.  If you're doing heavy exercise 3/4 times a week, maybe take a week off from it every 10-12 weeks.  Or plan in a "cheat" day every week or fortnight where you do eat up to or even a bit over maintenance kcals rather than sticking to loss. 

• Weigh everything.  Unless you have the most amazingly accurate estimating skills, your portion sizes WILL drift.  And usually upwards.  It will start to add up to a few more kcals every day than you're logging and again you'll wonder why the kcals seem to add up but the weight loss isn't doing.  In effect, you're kidding yourself.  Stop it.

• Don't rely on the scales for the measure of success.  Take body measurements periodically, maybe once a month, and keep track of that as well as weight.  You may find there are times when the scales don't shift, but your body changes shape and you lose a few cm around bits of yourself.

• Patience - with yourself and with the people who will try to, knowingly or not, sabotage your hard work.  You are only human; you will have off days and that's OK.  Just as long as they're not every day ;o)  And other people may not understand what you are trying to do, how or why and they can in a well-meaning way end up trying to sabotage your efforts by offering you food, tempting you out of exercise or saying "oh come on, you're not fat!".  It's down to you how you deal with it; I wasn't very good at that part, to be honest, I just hid and didn't go out!

There -will- be hard times; I remember many many tantrums and fits of tears during my main weight loss period.  The forums on WLR can really help with that and with advice and support when the going gets tough or you have questions.

So remember... plan,  Log EVERYTHING and be honest with yourself.  Losing weight isn't rocket science but it isn't easy either.  You can do it.  You will get there.  But you have to really want to change your lifestyle and keep it changed for life.

Solitude vs Clubs

It seems strange that I learned this from a day with two top athletes and I'm under no illusions that I was privileged to learn that way...

Me, at 18 months, with my dad at Leeds University pool

 

I'm relatively new to sport and fitness.  Having spent a chunk of my life being more than chunky and more than averagely sedentary, I came to sport very late in life.  As a child, I swam from the age of about 2 to 11 and part of that was as a member of Croydon Amphibians swimming club and then Stevenage Dolphins.  I don't really remember much about the swimming clubs other than being in races with my dad shouting encouragement from the crowd and the occasional being picked on in the changing rooms as I was a bit younger than most of the squad.  (Having gone to primary school in the Elephant and Castle, I could more than hold my own when being picked on; by comparison the home counties lot were amateur bullies ;o)).  But when I went to secondary school, the swimming pretty much ground to a halt.  Though there was a pool at my school, the support for sport wasn't brilliant and we weren't that good at athletics or team sports as a school.  However, there was a great swimming pool in the town centre, a 50m (Olympic) length outdoor pool where I got my mile swimming badge and my Personal Survival awards around the age of 8 or 9.  Shortly after I left my secondary school, the outdoor swimming pool at the school was filled in with concrete *sigh*

So, pretty much from the age of 12 I did no more sport.  Around 25ish I dabbled with swimming again (mostly to impress a boy) and I ended up doing a lot of long swims - never less than 1600m and on one particular occasion around 4800m.  But pretty much, from the age of 12 to 37 I did no sport and, near as dammit, no exercise.  And, to compound the problem with my own body, I lost a butt-load of weight and a large amount of muscle into the bargain.

In 2009 I got married and something clicked in my head that I wanted to fix the problem that I'd lost a lot of muscle and I was weak.  I may have been a lot less tubby, but I couldn't lift boxes to help someone move house and that made me feel quite worried.  So, I joined a gym and started to do resistance training.  A couple of weeks after that, I started to get off the tube a few stops earlier and earlier and walk the last few km home.  Getting frustrated with how long that took, I decided to try Couch 2 5K and dived in several weeks into the programme.  My heart rate would rocket to 190 or so for the periods I was running and I felt -terrible-, but I persevered and after a few months raced my first 10km race putting in a time under 60 minutes despite a touch of food poisoning and a roaring hangover.

Having messed about with cycling a tiny bit (pretty much learned to ride a bike to visit my then boyfriend, now husband, in 2008), cycling a couple of times a month for a few km at a time, along with being a swimmer by background (and now starting to put in some distance swims) and starting in running, I decided to join Mr TOTKat in doing some triathlons.  I set to, having heard horror stories about the fist-fights in the swim, looking for triathlons with the swim leg in a pool rather than open water and I came across the Thames Turbo sprint series. 

Thames Turbo are the greatest possible start into triathlon.  The races are extremely well organised and run, the club and marshalls are friendly and supportive and I think that made a huge impact on our feelings towards the sport of triathlon and made us want to do more.  We improved our times through the series in 2010 and in 2011 we signed up for a lot more triathlons, including a couple of Olympic distance ones (with some pretty robust open water swim starts - needless to say I'm pretty comfortable with that now) and I DNFed a lot due to a knee injury.  Training was erratic and inconsistent but we were just mucking about really.  The Ironman idea came up and that meant we were going to need to take things a bit more seriously.  Training to date had been a solitary affair for me, with the very very occasional ride or run with Mr TOTKat.

Cutting to the chase... Friday 13th January 2012 was the first time I've been out on a bike and a run with more than one other person (apart from races of course!) and it turns out that it's really quite nice.  So far, I certainly have preferred to train alone.  I'm an anti-social beast at the best of times.  Previously I was worried that for Ironman it is a big mental event where you have only yourself to rely on and your own determination and mind, I didn't want to come to rely on being in a group, get too used to it and the supportive environment of it.  And I worry ever so much about being The Slow One and holding people up.  So I'd really not wanted to join a club or train with others.  But that day with Ali and Jonny Brownlee, incredible as it was just to be with them anyway, showed me that people really don't mind as much as I thought they might.  It also showed me that, although I was quite ginger about most of the first part of the bike ride, overly worried that I'd mess up in some way, fall off, bin it down a hill or something, once I'd relaxed and warmed up a lot, the three boys really helped me fuss less about my usual worries by being so supportive and considerate.  It also resulted in me being a bit more gung ho towards the end, slogging up the long hill in the final stages and bombing down one descent, to catch up with them at the bottom, a lot more quickly than I'd been previously comfortable with.

I'd really like to learn new routes to run and ride as I'm not that imaginative and all I seem to see are the difficulties and negatives.  It's probably time to join a club and enjoy some company for at least some of my training sessions, have access to some other very experienced coaches, plus I'd really rather like to race in Thames Turbo colours :o)