Running with Friends

Me modelling the Spring/Summer 2011 collection.

As you may or may not know I tend to do 98% of my runs on my own, not through choice, but because of the times I am able to run, and mine and other peoples schedules not fitting in. This as you can imagine makes getting out the door and doing all these runs a little bit more difficult, so it was really good to be able to do a long run with my firend and work colleague Ed on Friday afternoon. We both booked Friday PM off of work, as Ed had told me earlier in the week he wanted to do a long run of over 26.2miles (Marathon distance) but couldn't do it Saturday or Sunday. We decided on 28.2miles, and Ed worked out a route that took in Bushy Park, Twickenham, Syon Park, Brentford, Kew Bridge and then onto the Thames Path and the 10 or so miles back to East Molesey where we had parked the cars. This would be Ed's furthest ever run and his first ever Ultra distance run, or as I said to Ed, his first proper distance run (!). We decided on a comfortable 8.45pace and promptly did the first mile in 8.20 (oops), it's easy to do this when you are talking and not concentrating, especially as both of us can run at 8.20 pretty easily. With a bit more concentration we got the speed down and the run itself went pretty quickly, as it tends to when you have good company, in fact over the last 4 or so miles I told Ed to slow down as he was gathering pace, Ed has a tendency to start to speed up near the end (he's in race mode from all the Coastal Half Marathon races he has been doing with his better half, Fi). He even suggested we do 30miles as he was feeling good!!!! Thankfully I had almost run out of drink, so talked him out of it (without much effort I hasten to add) but I was also a bit tired as I had run the previous 3days, and our pace had averaged 8.40pace for the whole 28.2miles.
All in all a really good run, and well done to Ed for going Ultra, which is good as he has already signed up to do the 44mile Classic Quarter in Lands End this June, I am of course going along to run it with him, it's a agreat course but v tough, as I learnt last year.
I have also received some The Shooting Star Children's Hospice t-shirts which I will be modelling during most runs over the next few weeks (as per the photo in this post), thank you to Karen and Alicja of the fundraising team for sending them to me.

A solid 70.1 miles run last week, more of the same this week only more so! Seems to be a recurring theme here.......

6:30am, raining and miserable, time for a run.



Back from my rainy run

Saturday 19th Feb:

It's has been a while since I have had to wear my Montane Quickfire waterproof jacket on a run, but Saturday was one of those days. When the alarm went off at 6am I dragged myself out of bed and snuck downstairs, doing my best not to wake the rest of the house, grabbed my Garmin switched it on and opened the window to pop the Garmin on the window ledge to get a signal and realised it was raining pretty hard (arse!). Got ready, grabbed my Raid Revo rucksack with 1.6l High5 energy drink in the bladder (had not used this Rucksack for a while, but needed it to carry more fluid from the start to-day, great bit of kit) ate a pancake (not the most hearty of breakfasts for a 24mile run) and out the door into the rain. The first 3 or 4 miles the rain was pretty hard, by mile 7 it was just a light drizzle and I thought I may have overdone it with the fully waterproof jacket, also chatted with another runner for a mile or so who is training for the 16mile Kingston Breakfast Run in March.

At mile 9 I met up with Sherrine (a work colleague) who is also training for the Kingston run as she wanted to do 12miles, which would be her furthest run so far, I was of course extremely glad of the company. In my infinite wisdom (Ha!) I decided we should set off along the Thames towards Weybridge, but as the rain must have been coming down overnight the tow-path was really waterlogged and extremely muddy most of the way, and the rain did not let up. So very wet/muddy shoes and socks for most of the 12miles (sorry Sherrine), but Sherrine ran very well at a good constant pace of around 8.40, although as I had miss calculated the distance she had to stop about a mile from where we met as she had already done 12miles and didn't want to push the distance too quickly (wise choice). We said our goodbyes, and I apologised for my miss calculation and went off to finish the last 3miles, I must admit my hands were very cold by this stage and the jacket had collected a fair bit of moisture (sweat) in the forearm/elbow area so I had to hang my arms down and feel it run down and out of the jacket (nice), you eventually overwhelm any waterproof jacket with the heat you generate and it can't shift it quick enough, I think it's called MVTR - Moisture Vapour Transfer Rate. My jacket has one of the best MVTR rates so god knows what it must be like inside the jacket when wearing one with a low MVTR, bin liner springs to mind. Anyway, the last 3miles were a bit quicker as I put the Ipod on and a couple of great tracks were playing, and then I was home in around 3hrs30mins.

Sunday 20th Feb:
Met up with Debs (superstar, who is doing PR for my 4 Marathons in 24hrs challenge) for my photoshoot. Debs had picked a nice spot on the Thames opposite side to Hampton Court Palace so we would capture the palace in the background of the photos. Just my luck as I stripped down to my running gear that 4 teeange girls (maybe 14 to 16yrs old) arrived on the scene, Debs joking that my fan club had turned up, I said that it couldn't be as there were not enough and the rest would be along presently!!! I put on the Shooting Star running t-shirt that Debs had got me, I think Debs is trying to tell me something as she only had Large and X-Large with her, but in all honesty I will have to grow into the Large. The first shot was brilliant, Hampton Court and the Thames in the background and nothing in the foreground, Debs had missed me, I was obviously running too fast (possibly not). Debs got some good shots eventually, which was no easy task  with what she had to work with, and hopefully some not too bad shots of me just standing and smiling and not looking too cheesy or false. I have reminded Debs to ensure the camera is set to 'George Clooney' or 'Brad Pitt' mode next time, failing that, get someone who can airbrush like a pro to take a look at the photos before we put them out for public viewing. My thanks again to Debs for all her hard work.
I managed to get out for today's run at 5.30pm, but was under instructions to be home before 7.45pm to do bedtime with the monsters aka the children. I wanted to run at easy pace so 15miles was the plan, I was pleasantly surprised on this run, significant was how low my Heart Rate was, the Average for the entire run was 126bpm at an average pace of 8min23secs per mile. So good pace for easy effort, seems like I was in that lovely running nirvana zone tonight, pity it isn't easily achieved on runs.

A solid 64.1miles for the week.

TCR (Triathlon, Cycling, Running) Show

Last Saturday I popped over to Sandown Park Racecourse for the TCR Show which is on every year. It has a real selection of kit aimed mainly at Triathletes but caters for runners as well as you would expect (Triathletes after all do run!!). It's a good job I am not a triathlete as you could spend a fortune, I saw bikes at £6500!!!!! One of my reasons for visiting was to go to the Brooks stand as I wear Brooks Adrenaline 10th edition and they now have the 11th edition out and wanted to see if they were an improvement on the 10's as sometimes updates are not neccessarily upgrades as was the case from Adreanline 8 to 9. The shoes themselves felt a little different if the forefoot but felt really good when I had a quick jog, this I think is the new DNA cushioning compound in the heel and forefoot which is non-newtonian  (A non-Newtonian fluid is a fluid whose viscosity is variable based on applied stress), my only issue is they seem to come up a little bigger than the 10's in width.

While I was on the Brooks stand I noticed a large queue and then saw Chrissie Wellington (3 x Ironman World Champion and World Record Holder) was signing autographs. She is taller than I had imagined and you could really see the muscle definition on her arms and shoulders (I have a long way to go to get into that sort of shape). She is sponsored by Brooks and is a phenomenal athlete, her marathon time at the end of a 2.4mile swim and 112mile ride is 2hrs48mins!!!! Had it not been for illness I think she would have won a 4th successive Ironman World Title late last year, great to see a British athlete who is the best in the world at what they do.
Sunday, I took my son to see Yogi Bear 3D, it was a good excuse for us boys to buy popcorn and sweets. While we were doing this the girls went to a 3rd birthday party, lots of princess dresses and sparkly stuff.

Thames Trot 50 - Race Report

Me before the start (with Jerry just over my shoulder)

It is funny how after the event and looking back you can see all the areas you could have improved on but when you are in the actual event you (or maybe it's just me) don't seem to be able to spot these things.
I met up with Jerry and George in Oxford on Friday evening and we grabbed a pizza fairly late and had a good old natter about future events and past runs before going to our separate hotels for the night. I stayed in the 5* (minus 4*s) Travelodge on the outskirts of town and caught the shuttle bus to Oxford station in the morning to pick up the minibus laid on by the race organisers (nice touch) to take us to the start about 3miles away in Iffley.
Once there i quickly saw and said hello to a few familiar faces, one of the runners (Tom), and I, have run bits of races together in the past and we quickly realised we were both looking to do sub 8hrs30 for to-day so we decided to run together. After a few pictures and deciding on not wearing my gloves (thanks to Tom for the sound advice) we were gathered outside for the start. The Race Director then gave final race instructions along with directions "Run to the River Thames, turn left, see you in Henley" as with most things it is never as easy as it sounds. And we were off.
The first 9 or so miles went quite quickly with Tom and I making good progress, top 30 or so I would say, but the headwind was strong. We just grabbed a few jelly babies at the first checkpoint and carried on, the ground was a little muddy and my trail shoes seemed to clog up and not shed the mud so they soon weighed about a 1lb each. This was also the first of a few occasions I had to re-tie my shoe, and it took me about 3 to 4 miles to catch Tom back up. By the time we reached the 2nd checkpoint around 19miles we both needed to fill up our bottles/bladders and this for me took a bit longer than I would have liked as the bottled water was only 330ml so I needed 3 - 4 for my bottles, but we were soon off again. It was at this stage that Tom was having a bit of a rough patch, as is the way with Ultra's, you have rough patches, it is with experience that you learn how best to ride them out. Tom knew he needed to get some carbs on board, and he wasn't wanting to slow me down, so I slowly went ahead, but my rough patch was not far away.
Now for most of the first 20 or so miles the wind was against us so we had worked hard to keep at 8.30 to 9min miles, but this hard work was now starting to have an affect so at 24miles I decided I would adopt a 4min walk 20mins/2 mile run strategy to make sure I kept making progress.
Just before I pulled into CP3 @ about 27miles I had overtaken a runner who was now dropping out (I heard at least 3 people pulled out at this CP). There was mini pasties, crisps, jelly babies, water etc but I could only just stomach a few salted crisps, as I was feeling pretty crap, so refilled my bottles and added my energy powder, and pulled myself together and got going, but about a mile or so along the river my stomach told me I really needed to find a quiet spot in the woods (hopefully no more detail required), which I did, but as I was in the woods I saw at least 10 people go past, it would be nigh on impossible to make up the ground which was a bit dis-heartening having run pretty hard up to then. The next 7 to 8 miles to the next checkpoint were about keeping moving, as I was still not feeling great and I could feel some rubbing on my left foot (my trail shoes were fairly new, the furthest I had run in them was 18miles, so was taking a bit of a risk doing 50) but I was aware that during the walking breaks I was being overtaken by a couple of runners, but when I was running I was making the ground up (need to do less walking, more running!!!!).
By the time I hit CP4 @ 34-35miles I was starting to come back round, and it was good to see Tom running into the CP, he must of been going strong since the last CP to make up the ground, I also bumbed into Robby, who I ran London2Brighhton with in 2009, and he was looking ok, we had a quick chat and he headed out just before Tom and I. We walked about 1/3m up a bigish hill and then quick check of the map with another runner for about 30secs (better than running the wrong way for 10mins) to confirm we were going in the right direction and then on our way. Once we picked up the Thames Path again and were by the river I noticed Tom was dropping back a bit but as we entered a lovely wooded section with some hills it was nice just to run it easy together and enjoy the scenery, we did remark that if we hadn't already run 35+ miles this would be a lovely place to run. We were now heading along towards Reading and with a good view ahead I could make out other runners in the distance, I was still sticking with my run/walk strategy as this was working ok, I could see that 2 or 3 of the runners ahead were the ones that had gone past me while I was busy in the woods earlier, so they were my target, but the main thing was just to finish strongly.
I was just about to take another walk break when i saw CP5 at about 42miles, so ran on, on arrival a passer by was asking how many runners were taking part, the CP Crew said "about 210" and I joked that at least I was in the top 210, there response was, your actually in the top 50 at the moment. I was a bit surprised, so this spurred me on, and made this just a quick water top up stop and cracked on, leaving the 2 runners who arrived ahead of me at the checkpoint behind, I was on the home stretch, time to run strongly.
Once over a small bridge and back on the Thames Path I felt pretty good, not great, but confident of keeping my pace. I quickly drew alongside another runner, who said "good going, well done", friendly lot these Ultra runners, another runner comming the other way must have known what race I was running, as he  congratulated me, which was nice, even though I was still a bit away from even finishing. I could now make out another runner ahead of me and just ahead of him, Robby who I last saw at CP4. Within a mile I had caught and passed the first runner, and about 3miles from home caught up with Robby. This was good as Robby is local and the last section I had been warned was a bit tricky, especially if you arrived in the dark, thankfully it was still daylight. I ran slightly ahead of Robby who kindly shouted out "keep left" or "straight on" at a couple of trick bits, including pointing out a massive house with a railway line in the front garden!! I then decided to take a 2min walk break and Robby slowly went past, as I thought we had 2.5miles to go and was readying myself for a hard last couple of miles, but a passer by said "only about a mile to the finish"!
So that was my queue to get a move on, so about half a mile across a field and onto a very long lock bridge, I quickly went past Robby, who wished me well, and I could see the Henley bandstand in the distance as well as 2 other runners. I binned the map book as soon I came off the lock bridge and onto the towpath, and was really motoring, I knew I would catch the first of the 2 runners but was the 2nd too far ahead to catch before the finish? Well, I must have caught him by surprise as I went past him about 50mtrs from the finish at about 6.30pace, and I was getting great support from some of the other runners and organisers as I came in to finish in 8hrs15mins in 42nd place of 201 starters.

All in all a good run, and good training for April especially as it was flat, also 45mins quicker than a similar race last year which was 5miles shorter, so a good sign that training is going in the right direction. Apart from a little stiffness feel surprisingly ok, so start building up again towards April. My thanks to Robby and his wife for dropping me off at Reading station after the race, and thanks to Tom for being my companion for a fair chunk of the race. My apologies to Jerry and George for shooting off at the start and then not seeing them the rest of the race, thankfully we met up and chatted the night before.

Last weeks training

I had intended to do a good 60 to 65miles last week (ended up doing 50), but as I couldn't quite get myself out of bed early enough on Saturday morning had to settle for 18miles and not the planned 25 (but did do mile 18 in about 6.50). This was actually a good thing as it meant I got home earlier and then we took the kids swimming, well they swam and I did my best to stop them from drowning me (good fun). Sunday's run was also a shorter than planned outing but went for quality rather than quantity so 8miles in total 6 of those at 7:05min mile, felt pretty good.
This week is about just ticking over in preperation for the Thames Trot Ultra (approx 50miles) on Sat 5th Feb, so easy run on Monday at the Gym and a few weights, and have just got in from an easy 4miles this evening. Rest up now until Saturday, looking forward to meeting up with Jerry and George, hopefully in Oxford on Friday evening, but if not then on the start line saturday morning, I am sure we will run a few miles together and have a chat and catch up. Part of the reason I really like Ultra's, the friends you get to make on the way round.