Running at midnight

Yesterday went like this:

5:30am: alarm rang - I turned it off.
7:30am: got up, 2 hours late
9.30am - 5.30pm: at work.
6pm: train to Chelmsford with a sandwich for dinner
7pm: watched the T20 cricket game between Essex and Kent.  Amazing match, great atmosphere, and very exciting towards the end...came down to the last ball! Kent needed a 4, Essex got a wicket, so Essex won.  Fantastic!
10.10pm: wandered back to the station from the cricket ground.  Realised the train was in 2 minutes.  Sprinted & got to the platform at 10.13pm, missed the train.
11.10pm: Finally got home.
11.30pm - midnight: Went out for a run!

That's very late, even for me, a seasoned night runner, to be heading out of the door and so I didn't go far, but am pleased I went.  I barely saw anyone out on the roads, but there was a group of teenagers coming up the street, I assume from the pub, in the opposite direction to me.  As I got closer I could hear them asking each other "Is she really running? At this time of night?" and then they started applauding and cheering me as I passed them, as though I was running a marathon.  It raised a smile and was all well intentioned ;)

Despite getting to bed so late, I actually tried to get up at 5.30pm this morning in another attempt to get my run in before work.  Needless to say, I slept through! Unfortunately, we're going out again tonight so I'll be running late again, although this time I'll hopefully be home a bit earlier, which is a good job as I need to do about 8 miles.  Fingers crossed it doesn't turn into another midnight run, not sure how long I can keep this up! ;)

A return to Juneathon - day 20

After yesterday morning's gym session, there was a tiny part of me that wondered whether I would actually make it out for my run last night, but very pleased to be able to say that I did and my Juneathon exercise has restarted and my training is back on track.

Having watched the first 10 minutes of the England v Ukraine game, I headed out of the door, and ran a hilly 8 miles at what felt like a decent pace.  I didn't take my Garmin, but had one of those runs where I felt strong, my legs were moving well, the sun was shining (although by the time I got back it was setting & the skies were red) and pretty much every song that came on my ipod was one I love. I was home in time to watch the last 10 minutes of the football so I was able to enjoy the England win too - yesterday was a very good day :)

Unfortunately, I did have a bit of pain in my right ankle during the run and it's still hurting this morning...to go with the DOMS that I've developed from the gym session.  My arms, back and abs are all really aching, but the DOMS is a good thing - it means the gym workout was effective!  The ankle pain is less positive though - I can't identify what the cause is, but I've got a support on it this morning, which has definitely helped.

I meant to get up early and get today's run done before work, but when my alarm rang, I must have turned if off and fallen straight back into a deep sleep, as I didn't wake up until 2 hours later!! It wasn't a consious decision - yesterday's exercise obviously tired me out - but it has caused me a bit of a problem. We're off to watch the cricket (Essex v Kent Twenty20) tonight, and probably wont get home until about 10.30pm, so today's run is just going to have to be a very late one. I need to get it done, as this week is a really big week in my training - last week was an easy rest week, but this week is high mileage - I'm aiming to hit 57 miles, and I'm not going to do that unless I run tonight!

A wedding, some walking & a work-out

No blog for 5 days.  No run for 4 days. So what have I been doing?! Well, although I didn't manage to blog about it, on Thursday I did get up early for a 5.5 mile run before work, which was lovely - I need to start running more often in the morning and take advantage of the early sunshine!

Unfortunately though, I haven't run since, but I do have my Juneathon excuses lined up:

On Friday, we were on holiday! We drove 3 hours up to Derbyshire, to go to a friend's wedding.  Although there was no exercise, the wedding was absolutely wonderful - I shed more than a couple of tears during the ceremony and we slipped away from the reception for a couple of hours to watch the England v Sweden match in the Best Man's hotel room! A great day :)

Saturday - No running again, but we went for a 8 mile hike around the village of Grindleford, where we were staying.  Definitely counts for Juneathon, as going up and down the hills in the Peak District was hard work at times, but I absolutely loved the walk despite the frequent and heavy rain storms! The walk took us through different types of landscape, from fairytale ancient forest, to dales dotted with flocks of sheep, to standing high on the heather moorland looking over the view down the valley, to the Grindleford Summer Festival from which, for 20 minutes before we arrived, we could hear the sound of bagpipers, and along muddy paths by the river.  The countryside in this part of the world is absolutely beautiful and we'll definitely go back...there are even loads of runners to make me feel at home - I saw more runners on Saturday than I usually see in Essex or London in a week, and they were all running on trails and more often than not, up some very steep slopes!

Me in the pouring rain

Sunday - we carried on with our Derbyshire site-seeing tour and drove back home, getting back at about 9pm and although I'd planned to, I didn't go out for an evening run - we'd walked quite a lot during the day but I know that's a poor excuse! We also ate ice-cream, chips from the chippy, chocolate, pastries, scones....a terrible day's eating, although it was all very tasty ;)  Sunday though seems to be the day for bikers as opposed to runners in Derbyshire - we saw more cyclists attacking the hills than we saw when we were in Tuscany a couple of years ago (when we drove along what is apparently the world's best cycling road) - and I've never seen so many bikers as we did at Matlock Bath where they all park up along the street and have a pint! 

Monday - back to work, but still in holiday mode - total Juneathon fail as I sat on the sofa after dinner and decided I couldn't be bothered to run, again!

Tuesday - hurray....and I'm back....healthy eating today, exercise and blogging.

This morning I went for a free trial session with a personal trainer at my gym.  I was very nervous about it and worried about feeling self-conscious, but the trainer was excellent, and and I really enjoyed myself.  We did intervals on the rower, mat exercises with swiss balls and medicine balls, and then some work with the weight machines and I was astonished at how much I felt it in my muscles...and how weak I was in some areas! The difference having the trainer there was incredible and he also explained which muscles the different exercises were working, and how they would all help with my running which was really interesting. I did things I've never tried before, and now have aches in places I haven't felt before ;) I've already signed up for another session next week!

I was originally going to run long tonight (a 20odd miler) but as I'm already aching from this morning, I'm not sure I'll make it that far, so think I'll do the long one at the weekend instead, and try and do about 8 miles tonight, back from the train station home with a rucksack :)

My 30 mile run is now just 2 and half weeks away and my 50 miler is in just 4 and a half weeks!!

My favourite downhill run...uphill

After a couple of days of failing at Juneathon (i.e no exercise of any sort) today I reminded myself what I meant to be doing and went for a run in the unexpected sunshine we had this afternoon.

I didn't go too far as I was quite disorganised time-wise today, and managed just over 5 miles, but I did take some inspiration from my last blog post, and achieved something I've never done before.

There's this one hill that joins up some of my regular runs, but which I rarely go to.  It's about half a mile and crazy steep and I go so fast down it, that it I struggle to keep control of my legs so generally don't worry about that and just let gravity take control instead!  I absolutely love it and so occasionally do treat myself to a downhill trip but don't run there too often in case I get used to that feeling of freefall and don't enjoy it as much.

But that's downhill.

Uphill is a different story.  I've lived and run here for 3 years, but have never run up this infamous hill because it just seemed far too steep, and far too hard - I didn't think I could manage it.

Today it was sunny, I was enjoying my run, so I treated myself to a downhill run.  When I got to the bottom, unusually I stopped. I turned around and looked up the hill - you can only see about a quarter of the way up but I considered what I should do next...I remembered my blog, I remembered that I'm meant to be so confident I can take on really hard training sessions, and I knew what I needed to do - I ran straight back up!

It was hard, I had to stop once for a breather, but I made it to the top and you know what, I'm really proud of myself and I'm going to do it again, only next time, I'll do it without stopping!

It's no jedi mind-trick but you need to believe in yourself

After the race on Sunday, and my big mileage week, I was aching yesterday and so took a day off from running, although in the spirit of Juneathon, after work I walked the three miles from my office to the train station - a journey I usually make on the tube. While I was walking, I was pondering an exchange of tweets I'd had earlier in the day, about starting out as a runner and then improving pace, and how you could keep improving.

I remember when I started running in August 2007 I was very unfit, and my first non-stop mile took about 12 minutes. I kept at it though, purely because I desperately wanted to run a marathon, and then, because I'd been given a charity place for the London Marathon, had raised lots of money and it was too late to back out! Eight months after I started, I ran my first ever race, a half marathon, in 2:14 (10.16min/mile) and a month after that, ran the marathon in 5:00 hours, which means my average pace would have been 11.27min/mile.

After achieving my goal of completing a marathon, I was very pleased with myself, but completely stopped exercising, and by the time I decided to come back to running in January 2010, I'd lost all of my fitness, weighed nearly 13 stone (which on my 5'5'' frame was far from ideal & I was heavier than when I started running the first time!) and had inevitably got very slow again.  


With only four months training, I then ran my second marathon in April 2010, for the RNLI, in an agonising 5:41... so that's 13.02min/mile.  I'd gone backwards in the very worst way! Despite looking quite happy in this photo (taken at about 13 miles) it was an awful race, and afterwards, I started to take my running more seriously.  

I went from that 5:41 performance in April 2010 to a 4:55 marathon in April 2011, to running a 1:49 half marathon (at 8:03 min/mile) in April 2012 and a 3:49 marathon at Brighton later the same month, which was at 8:49 min/mile pace.

While I was walking home last night, I decided to write a blog post about how I've improved my pace over the last two years, as an answer to the tweet I'd been sent, and I was going to create a list of the top 10 things I've done that I believe have helped...they included losing weight, doing some speedwork, increasing my mileage, running hills, lots of races, race day prep; you know - all those things that Runner's World and the forums tell us we should be doing!

As I thought about it though, I realised that although these have each been a significant factor in increasing my pace, and that it's only with the right training you'll get fitter and faster, it's impossible to start doing any of them effectively without one thing that you don't really read about in the magazines.

The biggest factor, I think, in improving my marathon time was discovering my confidence as a runner. It's been about believing in myself and in my training. Now, I know that sounds new-age and probably very wishy washy...and obviously there's no jedi mind trick that makes you into a faster runner overnight, but I do think that self-belief makes a difference. I'm convinced that for a long time my pace wasn't as fast as it could have been because I had a mind-set that said I was a slow runner who would try and go faster but I never pushed myself in training - if I'm honest, I was probably scared of the pain in my legs, in my lungs, scared to keep running without stopping, scared of trying too hard in training incase I still failed to achieve what I wanted in my races...

I'm not entirely sure where my new found confidence came from. I think the amazing running community on Twitter probably had something to do with it, and the relentless optimism & encouragement that flows from them ;)  Seeing what seemingly ordinary people can achieve has been so inspiring - particularly in ultra running - and also the realisation that sometimes everyone fails, but it's not a DNF or a bad performance that defines us, it's how we carry on afterwards - there's a confidence to be found in realising it's ok to crash sometimes!  Writing this blog has probably also helped as it really focuses my mind on my goals, and has been a true record of just how far I've come...

Becoming a more confident and positive runner has made me train harder, and race harder.  I've still got a long way to go to be the best runner I can be - I am convinced that somewhere inside me is a sub 3:30 marathon - but whereas once I didn't believe that I'd ever break 4:30 in the marathon, now I have the confidence to know that if I really put my heart and soul into it, train hard and run races with the most effort I can muster, eventually I'll achieve my goals even if I have some setbacks along the way, rather than training and racing within that safe zone, where you're not risking anything, and nothing hurts that much.