Since last month’s instalment of Run Reece Run I am thrilled to say that my fundraising has passed
the £500 mark! I really can’t emphasise enough how much this has encouraged me
to carry on pounding out the miles in my training and I am genuinely very
grateful for the generous donations.
Nevertheless, I still have some way to go towards my target of £2,000
and I hope, if you haven’t contributed already, that you will consider making a
donation. This can be done directly
through my fundraising site: www.virginmoneygiving.com/JohnReece or otherwise let me know if you
prefer to make a cash or cheque payment and I can arrange completion of the
sponsor form.
Last month’s instalment
of Run Reece Run focussed
particularly on The Outward Bound Trust and provided details of the great
development opportunities for young people that my fundraising is aiming to support. Here’s the link to that instalment if you
missed it first time: www.jhr190764.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/reece-goes-outward-bound.html
Also last month, I reported on my near euphoria at
successfully completing a 17 mile run on 25th January. However, the trouble with hitting a peak like
that is then having to keep up the momentum!
I don’t know if my experience is typical, but this is the stage when I
find myself being re-introduced to the “brain gremlins” – a pretty nasty bunch
of companions who do their best to join me in my training!
These are the characters that tell you that you’re too
fatigued to run and shouldn’t bother, or, when you’re just a mile or two into a
run, try to convince you that you’ve hit exhaustion already, or nag away in the
back of your mind that the niggle you’re feeling in your ankle is about to put
you out of action for months.
This last month of training has been a real mixed show and
the brain gremlins have certainly endeavoured to muscle into the act. Things started with a repetition of my 17
mile run, one week after the first. In
the overall scheme of things, this effort wasn’t bad but the brain gremlins were
asking all sorts of probing questions throughout – why did my legs feel heavier
than I remembered them being the week before?
Why did I slowdown in the last few miles when the previous week I had
sustained the pace throughout? I could
see they were trying to corner me into conceding that I’d peaked already and I
was now on an inevitable downward spiral!
After this, I mixed the training up for the next two
weeks which left me feeling pretty knackered at times but also hitting some
pretty pleasing highs. One of these was
on a parkrun on 8th
February. I have never really got into parkrun or 5KM as a distance in any
other format. This occasion was only my
third parkrun so I wasn’t too
surprised to achieve a personal best time but I had absolutely no expectation
of slicing off 49 seconds to achieve a new PB of 23m11s!
And then on to the next significant stage in my schedule
– a 20 miler!
It’s funny with long runs that you can quite happily
write them into your training plan and admire how good it all looks and even
just a week away talk with utter complacency about the route you’re planning to
do, etc. Suddenly, as the run gets
closer day by day, the grim reality of running 20 miles begins to loom like a
cliff face! In this, my second marathon
training campaign, I have come to the firm conclusion that a 20 mile training
run is a mighty and terrible beast – one that looks you straight in the eye and
leaves you in no doubt that its intention is to charge you down and trample
your body to a wreck!
Brain gremlins or not, the sight of my neighbour’s tree
lying flat across their lawn while other trees were visibly bending to a
worrying angle in the wind convinced me to postpone by 24 hours the run I had
originally planned to do on Saturday 15th February. While this meant I ended up running on one of the most glorious
days of the year, the downside was this fell on the morning after the drink
fuelled excess of a friend’s birthday celebration! Needless to say, the brain gremlins were well
oiled as I set out and they weren’t shy of returning to keep me company for the
last few miles as well! Again a mixed
report – disappointing that I didn’t run as smoothly as I had done on that
first 17 mile run of the campaign but nevertheless I was very pleased to knock
a few minutes off my previous best time at 20 miles distance.
A few days after my 20 mile run, I did a hefty session at
the gym and had a euphoric moment of realisation that it was the first time
since last summer that I’d run on a treadmill without pain in at least one of
my ankles, shins or calves! However, this
was countered just 24 hours later by the disappointment of having to pull out
of an intended 10 mile run after less than 3 miles because of pain in my left
ankle!
Nevertheless a few days later I
made it to the start line of the Hampton Court Half Marathon. My head was telling me not to push too hard
at this event as my training had been mainly focussed on a marathon pace rather
than the speedier pace of a half marathon – I’d had to cut a lot of the
intended speed training out of my programme in December to February due to the aches
I’d had in my ankles/shins/calves.
Nevertheless, my heart was obviously saying something else, and with 2
miles to go I found myself accelerating to a pace that I was confident was
going to get me to the finish line in about 1h46m30s (about 30 seconds inside
my PB). Gremlins of a different
description had their say as the course finished 0.4 of a mile too early and my
actual finish time of 1h43m29s is one that remains a dream for me to achieve at
a proper half marathon distance!
On the whole, I am pleased to say I am still hanging on
in with my effort to achieve a sub 4 hours finish time at the London
Marathon. Next month sees my training
reach its zenith as I run in the “Spitfire 20” (a 20 mile race), the Richmond
Half Marathon (another opportunity to get my HM PB?) and, by way of variety, I
also join work colleagues in the “Nuts Challenge” (aka “the mud challenge” - an
army assault course!).
Wish me luck!!!
John
26h February 2014
