Brighton Crock?

Picking up from the last instalment of Run Reece Run, the decision had been seriously in the balance through the whole week…  Either way, Lesley and I were both heading to Brighton on that Saturday morning, but would I would be joining her with the Bearcat Running Club cheer team or be one of the 20 plus Bearcats actually taking part in the Brighton Marathon?

The fact that I managed to run 400 metres that morning without any noticeable pain in my right knee had decided the matter… I was on my way to run!

The rest of that weekend has left me with an absolute vault of memories… quite a number of weeks have gone by and yet I’m still not sure I’ve got my head round it all! 

One vivid memory I have says a lot… On the morning of the marathon, Lesley and I were walking up from our apartment near the seafront to the start area at Preston Park, about two miles away.  The walk started quietly enough, as would generally be the case early on a Sunday morning, but before long we found ourselves a part of a throng of marathon entrants and their supporters heading purposefully to the start area.

The building anticipation that I could feel in myself and witness in the mass of people around me is one of the great things of the bigger marathon events – I am still a long way off from feeling apathetic about that feeling and in that experience alone I knew at the time I had a reward for persevering through the previous week and not withdrawing my entry!

There are also great memories of the evening before… For weeks the anticipation had been building among a large contingent of the Bearcat Running Club with so many of us having entered the Brighton Marathon.   On the eve of the event many of us were already in Brighton and we rendezvoused for a pasta party… making a pretty good effort to take over Piccolos for the evening!  Obviously, for the majority it was a meal unaccompanied by alcohol (despite some photographic evidence!), but I’m sure I wasn’t alone in feeling high from the anticipation shared with so many friends!

Back to the morning of the event and we certainly couldn’t have asked for better marathon running weather.  A massive contrast to my experience at the Thames Meander Marathon in November – the temperature was on the cool side, it was dry and bright and there was not much more than a breeze in the air.

Lesley and I reached Preston Park and scanned the crowd for a sign of the Bearcats.  It didn’t take long to see the club banner being held high!

We joined the group that grew steadily larger as the Bearcats converged, almost as many having travelled from home that morning as had stayed overnight locally.  Nerves, excitement, resolve – a pretty heady mix of emotions was brewing!  The Bearcats were in a mood to leave their mark on the Brighton Marathon!

After a while I felt the time was right to extricate myself from the Bearcat crowd and make my way to the start pen.  I’d resolved to back myself in an effort to attain something near to the target time I’d had in mind for months, 3h45m.  Five weeks earlier I’d started the Spitfire 20 with doubts in my mind having been unable to run through most of the two previous weeks due to my knee and ITB problems.  That day had gone incredibly well for me and, if that was any indicator, I felt that I would be in good shape to reach the 20 mile mark in a time of about 2 hours 50 minutes.  I felt that if I managed that then things were on for my target finish time.

The pen for runners aiming for a finish time of 3h30m to 4h00m was steadily filling but I pretty comfortably squeezed myself to about a quarter of the way from the front of the pen.  

These are great moments… drawing strength from the building emotion and tension in the air while focussing on the effort about to be exerted.  If the feeling arising from the crowd wasn’t enough, the anthem of David Bowie’s “Heroes” playing over the PA definitely had me primed and ready to start.   For the umpteenth time I resolved… keep the pace at 8m30s to 8m40s per mile.  This was slower than I’d sustained at the Spitfire 20 and was there to be done... get to mile 20 and then each mile as it comes!

And then there was the  start countdown with a cheer emanating from some way ahead as, out of my sight, the first pen was opened and the marathon started.  The crowd of which I was part started inching forward and gathered momentum over some minutes until the start line came into sight… through the start, activate the Garmin and focus on getting the pace right….

The first couple of miles at Brighton are not the easiest in which to settle into a pace as the course has a pretty sharp climb at the start before an equally significant descent.  My first mile took 8m46s and my second 8m16s and then, even though the course continued to undulate, particularly until the halfway point, I had found my groove.  Seeing my split times after, I’m pleased to see that from mile five to thirteen I kept within a pretty tight range of 8m28s to 8m39s per mile.  Overall, at the half way point I had an average pace of 8m33s per mile – pretty much spot on!

I was feeling pretty good throughout the first half and all the better when within the first five miles I heard a call and, looking round, saw fellow Bearcat runner Andrew.  He looked in great form - some way ahead of me in the field but coming up on the other side of the road as the course looped round.  This prompted me into the welcome distraction of Bearcat spotting along the significant parts of the course where it looped on itself.  I saw Andrew and Anna, both well ahead of me, a few times and likewise with Jess, closing in from behind, and there were numerous other Bearcats that I got to call out to. As I went past mile 13 I got a call from the crowd and there was Roger (and presumably Emma) and about a mile later there was the Bearcat banner held proudly aloft, crewed by group of Bearcat supporters which I guessed (correctly) included Lesley.

Sadly, it was around the mile 13 to 14 zone that the wheels started to come of the Reece machine, though I didn’t really fully recognise the problem for a while.  In hindsight, I had been aware of a troublesome pain on the outer edge of my left foot from about mile 7.  I had been trying to manage this, for example by running as much as possible along the middle of the road where the camber wasn’t so steep as at the sides. This had been steadily getting worse but I don’t think was the main reason why mile 14 was notably slower (8m44s).  I recall noting this and not being too worried at the time and simply trying to bring my pace back up to the average I’d been sustaining.  However it became evident that whatever extra effort I was trying to put in wasn’t having the desired effect as mile 15 took 8m50s and mile 16 took 8m57s.  The pain in my foot was becoming a lot less tolerable as I realised that my target time was slipping away and I had a further rough couple of miles where I continued to lose pace.

Serious doubts were nagging away at this point about any damage I might be doing to my troublesome knee (even though that didn’t seem to be the source of the immediate problem) and I contemplated the possibility of withdrawing at mile 18.  At that point I was well aware that  the course takes a turn, heading out east and further away from the finish line.  One way or another I knew I had to get to the finish to collect my baggage, so if I had to withdraw I knew it would be better to do so at mile 18 rather than mile 21, from where I’d have an extra 3 miles to get back from!

However, during mile 18, while I found myself unable to halt the decline in my pace, I somehow felt less uncomfortable (seeing Lesley at mile 18 no doubt helped!).  Perhaps this was through accepting to myself a much less ambitious target time.  I’m pretty sure that by then I wasn’t even thinking of a sub 4 hour time but was reckoning on being able to average the rest of the course at between 10 and 11 minutes per mile which would have seen me finish inside 4h10m.  Miles 17 through to 19 saw me hold that line pretty well as, though my pace continued to decline it was still faster than 10 minutes per mile pace.  However, things definitely slumped during mile 20 as I lost almost a further minute off my pace.  By now I was certain that my right glute was not “firing” (a term picked up from a chiropractor I’d been consulting!).  There was a very serious debate going on inside my head over the next couple of miles and having completed mile 22 at a pace of 12m23s and with my watch indicating I was slowing even more (I thought at the time, perhaps mistakenly, that I was down to 15 minutes per mile pace), my resolve snapped.

Having run, however slowly, for 22.37 miles there is no doubt I’ve found it difficult to come to terms with walking the final four miles!   If it wasn’t for the need to collect my belongings from the finish area I might well have taken myself off at that point to the pub where the Bearcats had agreed to meet.

However, I was able to walk and I just carried on.  One thing for certain, once I’d stopped running, there was no way I was able to re-start running, whatever the pace.  I did try for one brief ten second spurt but by then, having stiffened up further, my legs and particularly my right knee literally felt brittle and ready to break!  Rationally, I knew there was every chance that if I continued to run I would pick up or worsen an injury.

There’s no denying that most of what I feel about the experience of walking four miles to finish is negative.  I know how annoyed I felt about the performance of a certain football team close to my heart in the last two games of the season just ended!  They had played brilliantly and well above expectation for months but when winning the league ceased to be a possibility, though they continued to have 11 players on the pitch getting paid as normal, they seemed to more or less stop playing football.  The inner chastisement I’ve given myself about walking for four miles at the end of a marathon is pretty much on par with my thoughts about that football club during those two games!  Nevertheless, I’ll be supporting them with restored passion at the beginning of next football season (COYS!) and likewise I’m sure I’ll be backing myself to achieve whatever target I set myself the next time I run a marathon!

There are still positives to draw.  Genuinely, overall I’m glad that I gave myself the chance to compete.  On another occasion I’ll start an event with similar uncertainty and things will work out!  As I’ve said earlier, the experience of so much of the weekend was brilliant and I’m sure wouldn’t have been anywhere near as good if, after all the training I’d done over the last few months, I’d had the anti-climax of not running at all.  

Another thing is that, however much regret there is about only being able to walk that last four miles, the support was absolutely fantastic.  If anything you get even greater support from the crowd if you’re walking as you become the focus of more people encouraging you to carry on!  

The best encouragement I had was when I finally reached the point where Lesley was looking out for me and for a while she joined me in my walk towards the finish.  It was also great to see so many of the Bearcat runners doing so well in the final miles and checking I was alright – in particular Sarah and Mel who kept going through their own big problems on the day.

It was sad to go through the marathon finish line with no great feeling of celebration – just relief to get finished (in a time of 4h49m)!  But I still had a further finish line to find… the pub that was the rendezvous point for the Bearcats.  That was a finish line I reached with much greater enthusiasm!

Big congratulations to the brilliant achievements of so many of my clubmates - huge numbers of PBs and many first marathons completed.  In contrast to the previous night the evident intoxication at the pub had nothing to do with anticipation!

Seven weeks on from Brighton I can report on having made a cautious return to running over the last few weeks, enabling me to take part in the biggest Bearcat party of the year, the Turks Head 10.

  

It was particularly special in being the first time that there were three of the family taking part in an event with both Lesley and Carmella joining me in a medal shot…

My knee still isn't entirely right but an X-Ray gave some reassuring news last week.  I’m hoping to see some continued improvement over the next few weeks as I’d like to be fit to start a serious training campaign by the beginning of July that would enable some further challenges in the autumn.  

All being well Run Reece Run will be back later this year!

Brighton or Bust?

Picking up from the last instalment of Run Reece Run, my planning for Brighton Marathon started last November in the wake of completing the Thames Meander Marathon.

As with my previous three marathons, there were some useful lessons to take on board from the TMM.

One lesson is to never underestimate the importance of adapting to weather conditions!  On a day of heavy showers when the course was already saturated from a week of heavy rain and with winds that, for the most part, were 20mph and at times 40mph, in hindsight I realise I should have started at a more cautious pace.  Instead I probably went out slightly quicker than would have been wise even if the conditions had been perfect!  

I think a factor that contributed to this was that on the three previous weekends I had gained PBs at half marathon, 10 miles and 10K distances and any internal metronome I have was probably set at a faster pace than ideal for a marathon!  The outcome was that, while I felt very comfortable in the first 10 miles running faster than 8m20s per mile (no great surprise as this was significantly slower than the sub 7m20s pace I’d run throughout the Great South 10 mile run two weeks earlier), by the time I reached the turn point on the course and found myself running into a 40mph wind I was definitely more fatigued than I would have wanted to be with 13 miles still to run.  By mile 16 I was seriously struggling!

At the time I considered an even more important lesson was to ensure I built more long training runs into my next marathon schedule.  While my training for TMM had included two twenty mile runs (four and five weeks before the marathon), I’d only squeezed in two other runs of 16 miles or more.  Prior to my three previous marathons I’d done significantly more runs of 16 miles or further and I had to acknowledge that while my training in advance of the TMM had been great for 10K to half marathon distances, it was far from ideal for a marathon.

For the six weeks following the TMM I gave myself a relative rest with just one “heavy week” (that included a 16 mile run) in the middle of this period.  That took me to w/c 20th December when my 17 week programme for Brighton was seriously launched.

The first three weeks of training went as perfectly as I could have hoped for with a combination of interval sessions, tempo runs of 3-7 miles and longer slower runs.   However, Saturday 9th January marked a turning point.  That morning I had the very unwelcome experience of finding I could not put any weight on my right leg as I went downstairs without significant pain to my knee.  Strangely, there was no indication of any problem when I was walking on the flat.  I tentatively ran a short distance with no noticeable pain in my knee and came to what may well have been an unwise decision to go ahead with Parkrun.  The almost equally strange occurrence was that I then proceeded to take 23 seconds off my 5K PB, finishing in a time of 21m00s!

Over the previous six Saturdays I had been pushing myself pretty hard at Parkrun with finishes ranging from a PB equalling 21m23s to 22m01s.  On some of those runs the conditions hadn’t been ideal so I felt there was a chance that on a day with less wind and/or less slippery conditions underfoot I might be able to take a second or two off my PB.  In the final kilometre I was pretty confident that I had a PB time in the bag if I kept pushing hard to the end but I didn’t have a clue that it was such a big improvement until I went through the finish and checked my watch.  Of particular satisfaction was that I once more had bragging rights in the Parker/Reece household!

While Lesley had started running only in January of the previous year she had made incredible improvement.  Compared to my training programme, Lesley was doing only a fraction of the runs and none of the strength and stretching exercises.  Nevertheless within a year she had attained a PB with an age graded (“WAVA” or now “WMA”) score that was better than 70%.  At last with my new PB I had achieved my first 70% WMA score at Parkrun (only my second 70% score at any distance, the first having been the Trick or Treat 10K in November).  I daren’t make too much of this as I know only too well that if Lesley did ever decide to take training more seriously, she might be pushing towards 80%, certainly way beyond my capability! [For more information about age graded scoring: https://support.parkrun.com/hc/en-us/articles/200565263-What-is-age-grading- ].

My training through the rest of that week continued to go to schedule but by the end of the week I was getting the impression that there were issues with my knee that were more than just a temporary niggle.  Matters then took another turn at the end of the week when Mum had a bad fall and was rushed into hospital.  While I would desperately have wished for different circumstances, the fact that I had an enforced week off from running was not at all a bad thing for my knee at that time.

Looking back now, the training picked up again very well in February and I also had a few physio and chiropractic sessions.  By the end of the month I’d completed the Hampton Court Half Marathon in a 1h41m time and my first 20 mile run of the campaign.  However, the completion of the latter coincided with a further flare up of my knee problem and an associated ITB issue.  This led to another couple of weeks where I had to rest up.  Once more I had relatively reassuring sessions with physio/chiro and I ended the two week rest period on 13^th March with one of the highlights of my spring campaign - the Spitfire 20.

The Spitfire 20 is a challenging course of two ten mile laps that include some serious hills.  I’d previously completed it in 2014 in a time of 3h06m when the last two hills had seemed like Everest!  This time I felt far more in control and finished in 2h48m!  During the run and over the next day or so, I had no particular reaction from the knee or ITB but then later in the week I found myself having to abandon a run because of knee pain.

There then followed what in terms of my hopes for Brighton Marathon was a mistake.  One week after the Spitfire 20 I took part in the Hampton Court Palace Half Marathon.  I’d been allocated a place among the first wave of runners and against my better judgement went along with this placing and found myself swept along in an adrenalin fuelled tide of enthusiasm which led to just my second sub 1h40m half marathon time (about 30 seconds slower than my PB of the previous October).  While this was very satisfying in itself, the effort clearly had its consequences on my troublesome knee!

I found myself unable to do any running through the rest of the week and over the following Easter weekend my hopes of undertaking a final 20 mile training run were thwarted after just 2 miles by the discomfort in my knee and ITB.  A second week of relative rest which included a somewhat “clunky” 5 mile run and I decided that I had to take my place at the Richmond Half Marathon to keep myself in reasonable shape for Brighton, just two weeks away.

This time I maintained good discipline and ran at not much faster than my intended marathon pace.  My leg was fine through the run and, though it stiffened up through the rest of the day, I thought the signs were reasonably positive.  Nevertheless, over the week I didn’t feel confident enough to test it any further.  

In the final weekend before Brighton I ran Parkrun on Saturday which went well and on Sunday a 7 mile run with the Bearcat Running Club.  The knee felt absolutely fine for most of that last 7 mile run but within the last 100 metres, as we went over a footbridge, I felt the knee suddenly stiffen up.  I wasn’t particularly concerned at the time but by the end of the afternoon the knee was causing more pain than it had throughout the whole time since the problem first occurred in January.   For the next 48 hours I judged that the likelihood of me being able to run a marathon less than a week later was less than 20%!  

I resolved to avoid making a final decision until as late as possible and from Wednesday morning onwards there was definite improvement each day.  On Saturday morning, the day before the marathon, I took a cautious run round the block (about 400 metres) and didn’t feel any significant discomfort…

Brighton or bust?  I'd come up with an answer - not bust enough to stop me getting to the start line! I was going to Brighton to compete and not spectate!

Next instalment of Run Reece Run – Crunch time at the Brighton Marathon! 

Training Hard... Running Faster

It’s been a long while since I put pen to paper for Run Reece Run, in fact just over a year with the last occasion being in the afterglow of my first sub 4 hour marathon achieved at Paris in April 2015.

I did have every intention of getting the blog going again in January 2016 to track my training for the April 2016 Brighton Marathon but other matters took over…

The most significant was Mum having a fall that led her to being rushed into hospital in mid-January.  Mum has remained in hospital from then right up to now in May.  The other matter was an injury I incurred, also in January, that has troubled me throughout my training and led me on at least three separate occasions to seriously contemplate having to defer my Brighton entry.

For a combination of reasons these matters left me with no particular enthusiasm for resuming the blog until now.

The difficulties I encountered from January were in marked contrast to the period between Paris Marathon in April 2015 and the turn of the year.

Things really got going in that period on the back of the Turk’s Head 10K event in June 2015.  Between the Paris Marathon in April 2015 and Turk’s Head 10 in June I changed my approach to training, focussing much more on sprint intervals and pushing myself a bit harder at the 5K distance at weekly Parkrun events.  Another important feature of my training at that time was doing strength sessions about three times a week.  This was not exactly sophisticated but it seemed to be pretty effective.  This involved doing three to four cycles of a programme involving press-ups, squats, steps and a combination of core exercises.  Overall this took about 45 minutes and was completed in my front room three mornings a week for two to three months before being reduced to one session per week.  On the mornings that I didn’t do the strength sessions I did a somewhat less strenuous but nevertheless important set of stretching exercises that took about 20 minutes to complete.   The 20 minutes of stretching exercises were also a feature of my evenings other than a Wednesday when I would try to get to a Pilates class and swim session. 

The Turk’s Head 10 went as well as I could have hoped for as I finished well inside the 48 minute time I’d targeted.  More than that, it gave me a marker for what I wanted to achieve over the rest of the year.  

My most immediate target was to improve on my 22m17s PB for 5K, achieved at my regular Parkrun event (Crane Park).  On the back of my training, I succeeded with this objective on two occasions in July, both times getting below 22 minutes.  Then in August I achieved another two PBs at the distance, getting down to 21m23s.  That was almost a minute less than the best that I’d set in September 2014, which at the time I’d considered would be a major challenge to improve upon.

With my 5K performance improvement well in hand, what then helped to raise my ambitions for the longer distances was a combination of seeing the achievements of some of my Bearcat Running Club friends and also checking out websites such as www.goodrunguide.co.uk/RacePredictor.asp  which provided a means to identify the realistically achievable times for longer distances projected from inputting my finish times at 5K events.   The fact that at this point in August/September I was consistently achieving  5K times of around 21m30s seemed to indicate that I could realistically aim for a half marathon of about 1h40m (my PB stood at 1h44m).

As the summer progressed and going into September, I reduced the strength and sprint interval sessions but increased the number and intensity of my 5 to 10 mile training runs.  I had a hint of what my training was going to enable when in September at the Richmond Running Festival I found myself smashing my Half Marathon PB while still feeling I had further capacity for improvement. Eighteen months had passed since my previous Half Marathon PB of 1h44m and in that time I’d run eight half marathons with none better than 1h48m.  My new PB was a time of 1h40m25s (though my Garmin annoyingly showed a distance of just 12.97 miles!).  For me, another memorable aspect of the Richmond Running Festival was that it marked my partner Lesley's first race event after she had started running in January 2015.  She did the Bearcat Running Club proud by earning her first 10K medal!

This set the scene for a period in October/November which may turn out to be the best three weeks of running I ever achieve.  

On 18th October I completed the River Thames Half Marathon in 1h39m09s...

On 25th October as part of Bearcat Running Club friendly invasion of Portsmouth, I completed the Great South Run (10 miles) in 1h13m13s...

On 1st November I completed the Trick or Treat 10K event in 43m15s (hotly pursued by Catwoman)...

Three PBs absolutely smashed in three weeks!  The only relative disappointment was that one week later my effort in the Thames Meander Marathon was about 15 minutes outside my marathon PB.  

There were a number of factors that contributed to that and I was more than happy to end my autumn campaign with the three PBs plus a completed marathon and added resolve to achieve a 3h45m time at the Brighton Marathon!

In closing my account of how I moved on from the Paris Marathon in April 2015 to the Thames Meander Marathon in November 2015 it is right that I also reflect on the charity I supported in the lead up to Paris.  As recorded in the January to April 2015 instalments of Run Reece Run, my aim was to support Kaira Konko Scout Active Support.

I was inspired to do this particularly by the work my daughter Carmella has been involved with in The Gambia since 2008.  Carmella’s association with The Gambia arose initially from a link between the school at which she is a teacher, All Saints C of E Junior School in Fleet, and The Soma Lower Basic School, located in Soma, a town in The Gambia.  This link was itself developed from work that had been initiated between scouts groups based in Soma and Hampshire and Carmella has become increasingly involved with this as well.

I hugely appreciate the fundraising support I received which provided £1,120 to the charity.   This supported the construction of a borehole at Soma Lower Basic School, part of the school orchard project.

Carmella along with colleagues from her school visited Soma again in February 2016 and her report included the following….

This year, we were absolutely delighted to find the school orchard, once barren land, transformed as a fully operating women’s garden.  Two years ago, our school community helped raise funds to build a wall, crucial to the success of this project, and over the summer a bore hole was built allowing mothers to cultivate the land and grow crops.  The vast amount of land at the back of the school is now a fully functioning women’s garden, tended by hundreds of mothers, which impacts both the school and local community.

With all that has gone on since January, I failed to get myself engaged in a coordinated fundraising campaign but I have belatedly started raising funds for the Education Support Partnership.

This is an organisation that provides practical and emotional support to staff in the education sector and their families. They provide independent, confidential support, to help people deal with stress and anxiety, bullying, career and money worries, and a range of other issues.

In view of the fact that I have not given the Education Support Partnership the attention that I would have liked to in the lead up to the Brighton Marathon, my current thinking is to continue with my support of the charity in association with my next running campaign (the timing of which is a little uncertain with my current injury!).  In the meantime any support to the charity through my fundraising page  https://www.justgiving.com/John-Reece1 will be very gratefully received! 

The next instalment of Run Reece Run will bring things up to date with the highs and lows of my Brighton Marathon campaign and hopefully some news of improvement on the injury front!

With very best wishes...