HBT, JMW, and E2NB

Here’s our Graham with a quick reminder.  Or rather a round-up, since I’ve not told you about it previously.

I’ve done three races since I last blogged, and they’ve all gone about as well as can be expected.  The headline message from a reasonably solid month’s training is that I am no longer injured (my legs feel ok), but I am certainly not fit.  The extra weight gained is taking a while to shift, the lungs still feel underinflated like a pair of old balloons, and what pace I had has all but disappeared.

H!

B!

T!

First up race-wise was the Hunter’s Bog Trot on 16 April.  I’d put it on the club championship list in the hope that a short hill race in the centre of Edinburgh might encourage a few folk to try something a little bit different from their norm.  Dr Neil (ahead of his successful Fling debut) was the only other taker.  Never mind.  In fairness, it is not an easy race, with a couple of nasty climbs up the back of Salisbury Crags, and an ascent of the Radical Road.  Laughably, I had hoped I might be able to run, albeit very slowly, up the Radical Road if I paced myself.  No danger!  A young lad kindly tried to encourage me by saying, “you can do it”, to which I replied, “thanks, but I don’t think I can kiddo”.  Still, I got round in the end, and with no harm done.

Since that went so well, I decided to sign up at the last minute for something a little further – the inaugural John Muir Way Ultra from Port Seton to Foxlake at Dunbar, on 23 April.  A mere 50k.  Conventional wisdom would suggest that that was a really stupid idea for someone coming back from injury.  And conventional wisdom would be 100% correct.  However, it was so close to home, covered trails that I really like, and I could see that so many friends were already signed up.  I couldn’t stand the idea of missing out on the party.

Not long for this group...

Although I took my camera, I’m afraid that I didn’t take any pictures.  My backpack doesn’t have any front pockets, and there was too much inertia to overcome to take it off my back for anything other than food.  Talking of food, I took plenty.  I could easily have been mistaken for Yogi, running from the park ranger carrying a couple of picnic baskets.

At Archerfield

My mental approach was a little flaky.  I deliberately put no pressure on myself, deciding that anything under four and a half hours would be fine.  But I made the mistake of breaking the race into two, focusing too much on trying to run the whole of the first half to North Berwick.  The problem with that was that, once that goal was achieved, I somewhat threw in the towel and allowed myself too much slack on the second half.  I was rather guilty of that at last year’s Jedburgh 38 and GO33 as well.  The second half saw an awful lot of walking, including on what seemed like quite an unnecessary and very muddy loop around the Balgonie Estate, during which a sharp hail shower interrupted an otherwise sunny day.  Towards the end I was rewarding myself with a minute of walking for every 5 minutes run.  And that was an attempt to keep the walking to a minimum – if I hadn’t imposed time limits, it could have been more.  But again, it got done in the end, without injury, and I came in ahead of my target.  Decent training if nothing else.

I was a little more nervous about the Edinburgh to North Berwick Race on 7 May.  Not least because the forecast was for a stiff headwind from the North East (i.e. in the perfect wrong direction).  I’ve done it three times before with varying degrees of success.  My fears of a PW were far greater than my hopes for a PB.  To avoid a PW I set myself a target of 7:30 per mile.  But that pace had felt like quite hard work on (shorter) recent training runs.  I’d had a minor breakthrough with a 7 miler at (only just) sub-7 pace in the middle of the week before, but had had to “bust my hump” to do it.

I made a very conscious effort to wave goodbye to people I might normally try to hang onto at the start, and settled into what felt like the best comfortable pace I could manage.  

If I close my eyes it might soon be over
(Photo: Gordon Donnachie)

So I was surprised when I reached the first checkpoint at 5 miles in a shade over 35 minutes.  And even more surprised when my pace improved slightly, and I got to 10 miles in under 70 minutes.  The benefit of a conservative approach was that I found myself steadily moving through the field instead of being passed.  That did wonders for my mood, although I felt sorry for Porty’s Roly and Falkirk’s Brian when I passed them not long after Seton Sands – both admitted afterwards to having an (unusual) off day.

My decent pace couldn’t hold out for ever though, on account of a combination of my fitness and the weather conditions.  The right turn not long after the entrance to Luffness Golf Club brought the full force of the wind to bear, with the worst of the incline also kicking in.  After 15 miles I felt bullied by the wind – like it had been digging me in the ribs for the best part of an hour and three quarters, and so I swallowed my pride and handed over my lunch money.

Dr Neil - purveyor of jelly babies and taker of photos

(Photo: Gordon Donnachie)

Job eventually done though, and I avoided a PW by around 9 minutes.  In fact, I was only 5 or 6 minutes slower than last year when I was in much better shape.  I’d definitely have taken that before the start, and am very happy to focus on the positives. 

A tough shift was made much more bearable by excellent support along the route from a large number of cheery faces.

One of the best things about the last month has been the increasing length of the days, which has allowed for a greater variety of runs in more interesting surroundings, and often in glorious evening sunshine.  It makes a huge difference not to have to plod around the same town route under streetlights – putting a metaphorical (if not literal) spring in my step.

Coming soon is the club trip to Leiden in the Netherlands on the weekend of 21/22 May.  I have already pretty much written off the marathon as a good fast training run, and so am not going to bother tapering for it.  I’d rather keep trying to rack up the miles, and try to continue the recovery to full fitness.  That is not to say that I am not excited about the trip though.  Last year’s trip to Karlsruhe was great fun, and we are repeating the same “out on Saturday morning, back on Tuesday afternoon/evening” formula that worked so well then.  A number of us have also signed up to run the 5k at 10.30pm on the Saturday night, which has been described as a bit of a festival of light, with everyone encouraged to wear headtorches and reflective gear.  It should be quite a nice warm up, and allow us to get an early look at some of the sights.

In summary – there are reasons to be cheerful!