This year has been somewhat negative in terms of running. I started the year plagued with 7 months of really bad plantar fasciitis and tendonitis which came right after recovering from my first experience of Covid-19 over Christmas. When I did get back to running towards the end of June it was a slow, worrying start because I was terrified I might reawaken my injuries. However, by the end of July I was running well and feeling like I was ready to pick a race and ready to train for it properly. Then, during the second week of September (which coincided with the start of a 14 week training plan for aforementioned race) I picked up an awful chest infection and only now, in the first week of October do I feel like I can get back to some sort of running.
With the year so far plagued by injury and illness, right now the emphasis for me is getting back to a place of mental balance and happiness and working back up an running endurance and fitness base. The first 7 months of the year I didn’t let the lack of running and racing phase me. Instead I chose to find find joy in frequent yoga, strength/gym work and swimming. But since I got ill at the beginning of September I haven’t really done much of anything and the lack of exercise, combined with some life stressors, has started to take its toll on my mental health and stress levels. Over the last few weeks, aside from hearing from people that I look ill, I’ve heard consistently from others that I ‘look stressed’ which is something I’ve just as consistently denied. But on the day I write this, a straw was added to my back and it broke. I had to acknowledge that actually I do feel quite unhappy and I am feeling stressed, and that I am the only person who can change the situation by taking positive action. That positive action started with looking at the reasons why I might be unhappy and stressed (-), and then putting in mitgations (+) for each:
(-) I am going to bed too late, and getting up at the latest possible time I can
(+) I am going to make sure I’m in bed by 2230hrs and up at 0600hrs because that is a proven schedule that works for me
(-) I am eating more food than I need, and less healthily than I would normally
(+) I’m going to decrease my lunch and dinner portion size, and I’m going to cut out any snacking after 1700hrs
(-) I am not doing yoga or meditation consistently
(+) I am going to use my earlier wake up to ensure I do yoga and/or meditate before the household rises
(-) I feel physically disconnected from the running/endurance community
(+) I am going to show up to races I’ve entered, regardless of whether I intend to start or not
(-) My work/life balance doesn’t feel quite right
(+) I started a new job in August, and honestly I’m not exactly loving it. I’m going to be more boundaried with how much headspace I give to work – I’m paid to work 35 hours a week and 35 hours is what I’m going to give to it
(-) I feel pressure to perform at my 2022 level in terms of running
(+) I’ve let go of my Maratona di Pisa structured training approach, and I’ve let go of any goal aside from starting and finishing the race
So from now until I run Maratona di Pisa in December, the ‘training’ I do is really more about exercising for physical and mental health, more than training for a specific race goal. I thought I’d like to run Pisa in 2:54 or better, my A-goal was 2:50. But now I’ve accepted that it will be a case of running what I run on the day. Up to the day of the race I’m going to just try to stay fit, healthy and happy by doing whatever feels right each day.
In terms of training, racing and community connection I have shifted my eye to 2024 and the races I would like to do. I really do feel like I’ve lost a lot of genuine connection with the sport, and maybe even a bit of love for it*. I’d like to get that back.
* in terms of genuine connections with and love for the sport, that’s a whole different blog post in and of itself that may or may not be written anon!
It has taken me 10 years to finally run a sub-3 hour road marathon and it’s taken me just over a month to process that fact, and to finally sit down and write something about it. It is a strange feeling to have achieved what was the first ever goal I set myself when I started racing in 2012. Back in 2012 it was certainly a reaching goal that did not consider the fact I only took up running a year before and off the back of years of drinking too much, smoking cigarettes and taking quite a lot of drugs! But, every road marathon I lined up for from 2013 in Pisa through to Paris in 2022 I always stated my goal was to run sub-3. The difference this time was that I committed to the training, focused on one single race and one single goal and I was very specific with the process. The other major difference was that I had an additional motivating factor to get it done – the imminent arrival of my first child who is due in August 2022.
I will take you back to December 2021 where the sub-3 dream started to feel like something I was ready for. At that time for some reason unknown, everything seemed to coalesce to set me off on the best and most consistent training block I have ever put together (joint best when held against the Cheviot Goat 2019 training block). Back in December 2021 I had been training for a winter ultra as this is something I’ve done for a few years now. I was on a 12 week training block which initially was focused on running my longest race yet at 83 miles, and which was focused not just on completing that race but competing. Along the way I had doubts start to surface about why I was training for an 83 mile race, why did I really want to race a mid-winter, night time ultra? The answer was not satisfactory – “Because that’s what comes next…” – was all I could really come up with.
It just was not good enough to keep the motivation high enough to keep the mileage high enough to race 83 miles so I dropped to the 45 mile ‘half’ distance and that seemed to provide at least a little boost. But the doubts around ‘the why’ kept resurfacing and kept on making the training feel unproductive, a slog and not really at all that enjoyable. To cut a long story short the race was due to start at 2300hrs on December 11th and I didn’t make it to the start line. I experienced a lot of fear, anxiety, crippling self-doubt and burgeoning depression in the couple of days leading up to it and when I got to my pre-race accommodation I just fell apart. I just wanted to go home and be with my wife and think about what I really want from running, what I really enjoy about running and to figure out why I felt the way I felt. Contributing to this sense of flight, and the desire to return to the roost was the fact that on December 4th we found out that we were going to be parents. I fought the feeling of flight for quite a while and took a drive to the buses that would take us to the start line but in the end I didn’t board and instead drove home that very night with a sense of ever increasing relief as I got closer and closer to my front door. I knew my heart wasn’t fully in the ultra at least 4 weeks beforehand because I’d already entered the Paris Marathon for 2022. At the time it was not apparent to me that what I wanted was what I’d always wanted – to run under 3 hours at the marathon distance.
As the ultra approached, and as I began to feel more and more demotivated, I threw in a couple of road runs into the mix and they were the runs I enjoyed the most throughout that 12 week block. I think over the last 4 or 5 weeks of the block I ran 6 or 7 road runs, and all of them at a decent pace. Subconsciously I had made the move into marathon training. After getting home from my abandoned ultra I took a few weeks off structured training and I just ran when I felt like it and on whatever surface I felt like, and at whatever pace I felt like. I went to the gym a bit more, I did some swimming and some biking and during this time it really began to set in – I was looking forward to a focused, hard, intense training block and I absolutely was going to run under 3 hours. There was no doubt in my mind this time, there were no trail or ultra races in my calendar to distract me and after Christmas I put my 14-week Paris Marathon training block into TrainingPeaks and started to feel more motivated, energised and excited about training and running than I have felt since 2019. I used the Asics Sub-3 Marathon Training plan – something I have attempted to follow in a very unfocused way in 2 of my previous 4 ‘attempts’ at sub-3!
This time, I was absolutely determined to follow the plan as closely as I could and I am grateful to a couple of people who helped me along the way – firstly my wife who always encouraged me to just get out the door and if I still had doubts made the suggestion to speak to my long run buddy Sean. Sean is a very accomplished marathon runner and it was his suggested adjustments and amendments to the plan that made all the difference. It was also Sean who gave me the mantra early on “Trust the process”. That mantra was oft repeated during the 14 weeks to Paris and when I began to doubt the mantra (usually before the week’s long run) it was Sean who came to the rescue and trained with me for 15 to 20 miles.
The process, when all was said and done, was pretty simple:
Monday: Rest or Easy Run
Tuesday: Intervals
Wednesday: Relaxed/Aerobic
Thursday: LT/Tempo
Friday: Rest or Easy Run
Saturday: Easy Run (or tune up race)
Sunday: Long Run at various paces (or tune up race)
Monday-Friday: 30 to 60 minutes of yoga every day
Once per week: 15 to 30 minutes of foam rolling
All the running took place on the roads as I didn’t want to take the risk of getting pulled back to the trails for any reason – it has happened many times before when I was supposed to be ‘focused’ on achieving this longest held goal! The commitment to a ‘road only’ plan worked well for me and made the training block super specific to the end goal. To get current for a moment, I am in week 2 of a 9 week road half marathon training block and I feel I have enough discipline now to be able to run on the trail once or twice a week for my easy runs. There are a couple of reasons for this – I know instinctively that running on trail will naturally moderate my pace, I know that it will strengthen my ankles and calves and I know that the impact is lighter than the road so my recovery will be quicker. In retrospect, my easy runs during the Paris training block were not really easy at all, they were more like relaxed aerobic efforts and usually with a few faster bits thrown in as I couldn’t help myself.
For the first time in training, I really and truly listened to my body and acted on the feedback sooner rather than later. This is something I have never really mastered in 11 years of running – I’m either feeling great and putting in big miles and/or high intensity or I’m slacking off and capitulating due to a lack of recovery and/or sensible training and then mentally beating myself up about it. The mental side of capitulating can be dangerous for me as I have seen over the years sometimes this can lead me into a period of depression, anxiety and often inertia to varying degrees from manageable, to very unmanageable. But this time around, if I felt a run might not be right for that day, I’d take a look at the plan and switch it around, or I’d just take an unplanned rest day and not beat myself up about it. Unplanned rest days usually meant a bit more yoga and probably an easy walk with Sarah and those days were often really refreshing and grounding. Again, a big thank you to Sarah and Sean here for helping me to navigate this aspect of the training – aside from the speed and endurance I built during this training block, I built up mental strength and self-belief and learned to relax when the going got tough instead of either immediately capitulating or conversely, picking it up and grinding myself to dust…and then capitulating.
Sean taking the lead during a 20 mile training run, Week 9/14
I have always enjoyed running fast, but I have never really put together a block that has improved my speed exponentially from the first week to the final week. I really learned about the importance of interval and threshold training, and I embraced both – particularly the intervals. Over the course of the block I came to love the Tuesday interval session and I did not miss one of them. Of them all there were I think 2 during which I didn’t hit the numbers, and I didn’t beat myself up about it, I just trusted the process and moved on to the next run in the sequence. The intervals and threshold sessions, combined with a selection of road races throughout helped me to take down lots of my previous PBs and that in itself was a motivator week on week. I really looked forward to each race and headed to the line each time with no expectations and having put no pressure on myself. Prior to this I put all kinds of expectations and pressures on myself before every single race:
I need to run X time for it to be a success
I need to finish in the Top 5 or 10
I’m here to win
I’m here for a podium, nothing else will do
This time each time I got the line all I said to myself was:
I’m here because I love to race
I’m here to give 100% of what I have
That was it and it was the same from the first race in January (Fred Hughes 10) to the A-Race in Paris. It was liberating and it was exciting, and it was yet another thing I took form this block that will stand me in good stead for future training and racing, and I think also for life in general – even if I might not be 100% I can still give 100% of what I have, and that is good enough! With that approach I achieved the following over the course of 14 weeks:
5 Miles PB 28:27 (January 2022 – Fred Hughes 10)
10km PB 35:51 (January 2022 – Fred Hughes 10)
10 Miles PB 58:24 (January 2022 – Fred Hughes 10)
Half Marathon PB 1:17:15 (March 2022 – Essex 20)
20 Miles PB 2:02:39 (March 2022 – Essex 20)
Marathon PB 2:54:43 (April 2022- Paris Marathon)
Essex 20, March 6th – 2:02:39 (43rd)
Something else that changed for this one was my approach to setting goals, and to selecting my race calendar. I booked Paris in November 2021 as my A-Race for early 2022 and at the time I was planning to do what I normally did following completion of my abandoned winter ultra – book in my race calendar for 2022 as far ahead as possible. This time I took stock, stepped back and after some searching around for what it was I wanted from running and what I enjoyed about racing I decided to book only one more race well in advance. The way I saw it Paris was my first half of the year A-Race and the Wooler Trail Marathon became my second half of the year A-Race – Paris was on the road, Wooler is on the trail. Not long ago I would have booked a lot of ‘preparation’ races to lead into Paris and into Wooler then and there, but this time I decided to sit back and wait a while. I recognised that in years past I have packed my calendar so full that that was a pressure on my mind as well as my time, and this led to mental burnout and a loss of motivation. There have been so many DNS races in my past and I saw that for what it really is – a huge waste of my finite resources both mentally, physically and importantly with a baby on the way, financially. For Paris, I identified a few races that would be of benefit and that fit with my training plan and booked them one at a time – I’d finish one, wait a while and then book the next and if I missed a place because of waiting I had a few options:
E-mail the race organiser and see if I could get a discretionary late entry
Find another race
Undertake a more challenging training run instead
This has carried on past Paris. I only had Wooler in the calendar afterwards and I took some time to evaluate how I felt and what I wanted before deciding on a course of action. That course of action was to see what I could do at the half marathon distance on the back of a great marathon training block, so as I mentioned above I currently find myself in Week 2 of my first ever focused half marathon training block and I am really enjoying it.
So, that was the process I followed really, and I can confirm that trusting that process has transformed my running and my mindset for the better. Not to mention it has given me a 2:54:43 marathon which is a 21 minute and 12 second improvement on the previous personal best. I am still buzzing to have gone under 2:55 because at the start, back in the post-Christmas lull when I entered the plan into TrainingPeaks, I set my goal as 2:55:55 and I have sweat buckets, I have shed blood and I have cried a fair few times along the way to get to where I wanted. It feels great to finally have a London Good For Age time and a Boston Qualifier too – after 9 years of applying in the ballot and not getting picked, I now might actually get into London at some point.
The Arc de Triomphe
But what about the Paris Marathon itself? Well, it would be remiss of me to omit a breakdown of that, and I guess quite a few of you reading this were pretty much expecting that from the get-go! Before I get to that I have to admit that I was very much in the zone pretty much from the first kilometre right up until the last 400m when I knew I had something I’d wanted in the bag and I could begin to smile – it was at that point that my vision expanded from the narrow box of the few hundred metres of road just in front of me, to the things off to my periphery!
To put it simply the course was not easy at all and that was a surprise to me after about 8km! I had reviewed other people’s runs on Strava and I felt I was familiar with the course profile and the route, but I was really taken by surprise with some of the tighter turns, narrower sections and many and regular undulations. Those undulations don’t really make themselves known regularly until about halfway and by that point I’d gotten used to the pace, to the narrow bits and the turns so I was kind of in a place of enjoyable security. Then the undulations become more pronounced and more regular. As you approach the section along the river Seine there are a number of underpasses to get through and then quite a few more as you move away from the Seine. I was so focused that I managed to miss the Eiffel Tower and pretty much all of the sights to see!
The Eiffel Tower
As we approach the 34km mark it was apparent that a hill was fast approaching – not an undulation, a hill. This hill seemed to be a shock for a few people in front who were making their way up it and I felt like I was reeling people in until around half way up and then I felt like I was going backwards as people passed me. I doubled down on my pace and refused to be dropped. As we crested the hill in a small group a water station was right there which absolutely messed with any rhythm I had started to build over the top! This was by far the most challenging part of the day for me and it was the first time I doubted my ability to hold my pace – but I grabbed a couple of water bottles, moved into a clear space of road and focused on keeping my head high and my turnover solid and then the negative thoughts went away. That is pretty much all I can remember! I do remember there was lots of support out there – loud and happy people, great and varied music – this was most welcome over the final 5km as the wheels started to wobble and I think the support helped to keep them on. From that 34km mark to the end my pace dropped fairly steadily but I didn’t blow up and I managed to hold on to a decent form and a decent cadence and I knew with about 2km to go that I would definitely be crossing the line under 3 hours – my watch was reading long so I didn’t really know how far under I would be and I think this helped me to grit my teeth and to keep pushing with as much effort as I could muster over the line.
Paris Marathon, April 3rd – 2:54:43 (941st)
Normally I would end a blog post like this with a view to what’s next for me. What is my next goal? Well, my next goal is to go easy on myself and to take a break from structured training when Baby Flowers arrives in August. I am going to take time to get to know my son, to support Sarah and to really embrace being a Dad. Once we’ve settled into our new family rhythm I will think about what my next running and racing goal is. Until then, I’m going to enjoy the running I’m doing now!
26.2 and Beyond 