Despite having been able to train as it was all above the neck, in my head I felt like I'd lost fitness - in reality I don't think this was true, I had not missed any runs and sensibly backed off a bit on run pace where necessary but it was all feeling a little bit tougher because of fighting the lurgi. My legs were OK after the double 20 weekend and Wednesdays hill session I surprised myself by having a better one than I thought I would despite reverting back to croaky afterwards.
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| *cough* *cough* *cough* *cough* SHUT UP!!!!!! |
So the next weekend I was up in Cambridge to see my parents, also to run the Oakley 20. I had a great run there last year and actually got s bit of a tan. Well - on the Friday morning before Oakley weekend in 2013, "snowmageddon" had hit the Midlands as predicted; thankfully I got up and out to Bristol at a ridiculous hour before the morons hit the roads so it was a relatively stress free journey. South of Birmingham / North Worcester there was no snow at all, and in the evening I trekked along the M4 / M25 / A1M from Bristol to Cambridge. It was snow free on the ground but I had a horrible dark sleet blowing at the windscreen experience. Yuk.
I opened the curtains in Cambridge early on Saturday morning with a view to going to the Wimpole ParkRun for a bit of XC effort. However a blizzard was coming down heavily, I assumed they would cancel so went back to bed. When I surfaced at about 10.00am and checked - it was on. Gah!!! Oops. I'm not obsessive, but do I appreciate the benefits of my ParkRuns as a weekend speed session, so if I miss something like this I do try and make it up somehow later in the day. In this case there was no other way. A WU, a solo 5K effort at 5K pace and a WD.
Now I don't usually really care what the weather is, I will go out regardless. There is something quite nice about running in the rain in summer, overheating, the heavens opening and getting soaked to the skin with rain dripping off of your nose and off of the ends of your fingers, let's cut that romantic vision back to a "spring" day in March. This speed work session was horrific. I love my running but it was really soul destroying. The sky was grey, light snow was blowing in to my eyes, the wind was so fierce and bitter it was stinging my face to the point where it was quite painful. I managed a good pace but again it felt too hard. I went back to my parents and brooded over how shit I felt for the rest of the afternoon. Still, there had been no snow forecast for Oakley so that would be good. Ooooh a text. For meeee?!?! Oakley cancelled. Flippin' brilliant. I feel sorry for race directors when this sort of thing happens, it is a hard task organising a race and despite it being a total act of god, all people seem to do is moan about the cancellation and start fishing for refunds when it is just one of those things.
The next morning, we'd had a snow scattering in Cambridge. A photo appeared of the race HQ at Oakely - quite thick snow, significantly more than we had. I decided to make the most of the relatively good conditions in Cambridge and get on with it, at Oakley I was supposed to inject some pace in the middle miles, but hey a slow 20 is better than no 20. In the end, the paths were so good, I gave it a crack and managed to do what I was supposed to do. If you don't give it a go you'll never know.
The following week was still freezing, but I managed to crank out a monster speed work session, 12 x 0.33 mile reps with a relatively short amount of recovery. I've been doing these sessions for a long time, but I felt like I was flying that evening. I run the reps in these sessions just using the force, and all the reps were within about 3 seconds of each other, no drop off in pace at the end, so consistent. It gave me a boost to know my speed endurance is coming along well. I had to smile every time I whizzed past a solitary snowman that was still standing tall in the middle of relatively dry pavements on the estate we do our interval loops on. There are still large patches of snow on the fields even now.
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| Snow causes chaos yet again... |
This brings us to the Easter weekend, and I was supposed to do the Maidenhead Easter 10. A duff car battery put pay to that. I can't say I was 'pleased' but I didn't really feel as up for it as I did for say, the Cambridge half so I think it's fair to say I was less annoyed than I could have been. I shifted my training around and did an easy run after getting things sorted, then off to Cambridge again. Having been in Cambridge quite a few weekends recently, the thought 22 miles round the same places didn't fill me with joy. Luckily on searching I found a trail race that looked interesting. 16 miles from Ely to Cambridge, meeting on the Common, get bussed to Ely and then run back along the river path. However with an imminent off road training run I decided to be sensible Saturday and do a nice tarmac parkrun and had my first visit to Bedford.
I think I was feeling a bit tired from the mid week speed work session, but I gave Bedford a good go. There were so many chattering people at the race briefing, I heard the lady go "blah blah bandstand blah blah finish" - ok I had it sorted in my head. I set off, feeling ok, pretty much steadily overtaking. After a couple of laps, I was convinced the next time at the Bandstand was the end, so I kicked a bit. It didn't feel quite right though and people appeared to be still going round. I usually run 5Ks again using the force, and glancing at my garmin I'd only done 2.5 miles. So I'd quite severely misjudged it. I managed to hang on for 24.49. I know parkrun is free and I do appreciate everyone involved in the running of these events but I'm positive my time was 2 places out - it was too big a margin - 11 sec - out and I did start my watch on the gun. I emailed the mailbox but not even a reply to say "actually we think we are correct". Oh well. It's a good course and I will definitely be back. Before and after the run I bumped in to C and A who showed me one of the best kept secrets in Bedford (I worked in Bedford for almost 2 years and I never found it). It was lovely to catch up with them and in the most amazing cake shop ever. I just stood open mouthed a the selection on display, like a kid in a... cake shop!
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| *drool* |
In the end I went for the Neapolitan style sponge with the pink and white icing in the middle. It must have been about 20 cm tall! Yeah!!! :-D
Easter Sunday the eggs had to wait. The clocks had gone back, so *yawn* I was waiting for the race bus at 7.45 which was actually 6.45. Got on, dozed off for half an hour. Yes I am a finely tuned athlete poised like a coiled spring to leap in to action. The route started near Ely station, and follows the "Fen Rivers Way" back to Cambridge. The section between Waterbeach and Cambridge I know very well, the Ely to Waterbeach section not so much but the race briefing consisted of "keep the river on your left till you get to the Green Dragon pub in Cambridge, then keep it on your right, and follow the footpath signs with the Eel on" Okey dokey then. For off road it wasn't too bad. As it had been dry I decided to risk road shoes, especially as I was going to be doing 22 in total, and apart from some muddy / knobbly bits there was nothing very technical. Most of it was running on fairly flat grass. The landscape was flat, you cold see for miles the dark black soil and plastic crop covers. A food table at 10 miles was welcome, with Bananas, sweets and cups of coke / water. After this I knew where I was and the last 6 miles in were a breeze. On the line I got given a medal which I was fairly underwhelmed by, however I was overjoyed by the creme egg, and off I trotted around the backs and Newnham in the (very cold) sunshine. Happy days.
Last week was our club's handicap race, in memory of a gentleman who used to be on the running club committee, club Treasurer in fact. I decided not to run this year, I am rubbish at racing on dimly lit routes in the evening, and this close to Manchester I didn't want to risk face planting on a tree root so I did a fairly hard speed work session in the day. It is interesting to see here what people put down as a recent 10K time (!!!), this is how we calculate the handicaps - the slower runners go off first, the faster runners last, and in theory if we have got everything right (and we've been given accurate times) all the runners should arrive back at the club at the same time. It was really nice to see some of our 36 minute 10K-ers and 1:26 minute 10K-ers in the same race, coming in close together, having fun and pretty much everyone sporting club kit.
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| Some of the mighty SRC |
We have had a lot of new members recently, but new and old it still makes me proud to see a bunch of such happy runners nice people all together at the club enjoying their running.
So the weekend just gone I had to do my last 20. Rather than do the same old routes, S had mentioned she was doing the Bournemouth Half, so I asked if I could tag along. The intention was to run 7 miles beforehand, and then the half. 2 miles in to the half I would go in to "turbo mode" for 10 miles (Marathon pace) and jogging in home the last mile. I got a number in the Half and I got a room in the same Hotel.
It was all very civilised - I got picked up just before 3pm on Sat, and by 5.30 we were at the hotel. Turns out the hotel was a) 5 minutes from the station where another friend was coming in from, and b) 5 mins from the pier where the race started. There was an Italian (well... ASK) restaurant across the road where we had a really nice meal, and a Tesco Express the other side of the roundabout where we could stock up on goodies (by that I mean bananas / bagels) for immediate refuelling after the race. The hotel was very old fashioned with flowery bedspreads (all that was missing were those toilet roll covers that are shaped like ladies in ball gowns), but considering the usual clientele that was to be expected. They were very accommodating, and when we announced our diva demands of cereal at 07.30, and "could we have a checkout at 2pm so we can come back and have a shower please" they were really really good about it.
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| Guardian of the loo roll |
So at about 8.30 I snuk off to do my 7 miles. I went along the cliff top road, going down on to the front for 3.5 miles then coming back. On the way back it was actually quite warm, so I ended up doing a detour and going back to the hotel, bumping in to S, taking half her clothes back, getting changed in 30 seconds in to some cooler attire myself. I jogged back down to the start, literally 5 mins hovering around and the gun went off. Perfect timing. The first 2 miles of the course are a little uphill, so I was glad of the starting slow plan, then I attempted to do Marathon Pace for another 10. I say attempted because it felt hard. It messed with my head a bit until I realised the wind coming off the sea was actually causing this false impression of effort. My MP efforts were all sub 9.00mm apart from one mile with a major hill, so I can't really complain, and hopefully this bodes well for less than 3 weeks time. I liked the course, despite the wind the seafront was nice and sunny, and then in the later miles we wound our way up on to the cliff roads and back down again. It started to feel like spring time.
At the finish I had a chap almost pass out in front of me. Slightly disappointed I had to argue with a marshal to get not one but TWO bottles of water how dare I (one for me one for him) but I got let off when he saw my "patient" leaning against the railings looking like he was going to vomit. Mr queezy seemed to perk up quite quickly thank goodness, I need to get myself on a first aid course or something because I didn't really know what to do, no one was rushing to help and I felt quite out of my depth if I'm honest. After a few mins of me telling him to take some deep breaths and sips of water, he convinced me he was OK and that he didn't want me to find or get anyone so off I went. He was very sweet and said thank you and also well done on the run. I didn't have the heart to tell him about the 7.5 mile WU but if I was on the deck I'd hope someone would check if I was OK so the thanks was appreciated.
I was glad to have a shower at the hotel, it was quite warm out there and 3 hours back in the car would have been a bit of a stinky experience. We had a somewhat slower drive back, stopping to get some drinks and also dining at the Little Chef on the A34 near Oxford. I'd clocked it on the way down, it looked like it had been refurbed. They are not really my scene, but by the look of things the menu is similar to what it has always been, with was some new / interesting and even vaguely healthy stuff on there, we were actually quite impressed. I felt my face glowing on the way home. I have a slight tan.
And there you have it, last 20 miler done for now. Taper time - let insanity commence.
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