17. The One Where I Didn't Go A Really Long Way

23 August 2015

Since today was a recovery day after the triathlon yesterday, and since I've never gone further than 30km (and that was last week haha) I wanted to get a feel for the full 50km distance this weekend.  Officially it's actually 42km per day for the actual challenge, but on all the blogs I've read (and on tracking the course on MapMyRun) it's definitely more like 50km.

I didn't want to stress my body massively unduly and put myself out of training for any length of time, so I decided to walk the distance.  I planned a route that took me from my house to Richmond Park, around Richmond Park a few times, and home again.

All my planning was going really well until I realised I had to be in Hampstead at 16:00, which meant leaving home at 15:00 ... which meant that at 5km per hour (and thus a total of ten hours for 50km) I'd have to leave home at 04:00 to get home by 14:00 to get showered, fed, and out the door again.  Ummmm ....!!!!!!!!!!  04:00 was not a viable option when I'd raced the day before and then driven back down to London, so I thought I'd leave at 07:00 and get as much in as I could by 13:00, still being six hours.  That would leave me time to have a little nap as well as having a shower and lunch and also left me slippage time since my sense of time is TERRIBLE and cutting it fine just meant I'd be twenty minutes late.

So that was the plan!  With last week's bonking vividly lodged in my mind, I got up at 05:30, made a HUMUNGOUS plate of oaty, proteiny, Bodyism pancakes for fuel and scarfed the lot with blueberries, Fage yoghurt and maple syrup.

I also baked more two-ingredient cookies but with berries (LOVE THEM) to take with me, and picked up some ChiaCharge fuel to take along as well.  I love ChiaCharge because it's all natural and has no preservatives or anything ghastly like that, just oats, butter, sugar, golden syrup, chia seeds and sea salt.  There are also cafe's in Richmond Park, so I figured that that would do, because I could always stop and pick up soup or something from the cafe.

I finally set off on time and headed over to Richmond Park, which is 7km from my house.  The walk there was soooo uncomfortable!  I had filled up my water reservoir to its full capacity of 2 litres, which meant that everything was sitting in my pack a bit weirdly, bouncing around on top of the water.  In addition, I'd also packed my warm sweater into a snaplock bag in case it rained, but that meant that it couldn't drape across my bag and sort of lurked there, pulling me down.  Everything felt tight and horrendous and uncomfortable and I'm sure I spent the whole 7km pulling at various tabs and straps to try and readjust.  Luckily I had a lovely view over the Thames for part of the way which kept me vaguely distracted.

It took me an hour and a quarter to get there, and my first stop was the loo.  I took my pack off (obviously!) to use the bathroom and fortunately, when I put it back on, something had shifted somewhere and it was soooooooo much better.  It was a real lesson to me to take it off next time and shake it about and put it back on, as it was such a simple fix and made me feel 100x better.  From the loo, I set off round the park.  Someone once pointed out to me that if you go clockwise round the park, you look at men's faces, and if you go counter-clock around it, you look at men's bums, because all the bike wankers cyclists tend to cycle round in a counter-clock direction.  Obviously, that was no contest, so I set off counter-clock round the perimeter.

Richmond Park is such a strange place - it's got forests, bush, flat plains, a deer sanctuary, lakes, and what look like wheat fields (but are actually fields of long grass) and - unless you stick to the perimeter road - you sort of get flung from one to the other without much warning.  You also run the risk of running face first into a pack of deer, as they roam around the entire park.



I got a bit bored of the perimeter quite quickly (hard to believe with all those bums flashing past) so I headed up through the bush (which turned out to be entirely made of ferns, which was a bit weird, I thought I was back in New Zealand for a moment!) and towards the forest.  Over the following three hours I basically just headed around the park in a squiggle shape to try and take in as much as I could of the terrain.  I'd been expecting it to be quite hilly but it wasn't really - a few gentle slopes and that was it.  I'm sure I remember cycling around it and thinking the hills were killer, perhaps I'm just more hench than I used to be after all my encounters with cliffs!



 

In the end, I had to leave Richmond Park with an hour and a quarter left on my time to make sure I got home in time to eat and rest a little bit before I went out.  The best thing about my trip home was that on my way over I'd noticed wild blackberries growing on Rocks Lane and I'd promised myself I'd get some on the way back.  Wild blackberries fresh off the bush are AMAZING - nothing like the tasteless garbage (even the organic ones) you get in the supermarket.  They're tiny little explosions of juice and sweetness and flavor - I was so so excited to grab a handful on the way back!

It was good that I had them to look forward to because what had been a bit of a drizzle when I left Richmond Park was a miserable downpour by the time I got home.  At least I could test my waterproofing of my sweater (yup, my Waitrose snaplock bag was totally up to the job) and as the walk finished at home, I could just throw myself under the shower.  I could also eat within about 15 minutes of getting home!  Best ever lunch!

I learned A LOT on this walk, even though it was only 34km in the end.  My new knowledge includes:

• Running is obviously harder on your body in some ways, but I was in a lot more pain walking!  My feet, hips, lower back and glutes were basically screaming at me after about 20km, they were not happy.  That doesn't seem to happen when I am run/walking and I think it's because a lot of running uses elasticity whereas walking is solid effort.  
• I don't get hungry when I'm going long distance.  I'd noticed this last week when I was reflecting on my bonking episode, so I was hyper-aware of watching for it and I didn't feel hungry at all throughout.  I did stop twice within the park for two-ingredient cookie breaks and I did feel far better after them.  Therefore, I just have to make sure I stop every hour or so and eat something without waiting to feel hungry.
• Speaking of two-ingredient cookies, apart from being a bit melty, they are PERFECT on-the-go fuel.  The banana is sugary enough to give me instant energy, and the oats give me more medium energy.  I might experiment with adding some coconut - I think with coconut they would be even better as that would give me some fats to add to the carbs.  
• It's really hard to start running half way through a walk - I tested a couple of mid-walk runs on downhills, and my ankles nearly staged a revolt.  They simply would not have it.  That doesn't happen when I start off with a run or a run/walk alternating, so I'm much better off run/walk alternating so that I have the choice to run if I want!
• If you don't like a song a LOT before you take it on a six-hour walk, you will really really really hate it by the end of it.  I just put my iPhone on shuffle for all my songs but it seemed to get stuck on repeating about twenty 80s and 90s rock (hello Bon Jovi, Bryan Adams and the Goo Goo Dolls ...).  I'm definitely making a better playlist for next week; if I never hear Bryan Adams' 18 Til I Die ever again it will be too soon.

Having said that, since I didn't make the full distance, I'm going to repeat it all again next week to try and understand the distance and get to grips with it.  I'd rather do some more hills running, but Richmond works out well for me because of the loos and the cafes (I also want to test out running after eating soup as part of my nutrition, because I know that soup is on offer at the feed stations on the challenge and it seems like something that I'd be able to wrap myself around even if I wasn't that hungry).  Luckily it's a bank holiday weekend so I have lots of lovely time to spend walking and/or running, although I've got to fit in a few social plans as well.  Hopefully I will get to improve my squiggly map!

16. The One With The Triathlon

22 August 2015

Well it's not strictly running (or rather, not only running) but I signed up for the Nottingham Tri Relays aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaages ago, and they took place today!

The format of the tri relays is totally different to a normal tri or a normal relay.  Basically, you have four team members and each swims 500, then each cycles 15km, and finally each runs 5km.  My last triathlon was the European Qualifiers on 13 September 2014 in Milton Keynes (a race in which I famously managed to cycle 32km on a 20km course, this is HOW BAD I am at directions.  Needless to say, I didn't qualify ...).  Since then, I have swum once in the Serpentine, without a wetsuit, and once in a pool for a good 20 minutes.  I have also managed to ride my bike once - to work and back during the last tube strike.  That's a whole 15K altogether ... Hmm.  Luckily the idea was to have fun, rather than be competitive ... which was just as well in the end!  First off, our B (each of the four team members is assigned a number A-D) came down with tonsillitis earlier in the week and had to pull out.  Fortunately, our D had already been poached to race twice - once with us in the morning and once in the afternoon for another of our club's teams.  One of the girls in that team was happy to return the favor and replace our B (which was particularly kind of her because she was also racing Sunday morning!).

We all managed to get up on time, I managed to register us, and we thought all was well, albeit we couldn't quite work out how transition worked etc ... but we figured it would all become clear in due course.  I was A, which was terrifying.  I am soooo bad at directions (see above) plus I am amazing at getting things hopelessly wrong (remind me to tell you about the time I rode my bike into a 9-metre deep canal some time ...), plus the lack of training made me super-stressed.  Luckily I didn't have much time to think because setting up transition took about six times longer than I thought it would, so I was on the swim before I knew it!  I could genuinely hardly remember what to do - I'm an absolutely terrible swimmer at the best of times, so it was all slightly bewildering.  Muscle memory finally kicked in and the swim wasn't tooooo bad (for me, that is) - I managed not to be last out and everything!  I did manage to hand the baton to the wrong team member (I saw C and assumed she was B) but luckily C handed it to B and we straightened ourselves out.  B had a cracking swim, as did C and D, and then I was out on the bike.  I hate the bike.  Really really really hate it - quite apart from the serious risk of going the wrong way, I find it soooooooo boring.  I groused myself round the course (which was around a lake; even I couldn't get lost) and managed to hand over to B this time rather than C, D, or a complete random.

I then had a nice hour and a half to enjoy before my next stage.  However .... disaster struck!  Our B is the fastest ever - she represents GB in her age group (as does our D) and she is speeeeeeeedy!  She loves the bike, so she was pelting round at full tilt all the way to the dismount.  Unfortunately she (like many many others) mistook the timing mat which was located three metres behind the thin, almost invisible dismount line for the dismount line itself and didn't realise she had to dismount until she was on the line itself.  She panicked and slammed on the brakes and ... went headfirst over the handlebars and ended up with a broken arm for her pains.  I was out in the holding pen on the run by the time I heard what had happened, but my fabulous team mates sorted it out between them with our C running twice (bless her).  Luckily B is super-hench and she was okay, but it was a shame to ruin her day, especially as she has the world championships in three weeks.  Poor B.

My run wasn't too bad - it felt horrific, mainly because it was fast and flat, not my normal wander over the hills!  I managed 23:52 for 4.89KM (the course was slightly short) which is about a minute slower than my PB for 5K but I was quite pleased with it given that I hadn't trained that distance for ages.  So all good really!  The official results say 24:07 but that includes D's transition off the bike - my Garmin told me it was 23:52 so I'm gonna go with that natch ;)

Once the relays were over it was straight back to London to get some rest in before a mahoosive walk tomorrow.  Sleep is key!

15. The One Where I Ran Quite Fast

20 August 2015

Got me a lil PB today!  Yep!!  Uh-huh!

It was back to sprint sets on the Curve (those ones where I do 30 seconds hard out, with 90 seconds full stop rest - totally killer).  I never thought I would manage a PB because I started off my sprint set so badly - usually on the first rep I manage at least .13km but I only managed 0.12 today and I thought that was it for me.  All the way up to the 9th rep I was only at the same level as I managed last week, and although I was happy with last week given that it was my first set back in ages, it was nowhere near my previous PB of 1.96KM overall.  I managed to really kick it up for the last few reps though - and just tip it over the line to get to 1.97KM overall ... woop woop!  It's only a 0.01KM PB, but honestly, you don't understand what that ten metres means to me ... that set is so so hard!

1.       0.12

2.       0.25 (+13)

3.       0.39 (+14)

4.       0.52 (+13)

5.       0.65 (+13)

6.       0.77 (+12)

7.       0.90 (+13)

8.       1.04 (+14)

9.       1.17 (+13)

10.   1.30 (+13)

11.   1.44 (+14)

12.   1.57 (+13)

13.   1.70 (+13)

14.   1.83 (+13)

15.   1.97 (+14)

I also obsessively checked my body stats on the Boditrax (I'm sure the novelty will wear off soon, but for now I am still in love with it) and despite the fact that I've increased my carbs over the last few days, my body fat has taken a nosedive by 0.8KG and my overall body fat percentage has gone down to 17.7%.  I think it's partly because the carbs I'm eating are so clean - we're talking berries, oatcakes, and pearlised spelt for the most part, plus those lovely little two-ingredient bites of heaven - and partly because my body obviously needs that extra fuel at the moment.  My performance has shot up since I increased the carbs (and, as I said yesterday, increased the sleep) so it's something I'm going to be keeping a sharp eye on to make sure I'm managing it right (oooh managing.  I almost sound like a real runner ...!).

14. The One Where I Got Sleep

19 August 2015

I have discovered the answer to all my problems in life - SLEEP!

That's right people, it's all about the sleep.  I have never been so tired as I have been since Sunday - all that lack of sleep in Ibiza catching up with me, plus so much to DO in the last ten days since I've been back, plus all the running has meant that I have not been functioning at all for the last few days.  On Sunday, therefore, I made a new week's resolution to go to bed at 21:00 on at least four days this week.  So far I've done Sunday, Monday and Tuesday and today I feel like a whole new person!

The other thing I changed up yesterday was adding a few more carbs into my diet.  Although I love love love Bodyism (the idea behind which is basically eat whole foods, don't eat unprocessed foods, and don't eat sugars or fake foods) I think it's been a little too low-carb for me so far with all the running I'm doing.  Therefore, yesterday I added some extra fruit, some oatcakes with grassfed butter and a little honey and ... wait for it ... COOKIES!

But not cookies as we know them, no no, these are two-ingredient cookies.  All they have in them on the basic recipe is 1 cup oats and 1 cup mashed banana - mix it together, shape into cookie-shapes, throw in the oven for 15 minutes at 175*C / 350*F and you are good to go!  I also added in cinnamon, vanilla essence, ginger and nutmeg, plus a handful of raisins.  At about 50 kcal a pop (44 kcal without the raisins), no-added-sugar, vegan, wheat-free, low-fat and gluten-free (if you use gluten-free oats of course) they're just about good for any kind of diet you could ever imagine (except Paleo I suppose).  They even tasted nice (I was skeptical, I have to admit, but honestly they were good - I've already scarfed half the batch so I will be making more before my long run at the weekend as I'd like to take some with me then too - I think they'd be great on-the-go nutrition).

The net result of these two changes - a few more carbs and a lot more sleep - has meant that I feel much more like a human being today (I even might be able to squeeze in a little work if my boss is lucky).  It also meant that my track reps this morning were a whole lot better than last week!  They weren't easy, and they weren't back to my best, but it was a LOT better than last week.

Here's a comparison, for the record!

	BEST WEEK (16 JULY 2015)	LAST WEEK (12 AUGUST 2015)	THIS WEEK (19 AUGUST 2015)
1.	03.12	03:24	03:15
2.	03:24	03:29	03:32
3.	03:26	03:40	03:33
4.	03:46	03:43	03:35
5.	03:39	03:47	03:36
6.	03:34	-	03:31

I was really happy with that - overall my times are actually quicker this week on the last three reps than they were my best week, but the first three were slower.  I feel like my strategies are working though and that is a massive bonus - I was beginning to worry that I'd only get slower and slower!!

13. The One Where I Was Tired

18 August 2015

It was back to the treadmill and the sub-130 HR run today for 45 minutes - just as well it was an easy session because I am tired today!  Proper bone-achingly, eye-closingly, brain-numbingly tired ... I'm sure it's just a reaction from the weekend but I can't wait to hit bed tonight!  One of my goals for this week was to go to bed at 21:00 at least four times to try and rebuild and recover from both the lack of sleep over my holiday and the extra strain I'm throwing at my body by increasing my running volume with these longer runs.  Worryingly, I did go to bed at 21:00 both last night and Monday, so I have no idea what I'd have been like otherwise!

The good news is that this morning's run was brilliant - I only had to slow to a walk twice to lower my heart rate and one of those was right at the end.  Otherwise my heart rate behaved itself beautifully, staying down at between about 125 and about 129 bpm.  I'm pleased about this because I'm hoping it means that my training is actually doing some good!

That's it for today - tomorrow is back to Battersea and 800m reps.  I'm hoping I've recovered much better by then and can really give it some welly, because it's my last Battersea session for a couple of weeks, and when I go back it'll be to do some technique work.  Therefore I'd really like to smash it tomorrow but we'll see!

12. The One Where I Hit The Wall

16 August 2015

I had such a lovely rest day yesterday!  My lovely friend Romy organised a day in Suffolk for us, since that's where she and my other lovely friend (Harri) are from, but I'd never been.  We started off in Ely (okay, that's Cambridgeshire, but still) and had a wander round the town, followed lunch with some other friends (Henrietta and her brother and stepmother, and Tom, Harri's brother).  Ely is absolutely stunning - it looks exactly like a picture postcard!

How pretty is that?!  Then we pootled over to Bury St Edmunds, where Tom lives, for a walk through town and then a visit to the Abbey Gardens and along the river (also an icecream, don't tell anyone).  Bury was so cute, exactly like you'd imagine an English market town to be.  Finally, we headed over to Harri and Tom's parents' for supper - her mom had cooked a feast!  It was the perfect rest day (even though I had actually intended to run in Suffolk, but too much time had to be devoted to having fun).

Today it was back to the grindstone though - a run in Brighton.  I'd had a pretty intense headache all day yesterday but I'd slept it off thank God ... however that was where the good news ended for this run.  Here's a list of what went wrong ...!

• Slept through alarm
• Left remote phone charger in the car (parked 1km away)
• Managed to get to Victoria on time (complete with charger), only to find that the ticket machines were broken and only one actual cashier was open, so missed the train
• Got the next train, only to find it was cancelled half-way so had to spend a freezing cold 50 minutes at East Croydon (which is as horrible as it sounds)
• By the time I FINALLY got to Brighton (two hours late) my porridge had already digested so I wasn't especially fuelled
• Started off the run so cold that I was almost blue, since I hadn't managed to warm up on the train down
• Got blisters after 12K and even my magic balm didn't calm them
• Got absolutely exhausted after 14K but still had to make it back home (ummm!!)
• It absolutely hurled rain down about 3/4 of the way through
• Did not manage nutrition, and completely bonked about 23K and only just managed to crawl the last hour or so back to Brighton 
• Ran out of water with about 45 minutes to go
• Had to visit Sports Direct (the horror) to get a new jumper as mine was soaking!

Blister maintenance

Apart from that, it was a lovely run ...!!!!!!!!!!  

Bonking was exceptionally unpleasant - I literally couldn't stop walking (by that time there was no chance of running at all, but I knew if I stopped even for a minute there was no way I was getting back up again), I could barely hear anything and my brain felt like it was wrapped in cotton wool.  Even when I made it to Pret for a restorative water and ham and cheese toastie (being the first thing I saw) I couldn't really wrap myself around it, because I couldn't properly swallow it down.  It took me half an hour to get it down me!  

At least taking that long meant that it kicked in and I could use that energy to get back to the train station where I changed into my new warm Sports Direct sweater (all class) and got myself onto the train.  It took me approximately 2.4 seconds to fall asleep on the train and I woke up back in London feeling much better for a good 54 minute sleep.  A hot bath and my slippers on and I'm almost good as new (my feet might not agree).  

There were a few good things I've taken from it:

1.  It was my first run when it rained, so I now know what that's like; 

2.  I was not not not in the mood, but I still managed to do it, even though I could have quit at any point (including when the trains were cancelled);

3.  I ran/walked longer than I've ever gone before - almost 30K I think (my Garmin was playing up and my MapMyRun was being very weird!); 

4.  I need to manage my nutrition and sleep properly - I think sleep is super-important and I'm not getting enough! 

The other good thing was that my depleted body demanded steak and sweet potato for supper.  I managed to step up to the plate and cook up the most enormous garlic steak, paprika sweet potato fries and blanched broccoli.  Obviously it was tough, but I managed to sacrifice myself for my body and eat it for supper ...!  I followed it up with fresh (organic, obvs) berries and a dollop of clotted cream.  There are definitely advantages to this running lark.  

I'm a bit worried about the fact that in six weeks and five days (not that I'm counting) I've got to do almost double that distance for three days in a row - eeeeeeeeeek.  Training training training for me!

11. The One On The Treadmill

13 August 2015

Today it was back to the gym for a 45-minute run (it was meant to be an hour, but I ran out of time) on the treadmill with my heart-rate kept below 130 throughout to train my aerobic system.  This is the easiest workout on my schedule from the perspective of actual running, but the hardest mentally in a way!  It's soooooooooooo dulllllllllllllll ...

I like to do it on a treadmill for two reasons:  first, it's much easier to keep an eye on my heart rate there, because I can take my Garmin off and have it in front of me so that I don't need to bring my arm up to eye level.  Secondly, I can watch TV or have a little nose at what's going on around me in the gym to keep me occupied!

The good news about today's run was that I was finally feeling more like myself after a good night's sleep last night (AT LAST!) and that it was much easier to keep my heart rate under 130 than it's ever been before.  To keep it that low, I have to run at 7.5kph(!) but even then it creeps up about so that about every six or seven minutes I have to slow to a 6.5kph walk to bring it back down.  Today I only had to stop every 10-12 minutes, so hopefully that means I'm getting a little fitter with all this running!

The other good news was that it meant that I could catch up on Mr & Mrs Murder on 5oD.  I love that show - definitely one of my favorites!  It was the last of the series so it was even more of a treat to watch it.  Can't wait for next season!