The Phedippidations RC, this blog and my "noble cause".

I think I've joined a running club......
How did that happen exactly?
What are the club colours? Where are the grainy photos with the guys in the long shorts, with the brown leather spikes on the cinder track? Do we have club records? Which cross country league do we compete in? When is "club night"? Do we have our own race?

....Yes, I know we do have our own race....it's on my birthday!

Once again I went for a 7 miler with my mp3 player carrying the latest of Steve Runner's wonderful podcasts (number 46 I think). I was just turning back into the village into the wind when Steve started to talk to me - yes directly to me. For some weeks now he has run alongside me occasionally and so have the guys who have called him up, but I thought I was hidden in the pack and hadn't been noticed.

Thanks, Steve, for mentioning this blog and my desire to run in Lausanne on October 22. But thanks most of all for publicising my "noble cause" and taking the trouble to look up the Uganda Village Project on the web via the links.

Fellow Phedip RC members who have a look at the blog via the link on Steve's site may wonder where the fund raising page is. Well, I decided that I wouldn't get the begging bowl / sponsorship form out until there were about 12 weeks to go to my marathon. The main reason is that we are pushing the fund-raising face to face through the day job and when we switch into "sponsor coffeeman-running mode" we want to do it on all fronts.

However if anyone is desperate to learn more and help "Get Ugandan Orphans through School" right now, just click on this hypertext link to our donation site at hvcoffee.com. More details can also be found on the hvcoffee blog.

Oh and I've figured out when club runs are - they are whenever you have Phedippidations in your headphones and your running shoes on!

Training Report 3

22 weeks to the Lausanne Marathon.
20 weeks to the Phedippidations World Half Marathon Challenge (at Henley on Thames)
16 weeks to the Robin Hood Nottingham Half Marathon.

Yes there are some more goals on the list now. I hope that this blog helps me stick to them as the lack of sunday runs in my weekend work season means I can't rely on the inspiration of my two trusted running partners Paul (Stockport Shuffler) MacDowell and Trevor ('wor Trev) White. Together we ran London together twice, as well as the entire length of the Ridgeway, Grand Union Canal and Thames Path National trails.

This was another week when I missed a day's intended running, self-destructing on my plan to hit the 30 mile mark for a sunday to saturday week. But I gained one back on sunday when my weekend event got curtailed. A nice lonely road run of 6.5 miles through the surrounding villages - in Noah's Ark friendly conditions!

When I finished last week's report I was off on an intended 12 miler along the ridgeway. Well I did it, loved it, avoided the field with the bull in it and finished in pretty good shape if completely knackered. I've decided to take a half-litre sports drink along with me for the ride on my longer runs - something I didn't bother with in the past. The aim is to aid recovery and alos imitate the way I expect to run a marathon. This and the mp3 player I would have scoffed at 20 years ago. What would Alf Tupper have thought?

I am truly fortunate to have the Ridgeway and the Chiltern hills so close to where I live. Although I have to drive to a start point, the reward is miles of challenging offroad terrain (mainly rolling hills in and out of patches of woodland and pasture). It is amazingly deserted particularly on a weekday and thr trail is invariably obvious with many alternatives available. This spring it is dry though and this means the soft trails that you may expect in May after a typically wet April and March are now rutted and uneven. I found this quite tiring last wednesday and my ankles and feet certainly got a good two hour work out.

Eric Clapton at the Albert Hall was just awesome, but I have to admit to feeling my aching legs as I climb the stairs to our seats in the circle. eric looks like he keeps himself fit - do you think he's a runner?

Today's 5.5 mile mixed terrain run confirmed that the mystery thigh twinge of last night was a bit of a disappearing running injury. A whinge not a twinge!

Another week of running around work commitments beckons. Let's see if I can hit that 30 miles now?

Thanks to Steve Runner again. Your latest wonderful podcast accompanied sunday's six and a half miler in the rain. I think I'll christen that route my Phedippidations 10k Round! I don't know if the rest of us are kind hearted, but you, my friend have enough of that for most of us anyway.

Injuries, Niggles and things to ignore

Ooh - that didn't feel right.
What is that twinge?
Is that just stiffnesss?
Why did that happen?
Ow - I'd better slowdown.
Is it my shoes?
Did I stretch enough / too much?


One of the most difficult things about returning to running is that you begin to remember the aches and pains. No not that constant discomfort emanating somewhere in the brain that tries to tell you to "Stop running, you're damaging me!". I mean the "mechanical" problems associated with trying to train an unwilling body into pounding out the miles without complaint.

It also gets worse as you get older, but thankfully you are better equipped with the mental skills to deal with it all.

Since re-starting a proper training regime I have had to deal with the following. My worst fears are in the brackets:


1. Pretty constant stiff calf muscles (Compartment syndrome - total rest).

2. Soreness in my decrepit, much abused left ankle joint (I know I need orthotics).

3. A sore right hip (Onset of arthritis. Hip Bursa forming?)

4. Sore left knee (First attack of runner's knee)

5. A sore left thigh muscle (Mystery injury?)


Most of these were worse on getting up the next morning and at the time of writing this I am on number 5 and wondering if I should run today. I want to but worry slightly at the onset of soreness in an area I have never had problems with before. Did I over-stretch before my steady five miler last night?


Sorting the wheat of a proper injury from the chaff of these aches and pains is a bit like trying to evesdrop on a conversation across a crowded tube carriage. Too much background noise?

So how to know when to back off...I never met a runner who said he had the balance between copping out on training and running through minor injuries cracked! It's all a bit trial and error, and almost impossible to judge if you are a beginner with no memory of when these "niggles" just disappeared at some point during a run.

I just do my usual - back off for a day or two (more doesn't do any good without treatment if it is a real injury), take some anti-inflammatory pills after the run, keep well hydrated.

This time in my marathon training I've also decided to give my aging joints a bit of help. In my training for th 1998 London I took daily Glucosamine Sulphate tablets and I've just started this again, with the addition of some Omega 3 Fish Oil tabs. Hopefully together they will help in re-building and strengthening tissue in the joints. We'll see.


One thing last night's onset of thigh soreness did tell me though. I was flirting with the idea of running a local 5k race tonight and I think this has just been shelved - a shame really, but I know then I would probably return with a "proper" injury.

Training Report 2

23 weeks to the Lausanne Marathon.
It's been a bit of an erratic week for me as life yet again got in the way of running. Starting to train for a marathon knowing that all your weekends are fully occupied until race day might be thought to be a bit absurd, but I've managed somehow to convince myself that I can turn wednesdays and thursdays into saturdays and sundays.
We'll see how naive that looks when the mileage starts to climb in a few weeks time!
I download the Phedippidations podcast by Steve Runner every week and that gives me an hour of inspiration to keep on track. It's a perfect mixture of training tips, listeners' anecdotes and mishap stories which must strike a chord with all of us who have run, lapsed, got fat, run again, lapsed again, set goals, failed, achieved and got injured! I continually wonder exactly where I am on this journey. Could it be the start of a "second wind" of proper running?
One thing is sure, if I am going to achieve my goals, there are going to be a lot of weeks of 5 consecutive days of running followed by weekends without a run. Last weekend saw my mileage lapse a bit mostly due to a mid week rest day. Slap that wrist! I was feeling a bit jaded so I am excusing myself for the moment. Once I go onto a "proper" training programme with 18 weeks to go, I hope I can be harder on myself.
So, at the time of writing I am facing day 3 of a promised 5 consecutive days running. I am aware of a few aches and pains, notably a nagging stiffness in my left calf and a slight soreness in my right hip after each run. I hope that the years of up and down mean I can keep on the edge of progressive training whilst filtering the true warnings out my 50 year old physique's cries of wolf!
Yesterday evening I ran my first true intervals workout since I was in training for the 1998 London Marathon. It's strange how the mental attitude comes back from some hidden archive in the brain and other sessions playback in your head. I know I have to improve speed and strength. I think I already know that I will be able to finish the marathon unless I get injured, but if I can significantly raise my training pace along the way, my sub 4 hour goal will become achievable. My basic speed improved so much in my first year of serious running 20 years ago and I am fairly confident that I can also make some much more modest progress this time.
So the lunatic within headed for a hidden (and thankfully traffic free!) hill in our village with my stopwatch and bottle of lucozade sport. I ran up it's 550 - 600 metre or so length 6 times, giving myself just the jog back down to recover. It really, really hurt! Burning lungs weren't helped by the drifting smoke of a farmer's bonfire about half way up, but my brain just took this in as another obstacle to run through. The memories came flooding back - these sessions are about mental toughness, maintaining running form and energy conservation. You expect to end them exhausted and I wasn't disappointed! I gave myself a pat on the back for mental toughness and I just have the feeling that this is a sharper weapon in my running armoury than it was 20 years ago. I hope so, as the signs are that I'm going to need it.
Listening to Rocco di Luca and Bruce Springsteen's Seeger Sessions on my mp3 player was a weird juxtaposition to my grunting and pumping. I also managed to keep the head roll down in order to keep the headphones in. I wonder how Paula Radcliffe would manage that!
By the way I averaged just under 2.20 on the hills and will repeat this session bi-weekly to see how I'm doing.
Today (your wednesday - my saturday) orders me to go 12 miles or two hours on the Ridgeway.
After those hills - more hills! But I have a great reward tonight, with tickets to see Eric Clapton at The Royal Albert Hall. Now I wonder what I should load onto the mp3 player today.........

Training Report 1

24 weeks to go to the Lausanne Marathon.
After some fairly regular running in the early part of the year, a good phase in Australia and a serious lapse of 2-3 weeks, I have now spent a fairly disciplined 4 weeks getting myself up to 25 miles a week plus. In the past two weeks I've made some good progress. I won't bore you with training diary type stuff. Other than:
- Did my first 10 mile plus run for about a year on friday May 5th, all offroad along the Ridgeway path between Princes Risborough and Chinnor. Plenty of hills, inspiring views, blossoms on the trees and even a "Beware of the Bull" sign on a gate as I entered the field. (My coffee blog should have that stuck at the top perhaps.) He'd never have caught me anyway......
- Last night I decided I'd better see if my ambition to run sub 4 hours in Lausanne was in any way realistic. Like most people I run on un-measured courses and only have a notional idea of my running pace from my stopwatch and the "feel" of the run. Last night I decided on a "tempo" run on a measured 7 mile out & back course on the roads and came back in under 58 minutes. I concentrated on maintaining my breathing and rhythm / running form. As it was the first time I'd done anything like this for about 5 years, I was chuffed to bits when my training diary spreadsheet flashed up 3.51 in the "marathon predictor" column. I like the 7 mile distance for this sort of run as it means you cannot go "eyeballs out" from the start otherwise the second half just won't happen, but it is quite horrific to think that I used to knock these out in 40-45 minutes!
- Having spent decades in contempt of people who run with headphones in their ears (not "proper" runners of course), I've now become surprisingly and pretty much instantly converted to running with an mp3 player. I guess most people just shuffle selections from their music collection, but I've found that podcasts are the way to go for me. The 10 miler on the ridgeway had birds singing in the background but Steve Runner was in my ears all the way. Steve's podcast of the Boston Marathon with him "blowing chunks" every 4-5 miles is one of the best bits of reality black humour I have heard in years. His crossing of the finish line brought a tear to my eyes. Another one I have found great is Ritmo Latino, just under an hour of sometimes surprising latin rhythms that supports your running rhythm perfectly. I am sure that the soundtrack now improves running form and puts off that moment in the run when inevitably you wish it would just be over.

What's the plan, Charlie?

So....I am already running and, I think, my overall fitness is fairly good, but I don't want to take the start gun in a marathon if it means being out on the roads for more than 4 hours. Goodness knows, if I had kept to my running in the late eighties and nineties, I should have been able to get close to the elusive 3 hours. So more than 4 won't do!
This means that my training will have to incorporate sessions to bring back some speed to my legs, 20 years after I first found it. I'll also have to run a half marathon in 1.45 or less as a confidence booster. This is going to be hard as I probably have to work every weekend from now to the weekend before Lausanne
I used to enjoy reading about running and trawl the web regularly even now for hints on training and schedules. My problem for the last 20 years has been keeping up a regular mileage, not knowing how to plan my training. I've embarked on a few plans only to fall off the plan after a few weeks and then have to give it up due to injury, other committments or my own lack of self motivation.
This time I've decided on the Hal Higdon 18 week intermediate schedule - that would start around the third week of June. I think I'll call that H week.
The plan is then to get to around 30 miles a week with a 10-12 mile long run and a sub 9 minute mile tempo run by then.
So now it is near the end of H week minus 7!

How I got to here....

I became a "jogger" in about 1982 and graduated into "running" at the East London Half Marathon on an unseasonably hot day in March 1985, posting a promising time just under 1.30.
After that I got fairly serious about my running. My job on the commodities market in the city gave me a two hour lunch break and I replaced lounging about the office and the frequent trip to the pub with a daily run from a squash club next to London Bridge. Usually this turned into a race with several friends towing me along the Thames and eventually various circuits of the Royal Parks added in.
Road race times started tumbling, but lower leg injuries soon became the bane of my runners life, mainly due to weak "footballers ankles" that I had gained playing rugby on hard surfaces in my student years.
During 1986 at the age of 30, and as a member of Woodford Green AC, I got my half marathon down below 1.18 at the St. Neots half and ran a 10 mile in less than 58 minutes on an airfield. I also was a member of a corporate team that won the Emil Zatopek challenge relay in the city two years running. As this was organised by David Bedford and based at Cannons Health Club, we felt pretty good about it at the time!
It is fair to say that my attempts to keep running since that "high" have represented a steady decline in times and running volume, with a few high spots. It didn't help that my club running career in the UK stopped dead in 1987 when I took a job in Geneva, Switzerland.
I waited until my 43rd year before running a marathon, London, in 1998 on a charity bond place.
I repeated the dose in 2000 when to my shock I actually got in on the ballot. My times of 3.46 and 3.50 are probably "good for my age" but way below the potential I showed in my early thirties. Oh well!
So this year, having not run in more than 4 competitive races in 10 years, I've decided, at the age of 50 to take on another marathon, in Lausanne on October.