Robin Hood and his merry hills conquered! Tendons not co-operating.

5 weeks to the Lausanne Marathon.
3 weeks to the Phedippidations World Half Marathon Challenge (at Henley on Thames)
I ran in the Robin Hood Nottingham Half Marathon.

Check out how no. 784 finished here.

Just select "Robin Hood Marathon" and bib 784.

Do you feel my pain?

Week 1 - 40.
Week 2 - 39
Week 3 - 36
Week 4 - 31
Week 5 - 19
Week 6 - 26
Week 7 - 61 (!!!!) Long run 1 - 16 miles.
Week 8 - 24
Week 9 - 50 Long run 2 - 18 miles
Week 10 - 50
Week 11 - 10
Week 12 - 40 Race 13.1
Week 13 - 5 Ooops!

6 week average 30 miles. It looks like an early taper

My weight is around 86 kgs still.

So after an up and down week including a five mile run with both my kids (lump in throat) and lots of doubts surrounding the state of my achilles tendons, I drove up to Nottingham on a foggy September morn and conquered the Robin Hood Half. My last battle plan involved running 8:40 pace to 10 miles and then attempting to speed up to get as close to 1:50 as I could. The logic being that I could extrapolate to a sub 4 hour marathon from this.

Perhaps I did this. It's difficult to tell. My stopwatch didn't make it through mile 1! But I know that my "chip time" was 1:49:50 and I ran the last 3 (slightly downhill) miles in about 24:10. My finishing position was in the top 25% of the 6800 field. Not bad for a V50 who hasn't raced in 6 years

Positives :

I was strong on the hills
I hit my race time objectives
I enjoyed the race and the atmosphere
I finished with my strongest miles
I have my first medal for 6 years. Nice.

Negatives :

My achilles tendons got progressively more sore from 5 miles. I don't think I could finish a marathon if they behaved the same.
I nearly fell asleep on the M1 coming home, and after being cramped up in a Mazda MX5 for 2 hours, spent the next 3 hours on my feet.
I almost immediately got a cold in the days following.

The week after left me with a work schedule with practically no "running windows", and I grabbed one of the few open to me on wednesday, by running 45 minutes through thickly grassed parkland in Northamptonshire as the sun went down. This did the tendons no good at all of course. Silly arse! So the rest of the week was enforced rest, but nevertheless I spent most of it on my feet working and only by sunday could I get up without lower leg stiffness.

I ran 7 miles on the roads today and soreness in the tendon was progressive from about 40 minutes into the run. As I write this my left ankle is resting on an ice pack and I had Ibuprofen with lunch. Yum! My determination to run the "full" in Lausanne is certainly being challenged and I still want to run flat and hilly 20 milers over the next 3 weeks before tapering. The flat one should be this thursday - we'll see.

With the Lausanne course giving 2700 feet of up and down "undulation" I need in particular to seriously challenge my endurance on a long run with 2000 feet of up-and-down. That will severely test out the tendons, won't it? I've plotted a course...

Every runner I tell I have achilles tendon problems seems to pull the same face and not one has ended the conversation with the cheery words,

"You'll be OK."

So as a result I've felt duty bound to say it for them

"I'll be OK, it's under control!"

Is it hell?!

I'm going to finish off this week at the Windsor Half Marathon, one of the best organised UK halfs and wholly off public roads. But I'm not running it, merely serving the coffee! Photos to be blogged next week.

The race is being started by Seb Coe, an absolute hero of mine and an inspiration in my first running "career" in the mid eighties. I can remember vividly getting up in the middle of the night in 1984 to watch Seb retain the olympic 1500m title in Los Angeles. Watching that race again still brings a lump to the throat and sets the hairs up on the back of my neck. Coe's kick against the then world champion Steve Cram on the final bend off a searingly fast pace was as majestic and courageous a piece of running as has ever been seen in a UK vest and unfortunately only Liz McColgan and Paula Radcliffe have matched that performance since, both in the 10k to Marathon distances and neither of them at an Olympic Games. Nobody was going to beat Seb that day, although all the experts had written him off as yesterdays man by that time, due to a prolonged period of glandular illness. The fact that Seb actually set his sub 3.30 1500m PB 2 years after this final has passed largely unnoticed as by then others had lowered the world record. Seb's 800m world record set in 1981 has only been bettered by one man since in 25 years of trying with amazing progression in training techniques and athlete preparation, and this only by .6 of a second. Seb only won his first international championship at 800m in 1986 as well.

I once read an article written by his father / coach where it was claimed that one of his standard training runs was a sustained pace 10 miler in a little over 45 minutes. Heavens knows where the marathon world record would be now if Seb had turned his mind to it towards the end of his career as Haile Gebreselassie has!

The fact that this supreme Olympic runner has managed by force of will and personality to bring the games back to the UK is just further complement to his right to the status of an immortal amongst runners in the UK.

Do you think he'll let me make him a latte?

One last footnote - Dean Kanzares has now started his awesome attempt to run 50 marathons in 50 days in 50 states of the USA. Check out the website of his quest and the blog also.

And I'm worried about a bit of tendonitis!