MK half marathon race report and Wuthering Hike pre-race report

MK half race report

Distance: 13.1 miles
Time: 01:29:59
Position: 242/3038

Early March is pretty late to have my first race of the year, but this was it. My other 2 planned races had to be aborted for various reasons (one was cancelled due to yes would you believe icy conditions - and it was supposedly a 'challenging' trail race ha ha) and I've not had a good start to the year training wise. Eilidh's various ailments and bad teething have left me down 1 session per week pretty much consistently since the start of the year.

Excuses excuses I know but I've been gradually upping my speeds and getting PBs every year since I started running half marathons 5 years ago. My previous PB set at this race last year was 01:29:06 and I was hoping to beat it, but this wasn't to be. I was lucky to stay under the 01:30:00 mark.

I ran strong for the first 5-6 miles at a consistent 6:35 - 6:42 min/mile pace then began without noticing to slow to 6:50. I regained 6:45 pace but then slowed to 7:05 and worse over miles 7 to 11 as the route turned into a fierce headwind. I just couldn't get any faster through the wind. The last mile I picked up to 6:40 pace again but too late, the PB gone for another year (c'est la vie).

Wuthering Hike pre-race report

I am filing a pre-race report because although registered and was actually in Haworth ready to race on Saturday morning I was stricken with the most torrential bout of diarrohea you could imagine. Vast volumes of pasta consumed in the interests of glycogen storage were turned through a marvellous chain of biochemical reactions to an outpouring of water with the odd brown fleck. Quiet amazing, and quite debilitating too when it comes to running 31 miles. So there I sat in my Westfield Lodge apartment overlooking the last road drag up to Penistone Hill watching the bobbing heads of runners nearing the end of their race. Gits said I feeling jealous (I hope all WHWR'ers there had a good race even if they are all gits for bobbing their heads far too happily as I looked out my window).

Where did I get the lurgy bug from? A baby of course. We went on holiday with some friends and their almot 2 year old baby boy to a Centre Parcs holiday camp thing near Nottingham. It turned into holiday sick camp. We arrived on the Monday only for them to be stricken down on the Monday night with the lurgy - they caught it from their baby son who had it the week before (lesson - do not go on holiday with babies who have just had sickness and diarrohea, even if you are paid to do so). Eilidh then caught it on Wednesday with a magnificent series of ejections from either end. Kirstin then came down with it on Wednesday night / Thursday morning and I felt pretty ropey at the same time but thought I'd escaped the worst of it. How wrong was I.

So more, tales of a poor start to the year running wise. I'm a glass half full kind of chap though so I'm happy I have a couple of extra months up my sleeve when it comes to the UTMB as compared to the WHWR. I'll do a race pace 30 miler one afternoon this week to make up for missing the Wuthering and that'll get me back on track. Until the next baby related illness incident of course! :-)

Eilidh in hospital

The 2nd year of Eilidh's life is proving to be peppered with various ailments - colds and squirty bum bugs mainly. Unfortunately with an asthmatic set of parents (mine still persists) she is hit heavily in the chest when she gets a cold. Apparently babies in their 2nd year get on average 24 colds. That's a lot of wheezing we've still to come.

Anyway I got the call to pick her up early from her childminders on Wednesday as her ventolin puffer was having no effect on her latest chesty cold. I took her immediately to the doctors as her last chesty cold was only 1.5 weeks ago - probably the same infection. He referred her immediately to the hospital. Que for a 4 hour wait in A&E after being really very quickly seen and Eilidh nebulised (an effective way of delivering the anti-wheezing drug salbutamol). Her blood oxygen levels were tested using a rather nifty infra red non-invasive device (I'd love to know how it works) and came out at 82% - pretty dangerously low. She was tranferred to the paedatric unit after 4 hours in A&E, put on oxygen and nebulised every hour until 09:00 when the nebulising went to every 2 then 3 hours. Eventually she was discharged today at 17:30, with some steroid to reduce lung inflammation and two very bleary eyed parents.

So, more blogging about being a father and not training, but heyho I wouldn't change a thing. I love her to bits.

My draining will

Training seems to be going according to my rather rough plan this year. Long run distance is up, speed and tempo sessions going well but I'm struggling to get my mileage up to the levels I want it up. There's no physical problem, just a motivational one. Eilidh is still teething. It's been pretty much 2.5 weeks of 05:00 - 05:15 rises every day and they are exacting a toll on me. My will to get out running after work at night is gradually being sapped. I'm still doing OK but I'm dropping 1 session per week just to try to get to bed before 22:00. I find it impossible to get back from work, play with Eilidh, help get her ready for bed, train, cook dinner and get into bed any earlier than 22:00. It's often 22:30 and I am an 8 hour a night sleep kind of a chap so the accumulated loss of 2 hours sleep a night is well, accumulating. 4-5 cups of coffee a day to function a work says it all.

She's great though. She knows and can repeat the sounds of elephants, cows, frogs, ducks, sheep, dogs, her grandad (who says a sort of high pitched yoo-hoo to her), tigers, cats, lions, birds and monkeys. She can point out some colours, loves drawing (on everything) and says what's that to everything, all the time. Very funny.

On the Imelda Marcos front I've just purchased myself a new pair of road trainers which I'll try out tonight. Adidas Supernova Sequences. Lovely white, red and silver. Hopefully be good for the MK half marathon, my first race of the year this weekend.

Close Encounters of the Academic Kind

Stan B reckons my blog is reminiscent of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I am trying to figure out how.

I have a large domed and bald head which does impart a certain otherwordly appearance in a dim light, or if a bright torch is shone upon it. It might be this which reminds him of said movie.

Or he may simpy have detected that I look like the kind of fella who really enjoyes watching said movie. Sad I know, but it's a cracker. Almost as good as Das Boot for mind numbing ultra length movies. Here's the famous bontempi organ music to heighten the Close Encounters experience I offer here on this mildly academic blog. Enjoy. :-)

Condors soaring over Milton Keynes

Saturday was a glorious day for the start of my Milton Keynes based alpine training regime in preparation for the UTMB in August. The sun was out and its warmth could be felt penetrating through trees and clothing. The condors were soaring high above the lofty, snow clad peaks and jutting aretes of the Brickhill Alps whilst marmots and lemmings scurried about in the pine clad slopes and upper alpine meadows. Glorious.

I picked the off road slope with the single greatest uninterrupted vertical ascent and started my run at 3pm. 115' of climbing and 115' of descending saw my first hill rep complete. Yes, the Brickhill Alps are a behemoth of a mountain, ahem er, molehill range.

Last year I peaked at 15 reps in my mid-week hill rep sessions so I was pleasantly surprised when I got to 13 and thought, hang on, this isn't too bad, I can manage a few more. I got to 15 and thought the same thing again. It wasn't till rep 17 that I could feel my calves begin to complain and in rep 18 I thought I'd probably have to walk rep 19 so I called it a day. 18 consecutive reps of up and down, covering 2100' of ascent and descent over 7.83 miles in 1:26.

I then managed to dodge the condors on my descent to make it home in time for my voracious daughter's dinner. A great afternoon. I'll work on upping the number of reps to somewhere around 30-40 as I get closer to the UTMB (oh joy, the idea of it sounds very enticing).

Here's a picture of my at the top of the hill I selected to run up. Milton Keynes is wonderfully scenic isn't it? A real hidden gem. ;-)

Training update (oh what an exciting post title) and racing plan

Right then folks, I'm back to the keyboard whilst sitting in bed last thing at night. Eilidh is teething like billy-oh just now so it's 6am ups or earlier every day. The time is past 11pm so I'm playing fast, loose and dangerous with sleep quotas. I'll have to be quick.

My training is back on track performance wise after a rather stuttered start to the year. I'm not managing all my planned sessions yet as various bits and bobs are popping up but I am performing as I want to be at this stage in the year and season. Progress wise I am doing as below:

Endurance - no problems, my base level doesn't appear to have diminished and I've run an 18.5 miler on the last 2 weekends. The 2nd one had about 1500' of ascent in it and I recovered within a day.
Speed - again no problems, I am up to running 6 consecutive sub 7 minute miles in my tempo sessions with the first 3 at sub 6:50 pace. I am holding 6:15 and below pace easily in my 3 minute effort interval sessions
Strength - my gym sessions haven't been as regular as I'd like so I need to up these
Yoga - I can now do up and down dog positions in Ashtanga Yoga and am enjoying it
Hills - not really started this yet but tomorrow is the day I run 15-20 reps of a 130' ascent hill near my house as the start of my 'simulate alpine running in rural buckinghamshire' training plan

I have my race and training even plan sorted until the back end of September and it kicks off next month:

March - MK half marathon (aiming sub-1:29), Wuthering Hike 31 miler (aiming sub-5:15)
April - Exe to Axe 21 miler (4500' ascent, aiming sub 3:20), Highland Fling 53 miler (aiming sub 9:56)
May - Marlborough Downs Challenge 33 miler (aiming sub 4:55)
June - 2 day Bob Graham Round
July - in Australia so I''ll grab whatever I can plsu something big when I return as a final UTMB training session
August - UTMB 103 miler
September - High Peak 40 miler

If anyone has any June or late July ultra race or training ideas I'd be very grateful for them.

Looking forward to the season, and hoping to see some familiar faces at the ultra events, particularly the Wuthering Hike, Highland Fling and HP40.

In the meantime here are some photos that were taken by my mate Phil Dickson at PSD Photography over the festive period. We wanted to get some professional photos taken to send to Kirstin's family in Australia, for my family and our own albums, but didn't want anythin too cheesey. I think he did a good job. The last photo was taken in People's Palace in Glasgow when he accidentally dropped something and managed accidentally to take a photo of us (my family - gran, mum, dad, brother, wife, daughter and me) grimacing at the noise. Funny expressions!

Grunt puff puff ...

... are the noises I made on my supposedly long hilly trail run at the weekend before I decided to cut it short and go home! Talk about perseverance, not.

Last week was my first full week of training so my mileage lept up and by Saturday my body was groaning under the strain. Probably too much red wine on Friday night too - well you've got to haven't you, after a week of hard work and not much sleep due to our crazy daughter's prolonged teething? That and I still get overly excited by Friday nights even though my hazy youthful days are but a hazy memory. Actually they were hazy the next day but that's besides the point.

Anyway, my breathing felt a bit laboured / asthmatic (I've had asthma since I was wee) and my legs sluggish after 1 mile of running so I called it quits at 11 miles. Pain in the bum really and disappointing performance wise but hey ho, back in the saddle this week. I'm planning to do a 20 miler this weekend and I'll remember to stay off the vino.

More importantly I've got to pass my condolences on John Kynaston for the loss of his father - sad news. And at the other end of life, my congratulations to Debbie and Marco for the birth of their son, Cairn, the first newborn to have already finished the West Highland Way Race - great stuff.

To leave this post I'd like to finish with a great a track by the Doves - There Goes the Fear. I first heard it, and the band on Richie Cunningham's UTMB slideshow and rather liked it. It has a dramatic fee that sort of suits the enormity of running a long ultra I think. And lots of other life events too.