"That week!"

This week has been "that week".  That week in a training cycle where the world and his dog decide to chuck everything at you that they've got and you either curl up in a little ball or dig your heels in and say "fuck you, I am not giving up."

This week was about endurance.  It was to be my highest mileage week so far, my highest elevation week so far, a huge amount of time on my feet along with a small amount of quality.  It was a week for building strength and stamina, with just a few little pushes to get the heart rate up.  It was a week to approach fresh, bouncy and full of optimistic boing.

It was not a week for two huge storms bringing horrendously high winds and rain, or a cold, or a nasty fall resulting in badly bruised knees (cheers Pupster), or blisters.

The blisters were the icing on the cake even though they arrived before most of the rest.  They've annoyed me all week, because they were my own fault.  For some reason on Monday I went out to do my longest run for over a year, largely off road, wearing trail shoes and ridiculously thin lightweight socks.  Not the sort of good quality nice running socks I may race in, just cheap crappy not even really running socks.  I think at some point they claimed to be compression socks but even before I'd tried them on they were clearly lying and I only bought because I thought they'd tuck up nicely inside skinny jeans and keep my calves warm in winter.  I did not get them to keep my feet softly cushioned through 22 miles of running in hard shoes.  Being grateful for small mercies, I was so cold that I didn't actually hear even a murmur from the blisters at all until around fiften minutes after getting back from my run when my extremities started to thaw out.  Then they started shouting expletives at me and continued to do so every time I put trainers on for several days.  With no-one but myself to blame, I gritted my teeth, found my nicest socks, and got on with it.  

So, this week, or "that week," or possibly "that bloody week," or on at least one occasion "that bastard bloody buggering week that can fuck off back to where it came from and take its storms with it!", has been a bit of a tough one.  But actually it finished better than I had hoped and in fact better than it had started. 

When I was trudging round a very hilly 22 miler in Storm Ciara on Monday and wondering why it was feeling quite as tough as it was my head was in a pretty bleak place.  The start of a 70 mile week and I was struggling with a painfully slow pace.  The pace I was running shouldn't have felt that hard so early in the run, or at the end.  Yes, it was windy and the weather was utterly foul, snow, sleet, wind, hail, freezing rain.  Yes, the terrain was tough.  I wanted off road so ran largely on grass verges between various hilly local off road areas and then ran round and up and down them.  But it shouldn't have felt that hard.  It was a miserable run and I only really enjoyed a brief couple of miles of it when I had a scramble round a very storm damaged Hemlock Open Space.  I wouldn't have dared if it wasn't for the fact there were too many fallen trees for me to scramble over to run any risk of getting knocked over by someone doing a bit of extreme biking, and I didn't even know there was in fact an actual open space at the top.  Yeah, OK, the hint is in the name but I'd never seen it.  The view was pretty special even if the descent was equally terrifying.  That was 5 miles in and the highlight of the run.  The rest was a test of mental strength.

In some ways waking up with a stinking head cold the next day went into the "last thing I need" category, but it also left me feeling a little vindicated.  Of course my long run had been horrific if I'd been fighting the onset of a virus I wasn't aware of.  No need to hang up the trainers just yet.

The rest of the week I slogged on.  My effort session made me question the sanity of the sadistic bastard who wrote it.  Then I remembered I wrote it.  40 minutes of efforts of varying lengths, the wind was howling and I was streaming.    I took a view on it and did it on the treadmill.  Just me in my little corner of the gym, spreading sweat and snot in equally large quantities in a 5 foot area around my treadmill.  Treadmill running is undoubtedly easier than outdoors running, so I hooked myself up to the emergency stop strap and made myself do it quicker.  I didn't puke, quite, and I finished it, actually up on pace.  I felt awful, but I'd done it.  That afternoon while recovery running on the park with my gorgeous girly and encouraging her to pull as she's being trained to my legs took their revenge.  Leeloo pulled, my legs refused to open up to follow, I face planted on concrete.  The resulting bruises to knees and hip were spectacular and painful.  I got up and carried on.

And that was the motto of the week.  Circumstances out of my control are making this hard, get up and carry on.  I did my miles, elevation, my strength training, my core training (not pleasant with a nose which seems to have mutated into a tap set to "on"), and by and large I stuck to pace.

Saturday morning was meant to produce 6 miles of tempo pace running, which at the moment is around the 7:00-7:15 minute mile mark.  I got to the park with my wonderful Pupster to do my warm up and after three miles trudging round in howling wind and rain it became very clear I needed to make a choice.  Either I did my 6 miles tempo and wrote off the next day, or I eased it off a bit and got my mileage in.  Pup dropped home and cleaned I headed back to the park and made the right decision for the week's goal; endurance.  Bumping into a friend a km or so in helped keep me on track.  I did the miles at marathon pace instead of tempo pace, chatted my way round parkrun with a fellow club member and good ol' Dennis, did an extra lap, and while the wind was a pain at that pace it was manageable.

All of which just left Sunday.  I'd thought about running on the treadmill, but when I woke up on Sunday wind speeds were "only" around the 20-30 mph mark which while hard work was in no way dangerous, so I put my big girl pants on and went out for another windy run.  14 miles, some hills, a lot of wind and driving rain, a free exfoliation which some girls would probably pay for, and a target of running just 30 seconds slower than marathon pace for 14 miles.  I knew from the start I couldn't do it.  I was still suffering from the cold, my legs were just so tired from all the training there was no way I could kick out even a little bit, it was going to be a shuffle.  I tried anyway, told myself to start easy and pick it up, and the first couple of (wind assisted) miles were just a little under pace. 

Then I turned into the wind and hit the first hill.  Half way up I encountered a bloke just starting his run.  He made a comment about giving me some competition and I looked at him, 6 foot 6, muscular, strong, probably 15 years my junior, standing there on the corner ready to start his run looking ridiculously well rested and happy, and thought "like fuck you are."  500m later after a brief chat to Mr Young Fit and Healthy I gritted my teeth and wished him a "good run" before picking the pace up by about 45 seconds a mile and determinedly leaving him standing as I pushed on up the hills.  Having made such a move of moderate cockiness there was no way I was slowing down until his attempts to keep up had failed and I'd got far enough ahead to be out of sight, by which point I'd realised I could do it if I wanted to, I just needed to toughen up a bit because it wasn't going to be easy.  It isn't meant to be easy. 

That was the turning point of the run and the rest was by and large on pace despite the utterly horrific bastard wind and occasional wading through flood water.  I was about 10-15 seconds a mile off pace by the end which in the conditions and considering the practical crawl of the first 3 miles I decided I could and would call a win. 

So, 70 miles, 2,000 feet of elevation, hills session, hard interval session, marathon pace run, and a variety of strength and conditioning.  This week is much lower mileage with, I really really hope, an actual race that isn't cancelled due to weather!

I honestly have no idea at all if I can remember how to run fast any more, or dig in through that sort of pain which is so different to the grind through the fatigue, but I am very keen to find out.  C'mon weather, give me a break!

I have no photos at all of me running through horrific conditions, so here's one of my beautiful pup enjoying her run on the park.  Yes, that's the park.  Yes, that's the path!  I'm going to file my morning email encouraging me to volunteer at parkrun this weekend in a brand new folder entitled "Pure Optimism".  Happy running folks, stay safe!

Where did January go?

(Post written on 31 January)

I have no idea what happened to January in terms of training.  Today is not a training day, so for me January is done and I'm looking at my month's training.

January has involved a total of 219 miles with 6,149 feet of elevation climbed. It isn't all about distance but I'm satisfied that there's been some quality training amongst that, particularly over the latter three weeks.  I've done one legs weight session every week plus a body weight and resistance band session most weeks.  Core training once or twice a week, one harder session and one little top up. 

Next month I don't necessarily need to run farther, but I do need more elevation and more strength work. I'm hoping to hit around 2,000 feet a week for the next four weeks.  That's nothing compared to what some do, but I know it'll be hard for me.  In terms of strength training I feel like I'm operating at a bare injury prevention minimum and would like to do more, but it has a huge impact on my running for days afterwards.  I'm not really sure how to deal with that one.

The big down side this month is that I haven't raced at all and in fact I haven't even done a hard parkrun - the one I was meant to do was cancelled due to ice.  Really I should be doing at least one race a month.  Next month I have two races, a 10 mile and a half marathon, and I've promised a hard parkrun on the alternate Saturdays.  Both races are off road, both are undulating, and both will put me well out my racing comfort zone in a way but the nature of the races means the pressure in terms of trying to get near to PB times is off.  They aren't PB courses, I just need to go and race as well as I can.  I'm really excited to see what I can do while also a little daunted by the idea of trying to feel ready for racing in a month where my training is also going to be taking a lot out of me.  Generally I would tend to have a light training week when I have a race at the end, but this isn't feasible when I'm building towards a target race further down the line.  I will just have to race with tired legs.

Cummulative fatigue has started to be a thing.  This will get worse and I will need to get used to it and adjust training if necessary.  On the flip side I have absolutely no injury niggles.  The closest thing I've come to running related injury so far is a bit of chafing from wearing a jacket with only a sports bra underneath and slightly bruised feet.  The bruising has been solved by doing more runs off road and wearing more cushioned shoes for a lot of my steadier running.

In terms of my lifestyle I have made some significant improvements.  I'm not drinking at all on the days before I run, which means five days a week with no alcohol, and on the days I do drink I'm limiting it to a glass or two of wine (please see photo for evidence of said wine consumption).  My diet has also significantly improved and in general I'm feeling a lot better for that.  I wouldn't say it was perfect, there's been the odd evening of excessive pigging out on utter crap, but overall I'm doing much better.  This being said with a Sunday evening glass of wine in my hand of course, but it's only the second day of the week that's involved wine, so definitely much better than I was doing a month or two back!

So bums up everyone, here's to January done, not a great month but a solid month of good training, and February to come where I hope to turn it up a notch.