Bone Marrow Runner

May 2010 saw my first race of the year in Manchester and it was certainly going to be a challenge, in fact I had only run 4 times since the Reading Half.  To add to this dirth of training the continued theme of old friends resurfaced and by complete chance we met 7 of my old university friends in the restaurant we picked for lunch. A quick bite to eat evolved into a long chat and a trip out to the sticks for dinner and chat till the small hours.

The race was brilliantly organised and given I was in on of the sloooow waves I grabbed the chance to watch Haile Gebrselassie Cruise across the line looking unflustered at 28:02, absolutely phenomenal.  It was a quick wander up towards the start zone for our mass warm up.  Maybe its my English reservations about "performing" in public, but I'm not really a fan of pre-race mass aerobics. With that impasse traversed all that was left to do was race.

Things started out pretty slow after the usual 9min/mile rush off the line, struggling to hang around the 11 min/mile pace for the first couple of miles.  I think I only have myself to blame though as I made my classic race mistake of being to proud and stupid to take my walk breaks every 10 minutes. Since the beginning I have been doing 9min run/1min walk and have done nearly every training since. So like the fool that I am it was nearly 23 minutes until I took my first walk and the pace had been fading.

My salvation was probably the mental impact of a single workout the week before the race, my first ever real tempo run.  Most of my training before the half marathons had been steady state "easy" runs, but with my newly constructed marathon plan there were a few faster workouts. After a gentle mile warm up, I pushed for a mile a hard as I could and discovered something of great significance. I can hold on at a pace that causes serious effort and pain, despite my lungs burning I had run a 8:29 mile and managed to carry on into the cool down afterwards. If this taught me anything it was that I could go a lot faster and tolerate the pain for quite a distance.

I made it to the 5K mark in 33:32, on pace for my worst ever 10K performance, but the walk break really started to kick in. I was managing to push along at well below 10min/mile pace without slowing down and the race was back on. In fact I managed a big negative split to come in at 1:01:56 (2nd 5K 28:24), my 2nd 5K was actually my PB for that distance. All of which makes me think that there could have been a much better time if I had pushed from the start and been brave enough to walk.

This was in fact my best ever 10K time despite an almost complete absence of training, I was mostly trading on the aerobic base I had built up helping Helen with her marathon training. It still left a bitter taste in my mouth though, I'm more convinced than ever that I can break the hour, and I finished 4 seconds behinds Helen's brother in his first ever 10K. Next time ..................

Back in March, I was very happy to recieve a message from an old university friend, who I hadn't seen for years.  He'd spotted the running I had done posted up on facebook and thought I might be up for a bit of a challenge. In his own words he had signed up for the Berlin Marathon and wonderd if I might be interested in doing the same.

I'm not sure if it was the seeming last chance to hold to a little bit of my youth or the seemingly long time to train, but I jumped at the chance and booked up for the big trip to berlin.  Nearly three months down the line, the challenge seems an awful lot more real and the training is starting to ramp up ............

A Little pictoral illustration of why our training hasn't gone too well this week!

New Years eve was the latest meeting of the inaugral team reading ruuning team for this years Reading half marathon.  Unfortunately for us it was not a hard training run or tactical discussions on nutrition and the most aerodynamic clothing.  No our team meetings involve copious amounts of alcohol (mulled wine in this case), meat and trying to cram 11 people onto a two bed house.  If you haven't guessed it yet, you're probably not too sharp, but this was our new years eve party and a great one at that.

All but one of our prospective team showed up and were it not for the late hour, we might have enticed the globetrotting Pinolona (of the Pinolona Blog) who may have had some more eloquent and philosophical posting for the page!

A great time was had by all (I hope) and if team spirit is the most important thing then we are doing just fine.  However given training is slightly important we will be having a proper run in january, with the possibility of  live tweetup, watch this space.

I was out for a long run on Sunday in the freezing cold here and my mind began to wander a little and meandered onto the thought of why I run.  At first though this seems like a very simple question with a multitude of simple answers.  Sure there are plenty of obvious candidates to lose weight, look better, feel fitter, compete with myself, but none of these rang true.  Shallow reasons of self interest could not explain why I was trudging through the mud and the ice with the temperature below zero, I just don't have the vanity or the body to make it worth my while.  It had to be something else, something deeper that drove me.  Was it the same thing that once drove me to play basketball for two hours a day in an extremely ropey Manchester neighbourhood and brave the cold mud and pain to play rugby in the UK?

Then it came to me, it was absolute nothingness.  Four miles in with aching legs and wet toes my mind went blank, no thoughts of pleasure or pain, just calm.  The serenity of being absolutely comfortable in what you are doing, feeling like you could go for miles without a care in the world.  In a way it’s like euphoria without the awareness that you are happy. This inner peace is what I had been chasing all these years and you could almost not notice it was there.

You could call this all sorts of names, the classic runners high, meditation, a trance or all sorts of things, but if you've been there or done endurance sports you must know what I mean.  Is it just me or is this the core of what all of us get out there and sweat for? Now my task is not to name it or put it into a box, but to go out and find it again, I can't wait for my long run .............