Week 10 - A marathon is a long way

Getting back on track has been a struggle. It was only really after the long run on Sunday that I felt reassured I was making any progress. The mid week 8 miler was slowly slowly and my achey legs during the final mile got me worried. It was the furthest my flatmate has ever run so he was pretty chuffed but other than that it was just a few more miles in the bank to cash out on race day.

In the final few weeks until the marathon my life is dominated by running and I pretty much spent most of Saturday resting up ahead of the long one. I drank my own bodyweight in Evian and tried to eat sensibly (triple chocolate chip cookies and sausage and egg mcmuffin aside). I got a solid 8 hours sleep and reached Richmond Park just after 8am on Sunday morning.

Having not done a long run for a fortnight I was reasonably nervous... 16 miles sounds so much longer than 14. I've got just 3 more long runs before New York but right now they seem like mountains to climb. The new trainers were slightly broken in and ready for action and I had decided to experiment with Jelly Babies as incentivisation tools. A long time ago my friend, who has run both the New York and London marathons told me that these little sugar packed critters were the key to her success. After a certain point she would reward herself with one at every mile. Worth a shot I thought.

I set off in the usual direction and the first lap was fairly uneventful. During the long runs I have been listening to the iPod and trying to think of lots of other things besides running. The Non-Runners Guide to Marathon training has been giving me lots of tips to improve my concentration and also positive self talk to help me through the tough points. So far it has worked pretty well and I've not had to have a walking break or suffered a real sense that I just can't carry on since that first 10 miler in Week 5.

Whenever I run on my own I listen to my iPod. The book suggests that I don't but, for me, the dulcet tones of chris martin, britney speares, michael jackson and MC Hammer (don't judge me) are very motivational. I don't use it when out with others or in races but on a long training run, on my own, it definitely helps. At first I filled my iPod with fast beat, loud and pumping dance music to push me round those 3, 4 and 5 milers. Now i'm on the longer runs I prefer to mix it up more. I'm sure there's some scientific research out there that matches up your ideal bmp to deliver peak pace performance but right now i'm just happy to sing along with with the opening line of Castles in The Sky which goes like this. "Do you ever question your life... Do you ever wonder why?" Around the 12 mile mark and having not partied properly for a good month and a bit YES I DO.


So back to the Jelly Baby experiment... The first problem was how to transport them. Once that was overcome (wrapped in foil in my back pocket) the second problem was removing them, unwrapping them, consuming one, wrapping the remainders back up and replacing them. You'd have thought that 10 minute miles would be long enough to effect this series of manoeuvres but as I have all the awkardness of a new born giraffe on a trampoline in an earthquake it proved troublesome. The third and final problem was that after going to all this effort I realised that I don't actually like Jelly Babies and therefore their use as an incentivisation tool is altogether redundant! Rubbish. Next week I will experiment with the dreaded gels!

I'm lucky that training is still a novelty. I think your first marathon is always going to be the most fun to train for. Each long distance is further than you've ever run before, you don't have any existing times to measure yourself against and each week you feel you've made a decent amount of progress. Plus you get to experiement with what works best for you in terms of incentives, nutrition, hydration and so on. Blissful ignorance is more often than not a good thing in my opinion. Chatting on email to an experienced marathon runner he decribed his training as 'a series of disappointments interspersed with a few highs" but at the moment I can confidently say my training is the reverse.