Keep on the grass

Just made it over the finish line in time to crumple sportively on the front row

It turned colder, that’s where it begins.

The running week began with the first (for me) cross country race of the season. The blue, frosty conditions were perfect for that wholesome, ruddy-cheeked sense of wellbeing I remember so well from school cross country (despite trying to be too cool for school, I could be embarrassingly outdoorsy in my early teens) and am now enough of a veteran Kent AC runner to be nostalgic for my adult glory days. Glory is an overstatement. However, I still cherish the Second V50 medal I earned back in 2015, mostly for showing up to all of the cross country races that season. My personal glory, in that I wasn’t as pack of the pack ten years ago as I am now.

Last Saturday morning I actually fretted to Rick about being last across the line at Beckenham Place Park. That didn’t happen: the (nearly) five-mile race over grass and up many hills was a slog, but I wasn’t too disappointed with my 41minutes, and there were a few people behind me.

The cold grass proved a boon before the race. The base of my right foot is still aflame from the wart/verruca that’s been plaguing me for nearly nine months, so I walked barefoot on the frost awhile to calm it down. It seems such a footling (see what I did there?) malady, but really has affected my form. Once the adrenaline takes hold in a race situation, the sole smarting abates, but during training and warm-ups it’s the very devil. The nurse practitioner at the GP surgery is, understandably, less than interested, but kindly referred me to the NHS Foot Clinic, which then rang to tell me they don’t do verrucas. It looks as if I’ll have to shell out for a private freezing job.

The Sunday long run turned out longer than we’d envisaged. Ten miles, taking in Dulwich Woods and Horniman Gardens, was rounded off with a much needed coffee and croissant at Le Delice in Ladywell. How lovely it is to be back there.

Tuesday track night was a frosty one. The surface was rimed and slippy, enough to make the more circumspect among us stick to the grassy infield rather than the speedy track. The session was 6x800m, and it was difficult to keep to pace (I also have no clue what pace I’m doing, now I run with a FitBit, which isn’t great at gauging this element of one’s fitness ‘journey’). I feel it’s probably better to concentrate on my running than what nonsense is happening on my wrist. The constant news flashes on the FitBit app are pretty moronic. It has just informed me that I’ve one the ‘Skydiver Award’. Looking this up, I find it’s rewarding me for climbing many flights of stairs since I’ve started wearing it. I have lost the will to wear it at all times, because its assessments are too ludicrous. As a friend pointed out last week, Sleep apps are notoriously inaccurate, and only serve to increase anxiety.

Most importantly of all this week, my confirmation of a Good For Age place from London Marathon came through. Now I’ve secured my place on the start line, I must busy myself with compiling a training programme. I’d like to shave three minutes off last year’s Brighton, so a 3:56 would be nice. Given that the fastest marathon time for a woman over 60 is 2:52:13 (Yugeta Mariko), I’m being pretty kind to myself. Nonetheless, my fitness is going to need some serious work to be more than an hour slower than that. Which puts things into perspective. My Fitbit thinks I’m wonderful, it would probably explode with excitement if it was on Yugeta’s tiny wrist.

O Mensola Mio

Made it to the start, then made it to the finish

You know those tourist T-shirts? ‘My Mum went to … and all she bought me with this T-shirt’.

I’m reminded of that when I look at this photo of an immensely knackered woman at the end of a 5k-community race. In my case, Marathon Gran went to Italy and all she did was seek out the nearest parkrun and make it her mission to get there at 9am last Saturday.

Locating, and travelling to, parkrun at Park di Mensola, while staying in Prato last week took up two days of my week’s holiday. The park is in a suburb on the other side of Florence, about 22km from Prato. It meant I passed through that fine Tuscan city, renowned for its galleries, museums and markets, without buying a single ticket to see great art or treasure, and I a 61-year-old middle class woman, the perfect demographic for the Uffizi and all the rest of it. Almost sacrilege.

Was it worth it? Of course it was. I ran more than a minute slower than usual, not because I was looking at the stunning scenery under the wide, blue November skies, but because I was totally knackered. I’d risen at 6 to catch the first of three trains to the nearest station to the parkrun. I’d barely slept all week owing to being in far too close quarters with my husband (normal double beds are no longer acceptable; at home we have a giant bed, and two single mattresses upon it. You’re welcome to come to any conclusion you like about the state of our marriage, but it suits us).

On holiday, though, in unfamiliar humming hotel rooms (they always hum, don’t they? Air con and lavatory fans etc) and an over sanitised studio apartment where the air-freshening diffuser was so strong I could even smell it when I banished it to the balcony, I spent the night wakeful and fretting: my husband seemed to be blissfully unconscious and snoring. He tells me he doesn’t snore.

The reason we were there was because my husband has a rich cultural life and is a Renaissance Man, and I followed him. He is in the ELO (no, he’s not Jeff Lynne, the European Lute Orchestra) and was in Prato to practise for, and play in, a wonderful concert in the Duomo). While he rehearsed for the concert, I indulged my running obsessions and hiked up a few very steep hills that surround the city of Prato, taking bread filled with vegetables and nuts for sustenance (vegans are a slightly unknown quantity in Tuscany, although vegetarians are handsomely catered for with cheese and egg dishes). I ate well though, just missed my usual protein sources.

It was a slow holiday, taking four days’ worth of trains and coaches (landslides put paid to the Torino-Lyon train ride on the way home) to get to our destination, but it was a fantastic way to enjoy the scenery, catch up on reading and researching for a new work project, writing my journal and dreaming about training for next April’s London Marathon. Mostly, though, it was a last hurrah for self indulgence, boozing, swerving track sessions on a cold, wet night and finding excuses not to lift weights. (with a slight hiatus for Christmas, we’ll allow).

The weights thing is particularly urgent. I read the other day that a very high percentage of 70-year-old women cannot lift a 10kg weight above their head. And the rot starts years earlier, which is why I should be worrying now. It’s no good owning a heavy kettle bell, I need to work with it. This past week I made a start, walking long kilometres between stations and bus stops with a very heavy rucksack on my back (I vowed several years back never to own a wheelie suitcase : so far so tortoise-like). I also hefted said rucksack on to many an overhead luggage rack.

So much for holidays and resolutions. This week I have a cross country race on Saturday (my last date with mud was shelved owing to a bad cold), my first of the season. I have vowed to take part in Thursday training after work tomorrow (never a great prospect after leading a walking tour in town).

Winter training starts here.

Granning

Winter training starts with Kent AC

A birthday visit from the Berlin branch of the family kept the running to a minimum last week, so the last ten days’ of training is barely worth recording. However, two of my favourite memories of my grandsons’ first visit to the new homestead involved running. One is coming down in the early mornings to find the two of them playing with their dad’s 25-year old MicroMachines (do they even exist now?), informing them that I was popping out for a quick blast around stormy Blackheath, and that there would be Cocopops (not allowed at home) on my return.

The second was challenging eight-year-old Charlie Catford to a race to St James’s Palace from Admiralty Arch (and winning; I’m like that competitive parent from the Fast Show). They’d expressed a desire to see the Changing of the Guard, and as my job involves leading running and walking tours between the three palaces and two barracks involved in this bizarrely British manoeuvre, I was only too happy to oblige. Their parents’ relaxed holiday mode meant we didn’t have enough time to get from Charing Cross in time for the marching band without a bit of a sprint.

The rest of their stay was dominated by a lot of football in the rain, trick or treating in the rain, sheltering from the rain in the British Museum (the mummies disappointed five-year-old Jesse, who’d imagined they’d be upright and lumbering around trailing their grave wrappings, like Hallowe’en ones) and a huge, gloriously chaotic family gathering to celebrate birthdays, pumpkins, dressing-up, German visitors and other, newer, additions to the Haydon clan. Always a pleasure.

Now the house is quiet, the underfloor heating is taking a bit of getting used to, but it’s great for early-morning yoga stuff, as are the bi-fold doors, which I love to open energetically after the yoga stuff, to go outside to swing a kettle bell about.

Yup, now Day of the Dead is over it’s time for Daily Deadlifts. I have been advised countless times to start lifting to stop melting (ie combat the age-related sarcopenia, ‘muscle melting’) that starts worryingly young in the human body, and proceeds apace when you get to the grand old age of 61.

The 61st birthday sent me into a brief gloom, as I realised I hadn’t really fulfilled the V60 goals I made a year ago. April’s Brighton Marathon was a high point, but my weekly parkrun WAVA rating is not what I aimed for, having assumed 80% was a modest ambition. The last two Hillyfields parkruns completed since my last blog have yielded only 75% and 74% respectively. Still, as I am constantly reminded, I should be happy that running (no matter the pace) still feels easy and joyful. That is the most important ambition of all.

It’s obviously not healthy to obsess over age gradings, pacing, heart rates or all of the other data that ‘wearables’ now furnish us with, but now we have them, we’re using them to torture ourselves. My Garmin has died a sort of death and I am wondering whether to replace it. A friend has kindly lent me a FitBit Blaze, because I was moaning about not knowing what pace I was doing per mile for marathon training purposes. But do I really need to know? Surely I have practised marathon pace enough to know what it feels like, and, on race day, can stick to my chosen pacing group? I’m not sure I’m willing or able to trust my training programme to gut instinct, though.

This FitBit has revealed to me that I only manage 30minutes of deep sleep per night. I think I’d rather not know that, but it’s so tempting to check. I never wore the Garmin to bed because it was ginormous, and so slept in blissful ignorance of deep, light, REM modes. I was aware of being awake, though. Worrying about what the FitBit will track is keeping me awake, nowadays.

The jury’s out. I’ll wear the device for a few more days, and see how much my mate wants for it.

Yesterday marked a brief return to track, before heading off to Italy, where Rick is taking part in the International Lute Orchestra in Prato. Booking all the trains for this European Odyssey proved challenging, not least because the Italian rain has been as persistent as the more predicable precipitation that the English tolerate at this time of year, and landslides have washed some tracks away. There’ll be replacement coaches (BlaBlaCar Bus, who knew?) before the week is over. Watch this space.

Track was fun yesterday, thanks to Coach Ellie’s stimulating session, alternating eyeballs-out 400m speedwork with lower-body strength training. It was a great turnout of women (see the pic above), who will reconvene this coming Saturday for the second Surrey League Fixture of the season. I missed the first one, owing to the Great Eastern Half, so the pain is not fresh in the memory. It takes all the self-belief I can muster to face the inevitable struggle in the mud, being one of the slowest, and oldest, in the pack and, more trivially, not looking great in my kit like my younger team-mates. I comfort myself with the fact that I am a 61-year-old-woman running six miles in the mud and rain and receiving a big dose of lovely endorphins for my pain, and that that pain may or may not translate into lasting cardiovascular health into older age, but will indisputably make Saturday evening sweeter in the short term.