Dartford has been my happy place since joining Kent AC. It’s the scene of a pretty quick cross-country result in the glory years, when times kept tumbling and I was something of a poster girl for veteran athletes cocking a snook at Mistress Menopause (Where’s My Tartan Shopper, blogs Passim), and it made me cheerful last Saturday, too.
The Kent Veterans Cross Country race sees runners of a maturer category testing their legs around Dartford’s Central Park (rather less attractive than NYC’s version), organised into age-groups from 35 to 70. What tends to happen is that the youthful men and women in their thirties give it a swerve, and the super-fit veterans of 45 and over are down-aged into younger categories. So it was that I, aged 61, ran in the VW55 category, alongside 58-year-old Kate and Zoe, who usually runs with the VW65s. Between us, we earned enough points to claim the bronze-medal spot, which was cheering.
I was quite happy with my run. I’d rested the legs adequately the day before (and spent the evening feasting my eyes on my favourite celebrity vegan, Joaquin Phoenix, who even floats my boat in an absurd hat and portly belly as a petulant Napoleon). Catford being easily accessible on the train from Lewisham, I enjoyed a ‘soft’ morning with coffee, porridge, bananas and time enough to cast my eyes over Runners’ World and act on their top tip to add peppermint oil into my water bottle (greatly diluted, obviously.
Meeting team-mates on the train down, and all the camaraderie around warming up, fussing over footwear, cheering on the Men’s Veteran teams before our turn came, it’s all part of a great day out in the perishing cold, when the freezing air seems to scour your lungs, leaving you feeling centrally heated from the inside out, a feeling that lasts all the way into the evening and a well-deserved comfort dinner with a glass of beer.
The race was only 5k, but an event, and the following day’s Long Slow Run went ahead as normal, for about eight miles or so, and another communal breakfast with running mates. The text-book perfect marathon training weekend.
It’s quite normal for runners to begin their spring-marathon campaign when Christmas and New Year celebrations are finally tidied away and the media’s NYNY health campaigns are right up in our grills. For veterans, though, the longer you can spend stretching out the marathon training plan to fully balance hard efforts (whether that be long slow multiple miles or hard efforts on the hills and track) and the extra periods of rest, sleep and active recovery (and weight training) an older body needs, the better.
So I’m getting all my training ducks in a row before descending into the fairylit Christmas pit (which of course will include festive parkruns and long runs) and trying to keep the mulled wine consumption to a sensible level (I have a quite childish preference for mulled wine over actual wine, although possibly not in the summer).
One of those little ducks is osteopath Laura McCrave, whom I visited yesterday as part of a resolution to pace this training block sensibly. You’d have thought, that by the age of 61, and, to all intents and purposes semi retired, I’d be past the sort of haphazard marathon training I indulged in eight years ago: getting up at 5am to complete interval training, cycling 14 miles to and from work daily, taking on extra work necessitating burning the midnight oil…Reading my blog and diaries from those years I was determined, but not always happy, and my diet appallingly biscuit based.
This time my London Marathon training is going to be a kinder process. Going to an osteopath is a way of focusing on the care of my increasingly crooked spine, and, indeed the way my body hangs together.
As well as body care, my love affair with the world’s best marathon will be kindled over the coming months by some running clients, who are tackling the London for the first time and want tours over the route, with wisdom from this old timer approaching her seventh effort over the legendary course.
I’m hoping this will be the first of an unbroken run up to VW85.
Meanwhile, the week’s training:
Thursday 30 November: warmups, drills, strides and a few 400m repeats on frosty grass
Saturday 2 December: 5k cross country
Sunday 3 December: 7/8 miles LSR
Tuesday 5 December: warmups, drills and 5x600m on track.
Marathon Gran 