Not looking so rosy

Disgusting of Tunbridge Wells

You don’t need your voice for running, but you do need it for delivering guided tours. That’s why I’m sitting at this laptop instead of standing under my umbrella holding forth about Dame Louisa Brandreth Aldritch Blake in Tavistock Square. The sitting and typing feels like a treat, but I’m awash with guilt as my poor husband has had to take up the slack and lead my tours as well as his own. He draws the line at the running ones, which is why I must retrieve this AWOL voice before Monday, when I have a private client who wants a mile-by-mile commentary on the London Marathon route. We’re running the first half (Greenwich Park to Heartbreak Highway) on Monday, and the second half (Heartbreak Highway to The Mall) next month. She’s not doing anything by half when it comes to mental preparation. Except the physical preparation, if you see what I mean.

My London Marathon preparation is also a bit half cocked. Thanks to my running the Tunbridge Wells Half marathon last Sunday, I am now both ahead of the Training Tilt/Vegan Runners training schedule and behind on weekly mileage. The official schedule states that we should be doing a ‘Half Marathon Dress rehearsal’ this coming Sunday, with just a few strides this Saturday. Instead I’m planning to do a fast, flat 5k in Poole on Saturday and a short slow run on Sunday.

We will see how all that goes. In the meantime I need to sum up the week just past. Two weeks on from my initial malady, I’m still suffering from sore throat, cough and aches and pains. It’s highly likely that my failure to rest properly has dragged this whole sorry episode out for far longer than necessary.

Last Friday I rested voice and legs. My volunteering stint at Hillyfields parkrun, supposedly saving legs for the Tunbridge Wells Half on Sunday, turned out to be a little more energetic than I’d hoped, as I was a tail walker, so that was three miles (with a couple more there and back). Then I had the walk to the hotel in Kent, all the while fretting ceaselessly about whether I should be running the next day’s race. In the rain.

Things went better than I dared hope. A few ibuprofen down, and a simple dinner and glass of wine in the Hand & Sceptre, Southborough, settled me for a decent night’s sleep. I was sharing with a club mate of my age, and we chatted (well, I squeaked raspily) about Veterans’ Issues and buoyed each other in the tragic, stormy seas of PBs long gone. She told me the story of qualifying for, and running in, the historic Boston Marathon, when the rain came down in buckets and she nearly passed out from hypothermia in an icy portaloo (porta-potty to our American friends). She still finished in a really good time. We went through our pre-race rituals companionably the next morning, and strode through the rain to the race HQ in the local sports centre, thanking our lucky stars for the shelter.

The race itself was a delightful, if hilly, exploration of the pretty villages in the neighbourhood. There were drum bands and cheerful Kentish families lining the route. I sensibly stopped at every water station to wet my whistle, sucked a few throat lozenges and tried to keep my mouth shut as far as possible when running reasonably briskly for 13.1 miles.

I felt ok, finishing more confidently than I’d started, with a time of 1:54, which I’d have been disappointed with in a healthier state (I’d been hoping for sub 1:50). I took a selfie at the end, but forgot to take any other photos, so have attempted to flatter a really god-awful image by going moody monochrome.

The lurgy continues to compromise my training, however, and as for choir practice, I’m nowhere with that and on March 16, I am supposed to be taking part in my first choral adventure since I was in school uniform.

A light recovery run was achieved on Tuesday, a longer, tour-reccing run was endured yesterday, and today I sat here, contemplating Hogarth and eighteenth-century London for a walking tour while trying not to be distracted by my training schedule and the fact that March is next week and I’d intended to reach a weekly mileage peak of 50 miles before April heaves in sight.

No need to panic quite yet, but if the next blog sees me still hitting the ibuprofen I shall have to start running around with my apron over my head.

Friday 16 Feb: rest

Saturday 17 : rest, walking

Sunday: half marathon (1:54)

Monday: rest, Bikram yoga

Tuesday: 3-mile shuffle

Wednesday: 9-mile shuffle

Thursday: rest

Friday 23 February, I predict a rest.

Adventures on trains

Soaked, knackered, late, slow…but at least I showed up

Very little goes according to plan, as any marathon hopeful whose fridge magnets hold up a seemingly achievable marathon training schedule can tell you…it only takes a bit of real life to knock you out of kilter.

This is the second week in a row when just getting out for a run has been an epic mental struggle; the mileage and pace have both been below par (and the weather, incidentally, has been wet and unpleasantly, muckily warm for each outing). Since The Nasty Cold of last week I’ve struggled with aches and pains. In short, I feel my age.

Meanwhile my team-mate Clare Elms, on turning 60, has taken more than 10 seconds off the World W60 indoor mile record with 5:30.89. Watching the race video posted by Athletics Weekly I am, once again, overawed by her strength, agility and speed. When I interviewed Clare for The Guardian Running Blog years ago, my editor said, ‘has she got a portrait in the attic, or what?’ The woman is a phenomenon, and very pleasant and humble, too, I might add.

Still, there’s no point my wishing for the moon on a stick. I have working limbs, a big heart and a place in the London Marathon, and I try my hardest with those gifts. Here endeth the Pollyanna bit. It’s up to me to improve my diet, sleep and training regimes and feel better about my own running.

A generally post-viral state of health was not improved by my European Sleeper odyssey to see the grandsons in Berlin last Friday. The journey out was pleasant enough, the Eurostar was punctual, giving me time to locate the European Sleeper and my berth. It was very exciting once again to board a sleeper train for Berlin. I’d missed the Paris Est–Berlin that was abolished about a decade ago (I’m nostalgic because I travelled by night train to run the Berlin Marathon and earn my first sub-4 time – 3:57! Yay! – in 2013). European Sleeper’s 2024 rolling stock is adorably old (I concluded, benignly, on Friday night, while supping my special European Sleeper branded Weissbier). I was charmed by the sight of the track zipping along beneath me through a strange hole in the lavatory floor. For the first few hours I was in splendid isolation in the six-berth compartment, but I was joined by three Dutch people in Amsterdam. They were quiet as mice, however, and didn’t disturb me much.

On arrival in Berlin at 7am I lodged my rucksack in a luggage locker, drank a coffee, ate a banana, then jogged the six kilometres or so to Hasenheide parkrun in Berlin’s trendy Neukoln. I fact I got a bit lost and was late for the start, so had to chase down the runners disappearing over the hill. This was exhausting, and my time was predictably disappointing (26:13). I jogged back to Berlin Hauptbahnhoft, reclaimed my rucksack and took a train to the Gesundbrunnen flat, where I found grandson Number Eins Charlie Catford alone and palely loitering, vaguely poorly with a bronchial cough (his mum and brother had nipped out on a Fasching errand). Fasching is the German carnival marking the exorcism of winter, and involves much dressing up and overeating. Both children, in fact, were poorly, young Jesse, equally pale, had an upset stomach.

So the rest of the weekend was spent playing with, and reading to, feverish and spluttering children, before catching the night train Sunday night. This train was less adorable. I was in a compartment with five other people, including two snoring Belgians. Worse was to come. The train broke down in the middle of Holland, and we had to be rescued by coaches. I missed my Eurostar and had to pay 75 quid for a ticket change.

A good night’s sleep back home in Lewisham proved a wonderful antidote for my sense-of-humour failure, and I enjoyed my track session on Tuesday evening (a 30-minute time trial was on the agenda, which went reasonably well).

By Tuesday, however, the grandson’s lurgy had transferred itself to me, in the form of a temperature and a ticklish throat. I jogged my morning recovery run, stretched myself at Forrest Yoga and took paracetamol before our evening’s dinner date and the much-feted musical Standing At The Sky’s Edge, which was sentimental, but enjoyable.

On Thursday I had to work, but the lurgy seemed to be turning laryngeal, and I literally squeaked my way round the London Walks Medical Tour I lead every Thursday (2.30pm, Russell Square tube if you’d like to come along). No running.

It’s Friday. I can’t speak, voice totally gone. I’m worried about a very gruelling half marathon I have booked for Sunday.

An obvious occupational hazard of being a Marathon Gran is that close proximity to virus-ridden little children, snoring Belgians on trans-Europe rolling stock and the endlessly demanding training schedule can have serious effects on a mature immune system. Perhaps an early night and a hot toddy will work some magic.

Thursday 8 February: one hour easy (6 miles)

Friday 9 February: travel day

Saturday 10 February: Hasenheide parkrun bookended by about 7 miles WU/WD

Sunday 11 February: A rainy walk with the family in Burger Park, Berlin, a bit of football

Monday 12 February: travel day

Tuesday 13 February: Time trial (30 mins strong running), bookended by 2m WU/WD

Wednesday 14 February: 1 hour easy Blackheath, Greenwich, Deptford and home

Thursday: running aborted, Walking Tour took its toll

Friday: Pilates and self pity

This suburban Everest

Ready, steady…always tricky to time the picture mid jump

It’s stretching the point a bit to say that on occasion I am a professional athlete, but tour guiding on the run is part of my portfolio career. So it was on Sunday, when I led a merry band of Secret London Runs clients on an 11-mile appreciation of the London Marathon.

The third Sunday in April has been my favourite day in the calendar for about twenty years. From my first experience of this glorious city festival back in 2005, as a volunteer water bottle distributor in Deptford, to last year’s volunteering gig in the elites enclosure, where I watched Sifan Hassan (who went on to be first woman) and Mo Farah (a disappointing tenth place his swansong) warming up nervously, my love for this marathon has grown. It’ll probably be the only 26.2 I’ll do every year until I become too slow to earn a place.

‘The great suburban Everest’ is the description the late Chris Brasher, who with his running pal John Disley founded the London Marathon in 1981, gave his new road race, which went on to attract 578,000 applications in the ballot (that’s the record-breaking number who put their names in the ballot this year, about 49,000 will line up in Greenwich Park and Blackheath on 21 April 2024). Running it is a massive challenge, as well as a joy and a privilege.

I try to prepare my clients for the atmosphere at the start, along the route and, most thrillingly, that last massive effort on The Mall. On the training run, I cut out massive loops of Rotherhithe, Docklands and the suburban longueurs of Woolwich, trotting from Greenwich Park too Cutty Sark, through Deptford and Southwark Park, across Tower Bridge and the halfway point on Heartbreak Highway, down to The Tower and Lower Thames Street, Victoria Embankment, turning right to Birdcage Walk, St James’s Park and The Mall. On Sunday I doled out Percy Pigs for energy, while talking about fuelling, pacing, Marathon heroes, including Paula Radcliffe and Eliud Kipchoge, The Wall, the Everpresents (the 45 men that became famous for running every single London Marathon from 1981 to the 2000s, although now only seven remain), and the Turbanned Tornado, Fauja Singh, who ran the race aged 100 (he’s retired from running now, but is still with us, aged 112).

All Sunday’s London Marathon talk rekindled my appetite for the training and nutrition plan I vowed to follow faithfully for 16 weeks. Unfortunate, therefore, that by lunch-time on Sunday I was feeling more than just knackered from the day’s running tour and the good -ish Hillyfields parkrun time the day before (24.45, the best on this course for more than a year)…I was, as they say, coming down with something. A big old sneezy, drippy, shivery cold, as it turned out.

Tuesday’s training was an abortive slow 50-minute run, rather than a good speed session on the track. I drove down to Alice Holt Forest, near my sister’s house, for this morning’s hour-long recovery run, but I still feel pretty ropey, because the blocked nose is preventing sleep.

Tomorrow’s easy run may be swerved if I still feel grim, but will listen to this poor old beleaguered body. On Friday I’ll be boarding a Eurostar and the new European Sleeper train to Berlin, to do a spot of babysitting. It will be a new experience to pass on my sniffles to my grandsons, rather the other way round.

Thursday 1 February: one hour easy (6 miles)

Friday 2 February: rest

Saturday 3 February: Hillfields parkrun bookended by 2 miles WU/WD

Sunday 4 February: Magic of the London Marathon Tour (very slow, with many breaks) plus added miles (14miles)

Monday: rest, Bikram yoga

Tuesday: 1hour ish walk run (6miles)

Wednesday: 1 hour easy in Alice Holt Forest (5.5miles)