Among goddesses

The goddess, Louise Dumas, is on the left, ignore the gurner on the right

It’s amusing to think that while I was grouchily sliding around Southwater Country Park in Sussex, willing the sports watch to reach that magic 21-mile invitation to Just Stop Running, Jasmin Paris was making history.

Ms Paris, an ultrarunner of some repute, became the first woman ever to finish the Barkley Marathons (this is a gnarly, 100-mile vertical race that involves some quite weird rules and most competitors, if they’re allowed to enter, don’t finish). Jasmin Paris did it, the footage of her running to collapsing point at the finish is heartbreaking. She’s now on a gruelling treadmill of media interviews; the mainstream press having realised that something special has been achieved owing to the sports media practically frothing at the mouth.

Also, while I was moodily eating an overripe banana and looking up my inevitably disappointing result email from Horsham parkrun, my club mate Clare Elms was once again picking up golds in an internationally athletic way. As Athletics Weekly puts it

‘Clare Elms led the way for Great Britiain at the recent Euro Masters Indoor Champs in Torun. She won an incredible five gold medals over the 800m, 1500m, 3000m, and cleaned individual and team XC medals.’

Still, I did my parkrun in the mud, having risen at six to make it to the startline. I then had to run further 18 miles around the Sussex countryside in order to make up the mileage (I suspected that I would not do them the following morning after the evening’s celebrations, and I was right).

This parkrun has been in my sights for a while, since meeting another goddess at a German Society event in Horsham (you should try them. Wild). She is the beautiful Louise Dumas, who was introduced to me as a fellow mature runner. She was marshalling at parkrun on Saturday, as she had a 10k race the following day. She’s also fascinating to me because she’s relatively newly married, and I was in Sussex for my 65-year-old-sister’s hen weekend. Louise had been widowed but met her current husband in her seventies. I love this. Not that there’s anything wrong with having just the one husband for decades and decades…will stop now.

On to the Park House Hotel, Midhurst, where I and eleven other goddess-like women (the youngest was in her thirties, the eldest is seventy next year), lived like queens for 24 hours or so: eating, drinking a lot of Champagne, making full use of pool, sauna, steam room and fluffy dressing gowns.

It was a bit of a blow out, and my system took another 24-hours to recover from the alcohol onslaught. In fact I felt so rough on Sunday I have vowed not to touch another drop of alcohol until 1pm on 21 April (London Marathon Day).

The running week in full:

Tuesday 19 March: track, 2×800, 8x300m, with a couple of miles easy running either side

Wednesday 20 March: recovery run of six miles

Thursday: no running, as felt some tightness in the knee and was worried about Saturday’s demands

Friday: rest n pilates

Saturday: Horsham parkrun (25:50, but very slow starting to small paths), followed by 18 miles of Sussex beauty, the Downslink and the muddy country park).

Sunday: hangover recovery

Monday: recovery and Bikram yoga

Counting up from 20

Seven ages of man totem, where existential angst overwhelms me…

Experienced marathon runners like to terrify first timers by muttering darkly about the race ‘starting at mile 20’. This isn’t overly helpful, when most beginner marathon plans peg the longest long slow training run at 20 miles.

For me, March’s five weekends mean that the long runs go from 18, to 20, 21,22 and down to 20 again, before the taper. Ideally. However work commitments and family stuff, most notably my older sister coming to stay, the other one getting married for the third time in April, and having a lavish hen do next weekend, has thrown out my timetable and seen me running at odd times in between events.

The past fortnight, while I’ve been going off piste, and once or twice getting pissed, there’s been the odd hiatus, but two useful track sessions and a couple of good-mileage outings. The first was an 18-miler in deluging rain (it’s official, this past year has been the wettest in 135 years, and the weather rolling in from the Atlantic hasn’t finished soaking us yet). I was running with Best Running Buddy Sarah, up to town by way of Burgess Park, ending up with second breakfast here in Lewisham.

This past weekend my sister was staying, as Rick and I had a choir concert (during which I mimed, having been struck down with another bout of laryngitis) so there was no weekend running. I did however manage 20 miles out to Woolwich along the river and back on Friday.

The picture, by the way, is my new meditative place, near Blackfriars, Richard Kindersley’s tribute to Shakespeare’s All the World’s a Stage speech, feminised in my head: starring the mewling puker, the reluctant schoolgirl snail, the burning lovelorn student, the battle axe journalist, the wise editor and poet , the lean and slippered middle aged marathon runner and the toothless old crone, enjoying her second babyhood, at the top.

So since I last recorded here I’ve managed:

Sunday 10 March 18 miles with Sarah

Monday 11 March 11 miles with first-time-marathon client, sussing out the second half of the London Marathon route

Tuesday 12 March TRACK pyramid session 400, 600, 800, 1000, 800, 600, 400 with 2 miles WU/WD either side

Wednesday 6miles recovery run

Thursday: rest (led Medical Tour with clients)

Friday 15 March long slow 20 miler, which went well.

On track tomorrow, and generally, if I can just lose the fatigue and regain my voice.

Half-marathon grand day out

Gallopers turned out in the Paddock again

This time last year, reporting on the Paddock Wood Half Marathon (full name: Lambert & Foster Half Marathon, which my ex-smoker’s brain insists on calling Lambert & Butler, the name on the first pack of cigarettes I ever bought, age 15, with two school friends. We made it our task, that Saturday night long ago, to smoke a minimum of six each from the magical silver pack), I was reasonably sanguine about my achievement at this stage of the marathon training game.

This year I was four minutes faster, with more weeks of training time to go before my Big Race. I am daring myself to feel a little confident. My time of 1:48 is reasonably good for a woman of 61, but for this Marathon Gran, it represents a big leap forward. Although all my PBs across all distances occurred in 2015, when I was 53, this is the first time since the injury challenges of 2017/18, that I have managed sub 1:50 in the half marathon. I’m pleased.

The rest of the week was a battle of mind and training plan over protesting body. I drooped about Monday, feeling wrung out, went as a snail to track on Tuesday, jogged confusedly round Wapping, Docklands and the Isle of Dogs for a London Marathon client on Wednesday and hauled myself out for Thursday hill training (I managed half the session). Friday saw more drooping and pilates; today was Hillyfields parkrun, which I thought I run quite fast…..

That training in full

Monday 4 March walking tour for London Walks Clients, Hot Yoga, 90 minutes: felt like Stretch Armstrong after the half-marathon DOMS

Tuesday 5 March: 6×600 at 5k pace, with 200 recoveries.Hard but beneficial

Wednesday: 12-mile recce run. In which I had to swerve into Canary Wharf Waitrose to buy sandwiches, banana and smoothie to stop me keeling over

Thursday: Hot yoga am, walking tour for London Walks clients in the afternoon, dynamic, drills and hills in the evening. Never have I been so glad to go to bed with full stomach and good book (Shadowland by Joseph O’Connor)

Friday: Pilates with the always positive Alex Tinney, who despite being radiantly pregnant makes me feel like a heffalump.

Today, Saturday 9 March, Hillyfields parkrun in 25:12. What? Could have sworn it was fastest this year…I am delusional with fatigue.

Sarah wants to do 18 miles tomorrow. Next week is all about the LSRs, having been inspired by the also radiant ultra runner Zuzana Nemeckova, whose talk in Greenwich on Wednesday was very well attended.

Dress rehearsals

Always a pleasure,  Poole

Where were all the other veteran women, last Saturday? Down by the seaside, at Poole parkrun, this one managed to trot in as first V60 (30th woman) out of 816 runners. I ran a modest 24:38, which is not fantastic for this fast, flat run. I am usually trumped by at least two other impressively speedy mature women. Still, I’ll take that.

The Saturday run was bookended by long, slow miles, as has often been the case in this marathon training block, as my plans have been scuppered by events banging into each other and the ideal of the long, marathon-style Sunday run, with its careful early breakfast and what the running media call ‘fuelling strategy’ fades into the middle distance. I’d imagined that if I could just protect the March Sundays for my proper long runs, all would be well, but this new month (coming in like a lion, if a slightly bedraggled one) looks to be as busy as the last.

March is considered Monster Month in marathon running circles, when the weekly mileage goes up to peak distance before the (in my case) longed-for taper down the other side. I may be forced to do some monstrous long runs to set my mind at rest, at odd times of the day and week. It’s reasonably challenging, but not impossible, and as the laryngeal lurgy of last month seems to have abated at long last, there is no reason to hold back on the distance, speed and hill training regime, so long as the sleeping and eating is equally prioritised.

This past week has seen five running sessions completed, some more enjoyable than others.

Sunday was a day off, owing to travel and work, but Monday’s outing was a fun one: one of my Secret London Runs clients, usually a trail runner and wild swimmer, had been awarded a place in the London Marathon by the charity she raises funds for, so needed some long tarmacadam miles along The Actual Route. On a blustery Monday morning, with the traffic relentless on the Woolwich Road, we jogged the first half, with me urging my companion to visualise this urban hell cleared of traffic, lined with wellwishers and enhanced by a continuous, bright blue line, which denotes the most efficient route over the 26.2 miles. The organisers go out in the small hours on Marathon Eve to paint it on the road. It is everyone’s best friend and seasoned old hacks like me stick to it with some determination; after all, nobody wants run even a single yard further than they need to.

After Monday”s fun run, it was track on Tuesday with tired legs. A group of us did the session while fretting gently to each other about the Paddock Wood half marathon this coming Sunday. Maybe it was me fretting hardest. After the slightly slower-than-hoped time in Tunbridge Wells, owing to the previous week’s malady, I feel I need to do better on this one. It would be great to be a few minutes closer to my PB (all right, it was seven years ago, so that’ll never be repeated, but a 1:48 would be fine).

Wednesday and Thursday were solitary, rainy, unpleasantly achey ‘easy’ runs. Toiling up to Blackheath on jelly legs, I tested my new trainers, wondering why the transition from one comfortable, old, worn pair to a new, identical ones in a pleasing sky-blue (in fact the old ones, in iron grey, were more representative of current skies) would prove so unyielding in the sole department. Thursday afternoon’s work was a pleasant stroll around Bloomsbury, singing praises to the likes of Jeremy Bentham and Alice Ball. Sometimes my job is much more fun than the loneliness of the long-distance runner.

Monday 26 February

Tuesday 27 February 6x400m speedier, 2miles wu/wd

Wednesday: 45 min easy run/walk

Thursday: 45 min easy, with a mile or two practising marathon pace

Friday: REST