Good forage

Running besties on the hop (s)

Lon-done (sic) for another year, and this past four months’ training has been, for the large part, successful. Sunday’s race was hard work, and my plan to go under four hours was achieved by the skin of my teeth. 3:59.42.

Good for age entry for women older than 60 is 4:25, however, so my place for 2025, and the 45th London Marathon, is secured. Unless the powers that be level us up with the men, in which case I’m a hot mess.

The title refers to the conclusions that Google used to draw when I first consulted about the concept of Good For Age. A whole list of beekeeping advice, basically. However, now Google knows my obsession and launches straight into TCS London Marathon Good For Age times and Hugh Brasher’s statement in Runners World that the new range of super/cheat shoes have made everyone faster.

Except me. I find those Alphaflys, with their weird bicycle-helmet-pointy shape and platform soles supremely ugly. What is worse, as a slow runner of mature years, I am rather chary of looking ridiculous. The elite runners in my club, all of whom ran well under three hours last Sunday, look fine in them. They need those extra seconds for their Championship/Olympic qualifications.

Last Sunday, I enjoyed passing slow runners wearing clownlike shoes. When I finally finished, and chatted in the pub to my faster club mates, they advised getting over myself about wearing the carbon plated monstrosities. Wasn’t I a bit grumpy about running two minutes over my preferred time, they reasoned? Ergo, help myself out with some decent footwear.

We’ll see. Brooks Hyperion look quite attractive.

As for my race? It went reasonably well. I think. the four-banana strategy is a good one (one with breakfast, one in starting pen, one after three miles and one after 10 miles). From then on, it’s on to Voom carbohydrate bars/or (next time I would prefer) SIS gels, Lucozade in cups, a Lucozade gel (swallowed about a quarter of it) and plenty of water.

I’m cross that I didn’t bother to hunt in my zipped back pocket for the salt sticks, because the cramp in my hamstrings, calves, achilles, foot muscles and glut muscles started at 19 miles and had to be carefully handled from there on in.

I reckoned the muscles that helped me out the best were facial ones: I smiled and smiled. Determined not to have the sense-of-humour failure that ruined my Manchester marathon in 2022 (when I walked for two miles), I chuckled, gurned, chatted and acknowledged the huge, huge, loud crowds (the biggest and rowdiest ever). I high-fived all the children. I danced to the music.

My favourite bit was the stunningly uplifting Rainbow Row (Butcher Row, Limehouse) at mile 21. It was the best crowd ever, with a stage covered in talented drag queens giving it all that Cher. I wanted to stop and take a photo but had decided to leave phone in my bag because I didn’t want to be bothered with tech. The watch was a bit shit, telling me I was running 10-minute miles, which I patently wasn’t.

For the record: the food and fuelling was ok (pasta the night before, pea and rice risotto the night before the night before. Bagels and peanut butter frequently, beetroot bars and bananas; chocolate, overnight oats, fruit…). Guts behaved themselves, no portaloo stops. However, I felt drained of energy a lot of the time, and this has made me resolve to address vitamin and minerals levels.

What an extremely tedious paragraph that was (am reminded of a comment in one of my favourite books ever: Jill’s Gymkhana, when Jill describes a lovely picnic she shared at a horse show, and then comments that her author mother would put a line through such ramblings).

There’s method in my ramblings, though, as I use these blogs as a training manual, and try to replicate successful fuelling, and avoid those that resulted in digestive distress, as happened in both Berlin marathons (too many baked goods, I reckon).

Yesterday I checked my iron levels in the usual way, giving blood, and my vintage B- was accepted. Blood UK won’t accept you if they find your haemoglobin lacking. This means my running will be terrible for the next month, so I’ll only run for fun, if I run, in the next month.

I’ve signed up for the Big Half on September 1, so will break from the blog for six weeks or so until I start the training for that.

This final blog of this training block is dedicated with love and thanks to my Kent AC training partner, the super strong Sarah Young (pictured above, after waltzing round in 3:49), who keeps my positivity pilot light glowing, and ensures that MG (Marathon Gran) gets to run another year.

Bits of me keep hurting

It’s a bit naff to talk about one’s ‘marathon journey’, but I did have a bit of an excursion to pick up my number yesterday at the London Marathon Running Show. It started with an early trip on the DLR and Elizabeth Line to Heathrow, where 84 Dutch marathoners were disembarking and resting their powerful legs on a posh coach, all the way across town to Docklands and the ExCel, there to register their barcode, receive their numbers, pins and kit bags and have their senses assaulted by the hard sells of New Balance, Garmin, Voltarol et al.

I was their in-coach entertainment, riding shotgun next to the driver, microphone in hand, pointing out the sights and marathon-route landmarks along the way. I have a stash of facts, figures and anecdotes about the Greatest Show on Earth (for the London Marathon is indeed it), and threw in some good stuff about King Charles I’s demise outside Banqueting House, Big Ben being the name of the bell not the clock and so on. It is a lovely gig, and it’s great being in among a bunch of tall, strong, fit people who are excited about this Sunday as I am.

Once the Dutch were safely in the Running Show, hopefully not being seduced by the idea of box-fresh New Balances with event discount, I took my leave, bought a coffee and sat down to enjoy the speakers. I was hugely amused by a member of TCS London Marathon crew, who was a natural comedian, giving advice to first-time London Marathoners (how far the start is from Greenwich station, portaloos, bag stowage etc etc) and making me laugh out loud. Next up, the pneumatic Anita Bean:

…the most pertinently named sports nutritionist in the world. It was comforting to hear the familiar stuff about grams of carbohydrate per kilogram of bodyweight we need to consume to keep those glycogen stores topped up, etc. As images of oats, bagels, bananas and potatoes popped up on the screen behind her, I mentally checked off all the bland white carbohydrates sitting in my food cupboard.

Much of that starch has been packed away down my gullet; the pasta dish will be consumed in a couple of hours, and more bagels packed in my kit bag for a late, start-line top up in Greenwich.

In previous years I would come back from Excel stuffed with bits of Cliff bar and protein-rich Yorkshire flapjacks all free-to-grab from the stalls, but since the pandemic, no-one has been allowed to dip grubby fingers into freebie platters. The cost of putting on a huge event like this becomes annually more eye-watering, which is presumably why my kit bag contained just a number, a bag identification sticker and four safety pins. It used to be like a Santa sack, back in the good old days.

Now we are V60: the Good For Age cut-off is kinder, the advice is more familiar, the freebies non existent, but the nerves are as real as ever. I am bound to feel Pollyanna-ish on this optimistic day before, but I am just happy to get out there and enjoy the brightest day in my personal diary.

Bits of me that have hurt today: an imaginary blister, my eye, where I accidentally collided with my new lemon tree, my right knee for reasons unknown, my stomach from eating muesli too fast, my sore-base-of-foot lesion, which has hurt on and off since this time last year.

Here’s what I did this week:

Monday rest, hot yoga

Tuesday:6x Hillyfields Hill with J, S and B

Wednesday: rest; erecting a greenhouse

Thursday: carbo-bang run (quite hard to do the quick minutes within the easy running), which was about four miles in total, then hot yoga, then led a Medical Tour around Bloomsbury. Knackered.

Friday: Dutch Marathon Tour on coach, then cooking/eating with friend who has come to stay for marathon weekend

Saturday: volunteering at parkrun, coffee and toast, with running buddies, sitting, eating, behaving as calm as I can. Name on Vegan Runners vest. Best socks located.

See you on the other side.

Give me strength

A load of old Holkham

While in Norfolk last week, carb-loading in a beer-and-chips sort of way, I was vaguely aware of what was on my Vegan Runners spring marathon training schedule, but couldn’t really be arsed to do the sessions. It’s taper time, and the plan is really to prioritise sleep (how many times have I written ‘prioritise sleep’ in diaries, blogs and running features in my illustrious journalistic past?) and keep the legs turning over in a vaguely energetic fashion.

My Wednesday recovery run, for example, was replaced by a frankly far more gruelling slog around Cley-Next-the-Sea and Blakeney, culminating in several miles trudging on shingle to see the famous seals at Blakeney point. We saw one, seal-surfing on rough seas and teasing us by making as if to swim beachward, before diving under the surf again. The day before we’d come across a seal pup looking confused on a Cromer beach.

Hard to resist the urge to get close and even attempt an examination, but fortunately North Norfolk Wildlife Trust is wise to idiots like me thinking they’re Dr Doolittle, and there are clearly worded posters everywhere saying leave them beached pups alone. Apparently it’s likely the mother seal had left her baby there for a reason (just popping to the shops) and would take a dim view of finding my stinky human scent on her progeny.

I did manage one, slightly sulky, run (shaken out of bed at 5.30am by the old-man’s beer-induced snores) in the Norfolk drizzle, which cleared to a pearly grey sort of day: perfect for wandering around Holkham Hall and its magical walled garden. I took full advantage of the National Trust’s benevolent (some might say woke) attitude to vegans, and feasted on a no-sausage roll for elevenses, a butter-free pecan tart for lunch and a millionaire’s (reasonably well-off-but-no-second-home person’s?) shortbread to go with afternoon tea.

I am now fully into the swing of taper mode. I only want to eat rubbish (see above) when all the wisdom tells us to uptake protein levels and make wholesome balanced meals with many vegetables, fruits and whole grains. The Easter chocolate has all but disappeared into my gaping maw, even the rather nasty Nomo (Kinnerton) shouty vegan stuff (plenty of dark chocolate not labelled as vegan is vegan, I tiredly reiterate to the Easter Bunny….).But one shouldn’t look a gift bunny in the mouth.

The sugar overload has not sweetened my disposition. For some reason everything has been irritating me this past week. It didn’t help that I had a very depressing session at the gum specialist (not the GUM clinic, you understand), where I’d been referred by my dentist. My receeding gums are an accident of genetics, three pregnancies and menopause; nothing, I must stress, to do with poor dental hygiene. Or the unwonted sweet stuff I’ve been eating.

The taper is quite irritating, which is really counterintuitive. You’d think that scaling down the mileage would result in renewed vigour and lust for life, but I feel heavy legged and dull. Today is the Friday before my last pre-marathon parkrun. I’d hoped to run a season’s best at Hillyfields tomorrow (and this season has seen me struggle to go under 25mins on this course). This evening sees me perched on a stool with my laptop listening to a rather tedious selection on Radio 3 and worry about my right knee. It hurts quite a lot and is a little swollen. It particularly hurts when going downstairs. It has nine days in which to get better. Nine days’ wonder.

Training since last blogpost:

Wednesday: 13 mile walk on shingle. Exhausted

Thursday: Easy five miler, with some marathon paced checks

Friday: Rest, driving back from Norfolk. Big dinner and glass of wine with William brother in law

Saturday parkrun with squiffy guts (see above) 25:05, a bit of a struggle, clenching manfully. You need know no more

Sunday: delightful sunny long run of 20 miles, to Erith! And Beyond! Took lots of lovely pictures and felt pleased with self

Monday: rest: proper taperage now. Filthy mood

Tuesday: early morning hills with Jaqui and Sarah. Hard work

Wednesday: recovery run of 5/6 miles. Did not recover. Mood still negative

Thursday: abortive track session. Feel like shit

Friday: pilates, bad knee, furious maranoia

Knackered

Bring us sunshine

This was designated the highest mileage week of marathon training, cheerily ending with Easter Sunday and its customary feasting. The pasty-faced women in the picture are rejoicing the halfway point in a 22-mile Sunday long run in a rather subdued fashion. We’d been expecting Easter sunshine and lollipops and had been presented with heavy grey skies and a feeling of vague malaise, probably occasioned by the clocks going forward in a distinctly un-springy way and a sharp, biting wind whistling around Woolwich. When you’re exhausted and still have a dozen miles to run against the wind you wonder why you ever signed up for this in the first place.

As we slogged along the Thames Path Sarah and I reminisced about all the London Marathon highs and lows we’d been through together. Our highest point, both figuratively and literally, was when we attended a running weekend in the Scottish Highlands. We stayed in Balmoral, did our marathon training miles along forest paths and into the hills. The skies were bright blue, there was frost underfoot, we cooled tired muscles in the River Dee and felt ready for the Big Race in the Smoke. I scored a PB that year (3:43) and Sarah’s time was somewhere around the 3:30 mark if I remember rightly. Ah, happy days.

Much water under the bridge since then. We run together and support each other through the ups and downs, and dig out the joy from the deep exhaustion. Sunday was a case in point. I would have lapsed into a self-pitying walk somewhere around mile 17 if Sarah hadn’t been there.

I’ve also been suffering the first twitches of maranoia. That’s when you imagine the disasters that could scupper your chances of making the start line on 21 April. This year, the anxiety has been exacerbated by senior moments regarding whether I even entered the bloody race. I received my Good For Age invitation but did I pay the entry fee and secure my place? When I log into my profile on Let’s Do This, the race platform that is supposed to record a runner’s upcoming races, has no record of my application. Would that be why I haven’t received my exciting London Marathon magazine and instructions for the Big Day? I’ve checked my credit card statement and see I definitely paid Let’s Do This £69.99 on 28 November, so I must be entered….or am I?

Enough. The taper is coming. I’m feeling nicely stretched from Bikram Yoga and the fatigue of yesterday’s 22 miles is messing with my head.

The old man and I are off to Norfolk tomorrow morning, for a little Early Music Festival. I will relax and run some easy miles by the sea and be soothed by lute music. It’s April Fools Day, but there’s no need to behave like a paranoid nutter.

The Week’s Running:

Tuesday 27 March: track, 8x400m, bookended by three miles WU/WD

Wednesday, 28 March: six miles easy

Thursday 29 March: six miles with a few bursts of MP energy (what all be my marathon pace? Do I dare dream?)

Friday: Rest, St John Passion and home-made vegan hot cross buns. A Good Friday

Saturday: parkrun with a couple miles WU/D (rather slow 25:19, not sure why. Thought I was going quite quickly)

Sunday: Long, long, uncomfortable 22 miles.

I usually like this week to add up to 50miles. It hasn’t. Too late now.