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.

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

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