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)

Dozy, beachy, peaky, quick and stitch

Edges and skies

Skies and edges

Titles for this not-quite-weekly blogs usually hit me during a run, which is only right, because the words form easily during my weekly miles, but getting them on to the screen is far more torturous. The words above pretty well sum up the two weeks’ of running I’ve failed to record since my last post, though: Excessive weariness from running five times a week (transitioning from a four-run regime to a five has taken its toll); a Dorset beach run that took place in blue, crisp weather ; 24hours in the Peak District to stand at Sky’s Edge; a faster (flatter) parkrun; heartburn more than stitch, both in the digestive sense of the word and the Nora Ephron sense.

The seaside run was the Thursday workout, described on my Training Tilt Vegan Runners plan as ‘one-hour easy’. However, Thursdays with Kent AC coach usually requires some sort of tempo efforts, so I practised marathon pace. I am going to play safe and stick to 8:55-minute miles for the marathon. I would hope to sustain that on 21 April. It would result in a 3:53 time, so 6 minutes faster than Brighton last year and a full ten minutes faster than my PB (at age 53). I think that allows for the age difference with some generosity. You get roughly a minute slower with each passing year, I reckon.

Poole was so beautiful. I watched kingfishers dip and dive, and egrets pace delicately at the waters’ edge near the harbour. My sister and I had a jolly time catching up.

That weekend, my Hillyfields parkrun had improved (25:12), but my Sunday long run was lumbering and effortful, which I put down to alcohol and late nights. Worrying about my daughter, ill and unhappy in Taipei, was the preoccupation over the weekend. The sooner she’s in Europe and I can help in a more practical way, the better.

Worse was to come in the afternoon, which was given over to a very pushy salesman of solar panels. I’d telephoned a helpline (Government Approved!) about funding for greener, cleaner power to my homestead, and ended up drinking tea to an increasing Hard Sell. By the end of the ‘chat’ we were being urged to sign up to a non-refundable deposit for 14 thousand pounds’ worth of panels and piping and bird barriers and batteries. There was no possibility of funding. Rather than filling us with planet-saving smugness we felt bamboozled and none the wiser.

The episode sums up the conflict between my individual desire to be a better person and the uncomfortable possibility that my impulses may make life difficult not just for me, but for Rick. I end up feeling trapped and cowardly.

Sometimes I think I may set out on a run and not come back for a few days. We grow tentative as we grow old.

Existential fretting aside, I stuck to the training plan for the following week, but mixed things up a bit at the weekend, by combining a never-before-sampled London parkrun with the weekly long run: 16 miles comprising a five-mile warm up, a Thames Path parkrun and a further eight miles easy all the way home. The Thames Path is a relatively new parkrun, and it’s fun to run, the high point being the twirly-whirly path up to a Woolwich viewpoint I’d never visited before, followed by a quick twirl down. Other than that it’s flat and free of mud, so I managed my quickest time this winter (24.12).

Street art proving useful at Woolwich

Peaky refers to the following weekend’s trip to the Peak District. Rick had booked a hotel and dinner in Sheffield, where I lived as an undergraduate 1981-1984, for a Christmas present. It is a two-stage present, as one of our missions is to see the musical inspired by the flats in the second picture at the top of this page (Standing At the Sky’s Edge), which I barely registered as an undergraduate. My knowledge and memory of Sheffield City is shamefully hazy, as we found out over the weekend. I was able to locate The Leadmill, where I saw many gigs, and the arts tower, but the rest of the city seemed unrecognisable. We took a bus out to the Hathersage area and walked 15 miles back on the Sunday. I was extremely achey after a 31-mile weekend. All grist t’t’mill.

To Tuesday track night, and 8x500m repeats, followed by a six-mile recovery run this morning and the prospect of another early-morning six miler tomorrow morning. My legs feel as heavy those holding up the hi-viz in the parkrun picture.

Mudlarks

One of us went above and beyond…

Another wintry Saturday, another cross country, this time on Wimbledon Common. It felt good to get out of central London for the first time since the Boxing Day walk: the far reaches of the city’s south west felt like the countryside. This was a race I’d been looking forward to for a while, as I have fond memories of running the course many years ago, one snowy Saturday in December. Afterwards, we’d repaired to the pub for mulled beverages and mince pies, and all felt right with the world.

Wimbledon didn’t disappoint on 13 January 2024, either. The course took us round the pond, through woods, across greensward and through lots and lots of mud, jumping over logs and even a small stream along the way. As you can see from the picture, my esteemed running buddy performed a spectacular full-body plant in the muddiest, slippiest section. She urged me to run on while she wallowed brokenly, but I finished the last mile worrying about her bloodied kneecaps. Fortunately she limped through not long after I finished, but it wasn’t the way I’d planned to get ahead of her (our friendly rivalry is still going strong after a decade).

I cannot overstate the joy at the end of a gruelling five miler, those endorphins whizzing through the system, rejuvenating your tired old body and flooding you with such love for all your teammates that you even beam bad-toothily in the pictures (I am a self-conscious closed-mouth smiler, as was my dentally challenged mother before me). Who cares what I look like? I’m a Warrior Woman, as my friend Susanna, who took the photo above, captioned her WhatsApp. She’s also called me an inspiration, which I’ll take. What’s the point of being a 61-year-old cross-country runner, that rare breed, if you’re not inspiring younger women?

The race was a Surrey League fixture, which meant that all age groups took part so older stateswomen like me don’t really get a look in when it comes to placings and prizes. There are elite veteran women, such as the wonderful Claire Elms (a year younger than me and 5000m international champion in her age group), who measure up against the faster, younger ones, but the rest of us veterans bring up the rear, really.

Which is why it would have been great to take part in the veterans Cross Country champs in Wales, in March. However, we can only raise three women in the club’s V55 category who can represent, and one of them is less than keen, so it seems a lot of faff for not much reward. Maybe next year.

The picture at the end is this morning’s run. I’m missing track today as have to go to a lecture, so I rose early, met Sarah-of-the-broken-knees (still feeling sore) and Jaqui and attempted half a dozen hill repeats as the sun rose fierily and the sky turned icy blue. It was so cold. My face froze and I found I couldn’t move my lips, slurring comically when I tried to converse with my friends. It was worth it though, if only because I’m sitting here in the warm typing this mid afternoon, without the prospect of squeezing myself into a tight (still carrying that timber) sports bra in order to skate along to the track for brutal 400m repeats at 7pm.

Interestingly, on the subject of restrictive breast wrangling, Shortcuts on Radio 4 just now featured a young transgender man who states they have to raise £10k for gender re-alignment surgery, or wait seven years for the NHS to take on the surgery. My sports bra is as restricting as their breast bindings, I reckon, because I cannot abide the tiniest bit of wobble when I run. I often moan that running would be a damn sight easier if my chest was free of all this pointless fatty tissue, causing shocked scolding among my friends, who are proud of their bosoms. The best thing about winter, though, is that you can run in warm layers, hide any wobble and forget the possibility of sweat causing bra chafe. I’m in no hurry for the sun to burn hotter, and have already planned to avoid all race events this coming summer. I think last June’s North Downs Run in searing heat has really scarred me, and my right breast.

Last week’s running

Thursday: drills, dynamics, strides and one hour easy

Friday pilates

Saturday 5 miles cross country

Sunday 7 miles slow

Tuesday 5 miles (2m warm up/down and 3m hilly fields efforts)

Wed (tomorrow) 1 hour….I hope

Layers safely covering

Brands Hatch

Big Bobble has brewer’s droop in this pic

The irony of running cross country rather lumberingly in a muddy field adjacent to a race track where racers tend to move rather more quickly has not escaped me. As is often the case on these Saturday-afternoon torture sessions, I fantasised about jet-packs helping me up the hills: perhaps e-trainers for the middle aged, in the same way that many people in my age group have resorted to electric bicycles that assist on the long climbs.

However, the footwear of choice was, as usual, slightly heavy and unyielding trail shoes, which became yet weightier after a few immersions in thick mud, where the men’s spikes had churned up the racecourse before the women had placed a dainty foot thereon. The distance of the race: three laps of some unprepossessing suburban fields was eight kilometres. It felt longer, but so good when it was finally over and we’d wrapped up warm again and arranged ourselves for the photo opportunity. The fact that I’d not had time to don thermal trousers, fleece, padded coat etc, and only a few seconds to jam my big bobble hat onto the back of my head at an odd rakish angle, speaks volumes as to how late I was to the finish line party.

Either side of this main running event, the Vegan Runners UK/Rooted in Dirt training plan was slavishly followed. The one-hour tempo run that should have taken place on Thursday evening was undertaken on Friday morning, owing to work fatigue and biblical rain.

I can see the Thursday workout is going to be a problem. I want to fit in morning Bikram yoga, my work as a London walking tour guide and the evening track workout without keeling over at some point. Challenging.

The long Sunday run was supposed to be 75 minutes, which wasn’t so bad, and I fitted in about nine miles before repairing to the coffee shop with my running buddies to plan a June running break in the Isle of Skye.

The Skye trip, an imminent Dorset break, Sheffield at the end of the month and Berlin in February has necessitated an enormous train-related splurge on the credit card, which has frayed my nerves somewhat. I need to drum up more work, so will also commit to sitting at this laptop for longer while resting my legs and using my brain to write a new tour that I hope London Walks will accept.

At 61, I’ve accepted that I can describe myself as semi-retired without raising too many eyebrows, but I still find the ‘R’ word somewhat shaming, as I won’t be in receipt of my state pension for another six years. Living off the last of the money my aunt left me in 2018, my meagre income from part-time work and my husband’s income until then will be difficult, not least for my self esteem.

Next week’s tasks will involve an attempt at achieving a work/life balance.

running this week:

Thursday tempo, commuted to Friday am: 5 miles

Saturday Cross country 4:5 miles

Sunday: 9 mile LSR

Tuesday track 5x800m plans 2 miles warmup/down

Wednesday easy run: 4 miles

Full tilt

A pair of gorgeous, pouting V60 Christmas elves

The first blog of 2024, and there is a sackful of stuff to unpack in it. As usual, the temptation to go all hung-ho and promise strict adherence to an austere training and clean-eating schedule until 21 April needs to be tamped down a little. There’s no point being unrealistic: if a person hasn’t had the discipline to refuse second mince pies and large wedges of marzipanned Christmas cake on 1 January, why would she stick to broccoli, tofu and ashwaganda (the three essentials in a vegan diet, apparently) on 2 January?

So, it’s a question of easing into jolly January with an indulgent nod towards leftover marzipan and mincemeat (delicious in porridge). After all, the training schedule requires extra calories, and a bit of extra chocolate and the odd macaroon (thank you Father Christmas) will not have a disastrous effect on race times.

I’ve managed one day of paid work over the two-week break (a private walking tour followed by a group tour last Thursday), which I found quite exhausting, but otherwise it’s been a long round of hosting, feasting, drinking, late nights, singing, telly slumping and subsequent bloating. This last been alleviated by several mugs of mint tea over the past 24 hours, and last night’s time trial on the track.

It was the Training Tilt Time Trial. Overseen by a coaching outfit called Rooted in Dirt. I answered an email from Vegan Runners UK, which invited my to out my name in the hat for a place on a Spring-Marathon-specific online training platform. More than 70 athletic vegans entered the ballot, and 20 people, including me, were lucky enough to be selected.

Accepting my place has necessitated joining Strava (anathema to me, apologies for all those who have followed me and received a deafening silence in return). I engage with Strava as little as possible, but I’m obliged to link it to my Training Tilt profile. Last night’s time trial (30minutes at 5-10k pace) took place on the track, while my team mates did the session and whooped at me every time I completed another 400m. It was quite interesting; my pace was steady, but definitely my slower 10k pace.

This morning I had to follow last night’s effort with a 30-min recovery run. I jogged up to The Point in Blackheath, a London look-out that I’d had no idea existed until my son came home from the Caribbean and suggested we go there for our rainy Christmas Day walk.

Hillyfields parkrun was also jogged, as I was keeping son’s girlfriend, who’d never done one before, company. I was easygoing, as I’d put in a bit of effort the Saturday before, my 250th although still failed to run under 25minutes. Blame the mulled wine. Parkrun was also ticked off on the Saturday after Christmas, and I volunteered on New Years Day. A couple of long, slow Sunday runs were also achieved, so I approach this new training programme with a decent level of base training under my belt.

The biggest test for a while will be Saturday, and the Kent County cross country at Brands Hatch. It is a particularly brutal way of pitching yourself into spring marathon training, but you feel much better for having made it to the finish line, because for all the pretence of keeping up the training throughout the holiday period, it is undertaken while you’re coddled in a Readybrek glow of festive spirit, at party pace, really.

It will be interesting to have an independent, and vegan, coach assessing my workouts, while doing the math regarding my WAVA rating, past PBs, time spent strength training ( one New Year’s resolution: an hour a week in the gym). The next four months are going to require a higher level of organisation than I’ve managed since 2015, but having let so many things slide over the past six months, while being ‘kind to myself’, I’m ready to show myself a rather tougher variety of love. Anyway, the mince pies are finally finished and the remaining unopened jar of home-made mincemeat in the fridge will probably last until next December.

Past fortnight: 3 parkruns, 1 bike ride, 1 tempo run, two long, slow 10 milers. About 2kg worth of extra timber being carried, owing to excesses of food and drink. It will probably melt away, but can stay there, if necessary, as I need it for the training, if it promises to convert into muscle…..

Instead it just kept on raining

Hillyfields mud slalom event

With every passing year, as, coincidentally, local parkruns become increasingly lake runs, Greg Lake’s gloomy Christmas lyrics chime more resonantly. Splashing through the flow this Saturday, sturdy trail shoes slowing me down even more than my slight hangover, a veil of tears streaming down my pasty face, I could only fantasise about the frosty-the-snowman conditions the greetings cards promise.

Still, this isn’t a climate-change blog. (COP 28? Dubai? WTAF). It’s all about an old woman that runs. On Saturday she saw just how decrepit she looks when caught off guard. That parkrun on Saturday marked both a low point in the training week and an absolutely nadir in my always rather delusional sense of perceived exertion.

The Borg Rating of Perceived Exertion, a way of measuring physical activity, is based on your own interpretation of how hard a run is. So the runner thinks about her heart rate, fatigue, heavy breathing and concludes, as I did, that they’re trying properly hard (and in my case, decide therefore that you’ve smashed last week’s effort). It is, self evidently, subjective. I also based my internal optimism on the view ahead of me: there were only five women, the usual fast suspects (the one in the red, above, was first woman), and the women who usually sail past had, for their own reasons, decided on a go slow. The upshot of all this was, my time, when it came through, disappointed: 26 minutes on the nose. Worst for a while.

Even worse, though, was the fact that my friend Dame, who had time to kill after after finishing first in 17 minutes, took some videos of his club mates. The one of me bent and toiling up a small slope has burned into my consciousness.

The Sunday long run saw me equally cowed by the effort of keeping up with the others over nine miles. This was even more worrying, given no-one was running at any sort of tempo, it was party pace, yet the fatigue was weighing me down. This could have been caused by a largely sleepless night, which saw me discussing Margaret Thatcher and TS Eliot with husband at 4am (luckily he was was sleepless, fretting over pending performances concerning these two). We’d also watched Berlin 1933 on the telly before bed, which was horribly disturbing and relevant.

Anyway, I’m tired. Very tired. I was tired last night on the track (the session was 10x400m, which I ploughed my way through, but I’ve lost my bounce). I’m tired today at my desk.

Osteopath Laura recommends having a blood test for thyroid function, which I’ve had before, but years ago, but if the fatigue isn’t purely down to Christmas duties and builders who are nowhere near finished ( I have son and girlfriend coming home for Christmas and a winter solstice mulled wine party for neighbours and friends, who at this rate are going to be blowing plaster dust off their mince pies and picking their way around the as yet installed lavatory and basin – currently sitting in the middle of our dining area). If the fatigue isn’t down to all of that, I’ll request another blood test before marathon training becomes too heavy.

After work tomorrow I’m going to the second carol event this week, then driving son’s car down to visit my sister by the sea. A change of scene may be the tonic I need, even if my daily mince pie quota won’t be getting any lower for a week or two.

This coming weekend I’ll be swerving parkrun, because I want my 250th to be on my home turf, Hillyfields, on 23 December. I just have to reconcile myself that this anniversary run will likely be as slow as the first one I ever ran there, back in 2012, when I was a raw, coltish 50 year old. Ho ho.

Going for bronze

Three to score

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.

Keep on the grass

Just made it over the finish line in time to crumple sportively on the front row

It turned colder, that’s where it begins.

The running week began with the first (for me) cross country race of the season. The blue, frosty conditions were perfect for that wholesome, ruddy-cheeked sense of wellbeing I remember so well from school cross country (despite trying to be too cool for school, I could be embarrassingly outdoorsy in my early teens) and am now enough of a veteran Kent AC runner to be nostalgic for my adult glory days. Glory is an overstatement. However, I still cherish the Second V50 medal I earned back in 2015, mostly for showing up to all of the cross country races that season. My personal glory, in that I wasn’t as pack of the pack ten years ago as I am now.

Last Saturday morning I actually fretted to Rick about being last across the line at Beckenham Place Park. That didn’t happen: the (nearly) five-mile race over grass and up many hills was a slog, but I wasn’t too disappointed with my 41minutes, and there were a few people behind me.

The cold grass proved a boon before the race. The base of my right foot is still aflame from the wart/verruca that’s been plaguing me for nearly nine months, so I walked barefoot on the frost awhile to calm it down. It seems such a footling (see what I did there?) malady, but really has affected my form. Once the adrenaline takes hold in a race situation, the sole smarting abates, but during training and warm-ups it’s the very devil. The nurse practitioner at the GP surgery is, understandably, less than interested, but kindly referred me to the NHS Foot Clinic, which then rang to tell me they don’t do verrucas. It looks as if I’ll have to shell out for a private freezing job.

The Sunday long run turned out longer than we’d envisaged. Ten miles, taking in Dulwich Woods and Horniman Gardens, was rounded off with a much needed coffee and croissant at Le Delice in Ladywell. How lovely it is to be back there.

Tuesday track night was a frosty one. The surface was rimed and slippy, enough to make the more circumspect among us stick to the grassy infield rather than the speedy track. The session was 6x800m, and it was difficult to keep to pace (I also have no clue what pace I’m doing, now I run with a FitBit, which isn’t great at gauging this element of one’s fitness ‘journey’). I feel it’s probably better to concentrate on my running than what nonsense is happening on my wrist. The constant news flashes on the FitBit app are pretty moronic. It has just informed me that I’ve one the ‘Skydiver Award’. Looking this up, I find it’s rewarding me for climbing many flights of stairs since I’ve started wearing it. I have lost the will to wear it at all times, because its assessments are too ludicrous. As a friend pointed out last week, Sleep apps are notoriously inaccurate, and only serve to increase anxiety.

Most importantly of all this week, my confirmation of a Good For Age place from London Marathon came through. Now I’ve secured my place on the start line, I must busy myself with compiling a training programme. I’d like to shave three minutes off last year’s Brighton, so a 3:56 would be nice. Given that the fastest marathon time for a woman over 60 is 2:52:13 (Yugeta Mariko), I’m being pretty kind to myself. Nonetheless, my fitness is going to need some serious work to be more than an hour slower than that. Which puts things into perspective. My Fitbit thinks I’m wonderful, it would probably explode with excitement if it was on Yugeta’s tiny wrist.

O Mensola Mio

Made it to the start, then made it to the finish

You know those tourist T-shirts? ‘My Mum went to … and all she bought me with this T-shirt’.

I’m reminded of that when I look at this photo of an immensely knackered woman at the end of a 5k-community race. In my case, Marathon Gran went to Italy and all she did was seek out the nearest parkrun and make it her mission to get there at 9am last Saturday.

Locating, and travelling to, parkrun at Park di Mensola, while staying in Prato last week took up two days of my week’s holiday. The park is in a suburb on the other side of Florence, about 22km from Prato. It meant I passed through that fine Tuscan city, renowned for its galleries, museums and markets, without buying a single ticket to see great art or treasure, and I a 61-year-old middle class woman, the perfect demographic for the Uffizi and all the rest of it. Almost sacrilege.

Was it worth it? Of course it was. I ran more than a minute slower than usual, not because I was looking at the stunning scenery under the wide, blue November skies, but because I was totally knackered. I’d risen at 6 to catch the first of three trains to the nearest station to the parkrun. I’d barely slept all week owing to being in far too close quarters with my husband (normal double beds are no longer acceptable; at home we have a giant bed, and two single mattresses upon it. You’re welcome to come to any conclusion you like about the state of our marriage, but it suits us).

On holiday, though, in unfamiliar humming hotel rooms (they always hum, don’t they? Air con and lavatory fans etc) and an over sanitised studio apartment where the air-freshening diffuser was so strong I could even smell it when I banished it to the balcony, I spent the night wakeful and fretting: my husband seemed to be blissfully unconscious and snoring. He tells me he doesn’t snore.

The reason we were there was because my husband has a rich cultural life and is a Renaissance Man, and I followed him. He is in the ELO (no, he’s not Jeff Lynne, the European Lute Orchestra) and was in Prato to practise for, and play in, a wonderful concert in the Duomo). While he rehearsed for the concert, I indulged my running obsessions and hiked up a few very steep hills that surround the city of Prato, taking bread filled with vegetables and nuts for sustenance (vegans are a slightly unknown quantity in Tuscany, although vegetarians are handsomely catered for with cheese and egg dishes). I ate well though, just missed my usual protein sources.

It was a slow holiday, taking four days’ worth of trains and coaches (landslides put paid to the Torino-Lyon train ride on the way home) to get to our destination, but it was a fantastic way to enjoy the scenery, catch up on reading and researching for a new work project, writing my journal and dreaming about training for next April’s London Marathon. Mostly, though, it was a last hurrah for self indulgence, boozing, swerving track sessions on a cold, wet night and finding excuses not to lift weights. (with a slight hiatus for Christmas, we’ll allow).

The weights thing is particularly urgent. I read the other day that a very high percentage of 70-year-old women cannot lift a 10kg weight above their head. And the rot starts years earlier, which is why I should be worrying now. It’s no good owning a heavy kettle bell, I need to work with it. This past week I made a start, walking long kilometres between stations and bus stops with a very heavy rucksack on my back (I vowed several years back never to own a wheelie suitcase : so far so tortoise-like). I also hefted said rucksack on to many an overhead luggage rack.

So much for holidays and resolutions. This week I have a cross country race on Saturday (my last date with mud was shelved owing to a bad cold), my first of the season. I have vowed to take part in Thursday training after work tomorrow (never a great prospect after leading a walking tour in town).

Winter training starts here.

Granning

Winter training starts with Kent AC

A birthday visit from the Berlin branch of the family kept the running to a minimum last week, so the last ten days’ of training is barely worth recording. However, two of my favourite memories of my grandsons’ first visit to the new homestead involved running. One is coming down in the early mornings to find the two of them playing with their dad’s 25-year old MicroMachines (do they even exist now?), informing them that I was popping out for a quick blast around stormy Blackheath, and that there would be Cocopops (not allowed at home) on my return.

The second was challenging eight-year-old Charlie Catford to a race to St James’s Palace from Admiralty Arch (and winning; I’m like that competitive parent from the Fast Show). They’d expressed a desire to see the Changing of the Guard, and as my job involves leading running and walking tours between the three palaces and two barracks involved in this bizarrely British manoeuvre, I was only too happy to oblige. Their parents’ relaxed holiday mode meant we didn’t have enough time to get from Charing Cross in time for the marching band without a bit of a sprint.

The rest of their stay was dominated by a lot of football in the rain, trick or treating in the rain, sheltering from the rain in the British Museum (the mummies disappointed five-year-old Jesse, who’d imagined they’d be upright and lumbering around trailing their grave wrappings, like Hallowe’en ones) and a huge, gloriously chaotic family gathering to celebrate birthdays, pumpkins, dressing-up, German visitors and other, newer, additions to the Haydon clan. Always a pleasure.

Now the house is quiet, the underfloor heating is taking a bit of getting used to, but it’s great for early-morning yoga stuff, as are the bi-fold doors, which I love to open energetically after the yoga stuff, to go outside to swing a kettle bell about.

Yup, now Day of the Dead is over it’s time for Daily Deadlifts. I have been advised countless times to start lifting to stop melting (ie combat the age-related sarcopenia, ‘muscle melting’) that starts worryingly young in the human body, and proceeds apace when you get to the grand old age of 61.

The 61st birthday sent me into a brief gloom, as I realised I hadn’t really fulfilled the V60 goals I made a year ago. April’s Brighton Marathon was a high point, but my weekly parkrun WAVA rating is not what I aimed for, having assumed 80% was a modest ambition. The last two Hillyfields parkruns completed since my last blog have yielded only 75% and 74% respectively. Still, as I am constantly reminded, I should be happy that running (no matter the pace) still feels easy and joyful. That is the most important ambition of all.

It’s obviously not healthy to obsess over age gradings, pacing, heart rates or all of the other data that ‘wearables’ now furnish us with, but now we have them, we’re using them to torture ourselves. My Garmin has died a sort of death and I am wondering whether to replace it. A friend has kindly lent me a FitBit Blaze, because I was moaning about not knowing what pace I was doing per mile for marathon training purposes. But do I really need to know? Surely I have practised marathon pace enough to know what it feels like, and, on race day, can stick to my chosen pacing group? I’m not sure I’m willing or able to trust my training programme to gut instinct, though.

This FitBit has revealed to me that I only manage 30minutes of deep sleep per night. I think I’d rather not know that, but it’s so tempting to check. I never wore the Garmin to bed because it was ginormous, and so slept in blissful ignorance of deep, light, REM modes. I was aware of being awake, though. Worrying about what the FitBit will track is keeping me awake, nowadays.

The jury’s out. I’ll wear the device for a few more days, and see how much my mate wants for it.

Yesterday marked a brief return to track, before heading off to Italy, where Rick is taking part in the International Lute Orchestra in Prato. Booking all the trains for this European Odyssey proved challenging, not least because the Italian rain has been as persistent as the more predicable precipitation that the English tolerate at this time of year, and landslides have washed some tracks away. There’ll be replacement coaches (BlaBlaCar Bus, who knew?) before the week is over. Watch this space.

Track was fun yesterday, thanks to Coach Ellie’s stimulating session, alternating eyeballs-out 400m speedwork with lower-body strength training. It was a great turnout of women (see the pic above), who will reconvene this coming Saturday for the second Surrey League Fixture of the season. I missed the first one, owing to the Great Eastern Half, so the pain is not fresh in the memory. It takes all the self-belief I can muster to face the inevitable struggle in the mud, being one of the slowest, and oldest, in the pack and, more trivially, not looking great in my kit like my younger team-mates. I comfort myself with the fact that I am a 61-year-old-woman running six miles in the mud and rain and receiving a big dose of lovely endorphins for my pain, and that that pain may or may not translate into lasting cardiovascular health into older age, but will indisputably make Saturday evening sweeter in the short term.