Author: Buck

Wendy had to start taking some of her holidays so we both booked a week off work. Wendy promptly came down with covid. So that’s lovely. Obviously I followed suit. She came over all ill on Tuesday, I had to get a test kit, but she tested positive as soon as it arrived on Friday, I tested positive the day after. It’s dragging it’s feet. It’s Monday and I tested positive again today. Wendy’s barking a lot and has had painful ears and throat, and feels grotty. It’s making her low. I’ve only got a light dose. I feel a bit weak and tired and I’ve got a persistent tickle. The worst thing for me is trying to sleep. I’m having to prop myself upright because when I lie down I’m constantly swallowing and coughing. My funky new watch monitors everything I do, I’m not sure how accurate it is about monitoring sleep, but it said I had 21 minutes deep sleep last night, 5 hours 22 light sleep. I don’t know the ins and outs, but I am knackered for sure. Up until today I’ve been bad trying to sleep, but when I get up and get dosed up, it becomes tolerable, and I get bored, so I’ve been out for my runs. Today is my long/ fast run day, the plan says to do 16 miles, 12 of them at marathon pace (6.50). If I was doing that I decided I wanted to focus my mind and go all out for a half marathon and set a huge new PB instead. Neither of those options seems achievable today. By now (13.25hrs) my boredom has been outweighing my illness and I’ve been going for a run, today I’m just too, too tired. Fail day, I fear. I was kind of relieved to get it now, I was scared I was going to get it on race week or something, but I need it gone now. This is not convenient. My fitness is probably going to take a bit of hit with the lung thing, I need to get back to it. Meh. I’m too tired to concentrate. Later, Buck.

I’ve been looking at several race predictors and the science is that you lose 8% off your time when you double the distance. So I absolutely have to be 1.25 for a half to stand a chance. That’s 6.30 pace for the distance. Right. I’m through with waiting for improvement. This week my plan is I’m resting today. I’ll do the easy trots tomorrow. The 5x 1200m I’ll do as an 11 mile run with a flat out 5K race. I’ll do slow runs (8m/m) for the next two. I might skip the recovery run. Then I’m going to do a test half. I’m going to go out at 6.30 and just try and hold. It’s 15 seconds per mile more than I have done previously. If I’m rested, absolutely determined, and prepared to accept the pain, I might be able to do it. I’ve just looked, my last half was 1.29:06. I ran a 1.29:05 in April. If I discount the Garmin blip of that 1.26, I’ve not made any gains in 5 months. That just can’t be right. My speed and fitness have to be loads better. I think it’s my capacity to push and suffer that has taken a kicking with Camille’s plan. Watch this space. I’m through with this shit.

It’s all getting very real now. I’ve got just under 7 weeks until my race. I did a quick blog last week moaning that I didn’t think I could do it. As I was writing it, the solution occurred to me: up the pace. It sounds obvious, but I was doing Camille’s plan after Garmin fooled me into thinking I was a lot faster than I actually am. That left me behind on my training. Then I panicked and went back to Advanced Marathoning plan but that says “do the long runs at marathon pace +10- 20%”. Which works, but I’ve no longer got the time to gradually build up my fitness. I remembered, as I was doing the blog, that when I started the plan it was after 2 months of no running. All the different run times (medium, fast, easy) were all the same to me because that was all I had. I set aspirational times and worked towards them, even though it nearly killed me. Within 8 weeks I had set an new half marathon PB. So what I’ve done is bump up all my run times. My long, fast run used to be 7.30 – 8.12, it’s now 6.50 – 7.15. my new watch finally arrived. I was waiting and going insane, checking my email and the order status several times a day. They said I had to wait 3 -5 weeks for stock to come in. After 4 weeks I noticed they had a chat button on the site so I asked how long for my order. Apparently, even though I’d rung them to change my card details 3 weeks before, and rang back the next day to confirm it, they hadn’t updated my card and hadn’t told me. They told me to ring again. While I was on hold I checked the website, watches in stock, so I put the ‘phone down, cancelled my order and ordered it again with my new card. It arrived 2 days later. In with calm. Deep breaths. 4 weeks! Anyway, it’s arrived and it actually is a great watch. Brilliant tracking and great pace tracking. Which is exactly what I need. And big, clear display, visible even if I’m not wearing glasses. Fantastic. The not so good is it’s packed with other data and features, one of which is a race predictor. It said (after I’d ran in it 3 times) that it estimated my marathon time to be 3.10. That’s only a snapshot guess, and it will get more accurate the more I use it (2 more runs and it’s already revised it down to 3.08) but it was enough to make me panic a bit more. Today was a 20 mile run on my plan, so I decided to see where I am. I wanted to run the first 10 miles at 6.50 (sub 3 pace), the second at 7.10. I failed, but not by much. I was only 2 seconds too slow in total over […]

It’s now 8 weeks until my target marathon. I really don’t think I’m going to do it. That Garmin blip that put me at 1.26 for the half marathon has really screwed me over. I was kind of relaxing and going with Camille’s plan, confident it was all working. Now I’m back on Advanced Marathoning, on the 70 mile a week plan, desperately trying to make up lost ground. I had another shop and bought some of the brand new Saucony Endorphin Pro 3s. The YouTube review if them said they were marginally better than the Nike Vaporfly Next% 2, that I currently have. I was cautious about the Saucony because although I love the “speedroll” tech (a rocker shape in the sole to fling you forward, so make your foot turnover really quick) it was battering my knees in my old Speed 2s. Also they are quite narrow and squashy. Since I’ve got plantar I’ve been running in the 2s quite a bit and I seem to have got used to them, so I took the plunge. I took them for a test ride today. The plan said 17 miles (at mara pace +10- 20%) I decided to do two miles warm up (+10%) then go for it for a half marathon. I tried to be fancy with my the settings on my watch to record the warm up, the half separately, and the warm down. It failed completely. So I had no idea how I was doing overall on the half attempt because it was including the average of the first two miles. Meh. I just had to go for it. The good news is the shoes are way wider than the Speeds, really soft, and fast. The bad news is I took a gamble on half a size up, to give me a bit of extra toe room, and my right foot got the numb/pain I get when cycling in cleats, from pressure under the pads of my foot. I’m hoping that the padding will give a bit. Anyway, I struggled around 5 laps of my new course. A mile or so of each lap was into the wind, which, although it wasn’t a stiff wind, when you are already at your limit, doesn’t help. Anyway, I had no idea how I’d done until I got home, uploaded the data and worked it out. 1.29:06 for a half. That’s good, (that’s great for a half, for me) but I need to be 1.25 they say, to be in sub 3 contention. And it was about all I had to do the 13.1 miles, I couldn’t have held that pace for another 13.1. I’m not sure what I’m going to do about it. I’ve got a 20 mile long run next week, 16 miles with 12 at mara pace the week after and 21 miles the week after that. Then Warrington Half, Chester marathon, and 3 weeks later my target marathon. I think I’ll up the pace of […]

Just a quick update on the plantar problem. I’ve been doing the stretches, and I’ve started properly warming up before runs (which I should have been doing from day one) and I think it’s very manageable. My heels are sore and it’s less than ideal, but it’s nothing like the day that made me consult Doctor Google. That day I got up, no warm up, and blasted out 14 miles at 7.29 m/m (mara pace +10%). The rest of the day I could barely walk. Every time I sat down it took me minutes of shuffling to get my feet to stop hurting enough to be able to walk properly. I was scared that was how it was going to be after every run, which probably wouldn’t have been sustainable. It definitely wouldn’t have been sustainable if the pain got worse as the condition of my plantar deteriorated. Those were my thoughts and fears. I did a long (18 miles), quite nippy, run the other day and my feet were sore, but not terrible. Then I tried to go fast. The plan said 5 miles running, (which I did at 7.37) then 5 miles at half marathon pace. My half pace is only my target mara pace (6.50) at the mo, so I pushed a bit harder. I wanted 6.30, averaged 6.40. Meh. The point is, I was going hard. My feet were OK the next day, once I’d got over the ‘getting out of bed and stretching’ bit. I bought gel insoles for my work boots, I’m wearing trainers around the house (to keep my feet from striking hard surfaces) and I’m stretching and massaging, (and warming up). I think it’s going to be enough. This level of soreness is nothing to fuss over. I’ve still not managed to do back to back runs to test that out. I was supposed to be getting up early yesterday morning to do a 15 mile run (which would have made today 3 days on the bounce, a proper test) but on Thursday some fool went half through the lights, they changed to amber, and he slammed on. He was already through, I thought I was going, suddenly he stopped dead. Me, in a dirty great truck, not so much. Work have been good about it, I’ve just got to go out with the driver trainers and practice leaving bigger gaps, but I’ve already driven one shift since, and I’m booked for 2 more next week, so it’s not like they are taking it too seriously. The long and short of that was I had to stand by my ‘phone from early o’clock yesterday in case they called me in for the training before my shift, or sacked me off. So no run. I felt a lot better about it after I’d done another shift. It always gives your confidence a knock, and makes you want to quit driving and get a job as lollypop lady, or hitman, or something. It does […]