My take on 2018

It's been a funny old year, it started with me not running at all during January😏and has finished with me running every day in December, with a grand total of 135😮

This year I decided to participate in the advent run for December deciding that running every day up to the 25th sounded achievable.  Then, of course, there is the Christmas Day parkrun, next running to pick the car up on Boxing Day and then before you know it there is only 5 days to go and it would be a shame to miss out on running every day for a month.  

  

December, I have clocked my highest mileage month for the year; the miles have not been quick by my previous standards (btw they were never that quick but quicker than now).  People keep asking if I have turned a corner with my running and I’m really not too sure, I do enjoy it more now so perhaps I have.

The BIG question did I achieve have achieved any of my pre-marathon training plan goals?  

• Run 4/5 times a week,  
• A 10-mile run at\za least once 
• Run over 25 miles a week consistently 👍( I think the advent run really helped with that one!)

Looking back over the year and although the miles have been lower than in previous years I have had a lot of great times. Spent time with friends, celebrated weddings, births of babies and travelled halfway across the world to Australia! I have parkran 17 times, being parkrun run director 14 times, volunteered a further 9 times and also sneaked in some tourism to Isabel Trail, Cairns, Bicester and Cannock Chase. 

In terms of what 2019 holds for me: I am stgarting well with a parkrun double run day, then hopefully off to Mexico in March, with a marathon in May, a van life trip to Scotland in July and the Great North Run in September.  I'm going to try another open water triathlon at some point and improve both my time and experience of the swim.  

I've a plan to help achieve the goal of running the marathon with a training plan and a strategy to help me get more miles in the week. I will be (hopefully) joining Derwent Runners as a social member which means I should regularly get 6 miles outside in on a Tuesday.

In terms of the open water swimming, I have had an online chat with a seasoned Iron distance veteran and he has given me some great advice which I will be able to follow when open water swimming opens in the spring.

The other thing I hope to do more is blogging about how my training is going and my other musing that come to me on my runs.

Hope you all have had a great or at least as good as it could have been 2018 and here is looking at 2019 head on and tackling whatever is thrown at us.     
                    

Getting slower to get better ??

Apologies for lack of posting we have been away on holiday to OZ for a couple of weeks and then I've been finishing off jobs around the house while waiting for my next contract to start. This has been great as I have been able to get plenty of running in.

However, as you may be seen from my earlier posts I have a recurrent injury both a physical one and a prolonged issue with my CBA* muscle! So after what I would like to think of as divine intervention, by way of my many recently listened to podcasts, the concept of heart rate training has come up on the radar again. 

I have tried and failed many times in the past to run to heart rate (HR) as I felt ridiculous going out so slowly and felt that people would judge me for my pace.  Not I that I have ever bothered  Jo Pavey or Paula Ratcliffe with my times, however, the fear was real. 

So last week I started out trying to run in zone 2 which was a big struggle and the only zone I could semi maintain was zone 3…which is not really following the rules of HR training However by being in zone 3 it was still 12+ min milling so I felt justified. But the problem was my heart rate would spike into zone 4 and I would have to stop and walk or just stop altogether for my HR to come back down into zone 2/3. Once this had happened I would start off and within minutes it would spike again.  Equally the HR alert I set up on my watch was getting annoying and I was convinced that it wasn't helping to keep my HR down. 

In an effort to keep the HR rate,  I switched to pace rather than HR; with the aim to keep my pace above 10:00 mins miles, so my watch alert would only tell me if I was going too fast.  Not truly HR training but when I reviewed at the data and compared the run to the same run a couple of days before my pace averaged out to 11min miles and the percentage I was in zone 3 was better than the last run, as you can see. 

Having said all of that, today I went out again a slightly shorter route, granted a few more hills but it was a struggle to keep both my HR and pace where they needed to be. It is a bit of trial and error which I have time for as my target for this year is purely about consistency and other than the holiday which did throw a dent into the consistency plan I have been regularly running 4-5 times a week. 

What is next??  to keep to the to pace training for all my runs excluding any quality running and see how I get on….however, I am hiding all of my runs on Strava so only I know……..

*CBA = Can't Be Arse

Being (nearly) last and what it taught me….

*grab a cup of coffee*👀

Sunday 16th Sept was my 1st and only sprint triathlon of 2018, I had entered three this year but unfortunately injury and fear had ruled me out of the earlier two so I was determined to complete this one.  

I had been thinking of calling this one quits as well, but a couple of things have happened which has spurred me on, I’ll let you one but keep the other one for another time.  A couple of weeks ago I was at my local Hanley parkrun, other pr’s are available, during my usual slog around with fellow runners, I happened mentioned that I was thinking of pulling out of the  Shropshire Tri and Graham said why not just complete it, it will feel much better than not even starting.

He got me thinking, I have said that to many a fellow runners and triathletes when we have been having similar conversations and my other favourite saying is that there are people who would love to be able to participate but can’t for one reason or another so really it is a gift to be fit enough to toe the start time.  It is about completing and not competing

Fast forward to the morning of Shropshire Triathlon, the weather was warm but drizzly, we woke up before the morning had really started with a quick coffee and bite of breakfast we were on our way.  Sean had said he would come along to be my support crew and so I would not feel too alone.  I did have a number of friends participating but they were in the Olympic Distance so would be set off before me.

After parking up the car and walking to registration, we stuck the race numbers in all the right places with not too much fuss and I headed off to transition to rack my bike and set up my area.  The weather started to turn and the rain started to fall, so thought it best to get into my wetsuit to keep warm.  The Olympic distance athletes were in the water and making fast work of their 1500m swim, getting out looking excited to get on their bikes.

They called us down to the water's edge for the pre-race brief, told us to BE CAREFUL on the bike for our course there was a sharp downhill, so remember that this was not the Tour of Britain and to take care, then a quick chat about the swim….which all I remember was buoys, left, buoys, kayaks and sticking your arm in the air…..now to get in to the water.

This is where my nightmare begins sorry to sound so dynamic, but I'm not a great open water swimmer, I am terrible in fact.  There is something about not being able to see very much, then there is something about seeing too much (was that a fish….), not forgetting the other people around you and then the buoys seem to keep moving further and further away. 

After my Blenheim Palace experience I had been getting in open water more and this year I had been to our local lake a number of times and on my last trip in late July I had made it around the full 750 meters.  It wasn't pretty and only managed around 250 of it freestyle the rest was breaststroke.  Due to work commitments and busy weekends, I hadn't been back since, but I had been in the pool (cough, once or twice).

I digress again, we are in the water and it's not as cold as I was expecting, to acclimate and test my goggles I tried a couple of freestyle strokes and all was good to go.  The water was quite shallow the biggest problem was the amount of silt at the bottom, which really put me off putting my feet down and I tried not to think about it too much….gosh those buoys look really far away!!

 Then the countdown started 5,4,3,2,1,GO…..  I managed to swim around 0.75m freestyle and then the panic set in, out and the breaststroke, people were swimming past me.  As I slowly approached the first turn buoy around 350 in, I knew I was near the back of the pack and my next turn buoy seemed so far away…. I kept remembering Graham's words and just keep swimming, determined not to admit defeat and pull the rip cord, I swam on!

All in all I was in the water for near on 30 mins, got beached on the way out of the lake, stumbled on the out ramp and promptly burst into tears. I have to say a BIG thank you to the swim marshal who gave me a big hug and to Sean for telling me that it will all be better when I get out on the bike leg.

Of course, he was right, although it did take me a while to pull myself together. On the bike leg, I thought of the late Francis Hamlet about how he would tell to crack on and Smashit, then about my dad who is, currently going through radiation and chemotherapy and thought if he can do that then I need to suck it up and crack on.

Soon I was heading back in, having made up some places on the bike and ready for the run, which was not going to be pretty with my glute in its current form.

Lovely to see my fellow niteriders on the course both supporting and participating and of course Sean cheering me on despite the awful weather.

Once I had crossed the finish line, got my medal I headed to Sean for a hug and that’s a wrap for my 2018 season as pitiful as it was, so my results:

Pos Swim      Bike         Run         Total
43   00:30:34 00:52:38  00:30:34 02:02:20

But as they say onwards and upwards, more open water practice needed because I’m not stopping just because it’s hard, while life is hard and quitting is not an option.

Here’s to next year and a more happier race report.