By a Hair

Despite Gillette’s current marketing campaign, ‘by a hair’ is a not a well known saying.  But it aptly describes the fallout of a speculative conversation on Tuesday night’s fun-down.

Training partner and replacement great rival Dan Robinson and I are so evenly matched in performance that our head-to-head looks staged. Dan arguably puts in more miles, additional static bike training and deploys aerodynamic enhancing full body grooming to compensate for his advancing years. I on the other hand prefer to rely on the gung-ho of youth, luck and the unteachable art of deploying two extra gears with the finish line in sight. 

Through this we mused what the difference between our cumulative PBs might be if totted up.  I didn’t have to wait long.  On opening my email on Wednesday morning, the result was waiting for me:

                        Tim                 Dan

800m                2:12                 2:12;

1500m              4:23                 4:23;

Mile                  4:34                 4:40;

3,000m             9:05                 9:07;

5,000m            15:37               15:30;

10,000m          32:59               32:50;

HM                   71:53               72:18;

Marathon        2:34:47            2:34:31.

Total                 4:55:30            4:55:31.           (+1)

1 second.  The difference of a dip for a line here or a widely-taken corner there.  Neither of us had expected it to be so entertainingly close.

Of course when I arrived home, quivering with excitement and unraveled the contents of that email to my girlfriend Ellie, she looked at me partly in sympathy, and mostly with the sort of distain she normally reserves for my half-hearted washing up. 

Clearly lost on her was the poetic beauty of two rivals, who after 53 miles of individual racing were separated by a finer margin than the result of the 1989 Tour de France.

Or perhaps I need some side-hobbies. 

NB: The blog was purposefully published on Saturday 27^th September 2014: If Dan improves his PB at tomorrow’s Nottingham HM, and I fail to beat him by the 25 seconds I was able to gain in the final mile of last year’s event, the pendulum will swing once again.

The 111 day struggle

On 13th April 2014 I crossed the finish line on the Mall marking one of my biggest athletic achievements: I had conquered London Marathon, elated after 154 minutes and 47 seconds of self inflicted torture.

I knew it would take some time to recovery and to be able to do another decent race, but the journey that followed was far more difficult than I imagined.

20 days later, after much rest and easy running, I ran a 5000m for the BRAT club. The result shocked me: 16:25 with absolutely nothing to give. Meanwhile my training partner Dan who had finished a mere 16 seconds ahead of me in London clocked a PB of 15:30 on that same day, almost lapping me. I was distraught. I was rubbish. But little did I know that things were actually going to get worse!

On 27 days I ran a track 10k, and albeit in torrential wind and rain could only clock 34:26. Logic says that an easy to write off, but Mark was the better part of a minute ahead, which was enough to play on my mind. On Day 41 I backed this up with an 18:04 parkrun, but on a new, tougher course in Worcester it was difficult to judge. Had I comeback too soon? Had I rushed it? I desperately want to pick up where I left off last summer, where PBs had been free flowing. I was impatient.

Come Day 63, a month later, when I was confident I was now surely returning to some fitness with training going well, I entered a fast 10k. But I followed up a 16:37 opening half with an embarrassing 18:10. That was slower than most of my 5k splits in the capital. In hindsight it was a hot day and I realised later I was still carrying a bug. But it didn't matter. I now questioned everything I was doing, which was another mistake.

I didn't race or a while. Just trained. Day 83 presented an 800 / 5000m double at another BRAT fixture. Nothing spectacular: I got the required result but the 5k was only 16:21. A paltry four second seasons best.

Then it just clicked, out of nowhere. 97 days after London I did Worcester parkrun, my second attempt. On a morning where I nearly didn't bother due to torrential rain, I don't know whether it was finishing first, or whipping 40 seconds from my time 9 weeks prior, but something had now changed. On Day 102 I entered Worcester AC Open and paced by Dan I won the 3000m in a semi-respectable 9:20. My confidence was restored.

111 days after London I finally made the breakthrough. At BRATs final track and field fixture I broke my 3000m PB which had stood since 2012. The time of 9:11 was hardly earth shattering, but it was something that id been unable to do in 5 attempts the previous year, even at a time when I was breaking almost every other PB out there. I was back.

____________________________________________

I learnt a lot from this period. And I know there are other runners out there who've also struggled, especially post-marathon. It's important to remember that everyone seems to recover differently....While Dan and Mark who both PBed at London were breaking their own records within weeks, it took me almost four months. What did I learn from all of this?

- Be patient. Everyone recovers differently. If rested and healthy there's no reason why it won't come good again.

- Whatever you do, don't put pressure on yourself to be ready for a particular event or that you need a good performance now. Just play it by ear, and race when you feel ready.

- Don't rush increasing the mileage or intensity. Luckily I didn't do this one (I still wasn't doing more than 50 mpw 2 months later) but then also remember than if you're doing less miles than when you were going well, it's going to be difficult to reach those dizzy heights just yet.

- If possible, don't change multiple things in your life at once; I moved cities; moved in with my girlfriend; I had a longer commute to work and wasn't sleeping as much; our interval sessions moved to grass; I had a marathon in me....I just couldn't judge how anything was going. There were no 'control' elements.

- Be confident in your ability and training.

- Don't be afraid of what will go on powerof10. Nobody cares that much, it just adds pressure.

- Don't be afraid of trying another distance...something you won't be hard on yourself about and doesn't matter, but that you might draw confidence from. (My 800m at rugby lifted by spirits a lot because I realised that I wasn't too far off even if it hadn't come together yet.)

A Pentalogy of Proven Folktales

About a year ago, a very reliable training partner of mine wrote a post-London marathon blog about the top five things he’d learnt from his recent experiences.  In the same vain, I’ve actually written a serious piece for once!  This post discusses the top five things that worked for me in a season where overall I smashed my PBs at every distance I raced.

1) Don’t undeRESTimate the power of nothing:

I know lots of runners, and I used to be one, who underestimated rest.  I don’t mean rest days, and I don’t mean tapering for races.  We all do that.  I mean perpetual training because you want to keep improving, are worried about falling behind, and are not looking at the big picture.  Just because you don’t feel tired, doesn’t mean you aren’t. 

Rest was the foundation for last season.  After averaging probably 60 miles per week for the previous 18 months, last summer my ankle revolted, and caused me have three unplanned months out, emerging from the other side of that dark tunnel with precious little fitness (mostly because I couldn’t be arsed to even try and maintain it).  But it enabled me to build my whole season around the idea of regaining fitness and to run a big PB at BUCS.  I don’t think that I would have done this so easily without the downtime which completely refreshed me.

2) Periodisation:

I’ve never done this consciously before, but having a goal which was sixth months away was the key, as it was ample time to build up each element of fitness.  I broke my time down in to three, two-month blocks, and a further one after BUCS.  Each element prioritied a different training component: endurance, strength, thresholds or speed endurance.  Looking back, it took only three weeks of hard training to regain 90 percent of my fitness, but this method meant that in total, it took just four months to go from no fitness, into PB territory.    The proof is in the pudding, and in May-July I demolished my best times for everything from 1500m to 10k (the longest I raced).

3) Big performances are possible, but belief is the key:

To be fair, Sammy Rashid has always said this to me, but I proved his theory!  Doubling up at the Olympic Stadium was never the plan, but I’ll be honest and say that I was slightly disappointed with my 16:14 in the 5000m heats.  Logic and common sense said that tired and sore legs couldn’t do any better the next day; after all, it had taken two years of trying just to break 34 minutes for 10k, a feat achieved just two months prior.  But, with only a pizza and 6 hours sleep preparation, I lined up on the startline of the 10,000m less than 18 hours later, believing that I could take something from the track that cold morning.  An 18 second PB proved to me that if the training is in the bank and you believe in it, last min preparation isn’t that important at all. 

4) Cadence, not stride length:

Increasing your cadence (ideally to 180 steps/minute) is the way forward.  To run at a given pace, the energy needed to take more, smaller steps is less than fewer longer ones, and ideally, this will eventually lead to quick long strides.  But in practice it is really difficult to change a habit.  I’ve been trying for a year, and whenever I do it, it really works.  But I wouldn’t say that I’m anywhere near mastering this yet, although I had some success.

5) Know your strengths:

We all know I’m not a sprinter, but this year has clarified that: My body responds far better to high-volume endurance training than high-recovery speed endurance.  Based on this summer, I require around two months to train my legs to diversify their endurance, to bring my shorter race times in-line with my longer ones.  But middle distance training will not improve my overall ability.  Only endurance will do this, and knowing this will enable me to consolidate how I train this coming year.

For me, I've called it a year on the 2011-12 season, which has been my best yet.  Training will begin soon in earnest for what will hopefully be a full-body-mud-bath-free XC season, and some other targets that I need to work out! Watch this space...

1668 Steps to Glory

My high school P.E. teacher Mr. Weedon may not have liked me (and we thought he was a prat too), and my physio in 2009 may have described me as having the running style of a stroke victim, but last night saw both my 3k and 1500m PBs both creak and tumble in a breath-taking BRAT Club dominance at, well, the BRAT Club Open.

This summer has seen my fast twitch muscles characteristically slow, but without my usual dominance of the under 17 age group races which I’ve come to enjoy, and a 3000m three weeks ago arguably achieved nothing except elevating me away from the very bottom of the national rankings.

The Carthorse camp are accrediting these masterful PB revisions to either the Saucony racing flats, which cost me a mere 6.3grams/kg of body weight, (£0.64/kg if you will,) or perhaps the concoction of beetroot which I subjected my stomach to three hours before the race.

But the real reason may perhaps be my new found running elegance.  Now don’t get me wrong, everyone knows that I have always been an elegant, neat, graceful and composed runner, but after an eye-opening hungover, dehydrated and sleep deprived track session last Saturday, I’ve come to realise that high leg cadence is even more respected by my cardiovascular system than I imagined.  In fact, upping my cadence to 180 per minute drew cheers from a season’s best of three different spectators, with one female fan commenting that while it was “enjoyable to be able see more footstrikes, my increased speed deprived her of additional time looking at my biceps.”

Despite being unable to get in touch with Chief Personal Motivator and Head Movement Coach Nick ‘Nandos’ Howard for praise, I can already see this new found technique revolutionising a running career which Seb Coe himself has long advocated as “going nowhere”.

Meanwhile, graduation at the end of 9 years of studying architecture has meant that there will be no more BUCS competitions.  Although organisers are said to be pleased that the average competitor age will now reduce, and I must now make my peace that any dream of winning a BUCS medal, or making an athletic impact at any event, is gone too.

NB: 180 (steps per minute) x 9:16 = 1668.

Indoor roundup

5000m goal : 15:50

5000m PB : 16:29.9

5k SB (post-Sept 2011) : 16:55 (xc split)

One might have been forgiven for thinking I’d lost a bet, forced to sit through (and luckily sleep through some of the) 15 heats of the men’s 400m, after earlier watching over 150 individuals run for 7 seconds, 6 at a time, down a short straight and try to avoid crashing into the railings at the end.  Seeing me warm up in the kit of the magnificent BCU would have done little to dispel this, but the BUCS Indoor Champs at the £24m EIS, where like (but not with) Jess Ennis, I used to train, provided me with a 3000m for my first timed event of 2012.  This was also the first and last indoor event of my season, excluding emergency bathroom dashes and the upcoming house inaugural indoor varsity jenga multi-event champs.

As always, the gauntlet of warming up for big events was more of a trial than the event itself: sprinters don’t like sharing the warm up area with joggers, and communicate this in belittling gestures.  Additionally the call up for heat 3 was 30 minutes before its start, meaning the only thing stopping the muscles from cooling back down were the hearty luck wishes all the way from Lyon, France, the adrenaline from arguing with a power hungry official about why the leg number had to be pinned side and side, not top and bottom, (we didn’t get to the bottom of this,) and wondering if the other competitors had noticed I was the only one wearing trainers.  Dirty ones.

The slow start was presumably because the other competitors had heard the rumours of my wobbling head, and gave me too much time ponder the insufficient testicular fortitude offered by the only shorts which colour coordinated with my vest, and led to a first kilometre which Monsieur Bayton would call a recovery pace.  But as the race stretched out, I quickly laid on a biomechanical master class for the watching cameras, with the event presumably broadcast to over 180 countries worldwide, and the international space station. 

I brushed off recent worries of hernias, tired legs, and my dwindling supply of Weetos to record negative splits, aided somewhat by a ferocious final 200m, which Ibrahim Jeilan is now said to be studying in detail “just in case”.

More interestingly, my 9:29.97 with just over two months to go until the target 5000m, shows that I have in the bank a gentleman’s one hundredth of a second per kilometre.