The Tale of a Mountain Goat

Sarah Mac (not to be confused with retired Javelin thrower Sarah Snack) became a household name on Saturday after winning the Bedford BMC Grand Prix on a windy and wet night, in which I ate her post-race dinner while she slogged it out over 12 ½ laps.

Making her August debut at her favourite distance, the student of soil who plys her trade north of the Scottish border executed the perfect race against Birmingham University’s fun-sized BUCS XC winner Hannah Walker to take not only the victory, but complete more than a 90 second PBimprovement from two years ago.

Imrpovement of a champion.

If Walker harboured any real ambitions of winning this race, then she had clearly not done her research of readily availableinformation.  With 200m to go, Mac destroyed her like a tsunami charging down a family picnic on the beach, and was first to the interview with Athletics Weekly and what was left of the organiser-provided water after spectator Simon Millhouse earlier filled up his bag when no one was looking.

Founding members of the Sarah Mac fan club.

Sarah put gender equality the right way up as she recorded a time faster than any of her former Sheffield Uni training partners ever have, renewing our desire for immediate improvements to avoid possible humiliation.  "I simply can not [sic] have her faster than me," text women’s U17 long jump and 1,350 metre specialist Millhouse.  "It’s not an option, and could prove the motivation I need."  He is already said to be considering discontinuing his range of rice-based cereals to work on this beer belly.

Indeed Mac’s fitness, stamina and disgestive abilities showcased her rapid improvement as she took and ate a pair of jam sandwichs on the following morning’s long run, as she gave 16min+ runners Millhouse and Carthorse a solid workout on her recovery jog.

The mountain-goat shaped runner, who is currently preparing for this weekend’s uphill-only race to the moon, and more importantly a November showdown with her former rival (myself), described the key elements of her training to be "receiving motivational texts from my friend Tim" (also me) and keeping her railcard photo hidden from prying eyes.

We are keenly hoping that this latest high profile victory will be enough to bagsy some free kit (all contributions should be a men’s ‘medium’ and footwear size 11), and boost sales of her upcoming paperback which will be released in all good retailers this autumn.

Mac's new bestseller, released this Autumn.

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.

Every Horse Has His Day

Sometimes everything just falls into place. 

Six months of training culminated with Heat 2 of the Men’s 5,000m, the main event, in the centre piece of the 2012 year – Populous’s £486m Olympic Stadium.  Despite being equipped with Saucony’s Fastwitch 5, costing a mere 220 grams per foot, pre-event training had been poor, but with a boost of being drawn in the same event as former rival Steven Bayton, meaning that friends and family, and the 6,000 spectators only had to pay keen attention to one 12 ½ lapper.

The 5k was an aerobically challenging experience, with the primary aim being not to be lapped by the afore-mentioned man from Halifax.  Elated by achieving this aim by circa 15 metres, I scampered to finish the final two furlongs in a hasty 67 seconds, for a concious lifetime record of 16:14.

The Final Furlong (Video by Sarah Mac, pun by Alison Camp)

The following day was a delicious slab of icing on a delicious cake.  I only ever entered the 10,000m as a back up due to BUCS controversial entry procedure, but after a pizza and video evidence review, the decision was made: “why not?”  A late night ice bath and a few hours sleep preceded the 6:20am start, to race for the second time in 18 hours.

For the first 200m, I took up my customary place at the back of the field preparing myself for a long morning, but I moved swiftly through the ambition-starters, digging deep into the faulting limbs, for what in reflection, was the most effortlessly proficient display of running, tactics and elegance the stadium had seen [that morning].

My stadium record – for the second fastest 10,000m ever ran in that venue – was personified with a Ovett-style raised arm celebration reflecting the elation at smashing my PB by 18 seconds, in an event that I hadn’t ever planned to do 24 hours earlier.  How I dragged that performance out of tired legs, I will never know. 

Even superhero Bayton was impressed, failing to follow up his magnificent 5k PB the previous day with an identikit performance.

But not to be outdone, Sarah McCormack, livid at only making it onto the number three spot on my all time favourite athletes list, performed a championship highlight, rocketing home in 34:31, a genuine stadium record, and the opportunity to urinate into a small cup in front of total strangers.  She described it as “the perfect day”, and was rewarded by just under one square inch on page 15 of last weeks Athletics Weekly.

A BUCS Gold medal.  Maybe in another lifetime for me.

BUCS Outdoors Preview

Six months ago - and these winter months have not flown - I set myself a wee target: 15:50 for 5000m at BUCS Outdoors, a race that is now but six days away. 

I didn’t know at the time if it was achievable: I was working off no fitness whatsoever, and didn’t even know if I would get a place at the event, or if BCU had an athletics team.  For the record, they don’t, but the controversial selection process has let me with entry in both distance events.

For someone once described by their physio as having the running technique of a stroke victim, I have changed almost everything in the last six months.  I’ve addressed unsymmetrical biomechanics, an aversion to morning training, and even started incorporating extra fruit and veg in my diet.  I’ve even instigated a move away from the mighty Structure Triax shoe - the brick of shoes as my training companions call it - and purchased a rather colourful ‘Fastwitch’ shoe, the irony of which will become apparent on the start line.

Recent events, namely the selfishness of the Usain Bolt and his mates on the Jamaican National Team coming to Birmingham this summer means the local facilities are being resurfaced, depriving me of the reassurance of pacing in my sessions.  As such, I have literally no idea what shape I’m in, no idea how fast I can run this weekend.  The result will be as much of a surprise to me as everyone else, but it will truly be an Olympic occasion.

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.

Halfway Horse

5000m goal : 15:50

5000m PB : 16:29.9

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

Far be it from good sense to, in typical BBC sport style, write a report on the outcome of a sporting event at the effective half time point, this is exactly what I’m going to do.  It’s three months since I set myself a six month 5k goal, so as the maths checks out, let’s proceed.

I am sitting wrapped up in bed keeping warm.  Yesterday was an immense day, based around the BUCS XC champs, featured a long trip to Cardiff and back with former teammate and superseded chief rival Sarah ‘The Snack’ McCormack.  Also included was a reunion with long-term nemesis Steven Bayton, (recently defected to France,) which has left me unable to walk properly (tight calves,) a curry and rooftop snowball fight with two fellow hat owners and a 40-point fantasy football point haul by Mister Robin Van Persie.

These champs were run in freezing temperatures, with snow falling all around, not too much of a problem, save for the ‘man off’ to see who would wear more than just the basic vest and shorts.  I confess to wearing gloves, and a wrist-based sweat band to increase my street cred/coolness.  The course was hard, literally.  It was frozen, rather than featuring the draconian hills that I like to see in a good XC.  No mud means no spikes to clean, and also means that I dropped my 5k SB once again to a time now beginning with 16.

In another moment of personal satisfaction, my 35 place improvement on my best ever BUCS put me between the 3^rd and 4^th Sheffield Uni runners, banishing the demons that haunted me following the event two years ago.

John Rocke, a man against boys, doesn't need gloves or eyes!

In reflection, the last three months have gone well.  I’m ahead of where I realistically expected to be, I’ve managed to complete almost every planned run, (except for the ones I forgot about), and I’ve managed to keep Chief Movement Coach Nick ‘Nando’s’ Howard somewhat motivated enough to use as a training partner as well.  Even Coach ‘Hannah’ Mitchell told me that she didn’t spot me in the race because I no longer wobble my head about.  The absence of post-race cream eggs this year was also keenly noted.

The six month plan itself, rumoured only to exist on parchment, 

written by quill. (Green = completed, orange = partially completed).

Next on the hit list, in five weeks time, is Trafford 10k, the mightiest of road races.  My 10k PB was set on this course 2 years ago, and I haven’t been able to break it since, despite obvious improvements.  However with yesterday’s XC time for the 10k (garmin measured course) coming home inside of (well, exactly) 34:20, it’s already an improvement on last year’s best time, set at this very road race.  Complacency is not an option, simple maths will tell you that a big chunk of time needs to fall for me to stand a realistic chance of hitting this summer’s target.

For now, 2012 is defined by: Bayton 1 – 0 Carter.

BUCS: The revenge of the cross country

5000m goal : 15:50

5000m PB : 16:29.9

5k SB (post-Sept 2011) : 17:03 (xc split)

Two years ago I was at the pinnacle of my athletics career (of the time).  Training alongside the mighty Steven Bayton under the impressive coaching of Coach ‘Hannah’ Mitchell, had seen me shatter my PBs in to fragments I could only dream of as I tried to (unsuccessfully) knock out 400 reps in under 80 seconds a piece the previous summer.

It was all set up for the main event, the BUCS Cross County Champs up in Stirling that year.  Buoyed by the event not being snowed off, I confidently engaged in a one pint wager with my arch nemesis, on the criteria of who finished first.  Little did I know that this was to be the stage which would be the first of a dozen consecutive defeats to the rapidly improving man from Halifax.  My race lacked urgency, I started off in an energy preservation mode and found myself near the back, and it was only half way through that the frustrated shouts of my coaching support team hit me.  No amount of ‘cutting up the inside’ could muster me a finish higher than 147^th.

Now, two years on, I am eligible to run in BUCS again as I represent the 2^nd finest educational institute in central Birmingham.  These XC Championships, this coming weekend, are an early morning train ride to Cardiff away, and are the venue for my post-injury return to student competition.  Recent training sessions suggest that I’m nearing my peak of fitness again, in particular after lowering my ‘asleep to bathroom’ PB to 25.4 seconds in the 8m event mid-last night.

A top 100 finish is surely the target, and I am wiser from lessons learnt in cross countries over the last 24 months.  These include, start fast, tread tentatively through muddy ditches, and don’t ponder whether you need to buy milk on the way home at crucial moments in the race. 

  

Top uni for architecture I’ll have you know…

Goals as achievable targets

5000m PB : 16:29.9

5k SB (post-Sept 2011) : 18:30 (training split)

Just under 6 months to go until BUCS 5000m.  Plenty of time?  Seeing me sit here in my birthday Onesie you might be forgiven for thinking so.  In all my time as a pseudo-athlete you’d think I’d have learnt to manage my expectations.  Goals are just numbers, but it’s too easy to pick one and think it so many times it no longer sounds good.  You then keep increasing the goal, and then end up with disappointment.  All of a sudden a 28 minute 10k doesn’t seem fast enough, and your latest 34 minute effort just makes you miserable enough to eat a whole pack of hob nobs.  Now you’re not race weight, and the cycle of doom continues.  So how do I pick what I want to achieve?

In 6 months time, I can announce, my target is to be in a position to run 15:50 for 5000m.  It might not happen on the day for a dozen different reasons, but I want to be in a position to achieve it.  3:10 a km, 76 second a lap, for 12 and a half gruelling laps.  Hell I’ve even run 3 of those back to back.  3 kilometres that is.  So surely this is achievable?  Picking a goal so slow that if achieved will still be 3 minutes slower than the world record, so slow in fact that Keninisa Bekele would have lapped me 3 times (I think) might sound unambitious.  But for me this would represent a 40 second, or 4.5% improvement over my current best time.  But as proved by others, namely Steven Bayton (2010), magical things can happen that cause targets to be re-evaluated, or illness, injury, demotivation, or just plain bad luck can de rail even the prettiest and most efficient excel spreadsheet.

So where am I at the moment?  And how do I get to where I want to be?  Having just recovered from a summer out with injury, leaving me with the ability to only run for 10 lung-wrenching minutes, I’ve now completed 8 weeks of transitionary training.  This is my honest assessment of where I am now, compared to where I need to be:

VO2 max :                   worse than a sedentary horse.

Endurance :                 modest.

Lactate threshold :      physically to shy to try.

Muscular strength :    laughable.

Technique :                 lets just say there lots of room for improvement.

Weight :                      not race weight.

Potential :                    … meh.

Cold winter mornings, long dark runs, grass hill after grass hill, hour after hour thinking about technique, weights, cross country races that hopefully don’t involve me falling on my face in the mud (again), continuous hunger, mind numbing drills to improve my form, ice baths, and Ally constantly ordering to improve my posture at the dinner table.  Those who know me know that I must have a constantly evolving yet structured training programme, planned out for month after month.  Am I going to make it?  Watch this space…

Horses for Courses

It had all been so promising in June; a PB of 9:20 for 3000m and potential for more on the 1st of the month, but within 3 weeks I was lying on my back with my feet in the air, hoping somehow that being upside down might exorcise the blasted tendonitis.  Since then, I have achieved no PBs, but optimistically did log a 10 minute long-jog in the park with an average heart rate of 172 in early September.  The walk home from that one was both enforced, and to save embarrassment from not being able to make it up the short incline back to our pad without being overtaken by an obese jogger.

But, after 3 months of injury, I’ve made it through the 6 weeks of rehab and built up my mileage from next to nothing and I now sit on some very sore hamstrings and a sore back from my first fast session last night.  How refreshing it is to have aches and pains in different parts of my body from the peroneal, the little finger injury equivalent of not being able to run.

6 months and about a week, this is the time frame until the BUCS outdoor competition which incidentally will be held in the almighty Olympic stadium, and in no way influenced my decision to return to uni to do my Part 3 architecture this academic year.  According to Ally and Alison's cupboard door, i have no current athletic pedigree, with my name almost absent from the 'house season leads' chart carefully blue-tacked parallel to the wood grain.  Fortunately for me however, I did trip over our early learning centre playmat the other day and accidently record a triple jump house lead of 1 meter 16 centimetres, notching my name.  Arguably the most vulnerable discipline on there, Ally has continually threatened to supersede this near world record every time I leave the room.  Still, all-round improvements are needed against my inferred sub-22 minute pace if I'm going to take the required 6 minutes off and not soil the track which Mister Farah will probably be kissing 3 months later.

Speaking of Ally, the current holder of the house leads for 3 and 5km, he appears to currently be my stiffest male house challenger, and after an impressive effort defrosting a sink's worth of ice from our stubborn freezer, I have no reason to doubt that he has logged this as another mile of cross-training on his child-like chart.  The 12th of November is a key date for us, with our scheduled parkrun face-off looming.  The winner will hold the house lead for probably less than 90 seconds until Alison crosses the line (for a women-adjusted leading time), and the loser forced to machine wash their thermal underwear while the heating remains off.

Tough Times

It’s been a difficult Christmas for Steve Bayton, aged 12.  Fresh from - apparently - underperforming in the Percy Pud 10K, in a disappointing personal best of 32:17, he spent the rest of his day’s energy trying to save his obnoxiously over-sized trophy from being smashed into its inherent materials and recycled in the corresponding containers as Tesco’s recycling plant. 

Bayton’s misery was compounded by visiting his new coach and receiving the news that his potential is being limited by tight hamstrings, poor flexibility in his right quad, weak glutes and hip flexors, and that his thoracic pillar strength needs improving, possibly more on right.  I mean what worse way to hit a man than in his right-thoracic pillar strength.  Ouch. 

The man now also has some serious continuity problems, with none of his other times lining up with this new one.  His 3k pb is only 3 seconds faster than his 3k split in this race, his 5k is slower, and since McMillian’s time prediction are essentially PBs themselves, his 76 minute half just doesn’t live up to the 2h30 marathon he presumably entered in his notebook.

What’s more, I have asked my mother to rescind Steve’s open invitation to my house, without which he will struggle to win next years Burton 10K Classic in my own backyard.

There is however, an air of optimism about the ginger Huddersfield community (no offense to anyone) where he resides.  Rumour has it that he completed 14 unassisted press ups within this last week, which is only 1 shy of his lifetime best. 

Come rain or shine though, I believe that Mister Bayton will line up on the starting line at BUCS, with rumour suggesting that Danny Brewer will be relegated to the ‘B-race’ this year, to avoid Steve being manhandled again whilst spectating and humouring the lower calibre of runners.