The aftermath and the darkness

Well over a week later and feeling has properly returned to my legs/feet/body/mind. The afterglow of getting through another marathon has now faded away and I’m somewhat ‘event-less’ aside from the possibility of another Open Adventure race in the beginning of December in the Lake District.

The running since the big race has been patchy at best, down to a mixture of lack of motivation, not enough time and generally darkness being with us. Seeing that the clocks go back an hour this weekend, the challenge of getting out and running will only get harder.

The next challenge though is going to be trying to keep up the long distances, if only in a relaxed “no cares in the world” way. Saying that, next week is a week off for me, the first since the summer holiday in the first week of August and it’s about time too. I will be relaxing and doing not much if I can possibly help it while also taking the opportunity to start to get the running going again.

And in the meantime… I will keep on playing with my new toy, a Mac Pro notebook, and quite frankly, loving it so far! There’s a whole gadget thread I could start here, but I will hold back before my true inner-geekness comes out.

3h30 goodness

And another one ticked off. Another notch. Another mark on the wall. And more creaky legs for a week or so…

Yesterday was the Marathon Des Villages in Cap Ferret, France. The weather was almost perfect for a race, nice and sunny, not too hot though with a nice breeze to keep you cool. And more importantly, I just about did the time I wanted to do, 3h30:03 was my time by my Garmin, almost a perfect 8 min/mile pace. 

It felt much better than my first marathon experience on the whole, although from the start I was continually battling to keep positive. This time round though, made sure I physically stopped at all the drinking/food stops, ate some bananas, some gels, and took on water and lucozade sport. The infamous ‘wall’ was a lot less obvious and I was able to stagger through it and even finished with a sprint at the end to get as near to the 3h30 mark as I could.

Being honest with myself, I’m sure I could shave some more minutes off that, mostly because it didn’t feel exactly smooth all the way around like it does on those perfect running days where it just feels so easy. This could be a leftover from the previous marathon 5 weeks earlier or simple over-training (which I was scared about at the beginning of next week). However, only a few minutes is what I could gain. That’s marathon’s done for me as I’ve not got the urge to put in the considerable extra effort to take off another 10+ minutes of my new PB. So, happy with that.

Anyway, very nice run, lovely surroundings, excellent support from family and friends (which made an unbelievable difference at the difficult stages of the run), friendly smiling people and a nice medal. To make things better for supporters, in France they put your name and where you’re from on the number bibs so that you get loads of random strangers cheering you on by name, which is a little freaky at the start but greatly appreciated by the end! Recommended marathon… will do it next year methinks.

And next…. well, going to have a month of just going easy, back on the bike as well, enjoying the lack of any real training plan before starting a new load of base training. I have eyed an Open Adventure 5 race in the beginning of December which may fall perfectly. It’s just another target…

Oh, and just got this in the inbox for next summer… very tempting… BreadkBasket Ultra

The Return of the Taper

And it’s the final taper time again. A nice easy week, and in fact last week’s was pretty restful too, only doing a couple of 11 mile runs, although I couldn’t stop myself upping the pace usually running quicker than my target race pace. Had the usual niggles but now put these all down to ‘runners niggles’ that will always be there until I’m wheelchaired.

All I need to do now is make sure that I sort out nutrition for the run. Start taking it on board at mile 10, so that I feel like the michelin man by the end of the race.

Anyway, looking forward to this weekend’s run by the sea.