The training plan beckons + a mad challenge

It is t-minus one week until the training plan for the Berlin marathon starts and I start running longer and longer again. My mission is to keep focused on injury prevention and staying run healthy going into the race - times once again are on the back burner and will be what it will be. A training plan sounds like an onerous thing but actually I enjoy the structure and I am sticking with one I have followed successfully before.

This all sounds sensible and not at all 'mad'... well no, it isn't... but what is mad is signing up for a second marathon four weekends after Berlin! I think I had a reason for doing this though having just completed the simple sign-up process I am already questioning my sanity (perhaps I've truly gone running mad). All being well I am going to tie the two together as a charity challenge and fund raising vehicle for one of two charities. Plans,aside from the training plan, are still up in the air a little which is adding to the sense of madness. As proper logistical planning swings into full force I hope it won't feel quite so crazy, and I am going to try and blog a weekly update of how it all goes.

The second marathon will be a new experience in more than race timing as it is a point-to-point city to city race across urban landscapes and English countryside - the Bristol + Bath marathon. It is the organisers first year, a brand new event, and it was something of the locations involved combined with the novelty of not running around in a big circle. Pacing is something that I will have to think hard about before the race as the course starts out fairly smooth and gets lumpy in the second half as it gets in towards Bath. There will be parts of the course I will recognise and others that will be totally new to me so it will be a full on adventure of a run.

The route - borrowed from the event website

I have the feeling my wife agreed to this because of the location, there is no getting away from the fact I might just be mad... am I?

Swansea half-marathon 2015 - my race review

My impressions from the day -
Course: 10/10 it is a super simple one lap course, that looks like an out and back and is more or less just that. Very nearly pan flat but for a bump in the final mile.
Marshalling: 10/10 Very good.
Facilities: 9/10 Very good, it is in the middle of the city so there was plenty of options for supporters too. Could have done with a few more port-a-loo units.
Organisation: 8/10 - two words "car" & "parking"
Fellow runners: 10/10 good and smiley, pace squad were excellent.
Crowd: great support all over the course, a bit patchy but lovely and vocal
My performance:  7/10.
My time: 2:04:59 official chip time - my watch gave me two spare seconds. at 2:04:57.

My race day -

Got up for an early breakfast and walked the dog which set me up nicely and got me properly awake. Getting to the race was a nice straight forward drive from Cardiff to Swansea along the M4. The morning weather was looking good, a little cloud cover, with no sign of rain.

I had decided ahead of time to make the run about training, and so time was put onto the back-burner. This wasn't to say that I was ignoring time - far from it - I aimed to go out at a strong pace, aiming to get to half way (something like 10 km race pace) and coming back in whatever I could muster from there. Hoping all the while quietly that I might be able to hold the high pace beyond halfway.... and so it was a race of two halves...

Image of the start taken from WalesOnline - there is a review article about the race at on their news pages

Inside the start corral I stood near the 1hr 50m pace guys (from race pacing) with their fantastic back pack mounted Xempo flags, it was utter fantasy for me to able to follow them the whole way but they were on perfect target pace for my 'hot' 10 km. For the first 3 km it felt pretty good, my running form was okay (not that good, but okay) and the pace didn't feel searingly fast mechanically (though my lungs weren't entirely sure). So over that first phase it was already clear that I could not run that pace the whole way, which I of course knew and so hoped to control. Though to 8 km I kept my focus on trying to relax and stick to the pace guys. It turned out that around 7-9 km the switch came as my body began to let me know just how much more it could take of the 'hotter' pace.

So my fall off the back of the pacers was slow and sort of graceful (!) in so far as I didn't just stop and wheeze. I eased to the inside of the course and let my pace ease down from 5:15 per km to 5:30 per km, which was okay to get me through to the turn around point out in the area of Swansea bay called the Mumbles. Now, the Mumbles is lovely and I have been there a few times, but on race day other than the over head weather and air temperature I couldn't tell you much about the lovely picturesque area - I was utterly internalised working out my second half and how much I had taken out of myself in the first. In the Mumbles was a water station, I took a bottle, pressed the lap button on my Garmin and steadied myself for the hard work part of my marathon endurance test! (see the photo montage below)

After having a handful of sports beans with the drink walking along for about 100 metres I picked up my feet and took off again. Well I say "took off" I mean started to shuffle again intending to find full marathon pace for the trip back to the start / finish. In many ways I did mange my second half goal - (1) I finished, (2) my pace was pretty good (but not quite what I had hoped for), (3) I enjoyed the day more with my head up looking around me, and most of all I discovered that I could put myself to the running sword and have my body deliver after months of niggling injury and uncertainty.

I think my face tells a story in itself - left top is me at the start; middle top is me taking a halfway drink,  from there on it was all hard graft

The last mile was hard - really hard (!), I walked a short way at the bottom of the hill and then ran it home through the cheering crowds of the city centre. One big downside for me personally was that I had signed up with my non-injury target time, which meant I had a 'quick' coloured bib number and large numbers in the crowd had the look of "what's he doing back here?" on their faces. I would have happily swapped my race number and stood in a different start bin but I didn't look into it in time and so just had to put up with the "look at that prat running so slow in a fast number" sort of sentiments.

Inside the last 150 metres I put on a stupid burst of speed, partly because of the mounting feelings around my race bib and mostly because I spotted that I could sneak under 2:05. After colliding with someone in a previous race I had sworn not to be so daft, but the red mist dropped and I finished my run with a lung bursting attempt to sprint (in my head Usain Bolt, in reality of course a lumbering knackered bloke flailing his arms and legs about). Over the line the organisation and the funnel was great, returning me to my family and my wife's quizzical question of "why did the race tracker say you went through half way in such a fast time?". I spent some time explaining my mad plan!

Having the family there was great, with the enthusiasm of the kids and the flaming influence of my lovely wife. My kids had made little good luck signs that they waved at me in the start area. The signs made not just me smile silly smiles but the runners around me were smiling along with us. In the end I offered to carry two of them folded up in my back pocket to 'push' me along. Thankfully I remembered they were there when the going got hard and my plan seemed foolish - they did really push me up the only hill on the course inside the last mile.

On our way back to the car park we stopped for a Joe's Ice Cream which is a Swansea must-do in my wife's opinion (I have to say I am converted to her way of thinking). Munching our way through the delicious vanilla ice cream we spotted the only fly in what was otherwise pristine ointment - the chaos in the car park. We spent the next hour going nowhere as my legs began to seize and everyones blood pressures soared. Eventually a handful of community and full police officers came to everyones rescue by adding some common sense to the process of feeding cars out of the only exit from the Parc Tawe car park - certainly something for the organisers to tend to there.

My takeaway -

All in I was extremely happy with my effort, and even happier that my body took it well with no huge adverse reaction to a long and hard run. I feel I now have a good platform for a summer of training towards Berlin, so onwards and maybe upwards. I certainly hope to be back next year, perhaps to hunt the pacers all the way round.

Note - Swansea Half-marathon race day photography was looked after by Dirty Green Trainers Sports Photography though sadly I didn't have the kind of run where I would want a memento they did great work and were all over the course. So if you ran go take a look at what you might find.

10 days to go until the Swansea half marathon

It seems to have come around seriously quickly, but the Swansea half marathon is ten days away. My preparation for the race has been fragmented and so I will be going into it with much lower expectations than the day I sat down at the computer to enter the event. I put down a time that was a good chunk off my PB as a race entry prediction, which was yes ambitious but a target I felt was wholly attainable. If asked in February if my prediction would hold I would have smiled broadly and said "yes!", things since then have been rocky to say the least (see previous posts).

In terms of training I have definitely settled into two run sessions a week and found my calf is doing okay with it. This weekend I did 18.1 km as a long run and 'test' for Swansea which went really very well, it was one third on grass, one third on gravel, and one on tarmac - so it was nice a varied too. My idea was to just run long and set some sort of benchmark for the race, and I think I now have a much better of where my fitness is. Tuesday night I followed up with another 8 km which was much harder work and reinforced my feelings about the race.

Aside from pondering fitness levels happily the organisation of the Swansea half-marathon ahead of time has been fantastic, the race pack has arrived and all looks very good. We know the course well and visit Swansea a few times a year so I am looking forward to race day all round.

Trials, tribulations, and grass running

The last month since my last post has seen something of everything, though not the largest amount of running. A brief excursion back into run training at the start of the month led to another setback with my calf, so after more time off and rest, I tried again in the last two weeks. Though only managing two runs a week I have now gotten a few pain free runs under my belt. I have not been doing anything particularly 'clever' or active to get my calf into shape, I found that the more I simply rested it the better it got - doing over zealous stretching and so on just kept inflaming it. Being back at two runs a week is where I wanted to get to so from here I just need to keep keeping it simple and keeping it going.

It is now less than three weeks to the next event I've paid money to enter (the Swansea half), after having missed the Cardiff Bay 5 with the calf injury, and I will definitely be taking it in as a training run. It is only the second running of the Swansea event, and will be my first one around that course, so I will be looking to just go out and enjoy a fun new experience. The goal of this 'training run' will very much be to get round (how many say just that on the start line), and to do so without hurting the training and the runs that will follow. Time targets are the furthest thing from my mind, indeed so far out of my mind that it could be my slowest half marathon ever.

A very neat new discovery for me has been running on grass (namely the outskirts of playing fields) and enjoying the different feel. As an experience it is quite different, my legs are tired in a different way, my pace is harder to maintain, and when I switch back to tarmac path I feel much lighter / bouncier. Having tried it I looked it up in a couple of runners forums and found explanations of the mechanical, physical, pace differences between running surfaces - apparently grass can be up to 30 seconds per kilometre slower than the tarmac as the softer surface absorbs some of the ground reaction (impact energy). All physics aside I have found it seems to help me think about and work on technique, not cause calf pain, and present a nice new set of challenges / opportunities. The weirdest opportunity (and in a way a mental challenge) is running round and round a field, it gives a nice fixed distance and lap by lap feed back on progress of pace (or fatigue mostly). I am going to carry on running on grass once a week, and in fact am really tempted to move more runs onto it as I add to the two runs a week.

8.5k to begin a new training plan - injured or not

Last night I took myself out for a run, indeed my second in about 8 weeks thanks to my calf injury. On a very nice day for running (sunny, light breeze, and a cool / comfortable temperature) I set off at a warm-up pace intending to then hit a comfortable controlled 5k effort pace. It was a simple plan and I simply didn't get out of warm-up pace the entire way round, come the cool down I was already cool enough (!). The reason 'plan A' sank was that my legs were not capable of carrying me much faster without the feeling that my calf would 'go' again, there was no sense of strength and why would there be after the best part of 2 months 'off'. In the end I took all the positives I could out of it, after all I ran the whole thing avoiding tarmac (where possible) and ran an entirely new frankly fun route around the park / river.

Over two months of niggling and often painful calf trouble I have turbo trained here and there and tried to do things - frankly though I failed (!!) - I didn't stay fit, I didn't cross train enough, and I really didn't eat well. There was nothing much more I could realistically expect from a first effort back in training. My hit out at last weeks parkrun was good for my soul but set my calf back again, so was silly to have done at the intensity I did.

Now I am looking forward to being back in a plan, whilst probably running only once or twice a week and cross-training all the other sessions in the schedule I hope that the structure will do me a power of good. It is the plan I followed at the start of this year that is good and progressive (and familiar). This time around by applying some common sense (!!) and by not running every and all sessions I hope to get to my next target at the Swansea half-marathon. That target is now essentially to get onto to the start line and get round, all thoughts of progressing my pace questing a faster marathon in the autumn have been forgotten for the moment.

April - the only way is up

March was a wash out, I lost the entire month to injury niggles and frustration. March's woes were compounded by the knowledge that January and February had gone so well, the contrast could not have been starker. Now April and spring has arrived I am looking forward to more forward momentum and hopefully no more set backs.

There were obviously highlights in March, mostly non-running / non-sporting / non-exercising related, involving a family holiday and way too much eating (!!). One of the highlights that did relate to sporting endeavour was signing up for the...

Cardiff half-marathon 2016  the mass participation event as part of the IAAF/Cardiff University World Half Marathon Championships Cardiff March 26th 2016 -  Event website

...so I have another goal to look forward to next year that should help to limit just how much focus I put on the marathon this autumn.

I hope to get back to running this week nursing my calf, and perhaps back into a training plan next week if all goes really well.

A massive dose of the 'shoulds'

There is a lot written about psychology, everything from the real science through to pulpy magazine soft soap, but over the last couple of weeks I have been indulging in one of those things they all agree is bad... the 'shoulds' or a little more specifically the 'should'ves'. For example:

• I should still cross train.
• I should've avoided the injury in the first place.
• I should eat right.
• I should've read all those run coaching books.
• I should do proper training.
• I should've seen it coming.
• I should've listened to my body not try to stick to every letter of the plan.

None of these things are especially helpful, most are down right unhelpful, and all of them hurt my mental state. Given that these are only a sample, there are some I'd rather not commit to the blog, you can see that I was in a real funk. It was pretty nasty and meant that I was feeling drained even without doing any activity, it even stopped me icing my leg as much as I was advised because I was busy cycling the should list round my head.

All the 'should' stuff is something that most therapy practitioners would have a field day with, and eventually (though not a councillor) I spotted the pattern for myself. Now I have the fun part (!), stripping away all the paralysing shoulds and should'ves and getting moving again. Recognising the problem is more than half the cure, and I know that the moment I get to go for a run again they will almost all disappear.

Injuries seem to have plagued any attempt I have made at consistent training over the last couple of years, and this last one has carried the biggest psychological impact as I put a lot of pressure on my self to improve this year. Aside from avoiding injuries my biggest battle this year will be not to pysch myself out. I want do run the best marathon I can this year, and perhaps the only 'should' worth retaining is this one - "I should just enjoy it". In the meantime I'm back on the turbo trainer, looking to strengthen up generally, and have signed up for a running coaching course in a few weeks time to really get myself going again.

Deeply humbled

The last couple of weeks have seen my training nose dive through the combination of a calf tear and then a huge stinking head cold, to the extent that I feel like have gone backwards fitness wise too. Initial effects of the calf tear were easing with the aid of rest and a visit to see Leon the uber physiotherapist, but then this Sunday I went and re-angered it. Happily in all this gloom I was deeply humbled, admittedly to be fair I am humbled most days by the activities of people around me. I ran with my four year old son on Sunday when I pinged my calf again. His face during the junior parkrun was a picture of delight, joy and fun as we negotiated the course to his 2km best time.

The ping happened in the first 400m as I jogged alongside the happy chappie, I didn't stop, I didn't want to stop, I wanted to stay in the moment, I wanted to not spoil his run and his fun. It was not a bad twinge / re-tear in so far as a change of running form alleviated most of the pain, and it simply grumbled a few more times as we continued. I was utterly in the moment and feeling so humble in the face of the pure delight he was exuding that there was no way I was missing it. In the end his pace towards the finish time was quite breathtaking, especially as he is only just old enough to take part and one of the youngest lads there.

The lil' dude's awesome sprint for the line, and his huge PB

Since then I have had to go back to icing and nursing my leg and trying to look for low impact training / rehab plans, but when I am feeling grumpy I try and remember that moment to put a smile back on my face. Suffice to say though I won't be parkrunning for a while - if only for the fact I fear I'll have to be fully fit to keep up with him in coming weeks :-)

Three things Thursday

1) I have a cold*

2) I have a cold*

3) I have a cold*

I am possibly one of the worlds worst cold sufferers, and I am desperate to do some exercise but I really cautious about driving the thing into my lungs. So, for now I am just wallowing in the self pity and occasionally entertaining thoughts of strange hot lemon drinks as a potential 'cure'.

Image from http://pixabay.com/en/users/steinchen-21981/

* this post has been nominated** for the dullest "Three things Thursday" in internet history. Vote via any channel you like, but know that it'll make no difference except to cheer me up perhaps ;-)

** this post also nominated for biggest stuff of nonsense of 2015***

*** no, sorry I am just rambling, neither of the above is true... medication? Medication!... can I have a lie down?

Block 2 - not off to a great start

My plan for the Berlin marathon involved three blocks: one for the Bath half, one the Swansea half, and the final for the marathon itself. Block one was boom and ultimately bust, with a great training block spoilt by picking up a niggle and not running the Bath half. So, into the second block with many lessons learnt already and off to the physio to get the niggle sorted... or so I thought.

Being a couple of weeks after my stupid back to back hard session in two days nonsense and I thought I'd probably mended and 'just' needed to do the right rehab. Nope, I still have a hotspot in my calf (i.e. a small calf tear) and need to be icing it still and generally treating it cautiously. So I will be turbo trainer, cross-trainer, and swimming for the meanwhile.

The lack of running for the moment might ultimately prove a good thing, because this second block in the longest and pacing my way into it will be helped by having to cross train so much for the first few weeks. A nursing a torn calf though was not the way I wanted to start block 2 I really wanted to get out of the first block ready to do great things in the second. Still, the first rule of planning is be flexible, so I have learned.

Sort of Race Review - Bath Half marathon 2015

My first review of a race I couldn't run...

My impressions from the day -
Course: it is a straight-forward two lap course, I am sure well set out as always.
Marshalling: Pass
Facilities: Pass
Organisation: 10/10 - the entry system, the provision of race packs (must send my timing chip back), the information supplied was all first rate. It is a super organised, supremely experienced event team, which makes me all the more sad I wasn't able to run.
Fellow runners: Pass, but the banter on twitter was pretty good #balfhalf
Crowd: Pass - it is a friendly city so it would no doubt have been awesome.
My performance: DNS - did not start, due to picking up a stupid injury 10 days before the race.
My time: see above - although in my head it would have been stellar ;-)

My race day -

I spent race day relaxing with my lovely wife, we took the greyhound on a good long stroll and tackled a bit of low level DIY before heading to the in-laws for a St.Davids day lunch. It was the kind of Sunday that we haven't had for a little while, so it was really very recharging and quite energising in that it was so restful.

Happily, the whole day I didn't suffer too much with the sense of "gah, I should be running!". The occasional twinge in my calf did offer timely reminders as to why I wasn't and shouldn't run the race.

The hardest running decision: aka a Spot of bother

I have had to make the hard choice, the not to run choice, the choice that leaves you utterly empty at the completion of a block of training. I will not run the Bath Half marathon on Sunday, because I went and picked up an injury. Worst of it all is that it is my own fault, I should have seen it coming, and I should have listened to sound advice.

Good advice is often right in front of your face, so it was a little while back when I read some very good blogs and when I was following my training plan carefully / mindfully. So how I managed to read and then ignore some very sound guidance is a little beyond me (apart from perhaps having too male a brain sometimes).

My not quite running man just about sums it all up

I even read number 2 on MissZippy's advice list in her blog post "Running plans were made to be flexible" which says and I quote - 'avoid placing two hard runs back to back'... so what did I do? Two hard runs back to back that absolutely trashed my legs and left my left calf muscle torn (not terribly but torn). A week later and I had to walk / hobble to the shops leaving me in little doubt that I had blown the half marathon throwing away money, planning and effort in two days of madness.

What's next? I try and get fixed up into good enough shape to run again and get into the second planned block of the year heading into the Swansea half marathon.... only this time I hope a WHOLE lot wiser!

Hope your running is going well, and that you don't try two hard runs back to back - please don't!

Variable rates of travel

The single biggest revelation of the New Year has been the 'discovery' of pace variation in my runs, which "yes" I should have thought about and mastered long ago. In following a new training plan I took the time to read the 'blurb' about each session type, something I thought I had done many times in the past but this set of instructions seemed to embed. So each session has a warm-up and cool down where I realised I had to run slowly in fact very slowly to cool down properly for instance, not something I've ever done before in run sessions (spotting a theme here yet?).

Lately I have found a speed range across almost 3 minutes per kilometre (something around 4.5-5 minutes per mile), and while the quicker pacing has been 'easier' to find I found the slow running very difficult at first. The focus on technique that comes with the pacing range has been so helpful to my running form. I only hope I can shake a niggle of a calf injury I have picked up in the last week, get round the Bath half on Sunday, and then get back into this awesome varied training.

Wow, that was quite the January

I am looking back now more than a little amazed as to just how well January went from a running and training point of view. Setting myself several targets for 2015 felt like the right way to progress, but I had this lingering doubt that I might be over-reaching. The targets come in three blocks, block one (lasting 8 weeks) into the Bath Half marathon, block two (the next 15 weeks) into the Swansea half marathon and the final block of 12 weeks into the Berlin marathon. All three predicated on progression towards a marathon PB, with the first block in some ways the most critical in determining how far I dare to let my ambitions go.

All month I was waiting for something to go wrong for something to twinge and fall apart, but no through using warm-ups and cool downs properly and employing my friend the golf ball I managed very well. My body is not entirely happy with the switch from life without a training plan to life with one but we are agreeing in the most part that everything is okay.

Interestingly going to the local pool for a swim session once a week really has made a difference to my training week perspective. It isn't that I have opted to bob about lazily in the pool I have been working hard and got up to 2.5km in my most recent visit. The big difference it makes is mental, I have to completely change my headspace to get a good session together in the water. Embarassingly I can't freestyle so I have been monstering quick breaststroke lengths instead, but all the while working out how I could try to improve my freestyle. This alternative challenge has neatly stopped me thinking 24/7 about running paces, sessions, technique, and all that.

In the end January was my 4th highest (recorded) month for distance in 4 years of keeping GPS records with just over 116km (72miles). I even went out on the last day of the month to ensure I pushed the total to a personal fourth best total, which I know is tiny compared to the distances 'serious' runners notch up (!).

Heading into February I am looking to simply keep this wagon rolling and glitch free. Bath comes at the end of the month and my main goal go under my Cardiff half marathon time from last year and get as close to my PB as possible without damaging myself for the next training block.

Step change

2015 - "Hello". I have been meaning to blog all year and somehow time at the keyboard has not quite been enough. There are a few things to say, a few things to comment on, and new plans afoot.

The New Year has seen me into a new training plan, an 8 week progressive little ditty that I discovered during a somewhat speculative (read 'random') google search. Somehow I've ended up following the "Shape" - 'Train for a Half-Marathon in 8 Weeks' - plan....

http://www.shape.com/fitness/training-plans/train-half-marathon-8-weeks

...and frankly I have no notion of who or what "Shape" are or do normally, but weird the search engine bots found it and it didn't look half bad.

Now if you follow the link to the plan you'll see that it is an intermediate plan, hmmm, am I a beginner or an intermediate? No clue honestly, it looked like a training load I could handle, it looked incremental, and it was 8 weeks long (all the time until my first event of the year, the Bath Half). Done deal! Two weeks in and I'm doing okay.

For a change my plan seems to have me moving in the right direction

To be fair the last two years have seen me jump on the odd fitness bandwagon, against my usual judgement but the running plan looked to be a good one... what wasn't was the resurrection of the plankaday twitter meme challenge thing. Within two weeks I found I had angered the plantar fasiciitis that has obviously been sneakily hiding and waiting to pop out. It is all about the way I plank, I tend to move my feet about as the hold gets harder, and low and behold the day after my longest plank of the year my right foot was in agony. So that New Year challenge has been binned, which is not to say I won't plank - just not everyday... or to the point I get all wobbly!

The treatment method of choice for my plantar fasciitis - plenty of rolling under my foot after each run

Changes have even led me to the door of Strava, the GPS tracking app / website that acts as a diary, microblog, and motivational tool. Several friends were on there and so in the end peer pressure (I joke guys) made me sign up. Seriously a friend is on there that I hope to be running the Berlin marathon with and so it offered a simple way of tracking each other along with the opportunity to prod each other if need be I suspect. He is tackling London and Berlin marathons in the same year, is blogging over on Runaround!, and is raising money for Save the Children in London.

Runaround! - Don't be put off by the Google+ profile image, haha

Steps? Oh, yeah 2015 has seen my taste in daft post titles unabashed, sorry. I have been on the move for 20 good days and I have noticed the stairs in work are that little bit easier. In fact as little training as I actually really have under my belt, as little weight as I have lost, I am feeling that bit more lithe and nibble. Its not huge, but I've noticed it and it feels great. Roll on a couple of months time when I'll skip up them like a youthful mountain goat chasing the last patch of fresh moss.

Cardiff Half marathon 2014 - my race review

A much overdue race report that I found in my drafts folder during some pre-end of year housekeeping....

 Cardiff Half marathon 2014 

Cardiff city centre - October 5th 2014 - website

My impressions from the day -
Course: 10/10 - simple, flat, quick, well set out.
Marshalling: 6/10 - quality great, quantity not enough - particularly around the start area (more on that in my report below).
Facilities: N/A - as I work near the start / finish I used those facilities for baggage, toilets, and so forth.
Organisation: 10/10 - The start / finish area was fabulously laid out, and the facilities great.
Fellow runners: 6/10 - not a lot of care for fellow runners shown at times, otherwise a great atmosphere.
Crowd: 9/10 - brilliant and vocal support almost all the way round, obviously the barrage was a quiet spot but the city centre was packed.
My performance: 10/10 - given my lack of consistent training I couldn't not have asked much more of myself realistically.
My time: 2:05:41

Pic from the Cardiff Half facebook feed - I can find myself, I don't expect anyone else to ;-)

My race :
I got to the start right on time having cycled to work changed and walked down the the well organised start area. There were lots of signs in evidence and good numbers of marshals shepherding us towards our appropriate time bins in the start chute. The start in fact being right in front of Cardiff Castle was good and spacious, though it was very quiet when I arrived it filled up quickly. I hung out right at the back of the bin knowing that my injury hit preparation had not left me in the shape I had predicted way back when I entered.

Just before the start of the race as we moved toward the front of zone a woman came walking back and collapsed in front of us. I was saddened that so many simply turned their gaze away and carried on towards the start - everyone is chip timed a few moments to help would do nothing to their eventually run times. In the end a small group did congregate around to help her, I was stood nearer the barriers and so yelled will my not inconsiderably loud voice to the marshals who were a very long way in either direction. She was helped to the side as more and more people pushed passed desperately ignoring the situation in their lemming-like desire to get to the start line. In the end a marshal attended and I hope told her not to run. I set off feeling a bit dis-chuffed with my fellow runners.

First three miles - I spent my time trying to work out what pace my body might reasonably be able to hold for the distance and plumped initially for a just sub-2hr pace. As you can see from my GPS graph that ended up being a lofty goal. In mile 3 there is the only long hill of note, and it was there that I realised I needed to cool my pace a bit.

Mile 3 to 6 - keeping up the effort level became my goal, as I knew by then that sub-2hr was not on. From here I relaxed a bit more having had the distractions of the start area on my mind, and through half way a major pinch point on the course (as it enters the barrage) was negotiated with no mishaps.

I think my overall pace trend is fairly self evident

Miles 6 through to 9 - were where I started indulging in a fuel gel and the water stops, neither of which proved successful as I had not practiced either enough and I ended up with a bloated sore tummy for a couple of miles. It was around here that I began digging in to make sure of being around the 2:05 mark. The crowds really did begin to build through this section. It seems that I missed waving at my wife and kids because they were weigh-laid for a newspaper interview (about why daddy was running today) just as I went by. I didn't make it into the newspaper, but I did chuckle at the expert timing and was super pleased that they had made the effort to get out to the halfway mark to try and catch me.

Mile 9 until the end - this is where I had the most familiarity with the course as it was where I started running 'properly' many years ago. Especially the course went around the park that I had struggled to run/walk as a much lardier novice runner trying to get 10K fit. Knowing that the finish was coming and be able to picture every lump and bump in the road to get there helped no end. Feeling that my pace was really suffering through the 11th mile I focused on just letting my legs roll and being not too far from 2:05.

The finish line was right outside the Royal College of Welsh Music and Drama (which is a fantastically striking piece of architecture), and as usual I pulled out a last minute dash for the line. Happily this time being more careful and not clattering into anybody else. The area afterwards was brilliant, the best laid out of any welsh race I've attended and very much on keeping with Cardiff's ambitions to be a major UK half-marathon.

Overall I was very happy with my levels of efforts if not my base fitness, and aside from the start area misfortune was massively impressed with the race organisation. My cycle home with my medal was a good one, with the entire day topped by the delight on my kids faces when the saw my new metalwork - I still haven't the heart to really explain that everyone gets one not just the top three like in the Olympics!! ;-)

Trying to avoid the Christmas feast

Over the next few weeks I will mostly be trying to avoid the temptation to over indulge in Christmas feasting which is essentially an annual pitfall of mine. To achieve my food goals I am hoping the calorie counting approach combined with some regular turbo trainer sessions will see me through to January without extra poundage. Last week I suffered one of those Winter stomach bugs and found I over compensated when my stomach let me eat properly again.

The weekends parkrun went really well, I took it on feeling that a PB is in me waiting to get out. Unfortunately the stomach bug fatigue robbed me of the umph to go and get that quicker time, really happily though I did manage a consistent time that matched my last two parkruns. Perhaps Santa can drop a PB down the chimney for me over the Christmas and New Years period.

Over the next week I have to get myself into gear and get my Bath Half training on the road, so I am on the hunt for a good 11-12 week program. I'll thinking of a 'beginner' one so that I don't throw myself into it too hard as my main goal is Berlin and I am going to do all I can to avoid injury niggles.

Wittering on Wednesday - How to stick to a resolution

How? Well, it is simple really "Don't make a resolution at New Year's, make it when you want to".

There it is 'easy'.  To explain... well even the explanation is pretty straightforward, it seems to me that those resolutions that stick are invariably those made when it was "the right moment".

Sure a New Years resolution can work (don't let me put anyone off), but the 'stickability' comes down to factors like:-

• mental preparedness - i.e. does it simply feel like the right time for action?
• collection or body of information that will act as leverage
• belief - do you really believe in the need for the change or does the fact everyone is doing it make it 'the thing to do'? Do you have as they say in some circles 'Buy-in'
• life situation
• other external stimuli (imminent event, new job, family changes, illness, etc.)

Whenever you make a change - "Make it for yourself and make it stick. Good luck!".

Things are taking shape

Things with my running are beginning to crystallise for 2015, I have signed up for three races (two halves and a full marathon) and I have a several plans in full swing. At the moment I have shifted 10 pounds (4+kg) in the last couple of months, I have brought my 5k parkrun PB down (I'm knocking on the door of sub-25mins now), and I have a roadmap set out to try and achieve a good PB in Berlin next autumn.

For the moment my biggest concern is getting in and out of Christmas with diet intact and waistline smaller than it is now. Due to having lost well recently I am hoping that the New Year can bring a new trousers mini-spending spree that will really be a marker of good progress.

I hope with the holidays coming I will have a little more time to write about progress. I am not making any New Years resolutions, I am only determined to meet my Berlin PB goal - have you set yourself any 2015 challenges?

Very cool news - Berlin marathon said "yes"

I couldn't be more pleased, two years after my first experience of a World marathon major I should be toeing the start line of my second having won a place through the Berlin marathon 2015 ballot.

Training started three weeks ago, after a long planning phase where I considered the length of time I would give myself before another marathon. Moreover I considered the targets and logistics involved in achieving my very best in the next marathon effort. Now I have the offer I can cement those plans and build through to next September in earnest.