Leah O'Donovan

Tonight I did hill work. This is a mile warm up, run up a hill for 2:00, jog/walk down for 3:00, repeat 11 more times, mile cool down. That is all.

Thursday and Friday were hectic with election work so I wasn’t able to blog. I did manage a run on Friday night of 10 miles at marathon pace, which is around 9:25 per mile. It wasn’t too bad either. I felt strong.

Today was the last long run of the programme. I did 18 miles at the usual slow 10:25ish pace. It actually went quite well except I don’t think I’d fully recovered from Friday’s efforts as my heart rate was higher throughout than it should have been. On a long, slow run I can manage to go as low as 147 but today the lowest it got was 158 and was even up in 175 territory in the last few miles. This is fine, though. I may not have fully recovered from Friday but it’s not ultimately detrimental. So long as I get proper rest tomorrow I should be fine again by Tuesday.

So there’s just two weeks to go. Next Sunday is only 12 miles which, considering the long ones I’ve knocked out, will seem SO short in comparison. The next two weeks will be a massive reduction in mileage in what is known as the ‘taper period’. This is the week or two before a long run where you scale back on the mileage, while still training at the same intensity, in order to let your body fully recover in time to make the start line. It apparently takes two weeks for a long run or speed work or another harder session to affect your fitness, therefore, anything done in the next two weeks is basically just maintenance. I won’t see much difference in my fitness level between now and the marathon.

Thankfully, I think I can say with all honesty, I feel quite good. I am, of course, still scared of the race; who wouldn’t be? But I actually felt rather good in today’s long run, which I haven’t been able to say before. Yes, my feet were still screaming by the end and, yes, I couldn’t wait to stop but that was on my own. In the marathon I will have crowds and atmosphere and other runners spurring me on. I’ve even got my name printed on my running top so that 1) hubby has a bit more help finding me in the crowd; and 2) crowds will shout out my name. They will do it, you know. Race crowds are fantastic at really cheering on the runners. The last 10 miles or so I am planning on running without music so that I can hear the crowds and really soak up the atmosphere. Hopefully, and in all likelihood, that will help me to finish the race strong. Crowds really can ‘carry’ you the last miles of a race.

So here we go. The road to the marathon really starts here. The next two weeks will be all about resting, eating lots of good carbs and avoiding any last-minute injuries or illnesses. I just need to stay strong. The physical bits are almost over, it’s pretty much all mental now.

Have you missed me? It’s been more than a week since my last post and there are reasons: primarily that I was ill for almost all of last week and did not run.

It started on Monday as what I thought were just allergies. Sniffles, sneezing, the usual hayfever signs. By Tuesday morning, though, I woke up with a sore throat from overnight drainage and a bit more sinus-type pressure to go with the hayfever-type symptoms. By Wednesday I was at home from work resting on the sofa. This continued on Thursday. By Friday I felt well enough to go to work but still not well enough to run. I felt slightly better again on Saturday but still not 100% ready to run. Finally, by Sunday I was back to normal.

The dilemma became, though, what to run? On Friday I posted to the Runner’s World forum that I intended to run my scheduled 22 miles on Sunday. I had assumed that I would just be very well-rested for it. Thankfully – and one of the reasons I’m glad I post on RW – a seasoned marathoner replied to my post to urge me not to run the 22 miles.

The conventional thinking is that with time out the body would work so hard to complete this 22 miles after running on low all week that it would be the marathon. My body would not fully recover enough by 23 May to run the marathon or at least run it well.

I consulted another runner at work on Friday and he concurred with this advice. So, I decided to ease myself back in. I’m glad I did because Sunday’s easy three miles weren’t so easy. It was almost as though my legs had forgot how to run. They were stiff, they were heavy and the knees hurt quite badly for the first 1.5 miles. The second 1.5 were much easier and I felt like a runner again. I think that if I had tried to do 22 miles on Sunday I would have quickly realised that it was a bad idea. Your body is intelligent; it knows how to tell you things.

So, yesterday I upped the mileage 1.5 miles to 4.5. I ran both Sunday and yesterday at easy to slow paces, just whatever I was comfortable with. I tried to avoid ‘clock-watching’ the Garmin and just ran. I’m happy to report that yesterday went far better and I feel as though I’m almost back to normal.

I’m going to rest today since I’m scheduled for speed work tonight and I’m not quite up for that yet. Tomorrow is a slow six miles so I will be running that since it’s another 1.5 miles up from yesterday. Thursday is Election Day here so I’ll most likely be in work all day and even into the night so that will be a rest day too. Friday I’ll assess things and see how work commitments are and will look to run the nine miles at marathon pace scheduled for Thursday.

So that is where I am with only 20 days to go to the marathon. Yikes.

P.S. That’s “yikes” to how close we are to the marathon, not to fitness levels. Happy to report I’m feeling fine in that department despite the illness.

Sorry I haven’t written in a couple of days. It’s been hectic. Let’s recap:

Wednesday: felt very tired from Tuesday’s speed work so I rested

Thursday: 8 miles slow, run from work to home

Friday: a mile warm up, 3 miles ‘brisk’ at half-marathon pace, mile cool down

Saturday: rest

Today: repeat of last Sunday’s 19 miles slow.

The weather was certainly better today, much cooler and I had fluid the whole time. Only bummer was my Garmin was dead so I had to just guess at the pacing the whole time. I think I may have managed just a bit too fast at times as the feet were screaming by the end, as they tend to do. It really is a shame. I know I can run but my damn biomechanics think otherwise. More core work and foam rolling awaits me this week in preparation for Sunday’s 22 miles. That will be the longest run of the training. Some people will run the full 26 miles or just over but conventional thinking is not to do so. With high mileage injuries are fraught (as I’m clearly showing) and so you keep it just under the full distance, trusting the atmosphere and your legs to carry you the full 26.2 on the day. Here we go, four weeks left.

Tonight was a repeat of my session a couple of weeks ago: 3 x 1.5 miles at 10k pace of 8:46-8:26 per mile with .25 jog recoveries and a mile warm up and cool down. I think I’m still very tired from Sunday’s 19 miler. Tonight was quite difficult and I’m absolutely exhausted right now. I feel as though I could sleep for 12 hours or more. I am honestly starting to have doubts about completing this marathon. I’m not seeking sympathy or seeking “you can do it” from people; I’m simply saying I’m having serious doubts. I am hoping these pass because I am not a quitter. I do not want to quit but, damn it, I’m tired, dog tired.

I’d planned on adjusting the schedule this week to account for tiredness anyway. My normal Friday evening driving lesson is off for this week so instead of my usual Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday runs, rest Friday, run four easy miles Saturday, I’m throwing out Saturday’s run. I was going to run tonight and tomorrow, rest Thursday, run Friday, rest Saturday. Because of how tired I am, though, and the fact that I have to help with a mind-numbingly boring work task tomorrow that may not let me leave as early as I normally like, I’m resting tomorrow. I’ll run Thursday and Friday and rest Saturday. It’s another 19 miler on Sunday. I need to ensure I’m rested enough to do it.

Well, update first on the tight leg problems. I think the foam roller has helped. I also chose not to run my four easy miles yesterday and take another day of rest. I think that certainly helped. It’s a long road to getting my form perfected and muscles loosened but progress is being made. On to today.

Today I ran a whopping 19 miles. That’s almost 3/4 of a marathon. I ran along the river Thames today on the path. Map here. It was a lovely spring day if a bit warm for running. This led to the one problem: I ran out of fluid again. I filled my CamelBak hydration backpack with one whole litre of Lucozade energy drink (like Gatorade or Powerade) as that would be just enough for my three hour run. Well, it was a bit warmer than I’d expected and I didn’t ration out the amount as well as I’d thought. I got to just outside of Richmond, with 5.5 miles to go, turned round to head back, went to take a drink and found no more Lucozade. I immediately had a small panic but just thought “it’s only 5.5 miles you can do this.” Every ice cream van that I passed, though, I considered stopping and begging some water as, of course, I had no money with me. But I thought “I’ll have to stop, best just to keep going”. Needless to say I would’ve preferred to have had water all the way back but I managed to finish.

I repeated my mantra of ‘loose’ the whole time and, I think, it helped to keep things loose as, thankfully, my feet aren’t nearly as sore as they were after the 17 miler. Don’t get me wrong, they hurt, but why wouldn’t they after nearly 3.5 hours on them?! I’m going to continue to use the foam roller and it will still hurt but I think we’re getting closer to perfecting the form and loosening the muscles.

Last night I was too tired and did not have enough time to post. Yesterday’s run was 10 miles at what will be marathon pace of 9:11-9:31 per mile. I finished with an average of 9:23 per mile. My only problem is still my too tight legs. So, today I took a day off work and waited in for a foam roller to be delivered. This is just one of the very, very painful exercises I’ll be performing on this roller.

You basically sit on it with whatever muscle is the problem, calves, quadriceps, hips, or in this video the outside thigh or IT band, and roll back and forth. It is just as good as a sports massage and just as painful. I have just completed my first round of rolls and I’m not going to lie, there were screams, shouts, profanities and, yes, even crying. That is how tight my legs really are. This will loosen them up but not without pain. I suppose, though, that the adage ‘no pain, no gain’ applies here. Wish me luck people. This is really going to hurt!

Quick one tonight: slow six miles. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. I even ran without music hoping to ‘get in touch’ with my body. Yes, I realise how hippy dippy that sounds. I will likely do it again tomorrow night. My aim is if I can ‘listen’ to my body, when to hold back, when to go faster, all while repeating the mantra ‘loose’ I can, hopefully, run better and keep from tightening up. The foam roller is due to arrive by the end of the week also so the massage with that should also produce some immediate results. Fingers crossed, I can get things loosened up permanently, or at least in time for Sunday’s long run, each subsequent long run and the marathon.

Well, a lot has happened in the past 48 hours. Let’s start with tonight’s session. It’s the second in the programme but the first time you’ll have heard of it because I skipped the first one as it was the day after we got back from Norway and there was no way in hell I was getting up at 6.00am to do it. Tonight was a Fartlek session. Fartlek means ‘speed play’ in Swedish. Basically, you run at comfortable pace and find a landmark anywhere from .25 to .5 miles away, like a lamp post or road sign. You then run flat out, as hard as you can maintain until you reach the landmark. You then jog slowly until you feel recovered and repeat as many times as you can in a given mile or time limit. Tonight was a six mile Fartlek with a mile warm up and cool down, for a total of eight miles. I like Fartlek sessions. They are entirely unique and you make them your own. You decide how fast and how often you speed up and how slow and how long you take to recover.  I was very happy this evening to be able to maintain with relative ease 7:30 per mile pace. That’s very, very fast for me and it feels good to know I’ve managed to get so fit. Now, though, I turn to the other part.

I went to the Physiotherapist again last night for a sports massage. I mentioned that my feet were killing me after long runs and the plantar fasciitis had flared up again in the left foot and seemed to have appeared in the right foot as well. I know my hip flexors are tight and I could feel everything tightening up throughout the legs over the past few weeks. The right leg, it seems, has gone completely haywire. I was wincing in pain when he was massaging my right quad and right calf. While it is not likely to be PF in the right foot, it is some sort of overload injury causing the pain. My hip rotation was well under par and he worked on my hips and glutes, driving his fist – or possibly elbow, I wasn’t able to see nor did I care – into my buttock while stretching my leg the other direction to loosen everything up. It was not your normal relaxing massage. He did other stretches and massage to try to loosen up those hips. They were still relatively tight by the end but had loosened up enough.

So, what’s causing this? Biomechanics; the makeup of my body and the way that I run causes my muscles to tighten up. My form drops after so many miles and my muscles are struggling to cope and, therefore, taking the feet with them. The body is like a chain when you’re running. The upper body, abs, core strength, hips, quads, calves and feet are all ‘connected’ and if one thing goes wrong, it can affect the rest below. It’s not marathon ending by any means but I do need to do some things over the next six weeks to ensure I make it to the start line intact.

I’m going to do core ab work on my rest days and Saturday. This is not just crunches. This is working the inner abdominal muscles that give you posture and help your body to walk and run. I’m going to increase my stretching after each run to two-three rounds and also stretch on my rest days. I’m going to buy a foam roller thing that I will roll on the floor with in cries of agony (so I’m told) to massage, stretch and loosen up the leg muscles. Finally, I’m going to add in a few leg squats with just a broom for balance using my own body weight rather than actual weights. This is to avoid introducing anything drastically new so close to the marathon as per the advice of my fellow running forum-ites.

So, in two words: this sucks. There are remedies but I’m still disappointed that my body is not coping and rebelling in a fashion. I really want to do this marathon and am hoping and praying that my body heals itself or adapts again to the running load. Thankfully, this is actually my highest mileage week at 47. From here to the marathon it is all downhill relative to this week. If you’re the praying type, please do keep me and my poor legs and feet in your prayers. Pray that I don’t fall apart bit by bit by bit between now and 23 May. I like being whole, thank you.

Today I had a half-marathon race in Paddock Wood, Kent. That is in the southeast of England. Again, I smashed my PB from last year’s Cardiff half. That was 1:58:10. Today I managed 1:56:34. That’s a full 1:36 off of my time. I managed 8:54 per mile and my aim had been to try and do 8:55 per mile, so I am pleased with the results. You can see the map here. I know these seem like small increments off of times but seven seconds faster per mile is still a big feat. Anyone who has ever run knows how precious seconds are when running a race. My colleague who also runs tells me of a friend in his running club who ran the marathon in three hours and one second. One second and he is over three hours. One second can make all the difference.

Well, regardless of all the talk of seconds I am very happy with the result not only because I have a new PB but because I found today much easier than the half in Cardiff in October. I felt much fitter. I paced myself as much as possible and tried to avoid going too fast too soon. This meant I was able to kick things up into higher gear for the last two miles and even managed 8:00 per mile a few times. I also did a proper sprint to the finish. I was caning it towards that finish line. According to the Garmin graph I was doing around 7:00 per mile in the last tenth of a mile.

I’m not going to say I’m not still scared to death of the marathon but, after today, I feel much better about it than I did previously. I’ve just got a few more weeks of long runs to get me ready for the mileage. Six weeks to go.