Yorkshire MT – Week 2

This week I felt something.

No, don’t worry. My calf muscle didn’t seize up and my hamstring didn’t ping. Quite the opposite in fact. I realised that I am getting stronger.

There is probably a way of measuring this more scientifically, but I don’t need to see the metrics, I could feel it. By the way I could lope comfortably back to the club after doing those hill repeats on Tuesday night. By the way I didn’t feel wiped out by my three hour long run on Friday. I’m not sure I am much faster, but I’m definitely stronger.

Obviously that strength hasn’t just come from two weeks of marathon training, but has slowly been accumulating over the course of this year. And last year too. I’ve been consistently showing up and bit by little bit, that time has been imprinting itself in my body. It’s taking a while because I don’t think there is a single gene in my body that gives me a leg up on this journey. But, I’m human, and having finally read the book Born To Run by Christopher McDougall recently, I feel like Homo Erectus gives hope even to me.

Although the style of telling grates on me somewhat, the story itself is fascinating. The core of it is of a man who tries to create a race between a handful of established western ultra-runners and a few members of an elusive native American community for whom running is central to their identity. In amongst that, the writer weaves stories about modern running, the damage created by Nike and other shoe companies, how we as humans may have hunted, and his own journey from injury-riddled wannabe to stronger trail-runner. It’s worth a read.

But back to me.

I have decided, in these early weeks of marathon training, to make the long runs quite long from the off. The week before I did just over 12, last week I did just under 15 and this week I want to do around 17. Next week I will drop it down a bit. I’m not giving myself a designated distance, just time on my feet. Most training plans would not suggest doing this much continuous time so early on for slower runners like me. However, I haven’t found a training plan that works for me yet, so! It is an experiment, but I think that so long as I recover well enough to keep my weekly mileage up and be able to do at least one other session (by that I mean hills or speed work), I should just try and get my body ready for that very long time out there.

I have this idea that most off-the-shelf training plans assume that slow runners are inexperienced and therefore have not built up stamina. That doesn’t really fit the type of runner I am. So, I’m going to try it this way and we will see how it goes.

Day	What I Did
Mon	Run: 6.77 miles [10.9 km] Pace: 11.06 min/miles [6.87 min/km] Avg pace includes stopping and chatting with Jim midway, who was strolling with his grandson. 25 mins Yoga With Adriene 10 mins Strength and Mobility
Tue	Club Run – Hills Run: 8.19 miles [13.18 km] Pace: 11.40 mm [7.08 m/km] 4 hill climbs – half a mile each and running down to recover. Plus two and bit miles to get there and back in the first place. Good work, even though I do say so myself.
Wed	40 mins Yoga 10 mins Strength and Mobility
Thu	Nothing at all
Fri	Long Slow Run Run: 14.93 miles [24.03 km] Pace: 12.03 mm [7.04 m/km] Did this in the morning after some tea, although I’d eaten a big dinner the night before. Ate a clif bar (a goodie bag acquisition) between around mile 10 and I walked up the big hill near the end, but ran most of the way around. I was tired by the end but quickly recovered. 15 mins Yoga 10 mins Strength and Mobility
Sat	Nothing at all
Sun	30 mins Yoga A progression run (11:00mm, 10:37mm, 9:59mm, 8:14mm), just to blow off the cobwebs of all the sedentary requirements of my coursework. Run: 3.30 miles [5.3 km] Pace: 10.20 mm [6.34 m/km]