Massif de l'étoile

I forgot to post this: how come I have never come here before?! Stunning views, and quality podcast, thank you Talk Ultra!

For my gran: "Bunny", 8 km hill climb

7.8 km in 44:24 hill climb.

Today is a sad day following on from my Gran, a.k.a. Bunny, passing away last night. Some of today's run was spent thinking about her, and prayerfully recognising the privilege of that heritage and existence and family.

This was a sprightly run up the steepest off-road hill near me, that sees a vertical gain of xxxm in the first 2k. Downhill speed peaked at 2:38/km (almost 23k/h), but this was obviously on a steep downhill tarmac section. Off-road downhill, attempted to integrate some of the lessons learned at the trail race on Nov 4, although there's only so fast you I feel I can go on that rocky, and stupid-steep section.

not been easy, getting back on the blogging wagon...

2 x 9 km

I seem to have gotten off the wagon - not so much of running, but of updating the blog, which I think also coincides with some difficult personal circumstances and family stress. What was great about today was the way in which the runs just slotted into a commute to and from an appointment. Excellent - and I don't feel the 18 km at all, it's a great way to sneak in extra miles without my body really noticing. It really did notice, however, the other day, when I did a 36 km run around my city in 3:34. It was nice to get into the second half of the challenge ahead - the 70km SaintElyon, but yet scary, as my feet were killing by the end.

Breakthrough came though in my nutrition - running at 5:55/km pace is so different to 4:20! I can really take on board good food, and I found that both ham and cheese were welcome fuels. I will be doing the same again on the ultra, using highly-practical babybels (remove the plastic wrapper though, that was annoying).

Running has again become a time for meditation and prayer for me, and for it I am grateful. I am going the process at the moment also of wondering again how running can be glorifying to God and how I can work with other people in that vision. I'm off to work on that now in fact!

Family prioritising, urban poverty and negative splitting

Sun: nowt, Mon: nowt, Tue: 16k

Thank goodness something got squeezed in! I really wanted a long run in each week as part of the build up to SaintElyon but that has t really happened. For the first two weeks I was definitely recovering, so no regrets there. But I really should have been out for a long 'un this weekend. Sometimes though, I just have to learn that circumstances sometimes just dictate differently to my plans, and remind me that as much as I love running, it isn't the most important thing in my life. My family and my faith come higher up the list. A last minute change in weather conditions and a last minute visits by a family of nine (yes, NINE!) meant a whole load of changes hit hard. But I can't tell you just how much release it gave me after initial feelings of stress just to say: there is nothing I can do about this, I have to accept this, this is life! Also, coming tons point of peace about this in the presence of my family is valuable and scores points because they know just how precious time running is to me. 

Regarding the 16k: a "utility run" to the train station and back to pick up a ticke (for the saintelyon race as it happens), applying the usual principle of slightly faster back than out. About and hour 20 mins in total.  I was so struck by the poverty in the northern district of the city I was running through, the filth, thé people rummaging through the bins. I had a bad dream last night about my disgust of the whole situation that poverty brings. I tried to pray for the areas but then just felt quite helpless in the face of such need. I'm glad I came back a different route. 

Back on the subject of the out and back pacing strategy for a training run: when I do this, I know that my pace can be increased. Although it might feel harder to do 4:30 or 4:40/km, I just know it's still well within my scope relative to my race pace, and I do it, and feel fairly positive about that. However, I have yet to negative split on a marathon (or go sub 3hr). And I realise now that my strategy virtually guarantees that I will fail in this endeavour. My strategy really is to positive split! I set off pretty quick in first km and then average around 5 seconds per km quicker than my goal marathon pace for the next 25. But even if I'd gone those five seconds slower: assuming accurate goal-setting, I am at best going to nail an absolutely even marathon. Surely I need to be running a couple of seconds slower than average goal pace to ensure a Healthy negative split. Now this is all a bit theoretical, I know. What do I do when confronted with the reality of a hilly course next time? When running in my last marathon, I kept telling myself when on the flat that I had to run slightly quicker than average goal pace because the speed of the hills is not (and should not be) compensated for by the acceleration of the downs. I course, battered by the third quarter hills, this was not an option for me in the latter stages of the race, but maybe it might have been. Could we not suggest then, as a rule of thumb and guide for a hilly course that flat sections in the first half are taken AT average goal pace, ie slightly slow?

Picking it up

Third week after marathon and my strength and endurance are definitely coming back. So reassuring! 8 and 10 km runs were leaving me panicking that I was going to never make the saintelyon challenge. 

Last night:

8.5 km mainly uphill average 5:00/km. stop 1hr 15. Return over technical hills in night 11km. Slightly crazy moment where I had almost got off the hills, which apparently are privately owned by Lafarge, although seems to depend on how you access the hills, when I discovered Lafarge had reinforced security at the exit, meaning I had to climb back almost to the top of the hill to find another route off. This was perhaps not entirely a bad thing. I simply had the reserves and strength, and it was encouraging to see my body literally take it in its stride. Just within the last few K, a bit of general fatigue and fragility in left knee saw the downhill pace drop. Sub-4 min pace/km aerobically felt otherwise pretty easy. 

10km, with more ups and downs than a hilly hill!

As per yesterday's post, I am sounding out a return to training with the rather ominous 70 km only 7-or-so weeks away. 10 km felt hard today. Admittedly I went out making a school-boy error of not having drunk before I left, and by the time I reached my 6th K, although i was now heading back downhill on my usual 10 K out-and-back route past the plage de Corbière, I struggled to even match my uphill pace. Strangely, I started to feel considerably better as time wore on and felt pretty good by the time I got home, having stopped for a little water in the park en-route. Bit of a weird experience to be honest.

Later in the day felt quite a lot of stiffness around the ankles in particular, which was also a good reminder to not neglect stretching (which I did totally neglect). I am really looking forward to building up to the maximum long-run, which I will basically be measuring in time --> 4 hours, although I don't know exactly by when I shall be able to achieve this, with the 4 November race placed when it is. My guess is either the week before or the week after, certainly no later. Although it's more about time on the feet, which is in-line with my goal of just completing this distance, it would be good to aim for average 6 min/km pace I think, which should mean I can have a 40km route in mind, probably in the city, to give me a hopefully unnecessary bail-out fallback option in the form of public transport home.

In terms of faith, the main current news is that I am really having to rethink my reasons for running by with and for God in a time when I may be joining with a Christian sports group. I suppose it's good that we all have our own complementary approaches.

Picking it up

It's a wee bit tricky when you have two "A-races" isn't it? My Autumn goals have centred around the Luberon marathon on 7 October and the SaintElyon on 1 December, two very different challenges. The first one is now obviously over, and so is my first week of recovery from that: Tuesday = 3 mile jog, Friday = 3 mile run, Saturday = 1h50 min off-road gentle and some clambering over rocks. And I feel tired still, not that recent just run hard tired, but a deeper, still-needing-to-recover from 3h04 of grilling myself! And in some ways I should be glad. If the recovery had been really quick (last year's was quicker than this), then maybe I hadn't run as hard as I needed, and proper recovery does take time. In fact, most of us, and I am well and truly in the "most-of-us" category, need to be thinking about a very low number of very-long (marathon and above) events in the year.

But having these two races together, 1 in October and 1 on 1 December, seemed like a really decent gap. The idea was to allow my body to recover from the marathon and then use that training to benefit my first dabble in the Ultra world. I think it will work out, but what I realise now is that actually I have given virtually no thought to how I will build up to Dec 1. My thinking now is to keep it gentle until my body feels able to clock it up a bit, and keep in view a few training programmes for marathon (I use MarathonTalk ("competent") and Runner's World (sub-3) downloads and tweak as needed. The only thing is that even if I were to jump on that band wagon now, I would already be more than half way through! That is quite scary. The key change to those programmes that I will be looking at is extending the easy stuff. I really need to build up to some outings. I estimate the SaintElyon to take me in the region of 7 hours, which is I hope taking into account my lack of experience and forcing a slow 6 min/km-ish pace for the first 50 km. This expectation is of course likely to be tweaked also as I factor in the experience from my remaining long runs.

Incidentally, there is also a long trail event with 1000m of vertical assent of 28.5 km planned for 4 november. This will obviously be one of my long runs that I will be running faster than long-run pace but not flat out either as I will need to be not recovering for the next two weeks, which basically precede my taper period. This planning stuff is quite tough!