Titles and trophies

Being a City fan in my forties I know that titles aren’t easily won.  The world has felt a little wierd over the last few weeks and I’m still adjusting a life that doesn’t involve glorious failure and ridicule.  Yesterday I claimed a title of my own and for the first time in my life have a trophy.  Ok it isn’t of the size and stature of John Terry’s (oh and Chelsea’s) Champion’s League cup but my son’s impressed with it and wants to be photographed holding it aloft.  My title is Veteran UK backward running champion.

I rocked up to last year’s event in Heaton Park hungover and not even having run 50m backwards but managed to complete the 1 mile circuit in just under 10 minutes.  I seemed to have chanced upon a natural talent and it’s one which I have nurtured and developed over the last year with 20 or so training runs.  The winner last August was Garret who holds backwards world records at distances up to half marathon and finished in just over 7 minutes in 2011.  This year there were many of the entrants I’d met last year and we’d all improved.  I was beaten by just one other over 40 last year so my plan was to train sufficiently to compete for (if not actually claim) that veteran’s title.  Last year’s veteran champ finished a minute ahead of me and I knew he had entered again and, through Twitter grapevine, heard that ultra-marathon runner Mark was taking it seriously this year.  Lucky for me he didn’t turn up on the day although I was satisfied that I beat the veteran’s best time he set last year.

The race was held in tricky conditions as it was hot and the park was busy providing far more potential obsticles than I had encountered on my early morning training runs.  There were large dogs running free around the start line and a large skip had been parked blocking half the path on the steep climb up from the boating lake to the hall.  Being the local boy I had the advantage of training on the course and yes, knowing it ‘backwards’.  I knew where each ridge and manhole cover was and where the cambre of the edge of the paths could be so defined that it might throw you off balance.  I also knew how to pace myself for the gradients.

The start was busy and despite pushing off quickly from the start I settled into 5th place.  I overtook a couple on the climb up to the hall and hoped that the 2nd place guy would find he’d over-cooked his legs on the hill and I could catch him on the gentle descent where I intended to speed up considerably.  However, Seamus also accelerated and periodic glances over my shoulder told me I wasn’t eatting into his lead.  So instead I focussed on Alex behind me and made sure that I kept at least 30m between us.  I suppose that’s a feature of backwards running; it’s easier to defend a position and harder to gain one.   Garret won easily, taking the course record below 7 minutes, second place was just over a minute behind him and I clocked 8:38 which exceeded my expectations.  I found out that Seamus was a marathon runner too as I congratulated him at the finish line but whilst I was engaging with him to find out more about his background I was really taking a closer inspection to work out if he was also over 40.  I couldn’t really ask him outright (could I?) but noted he had quite a few flecks of grey hair and a young teenage lad (son?) amongst his family cheering him on.  I bottled out of asking him and instead had a quick word with race organiser James who told me he was 4 years my junior.  Brilliant!

I feel I have embraced middle age over the last 12 months; I have developed a taste for brown ale and mild, I sing along when Fleetwood Mac are on the radio, I’ve started wearing slippers and using talcum powder and didn’t even protest last night when my wife applied aftersun lotion to the crown of my head for the first time ever.  I’m proud of my ‘veteran’ title.  I can and will trainer harder for next year, my weekly running mileage has dropped off recently and needs to be increased as I train for a triathlon in a few months time and I’m 10 pounds above what I consider to be my fighting weight.  Having watched Garret more closely there is much I can do to improve my technique as well.  Maybe a sub 8 minute run is possible?

No doubt the inevitable new Blues attracted to recent success at the Etihad will expect and demand repeated success but life isn’t always like that is it?  You can’t rest on your laurels and hopefully, like the Blues, I will further up my game over the next year to defend my title.

Marie Curie Swimathon

Lisa and I, representing Sage, completed our 5k swimathon for Marie Curie cancer support this afternoon.  Lisa is the more regular swimmer and both of us would have liked to have done 5k on our own but software release schedules have not afforded us the time to prepare for that.  Nevertheless, I was delighted to manage 100 lengths of crawl for the first time in my life and although the shoulders are still burning now I don’t think there’s any damage to them.  I’d like to say my technique has improved through the last few weeks of training but I don’t think it has really.  My legs are still not contributing much and my whole body rotates too much.  What I lack in technique I make up for in energy and I got that side of things spot on today.  I started swimming at 1:30pm so had a second large bowl of porridge a couple of hours before starting and then a dodgy looking budget caffine energy shot thing that I found in Quality Save being sold off for about 20p.  It seemed to work together with some SIS PSP22 that I quaffed every 20 lengths.  It was noticeable that I had more energy swimming early afternoon than first thing in the morning with just a bit of breakfast and fluids inside me.

I’d not been to the Manchester Aquatic centre before and it was an impressive facility but it felt like they weren’t expecting the 30 or so people that had booked in for the dedicated swimathon swimming session.  There were supposed to be counters made available but in the end we were reduced to paper tick charts and 4 pens between us all.   In the end they gave us all the 6 lanes of the diving pool lanes and so it didn’t feel too busy.  Everyone paused politely at the end of their lengths to let others pass and I felt like I could swim at my preferred pace.  I’ll try to keep a swim in my weekly fitness routine and work on my power and speed.  It would be great to put the wetsuit on and do a few sessions in the Quays through the summer and get ready for my triathlon in October.

We raised some money for Marie Curie Cancer support and having lost a former Round Table comrade to cancer a few weeks ago it was easy to power through the last few lengths with him, his wife and young sons in mind.   We weren’t the best of mates but had a mutual respect for each other’s athletic abilities and having been as fit as me before he was struck down, there but for the grace of God go I.  RIP Robin Clifton.

Link to my sponsorship page here

I promise that I’ll do my best

Today my daughter carried the flag for her district’s Beavers at the St George’s Day parade and I was bursting with pride.  In 10 years of Scouting I’d never carried the flag for my troop let alone the district.  She was immense, striding out in perfect time like her life depended on it.  She’d put herself forward to do it and was then selected on merit from the nominees.  I realise why I never carried the flag now.

The Scout promise is to do your best and do your duty to God and to the Queen.  You can only do your best and I need to remember that sometimes, maybe all the time.  Today was a good day though.  I knocked another 8 seconds off my backwards PB this afternoon putting me just 12 seconds outside the time that claimed the senior’s title last year.  I’m certain I can crack that time but my best might not be good enough for the title this year.  You can only do your best.

I also had a bit of a break through in the pool this morning as I swam 80 lengths of crawl and felt that I was actually in control rather than just thrashing around.  The tumble turns are becoming consistent and actually saving me some time at last and I also feel like I can vary my speed a little bit.  There weren’t any serious aches in the shoulders afterwards and I’m set up for next week’s 100 length swimathon for Marie Curie Cancer Care.  If you’d like to sponsor me please take the link here.  I promise that I’ll do my best.

Old dog, new trick?

Can you teach an old dog a new trick?

After around 40 years of running without considering my posture, I’m starting to think about it with a view to improving it.  A colleague in the office had mentioned Dr Nicholas Romanov’s Pose method a couple of years ago and I looked at it briefly.  Yesterday I found some YouTube footage which demonstrated a few features of it rather than the drills and more technical footage I’d watched previously.

The backwards running has had me up on my toes although the longest I’ve retro-run has been 20 minutes so far.  When going forwards I don’t heel strike to a large degree but do rest back on my heels as I tire or relax.  Yesterday I ran with Tom and Robin around our usual lunchtime 4k route and stayed off my heels but I didn’t feel stable, wasn’t relaxed and wanted to go faster all the time.

Today in the more controlled environment of the gym I ran 4k on the treadmill.  With a mirror to the side of me as well as in front of me I checked to see if I was leaning forward and ensured that the lean was coming from my ankles and that my back was straight.  My stride was significantly shortened and my cadence increased.  I settled on a speed of 14 km/h which although quicker than yesterday should have been in my comfort zone but the amount of sweat I was producing suggested that I was not all that comfortable.  An although Pose is claimed to be more efficient and didn’t feel that way to me.  The last km was tough and as I tired I wanted to drop the cadence and lengthen my stride but I resisted.  An hour later my calf muscles felt like they were going to explode and they’re still throbbing now.  In hindsight I shouldn’t have set an inclide on the treadmill as I normally do and maybe shouldn’t run for quite so long.

Although the leaning will take some getting used to and I’ll have to gently build up my mileage again in this new form, even if this doesn’t become my default style all the technical tips I’m taking on such as avoiding heel strike, keeping my head up, not overstretching, keeping cadence high and both feeling and listening to my feet hitting the ground are all going to help.

Running back to happiness

After over-exercising and damaging my ankle around the streets of London I had a week off which depressed me somewhat, although I did get back into the habit of cycling to work.  I’m back in London to spend the weekend with my brother in law and family so I ventured out to Dulwich park as soon as the gates opened this morning.  There’s a mile long sand track around the park but rather than take it as I have in the past I ran backwards on the smooth tarmac to the side of it. I didn’t capture the time for my lap but the last km was a good 5:30 pace.  Going to do 2 laps tomorrow or maybe 3 if I’m feeling strong and the Rocky Story is firing me up.  No ill effects afterwards and the intensity of backwards running means I feel it in heart and lungs well before my joins are stressed.  I’m looking forward to a week off work and using the time to do a bit of swimming in preparation for the Marie Curie swimmathon and might even dig out the roadbike too.

Learning the hard way

Well I’m back home after a week long course in London and I’ve learnt lots: The location of the Olympic stadium, the joys of interval training, the terminal velocity of a Boris bike (39km/h) and the pain of over training.  There was also some stuff about TCP/IP, BIOS, boot disks and the Packet InterNet Groper (and pinging sounded so innocent!) which left me drowning in a sea of acromyns but I suspect you don’t want to know about that.

To contrast the lethargy of 5 days of classroom learning (and biscuit consumption) I looked to use the rest of the time devoid of the company of my fabulous wife and delightful children to throw myself into a programme of exercise.  As well as the obvious physical benefits this would get me back into early morning starts and fire me up for the day ahead as well as justifying the ever tempting full cooked breakfasts.

Monday was meant to be a gentle exploration of the east side of the city to get my bearings and source a curry house on Brick Lane for the evening but I got distracted and found a steady and suprisingly un-interrupted pace along Whitechapel taking me so far east that the Olympic stadium came into view and beckoned me.

Tuesday I headed east again a little earlier to try to catch sunrise but in the end I didn’t really notice it as my riverside route took me amongst the converted warehouses between St Katherine’s dock and the wharf at the end of the Regent’s canal.  In hindsight this was the run I shouldn’t have done.  Back to back hour long runs after almost a week off was too much too soon and although the post run stretches helped my muscles the joints became tired and achy. Wednesday I hired a Boris bike to soothe my joints but I kept the muscles hot as I gunned east and west along the A13.

Thursday morning was my favourite run as I headed west along the south bank of the river.  I’d run this stretch before and there are some really good traffic free straights to relax you as you enjoy the sights of the city which I think is at its best early morning before the hubbub of the day builds.  At the start of the week I’d stumbled across a Nike Runners Needs store around the corner from my hotel and found that they have a weekly run on Thursday evenings.  Although the 10k in the morning had caused my left ankle to tighten I figured that a group run wouldn’t be too tough and might help loosen it up.  I was wrong.  Under the guidance of Tim and Erea, 15 of us jogged gently to the Tower of London where we paired off to run some 400m intervals. I couldn’t help myself and lead my pair off at a speed I could only sustain for the first of the 5 circuits even with the recovery time between them.  My partner, Mark, was an accountant from Droylsden who was currently contracting for Lloyds.  He knew Prestwich well as his brother has a florist on Heywood road around the corner from my house or as Mark described it between Transformations and the knocking shop.  Mark, it transpires, is divorced.

We weren’t competing against any other pair but both pushed hard in a sadisic manner to limit the other’s recovery time (well I did anyway) and then we gently jogged back to the shop.  There was a pleasant glow from my quads and hamstrings that distracted me from my left ankle which had anything but eased up.

The finale to my London boot camp was to be a duathon to Buckingham Palace and yesterday morning I hobbled with purpose to the Tower of London to pick up a Boris bike.  It was 6:10 but the roads were far from quiet along the north bank of the Thames.  I lifted my speed to try to match that of the traffic in the slower lane but even downhill with my legs spinning frantically I maxed out at about 25 mph.  I stopped at the palace for a few photos and then pottered gently along a peaceful Mall before being swept the rest of the way back to the hotel where my cooked breakfast awaited me.

I won’t be Park Running today but might take the kids out running in Heaton Park tomorrow if the ankle has eased a little.  All that running was a bit silly but I’ve no regrets and as you can see from the photos it was well worth getting out and about whilst in London.

London Calling

I’m on a week long course in London and as I set off to orientate myself around the east side of the city, I realised it was almost as week since my last run; that being the regular 4k to the Lowry wth the ever improving Naeem and Tom.

The sun was shining early this morning and after I found the course venue I headed along Whitechapel, sticking to the main road so as not to get lost.  A couple of landmarks of note were The Blind Beggar pub which I think is where the Krays went drinking and Paraiso School of Samba, possibly the best in the country.

I then caught sight of the Olympic stadium at Stratford. Obviously it’s still a massive building site so rather than find my way around it I was happy to take a picture from the Greenway before taking this cycle/walkway back towards the city.

Tomorrow and Wednesday I’ll run by the river in either direction and then do a short one Thursday morning to leave energy for some interval training with a gang leaving a Runnersneed shop I have found just around the corner from my Travelodge.  That should help put my mileage back on track, find some new people to run with and maybe sharpen my head and legs for a return to the Heaton Parkrun.

Keep calm

How do you deal with stress?  Drink?  Comfort eat?  I’ve turned to both in the past though never to a point where I had any serious problem. In either case I realised for myself that it wasn’t helping.  I’ve noticed occassions over the years when I (or we) have slipped into drinking most nights through the week and we’ve had to make a conscious effort to change.  One vice can be replaced with another though and last year when I gave up alcohol for Lent I turned to cake instead, with vast quantities of Jamaica Ginger cake being consumed.  There’s no way I could live entirely without beer at the moment but this year I’ve given up sweets, crisps and chocolate (10 days so far) to try to at least purge myself of junk food through the day.  I’ve tried to substitute better snacking alternatives and healthy lunches although I soon tired of the egg, beetroot and spinach salads that I turned in the first week.  I’m back mostly eatting chicken noodles again but resisting Doritos and Double Deckers to follow them.

I knew the last couple of months were going to be stressful but I made a mistake cutting back on my running recently.  Working long hours and trying to keep other stuff ticking over meant that I thought dropping the running and gym might be for the best for a few weeks but I was wrong.  I don’t regret ending my running streak but since then I’ve only found chance to go out a couple of times a week and that’s not enough for me.  My moods have been swinging and I’m struggling to get out of bed again.  I need that time – even if it’s only 20 minutes a day to clear my head, switch off, get away from a computer or phone and relax doing something that I enjoy and I know it’s good for my body mind and soul.

This lunchtime I realised what I was missing as the sun was shining and I knew I had to get out there.  It really felt like the gloom of winter had gone and I headed gently through Trafford Park along the Bridgewater canal testing out a softer towpath surface that should help cushion Naeem’s shin splints when the group run on a Monday evening.  He’s improved over the last month but still isn’t comfortable after 20 minutes running on the block paving around the Quays.  An alternative to our regular 4k Lowry run would be to head for 10 minutes by the canal and then all turn around and head back.  That way we could all push as much as we each wanted and different abilities could be catered for.

Sadly no Parkrun again tomorrow but I’m running to work instead and without trying to run every day I should be looking for chances to grab daylight, fresh air and endorphins whenever I can.

I’m no Ironman

I’ve no delusions, I’m no Ironman.  An Ironman would have run for a couple of hours across muddy fields in steady rain and through a stiff wind, but not me.  Not today anyway.  I had intended to run for 90 – 120 minutes around the Lune Valley from the rural training base afforded to me by my mother-in-law and I suggested to my wife that I may be gone some time as I left at 7:30 but then sense got the better of me.  I climbed over the wall at the bottom of the garden and ran by the side of the River Wenning to the point where it met the Lune.

Now this is going to sound like a sad catalogue of excuses but firstly my new phone mysteriously only had 2 albums transfered to it by the lovely man in the Vodafone shop.  I was therefore bereft of the assistance of 5150, Thriller, Let it Bleed, Two Door Cimena fabulous first album and most crucially the Rocky OST.  I could only chose between Eliza Doolittle’s cheeky and chirpy debut album and the more rhythmic Sambayabamba.  They being a proudly Glaswegian samba band that would have been acustomed to rain and misery I went with them, though even they couldn’t provide the grit and drive required to power me through mud and slurry.  Secondly there was a stiff wind blowing up the Lune valley (as well as rain) and as I turned at the point where the rivers joined I appreciated it being behind me but this made me think twice about crossing the river and commiting to 5 miles running into it (as I had intended), especially along unknown muddy footpaths that I’m sure would have left me a little lost at some point.  I also had a bit of a cold which attacked my vocal chords and prevented me singing along (even to Glaswegian ragga-samba).

So having done 3k across muddy fields I bottled it and ran back towards Hornby but continued through the village and tried to find a shorter muddy track on ‘my’ side of the river towards Claughton or Caton.  I failed at this too and headed home with just 7k under the belt but with my spirits not damped too much and my achilles in tact.

Yesterday I finally committed to the Capernwray clearwater triathlon which will be my first olympic distance triathlon this October.  I’ve swum at the flooded quarry at Capernwray before, claimed to be the clearest water in the country, and I vowed to return, particularly as the venue is not too far from my Mother-in-law’s.  I swam for an hour yesterday at Broughton baths to work on my weakest discipline and happened to be in the next lane to a guy training for his first Ironman which is being held again around Bolton in July.  This guy was going straight from the olympic distance I’m working towards to the 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile cycle and marathon run ultimate event without lingering on the the 70.3 half Ironman event that I would consider my eventual target.  He ploughed up and down the pool at a pace with various training aids whilst I was pleased with my hour long thrashing about without drowning.  I joined my kids for 30 minutes whilst he continued (purposefully and magnificently) and we met in the showers afterwards when he helpfully suggested some catch strokes to improve the pitiful kick that throws my whole body out of shape.  It was a little depressing to find out that he regarded running (not swimming) as his strongest discipline although this ‘Tin-man’ was pleased to gloat that he had run to Broughton baths whilst the lazy Ironman-in-training had driven there.

End of my streak

My running streak came to an end this week due to nothing but sheer laziness.  I had run for 159 consecutive days and on a couple of occassions I’d run after 11pm in order to keep the streak going, but not this Tuesday.  To be honest I couldn’t be arsed, but then I think my attitude needed re-adjusting a little.  After putting the kids to bed, I turned in myself and although I woke before 11 there was still compacted snow on the pavements and that just confirmed to me that staying tucked up in bed was the sensible option.

My body had held up to the constant exercise; I only seem to suffer when I cycle long distance as well as run and I haven’t done that for a couple of years.  My achilles got tender from time to time but other than that all was fine.  No muscular pain, blisters or even lost toe nails.  I’d intended to keep the streak going past 200 days and only break it when I wanted to increase the intensity of my runs in the spring but hey ho.  I’ve kept a log of all the runs, some more interesting than others with the best of them being my drunken 6am charge around Newcastle back in November.  During the last streak I’ve started running off road, running with new friends of all abilities, going quickly, deliberately slowly, backwards as well as forwards and just recently I’ve turned to the treadmill for the first time to avoid some of the extreme cold.

After 2 days rest I was out with Imi at lunchtime today and without the regular company of Naeem and his shin splints we were able to push on and he was delighted to beat his 4k target time of 25 minutes by almost 5 minutes.  He’s football fit but never really run before and working towards the Manchester 10k in May.  So no more streaking and running just to say I’ve done it.  I’ll probably still run 5 times a week but will make sure I enjoy every single one from now on.