Post 168 - End of winter 2018-2019 cross country season

My last blog post was about a successful Ulster cross-country championships, at which I had a decent run. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, followed by getting sick. I had trained hard and peaked well for the Ulsters, ran really hard, and this depletion ended up making me ill. I wasn’t really surprised. Silly as it may sound, but getting a tight haircut just before the race didn’t help as my head was cold all the time, and my body said “enough” and forced me into submission by getting sick.

So I had to write off a planned trip to Aberdeen to run a 3K. There aren’t many opportunities to run 3K road races. My PB was 9:06 from years ago (I’d say 13-14 years ago), and I’d always wanted to run sub-9. Oh well. The wait goes on…

I managed to recover quickly enough for the UK inter-county cross-country championships in Loughborough. I’d be running for Scotland East. I knew a strong Northern Ireland squad was traveling over and I wondered if I might have made that squad had I expressed an intention. In the end Scotland East were only able to field 3 senior male runners, which was a bit disappointing when it’s 6 runners minimum to make up a team).

No matter, it would be a good run out and a good weekend. A long bus journey to Loughborough meant everyone was dying to get off the bus and into the canteen as soon as possible. We were staying in the Elite Athlete Centre at the university. It was pretty cool. Bedrooms where you can control the levels of oxygen in the air to mimic sleeping at altitude, stimulating oxygen-carrying red blood cell production. Amazing food. Great rest and relaxation facilities. A running track named after Paula Radcliffe right next door. Amazing food. I was sorry we were only staying one night…

I made the most of the amazing food (probably made too much of it and over-ate), and was happy to see the course was nowhere near as muddy as last year. There was a very strong wind blowing. Being the last race, I had a bit of time to kill. I found a jerry-can behind a burger van, and sat sheltered from the wind in the sun, sorting out my spikes.

It’s a very high-quality race and I said I’d be happy placing in the top half of the field. I managed to do this, but didn’t feel I’d had a brilliant run. I had peaked two weeks earlier for the Ulsters, processed an illness and just never quite felt 100% in Loughborough. I gave it my best though, but was nowhere near one of the guys in the Northern Ireland squad who I would usually be really close to. Such was the strength of the field, the Northern Ireland squad didn’t manage to finish in the medals – knowing the quality of that squad, this was surprising but goes to show the quality of the athletes on show.

It was quite a highlight running through “West End Corner” where Deirdre and some of her clubmates were marshalling/shouting at me/taking photographs. I didn’t have to endure the bus back to Scotland as we were heading off to Ireland for a week, hopefully culminating in another attempt at the Bere Island ParkRun record We had a good week touring the south of Ireland, getting a few runs in, eating plenty of nice food, a few drinks. The weather was stormy though. The Bere Island record was looking safe…

Wild scenery, wild weather

One run of note during the week was my first track session since 2008. I wanted to make it to 14 x 400, but didn’t want to trash my legs, so thought 10 might be a good compromise. At my fittest at university, when I was training on the track once a week, I did 14 x 400m all under 70 seconds, with 50 seconds of recovery. I wondered how far off I’d be. This time round, it was blowing a gale, raining, with sleet and hail showers. My first one was sub-70. They dropped to around 72. Then halfway through, a hailstorm hit. The hurlers on the adjacent field bailed out of their training session. I’m halfway through, I’m not quitting. It was agony. Horizontal hail smashing me. Times dropped to almost 80 seconds. After 10 minutes, the storm subsided. It was still windy. The times came down again to around 72. I did 14. And jumped straight in the car and drove straight to the supermarket and bought protein-enhanced milk and crossed my fingers that the session wouldn’t do any damage…

Down to Bere Island then and waking up on ParkRun morning on what I hoped would be a glorious warm sunny calm blue-sky day, I ended up disappointed. The Wild Atlantic Way was living up to its billing, Storm Gareth was in full swing, it was lashing rain and howling wind. No records today. Would I just cruise around then, or would I run it hard and see what happened? I was there to run hard. I’d run hard. The ferry over was uneventful, everyone huddled in the small cabin at the back. The minibus was the usual rollercoaster on the little hilly country roads on the island. The weather was fierce. I decided not to wear a waterproof. And ran as hard as I could.

Mile one was quick, with the wind behind. At the turn, the wind caught my long-sleeved top and shorts like parachutes, they were billowing crazily, adding a huge amount more drag. It was grit your teeth stuff. Really slow running. What could I do? I just kept going. 16:45 or something in the end. 40 seconds off the record. I dare say I had the fitness to do it, I just need to go there on a good day! Any disappointment disappeared in the BakeHouse with a scone, cake and banoffee pie for breakfast… great success. With it being the end of the winter season, the end of the cross-country season, and having carried things through the Bere Island ParkRun, I decided the rest of the day would be a bit of an end-of-season blow-out and duly spent time in the pub consuming Guinness and eating tremendous food...

I came back off the week and a half in Ireland, probably the longest time that I have been “lax” with my eating and drinking (I say “lax”, it’s not like I ate pure rubbish all week, I ate pretty healthily but it’s weeks like this that make me realise how tight and ridiculously clean and healthy my normal diet has become). I wondered would I have put on much weight, and how would training go? I’d maybe put on a kilo, which I’d soon shift, and training seemed to be fairly unaffected: I thought I’d maybe need a week to get back up to speed but my first hill session on the Tuesday evening went well, followed by a good turbo session (3 x 10 minutes hard, with 5 minutes recovery, each interval averaging 300W. I looked at last year’s log and in May/June 2018 I was able to do 4 sets of 10 minutes at 300W, so to be doing 3 in March is OK). I had a decent fartlek run on Thursday evening, and then had to think about how to play it for the next few days…

The Scottish National Road Relay championships were on the Sunday. I was picked on the A team, with an outside chance of a medal. Would I do a mini-taper? Or train straight through? In the end I decided a long (80 minutes, long for me) slow run on grass on Friday would do no harm, nor would a swim on Saturday. I did an ironman-distance swim, nice and easy, in 67 minutes. My heart rate was pleasingly low at the end when I checked. This was the first time I’d swam in 31 days, and only the second time in 44 days. I haven’t been swimming much recently. When fit and pushing, I’d do an ironman-distance pool swim in 63-64 minutes. So my swimming is still surprisingly good. If I do the Ironman again, my swim strategy will be to swim nice and easy, accept losing a couple of minutes if it means coming out of the water feeling great, with a low heart rate, having not exerted myself too hard. It seems like I’ll be able to achieve this off one swim per week, instead of the 2-3 swims per week I was doing in London. One swim per week will allow more recovery time, and I will hopefully be much fresher.

The relays were another windy day. I did them a few times in 2004-2007, and again 2 years ago. Last year they clashed with the Scottish Duathlon championships. I was a bit apprehensive about racing hard on the road again. My body doesn’t like the road. I had a good consistent cross-country season because the soft surfaces take less out of the body. The road is unforgiving for injury-prone people like me. I know I’m not far off the shape needed for a sub-32 10K – a huge goal for mid-April. I don’t want to jeopardise this. But at the same time, I need to do the training and racing that will allow me to improve and get to mid-April in good shape. I felt all sorts of niggles going into the relays – right foot, left knee, both Achilles. I hoped I’d survive in one piece. The course was once described to me as “a cross-country course on tarmac”, which isn’t far away – all underpasses, overpasses, bridges, twists, turns, footpaths, the odd trail, tight blind turns. A tough course.

In the end, I survived, and I ran reasonably well, given that I hadn’t tapered and had a fairly big week of training beforehand. The first half was uphill and twisty into a strong wind. I ended up being the windbreak for two athletes who were sheltering behind me. One dropped off. I kept weaving to try to shake him from my slipstream. Kept looking round as if to say “come on, share the work”. Pointedly slowed very briefly twice to see if he’d come through. Not a bit of it. At the top turn, the highest point of the course where we turned out of the wind, he came through and started pulling away. Well he had played that one well. He got about 5 seconds. I hated the first half. Hated the hills. Hated the wind. But as the course started back gradually downhill with the wind behind, I was able to open up. A 4:45 mile saw me catch and pass the slipstreamer.

I seemed to be going well and hoped I’d keep it going. It was good to have someone ahead (a green vest) to chase, and someone behind (the slipstreamer) who I had motivation to keep behind. I caught the green vest. Approached the final tight left hander. Knew it was leading onto a 600m uphill of pain to the finish. I really wanted to keep green vest and slipstreamer behind. I fought so hard and pipped them. A decent run. Just shy of 10K. Had it been 10k, I’d have equalled my PB (just sub-33). I had a chat with slipstreamer. We laughed. “That was the race.” Fair enough, race how you see fit, no hard feelings.

In the end our A team was fifth overall. It was a strong team, which shows the strength in depth in Scottish running. It’s always a good day out at the relays, being able to support clubmates on course and meeting up with people. Some of our veteran teams got medals.

Importantly, I seem to have gotten away with the relays without injuring myself, which is great. I ran at 10K PB-equalling pace on a very windy day, on a slow course. Could I be a minute quicker on a flatter, faster course, on a more favourable day? I hope so… My legs were a little sore the day after, but hopefully this will pass. I’ll hopefully see nice weather on Friday when I hope to run a road 3K in Glasgow (I’d love to break 9 minutes, and not wreck myself in the process). Then I will have 2 more weeks to train prior to the Grangemouth 10K, which will be my only tilt at a 10K this year (multisports are looming). I want so much to break 32. I’ve wanted to do this since I was 18. I am probably just about good enough to do it if I am really fit, lucky with injury, lucky with the weather and have a very good day. I’ve never managed it to date.

I will have to balance my training with a bit of bike work as well, because the Scottish duathlon (10k run, 40K bike, 5K run) is the week after the 10K (assuming the 10K doesn’t destroy me and leave me injured). This is also a big target. I was third overall there last year and would love to be similarly competitive this year. If I can make it there in one piece, my running should be strong. Probably I won’t have done quite so much on the bike as I would like, but my overall fitness should certainly be good.

My winter 2018-2019

So, some exciting races coming up, but it’s high-risk stuff for me – I find racing hard on the roads very difficult and injury-inducing, so I am hoping I make it through April in once piece. Then, in one form or the other, I will be into multisports again, reliving some of the pressure of avoiding injury I associate with pure road running. My dilemmas are still the same: one last tilt at ironman, or full focus on short-course triathlon? Or indeed, full-time focus on running?

A previous post (post 164) outlined this dilemma in more detail! I still haven’t made a call but I need to hurry up and do so.

Training done was as follows:

Post 167 - Ulster cross-country championships 2019

Ulster cross-country championship week. This would be my ninth running of the Ulsters for City of Derry Spartans AC. The club has been really good to me over the years. I first ran the North-West cross-country in Derry in December 2005 as an unattached runner (unattached in that I didn’t have a “home” club, but I was running for Metro Aberdeen in between stints at university in England). Not long after the 2005 North West cross-country race I had a phone call from Gerry Lynch, Spartans club stalwart and a man who has become an absolute hero of mine.

The result of this phone call was that I was on a flight home a few weeks later in January 2006 for the Ulster Junior cross-country championships, followed by 9 Ulster senior championships over the years. I’ve been lucky enough that I’ve always managed to be in the scoring 6 for the club, and have picked up one junior team gold medal, six senior team gold medals, a silver and two bronzes. Some great days in Ulster, at various venues: Bangor, Coleraine, Antrim, Greenmount, and more recently Lurgan where the event has made a home for itself over the past few years.

I had a hot bath on Monday night to help my legs recover after the fast 5K in Armagh. I often get itchy legs in winter – whether it’s the cold, or the going from warm to cold to warm etc when training and commuting on the bike, whether it’s the dry air in the flat when the heating is on, whether my skin is just susceptible to itching, whether it doesn’t like washing powder or whatever it is, it’s annoying at best and sleep-depriving at worst. After the hot bath my legs were so bad I had to resort to taking anti-histamines so I could sleep. Not ideal.

It was a moderate week of training in the lead-up to the Ulsters: a rest day on Monday, then 4 x half -mile reps on Tuesday. Apparently the first half-mile was 2:18 but I can’t believe this was correct. Far too fast… The final three were more “normal” at just under 2:30. A swim on Wednesday night, a fartlek run on Thursday, a short easy turbo/bike on Friday, then off to catch a flight.

The flight was 3 hours late. Sitting in the airport for nearly 5 hours wasn’t ideal. If I’ve learned anything from running/sport, it’s that I’m fragile, especially when fit. Breathing stale manky airport air wasn’t ideal. Anyway. I got home late, got a late dinner, got to bed late.

Then it was off to Lurgan. I met the squad, did a warm-up, chatted and caught up with people. I felt decent in the warm-up, unlike Armagh. It was a nice day. I like the course, as much as it’s possible to like 6 laps and 12km of cross-country running. I really hoped the team would win the title again and that I could make a contribution on the scoring six again.

 Both the ladies’ and the men’s fields seemed bigger this year with good numbers turning out. Our ladies took bronze with Breege winning the overall title. Great stuff. The men lined up. We were off. Within a couple of hundred metres, a lead group of about 10 had formed. I was just off this lead group. In no-man’s land. Decision time. Go with the lead group, or hang back…? I was never going to win this race today and I figured that a few of the lead group would be strong throughout, and a few would probably drop off. I decided to run my own race and hang back. It was definitely the right decision. The race stabilised after a lap, then each lap that followed, I was picking people off, one by one, slowly but surely.

There were a couple of dramas. I almost rolled my ankle on a section running over some tree roots. A fraction more of a roll and I’d have been out of the race, and probably out of action for months. I was lucky. I felt decent. Kept going. Kept making progress through the field, working my way up from about 11th to 6th.

When passing one of the runners on a tight section, there was a bit of an issue. He moved off his line, maybe to avoid a tree root or uneven ground or something. I was blocked, I was almost into the back of him, I almost stumbled. I had to tell myself to calm down. Losing a few seconds was OK. Treat it as a mini-recovery. I gathered myself again. I was moving faster than he was. Wanted to get past. It was such an awkward section to pass on, particularly as we were lapping other runners. There was a bit of room to the left, and I made the pass. Kept going. I don’t know what happened or how it happened, but I felt the smallest touch on my right leg. Very minor contact. I looked back. He was down. “Shiiiiiiit”, what to do? Wait? Help him up? It was totally accidental. I looked back again. He was getting to his feet. Seemed OK. I felt terrible that it had happened, if I’d thought I was at fault I’d put my hands up and admit responsibility but it was just one of those things.

The race went on. By the start of the final lap I had made it up to 6th place. The strength of our squad meant that I was our fourth scorer. Up to this point I felt great. We had great support on the sidelines, roaring us on. It really makes such a difference. All the Spartans girls’ team were cheering from the sidelines, along with a good few other guys fro the club who had come along to support, and my mum was there too. I’m sure there’s all sorts of psychology around support and positive messages. It all seemed to come together, I knew I was running fairly well and was later told that I looked like a ballerina running round, light on my feet and looking decent. I’ll take that compliment!

Wouldn't call this anything like a ballerina

After a couple of laps I heard “come on Portstewart” from the sidelines. It must have been directed at me. Who was it? Who knows that? I kept hearing it every lap. I recognised the voice. I was sure I’d heard it before. But where…? South Africa! It was Stephen, husband of June, two I’d met in South Africa at the half Ironman world championships in September last year. I’d heard Stephen shouting at me in the run in South Africa and it was the “come on Portstewart” shout from the massed crowds that meant I knew it was them. June must have been running in the ladies’ race before we started. It was nice to catch up with them afterwards.

The final lap was slightly tougher. The guy I had just passed had obviously saved a bit for the last lap and as soon as we started the lap, he upped it and ran away from me. I just tried to maintain my pace. Up the long, long drag at the start of the lap. Round to the left, then keep right for the best line, through a bit of muck and slop, batter up the hill, left and left again, then a downhill, over the wood chippings, along a short straight, keep wide for the best ground or keep tight for the shortest line, into the trees and trying to watch your footing, gradually round to the left, up the hill, off-camber, up to the top, stay strong, out the other side, down the hill, round the far end of the course, flat now, turn into the home straight, finish strong. Seventh overall. My highest ever placing in the Ulsters. Another team title, with our runners scoring 2, 3, 5, 7, 12 and 15. Fantastic.

The first person I waited to talk to at the finish was the young runner who had gone down after our contact. I apologised that it had happened, said I wished it hadn’t, said I felt bad for him that it had, but also said there wasn’t anything I could have done, that it was purely accidental. Very graciously, he was completely fine with it. We shook hands. “That’s racing”, he said. And that’s indeed what it was.

I really am very lucky and privileged to run for such a great squad of runners. The club and the people have been really good to me over the years. They really took me under their wings in the early years of my running career, and over 13 years later continue to inspire and motivate me. I only wish I could be more involved more often. Running for City of Derry Spartans in the Ulsters is probably my favourite race of the entire year.

I started out as a runner, kept getting injured, and drifted to triathlon because I got injured less doing it. My training nowadays isn’t really full-on running training, it’s complemented with bike and swim training. I’ve had a tough winter of racing where I’ve often had to curtail my training due to the frequency of upcoming races, to keep myself fresh. I wonder if I really gave the running a proper crack, focused on a couple of key races, did some really good blocks of training, complemented by sports massage to keep myself fresh, how much further up the Ulster finishing order could I be…? Another minute would have put me in the mix for a podium. I need to knock the triathlon habit first of all, I’ll try to do that this year but there are just so many things I want to try and do that just don’t go that well together. For now I’ll be happy with what was a decent run in the Ulsters. I couldn’t help but have a look at the Scottish National cross-country results, held the same day, wondering where I might have placed there. But for me, it’ll always be the Ulsters.

I’m going to be getting back into triathlon and duathlon in some form this summer (whether long course or short course is still to be decided). But I want to use this running form to run some PBs. I had hoped to travel to Aberdeen the week after the Ulsters for the winter monthly 3K race. I’d love to break 9 minutes. I’m probably in shape to do it.

But unfortunately, in the days after the Ulsters, I’ve been feeling worse and worse, to the point where I now have to admit I am sick, and I’ve bailed on Aberdeen. A huge disappointment. I wonder what I did wrong. Not putting on a tracksuit soon enough after finishing? Too long travelling (2 weekends in a row)? Sitting beside the wrong person? Who knows.

I’d love to run some PB times that I can say “those times are the best I could achieve” – I’ve never yet done that in all my years of running. What times would satisfy that? Sub-9 for 3K, close to sub-15 for 5K, sub-32 for 10K, 53 (or better 52) for 10 miles, and sub-70 for a half marathon. And eventually I’d like to run sub 2:36 (or better sub 2:30) for a marathon. In addition to my triathlon ambitions. I wish I was 15 years younger…

So I’ve bailed on Aberdeen, but I hope to shake this sickness off to have a good run at the UK inter-county cross-country championships in Loughborough next week (selection confirmation came through a couple of days after the Ulsters), then have a crack at breaking the Bere Island ParkRun course record in Ireland the week after that. I’d have said I’d have a decent enough chance of that a week ago, but now, I’ve had a horribly lethargic, sniffly, snotty, frustrating week. I wonder how much fitness I’ll lose…

Training done was as follows: