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: