Race Oddity.....

When this whole marathon-thingummy-bob started back in October, I mentally broke it down into a three parts: The training, the fundraising, and writing this blog. At the time, I imagined the first two elements would be the hardest, and the blog writing would just happen quite naturally. As it turns out, I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The training, though hard in the sense that I get tired when I do it, and it’s mostly cold and wet, isn’t tough in an ‘I don’t want to do this today’ sort of way; I’m actually really enjoying it. Not only can I sense improvement as the weeks go on and the miles increase, but I’m starting to feel slimmer and lither. Plus, I can eat more cakes now and not feel guilty about it. The fundraising, as well, is going swimmingly (or runningly – see what I did there! I’m so awesome). With the help of friends and family we’ve managed to organise a major event which will hopefully raise a substantial portion of the target, and meanwhile lots is coming in from personal donations, because, as it turns out, people are incredibly generous. Many of the donations on my fundraising site have surprised me not because of the amount that the individual has donated, but because of the fact that they have donated at all. Quite a few of the donations have come from family members and Facebook friends that I haven’t spoken to (in an actual face-to-face situation) for many years, or in some cases, ever. And the fact that these people are willing to take money out of their pockets and time out of their day in order to sponsor me fills me with an enormous sense of wellbeing. Obviously, Facebook and social networking in general provides an excellent tool with which to try and entice people to sponsor you, but in many ways it is still a passive interface. All of those that have read my plight on Facebook and have chosen to sponsor me have done so completely out of their own choice, and that somehow makes every pound they’ve donated even more worthwhile. Ever felt that you want to restore your own faith in the goodness of human nature? Then try raising money for charity.

Anyway, the point I was originally getting at was about…elephants…wasn’t it? No, it wasn’t. It was about how I thought it would be easy to write a blog and it turns out it’s not. Yeah, that’s it.

When I first started writing the blog, I made a promise to myself that, even though it is a running blog of sorts,  I would try to make it interesting, and hopefully, if the timing was right and the winding is blowing in the right direction, a little bit funny. I didn’t want it to end up an actual diary of my running:

‘Ran 4.32 miles today at 9.12 minutes per mile. Wore my fluorescent long sleeve top with three-quarter length running tights. Saw three dogs.’

See? Boring.

I have no desire to produce a blog that is uninteresting and written purely for the sake of writing; it would be extremely tedious for me, and incredibly ignored by most of you. And I’d also hate the idea that I spent an hour or two writing a blog that would be not be read, let alone enjoyed, by anyone. Happily, the last blog I wrote (come on, you know the one, you’ve probably read it several times, and have it printed out so that you can re-read your favourite bits) was by far the most successful yet, in terms of the volume of readership, the number of re-links posted, and the amount of donations (assuming there was a correlation). And because that last blog was the most successful, it’s made writing the next one (i.e. this one) even harder, because I obviously want it to be better, to have continual improvement, in much the same way as the training and the fundraising seems to be getting better all the time. The trouble is, it’s becoming harder and harder to find interesting things to write about, which is why you now find yourself reading a blog about writing a blog.

So, despite that sentence I wrote 208 words ago, here is how the running is going: On each of the last three Sundays I have a completed a 10 mile run, and for the next two Sundays I’m going to up it to half marathon distance (13.1 miles). After that, it goes up to 15, then 18, and then 20 miles. There is short recess the week after for the Brentwood Half Marathon, and then it’s back up to 20. For the three weeks between that run and the actual London Marathon, I start the ‘taper’ process, which brings the weekly mileage down and allows the body to rebuild itself for the big one. As I write, I have a moderate knee twinge, which worries me slightly.

This is a post I recently put on Facebook, in case you missed it:

15 years ago our mum was diagnosed with breast cancer, a condition that, if not treated with the right amount of care & support, would have taken her from us. By our mum's own admission, had it not been for Macmillan Cancer Support she doubts she would have had the strength to make it. On the 21st of April I'm going to try and run the 26.2 miles of the London Marathon, and in doing so I intend to raise as much money as possible for Macmillan. No amount of money is ever going to be equal to having our mum here with us, but hopefully, in a very small way, I can begin to repay the huge debt of gratitude I feel I owe to them.

But I need your help. If you went to my Just Giving site and donated a couple of pounds, you would be helping millions of people currently diagnosed with cancer. And don’t think that a couple of quid wouldn’t make a difference. Macmillan survives off those donating just two or three pounds just as much as those donating ten and twenty pounds.

Thanks for reading.

www.justgiving.com/james-blackshaw

Happy No Beer

I wrote this pre-Christmas, but didn’t have a chance to post as it was on my work PC. The training schedule has now started, and is going well; I’ll post with a more thorough update soon. Enjoy!

 –JB 08/01/13

I’ve been doing my pre-training training for just over two months now, averaging between fifteen and twenty miles a week, and so far I’ve managed to do without an iPod or any other type of audio input to keep the boredom away.  Instead, I think about stuff.

Here are the top seven things that occupy my thoughts during the cold wintery evenings:

1)      Becoming Lame

There are countless injuries and afflictions that can affect a runner, such as shin splints, runner’s knee, IT band syndrome, and a whole host of other ligament, tendon, and muscle related problems. Due to the nature of the training, at some point I expect to be affected by at least one, but probably multiple, of these afflictions. Depending on a number of factors, such as when the injury hits and the severity of the pain, I am hoping that I would be able to recover in time to continue the training and complete the marathon.  The very scary thing is that if the timing is wrong and/or the injury is too severe for me to be able to compete in, let alone complete, the 26.2 mile course, then all of the training and fundraising will have been for nothing.

Well, that isn’t quite right. The money I’d have raised will still go to Macmillan, and they’ll probably be just as happy with the donations as they would be if I’d actually run the event. And I’d still be much fitter and – hopefully – slimmer due to the months of training. But the main focus and reason for both the training and fundraising would be gone.

I’m doing all I can to hopefully avoid an injury: warming up, warming down, stretching, not pushing the pace, only increasing weekly distances by 10%, taking rest days, etc. But I’m more than aware that I can do all this and still get a niggle. As I write I have a minor ankle twinge, but I also know that I’ve run further this weekend than any previous one, so hopefully a day or two off should see the tightness recede. In general, whether I get an injury or not is in the hands of the running Gods, and therefore I should probably just stop worrying about it. But I probably won’t.

2)      A Face in the Crowd

Running can be fairly boring. At the moment, I’m only running up to eight miles, which is about an hour and a bit, so it’s not really long enough to get too bored. But come February and March time I’ll be running roughly triple that distance, so I fully expect some modicum of tedium. Still though, I intend to try and stay iPod-less throughout my entire training, as I don’t intend to use one on the day, and one of the biggest ‘rules’ of marathon running is that you don’t do anything on the day that you don’t do in training.

So why don’t I intend to use an iPod on the day? Well, because almost all of the past Marathoners I have spoken to have said how great the crowd is and how there’s too much to look at and take in. This seems to make sense to me; I’d have been training for this day for the last six months, so I want to ‘enjoy’ it as much as possible.

But there’s another factor that everyone seems to agree is a huge driving force in getting you round the course, and that is having a loved one there to cheer you on. So I’m told, when the going gets tough and you start to flag, there’s nothing like the thought of getting to see your wife, child, parents, etc in the next couple miles to drive you on. I experienced this from the other side during the 2012 Marathon when my better half, my parents-in-law and I went to watch my sister-in-law. We saw her first at 13 miles, and then at 22 miles, and the joy and relief on Angela’s face when she saw her loved ones (and me!) was evident. My wife and my parents have all promised to come and watch this year’s marathon, and I’ve asked them to stand at the same mile markers. Mile 13 is a good one as it’s the halfway point, and gets you ‘over the hump’. Most marathoners say they found the first 13 relatively easy, and it was after halfway mark that aches started to set in. Mile 22 is also a great target point, as it is about then the going starts to get really tough, and also when the dreaded ‘wall’ is supposed to kick in, so it’s a great idea to have someone there to spur you on for the last four miles.

3)      Toilet Training

I’ll make no bones about this; I like a poo as much as the next man. In fact, I’d go as far to say I enjoy a poo probably more than the next man. And running, of course, tends to free things up a bit, if you catch my meaning. There is actually a syndrome called Runner’s Trots, whereby after a couple of miles of running the sufferer starts to feel the pangs of an oncoming turd. A running friend of mine who suffers from the syndrome told me that on many of his runs he is almost ‘hanging out of the back’, which conjures all sorts of delightful images.

Fortunately, despite the fact I’m incredibly regular, it doesn’t seem to affect me so much. When I first started running in earnest a couple of months ago I had a few bouts of it, and though it never actually came to the point of accidental browning, it was still quite uncomfortable. I found that by cutting out the majority of my dairy intake it drastically subsided (and by ‘cutting out’ I mean not having three-quarters of a pint of milk on my Crunchy Nuts in the morning).

Nonetheless, I’m aware there will be a few extra factors on the morning on the 21^st of April 2013, such as nerves, and, well, nerves, so I will be accompanied my good friend Imodium, should the need arise.

4)      Tee-Total

I’ll make no bones about this; I like a glass of wine of much as the next man. In fact, I’d go as far to say I enjoy a glass of wine probably more than the next man. Copying-and-pasting-whole-sentences aside, I’m aware that post NYE celebrations I will need to totally curb my alcohol intake for around four months. It will be the longest I’ve gone without a drink since I started drinking, which makes me sound much more like an alcoholic than it should.

My current drinking is roughly thus: I’ll have a glass or two of wine – mostly red – in the evening with dinner, almost every evening. At the weekend I’ll possible have a little more, perhaps a whole a bottle of wine, and probably a couple of beers. On the other hand, if I’ve been out gigging with the band, or the wife and I have been out and I’ve driven, then I won’t have anything to drink at all.

However, I’m under absolutely no illusions about my current drinking habits, which are well in excess of what they should be. Training for a marathon aside, I could do without the nightly tipples, and should also cut down on the weekend binging. Lots of people probably won’t agree with this paragraph, but that is probably because they are trying to justify their own drinking habits, which is up to them. I don’t think the sort of drinking I do, or that lots of others do, can really be called alcoholism, in the sense of the stereotypical alcoholic, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t actually some form of dependence or reliance evident, even if that only manifests itself as unwinding after a day at work.

 I’m actually really interested as to how my body and general health is going to react when I stop the drinking on the 2^nd of January. It will probably help me lose some weight, as I’ll be knocking between 2000 and 3000 calories a week on the head. I should also get better blood flow and immunity from colds and flu, etc. But there will also be some negatives to get over, such as (and this is going to sound silly)….. not having a drink every evening. I drink because I enjoy the taste, and because of the feeling being intoxicated gives me, and I’m going to give that up, which is going to be difficult.  

5)      Repeat Performance

I’ve said all along that this probably be the only time I’ll run the London Marathon. The wife and I don’t have any children yet, but even so I often find it difficult to find the time for training, and have to fits runs in as and when I have a free hour or so. I can only imagine that when we have sprogs any free time will be totally digested by teaching my children how to make a half decent bong out of an empty two-litre coke bottle and a bit of hosepipe (that’s what you do with kids, right?). If I was to enter the marathon again it have to be through the ballot system rather than a charity place, as the fundraising for a charity place can be nearly as consuming as the actual training itself.

6)      Target Setting

Quite a few people have asked me what time I’d like to get round the course in, and it can be answered on two levels. When I’m feeling brave I’ll say I’ll want to get round in about four hours and ten minutes, which is an time I’ve calculated I can finish in if I can maintain a constant pace of one mile every nine and half minutes. As I write, this sounds fairly doable, as most of my training runs are at about the nine-minutes per mile mark, and general marathon guidelines say you should aim at a pace that is slightly slower than your training pace.

If I’m not feeling brave, then my answer is that I just want to finish the race. Several people I know have had very clear targets for their finish time, and then, on the day, it has all gone to pot. This could happen for a variety of reasons, such as nerves, being a bit under the weather, starting too quick, getting a small injury, and a whole bunch of other reasonable excuses. So, if everything goes right for me on the morning on the marathon, then yeah, I hope to do just over four hours. If not, then who knows.

7)      Race Day Tictacs

I’ve already started to plan what I think I’ll have with me while I’m running, as obviously you want to keep general baggage down to a minimum for reasons of weight and comfort. So far my current inventory looks like this: a few Ibuprofens, to stave off any pains or aches that crop up; a few Imodium instants, to stave off any shits or poos that crap up; some small sugary treats, a running watch, and…….well, that’s it. Obviously, I’ll be wearing some clothes, including my personalised running vest that Macmillan provides. I was tempted to get ‘TWAT’ printed on mine rather than my name, just to see how many the crowd were would cheer “Come on Twat!”, but I’m not sure they’d allow that. I’m still undecided about whether or not I’m going to carry a phone with me, as my phone is a pretty weighty piece of kit, and as silly as sounds, that extra weight can really add up over the course of 26.2 miles. But then, I’d quite like to be able to contact people, particularly at the end when I’ll probably want to meet up with the wife and the folks, and with 40,000 runners and a quarter of a million spectators the chances of bumping into your loved ones are pretty slim. So, it’s a small but on-going concern.

This has been a fairly hefty post, so thanks for reading.

Big thanks to all those who have sponsored me so far. You are all genuinely very generous people, and every pound you’ve donated is hugely appreciated.

If you’d like to sponsor me please go to www.justgiving.com/james-blackshaw. It takes almost no time at all. Alternatively you can donate via your mobile – just text JIMB79 and your donation amount to 70070.

Thanks. X