Housekeeping

Avid readers of this blog (if such a thing exists) will have noticed it stopped dead towards the end of January when I was in the middle of my training for this year's Greater Manchester Marathon. So what's been going on?

What I hadn't mentioned in my blogs back in January was that I was carrying an injury. I didn't mention this for a couple of reasons: firstly if I didn't talk about it then it wasn't there and second I know runners and once you mention a niggle or a problem everybody has a solution that 100% worked for them/their friend/some bloke they heard about on the net.

So I plowed on with the heavy training I was doing. Back to back weeks of 60+ miles finally did it for me and I found I was limping when walking, albeit I could still run when everything was warmed up but it wasn't good.

I knew I couldn't carry on like this, but the first RRR championship race of the season, the Mad Dog 10k, was a week away. I love that race and on top of that it was my wife's first ever race. I wasn't going to miss it! So stupidly I dragged myself through another week of training and got myself to the race.

"I'm taking it easy" I told everybody and dropped back a wave so I wasn't going to try and keep up with a pace I didn't think I should be doing. Didn't work though did it? While it wasn't the kind of time I'd expect from a flat out 10k it was still a lot faster than I'd set out to do. I'm sure this didn't help matters but after the race I was determined to have a rest and get fit to carry on with the marathon training.

9 days. 9 long days. I waited 9 days before going out for my next run. It felt okay but again I tried to come back too quickly, doing consecutive days rather than on one, one off. The pain returned, I was going backwards but I only had myself to blame: the marathon wasn't far off and I needed to be getting the miles in as March had two key tune up races and I wasn't feeling ready.

Back to resting it was then. The month of February was creeping by but my miles, on while my marathon progress had been gauged on were stagnating. I'd done less in a month than was previously doing in a week.

By the fourth week of February I was looking on the Greater Manchester Marathon site about deferring my entry to 2016. I could still, just, move my entry but had to do it before the 27th of the month.

Working towards that PB at Wilmslow

What to do? I'd spent months reading up on things, working out my training, identifying my target tune up races and times I should be hitting at them to get the sub 3:05 I was working towards. I knew in my own mind that if I kept my entry for this year I'd push myself to run it and get that time. It wouldn't end well.

So I bit the bullet and rang the Xtra Mile Events office. It was the last day for deferrals and they were busy, lots of runners had left it till the last minute to decide. After a quick call my entry was transferred and my marathon dream for this year was over. Yes I could still buy another entry to the 2015 event right up to race day eve but I was out and if I even thought about doing that I would be back on that slippery slope.

By the time I had differed I was on the road back to recovery but it is only now as I write this on the last weekend in April that I feel I'm back in what I consider full training.

This now left me in a bit of a quandary as my running year had been focused on Manchester in April and the tough Oldham half in October. I still had the Trafford 10k at the start of March and Wilmslow half marathon at the end to try for. I wasn't sure I could be fit for either of these but I was going to try.

I set off conservatively at Trafford and was finding the pace comfortable even though I was doing sub 40. I finished the race in 39:13 which was 1 second faster than my PB set at Ribble Valley back in December.

This made me think I still had a chance of bettering my best half time set at Wilmslow last year (1:29:26) and so it proved I ran a great race to finish in 1:27:34.

So I'd had nearly a month of little or no training yet I was flying when I raced. What was going on? Runners all know about the taper before a big race but this was too much surely? I was convinced that I'd had so long off I'd have lost all my fitness but it turns out my body had in addition to having chance to recover from the injury and have some much needed rest.

Having no spring marathon on the horizon gave me chance to look back of the past 6 to 12 months running and see if I could work out how I'd ended up in this place. Looking at my monthly miles after the dip last summer of the birth of Abigail the miles kept going up, I was focused on doing well at the Stockport 10 in December and put plenty of miles in for that. Nothing wrong with that I don't think, however there was no easing up I kept knocking out the miles week after week long before my marathon training was to begin.

Looking back now I should have backed off after Stockport and possibly not trained as hard for it as I did. When I reached the end of January this year I think in terms of miles laid down I'd done a full marathon training plan as was still over 2 months from race day.

Taking stock everything that has happened I'm determined to put a positive spin on things. I've spent plenty of time reviewing what I did and what I can do better for next time. Miles in a training log mean nothing if all they do is leave me injured and unable to complete the event I was training for. On top of that I now realise my body needs a period of rest, especially if I'm going to put it through 4 months of tough marathon training.

My focus this year remains the Oldham Half in October, an autumn marathon doesn't fit with either this or having a good rest before working up to a spring 2016 marathon. I’ll be doing it with more thought about what I’m doing and making sure I don’t do too much when I don’t need to!