Hydration

Wednesday 30th April

Much has been written about the holy grail of hydration and of its importance to runners.

Most of it is useless, incomprehensible and fails to give clear guidelines.

After my lack of hydration in Richmond on Saturday I resolved to get to the bottom of the hydration-saga.

This little gem from the UK Government’s Food Standards Agency:

“It’s important to make sure you drink enough fluid when you’re training and when you’re running the race, but it’s also important not to drink too much. If you get dehydrated or if you drink too much, this can affect your performance and be bad for your health.”

Errr, thanks, that’s really helpful. It gets better:

“To perform at your best in the race it’s a good idea to listen to your body and drink whenever you feel thirsty. If you don’t feel thirsty, there’s no need to drink. And remember, you don’t need to drink at every water stop.”

So I need to drink exactly the right amount? Not too little but not too much? Ok thanks, that's great.

Better advice is found elsewhere:

It's important to begin the run properly hydrated. That means drinking at least 2 litres a day in the weeks leading up to the race and then 500ml of fluid two hours before the run and another 150ml of fluid just before you start.

Studies have shown that the average person loses 500ml - 1.5 litres of fluid per hour of exercise.

Replenising this is important, since a mere 4% drop in hydration levels leads to a 25% drop in performance.

Most people recommend taking 125-250ml of water or sports drinnk every 15-20 mins. That seems like a lot to me. Which is probably why I felt so dreadful on Saturday.

For a three hour run, that means you'd need around three litres of water. You'd probably also need to "do a Paula."

After a long run you should drink 500ml - 1.5 litres more, monitoring the colour of your urine as a guide to when you've had enough.

You're looking for the colour of pale straw apparently. Good luck!

18.2 Miles Down - 8 To Go

Saturday 26th April




Felt pretty scared ahead of this Saturday's run. I planned to run 18 miles and it was HOT.

To get an 18 mile route in Richmond I ran across the centre of the park from Richmond Gate to Roehampton Gate, turned and ran back and then ran around the edge of the park in one direction before turning around and running back again.

The first eleven miles were ok. Had two jelly babies at the start and then one at each mile after the eleventh. Miles 12-14 were also ok. Miles 15-18 were particularly tough and I ran out of Zade at just before mile 16. That was a mistake as it was very very hot.

Afterwards I felt alright. Very dehydrated, but ok. I had a sunburnt nose.

Legs were a bit stiff in the evening but muscles seemed to cope quite well. My left shin felt quite sore down the front and the bunion on my right foot is very painful but nothing a few days rest can't cure.

Topped off the day with a lovely picnic in Battersea Park watching the sun set. Rehyration using strawberry flavoured cava probably not the best option.

Felt: Encouraged by my progress, worried that I need to do more research on hydrating

Distance: 18.2 miles

Time: 2 hrs 48 mins
Average pace per mile: 9 mins 12 secs
Calories: 1916

Jelly Babies

Tuesday 22nd April

I’m dedicating this post to my good friend and housemate who introduced me to the power of jelly babies.

Apparently many runners use Jelly Babies as an energy source during longer races – both to fuel their miles and also as a motivational tool (“One more mile, then I’ll eat a baby”).

Jelly Babies are a cult UK sweet. Launched in 1918 to celebrate the end of World War I, they were originally called Peace Babies. Allegedly they come in six flavours: strawberry, lemon, raspberry, lime, blackcurrant and orange. The reality is they only come in one: sugar. Still there’s something strangely addictive about their texture, a soft jelly flesh encased in crystallized sugar.

And they are great for running.

I trialled the Babies for the first time last Saturday. It was fantastic. We ate them as follows:

Start: Two babies
Mile Seven: One baby
Mile Ten: One baby
Mile Twelve: One baby

I think the effect was mostly psychological but it definitely worked, if you’re feeling low or like you might stop, you can just focus your mind on the next jelly baby. Further exploration on the internet suggests that some runners take a baby on board at each mile after the halfway point.

Calories per baby: 20 (all from sugar)
Nutrition per 100g: Calories: 335, Carbs: 79.5g, Protein: 4.0g, Fat: 0.0g

Ingredients: sugar, glucose syrup, water, gelatine, citric acid, colours (E150d, E120, E132, E104), flavourings, suphites.

Turns out I’m not the only one with a penchant for the jellied baby:

The father of a little boy with a rare skin condition says positive thinking and jelly babies were the key to getting him through the London Marathon to raise money for research into his condition.
http://www.northwaleschronicle.co.uk/latest-features/Dad-runs-marathon-for-little.3996457.jp

A runner is hoping for sweet success in the London Marathon due to her Jelly Baby powered training regime.
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/cn_news_home/DisplayArticle.asp?ID=304259

The Big Build Up

Saturday 19th April


Coming in to the final stages of the training now and the last three massive runs. More seasoned runners than me assure me that this is where it all happens – the most vital part of the preparation.

I plan three long runs:
Saturday 19th April – 14 miles
Saturday 26th April – 18 miles
Thursday 1st May – 22 miles

Then I enter the taper phase.

Most of my reading on Marathon Running suggests that many runners ignore the taper phase and therefore aren’t properly rested for the Main Event. The idea is that – having built up your miles and fitness over the weeks – you should reduce your weekly mileage and length of run to guard against injury and recover from the strain you’ve put your body under in the build up.

Last Saturday saw the first of the long runs in Richmond Park – without a doubt the most beautiful place in London to run. We ran around the perimeter once then turned back on ourselves and went round in the opposite direction.

It was tough. Especially when we reached 7 miles and realized we’d need to do it all over again. But somehow we kept going and even managed a little pick up in pace toward the end. Afterward my legs hurt but I felt good. It made me feel that I was almost ready for the marathon both physically and mentally. There was also a massive sense of achievement in getting the first of the three long runs out of the way.

Roll on next Saturday!

Distance: 14.3 miles
Time: 2 hrs 14 mins
Average pace per mile: 9 mins 25 secs
Calories: 1503

Nike+ SportBand

Sunday 20th April

My running life’s been revolutionized. Last week I bought a Nike+ SportBand. It tracks distance, time, pace and calories burned. It’s absolutely incredible and really easy to use, even for a confirmed technophobe like me.

It works via a sensor in your shoe that sends out a signal with every step you take. That communicates with a band on your wrist which holds a UBS key. Once you’ve finished the run you unplug the USB key from the watch strap, plug it in to the computer and it uploads your runs to a website, plotting them on a pace graph.

I’m quite a new user but I’m very excited about it. On the Nike+ website you can look back over every single run you’ve done, check out the stats, benchmark yourself against other runners and download free running plans to get ready for different races.

I paid £48 for mine at London City Runner, which is on Ludgate Broadway near Ludgate Circus in the city. It was £40 for the Nike+ set which contain the band, the USB key and the shoe chip and then a further £8 for a shoe wallet which attaches to your shoe and holds the chip because I don’t have Nike running shoes.

www.londoncityrunner.com

www.nikeplus.com

And runnin' runnin'

Monday 14th - Friday 18th April

This week has been exhausting. I've managed nothing more than a few runs between the office and home.

Saw Jeremy Irons playing Harold Macmillan in Never So Good at the National Theatre. Macmillan was the British prime minister from 1957-63 and the play looks back at his life, revealing a bevvy of interesting facts for those of us who haven't read his biography. I didn't know Macmillan was wounded five times in World War I or that he survived a plane crash in World War II. Jeremy Irons was Very Good, as was the actor who plays Churchill and duckface from Four Weddings and a Funeral. Highly Recommended, especially if you can get the £10 tickets offer from Travelex.

Also watched the Italian film My Brother Is An Only Child, which follows two squabbling brothers navigating the political ideologies of 1960s Italy. The older hot brother is a communist, the younger, gangly one a fascist. They fight, they make up, they fight some more. They are a metaphor for the entire country. One dies, the other comes to terms with himself and his politics. Beautiful. Thought provoking given my current heightened interest in Italian politics. Could have been half an hour shorter.

The London Marathon - Blood, Vaseline and Blisters

Sunday 13th April

The London Marathon


Watching the London Marathon was at once inspirational and frightening. The reality of what your body goes through was striking, as was the obvious difference between the people that were well prepared and those who really, really weren’t…

Our first stop was between Miles Eleven and Twelve, at Bermondsey. Torrential rain notwithstanding most people were looking fairly chipper. There were a few good costumes, a few bad ones and some crazy folk who'd chosen not only to run more than 26 miles but to do so pretty much in the nude.

Freshness left us at our next stop: Mile Twenty-Four. This was marathon running laid bare. Probably one of the most gruesome points you can stand at. Sodden, tired, bloody: the runners were really feeling it. Attendants handed out Vaseline and Lucozade, dignity didn't play a massive role.

Gordon Ramsay sailed by looking fresh as a daisy. He was running the marathon for an impressive ninth-straight time. We also spotted Castaway has-been and Atlantic rower Ben Fogle, a giant Cornish pasty and a group of six Maasai warriors from a village in northern Tanzania, who were running in jangley flip flops.

Kenyan-speedster Martin Lel set a new course record this year, completing the course in a staggering 2 hours, 5 mins and 16 seconds and chalking up a pace that's waaaay under a five minute mile.

My friends completed in times ranging from 3 hours and 42 minutes to 5 hours and 7 minutes. WELL DONE EVERYONE.

Inspired I ran just over four miles in the evening: around Battersea Park and along the river a little bit.

Fact: London's marathon course is the only one in the world to take in both the east and west hemispheres, crossing the Prime Meridian in Greenwich.

Richmond Ten Miler

Saturday 12th April

A beautiful run this Saturday, around the perimeter of Richmond Park. Much nicer than any of the more urban runs I've done so far.

One lap of the lovely Richmond Park is about eight miles, we added on another two miles at the end. The 'zade came in handy around mile seven. All in all a great run - there's a few sneaky hills if you run around clockwise (which we did) but you can knock most of those out by running anti-clockwise.

Richmond Park is the largest open space in London and covers around 2,500 acres. It was created by King Charles I, who brought his court to Richmond Palace in 1625 to escape the plague in London. The park itself is walled, and quite rugged with lots of little woods and copses and a golf course on the east side. The highest hill in the park is called King Henry VIII's Mound - we ran up it - slowly.

After a few weeks of feeling fairly downbeat this run restored my enthusiasm for the challenge ahead. I loved the sense of feeling out of the city and the fresh air.

Saturday ended with afternoon tea at a friend's in Islington. Polished off lots of crustless sandwiches and scones sans-guilt after my ten miles in the morning.

Perfect.

www.royalparks.gov.uk/richmond

Ran: Ten miles

Realised: How close to Richmond Clapham Junction is

Resolved: To go to Richmond more often

Ate:

Shredded wheat

Crustless sandwiches

Scone, jam, cream

Little cakes

Pink fizzy wine

Lots of tea

Nice Cup Of Tea

Monday 7th April
This one doesn't need any explanation but very accurately captures my current mood.

It's from the lovely Last Lemon Productions: www.haroldsplanet.com

Ljubljana and Bled

3rd - 7th April

Work took me to Slovenia for a few days this weekend while training took a back seat. Left my running kit at home but did manage two walks and one short swim which I hope went someway to bolstering my fitness.

Walk One took me through Ljubljana Old Town and up the steep Castle Hill to Ljubljana Castle, a hotchpotch of architectural styles thought to have been first settled in 1200BC. According to the information points, the castle was first mentioned in literature in 1144, and was gradually added to over the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. After a brief spell as a prison in the early 19th century, the building was renovated in the 1960s and is now used as a venue for weddings and cultural events. There’s a café in the main courtyard and a great 360 view from the top of the main tower.

Walk Two was a far-more-substantial 6.5k in Bled, a small town in the north-west of the country at the edge of the Julian Alps. It’s almost too pretty to believe and eerily quiet. The town is set on a picture perfect, mountain ringed lake, with an island-church in the middle. That’s overlooked by a cliff-perched castle which adds to the Disney-esque fairytale setting. Gave myself a near-heart-attack and several blisters hiking up to the viewpoint to get some photos. Undid all I’d achieved by scoffing local-specialty the kremna rezina – a vanilla custard and cream pastry not dissimilar to England’s custard slice.

The Battersea Loop

Tuesday 1st and Wednesday 2nd April

Motivation, Staying Power and Enthusiasm have all abandoned me these past few days.

Drank too much wine. Worked a lot.

Ran the tried and tested "Battersea Loop" just to keep going. The loop is just 2.9 miles, or 4.7 kilometres long. Realised I would need to run it nine times to make a marathon.

Got depressed. Not good for reviving Motivation, Staying Power or Enthusiasm. Resolved that one day soon I will run the Battersea Loop six times in a row. Felt better.

Uphill Struggle

Monday 31st March

One of the things about training for a marathon is that it becomes increasingly difficult to fit in anything else. Training swallows your life whole, like a snake digesting a mouse. Thusfar I’ve chosen to prioritize my life over my training, but with less than eight weeks until D-day something had to give.

And so I found myself hatching a Master Plan.

Invited to Monday night dinner in Finchley? Not a problem, I’ll run to it: putting in the miles, saving time and arriving for supper with a healthy glow. Genius.

A quick look at walkit.com suggests a route of 8.2 miles from my office to my friend’s house near Finchley Central. So far so good: Quick change at work. Back pack on. Ipod in. And we’re off.

One of the great things about running a route you've never run before is the sense of freshness: the thrill of taking in new sights and the slightly sick feeling when you worry you're getting lost.

One of the not-so-great things about running a route you’ve never run before is that it’s fairly easy to underestimate the amount of pollution or the number of hills you’ll encounter.

And hills and pollution there were aplenty. In fact, this entire route was on an upwardly-tilted main road.

Setting out up Gray’s Inn Road in the sun shine I felt pretty positive. Cutting down the side of Kings Cross Station, the route took me past disused London Underground station York Road – which sits between Kings Cross and Caledonian Road on the Piccadilly Line and closed in 1932 – and into the hinterland of “redevelopment” that sits behind Kings Cross.

The long and not-particularly good-looking Brecknock Road made up the next stretch, delivering me to Tufnell Park tube station, which is encased in that distinctive and very attractive Edwardian red tiling that I like.

After that the super-hill set in. Dartmouth Park HILL is a hill and a half. A long, protracted, seemingly never-ending beast of a hump.

After what seemed like eternity, I reached Waterlow Park – one of London’s most underrated green spaces, perhaps because of its steep hill location. It’s 26-acres and was given to the public as a "garden for the gardenless" by London’s then-Lord Mayor, Sir Sydney Waterlow in 1889. To the south, the park borders Highgate Cemetery, resting place of a plethora of famous dead people, including Karl Marx. Passing up through the park I paused for breath at Lauderdale House, a neoclassical style building which took its name from the Earl who first lived there. Now an arts centre and tea room, its hill-top location affords visitors a jaw-dropping view over London.

Onward and upward, through miles of residential wasteland and across the hellish North Circular, I eventually landed in Finchley, just in time for sausage and cabbage mash, bracingly strong coffee and a white chocolate chip cookie. Yum.

Ran: 8.2 miles, mostly uphill.

Felt: The burn of those hills, Over full after supper.

Ate:
Porridge with banana and honey
Hot cross bun
Niçoise salad (no anchovies)
Apple, grape and yogurt salad
Sausage and cabbage mash
White chocolate chip cookie