First race of the year

I took part in my first running race yesterday since I did the London Marathon in April last year. Woop woop me. It was the Human Race Iceman 16km trail run on the Army training grounds in Frimley. I had entered it a few months ago as something to give my running a bit of a focus over the winter and I wanted to do something a bit different. Human Race events tend to get a bit of a bad press for the cost of their events and at £27 this was not cheap for what it was, but it was a very well organised event over an interesting and tough course.

My major problem on turning up was that I was not wearing running shorts, instead opting for lycra leggings which I normally never wear except on the bike, over cycle shorts. I looked ridiculous and resembled a skinny beetle with weak lower limbs. I was very self conscious.

I knew it was going to be fairly hilly and with only a handful of 8 and 10 mile runs over very flat terrain under my belt, the plan was simple. Start very steadily, stay running steadily and then see how I was feeling over the last few kilometres if it was possible to push the pace a bit. So on the hooter most of the field left me standing while I set off at a trot. We all spent the first few miles trying to avoid the puddles before we all realised that this was going to be impossible and we might as well just run through. The first large loop started easily enough before we encountered the first few hills. They were all very short and very steep and before long people were walking up them. This was where I found I was able to begin overtaking quite a few people who had gone out way too fast.

After the first loop I was feeling very comfortable and then came the next loop, run twice, which was apparently the hardest part of the course. It started with a wide flat bridle path that was gently rolling, followed by quite a narrow technical section through woods. After this came the hills. Well, actually it was one hill but we ran up it about 6 times. Once per lap I had to walk as people had stopped in front of me and as it was single track there was no way around them until we reached the top. The first time was a lot of fun and I was overtaking people steadily and even picking up the pace steadily on the flat sections. The second of the small laps did start to sting a bit, but I just kept picking people off and even had enough at the end for a sprint finish. 32nd out of 270 and 6th in my age group on minimal training, but most importantly my achilles and calves held together over a tough course and I had a lot of fun. Maybe, just maybe, I'm getting my running legs back.  :-)

A solid start

I'm a happy chappy because I'm running regularly again. I've used the Marathon Talk podcast's Jantastic Spring motivation challenge to give me a bit of focus but the main thing compared to previous years is I have reduced the number of weekly runs. For the past two years I have tried, and failed, to do 5 runs per week during Jantastic. This has ended up with me breaking down spectacularly well before April. This time, it's 3 runs per week. Quite simply a couple of easy 30-40 minute runs and one longer one at the weekend. Last weekend I did 8 miles including some fartlek for the middle 4 miles. It was lots of fun  and the fastest I have run for a very very long time. Yesterday Simon and I went to Richmond Park and got 11 slow miles in; the longest I have run since the London Marathon back in April. I need to just keep on doing what I can with 3 runs per week and enjoying it.

It's hardly been cycling weather recently so my cycling has been sporadic, usually involving a quick session on the turbo and commuting bits and pieces. I'm still tinkering with my position on the Argon. I raised the set by 2mm last week and it made a massive difference, opening up my hip angle so that I felt that I was able to breathe much more easily. It doesn't take a genius to work out that being able to get oxygen down into my lungs will significantly help my power output.

As usual swimming is the thing that seems to get hit but I'm not stressing too much about it. In a few months when the lakes open again then I'll start to try to get wet more regularly. At the moment a hard one hour session a week at Kingfisher will do with the odd second swim when I can. It's all good.