London Week 8 - Recovery, Car Crashes, Misdirection and Inspiration
It's been an odd week, busy at work... The plan was that I'd be writing up a couple of walks and a gentle run today, but the lovely people at VirginMoneyGiving invited me an a friend (of who more later) to a day of training tips and inspiration - so instead of north I headed south, to London and Windsor...
Two recovery runs in the week - I can't share them as Garmin has done one of its periodically amazingly poor upgrades to their system, and I now can't make the watch talk to the computer... Then a night at the theatre with friends watching Japanese belt the living daylights of drums - http://www.kodo.or.jp/index_en.html
Then down to London, meeting up with my mate Kieran at Waterloo - Kieran is one of my inspirations, there is no need for someone who has done what's he's done to be doing another marathon - but he say's there's unfinished business and that's good enough for me... Hell, he's scared of heights and has jumped out of a plane...
Out to Eton, and jump a cab - out to the Dorney Lake complex, where there was a Triathlon ongoing and a hole load of rowing (it is Eton College's rowing centre...). Unfortunately, there's not a lot of parking so it looked like all of the rowers had abandoned their cars on the side of the road... Our cab was going one way, and the large 4x4 with a trailer attached... that'll be a trailer with now a large amount of the cab's paint on it... a short chase ensued, and our out of breathe cabbie came back without any insurance details...
We arrived, with 20 minutes to spare before the start... For the reception guy to tell us that anything running related was down the other end - back 2km to the triathlon tent...
And so we walked down... and the guys and girls to look confused and send us back up to the reception...
The rowing course is 2000m... Kieran had started suggesting that this was an elaborate scam, but trust me I've nothing worth the effort of this one...
So we walked back up...
And then as we approached the complex again... we saw a sign.... I say a sign, an A4 bit of paper...
That made me happy...
Martin Yelling was excellent - good sensible advice based on the simple fact that if we've done the training we've all done and kept doing it we would finish. It was going to hurt, but that the hurt would be worth it for the cold heavy weight of a medal at the finish line - we talked runs, food, the taper and fundamentally disagreed with the existence of the wall - if you do things right, it DOES NOT EXIST!!!
All good stuff - we then went out for light session - c5km in total (still locked into the Garmin), running at our easy, steady and threshold paces and showing us how easy it is to run too fast, and what an impact that can have... 5km has never been so interesting, trying to run for 90s at threshold, and then 1min recover, turn around, and if you're getting it about right you finish 90s later exactly where you started...
Lunch... and the view...
Yes, this is February...
After lunch we had a good talk on nutrition & hydration, complete with freebees from Lucozade (thank you) and an absolutely brutal stretching session that hurt more than the run... Trust me if some of those photos come out there'll be some explaining to do ;-)
Then the lads from Walking for Wounded talked about walking to the South Pole and how they kept going in -40, with ipods freezing, altitude sickness knocking their mates... All done with the sort of pathos any GUCH would recognise, that acknowledgement that our bodies may be battered, missing bits or have plastic bits inside of us... but we're still a damn sight luckier than many of our friends.
The guys were genuinely great, funny, and self effacing - they'll also be on the start line at London with us - though I suspect they'll be somewhere ahead of me, grinning and thinking about the finish line and a cold pint...
We finished with a session on how to make our virginmoney giving pages more appealing... which was all good stuff:-)
Then an event free trip back, apart from the very happy England fans getting on at Twickenham, and the less happy Irish fans. A stroll along the South Bank admiring the view and a quick healthy pizza.
The Kieran headed back to Cambridge to home and to get ready for his LSR and I off to the YHA at Thameside for another recovery run, the 20miler was good, but it took a lot out of me. So 10km to the Cutty Sark, via circumnavigating Peter the Great and an emergency stop at a McDonalds toilet...
So, an excellent day - thank you to VirginMoneyGiving for picking me and letting the pair of dickey ticker runners to turn up and cause havoc. Special thanks to the Walking for Wounded for reminding us all that how ever shit it gets out there, we're doing 26.2 miles not 10 days and to Martin for sage counsel and advice.
A good week, just need to get the Garmin talking to the laptop
TTFN
Paul
Two recovery runs in the week - I can't share them as Garmin has done one of its periodically amazingly poor upgrades to their system, and I now can't make the watch talk to the computer... Then a night at the theatre with friends watching Japanese belt the living daylights of drums - http://www.kodo.or.jp/index_en.html
Then down to London, meeting up with my mate Kieran at Waterloo - Kieran is one of my inspirations, there is no need for someone who has done what's he's done to be doing another marathon - but he say's there's unfinished business and that's good enough for me... Hell, he's scared of heights and has jumped out of a plane...
Out to Eton, and jump a cab - out to the Dorney Lake complex, where there was a Triathlon ongoing and a hole load of rowing (it is Eton College's rowing centre...). Unfortunately, there's not a lot of parking so it looked like all of the rowers had abandoned their cars on the side of the road... Our cab was going one way, and the large 4x4 with a trailer attached... that'll be a trailer with now a large amount of the cab's paint on it... a short chase ensued, and our out of breathe cabbie came back without any insurance details...
We arrived, with 20 minutes to spare before the start... For the reception guy to tell us that anything running related was down the other end - back 2km to the triathlon tent...
And so we walked down... and the guys and girls to look confused and send us back up to the reception...
The rowing course is 2000m... Kieran had started suggesting that this was an elaborate scam, but trust me I've nothing worth the effort of this one...
So we walked back up...
And then as we approached the complex again... we saw a sign.... I say a sign, an A4 bit of paper...
That made me happy...
Martin Yelling was excellent - good sensible advice based on the simple fact that if we've done the training we've all done and kept doing it we would finish. It was going to hurt, but that the hurt would be worth it for the cold heavy weight of a medal at the finish line - we talked runs, food, the taper and fundamentally disagreed with the existence of the wall - if you do things right, it DOES NOT EXIST!!!
All good stuff - we then went out for light session - c5km in total (still locked into the Garmin), running at our easy, steady and threshold paces and showing us how easy it is to run too fast, and what an impact that can have... 5km has never been so interesting, trying to run for 90s at threshold, and then 1min recover, turn around, and if you're getting it about right you finish 90s later exactly where you started...
Lunch... and the view...
Yes, this is February...
After lunch we had a good talk on nutrition & hydration, complete with freebees from Lucozade (thank you) and an absolutely brutal stretching session that hurt more than the run... Trust me if some of those photos come out there'll be some explaining to do ;-)
Then the lads from Walking for Wounded talked about walking to the South Pole and how they kept going in -40, with ipods freezing, altitude sickness knocking their mates... All done with the sort of pathos any GUCH would recognise, that acknowledgement that our bodies may be battered, missing bits or have plastic bits inside of us... but we're still a damn sight luckier than many of our friends.
The guys were genuinely great, funny, and self effacing - they'll also be on the start line at London with us - though I suspect they'll be somewhere ahead of me, grinning and thinking about the finish line and a cold pint...
We finished with a session on how to make our virginmoney giving pages more appealing... which was all good stuff:-)
Then an event free trip back, apart from the very happy England fans getting on at Twickenham, and the less happy Irish fans. A stroll along the South Bank admiring the view and a quick healthy pizza.
The Kieran headed back to Cambridge to home and to get ready for his LSR and I off to the YHA at Thameside for another recovery run, the 20miler was good, but it took a lot out of me. So 10km to the Cutty Sark, via circumnavigating Peter the Great and an emergency stop at a McDonalds toilet...
So, an excellent day - thank you to VirginMoneyGiving for picking me and letting the pair of dickey ticker runners to turn up and cause havoc. Special thanks to the Walking for Wounded for reminding us all that how ever shit it gets out there, we're doing 26.2 miles not 10 days and to Martin for sage counsel and advice.
A good week, just need to get the Garmin talking to the laptop
TTFN
Paul
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