Greetings there! All good with you?
Well, I’ve been better, let me tell you. Last week
wasn’t great for training, through a combination of a bug doing the rounds chez
Squintani and the disruption of a 24-hr round trip to Farnborough. I still
managed to get to the 50mi mark for the week, mind… just!
I’m just crossing that chasm where childish
enthusiasm for a new challenge turns to the acute adult awareness of its
implications. I do so with M-Day now less than five weeks away. In 33 days’
time, I will know whether all these miles, all these hours have been
worthwhile, and into what finishing time I will have been able to convert them.
And that sure focuses the mind!
These are five weeks during which I will be my best
friend and my own worst enemy. I will motivate myself onto the roads of
Portishead, I
will keep an eye on myself to ensure I eat properly… and I will have more than
the occasional word wi’misen. But, almost as a natural flow from that, I will
set expectations of myself that, quite frankly, no-one will do anything to
compound. Everybody else recognises that running a marathon is a major
challenge in itself without overcomplicating, over-stretching the issue. But
me… as economic theory goes, the more you invest, the more you expect in return:
and I’ve invested, and will continue to invest, an awful lot. There is a danger
that, cometh the day, I will expect too much: it is one of which I am aware and
one which I intend to manage. Hope for the best but expect nothing: that’s the
balancing act I need to strike.
Lest I forget, of course, my initial target was to
run a marathon in under four hours. That alone, for someone who’s never run
26.2mi, would be some achievement – something of which I must not lose sight.
It is only because of the sheer volume of training I’ve been able to put in and
because of some encouraging results along the way that I moved my target
finish time to 3h45’ and then 3h30’. Every time that target has been lowered by
15’, the required pace per mile has gone down by 30”. So, from 9’/mi, I went to
8’30”/mi and am now effectively targeting 8’/mi. Is that sensible, when only
last Tuesday I ran 22.1mi at a pace of 8’36”/mi and only
this morning I ran 23.2mi
at 8’43”? Am I really going to be able to shave off 43”/mi?
Truth is, I don’t know. The past few weeks also featured
1,000+ feet of elevation, which I won’t encounter in Manchester. I’ve been setting
off before 6am, which, whilst practical, can’t be ideal for my body. Although
it has meant lower dehydration levels… there are parts of this here country
covered in snow right now, surely it can’t last till April?
No small detail, however, is that even this
morning, on my longest run yet, I ran three fewer miles than I will do in 33
days’ time: and, when I do have to run miles 24, 25 and 26, they will be a darn
sight more challenging than any of miles 1 to 23! (Or is the “uphill finale” I encounter when running around here acting
as a good simulator for the pain of those final marathon miles? Discuss)
Looking at my splits from last week, I see that I
ran miles 15 and 16 at 8’00”/mi and 8’10”/mi. That’s encouraging. Still not
good enough for 3h30’, though. So why don’t I aim for 3h45’?
Because… I don’t know. Because I want to give 3h30’
a shot, safe in the knowledge that, if I drop off the pace, I can still aim for
3h45’ or indeed 3h59’59”. Because I am hoping that being part of a Brooks Pace Team will have a positive effect on
me, helping my legs keep up and saving my head from having to work out stuff. Because
what I don’t want to do is give up now on 3h30’ and then reach the finish line only
to find myself wondering. I’d much rather slow down on the day. Make sense?
Who knows! I need to not get fixated on a time,
much as that is somewhat complicated by my wanting to sign up for one of the Pace
Teams.
As with any performance, on the day there will be
nerves: as with any performance, if managed correctly those nerves will be an
asset. Here’s hoping the rehearsals bear some resemblance to the real thing in
the end.
Last
but not least, a major source of motivation comes of course from my
fundraising. I’m now within £35 of my £500 target, which is immensely humbling.
I have always candidly admitted that I would be running Manchester even if I
weren’t fundraising, yet life has gone and added a little poignancy to my efforts. This is not my story to tell or my
grief to share: suffice to say that someone I know has recently lost their son,
their very young son. We should not have to bury our children, yet that is what
she will have to do on Thursday. She wasn’t from Sheffield, though it’s from
Sheffield that I know her. I’m fundraising for Sheffield’s Children’s Hospital Charity, because of personal links to the Hospital and of course the City. But Sheffield has
no monopoly over the sadness I feel upon hearing such stories. And I plead guilty to
having thought about my friend on recent runs, of the unfair hand life has
dealt her and her husband, and of finding myself converting that feeling of
injustice into an extra spring in my step at times.
Anger
and sadness pull at our heartstrings in a way that can motivate us in a
sporting context, as we turn to sport to “do something” when there is very
little that we can do. If April 28 turns out anything like my previous races, I
will think about my brothers in the final hour or so ahead of the start, when I will fight back a
tear or two, then during the race, when they will lift me during the harder
bits, and finally when I cross that line, when I will feel we did it together and will raise my eyes to the sky, to them. But now I expect I will also think about a
young man I never met, whose mother for that matter I’ve not seen since
graduating in 1998, but with whom I’ve kept in touch courtesy of modern
technology. A mother who, around a year ago, suggested we try to meet up, kids an’all… we
never did and now my chance to meet that young man has gone forever. My chance
to honour his memory alongside my brothers’, alongside the streets of
Manchester… well, that’s 33 days away.
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