if I can do it, so can you (maybe)
I learnt a lot from my race here last year. And it has been working. Through my marathon block this time, I ran my fastest 10k in 10yrs, as well as my fastest ever parkrun. The marathon sessions have all been faster than ever, and feeling better than ever too.
If I wanted to run sub 2:20 for the first time, I’d have to do something different. At my age, I also faced the law of diminishing returns. Time is not some made up construct in our heads. I’m older than I was. I don’t feel like I used to. I can’t run as smoothly, jump as high, recover as quickly.
So if you have to train harder just to stay the same, what do you have to do to improve?
The National Road Relays is the most team orientated event in the UK.
For one day, everyone has to put aside their own egos and personal ambitions. Building a team of 12 elite runners can be like herding cats.
I have just finished reading Running With The Buffaloes, which followed a team of university athletes for a season as they trained for the USA Cross Country team title (they came 3rd). I should have read this book years ago, as it has gone down in the running world as a cult classic. Reading it brought forward a stark contrast of memories for me, of my time living and training with an elite group of Kenyan athletes, as they trained for the World Cross Country team title (they came 1st). The difference between how the athletes and coach behaved are profound. I sometimes wish I wrote an account of it then, but, at the time I was fully immersed, and I wonder if the note taking and interviews would have changed the experience I had.
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You often know in the first mile how the race is going to go, first mile is 5.01, race will go well. We run a few miles up hill, but the wind is on our backs. The road levels out and I find myself picking up stragglers already.
I often contemplate why it is that the marathon is so compelling, magnetising, for so many people. I think, for me, it is those conversations you are forced to have with yourself in those last 6 miles. Where everything is stripped back to you, and your most authentic voice. Have you really got what it takes? Do you really want it badly enough? Is your ‘why’ strong enough?
