I run, so you dont have to
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?
11 months ago, I fell in a mountain race (read post here) and cut my knee very badly. For a short period it was the most painful thing I have ever experienced, but the shock kicked in quickly, and the pain was replaced with a fear. I thought I had completely severed my patella tendon, which would mean the end of my running. The small hospital I was taken to in Italy was clean and professional, but no one spoke any English. I asked everyone I saw, “will I be able to run again”, but no one could understand me.
I was left to fully contemplate my life without running. I have always a
