Sunday 8 October 2017

Yorkshire Marathon 2017

Today was tough, and running a marathon is tough, so it should be tough.  



Over the last few weeks my training has been reasonable - 22 - 23 mile sightseeing run in New York (ok not at pace, but lots of time on the legs) walking the National 3 Peaks last weekend and generally working hard to stay injury free.  I managed a half marathon pb in September, so hoping for a pb today wasn't unrealistic.

This morning the prep had been decent - volunteered at parkrun yesterday to save my legs, good night of sleep, loads of carbs and my ultimate running fuel breakfast of porridge with cashew nut butter and golden syrup.  I did have a cold lingering, but this morning that seemed much better and so I ambitiously plugged a target time of 3 hours 40 to push me to knock off 7 minutes from last year and allow me to achieve Good for Age (3 hours 45) for the future.

We drove to the park and run (well park, ride and run!) and got to the race village in great time.  I had my first toilet stop, left my stuff at baggage drop and walked up to the start area with Alan in our ready to dispose tshirts.  The conditions were great - cool, overcast and not raining!  We made another toilet break about 40 minutes before the start gun and got in our pen - this was my first error.  I always need less time between my last toilet break the start gun and I ended up rushing to the vacant toilet I spotted at mile 5 which cost me about a minute.

Alan and I had discussed what times we would be aiming for and I was going to try for 5 minute 13 second KM average, with faster at the start - around 5 minute KMs and he was going to start off at 5 minute KMs and get faster.  My second error in this race was the temptation to run with the 3 hour 30 pacer who was also a bit fast setting off - I hung on for around 5KM and then both Alan and the pacer disappeared into the horizon.  At this point I felt fine, but I could see my heart rate was a bit high (Alan has had his lactate threshold determined at 157 BPM and we're guessing mine is similar and at this point I was 159, so decided to slow down) I slowed down and comfortably knocked out the miles appreciating the support including pompoms from Tobias (nothing like peer pressure to purchase pompoms!) and the loud HPH collection at mile 5.  My garmin tantalising kept telling me a predicted finish time of 3 hours 23 and I went through 5k at 24 minutes, 10K at 49, 10 miles at 1.22 and half marathon at 1.52.

I made my dash for the toilet when I spotted a green vacant slot on a portaloo and it was about 9 miles into the "harder" bit of the course when it's just country lanes with more sparse support when my right knee started to throb.  My knee has been fine throughout training after my earlier hamstring injury and periformis niggles on my right hand side it was a surprise pain.  I slowed and stretched out, but it continued to hurt.  I then noticed the arch on my right foot was starting to blister so I asked to borrow a marshall's chair and put on a compeed, which didn't really help, because it only stopped half of the arch blistering!

I'm used to marathon's hurting, but usually at meltdown mile 19 - at mile 9 I knew I still had 17 miles to get through and seriously considered pulling out.  I have an unblemished record of always finishing races though and pride/stubborness forced me on.   I limped on (my garmin verifies the limping with my left right balance at a pretty unbalanced 51.5% - 48.5%) and hit the mentally challenging 15 - 19 mile out and back section.  It's great to run past fellow runners and cheer them on, but this only lasts for a few seconds.  I was grateful that Ann and Noel had set up camp in the same motivational spot and cheered me on twice and helped me smile enough for a decent photo at least.  Scott was also a bit further up with a smile and jelly babies that kept me going.  I also spotted Alan and counted the time between us and figured he was on for a good time of at least 20 minutes in front of me.  By the time I got to mile 19 I figured I could walk it to the end if necessary, even if poor Alan would be waiting for me!



The last 7 miles seem a bit of a blur...my garmin estimated a finish time of 4 hours 7 - the Lucy of last year would have been delighted with this time, but knowing the course and what I achieved last year I couldn't help feeling a bit disappointed.   A few similar looking villages with lovely support and more and more country lanes and the sun coming out.  I walk-ran it with my km times flashing up on my garmin at 6.43 and even 8.21 at one point.  Julia caught up to me at one point and said she was aiming for under 4 hours, my garmin had me on track for 4.04 and I knew I'd started in front of her so wished her good luck and she disappeared into the distance. I loved seeing a huge gaggle of HPHs at mile 21 (in fact I definitely heard them all before I saw them!) and grabbed some jelly babies off Caroline after much fumbling and declaring "it's ok I'm not in a hurry!"  People were encouraging each other along with a mix of runners, limpers and walkers and my garmin told me I had less than 2km to go - I could do this!

I then spotted the hill right at the end, it seemed like a mountain, but I made it up - Dan told me I wasn't allowed to walk past him, so I just about started to manage running again.

As the finish line came into sight I started to feel quite emotional - Sam took these photos of me when I wasn't noticing and it sums up my emotions quite well - holding back tears and in a fair bit of pain.




I could see the finish though so I smiled for the cameras and picked up the pace knowing it would soon be over!  Hannah Marshall got a few pics of me looking a bit more triumphant.




As I crossed the finish line my emotions got the better of me, but holding back tears made me start shallow breathing and I had to grab my asthma inhaler and make an effort to calm myself down.  I bumped into Julia who had made it under 4 hours with 7 seconds to spare - I was delighted for her!  I found Alan who had also had a hard run with his hip going seconds after I passed him looking strong at mile 19 (bloody mile 19!) and had finished in 3 hours 52.  We then saw Tilly who had completed her first marathon in an amazing 4 hours 4 - I have a feeling it won't be her last marathon!

I'm now sitting with a Qubit sat on my feet and an ice pack on my knee (thanks for the recommendation Nicola) and about to go to bed (I'm never in bed before 10pm!) and if you asked me would I sign up for another marathon...I might have said no, but somehow I've already answered my own question and I'm doing Liverpool Rock & Roll Marathon in May - the day after my birthday!  I think I'll make a note of these lessons for next time and try and pay attention to my pace earlier on and definitely definitely build in more leg strength training.  

Thanks and well done to everyone today - running just has an amazing way of bringing out the best in us all.

Monday 17 April 2017

An Anxious Extrovert and running...

I injured my hamstring in a stupid drunken dancing competition at our work Christmas party on the 14th December last year.  Since then I've gone from a form where I managed to PB every distance I've ever run in 2016 (1 mile, 5K, 10K, 10 mile, Half Marathon and Marathon) to my first run back being an incredibly painful and slow flat parkrun at Pontefract that took me more than 10 minutes slower than my usual times.  It was my fault and I've certainly paid the price for being a bit tipsy and over exuberant.

I'm incredibly competitive in pretty much everything I do and I am generally rushing around getting things done, so to have to slow down and recover has been tough for me both physically and mentally.  (I make it sound like it was worse than it was - I was limping for a fair few weeks and had to ice it for the first few days.)  I'm pleased to say that after a fair few physio sessions, lots of leg exercises (could do more), encouragement from Alan, Hyde Park Harriers and lots of other friends and family I haven't gone completely mad and I'm managing to chip in reasonable (if still painful) running performances again.

So what has any of this got to do with being an Anxious Extrovert?

After coming off being on antidepressants for 12 years in June 2013 running has been my therapy.  It's not the only thing that keeps me with a good state of mental health, but I know that in no particular order I have to concentrate on the following things to make sure I keep healthy:
  • Regular exercise where I sweat for at least 20 minutes for around 3 - 6 times a week
  • Regular contact with loved ones, friends, family
  • Reasonable sleep - i.e. at least 6 hours a night
  • Eating well - balanced meals with fresh fruit and veg
  • Not overdosing on caffeine or alcohol - small amounts are fine
  • Getting time outside in the fresh air
  • Yoga and or some sort of meditation/mindfulness at least once a week
  • Having Willow (and all my other lovely pets before her)
  • Keeping some sort of journal from time to time
  • Not letting work take up too much of my time
  • Doing something a bit creative from time to time
It's quite a long list, but I find if I miss out bits of it for too long, my mood dips considerably. I used to think that it would be easy to tell if my mood was "dipping", but sometimes it creeps up on me, I'll find myself in the middle of a task staring off into space, or leaping from one task to another to another and another...achieving nothing in the space of a few hours.   I'm fairly well practiced in making sure I stay on top of depression as I've described above, but what I'd not appreciated was a "side effect" of long term anti-depressant use was that it meant for around 12 years I never really had to process or learn to deal with anxiety.

After a few obvious triggers of life changing events like moving house coupled with the reduction in running, I found myself at the start of the year experiencing high levels of anxiety and being a bit at a loss of how to make them reduce.  

I've recently seen a few posts on Facebook explaining what anxiety feels like to different people and I've got my own examples here are a few.
  • I bumped shoulders with a colleague in the kitchen at work about 6 months ago when I was half asleep, I still feel bad about it and think about it now.
  • As I'm falling asleep my body twitches me awake again - like those dreams you have when you are falling and it wakes you up.
  • I think about a scenario I'm a little worried about, and it whirs around and around in my head getting worse and more catastrophic the more it spins - which can be as small as trying to decide what to pack for a day at the beach.
Usually a good dose of running and keeping busy has been enough to stave off depression and anxiety, but without being able to run as much as I usually have done it's been a bit harder to shake.

So let's get to explaining my Anxious Extrovert phrase.  Some of you might have heard of Myers Briggs and about 4 years ago I had my personality type outlined with this as an ENFP (I could bang on about how much I love Myers Briggs, but I'll maybe save that for another time) The "E" is extroversion - it was my strongest preference and you can see by how much in this picture below.


The "E" doesn't mean that someone is the most obviously loud confident type of person that we often associate the word "Extrovert" to mean, but more that it is their preferred style of how they get "energy" from the world - i.e. if they are tired will they push through and go to that party to see their friends or will they go home and watch Netflix alone under a blanket?  

One of the things that I've noticed recently is that I've not been as socially active as usual and it's not that I've not wanted to be, more that I've perhaps allowed the anxiety to rule me a bit too much and not pushed forward with arranging social things as frequently.  I'm extremely grateful that I've got things like parkrun, run club, Guides and other good friends who will continue to help me create a structure in my life that forces me to not retreat too far and let anxiety win.  If I turn down too many social invitations, then I won't get invited and then I get less energy from the people around me - I want to break that cycle before it starts up!

I guess the challenge I'm finding is that on the surface I will look and behave as "normal", but inside my head I'm wasting precious brain power on the incessant whirring of thoughts.  

For me, one of the best things about running is that you are forced to be at least a bit "mindful" and present in the moment and it means that annoying whirring part of your brain has to get shoved to the back of your head for a while to allow you to focus on your run.  I find this to be especially true of a trail race such as yesterday at Guiseley Gallop; you have to look down at the ground at the tree roots and rocks and plan ahead where you are going to put your feet to avoid a taking a tumble.  

During the race yesterday I managed to not only stay on my feet (I'm well known for my clumsy running incidents), but also had the chance during the 10K of trail to process a few thoughts including my conclusion that I'm currently an Anxious Extrovert and also that one of my biggest discoveries when I had my Myers Briggs done was that - Not everyone sees the world in the same way as I do.  This was a revelation for me at the time and as basic as it seems I still need to remind myself that just because I make a conclusion or an inference of a situation, the reality and perception could be completely different to someone else.  Maybe the fact I've not been as sociable will lead people to think I'm generally being rude, or maybe they've not even noticed (there's that anxiety again), but what about if I tell them?  Then at least they might have an idea of what's going on.  Maybe they have similar challenges, but don't want to say anything?  Mental health issues still have that "stigma" of weakness attached to them.  I might not see the world the same as everyone, but maybe someone else is struggling with anxiety or depression and hasn't tried running or exercise?  

I'm fortunate to have discovered parkrun, Hyde Park Harriers as well as other important running friends (yes Alan!) that give my weeks a rhythm and routine of exercise (injuries permitting) and I'm really pleased that movements like #runandtalk are there and hopefully will help people find other ways to manage their mental health successfully.