JH

The race was last night, on the evening of the 21st June. It was the longest day of the year, and one of the hottest. The start time was 7pm so things had cooled down a little but it still wasn’t as cool as I would have hoped.

I was feeling good before the race, arrived in plenty of time and had loads of time to warm up. I didn’t know exactly what the course would be but I was naive about two things: I thought the course was only 10k and I didn’t appreciate just how hilly it was going to be.

I started at the front of the pack and probably let them drag me a long too fast. I was too competitive going up the first hill, fighting for positions it didn’t really matter if I kept and using precious energy in the process. 10 mins in the hills were really starting to bite but I kept my head down and fought through the struggle.

The hills were continuous, constantly up and down, but around 20 mins I regained some strength and was feeling good. There were no mile markers so I had no idea what pace I was doing really. Between the 20 and 40 minute period I was roughly holding position with the guys around me but losing strength all the time.

By the 40 minute point I was really struggling but at this point still thought I was only doing 10k and was nearly at the end. As the course kept coming though and it was obvious it was going to be longer than that I was really mentally defeated. The last kilometre was a steep downhill, at the bottom of which you turned around and ran right back up it, and I took it at what was basically a slow training speed.

Eventually finished in just under an hour at 59:38, and in 33rd position out of 160.

I think there are two main takeaways for this for me – I need to train more at longer distances. Although the course was slightly longer than expected, I should have been able to handle that (some more hill training probably would have helped too!). Secondly, a lot of my collapse in this race was mental. I need to work on fighting off the negative thoughts.

When I was done I felt good even though I hadn’t done as well as hoped. The course was very tough and I’ll be better prepared for the next race in the series in 1 month’s time.

The big gap in posts was due to a trip to Barcelona to Primavera Sound festival (which was excellent, by the way). I didn’t run while I was there but according to my phone did more than 25,000 steps per day – festivals can be very active! – so I didn’t feel too bad.

Returned from Barcelona on the 6th of June and took running back up straight away, building up to my longest run of the year on Friday. It was a 10 miler which actually went fine, felt good throughout. Also sneaked in a 10k on Monday night so I’m doing ok for miles.

This is good because my first event of the year is next Wednesday, a 10km race called Tempsey Torture at Temple Newsam. Looking forward to competing again because I haven’t been able to do any park runs for over 2 months.

As an aside, I also fasted for 24 hours on Monday. I have read about the health benefits of fasting for a while (most notably from Tim Ferris) but the real inspiration was one of my students who was participating in Ramadan. To understand her better and as an act of support I decided to fast for just one day (out of her 30!). I actually found it not to be too bad – I felt that my mind was very clear and wasn’t crippled by hunger through the day. I was looking forward to breaking the fast by the end of it though. I would recommend and probably will do it again myself.

Went for a social run with Ste and Lucy, 3 miles to Kippax and back. Very beautiful evening. Finished off with a quick half at Wetherspoon’s!

Tackled my longest run this year today, 9 miles. Actually felt surprisingly fine and managed a faster pace than my 8 mile run last week. The weather was very hot and as it was a long run I didn’t push too hard but was putting in effort all the way around. Felt fatigued after but very satisfied!

Throughout my life, I have thought a lot about what it means to push yourself to the limit. And most of the time when you think you are there, in reality you are nowhere near.

Actually pushing yourself to 100% physical capacity for anything more that a few minutes leaves you feeling drained, unwell and nauseated for the rest of the day. How often does that actually happen? Not much. That’s probably a good thing; those of us who have to get up to work and train the next day need to leave something in the tank.

The reasons it is so psychologically difficult to reach your physical limit are probably evolutionary: you don’t want to wear yourself out picking berries in the morning and then end up having to outrun a sabre-toothed tiger in the afternoon. The same goes for us now; it needs to be difficult to really run oneself down to the wire because we need to continue to function in society. Realistically we should probably save draining the tank until the last 15 minutes of a race that we have trained 3 months or more for. And then book the next day off work.

To get the most out of ourselves, however, we need to be able to get near that limit every now and again, and that takes some practice.

For me, the issue of reaching my maximum appears during races. I feel myself holding back (especially in the first half, when the rest of the race looms large ahead) but then end the race feeling like I could have given more. One of the methods I have used to tackle this is interval training. During your fast intervals, you should be approaching maximum capacity but only for a short period. The main benefit of this, in addition to training muscle,  lets you experience what really pushing really feels like. Doing this on a regular basis gets you familiar with and unafraid of the sensation and hence gives you some benchmark when racing. If at 2km into a 10 km race (that you care about) you feel like you do during your fast interval, you are probably going too fast. If you don’t feel like that at 9km, you are probably not pushing hard enough.

Once you have become comfortable with where your maximum capacity lies, only then can you begin to expand and increase it.

Did a leisurely 4 miles this morning. Weather was beautiful and really just wanted to get out. Did some pull ups beforehand. Ran past a horse that had escaped from it’s paddock.