Marathon Training Update: The Last Push

Week 12 beckons. One more week of training runs before the taper. One more 20 miler. One more week of 30 plus miles. This week, I've been preparing for my last long run next weekend, the dress rehearsal for the big day.

I had a few kit failures when I did the the Meadows Half and that's been a really important bit of learning for me.  I hated being too hot and it is much colder running along the open beach into the wind, so I've got a couple of new lighter weight tops. My big toe-pad got sore because my socks were a wee bitty worn, so I've got Balega socks which are wonderfully soft and cushioned yet light.  I also stocked up on gels as I need a boost at about 7 miles (more mental than physical).  I'm loving the SIS berry and caffeine ones - you don't need to take them with water. And to counter the flapping i pod and melting jelly babies, I've got a neat little Nathan belt for my drinks and one for the iplayer.  I tried them all out yesterday and it all felt pretty comfortable.  I think I might need something more through, I don't travel light - tissues and lip salve are essentials!

Mentally, I've got my running head back on after the half. I'm back to normal,  I shoe up and head off and run until it's time to stop. But with a lot on the to do list and I think as I get to the end of the training, I've caught myself fighting the urge to get the run done quickly. The discipline for me is to focus on how long I run. I've learnt that if I start the run with the intention of running for one, two, three, four hours, with no thought of distance or pace then my mind just settles down and gets on with it.

It's been a massive challenge to stick to my cunning plan and I thought I'd got it sussed, but this week I caught myself at it again - trying to get out of the deal so I can do it more quickly. At about half way through my short run this week, I caught myself arguing with myself that I run for 10 k or an hour which ever comes first. I caved in (I've been fretting about my slower 10K and half marathon times) and I ran too fast. I might have saved myself a few minutes running time, but my knee hurt and niggled me on my long run yesterday. And it was harder to slip into that endurance frame of mind because I'd focussed on speed again. Grrr! Silly Sue!

But better to know this now than bombing it on the big day and I still have time to make some adjustments. I realised that this is probably what they mean by working out a race strategy. So that's on my list as well.   Up until now my strategy has been to get to the start line in one piece and then run til the end and finish with a smile.  I've also been practicing negative splits as a way to manage my speed addiction and it's taught me how much better I do if I keep it slow at the start.  So I'm going to treat Saturday's last long run like a mock marathon; a dress rehearsal. Not 26.2 miles, but I am going to give myself a treat afterwards to mark an achievement - getting to the end of another stage of the journey.

This week has been a lower mileage week - 30 miles in total (I nearly said 'only' 30 miles and then realised that was silly!). I've done my Pilates, yoga and rolling and stretching which have become as essential as the running. I even managed a Sunday swim to loosen everything up and take the weight off everything.  I'm ready for the last push.

Four weeks today til the Lochaber Marathon- if I'm spared and well. Four more weeks.

Scary.

Gulp.

Whatever you're up to, have a good week.

Take care

Suex

Inspiring People

This week has been one of the most inspirational weeks of my entire life.  With the start of one of the greatest displays of feats of human endeavour on the planet - the Olympics - inspiration is coming thick and fast and I'm feeling almost drunk with it all!

On Wednesday I went to Milton Keynes for a Tesco Diets success story photo session. As I walked in the door, Julie and Claire told me that that morning I was going to meet Dame Kelly Holmes.  My jaw dropped, my brain went numb, Dame Kelly Holmes? There? In Milton Keynes? That morning? To meet us? Surely not! It takes a lot to shut me up, but I was gobsmacked.

But it was indeed true. Dame Kelly had come to meet us; celebrate our achievements; have photos taken and do a spot of Q&A. We sat spell bound as she talked us through how she trained, how she prepared, how she got through hard times and got those two gold medals. It was totally awesome and inspirational and I had to keep pinching myself, I was sitting next to an Olympic double gold medal runner!

This is nothing about being star struck or impressed by celebrity,  I'm really too long in the tooth for that sort of thing. No, this was one of those moments when you meet another human being who has done something remarkable. When faced with adversity and challenge, they fight back and overcome. They make things happen. They build on what they have survived to make them stronger, better human beings. They work to make the world better for others.

Dame Kelly Holmes has been an inspiration in our family and she is to many people; not just runners and not just those of us who have had an injury. She never gave up on her goal, she gave 100%. She made it.

I was also inspired by the lovely TescoDiet ladies and gent I was with that day too. Every one of them had lost a shed load of weight and transformed their lives in the process. They too had set their goals and given it their all and every one of them was inspiring and encouraging others that they too could change their lives.   Those folk are living proof that things can change and that every one of us can do our bit to change our lives and help others too.

It doesn't matter if your goal is a park run or a marathon; to lose three pounds or three stone; to raise a happy child or be a great aunty.  Sometimes, the hardest thing of all is to put on a smile when you're in bits or just get out of bed in the morning. A goal doesn't have to be two gold medals. It just has to mean something important to you.

We humans are truly remarkable when we set our sights on something and go for it, and as I headed home from a far too hot, sweaty (and smoky) Luton Airport, I had lots of food for thought.

Without a goal in life, it is easy to drift, it's far too easy to waste our potential. A goal pulls it all together and points head, heart and spirit in the same direction. With focus and purpose, we begin to change our worlds and we help others change theirs too. Magic happens.

The Olympics inspire us all, and I loved the way they emphasised that these games are also for the gold medal winners of the future. But why should these dreams only be for the young? Sadly there's no Olympic dream for those of us who are a bit past our prime, but wouldn't it be wonderful if there was? Wouldn't it be wonderful to see healthy, active, competing older people; what an inspiration that would be!

These Olympic rings are from the residential home where my Mum lives - they've been talking about the Olympics for weeks and armchair swimming is on the agenda. How lovely to be connected, to feel part of it.

I certainly have been inspired to take up running in the second half of my life by men and women like  Fauja Singh. They've proved that we don't have to stop running just because of what's on our birth certificate. Helen Mirren showed me that I can have great muscle tone (and abs!) well past the age I'm supposed to not care any more.  Dame Kelly reminded me that if we go for what we want, we can make it happen, even when we think it's all over. But it takes work and it takes planning and it takes discipline.

So, I think it's time to stop drifting and time to decide on some goals. What do I want to achieve with my running? Is it time to think again about the marathon? Is that the right goal for me now? Ever? The key to success is setting the right goal and that takes a bit of thought. I know what can happen if you go for the wrong goal at the wrong time - I don't want another injury. 

For now, time to be inspired by the Olympics and train for Speed of Light. After that I will start working towards my next goal. Watch this space!

Wherever you are, whatever your goal, have a great week and take care.

Suex

Running on sleepy: eyes half shut

Okay, hands up who's exhausted? Who would really, really like to catch up on the old zzzzs but is just too busy? Sleeping time gets hijacked when we've lots to do. Up at 4am to get that run in before work. Staying up late to get the ironing done or more pleasurably, to get some time with friends. Every day that sleeping time gets a bit more chipped off it, gradually whittled away, even on a bank holiday! Long gone are the days of sleeping til lunchtime.

I don't know about you, but I've just got used to having less than my allotted 8 hours kip and most of the time it's fine. Less sleep, more time to do things. Lying in wastes time that could be spent doing things - it wastes the day. Yes I am that age and I am now saying things my parents said to me.

Because I'm practicing body-sensing, I'm beginning to understand what sleep deprivation does to me. On our trip to Barcelona in March, the clocks went forward several times so we didn't know which way was up when we got home. Then an early rise for a trip to London, a few a late finishes at work and a long 'to do list'. None of these keep me awake at night, I go out like a light.  No my problem is waking up at 4am. If I've had a long day at work or lots of travelling, that's often accompanied by a night of poor quality sleep, my body restless from sitting down all day, eating crap food and drinking too much tea.  

When I'm tired, things go awry. I struggle to concentrate, I'm easily distracted and I can't resist nibbling on rubbish, high sugar, high fat, junk food. My brain is not engaged with what I'm doing, it floats around on the breeze of random thoughts. Chocolate is eaten with absolutely no conscious input at all, cake slips past the lips barely tasted. My brain is on stand-by and those chattering monkeys rule the roost (apologies for the mixed metaphor there).

So I've been doing some digging round about sleep.  Research shows that we never really catch up after losing that hour when the clocks change. Maybe because I'm a winter baby my body clock is on British winter time, I never really feel right when the clocks are on British Sumer Time. We lose about 40 minutes of sleep every night after the clocks go forward as our body rhythms struggle to adapt. That adds up to a hell of a lot of sleep, especially if we're all paring our sleep down to the bone just to get by.

There's plenty of research that shows that disrupted sleep might not kill you, but it can certainly make your focus a bit blurred.  One study I found recently (www.occdigest.org.uk) showed that a lack of sleep can make us more prone to cyber loafing "frittering away work time on unrelated online activities". Isn't cyber-loafing a great concept,? I don't get time to do it at work (honest!) but I do lot a bit in my own time and it is good sport when you're tired or a bit hungover.

Anyway, they looked at Google's publicly available data for entertainment-related searches and found that these searches were significantly higher after the clocks went forward. The costs of cyber loafing have been estimated at £300m per year. That's a lot of loafing.

One of the theories for 'cyber-loafing' is ego depletion.  Some researchers see will power as a resource that gets used up through effort and sleep replenishes and re charges it. Lack of sleep saps our regulatory resources making us easy pickings for behaviours we need to keep control of - our defences are low. Certainly waking up groggy and out of synch with yourself is not a great way to start the day and is often associated with random thoughts about bacon rolls or muffins.

Lack of sleep certainly saps my will power and gets right at my weak spots. Women's Running magazine cites research that shows that a good sleep helps cut snacking, a real problem for me.  Folks who got less than 5.5 hours sleep a night ate larger amounts of high carb snacks than those who got 8 hours - and don't my scales know it. And this is not counting any impact lack of sleep has on your metabolism, making it easier to out fat on and harder to get it off. 

And of course it can be serious, lack of sleep can affect your running. Running Times had an interesting article on sleep and running.  Decreased sleep for even a few days impaired glycogen synthesis, meaning you're running on a half full tank and may "bonk" earlier than a well-rested individual (stop sniggering at the back). Disrupted sleep undermines our ability to repair training-induced soft-tissue breakdown. Not good if you're putting your body through serious training. 

So, freshly back from a very nice run, feeling replenished and refreshed despite my lack of sleep, what do I make of all of this?  All the advice is about getting to sleep and I don't have that problem, I am out like a light maybe because I already do all the stuff you're supposed to do. My problem is I'm wide awake at 4am wake up and then I start thinking about what I've got to do and the game's a bogie. I think I might just have to love with this for a while, so until I get a cunning plan, I'm going to take two preventative measures.  First I'm going to be limit the amount of running-related damage I inflict on my body. If I'm not repairing myself fully, then I have to watch my recovery times and make sure I take in protein immediately after a long or hard run. Second, I'm going to make the most of those early rises, that bit of extra time, and I'm going to enjoy a run, or get into work early. I'm not going to fret, just go with the flow.

Only two short runs and a spin class this week because of being away at the weekend. So I did 2 faster runs, one barefoot in the beach where I really focussed on form - both quality.  Next week I'm not going to do a long run, I fancy a break from distance, so I'm going to do more shorter ones just for a change and see how my body reacts to greater frequency. I did one today with a cheeky hill in the middle and it feels good.

Have a great week whether you're running, walking, working, playing, whatever.

Take care

Suex

In Recovery - Ready to run .....

A word that's been very much part of my life over the last few weeks is recovery, specifically recovering to run.  For some folk, they get injured, they get better and that's it. But for many of us it's a more complex and less certain process. And it's hard.

Here's what the dictionary says:

Recovery:  a return to a normal state of health, mind, or strength.  The action or process of regaining possession or control of something stolen or lost. Also  recovery shot - golf stroke bringing the ball from the rough or from a hazard back onto the fairway or the green. Football an act of taking possession of a fumbled ball. In rowing, cycling, or swimming, the action of returning the paddle, leg, or arm to its initial position ready to make a new stroke.


There's lots of good stuff in here that inspires me and captures the recovery process for me. Of course it's all about getting back to normal, but I like the idea of taking back control, regaining strength. I like also that it's physical and mental, that recovery is an end and a beginning.  


The definition sounds so positive and active and I need to be more positive about recovery; about my eventual return to running. I need to focus on getting ready to run.


A huge part of my recovery is about regaining confidence. When I first get an injury I am very cautious and self protective. I'm a catastrophic thinker - something happens and I immediately extrapolate the graph to the end of the world. It's a well know psychological problem you'll be glad to know.  So I worry terribly that the injury is going to get worse. I worry that some small movement, slip, accident, knock, will send me hurtling down that ladder; straight to jail, no passing go and it will be really serious this time. I was listening to Desert Island disks where an ex ballet dancer spoke about her ballet injury and how she needed someone she trusted to hold her hand and encourage her to dare to tackle the move that injured her. The confidence to take that risk was a critical part of her recovery. 


So this week, having found the positive things about not running, i.e. enjoying the here and now; I've been focussing on the future; on taking back control and getting a positive running-focussed mindset.  


My strategy is to start off with some easy risk free actions and move up from there SLOWLY - no frightening the horses. Here's what I've done since I last blogged:

• Deleted my old training schedule from my iPhone and calendars
• Done one hour of some kind of exercise every day - including physio, balance; upper body exercises and Pilates. 
• Practiced walking properly - very, very slowly
• Tried to drive - and stopped - ouch! even the thought of an emergency stop hurts
• Changed my thinking as I go down our stairs from re-living the ping to imaging I'm fixed and heading out for a nice long run
• Bought a mini bicycle machine to get those quads working until I can drive to the gym/pool and some new Pilates and workout DVDs 
• Got (and used!) a foam roller and compression tights
• Begun to think whether I want to risk running the Barcelona Marathon even if I am fit or wait until the autumn

Acting positive, even when I didn't really feel like it, really helped. I've gradually upped my risk taking, pushed the calf a bit, but not too much. I'm more in control and recovery is becoming an active thing, not just sitting on my bum (although I am doing a lot of that!).  


I'm surprised how tired I feel. Sometimes I focus on the loss of my Barcelona dream, of my fitness and those good running days stolen from me. Sometimes I'm sad; lost in the rough or abandoned in the sandpit as my running chums do a hole in one and are back in the Twitter clubhouse comparing notes. But that's neither use nor ornament as we say in Yorkshire and of course fine words butter no parsnips!


Recovery, just like running and any other challenge we set ourselves, is about mental strength, discipline and persistence. When I was dieting, I dealt with setbacks (eating the entire tub of ice cream; a nice bottle of Rioja) by just getting back onto the diet and not looking back. Usually I recovered my confidence, focus and drive to lose weight pretty quickly and easily. I need to do the same now for my running, but I don't have quite the control of the biological side of things!


The challenges of recovery are different for every one of us.  I'm a wimp. I need courage to take risks that might well make my injury a bit worse.  Other folk need the discipline not to run with an injury. I need to stop analysing how it all happened and focus on the future. Others need to spend longer learning from what went wrong before they look ahead. What is clear is that recovery is not easy for any of us, it tests us mentally and spiritually and so, like our damaged muscles, can make us stronger.


As I type, I have done my first set of very light calf raises and survived. That was really scary. I still can't walk very well or very far, but it will come.  Will I be able to make up over 2 months lost training and get fit to run a marathon in about 8 weeks when I can't even walk to the train station? Not sure yet, but whatever happens, all will sooner or later be fine.


This post is dedicated to everyone in recovery, whatever your challenge is. May you find the strength, courage, determination and wisdom to get through. And more than anything else, the hope and belief that you will get there.


Take care
Suex

More bad (eating) habits: naughty nibbling exposed!

As I clamber back onto the wagon after an indulgent Christmas I've noticed a few bad eating habits are still around and impeding my return to normal. They are aided and abetted by me being unable to run anything off and of course having what should be running time now available for other things.

Here, in all their shameful glory are my bad eating habits - well not all, just the ones causing problems at the moment:

I hoard food and I hate to throw it away. Christmas is a double whammy for this pair. I've already blogged about my Christmas hoarding instincts so it's no surprise that I have in the house lots of food; lots of rich food. To get rid of it I have to eat it or throw it out.  I was brought up not to waste food, never mind throw it out. This year, for the first time ever, I threw food in the bin (only if the birds or the cats wouldn't eat it!). This is a crime I know, I am ashamed as I type. And of course I haven't thrown it all out (discipline failure!) so there is some temptation at hand.  I am hoping that this experience has been so traumatic that next year I am sensible and don't overbuy, that will remove temptation and set a boundary for the return to normal. 

Family foods are good foods.  As a child I learnt about eating just like everyone else, in the family home and at school. There wasn't much on TV, Fanny Craddock didn't really impact on family cooking and cookbooks were rare. No Biggest Loser for us! Normal eating in the 1960s and 70s was a big roast plus pudding on a Sunday; fish and chips after swimming on Saturday or on the way home after a night out.   Mince and veg almost every night  (though of course veg were soaked overnight and boiled and boiled). Porridge for breakfast. School dinners, meals at other folks' houses and what we concocted in cookery lessons were all the same sort of thing (except the Pineapple Upside Down Cake circa 1969 only found in cookery rooms thank goodness!).  These foods are foods that Mum recognises, that the family ate together, they are comforting in a very deep way.

Food is a reward for hard work. We didn't have many biscuits or chocolates as kids but tea and toast was a treat and a reward to be had at almost anytime of the day or night for almost any reason you can think of.  Bacon and toast was a very special reward, usually for studying hard. I knew I was in favour and a very good girl when I got tea and a toasted bacon sarnie delivered to my desk.  Nowadays, I self-administer the treats. Health and Safety ban toasters at work so I am reduced to chocolate biscuits, but the principle remains in tact.

Diets are bad.  Like many women of their generation, my Mum was always on some weird diet or another - grapefruits, eggs, lemon juice (remember PLJ!). I never really understood why, she always looked slim and beautiful to me. These diets made life tense and uncomfortable.  Despite the diets, Mum also used to nibble in secret.  She'd have a tiny plate at dinner but fill up in the kitchen. We'd sit with big plate-fulls whilst Mum apparently ate like a bird and dieted. This left me feeling greedy and confused about food and portions. How could she possibly survive on such a small amount of food? Was this how women ate? Dad didn't seem to have any problems with eating and he could eat loads. I knew who I wanted to be like!

By the time I left home I had learnt a lot about what 'normal people' - people like my family - ate and about how food worked.  Over the years, I just applied and adapted what I'd learnt. Not surprisingly, I put on weight. I didn't diet and had no workable notion of weight control, so I exercised to control my weight when I got too fed up. The rest as you know is history.

Over the years I did change as I learnt new things and met new people, but I never really changed my basic beliefs about food.  My 'normal' expanded to include broccoli, garlic, butternut squash and aubergines. Out went lard, batter, three course lunches and the top of the milk.  When I started on my weight loss diet, very late in life, things changed.  I had to do a serious shed load of re-learning about healthy food, healthy portions and all the rest of it. It took me a year to begin to make those changes.

The emotional stuff though is harder.  I struggle still with my hatred of diets and I have to crack this.  I know (in theory) that I only need to eat fewer calories than I use for a few weeks, I don't even have it call it a diet! I'm going to have to re programme myself and @nuuutymel and my friend Helen have both suggested I take a look at NLP which I'm going to do (no I really am this time!). 

Similarly, the nibbling. As I type I realise that I don't nibble when watching TV, I nibble when I am working. It's partly that I get up, stretch the legs, stretch the mind, make a cuppa.... and yes, give myself a little foodie pat on  the back for working hard.  

A little while ago a friend told me about a conversation she had with her daughter who was being bullied at school for being 'fat'. At 9 years old, Fiona is not fat, but she is a bit heavier than her peers. My pal Sarah was worried, how to take Fiona's predicament seriously whilst avoiding any suggestion that weight loss was the answer.  Sarah handled it beautifully. They had  a long chat about how Fiona felt and decided that they would both read about healthy eating and exercise. As a result, they both learnt a lot; they had quality time together and now they are both training for Race for Life next year. Fiona is happy and more confident and their relationship is even stronger than it was. Fiona has a fantastic base for healthy living in adulthood.

Children are programmed to learn and they won't just learn what you want them to learn, there are always hidden messages to be decoded. What child ever fell for the 'do as I say not as I do' line!  Nowadays children have many more influences on them and more sources of information - for good and ill. For them it will be about keeping in good shape using self confidence, self belief and self esteem, much the same as for my generation I suppose!

As 2012 gets underway, I'm still not sure what my running goals will be this year, but I do now have some eating habits to sort out.   My two big challenges are getting over my diet phobia and my thing about rewarding myself for working with toast. I'll deal with Christmas hoarding in due course - remind me!

I hope wherever you are you enjoyed the festive season, survived the weather and are back on track for reaching your goals and aspirations for 2012. I hope to be out and running again soon. I will have my foot up for another 2 weeks, recovery is slow, but I will get there. Toes crossed!

Take care

Suex

How to stay slim after weight loss - keeping motivated

I hit my target weight loss autumn, it was a great moment, standing on those scales and seeing that finally, I'd made it after almost a year of hard work and self discipline. Those weekly weigh ins, friendly words from the mentors and the loosening waistline had really kept me motivated, kept me well and truly on track, gave me something to aim for.

Now I'd got there, all I had to do was stay slim! Why oh why did I think that this would be the easy part?  I was fine for a few months but gradually my weight started creeping up - not helped by a minor op, Christmas and lots and lots of snow. I knew all I had to do was get back on that diet for a week or two, but I couldn't face it, I wanted to try and manage my weight normally, I'd had enough dieting, but there was nothing round to help me. I began to get de moralised and I did think about just giving in and getting fat again (Thanks Carol for giving me a talking to!).

It was quite a struggle and now it was all up to me. I was training for my big run so needed to eat healthily, work was really busy and Mum would now only eat if I ate something with her (miming didn't cut it, it's only her memory that's fused!).  The scales - my big friend during the diet didn't work any more.  My clothes fitted fine which reassured me that things hadn't got out of hand, I was fit as a fiddle and was looking good for the run, but I needed more of a push, I needed something to keep me motivated.

I got some real inspiration from other weight loss success stories who set themselves a goal for after reaching their target.  For some it was looking good on the beach, or a big occassion; one was to blog every day about food (see Foodie Fisher!) but the one that caught my eye was running. Two of my weight loss sheros had set themselves a running goal for a few months after the end of their diets. I needed my goal.

I'd always had a secret dream to run a marathon but never ever thought I would. As I lost weight that dream began to become possible, I decided to take some tentative steps. I signed up for a half marathon. I signed up for Race for Life.  I'm currently working out when - yes when - I should dare to go for that marathon dream, then I'll work back from that. Suddenly, I'm looking ahead, I have my goal and I'm going to go for it. It's a bit bonkers, but it's definitely not boring!  To get there my weight will have to go up and down, I will have to eat well and eat healthy, I'll have to be disciplined and not get too heavy or my knees won't stand the strain! But I have the scales and my trousers to help me keep on track and my dream to keep me going.

We all need a dream or a wish or a hope to keep us going whatever challenge we set for ourselves. For some people it's to make money or get promoted or win the lottery. My first challenge was to lose weight, as I did that I rediscovered my dream to run 26.2 miles with loads of other people. I will run that marathon and I'm already thinking about what happens after that - good to plan ahead.  Watch this space!!!

I'd be really interested to hear how you keep motivated to lose weight or keep the weight off? What keeps you going? 

Happy dreaming!

Sue