Confessions of a never has been.....

Swashbuckler

Bring on the madness

AuldManKing

2 x
2 miles @ 6.30
3 mins steady
1 mile @ 6.30
3 mins steady
1k @ HMP\Threshold

That's a great session - where'd you get your hands on that??

Duanington

Swashbuckler wrote: »

Bring on the madness

It's arrived , hand sanitizers at the office are nearly empty already

Duanington

AuldManKing wrote: »

2 x
2 miles @ 6.30
3 mins steady
1 mile @ 6.30
3 mins steady
1k @ HMP\Threshold

That's a great session - where'd you get your hands on that??

It's a watered down version of a bigger session that the very very fast lads in the club run ( which is about 17 miles in total), have been toying around with the final format for about a week now and settled on it on Thursday.

aquinn

All the very best on Sunday now DD. Have a fantastic race. I hope taper is ok.

Younganne

Best of Luck in Seville DD, its been great watching you comeback and doing so fantastically well again. Enjoy the whole weekend.:D

healy1835

Best of luck tomorrow D. Super block behind you, looking forward to seeing the results. Will be tracking.....

Singer

"Enjoy"!

AuldManKing

Davey - the most important thing you can do in Seville is run a time I can beat.
When things get tough - just think "I'm setting AMK an easy target here - that's the 'main thing' - and ease off the steam a bit, maybe a 2.55 or a 2.54 would be a good PB for you and a target for me to beat.




or else, just run to your potential and leave me and a lot more in the hinterland of your slipstream with a run that's within the void or realism but the reality of escapism .........or words to that effect

Murph_D

All the best, D. No farting about!

Mrs Mc

Have a great run D best of luck

quick feet

Best of luck D, have a great run...

FBOT01

AuldManKing wrote: »

Davey - the most important thing you can do in Seville is run a time I can beat.
When things get tough - just think "I'm setting AMK an easy target here - that's the 'main thing' - and ease off the steam a bit, maybe a 2.55 or a 2.54 would be a good PB for you and a target for me to beat.




or else, just run to your potential and leave me and a lot more in the hinterland of your slipstream with a run that's within the void or realism but the reality of escapism .........or words to that effect

This whole post reads like escapism to me

By finishing he probably set you an unbeatable target

Duanington

Thanks folks

2.54 in the end, a little shy ( again) of what I thought I had in me but I gave it everything I had on the day and that's the number that popped up on the big screen. Things got rough for a couple of miles towards the end but I managed to get the show back on the road thankfully. Very happy in that regard

Time to recover now

El CabaIIo

Good man! Savage going:)

Duanington

El CabaIIo wrote: »

Good man! Savage going:)

Thanks man, very happy with the performance if not so much the time

Duanington

19.02.2019

Feb4-10

Monday - Easy peasy, just over 7 miles
Tuesday - 7 easy miles with one of the lads on lunch
Wednesday - 12x300s on the track, enjoyed this, legs felt good and zippy by the end
Thursday - 5 easy
Friday - Just over 5 easy
Saturday - ^same^
Sunday - 4x400s, 1mile, 2 miles, 1 mile, 4x400s
60 seconds recovery of the 400s and 2 minutes off the miles
Really good session but horrible conditions with the wind
400s were mostly around threshold effort while the miles were in around MP

Feb11 - 16

Monday - 5
Tuesday - 4.5
Wednesday - A few 400s and 800s at MP, loads of recovery, MP pace felt stupidly comfortable, legs feeling great
Thursday - 4 easy
Friday - 30 minutes easy around Seville, legs and mind feeling a little heavy
Saturday - 15 minutes very easy, hip flexors notably tight

Duanington

Seville Marathon, 2.54.38, PB

It’s been just over 2 years since I last ran a marathon, there have been a few false starts over that period of time, health issues and work commitments put the marathon on the backburner for longer than I would have liked but standing in sub 3 starting pen, I’d be lying if I said I was full of beans and ready to go.

I love racing, love training and love the process as a whole. I was finally back at the starting line of a marathon ( having done plenty of talking about marathons but no actual running of marathons for so long), training had gone very well, I’d pushed myself to the limit during some races and recovered well when required – it was a different approach to previous marathons but I had banked a lot of training in the last 12 months and knew I had a bit of room to work with, I also wanted to make sure I enjoyed myself ...to a degree
I knew I was in the shape of my life....but I knew something was off, nothing major, no pain, nothing very obvious but I was standing there, shivering like a child with the air temperature at 8\9 degrees...it was chilly alright but that that bad. I couldn’t help but think back to Berlin and how I felt then, calm, in control, a little wary of the heat but very confident that a plan B would do the job.

I had felt “off” for the couple of days previous, a headache, stuffy sinus....I’d put it down to the air con in the apartment but there was also some shivering when trying to sleep a few times, I put that down to the apartment being a little damp. I’ve gotten very good at listening to my body over the last while and I have tell tale signs when something is out of balance, a niggle under my foot flairs up just a tad, my quads feel a little tight and my hip flexors tend to stiffen up. They were all there from Friday afternoon, again nothing major but enough to let me know that I needed to hydrate, sleep as much as I could and eat very well...I had done all of those things up to this point and knew that I’d done all I could really, it was now a case of getting going and seeing what I could do on the day.

I also made a rooky error by getting into the pen far too early, that damn countdown clock was moving in slow motion and the place was near empy. The organisation around the starting area was spot on though, no problem at all getting in our out of the starting pens. Eventually the pen filled up a bit more and the bit of body heat helped to settle down the shivering a little, the announcer told us we had a couple of minutes to go and I told myself that I’d be fine once I got moving, I didn’t quite believe myself but I repeated it in my head, control the first 10 miles, control, control, control.

Almost without warning, we were off....at last we were off. Slowly at first but gradually picking up pace and the crowd thinned out nicely over the first mile or so. When things settled down, I got to work on finding the racing line, made my way towards it and went over the strategy again in my head;
Control the first 10 miles, aim to hit halfway in 1.26 or so
Concentrate for the 2nd 10 miles, aiming to start picking up the pace towards the end of that section

Character for the last 10k, there is a twilight zone moment in there somewhere and I haven’t been there in a good while, I knew I’d have to dig in and hope to finish strong.

If things went well, I knew I’d hit 2.50 or lower, if things didn’t go well, I knew I’d be in serious trouble !
The three Cs....a great little tip given to me by one of my training partners over the past few weeks, he’s a 2.34 marathon man so well placed to give these little nuggets

The watch beeped, a little slow to start but that was ok, I was feeling ok and relieved to be running. I moved out to the front of the small group I was with and worked my way towards a larger group just ahead, mostly Spanish judging by the singlets. We were moving alongside the river that runs through the city which looked spectacular with sun rising and headed towards a bridge up ahead, everything seemed to be working well for now, breathing was a little quicker than I would expect but I put that down to early race nerves.

We turned onto the bridge, crossing the river and turned right into a side of the city that I hadn’t been to yet, plenty of support here with shouts of “vamos, vamos” and kids looking for high 5s...I obliged of course, I love seeing kids out supporting marathons, takes the mind off the pain for a bit.
Over the 5k marker, I couldn’t believe how quickly that came and went, 5k in...37k to go. Everything moving well so far, the breathing had started to settle down too

Miles 1-3 6.44, 6.34, 6.35

I’m really struggling to remember anything about the next few miles but I do know that I was leading the larger group for a good bit, the sun had come up and while the clocks were showing 12 degrees, it felt a lot warmer when we were running directly into the sun. Each time I found myself running into the sun, I felt myself work a little harder to keep on pace. The group was great though, people would move up beside me, take the lead, I’d take my turn etc...I knew the pace was slightly off but it was still very early days and I wasn’t worried at all about that.

Miles 4-6 6.36, 6.38, 6.38

Through the 10k mark and I thought of home for a minute, of the people who I know were tracking me...and how I couldn’t mess this up or I’d be getting an unmerciful slagging from some of them.

Took a gel around here, threw some water over my head too and it helped shake that hazy feeling from my head. Shortly afterwards though, I started to feel a hint of heaviness in the legs, just an increase in effort levels for the same pace. I knew there and then that this was not going to go to plan but I also knew there were just going to be more rough patches to get through than there were going to be good patches to enjoy.

We moved back over the river to run along the starting mile or so again, into the sunshine but along a nice long straight stretch. Before crossing the river, we had gone through one of the many city parks and the harder surface ( tiles\cobbles) had started to hurt that little knot on my foot that I had told AMK never bothers me anymore :rolleyes:, it had settled a little on the tarmac surface but still niggling away underneath.

The group I was with had broken up by now, one woman dropping back and another heading off up the road with a smaller group. I held firm and just focused on locking in this pace, despite not feeling great, I knew I was moving well and approaching the middle section of the race.

Miles 7,8,9 – 6.31, 6.34, 6.38

Support was increasing now, the crowds coming out as the morning wore on. There was plenty of shade from the sun too and while the dials still told us it was hovering around the 13 degree mark, it felt a lot warmer when running in direct sunlight.

“Vamos, Vamos”, they cried ...focus, focus I told myself. I had mile or two of relative comfort around this section, the surface was good, the water stations were so well organised and I was surrounded by quality runners, Seville really does have everything it takes to run a class marathon.

I found the cheering sections offputting though, for some odd reason as I ran through the larger crowds, the noise actually put me off my stride....I’d normally feed off that stuff but it was having the opposite effect here.
Halfway was coming up, I knew I was going to have to work a lot harder over the 2nd half than I had done this far and that was not pleasant thought, I was having to keep myself very focused to hold the stride steady and resist the growing urge to slow down.

Miles 10,11,12,13 – 6.34, 6.35, 6.38, 6.35

Through halfway in around 1.27, slightly ahead of schedule but that schedule was null and void to be honest, despite myself I was holding this down well. I was under no illusions of course but I did take some confidence from the fact that I had executed the race quite well so far.

This was well into CONCENTRATE territory and that really is what I did for the next few miles, no thoughts of family or friends or what ifs or maybes....just the ground in front of me, the next stride, again and again and again. Hold the form, relax the shoulders and run, no slowing, open the stride up when you need to but no slowing.

The heaviness in my legs was increasing now and I could feel an irritation in my throat, I took a couple of sips of water at each water station, took another gel and made sure to throw some water over myself when I could too. The knot under my foot was really acting up any time we went over cobblestones or tiles but this course is seriously flat so thankfully there were no downhill sections to aggravate it even more, it also seemed to settle nicely when moved back onto tarmac road surfaces.

Miles 14, 15, 16, 17 – 6.37, 6.42, 6.33, 6.35

We were buried within the city now, passing landmarks that I didn’t recognise, crowds building and noise building, I made sure to stick to that racing line. I was surprised that more people weren’t doing that, most of them seemed to be running their own lines, maybe they knew something I didn’t but I needed to believe that I was doing something well.

While there was plenty of room to work with, I found myself boxed in slightly by runners that were starting to come back so a few times, I had to step outside of groups and move out on my own. A slight pang on the hamstring gave me a bit of a fright on one of these occasions and while it settled down, I was left with a generally tight feeling along that whole leg for the rest of the race.

Effort levels were rising with the sun, it was hard work now, nothing slight or gradual about it, by the time I went through 20 miles, I was working hard to keep this thing going.

Miles 18, 19, 20, 21 – 6.34, 6.37, 6.34, 6.41

We were back in Parque De Maria Luisa now, running through the spectacular scenery ( including a location used for Game of Thrones and Star Wars) – while it all looked and sounded amazing, it was getting warm and the tiles underfoot were very heavy on the already aching legs. The doubts were starting to creep in, the big doubts, not the minor ones that you know will go away if you let them, the other ones that you know you have to tackle head on or else give in.
I was relieved to get out of the park and back onto some Tarmac, I told myself that I had just over 30 minutes more to endure now, that I had to hang on. The urge to slow was gone, replaced by a very real urge to stop, lie down and have an early siesta in the morning sun.

As a way of breaking things up, I tried to increase the effort a little, to push back against the pain and open up the stride. We were running through a series of narrow streets, tarmac for the most part but the odd stretch of tiles and cobbles, people coming back to me in their droves now, the odd person walking, the odd person puking, another sitting....all of which seemed like very pleasant alternatives to this.

5k to go...a parkrun...1 little parkrun, I knew I was leaking time but more worryingly, I knew I had lost momentum and that is always something I thrive on. The knot under my foot was full on hurting, my quads were aching, my right leg seemed to have eased a little but my breathing was ridiculous. I had to do something to settle things down so I pulled over for a few seconds, stretched out the left foot\calf to try and loosen that area out, stealing a few gasps of air while I was at it and got back into the race. While it hadn’t removed the pain, it had certainly eased it, I couldn’t believe it but I was going to take it.

1.5 miles or so to go, a Spanish lad pulled up alongside me and said something in Spanish, no idea what he said so I just mustered up enough air to blurt “Irish” back.

His response will stay with me till I die....”Andele, Andele”.....he pointed towards a smoothed section just to the left of the cobblestones that we moved onto together and I could feel the pace increasing, I opened up my stride a bit and started to kick, it hurt but it was there. We left the narrow street and the route opened up back onto some tarmac, I kicked again and the legs responded well....I could sense it now, that near end of race thing that happens, that place that we go to when you know its a temporary thing, when you know you’re going to reward your body with lots and lots of breathing with no running when its done.

I think there were tram tracks here, I’d heard about them, I didn’t care. My Spanish friend wasn’t coming with me anymore “ Arriba, arriba” I hear him shout from behind.
Into the last mile now, I had no idea what time I was on for...sub 3? A PB? I didn’t care, it didn’t matter, this was about as deep as I’ve ever had to dig in a race, this was everything I had.
Back towards the big park, a sharp left, the watch beeped....last mile done – we’re into the last stretch now, I can see the finishing area in the distance....push D, push....people are flailing all around me and I’m working like a demon now. Someone cramps up to my left, the finishing line still looks way off. Eyes on the ground and work......on to the carpet, one last surge and over the line.

Finishing miles: 6.47, 6.35, 6.58, 7.04, 6.15....( + the last .37 at 6 min pace)

Both legs lock up for a few seconds when I stopped so I kept walking, take my medal and hobble towards the goodie bag area...I needed fluids.

I lay down in the shade for what must have been 20 minutes, I was shattered, sore and thirsty, eventually I got myself back to my feet and hobbled down to collect my bag, gratefully accepting the offer of some spray on the legs....magic...instant relief.

I took a few minutes to sit on the grass to reflect on the effort that I had put in, sitting in the sunshine, drinking whatever this blue stuff in the bottle was....the time was a bit good.....the resilience to stick it out when things weren’t going well and to dig in for a fast finish, that’s the satisfying bit and that’s the bit I’m going to take forward into the summer and beyond. You can only control the controllables and I did that much well

Loved Seville as a race and as a city, beautiful course, maybe not quite as fast as Berlin but every bit as flat. It feels good to be back on the marathon trail but I’m looking forward to a few weeks of recovery now.

Applegirl26

Wow! That was just incredible to read. Towards the end I felt like I was running it with you! Huge well done. That was just awesome.

I'm going back to read it again....

OOnegative

Massive well done again DD, I think you gathered I was glued to the tracker Sunday morning willing you on. Your one of the main runners on here I aspire to be as good as, delighted to see you racing so well.

healy1835

Great report DD. I know it didn't go exactly as planned, but I reckon it's just a stepping stone to the next 26.2 where you'll nail it. Still a great time though. Pleasure being on this journey, online for the most part ) with you. Hopefully we might knock off a couple of the same milestones in the next while. Enjoy the recovery.

skyblue46

That's a great report. Well done on toughing it out...though from reading your race reports over the last while toughing it out when the going got tough was never going to be in question. Enjoy the downtime.

Wubble Wubble

Brilliant run DD, great report too - enjoyed that read. Enjoy the well deserved recovery.

Swashbuckler

Great stuff. Andale Andale. Brilliant. Well done on another phenomenal performance. Lots for us to take from that. Some great nuggets of advice in there.

Murph_D

Well done, D. Great report, full of insight. Just a parkrun to go? Sure you never do parkrun! Congrats on a brilliant race.

ReeReeG

Super report, with so many colourful details. Congrats on the PB, savage running

AuldManKing

Congrats on the PB DD - While its not a time that you would have wanted, to actually get a 2.54 under pressure like that is phenomenal.

I'm intrigued by the 'gasping for air' bits in the report - defo something not right there - effort levels way too high for MP.

Given the health issues over the last 2 years - In the overall scheme of things, this must be satisfying and also give you a graw to go 2.50 at some stage.

BTW - I liked the shades - did your BFF give you those?

Duanington

Applegirl26 wrote: »

Wow! That was just incredible to read. Towards the end I felt like I was running it with you! Huge well done. That was just awesome.

I'm going back to read it again....

Thanks, it was actually enjoyable to write! ( more enjoyable than running anyway), the marathon brings out the emotion I suppose

Duanington

OOnegative wrote: »

Massive well done again DD, I think you gathered I was glued to the tracker Sunday morning willing you on. Your one of the main runners on here I aspire to be as good as, delighted to see you racing so well.

I'd a feeling you'd be tracking alright B, I knew a few others were too. You're going well yourself, gotta keep up that S+C though, its all part of getting to that next level. Thanks as always for the support

Duanington

healy1835 wrote: »

Great report DD. I know it didn't go exactly as planned, but I reckon it's just a stepping stone to the next 26.2 where you'll nail it. Still a great time though. Pleasure being on this journey, online for the most part ) with you. Hopefully we might knock off a couple of the same milestones in the next while. Enjoy the recovery.

Thanks J, I have a very different outlook on racing these days. I honestly don't get too hung up on times, that all takes care of itself so long as we keep doing the right things and racing hard. I've no doubt we'll be in and and around those milestones over the next while.