Orston Spring Dash

Today L, Daughter and myself run the Orston Spring Dash 10km in the Vale of Belvoir. It is a 10k in name only as it’s actually 10.2k long but , apparently, as it’s a ‘mixed terrain’ race they’re still allowed to call it a 10k. Who knew...

I’m also not sure that anyone mentioned the dreaded words ‘mixed terrain’ to me when this was put on our race calendar. There are apparently some muddy tracks which isn’t exactly what I want when trying to avoid further injury ahead of Windermere next week.

However the route isn’t too bad, not too muddy, as they take us on a loop from the village of Orston through Flawborough and Thoroton then back to Orston.

Daughter sets an impressive new PB but then we all do for 10.2k. I guess she’s referring to her time at the actual 10k point. I limp round in 50:23. L is equally disgruntled with her time but soon cheers up when she sees the impressive cake selection.

Great Northern Half

Monday is the May Day Bank Holiday and is the day of my inadvisable half marathon, the Great Northern Half in Mickleover, but if I’m doing the Windermere Marathon in two weeks time I need to do some training, however inadvisable. It is run by Huub and is possibly the dullest race you’ll ever do but it’s shockingly popular. At least it usually is when it’s run in March when there’s not a lot on. Having it in May, when there are more races on, means it hasn’t proved quite as popular.

There is a 10k option which L does. It’s the same course as mine but just the one lap!

I take it steady, in a damage limitation exercise, and run it at marathon (e.g. two hour) pace. Which goes well for ten miles, so I decide to up the pace for the last three and come in at 1:54:08 but I’ll probably regret it tomorrow.

The Longhorn

Today L and I both do the Longhorn Half Marathon at Thoresby Park. L signed up for this a while ago figuring that while the 10k would have been sensible, an off-road half marathon sounded too good to miss. Which is the opposite of the logic I would have used. Now she is a reluctant participant but one with a masterplan - ‘How to Finish a Half Marathon Without Training For It’. Sorted.

We leave the dogs at home and take the new car, travelling in style. It’s a late start for our race, 11:50, so I take them for a park session first. There are actually various distances I could have done with the Lad but decide to go it alone.

I shouldn’t really be doing this at all, as my calf isn’t up to it but if I’m going to do justice to my birthday present (Windermere Marathon) then I need the training run even if I have to crawl the second lap. Yes, the half marathon is two laps.

There is also a 5k, a full marathon and a 60k Ultra for the excessively stupid. Maybe next year.

I strap everything up and take it very easy, making sure I don’t toe strike to preserve my bad calf. I'm even chilled enough to partake of the odd chuck of cake at the feed stations.

There are plenty of Nordic Walkers which set me off thinking whether those poles they use would help take the stress off my calves. Is Nordic Running also a thing?

The route, through Sherwood Forest and allegedly over old military roads (they’re all forest tracks to me) was nice, if you like that sort of thing. I prefer city centres myself. The terrain is not too leg braking but might have been had I been strapped to a dog.

The mile marking is a tad bizarre. Miles 1 to 6 are marked out but what this all means when you start lap two I have no idea, given a lap is 6.55 miles. That said, from what I call tell, I’m almost but not quite on Marathon pace and I finish in 2:04, which isn’t a total disaster. I did try and lift the pace towards the end which didn’t help my calves, which had until that point held up well.

I am handed my ‘bespoke’ race finishers medal which is allegedly one of the big selling point of the race. That is, if you’re into your bling which I’m not but at least I will save mine. L will most likely bin hers straight away. There’s no t-shirt included but there are some to buy.

Then I wait for L who pronounces herself pleased with her efforts which included a bit of run-walk to get herself through it.

Greater Manchester Marathon

Today is the day. The Manchester Marathon. We had looked at staying over in Manchester but as we’re taking the boys with us the logistics were difficult, so it’s a stupid o’clock start instead as we drive over.

We have pre-booked parking in Manchester United’s official car park which you would think would make things easier and probably does, once we’d found it. A lot of the roads were closed, as you would expect, but more with roadworks than the race I think and the signage was confusing. There was lots of signs for car parks without telling you which one was which but we got there in the end after several U-turns.

From there we can walk to the Race Village which is at the Old Trafford Cricket Ground and then on to the start. Just as I’m warning up Daughter joins us, so now my full support crew has been assembled and I head to my start pen.

Normally in a half marathon I would get a start pen pretty close to the front of the field but here I am over halfway back in start 5 (I think). Clearly this is now serious. Each start is set off five minutes apart, consequently it takes me nearly 20 minutes to get to the start line.

When I do get there we are held on the line for a few minutes and I’m on the front row, like an elite! It also meant I have a completely open road in front of me which I squander by heading over to high five the dogs and of course L and Daughter.

I have been training for this for months and the aim is not only to beat my only previous marathon time of 4:02:27 at Birmingham in 2017 where in blew up in the last few miles but to go under four hours. My schedule is to run 3:55.

Manchester not only has a 4:00 pacer but a 3:59 and 3:58 pacer to split up what is a popular target time. So I start with the 3:58, planning to start at that pace and then edge it faster after the first 10k. The thing is I struggle to stay with her, she’s too slow! Four hour pace is 9:09 and I run 8:50 for the first two miles and I’m getting a crick in my neck looking backwards to see where she is.

The route starts with a mini loop around Trafford which then takes you back close to the start where I get chance to see my awesome support team again about three miles in. I had hoped they might then be able to get the tram further down the course but, as everyone else had the same idea, sadly that didn’t happen. Meanwhile I head off through Timperley and towards Sale.

As I knew I probably wouldn’t see them again and hadn’t left any gels with L as I did last time, I had instead loaded up my triathlon number belt with them. I hadn't tried this in training and this is probably why it was an unmitigated failure. The High 5 gels I use are too narrow to fit snugly in the slots in the belt and I soon lost several of them. That’s one lesson to learn for next time.

Unfortunately not long after I’d passed my support crew I felt my calf start to tighten. This is an old problem of mine that I haven’t suffered with throughout all my months of training and now it has come back to haunt me on race day. In truth, I had had the odd twinge in the last week but I’d shrugged it off. I stop and stretch; it eases a bit but not much. The too slow 3:58 pacer passes me and I'm sure she was laughing as she did so. 

I hobble off in pursuit but soon stop again and do more stretches, then I sit down remove the calf support off my good leg and put it on top of the one already on my the bad one. I theory offering twice the support. The 3:59 pacer passes me.

Mile 5 takes me all of 10:36 and I consider giving up. Can I run another 21 miles with only working leg? Probably...

So I tough it out. I manage to keep off my toes and heel strike every step of the way to minimise calf movement. I settle into full on fast hobble mode aka a pace of about 09:25. The 4:00 pacer passes me.

Oh well, at least I can admire the view. Erm, perhaps not. The course takes us through a lot of residential areas and it isn’t one for the sightseer. They rather cheekily announced before today that next year’s route will include the city centre and more of the city’s landmarks. Just to rub it in. However, the crowds are large, vocal and brandishing gifts of jelly babies and the like

A large proportion of the course, about 4 miles worth, takes place in Altrincham which is actually quite nice. I go through halfway in 02:02:40 which isn’t that bad but obviously I’m not going to break four hours.

Then we leave Altrincham and head back to Sale with only ten miles to go. Only 10 miles... hobble hobble.

They say the first half of a marathon is about patience and the second half is about determination. In my case the first half was about preservation but now the determination kicks in and you know what? I do it. 

Obviously 4:06:48 wasn’t what I was looking for but it’s quite an impressive time for someone with one leg. 9:28 per mile. I was 6,728^th out of 13,654 finishers.

The race medal is ok and the t-shirt very nice, black and wearable. I now have two marathons under my belt, I just hope my calf will allow me a third.

A Nottingham one would be nice. Manchester reckon this year’s race boosted their local economy by about £6.8M, attracting thousands of visitors, 75% of whom were from outside the north-west of England. Next year, with the race taking in the city centre as well, they expect it to provide an even bigger economic boost. Nottingham get on it.

Bedford Autodrome 16 Mile

Sunday brings my final warm up race before Manchester next week. Of course, the beauty of training for a spring marathon is that you get to run some fantastically dull events as there is really little else at this time of year. Hot on the heels of the Half Marathon at Prestwold Hall which was organised by RunThrough Events comes the Bedford Autodrome 5k\10k\Half Marathon\ 16 mile\20 mile\Marathon (delete as applicable) also organised by RunThrough. This is basically Prestwold again but with the least dull bits removed.

Whereas Prestwold was only mostly on a car racing circuit Bedford is entirely on one although this is one designed by none other than Jonathan Palmer. Which would be great but seriously Jonathon... I’m not impressed.

The 5k is one lap of the circuit, the 10k is two laps, the Half Marathon is four laps... you get the gist. Pity the poor souls in the marathon, eight laps! That’s not me this week, I have opted for the 16 Mile option which is five laps plus a mini lap to make sure the distance is right.

Not that I’m sure it is right as I run 6:07 for the first mile which is insanely unlikely. Then again it is perhaps just another case of random mile marking and I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt about the overall distance.

The race itself is fine, once you’ve switched yourself off and got down to grounding out the laps. The tarmac is lovely and it’s all quite flat being on a motor racing track although there was a slight slope on one section of it. It was left to the strong wind to make it ‘interesting’, being behind you, then being a crosswind, then being in your face etc etc. Repeat for each lap.

They started the races in reverse order of length, so the marathon first, ending up with all the races on the track at the same time. So you never really knew who you were racing against but that was fine. No one cared who they were racing against, we were all here training for something else.

L ran the 10k and I did wonder if we’d get to run over the line together but it didn’t happen like that.

I think my time of 02:21:08 wasn’t great but having only Naseby to compare it, where I was three minutes quicker, it’s hard to tell and of course the Notts 20 did not give us any mile markers at all. I was also slow through 13 miles today but it’s all about getting some distance in a week out from the big one.

Notts 20

This morning L and go our separate race ways. She hops on the Red Arrow and then the Comet on her way up to the Kilburn Kilometres 10K. You’d think that the run would be a doddle after the transport arrangements but she says it was brutal with knee deep mud and loads of stiles to climb over. It took her 1 hour 24 minutes but naturally she loved it.

It sounds surprisingly like my race where there no stiles but still plenty of mud. Which wasn’t what I was expecting from the new Notts 20 Road Race.

I drive over to Holme Pierrepont nice and early which was a very good plan as the car park soon fills up. Parking anarchy breaks out with people abandoning their cars all over the place and it becomes apparent that they probably aren’t going to get 800 runners’ cars in but somehow everyone parks somewhere.

This is the first running of the race so there are going to be a few teething problems and that’s one for attention next year.

Practically everybody was doing this 20 miler to prepare for a marathon, so all the chat was about which one you were doing. Were you lucky enough to have got into London or were you doing Brighton or Manchester? Many were doing more than one of these.

The route consisted of two different loops out from the National Water Sports Centre. The first one of around 13 miles took us out through Radcliffe-on-Trent and Shelford. Then the second, of the remaining seven miles, took us out along the riverbank to the Victoria Embankment and back. The first part seemed to contain large chunks of the Outlaw bike course along with the legendary Adbolton Lane potholes while the second part seemed to contain large chunks of the Outlaw run course. So you could say it was all very familiar to me.

What I didn’t expect was that so much of it would be off road, around about two-thirds perhaps, and because the weather hadn’t been great of late, several sections of the course had turned in to either mini lakes or mud baths. It almost warranted trail shoes.

The last section along the riverbank was particularly grim with its puddles, mud and very narrow path. Which wasn’t the best choice for a race in March.

The other thing that made it a lot harder was the lack of miles markers. There were not at all. Apparently the organisers took the decision to take them down as they were in danger of becoming low flying missiles in the wind. Unfortunately, this looked a bit over the top with the wind having dropped considerably by race time. So once again I was wishing I had brought my GPS watch but we all ended up using the water stations, which were placed every three miles, as markers.

Anyhow it all went well in the end and it was all very well organised despite the less than perfect route. I was aiming to break three hours which I knew I was on to when I saw the three hour pacer behind me as we did an out and back section on the Embankment with around two miles to go.

I came home in 02:55:51 to claim a fairly naff medal but a very nice t-shirt.

Retford Half Marathon

After the exotic Sherwood Pines on Saturday, on Sunday I continue my marathon training with the equally exotic Retford Half Marathon. I’ve done this one before and it’s not that exciting but I need the distance.

L gets the short straw of supporting with the dogs. She doesn’t fancy running exotic Retford but is apparently dreaming of doing a Tough Mudder as we are possibly the only people on the planet who don't yet have a Tough Mudder t-shirt. Personally, I’m not sure I want one either but then I also wouldn’t be keen on paying the £10 charge to spectate. Yes really, I’ve never seen that before.

Aside from Tough Mudder she adds Dublin and Sofia to our Bucket List of must do foreign races. Adding to the likes of Copenhagen, Malmo, Krakow, Berlin, Tallinn, Riga, Amsterdam, Bauhaus and Hitchin.

My time at Retford of exactly 1:45 is four minutes up on my time there three years ago. So perhaps the training is paying off. As an added bonus this year's t-shirt isn't orange like last time and is actually quite nice.