It's been 4 months since my last post and quite rightly so. This a marathon blog after all. Unless I'm training, the rest is just background. So I'll try and keep the last 3 months pre-training brief, before regurgitating the past 3 weeks of ACTUAL marathon training.
October to December was actually very busy. In that time I went to Scotland and cycled 47 miles in one day, which was a humongous struggle, before having our cycling holiday ended by a storm. However, we did get to do some Ice-climbing, which was awesome.
Haggis was eaten and our biggest achievement (probably the wrong word) was frequenting every pub in Fort William. Not joking... every pub.
On return from my trip, my foot was still playing up following my wakeboarding accident. I was concerned, mainly because I knew my marathon training was fast approaching. I managed to get a referral to a Plastic Surgeon to take a look. After 8 injections of anaesthetic into the bottom of my foot, he opened my foot up and found a small piece of wood splinter that had lodged itself in the middle of my foot by a nerve, which had caused me some degree of discomfort for the past 3 months. Finally, a resolution, I thought... The recovery took longer than expected and I didn't manage to make my first proper pre-training run until Christmas Eve. Somehow I managed to run 10km in an hour. Kudos to my body for retaining a good base level of fitness. However, I was huffing and puffing significantly. Honestly, I sometimes feel the odd niggle in the foot still and I'm not entirely sure it's recovered. But there's no way I'm going anywhere near it until after the marathon.
Going back to November. As part of my fundraising I organised a Charity Pub Quiz in my hometown in Essex. I was astonished by the turnout of 70 people. Charging everyone £12 each entry, plus a raffle and an auction made just under £1,100 in the evening. The winners of the quiz kindly donated the money to the charity. Essex people = good people.
I was truly grateful to all of my friends who came to the quiz from London, Sussex, even Manchester for the weekend. Also, for my family for bringing many people too. In fact, the night would not have been such a success without my parents, who helped organise the venue and wrote to many companies and collected great raffle prizes.
Unbelievably, Sir David Attenborough kindly signed a photograph for me, and the Rt Hon Boris Johnson MP also signed a list of his best quotes for me. I never expected my friend "Bacon" to bid £101 for the Johnson, but he did.
Since then, with a huge thanks to all of my donors we have raised an amazing £1,471 at this early stage. JustGiving publishes a leader board of ALL fundraisers for the London Marathon and I'm currently in 467th place, which isn't bad considering that 44,000 people will have received a marathon place. Of course, not everyone will be fundraising, but I hope that the majority do. The person out in first place is on £37,000. What an effort!
NEW YEAR, NEW DARYL.
2019 is going to be an absolute bloody success. It has to. It all starts with the right attitude. Training officially started on 2 January and, honestly, I've been enjoying it. In the last 3 weeks I've run 49 miles and counting. I'm learning a lot about myself, the ability to push through pain, how the body reacts to incremental physical stress, nutrition and how my body works. A lot of this is down to two motivating products. A book and a watch. Firstly, I bought a Garmin Forerunner 235. This has been an eye-opener and an absolute must for anyone training for a marathon.
So, I wear my Garmin 24 hours a day. It tracks my heart rate, daily steps, even the amount and quality of sleep I'm getting. It uses a combination of heart rate monitoring and data from its in-built accelerometer to work out when you're moving. It therefore determines when you're most likely in REM sleep and light sleep. It's amazing stuff. It also gives you smart phone updates if linked to your phone. In addition, when I turn on the running timer it tracks my timing, route, distance, speed, heart rate, elevation, cadence, calories, miles per minute (pace) etc. This is all important information. The two most important being distance and pace. A 5 hour marathon is an 11:27 miles per minute pace. A 4 hour 30 marathon is a 10:18 pace. My goal in the Marathon is (1) to finish it and (2) to be happy with my time as a bonus. I'll accept less than 5 hours, but my aim is 4 hours 30 minutes. On my training runs I can therefore determine what my pace is. My last run was an eight mile run and for an hour and 20 minutes I kept a pace of 9:48 which equates to a 4 hour 17 minute marathon. I was running quite casually as well. I'd be thrilled with that time come 28th April. Strangely, that run also came 2 days after Reece's 30th birthday trip to Romania. Bucharest was a whitewash of alcohol and sleep deprivation, so I was extremely surprised at how excellent my run was! My resting heart rate when I sleep is roughly 50-53 beats per minute. After a bit of a session on a Friday night off training for a party, I was astounded by my resting heart rate. The influence of alcohol gave me a resting heart rate of 73bpm overnight. Learn't a lot from that. I also learn't that I danced the equivalent of about 2km that evening. None of it good or in rhythm I suspect.
The second motivator was the book (my training diary). After each day I write down everything important that happened physiologically to me. This ncludes exercise, steps, diet, sleep etc. It's a good guide as to my progress throughout my training. It will also be interesting to see how I progress over my 4.5 months of training.
Plus, when I'm writing down my food each day, it keeps me eating well, so that crap food isn't included in my diary! I've made some delicious meals so far, which are always healthy. Anyone can do it. No excuses.
It's also very helpful for recording action points, such as buying ice packs for my legs to flush out the lactic acid after long runs, or simply to buy some Chamois. Ahhh Chamois cream. This is very much needed. Everyone tells you about nipple chafing and destroyed feet in training, but not about chafing in the more intimate areas shall we say! Having research it, it's incredibly common but everyone's too embarrassed to talk about it! We all have skin that rubs between the groin when you run, and when you add moisture from sweat and the salts that get released, chafing is inevitable. So there's a Chamois cream (let's just call it what it is, it's groin lube) that you can buy. Slather it on before and run pain free!
Even my flatmates have began exercising with me. This week we did a Core Session. Over 40 minutes it included about 310 sit-ups of varying types of crunch and 4 minutes of planking. We were all suffering the next day. The core workout is so important for running though. Keeping postural integrity and strength will hold you together when the rest of your body starts giving up later in your run.
I've signed up for the Vitality Big Half, which is a half marathon in South East London on 10 March. Scope had free places and kindly gave me a place. Speaking of Scope, I took the opportunity to go to their Headquarters in November and meet the team and a few other runners. It was an excellent day. An experienced marathoner came and gave us a talk, which was invaluable about injury prevention, over-training and gait. I'm going to the second Scope meet-up tomorrow morning, which I'm looking forward to. I believe we get our kits tomorrow! Which would be awesome.
This weekend is a 9 mile run on Sunday and I'm also looking forward to building up my distance/pace and getting to that £2,000 mark! The next struggle will be Paul's stag in **** (somewhere abroad). I can't say where as it's a secret. But that weekend I'm supposed to be running 14 miles. I've booked an extra 1.5 days there after the stag party has left, so I can get a good run in... unlikely to be 14 miles though.
Until next time!