Marathon Training (six weeks to go)

Time flies and before I know it, it’s six weeks and six days until I run the Yorkshire Marathon, I’ve already knocked out my 20 miler and am bathing in Maranoia. It’s safe to say it is going a whole lot better than last time: I’ve not broken my leg, for a start. Neither have I rung my mum in the rain begging her to pick me up, become so delirious from exhaustion that I’ve hallucinated dead cats in Kingston, nor thrown myself into the gauze of Tottenham Marshes tearfully despairing at my ineptitude. This is not to say it has not been hard or exhausting: I am exhausted, and those long runs are so far, so long, take me such a ridiculous distance from home that I still feel it shouldn’t be possible on foot.

I’ve been very lucky in that nearly all my long runs have been on beautiful sunny days. They have been as follows:

1. 20km around the Olympic Park, Tottenham Marshes, Walthamstow Wetlands etc, where I saw a kingfisher!
2. 25km along the Thames Path, from Bow to Putney. I caught the river bus back, which seemed like a really good idea at the time, but actually took forever and started to become freezing cold.
3. Phoenix Runner “Olympic Friday” lapped race in Walton on Thames – one of those things where you rock up and do as many laps as possible. I did this with my friend Kate and we became rather competitive and I feared we’d be out all day because neither wanted to stop first. Fortunately we decided to knock it on the head after 26.4km (5 laps).
4. 30km down the Thames Path from Bow to Kew. This was a big milestone for me because it was my longest ever training run – I only reached 27.5km training for Brighton. It was also a lot faster and more enjoyable and not just because it wasn’t raining.
5. 32.2km (the fabled 20 miler!) from Bow to Broxbourne. I decided to do this because once upon a time rob made me cycle to Broxbourne and it felt like the fucking moon. It still felt like the moon running there but with a better space rocket. Also I didn’t choose the route that takes you up a massive hill this time.
6. A 10 mile race in the Velopark in the absolute pissing pouring race which I almost chickened out of because I hate rain. I made myself do it because I hoped it might make me feel better about the possibility of rain on race day (it is October in Yorkshire after all). I don’t know if it made me feel better or worse but I got a PB.

I’ve actually peaked a little early as I have reached maximum training distance with two long runs in hand. I had assumed that something terrible would happen at least once to make me miss one, but so far nothing has, which means I have to run twenty miles at least once more. It’s getting increasingly hard to find routes that are long enough, not laps, not too hard and have adequate water opportunities.

Maranoia, I’ve noted, doesn’t get any better if your training goes well. I am going to dig out the post I wrote last time and compare shortly, but these are my current worries:

1. Will the battery life of my Garmin and Shokz outlast my race? (I have bought new ones of both just in case, even though I can’t afford it)
2. Injury. I’ve not had a proper injury for over a year now. Everything hurts on a low level constantly but I’m used to that. I tweaked my calf at parkrun on Saturday and have been in a state of major panic ever since, keeping it wrapped up and googling an array of expensive private treatments although actually I have to say two days later it feels pretty much fine so maybe, just maybe, I ‘ll live
3. Illness. The fucking corona will get me, I know it. Thinking of going around in a mask and refusing to engage with anyone from distance of less than two metres.
4. I put on 5kg training for Brighton/Dublin due to post run overeating so have been v careful with eating this time to the extent that I have accidentally lost 2kg. So now I am simultaneously worried about getting too fat and getting malnutrition.
5. Weather.
6. Not really a maranoia but general guilt about doing well when my friends are ill, also guilt about moaning about things like a slightly tweaked calf when people have actual problems.
7. Toilet.
8. Which charity to raise money for? And am I jinxing race by raising money before doing it? At what point have I done enough training for sponsors to feel they have their money’s worth even if I get crushed by a falling elephant on the way to York.
9. What time to aim for? It’s all well and good to say “just be happy with getting round” but you can’t just bolt off at 5k pace and hope for the best, you do have to choose an actual time to try for. My times indicate that I could, at a big push, get sub 5 but I really don’t want to set myself up for being disappointed if I get 5:01 (especially as that would be a PB by nearly 2 hours) so I think it would be safer to aim for 5:30. After all, I can always aim for sub 5 in my next marathon. Next marathon? Did I really say that?