Kilomathon

So last Sunday was Kilomathon. 26.2k (16.3m) from Nottingham to Derby. I was quite nervous about the distance as its 3 miles more than I had managed before. Heres the route.



I got to Nottingham on Saturday afternoon where I was wonderfully taken care of by my sister who can whip up an excellent pasta bake if you ask her. So after filling up on pasta, bread and Match of the Day I headed to bed to set my alarm for a horribly early time.
I woke up in the morning and thought, "mm, I wonder what the time is?" It was 6:58 - 18 minutes later than I'd set my alarm for! Id set the alarm but forgot to save it... good job my internal clock is in good working order because Lucy had forgotten to set hers too! Oops.

So I ate breakfast, got ready and started to get a bit excited/nervous. We drove to Nottingham University and walked to the start and I started to wonder at this point whether I was wearing the right thing? should I have got here earlier? Should I have eaten something else for breakfast? Do I dare wait in the massive toilet queues?

It really was an atmosphere like Ive never experienced at a race before. There were so many people in fancy dress including a man with a prosthetic foot, painted all in blue wearing just pants! (pic from bbc website)



We were told to head to the area that matched the colour on our race number so we could head to the start line. Here Lucy left me )or so I thought) with nothing to keep me warm but a bin bag and I really started asking questions of myself. What was I doing? Should I have brought my radio? Should I have brought my water bottle?
Little did I know Lucy had followed me the start line, managing to find me in amongst 5000 other runners to see me off. (You can just see the top of the blue mans head behind me.)



The first 7 miles felt great. The weather was lovely sunny and I was enjoying running on the closed main roads leading out of Nottingham. At seven miles though I had to have a brief toilet stop despite having braved the earlier queues. I never really regained my rhythm after that and I pretty much struggled the rest of the way.
About 12 miles in things got tough as the wind picked but by 14 miles it was very tough. My right knee started playing up and I was running straight into the wind. Despite warings having been put up weeks in advance, traffic on the road into Derby was terrible. As we ran in the left hand we were greeted by a line of cars about 3 miles long facing us in the right hand lane. I swear I could feel everyone of them scowling at holding up their Mothers Day dinners. Sorry people of Derby.

I was so close to the end but my knee hurt alot so I stopped for just a second when a man ran up behind me and said "come on, we're nearly there now" so I ran with him for a minute or so until I heard a marshall say "Well done, you can almost see the finish line" and I turned right and there it was, the finish line! I powered down that home straight desperately trying to beat 3 hours as my watch said I was close. As I neared the line though the clock said 3:20. 3:20?! Of course, with the two stops and me not crossing the start line as the timer started, my official time was bound to be slower than my watch time. I heard a cheer come from Lucy to my left who had driven from Nottingham to see me finish. It was a lovely feeling to cross the line and hear the beep as my chip timer registered my time. I had actually made it.



My legs have never ached so much in all my life but I had finished. I got a massive medal which looks a bit like a Jim'll Fix It medal and a bag full of goodies including a free token for a beer at the beer tent provided by local brewer Flagstaff :)

I tentatively made it Pride Park where Lucy's car awaited (good work on the free parking!) to drive me back to Nottingham in 30 minutes! Not before taking a triumphant photo with my medal and kilomathon t-shirt though :)




Im feeling more confident now and I learned a few vital things that Im glad I learned before London - I know I can push on to finish when I have to. Im more familiar with the arrangements and atmosphere of a big race. Im familiar with running with thousands of other runners. Ive got a better idea of when to take energy gels and most importantly... I know where to put the vaseline! :-o

Things have been a little bit hectic over the last couple of weeks and my training (and blogging) has kind of taken a back seat role. I have moved house and work has been brutal so time and energy for midweek training runs has been in very short supply. I have still been managing to go to circuit training and do my long runs but I think I felt the effect of the missed runs when I went for my long run on Sunday. It was really difficult and my right ankle felt very strange in the beginning. Not painful just quite weak and tired. This caused pain in my right knee and right thigh which meant I had to cut the run short by two miles. I think this might a small niggle in something called my illiotibial band which runs from thigh to knee. The pain doesn’t seem to be as bad today as it has been the last couple of days so Im hopeful that I can try for an easy run this evening. Im going to have to be careful with it though, Kilomathon is just a week and a half away!

Im really looking forward to this race. Kilomathon is 26.2 kilometres from Nottingham to Derby, instead of the 26.2 miles of a marathon. It’s a good training distance but I wont really be ‘racing’ it. The plan is just to use it as a long training run. It’s the first ever race of this distance and it will be the biggest race I have ever done. It will have fuel stops and will probably be the closest I can get to the atmosphere of the marathon before the big day itself so it should be very good practice for dealing with nerves, starting pens, chip timers, energy stops and crowds. I’ll also be in the very capable hands of Mini-Judd who will be taking care of pre and post race nutrition and entertainment. Hope you’re strong mini, I may need carrying! ;o)

Running in London and sick again!

I went to visit the girlies this weekend in London this weekend but I didnt want to sacrifice my weekend run so I got in my first ever London run and I loved it. I ran through Battersea Park admiring the power station I recognised so well from the Pink Floyd album cover. Ran over the river, along Chelsea Embankment, over Chelsea Bridge and then back through the park.

There had been a light dusting of snow overnight which made the park pretty but not treacherous and running near the river was very scenic. There were so many other runners too. Ive never seen so many other runners before. I love the quiet and peacefulness of running in the norfolk countryside but London offered something new and I really enjoyed it. Good job really or 25th April is going to be very dull ;o)

Club run yesterday went pretty well. It was snowing to begin with and I wasnt sure I had the energy to complete the session but as usual, I seem to get better the longer I stick with it. I just seem to find a rhythm eventually. Turns out there may have been a reason for my low energy levels as I seem to be sick. Again. Just another cold, probably caught from the man at work who has come into work for the last two weeks coughing and spluttering without covering his mouth. Grr, I really hate that. There always seems to be one no matter where I work. Tut.
Still, it gives me an excuse to relax on the sofa watching the football. Hoorah!

I winned a medal!

And here it is, along with my race number for the day. Its just a finishers medal, I havent set any world records just yet ;o) More on the race in a bit...



Well its been an eventful few days for me. It started on Saturday when I went to Sportlink. It’s a running specialist shop just outside Norwich and I had my gait analysed and showed the lady the ruined remains of my trainers. She told me that the trainers I had were not the right type for my style but I had a feeling that this was the case as I know my running style has changed since I bought those over a year ago. She recommended a couple of different types for me and then she let me run outside in them to test the difference. One pair was very comfy and cushioned, the other were really comfy and light. I went for the cushioned ones thinking that the extra cushioning would help my shins. The lady then said, “I hoped you’d pick those ones”. And here they are
They arent that shiny and white anymore though! The two ladies in the shop conferred a little and although it's normally advised to wear new trainers in a bit before wearing them for a race, both ladies agreed that the risk of blisters was better than the risk of injury in the old ones so I wore my shiny new ones on Sunday for the rescheduled Wymondham New Years Day 10k.

It was an excellent day. I was up nice and early and didn’t feel tired for a change, Saturdays lay-in had done the trick. I arrived fairly early but saw a few ladies wearing Norwich Road Runners gear so I introduced myself and they let me tag along and were very friendly. Ivan (the coach I normally run with at the club) came along a bit later and gave me a club vest which was brilliant. As I ran round lots of people cheered me as a ‘Road Runner’ which was really nice. A couple more races and they'll cheer me by name :o)


But down to the serious business.. how did I get on? Really really well! I did it in 1.00.07 by my watch (started as I crossed the start line) and 1.00.22 official time (started with the gun). Either way this beats my previous time by over 9 minutes so Im really pleased not just with the time, Im pleased with how I felt while running. I had my Garmin helping me out with pace, I got round without stopping (apart from a few seconds to drink at the water station because I dint want to throw in my face; it was cold!) and finished with a strong sprint finish despite the hill at the 9k mark, so all in all a very successful race. This was celebrated with a large bottle of Heineken :o)

Monday was a deserved rest day and Tuesday was back to the club for the speed session. I really didn’t fancy it. I was tired and it was sooo cold last night but I somehow found the motivation and off I went. We did 3 x 800m efforts with 200m recovery, a 3 min rest and then the same again. It was hard but actually quite good fun as I now had a running partner. We took turns to set the pace and as he was faster than me it was a real test.

Im actually starting to feel a bit like a real runner now :o)

Butterflies and running geekery

I had a pretty major case of nerves yesterday. I signed up to marathon group on the running website (FetchEveryone) I am a member of. They are organising what they call a ‘Fetchpoint’ where those who are not running gather to provide support, hugs, drinks, jelly babies and a shoulder to cry on if necessary. ;) So I joined the list of runners and looked through the information they provided. They will be waiting to cheer everybody on at mile 22. It was then that it hit me exactly what I let myself in for. Mile 22! What kind of state will I be in by mile 22? Im getting butterflies again now just thinking about it.

I hit the circuits again on Wednesday and the good news is…. My arms and shoulders don’t ache at all. This is because its all concentrated in my thighs this week! This means I cant sit down without making funny faces and the less said about getting up and down stairs the better. ;o)

With this in mind I went to running club with the intention of doing the easy 4 mile run that the coach mentioned on Tuesday. This turned into a very, very easy 2 and a half mile run with the coach and two other ladies. I didn’t really mind running this slow as the purpose was really to just loosen up my thighs without aggravating my shins ahead of Sundays PB attempt. Weirdly though, I found this more painful for my shins than I probably would have found it at my regular pace. It was quite nice to run along while having a chat though. Ooh and the Garmin has finally arrived which means I shall soon be able to wow/bore you all with amazing stats and stunning running geekery! Who want to see graphs? Hey? No-one? Oh. ;-p

Im officially resting/powering up for Sunday now. Im really looking forward to having a lie-in and not running tomorrow, not to mention the carb-loading, oh yes. Technically you probably don’t *need* to carb-load for a 10k but Im gonna. Im going for a PB y’know so the more carbs the better I say. Yum yum yum :) Hopefully I’ll be able to come back here on Sunday and tell you all about my sub 60min 10k but I think that because of the illness and minor niggles Ive had recently, a sub 65min is more realistic. That will still beat my previous time by 4 minutes so I’ll be sort of happy with that.

Left, Right, Hook, Left

Well my first full week of marathon training didn’t quite go to plan. Mondays treadmill run left my calves so sore that not only did I miss Tuesdays club session but I had to cut short my 10k race pace run on Thursday and my 9 mile long run on Saturday. It’s very disappointing to go out on a run but then have to abandon it. Psychologically its tough because part of you wants to run on anyway “You have to run a marathon in 4 months, just get on with it” and the other part remembers how frustrating not running at all because running on sore calves gave me shin splints “Be sensible, better to go home now and live to run another day”. I probably looked a little silly stood still by the river in my running gear having a mental argument with myself. That’s mental as in ‘internal’ by the way, just in case you had images of me ranting and raving at the trees ;)

On the plus side I did manage to go to circuit training and it was brilliant. SO many different exercises and the punching section had my heart-rate going faster than during a 10k race! Really tough and quite painful for my weedy little arms on Friday and Saturday but, after another couple of sessions, that shouldn’t be too much of a problem anymore. Boys, (You know who you are!) stop belly-aching and get your bums back down there. If I can do it, you can :)

Week 2 starts today. I think Im just gonna go for a tester run and see how it goes. Definitely not going to more than 4 miles though It’s the Wymondham 10k this Sunday and Im eyeing up my first ever PB so I need my shins to hold out.

Garmin Status – Still not here.

www.justgiving.com/vickijudd

First blog

Hello,

This will be a bit of a strange blog for a first one because it will actually contain two blogs. Bear with me here... :)

I am a runner. I am a member of an online running community and thought it would be a good idea to blog my experience of training for the London Marathon and my attempts to raise money for a local charity. But then I thought, in the interest of raising more money I should widen my potential audience a little. :) This is why the first blog is strange - I started the one on the running website yesterday but I dont want you to miss out on the start of the adventure.

So here goes - blog entry for Tuesday 12th January -

Reunited with my old friend...

…the treadmill. Or should that be foe?

My love affair with running began at the back end of 2008 in a small gym based in a community centre in a fairly ‘rough’ area in Norwich. 2 nights a week and Saturday mornings I could be found huffing, puffing and going a shade of red reminiscent of a tomato trying to reach 7 minutes. Not 7 minute miles, 7 whole minutes of running. It was tough and my inhaler was a close companion in these dark days. My dream was to manage half an hour of continuous running but it seemed so far away.

As some of you know, 2009 was a mixed bag of injury and progress for me but fairly early on I ditched the treadie, hit the streets and in no time made my 30 minute target. Hoorah! I’ve never looked back. Until yesterday.

The icy streets and the impeding VLM meant I had to bite the bullet and go to the gym. Dum dum dum…. It was pretty awful in many ways. I downgraded my membership some months ago so I had to pay £4.20 for the dubious privilege of using the treadmill. That was before I even got into the gym and had to wait 15 mins to use one. Bah!

When I did get on though I noticed that they were some pretty flashy new treadmills to play with that included such high tech equipment as a ‘cool’ air fan (very little positive effect) and a HR monitor that you don’t need a strap for. I did like this feature as I’ve never had a HR reading before. I was up to 171 doing 10.5k per hour at one point. I don’t know what it means but Im glad I know Ill look into it in more detail when my Garmin eventually arrives!

The ability to regulate speed was pretty handy too but holy moly was I bored?! Last time I was on a treadie I’d struggle to get past 4k – last night I was on there for nearly an hour doing 9k! (it was gonna be 10 but I really needed a wee!) I could probably tell you how many ceiling tiles there are in my gym now!

Wednesday 13th January -

DOM DOM DOMS

Guess what? I have doms. This is 'Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness' or achey bits. My calves are in agony and my walking gait is more than a little peculiar. Stairs are… well put it this way, I make sure there is no one else around to see my ungainly descent or hear the “ooh's”, “ow's” and gentle weeping that accompanies it. (Ok, there is no real weeping. Just inside tears… ) That is ‘The Revenge of the Treadmill’ in action. My calves never hurt like this from running outside! I had to bail on the club speed session last night. I was trying to be sensible and not try to do too much, too soon. My shin splints seem to have cleared up but I thought a speed session on very sore calves might be a bit risky. Aggravating my shins is the last thing I wanna do… tetchy b*st*rds that they are!

Im gonna go along with K tonight to his boxing circuit training. Im just no good at motivating myself to do core and strength exercises. I need a) the shame and ridicule of my peers if I chicken out and b) someone to shout at me and make me go the extra bit when it hurts. Im pretty nervous. Not about doing it, but about how much pain Im going to be in tomorrow and whether it will make Thursday’s 6mile run the most painful run since…. Well…. The last most painful run I guess

I'll let you know how it goes.