Milestones

Today I ran 7.34 miles in 2 hours.  This may not sound like much, given I'm hoping to run 26 miles in 5.5 hours this coming April.  However, it's a major accomplishment for me.  It's by far the furthest I have ever run, and the longest time I've ever run for.  And I really did run it - or rather, I trotted along slowly.  That's pretty much walking pace, less that 4 miles per hour.  But I didn't walk, I definitely sort of gently jogged, so I'm going to count it as my longest run ever.  It's a little over 11 km, so more than a 10K.

It was an enjoyable run, too.  On the country lanes, the drivers were all immensely considerate.  They slowed down, all except the driver of an Audi A4, but he sped up so much after he passed me, revving his engine and tearing away, I can only think that he must have slowed down after all, and I just didn't hear it.

On the A46 drivers were a little less considerate.   And the path by the road was really uneven and overgrown, so not a lot of fun.   Did you know nettles can sting through compression tights?  I think I won't repeat that particular bit of the route.

I took a different route to my usual today, and saw many interesting things.  There was a little field mouse, scurrying out of my path and into the hedgerow; there were two ancient sycamores I must have passed hundreds of times, but never noticed how old they are (they must be at least 200 years old based on their girth), I saw miles of dry stone walls in beautiful condition, there were clouds reflecting the evening sun that glinted as if they'd been digitally enhanced, and there was a funny smell as I passed a large electricity pylon, that I assume must be the smell of ozone. 

I also noticed this milestone, which I'd never seen before.  This is just a little country lane - why does it merit a milestone?   I've looked at an old map that pre-dates the nearby M4 motorway, and at one time this was the B4455, a small but perhaps significant east-west route in an area with comparatively few straight roads.  Whether the cause or the effect of its straightness, this was an old toll road, running from Bristol to Chippenham.  There are signs of this, including a "Turnpike Cottage" and "Turnpike Farm" on the corner with the road between Tormarton and Marshfield.  These toll roads were common in the 17-19c, and were run as trusts, set up to maintain key roads, before the railways brought about their decline and responsibility was given over to county councils instead.

The milestone is a cast iron plate attached to a large stone.  I was puzzled by the first destination - it says "To Malford 13" and I reflected that I'd never heard of this village, which is unusual for me - I know most of the little villages around here.  Then I noticed the X.   Of course.  Christian Malford!  13 miles away?  Well, maybe.  It's just the other side of Chippenham.  I suppose it must have been an important staging post at one time - there are some gorgeous houses there.

Next is "PuckleC 5", i.e. Pucklechurch.  Its main claim to fame would appear to be that King Edmund I of England was murdered there in 946 AD.  He was the grandson of Alfred theGreat.

The last line of the milestone is "Bristol 12".  Presumably central Bristol?  Who really knows.  I'm not going to run all the way to find out. 

Not yet anyway.  There and back, plus the leg to my house, would be roughly marathon distance.  And the route goes to some interesting places, including the iron age fort at Hinton, which is a match for the one nearer to us, by the Old Sodbury petrol station (so called "Roman Camp" - because the Romans sensibly used the old fort as a stopping place on their north-south route from Bath).

I feel I ought to write a bit about the run.  I was trying to keep the pace slow and to stay in the "green zone" with my heart rate monitor.  For the first half hour this was pretty hard, but after that it got much easier.  I didn't slow down - my pace was 15-17 minutes per mile throughout the run - but I think my body must have clicked into running mode and settled down a bit.  I guess that bodes well.

The muddy tracks at the start of the run were not so much fun, but the road running was good - it was a cool day (note to self - need to take hat and gloves from now on), and the roads are in surprisingly good condition considering how little used they are.   As I mentioned, the A46 was hard work and to be avoided in future.  I know from my maps that there are other ways across the motorway, and I should seek them out at some point.

I did not find it hard to keep going, and had I not set myself the goal of two hours, then home so we could get to the fireworks on time, I'm sure I could have run for longer.  I now know that running a 10K race now would be a reasonable thing to do - and I could probably do it faster than today's run, which was deliberately cautious on the speed front.

Unfortunately, my legs are killing me.  During the run, a couple of my toes started to hurt, but afterwards they've been fine, and it's ankles, shins, knees and thighs that are complaining.  I should probably consult a sports physio at some point for advice.

So - a milestone in more than one way.  The marathon is still over five months away - if I was ever in doubt, I'm pretty sure now that I'll be in shape to run it, and to get a not-embarrassing time.

Measurement technology

Today I ran a 7K route, about half of it on farm tracks, in about an hour.  This gives me a theoretical marathon time of 6.5 hours - an hour off my target.  Of course, I couldn't really run a marathon at that speed right now, but it gives me an idea of the speed I could expect if I could build my endurance.

The route tracks some roads that used to be "real" roads before the M4 plowed through the village in the 1960s. They are lovely lanes, lined with hawthorn, sloes, rosehips and blackberries - I should go back and do some gathering for hedgerow jelly!

I've been using Endomondo to track my runs - it's a phenomenally useful app, and of course you get all you really need in the free version.  I recommend it highly to anyone who cycles or runs!  I've also been using Richard's Adidas micoach, which tracks my heart rate and run time (it would also track my pace, but unfortunately I've lost the bit that does that - but that's fine because Endomondo does it in speed terms, rather than real pace - which is practical).  I'm in two minds about the micoach - on the one hand, it's really useful for what it does at the moment, but on the other hand, you can't just buy one bit of it - if I want the pacer back I have to buy a whole new unit - wasteful and shameful!  Adidas ought to allow purchases of the individual components as part of their efforts to be more sustainable.

I like the fact that I can save runs on Endomondo - the next step will be to run the same route from time to time and try to improve my speed.  I've also been trying to work out a safe 10K route from home without too many hills, but as Richard has remarked in the past, the problem with living as high above sea level as we do is that virtually everything is down.  Actually, that only applies to the west, where you soon get to the "Cotswold Edge", a sharp drop into the Severn Vale from the plateau that extends to our east.  My run through Tormarton was of course eastward, taking advantage of the flattish Cotswold landscape.

One alternative for flat routes is to drive down to the common in Old Sodbury, as that has plenty of quiet(ish) roads that are reasonably flat.  The only thing I don't like is that there is relatively little off-road running that isn't impossibly muddy.  The common is just a huge bog - that's probably why it wasn't included in Yate.  At any rate, it just doesn't feel right to drive 4 miles in order to go for a run.

When in Rome...

...or as it may be, in France.  I was there last weekend, attending a reunion of my MBA class at INSEAD in the beautiful town of Fontainebleau.  Of course, it rained - why on earth do they hold these things in October?

You only live once.

At any rate, I had a dilemma.  We were going by train and bringing all my running kit would require another suitcase (or a bigger one at any rate), which I'd have to lug across London, Paris, and Fontainebleau.  And what should I eat?  There were gorgeous cakes, dinner menus full of things I shouldn't eat... was it going to be a complete wash out in health terms, or was I going to exercise a little willpower?

Well, I decided that I don't get presented with such fabulous food very often.  And I didn't want to carry yet another suitcase.  I settled on the happy rationalisation that it was an experiment to discover the consequences of a "weekend off".

And in some ways I've been pleasantly surprised.  Granted, I did gain several pounds, all of it as fat.  After all that food I needed a serious detox, so I've been consuming large quantities of black coffee and green tea all day, plus raw veg and unadorned fish.  By the end of the day my body was feeling like me again.  Easy come, easy go.

Moreover, I finally went for a run, for the first time since leaving for France!  I feared the worst, but in fact it was an excellent run - only slightly slower than my fastest endurance run so far, and faster than any run last week.  My legs were hurting in unfamiliar places, but apart from that it was progress rather than retreat.

I do not plan gluttonous weekends on a regular basis, but it is at least somewhat reassuring to find that skipping a few sessions and eating unwisely doesn't set me back significantly on my training plans.

Eat and run?

Ever since my son was born, I've had problems with food.  I don't mean bulimia or anything like that.  What happened is that something in my digestive system changed, and the result was that if I eat wheat or milk (plus a few other odd things like quinoa and garlic), I suffer afterwards - weird symptoms from indigestion and bloating to depressed immune system.  It was several years of continual illness before I worked out what was wrong.

So I am very particular about what I eat.  But to add to these difficulties, I recently read about ongoing research into Alzheimer's Disease, which suggests that it is actually a form of diabetes - now occasionally referred to as "Type 3".  The current theory is that a diet high in fat and sugar can destroy the ability of insulin to work its magic in the brain - where, as it turns out, it is important in laying down memories.  The scientific ideas are a little too complex to go into here, but the short version is that consuming a lot of high-GI or fatty foods is potentially disastrous for your brain.

Unfortunately, those are just the things that runners are told they should consume during training and before a race.  You get these "gels" that deliver a lot of sugar in a rush, as well as sugar-filled sports drinks, protein bars that contain lots of sugar and starch (not to mention wheat and/or milk which I can't eat), and all these things are supposed to help you fill your muscles with glycogen (rapid energy supplies) so you can run efficiently.  Endurance runners are also supposed to eat a lot of carbohydrate-rich foods like bread and pasta for an extended period before their race.

I just can't help but have my doubts.   First of all, I am no lean runner - I'm overweight (BMI 23), carrying a lot of flab around my belly where it's said to do the most harm - why can't my body use that for fuel?  Also, Alzheimer's Disease runs in my family, and I'm not keen to do something potentially harmful to my brain in the long run, even if the running does my heart and circulation good.  I don't consider brain damage an acceptable trade-off for a healthy heart.

So I've had to go to the research in hopes of some sign that there are other points of view.  PubMed makes abstracts of most medical research available to the public for free.  Although you don't generally get the full article, the service at least gives you the conclusions - it's a start.  And so I was delighted to discover  "Glyceamic index, glycaeamic load, andexercise performance" in Sports Medicine, an Australian journal.  Although the conclusions are very verbose and disorganised, they boil down to this - the jury is still out, and more research is needed.  In particular, it's not wholly clear what the trade-off is between a normal diet for an extended period, and high-GI consumption immediately before and during the race.  There are also questions about how all this relates to post-run recovery. 

My conclusion: I don't have to follow the advice on carb loading, but it would be advisable to experiment and see what works for me.  No one knows best, but experiments will at least let me test out different strategies and draw conclusions for this sample size of one.  Conveniently, this is the conclusion of a review article collecting results of a variety of articles on this topic.  We're encouraged to "let practical issues and individual experience dictate the use of HGI or LGI meals and supplements before, during, and after exercise."  Marvellous - though of course that leaves me the difficulty of figuring out what I can actually eat....