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.

About Brad Perry

Brad on his 70th birthday in 2008

There are inevitably many myths surrounding Alzheimer's Disease, including the question of prevention.  People often think you can prevent the disease, or at least reduce your risk of getting it, by keeping mentally and physically active.

Brad in May 2012 with his grandson

My dad, Brad Perry, is proof that if mental and physical fitness reduces your risk, it certainly doesn't prevent the disease.  He has kept fit all the time I've known him, mostly by swimming (he used to run, until a thief broke into his apartment in NYC and stole his running shoes).  At the community where my parents now live, he won the "Olympics" swimming competition last year - he has always had a strong butterfly.

He has always kept mentally active as well.  He has a PhD in Physics from Columbia, and did post-doctoral work at Berkeley and Yale.  Even later, when he switched fields to Economics, he stayed abreast of current thinking in physics, reading Scientific American and Science News, and of course more recently keeping up via the internet.  He was always keen to study and learn new things.

As you can see from the 2008 photograph, he aged relatively well, up until Alzheimer's Disease took over.  By 2011, he was emaciated, his skin was in very poor condition, and all the brightness had gone out of his expression - you can see him in a typical pose in the 2012 photograph.  One difficulty with this disease is that you can no longer care for your body, and even with the help of my mother and various carers, his body has shown the effects of his neglect of it.  Some of the drugs he was prescribed by well-meaning doctors also made it harder for him to balance, and upset his digestion, which hastened his body's deterioration.

However, one must have some compassion for the doctors.  There is no drug that will prevent or cure Alzheimer's Disease.  The few drugs that are approved merely slow its progress very slightly, but they can't even do this indefinitely - the disease will inexorably progress, and will kill the patient if something else doesn't get there first.  Presumably many doctors will reach for any drug that they think might do some little bit of good for some of the symptoms, when faced with a bright, engaging patient who is fading fast.

Fortunately, my dad has always been fairly laid back, so the fact that he doesn't know most of the people around him (including his children and grandchildren) doesn't seem to worry him.  My brother and I switched to calling him "Brad" rather than "Dad" about a year ago on the grounds that he might find it unsettling if he didn't recognise the people calling him "Dad", but in fact it never seems to be a problem if I forget.  On my first visit after the onset of his illness, almost exactly a year ago, he knew who I was, but thought I was still at university (that was in the 1980s), and was a little surprised by how I looked (though he said nothing uncomplimentary about my looking 25 years older than he thought I should).  Now, he's comfortable around me, but he only knows who I am when my mother tells him.

I sometimes wonder whether my father knew he was likely to develop dementia.  His mother suspected she would, as I discovered in a letter she'd written to a genealogist in the 1950s.  I'm not sure why she suspected - she was occasionally just a little "dotty" but otherwise a bright and resourceful woman who was keenly active in hobbies (President of the American Daffodil Society, strangely enough), fit, slim, and very social.

You simply don't know who will develop dementia - it seems to attack the most unlikely people, regardless of fitness, social and mental activity, age, or any other clear indicator.   Having said that, Alzheimer's Research UK is funding a great deal of research, including studies that try to identify causes or indicators of the disease.  There has been a great deal of progress in this area, and with any luck there will soon be reliable ways to detect it early and to treat it before it destroys much of the brain.

If you would like to help fund this research, why not click the donation link at the top right of this blog?  I would be very grateful indeed if you would sponsor me to run the London Marathon in support of Alzheimer's Research UK - they are a fantastic charity making possible real progress in understanding and treating this increasingly common and destructive disease.

To what purpose?

I mentioned previously that I have not had a life-long ambition to run the marathon.  I used to enjoy a morning run, about 7K or so, along quiet country lanes, but a city run amidst crowds and pollution would not normally strike me as an attractive proposition, even if I were fit - which I am not.

But of course I do have some purpose.  Yes, I was carried away by the spirit of the thing after the 2012 London Marathon and Richard's successful performance.  That, however, does not constitute purpose - it's a year on, and the emotions have long since faded.  So why am I running?

In fact, I already knew what I wanted to do when I was watching Richard run.  It's not the running - it's the support for a favourite charity that attracts me.  You raise funds, you publicise your chosen cause through fundraising and running in their jersey (and blogging about them).  And I know my cause - I want to run for Alzheimer's research.

Conveniently, there really is a charity in this country that does exactly that: Alzheimer's Research UK.  They don't spend money on hospices, nursing care, advice lines, or any of those other important but fundamentally short-term fixes.  They fund quality research into the causes, diagnosis, treatments, and prevention - activities with long-term value.

Right side normal, left shows shrinkage due to Alzheimer's 

And this is a phonemenally exciting time for Alzheimer's research!  Scientists are finally beginning to understand the chemical mechanisms that lead to the creation of the characteristic amyloid plaques that stop brain cells from working properly, destroying old memories and preventing new ones from being laid down.  Now that they have a grip on the pathways that lead to Alzheimer's disease, they have a chance to find ways to put obstacles in that path - to stop Alzheimer's in its tracks.  It could potentially even mean rolling the disease back, perhaps one day even curing it.  In short, the work that is being done now is extremely productive, because it is far more likely to result in successful treatment of this awful disease than research 10 years ago.  Money invested is money well spent.

Moreover, the UK is a good place to invest your research money.   Scientific articles in the dementia field here are very high quality - with a citation impact (how often other articles refer to yours) second only to Sweden's, and above that of the USA.  This is nothing to get patriotic about - dementia research benefits everyone around the world - medical research advances are a product available to all.  Investing where the research produces the highest quality results makes sense, and Alzheimer's Research UK is the leading charity providing funding in this area.

Of course, I am not only attracted to this area because investing in this research has high returns.  Granted, with my MBA, I do think about value.  But the real reason I am so interested is that my father has Alzheimers - and his mother had vascular dementia, two of my mother's uncles had Alzheimer's... in other words, it's really common in my family.  Yes, there is a large helping of self-interest in all of this.  Although it's undoubtedly too late for research to help my father, it could help many of my other relatives, and perhaps even me one day.  And perhaps you.

My first week of training

I have completed my first full week of training for the marathon - and it's only now beginning to sink in how much I've taken on. 

My plan was to alternate easy and hard days, and on the whole that came off well this week.  My hard days got progressively harder during the week.  My easy days, on the other hand, got progressively easier, to the point of doing nothing at all on the last one.  I must have some inner karmic impulse that is trying to balance things.

That's not a tan - my face turns
crimson when I exercise

All told I ran (and walked) 17.5 miles.  Not much, for anyone who is a regular runner, but it's a start.  Rome wasn't built in a day, and I won't be turned into a marathon runner in just a week.

I did learn a few interesting things:

• I have to eat when I finish a run - otherwise I feel like I'm coming down with the flu!
• It's not the end of the world if I don't stretch;
• I really need to strengthen my abdominal muscles - they make a huge difference to the amount of oxygen I can take in, but then get sore very fast;
• Walking hurts my legs more than running.

All of you runners will be telling me this is obvious stuff, but there's nothing like learning by doing.

I've also come to love and hate Richard's micoach.  This is a gadget that measures your pace and heartbeat as you run, and can give you readings of these, as well as elapsed time.  I normally use it on "free" mode - I keep track of my own running plans - but you can programme it to coach you to speed up, slow down, walk, etc over pre-planned intervals.  It clips to your clothes, so that's one less thing that needs a pocket.

Sounds good, doesn't it?  Unfortunately, it has two serious failings.  The lesser one is that it doesn't measure your heartbeat until you are exercising reasonably vigorously - enough to raise your breathing rate noticeably.  In other words, you don't get a view of your resting or walking heart rate.

The truly appalling thing about it, though, is that you can't download the data!  Those who know me well will appreciate how much I hate this.  The micoach produces interesting graphs which you can alter as much as Adidas has assumed you will want to.  Unfortunately, there is no facility for transferring it to your computer where you can have a proper go at analysis.

There is one final lesson I've learned from training this week: it's a really good thing that I have a six month run-up to the marathon.  I'm going to need it.  Running hard makes me ill, walking four miles makes my legs sore.  I have a considerable way to go before I can even walk the marathon in one day, never mind run it.

Before I begin: the research period

So if you knew you needed to run 26.2 miles in 29 weeks' time, what would you do first?  Get out and do some road training?  Not if you're me you wouldn't - you'd go online and start reading up. 

I checked PubMed for interesting medical research on long distance running.  I looked up marathon training programmes and advice, and scoured the Virgin London Marathon magazine for helpful information (mostly it contained ads).  Once I'd done all this, with varying success, we headed for the bookshops of Bath.  We decided to give Toppings a miss - just because it's at the top of town, so we'd either be carrying books up and down the hill or would have to climb the hill a second time.  Granted, with the marathon in mind, that shouldn't have bothered me, but there was my family to consider, of course.

So the first stop was the local branch of Waterstones, where the staff are friendly and the books are numerous.  There was nothing I really felt taken by, but I picked up a generalist book by Matt Roberts called Get Running.  It's not quite Dorling Kindersley, but it has attractive people (airbrushed?) in instructive photographs, and relatively straightforward content on how to start a running programme.

Mr B's understands the importance of a place to sit

Our next destination was our favourite independent bookseller outside London - Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights on John Street.  This is a book person's bookstore - an eclectic selection of whatever takes Mr B's fancy, carefully organised and displayed with many little notes about what the staff think of the books, spread out over 5 little rooms on three floors.  It is sort of an anti-Waterstones - tiny and personal, and full of many "perfect books" which are hard to pass over as you seek the sort of book you came in for, but which you couldn't have described until you'd found it.  And in the sport section I did indeed fine my book: Marathon Running: from beginner to elite, 4th edition, by Richard Nerurkar.  I'd never heard of him, but I'd heard of Haile Gebrselassie, who is quoted on the front as saying "if you want to run a marathon, or a faster one, you have to read this book!"   Well, I do, and I'm prepared to take his word for it.  So I have the book.

Now  armed with medical literature references, two books, a Runner's World magazine, and the beginnings of advice from friends and relatives, I feel ready to put my running shoes on.  Not that I've read everything.  I've dipped in, got the gist, made up my mind.  Sometimes, that's all research really needs to be.

It all started here

I hadn't realised the letter had arrived.  In its opaque plastic wrap it looked like a motor catalogue.  I might have left it piled up with the other unopened bank statements and advertising brochures, but my husband had got a parcel with a letter too - saying he hadn't got a place on the London marathon, but please accept this nice jacket instead.  He wanted to know where was my letter?  Rifling through all the ignored mail, we found the distinctive red plastic.  I ripped it open and found the acceptance certificate - I had a place on the London Marathon 2013.

I used to run, what feels like a lifetime ago, before thyroid cancer, before kids, before gaining 30 pounds.  Not real long distance running - I'd run for an hour before breakfast, usually covering around 7.5Km.  I thought vaguely about trying to enter a 10K, but then the above-mentioned events intervened, and by the end of it all I was an overweight, overtired Person Who Used To Run.

But for reasons best known to himself, my husband volunteered to run for SeeAbility in the 2012 London Marathon.  I had no desire to join him, but I enjoyed helping him fundraise, and got a tremendous buzz from seeing him finish, in 5hours 29minutes.  We'd dashed all over London trying to catch up with him - managing to meet him near the Cutty Sark, missing him at Tower Bridge, spotting him from a DLR platform, cheering him on in the north Docklands, and finally shouting like mad from the grandstand on the Mall as he sprinted for the finish.  The atmosphere was utterly contagious - all these great charities and causes, swarms of excited supporters, all those exhausted, heroic runners coming in as the Virgin DJ played rousing tunes.  Each was announced - including a runner for Sikhs in the City who was over 100 years old.  Apparently he had declared that this would be his last marathon - because he wanted to "concentrate on shorter distances and faster times."  I'm sure I wasn't the only one thinking that to even be alive, much less making clever remarks and running a marathon, aged over 100, would be a miracle for me.

So when the opportunity to enter the ballot system came up shortly afterward, my husband had no difficulty persuading me to join him in entering.  The chances of winning a ballot place are pretty slim anyway.  I don't think there was any rational analysis of this decision - it just floated in on the continuing feel-gooditis from the 2012 event.

And now I have the letter, and I've got to follow through.  Okay - I don't have to.  But I'm going to.  It's not something I've always wanted to do.  But the time is right for many reasons, even though the euphoria of last year's race is barely a memory.  I've got 29 weeks to prepare.