The Edinburgh Rock & Roll Half Marathon 2013 - Race Report

There are things you don't want to see on race day. Offical race marquees blowing away is one of them. Umbrellas blowing inside out is another, as are waves of sleet whooshing across Arthur's Seat, the backdrop to hundreds of people queuing for the portaloos.

Yesterday I'd been really positive about the race and feeling like I'd got my running mojo back. But pretty much as soon as I woke up today, to the sound of a howling gale coming down my chimney, I started to feel a whole lot less confident about (a) wearing my new vest and (b) running a PB at the Edinburgh Rock & Roll Half Marathon.

I swithered about wearing my new vest. It was a symbol of how positive and ambitious I felt about the race - to ditch it seemed like a bad omen. I'd painted my nails to match it. When I realised that there was No Way I would be taking my gloves off during this race, meaning my nails were irrelevant, I gave up on the vest and put on a t-shirt instead.

The conditions were horrible. Starting the race on Queen's Drive in Holyrood Park is asking for trouble - it's a wind tunnel and even on reasonable days I try to avoid it when I'm running. Today wasn't a reasonable day - although it wasn't too cold (12oC), the wind was 37mph and the rain and sleet were driving. The start of the race was delayed while the course was made safer - not what you want to hear when you're shivering at the start line! Undoubtedly there were moments when the course was warm and sheltered - but the start and finish in the park easily obliterate those memories.

To join the pace group, the instructions said to go to the souvenir stall at 0830 and sign up. The weather meant that every marquee was crushed full with sheltering runners so I had no idea which tent housed the souvenir stall. I looked at the queues for the toilets and the bag drop, and decided to cut my losses. The pace group I could live without, but I couldn't run with a full bladder and a rucksack.

You couldn't fault the route. It took in lots of parks and lots of Edinburgh's lovely views, including Portobello Prom! I got to run past my street - although the weather really diminished the crowds.  And the organisation was fine - doing a pretty good job in the face of adversity. But Holyrood Park is a rotten venue for anything on a windy day.

My lovely, wet, grumpy children waiting on Leith Links to cheer me on.

Me passing the bottom of my street and managing a grin for my lovely hubby and kids.

I was undeterred and still gave the race everything I could. I put up with the weather (I've faced much worse in training); at any given moment, I was putting my all into the race. From mile 10 my hamstrings were really feeling the pressure. I hurt pretty much all the way round. The hills were tough and sometimes my pace was slow, but I never stopped giving it all I had. I felt really pleased with the effort I put in - I reckon I put in about 20% more than I did when I tried the route last week.

Sadly, 20% extra effort translated into an improvement in my time of 1.8%!

I finished in 1 hour 50 minutes 10 seconds. That made me 182nd woman out of 2269, and overall 964 out of 4361. But mostly it made me pretty disappointed! I can't blame the weather, or course congestion, or anything going wrong - I just wasn't fast enough.

The low point was the queue for the baggage return. A massive, unmoving queue of shivering, wet runners waiting in the howling gale. It was like trying to get served in the world's busiest pub with only one barman. We were given bacofoil blankets which deafened you as the wind whipped them! The queue for the t-shirts was a bit shorter thankfully. The t-shirt is very nice and so is the medal. So were the compression socks I won in the Facebook competition yesterday.

Big thanks CEP for a brief respite from the climate, and funky pink compression sleeves!

I tramped across the mud and made my way to the Commonwealth Pool for a shower. The wind was horrible, I was cold and wet and on the verge of tears. Possibly an all-time low in my racing 'career' - even worse than getting lost in the 10M hill race last year.

A long, hot shower and a burger & chips later and I felt a bit better. I spent the rest of the day at a rehearsal for a show I'll be dancing in at The Pleasance in May, which cheered me up. Now that I'm warm and back in the fuzzy heart of my family (with a small girl cuddling up and saying, "mummy, you're the greatest runner", and giving me a kiss), I don't yet feel philosphical about my performance. I worked really hard and got hardly anything back, and I'm feeling really deflated and disappointed.

Marathon ranting

I had a marathon moan a few weeks ago, and now I'm going to tell you about my marathon rant!

Yesterday I had the chance to bore the pants off my classmates about my marathon training. It was (for me) brilliant.

As part of the HNC course, we do a unit called Personal Development Planning. We each select five goals (academic, professional, or personal) and track our progress towards them. Theoretically it's a helpful skill to aquire, but it's impossible to make people achieve goals if they're not motivated towards them - which frankly is the main problem with the course. "You WILL achieve your goals, or else!" - it's not the best approach.

So anyway, part of the course was treating our classmates to a five minute presentation on the progress so far we'd made towards one of our goals. Looking at my goals and realising that there'd been a distinct lack of progress on four of them, I sighed deeply and opened PowerPoint to write about my marathon training.

My goal is to run this year's Edinburgh Marathon in a personal best of less than 4 hours.  Cue a SWOT analysis of the goal, photos of last year's race and details of my training programme.

The truth is that once I got going, I really enjoyed telling everyone how I was getting on. Perhaps all I really wanted was the chance to share how my training was going - I don't really have anyone to bore with the facts of my training, and these guys had to listen - or at least, they had to not fall asleep. I finished off by giving them a jelly baby each - after all their are the secret of my training success. Why was I surprised to get the bag back afterwards to find all the black and red ones gone?

(red and black ones still shown)

It also gave me the chance to look at my statistics and realise that I'm making progress.

• My average speed for my easy runs has increased by 36 seconds per mile
• my average speed for my long runs has increased by 18 seconds per mile, and 
• my 20 mile run time predicts a marathon finishing time 3 hours and 55 minutes.

Got my running mojo back!

I think what I needed was a break!

I was just worn out. I've had a couple of easier weeks - the Easter holidays have meant no college and no dancing, and have coincided with a 28 mile week and a 30 mile week (a bit of a drop down from the previous few weeks) and I feel a lot better than in my last post.

Kim responded to my last blog post by suggesting that I try running somewhere nice, just for enjoyment. She told me she sometimes goes out with her camera and has been known to stop mid-run to take pictures of flowers. I reflected on this the next time I was out, on a frosty morning round Arthur's Seat, and tried hard to notice the icing-sugar trees and grass, and how muted all the colours were in the pre-spring chill. It was pretty and I can still remember it when I close my eyes.  I rarely appreciate the scenery - perhaps because it's only April and I've been so used to running before sunrise! - so it was good to do this. Thanks Kim.

Additionally - there's nothing like a race to focus my mind!

I'm really looking forward to tomorrow's Rock and Roll Half Marathon, having been lucky enough to win a free place. I didn't compete in the first Edinburgh Rock & Roll race, last year, because for me it was just too darned expensive (I think it was £45 when I tried to enter), and to be honest I don't really find the idea of local bands dotted around the course much of a motivator, since I'll have my iPod on anyway! But this afternoon I spotted one of the stages out on Leith Links, virtually at the bottom of the street where I live, and felt quite excited.

Last week I tried out the course of the race during my long run - having the race pass the bottom of my street makes it very easy to try it out! It has a couple of steep gradients, and I finished in 1 hour 52 minutes - a pretty much an average 13.1 time for me. Perhaps with a bit of race adrenelin and the knowledge of the course, I can shave a bit off that tomorrow - or on the other hand, perhaps the other 5,499 runners might slow me up a bit.

The race has pace groups. I've never run with a pace group before and I'm thinking of popping that cherry tomorrow. It would be 1 hour 45 minutes, so I'd really need to have a great day and a bit of Felix Felicis to complete with the pace group - but I can't think of a good reason not to try. My PB is 1 hour 45, in the Meadows (half) Marathon last year, which was flat, but I hadn't done any speedwork for that. I've done 10 weeks of speedwork now. Surely that'll improve my time?

I bought a new running vest this morning - I can't believe I bought something as skimpy as a vest, after all I do live in Scotland - but the shop must have been warm, and it's a lovely shade of blue. I've painted my nails to match, so I will wear it tomorrow regardless. Perhaps being cold will make me run faster?

I don't remember feeling this positive about a race before. The start line is a 20 minute walk from my house, with any luck my kids will cheer me on, I've got my kit ready, I won the place - and oooh I nearly forgot, I entered a Facebook competition this week and I won a pair of compression socks at the race Expo tomorrow! All good omens I think. I'm gonna go for it.

BTW I don't really have any Felix Felicis, and besides, it would be illegal. Just before you point it out.

Marathon moaning

Today begins week 8 of my 16 week marathon training programme. My marathon training takes up the single biggest part of my brain at the moment. At the moment I have to confess that I'm getting a bit fed up of it.

When I finish my Monday run, I start thinking about my Wednesday speed training session (tempo run, hill run, mile repeats or Yasso 800s) - how fast will I go? will I manage it? how much will it hurt? Then, even when I'm stretching after Thursday's recovery run, I'm already thinking about my Saturday long run - what other workouts will I have the energy for before it? what will I eat on Friday? what will I wear, what fuel will I take? what's my route going to be?

And when I'm recovering, I'm thinking about what I'm eating (and wishing I wanted to eat things that aren't just chocolate), procrastinating about stretching, and contemplating which part of me is aching most at that moment in time - usually a choice between my hip flexor, my anterior deltoid, and my foot. Although right now my throat's pretty sore too.

Everything I do, I see it in relation to my marathon training. Does my college class in Current Exercise Trends work my legs too soon before my long run? If I work on Tuesday night, will I be able to run on Wednesday? Should I visit family the day after the tune-up half marathon race, or the day of teh 20 mile training run? It feels like I'm programming my life round my training programme. 

Last year, my marathon training only lasted for 8 weeks - this year it's 16. So I've never had to work my body for this long before. I need to find new resolve - mental strength is required, because this is something I've never been through before.

I'm not considering quitting, I still want to run this marathon (Edinburgh on May 26th) and I want to finish in under 4 hours. But unless I continue to remember that really, really want it, my body's probably going to quit on my brain's behalf.

The hideous weather isn't helping. It's the middle of March and there's been snow every day for the last week. I ran in a full-on blizzard a fortnight ago. Yesterday's 18 miles had to be run on the relatively tedious cycle paths and when I was done, I didn't feel joyous, I really  just felt relieved.

Right, that's enough moaning. The more I talk up the down, the lower I'll get! Sunday is recovery day and it's all right to feel tired today.
Tomorrow I'll be back on the pavement.
Tomorrow I'll feel better about myself again.
Tomorrow I'll try again to stop eating sweeties and chocolate like Augustus Gloop.
Tomorrow is the first day of the school holidays so hopefully I'll have a fortnight of better rest, more foam rolling and a general bit of R&R.

If you've got any tips to help me find the mental strength to get through this wobble, please share them with me!

BodyAttack

Ooh, did I just find my favourite gym class ever?!

There's nothing new about BodyAttack, it's just that I've never tried it before. I think it's the 'attack' bit that put me off, but it turns out that BodyCombat is the martial arts class and that BodyAttack isn't. Edinburgh Leisure helpfully describes the class as "A simple, motivating and satisfying workout which will deliver results... using high energy interval training techniques", which doesn't exactly give much away and is probably why I've avoided it for so long.

D'y'know what it was? Aerobics!

When I say aerobics, I think of these key components:

• Start the move. Do it four times. Change the move. Do it four times. Repeat.
• Have music on.
• Do different sets of moves to different  music.
• Use these moves: grapevines, sidesteps, run forward, clap. Jumping jacks, squats, lunges. Kicks, skaters, plyometric jumps. Knee lifts, knee repeats. (plenty of old skool aerobics moves!)
• No weights. 
• Abs track at the end, on a mat.
• Sweat plenty.

What a buzz!

I felt really nicely knackered by the end of it, nothing totally killed me (well, a final set of squat pulses at the end was kinda horrible, but this was my second workout of the day) and I felt like I'd 'done enough', which is a feeling I don't get from many classes.

It helped that the teacher at Meadowbank, Vicky, was really good - no nonsense, great cueing, clear demonstrations; that the class wasn't so busy that I couldn't see; and the music was - well, it was okay, I won't say it was any better than that - more crowd-pleasers would've been good.

I liked it better than Zumba because I didn't feel like an idiot doing daft moves.
I liked it better than Sh'Bam because I didn't feel like a complete idiot doing really daft moves.
I liked it better than BodyPump because I sweated plenty and got to jump about.
I liked it better than BodyCombat because there was more counting to 4 and only really easy technique.

BodyAttack is now my gym class of the moment! What's yours?

Chilly for March

I'm marathon training again. It's week six. I didn't do a week six last year, I didn't start until week 8. So a full 16-week marathon training programme is new to me. It's fantastic. Well, it usually is, but I'm a little bit tired today.

I ran 16 miles, the second time in three weeks I've done that distance. The first time, I managed an even split after a super-speedy final mile. Today I managed a negative split the same way - about half a minute faster in the second eight miles than in the first. Yay!

When I got home I went for a cold bath. Cold baths - a form of cryotherapy, which sounds so science fiction and Doctor Who that it makes me love it - is recommended to reduce swelling and stiffness after a tough run, and promote a speedy recovery. As somebody who really hates rest days, anything that can help me recover faster is worth a go.

Today was my third cold bath, the first two after challenging speed sessions. I haven't had the organisational skills for an ice bath - I imagine you'd need a fair old bit of ice to have even a slushy bath and my freezer's too full of old fish fingers and bags of veggies for that. I'm hoping that water from the cold tap does the job nearly as well.

So I sit for ten minutes in a hip-deep bath, still in my running hat and jacket, browsing Facebook and reading Dean Karnazes. My kids look bemused. My husband ignored me (how can you ignore someone wearing a hat and jacket in the bath?!)

These ten minutes of cold take more stamina than the two hours and twenty minutes that promted them. After the first minute my breathing returns to normal (instead of that juddery, catching, shallow breathing that you normally only do when you get into the sea on holiday) and after that, it's not actually too bad. 

Well, not too bad except for my feet. My feet and especially my toes hate the cold. They properly hurt, like somebody's stomped on them with big boots. They hurt worse than any part of my body hurts while I'm running. I haven't found a way to really keep them out of the water while I'm soaking my legs. My feet hate the cold bath.

But the rest of me? Well like any recovery solution, it's hard to tell if it works. Unless you do just one leg, you don't have a control experiment, right? I do know that after the last two ice baths, (which were following speed sessions which push me harder than I've been pushed before) I haven't had DOMS, and I've been able to continue dancing, walking, zumba class - albeit at a lower intensity than if I hadn't run! So I suspect it's beneficial. Although I know in my heart of hearts that learning how to take proper rest days would be better.

I'm battling my old hip flexor demon too (with an icepack while I type!) which is another incentive for the cold bath. So far the icing, pilates and trying to keep my hip in alignment when I run seem to be keeping it together. Long may it continue.

Thinking of a cold bath? Go on, give it a shot. I recommend waiting until you're so tired you'd sit down anywhere - that's when it starts to look inviting!

Buying a car

So, my family and I need a car. In as much as anybody in Edinburgh *needs* a car, since in this city, everything is close, the bus service is really good and nobody in my family does antisocial hours. But we've decided we like having a car and we want to keep having one.

We don't really care about cars, as long as they've got four wheels and get us from A to B. So we enlisted the help of our friend Robert, who negotiated a good deal for my mum's recent car purchase, to take us car shopping today. By the time we left the house, we'd decided our budget and specifications - five doors, petrol, 1.2 engine. And that was pretty much it - we aren't fussy.

But when we got to Arnold Clark I started to get fussy! Faced with a real lack of cars that met our specifications, we got into a discussion about a dull dingy grey Astra, which looked really clunky, and was parked next to a big puddle. That was the moment I realised I cared. Because although the car fitted all our specifications, and we got offered a good price, I didn't even want to cross that puddle to get to it.

When I'm a qualified personal trainer, turning up to meet clients with a car full of swiss ball, kettlebells and yoga mats, do I want them to see me coming in a middle-sized clunky grey dullmobile? Will that inspire my clients with confidence that I'm a dynamic, energetic, fun trainer who's going to help them achieve their goals? Or will it make them think I'd rather be working in a bank?

So today I learned that actually, I do care about the car I drive and what it says about me. Which surprised me. Sadly it means that I'll be spending some of the week looking at cars, and inevitably meeting more car salesmen. I hope they aren't all as annoying as the one we saw today - because although he shook my hand before he shook the hands of Robert or my hubby (good tactic I thought!), by the end of our session he'd made me feel that I didn't deserve a nice car and that I should be terribly grateful for the favours he thought he was doing us.

He was a complete twat.