This marathon training is easy! It’s no more taxing than what I had been doing before for fun. A bit more targeted, but nothing like what I had expected. Until, that is, I got to these last few weeks.

Cumulative fatigue is starting to catch up with me, the weekly mileage has been creeping up and the interval sessions longer or more intense. It’s not just the running, at work I have a particular project causing unnecessary stress and work which has caused some over thinking in those quiet moments when my mind has nothing else to do. The cherry on top of this is having to manage my Type 2 Diabetes and the spikes in blood sugar that are being bought on by pre run fuelling and the gels on long runs. Although it’s in remission it still takes management to maintain an acceptable overall average. It’s not just physical fatigue I am going through right now, it’s the mental kind as well.

I’m learning more about myself training for this marathon than I considered I would. Ive taken a DILLIGAF approach to the project at work that’s been causing the stress. Ultimately there is nothing I can do to influence the individuals at the root of the problems so I am clear in what I need to achieve, work towards that and let others resolve the mess they have created. The management of the diabetes has been easy enough, just stepping back into a routine I used to put it into remission when I was first diagnosed, there are still dietary issues I need to resolve and some bad habits that crept back over the last year that need to be put to bed, but it’s a work in progress. 

The physical fatigue is getting more real in these weeks of the longest long runs. The last 32km run wasn’t something I was looking forward to after a bad long run attempt the previous weekend and an on/off week in between which wasn’t helped by mistakenly making a large fully caffeinated coffee instead of a decaf right before bed and losing a whole nights sleep when I gave up trying to drift off around half two in the morning.

I made a choice to travel out somewhere and run home from there. If I stuck to the river then it’d be fairly flat so it would be as easy as I could make it. I did not want to be failing at a long run a second week in a row. I checked the distances on the route planning bit of Strava and it happed that I could run from my old flat in Canary Wharf back home. I decided to decrease the intervals I was using between gels down to 30 minutes from 45 to see what difference that made, I finished off the Imodium and took some of the prescription anti-inflammatory medication the doctor had prescribed me for just this sort of situation to manage the OA in the knee. Traveling out to Canary Wharf on the tube all the old pains and niggles were nagging away, when I got to the other end I was full of doubt. One kilometre at a time, that’s what I told myself.

My legs hurt, my knee hurt, my lungs hurt, my heart hurt. I was waiting for that magical 1 mile to be over and my body understanding this is what we are doing now. The tall buildings of Canary Wharf screwed the GPS on the watch telling me my average pace was 3.45/km! It wasn’t. The watch kept pausing and starting all the way round the outside of the Isle of Dogs and the pace notifications were all over the place. I figured I wouldn’t be able to rely on this metric and was going to have to run by feel, which right about then wasn’t great.

In fact it felt tough for the whole loop around the peninsula and it must have been around 6-7 kilometres in before I realised all those little voices had subsided. Checking in with myself my cardio system reported all ok, it actually felt easy. Legs, in pieces still. They were tired from the weeks previous runs but not at a point I wanted to throw in the towel so I split out the next sections in my mind. Get to The Bunch of Grapes, Wapping Overground, The Alderman Stairs, Tower Bridge. Was this half way? Nope, just passed 11km. Forcing my way through a huge herd of students milling around More London I started counting off the bridges, London, Southwark, Waterloo… Heading along Lambeth I crossed the halfway point. Cardio? Still excellent, like I was out for a stroll. Legs? Pleading with me to stop for a bit. I’m counting down now, let’s see how long I can ignore them.

I was in to ticking off parks now, Battersea came and went and it didn’t feel like too long before I got to Wandsworth. Somewhere around here the Oxford men’s rowing team were out getting ready to head out on the river. Running through a group of them in their blue outfits and wellies I felt totally inadequate to these huge towering humans. To a man they must have all been seven foot and built and I just felt so small in that crowd. 

Still very much running by feel I’d noted a couple of times it had felt a little harder, my watch confirmed my HR was a little above where I’d want it so check the form, straightened up, controlled my breathing and imagined what easy would feel like. Sure enough I was soon back in the groove and the HR was back under control. Just a Parkrun to go!

It was a tough finish. In retrospect I think my mind finished before my body, I need to learn to run through the finish in my mind, not just up to it. At the end I was so happy it was over but even happier I had managed it on legs that felt so fatigued. I’m trusting that the fresh legs you hear about after the taper is true, it will all be so much easier on the day if it is. I’d just ticked off my longest nonstop run and my confidence had just got a big boost. I’ve heard it said that the 32km mark is halfway in a marathon and I can believe it, if there had been 10km tacked on the end of that run it’d have been a struggle at best. I’ve got five weeks of training left though, two more of the longer long runs, if I’m here now feeling like this then I’ve surely got this. 

After a bad week of running for me, with plans going out the window and stomach issues, I had completed one of my toughest runs so far and boosted my confidence.

I’m still knackered though.