I am loving these long bank holiday weekends in May, I think four day weeks are good for me. This weekend wasn’t a bank holiday but I had still booked the Monday off without realising that it meant four short weeks for me this month. I was heading up to Leeds to run the half marathon and see the family that live that way. It’d been a year since I had been up and had booked into the same hotel on the canal and reserved my seats on the trains up and back. I just hadn’t booked the race!

The first, and as far as I can tell, only time I have done this. Everything else in my calendar all the way into 2024 are paid for, so no idea how this happened. This would give me the chance to run further along the canal this time though, something I had wanted to try since I did a recovery run along it in ‘22. 

The week started well, I used the Monday Club run to recover from the activities around Box Hill which started slow and chatty with the tail runner until they started the walk part of their run/Walk training. The rest was a little faster and at no point were there any little aches, pains or fatigue from the day before. The legs were a lot looser when I got back to Ealing Green. After chatty to the other Eagles as they finished I finished off the mileage in the training plan by jogging home. I am still marvelling at how different everything feels post marathon, none of the niggles and pains I had through training are present now, they haven’t been since the day of the marathon. Im still trying to understand this and learn whatever lessons I can. How much of it was in my head and how I can deal with it when we start the training block for New York.

Wednesday saw one of my favourite sessions back, a fartlek which I was going to head to the track after work to run. When I got there what had been a sunny day was quickly disappearing behind grey leaden skies to the west slowly approaching. I’d been looking forward to this so I was going to get it done regardless. I warmed up with four laps of the track and a light drizzle started. Part way through the second interval the sky flashed, I started counting. The thunder rolled in on a count of twelve, good, far enough away to not need to worry about this. Third interval of the first set and the boiling clouds that had formed overhead let go of everything they were carrying. The rain was so heavy I was instantly soaked, the drops were small and blown by a strong westerly wind. Each drop stung my exposed arms and legs. The others that had been on the track before were nowhere to be seen now. Should I find shelter?

No, I was almost halfway through now and if this happened when I was out in a race I wouldn’t get that option. The lightning was still a long way out, I couldn’t get any wetter so I could see no be if it. Suck it up and use this as practice for when this isn’t training. The track flooded on the back straight and my already wet Alphaflys seemingly took on more water and grew heavier. Then the rain turned to fine hail which bit at my skin even more. I was coming to the end of the second set, should I call it here? Go get dried and put warm fry clothes on? Only ten minutes of the session left, I was already soaked, it would have been a waste. Push on. As I entered the final set the hail turned to rain, the rain slowly faded, and by the time I was running the cool-down laps faint patches of pale blue were replacing the grey clouds.

My alarm went off at 4am on Saturday, coffee, breakfast, shower and pack. Then off to Leeds for the weekend. I wasn’t going to be racing but I would be visiting with family that I hadn’t seen for a year. An east 5k was planned in Training Peaks for Saturday and I’d planned on checking in, changing and then turning that into a 10k run along the canal to where my cousin lived. Turned out I was a little early for that plan to work and with Leeds playing Newcastle I didn’t really fancy trying to weave through crowds of football supporters. Instead I opted to get an Uber over and met her in the pub garden near by. Conversation and drink flowed for the next nine hours with a lovely Turkish meal to finish.

A recent video call with Coach Jenny had discussed the use of a run/walk strategy for the coming ultra, I was keen to lock in something like this after seeing the first 50km of the course was flat and I didn’t want to blow all my energy in that first bit. So with the half marathon out the window I decided I’d take an easy run out and back along the canal. If I got to my cousin’s place and turned back there I would hit the mileage target in today’s plan. So, a little after 6am I set off from the hotel and followed the misty waters in the direction of Liverpool. Having grown up in the 70s and 80s, watching gritty crime dramas and comparisons I drew from having lived in Germany and a small town in the south my preconceived ideas of the north were somewhat stereotypical. The cleanliness, idilic green spaces and sheer beauty of the canal blew all of that away.

I was giving Jenny’s suggestion of 9 minutes running with 1 minute walking a try, I’d set the intervals in my watch but then hadn’t started it correctly so I was left with having to complete the timings manually, a mild annoyance. Every 30 minutes was a gel which, timing my run this way, I wouldn’t miss like I do sometimes when I don’t hear my watch alert to eat. Breaking the run down like this meant I was never thinking more than nine minutes ahead which broke down the miles quickly. The gear changes into run/walk felt easy, especially as the distance grew and I knew I only had to run for nine minutes. Easy! When I hit the 10k mark it was clear my cousin was probably still in bed, blinds drawn. So I snapped a photo and decided to push on for a bit, stretching the distance out.

For each kilometre I ran now I knew I was adding two to the original planned distance on the out and back. I started to consider what distances I should aim for. 24k? 28k? If I ran on 5k beyond my cousin’s place I could hit 30k. That’s spitting distance to the 20 mile mark. Might as well aim for that. I was still feeling incredible, everything just felt very fluid this morning. The mists were slowly burning off the canal and the sky was turning a pale orange, maybe I’d get use out of the sunnies I’d bought along after all! When I reached 16km from the hotel I paused, turned and walked back the way I had come whilst using another gel. A quick count of what I had left and the time it was going to take heading back let me know I was probably one short.  Not surprising, I’d effectively added over an hour to the original planned run I’d come to Leeds to do.

The miles ticked past quickly, the 9:1 strategy turning these into east bite sized chunks, very manageable. I took another photo outside my cousin’s. Just 10km left to go. The sun was out now along with other walkers, runners and cyclists. It remained much quieter than any of the tow paths in London though and everyone seemed to keep left making running this stretch a dream. With around 5k left I took on my last gel, I was going to be one short. My stomach was beginning to make itself known, I’m not sure I could have had many more gels anyway. The right calf was beginning to feel tight and I started to consider the merits of long socks or compression sleeves over the longer distances in the future. It was almost certainly dehydration though. I hadn’t bought my pack with me as I’d not intended on running this distance and thought that the SiS isotonic gels would carry me through 21km easily enough. This was a bit too much to ask of them for this distance. I was switching between SIS and Gu gels and had no water. Don’t do this at home kids.

The tight calf started to turn into cramp. I stopped to stretch it out which helped for a wee bit but as I got within sight of the tall edifices where my hotel was I opted for a cool-down walk in of the final kilometre or so. It had become too painful to blindly continue. Grabbing a coffee and two bottles of water from the little cafe nearby I headed up to the room, popped some electrolyte tablets into the water and guzzled both bottles down. A visit to the toilet confirmed I was dehydrated. Note to self: plan for all eventualities when I go away as plans often have to adapt!