The sun coming up on Monday 17th was the start of the training block for the autumn marathon. Sixteen weeks of training all aimed at this one race are laid out ahead of me now. Right now there is just a single week loaded into Training Peaks by Jenny so thankfully I cannot see too far ahead and have those longer, harder, sessions in my head already. My own plans and races already booked in are far fewer than those already in the diary during the training for London making this a little more straightforward I hope.

My goals for this block are slightly different this time round and so is the measure by how I will gauge my pace. Last block I ran to feel, very straightforward once I’d got used to defining the different RPE levels. This time though I want to have a specific pace to target, a metric more measurable and a target to work for over time. I’ve also got a new goal in there. Well, and old goal, just not one I’ve worked hard at for a while. Not since I came out of hospital. I need to shift some of the weight I’m carrying. I have a feeling that if I was carrying less the running would be more comfortable and less strain on the bits I’m already using to carry me over these distances in training and racing.

My headspace is already very different to where it had been last week. Knowing that these weeks now have a target, something I’m building on, the thoughts are turned towards getting to done the best I can, build some good foundations. The first run of the plan was so much better than the previous week, it was an easy 5k which I pushed to later in the evening than trying to run home knowing how I’d felt staring at the prospect of that each time. It wasn’t anywhere near as easy as I remember a 5k feeling but I got it done and felt much better than the previous weeks. This was followed by a fartlek session in Hyde Park and an easy run home from work heading into the weekend. None of this felt comfortable but each one was a little better than the last, building back my confidence alongside my fitness.

A tempo session was on the cards for Saturday morning and Runthrough had their weekend race in Regents Park. How could I resist the draw of a medal and a homemade flapjack? I headed there with no expectations given what had gone before, I just knew I was going to focus and do what I could to hit the tempo pace for the 5k distance. It’s a single lap of a course I had run four times before, in fact it was the course where I ran my first chip timed race. Back then I knew no better than to run flat out all the way round, racing the person in front of me. That had felt so hard with the heart pounding out of my chest, lungs burning trying to suck in enough oxygen. Two years had taught me to run these differently, to pace myself. Warm up done and I was eventually filtering into the pack of runners funnelling towards the start line. I felt good after the warm up, slowly picking my way through the runners and walkers in the first kilometre until the switch-back and incline where the path widened and I felt like I was cruising. Easily passing those who were struggling with that little hill.

Two kilometres ticked to three, then to four. I could feel the effort now. Not that it hadn’t been there before but it was accompanied by that nagging desire to slow down and stop. Ignoring this as best I could I focused on those in front. Can I catch them? Can I pass them? This won’t last forever. The distance dissolved away, hidden by this veil of new thoughts pushing the negative ones to the side. I could see the arch in the distance, a few hundred meters to go now, push on. I turned my head slightly to one side then the other listening for runners behind me. Not detecting any I kept the pace fast but steady, no need for a sprint finish with no one to race. It had felt great, best run in a long time. With a  big smile across my face I grabbed the goodies and went to the bag drop to tuck them away before rejoining the course to cool down. When I looked back at the metrics later I was rewarded with a tidy little graph showing a steady progression over the distance and a PB for that course. After a few crappy weeks of it not feeling good and not going well it felt like this was the turn in the corner that put me back on track.

With my head in a different space now I knew it was all going to be a different mental battle on the runs now. Sunday’s long run of 16k had a different problem though. Needing the loo for most of the first 9k I was very happy to take a little sit down break when I got to Hyde Park and it was a lot more comfortable afterwards. The last couple of kilometres felt tough though, legs were tired and it was a struggle to get those last few out of them. I’m still building back up though, and throw in a dose of poor fuelling at the start of the run for obvious reasons I wasn’t too surprised. 

Thoughts and planning is now turned towards New York now and one of the things that had been on my mind for a while was what shoes to wear. I had been having so much fun in the Nike Vapourflys on the run up to London that originally that had been my plan for that race but Nike had other ideas it seemed. As the race drew closer Nike released the new version of the Vapourflys and I wasn’t keen on trying new shoes that close to the race and spending so much on an unknown, maybe try them later. Could I find a pair of the Vapourfly 2 though? Hell no. So for that marathon it was back to the good old New Balance 1080 v12, my staple day to day shoe I had worn for many a long run. For New York I needed to find something fun. After finding adidas had a sale on and watching some YouTube reviews I got myself a pair of Adios Pro 3. The sale price for these was a little under the usual cost for the 1080 v12 shoes I usually cycle into the training shoe mix. One session in these in Gunnersbury Park confirmed that these were going to be an excellent candidate. Bouncy, lively and aggressive in the toe off. No hot spots and a comfortable fit in width across the foot. I got the second pair the very next day. It’s probably a little extravagant, but I plan to run every session between now and NYC in the supershoes.

The week would end with the Wedding Day 7k, a race that I had missed last year due to injury which cost me a point in the club ballot for the London Marathon. Bushy Park, where Parkrun was born and somewhere I had never run before. I had no expectations at all, no idea what pace to run or haw the different surfaces would play out so it was all about enjoying it and seeing a number of eagles I hadn’t seen for a while. The new shoes felt great yet again, maybe not totally suited to grass but handled every other surface well and just made the run a little more fun. Once the field opened up so did I, cautiously increasing the speed a wee bit each kilometre counting up to five in my head and then putting what was left into the last two. A beautiful little race and a great way to finish a pretty shitty week of work. After hanging back to cheer on those eagles still crossing the finish line I headed home looking forward to the long run that was in the diary for Sunday.