The idea of starting an online diary – blog, in current parlance – first came when we decided to run the Paris Marathon 2019. We decided that this was something we wanted to do to honour Lynne’s father, Fred, who had passed away nearly exactly one year prior to the run, on April the 14th.
We registered for the race by running for Macmillan Cancer Support, and set ourselves an ambitious collection target that (gratefully) we managed to achieve, thanks to so many wonderful friends …..and family, of course!
Well, a marathon is a long way to run. Trust me. 42.2 km – 26.2 miles. Elite runners achieve this in just over 2 hours. So – ok. Not us. When asked “What is your target time…?” the answer had to be to “finish before they close the race and let the cars back on the road….”.
We had to start early – a demanding twelve weeks training programme had to be followed rigorously. One long run every week, one tempo run and one sprint run also every week. Non-running days we did ‘cross training’ – a mixture of going to the gym and yoga. Then, once a week we succumbed to some deep tissue agony at the Belsize Park massage torture shop.
We ran in the cold winter days in France, we ran on the icy streets of London, we ran on a treadmill in the gym when too icy and treacherous and we also ran the Bath Half Marathon, on a bitterly cold but dry day, just as part of the training plan.
Advice was to keep warm before the race with something that we could just throw away at the start of the run. All those old sweatshirts and woolly hats would be collected and made use of by charities. All very well – nice and hot during the run – but left us a bit exposed afterwards. The warm feel of adding a medal to the pile back home, didn’t really help us getting back to Bath railway station and boarding a nice, warm, jam-packed full train back to London.
The 14th of April was getting closer. More running – harder, further. Here we are, finding sun in London…
As much as we trained, the ‘elephant in the room’ was energy. Anybody who has dabbled in marathon running knows about ‘The Wall’ – the dreaded total loss of power, encountered at some point of the run.
In my simple mind (as opposed to the piles and piles of quasi-scientific articles on the subject), it boils down to this. A normal human body can store about 2,000 calories. That equates, on average, to about 20’ish kilometres of running, i.e. about half a marathon. To get to the finishing line, the body needs extra energy. So this means we need to have a plan as to how we do our ‘in flight refuelling’.
There is a huge market out there flogging sugar in every conceivable form, in every conceivable ‘motivational’ type of packaging. We try the sugars out during training, and hope we find the right sort in time for the race.
Of course, this is not too easy when the runner has digestive problems. Lynne has. Certain sugars affect her badly – others worse. Some are just plain awful. No easy choices.
I don’t have this dreadful problem to deal with. My gastric processes are tickety-boo, thank you. So, what I do, is something we used to do when I did my military service in Sweden. Before embarking on a long march, we were given a chunky paper bag filled with a mixture of chipped chocolate, nuts and raisins. We called it Jägarsnus – ‘Hunters snuff’, or more appropriately for us, ‘Commando Snuff’.
Another runner’s truism – the day before the race you must ‘Carb Up’. That means lots of nice heavy pasta. Sorry – not for us…. In another city, pasta invariably means ‘Italian Restaurant’. In our experience, Italian restaurants invariably means ‘garlic’, which Lynne is violently allergic to. After the experience of a heroic half marathon in Stockholm, Lynne feeling sick for most of the distance, we now avoid carbing up with pasta.
