Manchester - Week 8

It's rest day after last week's 60 mile week and I'm not even going to pretend I was ever going to the gym as I clearly wasn't.

A lazy day spent doing a bit of work and then watching lots of Flight of the Conchords which I'm once again obsessed with, if you haven't seen it you have to, it's superb.

My legs feel a bit heavy today, not painful just heavy and I feel tired. Nearing the halfway point of marathon training and it's all ramping up a bit now and it's to be expected. In the evening when I should be at the gym I instead sit and eat a large bar of galaxy chocolate, this is immensely superior to going to the gym.  I really need to sort my diet out, it's been terrible recently.

It's threshold Thursday on a Wednesday and after the last two weeks of messing these up I need to get it right. It's 4 x 2 miles at threshold pace with 90 sec recoveries.

I decide to go to the track as the seafront is a nightmare at the moment with the cycle lane works, bloody cyclists.

So the plan is 2 miles between 13:30 and 14:30, ideally I want to hit around 14 mins for each rep.

Arrive at the track and there's a company cleaning the lanes and a fella running very slow laps and a lady running very, very slow laps. The lady is sitting in lane 1 but the fella is wide in lane 1 and drifting into lane 2 all the time and that annoys me, doesn't take much to annoy me and he's annoying me

Rep 1 and I go past the lady, lane drifting man is going wide so I have to go lane 3 to get round him, on lap 7 I'm catching him again and cleaning men are now in lane 1, drifter is in 2 and drifting into 3 and there's a hose across 4,5 and 6. I overtake him wide and slot back into lane 1.

All 4 reps follow a similar pattern of overtaking, going wide and tucking in. Drifting man is really pissing me off, I toy with coming up behind him and pushing him over onto the grass, that would sort him out but I'm not Ben.

Anyway I finish and all 4 reps done and pacing spot on, well not spot on really but too fast but it's done and I can go home. Get home and Dave tells me it was supposed to be marathon pace not threshold pace, I wrote the plan and I got it wrong, what a twat.

Me that is, not Dave.

Tonight I'm off to the Boiler Shop with Graham, Bain, Pete and Steve to see Fat Dog.  

Who's Fat Dog? I hear anyone under 45 saying, well they are a superb group and you should listen to them. The gig is brilliant, the highlights being the support act (adult DVD) playing a brilliant song called Billy Murray which is straight into my run playlist and me and Bain pretending we are young again and leaping into the moshpit for 'running' and coming out 5 minutes later very, very sweaty a little bit beaten up and me with a sore calf and Paul with a sore hip. We are of course too old for this but we will do it again because it's fucking good fun.

Today is a stupidly busy work day and I'm having a rest day from running.

I finish at 7pm and open a nice bottle of French Red and lie on the settee with Murphy and drink it whilst watching a Japanese revenge movie about a guy who's been in a coma for 14 years and comes out and is amazingly fine after eating a small bread roll.

I go and eat a bread roll but i put cheese and chilli jam in mine.

It's Middlesbrough half marathon today.

Haven't done this one before but heard good things, I've been awake a lot through the night with a sore throat and think I'm starting with something. I decide to totally ignore this and just stick with the plan.  

The plan is 'run as long as you can at sub 7 minute mile pace'. It's a perfect plan, I don't bother checking what finish time this will give me as I don't want the pressure of that. I ran 1:37 at GNR last year and my PB is 1:31:18 from 2017 and I'm now approaching 50 and those days are behind me.

Anyway, picked up by Jim who definitely didn't run a red light on the way to get Bain. Bain tells us a fascinating story about the Zetland carpark but what happens in the Zetland carpark stays in the Zetland carpark. As we drive past I see him smile fondly out the window and give a little wink. My lips are sealed, unlike what happened on that evenin.......

It's been a long blog and I want to go and have some tea and eat some Frazzles so I'll skip to the run.

My plan was sub 7's but nothing daft. We start and I'm 10m behind Chris and Bex, this seems a bit daft but I run with them in B team, or rather I run behind them in B team so I'm used to this scenario.

The first 3 miles fly by in 6:48, 6:45, 6:46 and it feels a nice pace, Bex starts to pull away but I maintain a gap with Chris. Next 3 in 6:41, 6:47, 6:45 and my Garmin tells me I've just ran 42:04 for the 10k, quickest 10k I've done in about 5 years. All feels good still.

At around 6 miles I'm overtaken by a couple of fellas on my right, they are doing about 6:20-6:30 pace and they are both juggling. Now I find it hard here to put into words just how much this absolutely fills me with rage. I'm even more livid when later that evening I'm checking photos of the jugglers to see if I can find who they are and make myself feel better by discovering they are amazing runners and what do I find? That's right, I find a series of photos of them overtaking some unsuspecting sad looking 49 year old fella that has an uncanny resemblance to me because it's me, the moment they juggle past me is captured in a series of 4 photos and now I hate them even more. Juggling, and running that quick is just unnecessary, I watch them vanish into the distance and then I see two horses just standing on the side of the road, an unusual sight in a city centre I think to myself but then I remember it's Middlesbrough.

The next 3 miles I have to dig deep, Chris starts to move away and I drop to 6:54, 6:55, 6:59 and legs feel heavy. This is a large section round an industrial estate with some out and back bits, I mange to finger and get fingered by Steve and Bain which is always pleasant. I also see another two horses in the middle of an industrial estates.

Middlesbrough is fucking weird.

Ten miles and I'm hurting a bit, I take a gel. I've dropped to a 7:15 and then a 7:30 mile and decide I need to pick it up again and I guess I'm on for something like a 1:33 which will be my fastest half in 8 years. I start to feel a little better and run a 7:14 and the gel must be kicking in, I go past a couple of Poly runners and I lift the pace again and my watch is back to sub 7 minute pace my average is coming back down and now at 6:56.

Then we take a left turn and I spot the building where I know the finish is, I change the screen on my watch to see what I'm on, I'm amazed to see I'm actually just over about to hit 90 minutes, not going to be a sub 90 but it never really was and then I spot the finish. 

A glance at my watch and I'm guessing it's 100m or so away, I've got about 30 seconds and I could actually PB this, give it my all and cross the line in 1:31:15

So, halfway through the training with 8 weeks left to go and I've just ran the fastest 10k I've done in about 4 or 5 years and I've just got a 3 second PB that has stood since 2017, 8 years ago when I was 41 years old and running the best I ever have.

It's been a good day.

Home for some food and then I nip to Tesco to buy some more Frazzles and a large bar of galaxy.

Next week I am properly starting the diet for the second half of Manchester training but today I shall eat crisps, chocolate, white bread and cheese.