Last week I suffered badly for the volume I whacked in the diary the previous week. Whereas I'd normally expect to bounce back after a couple of easier days running, this wasn't happening. An easy day lead to an even more tired day - this pattern continued all week.
I felt bloody terrible running on Friday and Saturday before race day, not the normal tired legs, but a deep rooted fatigue in my whole body and mind. I was totally screwed for want of a better word. I'd put a couple of miles into my evening run on Thursday at half marathon pace - but this was a real effort.
You don't mind tiredness in a marathon build up, in fact you're looking to get to a point where you can run well off the tiredness. However, during my pre race 'jog' on Saturday, I was struggling to put one foot in front of the other. Not good the evening before a race.
Come race day the wind was strong across the country and I travelled almost dreading the effort required to run, let alone race. This wasn't good. I'd chosen the Grunty Fen Half Marathon because it is low key, flat, fairly close to home and the prize money was good. I can usually run 69 minutes on any given race day at least, but this was going to be a very tall order today.
Aaron Scott was running and I expected him to go well as he's been solid all summer and should expect something in the 67 minute region under normal less windy circumstances. I had planned a solid run at Grunty, rather than racing it hard - this had worked for me before. When I've raced a half marathon hard, the marathon result a few weeks later wasn't so good.
I had also been suffering with an upset stomach and this was the case on my warm up. Nothing painful, just not normal.
We got underway and Aaron sped off - I knew immediately I wasn't going to be happy with the race outcome, but thought it was worth the effort regardless of the time or placing in the race - largely irrelevant anyway in the wind. From two miles to four miles it was incredibly strong and the pace was way way down on anything even reasonable.
For all my fatigue and state of mind I was feeling fair at this point, but if the two guys I'd been with had upped the pace, I'd had let them go. I'd have had no response.
As we ticked the miles off, one of the guys dropped off and it was me and a Hallamshire Harriers runner for a while. My stomach was turning over and I was getting really cheesed off as the wind battered us. This was making me more tired, obviously, and from seven miles my legs started to tighten up and my quads were so sore. My calves tight and my stomach hurting. I was having a bloody awful time but thought I should see it through, then get home and rest.
This was not the result you want ahead of a marathon, especially in the final race in the build up. However, the one and only reason I raced so poorly was down to the tiredness from the weeks beforehand. I don't necessarily think the weekly volume has been the reason, but the relentless long runs on Sunday - 20, 20, 22, 22¼, 24, 24¼ in the six weekends before the race took a toll on me in the end, I'm convinced.
I'm having a few days of relaxed jogging to get my legs back before pushing on. I know I can overcome this setback, because I know why it's happened. I still expect to be right for Toronto. Looking on the bright side, this was two miles warm up, 10 miles tempo run, 3.1 miles warm down - with trashed legs!
Onwards...