Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

Now the weather hates me.

After a nice long spell of the weather being reasonably cool for the time of year and generally overcast - in other words, perfect running weather - it seems to be settling into "intermittently hot and sunny", which right now is exactly what I don't want. Running in cool weather or even in the rain is great, but running in hot sun is just exhausting. It's especially exhausting if you're me - not only have I done virtually all of my running in the evening, but I also find myself overheating at the slightest provocation when it's anything other than the depths of winter and I'm wearing more than a short-sleeved T-shirt. Sunny, therefore, is not something I like to run in.

So naturally, as soon as I throw myself headlong into the last four weeks of a 16-week marathon training programme the weather gets nice and I start sweating a lot. Including last Sunday's half-marathon I logged 67km in the last week, and today was the dreaded Long Run Day. If you're starting training properly, long runs start out at about 18km and get longer. If you're me, though, it's necessary to hurry things along a bit and go straight in at the deep end with a 32km epic. Officially it's the last really long run - three weeks before the marathon, but in my case it was the first time I'd covered the distance. I'd planned out a route along the river for this one - the Thames is flat and so's Copenhagen. The plan was to start good and early before it had a chance to get hot.

Unfortunately, a reasonably local sporting team seemed to have some success last night (mostly the result of some Russian chap writing a cheque for 200 million quid, I think - and people whine about the amount of money elite athletes get paid...) so I was kept awake until all hours by the local chav population going "uuuuuhhhhuurrrrr, yuuuurrrrrhhhh, cheeelseeeuuhhh..." outside and celebrating by having fights and shouting matches. As a result I didn't hit the road until 0945, in full sun. It got hot quickly and through fantastic planning on my part I wasn't able to procure any liquids until about 18km in, at which point I was suffering badly. Having downed a half-litre of Lucozade Sport in one go and another half-litre of water I struggled from that point along narrow pavements next to busy main roads with cars whooshing past in the sun - no fun at all - until reaching the more civilised environs of Hampton Court Palace. I'll admit to having taken a couple of walk breaks along the way.

From here it was a little easier as the sun went in and it even rained a teeny, tiny bit. I was also on home turf and heading for home, but that didn't stop the glycogen depletion kicking in big-time about 2km out. Eventually staggered home in just under three hours - 2:57.

What this means is that I can certainly still attempt to finish a marathon in the next month. Today's run was on the back of a heavy week with not one, but two races, and allowing myself to get as dehydrated as I did was stupid and contributed a lot to my suffering. Race day will be at the end of a taper so I'll be (theoretically) in better shape, fresher, and having stuffed myself with tonnes of pasta over the week leading up to the race, much better fuelled. Once again, we'll see.

Posted by mpk at May 1, 2005 5:36 PM | TrackBack