This year I completed my second marathon, the Thames Meander, almost a year to the day after the first in Barcelona. Looking back now and comparing the two, the training experience was similar but the race experience starkly different.
The training
To train for each marathon, I loosely followed one of the excellent free Runkeeper race plans. I say loosely, as try as I might I've never been able to keep up with either the number of runs per week or the number of miles per week. My approach is to make sure I always complete the long run of a given week, then do as much else as possible - but not worry too much when I skip some scheduled outings. I try to get some interval runs in, and a half-marathon paced 'threshold run', and make do with that.
Then, of course, there is the unpredictability of outside events. The slings and arrows of training fortune. In this respect the two training periods were remarkably similar, confirming - if there were any doubt - that you have to be prepared to expect some ups and downs and interruptions. In both years the following happened:
- In the second month of training, I had minor injuries to deal with - a hamstring strain the first year, an ankle sprain the second. In each case this meant about a week off, then gently easing back in (and a spot of cross-training)
- I had the customary winter cold in January, losing another week
- I was also ill in the week leading up to the marathon. The first time I think it was partly psychosomatic, the second time it was on the back of an exhausting week at work followed immediately by a weekend away, and a lack of opportunity to rest and recover. It’s sod’s law at work, either way. The first time this meant dropping about 3 runs, the second time it was 10 days without a proper run before race day, save 15 minutes the day before. The silver lining here is that at least it was the taper by this point, and as the running plans would say “the hay is in the barn”
The marathon
There were obvious differences in the type of race - the Thames Meander a low key trail marathon and Barcelona the full closed-road cheering crowds job - but here I'm more interested in the way I ran it and how I felt. For in that respect they were certainly different.
In my first marathon I heeded the advice to start slowly. The first two miles turned out to be my slowest. I kept a steady pace in line with what I was planning. I wasn't expecting what happened when I reached the halfway point though: the ability to continue that pace. From 13 to 20 miles I experienced a surprising feeling of strength, an incredibly tangible sense of the long hours of training kicking in. I struggle to recall another time when I felt such a direct relationship between effort and reward. You reap what you sow. And while it certainly got hard later on, I ended up running the second half marginally faster than the first - living the negative splits dream!
Marathon number 2, though, was a different story. I had decided to be less conservative at the start, but this intent combined with the 10 days without running meant I over-compensated and went off much too quickly. A couple of the early miles came in at just over 7 minutes per mile. And once the genie was unleashed, I struggled to contain it. This time, there was to be no kick at the halfway point - quite the opposite.
At halfway I already felt in trouble and the whole second half was a huge mental and physical struggle. A lot of suffering. I had the added ingominy of my GPS tracking freezing at 21 miles, with no course mile markers to help me out, so that last stretch was a killer. One final kick in the teeth - on the Thames Meander you pass the finish at 24 miles and have to do an extra out-and-back loop to make the distance. All that can be said for that psychological treat is at least I knew where I was by then.
So it turns out you reap what you sow during a race, as well as from your training. I didn't heed the warnings I'd read but, you know, sometimes you've just got to find out for yourself and learn the hard way. The experience is not one I intend to repeat, but it was at least in keeping with the pain-and-pushed-limits theme of the race number and medal.
