Back on track

With no races planned after the 1st, January was never going to be an eventful month, and so it proved to be. For the first two and a half weeks of the month, I stuck rigidly to the training schedule that my coach has drawn up. Then I was struck down by a virus. I did a track session on the morning of Saturday 18^th January. Six 400 Metre reps, with a three minute jog interval. I should have felt fresh and have been flying; I wasn’t. I felt excessively tired. I woke up the next day with a pounding headache. A week of enforced rest followed, giving me time to think about my training.

Over the last few months, I’ve increased the workload that I can handle, getting used to training six days/running up to 50 miles a week again. So a reasonable level of base fitness has been built up. However, I have felt stuck in a rut with my training for a while. I’m just not making progress. My times are not coming down. I woke up one morning with the realisation that I’ve not ran well since late 2011. Something has got to change.

The first priority is to get back to training on a tartan track. Training once or twice a week on a tartan track has proven itself as transformational to my running in the past. The cinder track that I’ve been using for the last 5 months is just not cutting the mustard. Figuring out how to get regular, reliable access to a decent track has been a challenge. I sought and begged for help. Basically, with a lot of paper work and a small fee, I’ve found a way to train on a tartan track on a Friday and Sunday afternoon, each week. Not ideal days, but with some jigging around of my training schedule, it can work.

I was thrilled to get the chance to do two track sessions this week, having bounced back from the virus. It was hard. I am even more unfit than I thought I was. Yet, I know this is the solution. Training on a tartan track means I can make a comeback, albeit slowly. The second step is to re-introduce training twice a day. I’ve never been keen on this. Getting out of bed at the crack of dawn to put in a few miles before going to work is brutal. I did train twice a day, five days a week, in the build up to my first marathon in 2010. I ran several personal bests on the back of that training. Therefore, I’ve started running twice a day. Just two miles in the morning a couple of times a week to begin with, before I try and increase this to running twice a day, five times a week. 

That’s the plan anyway. It does feel good to be back on (tartan) track.

Kameoka New Year’s Day Road Race

Many Japanese people like to welcome in the New Year by viewing the New Year’s first sunrise. January 1st is seen as an auspicious day, believed to be representative of the whole year that has just commenced. Therefore, the day is supposed to be full of joy and free of stress and anger, whilst everything should be clean and no work should be done.

For my part, I took in the New Year’s sunrise as I walked to the train station, in a bid to join nearly a thousand other hardy souls who were beginning the New Year as runners hope to carry on; with fresh air, the open road, adrenalin, joy, pain, and the optimistic pursuit of achieving new goals and personal bests. The highlight of the race schedule was a 10K race. I chose the 5K event, partly because I have a preference for this distance.

The 5K began at 10:05am, 5 minutes after the mass start of the 10K, with 300M of a running track, before hitting the main road outside the sports stadium that was hosting the event. Turning onto the road we were faced with a bracing, icy, head wind. The 5K and 10K races were both out and back affairs along the same straight stretch of road, so to pass the back runners in the 10K race, the fast 5K lads and lasses had to run the majority of the first half of the race in the middle of the road.

The turnaround point was a giant 6 feet tall red traffic cone with ‘5KM’ emblazoned across it. I’d passed a junior runner just a few metres before the cone, so tried to put in a burst as I turned away from the head wind. The nearest runner ahead of me was about 20 metres in front of me at this point. I decided to aim to at least keep that gap at the same distance, or close it if possible. It was wishful thinking. The gap gradually increased as we travelled along the gently undulating road back to the track, passing a convenience store, an American style diner and rice paddies along the route.

Entering the track stadium with 400M remaining, I looked at my watch for the first time in the race. It showed that I’d been running for 16 minutes 08 seconds, which meant that I was well off my target time. Wanting to start the year as I meant to go on, I stole myself to finish as strong as possible and crossed the line in 17 minutes 24 seconds.

After a week of living it up during the festive period, it was not a surprise that I was so far away from my race target. Still, running a race on January 1^st sets the tone for the year ahead. It’s a fresh year, and I came away from the race with a renewed sense of determination to make progress towards beating my 5K and 10K personal bests in 2014.