Like blood from a stone

Ouch. Woke up stiff this morning. I guess I didn't warm down as well as I should have. Or maybe it's just running 17k that does it ;).

I gave blood today, so I'm glad I got the run out of the way yesterday!

The guy who organises the touch rugby at work called me this afternoon to ask if I'd play tomorrow - they're a bit short of players tomorrow. Without really thinking, I said yes - my only concern was the Frisbee, but I didn't reckon that was a problem. I didn't think about the 17k of stiffness or the blood letting - on previous occasions I've really struggled the day after I've given blood.

Anyway - not directly relevant to training for the Marathon, but I thought I should get my excuse generation started early :)

Training starts early

I hadn't been able to start my training on the day I received my form, and today I was due to play Ultimate Frisbee (that's another blog altogether). In fact this week wasn't looking too promising with me giving blood on Wednesday and playing Frisbee on Thursday too.

Someone up there must have decided I could do with an early start on my Marathon road, because, for the first time for a couple of years the weekly game of Frisbee at work was cancelled. I took the opportunity to go for a run. Well to be honest Hazel damn near forced me out the door.

So at 6pm, kitted up in my running leggings and top (which I'd serendipitously bought for Ultimate a week before) I headed out the door. I'd decided for this first post-acceptance outing that I'd opt for my Oakwood run, an undulating route that takes me around half an hour to complete. I planned out a possible extension if I felt particularly good.

My recent acceptance must have been sending extra serotonin round my body, because in spite of feeling a little tired at the beginning, I started to get into it. With Good Charlotte still blaring into my ears I reched Oakwood with a shade over 15 minutes gone. I took a split second decision and decided to continue my run out to Cockfosters. My backup route involved circling back round a country lane that would probably have made my run close to 10k.

So there I am, jogging happily(ish!) along when I spot my side road. Without lights. Or pavement. Now I'm not a nervous person, but the idea of running down a country lane at night without a pavement didn't seem to be a good idea. Caught unawares, I decided to continue running along the road I was already on, out towards the M25. In the distance I could see the lights of the motorway and thought "What the hell - it would be pretty cool to have run all the way to the M25". A few seconds later I passed a sign saying that I'd just entered Hetfordshire - cross county running...

I reached the motorway with around 45 minutes gone and suddenly thought about what Hazel would think - I'd told her I might take longer than half an hour, but she couldn't possibly think I'd be away that long. I felt pretty guilty, but that thought was quickly cut off when I realised that I needed the loo. And I'm not talking a quick stop at the side of the road for a pee.

I took the same route back without too much trouble, and arrived home with the clock reading 1 hour 27 minutes - my longest ever run.

Later in the evening I looked up the length of the run on a Google Map mashup called gmap-pedometer. Basically it allows you to plot out a route on a Google Map and calculate the distance you've run. It turned out I'd run almost exactly 17km. Wow - that's almost a half marathon on my first outing.

So aside from being quite stiff, I'm a pretty happy bunny and feeling much more confident with the whole Marathon thing. Can't wait for the next run!

Marathon Surprise

Today was my wife's birthday, so I really wasn't expecting to receive any presents, and certainly not an acceptance to the London Marathon. I'd looked on the Runners World website a couple of weeks ago where they'd been discussing cheque cashing dates (as they do every year). It seemed that about one in five people had had their cheques cashed on one day, while the rest (or at least those who had bequeathed their cheques) had had them cashed on another day. I fell into the second group, and since the London Marathon is heavily oversubscribed by a similar sort of ratio, I assumed that I had been rejected.

Not that being rejected is a big thing - this was the third time that I'd applied and it's only on your sixth attempt that you're guaranteed a place. By that time I'd would have been 31 (assuming they still used the same system) and I really wanted to run it before I turned 30.

So there I was checking the mail when I came home for lunch (the postman arrives mid morning - don't get me started on that rant!) and I saw a bulky package for me. I was sure that the rejection present this year was a fleece, so the package seemed a bit small. Surely I couldn't actually have got in? Maybe I was wrong and it was actually a watch again (I have a watch and a raincoat from previous rejections).

I was surprisingly unexcited - I really did think I'd been rejected, so I just put down the mail on the table, said hello to Hazel and gave her the letters (and more importantly her cards!). It wasn't for another few minutes that I remembered the Marathon letter.

I must have had a little hope left, because I was a bit excited opening it. That excitement increased massively when I saw the "Smile - you're in" front cover. I just turned round the letter and showed it to Hazel... She seemed to be really happy for me. Much happier than I was - acceptance had always been a theoretical possibility, but suddenly those 26 and a bit miles stretched out in front of me in a very real way, and more importantly, in a very short time. Despite the Marathon being staged towards the end of April next year, somehow there only appear to be twenty weeks between then and now. Hardly seems long enough to get decently fit, let alone post a good time. Fortunately I'm already reasonably fit, so it's not such a huge climb.

So who have I told? Well Hazel, obviously, my team at work, my immediate family and two school friends who got me into running in the first place. Actually, they're pretty much to blame for me being interested in sport at all. They really do have a lot to answer for. Basically one of them, Mike, convinced me to enter the Nike 10k because he was doing it. This was back when I was unfit and running 10k seemed to be something from a nightmare. I threw myself into it and six weeks later I was running 10k in a time of 50 minutes and 7 seconds. I was pretty pleased with myself until a friend at work pointed out that one of the women I work with had done a 10k in 48 minutes. Walking.... Still, I beat that time this year with a sub 45 10k run in Victoria Park.

The purpose of this blog is to try to record anything which relates to the race or my training - we'll see whether that actually happens... Not sure why - maybe for posterity, or to allow my creativity to run wild, or possibly just to save my wife from having to listen to me prattle on about running. To be honest, probably all three!