It's been a strange few days. My ankle still isn't sorted, although I believe it will be very soon. I think I made the mistake last week of cutting out running but not cutting out weight bearing exercises. Since Sunday I have done nothing weight bearing other than walking to work, I've done all the stretches I'm supposed to do, iced, ibuprofened and I'm seeing an improvement. I go back to the physio tomorrow evening so he can work his magic again... magic that became undone when I spent 45 gruelling minutes on a hill climber machine last week!
I also got an email from William at the weekend telling me they thought I should still be sticking to a 2:1 run/walk ratio and they want me to keep this in mind for future long runs with an emphasis on running the running parts faster. I was gutted when I got the email, because I just couldn't seem to see past the Cayman marathon in December. I remembered Amsterdam when everyone looked at me like I was a freak because I was walking so early on in the race, and thought I will be in for the same embarrassing ordeal in the Cayman Islands.
Then I had a rethink. I realised the past year has left me with a very short sighted vision of the future. In my attempt to just "get on and do a race in 2012" I had totally forgotten what I REALLY want to do in the future, which is to do ultra marathons. How could I have lost sight of that? I don't know. Although I have commented on here that Cayman is just a training run, I think I was finding it hard to convince myself that that is all it is! I consider myself now fully convinced! ;-)
So, with this in mind, I have been thinking for a few days about getting into the swing of a 2:1 with a key race at the end of it. I wanted Llanelli as a trial in February, but I wanted whatever the key race is, to be way way before The Wall in June. I knew the race I wanted to do immediately... a place I'd love to go... Connemara. 39.3 miles of ultra running and a marathon on the same day... perfect for Graeme too! I also had a twinge of sympathy for his brother Paul, who hasn't done a marathon this year and would love to but says it wouldn't be the same if we weren't there. He and Graeme are also devastaed to have missed out on VLM yet again, with their commiseration magazines landing on the doormat last week!
I suggested to Graeme it may be a good idea and what did he think. He said he thought it would be a beautiful place to run! I thought no more of it, as I hadn't put the idea to William and Shaun yet. This is something I like to do, because they are always frank and honest and tell me if I'm biting off more than I can chew. I thought I'd leave it for a few weeks and then maybe ask their opinion.
When Graeme came home after his 3 mile run yesterday, as he was stretching he announced, "I've been thinking, I might do the ultra in Connemara instead of the marathon". Now, Graeme genuinely is a real gentleman when it comes to races. He never brags about his time, he never boasts about his fitness levels, he never accuses you of training incorrectly, and when it came to Bangalore, it was as if his race was nothing to him as he was so proud about what I had achieved. His brother, on the other hand, is completely the opposite to that. I asked if he had spoken to Paul about the marathon and he said he was "well up for it". I asked what had made him decide he wanted to do an ultra again... after all, Bangalore had been one of the worst experiences of his life, he hated every minute of it, and even after reluctantly saying he would do the race again, we spent a whole hour at our friend Kerrys' birthday party where he "broke" it to me that he didn't ever want to run that far again and did I mind if he went there purely as support for me? His answer to my question had me on the verge of suffocation, and I felt like I couldn't breathe.... "Well, I'm vegan now, and I want to know if it will make a difference to how it made me feel". The next 5 months flashed before me... 5 months where his brother, not wanting to be left on the sidelines, decides he too will run the ultra. We will get a running commentary on how many miles he's running a week, how fast the pace is, how he is uninjured all the time and feels amazing all because he's vegan and he is now just super duper fit, how my training schedule may not be quite as good as it should be, how my nutrition is probably wrong... after all... he doesn't eat that, the boasting at work where Graeme comes home and says he's sick of the lads saying "Why aren't you doing as good as your Paul... he says you've been running much longer than he has and he's kicking you to the curb....."
When I explained this to Graeme, he immediately agreed. I suggested maybe he could do Llanelli ultra instead, and when he found out Connemara was hilly and Llanelli was fairly flat, he agreed pretty quickly this was a good idea.
This forced me to ask William and Shaun much earlier than I wanted to about Connemara, but they answered me back very quickly saying it was more than possible with careful training and planning and using Llanelli as a training run rather than a hard effort race.
So, I rang Paul and booked him into the marathon along with Graeme. There was a pause when I asked him did he want me to enter him, then he asked was I doing the ultra. Yes! Another pause... oh, ok then, yeah I'll do the marathon with Graeme. It's only a matter of time before he thinks he's Rich Roll and can conquer the world, but for now, I'm just not ready to hear him brag about it to everyone he knows.
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