Next weekend I’m running the Rottnest Marathon for the 11th time. Without doubt this is my favourite marathon as it takes place in what I can only describe as ‘paradise’; from a runners point of view that is.  I admit some peoples idea of paradise may be a tad different to mine, maybe involving Casino’s , dancing girls, nightlife etc. For me it’s peace and quite, beautiful beaches and time with the family,  away from the hussle and bussle of life. Rottnest allows you and your loved ones to transcend back to a time before electronic devices (can we even remember that far back now?) when kids (and old runners) just enjoy being kids. How I miss the seventies…..

I’ve attached a few images of the Island but they really don’t do it justice, it really is so special you need to experience it yourself. The marathon itself it testing due to the heat and hills but the scenery helps, at least for the first couple of laps anyway , I’ve attached a post I wrote last year on the event below.

This weekend is the Rottnest marathon, probably my favourite marathon and one unfortunately this year I am going to have to miss. I’ve ran ‘Rotto’ ten times but being two weeks out from the World Masters marathon was just too close. I am big believer in a day a kilometre (‘ish)  to recover, at my age anyway. It normally takes me between 3-4 weeks to really get over a marathon. I know other runners who can recover a lot quicker. My mate Tony ‘T-train’ Smith takes about 12 hours and always winds me up on Strava the day following a marathon by running a sub 4min/k average run. Suicide but he seems to get away with it.

Rottnest is a small Island 30k from the Perth coastline. A pristine Island with numerous untouched beaches and no cars allowed so everybody bikes, or runs. It really is from a by-gone age and I’ve been holidaying there since the kids were babies. This year there is an inaugural half marathon so I have a race to keep me interested but it’ll be just two laps rather than the obligatory four I’m use to.  ( http://www.rottnestisland.com )

Each year we stay in the same apartment on the beach and as you can see from the photo below when I say on the beach I mean on the beach. A week at Rottnest is the perfect ‘down time’ after the Winter running season and the last marathon of the year. I have the 6 inch ultra marathon in December ( http://www.6inchtrailmarathon.com ) but that’s more of a long training run getting back to nature running some glorious trails. Next race of any significance isn’t until March next year when I race the Darlington half, then it’s Perth, City to Surf and Rottnest again. Maybe throw in an ultra or two, a sprinkling of shorter races and off we go again. Almost forgot the Australia Day Ultra in January ( http://australiadayultra.com ). I may race the 100k but I’m worried I’ll put too much weight on !!

Right back to Rottnest. A four lap course, with four good hills, runner unfriendly in my view. i.e. long undulating up sections with sharp down sections where you seem to get to the bottom too quickly before the next rise. It also gets pretty warm and windy. Finally did I mention the four hills, remember you need to times that by four for the four laps. So 16 runner unfriendly hills, 4 laps, it gets hot (and humid!) and windy. I’m not selling this am I, but the reason I love it so much is because of all the aforementioned issues. It is a hard marathon and these days there are fewer and fewer hard marathons where everybody is looking for a quick course. Rottnest is more about finishing rather than a time. It’s about going back to a by-gone age where life was just simpler and enjoying running a small marathon with good friends. There’s even a good pub on the Island where everybody congregates afterwards with the compulsory marathon war stories which get wilder and wilder the more they drink. This is then followed by the obligatory run to the last ferry when you realise you’re late.

Rottnest really is special and I urge you to click on the link at the start of this post to see the Island for yourself if you are not in Western Australia. You never know next year we may be lining up together at the start line together.

Assuming you didn’t sign up last year here are a few more images to try and convince you to come along in 2018, it really is worth the trip, big time !

Yet again I was dissecting Strava splits from some of my running friends who had ran Berlin and it became apparent that most had fallen into the ‘marathon trap‘ that is the norm these days. They had trained long and hard and were prepared for the first 32k of the race but had fallen away for the last 10k. This is why I believe a marathon really is a 10k race with a 32k warm-up.  These two separate races are as important as each other, if you do badly in either the end the result is normally the same.

So why does the marathon lend itself so well to these two separate distances ? The first part, the 32k warm-up, is where all your training and hard work pays dividends. If you have put in the hard yards you will be able to maintain your goal pace for the first 32k most of the time. Add in proper nutrition and a good taper and the first 32k can actually be an enjoyable experience.  Its at 32k you will first encounter every marathon runners worst nightmare, ‘the wall’.  Susan Paul from http://www.runnersworld.com    sums up the wall in an article below :-

 

In general, hitting the wall refers to depleting your stored glycogen and the feelings of fatigue and negativity that typically accompany it. Glycogen is carbohydrate that is stored in our muscles and liver for energy. It is the easiest and most readily available fuel source to burn when exercising, so the body prefers it. When you run low on glycogen, even your brain wants to shut down activity as a preservation method, which leads to the negative thinking that comes along with hitting the wall.

It’s important to note that you burn a blend of stored carbohydrate and fat for fuel all of the time. However, the ratio of these two fuels changes with the intensity of the activity. For example, during a speed workout you will use a higher percentage of glycogen in your fuel blend. On a long slow run, you would burn a higher percentage of fat and a lower percentage of carbohydrate.

If you do the math, it’s easy to see why many runners hit the wall around the 18- or 20-mile mark. Our bodies store about 1,800 to 2,000 calories worth of glycogen in our muscles and liver. On average, we use about 100 calories per mile when running, depending upon run pace and body mass.

However, proper training for marathon mileage gives your body and mind time to adapt to these rigors. Since you don’t use purely carbohydrate as fuel, you have the ability to continue running by accessing fat stores.

The energy issue then, is really about reaching for those fuel sources. In order to utilize your fat stores, you must have some carbohydrate present to facilitate this metabolic pathway. When you deplete your glycogen stores, it becomes difficult to access fat as a fuel source because burning fat for energy is a more complex process. Long runs help train your body to utilize the fat metabolic pathway more efficiently.

During training you should also experiment with taking nutrition on longer runs for a quick carbohydrate source. By the time you build up to 20 mile runs, you should have a pretty good idea about how much fuel you need to sustain yourself for this distance. (Here are more tips to help you avoid hitting the wall.)

Hitting the wall is not something that needs to be feared, dreaded, or avoided (unless it’s race day, of course). The old adage of “if you don’t use it, you lose it” can be applied here.

Training is more than just logging the miles. It is a total body process, and by the end of it you will be transformed into a runner that is prepared and ready to meet all the demands of the marathon. Between stored glycogen and stored fat, you actually have the ability to run many, many miles.

This is why on Strava ( http://www.strava.com If it’s not on Strava it didn’t happen!) you see the splits from 32k slowly, to start with, get longer and continue to increase until most marathon runners ‘stagger’ over the line, albeit elated to finish. This brings me to the second mini-race in any marathon, the 10k sprint to the line.

Pace the marathon right and you can switch over to ‘finish mode’ with 10k to go, if, and this is a big if, you have the experience and confidence you are not going to be visiting our friend ‘Mr.Wall’ anytime soon.  Personally , with the experience of 60 marathons and ultras on my CV, I know at 32k how the last 10k will pan-out. Mentally now I can switch over to the ‘finish mode’ and this allows me to call on my last resources available and start to think about the finish. I now look forward to the 32k mark of any marathon because I know I’ve put in the training (and you should always ‘trust in your training’.) and I am not going to hit the wall. To me the last 10k is about shaving a few minutes of my estimated finish time, a time I would have worked out way before the 32k mark. These mental arithmetic exercises also help you concentrate on something other than the constant kilometer pacing targets and when you run a marathon you’ll understand you have a lot of time on your hands; bare minimum well over 2 hours and upwards of course.

I’ve said this many times but it is always worth repeating , to quote Jon ‘the marathon runner who slows down the least wins’. So true and this is where the 10k sprint to the line comes into play. If you can hold your pace while all around you start to drop off you’ll be amazed how you will move through the field, ‘like a hot knife through butter’. (Pretty cool how I could get the old ‘hot knife through butter’ synonym to relate to running, happy with that.) Why is this possible ? This is where the part of training that is rarely touched on comes into play, the mental toughness.

Mental toughness is not something you find on trainingpeaks  ( http://www.trainingpeaks.com ) or strava ( http://www.strava.com ) ,there’s no app to help you train it. Mental toughness is a state of mind and a ‘how bad do you want it’ though process that you will need to draw down on from 32k onwards. No one, not even the top Kenyans, can run their best marathon and not need to put themselves in the ‘pain box’ for the last 10k of any marathon.  Sure they can probably convince the central governor, explained briefly below, that all is good and push harder than us normal runners but trust me those Kenyans are experiencing the same pain we do, probably even more.

In short, the central governor theory is based around the premise that the brain will override your physical ability to run and “shut the body down” before you’re able to do serious or permanent damage to yourself.

Dr. Tim Noakes believes that the point in the race when you think you’ve given everything you’ve got is actually a signal or response from the brain to slow down to preserve health, rather than a physiological reality. In actuality, Noakes believes you have more to give physically when this happens.

Runners experience this during almost every race they run. At mile 8 of a half marathon, goal race pace is extremely difficult and the thought of running faster, even for just a minute, seems impossible. Yet, when you get within 400 meters of the finish, you’re somehow able to summon a kick that finds you running minutes per mile faster than goal pace.

Once your brain realizes it won’t die if you pick up the pace (because the finish line is close) it opens the biological pathways to run faster.

That’s not to say that the physiological demands of a race aren’t real. Rather, the central governor theory posits that racing is a balance between: (1) physical preparation and biological systems; (2) emotional components, such as motivation and pain tolerance; (3) and self-preservation. The exact combination of these factors is what leads to how hard you’re able to push during a race.

Another one of my favourite mentally tough runners is David Goggins ( http://davidgoggins.com/ ),  it is well worth spending some time on his site. He is one tough runner (and that’s putting it mildly, the Chuck Norris of running ?) and his running CV is impressive to say the least, as are his quotes which are recited on most of our long runs.

I seemed to have digressed for a change so to get back to the main point of this post. Training will get you to the 32k mark of the marathon, from there it becomes a games of mental toughness, you versus yourself really. It is up to you to persuade your central governor to release what limited running resources you have left to enable yourself to push on and finish the race strongly, maybe even a negative split ? I can tell you it gets easier with experience as I believe each time to run a marathon , and don’t die!, your mind learns and  is encouraged to release the governor a little bit more. This in turn enables you to attack the last 10k of your next marathon with more confidence and more energy, resulting in a better performance , which in turn persuades the mind that next time you can go even better.

So if you are preparing for your first marathon or working towards your next you really need to also work on your mental toughness because at 32k, as sure as night follows day, you are going to need to draw down on this to continue to travel at your target pace, your mind will start to play his favourite card, Mr. Fatigue, to try and protect you and this is when you need to say ‘no thanks, I’m fine, it’s time to ‘toughen up and take a ‘suck it up pill’ (Thanks DG)…..

With the Chevron City to Surf Marathon now less than 4 weeks away it is time to start to dial in a predicted finish time. Normally I’m pretty accurate with my predictions as with the experience of 59 marathon (or longer) finishes I know the distance well enough. Of course its not to say each one doesn’t hurt and I’d be kidding you if I said they got easier the more you do but with experience does come wisdom.

This marathon though is different,  I am coming off the biggest break in the last 7 years and, truth be told, am not 100% sure how this will affect my finishing time, albeit how much slower than the last time I ran this course last year where I ran a 2:41:41 for 5th place. There is no way I am in that form after such a long lay-off but I certainly feel the old cardio fitness returning. I have Mark L. looking at sub3 (his first of many I predict, if he can stay away from triathlons!) , Mark C. looking good for a sub 2:55 (minimum) and Jon, the wild card , probably closer to 2:50. Who do I choose to run with as when you make your decision it will be near impossible to change as you won’t know until around the 32k mark (when you come out of Kings Park) if you have made the right decision. Leave Kings park ‘full of beans’  and you probably went out too slow, ‘stagger‘ out of Kings Park and you went out too fast, logical really.

So how can you decide on a goal marathon pace without experience to guide you. There are several websites that offer good predictor times using race distance from 5k up to the near race distance. Anything under 5k and you’d be hard to predict a marathon time and even 5k is probably a tad short IMHO. (Note, Mike K. use to predict his marathon time on metres rather then kilometres but he is a special case, in every sense of the work. )

The best, in my opinion, is the McMillan Running website ( https://www.mcmillanrunning.com/ )  In the example below I typed in my last 10k time of 35:12 (ground zero for my calf tear , in April) and put in a predicted 2:39:59 marathon finish.  The resulting table shows my current numbers in the left column, as predicted by my last 10k time , the numbers I’d need to run in the right column to hit my sub 2:40 goal. As you can see they don’t marry up showing running a 35:12 is not going to be enough, probably, to hit a sub 2:40 marathon time. This is a fair call.

Looking at the times needed to run a 2:39:59 I have the 1/2 marathon time covered (my PB is 1:15) but not the 10 Miles (57mins.  required, my PB is just over 58mins.) , the 10k (34:06 while my best is 34:18) or 5k ( 16:25 while I have ran 16:40). Admittedly I’m close but all these near misses probably add up. (the 50km time of 3:14 is way quicker than I’ve ran a 50k , currently!)  So it looks like the McMillan calculator has got my number, literally, and in my current form (or even when I was running well at the end of last year)  I was always doomed to fail.

Of course what the calculator does miss is the ‘run of your life’ type races. When these happen all tables are thrown out the window and you get to rewrite the record books. This happened last year at the Fremantle half when I was in the middle of a hard training block for the World Masters which involved a massive increase in weekly distance and many races. I remember sitting in the car before the start of the race hoping I wouldn’t embarrass myself after racing a 10k the previous week and a massive weekly training total. The conditions weren’t that good either with a strong wind.  I even turned up late to the start and made it by about 2 seconds, everything was going wrong. When the race started I decided I’d run with the leaders until I couldn’t hang on and then gradually work my way back to the pack and chalk up the race as a nice training run with a medal at the end. The first 10k was painful but I hung on and even managed to get to halfway with the lead group. It got better within the next 5k when my friend Ross decided he had enough and it left myself and two others in the leading group. Now both these two runners were better runners than me but both seemed to be off their game, to such an extent that at 18k I found myself leading and actually feeling comfortable (well as comfortable as you can be 18k into a 21k race.) Anyhow a kilometer later both the other runners in the group suddenly realised they were in a race and I was dropped back to third place,  which would be where I would finish. (Truth be told I was distracted at the time practicing  my winners speech in my head.)   The placing wasn’t important though as I managed to run 1:15 dead. A massive PB when, less than 90 minutes earlier, I had to making all sort of excuses to justify the bad run I was about to have.

There really was no rhyme or reason why I ran a PB on that day and I still don’t really understand what happened but when a ‘run of your life’ happens just go with it, don’t hold back or ask questions just enjoy the moment and cherish the time you are in ‘the zone’ . These runs are few and far between , otherwise they’d become the norm, and how or why they happen is a mystery. I was tired, over trained and mentally ready for failure before the start of the race but something magical occurred and I managed to run a time I doubt I will ever threaten. My only regret on the day is a rookie error of checking my watch as I crossed the line rather than smiling like a Cheshire cat at what will probably be my fastest ever half finish, luckily of course I have photoshop trickery, so this can be ‘amended’ to show my true emotion at a later date. (I may even adjust the time, what is the current half world record I wonder ?)

This week has been a break through week for me with my calf finally feeling under control, I won’t tempt fate and say completely healed as I saw the scan a week last Tuesday and the tear is there, albeit a new one and a lot smaller. I spoke to my physio on Wednesday and he is the most pessimistic (or realist?) person you could ever meet when it comes to recovering from injury and even he said if I could run 10k without any issue then I should continue to run and build up my cardio fitness. He did recommend not running the City to Surf Marathon in August and I was vague on this point knowing full well I had entered only a few days before. I suggested we discuss this subject again in 4 weeks time, knowing full well that in 4 weeks, if I’m still running, then I’m lining up for my 9th City to Surf in a row, come hell or waters high.

Letting the boys know I’d entered spurred on an avalanche of entires and it seems I won’t be alone on the big day with the two Mark’s entering and Jon. Gareth has ‘footy’ coaching but I’m sure he’ll find a replacement for the big day  as , speaking from experience, missing out on these marathons is frustrating, and that’s putting it nicely.

Training wise I have to walk a tight rope for the next few weeks. It’ll be a lot of Elliptigo time (which I love at the moment) and any running will be at a very relaxed and slow pace. This morning for instance I was awoke by one of the puppies early so had an hour to kill. What could I do but go for a run but this was to be a rest day so I had to make sure the run was at a pedestrian pace at best. As it was 5:30am and pitch dark outside this was easy enough and I managed a 5:45min/k average for the 10k. Returning back to the family nest very happy that I managed to maintain this pace and truth be told at the end I was quite tired , which doesn’t bode well.

Can I break sub 3 ? It’ll be a big ask and my training will need to go very well but that is the target. I’ll plan for 50k this week (maximum) and then increase that to 70k next week and maybe nudge 100k the following week. This will then give me 3-4 more training weeks of volume before a 1 week taper. Add in some serious time on the Elliptigo and I should be in sub3 form. The only fly in my ointment is the last time I was out for a 4 week period I ran the Bunbury Marathon a month later and ran a 2:59.xx time, cutting it very fine. I remember running through halfway at 1:28 feeling absolutely ‘goosed’ and I had to work very hard to scrape under three hours, very hard ! I have the finishing shots and you can see the emotion on my face, it was one of the highlights of my running career, not for the time but for the effort required to dig very deep to get out of a very big hole.

The City to Surf will require another lazarus like comeback to go sub3 but I’m hoping the Elliptigo will be the extra weapon in my arsenal that will allow me to get some serious time on legs without the pounding of running but with the added benefit of being a better workout than cycling. I’ll know so much more in a week or two as my last attempt at returning from my original calf tear went well for a week and then ended up with a new tear,  probably due to over training so soon after injury. I certainly ate a large portion of humble pie but it was a risk I had to take with the Perth marathon as a carrot dangled infront of me.

What’s different this time ? The original tear is healed and the new tear is a lot smaller and probably nearly healed as well. I still haven’t got the confidence to add pace to my runs but I don’t have to for a few weeks. I will of course need to eventually add pace as I need to be comfortable running 4:15min/k or better to break the sub 3hr barrier for the 29th time (and hopefully number 26 in a row; remember what I said about runners and streaks; if I was to go over 3hrs I would be devastated, and that’s putting it mildly!)

Right back to training, a big week so far for me , 25k and with a 10k pencilled in for tomorrow I should be able to find 15k over the weekend to hit my 50k target. this will be the first hurdle; next week I add another 20k, hurdle number two. I will feel a lot more confident once I move towards hurdle number three as by then all calf tears will be well and truely healed.

What have I taken from this injury ? The main point is it could have been avoided. I knew I was pushing my limits and the calf had felt tight and sore for weeks before it eventually gave way. If I had rested more, even visited a physio for a massage, done some calf stretching exercises or hydrated better I’m confident I could have avoided this situation. Moving forward I really need to listen to my body more but the old saying about old dogs and new tricks seems to resonate in my mind for some reason. I suppose the only thing on my side is my youth? Still making rookie errors but hopefully learning from them, after all at 50 I still have another 50 years of running ahead of me, I hope my Elliptigo is up to the job, may have to check the warranty ?

Well this Sunday I get to run the Bunbury Marathon for the 5th time. The previous four occasions have all had very different outcomes. The first time I ran it I PB’d and ran a 2:52 but was probably in better form. I remember in the first 10k leading a group of runners and actually running backwards in a ‘Rocky‘ like way encouraging them on. This bravado came back to bite me about 10k down the line when the group left me and I struggled home.

The following year I was returning from injury and did just about everything wrong on the day. I had new shoes for the marathon and I hadn’t even tried them on. On the morning of the race I realised they were too tight so took on the course in a pair of shoes I had travelled down in. Needless to say these were past their best. I remember getting to halfway in 1:28 realising I was in trouble and in serious danger of losing my sub-3 hour marathon streak. I had to work very hard to finally finish on 2 hours 59 minutes and change. To this day this was one of the most satisfying finishes to a marathon albeit the time was one of my slowest.

The next year I was back into some good form and actually won the event running a 2 hour 43 minute PB time. I was racing my good friend Steve ‘Twinkle Toes’ McKean and we were neck and neck until the last 8k where I managed to grab a few hundred metres, which in the end was enough. My one and only marathon victory and one I will always cherish. This was 2013 and in 2014 I returned to defend my title. This was to prove my undoing when I went out way too quick with a group of three other runners and basically ran myself into the ground at 10k. Mentally shot I was walking through drink stops and staggered home in 2:54,  when I was in 2:45 form all day. This really taught me how much mental preparation is so important in marathon running as physically I was in great form coming into the race but I had just given up when it all started to get too hard. It was definitely the added pressure of being the defending champion which had been my undoing.

On Sunday, as well as taking on my 42nd marathon, I’ll be taking on the disaster that was 2014 and hopefully putting that behind me. This will of course be dictated by other runners in the field. It would be nice to podium  at Bunbury or better but truth be told this is a ‘B’ race which means it’s more of a tempo run,  with a medal at the end. My three ‘A’ races are the Perth marathon in June, the City to Surf marathon in August and my favourite the Rottnest marathon in October. After that we have the 6 inch ultra in December and my assault on the AURA Australian age group record in the 100k ultra in January. As I have mentioned before I don’t believe in ‘down time‘ and always have a goal race to work towards, always.

So with Bunbury happening on Sunday it means tomorrow starts my favourite time as a marathon runner, carbo-loading, As you can imagine the first place I am going to start this exercise is my usual 14k progressive run pre-Yelo muffin and coffee tomorrow morning.  ( http://yelocornerstore.com.au ) As I’m tapering it will be a shorter run but as I’m carbo-loading it should be a longer post-run food and coffee smorgasbord. Unfortunately this has been the undoing of many a runner, they get to three days before the big day and assume carbo-loading translates to eat as much chocolate as possible. Sorry people it’s about carbohydrates and although chocolate does contain some carbs there is certainly not enough to justify going overboard. ! Life could never be that good. The odd extra muffin may be accepted but it’s mainly orange juice, pasta, honey on toast and bagels. (or such like). I aim for 10g of carbohydrates for every kilo of body weight. So for me at 70kg it’s about 700g of carbs a day. This is actually quite difficult and you need to stay hydrated of course for this exercise to work , so add in about 600ml per hour and you are one eating and drinking machine.

You will put on weight if you carbo-load properly but a lot of that is water so you shouldn’t be too worried. Carbo-loading, done well, will ensure you avoid the dreaded 32k wall or at least push it back a few kilometres. (pushing it back 10k would be very nice of course!) You’ll need gels or similar on the course if you are aiming to run longer than 2hours 30 minutes, which I’m sure all the readers of this post probably are.  As I mentioned earlier in the post this will be my 42nd marathon so I am well versed in carbo-loading and what is required for the big day. I am actually quite relaxed pre-race but will become more nervous (excited?) as we move closer to Sunday.

Conditions are also a big influence when you run a marathon. Too hot, humid or windy and you’ll need to adjust your predicted finish time. Going out chasing a time you would have achieved if the conditions had been better is fraught with danger. Heat and humidity can be especially damaging and both of these command respect. Once you start the race I always keep an eye on my average pace and last kilometre split, the total time takes care of itself I find. I’ll have a goal average pace set before I start and will adjust my pace to match it during the race. It’s only after the 32k point in a race I’ll start to think about increasing my pace, if I can, to try to finish ahead of my predicted time. This has been rare in most of my marathons but each time I have PB’d I’ve been able to raise my game towards the end. As my mate Jon is fond of saying’ the runner who slows down the least wins’. Find your pace early and maintain it for as long as possible, hell even negative split if you can. (After 41 marathons I have come close but never have I had the pleasure of a negative split.)

Right, as well as tapering (running less to allow your body to recover, and also blogging more) and carbo-loading,  another marathon pre-requisite is sleep. As with the tapering it helps the body recover from the months of hard training. To this end I’m off to bed as I’m up early tomorrow to start carbo-loading at Yelo, sometimes being a runner is just the best thing EVER !