CODRC Triple Day 3

As it was written, so it came to pass.  A third gentle marathon running around in circles before being able to go home with a clear conscience.  No drama experienced and everything flowed by more smoothly that it had on the previous two days.  The pacing was even throughout the run and there were no aches, something of a miracle in my own mind.  I expect the decision to break each of the runs with regular short walk breaks kept the pain at bay and the relative freshness in the legs.

The journey home did not become the two hours of calf cramping that I had feared but instead a troublefree drive along sluggish motorways while grazing on good snacks and cans of ginger beer.  A day later and the legs are still my own and the hammer of tiredness has not fallen.  For a stupid couple of hours I had entertained the idea put forward by my ego to attend the weekly running club speedwork session.  Fortunately I have spent much of the previous three days thinking over some of the common mistakes made in running and general training.  One of my favourites being that training sessions themselves are not what makes you faster (or stronger, or whatever it is that you are training toward), but it is rather your bodies adaptation to that training.  The way that you fuel yourself, the way that you rest, the way that you do not go and beat yourself up flogging a dead horse around a track for an hour.  I am still struggling to balance the probably fact that sitting and watching TV and eating has been the right thing to do this evening.  At least I did not open the giant packet of hobnobs.

CODRC Triple Day 2

And so day two wrapped up as smoothly as I could have hoped for.  Other than managing to get completely lost on the way to the start due to an unusual failure of the Sat Nav that is.

Today's route was simple.  An out and back along a flat trail.  As a bonus, is was in the heart of the Severn valley so the views were good when I was looking around for them.  There was an interesting looking castle or fortified manor that we passed each time which I'll investigate the details of a little when I get home.  Actually, I probably will not do that, but I will add it to the list of interesting things that I have been able to see this year without the time to follow up on which I will feel bad about.

Having managed to arrive late, I set off eight minutes or so after the main group.  It was not likely to be a problem as I was not expecting to spend much time running with anyone else.  I had a game plan in mind, a hundred metre walk followed by nine hundred metres of jogging.  Watch will beep after a kilometre and time to rinse and repeat.  I was not going to look at the paces, just the heart rate, and during the hundred metre walk I would check the distance to keep me honest.  It can be tempting to choose a point a little further away to pick up the pace to a jog, particularly toward the end of a long day.

And my day was not a long day.  Not mentally anyway.  Near to five hours of running for just the distance of a marathon is obviously not exactly chewing up the ground but other than an uncomfortable twenty minutes or so while jogging (and walking) toward the portaloo, it passed.  The good thing about having a tight loop of things do to and the kilometres passed while deciding if there was anything needed during the next walking break.  Hence the beautiful sights passing by unseen, by me, at least.

And evening number three at the bunkhouse.  I am a little tired but those evenings dedicated to just recovery have helped keep it under control to the point where I think I will wake up with my alarm in the morning.  And most happily, my legs are functioning perfectly well.  I know the route tomorrow, being a repeat of Monday, and I am actually looking forward to it.  The loop has two hills which are not too steep and are perfect for recovery and nutrition.  I'm sure the time will fly.

And I very much doubt that there will be an update on these events in the short term.  Having time to burn while recovering in these hills of an evening has provided the ring-fenced time to write.  Having access to the normal pursuits of an evening from tomorrow will almost certainly draw my attention away.  I guess that normal does not apply to people running three marathons in three days, or people running fifty two marathons in a year, but then where on the scale would you put the people who chose to start these three marathons early so that they could do three ultras, or the guy who are currently going to sleep to start their twelfth marathon in twelves days in the morning, another guy who is looking to run a hundred marathons this year and has run twelve in March alone, or the guy who sleeps in his car near each race start and heading off afterward to make his way to the next start line, wherever that might be.

CODRC Triple Day 1

So it turns out that I had not quite put in enough research for these events either.  This was not the flat converted railway line that I was expecting.  Instead, we ran 32 loops of an unadopted road which were marked as trails.  This was something of a bonus for me though as it introduced hills, something that I thought I would not be seeing during these races whilst being surrounded by them each night in the beautiful All Stretton bunkhouse.

The rain driving against the roof this evening reminds me of the first two thirds of today's run.  The incessant downpour which kept the competitors in their rain jackets for most of the race.  The temperature was relatively mild however and this made hydration a little trickier to manage but a minor complication in the grand scheme of things.

A first lap jogging the route to make decisions on where walking breaks would begin, and more importantly where they would end.  And then another thirty one laps sticking to the task.  The puddles and mud growing underfoot with each loop but this soft ground helped to cushion the accumulated impacts.

Eventually time passed.  Runners pushing a little harder passed by me a number of times, those taking it easier were passed in turn.  More than four hours thirty passed during these laps and little of value passed through m mind.  The optical heart rate monitor on my latest piece of shiny equipment proved to be the intermittent trash that I was expecting, but when it started to choose random numbers to report, I had a good feel of where my effort was sitting and could safely ignore it until it returned to reality.  The main reoccurring thought was whether my feet were landing softly beneath me.  Was I maintaining the minimum damage and maximum efficiency that I could whilst sticking to a gentle effort that could be maintained for three days.  The answer was almost always, yes.  The thought occasionally held my attention to the point where I missed my mark to begin running again from a walk break but never by more than two metres.  It was about as disciplined as I could have hoped for.  Lap times were maintained to within a fifteen seconds or so with exceptions made for bathroom'ing.  Food was to be taken while walking the hills to avoid wasting time, or to provide any reason to deviate from the points chosen for walking and running.

The rain eased eventually.  Finally there was even sunshine.  Sweating in layers and a rain jacket because you cannot be bothered with the faff of removing it for the last few kilometres is either a sign of laziness or efficiency.  I'm choosing efficiency for today.

And after sensible food and time off my feet, my thoughts move to tomorrow.  I'm pretty sure that this one really is on the flattened trail of a railway line.

I would quite like the rain to stop for the morning but I will enjoy listening to it tonight.