It’s Juneathon, which means a blog post every day.
It’s also 9pm on a Sunday evening and I have just returned from 3 stunning days in the Welsh mountains and have a tonne of kit to sort out.
These two facts are not conducive to creativity, and so today I simply provide you with a video from Youtube.
Although we didn’t traverse Crib Goch this weekend I have done so in the past, but I can assure you it was not as swiftly as this. Take a look at some of the most extreme terrain Snowdonia, if not the UK, has to offer and the best bit is it’s easily accessible to anyone with some good boots and a head for heights! Check out the views, with Snowdon in the distance, and if you’re ever tempted to take it on then give me a shout!
Most races will start in waves, or pens, or will in some other way be segregated by the speed at which you think you’re likely to cover the distance. My advice…ignore these completely.
In bigger races you will have committed early in your training to a target time and chances are you either faster or slower than that now. If you are faster you will get caught behind runners who are just a shade slower than you and chances are you’ll slow down too. If you are slower you must suffer the ignominy of racers breezing past you for the first few miles of your run. Either way, you are never going to perform to your best, so I give you two choices.
Start at the front – And I mean right at the front. Lead the race from the start, be a hero, then relax as you reach the 20 metre mark and the whole field streams past you. Check out the video below of a chap who challenged himself to lead the London Marathon at 400 metres…Legend!
Start at the back – This is my new favourite, especially on courses with lots of room to pass. Be that runner who drifts past the tail enders. Overtake the fun runners in your lycra and gps watch. Yes you may look silly taking it seriously as you outpace the three-legged charity entrants and old bloke on sticks but trust me, overtaking people is ace! Once you start you won’t want to stop and you’ll keep doing it all the way to the line! I discovered this by accident and ran a half marathon PB by 17 minutes…overtaking is cool!
2 – Get the right soundtrack
And by this I don’t mean load your ipod with the last 180bpm “Speed Garage Dancefloor Mash-up 5” album, for two reasons. Firstly music is a hugely personal thing, I run better to Iron Maiden than I do to dance music despite loving both, I even have a friend who swears by Simon & Garfunkel when he runs. But it’s well known that music can affect performance and you never know if Beyonce will hold you back or Bieber spur you on. Letting the ipod dictate your pace could well be stopping you from reaching your potential. Secondly, not every race allows headphones, and suddenly it’s just you and the pounding of feet and panting of breath for 10 long kilometres. And this is where the danger lies and my advice becomes important, because if you can hear someone else’s foot strike or breathing pattern then it is a perfectly natural reaction for you to imitate it. That means the shuffling asthmatic you can hear could soon be you! I found this during a recent trail 10k, when I realised my foot strike had synced perfectly with that of someone who struck the ground incredibly loudly behind me. It wasn’t my usual cadence, but I’d naturally drifted to a slower pace to match what I could hear. The same happened later in the race with a heavy breather, I felt my breathing change as subconsciously their desperate panting dictated my own actions. So, make sure if you don’t have a perfectly crafted playlist filling your earholes you don’t let anything else in their that might affect your race…but I don’t recommend running with your fingers in your ears.
3 – Get your nutrition right
But I ran my 10k PB after a heavy night of cider and a cornish pasty for breakfast, so what do I know.
Just a short post this morning, as I’m about to jump in the car and head off to Snowdonia for a few days walking with the writers and photographers of Trail Magazine. I’m hoping we’ll become Best Friends Forever and they’ll invite me out with them every weekend.
Got me thinking though, aren’t the mountains brilliant.
I’ll be here tomorrow.
You may be a road runner, in which case I hope you’ve sampled the joys of trail running. If you are a trail runner, I hope you’ve had the opportunity to take it out to the wild places and enjoy running through the stunning landscapes of the National Parks. One of my favourite runs ever was a training run for the Fan Dance (an up & over half marathon taking in the mountain Pen y Fan in South Wales). There are obvious safety considerations when running in more remote areas and over more challenging terrain, but if you don’t feel comfortable going alone then find someone with experience and get out there. To run is wonderful, to run along a mountain ridge in the setting sun with the world at your feet is life changing.
Have a great Friday folks, enjoy the day and have a great run, wherever your route may take you.
Which is a shame, because I would love to run back and forth across America for months non stop (and be really good at ping pong).
But here we are at day 6 of Juneathon and after a 5 day running streak, a long day in the office and now packing for a weekend in the mountains I just haven’t found the time to get my trainers on this evening and punish my already tired legs further.
But that doesn’t mean I’ve done nothing. Because I met a personal trainer at Write This Run who may just change your life.
He’s the worst sort of PT, the nice kind. The kind who, when they shout jump, you find yourself compelled to ask how high. The answer will always be higher than ever before, and somehow you’ll manage it! I’ve been training with them on and off for a few months and the best bit, it has cost me absolutely nothing and could cost you the same.
I’m talking about Stuart Amory, and if you are a Twitter user anywhere in the world you simply have to follow @StuartAmoryPT
Offline Stuart is ex RAF, who used to split his time between getting fly boys fit and chucking them out of planes. He has a very successful business and has trained many celebrities either as regular clients or for specific fitness challenges. But what makes him stand out (apart from being a genuine nice guy and not the narcissistic nazi bullies you can sometimes find in gyms) is the amount of stuff he does for free on Twitter.
Under the hashtag #FitTeam13 Stuart issues monthly challenges for everyone to join in, tweet results and share stories. With previous months offering press up challenges or photo challenges in June we are enjoying a lunge and squat combo guaranteed to get your thighs burning. I’ve just done level 2, twice, because I felt bad for not running!
I’ve copied Stuart’s latest video below, give him a follow, tweet him with how you’re getting on and keep watching for future challenges. They only take minutes each day to complete and could make all the difference to your training!
This book was mentioned at the recent Write This Run event and it turned out many in the room had read it and someone even referred to it as their ‘running bible’ so I figured I’d better grab a copy.
This book shouldn’t work. It is written by a Japanese man who runs every day. Through the book he tells the story of why he started, how he does it, how he ran some marathons and did some triathlons. My synopsis is not much simpler than Murakami’s own prose, yet somehow he imbues his words with such an obvious passion for running that it resonates with the reader on a deeper level than other books on the subject I’ve read. There’s barely a narrative through the book with the end being near the beginning, the middle being the start and the ending tailing off in a series of races that didn’t go particularly well.
And yet somehow this is a gripping read. You are left eager to see how he gets on, and what his next challenge will be. The real success of the book though is in the humility of the author. Other running books have told a story laced with dramataic “woe is me” injuries and tales of near fatal attempts at running ultramarathons, but Murakami takes all his setbacks in his stride (pun intended) and with the same prosaic approach that we, the runner on the street, must face such trials as bad weather and twinging hamstrings.
This book didn’t teach me anything new about running, I’m not sure it will make me a better runner, but I am sure it will have a lasting effect. Knowing that it’s okay to have a bad run, or to finish a race slower than expected, and still dream about a book deal…that’s what I’ll carry with me from now on!
*Last night’s hill reps turned out not to be hill reps, but were sustained pace efforts, just as I’d done in the morning. I can only assume I’m part reptilian, because after a day in the sun I beasted the session, running hard and getting my pacing spot on. It’s nice when it all comes together like that isn’t it? 🙂
WHAT JAMES DID 