How (not) to Prepare for a Marathon: The Day Before

Previously: Seven Parts of How (not) to Train for a Marathon, ending with my running gear stuck in British Airways' luggage system with 24 hours to go. Dig in, and enjoy yourselves...

I don't really know why I've put this here, I just liked it and hadn't found anywhere else for it. Feel free to ignore, although it does kind of sum up what happened to my training at the end...

Saturday April 12th

It's Marathon Expo day! Yes, before they let you loose on the course, you actually have to turn up in person to prove you're really who you say you are - I suppose otherwise you could send Wilson Kipsang along to run for you and then claim bragging rights on his time, or something. Anyway, there's a whole running expo at London's ExCeL centre with clothes to buy and other races to sign up to, and minor running celebrities to meet, and that's where I'm off to today.

Karin kindly offers to stay at home and wait for my missing luggage to turn up, so my sister Helen decides to come along and share the excitement with me, which we double by getting there on the awesome-but-ultimately-fairly-pointless Emirates Airline, the cable car that straddles the Thames by the O2 in the world's most rubbish ski resort.

Getting inside, there's a number to be collected, and a photo-document of extreme terror to be taken - looks like this is really happening now.

I look strangely at peace with my fate, actually.

There's one other essential thing to be done, and that's getting my name printed on my T-shirt for tomorrow. I've read that having people call out your name as you go is one of the most inspiring things about the London Marathon, and frankly, I need all the inspiration I can get. A top tip I also picked up, though, suggests that there are going to be a heck of a lot of people with your name, so you might want to think about using a nickname or something else unique. It is thus, that I come to be the only "Jamesy" on the course on the day - that I spot, at least. This proves to be A Good Decision.

The main reasons for coming now complete, we figure we may as well check out the rest of this massive show, so I go and look at overpriced London Marathon merchandise, obviously buying a commemorative T-Shirt (in case I don't make it to the end and ever get my hands on the real one, perhaps), and there are nice "inspirational" things to do which have nothing to do with advertising any of the LM sponsors, obviously...

Write your predicted time on the Virgin Money wall of fame/shame!

Write your touching message of inspiration under the giant Adidas logo!

Oh, ok, that is quite nice actually. Thanks, Helen!

Watch someone who used to be in Emmerdale singing a song about marathons! (No, I don't know why, either.)

To be honest, being here with all these people kind of stresses me out, and stressing myself out is the last thing I'm meant to be doing today, so we don't stay long - but there is just time to catch up quickly with some people from the @Ukrunchat Twitter community that has helped me so much during my training. Unfortunately I upset Jeff by picking a 'Team Blue' shirt, but that can't be helped - red just isn't my colour...

We manage to leave without signing up to any more races or buying any new shoes (tempting though both are) - apparently some people buy new shoes at this event and then try to run the marathon in them the next day. You don't need to be a runner to know that's a terrible idea - remember how much your Clarks rubbed you on the first day of school each year?

So, it's time to leave now, via Decathlon at Surrey Quays, where I buy some precautionary replacement clothes for tomorrow in case my suitcase doesn't arrive (luckily I have a second pair of broken-in running shoes for just such an occasion), and back to the flat, where the suitcase duly arrives shortly after I get in. I'd normally be annoyed, but the running clothes in this bag have lived with me through the high times and the low, were my only company and solace out on the lonely road when things got rough, and, frankly, smell a bit like me, so I'd worry if anyone else found them and thought about approaching them without a ten foot pole.

There's time for a modicum of rest and chilling, before my parents arrive (no, I don't mean that they bring an end to the chilling...) and we all head out for a celebratory dinner at Zizzi, which, serving bread and pasta, the night before the city's main running event, is rather busy.

Part of the final carb load... followed by another BOBOP.

Cheers! Hope you don't die! Etc...

We eat, drink, and are merry - no vino for me, though, I can't imagine anything less conducive to a good run other than perhaps running over your foot with a lawnmower.

And before I know it, it's 10pm, I try on my gear for one last time to make sure I'm happy, and then lay it all out nicely ready for the morning. Charity T-shirt, base layer (more about that next time), shorts, non-rubbing pants, Bodyglide, number attached with Marathon Clips, headphones (quite possibly the most essential part) and heart rate watch, which doesn't seem that important at the time but as it turns out probably stops me having a cardiac arrest on the day, so is a fairly good call in retrospect.

How happy I look, how full of dreams and ambitions.. if only I knew...

I go to bed, and try to sleep. I fail for a very long time. Apparently this is normal. I don't care, it's still annoying.

Next time: The Race. The actual Marathon. No, really.

How (not) to Train for a Marathon (Part Seven)

Previously on How (not) to Train for a Marathon: We went to some very, very dark places on the longest training run I have ever done, enjoyed some French Cul-De-Sacs, and got high-fived by Henry VIII.


Things Fall Apart

It's the end of the first week of March, and there are just 5 weeks to go until the big day. It's at this point that things start to go off track - I've largely done what I needed to up to this point, but then everything starts coming at once - injury, illness, travel, like I'm delving into life's bag of Revels and pulling out all the coffee ones. It's a catalogue of disasters seemingly designed from stopping me getting to that finish line, and it's during these dark weeks that I decide that if I do make it through, I'm going to share my stories so that anyone else in the same situation can be reassured at just how miserable things can get without it stopping you making it through the big day. (Oops, spoiler!)

This is amazing - a guy at the hilarious Epicurean's Answer blog actually did research on the breakdown of the Revels across several bags, and it turns out coffee is the least frequent, we just perceive that there's more of them if we don't like them.
How very like life.

9th March (The Surrey Half Marathon)

What I am supposed to do:  18 miles
What I actually do: 1.83 miles jog, 13.44 miles run and a whole load of walking about
How Does it go?

I really shouldn't be here. I've already done one Half Marathon race, and today is supposed to be 18 mile training day. But I've paid for this, and I'm looking forward to it, so I'm going to make it work, dammit.

The race starts in Guildford, so I get off the train there and decide to be the smug one who jogs past everyone on the way to the start line just to get some more miles in. After last week's despair, it feels goood, but it doesn't quite make up for the fact that the race I'm doing today isn't really what I'm supposed to be doing.

Still, it's a lovely run on a sunny spring day, the roads are shut between Guildford and Woking so we can run there and back again through the countryside and not get run over, and there's a dodgy Oasis covers band playing outside in Woking when we get there, which is reward enough for anyone. There are a couple of fairly challenging hills that I manage to power through after my experience in France last week, and as I finish back in Guildford with a half-lap of the running track at the Athletics Stadium, I start to feel much more confident again. It's the last time for a very long time.

Finish line selfies are always popular, right?

Final stats: 13.44 miles in 2:18:44


15th March


What I am Supposed to do: 20 miles
What I actually do: 12 miles

How does it go?

I can't be bothered to make up a completely new route this time, so I amalgamate some others by deciding to get the train all the way from Surbiton in London's Zone 6 to Vauxhall in Zone 1, and run all the way home along the river. It's 20 miles - I tell people on Facebook that I'm going to do it, and I don't think they believe me, but that's probably because I don't believe it either. I've felt the pain of 16, and since then I've not gone any further than that, so what makes me think I can do this?

More Thames-porn.

I turn out to be right - as it happens, everything starts ok apart from nearly getting lost through Battersea Park, but the pace is ridiculously slow (12-13 minutes per mile), and I can feel that my body is completely spent and nowhere near recovered enough for this.

A brief diversion occurs in Mortlake, where I find the Thames Path completely flooded and have to double back on myself through the streets, but it's not enough to take my mind off the undeniable muscle pain, and from Mile 11 onwards every step becomes a struggle. When my knee starts twinging again at the 12 mile marker, I decide there's just no sense in pushing this, and stop by Kew Gardens, go and find a bus home, and eat a recovery breakfast once again cooked by the lovely Karin.

Sometimes, you just have to listen to your body.

22nd March

What I am supposed to do: 22 miles
What I actually do: Nothing

How does it go?

It really doesn't... the day after the aborted 20 miler, I'm off to Athens for a week's meeting with my new job. I drink too much ouzo and Mythos, and hang out with a couple of people with heavy colds.

On Wednesday the 18th, I wake up with a sore throat and a serious cough, and it looks like running might be off for the entire week. Sunday is supposed to be my longest run, and I completely miss it, which doesn't improve my mood. Things are starting to look a bit dodgy for the big day, as from here on out the training plan is all about "tapering" (easing up and starting to conserve energy stores for the main event). I'm meant to be slowing up, but not stopping completely. And I'm not even meant to be slowing up until I've done a proper, PROPER long run. (16 miles is clearly nothing...)

I eventually go to the doctor on March 25th and he tells me to rest a bit more, as for some reason he doesn't think me running 20 miles will actually improve my cough. I ask for a second opinion on Twitter and the consensus is that my doctor isn't an idiot, so I continue to rest, twiddling my thumbs and ruminating over and over again as to whether I will actually manage to do this, or have to pull out.

I obsessively Google "running injuries", "run marathon after 16 miles training", and "am I totally screwed?", reading everything I can find to see whether I'm going to be able to do this, or end up face down in a dock somewhere near Canary Wharf.

Still, at least Athens was pretty, eh?

On Saturday the 29th of March, I say bollocks to sitting worrying on the sofa, and decide to do something about this. If I lose all my running fitness, what's going to happen? I'll have to walk the whole distance, won't I? So I put on my walking shoes, and off I go on my normal 10k route, trying to walk it as fast as I comfortably can, just to see what my pace would be like. I average 16 minutes a mile, calculate that it would take nearly 7 hours to do the Marathon at this speed, decide I'd accept that, and move on with my life.


30th March

What I am Supposed to do: 13 miles
What I actually do: 11 miles (of which, 9 are running)

How Does it go?

Spurred on by being able to walk, I decide to give running a go -it's my first for over 2 weeks and it turns out to be the last one I do before the Marathon.

I manage 6 miles before having to stop and walk for a bit, then I do intervals of 2 miles run / 1 mile walk to see how that goes as a possible strategy for the main event. The running miles feel ok, until the very last one - when a familiar twinge in my knee signals that today's training is over.

With two weeks to go, I decide that it might be time to seek professional advice but before that, I turn to my trusty Twitter buddies who tell me to buy a foam roller and roll out those Illotibial bands. I go to Sports Direct and get one, bring it home on the bus to some odd looks, and start using it on the floor in the living room - into which Karin appears fairly shortly to ask me why I am torturing warthogs. Yes, it's a painful old thing which results in me groaning and grunting in a most unbecoming way, but it really does help, so I carry on with it anyway.

At least I: a) Keep my shirt on and b) don't look like Simon Cowell.

Physio Killed the Radio Star

On April the 2nd, I finally go and see the Physio at my gym, to explain my dodgy knee symptoms.

"Ok, so when did you first feel this, was it when you were running at the weekend?", she says.

"Um, no, it was about 6 weeks ago.", I admit, sheepishly.

"Wow, ok, so have you been resting since then?" 

"Noooot exactly, no...."

She gives me a deep tissue massage, which is probably the most uncomfortable thing I've ever experienced, as part of it involves pinching the offending tendons between her thumb and forefinger, running down the length of them to try and work out the knots (or something - I don't know what she's doing really, she could be trying to see how much it takes me to start crying, for all I know...)

"Everything is very tight - you should really have come in weeks ago!" - Yeah, no kidding. "Oh well, we'll get you to start doing these exercises and then you should be ok to carry on running again in a few weeks' time."

When I explain that I'm doing the London Marathon in 11 days' time, she first looks confused, then amused, and then realises that I'm serious about this, and puts on a brave face and starts trying to help me. I get exercises to do, she tells me my glutes are pathetic so I need to squeeze my butt cheeks together with every step as I run, and she tells me to keep on with the foam roller, but not to do any more running until the actual race.

That's right, none at all. Her logic is that at this point, I can't gain any more fitness, as that time is past, and all we can do now is damage limitation. It's incredibly unlikely that I'll be able to run the entire way, we both agree, so I tell her about my plan to run a certain number of miles, walk a certain number of miles and she agrees that it's probably the best result we can hope for. She also suggests that I take pain killers with me and take them every few hours in the hope of keeping the inflammation down.

"Good luck!", she says, sounding like I might be the client of hers that's needed it the most.


5th April

What I am Supposed to do: 8 miles
What I actually do: Help my sister move house

How is it?

It's quite a good day, actually - thanks for asking. I don't do any running, but I do drive across London to Deptford / Greenwich, and find cones out all over the place, signs up warning people of delays, and pubs advertising "Marathon Breakfast".

Shit just got real.

Mmmmm....

Eeeeek!

Ewwwww....

The Final Countdown...

In the last week, you're supposed to do as little as possible, rest as much as possible, and eat as many carbs as possible. I manage the last one, but 1 and 2 are a bit buggered by virtue of having to travel to Roskilde in Denmark with a very excitable colleague, who insists that we try and do something every evening, is obsessed with walking everywhere instead of getting cabs, and is somehow charming enough with her annoying persuasion that I go along with it. Even when she insists on calling me "Henry" for reasons too complicated to go into.

Hence, there's not much rest, but it's ok, the short walks we take get the muscles going again, and I've brought all my gear with me - the running shoes and clothes, the foam roller and my exercise mat, and I spend any free time I do have doing my exercises from the physio and trying not to panic about what's now less than a week away.

There's even genuinely healthy food to help me stock up my body, and I'm able to use the excuse of running a marathon at the weekend to avoid putting my feet in one of those fish-nibbly tanks that my colleague is desperate for me to try.

"Oh Henry, you're so boooooring!"  - ah, but you know, Marathon comes first! "Huh, alright then...". Win.

Unfortunately, I neglect to tell British Airways that Marathon comes first, and after bumping us off our return flight from Copenhagen in exchange for a 200 Euro gift voucher which actually doesn't materialise, we then end up two flights later in the evening, and without our suitcases.

Suitcases. Which contain literally everything I need for the marathon - shoes, clothes, foam roller, headphones, the lot. It's 11pm on Friday night, in the morning I need to go to the Marathon Expo to register, and in less than 24 hours' time I need to be tucked up in bed with all my gear laid out ready for me to grab and go.

See, even the last Revel in the bag usually turns out to be coffee.


Next time: It's the day before the big day (the small day?)

How (not) to Train for a Marathon (Part Six)

Previously on How (Not) to Train for a Marathon: We discovered why you can't run in the pitch black, what Mo thinks about my 10k time, and examined just how much fun you can have running 14 miles.


Practice Races

"Week 11: Run a Half Marathon (See p58)" reads Sunday the 2nd of March's instruction in the Marathon training plan - the idea being that doing a 'test race' gets you used to what it's like on race day.

What's on page 58? Oh, of course, it's a "feature" (advert) about the Silverstone half marathon race which, completely coincidentally, is organised and sponsored by all the same people as the London Marathon. "Register now, as this popular event is filling up fast!"

I laugh in the face of your pathetic attempts to manipulate me, Marathon training plan, I shall find my own Half Marathon race, from which you will obtain zero money, and I will have a much better time because I won't have to drive to sodding Silverstone. Of course, I now have a dilemma, because when someone gives me a plan for what to do when, you can bet your life I'm sticking to it to the letter, otherwise the whole thing is going to crumble and fall by the wayside like my diet plans after one Malteser.

I just spent a very long time Googling pictures of Maltesers.
There's some seriously good stuff out there if you know where to look. I can hook you up.

I try to find a Half Marathon that's a bit more local to me (yes, a Local Half Marathon for Local People), and find one that looks good, but it's not on the same day. Still, I decide to swap weeks 11 and 12 around in my training plan. It annoys the schedule nerd in me to my very core, but decide it probably won't make that much difference in the end.

And then... I'm halfway through week 10 and having palpitations just thinking about doing that 14-mile run from last week again PLUS another 2 miles, when I spot something on Twitter - there's a Hampton Court Half Marathon! And it's this weekend! Of course it's sold out, but someone on my feed has a spare place which he can't use, and it'll just go to waste... of course it's too late to transfer it officially, so tonight, Matthew, for one night only, I am going to be "Charles Hedges". I can still do 16 miles, can't I? I'll just finish the race, cross the line and then carry on past everyone else and run home. It'll be just like that time my friend Rob crossed the touchline playing rugby, and carried on running right off the pitch, thereby losing our team a certain try.


23rd February (Hampton Court Half Marathon)

What I am supposed to do: 16 miles
What I actually do: 13.01 miles, and then another 1.27 miles, and then give up
How Does it Go?

Here I am, at my first ever Half Marathon race, and I have a curious mixture of excitement and terror in various parts of my body. Will I be able to do this? Will I come last? Will I have to stop and adjust my pants halfway round and get arrested for indecent exposure?

Of course, I know I can do this- I've gone further than this in training already, so what I'll do is pretend it's just another training run, I'll go at my normal pace (11 minutes a mile or slightly more), not care about my time, ignore all the other people around me and just run my own race. I line up behind the 2:30 pace setter and decide to stick with them as an insurance plan. Lights out, and away we go, and before I know it I've done my first mile in 10:15 - slow down, boy!

Luckily, the previously documented 'first few miles' syndrome kicks in pretty quickly, and there are a lot of people on the route, so I drop right back to 11:30 for a couple of miles, to catch my breath, and then as we reach Hampton Court itself, I get high-fived by Henry VIII as I pass and something in me clicks as I speed off down the towpath towards Kingston (this time, being able to see.)

DEFINITELY the real one.

Miles fly by, and I keep my mind on enjoying the scenery, humming along to my banging tunes, and high-fiving random kids who've come out to watch (this is surprisingly motivating, actually). It's a really nice race with a good, flat course, and lots of excited spectators. And a Henry VIII.

With one mile to go, I'm starting to flag - somehow knowing exactly how far there still is to go is actually demotivating (it's the reason why I groan audibly at every race when I start seeing the "500 metres to go" / "100 metres to go" / "No honest you're really really nearly there now" signs) - but it's not as demotivating as seeing all the people who've already finished, sauntering back to their cars with their goody bags and eating their bananas provocatively.

But all that pales into insignificance compared to those who, as they're strolling, medal around neck, start calling out "Well done! You're doing really well! You're soooo nearly there!", in the world's most condescending tone which probably only exists in my head, but is nonetheless one of the most irritating things known to man aside from Piers Morgan. "I WILL DECIDE WHEN I'M NEARLY THERE, AND IF I CAN'T SEE THE PISSING FINISH LINE, I AM DEFINITELY NOT NEARLY THERE, THANKS!", I (don't) shout back, with veins popping from my head in apoplectic rage.

Still, the facts in the cold light of day are that I actually am pretty close to the finish, which I duly arrive at in what is a great time for me at this stage in my training, and as I cross, feeling damn good about myself, I slow down to wander over to the table where the goody bags are kept. There's a small queue, but I probably only wait about 30 seconds before grabbing my bounty, turning round to get going again, and...

"AAAAAAHHHHHH..."

Remember that knee pain I mentioned at the end of the 14-mile run? Yeah, I've failed to get that checked out, and somehow the act of stopping for 30 seconds has rendered me completely incapable of moving again. I hobble away from the finish line and find a quiet spot out on the road - thoughts of now running another 3 miles completely gone. I manage to do a bit of stretching and eat my banana, and I'm just pondering what on earth to do when my sister Helen arrives on her bike, hoping to catch me finishing, but now finding herself in the unenviable position of having to help me get home.

Still, at least she can take this "sort of victory" photo for me, although she somehow makes me look about 2 feet tall in the process. (Or maybe that's just my awesome attire.)

I do some more stretches and hobble around a bit, and then suddenly I feel ok. "I feel ok", I say.

"I'm going to try to run home, you can cycle alongside me..."

I don't know if you've ever run a really long way, cooled down properly and stretched, and THEN started trying to run again, but I hope not, for your sake. This is the worst idea ever. I manage one-and-a-bit miles, Helen cycling alongside when possible, but bicycles aren't actually designed to go as slowly as an ant trying to roll a can of baked beans up a hill with its face, so she heads off into the distance every so often to spare my embarrassment.

I give up halfway home and hobble the rest of the way. Upon arrival, I check my Endomondo to find that it's only tracked 13.01 miles for the actual race, which is odd since it will nearly always track more than the advertised distance due to me weaving in and out of even slower people like a Subaru driver on the M3. Checking on Twitter, there's an apology from the organisers of the race along the lines of "Yeah, sorry, there was a marshalling error - someone sent you the wrong way before you'd really even got going, so the race was only 12 and a bit miles. Sorry about that!".

I would say I'm at the lowest point I will reach on this journey - but there's still one more rung on the despair ladder to fall down onto...


Final stats: 13.02 miles in 2:20:43 and 1.27 miles in 14:50. Ugh. 



Really, really, really long runs

Ok, now it's time for the big boys' stuff. We've skirted around the Half Marathon distance for a few weeks like, well, teenage me at the edge of a school disco dancefloor, but now it's time to grow a pair of balls, and go out there and do The Robot. Or something...

Because I messed things up last week by doing a Half Marathon the week before, it's now time for my 16-miler.


Monday 3rd of March

What I am supposed to do: 13.1 miles
What I decide to do: 18 miles (for a reason I can't quite work out now)
What I actually do: 16 miles
How much I actually cry: A little bit

Taking my "find a new route every time" theory to its limits, I have relocated for a couple of weeks to my parents' house in the French countryside, where I am trying to recover from a stressful few years' work ahead of starting a new job. For some reason, the stress levels actually seem to increase while I am there - and it's only with the benefit of hindsight that I can see that the Marathon training is a massive contributor to this. The amount you put your body through week in, week out, the worry about whether you're doing enough, the pressure of your sponsors and charity counting on you, the constant feelings of not being good enough and that you're going to fail...

(So that's now the "cheap form of exercise", the "helps you lose weight", and the "relieves stress" myths that we've debunked over the last 6 blogs...)

This therefore marks the first lengthy run that I've done away from my beloved River Thames, and I have carte blanche to go wherever I like - but, wait, it's not that easy. It needs to be somewhere that I can run off the actual road, which counts out the immediate surroundings since for miles around there are only country roads and farmers on tractors -who, to be fair, do at least seem to enjoy the unusual spectacle of grown men in luminous lycra chasing sheep down the lanes.

It also needs to be somewhere where I don't keep having to stop to cross roads, and somewhere that if I have to stop for a pee, or to heave up my breakfast at the foot of a tree, nobody is really going to mind. Step forward the Forêt domaniale de Châteauroux, which is a large forest just South of the city of Châteauroux, with paths, and small forest tracks, which lend themselves perfectly to just such an occasion. I plan out my route using a run planning website, for some reason marking out an 18-mile route even though I actually only need to do 16. (As of now, I cannot remember why, and am calling myself an idiot for making my life harder, but let's ignore that for the moment.)

The numbers here are in Kilometres, just to confuse you.

There's obviously no way I'm going to manage to remember this route, so I print the map out - unfortunately it covers such a large area that it has to go on 6 sheets of A4 to have anything like the right amount of detail. So I assemble all the pages, tape them together, fold them into something that sort of fits in my hand (about as well as my stomach fits in my trousers right now), and get into the car, in which my parents will drive me the 45 minutes to my designated starting point.

If I've been nervous before, it's nothing compared to now. I sit in the back of the car, yawning and fidgeting, in scenes reminiscent of my Dad driving me to my first music exam, or to my first residential course away from home, or to university halls. All I want to do is sleep, to go back inside in the warm, for the car to turn round and my parents to say comfortingly "It's ok, you don't have to do this, let's just go home, shall we?"

But of course, I really, really want this at the same time, so as the car pulls into the layby where I'm about to begin this ordeal, the adrenalin starts pumping, I get in the zone and bid them a brusque farewell (probably just like when they left me at uni), and make arrangements to rendez-vous at the checkpoint marked 16 on the map above, to provide energy drinks and moral support.

The road ahead of me. It's awfully straight, isn't it?

A quick stretch and a warm up march with knees up around my ears (another reason why I want to be away from civilisation), and off I go.

The folly of my route choice immediately becomes clear: as you will have noticed from the map above, there are an awful lot of very straight roads in this forest, and as I realise gradually, there's nothing more demotivating than running mile after mile on the same straight road with nothing in your sights but the horizon, and identical trees as far as the eye can see. A bend would be nice, or a clearing, but the first few miles pass without such luxuries. Still, it's a nice sunny day, I've got some good tunes in my ears (it's today that I discover how surprisingly many of the lyrics to "My Name is Prince" I can remember), and the act of  trying to hold my water and the map at the same time whilst simultaneously unfolding sections of it and seeing where I need to go at the next intersection without losing the whole thing in the wind, keeps me occupied quite nicely.

I take a 90 degree left turn just before the 3 mile mark, and start heading inwards on the second side of my very irregular pentagon - things are feeling good, I'm running at a good pace nicely under 11 minutes a mile, and I'm reminded again just why I love this so much. I even take my headphones out for a bit and listen to some French birds singing in their French accents. At the 5 mile mark, there's a path I mustn't miss, as it turns me back into the forest instead of letting me exit into civilisation, but I can't see it. I keep going, desperately looking into the undergrowth for where this elusive trail might be, but before I can find it, the trees end, I'm suddenly running down a very suburban street, and into the town of Le Poinçonnet.

There's a nice church, at least.

I've run right off the map and have no idea where I actually am, so on goes the data roaming and in comes Google Maps, (all without stopping, by the way) and it's at this point that I realise I'm 2 miles or so off course. My heart sinking, I try to figure out which way to go, do a brief unintentional tour of French Cul-De-Sacs, manage to find my way back to the main road and head straight down it, back towards the forest and the hope of regaining my route and meeting my parents at some point today.

Around 9 miles into my run, I finally make it back to something approaching the planned route, and start again on the long, straight slogs, running on and on with seemingly no progress being made, but at the 10 mile mark, I turn a slight corner and find something different to cheer me up - half a mile of very steep hill leading down into a valley, and then half a mile of very steep hill leading up to my checkpoint, for the majority of which the path is made entirely of sodden grass and calf-deep mud. I've always said I didn't fancy doing a Tough Mudder, and this proves it, as I squelch slowly and painfully, actually losing my sodden wet trainer at one point, up the incline towards the spot where I know my parents are waiting with supplies.

Finally, about half an hour late, I arrive at the designated meeting spot, and there they are, the first human beings I've seen in hours - My mum is first, holding out a banana and an energy drink, both of which I eagerly grab, and then a few steps further on, there's my Dad, with a replacement bottle water, which I greet like a pint of Kingfisher at the end of an economy flight to Banagalore. I'm elated to see them nearly as much as the items they're holding, and my spirits suddenly take a massive upswing.

It looked a bit like this spot, but to be fair, so did the entire run. (With the obvious subtraction of leaves from the trees.)

It seems rude to just run right past them, so I jog on the spot a little, determined not to stop completely for fear of a repeat of last week's knee incident, and we shoot the breeze a little, chatting about how things are going and why the heck I'm so late. Obviously I now can't do the full route I'd planned because of my exploratory survey of suburban French architecture, so they suggest that if I turn left at this very checkpoint, there's a straight road which goes right across the diameter of this forest, so I can run right down there with no danger of getting lost, and not have to worry about the map any more. They'll meet me at the other road (around 16.5 miles) and we can decide then whether I'll carry on to the full 18 or not. (I think you can sense where this is going.)

It seems eminently sensible, so I leave the map with them, and with a renewed spring in my step, head off on the last section, with 5 miles to go until the next opportunity to get back in the car. What follows is probably the darkest and most difficult hour of my entire life. There aren't actually that many trees by the road at some points, so from side to side I get to enjoy a bit of a grassy bank and some bracken;  but in the distance the road stretches endlessly ahead, upwards into the distance, towards the main D990 which bisects the forest like a knife through a Florina. (It's a type of French apple, what do you mean you've never heard of it?)

I climb 200 feet over the next 2 miles, trudging wearily along this minor road, all alone, looking out every so often for cars (since this is one of the few forest roads that actually allows traffic) - and eventually I reach the roundabout that signifies that I'm halfway down this final, gruelling stretch. I'm at the 14 mile mark as I (thankfully) select the correct exit from the roundabout and cross back into the forest, and I can't see how I am going to make it to 16, let alone 18. All my leg muscles are burning like I've never felt before, my lungs feel like they're about to be expelled through my mouth, my head is pounding with intense pain, and I start moaning out loud with every breath...

"WUUUURRRRGGGHHHHHH", I go, again and again. "YEEEEUUUUCCCCCHHHH". The road continues to stretch endlessly on into the distance, I focus on my feet, or the tarmac 10 metres ahead, anything to avoid looking at that damn road and the finish point that I can't even see. The music is still going, but I can barely hear it any more, all I can hear is the pounding of my heart, and a voice in my head. "You knew you wouldn't be able to do this. You knew you couldn't run a marathon. Why did you even try? 

All the while, this voice fights with thoughts of the people who love me, people who've sponsored me and want to see me succeed and above all, thoughts of my Grandfather who I'm doing this in memory of. As I start thinking about him, my brain makes the twistedly ironic connection between the vision of him, shuffling along slowly, unable to pick up his feet as the Parkinson's got worse and worse, and the sight of my own feet, barely leaving the tarmac now, with each step getting shorter and shorter, and the rest of my body just being dragged along for the ride like a sack of potatoes,

It starts to rain. There's still a mile to go, and the fact that at least I'm dry (the one last good thing left to me) is gone. Onwards I still go though, slowing right down to nearly 12 minutes a mile but not stopping, never stopping. If I stop, I will fail - and I'm not going to fail.

My actual route. It's not quite the same, is it?

"16 miles in 2 hours, 55 minutes...", says the computerised Endomondo lady in my headphones. The rain is still falling. It's getting colder and darker. I'm running down a hill, quite unlike Kate Bush, and at the bottom I can just make out a car sitting there with its lights on... Is it? Please, let it be... IT IS! My parents get out and start coming towards me, and I just start bawling my eyes out as I try to force the last few steps out of my legs, which by this point are locked into a position they're probably never coming out of.

"WAHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHAAAAAAA", I say to my mum, "I DON'T WANT TO... I DON'T KNOW WHY... I just can't...."  - she grabs my arm as I come to a stop and lean against her for support, as my dad runs back to the car to bring it as close as possible. The rain is still falling, and I know there are still 2 miles left to my ultimate target, but I don't care. There will be an 18 mile run one day, but that day isn't today. I try to do some stretches against the car, but my knee is in agony, and my parents have to hold me by both arms to help me so much as get into the car. I look down at my shirt and it's smeared with blood which has run in the rain, my trainers are caked in mud and my socks are soaked through with brown water.

Yes, I went there. It was time.

We go back to theirs and I have the most wonderful bath and cup of tea that I've ever experienced, and spend the rest of the day hobbling back and forth between the drinks fridge and the sofa.

Two days later, I post this on Twitter. Perhaps I will be able to do this Marathon thing, after all....

Next time: Things start to unravel in the final weeks, as I make my last preparations for the big day...

How (not) to Train for a Marathon (Part Five)

Previously on How (not) to Train for a Marathon: We learned about all the very yummy things you're not really supposed to put in your mouth whilst training, but will anyway because you feel like you deserve it. There was probably some actual sensible advice there too, if you looked very hard for it...


In the Long Run...

Way back in the mists of time, we talked about the marathon training plan and I glossed over what is arguably the most critical part (likely because the memories were still all too raw). Sufficient time has elapsed now since the last time I found curious red stains on the chest of my T-shirt, or hobbled into a Sainsbury's Local trussed up in lycra to look for something, anything, to make the sky stop spinning - so let's go back to:

A. Long Runs

These are the most important parts of your training programme because, without them, you will never understand just what you're letting yourself in for, meaning you're probably on a one-way trip to the back of an ambulance on race day. Many people who get into a marathon through the ballot get to the post-10k stage in long-run training and find that they just don't like it, they actually can't do it without getting injured, or that, you know what, it's cold and it's wet and Saturday Kitchen is on, and they really love that James Martin, and yeah never mind...

"Look, I made you Yorkies and everything!"

This is where it comes in VERY handy to have a charity counting on you, and people who've paid good money to watch you humiliate yourself in a stripy singlet and lycra meggings. As soon as you realise what's going to happen if you don't actually make yourself lace up those trainers and get out there and do it, it suddenly ceases to be optional. Another top tip is to post on Social Media when you're just about to go out for the long run - if you've professed your intention to run all the way to Abu Dhabi before lunch, it's kind of humiliating when your well-meaning friend posts a few hours later to ask "How did u get on hun?" and you're still sitting in your pants playing Candy Crush.

Of course, it's also a good way to get your Facebook friends/Twitter followers who find the whole idea of running unbelievably smug to hide you from their newsfeed/ unfollow you, and that's ok. You're only going to annoy them more and more up to race day anyway, and you can easily spot who they are, because they're the ones who don't answer "Yeah, I saw" to everything you tell them next time you meet up with them in person - meaning that you can easily remind them to unhide you after the event.

Similarly, a nice bragtweet or automated Endomondo Facebook post after your run is a good way to a) Shove your athletic prowess in everyone's face and tell them to suck it and b) get lots of admiring responses from the few people who do care, and if you're even 10% as narcissistic as me, that's actually a huge motivator.

So, these long runs then? What are they about, and how do you do them? Well, short of the obvious answer of "running the distance it says in your training plan by means of putting on shoes, leaving the house and placing one foot in front of the other for the necessary length of time", I'd say they're about:


- Getting used to pounding the pavement for literally hours on end, hopefully without losing the will to live

- Practising how much water and food you need for differing run lengths

- Getting used to getting up nice and early one day at the weekend and heading off to do something shit-scary for a few hours before coming home and watching Formula 1 whilst eating a fry-up (great practice for the big day itself.)


They're also good for finding new ways to distract your mind during these seemingly interminable hours with only your own thoughts for company - it can be very lonely out there, especially when most fellow runners (in London anyway) won't even deign to so much as tut patronisingly at you as they go past.

The best one I found was to mix up the routes as much as possible. From 0-10k, and on my short recovery runs, I found it easiest to just stick to various sections of a 10k loop that I'd been doing for years - from Surbiton down to Kingston along the river, carrying on towards Richmond when necessary, and upon the final glorious day when I realised I could do a full 10k again, turning left in Kingston, over the river and back down the other side to Hampton Court. Once you've started on this final part of the loop, though, there's no turning back, and it's flipping quiet and lonely over there, so you'd better be sure you mean it.

Bloody gorgeous, mind you. Which does help.

After a while though, I craved variety, and so I started inventing ever more elaborate routes, as you will learn from:

Selected highlights from my Long Run Diary (no, wait, come back... it's not as dull as it sounds)

Top Tip for winter training - plan how long your route ought to take you, and make sure you go out at least that amount of time before sunset plus another half hour to 45 minutes. If you're anything like me, you will fanny and fart about getting all your gear on to go out, do a leisurely warm up walk before you get going, stop to buy some water, adjust every gadget you've brought with you so they're all synchronised - and before you know it, you end up doing this...

December 30th

What I am supposed to do: 8k
What I actually do: 10k
How does it go? I decide to do my usual loop in reverse this time to mix it up a little, which means running down the brightly lit main road from Surbiton to Hampton Court first, while the light is still fine. Seems like a plan. On reaching Hampton Court Palace itself, the light is really starting to go, and there's a choice to be made - I can either turn back and run back the way I just came (sensible), or I can plough on regardless down the completely unlit, positively rural tow path from Hampton Court to Kingston and hope that I can cover the 3 miles in the 5 minutes of daylight that remain (less sensible.)

Needless to say, I plump for option 2. As I start down the path everything looks ok, the regal glow of Hampton Court's floodlighting guiding my way, but very quickly, I realise I can't actually see anything apart from the houses on the other side of the river. This is a bit of a problem but I figure that the faster I run, the quicker I can just get it over with, so off I go. When I plonk my foot into a giant pothole in the towpath filled with dirty water and god knows what else, I decide that I have to do something about this, so I get out my phone and use the pathetic built in torch to light up the ground for 5 feet in front of me as I go.

This sort of works, but I also discover that however much you want to make your body run fast in the pitch black, your brain has a kind of built-in "don't be a twat" feature which prevents you from really giving it your all. Which is probably just as well when part of the path is flooded, there are several fallen tree trunks blocking your way, and there's enough mud to keep the spa at Centerparcs stocked for months.

But, wait, there's an upside! Because I've been held back by my own, deeply hidden "sensible filter", when I finally make it back to civilisation and sight, I feel I have more to give, so off I go back across Kingston Bridge and home to Surbiton along the road, pounding that pavement and striding like a running colossus (albeit one who is still a little bit scared of the teenagers hanging out in the dark doing who knows what), and as a result I hit the 10k mark. I'm a runner again!

Final Stats: 6.23 miles in 1:08:13



January 26th

What I am supposed to do: 10 miles
What I actually do: 10 miles!

How does it go? 

The first of many milestones -at this point in the training plan we go from "60 minutes" or "80 minutes" to an actual distance. And because I've been running so slowly so far, this represents quite a leap up in distance - from 6.5 miles on Monday 20th to a nice round 10.

I'm crapping my pants on the day. In fact I'm crapping them all week, telling everyone I meet that I'm going to have to run 10 miles at the weekend, asking them for tips about where I should go and perform this epic feat, asking if anyone wants to come with me (they don't). To make matters worse, when I get up in the morning, I look out of the window to see that the apocalypse is apparently about to begin, which is nice of it.

Brand new trainers. Cheers.

So of course I do what any sensible person would do, and go out anyway, dressed in my usual cold-weather warm running gear, but with the addition of a standard, ultra-sweaty waterproof jacket. Off I head towards Hampton Court again, but this time carrying on past the palace in the other direction down the tow path, Westward (ho!) towards Molesey, Walton and Weybridge. The variety in the route is key, as your brain really needs stimulation when you keep on running these long slogs - and I'm almost pathetically excited to finally carry on beyond the A309 and see what's there, a bit like that time I stayed on the tube after Hammersmith to see what happened and I ended up in Rayners Lane.

It's a good job that the scenery is nice and that my mind is grateful for the change, because it takes my mind off the fact that it's been steadily drizzling the whole time I've been running, and that the path is not only full of puddles, but in some places I wave to hippos as I splash past, nearly losing my shoes in the process. But after the first few miles, I settle into a nice rhythm and gradually speed up as I head towards my goal and the path becomes a little firmer, flying along feeling invincible (must be the roast and apple crumble from last night.)

I finally arrive at Weybridge train station, exactly 10 miles and cool-down walk distance away from my flat in Surbiton, buy my ticket home, text my mate Mark to brag a bit (he still hasn't replied), head down to the platform and do ostentatious stretching for a few minutes, hoping someone will come and ask me what I've been doing, then buy a cup of tea from the lady at the kiosk just to have someone to talk to.

"Cold out there, isn't it, love?", she says.

"Yes, it is, although I'm more wet than anything, I JUST RAN HERE FROM SURBITON YOU KNOW..."

"£1.50 please, " she replies, disappointingly.

Final Stats: 10.01 miles in 1:49:02


February 9th

What I am supposed to do: 12 miles
What I actually do: 12 bloody miles!

How does it go? 

We should probably take a moment to enjoy my outfit
before we go into it too deeply...

Badly. Horribly. I start out going in the other direction, towards Kingston, and I'm aiming for Hammersmith, which I've worked out is almost 12 miles along the river, past Richmond and Kew.

But there's a problem, those leg muscles which propelled me to such success last time out are feeling empty, drained, in that way your arms do when you try to carry too much shopping home from Tesco - and my motivation, so high after my apple crumble fuelled success, has completely gone. I trudge, slowly and completely ungracefully down to Kingston and out the other side, doing 11:30+ miles. Am I sick? Shall I stop?

Suddenly, I turn a corner at the 4 mile mark, and I'm into uncharted territory. Ham House comes up on my right, the legendary Eel Pie Island (former home to The Who's studio) is on my left, and then there's Syon House across the river. Before I know it, I'm putting in miles at 10:15, flying along and enjoying being out there and alive. Things start to get a bit tough after 10 miles, but then I think "ahh, two miles, that's nothing", and blot everything else out as I force my legs to keep on going.

I come to a halt, lungs burning and legs on auto-pilot by now,  as my Endomondo tells me over the sounds of Royksopp's "49 Percent" that I have reached my goal. 12 whole miles. I have a stretch against a pretty tree, look around to see if anyone is impressed by me, spot only a man in an anorak taking pictures of birds, and then start sauntering off to the tube station, which unfortunately is a further mile away from where I've stopped. At least it's a nice day and a pleasant walk.

When I get home, I have a read on the internet (they have everything, you know) about finding the first few miles of a long run very difficult, and discover that it's a well-known phenomenon, and that I can expect to have this every time from here on out. Jolly good.

Final Stats: 12.03 miles in 2:11:49


February 14th

What I am supposed to do: 14 miles
What I actually do: 14 miles, but God knows how

How does it go?

It goes, just about. I decide that it's not a good idea to have any part of this run be on the boring, unmotivating paths I've trodden a hundred times before, so I spend hours using a website to devise a cunning route that I'll enjoy running all of - taking the train to Putney Bridge, starting off in Wandsworth and then heading over the bridge of the same name, before turning left and coming back along the other side, through Fulham (past the almighty Craven Cottage), and down to Hammersmith. Then I add on a massive loop all the way down to Chiswick, where a man in a woolen waistcoat is walking a cat on a lead, over Kew Bridge and back again down the other other side through Mortlake and Barnes, before ending up back in Hammersmith (Apparently I really do love that place.)

If there's one thing I've reminded myself by writing this blog, it's that London is a wonderful place.

It's mostly ok, but I slow down a whole minute per mile over the last four miles, and really start to feel it around 12 miles, as I slog through Barnes, for the first time in this whole process thinking that I might have to give up. But I don't give up - there are people out there with Parkinson's counting on me to raise them some money, and not only that, but at a critical point, "Fighting Fit" by Gene comes on shuffle and the lyrics start speaking to me in ways that they probably weren't intended to:

I can't take it 
Too much time's been wasted
So come and get my plateful
I am fighting fit and able
...
I've tasted life and I'm ready

Suddenly feeling inspired, I push myself to finish, dragging myself over Hammersmith Bridge towards the point where I can finally say I made the imaginary finish line and end this ordeal.

"Are you alright?", says a guy coming the other way across the bridge, as I push myself beyond the point that I ever thought possible - and I suddenly realise, as the latest song fades out on my iPod, that the sound like a distressed sealion protecting its young, which I've been ignoring for the last 15 minutes, is me breathing. It's a tad worrying, but not as much as when I finally stop and end up slumped against the wall of the nearest church, trying to stretch out a bit in the graveyard, but basically unable to stand up. I'm dizzy, I think I'm going to vomit, and bending my right leg makes my knee excruciatingly painful, which proves to be even more of an issue when it turns out that getting up and down steps is nigh on impossible.

Which makes it a bit difficult to get back on the tube and go home.

Still, at least there's another lovely tree to check out.

Final Stats: 14.02 miles in 2:35:32. And a lovely dose of Illotibial Band Syndrome.


Next time: Practice races, and really, really, really, long runs.

How (not) to Train for a Marathon (Part Four)

Last time: We talked about why you should probably not ignore that stabbing pain in your heel, why the Mongolian Yaks are probably doing just fine without you, and we tried to forget a picture of me in a tiny red singlet...


What (not) to Eat

I have a friend, let's call him Allan Jaymes, who insists on eating flax seeds, hemp and dolphin's tears at every meal in the run up to a race, in order to squeeze every last piece of possible goodness into his body. I have another friend, let's call him me, who pretty much lived off pizza, pasta, bread and Jaffa Cakes for most of his marathon training period and managed to get through it. I'd say somewhere in the middle probably lies the correct approach... Nobody is suggesting that you stuff your face with whatever you feel like, because you are very likely not to get the nutrients you need during this extremely demanding time for your body. But, come on, you can allow yourself the odd treat still.

"We don't actually have tears, you know..."
UP YOURS, PEDANTIC DOLPHIN!

Eating advice can largely be divided into 4 categories, so let's take advantage of that possibility:

1. Before a run

Conventional wisdom suggests you carb load the night before a big run - and most people end up with a Big Old Bowl Of Pasta, which certainly works well, although in some instances it can just massively bloat you out so that you feel like you're running with an inflatable beach ball down your shirt, so take care.

The 'BOBOP' approach worked pretty well for me, until the night before my first 10 mile run - I'd planned to do the same as usual but ended up being unexpectedly invited for dinner at my sister's house (funnily enough, not the one who kept disagreeing with me in the last part...), whereupon I was presented with a gigantic roast dinner with all the trimmings and then a lovely apple crumble for pudding. I absolutely FLEW along the next morning, feeling like Superman, and after that decided that it apparently didn't really matter that much what I ate.

As for the day of a long run, I wouldn't eat much in the couple of hours beforehand - perhaps a banana or some oat biscuits in the morning before you head off on the train, but I mostly find that I'm good to get up and run any time before lunch without any breakfast. And (Top Tip) don't eat two massive pitta breads full of sliced banana 30 minutes before you start running unless you want to find out what it's like to be a penguin feeding its young for the duration of your workout...

A penguin, yesterday, as it would like to be remembered.
Majestic, stoic. Un-vomiting.

The week before the marathon is generally known as the 'Carb Loading' phase, when you're supposed to up your ratio of carbs to protein way beyond what it has been during training - and it was therefore probably quite lucky that I spent it in Denmark, land of all the good bread. I must admit, though, that it became a struggle at points to eat quite as many carbs as were suggested, and when I was loading my plate up with yet another spoonful of potatoes that I didn't want one lunchtime at the work canteen, I did really wonder if it was worth it.


2. During a Run

Consuming anything more nutritious than water during a run is something you never really think about until you start training for something longer than a 10k race, so I must admit I was at a bit of a loss to know where to start. Fortunately, a Google Search whose results I read extremely selectively suggested that Jelly Babies were a good thing, so I started out by taking a small bag with a few of those in it - until I realised that they were annoyingly fiddly and that I kept on losing them on the ground as I tried to feed myself on the go, which was frankly far too traumatic to continue with.

"It's ok... you go on... save yourself... I'll be o..." SPLAT... NOOOO!

Fortunately, soon after this, I noticed that my local pound shop had a special offer on Dextro Energy tablets (they were only a pound!) and remembering these from the 1990s, I decided to give them a go. They're pretty good, actually - eating one every half an hour or so during a run gave my motivation a definite pep talk and I ended up just using these pretty much all the time up until about 6 weeks before the Marathon. The problem with them is that they're very powdery and crumbly, and the problem with running is that it makes you breathe in quite sharply, quite a lot, often at the same time as you're trying to put something nutritious in your mouth. One disastrous choking incident later, I decided that these would be reserved for walking moments only.

By this time, I'd joined the UKRunchat community and discovered that (unlike what I suggested last time) Twitter could indeed be used to impart or receive useful information, and the information I got on this occasion suggested that Energy Gels were the only way to go for a serious runner. Vaguely remembering that I had one in a goody bag from my last race, I decided it was time to give it a try, so opened it up at mile 4 of a 12 miler, and tried to drink it, only to discover that it had the consistency and taste of a bag of Haribo that had been left in a car parked in direct sunlight for a month. Retching and coughing, I managed to force it down like a child eating its greens (I may even have held my nose), and washed it down with tons of water, but pretty much decided that Energy Gels were NOT for me.

That was until I was halfway through the Surrey Half Marathon and they handed us out some SIS gels, which at first I was tempted to fling into the nearest canal, but ended up trying, being able to drink/eat without bringing last night's dinner back up, and becoming a convert of. SIS. Science in Sport. That's their website. How about you go and click on it to make my dreams of endorsement deals a reality... "SIS Energy Gels - They don't make you gag as badly as the other brands."

Of course, after a certain distance, you start needing real food, and since there's only so much you can carry with you, you either need to start taking a backpack with supplies in it, or arranging for people to come and meet you at various points along the way to hold out bananas, chocolate milk, energy drinks and replacement bottles of water for you to grab, elite-athlete style. I find parents particularly useful for this kind of stuff, as your back-up people need to love you enough to have the patience to stand waiting in the drizzle in the middle of a forest in France, while you get lost in a housing estate and delay your arrival at the checkpoint by 30 minutes.

Oh, yeah, this may be obvious, but it's something I've neglected to mention - please take plenty of water out with you. I find 750ml will do me for a maximum of 2 hours' running, and after that I start to slow down and my urine, the next time there is any, starts to resemble John Smith's instead of Stella. The idea of not taking water on any kind of run with me is completely, unthinkably daft - and I mention this because I have a friend called Tom Smith.

I'm naming and shaming Tom Smith because he goes out for 13-mile runs in the sun and doesn't bother taking any water, or anything else for that matter, then comes back and doesn't stretch and heads to the pub for a liquid dinner when he's done. Don't be a Tom Smith. The fact that he's still alive is a great mystery (and slight annoyance) to me, to be honest. I'm not annoyed that he continues to live, more that whatever he does he seems to be able to carry on running, when I get injured by so much as looking at a pair of shoes for too long.


3. After a Run

This is just as important as before the run, only now you have different requirements - you'll still crave carbs and you should definitely have some, but focus number 1 is now on loading up on Protein and repairing those muscles as soon as possible. Focus number 2 is all the salt you just lost, which needs replacing as well.

For that excuse, I managed to convince my partner Karin that she should definitely cook me a massive fry-up after every long training run, and it worked, too. Salt and protein, massive check.

I'm not *entirely* convinced about what Allan Jaymes would have to say about the ridiculous quantities of fat contained in every protein refill meal like this, in fact, no I'm sure he would be explaining to me how if I ate rainbow seeds and otter testicles it would be far better, but to be honest I'm all for listening to what your body tells you at these times. And mine tells me MEAT. And, to a lesser, extent, EGGS.

Oh, and start the whole process off by grabbing a bottle of chocolate milk as soon as you stop running and get it down your neck, so you can rehydrate and protein-ify immediately.

This is all assuming that you can actually force anything down, after any particularly long and hard sessions you'll probably feel like you're about to throw up permanently for several hours - once you've stopped crying for long enough to notice, anyway. Enjoy!

"I... can't.... do this... any more..."

In the slightly longer term, I found that isotonic energy drinks (whose name I won't mention because of their ridiculous product placement in the Marathon training plan) were good to drink every so often over the next couple of days, to replace the lost electrolytes (or maybe I've just swallowed their marketing BS hook, line and sinker...)

And once I was running more than 10 miles every weekend, my normal lunch of a couple of slices of ham in a pitta bread wasn't going to cut it any more, so door-stop sandwiches containing 2 hot pan-fried turkey steaks became my ultimate craving and probably the reason that I made it to the finish line at any time in the last month of training. That and ridiculous, stubborn-as-hell competitiveness, anyway.


Losing Weight

Running is an excellent way to lose weight, right? Well, maybe over shorter distances, but training for a marathon seems to me to be about as good a way to lose weight as an all-inclusive holiday to Las Vegas.

This section is brought to you by "Pictures of some of the many things I ate during my marathon training
 because I figured I was doing so much running that I couldn't possibly put on weight..."

When I trained for a 10k, the physical and mental demands weren't quite so high, and in fact I started it as a way to lose weight in the first place, so I was carefully counting calories, found that the shorter runs would offset nicely my urges to eat more than I otherwise would have done, and watched the pounds fall off nice and easily.

One of the things I very quickly realised, after a couple of mornings of dizzy spells, is that proper marathon training and attempting to limit your calorie intake isn't the best idea in the world. I therefore made the decision that I needed to "listen to my body" (aka stop listening to any sense and reason) and just eat whatever I felt I needed.

Mmmmm....

As you can imagine, as well as all the sensible things which I told you above that you need to eat, my body (actually, I suspect it was the 8-year old inside my brain) decided that vast quantities of refined sugar, fat and salt were exactly what my body needed.

The Dead Hippie burger at London's Meat Market. Drooooooool....

Did this cause any problems with training? I'd say that's debatable. At some point we'll actually get to the end of this mammoth story and you will find out how I did on the day, from which you can make up your own mind.

Did it cause any longer-lasting effects? I'd say photographic evidence, the reading on my scales and 2 additional trouser sizes would suggest that, yes, if you give into the temptation to eat whatever the heck you want during intense periods of training, then as soon as you stop running, you are in for a whooooole lot of weight gain. Just think how much you've been fuelling yourself for all those months. Do you think your body or your brain is going to be happy now to go back to a bowl of porridge, a sandwich and an M&S Fuller Longer ready meal?

That's enough pictures of beige food now, James...


Next time: The Long Runs... (Luckily, "the runs" not involved...)