After the Rottnest half last Sunday I entered the 2 week period all runners detest, the ‘taper.‘ As I have mentioned before as runners we like to run, when we want and normally as may times as we want. This is called ‘training’ and depending on your goals this can mean you get to run a lot. Running a lot is good, assuming of course you avoid the ‘I’ word ! (I’ll type it once but that’s it… injury. I even hate typing that word.)

At the end of a training block we are then faced with a 2-3 week taper period where we cut back on running to allow our weary legs to recover and better prepare for the goal race. It all sounds good to the untrained runner, they would think that after an intensive training block you’d be ready for some ‘downtime’. In theory of course you would think so but once we take our foot of the gas, so to speak, along comes ‘self doubt’ and his friends ‘niggles’,  ‘I’m coming down with something’ and the worse of the lot ‘weight gain’.  These four make the last 2 weeks pre-race a living hell for most runners.

Let’s start with the first one, ‘self doubt‘. I know I continually talk about trust in your training but even typing this I have a 5k race tomorrow at the Perth world Masters  ( http://www.perth2016.com ) and because I have been on vacation for a week I am wondering if I can still run 5k. ! Ridiculous I know but after a day resting my old mate ‘self doubt’ has got to work. I’m lucky at the moment because after self doubt along comes ‘niggles’.

‘Niggles‘ is a bad one because after weeks of pushing yourself without the faintest thought of any issues all of a sudden every tendon and muscle in your legs, and/or anywhere in your body really, is starting to feel tight. Your hammy , which has been made of steel for months, now feels about to break in two if you move anywhere fast. Ankles and ITB’s start to feel they are about to implode and you are certain it’s all over.

Unfortunately it gets worse when ‘I’m coming down with something’ pops along and you are by now just about suicidal. How is it every single person you come into contact with has a cold and insists on sneezing on you,  or in your vicinity ?  The train journey is like sharing a carriage with the walking dead, everybody it seems has one purpose in life and that is to infect you.

Finally, after negotiating ‘self doubt, niggles’ and ‘I‘m coming down with something along comes’ the worst of the lot ‘weight gain’. After working so hard to get down to your running weight, even racing weight, you now have 2 weeks where the appetite is still there and thinks you’re running your training distances. Alas you have halved your distance and thus all of a sudden you feel you look like ‘Jabba the Hutt’! Of course it gets worse as the last few days pre-marathon you have to carbo-load. What idiot thought of this ? When you are already stressing over the smallest morsal of food you are now forced to stuff yourself silly for three days. How can this possibly help unless the course is downhill and the added weight is useful with gravity as a co-pilot?

We are a fragile lot runners and these four serve to make the 2-3 week taper a living hell. I know runners who cannot handle the taper and train right up to the event just to avoid the whole process. For an ultra there may be something in this. I wouldn’t recommend training as hard but if you really need to run there could be the option to train slower and ‘recover‘ while running. Unfortunately the carbo-loading is not to be avoided for any distance from the marathon up. Sorry guys but sometimes you just go to eat the odd muffin or two.

So I’m sitting here with my mate ‘self doubt‘ on my shoulder and I’m sure his three friends are just around the corner , waiting to pounce. You’d have thought after 40 marathons and 16 ultra-marathons I’d be ready for them, unfortunately not.  Counting down the days to the World Masters Marathon because I love racing but also because after the marathon I can get back to what I love to do, run, and run a lot.. (maybe even add in a stack of pancakes or two because I can…)

Note: I actually outdid myself this time by adding extra pressure agreeing to a photoshoot for the local Sunday newspaper. So add ‘Pressure‘ to the four running nightmares. Wouldn’t have it any other way.

Running can be a lifetime commitment and in my opinion of course should be. If you can avoid injury and maintain the passion there is no need to ever stop running. Discussing this topic with my friend Dan he raised a good point that company is another factor that can prolong your running career.

Running with friends encourages participation, if only for the banter afterwards over pancakes.  In sunny Perth I have running friends who I have met over the years and together we formed the St. Georges Terrace Running Club. (We all work on St. Georges Terrace in Perth hence the name)  This entailed purchasing some great running tops (see below) which we actually had professionally designed and made. As a group run together most lunchtimes, encourage each other, offer advice and race together.

Over the last 8 years I have met so many great runners who have become good friends and this week in Rottnest I holidayed with my friends Jon, Dan and Paul and their families; all people I have met through our love of running. So this bond keeps you running as before long you’ll find most of your friends are runners and you need to run to be able to add to the conversations, which invariably are about a new race to enter or current running goals etc.

As well as the St. Georges Terrace Club I am also a member of the West Australian Marathon Club. ( http://www.wamc.org.au ) (WAMC) and this is another source of good friends who I race against but also  share the same love of all things running. The WAMC put on around 30 events a year ranging from 4k unto 64k and each one is run and organised by volunteers.

Without these friends I would have found it difficult to maintain the passion as, although I enjoy some ‘Kev time‘  running alone , I also enjoy the banter running with a group. So I encourage all runners to seek out like minded people and spend time running with them. It will be a major factor in the length of your running career as when these runners become your friends spending time with them will encourage you to lace up the trainers.

It also helps at the end of the run as no one likes eating pancakes alone in the cafe.

Running has become more and more popular not seen since the days of the Sony Walkman revolution of the early eighties when for the first time you could run with music. (To the young generation amongst us we used a  thing called a ‘tape’, analog not digital music. ) People new to running inevitably join a running club or run with more experienced friends and before they know it they’ve signed up for their first race. This is a good thing as I believe you never push yourself as much as when the competitive juices start to flow with a racing bib on your chest. One thing leads to another and before too long you’ve entered your first half or full marathon.

Invariably this distance is conquered and you’ve informed all your friends via Facebook and normally your work colleagues via daily updates on your progress. The problem arises though when the marathon doesn’t seem to cut it for kudos like it use to. In the office there seems to be quite a few marathoners and worse most are faster than you. You start to get compared to John in accounts who ran sub3 or even Sheila in Purchasing who ran has ran 10 marathons while juggling family commitments and a busy career. So these days to get some real kudos it’s time to take this running to the next level, the ultra-marathon.

The ultra has the added benefit of the slower you run the more kudos you get where as the marathon is these days about not only completing it but also setting a good time. Non runners are getting use to people telling them they’ve ran a marathon and have responded asking how long they took. Again they are wise to what they consider a good time and if you reply ‘4 hours’ they look at you with pity an asked ‘what went wrong’? Not so with the ultra-marathon. Because it is still not mainstream a non runner has no idea what a good or bad time is for an ultra and even if they did the distance can be varied to confuse them. Remember an ultra is anything longer than a marathon distance, it can be 42.3k upwards.

The ultra gets even better, they tend to be in far flung locations and have pretty serious titles, again earning kudos points. How good does an ‘ultra-marathon in Death Valley‘ sound. Death valley, c’mon, if that doesn’t get serious kudos around the drink fountain nothing will. Ok, Sheila from Purchasing has ran 10 marathons but she’s never ran an ultra-marathon in Death Valley. They have no idea where Death Valley is or even what an ultra-marathon is but who cares, you are now the running god in the office, someone who wouldn’t waste their time with silly ‘girl distance’ like marathons. The universe is realigned and you can ‘strut’ around the office yet gain.

The only downside to this new running adventure is the office folk then look to you for more and more longer distances and/or exotic locations. After your first ultra you can never repeat that distance as non-runners , although initially impressed , soon become impervious to distance running unless there is a serious upgrade or the location adds some spice. e.g. The Marathon Des Sable ( http://www.marathondessables.com/en/), the toughest footrace on Earth. ! ( ..On Earth? are they saying there’s a tougher footrace not on earth, the Moon 100k maybe? Now that would be worth talking about !??)

A word of warning of course you may come across the non runner who knows a thing or two about ultra-running and while you strut around the office sprouting off about a 100k race on the local trails,  basking in the adulation of the finance department,  they walk past and grunt it was ‘no Marathon Des Sables’. Instantly your credibility is destroyed and you sneak off back to your desk plotting your next adventure.

So to some up an ultra marathon may fill the void in the office kudos states. It has the benefit of still being relatively hardcore, in the view of the uneducated, allows you to focus on distance and not time (to counter that nasty sub3 runner in Accounts) and even allows you to slow down and take your time as the longer you take will actually earn more brownie points.  I won’t even start to mention the extra equipment you get to buy and use on ultra-marathons. The wardrobe options are endless and include camelbacks, gators, water belts and my mate Mark’s favourite a cappuccino machine. ! (He doesn’t actually bring along a cappuccino machine but he wore a water belt once that had so many accessories he might as well have!)  This can become more of a hindrance than a help as I always remember feeling my mate TB’s camelback at the end of the 6 inch ultra-marathon ( http://www.6inchtrailmarathon.com ) and it must have weighted 10k; and that was at the END of the race not the beginning !!

The 6 inch is a good example of the small step up needed from the marathon distance. Remember anything longer than a marathon is classed an ultra. The 6 inch is 46k (assuming you don’t get lost, which I have on a number of occasions!), so for that extra 4k you get to shoot down Sheila in Purchasing as you’ve ran an ultra-marathon and as everybody knows so much harder than the silly marathon…

So lookout Sheila,  we’re coming for you ?

Everybody talks about the runners high, this sense of euphoria one experiences when they cross the line at a major goal event. I’ve discussed what I feel it is, a sudden overwhelming sense of relief, or release,  after you achieve something after putting yourself either under pressure or into the ‘pain box’. Anyway, after this ‘runners high’ you can sometimes come a cropper and experience what I term the ‘runners low’.

This feeling is the same in all sports and happens after achieving something you have worked so hard to do. There’s a classic scene (there are so many classic scenes in this movie of course.) in ‘Chariots of Fire’ when Harold Abrahams has just won the 100m gold and everybody else is celebrating while Harold himself is reserved and alone in the changing rooms. What Abrahams is struggling to come to terms with is success after so many years working towards that one 10 second race. All of a sudden he has no purpose, no target, no reason to do what he has been doing for so long. It must be daunting ?

The same can be true for us recreational marathon runners, albeit probably not as severe. Once we have completed the marathon and achieved the ‘runners high’ the next day all of sudden we have no goal. No reason to put in that early morning 5am start, no reason to double up or run a threshold until your lungs feel they are about to explode. There is no purpose after so many months of having something to achieve, a target to overcome. This feeling , coupled with the emotions of the previous few days of finishing a marathon, makes the runners high seem so long ago.

There is hope though and it as easy as getting on the internet and searching for the next goal, the next target, the next reason to structure a long term plan. Before you know it you’ve signed up for another race and it’s back on. Another phase begins towards another goal race which will probably have a target finish time just that little bit quicker than the previous race. Let’s face it we don’t do all this to slow down !

So my advice is to get back on the horse (so to speak, if you actually get on a horse you’ll probably get disqualified, remember this is a running blog!) and set yourself your next goal. It works for me, no off season, the next race is normally a few months away at worst but I know it’s there for me, waiting. Admittedly after a marathon I do feel low for a few days because I love to run marathons and the feeling you get when you finish one is why we do what we do. It has never let me down in 40 runs so far . (and the 16 ultra-marathons have also delivered of course)

Remember we are runners, we need a goal, something to make those 5am alarm calls worthwhile. What else is there to do at 5am in the morning anyway?

While I’m on holiday I like to try and read or,  even reread,  running books. Remember as a running tragic if I’m not running I like to read about running. There are so many good authors out there who have written so many good books it would be silly not to. Even now I’ve only brought 3 running books with me and I may need to call my Wife who is coming out Monday to bring a few more as I’ll probably finish these (they are all rereads actually) by the end of the weekend.

Of course my staple diet is Matt Fitzgerald and his ’80/20 Running’ . This has become my bible of late as I step up my training distance to over 100miles (160k) a week. By making sure 80% of this volume is low intensity I am able to sustain this without any fatigue issues. As Matt mentions in his book there are a few extra rules, small print, to his 80/20 Running blueprint.

He comments that the 80%/20% split is a guideline and not to follow religiously. It is more of a moving target and serves as a best case rather than a ‘set in stone’ target. Rather it is there to make sure you don’t over compensate either way e.g. 100/0 , 30/70 or 50/50. ‘The ideal balance of training intensities is a narrow range rather than a precise ratio’ . With periodization you may move the ratio more to the easy as you build up your base and just pre-race this ratio may change as you run more race-pace runs Once you have raced you may taper,  when again the shift is more to the 80% slower runs.

Matt also mentions training cycles and puts twenty-four weeks as probably the maximum the body , and mind, can sustain to absorb increased training loads. Looking ay my training lately I’m probably 16 weeks into a  heightened training program so it looks like I may have timed it pretty will with two weeks left pre-Masters Marathon.

Other rules Matt describes are topics I have touched on in previous posts and all make good sense. Build up your weekly average slowly and he even mentions no more than an average increase of 10 miles a week per year. I personally think this is far too conservative i.e. if your average weekly mileage was 20 miles one year I can see no reason why, if you were to commit to running,  and follow all the training rules you could not increase to any distance , within reason of course.  Limiting yourself to 30 miles a week average seems too restrictive. Sorry Matt it looks like you’re not perfect, or I’m wrong. (which has happened before funnily enough.)

Matt also describes the hard/easy principle where you should not have two hard training sessions in a row. As I described in a previous post the recovery run after a hard session is as good, if not better,  than the original hard run because you are running on fatigued legs. Thus even though it is a recovery run you are still preforming some good and increasing fitness, how good is that?

His fourth rule describes the tried and tested workouts which he splits into low intensity runs , these include the recovery runs, foundation runs and long runs. Next is the moderate intensity which include the fast finish runs (as the name suggests making the last few kilometres your fastest, and one of my favorite runs due to training with Tony Smith !!! AKA the T-train) . Next are the Tempo run, Cruise intervals and long runs with speed play. Finally is the high intensity runs which include speed play (fartlek), hill repetitions, short intervals or long intervals and mixed intervals. So many ways to have so much fun.

Finally Matt mentions Step Cycles where the running load is varied week to week , making each week slightly more challenging than the preceding, typically these adjustments are by increasing or decreasing volume. His last rule describes training progressively as you move towards your goal race. If it is a 5k your training should culminate with training sessions done at or near 5k pace. Likewise for a half you would sharpen up with a few workouts that closely simulate  the endurance and intensity demands of that specific distance.

All these rules make sense and have certainly helped me rediscover some racing form of late. I would highly recommend you search out any Matt Fitzgerald  ( http://mattfitzgerald.org/ ) literature, he knows what he is taking about.

Booked on there 3pm ferry to sunny Rottnest for the inaugural half marathon on Sunday. I then have a week on the island with my coach Dan ‘I have a plan’ Macey. (and the family of course, its not all about running)

Check out the Island on the their website, inspiring. ( http://www.rottnestisland.com )

Excited to get a holiday but tinged with a sad feeling knowing I won’t be running my favourite marathon on Sunday. Two weeks to the World Masters is just too close to do both justice and Rottnest will be here next year, the World Masters is a once in a lifetime, in Perth anyway.  It will be so surreal not running the marathon this year. As I have mentioned before consistency is a key to improvement and this even goes to entering the same events each year. This would have been my 9th Rottnest on the bounce, to go with my 8 City to Surf marathons and 10 Perth marathons. I am a creature of habit and not doing Rottnest will be a big ask. Even now while typing this I’m thinking could I do both and treat Rotto’ as a training run with a medal at the end. The answer is of course no but it doesn’t stop you asking the question.

Running marathons is what I do and the reason behind all the hard work, early mornings and time in the ‘pain box’.  When you finish your marathon and you achieve your target it is so worth it. The ‘runners high‘ is real and on a number of occasions I have experienced it. Comrades in 2010 when I ran a 7hrs22mins and got a silver medal (awards for running the 89k course quicker than 7hrs30mins) , City to Surf this year and last when I ran times I though beyond me and finished top 5 on both occasions, and Perth 2013.

You don’t have to achieve PB’s to get that feeling. In Bunbury 2012 I went into the marathon under done due to a nasty calf knot and set off confident of an easy sub3. I went through halfway in 1hr28mins and thought to myself ‘I’m in trouble here’, needless to say the next 21k I was watching my average pace creep up and it was touch and go right up to the last 1-2k, I eventually made it in 2hrs59mins and 20+seconds. Man that felt good. After putting myself under pressure from the halfway mark I was under the pump the whole second half and mentally it was a real struggle. That feeling of seeing the finish line will go with me to the grave.

So what really is a runners high ? To me is it a overwhelming feeling of relief when you achieve something that really is so hard you need to push your mind and body to breaking point. You don’t get a runners high jogging in to the finish line 30 minutes over your best time, you get it when you have pushed yourself to the limit, drawn a line in the sand and then step over it. When you cross that line there is a wave of emotions that wash over you and on a few occasions I have been brought to tears of joy. It’s a funny sport when you end up crying tears of joy when you finish. Not many golfers experience that, more like tears of frustration. (Being a Fremantle Docker AFL supporter I have also experienced tears of frustration of course, so I can understand what you Golfers go though trust me!)

Is it addictive, hell yeah ! It is still achievable, I think so. You may not get PB’s as you get older but you can always push yourself harder and further, maybe this is why Ultra-Running is becoming so popular. It’s a double whammy, as I mentioned before you get to eat as much as you want while ‘racing’ and if you run long enough I’m sure you get the runners high at the end. You’d want to anyway.

As I come to the end of this intense block of training I must admit to looking forward to the odd rest day. For the last 12 weeks I think I’ve had 3 days of not running. One was after the City to Surf marathon (call me weak!) and the other two was my attempt at a taper for the Fremantle half. On top of that I’ve been running twice a day for the most part and have ran 14 times a week on a number of occasion recently.

This intense training is working though as I’ve ran a 5k, 10k and half PB in that time, something I considered beyond me as I move into my 5th decade. (does that sound better or worse than 50?)  My mate Jon , I mention him a lot, has started to compare me to Thelma and Louise in the cliff top scene where they are about to drive off the edge. Always the optimist is Jon. He feels that with the intensity and distance of this training block the only output is the ‘I’ word. (injury for the less informed) He’s probably got a good point and I’m not saying that won’t happen.

So many runners give it away because of the constant stream of injuries. They can occur when you least expect them. My friend Mike got second degree burns when he was getting a massage and they put a heat pack on his calf. He was asked to call out if it got too hot but in typical ‘man mode’ Mike just lay there while his skin started to burn. He did admit it was a tad uncomfortable afterwards. another one of friend Gareth often says running is something he does between injuries. I’ve mentioned that before in a post but it’s worth repeating.

So will a rest day cure all these ills and save you from the ‘I’ word, it probably won’t do any harm. I personally prefer a recovery run to complete rest because I still get to run. I must admit though todays second run was into a stiff headwind and I was glad to finish. It didn’t feel like a recovery run I had planned, I was just plain knackered  at the end.  In this situation I am a big believer in listening to your body, if you have ‘niggles’ be careful. These can easily turn into ‘strain’, ‘fractures’ or even ‘breaks’. This means more time out of the game so sometimes doing nothing is the best thing to do, as well as a trip to your local health care professional for some advice and/or remedial work. Today I was physically tired but the legs feel ok, no niggles to speak off, so tomorrow it’ll probably be back up at 5am for my pre-work 10k and then something light and easy for lunch, maybe a 12k trail loop in Kings Park. You need to remember, I’m getting on, I’ll have plenty of time to rest in my box…..

As you’ll know from previous posts I am a Strava ( www.strava.com ) junkie and need to record every run. In fact I reckon this year I’ve ran over 340 times, for 4,471km’s (thanks Strava) and only once did I not record it when my battery died. I was ‘mad as a cut snake’ when that happened and did not enjoy the run at all.  How did this happen ? I’m not saying this is a bad thing as I love recounting previous runs and the way Garmin keeps track of EVERYTHING allows some good data analysis. (if that floats your boat of course?)

There are better software apps available however (Training peaks is one) as I still feel Strava is more cycling focused, and that hurts but for what I need it does the job. I even pay for the premium service which really adds little value but it is the one and only app I use daily,  so I feel I should contribute. Probably the best $90 I spend really given the amount of time I spend using it.

There is a downside to the Garmin and Strava world of course, you lose the ability to surprise yourself and run a massive PB or a time you thought beyond you. These days , thanks to blogs like this I suppose, you are taught to ‘trust your training’ but also set realistic and achievable goals. This is mainly to protect you from sprinting the first 10k of a marathon, because you can, and crawling home a broken runner who never returns to the game. In the Garmin world you are reminded every kilometre of your current pace, average pace, time, distance, temperature, heart rate, direction and probably the average rainfall of the Amazon rainforest in April, with the aid of widgets you can now download onto the watch.  What this does do is restrict you to a predetermined finishing time as you will only break free of the chains you have set yourself when you know you will not implode. This may be from 35k in the marathon or 17k in a half. A distance when you know your training has done the job and you can just ‘go for it with gay abandon’. Imagine though that the race was the race of your life and everything had come together so much better than you could have ever imagined. You were on track for a 20 minute PB if you ditched the watch and just ran on feel.

This goes against most coaches and 90%+ of the running community. You need realistic goals to protect yourself but these goals eventually become chains that restrict you to a certain finish time. Are the days of massive PB’s then gone ? I would say for the experienced runner they probably are. I have lowered my marathon time from high 3hour range to the high 2hr range in 40 marathons. Each time chipping away at a previous PB as I work harder and run more but also become a more experienced runner who has become accustomed  to the marathon distance. In those 40 marathons I have only hit the wall twice, on my first marathon and marathon number 37. Both for good reasons, the other 38 marathons have been ran, give or take 5-10 minutes, to a time I had targeted pre-race. Was there the opportunity somewhere in those 38 marathons to run a ‘fantastic time’ and achieve a quantum leap in my marathon time. We’ll never know.

I did run one marathon in 2010 without a watch, my battery had died on the line and I ran a 3hrs3minutes when I was in sub 3 pace. From the moment my watch died on the line my race was over. Mentally finished, the opportunity to run on feel vanished with my confidence. After this I ran with two watches for many marathons and have only just recently started to trust one Garmin.

So have the surprise element been taken away in the technology focused, GPS world we live in. I’m afraid so. Would I have it any other way, hell no, pass me my iPhone and no one gets hurt……

I ran this morning with my good friend Mark Lee, who is considerably faster than me. It was meant to be a recovery run but as we set off at quicker than 4:30min/k I knew I was in for a ‘fast recovery’. Whenever I run with Mark it is a challenge for two reasons, first he runs fast all the time and second his banter is as quick and you need to be switched on to keep up on both counts. ! Mark has his own Football Coaching business, is 20 years my junior and fit as a ‘butchers dog’. He is so passionate about everything he does and it is always a pleasure, as well as a challenge, to run with him. This morning I met him outside Yelo at 5:15am as we (well I) had decided that after our ‘recovery run’ we’d reward ourselves with the best muffin and coffee in the Southern Hemisphere. (Probably both hemispheres but I know I’d upset too many Italians)

Anyway as expected the 10k was quick and the banter constant. (No one told me they moved Valencia to Spain, it was Italian last time I looked. Geography not being my strong point, while we were discussing Phil Neville’s sacking as the head coach of Valencia. ) When we eventually finished the average had dropped to 4:06min/k, so much for recovery. We’d got back to Yelo 25 minutes before it even opened so a proper 4k recovery was called for.

So the point of this post is to find a runner who is faster than you and go and try and keep up. Of course it will be difficult but remember that ‘hard work’ I talked about yesterday, well this is part of that. You have a choice to run with runners who do not push you or step up a ‘pond’ or two and test yourself. This being said distance and time on legs will allow you to improve in your current ‘pond.’ That’s the good thing about running; there are many ways to move ‘ponds’. You can use the time on feet method, which is the slow and steady rise, or throw in some pace and distance and you’ll be hopping between ‘ponds’ like a frog who eaten an extra hot chilli-pepper. The choice is yours.