Hopefully you will have already read my profile on the site so you will know my background, so I won’t go into all of that again, instead I’ll fill you in on what I’ve been up to over the weeks since this year’s Virgin London Marathon.
The come down after a marathon is always a hard one as one minute you think that you are recovered but then you try and do a run or session and you get rudely reminded that you are not recovered. You have to be very patient and allow your body the time it needs to recover otherwise you are just asking for trouble later down the line.
The legs actually felt quite ok during the run and I had no after effects during the week after so I steadily increased my training over the next 2 weeks ready to start to introduce some sessions. Sessions started off just being tempo based stuff and then picked up to add in some ‘speed’ sessions. I cut my miles right back as I don’t plan on doing an autumn marathon so there is no need to be hitting 100+ miles a week again just yet and I believe that my body needs a break from that kind of volume right now.
2 weeks after the Sunderland 10k I ran the Pier to Pier race. I love the route of this race but have only ever done the race once as it usually clashes with something else. Again the organising club had supported me financially for my trip to Kenya so once more I thanked them by supporting the race.
As I am now concentrating on shorter distances over the summer I have been adding in some speedier type sessions on the track. I haven’t trained on a track for the last two years as I believe that in order to run well on the roads you need to train on the roads, so the return to track running was a bit of a shock to the system.
I am lucky enough that I have a few different groups which I can drop in and out of depending what type of workout I am looking for. The last few weeks I have been linking up with some girls from Newcastle University and doing some sessions at Gateshead Stadium. These have gone quite well and I have surprised myself with how fast I can actually rep 300/400/600meteres. Of course anyone can go out and rep the shorter distances, and I know more than anyone, that it’s the longer reps which give you a better reflection of where you are really at, but for a marathon runner, I have impressed myself with my new found speed!
As a bit of fun I decided to help out my club, Chester Le Street AC at the Northern track league at Whitley Bay. At the time it sounded like a good idea to do the 400m, 800m, 1500, and 3k all in the one meeting but when I was stood on the start line of the 1500m having already run the other distances in a space of less than 2 hours then my legs decided it wasn’t such a good idea!! Still I had fun and even recorded a new 400m PB!! Woohoo!!
I said at the beginning of this blog that this year’s marathon took a lot out of me mentally. I spent a lot of time contemplating my future in the sport and if I wanted to carry on striving to compete at such a high level. There were days when I decided that I didn’t want to carry on and was happy to just run as and when I wanted but then there were also days when I would sit and plan out race schedules in order to get me onto future teams.
Over the past few weeks I haven’t had a set structured training plan to rigidly stick to and this has been great as I don’t feel obliged to get out every day, I can quite easily just lay in bed and not bother if I wanted to. The telling point for me is that I haven’t done this – I have got up and got out for my training. No-one is telling me to, I am doing it because I want to and because I love it. And this is why I want to continue to try and improve and hopefully grab a few more representative honours. I still have a lot of goals and ambitions I wish to achieve and right now I don’t plan on giving up until I reach them.
To date I have given up a lot to concentrate on becoming the best runner I can be. I am not doing this to impress other people but to prove to myself what I can do. I have taken criticism for publicising my goals and then not achieving them but each and every goal that I set for myself I am fully confident on reaching. Yes we have bad races where things don’t go to plan and we end up running slower than what we know we are capable of but outsiders don’t see this they just see the time next to your name and then mock you for not achieving what you set out to.
Am I going to stop doing this just because a few petty individuals don’t like it? No, I will continue doing it as I know that I have a lot of supporters and followers not only in the North East but all across the country and further afield and I get daily messages from complete strangers telling me they are following my progress and that I have inspired them and taught them that with a little bit of hard work and dedication that you can achieve your goals.
To sign off this blog I want to say to everyone who has ever encouraged me or sent me a message of support, I THANK YOU VERY MUCH, and also to those who have also taken the time and effort to criticise me, I also THANK YOU as it is those criticisms which help to fuel my fire for training and racing – win:win situation for me really!! J
Hope you have enjoyed reading…