At the risk of looking like I’m copying fellow blogger Alyson Dixon, I’m going to use this edition of my blog to announce which marathon I will be running in the Spring of 2013. First though I want to mention a recent article which I spotted on the Yahoo website which made me laugh. “Too many marathons can kill, warn doctors” was the title. You can probably guess where I’m going with this.
For years now we’ve had to listen to the Government, doctors and other so-called health experts banging on about how we should all take part in at least 30 minutes of strenuous exercise a day. “It’s good for your health” they’ve kept telling us, “the more exercise the better” and “you’ll live for longer”. So why all of a sudden does that advice appear to be changing? Why, if the article is to be believed, are doctors now issuing “a stark warning about the dangers of taking too much vigorous exercise.”
For years now we’ve had to listen to the Government, doctors and other so-called health experts banging on about how we should all take part in at least 30 minutes of strenuous exercise a day. “It’s good for your health” they’ve kept telling us, “the more exercise the better” and “you’ll live for longer”. So why all of a sudden does that advice appear to be changing? Why, if the article is to be believed, are doctors now issuing “a stark warning about the dangers of taking too much vigorous exercise.”
To quote the article “Fitness fanatics should do just one or a few marathons say the cardiologists because over-exerting the heart for years can lead to long-term damage. There is now convincing evidence that repeatedly asking the heart to pump massive volumes of blood, for hours at a time, can lead to an array of problems, they say. These include overstretching of the organ’s chambers, thickening of its walls and changes to electrical signalling. These could trigger potentially dangerous heart rhythm problems. In addition, long-term excessive exercise may accelerate ageing in the heart.”
“Ah well, that’s that then” I thought to myself, “no more marathons for me” …… or at least I would have if I took even the slightest bit notice of the conflicting health advice we are constantly bombarded with. Don’t get me wrong, I’m the first to acknowledge that training for a marathon, and running the marathon itself, is not entirely healthy. Whatever your running ability, the marathon is a demanding event which places a huge strain on your body. At times you literally have to drag yourself out of bed to get the next training run done, and that’s before the race itself which can leave you feeling exhausted for weeks afterwards. After the Frankfurt marathon at the end of October, I spent the whole of November feeling completely run down, so tired and weak that I doubt whether I’d have been able to peel the skin off a rice pudding. The fact that I had ran 3,458 miles in the twelve months between 1st November 2011 and 28th October 2012 in preparation for my two marathons this year probably had a lot to do with the way I was feeling. But is that amount of running going to kill me or shorten my life? I doubt that very much. So thanks for the advice lads, but I think I’ll crack on anyway ……….
“Ah well, that’s that then” I thought to myself, “no more marathons for me” …… or at least I would have if I took even the slightest bit notice of the conflicting health advice we are constantly bombarded with. Don’t get me wrong, I’m the first to acknowledge that training for a marathon, and running the marathon itself, is not entirely healthy. Whatever your running ability, the marathon is a demanding event which places a huge strain on your body. At times you literally have to drag yourself out of bed to get the next training run done, and that’s before the race itself which can leave you feeling exhausted for weeks afterwards. After the Frankfurt marathon at the end of October, I spent the whole of November feeling completely run down, so tired and weak that I doubt whether I’d have been able to peel the skin off a rice pudding. The fact that I had ran 3,458 miles in the twelve months between 1st November 2011 and 28th October 2012 in preparation for my two marathons this year probably had a lot to do with the way I was feeling. But is that amount of running going to kill me or shorten my life? I doubt that very much. So thanks for the advice lads, but I think I’ll crack on anyway ……….
Which brings me onto the subject of my 2013 Spring marathon. I spent a good few weeks after Frankfurt trying to decide whether I actually wanted to run another marathon. I was so disappointed and frustrated at the way my race had fallen apart in the latter stages, especially when I knew I was in such good shape beforehand, that I was really starting to doubt whether I wanted to put myself through it all again. I’ve now ran ten sub-3 hour marathons (nine officially, and one unofficially in the GB Marathon Relay earlier this year), and the question I kept asking myself was, apart from trying to run a pb, what else is there left to achieve? For some unexplainable reason though the marathon has a massive stranglehold on me at the moment and the more I thought about it, the less I could envisage a winter of running where I wasn’t training for a marathon. So there it was, decision made.
That, of course, then raised the question of where I would run. London is always the obvious choice for British runners but it is such a circus on race day and I’ve never ran particularly well there in the past. Brighton was another option, or a return to Manchester where I ran probably my best ever marathon earlier this year and which undoubtedly would have been a pb had I incurred better weather conditions. But then I started thinking about how special it would be to run a marathon on home soil, in front of family and friends and with loads of local crowd support along the course. That’s something that I’ve never done before and it is a prospect which excites me alot. It has the added bonus of being able to prepare properly at home, as opposed to travelling in the days leading up to the race and staying in a hotel somewhere. It’s also more likely to be a race between local athletes rather than being a time trial amongst the big city masses - and let’s face it there is a big difference between racing a marathon and simply running one. The only downside that I can see with the race that I have chosen (and I appreciate that people will have their own views on this) is that a half marathon is scheduled to start alongside the full marathon at exactly the same time meaning that upon reaching halfway a large portion of the runners on the road will disappear, leaving only the hardened marathon runners to race out another 13.1 miles - a potentially soul destroying prospect if you’re having a bad day at the office.
So there you have it, on Sunday 28th April 2013 I can confirm that I will be taking on The Marathon Of The North …. even if it kills me!
That, of course, then raised the question of where I would run. London is always the obvious choice for British runners but it is such a circus on race day and I’ve never ran particularly well there in the past. Brighton was another option, or a return to Manchester where I ran probably my best ever marathon earlier this year and which undoubtedly would have been a pb had I incurred better weather conditions. But then I started thinking about how special it would be to run a marathon on home soil, in front of family and friends and with loads of local crowd support along the course. That’s something that I’ve never done before and it is a prospect which excites me alot. It has the added bonus of being able to prepare properly at home, as opposed to travelling in the days leading up to the race and staying in a hotel somewhere. It’s also more likely to be a race between local athletes rather than being a time trial amongst the big city masses - and let’s face it there is a big difference between racing a marathon and simply running one. The only downside that I can see with the race that I have chosen (and I appreciate that people will have their own views on this) is that a half marathon is scheduled to start alongside the full marathon at exactly the same time meaning that upon reaching halfway a large portion of the runners on the road will disappear, leaving only the hardened marathon runners to race out another 13.1 miles - a potentially soul destroying prospect if you’re having a bad day at the office.
So there you have it, on Sunday 28th April 2013 I can confirm that I will be taking on The Marathon Of The North …. even if it kills me!