Surviving the Post-Marathon Blues

Apparently the few weeks after a Marathon can be just as tough (if not tougher) than the week leading up to a Marathon (when your training plan tends to ease off and you start relaxing more). Because the race leaves you with "depleted fuel stores", "accumulated fluid in the muscles", "dehydration" and perhaps some "damaged muscle tissue" you can end up susceptible to injury and infection and feeling disorientated or even depressed after achieving such a significant running goal. Joyous. To me, this actually sounds like what some of my female have moaned about after giving birth.  (Hopefully this is the closest i'll ever get to that).  So what to do?  Bounce back on prozac?  Eat myself to death?  How does one conter-act this soul-sapping sense of apathy? Well i have to admit that apart from the definite muscle soreness, some weird things are going on. They are as follows: 1) Utterly, utterly knackered. Keeeer-nackered. 2) Going to bed at 21:30 3) Waking up before my alarm - even on a weekday... before 07:13... SHOCK! (This has NEVER happened before) 4) Eating everything. Everything. Don't come too close coz i might bite you. Unfortunatley, in typical James-Style, i'm eating all the wrong things. Doritos? Check! Cake? Check! Chocolate Chip Cookies? Check! Fish? Nope... Chicken? Nope... Wholewheat Pasta? Yeah, rightie... 5) Feel rather lost. a bit bemused and perplexed... what am i supposed to do now? Well that ever-informative magazine Runners World (yes, the one with the hotties on the cover every month) gives some good advice on getting over the physical and emotional pains of recovering from a Marathon.  Usual things: eat lots of protein and carbs, get lots of sleep and if you are going to exercise, make it gentle to ease the muscles back to life. More interesting is the advice on how to fight the post-marathon blues... Their Top 4 are "setting new running goals" at Number 1 (what... 27miles??), "joining a running club" at Number 2 (er, no. the advantage to long distance running is it's the one time in my life where i don't have to talk to anyone), and "experimenting with new exercises" at Number 3 (ha ha ha, yeah rightie). Fortunately advice Number 4 is much more me: 4. Redecorate or get married  Or book a trip to an exotic location. The point is to set an important non-running goal for after the marathon. This way, you'll have something to look forward to after you cross the finish line

Way-hay!! Hence planning a week cruising along the south of france in July with one of my mates, in a convertible car, Cary Grant & Grace Kelly-stylie (without the crash... although with Kate's driving, you never know). Runners World finishes on another remarkable piece of advice which i'm going to include because it makes me feel really good about what I achieved and certainly helps beating off the Post-Marathon Blues, so if anyone else is suffering, just focus on the following (and start booking your summer holiday) ONE LAST WORD Finally, be sure to congratulate yourself on your remarkable accomplishment. Only a tiny fraction of the population is fit enough to successfully complete a marathon - and with the right recovery, you'll be able to run many more in the future.

I did it!! The Highs n Lows of the London Marathon

Yes, i survived... and more importantly it was totally brilliant!

I'm going to start this final report by mentioning my good friend Si -has done an amazing 10 marathons- who gave me some great advice on Saturday, day before the Marathon. That advice was as follows:

1) Keep your tank full. It's going to run out during the course of the run anyway, so just keep it full for as long as possible. drink lots of water, lots of lucazade at the free stops and take the energy gells

2) hold your head high, smile and enjoy it. That positivity will earn you at least an extra mile.

That second bit of advice got me through the last 4miles i think.

Sooo, some Highs n Lows:

High Point: Crossing the starting line and the first few miles down to Greenwich - crowds along here were brilliant and really gave the runners a brilliant kick-start

High Point: The music: from the church bells in Greenwich to the brass band at Monument -and a million street bands in between- the music added massively to the atmosphere.

Low point: The high temperatures were a definite low!! The heat made it really hard in places. (And the sun has left me with a hugely unattractive chav-tan in the shape of my running vest... damn!). The blue sky was inspiring though, and i think the weather brought out the crowds but it definitely made the going tougher. Thank God for the showers en route.

High point: Running over Tower Bridge was a definite high. To run across such a landmark on London's history and skyline was just a fantastic feeling. I remember seeing it for the first time when i was a small boy, and for me it's always been at the heart of London, so to run over it as part of the London Marathon (and knowing it was the half way mark) was incredible and a definite highlight.

High Point: Over taking celeb runners Peter & Jordan. For those of you not familiar with our UK celeb-obsessed culture, this is Jordan & Peter ...

Quality couple. Serious respect to them for doing it.

Low Point: running all of Canary Wharf and not seeing any of my friends or family, despite knowing they were out there

High point: realizing that actually just knowing my friends and family were out there supporting me somewhere was enough to keep me going.

High point: Passing a pub in the Isle of Dogs which had Madonna's "Ray of Light" bellowing out of some speakers. never were the lyrics "Quicker than a ray of light, i'm flying, trying to remember, where it all began..." more relevant or motivating. Brilliant timing.

High Point: coming round Canary Wharf and feeling a million miles from home but seeing the 21mile marker and realising the worst was over.

Low Point: seeing a guy my age collapse by the side of the road on the 22nd mile, shaking uncontrollably. (Also i saw waaay too many bleeding nipples. Vaseline people, Vaseline!! It ain't difficult!!)

High point: seeing my colleague Sarah outside a pub in Poplar who gave me a massive shout and cheer and yelled "Don't stop" whilst clutching a lovely cold pint of beer. I remember thinking 'Oooh i want that beer' but she shoved me back into the race before i could let my demons get the better of me...

High point: Seeing Tash on mile 23 and suddenly discovering new energy levels! see pic:

Lowest point: The pain in my legs for the last 5miles was unbelievable. I nearly cried coming down the Embankment when i saw the 25mile marker and realised i was going to do it. fortunately the crowds must've seen the look on my face and shouted me on, which saved me. I remember some guy shouting "James - open you eyes! open your eyes, keep running!". I owe him a drink.

High Point: managing a sprint finish down the Pall Mall in front of Buckingham Palace. was dead chuffed with that - slightly regretting it this morning.

Highest point: crossing the finishing line and collecting my medal

High Point: Discovering that in total the marathon team for Family Holiday Association raised £50,000 which is amazing, so thank you all.

High Point: The London crowds. If you were out there cheering us on, then THANK YOU. Made me realise it's London's marathon.

So - definitely more highs than lows.

All in all, truly one of the best days of my life. Seeing so many people run for charities, putting themselves through hours of hell in order to give something back to other people was just incredible. Add to that the WONDERFUL London crowds and immense feeling of support and good-will, and it all adds up to a brilliant day.

For anyone thinking about doing it, they def should. Going by some of the sights i saw yesterday, anyone can do it. All it takes is a bit of dedication and commitment.

As they say, 'impossible is nothing'...

So let's finish with a shot of me and my medal... Can i get a whoop-whoop?

Here's to next year! (did i just say that?)

Marathon map arrives, and the verdict's in...

Now I know why Flora London Marathon send you the route map only 2 weeks before the actual run.

Now I know why they don't send it to you when you sign up. 

I mean I know everyone knows it's a bloody marathon, but you don't quite realise how bloody far it is until you see the actual route.

And also, of course, it's arrival also makes your brain scream "Holy sh*t, less than 2 weeks to Marathon Day".

How utterly, utterly, utterly unnerving. Every time i think about it my tummy does a little flip.

Not sure what scares me the most... The thought of not finishing it? The fact that doing 21 miles was unbelievable painful and doing another 5 just seems impossible? The thought of the chaffing, the nipple bleeding, the cramps and the fact that some people shit themselves and don't even notice??

(Seeing as some of my lovely friends and family are coming to see me run/crawl/die/cheer me on, I'm 110% confident that there will be no crapping-of-the-pants. Let's just be clear on that point now, shall we...)

So... back to business. The Flora Marathon sent me a map of the running route, complete with mile-by-mile markers.

Now, as any Londoner will tell you, Canary Wharf is officially known as "a-feck-of-a-long-way' from Pall Mall / outside Buckingham Palace where the finishing line is (I have a theory it's outside Buck Palace so the Queen can hide behind the curtains and laugh as the dying runners shuffle past on their last legs). Usually it would take you at least 40mins and a couple of tube lines to get from one to the other (on a good day). 

So you can image my surprise when i discovered that Canary Wharf is actually mile 20 on the map. 

Mile 20???? Mile 20???? I was pretty sure Canary Wharf would be about mile 13 (i.e. half way). Seeing as Mile 15 is usually when my muscles seriously start to ache and Mile 18 is usually when i want to start sobbing, it would be nice to at feel as if you were on the home stretch at this point... for example, the Embankment. That would feel about right.

The thought of hitting the "oh my god if i stop now i'll never move again" point whilst still in the east of London (in fact further east of the city, which is... er... well, east of the West End) is

 horrible. 

Deep breath. Any, just in case you want a laugh, here's the map of the route. The little white blobs are mile markers.

Count them.... 20.

For those not familiar with London, the bit where the route crosses Tower Bridge and turns RIGHT (i.e. away from finishing line) instead of LEFT (towards the Queens pad and the finishing line) is also horrible.  

Quite clearly planned by some complete sadistic git. 

Or Paula bloody Radcliffe.

Who -incidentally- did shit herself, and on national TV as well. And they still gave her a medal. Tsk. 

Actually let's re-visit that moment shall we?

Ta-dah! 

See, there's nothing glamourous about Marathon running. 

Actually, I really shouldn't gloat too quickly, that might be me in just under 2 weeks.

But no matter what happens on the day, I've raised over £1,700 (aiming for £2k, so £300 to go...) in six months for www.fhaonline.org.uk 

As my friend and fundraiser extraordinaire (hereby known as M Danceland) always told me, fundraising is a matter of persistence, determination and good organizational skills. 

I went for a different approach which consisted of nagging, unsubtle shameless begging, and filling inboxes with emails... works though. Ish. 

£300 left to go people.... 

www.justgiving.com/jameswatts 

It's time for another thrilling issue of .... Runner's World!

Runner's World is THE publication for runner's everywhere. It's like the runner's bible. 

There are several things to love about Runners World (all of them unintentional). Every time i get a new issue an image springs to mind of some very frustrated journalists in some crappy office somewhere struggling to find enough stories to fill the next issue.

"How about we do a feature on 'get in shape now!'"

"But we did that last month"

"Oh... how about 'Conquer any hill... 13 tricks to reach the top!'"

"Nope, did that last month too"

"oh. damn... how about 'Pimp my Running route'?"

"done it"

"Damn. Pass me another doughnut Jack"

Subsequently, the best thing about Runner's World, and the bit which makes me snort into my coffee, is the wonderful headlines on the front cover, blatantly designed to attract as wide an audience as possible, convert as many non-readers as possible and make the world of runners somehow interesting enough to make you fork out your £4.50 for exactly the same publication you got last month... Fab!

Here's a sample of April's issue:

A better way to breathe! - page 41

Guilt-Free Eating Plan! - Fuel your run with fish n chips! (for lard arses like me)

Do You Tie Your Laces wrong? - You might be surprised! (indeed, i think might be...)

But none of these beat my two favourite ones from march's issue:

The Road to Romance - find your perfect running partner! (for Bridget Jones's)

49 Brilliant reasons to run! (this must've taken the struggling journalists weeks to come up with a total of 49 'brilliant' reasons to run)

I like this last one, coz to be honest, i can think of 250,000,000,00000000000000 reasons not to run. 

They are as follows...

a) It hurts

b) it's knackering

c) it's takes up vast amounts of your time

d) it's makes you eat more (afterwards), not less

e) you have to eat sensibly before every run (booooo) and cut out alcohol (BOOOOO)

f) you have to brave the elements and run no matter what the weather

g) you have to embrace wearing embarrassing clothing in public

h) your friends start to avoid you coz all you do is bang on about how many miles you can now run

i) you become the most smug individual in the world every time you beat a new distance / time and discover another new muscle in your legs

etc etc

PS. Did i tell you that I did a half marathon in 1hr 53? This is pretty damn good, and my legs are SUPER-toned.

Smug smug smug. Oh, and I nearly forgot to mention the ridiculously toned topless hottie they put on every front cover (see below).

their audience clearly breaks down as follows: a) Straight men who want to look like this b) Straight single women who think they're going to bump into a man running the same route who looks like this and c) gay men who probably already met a man who looked like this on their running route, but didn't get around to asking for his number.

www.justgiving.com/jameswatts 

The runner's world

As I’ve previously alluded too, the runner’s world is a slightly mad one. 

Full of things which – in the normal world – are completely taboo.

These include inappropriately tight shorts, inappropriately short shorts, stretching limbs into weird poses in public, voluntarily getting up early on Sundays to run (madness), choosing cereal and bananas over 3 cups of coffee as a suitable weekend breakfast (complete madness), Vaseline-ing nipples/inner thighs (on long runs) and emptying ones nose in public.

It’s all very wrong.

Some of these things you have no choice but to buy into. The stretching limbs bit is unavoidable, especially when all the energy is running out of your legs. It's amazing how much you can get a sudden release of extra energy from pausing for 2mins to stretch your hamstrings out. Although I have learnt that using a park bench for this is acceptable, but people tend to give you looks if you use tombstones in a churchyard (which is annoying because the one's in Putney Bishops Gate Park church yard are perfect).

Voluntarily getting up early to run is also unavoidable, as it's the best part of the day to run and allows you to get on with the rest of the day ahead, with the added bonus of feeling very smug and virtuous.

Ditto re the cereal and bananas over coffee. I don't think there's any need to dwell on the vomiting-coffee-on-a-memorial-statue-of-Queen-Victoria incident in Berwick over Christmas.

The one I refuse to buy into are the inappropriately tight stretchy short shorts. Wrong Wrong Wrong. I don't care if they support your hamstrings, keep you warm, allow your skin to breath and reduce chaffing, they should still be illegal. Or at the very least they should legislate that if you are going to wear them, you should have to wear baggy shorts over them to hide the detail. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

And don't get me started on the runners who decide to clear their noses with the ol' thumb-to-one-nostril-and-blow technique... in public. Whilst running. And with little regard for anybody in the near vicinity. Gross and wrong. 

Although i did see a sunday walker's little dog be on the receiving end of this technique and the look on the owner's face as the runner flew by was enough to make me laugh. So maybe there is an upside to it.

It did occur to me afterwards that this was intentional by the runner. Runner's tend to fall into two categories: polite runners and rude runners. If you're polite, you let people know you're stuck behind them / their prams / their dogs with a polite breathless 'scuse me' and 'thanks' as you puff by.

Rude runners grunt loudly to announce their presence, push through anyway, sometimes swear at the the walkers, splash in a puddle as they pass and - if the walker has a cute fluffy little dog - evidently clear their noses on it for good measure.

I'm only a rude runner during the last 15mins of a run when my sense of humour, patience and energy has gone AWOL. I'll admit to grunting past people coz the thought of finding the energy to actually pronounce a word is impossible and have occasionally 'accidentally' splashed the odd puddle which will hopefully remind them to move quicker next time, but i draw the line at the nose clearing thing. So far anyway.

Maybe that'll change when i have to do my first 20k run a week sunday.

So if you're intending to go for a nice gentle walk on Sunday 8th Feb, you might want to avoid the west london Thames pathway. Or at least leave your dogs at home...

And the Award for "Best Song to Run To ever" goes to...

Now that I've done a couple of longer runs (i.e. over an hour / an hour & a half) I'm starting to notice that there's a certain process you go through on every run.

First 5 mins - feel v proud to have left house and hope you warm up soon

5-15 mins - hate it, wish you'd never left house and wonder if there's any way you can justify going home for a nice cup of coffee

15-30 mins - wonder when your legs will stop feeling so heavy

30-45 mins - constantly think about how much further you have left to run

45mins - fall into a stride, start to enjoy it, realise you might be able to actually do this

It's actually rather strange how I seem to go through this process of every single run. Having spoken to a couple of friends who also run, it encouraging to know that I'm not alone in this.

And from the 45 min point onwards, the run suddenly seems do-able and you feel quite proud to be out and running.

But there are still some things that you can count on happening at some point during the rest of your run.

1) You'll get trapped behind 2 or 3 people who are doing a spectacular job of hogging the entire pavement / pathway and are completely oblivious to the world around them or the red faced puffing runner trapped behind them

2) Despite having watched you run towards them for the last 30 seconds, a bunch of people at the bus stop will make zero effort to move or make any space to let you through but instead will stand gormlessly in your way.

Let's take a few moments to consider how annoying these people are. Look; here are some specimens:

Moving swiftly on...

3) a dog will chase your heels (sometimes embarrassingly)

4) you'll get distracted by a fellow runner coming towards you who's much faster than you, has a bigger stride, looks like they have run further, has snazzier running gear and is generally finding it all much easier.

5) As aforementioned runner passes you, you will trip and stumble. (This is the law of Sod, and is particularly applicable if the runner is a hottie)

6) You iPod shuffle delivers a spectacularly awful 'running song' your way and all of a sudden the ache in your butt, back and feet is worse, your lungs are tighter and your legs feel like jelly

7) Your iPod shuffle delivers Your Disco Needs You (live in London) by La Minogue, and all of a sudden you could run for another ten miles, no worries.

Think I'm going to officially submit this track as Best Song To Run To ever.

Or is that just me? Suspect it might be...

Either way, I'm now doing just over 10 miles in 1hr 50, and I'm pleased with that.

It's all about the view...

The advantages of training for a marathon is that it does force you to get off your butt and discover the great outdoors.

Unfortunately, if you live in W3, the great outdoors resembles something much like this:

Fortunately, just a small hop, skip and jump (or jog) away is the lovely Thames pathway.

Much nicer...

I'm learning that that runners are an industrious little bunch of people, and there's a whole online community where people share top running routes and favourite training areas.

So following a short dig around on some nifty training route-plotting website, I found a recommended running route which followed the river from Hammersmith Bridge to Barnes Bridge and back again (that's 12k, or 8.5miles if you please... Can i get a whoop-whoop?).

Although it was a freezing cold winter day, running through good ol' ancient west London along the river was pretty inspirational. It was almost enjoyable.

The Barnes stretch of the river is -for those not in the know- where the Cambridge / Oxford boat race takes place and the river is lined with many rowing clubs. Even in minus-C conditions there were some rowers out training.

They were the first people I saw during the entire hour-and-a-bit long run that I didn't envy.

It was bloody cold.

But the sight of them puffing along the river with bright red faces and very raw looking arms / hands did inspire me to a) keep going and b) get off the bridge ASAP coz there was a distinct wind chill factor.

But it was the furthest I've run so far and the truth is I could've kept going for a bit longer. And, most importantly, there was no further hamstring trouble thanks to three cracking (pun intended) trips to the chiropractor.

I'm taking this as a good sign... Here's to beating the 1hr 30min barrier.

But for that I'm going to have to find a longer route with an equally inspiring view...