It's Going To Be A Very Long Road

Hello!

This is the first entry of a blog I've decided to write which is intended to be part diary, part training log with six months to go until - if everything goes to plan - I run the Brighton Marathon on 17th April 2016.

Of course the title of the blog has an element of artistic licence to it, as I won't actually be running to Brighton Pier at all, although the marathon does go past it, so I'd say that's good enough reason to squeeze an Orwell reference in.

It will mainly be about running, but hopefully I'll include thoughts on my other interests, namely football, films, books, food, politics and travelling.

I should point out to begin with that I am fully aware that it is something totally, shamelessly self-indulgent and probably of little or no interest to anyone but myself. I intend to record my progress (if any) from a poor state of fitness, mental and physical, to a point where I stand on the start line in Brighton's Preston Park in such good shape that I can be confident of running 26.2 miles (42.195kms) at a good, competitive pace and attain the goals I've set myself. What these are I'm not entirely clear about yet, but certainly I hope to go under 3 hours and 15 minutes and so regain my automatic Good For Age (GFA) place for future London Marathons.

I'm an Englishman, born way back in the 1960s, and I moved to Oviedo, the capital of Asturias, Spain, after finishing my degree in 1992. I've been living/exiled/trapped here ever since. I work as an English teacher in a private school, and am reasonably happy there. Other aspects of my life are not all that great, however, and another of the reasons for starting this blog is for it to serve as a kind of therapy whereby I get some thoughts and musings down in writing, and hopefully this will get my head back in a good, healthy place.

In fact, I need all the help I can get, from whichever source, if I'm going to reach this marathon goal, as unfortunately I'm the type of person who returns to a default setting of bad eating and other bad lifestye habits (you can probably imagine which) as soon as things start to go awry in my life. I don't intend to bore you with too many details concerning my personal life but it is definitely relevant that I reached a sort of mid-life crisis over the summer, through nobody's fault but my own. To maintain a sense of perspective, which I was recently in danger of losing completely, I must say that nobody has died and nobody has become ill or anything like that.

To give you a bit of background on my sporting career (such as it is), I started running in 2003 after years of physical inactivity and smoking, coupled with a realisation that I was putting on loads of weight (for me, anyway). Six months later, in October of that year, I ran my first marathon after some naïve and haphazard training. It was here in Asturias, and I completed it in a time of 3:20:30. The following April, geared up by this modest success, I went to Bilbao and did 3:09:56. This in turn inspired me to thinking that a sub-3-hour marathon was just a matter of time away, but in fact it proved far more elusive than I could have imagined. I began to enter races of other distances and did a whole series of half marathons in times around the 1:28 mark.

However, for whatever reason, I found I didn't make the hoped-for progress and in fact despite constant training my performances began to get worse. My HM times slipped to 1:32-1:34, and in 2007 I ran a disastrous, sweaty marathon in Madrid in  3:33:07.

At this point I decided to make some changes and I set my heart on going to do the London Marathon and making my family proud of me.

The first step was qualifying. To do this automatically you have to achieve a time in any marathon of under 3:15 (well, for my age group you do, anyway). I entered the Asturias Marathon in 2008 with this goal in mind and to my surprise found that training for this slightly more modest target was far easier, both mentally and physically. The race itself went like a dream and I finished in 3:12:37.

 

 

This was good enough to get myself accepted for the 2009 London Marathon. Such was my excitement at this that my training took on a whole new meaning and I worked really hard over the autumn to get myself in top shape to face the four months of specific training from January 2009 onwards in order to attack London with confidence. That November I ran a HM in 1:27, my best for some time, and over the following months I really worked hard to improve. If in November I weighed 85kgs, by March I was down to 82kgs and this definitely helped me when I smashed my HM personal best (PB), running 1:22:50 at a local race.
 

On my way to a PB at the Trubia HM

To cut a long story short the 2009 London marathon was utterly memorable for me in many ways. I raised over £1,000 for Alder Hey Children's Hospital, all my family were there to cheer me on and just legging round the streets of London in front of thousands and thousands of spectators was something I'll never forget. In the end I didn't break three hours as I'd hoped, but came close enough (3:03:21, weighing 79kgs) to believe that the following year it would indeed be possible.

Going to register for the 2009 London Marathon

Signing up

And so it proved. Everything went to plan on 25th April 2010 and I went round in 2:59:06 (81kgs). Crossing the line and realising what I'd achieved was just the greatest feeling ever. At the ripe old age of 44, after years of trying, I was finally a sub- 3 marathoner!

Ready for the 2010 London Marathon

...and celebrating afterwards with my brother and my medal!

I couldn't possibly know it then, but that was as good as it has got. In 2011, perhaps lacking motivation after having already gone through such a massive psychological barrier, I struggled to 3:10:55 on a horribly hot day by the Thames.

Arriving at the start in 2011

Although for a couple of years I was still running sub-1:25 HMs, a decline definitely began to set in. I remember my Mum helpfully pointing out that this was because I was just too old (thanks, Mum!), and sadly I haven't been able to prove her wrong . A look at my HM performances since then tells the sorry story:

Of course, I have my excuses, and the major one is my dodgy knee, which I destroyed in a skiing accident back in my teenage years, and which forced my, erm, promising football career to come to an abrupt halt. However, I found I could run on it with no problems...until about two years ago, when the chickens came home to roost and I started to really have serious issues with it. These all came to a head at the end of last year when I found I even experienced severe pain just by walking, and it was clearly getting worse instead of better.

I kept running despite this, and and entered the La Coruña Marathon this April in an attempt to get back my GFA place, something I'd lost by only running 3:15:15 (curse those 16 seconds!!) in London in 2014. However after a heartening start to my training I found by February that the agony I was putting myself through wasn't worth it. With a heavy heart I withdrew from the race and sought medical help.

Do  miracles exist? I certainly wasn't expecting any, and less so when the specialist at the hospital told me that having to have a full knee replacement was a matter of time, and not much time at that. Almost as an afterthought he suggested that in the meantime I take a series of pills which could help to re-generate the cartilage I am lacking in my left knee, but even so I didn't hold out much hope.

Unbelievably, those pills, condroitin sulphate, have worked something close to that miracle and I am now able to walk pain-free and running competitively is now an option again.

So here I am, in October with a body which needs to shift some serious weight - I now tip the scales at an embarrassing 91kgs - but which, if there is no adverse reaction, will allow me to take on the challenge of running a decent marathon again.

I wasn't fortunate enough to get a place for the 2016 London Marathon through through the ballot system (there were 248,000 applications for 30,000 places) but on Thursday I was accepted into the Brighton Marathon (after paying 70 quid, of course), and so this journey, ending on Marine Drive, Brighton (near enough to the Pier) has begun.

Why Brighton? I considered Paris, Rotterdam, Manchester and Barcelona, but logistically Brighton works best for me as one of my brothers lives there. It's also a mass-participation event with great spectator support and generally very well-organised despite only being held since 2010.

Well, so that's the story so far. Sorry it's been so long in the telling.

I don't know how often I should post updates and what I should include. Tomorrow I plan to run 8-9 miles (13-odd kms) to make up a 22-mile week of running. Such is my decline that not so long ago I was doing 20-22-mile runs most Sundays in the build-up to a marathon. Still, I have to start somewhere.

If anybody is still reading this, thanks for your patience, and watch out for more posts if and when I can be bothered to write them. I would be very grateful for any comments and/or suggestions, which you can leave at the bottom of the page.

Bye for now!