Project Good For Age Week 22 of 30 – Race Day!!
Goal : Automatic Entry Into the London Marathon
How? : Run a 3:15 Mara @ Manchester Mara in April (Current PB 4:45)
First Step : Run a 45 Minute 10k @ Windmill 10k race on 12th November (achieved) (10k time at start of project : 58 mins) www.fyldecoastrunners.com/uploads/5/2/4/9/52490083/w10k3_overallresults_classic.pdf
Next Stop : Blackpool half mara on 18th Feb – Target 1:37 (Current PB 1:58)
I appreciate you are probably all like ‘well, cut to the chase Rookie, yes or no?’
But I would argue that this is not real the question here.
Remember, my PB for the half before today was 2 hours….
The real question is what happens when you train exclusively on a treadmill for 10 weeks and then enter a run race in attempt to smash your PB?
The answer, my friends, is as follows….
Fookin Hell……
What on earth am I doing with my life?
Deca dave turned up (my legend pacer) we parked, collected our race stuff and we were good to go.
The first kilometre was fine.
By 6k I was like Dave, we need to ease off.
Make no mistake, Dave was pacing it beautifully for 1:37, but my heart rate was already at 174 and I was feeling every single beat of it.
The pace was too much.
Once I made the decision to give up, let Dave go and reduce my pace, something weird happened…
I instantly felt stronger.
To be fair to Dave, rather than run off into the distance, he stayed with me.
The course at Blackpool consists of 3 (if I remember right) ‘out and back’ loops.
‘Out’ is fine, It’s pancake flat and you are sheltered from the wind as you are down on the bottom promenade walkway.
‘Back’ is not fine.
Its anything but fukin fine.
You are up on the top level as you double back on yourself, its lumpy to say the least and the fookin wind is horrendous.
Treadmill me has been floating along in a little bubble for the last 10 weeks, totally protected from such hell, so even the slightest little breeze is magnified tenfold.
I picked the biggest fuker I could find for the turn and stuck to his back like glue.
He knew exactly what I was doing.
Do that at Ironman and you get a slap, but drafting is allowed at Run races thank god, and he played along with a smile as I gave him the thumbs up towards the end of the first dose of ‘back’ (hell).
Kilometres 6-10 I was OK and I have to say kilometres 10-15 were the strongest of the lot from a ‘how it felt’ perspective.
One thing Ironman has given me is a big engine.
A big fuk off engine….
And also an unshakeable belief that anything is possible…
Not good when you are already a dreamer…
I remember on the hour mark I was almost at 13km and this gave me a boost.
Two lots of 15 minutes and you are nearly done Rookie.
Get to 15 kilometres, then 2.5 more and you are at 17.5.
Once you are at 17.5, there are only a couple more to do.
That’s how I sold it to myself anyway.
The final 3.5km and you are back up on the top level with the wind and the lumps.(great)
It was only a tiny ramp but let me tell you, it felt like trying to run up Hunters Hill.
No big fukers either this time for me to latch onto, I was on my own.
I knew I was on for sub 1:45 and that will do just fine thanks very much.
Into the last kilometre and I even managed a bit of a sprint.
Dave was still with me and we had been playing cat and mouse with another lad clearly being paced by a PT.
I caught them in the last kilometre but I went to soon and the fukers got me in the home straight.
On finishing I was goosed, the smell from the burger van almost sending me over the edge.
The medal lady was clearly concerned for my welfare, but after a couple of minutes of coughing and spluttering, Rookie returned to reality.
So how do we evaluate this result?
On the one hand, you could say I have failed.
My target was 1:37 and I came in at 1:42.
So a good 5 minutes out…
But let’s focus on the original question…
What happens when you train exclusively on a treadmill and then enter a road race in an attempt to smash your PB?
The answer is, my PB for the half mara was 2 hours and I have taken that down to 1:42 in just 10 weeks when everyone said to me it would take ‘at least a year’.
I’ll take that all day long.
The treadmill has served me well…
But it wasn’t 1:37…
Where do I go from here?
Walking back to the car with Dave I couldn’t help but come to the conclusion that all this PB chasing, it aint where it’s at for me…
Obviously me and Dave are on completely different planets in this regard.
I want to thank Deca Dave for turning up today to pace me, the man is an absolute legend.
But for me, all the romance lies in taking something that you believe to be impossible (like an Ironman Triathlon for example) and turning it into the possible, whilst feeling as strong as an Ox as you do it.
It’s very tempting to stick to what you are good at Rookie….
Back to the current project and will the tredmill get me to a 3:14 mara?
I’m not so sure…
I’ll post a link to the ‘official results’ when they come out but for now, you’ll have to make do with this www.strava.com/activities/1414093767
To Your amazing journey…
Like this article? then you will love this book!, it’s all about how I went from zero fitness to completing an Ironman triathlon, it’s only just come out but it has got some fantastic reviews already!- you can check them out here: (also available on Amazon in the US but please read the UK reviews first!)
