Still Running (weakly). Issue 47

PAST – inspiration – “60-minute run in the morning. In the afternoon, a track monster. Warmed up for 6 miles and warmed down for 6 miles, but in the middle of it I did 10 miles on the track. Basically, I did 2km with a quarter (400 metres) jog, 1km with a quarter jog and repeated that cycle 5 times.

“On my warmdown, the last 5 miles were over hills that are tougher than the Newton Hills in Boston. I ran the intervals faster than race pace, and the mileage for the entire workout (approximately 22 miles) has to average out at marathon race pace. The workout really gave me a lot of confidence that I’d do well in Boston.”

So wrote Benji Durden in 1983 of a workout completed 11 days before he ran a personal best of 2:09:58 for third place in the Boston Marathon. It’s one of the hardest sessions I’ve ever heard about, but the physical and more importantly the psychological benefits would have been incalculable.

Sometimes you’ve just got to go for it!

PRESENT – perspiration – My London Marathon review here will not cover the ground already well-trodden by all of your newspapers and Facebook groups. Instead I will point to Chris Finill, Michael Peace, Bill O’Connor, Jeffrey Aston, David Walker and Malcolm Speake, who completed the race for the 44th consecutive time, continuing their membership of the London Marathon Ever-Presents.

As they themselves admit, they are older but perhaps no wiser. In 2018, Chris Finill was tripped at 3.5 miles, fell and broke his upper arm in two places. He was strapped up and fed painkillers by St. John’s, but of course continued to complete the race in 3:54 to retain his membership.

He is the fastest of the six, running the first 33 editions of the marathon in under 3 hours, and clocking a 3:07 this year at the age of 65.

FUTURE – suggestion – What should you do in the week after a marathon or any long, hard race?

Not too much is the short answer. Your muscles are suffering and they will take time to repair. Assuming a Sunday race, be prepared for your legs to be even stiffer on Tuesday than Monday, but you may feel like a little jog by Wednesday. In any case, it is good to keep moving – walking probably followed by a bit of easy stretching and a bath – to optimise circulation.

It is a strange phenomenon, but you may notice – as I have – that if you go for a run around Thursday or Friday, you can feel like you can run forever. I can only put it down to some sort of supercompensation by your body, namely that the long, hard effort has prompted your cardiovascular system to produce more oxygen-carrying red blood cells in response. Something akin to the effect of altitude training.

But the number one thing to do in the week after your race is of course to relax, relish, rejoice!