Benchmarking

I have committed to running the Barcelona 24hour race in  nine weeks time. This is a tough ask, but I can focus on loosing weight via water fasting and building speed via the Cockbain method.  In the last week I have done strength training three times, swam a kilometer and ran on five days,  including two interval sessions, a hill rep session and finally a 10km race on Sunday.

Regarding the race, my first since the fiasco of the 2023 marathon, a little background is needed. Some five years ago Chrissy and I met Sherry at a wedding. She said she always wanted to go running in the woods around our house, but was worried about running alone. From then on we ran on and off. in  the Taunus. Obviously having broken my leg at the beginning of the year we have not met up for sometime. Then last weekend we had a conversation that went something like this 

Sherry: Morning ⛅️ shall we attempt a run tomorrow?

Rob: We are off to Gemünden to see a friend finish a 100 mile race

Rob: Next week maybe

Sherry: Next week is the Kurparklauf maybe you fancy that 😀

Rob: Distance?

Sherry: There’s a 5km and a 10 km, it’s 2 and 4 times around the park, not super exciting but I can’t motivate myself to run alone so races and friends are the way to go right now 🤣

Rob: Which one are you doing? I can't see that you are registeres and I know you Sherry. If you don’t commit now you will find an excuse not to do it on the day. Register now and I will do it with you. Do it. DO IT NOW!

Sherry: Hahaha ok fine, so the 10 km? It’s not too early and quite close to my home

On the Sunday morning Chrissy and I drove down to Bad Homburg and met Sherry.  The Kurpark is very pretty and especially so on an Autumn morning.  The start was a little chaotic but as soon as the hooter went I rushed off. I started way to fast and did the first kilometer in 5:21.   The course was quite undulating so that didn't help to maintain a consistant pace,  but I settled down and looked at maintaining a 5:30-6:00 /km pace. During the second lap I felt a twing in my left hamstring, but realised that was just a warming up and nothing to worry about,  even though part of me  told me  to quit.  I slowed over the second half, but ended with an average of 5:45/km  over the whole race. I was quite please the final time was 57.22. 

Sherry unfortunately felt bad and her hip started hurting after 5km.  The last time  she  had the same feeling she end up with back problems, so took the safe option.  We met Sherry and her Mom  after the race which was nice as her Mom is where Sherry' humor comes from.  In the end a successful day.  

I mentioned the race to my friend James and we had the following exchange

James: That is mega impressive and a massive step forward

Rob:Steady on chap. Hardly mega...

James:It is. You’ve had a massive fracture. Every step on the road to rehab is important.

As I said to Chrissy afterwards, if I can do something it can't be  that hard. Sometime I don't realise what I can do is a bit different from others.

As well as the running my weight is showing signs of improvement, down over 5kgs since the beginning of October. I want to get under 80kgs this week which is roughly and 3 kgs. This is achievabl via fasting and training.  I will commit to running  six days and swimming 3km as well as the three weight session.

Until next week.

  

2022-2024: Years of not training

2022 to 2024 have not been good years for my running and weight. I cover less and less distance at a reduced speed and my weight stayed resolutly above 85kg about 15-20kg heavier than I should be.

I did only six races in that period.

• 2022 Frankfurt Marathon
• 2023 50km in Rodgau 
• 2023 Sparta 24hour 
• 2023 Lepzig 100km
• 2023 Frankfurt Marathon

The 2023 Sparti 24hour really symbolised the how everything has gone. The race was on a weekend starting at 17:00. I booked a direct flight Frankfurt to Athens leaving on the Friday. The plan was to meet two of my Spartathlon friends(Ian & James) in Athens and drive to Sparti on the Friday night giving us plenty of time to get prepared in. 

Lufthansa had other ideas. By failing to pay their staff enough, they triggered a strike of ground crew. This resulted in a cancellation of flights. After much toing and froing I managed to get an early Saturday morning flight. This was delayed and I arrived in Sparti nearly three hours after the start of the race. 

The people at Ultras are always nice. I think there is something intrinsic about Ultra running that means you have to be good with yourself and others in order to be able to compete. 

I received messages on my journey that someone called Bill would help me to checking. Bill was lovely and got me going. The first three hours was fine, but then my pace started dropping, despite running with a good friend Martin Illott. 

I was crewing myself and that always makes things harder. A crew makes you more displined and prepares all your nurtition and gives you a good slap. You need to be Mark Cockbain to keep going on your own.  I got several messages from my sister Anne and a few others to keep going but it was a struggle. 

Several other British runners quit early on, but I kept slugging away for 14hours until my knee locked up.  I think they do that when you are trying to keep going with 20kgs more weight than you should have.  My doctor was less than impressed when I told her why my knee was so swollen.

I tried the Leipzig 100km but quit after 50km.  I really want to quit early on, but as my freind Jan was there I needed to cover ore distancethan him. 

Then the Frankfurt marathon was a shit show in the rain and my worst ever time over that distance. That said, despite being so heavy and the weather so bloody awful, my mental strength is so much better, as I kept going in the rain.

On top it all I  broken my fibula in January 2024 on top of a broken metatarsal in July 2022 resulting in 12 screws, 14 stiches and yet another 8-10 weeks of no running. 

The only real highlights is baskin in the glory of others by crewing in Spartathlon each year. I really do enjoy crewing.  Looking after Alastair Higgins in 2023 and then Andrew McKillop this year was a pleasure. Gary Seary crewed Alastair with me and did all of the driving. he introduced me to the glory of disco and the talent that was Teddy Pendergrass.  This year was another crewing highlight as my wife Chrissy was able to come to Spratehlon for the first time and we had a lovely time together.     

I have really learnt that I need to loose weight and get back the pace Mark Cockbain gave me.  As much as I love Robbie Britton and James Ellis' attempts to get me fit the only person who got me performing well was Mark. The only way I have lost weight is by fasting. 

So now I am committed to a month of fasting and a ten week block of training twice a day, six days a week until Baracelona 24hour race on 14-15th December. The aim is the following 

1) Get weight under 70kgs.

2) 10km time to under 50 minutes.

3) Marathon time under 4 hours.   

I am fairly confident my mental strength is fine.  I know what to do for nutrition, so I just need to stay focused on achieving the goals above and I will be  on for 180km and Spartathlon qualifier. Get that and I shall return to running heaven for the tenth anniversary of my one and only finish.

Getting back to it.

This year after crewing at Spartathlon and completing the Frankfurt marathon I have been re-energized and really want to get back to top fitness. I even went back and updated my race log of races and found to my surprise that I have entered 78 races and only DNF 12. These area mixture of marathons and ultras and covered a total distance of 7020 km.  

I feel it is important to note that running, although a solitary activity, is a matter of nonhierarchical teamwork. I wrote about the need to ditch the hierarchy here and I believe this is the future of work. Regarding running, one cannot train without the support of others. I could not have achieved the amount I have, without the support and assistance of my family and friends. The best thing on last Sunday's marathon was four kilometers from the end when I head the cry of "Rob" and saw Chrissy who had come down to see the end. She videoed the meeting and although I don't seem it, just seeing her lifted my spirits. Her support over the years has been amazing. Anyone that can put up with my mood swings over the years is really special. 

The last ten years of helping to run the British Spartathlon Team (BST), where each year we ensure all British runners and their crew have sponsored team shirts free charge, really does show that we can make a difference. It is a combined effort, with each performing to the best of their abilities and no real leader. Russell does the shirts; James does the advertising; Dave does the website. It is a good example of a nonhierarchical team and I like to think of us as an anarcho-syndicalist committee. 

Although it is a long time since I have qualified for the race, I have kept involved and helped ensure that the ethos of the British crew being there, being visible and ready to help all runners is something that I am particularly proud of. 

At Spartathlon, the Sparta Photography Club provide an excellent free service publishing all the photos on Flickr here. My favourite photo from this year, outranking this one of me with my friend Kostis, the former President of the International Spartathlon Association, is the one below it, as it shows the non-hierarchical team ethos I am referring to.

This was taken at the 80km HellasCan support point, showing part the British Spartathlon team crew. There are five members of the BST team there, all the act of helping each other. From the left Jonni is in the green and black shirt on the left have done 80km of 246km. His sister Sasha, in the white vest can be seen trying to attract my attention, as I post a photo of Jonni on the BST twitter. Sue is at the table with Jonni and her husband's Mark equipment searching for the specialized ultra-nutrition. Nathan and Jamie are in crew shirts with their backs to us as they wait for their runner Allan Anderson to, come in. As the twenty or so runners all take different times to reach this checkpoint, we all muck in. To quote the great Bill Shankley "The socialism I believe in is everyone working for each other, everyone having a share of the rewards. It's the way I see football, the way I see life."  

This leads me to my next point and rather the point of this blog.  Being a child of punk, I have always been somewhat, in the modern parlance, "woke" although I predate not only woke but also political correctness. It was " ideological sound" in my day. I have lost count of the amount of protest marches I went on in the 70s &80s and volunteered for the Miners groups and Terence Higgins trust back then.  Nowadays I merely wear rainbow laces and the more eagle eye will be able to spot them in the video above. 

It has always irked me that the British Spartathlon tends to be older white males. We, however, have a history of LGBTQ representation, but not many women or non-white runners. Thus, one of our goals for next year is to increase the diversity in the team. Being one of those old white males I have no expertise in the area and am at bit of loss as how to increase this engagement. If there any of my followers who know something about increasing diversity engagement, please do get in touch and teach this old dog some new tricks. 

 #fitness #ultrarunning #marathon #marathonrunner #mentalhealth #bame #lgbtq #diversity #team #teamwork #teambuilding 

Went well

I ran the Rodgau 50km and it went well. Rodgau is a season opener for the German ultra running community. There were some big names there including the reigning German 24hr men's champion Florian Reus. I always enjoy this race 10 laps of a 5km route. Sometimes the last km gets rather muddy, but this year it stayed quite firm.

My friend Jan flew over from the UK to attempt his first ultra and was so confident of his speed that he predicted he would lap me before the last lap. Being twenty five years younger and a darn sight faster, I thought that this was a fair prediction.

Chrissy drove us to the start and we collected our numbers and made our way to the refreshment point start.  We set up a double camping chair and I had 10 bottles of Mountain fuel in  old Powerade bottles.  I find these bottles the right size and weight to carry and sip from.  

I wore: 

• Nike Air Pegasus trail shoes,  
• Sealskin double skin trail socks, 
• Dri-Fit Stride Hybrid 5in 2in1 Running Shorts, these like the sock are particularly good as the inner lining rides with your body and prevents chafing, 
• Some old running tops.  
• A buff
• Gloves that went on and off during the race

I liberally plastered by under carriage with Vaseline and taped my nipples. 

We set off promptly at 10:00am and Chrissy went of to do the weekly shop. The weather as ok.  not too cold or windy for the end of January.  I noticed that I was going a little too quickly over the first 5 laps at under 30minutes a lap. By this time  my rather full stomach needed emptying . After this point I settled on a target of thirty five minutes.per lap. 

During the race a fellow runner said to me that it was not done to have a tattoo of a woman on my leg.  I pointed out that was no woman, but Pheidippides, a symbol that I had finished Spartathlon. He had never heard of the race.  Imagine being an ultra runner and not knowing of Spartathlon.  The shame!

On  the sixth lap I saw Jan sitting in our double chair looking rather sheepish.  I went to collect my bottle and he said to me  

"I couldn't be bothered any more after 30km"

"Fair enough,"

"You're not going to have a go at me?"

"Jan, I could only do that if I had never a quit a race as you have done, and I have DNF'ed more times than I like  to mention"" 

I believe he had low blood sugar because he was not eating enough. 

I suggested he put the space blanket on and called Chrissy so that he could rest in the car and keep warm.

At 40km, and only two laps to go I saw Chrissy at the start that we go through ten times

She encourage me as always and I really appreciate her support! I saw her again as I went through the start of the last lap and she said she would call Jan to watch me  finish.  Unfortunately I was too quick and met them as they came back from the chair.  As I was among the last to finish there was not many there. We did, however,  manage to congratulate two eighteen year olds who had finished their first ultra. That is quite impressive.

As Jan quit after 30km, I reckon I lapped  him four times. we meet some of our former work colleagues that evening and had a jolly good drink that night.  as I think I deserved the celebration. 

My next race is on 18th February, the Sparta City twenty four hour. Link here.

My goal is to get one of the two longer qualifiers for Spartathlon, either the hundred miles in twenty one hours or 180km in twenty four.  

This requires me to run around eight kilometers an hour and this race has set me  up nicely for that. I think the trick is to maintain a slower pace in the beginning.  As the route is one kilometer long, pacing should be quite simple. Run quicker down the street away from the statue and return a bit slower on the slight incline

I will wear pretty much the same gear, changing tops once every four hours, so that I fill fresher each time.  I will use the Powerade bottles with Mountain fuel and drink one per hour.  I plan on bringing a lot of warm tops for the evening and a space blanket just in case it drops to very cold.  I will also bring some cheeses and rice. Mainly, I will rely on the food provided by the race.  Another important not is not to dawdle too long getting changed or eating.  Relentless Forward Motion or RFM is the key.

In terms of things going wrong I have a hand written book of motivational quotes that I will look at each hour.  I know that no matter how bad I feel I will feel better after thirty minutes or so.  It is a matter of walking down the steps to the darkest monster infested steps and having the strength to walk out the other side.  

I shall make two checklists prior to the race 

1) Kit list 

2) Things to do to keep head straight list

Don't wish me luck as , to paraphrase the words of the great John Foden

"If you have prepared properly you won't need it and if you haven't it won't help"

Update 

I ran with Fatih last night.  We talked about the race and he came up with some suggestions

• Run slow for the first hour and really focus on warming up 
• Every hour have a walking break 
• Ensure you have Red Bull or similar caffeine drinks for the night section 

Week 21

Mentally getting better, due running and weight a little better. I need to stop punishing myself for not reaching unrealistic goals. Let's set better goals and reach those.

Week I don't know....

Ever get that feeling,  no matter what you that you are still depressed?

You try and modify things and nothing changes?

Or seek advice and no one really listens to you? 

You explain things in detail about how you experience an aspect of your life and every one tells you to do the same thing again and again. 

You tell them "I have tried that and that does not work."  But still they insist on you trying the same thing over and over again.

I just wish someone would have the time and respect to 

FUCKIN LISTEN TO ME, ABSORB WHAT I SAY, THINKING ABOUT WHAT THAT MEANS  AND MODIFY THEIR RESPONSE ACCORDINGLY

.........................

INSTEAD OF JUST PARROTING THE SAME OLD SHIT,

Week Eleven

 Weight high  Back at the flat and running to and fro