Marathon Training While Travelling (inc videos)

I got back to the UK the weekend just gone from a 2 week work trip to North America. Running while away on business is always interesting as I love being able to get out and explore new places, and this enables you to cover more distance/areas than if you just walk (and you miss lots if you drive everywhere I find!). It also makes planning marathon training a bit more challenging!

The trip was pretty varied, starting off with a week in Houston, Texas, where the temperatures were nicely in the range of 15-25DegC, before flying up to Calgary, Alberta the second week, with a overnight excursion to Edmonton (3hrs drive north). The temperature differential was stark, from +25 in Texas to hovering around freezing in Canada, there was even snow...

Houston involved mostly running from my hotel to the approx 3 mile running loop at Memorial Park, which is very popular with Houstonians, as most of the city is dominated by cars and quite frankly a bit rubbish for running in! The track circles a golf course/parkland and is hard pack gravel. It makes a perfect marathon training circuit, plus there are lots of other runners so the atmosphere is great :-) There is also a local trail running club which meets in the park to run offroad, the Houston Area Trail Runners (http://www.trailrunninghouston.com/), but I didn't get a chance to meet up with them on this trip.

The run below is typical of the "Sub Lactate Threshold" work I've been doing in this springs marathon training campaign. It consists of 10mins Easy running followed by 70mins at "SubLT" heartrate (approx 155-160 for me currently) and a short cool down. More on the general training approach I am using in the near future.....Note for this run I was coming straight from a work meeting, so just drove to the park and started on the running track (saves the 2 miles of concrete sidewalks and busy intersections from the hotel!)

I also got the chance to explore the pathways and trails along the Buffalo Bayou slightly further out to the west of the city. This was pleasantly surprising as along side the tarmac bike path that runs the length of the Bayou, there is also an decent amount of lovely dry single-track trails to run on, some quite technical in places.

So on to Calgary in the second week, I had been there before so was very familiar with the extensive network of pathways along either side of the Bow River, so spent the majority of my runs doing different combos of distance/bridge crossing etc.. It was quite hard work to start with and then after a day or two I remembered that the city sits at an altitude of 3,000ft, which isn't massively high, but probably enough to be felt during exercise. Here's a on-the-run video of clips taken with my Garmin Virb Elite camera one evening, it's just a rough edit so it's a bit long, feel free to skip through!

Towards the end of last week I then drove up to Edmonton for an overnight stay. It was a bit colder in Edmonton (-5 or so in the mornings) and there was quite a bit of snow on the uncleared pathways by the North Saskatchewan River (which was frozen over). It took a bit of getting use to running on snow and ice! I did another run vid with the Virb camera, this time with some of the HR/GPS data it records overlaid on top.
Apologies for the shakiness of the footage, it was shot handheld (the Calgary one is on a telescopic pole which steadies it a lot)

On my last morning before flying home I was running down to the river in Edmonton when I came across a good 100 or so runners doing hill reps at 6:30am, turns out it was a club called the November Project (http://november-project.com/edmonton-ab-canada/) who run 3 times a week in the city, whatever the weather (down to -30C sometimes!!!). I jumped in for a single up and down, there was even someone taking pictures halfway up...

Overall a decent couple of weeks training, on the return from an ankle sprain about a month ago, with 97 and then 103 miles. Including a good sprinkling of Sub-LT workout runs (one in a 20 miler).The second week was compressed into 5 days, which wasn't great and left me pretty tired. But I assumed that with the flight home and associated jet lag that running at the weekend probably wasn't going to happen!

XMiles.co.uk Brand Ambassador Announcement

I'm very happy to announce that I have been selected to be a brand ambassador for the awesome endurance running website and online store XMiles.co.uk, from the website;

"XMiles are proud to announce Alistair Pickburn is joining the Brand Ambassador program, the program has been created to give something back to the sport we love and provide support to athletes during the calendar year. Our aim as an independent running nutrition store is to support and be active in the running community.

Supported by XMiles, the full team will be a community of amateur athletes who follow the XMiles ethos of supporting individuals and teams in challenges without barriers of ability.

The program is part of an initiative from XMiles to support athletes and events at grass roots.

Al is joining XMiles as a Brand Ambassador in 2016. Keep up to date with his approach and progress with training for this year’s London Marathon. Following a string of good marathon performances in 2014 & 2015, Al is looking to modify things quite a bit from previous years to see if a change of training approach can help him break the 2:30 barrier. This includes changing some aspects of his diet and nutrition including introducing concepts from Renee McGregor's book 'Training Food'.

Watch out for his blogs on XMiles and on his own blog including a look at his 2016 targets/training approach, reports from some key races leading up to the marathon and the results/analysis of recent lactate threshold & VO2 max lab tests he has taking part in."

(link to announcement on XMiles.co.uk).

Set up and run by fellow athlete, Anthony Clark (Bournemouth Athletic Club, marathon PB 02:30:06 London 2015), XMiles.co.uk is based in Dorset. XMiles is a vibrant young company formed by runners focused on nutrition products, advice and guidance for endurance sports. They are committed to sharing knowledge and experiences whilst supporting individuals and teams in challenges without barriers of ability.

Whilst growing a brand that will be recognised for excellent customer service and connections with the roots of our sport,  XMiles aims to support runners of all levels along their journey, whether they are attempting 1 or 100’s of miles over one or many days.

Xmiles stocks a great range of some of the best nutritional products for exercise, including my personal favorites for race nutrition; Gu & Cliff Shot Gels. I'm also a fan of the Beet-It sport shots and Nuun electrolyte tabs. The full range of brands in the store are shown below

Xmiles has a great loyalty rewards scheme, sign up and each £ spent gets you a reward point, £500 points = £5 off in the store. You can sign up by following this link

I'm really looking forward to my involvement with XMiles and contributing to the online running community surrounding it! 

New Socks

Every since I bought my first pair of Injinji running toe socks (on a whim in a branch of REI whilst on a work trip to the US last year), I've been really impressed with the comfort of them for pretty much all runs, including long ones and races.

So pushed the button yesterday on an order from www.ultramarathonrunningstore.com for a couple of run 2.0 'lightweight' and a pair of 'original weight' no-show (i.e. low profile) Injinji's. The lightweight's may well be a contender for replacing the Faulke RU5 socks I've generally used for racing over the past couple of years... Come in a nice range of colors too!

Salisbury 5-4-3-2-1 50k Trail Race 10th August 2014

I entered the 50k race of the Salisbury 5-4-3-2-1 trail running/walk event this weekend just gone as a debut for me to dabble with a couple of ideas. Firstly that, based on my relative short to long distance PBs, I might do better at longer distances and secondly that it could also provide good training due to my apparent predisposition to endurance running. It would also be nice to run an event which is much less time/pace focused. 

My initial plan had been to run the first 5-6 miles with the leaders (assuming similar times to recent years of c. 3hr50ish) and see how I felt and then decide whether I could push on, based on my recent 50k run-commute I did in 3:40. I had purposefully had a light taper week and bit of a carb depletion (mostly to try and get my weight down a bit) and load the day before. I fitting in a sneaky Parkrun jaunt the dat before too, just to keep the legs fresh for Sunday.

On Race morning I filled up with a big bowl of banana porridge and honey before leaving the house and took 6 gels with me as a precaution (wise choice), as I didn't really want to be testing my fat burning capacity in an hilly ultra for the first time too!

Weather was looking ominous, but actually turned out to be reasonably good, got a bit wet at times, but the sun came out in the last 6-7miles and it got fairly warm. Milling around at registration I bumped into local Commonwealth Games marathon runner, Steve Way, who had decided to enter the race late instead of a solo 35 mile Purbeck Hills run. Don't say I blame him given how windy it was on the coast on Sunday! So then the plan changed a bit and I opted for the run with Steve for as long as it felt comfortable option.... 

We were off at 9am and the first few miles wound up the river valley north of Salisbury with a few stiles to navigate (good time being at the front, no queuing to get over!), followed by a very scenic lap of the Old Sarum Castle overlooking Salisbury. At about 7 miles we were suddenly joined by a third Italian sounding guy, who was clearly up for stretching things out a bit, so at that point I let him and Steve go on. I was fairly sure I wasn't going to be able to keep up with them going up the hills ahead! From then to around 15 miles was quite pleasant, a bit up and then a long descend down over a river and past a stately castle. Some-where around 15 miles I came into a field with no route arrow marking the exit which resulted in a moment of panic as I wondered which way to go, thankfully I was rescued by the guy in 4th place who caught up and had the route loaded into his GPS and we got going in the right direction again. Less than a mile later we came into a field to find Steve and the 2nd place guy in the same predicament, the cause was a herd of cows standing in front of the gate with the route arrow on it! A bit of cow shooing ensued and we were momentarily running in a group before the two leaders started to pull away again. I then lost touch with 3rd place going up the second major climb of the day, to compound things I started getting worrying twinges from my right ankle. Worried about a potential retirement I eased up a bit and tried adjusting my gait to try to alleviate the problem. Thankfully it eventually passed, but I did have an wife-and-car based escape route at 22 miles which would have come in handy if it hadn't.... At this point I was just in 'long training run' mode, no pressure to catch 3rd place (still in sight though) and just get to the finish.

Pretty wet at around 12 miles!

Last climb up to Salisbury race course actually felt good and I was glad to turn downhill at mile 24 for the run home. The last 6 miles are flat tarmac, but before that we had the entertainment of some low hay hurdles, where wheat had been harvested and the straw left in tall piles across the race route! Getting on to the road at Wilton I could see 3rd ahead of me, but my legs were starting to hurt pretty badly, so I wasn't trying to catch him. Never the less I slowly reeled him in and then nipped past as he stopped for a drink. It was then just head down and get on to the finish, the pace was decent on the road (comfortably sub-7 miling), but my legs were struggling with fatigue. The energy levels were good (thank you gels!) and with a few miles to good 2nd place came into view. Given that only a couple of miles earlier I had been told that 2nd was 7mins up on me I realised he must be slowing a lot, so tried to maintain my pace. He gradually inched closer, but even as we dodged passed ambling tourists outside Salisbury Cathedral with under a mile to go he was still holding a good 50yd lead. I finally got to him coming up the river footpath with under 500m to go and then gave it as much kick as I could muster into the finish straight to hold him off by 2secs at the line . Finished in 3:35:07 with legs shredded, the walk to the leisure centre for a shower was not much fun!

Overall an awesomely organised race in lovely scenery and very happy to bag a good result and training run.

A 'sprint' finish in a 50k,race - 3rd place just out of shot right...

Top 20 Results (full results available online here)

Low Carb (Jamie Oliver based) Fish Pie - Best Ever?

This is a recipe for possibly the best fish pie I've ever had. It's a low carbohydrate twist on a Jamie Oliver original recipe. Beware though it's extremely filling, this recipe serves 4, but could easily do 5 as a quarter left me stuffed!

Ingredients
1 large cauliflower, cut into pieces
2 eggs
2 large handfuls of fresh leaf spinach
1 onion, finely chopped
1 handful of fresh parsley, chopped
1 clove of garlic, pressed or very finely chopped
1 TB extra-virgin olive oil
1 1/4 cups of heavy cream
4 oz of grated mature cheddar cheese, and another 2 oz for later
juice of 1 lemon
1 heaped tsp English mustard or French will do
1/2 pound haddock, cod or other white fish, skinned, boned and sliced into strips
1/2 pound wild salmon fillet, skinned and sliced into strips
salt and pepper

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C). 
2. Put the cauliflower into a pan of salted, boiling water. Bring back to the boil for 10 minutes. 
3. At the same time, hard boil the 2 eggs. 
4. Steam the spinach in a colander over the pan that has the cauliflower. This will only take about a minute. 
5. When the spinach is done, remove from the colander and squeeze out excess water. 
6. After 10 minutes remove the eggs from pan. Cool under cold water and peel and quarter them. Put to one side. 
7. Drain the cauliflower in the colander. 
8. In a separate pan, slow-fry the onions in the olive oil for about 8-10 minutes. 
9. Add the cream and bring just to a boil. 
10. Remove from the heat and add the Cheddar cheese, lemon juice, garlic, parsley and mustard. 
11. Put the spinach, fish and eggs in an decent sized casserole dish with a lid and mix together. 
12. Pour over this mixture the creamy vegetable sauce. 
13. Mash the cooked cauliflower - adding a bit of olive oil or butter, salt and pepper. 
14. Spread the cauliflower on top of the fish, cover with leftover grated cheddar. 
15. Place in the oven for 25 - 30 minutes taking the lid off for the last 10 minutes of cooking to brown the top.

Frankfurt Marathon 2013 Video Highlights

Here's a short highlights movie from the Frankfurt Marathon I've put together. Includes bits from the official video, me passing 30,35,40km,at the finish and some footage shot by my very able support crew of one, Jason. Also includes a lot of sections with Ian Habgood from Bournemouth AC as we were traded places a couple of times on the way around the course! It starts with some suitability teutonic audio...

Post Frankfurt Marathon Notes & Thoughts

Now the dust has settled from the race in Germany, I've put together a bunch of extra thoughts & notes on the pre/during/post race stages. There's also some more photos (taken by my very talented support crew of one, Jason Rheinberg!) 

 

Frankfurt in the autumn

The old part of town

 

Pre race nutrition

I switched to a low carb/high fat diet from Monday before to Thursday evening to bring my weight down abit, and off-set for the low running volume in the last week (144 down to 140.5lb). It was then normal carb intake from Thursday evening through Friday and then one-day carb load on Saturday. This was based on 10-11g carbohydrate per kg body weight, so around 650g in total. Carb load food consisted of;

• Banana/porridge & honey/rye toast & jam/OJ for breakfast. 
• 750ml of torq energy drink/mule bar mid morning. 
• Sweet potato soup/rye toast/1xBeet it Sport for lunch. 
• 750ml torq energy drink in the afternoon. 
• Chicken/butternut squash/courgette/mushrooms/Green peppers/onion/brown rice for dinner (plus a small glass of champagne, celebrating our friends new baby!). 

Race morning started at 6:15, the weigh-in (post abulations) revealed the carb-load had added a few pounds, up to 146lbs from 141.5 on Saturday morning (likely due to all the extra fluid retained to store the glycogen in my muscles/liver - 3g of water for every 1g of carbs). Breakfast consisted of a small banana, a small bowl of porridge with honey and a double expresso black coffee. 1 double expresso gel shot gel 1 hour pre race and a citrus Clif gel 10 mins before the start. I also drank most of a bottle of lucozade sport before the start, but stopped drinking 1 hour pre-start (and made use of the start line portaloos!)

Race strategy

The plan was to keep the pace between 5:45 and 5:55 per mile, while monitoring my heart rate to keep it below marathon HR (165bpm). I'd estimated that somewhere around 2:32 pace would likely be achievable, so was aiming for 18:00/5k. As I said in my race report, the pace was difficult to track in the first 5k due to tall buildings, my heart rate was averaging a bit too high (~168bpm) and as a result I clocked a 17:38 for the first 5k. From 5k to 25k I ran to heart rate, sticking with a good sized group and trying not to work too hard into the wind and rain. From 25k onwards the wind & rain became less of an issue. Going down wind from 30-35k and with plenty of energy in reserve allowed me to put the hammer down and put in a 17:30 5k. The negative split was a bit of an accident really, but having done it I can see the benefit of controlling the effort in the first half and then pushing on in the second half. Physiologically it was great reeling in so many people on the run back into the city centre!

A normal sight on a early Sunday morning...in the African rift valley

The Race Leaders

Race nutrition

I umm'd and err'd about the gel strategy, at London there is lots of flexibility with a water station every mile, but at Frankfurt they are more widely spaced. I don't get an gastric issues with gels, so aim for the optimal 75g of carbs per hour that the body can digest. In the end I opted for a gel every 5k up to 35k and then an optional one for around 37.5k. I took all 8 in the end, although I'm not sure the final one (at around 37/38k) was really worth taking. Only took sips of water to lubricate the gels & wash my mouth out. I was using a combination of GU Roctane (caffeinated) and Clif Shot Razz (non-caffeinated) gels

Gel Plan & Water Stations -  splits based on 2h32'

 

(21/24g of carb per Roctane/Clif gel - aiming for approx 75g/hour (recommended caffeine intake of 3mg/kg body weight  = 195mg max  recommended limit of 390mg)

• One hour pre start - GEL Clif Double Expresso (24g/100mg)
• Hour 1
• 10mins pre Start - GEL Clif Citrus (24g/25mg)
• 5k (3.1M) - 00:18:00 - GEL Clif Razz (24g/0mg)
• 10k (6.2M) - 00:36:01 -  GEL GU Roctane (21g/35mg)
• 12.5k (7.8M) - 00:45:00 
• 15k (9.3M) - 00:54:02 - GEL GU Roctane (21g/35mg
• Hour 2
• 17.5k (10.9M) - 01:03:00
• 20k (12.4M) - 01:12:02- GEL Clif Razz (24g/0mg)
• 22.5k (14M) - 01:21:00 
• 25k (15.5M) - 01:30:03 - GEL GU Roctane (21g/35mg)
• 27.5k (17M) - 01:39:00
• 30k (18.6M) - 01:48:03 - GEL GU Roctane (21g/35mg)
• 32.5k (20.2M) - 01:57:00
• Hour 3
• 35k (21.75M) - 02:06:04  - GEL GU Roctane (21g/35mg)
• 37.5k (23.3M) - 02:15:00 - GEL Clif Razz (24g/0mg)
• 40k (24.9M) - 02:24:05

 

Race Recovery

My legs have been radically different post Frankfurt compared to previous PB marathons. After the last two London marathons (2012 & 2013), my legs have suffered from serious muscle fatigue for a good week or more, my legs were also very painful in the last 6-8 miles of both races (lots of damage being done!). This wasn't the case during or after Frankfurt, my legs were pretty much pain free throughout the race and I only had relatively minor delayed onset muscle fatigue (DOMS) for a few days post race. One suggestion I've heard for this is that running a negative split helps, conserving energy in the first half of the race (and limiting muscle damage), which allows you to push harder in the second half. I guess it would maybe be due to the overall duration at a set effort level being lower (one half lower effort than the other instead of 2.5 hrs continuous)? The week straight after the race, I took it easy and only ran twice, but surprised myself on both occasions with how easy and quick my runing was! So now I have been back into typical running for nearly two weeks and things generally feel good, although I think I may find out at the Gosport Half this weekend that my legs still have a bit of the marathon in them!

 

Made the killer mistake of sitting down post race...now how do I get up?

Training Plan/execution recap & thoughts

Due to a niggling issue with my left shin (which never caused me any running pain) I had regular physio sessions during the training period. The upside of this was that, in the course of investigating the shin, I ended up finding quite a few muscle imbalances/weaknesses which could be worked. So I was doing regular (1-2 times a week) core/stretching sessions and got into the habit of doing dynamic stretches pre-run (my glutes and hip flexors in particular) and stretching post-run too. I also did a couple of running form tune-up sessions with The Running School in Southampton, which nicely served to jog my muscle memory and also helped identify tight/weak muscle groups to work on.

In general the marathon specific training went ok, the preceding 'speed' phase hadn't gone very well, possibly partly due to the hot summer lingering right to the end of August. My half marathon PB attempt at Maidenhead at the start of September was a bit of a flop and I only managed 1:14:43 (30s outside PB from Wokingham in Feb). The first couple of marathon specific sessions (copied from the previous spring training plan from Bournemouth AC) didn't go very well either, the first one was very warm and the second was very windy! The breakthrough came at the New Forest Marathon, which I ran as a target MP +20s training run. Probably did this a little fast as it then took about 10 days to recover from before I was ready for the next hard session. But i feel that the marathon distance in training did me good, so I'll aim to do this again for London 2014, just a little slower, relative to MP, next time. The other key run was the "marathon special block" a Renato Canova (coach to the Kenyan elites) workout. Basically 6M steady followed by 6M marathon effort, twice in a day (and a few more miles to get home in each case!), when that went to plan I was much more confident of being able to hit a decent PB in Germany....

 

Below is a summary of the key sessions I did in the last 6-7wks before Frankfurt

Marathon Specific Phase Key Sessions & Mileage

• 6 weeks out - Total Mileage = 69
• Thurs AM Specific Extensive Endurance 5M Easy/4x3M@6:14/5:55/6:55/6:15 (1M rec @ 6:47/6:51/6:40) Total 21M@6:35M- hot on the prom even at 7am!

• 5 weeks out - Total Mileage = 81.3
• Tues PM 24'@5:58/M-(3')/18'@5:59/M(3')/12'@6:01/M(3')/6'@5:59/M(2')/3'@5:37/M Total 15.8M @ 6:25/M (windy solo prom run) 
• Sun AM Long even continuous paced run - NFR Marathon (tMP +20-30' 6:10-6:20) - 02:41:37 (6:09/M) 1st place overall

• 4 weeks out -  Total Mileage = 70.1
• Sun AM 18M @ 6:45/M inc 2x0.5M (6:01/M & 5:54/M)/ 1M (5:36/M)/0.5M (5:34/M) and 4M progressivre (6:44-5:55/M)

• 3 weeks out - Total Mileage =81.5
• Tues PM 30' av.5:53/M(rec 3')/4x5'av.5:39/M(rec 2')/(rec 3')/30' av.6:02/M total 18.3M 6:18/M (windy solo prom run)
• Sun AM 5M Easy/15M MP effort (av 6:00/M)/3M Easy Total 23M @ 6:24/M

• 2 weeks out - Total Mileage =83
• Weds Special MP Block 
• AM 6M(6:34/M)/6M(5:48/M)/2.75M(6:40/M)  
• PM 6M(6:28/M)/6M(5:47//M)/3.3M(6:45/M)
• Sun AM 3.7M(6:56/M)/MP Rhythm - Solent Half(1:15:34-5:46/M)/1.6M (7:32/M)

• 1 week out (Taper) - Total Mileage = 50
• Tues PM 1.7M / 5x5min(rec3") av 5:16/M / 2M Total 10.2M@6:36/M
• Sat AM 2M inc strides(6:38/M)/Poole Parkrun (16:59 5:27/M)/1.6M(7:22/M) & 21M Bike (av 14.2mph) - by accident, missed the train home!
• Sun PM Medium Pace Progressive Run 12.1M inc 11M progressive (6:45/6:35/6:28/6:33/6:19/6:12/6:05/5:56/5:48/5:53/5:52/7:09) Av6:19/M