Well the London marathon has been and gone, but I’m still feeling it having picked up a bit of an injury. The moral of this story, I am going to tell you in advance, is PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH!

I often hear myself warning athletes of the hazards of early season marathons in ironman training. While a good idea for a few, certain caveats need to be in place for many of us given that you have usually not been training for a straight marathon, rather an ironman marathon – a very differently paced affair, and the early season nature of the event often means you’re hitting it in base training. These reasons suggest that you should either avoid the marathon, run it as an easy long run as part of training, or run it as an ironman paced run. All of these are remarkably difficult to achieve as any athlete standing at the start line of a major international race will tell you. The excitement, the atmosphere all get to you and will power is difficult to find. Pride means that you fail to seed at your training pace position, instead pushing up to athletes of a similar standard to you. The first few miles at above IM pace feel easy and you settle into the pace – being surrounded by others running at the same pace as you reinforces the sense of ease belying the fast pace you’ve set.

Perhaps knowing how difficult not racing that marathon would be, you went and trained a hard week… no, a hard 3 week block, just to make sure that you got to the start line tired so that you’d be less tempted to blaze through the first half at your ‘fresh’ marathon pace. But you forgot that competitive voice that whispers ‘go on, run strong, you can get that PB… you’re not as tired as you thought you’d be’.

But, passing the half way mark at 1hour 20 mins, knowing that your racing plan would suggest that you now kick up the pace for a 1:15 second half, doubt starts to creep in. Your legs feel heavy. Like lead. You’re slowing down. The runners who’d previously been along side you start to move past and away. Why do I feel like I’m bonking? Probably because you are. The cumulative fatigue of the last three weeks is bearing down on you and your pride and arrogance is about to take a beating.

And so the second half hits Ironman pace. But this isn’t the easy planned pace you had expected to be running, but a survival pace that feels like you actually are finishing an ironman. You hurt. That niggling calf is on fire. You know how that’s going to end.

2:48 is how it ended. Not the 2:55 I had been aiming to target as IM pace, and not the 2:35 or 2:40 that I would hope to run straight given a decent taper and some slightly more specific marathon prep. A middle ground which left me a little disappointed that I’d not achieved anything, not executed either plan. And worse, I picked up a calf injury which I’m only now getting to grips with. All completely predictable. All completely avoidable… Maybe!

But the funniest thing is that if I was toeing that start line again, I would probably do the same thing. I know that I’m all or nothing. In or out. And even with the knowledge of what I was doing and what I had done, it was fun!!!

Running, jogging, crawling!

The upside: getting lots of swim and bike training done now, an actually it might have forced me to get this injury (a repeat) sorted properly once and for all. But only time will tell if I’ve managed to learn any valuable life lessons!

The lesson: know your level of control and pick your battles! O and I need to listen to my own advice.

But more importantly, BIG congrats to the Timex runners who were representing for us. Brett made it over from the States to run, and another 10 peeps were out running in Timex kit. Photos below from the Friday before at the Marathon Expo which was a huge affair. Thanks to Dan for sorting it all out.

Giving an interview and some nutrition tips at the London Marathon ExpoBrett (Timex US) and I at the marathon expo

Brett (Timex US) and I at the marathon expo