I have had five or six years of really pushing my body to my limits in sports and fitness, in particularly my running. I have ran the London Marathon 5 years in a row, dedicated a lot of my life to it and I achieved my goals more than once. I have ran two sub-3 hour marathon's and qualified for 'Good For Age' London Marathon entry 5 years in a row.
I decided to give my legs and body a rest from the marathon and take a year off, with the hope of using my 'Good For Age' qualification to run the London Marathon in 2018. I still intended to run other distances and keep active in running other races etc but it has not turned out that way. I have had a lot of life changes the last year or two and this has lead to a full year of inactivity with the Leeds Half Marathon being my first race for a whole year.
I have been playing football competitively but not to the level as previously and I have not been a member of a gym, so for a year I definitely lost a lot of my fitness, having to rely on my natural fitness.
I began training running again this last 4-6 weeks but a problem with my Achilles meant my training was cut short. I re-joined a gym end of January and my core strength and conditioning is improving again and overall, despite my running fitness being nowhere near it could be, should be or was this time last year, I am happy with my progress physically in the gym.
Below is my Run Britain Ranking graph which shows a huge drop in my handicap due to inactivity this last year.
As you can probably gather from my introduction, I definitely wasn't best prepared for this year's half marathon, but I was confident inside I could earn a time of around 1:30:00 on very limited training and with Achilles pain. I have been running half marathon's consistently between 1:25:00 and 1:28:00 fairly comfortably and carrying injuries over the last 4 years I think maybe I got a little bit overconfident and maybe I have started to did-respect the half marathon distance.
My plan was to really take it steady but at a consistent pace during the first 5 miles and then begin to up the pace and finish strong. I started very steady and felt really comfortable. I was been passed by quite a lot of runners but I wasn't worried as I knew what my game plan was and I felt I was above the level of a lot of the runners overtaking me at this point.
I had a game plan but the game plan never came into question. As the weather was quite hot running under the clear skies, I found myself dehydrating quite fast. My 'upping the pace' game plan never came. I just consistently stuck at the same pace the whole way round, I definitely slowed down in the last 2 miles too, which is not like me.
There was definitely something missing in me physically - I didn't have my usual ability of running through the gears, upping my pace when I wanted to up it. I could blame a number of things on that, I could blame wear and tear, the fact I have played over 1,000 games of football, 7 marathon's in 5 years, 19 half marathon's, 2 sub 3 hour pace marathon's, 5 'GFA' pace marathon's - maybe my legs are just shot and tired out? I could blame a year off from running, I could blame mental desire to push myself, I could sit here and question myself.
I think the real reason deep down is this: Running is an honest sport, you get back what you put in and the simple fact is, I haven't been running or training over the last year and that factor, combined with some of my mental desire to push myself to my limits at the moment is the key combining factors. I have been competing in competitive sports and fitness since the age of 8, I have challenged myself so many times and in-particular in the last 5-6 years I have pushed myself both in training and in competitive sport to my body's limits and from that I have achieved most of my goals several times over, maybe mentally I have lost that desire to push my body to limits I have done over the years.
Desire plays a big part in anything in life, but especially in sport - you have to want it and if I am 100% honest, last Sunday I think I was just happy to get round the race.
I must admit, it did feel a little sad to me that just 3 years ago, I finished the Leeds Half Marathon in 1:22:45 in a PB time with a very painful IT Band injury, finishing in 35th position out of 11,000 runners, where as this year I finished 481st position. I will be back though, gives me motivation to train more this next year, especially if I end up running the London Marathon again. I am going to need to rest my Achilles for a bit before I can get back properly running again, hopefully it won't be too long as I want to get back playing football again too.
I've been unlucky at the Leeds Half Marathon, out of the 11 times I have ran the Leeds Half Marathon, I have ran it carrying injuries several times which has caused me pain during the race or limited my training.
In the last 7 Leeds Half Marathons I have ran, I have been injured. In fact, during my peak Leeds Half Marathon where I recorded my PB of 1:22:45 in 35th position, I was carrying a very painful I.T. band injury. It's very frustrating as I feel I could have ran under 1:20:00 if I hadn't been carrying these injuries.
Over the last two and a half years I have been injury free and I felt in great health until 3-4 weeks before the race when my left Achilles began with pain when training.
I have had to limit my training to light jogging and the gym in order to manage the injury for Leeds Half Marathon.
I know that on race day I can withstand painful injuries - I have proven that to myself many times in the past - so pulling out was not an option for me - I want to reach my long term ambition of running 20 Leeds Half Marathon's in 20 years.
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