Keeping on, on the Thames Path!

My weekly post is a little later than usual this week, though for good reason. Other Half and I have been raising money for Mind, the mental health charity, by going for a walk along the Thames. Which makes it all sound rather tame, except for the fact that it was a 100km walk (that’s 62.2 miles for those of you that like me, still use old money) and we did it in 21 and a half hours. So no sleep for us – and I figured that it’d be better to create a blog post when I was actually awake!

So this week’s post is really about how I fueled myself to keep going for that distance and over that amount of time. As a conservative estimate (because I’m not sure how heavy my bag was and because there was no option to choose speed on the calories burnt calculator that I used), I used somewhere in the region of 4150 calories. Clearly I was going to need to eat something a bit more substantial than the sticks and leaves the vegans usually eat 😉

Breakfast was really early, so nothing was open to buy anything – I had two packets of instant Moma porridge in almond butter and salted caramel flavour. All you need is a kettle, a mug and a spoon and it’s pretty much my go to breakfast when I’m staying away as it’s miles cheaper than buying breakfast out.

Our event started at 7.10am and by the time we’d got to the first rest stop at Richmond, we were both feeling peckish. The first rest stop was well supplied for vegans – there were several different types of crisps available and some interesting looking cookies as well as fruit. Neither of us could resist the lure of pickled onion Space Invaders crisps – though the 200% increase in price was a surprise – they were 10p when I was at school! We also picked up a bag of Gato nut butter cookies each as well. I went for almond and raspberry and Other Half went for hazelnut and chocolate. We ate those whilst walking to the next stop. Other Half made the better choice – they had a really crumbly texture that worked much better with the chocolate flavouring.

By lunch time, we’d done 28km and arrived at Hurst Park. If you were doing the quarter challenge, you got lunch because that was your finish. Everybody else had to bring their own. Our lunch was our usual walking option: 2 bread rolls with mustard pickle. We’d made them at home and brought them with us, but despite being a day old, they were lovely. I grabbed a banana as well.

The third stop was a bit of a disappointment – they had a big display of pick and mix sweets, none of which was suitable for vegans. We’d brought some pulsin bars with us, so we had one of those each and some more water and then carried on our merry way!

Runnymede, site of the signing of the Magna Carta, was our fourth stop and that meant it was time for dinner! There was one vegan option – a very tasty tomato and bean ratatouille and then you could help yourself to chips, peas and carrots. There was a vegan cake option but you had to ask for it – neither us wanted cake. Having to ask for the vegan option might seem a bit annoying, but actually it means that there will be a vegan option left for the vegans. I’ve lost count of the times that I’ve been at conferences and other events where non-vegans have decided that the vegan option looks great and have eaten it all up!

By about 8.30, we had completed just under a third of the distance and watched a lovely sunset. This was another snack stop and by this time I was craving salt again, so I went for Smiths Salt and Vinegar Chipsticks – another snack fondly remembered from my childhood – and who can forget the advert?

At just before midnight we got the 6th stop, just over 3/4s of the way through. This was a meal stop and there was a vegan option of lentil koftas. Again, neither of us wanted to eat anything big at that time of night, so I opted for the other pulsin bar that I had brought with me. I wasn’t really hungry, but knew that I should eat something to keep me going and it seemed to work quite well.

At our seventh stop around 2am, neither of us ate anything. There were snacks available, but neither of us were particularly hungry and we didn’t really want to hang around in a cold tent either. This turned out to be a big mistake. The last stage was horrendous with a perfect storm of low temperature and poor visibility due to the river fog that had rolled in and made it feel even colder than 3.5 degrees C. We were both very tired and in retrospect I should have grabbed a banana!

We finally rolled into Henley at around 21 and a half hours after we’d started. Neither of us felt like a hot meal and there was cold no vegan option. Having learnt from the South Coast walk we did last year, I’d brought enough porridge with us to have another two sachets each. It tasted great and was lovely and warm. We got the first train that we could back to London and nipped into Leon for more porridge – and I have to say, I was very impressed with the Ruby Red Porridge that they had on offer – warm, fruity, nutty and sustaining. Yum!

So that was how I fueled myself for the equivalent of nearly two and a half marathons. My top tips for vegans intending to do a similar long distance challenge are:

Bring your own snacks – it’s great if the event caters for vegans at every stop, but you know what you like and it’s so much more motivating to know that you have your favourite bar to eat at the next stop, rather than hoping that there might be something suitable left. Plus, if you are concerned about plastic usage, you can make choices that don’t mean using plastic.
Try your snacks out in training – nobody wants an upset stomach 7km from the nearest toilet…
You will eat more than you think you will – take something for between stops just in case you need it. I carried some more Space Invaders with me for that reason (but completely forgot that I had them at 3am!). If you’ve done lots of training, you’ll know when you’re likely to start craving salt for example.
Make sure you eat something at every stop, even if it is just a small piece of fruit. You will get to the point where you stop feeling hungry, but your body is still working really hard and needs the fuel.
Make sure you drink enough water – drink at every rest stop and take water with you too. This is especially important if you need to take NSAIDs like ibuprofen, as they can effect how your kidneys work.
Make sure you do enough long distance training walks (pretty obvious really, but two and a bit marathons is a loooong way)
Bring plenty of plasters for blisters and change your socks every 25km

Despite the physical effort involved, staying up all night and the inevitable aches and pains afterwards, I really enjoy this kind challenge and get a great sense of achievement afterwards. If you’re thinking about it but aren’t sure, just give it a go. You can always retire if you have to!

3 Life lessons that apply to more than just running

Photo by Mateusz Dach on Pexels.com
(Not actually the 2019 Liverpool Marathon!)

Didn’t get a chance to post last weekend, as the long awaited marathon swung around and so I was in Liverpool. Unfortunately, I had injured my knee about a month prior to the event, so I couldn’t do the full thing and had to settle for a half marathon instead. So this post is about what I learnt from the run.

If it’s hurting, work out what the problem is

I’d been going great guns until I got to 18 miles and then I ended up with really bad knee pain. This should have been a cue to slow down. Instead, I did a 20 mile walk across the South Downs the Thursday afterwards. It was a lovely walk, but despite wearing a knee brace it still hurt quite a bit. The next day, I did a 5K run through the water meadows at Winchester and promptly fell over my own two feet. It was bad enough that the person who was walking his dog thought that I had fallen over it, but I landed on the bad knee and cut my hand too. So fast forward two weeks, and it’s still hurting, so I went to see Sports physio. I’ve now got loads of exercises to do to strengthen my legs and that should deal with the knee pain – in 2-3 months time. His advice was not to try to run the marathon, and in a rare bout of common sense, I decided he was right. If I had stopped when the pain started, would I have been able to do the full 26.2 miles? I’ll never know, but I could have saved myself a lot of discomfort if I’d stopped when it hurt and worked out what the problem was. Working out why it’s hurting and doing something about it applies in so many areas of life!

Even if you’re disappointed, give it your best shot and try to avoid being resentful

To say I was disappointed not to be running the marathon that I’d spent 6 months training for was an understatement and I could have let that colour my whole experience. Instead, I mooched over to Liverpool with the attitude that I’d give the half marathon a go and see what happened. I was determined to finish even if it meant walking most of it, and I figured that as I walk quite fast, if I only ran 3 miles, I could still complete in the cut off time. I could have done the half marathon feeling resentful that I wasn’t doing the whole thing, but instead I figured that just finishing it would be an achievement in itself. And it turned out that was quite important in terms of being in the right place mentally towards the second half of the race. With the exception of about a mile where the route turned inland for a short while, the last 6 miles was into a very stiff wind – alright – it was a hellish wind at around 18 mph, straight into my face. Even the seagulls were having trouble. I was just glad to have made it that far without stopping, so I battled on with a positive-I-really-can’t-believe-I’ve-made-it-this-far attitude and finally made it to the end. If I’d chosen to feel bitter, that last stretch of the race would have been horrendous. My other half was able to complete the marathon distance and I was genuinely pleased for him – again that would have been difficult if I was feeling resentful about my own race

Proper preparation is good thing – over preparation not so much

Turns out that training for a marathon and then doing a half is a recipe for a good time – even with an injury. There’s a fine balance between properly preparing and over preparing and I suppose that some might consider training for a marathon and then doing the half over preparing. I’d agree if that had been the original intention – especially as it was the 18 miles that proved too much for my knee. However, from my point of view, I was making the best of a bad job and all those training runs (and hill runs – I’m looking at you Upper Parliament Street) proved to be invaluable. I could have spent ages looking at the map before I did the run, working out where the water stations were, looking for landmarks to give me some idea of how far round I was etc, but that would have been over preparing – and the moment that something went awry (because even the most carefully planned things usually have something unexpected occurring) – I would have been completely thrown. So I winged it, relied on the organisers to put water stations at sensible distances apart and for the mileage signs to be mostly accurate.

And it worked out fine – and I somehow managed to finish in the top 25% for my age class. And then there’s the medal (personally I think I got a better deal than my other half in terms of ribbon colour 😁)

Marathon medal with blue and yellow ribbon, 1/2 marathon with orange and purple ribbon

So I’ve signed up for next year’s run already and fingers crossed that with the exercises I’m doing to strengthen my legs, I might just be able to do the full distance next time!

2019 Resolutions – March Update

So where did February go? I know it’s a short month, but I seem to have stumbled into March without realising it! So during the 28 days of February, what have I achieved that allows me to work toward this year’s goals?

Well, my blog is growing , slowly but surely! I’ve written on a range of topics from self development themed articles to sustainability to some recipes that I hope you’ve enjoyed (I think my favourite at the moment is the leek and sausage casserole!) I’m still enjoying the process of writing and being creative and it’s a nice escape from my day job.

One of my recent posts was on sustainable dental health, which fits nicely in with my next goal which is to live a more sustainable lifestyle. This month I have also purchased some rather nice pre-loved records rather than buying new physical copies – though I have then also bought the mp3s of the albums where available. I get to listen to great music in a variety of formats, the records don’t end up in landfill and the artist still gets some royalties – everyone’s happy (and I think I may be writing a second hand music post at some point in the near future)! As I type, I am thoroughly enjoying listening to Kraftwerk’s Man Machine (yes, I know I’m 40 odd years behind everyone else!) I love the random things that you find in record sleeves sometimes. My recent purchase of Now 8 resulted in a brilliant find of an offer for an “Exclusive limited edition warm sweatshirt”, available in Chinese Jade or Electric Blue for the princely sum of £19.99 plus p&p. As the offer closed on the 28th February 1987, I think I’m somewhat late for that, though according to this inflation calculator, the £19.99 that sweater cost in 1987 is now approximately £55.76. Ouch!

My third goal was to complete a marathon within the cut off time. I’m not aiming big, I’m just aiming! My training is continuing will be doing 12 miles this week – but still not enjoying the interval training or the hill running. Hopefully I’ll be able to persuade myself to come to like it – or at least dislike it less! I also entered my first race. Other half and I went for the Winchester 10K, partly because we like Winchester and partly because it was far enough away when we were contemplating entering a race that we thought it might be a realistic proposition that we could actually complete it. I wouldn’t say that my other half and I are competitive, but we crossed the finish line at the same time because we were determined not be beaten by each other…

My quest to see some good live music continues – I’m just having to be very patient as most of the gigs are at the back end of the year. I am going to see Sleeper at the end of the month though and shall thoroughly enjoy reliving the ’90s. Just not in fancy dress…

Last month my sustainable living goal was dental health – this month I shall be focusing on cruelty free and sustainable cosmetics and DIY bath alternatives. Experimenting will be fun, but I’d best get my skates on as we’re five days into March already!

Three lessons I learnt from doing my first 10K race

The noise of many pairs of tramping feet is strangely loud in the foggy morning and then a magnificent figure holding aloft a sword looms large out of the mist. He has a large shield leaning against his legs and everyone present knows that it is Alfred, King of the Britons.

But we’re not in 9th century Wessex…this is modern day Winchester and the start of this year’s Winchester 10K road race! This year’s event took place on the 24th February and with the fog made for a particularly chilly start. It was my first competitive race and I was pleased with my time, but more important than a personal best was the experience of actually running the race itself. This got me to thinking about what I’d learnt from the experience…

1.Train properly

As with so much in life, it pays to be properly prepared. Much as I hate hill running (and I really do!), I do appreciate why it’s important – and that training paid off in buckets last week. The area around Winchester is quite hilly, particularly the Arlesford road which is a long incline. I was glad that my running programme meant that I had spent some considerable time running up and down the same hill over and over again near where I live. Exciting, huh? But that hard graft in training meant that the event itself went much more smoothly than I had expected and I was able to keep up a fast pace for the whole race. Which brings me to my second point…

2. Be prepared to push yourself outside of your comfort zone…

…because you really are quite likely to surprise yourself! I run in the early morning, partly because I like the solitude and partly because I don’t want have to deal with other people faffing about. I discovered that running success in a large organised race such as this one is as much about navigating around other people as it is about the actual running. The fact that this was my first race and that I was running in a large crowd made me feel quite discombobulated! But I’d expected to feel slightly uncomfortable, and my desire to experience a formal race before I ran a marathon outweighed the temporary sense of muddle and confusion. For me, running this race was about allaying greater anxiety further down the line, so that’s what I concentrated on – and I think this can be applied to lots of different areas of life. Finding a compelling reason to push through the initial discomfort is a really strong motivator. And you are quite likely to surprise yourself once you start – by the time I was 5K into the race (and pleasantly surprised that I was still feeling quite fresh) – I was starting to relax and enjoy it!

3. Don’t over-prepare

Preparation is good. Obsessing about an event, not so much. I could have spent an awful lot of time looking at every detail of the course. The route had been published before the event, so I could have used Google Earth to have a look at the area. If I’d done that, I would have spotted the hills and there is a fair chance that I’d have decided that it was too difficult and chickened out. Instead, I just concentrated on my marathon training and treated it like a normal run – I knew I could do 10K, as I’d done 10 miles the week before. Once your basic plan is in place, there is usually little to be gained by continual scrutiny, except perhaps anxiety and that helps nobody!

So all in all, the Winchester 10K was a learning experience in more ways than one – and I got a rather nice medal and running shirt out of it too! And I enjoyed it so much that I shall be back next year to try to improve on my time…

With or Without You – running to your favourite tunes or not?

Seven months after Other Half and I started running regularly (for ‘regularly’, read at all…) we finally did 10K in one go. Which is a good thing really, as that marathon that we signed up for is six months away and there’s plenty of training to go between now and then. We’ve signed up for the Liverpool Rock and Roll Marathon and that brings me to the subject of this week’s post – to listen to music whilst running or not? I can think of three main reasons you’d want to listen to music when running.

You want to distract yourself from what you’re doing and take your mind off the effort
You want something to hold your interest on a longer run
You want to use the beat of the music to drive you on and improve performance

So I did some digging through the research to see what the thinking on running with music is…

In a Guardian article Prof. Karageorghis from Brunel University says that performance benefits of up to 15% could be yours if you listen to music whilst exercising. He says that you’d get enhanced performance and a reduction in the perception of effort. In the same article, a study by Prof Lane showed that motivating music unsurprisingly helped to improve the performance of the runners, whilst a research project at Liverpool JMU looked at 12 cyclists who rode for 30 minutes whilst listening to a song of their own choice. The second part of the experiment was to look at what happened when the tempo was increased or decreased by 10% without the cyclists being aware of it. When the music was slowed down, distance travelled and heart rate slowed down, whereas the opposite was true when the music was faster – and they enjoyed the music more. This didn’t stop the participants finding the workout harder, but it did mean that the participants “accept, and even, prefer a greater degree of effort”.

But it’s not just tempo that’s important – this article looked at Edworthy and Waring’s 2006 study which examined the effect of loudness too. This study looked at the effect of 5 different combinations of loud, fast, quiet, slow and no music at all on the 30 subjects. The subjects selected their own pace to run on a treadmill for 10 minutes. The results showed that there was a correlation between increased volume and tempo, and the heart rate and speed that the subjects ran at. The louder and faster the music, the faster the treadmill pace chosen to run at. However (there’s always a ‘but’, isn’t there!) some have questioned whether the effect that music seems to have is actually down to increased motivation caused by listening to music. Brooks and Brooks suggested that the studies which do show a positive effect on performance have used inexperienced participants exercising on their own in a lab. Where trained (exercising for at least an hour three times a week) and untrained participants were compared, there was a smaller effect on the trained group. Basically, working out in a lab on your own is boring, so the music helps you work harder. When you’re in a race, you’re already in a high state of excitement (or anxiety!) so the music has a negligible effect.

The memories and the emotions that a particular piece of music evoke are also key. Making you feel good when you run improves your mindset and therefore that improves performance. This probably explains why one of my running playlists is very 80s heavy! (But without Eye of the Tiger or the Rocky theme…) Lyrics might have an effect too, eg words on the theme of keeping going might just push you through a tough run, though how effective this is might just depend on your gender. Chris Lawhorn suggests that men and women process music differently, with women focusing on the melody, and men tend to focusing on the lyrics. In my highly unscientific study with a sample size of one (ie me!), I would agree that I definitely focus more on the melody whilst running, though this may be because I tend to lose myself in my thoughts too, so the lyrics tend to fade away.

A couple of penguins standing on a shingle beach

Then there’s tempo to match your stride. A strong beat *should* help you to drive along your stride – your foot should hit the ground with every beat, so a faster beat = faster running pace. I have never found this to work for me, but that’s because I run like a penguin, it in what is possibly the most inefficient manner ever. No, I really do! I take lots of small, quick steps when I am walking and this has translated into my running. A comfortable running pace for me is about 9 minutes a mile, or around 6.5 mph. The only thing that has a fast enough beat to match my foot strike is ELO’s Mr Blue Sky, at 178 beats per minute (BPM).

This article suggests that music that is around 160-180 BPM will keep you running at a good pace. Unfortunately, there isn’t actually that much music in the mainstream that goes that fast – and I don’t want to be listening to the same 5 or 6 tracks on repeat.

So what to do? Women’s Running suggests that the characteristics of good running music are

fairly loud volume
high tempo
rhythmically constant beat
affirmative lyrics

They also provide a range of BPMs for different types of running

150-190 BPM for running one step per beat
75-95 BPM for one stride cycle per beat
120-130 BPM for low to moderate intensity running if used as background music
130-140 BPM for moderate to high intensity running if used as background music

Nike, EMI and Ministry of Sound have all responded by creating or compiling music specifically for running, but you can easily create your own playlist with the aid of online databases of BPM, such as Song BPM and Get Song BPM. I really like Get Song as you can look up a whole album at once which is useful if you want to create a playlist database of your own. As for my 10K this week, I did exactly that and created a playlist based on my favourite OMD songs. They start fairly slow at 106 BPM and gradually increase to 176 BPM before dropping back to 110 BPM ish for the cool down. It fulfilled the first three of Women’s Running’s criteria and I reckon it certainly helped me battle through my run, up a hill and whilst the wind was running at 22mph and gusting up to 40! And of course, the wind was only behind me for about 5 seconds so was no help whatsoever (well, that’s what it felt like anyway!) So here’s my play list – but you’ll want to create your own because these songs will evoke different emotions for you.

5 minute warm up walk

Was it Something I Said?

Robot Man

1 hour run

Garden City*

Apollo

88 Seconds in Greensboro

The New Stone Age

Love and Violence

Heaven is (Highland Studios demo)

All Wrapped Up

Mystereality

New Babies; New Toys*

Dresden

Bloc Bloc Bloc

Georgia

Radio Waves

Electricity

Red Frame/White Light

5 minute warm down walk**

Joan of Arc

VCL XI

* these songs have an explicit lyric in them.

** this is actually slightly longer than 5 mins – useful if you slightly misjudge your route 😉

Safety note: I never listen to music with ear phones in both ears. Quite apart from the fact that I can only get the right one to stay in, I want to be able to hear the traffic around me and keep myself safe.

So after all that, this study rather throws a spanner in the works. Pre-run motivational music of 110-150 BPM aroused the runners and better prepared them for the 5K time trial than the no music group. When the runners listened to music during the 5K, they ran the first 2 laps of 12.5 faster than with no music, but after that the difference in lap times was negligible. This suggests that the higher the level of effort, the less effect the music has. When runners listened to music before their run they averaged times 26:45, but when listening to music of 140-160 BPM, the average time was 26.00. Weirdly, the fastest average times was when runners listened to music with a BPM of 80-100, which the researchers didn’t really explain. Maybe I’ll add Autobahn to my playlist and see what happens… Perhaps most interestingly, when runners listened to music after their run, it had the opposite effect to the pre-run music and internal systems, eg heart rate returned to normal more quickly.

So what have we learnt from this? If you like listening to music when you run, carry on and if you don’t, it’s unlikely to be having a detrimental effect overall! As for me, I shall be giving my 80s playlist an airing tomorrow – Just Can’t Get Enough!

Happy Running!