Very recently, I ran my first ever half marathon and though I’ve always been known by my friends to be a decent runner, the path to running it wasn’t as plaining sailing as it may have looked on the outside. The contents of this blog will talk about my journey from being a decent runner when younger, me losing me way and what happened to allow that to happen, my struggles getting back into running and what changes I’ve made to my training to allow me to break the barrier I was facing.
Those that I knew me back when I was a teenager would have known the I was an avid runner, though surprisingly after coming from a background of being a big indoor gamer and hating cross country when at school. But once I arrived at college, something changed in and my apparent natural ability for the sport was spotted and nurtured, and I suddenly fell in love with it! Over the next two years, I came to be cross country captain, placing highly in the local college races. Things were looking good for me, until I made the stupid decision to try long jump and managed to tear a ligament in my ankle and strain two of the tendons, leaving my season in tatters and my running being over for some substantial time, just as the going was getting good. The pain and misery was only compounded by a misdiagnosis of only a sprained ankle, which meant I didn’t get proper treatment for it, wasn’t given crutches and told I could attempt running in a few weeks. A failed 3000m race with an ankle roll, very bad biomechanics and no sign of recovery 6 weeks later, I was knocking at the door of a local physiotherapist who told me the bad news and started me on an intensive regime to get me back up and running as soon as possible.
With the pedigree of athletes that the University of Birmingham had produced in the past, it was my aspiration to try and become part of the team and try my hand at becoming the best runner that I could be. However, this didn’t go to plan at all! With so long without training properly and maybe not cross training as much as I should have, my love for running completely evaporated after the first few sessions, where being lapped by most of the team was a very bitter pill to swallow, one that my ego couldn’t take and with the effect this had on me, it became a calamitous cocktail of negative factors when you add in Freshers, alcohol and eating badly to seal the deal.
After finding the gym and deciding to see if I could gain a physique reminiscent of athletes and fitness influencers I saw, I left university just over 20kg heavier than my lean racing weight from my cross country days and had compounded my poor biomechanics and muscular imbalances with bad posture, not looking after myself and only lifting weights. My only saving grace was I knew I had some running ability left in me from my time competing in Tough Guy and finishing well but it was now always going to be an uphill battle.
With running always being a passion of mine, though sometimes a love hate relationship, it was something I always tried to return to on and off but due to the build up of issues, the work that needed to be put in was too much and one I slacked on, making the running difficult, sometimes painful, and hard work. This was at the back end of 2018 and I just couldn’t get past running 2 miles, sometimes 3 at a push before I was worn out, in too much pain or lose the mental side of the battle but I really couldn’t work out what was going wrong, apart from my knowledge of my imbalances affecting my form but not realising how bad it really was. What hindered me even further, though years ago, was the ego side of remembering my old running capabilities and using those old markers to grade my current efforts, even though I was injury free and weighed around 20-25kg lighter back then! But just as things started to pick up, though ever so slightly, to top it all off I smashed the end of my big toe so that stopped the running for the rest of the year.
Usually I carry on training when I head away travelling, potentially in an unhealthy way where I’d get neurotic about it to the point where I seriously stress myself out about it if I go too long without it. This time was different though. As I headed to Thailand with my very swollen, very broken toe, I found peace with myself and was able to decide to leave the training and completely reset mentally and physically. Obviously, this didn’t count me swimming in the sea, scuba diving, hiking, walking tours… you get what I mean though!
The rest, mentally and physically, during my time away helped by the lack of thinking about training, reinvigorated me to get back to it with a new found enthusiasm and drive to achieve what I always had the potential to achieve but after a lot of thinking about the mistakes of the past, I needed to make sure that I did it correctly. Coincidentally upon my return to the UK, ultramarathon videos popped into my YouTube recommended which resinated with me and focused my mind on a goal. Then came the motivational videos featuring David Goggins, which were followed up with podcasts featuring him, appearing in my recommended, which in turn fully inspired me and the drive was reignited. I decided to buy his book which in turn added fuel to the spark I had and I got busy planning my path to my goals.
I now had my long term goal to aim for but with ultramarathons being longer than 26.2 miles, I needed to make sure that I had some milestones along the way that could be achieved realistically to break up the path to such a distance, which brought about the target of a half marathon, which seemed very far away based on my inability to get any consistency due to one reason or another. That led me to making some serious changes to my running, which I’m going to go through now to help you out if you’re struggling to get moving for any running goals that you have and need inspiration to break through your own personal barriers.
Running Without Headphones
The main thing that inspired this change in my running was mostly reading Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins (an utterly brilliant book if you haven’t read it already!) but had a significant effect on my running that allowed a lot of other things to fall into place so easily. To you headphone users, I know where you’re coming from when you say that you NEED your music to get you through, I was the same. Running wasn’t comfortable and was hard work so the only way to get through it was to chuck on that go to playlist and try to power through. Little did I know, this was actually causing this discomfortable. The adrenaline from the music was causing me to run too hard to just get through the distance meaning I was tiring out sooner. This tiredness prompted me to pump my volume to push me again. This continued until I ran out of levels to up it to, breath and the ability to hear properly…
However, when I ditched the music and ran without any distractions, though weird initially, everything that I am about to cover came together bit by bit. I feel the main reason for this was because I was more present in the moment with the running so I could pay attention to my form and my pacing, whilst just enjoying the surroundings as I went by, rather than just trying to get through it as quickly as possible. Tying this in with making sure that I ran in places that were scenic, made running a lot more appealing compared to streets with the added benefit of less impact when I found trails and footpaths to run on. It’s certainly made me appreciate the places that I run more and found the hidden beauty of them whatever the weather.
Making Sure That I Went Easy
As I indicated in the point above, one of the common issues I was facing was the fact that I was pushing my running too hard meaning that I was just tiring myself out and not using the parts of the cardiovascular I needed to be able to improve to gain the endurance that I wanted to as well as contributing to the burn out or injuries I was facing beforehand. Using Jack Daniels’ book Running Formula to help me with this, I was using his advice to spend 4-8 weeks of building a form base of easy running before you start throwing in anything requiring a higher level of work. Now that I had ditched the music that was causing me to push too hard, I was able to really pay attention to the effort that I was putting in based on how heavily I was breathing, with the rule of thumb for an easy run being that you can have a conversation as you go. I do use a heart rate monitor on my watch to be able to see which training zone I’m in as well but if you don’t have one, the breathing rule will do just fine.
Technique
With me wanting to embrace being barefoot more, I had been wearing Vibram Fivefingers (much to my friends’ and family’s dismay) but tied in with me really embracing the running, the ego side of me pushing myself to the levels I used to have meant that I didn’t have the patience to take it slow and steady and brought about injuries in my calves and feet. Then when I did try to scale it back, I was still having issues that were frustrating me after reading through the literature around barefoot running.
Though I was happy with the Fivefingers, the design of Vivobarefoot’s shoes got me interested after the ridicule that I got for my “toe shoes” as well as the room they give your feet to spread in the shoe. Heading to their shop, I tried them on and explained my experiences of being barefoot in the past with the Fivefingers, detailing the issues I was having. Completely free of charge, they sent me into the back to have a chat with a couple of their coaches who do sessions to help rebuild your running form after years of being in the overly cushioned shoes of the modern day.
After just 5 minutes on the treadmill, my form was ripped apart. From the number of pick ups I was given, it made me wonder how I’d made it this far in life! My cadence wasn’t high enough, I was landing on my toes, my hips were in anterior pelvic tilt, my kickback wasn’t far enough, I was using the wrong muscles… you get the point! Thankfully, it wasn’t terminal and these guys were happy to impart some of their knowledge onto me breaking it down into individual chunks for me to use going forward:
- Heels kissing the floor – The first cue that I was given was to allow my heels to kiss the ground when running. From what I was told, I had embraced the “running on the balls of feet” a little too much, to the point where I was pointing my toes with such force, I had rigid calves and explained my several DOMS for days after barefoot runs. So counter this habit, I was told to pull back where I was landing to just behind the balls of my feet and should be kissing the floor with your heels, to give me the mental cue to land a lot softer and use the muscles in my feet and calves better to absorb the force and then reuse it as elastic energy.
- Know which muscle is doing what – Thinking back to my old running form, I was concentrating a lot on my calves and quadriceps doing all the work when it came to pushing me forwards and I wasn’t really utilising the glutes or hamstrings. Turns out, like a lot things with running, I was wrong! The guys managed to break it down for me and explain the real mechanics of running, though I’ll admit this is only my interpretation and simplified version of what they said. What I took away from this conversation is this simple understanding of the cycle: as you land, your calves and feet are to act as shock absorbers, meaning they should be relaxed, and acting like that spring, store the potential elastic energy to be used in the gait cycle later. It is then the role of the glutes and hamstrings to pull your planted leg back, in turn pushing you forward along with the release of the potential elastic energy in your calves and feet to propel you forward. Once the leg is at its limit of the hip extension, your quads contract to pull the leg back out in front of you for the next stride. It may sound stupid to you that I didn’t know this already, which was my attitude at the time! How could I know so little about such a simple thing as running? Come on now! But when put into practice on my next few runs, I came to a realisation that the guys were right and that running is a skill to be learnt after we’ve become so out of tune of our origins. I started concentrating more on what I was actually doing to ensure I wasn’t using the wrong thing at the wrong time which has allowed me to ease the workload in some places that wasn’t needed, in turn making me more efficient. Don’t worry, this doesn’t mean you have to think about how to run the whole time. It only took me a few runs to get into the new groove and now I’m more aware during a run, I can tell when I’m feeling off kilter and correct it straight away.
- Increasing cadence – Unaware to me, my cadence was low. Very low in fact! Compared to the recommended 175 to 185 range depending on your height, in comparison my was sitting at a lowly 160 steps per minute. This meant that I was over striding as well as having to put more effort in per stride to be able to go the same speed compared to a higher cadence. For me, this has probably been the hardest thing for me to correct so my advice is slow and steady by increasing it gradually, as you need to allow your stride length to shorten to reap the benefits. That’s the only advice I can give as all I recall doing is amending the other areas of my running whilst occasionally trying to up my cadence slightly when I felt it was a bit low.
Increasing Mileage Sustainably
After being the runner that I was a few year ago, I had a drive to go back to the miles I was putting in where I could easily put in two runs a day of 3 to 4 miles as well a gym session. However that was a few years and though I would still have some of that work capacity and cardiovascular fitness left over, it’s certainly been hindered from not really doing anything consistently for so long.
It was this picking up the mileage too quickly that often gave me the issues of injuries and over use, tied into not looking after my body well enough, that would stop my progress and only set me back to square one. My way of solving this issue? Tied in with my next point about looking after myself, when I started running after my broken toe, the distance was only 2 miles a run three times a week with a 2.5 mile “long run” on Sunday. This worked on the principles laid out in Jack Daniels’ Running Formula, where the rule for building base miles should be that the long run shouldn’t exceed 25-30% of your total weekly mileage or time.
So that was my starting point, which looks a long way from the 13.1 miles that I needed to run in 3 month’s time and I can tell you, it felt it too but I trusted in myself to obey the plan I set myself.
My method of increasing the mileage was by adding only 0.5 miles on to each run every week, which exceeds the recommendation of Jack Daniels’ rule of increasing weekly mileage by 10% but the method I was using was reacting well with me, alongside the cross training and maintenance of my body. I made sure that I never exceeded this amount though!
Cross Training
Another element to the training that I conducted during this period of three months was incorporating cross training to allow me to train on days where I wasn’t running that was impact free but continuing to push me forwards. This was on top of my already planned weights session that I had everyday and you’re now thinking that it’s too much and I was overtraining. But using the principles of work capacity and progressive overload in Ross Edgley’s book The World’s Fittest Book, I was keeping CV and weights around 12 hours apart so the gains for each weren’t being affected by the other. I was ensuring that I looked after my body and sleeping enough too, allowing me recover enough by the next session. Using the heart rate monitor on my Garmin Fenix 3 in the mornings, I was able to see how well recovered I was too. This took using the benchmark of my resting heart rate usually being between 40-45 so if I was at least above 50, I knew I hadn’t recovered enough and would conduct an impact free active recovery of cycling to keep me moving and assist my body in the recovery process by slightly increasing the blood flow without doing any further damaging. If you don’t have a heart rate monitor that automatically takes your resting heart rate, you can spend a week taking your heart rate in bed as you wake up and you’ll soon see the trend of when you’re feeling good and bad, helping you get in tune with your body.
You can find below the sorts of cross training sessions that I was doing below:
- Rowing HIIT – Starting with a 750m warm up row on setting 4 (out of 10), I’d then complete 6-8 x 500m max effort with 2 minutes rest between on setting 10, finishing with a 750m cool down. This session often induce some vomiting…
- Rowing 5km – I would just get on, set it to level 10 and row 5km, aiming for a time under 20 minutes for me, keeping things at a nice steady pace where I wasn’t hurting.
- Endurance ride – Starting with a 5-10 minute warm up on a light resistance, the working session would be on a setting that allowed me to get a good cadence of around 90 rpm, not be too out of breath but give my legs a good burn, for 45-60 minutes. Finish off with a 10 minute cool down.
- Active recovery ride – If I felt like I’d not recovered enough when it came to the cross training days, I’d set the bike to a very low resistance and cycle for 30-45 minutes at a very steady 70-75 rpm, making sure I wasn’t pushing at all.
- For running days, if I’d not recovered enough, I would make sure to lower the mileage slightly as well as the speed.
Looking After My Body Better
Even though I knew how much looking after your body was essential to be able to excel in the sports that you play, this was one thing that just I couldn’t get into a rhythm with for one reason or another. I feel that the main thing was the frustration and pain from imbalances from old injuries and poor posture, which isn’t the right attitude to have, but with a mindset of not embracing your weaknesses and strengthening them, I tend to avoid actions that will only go and highlight them to me. I don’t know what it was that clicked in me but I gained a sudden drive to meet my goals and embraced the fact that this involved making sure my body was working as efficiently and painlessly as possible. Looking back now, I’m glad that I made the change as a lot of the things that were ailing me in everyday life are slowly going away, breaking the uncomfortable status quo that I’d come to accept.
What I brought into my training was making that I was using the foam roller and theracane on the areas of my body that were the most troublesome and following it up with stretching every area of my body, doing this every evening before bed. It allowed me to unwind from day with things on in the background to keep me entertained. In the mornings, as soon as I woke up, I would conduct Elliott Hulse’s bioenergetics routine (easier if you looked this up) to get myself energised and moving before it was time to head out for a run or the gym.
One key thing to ensuring that I was looking after my body was sleeping enough! Good sleep hygiene in the evenings meant that not only was I getting the things done that I needed to but I was going to bed without screen lights stopping me from resting and sleeping deeply by hindering my melatonin release. Planning at least 7.5 hours was key too. You may think that’s impossible with our busy working lives but actually, I found my productivity rose considerably with me being able to function fully mentally and I was getting more done in the day time.
How did the half marathon go in the end? I went in aiming for a 1 hour 40 minutes based on my training runs and to set myself a decent marker to work from. The course was a trail run around Wimbledon Common, featuring a couple of hills at the beginning of the course before flattening out and then very gradually going down the hill. Going around the Common, it was a two lap run which has its pros and cons, depending how you look at it. My plan for the day was to run my own race at 7:00-7:30 per mile for the first lap then pick it up to 6:30-7:00 per mile for the second lap, depending on how I felt. Did it go to plan? Not at all but in a good way! Going a little bit with the group that went in the first wave (1 hour 40 minutes or below as a target), the end of the first lap showed that I was inside the pace for 1 hour 30 minutes and suddenly, I felt getting a pretty good time was on. Concentrating on my pace, technique and breathing, I did my best to keep the needed speed and hoped for the best come the finish line. As I came to the end of the race, I saw that things were going to be very tight and needed to up the tempo. Even with this final push, I entered the finishing straight of about 150m with 20 seconds to go on the finish line clock so the sprint finish was on and I crossed the line at… 1 hour 30 minutes 2 seconds! Which I was happy with BUT when the official chip time came out, it was 1 hour 29 minutes 55 seconds meaning that I managed to go from hating running, running 8 minutes per mile for 2 miles to finishing my first ever half marathon in a sub 1 hour 30 minute time!
That wraps up another blog from me! With fitness and running being a code that some people just can’t crack, I hope that some of the lessons that I’ve learnt along my path to distance running can help you make some small improvements to your fitness journeys, break those barriers down and move on from those plateaus! If you don’t already, be sure to like the Facebook page and follow the Instagram and Twitter pages to be the first to find out when I release the next blog!
