Marathon weekend

Before I ran the Malta marathon last March, I had decided to dedicate this year following that event to shorter races instead of concentrating on another marathon. But I did so well in the Malta marathon, and enjoyed it so much, that I quickly found a way to include a training schedule for another one, tomorrow's Brussels marathon, along with the various races that I would do throughout the year.

The combined shorter races plus marathon schedule went extremely well, even during the three weeks in the peak of summer in Malta, when I managed two runs, each at 2h45m, very early on Sunday mornings. Those two runs were quite an adventure, and were chronicled in this blog last July. The build up also included a half marathon on 15 August, on a hot afternoon this time in Belgium, three 3hr runs and another 3h15m run, all according to schedule. I was quite confident of achieving a result comparable to the 3h26m marathon in Malta.

But on 13 September, the day after the longest run exactly three weeks before the event, I received a nasty birthday gift in the shape of a cold. I was lucky, in a way. Any earlier and I wouldn't have managed to complete the build-up. Any later and it would have been too late to recover in time. As it turned out, I barely managed to recover, and my carefully planned tapering phase was turned literally upside-down. I had to be very careful if I didn't want all the hard training and preparations to go to waste. If I waited until I was fully recovered, I would enter the marathon with barely any running at all in the previous three weeks, or with sore muscles due to having resumed running after a long break - not a good idea. On the other hand, if I trained too hard while still not recovered I would remain sick.

So I had to look for a compromise somewhere, and kicked off after one week without any running, a fortnight ago when the worst seemed to be over. A short easy 6k on Sunday (in the afternoon to avoid the chill air of the morning), then a 10k on Monday, and a long run of two hours in an extended mid-day break on Wednesday. This was another compromise between the originally planned 2h30m at minus 2 weeks and 1h30m one week before the marathon, the two long runs of the tapering phase rolled into one. I did suffer some consequences after this effort - sore muscles and renewed coughing - but it was necessary to prevent my leg muscles from becoming too lazy... Two days' complete rest after that, then easy 10k's on alternate days, with slow but sure improvement in fitness and a decreasing urge to cough.

I now estimate my fitness to be at 90% of the ideal. Will it be enough for tomorrow?

My forecast is this. I'll manage to complete my 11th marathon tomorrow, which is what really matters in the end. Any less would be a huge disappointment, but it certainly wouldn't be through any lack of effort of mine. I won't try to compete with anyone, although I hope I'll still manage to run at 5 minutes per kilometre to beat the 3h30m target. I also expect a tough final thirty minutes, probably involving cramps in one or both calves, due to the missing 10% from my ideal level of fitness.

Two years ago, I ran the Brussels marathon without expecting to finish it. I just hope that tomorrow it won't be the opposite case. Maybe one day I'll take part, and I won't get a cold just a few weeks before the event.

Tapering phase - major disruption

The last few weeks before a marathon are the most critical. It's so close to the event that you hardly have any time to get back on track if anything goes wrong. Which is why it's such a big blow if you get a simple common cold during this period.

You see, the final weeks of preparation are very definitely structured. At minus 3 weeks there's the biggest long run before the marathon. Any earlier would be too early, and the benefits would start to wear off by marathon day. Any later would be too close, and there wouldn't be enough time left to rest properly. So, there's hardly any chance of flexibility - 3 weeks before the marathon I have to do my longest run, 3h15m, period. This is followed by the tapering phase, a gradual decrease in training leading to the marathon. In the last few days before the marathon there's hardly any training at all.

This is all well and good, IF you don't fall prey to a silly ailment such as the common cold. As I said, since we're so close to the event there's no time left to allow for easing back into the routine. If you can't run at minus three weeks, then you'll have to do away with the longest long run, and the longest training run would be a shorter run, say 3hr, FOUR weeks before the event. So it's probably goodbye to any excellent performance in the marathon.

I've been lucky. I got my cold on the day exactly following my longest run. It was the best possible time to have a cold during the month preceding a marathon. One week without training, but enough time left to recover normal muscular fitness. Except that at the end of the one week I couldn't afford to remain sitting down any longer, and with the symptoms almost over I resumed on Sunday with a short run, followed by my standard easy 10k, a day off to allow the inevitable muscle soreness to go away, and today a midweek long run - duration exactly midway between what I was supposed to have done last Sunday (2h30) and what I would have done next Sunday (1h30) if things had gone according to schedule. So today I ran for 2 hours.

Now I'm walking a very fine balance between staying fit - running fit - and staying healthy, i.e. a full recovery from the cold. Not enough training, and the marathon becomes a very difficult enterprise. I got cramps today because of the one week layoff, so I still need to work to get my leg muscles used to the activity of running for a long distance. Too much training, and I get sick again, and the symptoms are taking a long time to go away...

I'm confident it will be alright on the day. From now on it's one and a half weeks of pampering and easy 10k's. I just have to take it easy and hope for the best.

Vossem 12km - 0h53:46

Vossem seems to me to be a quiet, sleepy village, surrounded by agricultural land and parks, close to the more famous Tervuren. Arriving here, I noticed two landmarks that were noteworthy. One is a large farm building, pictured above, quite striking as you're approaching the village centre. The other is the church dedicated to Saint Paul that dates back to the 12th century, with construction typical of very old structures, with bricks embedded in mortar, but very well kept. Pity I couldn't have a look inside, as I was dressed rather inappropriately in short shorts and running vest...

This weekend they had their Dorpsfeesten, whatever that is. The sleepy quiet character of the place was of course shattered on this occasion. There was a street market, a stage, someone shouting on a PA system, and lots of chips and beer stalls, always all too present in these races, without it being possible for me to buy anything since I don't carry any money with me during races!

Again, it was awfully hot today, as I embarked on my seventh race in the Watermolen Cup, which would ensure a placing in the final classification. Again, I had to drink lots of water before the race, and pour lots more on top of my head to cool down a little bit. And yet again I cursed the strange idea of race organisers in Belgium, who could easily schedule August races in the morning, or in the evening, so that participants might run in temperatures that are better suited for endurance events. But no! The races have to start in the hottest part of the day, in mid-afternoon.

Well, 10k is more achievable than 21k. But I made it a point to stick to a cautious pace, at least for the first third of the race. All this Watermolen Cup series has for me been a bit of a jump in the dark, since I have never done any one of the races, so I didn't know what to expect during the routes. So, again, today I didn't know if it was a single or a double loop, if it was a flat or a hilly race, or if we would be doing easy-going bicycle lanes and normal roads, or if we would be doing any treacherous forest paths that the Belgians seem to like so much.

For a couple of kilometres it was normal streets, going slightly uphill or downhill. There was a double kilometre marker after 2km, saying "2km 8km". How sweet of them, I thought, 2km gone, 8 to go. We entered a wood and the ground started to get rough. But I had settled into a good steady pace, even though the quality of the ground kept deteriorating. There were a couple of stretches of single file running. Luckily, it has only rained on rare occasions for the past few weeks, otherwise this would have been another mud feast. Instead it was bone dry and very dusty. It seemed as if I was running in Tunisia rather than in Belgium.

A second, cryptic kilometre marker: 4km 10km. What the hell? Did they mean the 4th kilometre of the 10km race? Maybe. Then an even stranger marker: 5km 11km. Never mind. But one question had been answered. It was not a double loop, since at the half-way point, i.e. 5km, we hadn't passed the starting point. Or so I thought. A few minutes later I started to hear shouting on a PA system, and suddenly it clicked and all the cryptic kilometre markers made utterly perfect sense: we were doing a double loop after all, the half-way mark being at 6km!

They had advertised a 10km race, but in actual fact it was going to be 12km long.

What a mean trick to play on a hot August afternoon. When I go out for a run, whether it's training or a race, I'm mentally prepared for the distance. When doing a 10k, at the end of that 10k I'm unable to contemplate any more, while two days later I would be quite capable of running 30km without any undue trouble. It's a psychological thing. But there's also the physical aspect. The pace of a 10k is faster than that of a 12k, and I had been running at the former pace, with consequent expenditure of energy. Now I had to keep going for an extra 2 kilometres, which was no joke in that heat. So, I switched to '12k mode', aiming to maintain the good position that I had achieved up till then.

Luckily, it was early enough for me to readjust and 'absorb' the additional distance into my race. I also happened to be in good shape, and it seems that I had hit on the optimum pace. Another advantage was that now, having done one loop, I knew what to expect, so I could prepare myself (mentally, again) for the hard parts, and again I overtook a good number of rivals even the second part. No stopping for drinks today - I reckoned I could survive the distance without having to stop to drink in the plastic cups provided, thanks to my extra pre-race hydration.

After the final bit of steep forest path I felt a bit groggy, but there were just two kilometres left to go, mostly downhill, and I quickly recovered a strong pace that took me beyond more rivals up to the finish.

It was a fantastic performance overall, one of my very best this year.

Zaventem half marathon - 1h38:55

Most people consider summer in Belgium to be a bit of a joke. "Summer? What summer?" they will say. This idea is apparently shared by Dwars door Zaventem, the organisers of the annual Zaventem half marathon that takes place on 15 August, the main summer holiday in Europe. It must be the reason why they don't choose a different time for the race, which takes place at the peak of the afternoon heat starting at 2 p.m.

To be fair, today happened to be abnormally hot. The maximum temperature has been in the low twenties since quite a few days, but it went up to around 30 C precisely on the day of the half marathon. Still, surely it's not unheard of that temperatures tend to be hot in the afternoon at the peak of summer. Would it be such a bad idea then for a half marathon in mid-August to start at, say, 10 a.m. rather than at 2 p.m.?

Whatever - 2 p.m. it was, and that's when I joined the small crowd of long distance diehards at the starting line, under a scorching sun at the edge of the communal park in Zaventem. I had known since close to a week that it would be very hot today, so I was well prepared, having taken a lot of water, plus poured another bottle over the top of my head to cool me down.

Having had a few disappointments in racing recently, owing to having started too fast, my aim today, also given the prevailing conditions, would be simply to complete the run, without aiming for any spectacular finishing time. So I positioned myself in the middle of the pack, and for a good while simply ran along with them, trying not to exert myself at all. It was a bit the same way as I run a marathon.

It was amusing how many runners were jostling to secure a place wherever there was a little bit of shade. Zaventem is famous for hosting the "Brussels" international airport, but I was quite surprised that neither at the start nor during the run was this evident at all. In fact Zaventem turned out to be a typical Flemish town with the main feature (apart from the airport) being the church, and consisting mainly of residential streets, parks and cycling lanes.

To my huge relief we didn't have any treacherous forest paths to negotiate. It was simply terra firma all the way, and also relatively flat, so I could easily settle into the steady pace for which I had been aiming. For the first time ever, I stopped at water stations, where we were (yet again) offered water in cups. I was prepared for this too, and had already decided I couldn't afford to spill the precious fluid. I would stop for 5 seconds to gulp down the entire contents of the cup and resume my run. Four such stops would only cost me 20 seconds, and were more than worthwhile since the alternative would be to eventually give up due to dehydration.

In the middle part of the race I gained quite a few positions. As I passed one particular runner, he jokingly told me "professional", and I replied, "well, almost but not quite...". But in fact I was doing well, and soon realised that there were just 5 km remaining. I hadn't overtaken anyone for a good stretch, and after another kilometre decided this was the time when I could push myself a bit more, encouraged by the fact that I had been told that the final 4 km were mostly downhill.

I'm still undecided whether it was the right decision. I did, in fact, overtake various other rivals, but with 2 km to go my steam ran out, and they were a very tough final 2 km. As if this wasn't enough, there was a 'sting' in the final few hundred metres, as we had to do a loop in the park, part of which was a rather steep hill, turning into a finishing downhill stretch on the grass. Still, no one overtook me at all in those last 2 km, so I suppose in fact I actually gained a few positions by deciding to force the pace.

What a race! A half marathon under the hot afternoon sun in mid-August, with the temperature in the shade at 29 C. Unfortunately, there was no complimentary beer or wine or memento here either. They gave us an apple. Maybe they're concerned for our health, although there was lots of beer for sale... I also got a ticket for a lottery ("tombola") with prizes including a mountain bike. The draw would take place two hours later, at 6. I didn't have a single cent on me, so I staggered towards the car and drove back home. I probably won the mountain bike, but wasn't there to claim the prize. I still have the tombola ticket, number 720.

Kortenberg - 12.4 km - 0h56:28

A week ago I yearned for the "quiet, peaceful, clean, car-free shaded cool of a forest in Belgium". Well, today I got my forest with a vengeance, but it was just a bit more than I had bargained for...

It was certainly quiet, there were no cars threatening to run me over, it was reasonably cool and also shaded, much too shaded, so shaded that running as I always do without my glasses I could hardly see where I was going and seriously feared twisting an ankle. It was also clean. Well, sort of. That's if you consider ankle-deep mud to be clean. At least there wasn't any vomit on the ground, as there had been in my 'Pigsty Run' of last Sunday.

There's this thing about races in Belgium. If there's a forest in the vicinity, they'll take you there. And they're not happy to simply route them through well-worn and well-made forest paths that are wide enough to allow overtaking, and smooth enough to be suitable for running fast. No! They prefer narrow, treacherous paths, preferably with tree roots growing on the surface, perfectly placed to trip you up. The paths are inclined sideways, with a sharp drop into a ravine next to the lower edge. When it rains, the ground becomes muddy and slippery, so after struggling up a steep hill, side-stepping across a watery trench or sometimes through ankle-deep mud, you get no reprieve at the downhill parts, as you have to be extra careful you don't slip and hurt yourself badly.

I have to admit, irrespective of the horrid ground conditions, that I wasn't in good shape today. It happens sometimes. Maybe I was hampered by the fact that I haven't been doing any speed training recently. Or my legs are tired through too much long distance running. Or the extreme heat of the past three weeks in Malta have sapped my energy resources.

Whatever... I console myself with the fact that, even though this is now my second successive race which ended in disappointment, I'm still doing very well in my long runs, and that's what really matters if I want to run a successful Brussels marathon this October. In fact, as I struggled through the mud of the Kortenberg forest today, I decided to forget about racing and satisfy myself with simply completing the run and avoiding injury, thereby bagging points for the Watermolen Cup.

Back on terra firma in the last kilometre, where I could finally run properly, I tried to re-enter into the spirit of the race by competing and trying to overtake some of those whom I had allowed to pass at the one-man wide passages in the forest. Even this was only a partial success, as I had to contend with an occasional sharp cramp in my left calf. It really wasn't my day today.

At the finish I grabbed and drank a can of mineral water, named Vlaams something and labelled strictly and exclusively in their blessed Vlaams language, then immediately proceeded toward the car to drive back home. They didn't give us any memento or a bottle of beer or wine as most other race organisers do.

Or even a bag of crisps.

Running in a pigsty

Early morning, Sunday 26 July, 2009. Swieqi - Pembroke - Paceville - St Julian's. Another success from my running point of view, as I managed to do my second 2h45m run in July in Malta, this one in the middle of a heatwave with maximum temperatures reaching 40 C. So, I'm very satisfied that my run-up towards the October Brussels marathon proceeds without interruption, in spite of the difficult hurdle posed by a three-week stay in an impossibly hot climate.

But from a more general perspective, I can only cry in dismay. This time I left several water bottles to pick up at different stages of the run outside my own home in Swieqi, from where I ran a number loops in the surrounding neighbourhood. Most of these went through Swieqi towards St Andrew's Road, into the new Pembroke bypass towards the Radisson Hotel, and back.

On one occasion I decided to break the monotony, and do a detour through the picturesque coastline of St George's Bay towards Paceville and then to St Julian's. It was a bad mistake. The scene was pretty enough. The early morning sun was rising, lighting up the calm waters of St George's Bay in many hues of yellow, orange and fiery red. It was a beautiful sunrise. Around me, on the ground, there was vomit and rubbish, while the air had a strong smell of piss, complemented by a background sweet chirping of loud drunken louts.

I skirted Paceville, and moved on towards more familiar terrain - the St Julian's promenade. For a couple of hundred metres, it was the same old well-worn path that I know and love so well. Then I reached the morning-after scene of the Madonna tal-Karmnu feast. More rubbish, untold quantities of rubbish, plus a nauseating stink. I turned back to Swieqi in disgust, and from then on stuck to the monotonous but relatively clean Swieqi - Radisson route.

As I pounded the hot pavement, I couldn't help pondering the sorry state of our society. To honour the gods of entertainment of Paceville, and to honour the Madonna tal-Karmnu of Balluta, so many people have to behave just like animals. Most of them are probably very concerned about protecting Maltese "culture" and "values" from what they consider to be an "invasion" of African illegal immigrants. But if this is the "culture" they wish to preserve for our children and grandchildren, then all I can say is, God help us.

My next long run will be in the peaceful, quiet, car-free, clean, shaded cool of a forest in Belgium. What a relief that will be.

Staggering back to oblivion

To run a marathon you need to build up your long runs over several months before the event. If this period includes a three-week stay in an infernally hot place, then you need to include at least one very long run during this three-week stay.

This was the problem that had long been on my mind as I was building up my training for the upcoming Brussels marathon in October. This July I'm staying in Malta, where the temperature rises from 23 C early in the morning to the high twenties by 9 am, reaching a maximum above 30 C practically everyday.

So how would I be able to run for 2 hours 45 minutes without dying of heatstroke? To solve the problem I decided to start extra early in the morning, at 5:15, and devised a plan whereby I would remain sufficiently hydrated throughout the run. I filled four half-litre bottles with water and chilled them overnight. Three of these I placed on the ground behind my car, which I parked next to the Exiles beach car park. The plan was that I would run for 12 and a half minutes away from the car park and then back to the starting point, where I would pick one bottle and run out again for another 25-minute loop, drinking the life-saving fluid along the way. I would run three such loops for a total of 75 minutes, and then at 6:30 I would pick up the third half-litre bottle and join my running mates, who at that time were to kick off their 90-minute run from the same place. This added up to the target total of 2h45m, which I would run in relatively cool temperatures.

The Sliema seafront was surprisingly busy for such an ungodly hour in the morning. In particular, there were late night "revellers" staggering back to oblivion, and several cleaners clearing up the mess left overnight by the masses. But the air was fresh, and my long-awaited run kicked off extremely well. Coming back from my first loop I met a group of runners who are training for the Berlin marathon this September. In fact it was one of them, Sylvana Ungaro, who had given me the idea of starting my long run very early in the morning, before sunrise. I greeted them cheerily, and proceeded back to Exiles.

But then, at the end of the second loop, disaster struck - the water bottles, which I had carefully placed on the ground behind my parked car, were all gone! Probably, some well-meaning cleaner picked them up thinking they were rubbish left behind from the previous night, and I was left with close to two hours still to run in the sweltering heat of the Maltese summer, with no water at all to consume...

Drat, drat, and double drat! Well, sort of. The words in the early dawn at Exiles beach were different, but the gist was the same. I ran around the carpark for a couple of minutes, almost like a headless chicken, looking around in the forlorn hope that the life-saving bottles had been placed somewhere close. No such luck! But I remembered that I had a fourth bottle locked in the car, to be used at the end of the run. I opened the car boot, grabbed the bottle, and went off again, this time towards home with the intention of refilling there. On the way I met a sizeable number of my prospective running mates, all riding a mountaine bike with clearly no intention at all of going on a long run. Good luck to them, I'll work this one out on my own as I always do when I'm in Belgium. Then I remembered that at the promenade on top of the Exiles beach there are drinking water taps, which I could very well use to refill my one precious surviving bottle.

So I ran back towards the starting point, as planned in the very beginning, and my heart sank as I noticed that where previously there had been a drinking water tap, there was... nothing. More drats. Last resort, another drinking water tap that I remembered was just behind the corner after the Sliema tower, and - eureka! - the magic fluid spluttered out into the empty plastic bottle. The water even turned out to taste good, without the iodine flavour that it used to have in the past.

At the Exiles car park there were Antoine Attard, Peter Barbara, Alfred Demarco and Savo Ristic waiting for others, who would never arrive. We started off in the direction of Tigne', then always following the coastline to Gzira, Ta' Xbiex, Msida, Floriana, the Valletta bus terminus and all the way back, without too much effort, at a calm, sustained pace.

That was it - I had done it! Two hours and 45 minutes, in the middle of the Maltese summer, my longest run ever in July, and now I know exactly what I need to do today week to repeat the session, in what will probably be more severe weather conditions.

Brussels marathon, here I come!