Tom Roper's Running Training

2022 in running

2023-01-12T17:42:05+00:00

It’s a little late to review last year. I’m already got four 2023 runs under my belt. Nevertheless, this is what it looks like. Only one year, 2013 recorded a were total mileage (406 against 2022’s 436).

Injury accounts for some of this: I some falls, some while running, some at home, and found getting back to running after them tedious and prolonged. Nevertheless, I did finish the Brighton half marathon, helped lead the Seaford Striders Couch to 5k group, ran the King’s Head Canter, the Lewes Downland Five Mile and the Rathfinny Christmas Run. I did parkruns at Storey’s Field in Cambridge, Bevendean Down and Seaford Beach, and have now volunteered at parkruns over a hundred times.

As for 2023, I shall strive to improve.

Nineteen years of running

2022-11-09T17:09:45+00:00

I traditionally post here on the anniversary of the run that began my current phase of running. The anniversary was actually yesterday, but posting here is so infrequent that I don’t think a day matters.

It was a trip out behind the Brighton University Falmer campus, through Westlain woods, and up beyond, to what I now know as the highest point of the Bevendean Down parkrun, though this was long before anyone thought of parkruns. I did this in 2003, and have been running more or less continuously, with gaps for injury, ever since.

So it is meet and fitting to review my running now: I am slow anyway, but being in the post-acute stages of a COVID-19 infection, I am easily fatigued, so have started to work my way through the Couch to 5k programme yet again. I had a place in the Crowborough 10k in two weeks time, but have had to abandon that. With a bit of luck, the Cambridge half marathon at the beginning of March is still a realistic goal.

Brighton Half Marathon

2022-03-02T15:51:26+00:00

On Sunday, the day I turned 67, I ran the Brighton Half Marathon, my seventh time at this event, and my thirtieth half-marathon overall. My lack of training told, I’m sorry to say, and I finished in 3:05:11. My fastest time here, and my second fastest half, was in 2005 in 1:43:14.

The splits tell the story. I started off well in spring sunshine, though my legs complained even in the early stages. It took nigh on twenty minutes after Dame Kelly Holmes had fired the starting gun before my group crossed the start line. As the route unfolded, with its curious diversions (the race has been bedevilled by failures to measure exactly 13.1 miles over the years) things didn’t get any easier. I was passed by the 2.30 pacing group, but they were too fast for me. In the second half I settled into a painful plod, but still kept the belief alive that I could finish in under three hours. When I reached the turn at the west end of Hove lagoon, and three miles back into a fierce head wind, I started to run-walk. The finish seemed so far from the pier, but I managed a final burst to cross the line in better style. I will not be buying any of the race photographs; they do not show me to advantage.

Other lessons learnt:

Don’t take the park and ride bus (The smell! And the people!)
I’m going to stop wearing the ankle support I’ve worn for two years now and see what happens

More positively, forty of my fellow Seaford Striders took part, with Ollie Sprague first home in 51st position, in 1:18:08; Emily Danvers was first Striders woman in 1:42:09.

My thoughts now turn to the rest of the year. I think 10k is perhaps a better distance and I shall eschew any further half marathons this year. I have entered the Lewes 10k which takes place on Easter Monday over an agreeably agricultural course, and there are more 10ks I could enter, both as part of the Sussex Grand Prix and the Seaford Striders Club Grand Prix.

Five weeks to go

2022-01-26T17:20:30+00:00

I write this later than I should, but by Sunday just gone I had five weeks left to go, and had done another run that covered a distance greater than I had run at any time since June of last year. It was surprisingly easy, in spite of cold grey weather and a bit of mud on the ground, and I ran for around an hour and twenty minutes, True I only covered 6 miles, but that’s not the point.

Total mileage this week (Monday to Sunday): 10.93
35 days (on Sunday) till the Brighton half

A week of runs at sunset

2022-01-16T18:39:23+00:00

This week went reasonably well. I ran three times, as required by the training programme, culminating in 4.9 miles today. The last time I ran as far as that was in June of last year. For some reason, all my outings took place close to sunset, and the sunsets have been spectacular this week. One can barely move on the seafront for people photographing the disc as it drops below the horizon. Talking to one of the parkrun volunteers, he told me he hoped to see the green ray. It reminded me of the Rohmer film, which I must watch again.

Total mileage this week: 9.58

42 days till the Brighton half:

Training for an accidental half marathon

2022-01-09T17:03:52+00:00

Whether I had drink taken, or had an episode of memory loss, I cannot say, but I apparently entered the Brighton Half. I discovered this when I decided to volunteer to marshal the event, and on registering was told I also had a place to run.

It may be a tall order to compress half-marathon training into eight weeks, but I thought I would: I haven’t run a half since the much harder Seaford Half in 2019, but I’ve run nearly thirty in my time. It can be done, and the first week of training began with two very short sessions, followed by today’s slightly longer run. All went well. The sensations of running were strange at first, but I got used to them. On to next week

Total mileage this week: 6.65
49 days till the Brighton half:

2021 in running

2022-01-01T17:37:32+00:00

I was feeling unhappy with 2021 as a running year: few races, but then that’s true for everyone, and I had to do Couch to 5k twice to get back from injury, as well as leading the Seaford Striders C25K group. In fact, I increased both distance and elevation, compared to 2020.

The first part of the year was quiet; my running club, Seaford Striders, valiantly organised distanced events and competitions to keep us going. From April onwards we resumed our evening club nights, but in multiple groups at different locations around Seaford, and the Club Grand Prix started, though I only took part in six qualifying events. Parkrun returned in July, but I have run few, and volunteered at more. I ran four Twitten runs, including the Twiathlon, which adds twelve lengths of the Pells Pool to the twelve twittens. The only real race I ran was the King’s Head Canter in August; I did not disgrace myself.

I ended the year with a stupid foot injury, caused by stubbing my toe on the sink. Six weeks, the magic period, have passed and I will set out for my first run since November on Monday. I have a place in the Brighton Half on 27th February; I entered, and then forgot I’d entered, so must compress training into the next eight weeks. But I am confident I can train enough to get round.

The week in running: back to the Twittens

2021-11-14T18:03:47+00:00

The highlight of the week was a return to Lewes’s fabled Twitten run, which approaches its sixth anniversary. I last tackled it on 11th July 2021. By chance, as I ran it with Rob, Nick and Bec, we happened upon its founder and only begetter, Duncan, on his way to Blackcap. Other runs comprised a taxing hill session with the Seaford Striders Wednesday night group, and two seafront runs. I also officiated at Seaford Beach parkrun, as volunteer co-ordinator.

More intrepid runners than me took on a 14 mile course starting and finishing at the Southease youth hostel, the halfway point of the Moyleman. It was an interesting route, taking in parts of the Moyleman itself, and that protean event, a race starting and finishing at Firle Place that has been, variously, a half-marathon, a 20k and, I think, a 10 miler. I am proud to say that two members of Seaford Striders took second place and third female in this event.

Life in the old dog yet

2021-11-08T19:01:56+00:00

Today, 8th November, is an anniversary, though an event whose anniversary we mark the day before, the Great October Socialist Revolution, may have had a greater impact on the world.

The October revolution happened on 7th November on the new style calendar adopted in the Soviet Union in 1918. Under the tsars, Russia kept to the old Julian calendar abandoned by most countries centuries before.

The anniversary of which I speak is that of the day when I returned to running after a long gap. It was in 2003, and I was a mere stripling of 48. I took myself off for a lunchtime run on the downs at the back of the university where I worked at the time. It was the start of more or less uninterrupted running up to now.

I wore an old cotton t-shirt and a pair of rugby shorts I had worn at school. I forget my shoes, but I doubt that they were sophisticated running shoes.

Today, older and slower, but better clad, I went for a bright chilly morning run halfway up Seaford Head and then along the seafront. Yesterday I was proud to marshal at a trial run for a new half-marathon run around the beautiful Rathfinny vineyard. On Saturday I volunteered at Seaford Bach parkrun, and later ran over Seaford Head. There is life in the old dog yet.

Roaming in the gloaming

2021-10-31T18:02:54+00:00

There’s something special about the first late afternoon run after the clocks go back. I went out into fierce winds blowing foam over the Seaford Head golf course, and down to the seafront. It reminds me of the winter Sunday afternoons of childhood, in the back of my father’s Austin Cambridge, driving homewards from Ely across the darkening fens, where we would go for tea with my great-aunt Ada and her companion, Marjorie. There were a few walkers on the promenade, watching the spectacular waves.

This week also included my return to WNS (code for Wednesday Night Striders, one of my running club’s running nights), which I managed, although the distance involved was more than I’ve done for a few weeks. Braver and fitter souls went to Ashdown Forest, for the first event in the East Sussex Cross-Country championship; I’m not ready for these, though I hope to be for some of the six events.