Written by Phil Cairns
I signed up for Thames Riverside 20 a few weeks ago, and because of the timing of it, thought it would make a good topic for the sixth of my blog posts. I’ve never run a 20-mile race before, and it’s my only tune-up race on the road to London Marathon, so I thought a race report would take care of this particular club requirement.
Only… I’m not good at writing race reports. I just don’t remember stuff. Nothing seems remarkable. I’m so jealous of people who can turn their races into these step-by-step narratives, detailing incidents along the way that build into a satisfying story. (Yes, I’m looking at you and your excellent Lisbon Half report, Babs!)
I mostly remember the start. And the finish. And there definitely being some running in between. But… not a lot more than that. I could put a sophisticated veneer on this, claim I enter a meditative state, power down my brain in order to channel all energy into the sole purpose of putting one foot in front of the other. But frankly, I think it’s more that I’m just a bit dopey.
Nonetheless, taking a step back and looking at how Riverside 20 fits into my marathon journey, there is a significance to it.
Two weeks ago, I started to think about goals for London Marathon. I decided to adopt the Running Commentary podcast approach, and set myself gold, silver and bronze targets:
Gold: sub-3’30. (I haven’t run a sub-3’30 marathon since 2016, so this seemed ludicrously optimistic).
Silver: sub-3’40. (My last two marathons have been 3’38 and 3’43, so this seemed a more realistic target).
Bronze: sub-3’50. (Faster than my slowest marathon).
Two weeks ago, I was finding it hard to gauge where I was. I felt like I’d done enough long runs and enough track/intervals work. My weekly mileage is always on the lower end of what most marathon runners bank, but within my own parameters, I felt like I was doing ok. The bit that was missing was tempo runs. I felt I hadn’t done enough longer runs trying to sustain a target pace to know where I was fitness-wise.
So two weeks ago, I did two tempo runs. One intentional, one unintentional.
The intentional one was a grey Thursday afternoon attempt to run 8 miles at 8-minute miles. The weather looked a little dicey to the naked eye, but I waited until Accuweather suggested there would be no precipitation for 60 minutes and headed out. 3 miles in? Hail arrived. F**k you, Accuweather. I sped up in a bid to get home quicker, and when I got back, discovered I’d run 7’40 miles. And more importantly, it hadn’t felt that hard.
Then last weekend, I ran from home in Acton down to Ealing to do the Sunday morning club run, then back home again. 14 miles total. I ran club run with Dominic Wallace, chatting all the way round. We said we’d aim for around 8’30 miles, and reined ourselves back a couple of times when we realised we were going too quick. But mostly we (or at least I, I can’t speak for Dominic) enjoyed having a good old natter, and didn’t pay much attention to our pace. I got home to discover I’d averaged 8’04 over the 14 miles, unintentionally almost hitting 8-minute miles. Which, Dominic reminded me, is 3’30 marathon pace.
So my quandary for Riverside 20 was – do I treat it as a dry run for London Marathon and try to sustain 8-minute miles for 20 miles? Dominic counselled against this, suggesting that running 20 miles at target race pace 5 weeks out from a marathon was a foolhardy endeavour.
Clearly I am a fool.
I decided to set out at 8-minute miles and allow myself to throttle back in the latter stages if I felt like I was overdoing it.
This race is normally quite a popular one with Eagles running spring marathons. But until quite close to race day, no one had signed up to my Facebook event, so I had wondered if it would just be me this year. I didn’t twig that the proximity of Queen of the Suburbs the day before likely meant most Eagles who could afford to give up half their weekend would be either running or volunteering at that. But Carys Morgan took pity on me being Billy No-Mates and signed up quite late, and it was a lovely to surprise to bump into Allie Collins, Maria Hazzard and Glenn Matthews at the start.
I’ve always hated running in pacer groups. I like being a pacer, I’ve done it at EHM and the Eagles 10k a few times. But running in a pacer group always feels too congested to me, plus I don’t respond well to the spin-class-like abuse of the more energetic, motivational pacers. (“C’MON GUYS!”) If you have a Garmin, who needs that?
But I had a bit of an epiphany at Riverside 20. If I tucked in just behind the pacer group, I could stop obsessively looking at my watch and monitoring my speed, relax into it and just really feel the run, without having to worry about tripping over anyone’s heels or getting shouted at by some well-meaning, motivational sadist who is clearly cruising round at a speed that’s enough to make me breathless. I say this as someone who enjoys being a pacer, but as a pacee, this will never not be a bit irritating.
So that’s what I did. I tucked in behind the 8-minute mile group and just… sat there. For 18 miles. Having a lovely time and admiring all the gorgeous riverside views around Richmond and Ham House. And it felt absolutely fine. To the point where, with a mile and a half to go, I felt like I had enough left in the tank for a final surge. A couple of others had the same idea, but I managed to leave most of the group who’d paced me all the way round behind, ran my last mile in 7’25 after pretty even splits up to that, and finished in 2’38’45 (PB!) at an average pace of 7’51 per mile.
It feels perhaps foolhardy to nail my colours to the mast, in public, this far out. But suddenly that gold target sub-3’30 doesn’t seem so outlandish. I now know I can sustain 8-minute miles for 20 miles. The question is, can I sustain it for 26.2, on what will likely be a hotter day, in a way more congested field, and knowing my hay fever will have kicked in and will be affecting me by that point?