Health / Sport
Running man instalment two
In the second instalment of his unmissable marathon training diary, Mike White discovers that hangovers and hill-climbs do not mix
Remember your last hangover? Brain-throb, heart judder, creeping quease. Now imagine you’re enduring it at the bottom of a steep hill. Which you have to run up, several times over. Welcome to my Saturday.
Apparently it’s good for runners’ overall fitness to include bursts of intense training amongst the hours of pavement pounding. So here I am, in the filmic early morning light at the bottom of a steep hill. Ninetree Hill, just off Stokes Croft, since you ask. I’ve jogged here at ‘Easy Run’ pace from my house in Easton. Now I have to run up the hill and jog back down, run up the hill, jog back down and repeat 10 times. Then Easy Run home again.
First ascent I attack it really hard
Boom! I’m flying. I’m Rocky going up those steps, Braveheart up that mountain. Until about two-thirds of the way up, when I suddenly run out of oxygen and it feels like my lungs are going to explode out of my ears. Next time I take it steadier, work on the breathing. A group of wasted out-all-night hipsters snigger at me as they stumble past in their artful knitwear and daft hats. I keep going. It never really gets better, but after a while the shock begins to wear off. At least the sweat has washed away my hangover and I haven’t been sick on my own shoes.
Alongside the hill-running, my all-knowing downloaded Training Plan also recommends Interval Training. Which is not practising how to buy mid-performance drinks at the theatre. It’s running as fast as you can until you have to slow down again, easing up until you’ve recovered, then going fast again. Over and over again.
The ‘over and over again’ thing is key to marathon training
Putting up with hours of repetitious discomfort, existing in your own head for mile after mile. Treadmill running, although pleasingly free of dog turds, traffic and weather, is excruciatingly dull. It’s about building up psychological strength, the mind-over-matter muscle. I’m a world-class daydreamer but even for me it’s proving a challenge. Maybe audiobooks will help.
In the meantime, what have I learned? That whilst red wine is certainly a performance enhancer when it comes to dancing and speaking French, it really doesn’t help with hill running.
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