I started off 1982 with a significant jump in mileage, putting in 5 successive weeks of 35, 39, 50, 47 & 50. This produced some faster times in regular training routes, but also resulted by the 5th week in shin pains and a loss of enjoyment as for the first time, I was chasing mileage at the expense of running for the fun of it. It should be noted that nearly all of this training was being done in the dark and cold of a very harsh January and February. Dropping for a couple of weeks down to about 20’ish per week before bouncing back with a 40, I had by this time entered an early spring Marathon in Guildford, the second London Marathon scheduled for early May, and also my first non-marathon race – The Tonbridge 10 miles – which I was greatly looking forward to. On March 5th I set out for a routine 13 mile training run, but having got only a mile into it, I developed a pain in my right knee. Stupidly choosing to ignore it, I continued and the pain increased and although I completed the run, immediately after finishing I could hardly walk. Other than a couple of unsuccessful trials to test the knee, both of which were very quickly curtailed, I then went a month unable to run a step. Any thoughts of the Tonbridge 10 and the Guildford Marathon had to be abandoned. On April 5th I was able to do a short gentle jog, with bearable pain. 3 more days rest, a 3½ mile run with the pain easing, before running pain free for the first time on 13th April. With only 3 weeks to go before the 2nd London Marathon the common sense thing to do would have been to forget the race and start rebuilding to fitness via a steady training schedule. Instead I put in two weeks of 44 and 42, played two games of football and decided to go for it !
Sunday May 9th saw the running of the 2nd London Marathon. The field had more than doubled from the previous year to 16,000, and crowds lining the route were bigger than ever. I had very little expectation for this race, so to go through half way in 1 hr 31’, and with a modest slow down in the second half end up with a finish time of 3hrs 10’ 40” and a new p.b, was way better than I could have hoped for. The race winners were both British – Hugh Jones in 2hrs 09’ 24”, and Joyce Smith repeating her 1981 victory in 2hrs 29’ 43”, a British record. I had already entered my next race, yet another marathon – a return to the 3 forts marathon that I’d run in 1981. The year or so of reasonably regular running was clearly making me stronger, since the day after the marathon I was back out training, and continued to do so for the rest of the week and put in 5 consecutive weeks of 50 miles per week, my most consistent spell of training so far. It was also during this period that I introduced interval sessions into my running for the first time. I had been reading magazines and books devoted to marathon training and running in general and was picking up plenty of tips and ideas which I was keen to start putting in to practice in my own training to see where they would take me.
There are a few variations on the principle of interval training, or repetitions as they’re often known, but essentially it involves repeating sets of alternating fast running with slow recovery stretches. The fast bits train the body to become used to moving at a quicker tempo, the short recovery builds up the body’s ability to recover from strenuous effort and be ready again quickly for a renewed effort. Slightly different effects will be achieved by the different length, pace, intensity involved in the hard effort, the length of the recovery phase and of course the number of repetitions of the hard/easy cycle undertaken.
Up until this point I had been a “self-contained” sort of athlete. Not mixing or training with anyone except Iain, but mostly alone. Joining Tonbridge A.C. meant that I could go to the club and train on a good quality athletics track on club nights – Tuesday and Thursday – and maybe at some point might even pull on the club vest and compete for the club. My early visits to the club’s headquarters required me to overcome a feeling of inferiority when among other athletes. Most of the people around appeared to be fitter, faster and somehow more “professional”, experienced and organised than I felt. There were definitely “cliques” within the club at that time, but I was the type of person who could happily organise myself and just get on with things, so it never really bothered me. My first ever interval session was on one such Thursday night at the club’s H.Q in the grounds of Tonbridge school. On the superb newly laid “tartan” track I completed a set of 8 x 800 metres hard, with equal length recoveries, and recorded “very enjoyable” in my diary. These types of session were soon to become a very regular feature in my training.
Following the 5 good weeks of training, I arrived in Brighton for my second attempt at the Three Forts Marathon. Much as the previous year, I had a pretty good run to about 18 miles, but again the toughness of the last few miles meant gritting my teeth and hanging on to cross the line in 3hrs 34’ 50”. Placed 62nd out of 300 finishers, I had improved 54 minutes on last years time. Again allowing myself virtually no recovery period after the marathon I went straight back into a stint of ( for me ) high mileage weeks of around 50’ish in preparation for yet another Marathon, a revisit to the British Marathon in Manchester. Not only had my mileage become much higher, but the quality work in the track sessions were becoming a normal part of most week’s training. The result of this extra work was manifesting itself in regular improvements in training runs over regular routes, to the extent that I approached the Manchester Marathon on 22nd August with an ambition to break the 3 hour barrier ! On the day, the weather conditions were very unfavourable – torrential rain and strong winds – but mercifully soon after the race started things improved. Being slightly carried away with the early pace I went through the first 10 in 63 minutes, which meant that, despite the almost inevitable slow down beyond the 20 mile point, I still had enough in hand to cross the finish line in 2hrs 58’ 29”. Really, really pleased to have got under 3 hrs – a modest milestone had been achieved ! More next time…..
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