Late Nights, Could They Be your Downfall?

Lack of sleep is not good for anybody, irrespective of how active you are. It is possible to get away with the odd bad night and even a few together, I’ve flown overnight back from the states and gone straight out for a fast 8 miler, I’ve also run a good time in a 5000m when I’ve been half asleep on the start line, after a few sleepless and stressful nights. But you can’t live like that forever, eventually you’ll get run down and ill or injured.

I’m not a late night person anyway, I’m not yet old enough to partake of the afternoon nap and I do value my early bedtime. In fact I’ve always felt it difficult to concentrate on work after 9pm, so always stopped any work I was doing at that time, preferring to get up early in the morning, with a fresh head to solve any problems. Naturally this caused a few problems for me when I used to do a 12 hour shift from 7pm but that’s all water under the bridge and now I work civilised hours, even if I do start quite early some days.

There was a time when I did enjoy my late nights, but I was young and didn’t run in those days. There were some good ones when I was a student in Crewe, on Saturday’s I worked in a record shop during the day, then drove home to do the evening shift at Holmes Chapel Leisure Centre, before driving back to Crewe for one or more parties, they were fun days and I think I was reasonably popular, or at least not unpopular, so I had a good time. I used to stay over at various friends houses, or wherever I found myself when it was time to crash, then I’d drive home in the morning.

Even during my early years working in London, I was young, energetic and lucky enough to have a room in Bayswater, for a while, so I was out late quite often. In fact I walked home from various parties all over London on a number of occasions, sometimes after trying to sleep on a beer soaked floor. It helped that my job wasn’t very demanding at that point in my career, and I didn’t run.

But once I started taking my running seriously I had to cut back on the partying. Ok I didn’t give it up completely, I still recall standing on the start line of a road race one year, the morning after a Xmas party. I felt really bad and thought I was going to bring up one of the many pints I’d had the night before, but as soon as the race started I was off, not only winning the race but setting a course record too. I don’t recommend this as a course of action, David Bedford might have got away with it and, on this occasion, so did I, but it’s not really the best way to be successful, and as my old mate Al, used to say, ‘It doesn’t matter how well you run after drinking alcohol, just think how much better you’d have run without it’.

Of course it wasn’t just by choice that I gave up late nights, I was too tired from all the training. I remember one occasion I was visiting my girlfriend’s friends, in Bristol. We were out at the pub, they wanted to go onto a club, I wanted to go to bed. I was quite happy to go to bed, leaving them to go to the club, but for some reason it became a big issue and we all went to bed, not all in the same one. This incident probably was a defining moment in that relationship ending fairly soon after. Another time I was visiting a friend in Manchester, there was a small bunch of us, I was doing ok at first, managing to keep up with the seasoned drinkers but at some point, I don’t know when, I fell asleep in my seat. We were in a

Canal Street

bar at the time and luckily there were too nice young ladies sitting in the same area and they kept an eye on me, until my friends found me. I still have the odd late night but I much prefer to get up early and get loads done, I’m a morning person after all.

But last Thursday was an unintentional late night. I was working in Hale, Carole was out enjoying the company of some friends in Knutsford. Knutsford is a small diversion on the road back home from Hale so I offered to pick her up. Carole isn’t easy to prise out of a bar when she’s with friends so needless to say I didn’t get home until 10 past midnight. I was a little peeved as I had clients the next day and I like to be fully alert and brimming with energy, luckily it wasn’t one of my earlier starts. I woke up the next day and I was really tired, I knew I’d be ok for my first client but in the afternoon I was pacing Rich through 10k and we were aiming at 38 minutes. Yep I know that’s a few minutes slower than I can run a 10k, but if I was tired it would have an impact on that run and I didn’t want to let Rich down.

So I met up with Rich, Rich is running the Edinburgh Marathon this Sunday. I’d decided to take him around the course of the Cheshire 10k, in Queens Park, Crewe. I won that race in November last year, in 34:17. Rich has a best time for 10k of 38 minutes, it’s a little unclear as to how accurate that is, I think it was a low key event that may not have been accurately measured, also knowing how undulating and twisty the Cheshire 10k course is I was aware it might slow us down from that. So I was actually looking for a time between 38 and 40 minutes. If I was slower than 40 minutes, I’d know I hadn’t done a very good job. It’s a four lap affair, I thought I remembered the course, no tape or start and finish lines today. We set off at a good pace, Rich was comfortable and, thankfully, so was I, as we went around that first lap I was beginning to realise why I’d run such a slow time in November, it really is twisty and undulating. We passed through the first lap in 9:48, on for sub 40 but better not slow it down or we’ll be over that. I kept on the pressure and the second lap took 9:43, that was better. It was quite comforting having laps, I’ve always run well on multi lap courses and by now we were getting to know the course well. This led to a bit of a surge and we took the next lap in 9:30, then I made Rich push all the way round that last lap, for a 9:20, giving us a finish time of 38:21. Boy was I pleased, it had been a hard run for me but I’d got Rich to where I wanted him and it was a great last real speed session before his marathon. The other good thing is I know this will give Rich the confidence to chase a 36 or 37 minute clocking on a flatter faster course. But first to get that marathon out of the way, good luck Rich.

On Friday evening it was the Christleton 5k, some friends I know in West Cheshire had mentioned it to me, telling me it was a fast course. I’d liked to have done it but I thought the 10k was enough for an old man with dodgy legs. Ray did it, running a pb, 21:17. I was thinking of trying the parkrun at Pennington Flash, on Saturday morning, but the combination of the 10k and the enforced late night on Thursday made me decide it was best not to, so I took Carole out for a tough session instead, oh yes revenge is sweet sometimes.

Then I felt guilty so I took Carole out in the evening. I had it in my diary to watch the Champions League final but Carole didn’t seem that bothered, so I videoed it instead. We ate at the Golden Pheasant in Plumley, a really nice pub/restaurant. The service is pretty good, food is excellent and it’s never a small portion. In fact on this occasion there was quite a lot and we left stuffed. We got home having avoided any news about the football and started watching the game. It was a really good game but that morning session must’ve taken a lot out of Carole as she was fast asleep within 25 minutes. She went off to bed, I wanted to continue with the game but thought it more gentlemanly to save it until the morning, so we could watch it together.

The next morning, still not knowing the score, we watched the second half over breakfast, again it was exciting stuff but my heart sank when Bayern Munich scored. I’m not a Chelsea fan, but they are an English team so I wanted them to win. I’d anticipated the potential for extra time and had set the dvd to record an hour past the original finish time, but I didn’t really want to watch extra time as I wanted to go for my run, so even though Chelsea were losing there was a silver lining on the cloud. Then Drogba did what Drogba does best and equalised, a few minutes later we were into extra time. Oh well run would have to wait. Extra time was as exciting as the first 90 minutes, except everybody looked drained in the last 10 minutes. The score was the same, 1-1 at full extra time and it was down to penalties. Now I was starting to wonder if an hour extra recording was enough. Last time Chelsea made the Champions League Final we were watching the game in a restaurant in Turkey, just as Anelka set off to miss his penalty the power went off, so we missed the excitement and didn’t have a clue what had happened until a few minutes later, when it came back on again. I could see the potential for a similar incident. Thankfully it only went to 5 penalties and Drogba sealed the victory about 20 seconds before the recording finished. How exciting was that.

Sticking to football, Crewe Alexandra have made it to the play-off final, this Sunday. Fingers crossed they’ll get promotion.

I’ve been venturing into Tatton Park on my runs recently. Normally I run from home but I’ve had a client in Knutsford, Simon, who wanted to improve his running, he ran 52 minutes for the Manchester 10k last year. So I’ve done a few sessions with him and it got me into the idea of using the park when I’m in Knutsford, makes a change from running around Northwich. So I tried one of my easy runs there last week, not only that but I decided to try something I’ve never done before, I used my Ipod. I’ve been quite critical of the use of these, because I believe that people aren’t fully aware of what is going on around them, so I decided I’d see what it’s all about and see if I’m right or wrong. Well, I can’t say I enjoyed it, the music, whilst good, was pretty distracting, I wasn’t able to do any thinking, I do a lot of that when I’m on an easy run. I didn’t feel as though I was completely aware of my surroundings, something I value very much when I’m running fast. So I won’t be doing that again. Call me old fashioned but I know what I like.

The Manchester 10k was on this weekend as well and Simon did improve, he ran a 49 minute time. My old mate Jim Buick, of Edinburgh, was also down, running under 40 minutes – sorry haven’t had a chance to check exact times, but if you’re really interested it’s easy to do.

Written by Roger Alsop
http://www.rogeralsop.co.uk/