Teamwork

This week’s blog follow’s on from last week to further emphasise the benefits of team work. There are people who like to think they don’t need help to achieve their goals, sometimes I think I’m one of them, but the reality is that we all need a helping hand along the way, to a lesser or greater extent. The reality is that with a team around you, you have a greater chance of obtaining goals you wouldn’t even consider as an individual.

That’s not just in sport but something that’s also relevant to your working life. Within sport even the likes of Mo Farah and Paula Radcliffe have a team around them to help them obtain their goals. When it comes to using the gym a lot of gym users turn up, do their own thing and leave. But their routines may be more effective and interesting if they work out with a friend, though it can cause disruption if you’re not well matched, plus there may be times when you need a spotter. Actually I am a bit of a loner when I’m doing my gym work, when I turn up at the gym I know exactly what I want to do and why I’m doing it and, as I’m usually short on time I get on with it and get gone.

When it comes to running, although I do most of my training alone, I’ve always been a team man. At first I was rubbish so having a team to aim to break into gave me an incentive to train hard. As I became better the incentive was to break into the top team of my club and then the county, area and national teams. I’ve been reasonably successful as an individual athlete, winning quite a few medals at major championships, but I’ve gained about as many again as a member of a team. But it’s not just about winning things, I really enjoy being part of a team, I find it motivates me to get fit because I want to help that team to achieve success, and if we don’t we can always have a laugh together.

Of course it doesn’t always work out and there are many times in the past when the team I was representing turned up one runner short of a full team, and that can be pretty disheartening. Mind you, in 2008, I turned up for the East District Cross Country Championships as the runner short of a set of spikes, I’d left them in my hallway as I rushed out to pick up various other Edinburgh AC athletes. Luckily the ground was frozen hard and I managed to run ok in my trainers, and, surprisingly, I still managed to help Edinburgh AC win the Masters title.  

There was a time, when I was a member of Belgrave Harriers, when we had some fantastic runners in the club, but they would never all turn out at the same event, so for a number of years we would languish in lowly positions in major championships, instead of challenging for medals. My coach at the time would often talk to me about it, his thinking was that they were good individual runners but not the best in the country, however, if they all turned out together they could make Belgrave the best team in the country and then they would become a National Champion themselves, something they probably would not achieve as an individual. That always stuck in my mind, I’ve been a decent athlete, but never the best, so I have my best chance of becoming a National Champion as part of a team. Admittedly I have actually been a National Champion as an individual but that’s been a bonus. Yes it does mean a great deal to become an individual winner, in fact it’s very satisfying, but it’s also extremely satisfying to be surrounded by your team mates, knowing that each one of you contributed to the team becoming winners. Speaking of which here’s a picture of me with the Salford M45 team who came 2^nd in the National Cross Country Relays, I have to say not only do we look happy but we don’t look bad for our age, particularly Paul Birkett who looks about 26.

Incidentally if anyone has been waiting to read the official Salford write up on the BMAF Cross Country Relays, it’s finished but looks like it will be published on the Salford Harriers website over the next weekend, along with pictures of some old men. That’s www.salfordharriers.co.uk

Moving on to more domestic matters, I’ve been feeling a little lack lustre, some might say indifferent, in my training over the last week. I’m not entirely sure why, maybe it’s the Olympic effect, I focussed on the BMAF relays as my event for this stage of the year and now it’s over I find it hard to get going again, maybe it’s the cold I had about 5 weeks ago, which seems to be lingering, or maybe it’s just the rapid approach of my 48^th birthday (remember: running gear or single malt whisky). Whatever the reason it wasn’t a good week of training. I finished the week off with a hill session with another Cheshire athlete, Rob Tudor. He’s been injured and not run as much lately so I promised to go gentle on him. I was still promising that as I followed him up the first hill, and the 2^nd and the 3^rd. By the 6^th I’d realised the hill was too short, naturally Rob, a 1:50 800m runner was going to feel more comfortable up a short hill than me, a 1:59 800m runner (note these times were posted more than 20 years ago but serve as a useful comparison), so I suggested we head across the river and do a longer hill. After following Rob up these longer hills a couple of times we decided to move on to a more steady run through the woodlands and chat instead. I was still feeling a bit lacklustre yesterday, when I started my training session with Lee, but I perked up as we progressed through the session and we finished with a rep at 5 min mile pace. That was a good way to finish Lee’s last really hard session before he attacks the 10k world record with his 40lb pack. This morning I was out at 07:30, running a hill session. It went alright, I felt good and seem to have found my mojo again, or perhaps it was just that I didn’t have Rob Tudor running in front of me.

Speaking of Rob Tudor, he’s an England Master’s representative, National Champion and is someone who has yet to finish behind me in a race, therefore he’s on the list of those athletes I must beat before I retire. It’s a large list and growing all the time.  

Ray was out on Saturday, running his first cross country race, ever, at Sefton Park. I think he found it tough, it was quite a big race with some top runners entered, including a team from my old club, Belgrave Harriers. So he’s had his baptism of fire, and will no doubt be back for more.

It’s been a while since I’ve done a parkrun, now that I have a team to run for I have other races to do and I don’t like to race every week, but I do miss the atmosphere at Pennington Flash. They’re a friendly lot and it’s always a challenging run, which are two good reasons for going along. Hopefully I’ll be along to one soon, but I’m getting calls from other directions so I don’t know when. While we’re talking parkruns, I’m led to believe there will be new ones starting shortly at Delamere Forest and Congleton.

Because I’m a travelling PT, rather than basing myself in one gym, I always carry a book around with me, it gives me something to do if I turn up early for a client. I have my preferences as to type of book, but I’ll pretty much read anything. I’ve just finished ‘Over The Edge’ by Jonathan Kellerman, which is a really enjoyable read, I’ve just started ‘On The Road’ by Jack Kerouac, which has now been made into a movie. I’ve been interested in reading some of the books from American authors, of that era, but couldn’t seem to find them, now thanks to the movie this one is back in print. Another book I’ve always wanted to read is ‘Don Quixote’ and I managed to find that on one of my random searches through my kindle, but boy it’s a tedious read. Well actually there are sections that are tedious and sections that flow along really well. I’m about 77% the way through it and I’ve hit a tedious bit, but I’m desperate to get to the end so I’ll keep plodding along. Whilst on the subject of books, my friend Gabrielle Collison’s book, about British Marathon Running Legends of the 1980s, is now on Amazon, might be worth a punt as a Xmas present for a running friend who doesn’t need any more kit, it’s getting some good reviews.  

Written by Roger Alsop

www.rogeralsop.co.uk

Marathon The Final Tune-up

Many Marathon conversations have been going on lately, many of my running friends have voiced their own opinions over facebook. Most significantly, for British people anyway, is the decision of the IAAF to remove Paula Radcliffe’s World Record of 2:15.25, set at the London Marathon in 2003, because she was paced by male runners. Of course she’ll still be the World Record holder with her time achieved, in an all female race, of 2:17.42, her London time being stated as a World Best. Paula is keen to run the marathon at the 2012 London Olympics, but she has struggled with injury over the last two years. In a bid to show she deserves a place she entered this year’s Berlin Marathon and finished 3^rd in 2:23.46, well inside the 2:31 qualifying time. So it looks like Paula is on the way back and what a fitting finale it would be, to a great career, if she could win the gold at London, should she decide that it was then time to concentrate on other business interests.

At the same Berlin Marathon the world record was again broken, as Patrick Makau reduced it to 2:03.38. Getting ever closer to the 2 hour barrier that Michael Crawford attempted in the 70’s, in the film The Games – worth a watch on a wet afternoon with no real sport on.

At the end of this week the Chester Marathon takes place, this is now my local marathon, but more significantly, for me, it marks the marathon debut of my client, Ray Tran. You’ll have heard about Ray before, I’ve mentioned him in a few of my blogs, he’s also my Pennington Flash Parkrun buddy. Throughout the time that Ray has been training with me he has had a number of goals and one of these has been to run this marathon. Ray has been training hard for the marathon and is being realistic in his time goal (sub 3:30). You’ll recall I’ve previously mentioned the Yasso session we did, which indicated he was in 3:23 shape. Well this week it’s wind down time, which started on Sunday (after a final burn up session).

When I did my own marathon, in 2003, in fact the same one that Paula broke the World Record in, I had lots of knowledge about training for the marathon, gained from the many people I knew who had taken part in numerous marathons, I also had a great marathon coach in David Lucas, who had a reputation of coaching ladies to sub 3 hour marathons and also coached Junior Galley and Jim Estell to AAA Marathon Championship honours. However I also carried out some separate research and discussed my ideas with Dave, which Dave didn’t disagree with. One of the things I found out was that many top runners considered a 10k race, a week before the marathon, to be ideal preparation for the marathon. It also appeared that this fitted in nicely with the various regional 12 stage relays, held in Britain, which tended to be about a week before the marathon and had legs of 3 and 6 miles (approx). Of course, when I came to do the marathon, the Southern 12 Stage relay was being held in Milton Keynes and the long leg was nearer 5 miles. This didn’t phase me and, as I’ve always been a team man, I decided to do the relay rather than try to find a 10k. I requested a long leg from team manager, Alan Mead, which I got. Alan, being the sensitive type, gave me leg 1 so I could do some extra miles after the run. It was a typical long leg around the lake from the Open University grounds, typical being windy, I don’t think I’ve ever run there when there hasn’t been a strong wind out by the lake, those doing short legs have it so much easier. I hadn’t been doing any short distance speed work all winter, just lots of long hills and 1 mile reps so I settled into a steady pace around mid pack. However, as we hit the wind everyone around me seemed to slow down, well I felt strong so I pushed through and soon I found myself in the top 10. Once we joined the short stage path to home there was no stopping me, I just pushed all the way to the finish, coming in 7^th and running 24:50 for the close on 5 mile leg, I even got the better of local rival and now team mate, Dave Robinson, who I hadn’t beaten for some years, always a nice feather in your cap.    

But returning to Ray’s marathon, based on my own approach and the fact that Ray doesn’t have a lot of running years in his background, I decided to do my final pre-marathon session with Ray this Sunday and I decided I was going to pace him to an 8k at his predictor 8k pace, this turned out to be 4:45min/k pace. Session time was set for 16:00 and I’d worked out a fairly safe and flatish (or so I’d thought) run along the bypass towards Gadbrook Park, turning down towards town and back via the cemetery to the bypass, I was going to then turn back towards Leftwich but as it turned out the traffic junction at London Road was clear so we crossed it and carried on up the bypass. The finish was just before Hartford Hall, meaning that the last k would contain the steep hill, but it was the end of a race and I’d make Ray fight for it up that hill.

We started off with a 1k warm-up in 5:18 and then kicked off. As has often been the case in my racing career the first k was too fast, 4:25, but not so fast that we couldn’t correct and also I’m a great believer in going how you feel – of course on some occasions this has lead to me suffering mid-race, but on others I’ve smashed pbs. We edged back the pace but still only to 4:31 for the next k, but hey, Ray was still chatting away so I wasn’t panicking. Two further ks, each in 4:39, and this was looking good, we were half way and well within schedule. The next 2k had a long drag of a hill in it, I could sense Ray was struggling a bit, conversation was more one-way and it felt like we’d slackened the pace. I urged Ray on but we went over the 4:45 goal with 2 4:48s, but that was only a 6 second deficit and we only had 2k to go. We were reaching territory we regularly did reps on and Ray lifted his pace a touch with a 4:45 penultimate k and then it was the hill at Hartford towards the end of the final k. It is a tough hill to run up at the best of times but at 7.5k into an 8k hard run it’s a bit irritating, still I wasn’t about to let a hill ruin Ray’s run, I’ve already embraced this hill and made it my friend and at this point it was time for Ray to shake it’s hand, and he did so climbing to a crescendo finish with a final k of 4:43. All this gave us a final 8k time of 37:26, averaging 4:39, which, as Ray reminded me, would have been a pb at 10k if we’d carried on (particularly as the next 2k would have been flat), but there’s time for that in the future, now it’s time for Ray to ease back and smash that Chester marathon. We discussed the final week’s training and went home.

With the marathon in his legs it’ll be a few weeks before Ray and I train together but on the plus side I’ve just started running with the 38 minute 10k man, who shall be forever known as Rich (Ray, Rich, Rog, make sure you don’t get confused, I need a Julian or Henry for a bit of variety), we had our first run last Thursday and it was fast and furious. Rich is young and strong so over the next four weeks I’ll be expecting him to take me to pieces, but within that time he’ll gain an appreciation of my style of training (which has been proven to get you pbs and even world records) and I’ll also be passing on many tips for his marathon, he’s entered Edinburgh 2012.    

It was a Sunday session for Ray, that’s quite unusual for me, I decided a long time ago that it’s important to have a separation between work and play and that meant not working for the two days at the weekend, or even the extended weekend. I know this means that there are some lucrative opportunities I’m going to miss out on but life’s not all about making money. Anyway this weekend I found myself alone and I also wanted to do this final session with Ray, to ensure I gave him the best service I could prior to his marathon. Of course I’ll not always turn down weekend work, but it would need to be something of great interest to me, to tempt me away from spending it with Carole. I wasn’t supposed to be alone this weekend, it’s Carole’s birthday and we were planning to go somewhere exciting, such as Blackpool, but then Carole was given the opportunity to go to a conference in San Francisco and those who know Carole well know how driven she is when it comes to work. So Carole jetted off early on Saturday to the States. Poor Carole had to wake up on Sunday to take part in an organised wine tasting tour of the Napa Valley wineries. Over the next week she’ll be in networking mode for the benefit of her company and she’ll even have to take in a concert one night, featuring some singers from the past, Sting and Tom Petty. I feel for her, she could have been here being taken through her paces by me.

With Carole away it gives me the opportunity to do some things I wouldn’t normally do, like stay up a little later, watch non weepy movies and switch off the TV when Coronation Street and Emmerdale are on. It also gave me the opportunity to pay a brief visit to Edinburgh over the weekend. It was time to pick up the remnants of my previous life and move it to Northwich. Unfortunately I’d forgotten how many remnants I’d left in my garage and now they’ve filled up our house, a box of medals alone weighs about 6kg, I’d forgotten how successful I used to be, considering I haven’t won anything this year, mind you I haven’t entered much. The best thing is I now have my rowing machine installed in my gym and I believe it will help me add an edge to my training, it did before.

Whilst in Edinburgh it also gave me a chance to catch up with some people, I was only there a few hours so I didn’t make an effort to contact everybody but I had been invited to the engagement party of Richard Meade and Gail. Richard was in the group I helped to coach with Alex McEwen so I was keen to catch up with him and many other members of that group and other runners I’d met in my time in Edinburgh. Unfortunately I had to leave early as I was making an early start back to Northwich the next day. Before the party I had a bite to eat with fellow PT, Jim Buick, who’s working on his new website www.jimsgym.org

Finally while I was shopping in Chester, during the week, I came across the 2012 version of the Guinness book of World Records. I couldn’t resist having a quick peek and there in the Marathon records was a picture of Lee Riley. Incidentally Lee tells me that he’s managed to get Ann Packer along to support his mile world record attempt, for those too young to know she was Olympic champion over 800m at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.