Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/12644194219

Notes

Efficient morning pre-race after not-quite enough sleep. Dressed, banana, porridge, coffee, bathroom, out at 8.

I had decided on a three gel strategy using SIS Dual Fuel gels. One 5 mins before the starting, another at 7km, and the last one at 14km. I think it worked out pretty well.

At the event, we did bag drop and went straight to the starting pens. Didn’t use the portaloos, and regretted it after 30 mins standing in the starting pen. With ~20 mins to go, I jumped the fence and ran to the public bathrooms at the Covered Market. Felt MUCH BETTER OMG, and managed to get back in the pen fine. I also discovered that I hadn’t tightened my drawer-strings, and that the tops of my gels were poking me in the small of the back. I tied a neat bow, and turned the gels upside-down in the back pockets.

I felt pretty decent during the run. I saw Becca and Rachel spectating at a couple of points. Rachel even got a few photos!

I went off a tiny bit hard while my heart rate was coming up, but once in the 170s I modulated pace based on HR readings, aiming for low 170s in the first third, high 170s in the middle, and at 15km consciously pushed into the low 180s in order to catch the 1:35 flag runner. I think I let HR sag a bit through kms 5-12. In terms of pace, I didn’t manage negative splits. I ended up with basically flat splits throughout the race, with a slight sag at the end that was not solely because I was running through University Parks.

Comparing with previous attempts, I noticed that heart rates averaged about the same as last year, maybe a beat lower*. However according to Strava, I spent significantly more time in Z3, and half as much time in Z5. Probably my heart-rate zone cut-offs are for me when I’m much fitter: The 173 bpm transition from Z3 tempo to Z4 threshold is too low; I was certainly at or just above the top of threshold for the run, and that was at 172-174 bpm for the first two-thirds of the race. Threshold HR being lower can likely be explained by my reduced fitness.

*direct comparison is hard because I didn’t stop the run until after a couple mins of recovery, oops.

Trip

Quick summary: this time we organized the trip such that there were four solid days on the boat before the run. Which worked out really well, and enabled a contiguous trip to Aynho rather than just to Thrupp. We could have gone further if the Cherwell valley weren’t over-full of water, and if a number of other things hadn’t happened!

Next year

What we could do to make it better next year:-

• Do canal Saturday-Saturday, with race after the first night. We’d only lose a little under a day of cruising to the half marathon, and we could be more debaucherous after the race!
• Being fitter and a lot lighter. I could stand to lose 10kg!
• Weight training during winter.
• Base training. A lot of Z2 runs/pelotons/bike rides. Richard noted that he did this for the first time this year and it made a huge difference, lowering both race times, and average heart rates.

Race

I have done less preparation than last year. I’ll aim to do it in about 1:38, based on a 1:50 time that was:-

• At a lower pace (+5 min)
• Not run in my race shoes (+5 min)
• Hillier (+2 min)

This will be a lot slower than last year, about the same as the year before, and a lot slower than Richard this year. I’m not going to worry about it too much; I’ll try to get a lot of intensity in over the next 2 weeks, then take it easy for a week or so before the race, and then see what happens on the day.

Boat

The last two years that we did this, the “time on canal boat actually cruising” part of the holiday has been short, and bitty. We’d take the boat on Saturday afternoon, cruise a bit up and down, moor at the boatyard again because it’s the closest spot to the half marathon, and then get ~1.5 days of cruising Sunday afternoon to Tuesday morning.

But! This year we booked the boat for a whole week, with all cruising happening in the week leading up to the Half. We’ll have Tuesday afternoon-Saturday evening to cruise.

Much better.

I did it, and documented it, last year.

I have a training plan

I'm not in great shape right now. And my friends who are running it are quite quick. I need to get faster. I need to train. And to lose some weight, since I'm pretty heavy right now.

I made a plan! I have made it using intervals.icu, and taking into account vacations that are coming up. It may be a bit ambitious! But it can be adjusted on the fly and I'll still know where I stand.

Look! Here is a graphic that the web site generated:

The vertical light grey line is today. The top graph is about the state of my fitness: the blue line is my fitness and the purple line is my fatigue. (I don't know what the units are, but in my experience they are both arbitrary and useful.) The bottom graph is about whether I'm doing too much or too little. When trying to get fit, you want to be in the green zone, but for races you want to be in the blue "fresh" zone. As you get fitter, you need to do progressively more work in order to be in the green zone.

Workouts are either Power Zone rides on my Peloton spin bike, or runs. I'm choosing to use the peloton because a) I'm very familiar with it and b) it's a low-injury risk way to rapidly improve cardio fitness. In the first block the plan is one long run, one short run, and two peloton rides per week. As I get closer to the race I'll transition to 3 runs and 1 ride.

I've given myself a goal that I care about, and am orienting my fitness plans around it. Hopefully I can stick to it.

TODOs:

• Look into fancy fast running shoes
• Find some more shorts which aren't going to chafe too much
• Put an outdoor ride or two into the plan

First we went to the park&ride down the Abingdon Rd to fast-charge Cath’s new Leaf. Then we parked in westgate lot to slow-charge it to 100% while we went to Pembroke etc.

(Texted Ben since he was at work here but didn’t end up meeting him.)

The new Westgate is well designed and a pleasant place to spend time in. And enormous, with high glass roofs. But it’s still open air. Nice concept. It’s not surprising that retail elsewhere in the city is struggling.

The porters were most insistent that we did not go inside any buildings. Here’s a picture of Cath in the Chapel.

Cath recognized the gardener, Richard. One of very few people still there from old days. Chatted for a while about how things have changed.

Look it’s us in Chapel Quad outside the SCR, and my old room

Wonderful photo.

After that we went, by way of shops, to Brown’s in the Covered Market for luncheon

I had cottage pie.

Then Cath drove us to LHR T3 and there was time for one last selfie

Woke up, lazed around for a while. It’s so nice just being with these people, you know?

Boat went north, touched the Cherwell, went back south again.

Becca and Cath hard-stopped the boat at one point because they saw a kingfisher. <someone got a photo, maybe add it here>. If they are rare, they weren’t today. I think between us we saw 3 in total.

We moored in good time, 15 mins cruise from the boatyard, close to The Anchor pub, which was intended spot for last dinner. I believe we had pre-dinner G&Ts.

The Anchor had:-

• Table tennis table. Hard paddles, heavy balls, basically a different game.
• Japanese street food truck. I had curry udon w/ tofu. Richard chatted to the Japanese-native truck denizens, since he’d been there a few times.
• Wadworth beer (6X was off, I had Horizon)
• Bit of a swanky gastropubby vibe. Richard had an “autumn sour”, a sloe gin, lemon juice, elderflower thing w/ egg white for texture as you do. We were there as the barman refined the recipe, and chatted w/ him about it.

Becca left us after dinner, driving home for work Tuesday.

The rest of us decided to go to: The Lamb and Flag, G&Ds, and the Turf. Half pint in both pubs for me.

The Lamb and Flag has been recently neutered. No posters about weird student shit on the walls, half the rooms that were little nooks gone, no Betty Stoggs. But there was a familiar post to hang on to. Richard found a photo of me clinging to it while being given a wedgie on my 24th birthday. .

In general Oxford felt pretty quiet. A lot of places closed. (It was a Monday night, but the students were most definitely around.) weird. Guess we should try a Friday.

Original plan was to be dropped off at Peartree Park & Ride so that Dad could help Rachel and Ben view a house they were interested in buying.

But as we were going down motorway, I noticed that Rachel and Ben were in Oxford. (Rachel was getting her hair dyed a lighter shade to hide her greys because she is one of the older people working at her startup.) They decided to cancel their viewing and had lunch w/ me and Dad at Jamal’s in Jericho.

Was a bit rushed at lunch because Jamal’s closes at 2. But it worked out! Was good briefly to chat with them outside of the craziness of the upcoming marathon.

Then dad drove me to boatyard.

Becca arrived next in Lucy’s car, which is a Ben-Scott type car, viz a red coupe. Not a Becca car at all! Didn’t open the gates for her because couldn’t see who was in it.

Richard/Cath we’re running late (Cath had just bought Richard’s Leaf EV and I think they might have had a charging delay en route), so Becca, Dad and I did the “test” turn with a somewhat ornery gent from the boatyard. Quiet spoken and quick to frustration. I think I heard him say “fuck” under his breath when his opinion of how I should be approaching Isis lock differed heavily from mine.

I’m not trying to say he was wrong. He was trying to explain how to do it the single-hander way, which is slower and involves always getting the back in, always getting off at the back, never walking along the towpath with a windlass, etc. I feel like I learned a lot by implication.

It DID NOT HELP that Dad opened the paddle at the lower end while the top paddle was open/ gate closed. Embarrassing brain-fart. There’s only one top paddle at Isis lock, I wonder if he half-thought he was doing the other one?

Anyway, we winded and re-ascended Isis lock successfully. Picked up Richard and Cath. Said goodbye to Dad. Set out up to the junction w Duke’s Cut and back.

I was sure there was something around the propeller... Becca had a good go at freeing the phantom obstruction.

Richard was v insistent that we don’t drink before running tomorrow. So. weird. on. a. boat. not. to. be. holding. a. drink. in. the. evening.

But somehow we managed. Everyone goes to sleep early! Weird. Thanks, Melatonin for helping me do the same. (Thanks, Anna!)

Train to Warrington. 10:09 from Tonbridge to London Bridge, Northern Line to Euston, Avanti west coast to WBQ. Except that my Avanti train had been removed from the timetable. Instead of an 11:30 first stop WBQ, there was an 11:10 with additional stop at Crewe, but arriving WBQ same time. 🙄. I had just enough leeway to make that train. I ran through Euston and had enough time to jog mid-way up the train.

Eventually found a seat at a table with, what I surmised was a Glaswegian (saw a message thread on her phone to the Glasgow Girls Group, didn’t see any messages I’m not a monster) named Fiona (engraved on her AirPods case), and a couple of guys who were hungover, had recently come into a lot of money (one had just paid off his mortgage), and liked fancy cars (talk of Porsche Taycans) and road bikes (talk of Hard-Knock pass, and Colnago C68s with Titanium lugs, Super Record and Bora wheels on order). I stayed quiet for some reason. (The bike convo only came up on approach to WBQ.)

Dad collected me from the station, met mum at home, ate a large lunch because I hadn’t eaten on the train. Baxter’s scotch broth soup, oven par baked ciabatta, blue cheese, coffee.

Was lovely being home just the 3 of us. Felt normal, comfortable.

Walked with Mum to collect Amy from school on her birthday. We dropped off gifts at Kat’s, briefly said hi. I had heard that Amy was excited about time collecting her, but she was quiet and shy. I think she was a little bit under-the-weather.

Went back to 93 w/ Amy. Quiet afternoon, Amy made things with pipe cleaners. Then went back to Kat’s for Amy’s birthday part 1, which involved a chippy tea, and opening family presents.

Elliot liked Amy’s dressing gown

Chippy tea for dinner (in my honor). Amy got cupcake cake

Then went to The Pied Bull with Mum and Dad.

Dad left his phone at Kat’s. Mum used this as an excuse to go home. Pleasant couple of pints with dad, then home relatively early. Mum was still up.

Melatonin + 5-HTP, slept well.

Got off the plane quickly and took Elizabeth line into Paddington (main line). Met Richard at the coffee place in the shopping center.

Our approximate plan was to walk along the Regents Canal to Towpath, a restaurant on the canal near Shoreditch for lunch, and then to go ride Mail Rail, the tiny underground railway that used to transfer mail between the central London post offices.

About an hour into walking we decided it would take far too long to walk all the way, so we decided to rent the Bikes formally known as Boris. Took a bit of faffing to get accounts set up, but we eventually got ourselves a hybrid-electric for Rich and a normal one for me.

This rapidly accelerated progress toward restaurant.

Occasionally the towpath was blocked for residential moorings and we were diverted onto streets that a) had great bike paths and b) were full of wonderful old houses. I guess the neighborhoods were high-end mid-Victorian suburbs.

We popped up in Camden which looked like itself in places, but otherwise was a bit more gentrified. I took a picture of a bit that looked almost the same. Looking down toward tube station.

The Regents Canal has de-scuzzified itself quite impressively. Little Venice has always been nice, and it’s somehow gotten nicer, and not particularly nice bits, eg around Kings Cross have gotten unbelievably swanky. Luxury apartments built on a gasworks site, and an almost impossibly high end set of boutique-y shops in an old LMS goods yard.

We arrived at Towpath, to find … mostly Americans. An American waitress, silver haired, sort of like your grandma’s younger sister who was hip, wore colorful overalls, with just a hint of space cadet about her. & we were seated next to a couple of generic early-30s American women who probably worked in tech and moved here from SF.

Food was good (I had the haddock, I think the menu is readable in the photo below), and I had a glass of “approachable” orange wine that tasted almost exactly like farm cider.

After lunch, more bikes, this time to the Mail Rail museum. The only preserved railway in London. Good for younger kids and dorky adults who appreciate fine engineering.

After that, train to Richard’s house to see his family. Quick preface that I had had a fun video chat conversation with Richard’s daughter Alma a few weeks before, when we were planning the trip. And we had pulled faces at each other. I think she started it, and that I showed her how to cross her eyes by looking at the end of her nose. Anyway, I had the rare privilege of being the “fun adult” at dinner. We had take-away curry.

Went to pub with Richard after kids in bed, put the world to rights.

Quick note here to THANK ANNA FOR THE MELATONIN. I took some post-pub, slept deeply and well, and was able to be up in the morning to say goodbye to Alma and Leon for school. Also, I took enough for 4 other nights.