18-01-2016 – I Got the Music in Me
The other day, the countdown calendar on the sponsorship page ticked down past 100 days to go. It’s all beginning to seem very real.
On Tuesday’s 5K run, I came up with a new route on the hoof. Named the Bowie course it takes in Kelsey Park, The Three Tuns pub and the Beckenham Bandstand – all places with Bowie significance. I ran it in a modest 33.14 – I rationalised that this was an unfamiliar course and that I’d slowed to look at the growing number of flowers and tributes at both the Bandstand and The Three Tuns (I refuse to call it anything else). In my ears was BlackStar, his final album – an obvious choice, but not really the type of driving beat I’d use for running.
Indeed, in the last year most of my runs have been without any music at all. When I started running that would have been unthinkable. I used it as support crutch, in the way that many new runners believe they can’t possibly run anywhere without a big bottle of water (Hi Sue!).
It used to take me ages to get out for a run. I still remember those early parkruns before I bought a Garmin watch, where I used to have juggle my running app and trigger my music from my phone, held in an armstrap, on the startline with moments to the off. Under such pressure, I usually manage to cock-up, so I wouldn’t get my in-ear timed splits or I’d end up listening to the same song over and over.
I used to spend way too much time crafting playlists of fast punk, ska, indie or dance tunes. Then reordering those lists, depending on when I thought I’d most needed a boost during a run. When the chorus kicks in on David Guetta’s Titanium, it still has the Pavlovian power to make me suddenly sprint like a loony for 15 seconds even if I’m scaling the steep hill at Lloyd with my legs regretting such foolishness for the rest of the run. And there’s more than one Lloyd parkrunner who has nearly been taken out by a stray elbow during some over-eager air-drumming.
These days, all my ‘running songs’ have merged onto one long playlist on shuffle and, with the honourable exception already noted, I only tend to register the first 30 or so seconds of any song before my mind wanders to pace and pains.
Two things eventually led to a change in routine. Firstly my second Half Marathon – Paddock Wood last year, expressedly forbade the use of headphones on pain of disqualification/death etc. Thus I started to train without them and found, like Sue did with her comfort water bottle, that it really didn’t make much difference after all.
The other issue was ‘equipment failure’ when my expensive Plantronics Bluetooth headphones decided to give up the ghost and then a second set of even more costly Jabra wireless headphones barely lasted a month before disintegrating. I had my suspicions when I bought them, despite the price, they seemed less sturdy than my originals. The sound quality was nowhere near the mark, either. Sadly I’d lost the bloody receipt otherwise I’d have claimed under the guarantee.
The third half at Tonbridge frowned on the use of them too, so most of the training for that race was done music-free, too. Around November time I dug out at old wired pair and started using them but keeping the cord free became a great source of irritation, so I went back to listening to the sound of my own panting.
As it happens, Santa Claus bought me a new cheaper pair of Bluetooth headphones so I’m back connected again but I guess I’m only using them about half the time. Indeed during parkrun, I find myself stopping the music early when I want to step up my pace for the final few hundred metres. The only time I tend to use them is if I’m not quite motivated enough for a run and I think the music will distract me.
Everyone I’ve spoken too says the London Marathon atmosphere and support is so amazing that you won’t want to miss anything by having your headphones on, so the plan is not to use them on the day, or indeed on the longer training runs before.
The rest of the week’s running consisted of a 5K on a treadmill (29.50) in the Berkshire hotel that I’d taken Sue to for her birthday on Wednesday. As we were going away again for the weekend, we did our longer run of 8 miles (this week) on Friday, instead of Sunday. I’ve started to concentrate on maintaining a realistic pace, one that I think I will be comfortable with for the majority of the Marathon, which has meant going off more slowly than I’m used to. With that in mind I was quite pleased with a time of 1:31:50 for 8 and a bit miles – a pace of around 6:55 per K when I was aiming for 7K on a route that went gradually upwards for the first 5.5K (out of 13-ish). The feeling of pleasure was also derived from the fact that the Friday run felt, for a short while at least, like we were ahead of the game.
This mixture of kilometers for pace and miles for distance is getting confusing, as it always seems to, as the required mileage increases. So I know it’s now time to reset my Garmin watch to miles from kilometers, the surest signal that I am into the ‘hard yards’ in training for a race. Not that I’m likely to ever forget it with that dirty great countdown on the Sponsorship page spiralling downwards with seemingly increasing speed.