Tom Roper's Running Training

First week of training for the 2018 Brighton half

Training officially began for next year’s Brighton half marathon last Monday. The week was not a typical week, though, so rather than follow the programme, whose demands are in any case very modest in the first of sixteen weeks, I took my training as it came:

• Tuesday: swim
• Wednesday: the last ever session with the Seaford Striders Couch to 5k group. I led the medium paced group, who set a smart pace over about 2.5 miles
• Saturday: Peacehaven parkrun, with the Couch to 5k group. In spite of disappointing conditions, wet and quite windy, they all acquitted themselves splendidly. See the results here, a race report here and photographs here, including the handsome one below, taken by Tony Humphreys, photographer by appointment to Seaford Striders. 
• Sunday was my first cross-country event of the 2017-2018 season, Warren Hill, near Eastbourne. The weather was bright, but cold in a vicious north-westerly, and the event well-attended. It consists of a long downhill and, inevitably, an equally long and tough uphill. A runner was unfortunate enough to suffer a stroke on the course, and was air-lifted to hospital by the Kent, Surrey and Sussex Air Ambulance; it appears that a road ambulance was on its way, but involved in a collision in East Dean. 

Coming up, apart from the half itself, the Brighton 10k next Sunday, and the Downland Devil on 3rd December

Total mileage this week: 10.68 miles
103 days till the Brighton Half.

I’m running the Brighton Half for the Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals Ultimate Urgent Care Centre appeal . Find out more and sponsor me.  

 

Couch to 5k, and an anniversary

Tonight the second Seaford Striders Couch to 5k completed the programme, the ninth week, with 30 minutes of non-stop running. It was a chilly night, and my group, who self-identify as medium, set a cracking pace. We finished back at the Downs Leisure Centre, high on endorphins and achievement. On Saturday we go en masse to Peacehaven parkrun. 

I’m not sure how I ended up coaching them. I have no great stores of running wisdom to offer. My approach is similar to that of Ledru-Rollin, the French politician, who was supposed to have said, when running down a street at the rear of a crowd in the 1848 revolution, 'Eh! je suis leur chef, il fallait bien les suivre!’, which, being interpreted means 'I am their leader, I must follow them'. 

I may not be a very able or experienced coach, but I had able help from many other Striders, some who helped lead groups every week, some who  dipped in when they could. But the group coached themselves, to a great extent. I am so impressed with them; they came, week after week, in considerable numbers. They were tolerant of the baffling, eccentric and, very occasionally, hilly routes I sent them on, and always cheerful. I am reminded of the story of a report on a British army officer, which said ‘his men would follow him anywhere, but only out of curiosity.’ 

It’s an anniversary today too, the anniversary of my 2003 Westlain Plantation run, a short run, but my first for many years. I’d last run when my son was a baby, a 10k in Crouch End thirteen years before. I’ve told the story of this return across foggy, muddy November fields many times, but I don’t think I ever confessed to the garments I thought appropriate for this first excursion, to wit:

• a t-shirt given away at a conference I’d been too, advertising a database provider, Ovid, with a quotation from the poet of antiquity
• a pair of rugby shorts I had worn at school
• shoes: I think I had a pair of shoes I’d bought for treadmill running in a gym - one day I’ll tell all about my Westminster gym years

And here I am, thirteen years after that, with marathons and all manner of other races under my belt, trying to encourage others to run. It’s a rum do.