Race review: The Hull Jane Tomlinson 8.8k

The Maritime Museum, close to the start/finish of the race

This week's running was full of disasters. So nothing new there. The first was infection induced. The chest was problematic and was inching towards being better all week, but failed to tidy up its loose ends before the run on Sunday.
I was plunged in to a dilemma as always: I'm still a bit ill, do I run or not? And if I do, how hard do I go at it?
I was pleased that the chest infection seemed to reach its peak within a couple of days around Tuesday and was getting better, but there was a race against time to see if I would be ok for Sunday. On Saturday I was very close to being better, although I hadn't run at that point in 10 days. The conventional wisdom is you can run with a cold, providing the symptoms are above the neck, but mine were still below.
On Saturday night I experienced my first bout of insomnia in years so when I woke for the race on Sunday morning, I had had around 3.5 hours sleep. This wasn't the greatest race preparation I've ever had. Still, I was worried, after a week of illness I had no intention of running the race hard or trying to beat my PB, I had already reconciled myself to that fact.The poor night's sleep had done my chest no good and it remained 95% better instead of the 100% I had hoped.

Hull is my home city so I had been looking forward to a run here, but this year's pattern continued to mirror last year's as I had been unable to run this race full blast in 2012 after having missed the Leeds' half due to injury. Calf problems had stopped me from racing in Hull last year, instead I was reduced to a gentle training run, but I had been very pleasantly surprised by the the pleasure of taking it easy in a race. I was able to enjoy the crowd and watching other runners mid-race. I have to admit to the schadenfreude I felt as I jogged around in  about 46 minutes whilst the people around me appeared to be killing themselves to do the same time. It made me appreciate just how far I had come in 2 years from when I was desperately trying to go under 45 minutes.

The Jane Tomlinson Hull route has been very carefully designed to take in the sights (And yes, Hull has sights, before you say it) The race village is set at the end of the magnificent Queen's gardens with the beautiful fountain, over-looked by the maritime museum and the modern BBC building. A fitting setting.
The start is on Alfred Gelder street, another wonderful setting as either side is dominated by imposing historic buildings.

Unfortunately, that's where the problems starts. Alfred Gelder street is very wide, so quite why the cordon at the start is so thin, is not clear. It's a very cramped start and faster runners are sure to lose time unless they push right to the front. The front section is, somewhat laughably, split in to sub 45, sub 40 and sub 35 groups. I say laughably, because at the Jane Tomlinson's, the cordons are ignored to a massive, massive extent. The race organisers compound this to a gigantic degree by inserting dozens, and I mean, dozens, of corporate runners right in to the front of the race start.

What this effectively does, is ruins the race for anyone wishing to run a faster time (Say, sub 45)

Some may call me churlish for pointing this all out of course. They will say that the Jane Tomlinson's are a "Run for all" It's run entirely in aid of charity and is about getting anyone and everyone running. And I love this principal, I really do, and completely support it, however, by messing up the start, this badly, for anyone wishing to run a fast race, they are alienating a huge amount of runners. Serious club runners, in the main, don't enter Jane Tomlinson races, because of these reasons. By not properly policing the start and by aiding and abetting slow runners to the front, the run for all series can't be taken seriously by the quick runners. This I think is a terrible shame. If these problems were rectified, and the corporate runners were placed in an appropriate place, club runners might start to take it seriously and the races would expand. This can only be a good thing for the charities in question, and no one else need miss out. In the end, there is no reason for slow corporate runners to be at the front, other than to pander to the big companies sponsoring them. If they feel it is totally necessary to keep this pandering, then surely a side-cordon could be introduced to prevent the corporate runners getting in everyone's way.

Rant over.

I arrived at the start line having queued for not too long a time for the loos, to discover the still-too-thin-from-last-year cordon, stuffed even more full of corporate runners than ever before. With the chest infection in mind I decided I would line up just behind the sub 40 minute line. I soon discovered that there were still dozens of corporate runners in front of me and that I would need to push forward or lose a lot of time at the start. There were so many of them, that I ended up in the sub 35 minute section to escape.

Then the day's real disaster happened. We were warned of a problem that would mean the race start would be delayed by 10 minutes. Luckily it wasn't too cold. 10 minutes later, however, a man appeared next to the race MC with a face like thunder. It looked like he was about to cancel the race. Instead, he announced that there had been a problem with a bridge and that the race could not go ahead on the proposed route. Discussions with the race organisers and sport England had come to the conclusion that the best thing to do, would be to shorten the run. 9k they said.

My immediate reaction was obviously of annoyance. An early Sunday morning start and a fair drive to end up not even running the full race. "No bloody point in being here then" I grumbled. Who the hell was responsible for this bridge? How could they cock up this badly? I'm glad I rethought this attitude later on, but for now, back to the race.

Standing waiting for the race to start I still hadn't decided how hard I would run and what time I would aim for. When the shortened route was announced I had no idea what to do. Then a great idea hit me- Why not run the first 5k really hard and try to set a 5k PB? I had never run a flat 5k before. My lungs would probably hold out for a hard 5k, then I could just jog the rest of the race.

This shot isn't just for effect, this is the path we ran up

The race started 10 minutes late and I had edged far enough to the front that I didn't have to side-step too many of the corporate runners and to my surprise I fell in to a reasonably comfortable 3:30 per/k pace. The route heads south out of the city center, through a new housing estate and on to the banks of the Humber. The route is flat, but it's also very twisty, so not as fast as a flat course might other wise give. Sadly, pretty quickly, my chest started to complain and I began to slow, but not by too much. At first it looked like I might go under 18 minutes, but the week's illness was having too much effect and I covered the 4th kilometer in 4:05.   We came up to The Deep, the most successful of the UK's millennium projects and an iconic aquarium building. Another sharp turn and we were looking down Hull's millennium bridge, a foot bridge at the confluence of the river Hull and the Humber estuary. The 5k marker was on the other side of the humped, twisty bridge. At this point I had slowed down too much to knock a huge chunk off my PB, but I still stopped my watch at 19:26 around 20 seconds inside my record. Not too bad for a man with two bags of manure in his chest. I slowed to a walk for a minute to regain some breath, which must have looked very strange to the large group of spectators who had gathered at this point. I expected some shouts of encouragement "Keep going mate- you can do it" but maybe they were just baffled.

From that point the route takes in the Marina, Prince's Quay and the city hall before finishing where it started on Alfred Gelder.

At about 7k I was feeling pretty tired and was just wanting to finish, when another 2 girls passed me. I had run the first 5k with a woman on my shoulder that the crowd kept informing us was in 2nd place. The 2 girls who had just passed me, by my calculation, were in 5th and 6th. Suddenly, my friend Dom's voice appeared in my head, "I'm not letting a girl beat me" I shook it off. Told myself not to be silly. I had run my race, now I was just having fun. I wasn't in a good enough state to run hard any more. But still. Girls. Passing me. They sounded knackered too. Maybe I could speed up a bit, there wasn't far to go after all.
To my surprise, I found it pretty easy to up the pace and caught the two girls who had passed me quickly. I have a feeling they had spent quite some time chasing me down, so it must have come as a surprise to see me cruise past them. The course twisted and turned past the New Theatre, and we headed past the race village on Queens' Gardens and Alfred Gelder was in sight where the race would finish.

I will admit, I looked behind me at Queen's gardens to see if I could spot the girls and to my, admittedly  very sad, satisfaction, saw that I had lost them. A sizeable crowd was gathered at the finish and as I was on my own I was pretty certain the race MC would give me a shout out, which he did. He also seemed to think I was sprinting home, I wasn't, but my sad male bravado and vanity kicked in and I decided I would make it look fairly good by speeding up. I crossed the line in 36:30, which pretty much told me the revised course had been even shorter than they thought it was going to be. I had turned my GPS watch off at 5k so I wasn't sure. Other people confirmed the course to be 8.8k. Considering I had taken it very easy after 5k and the chest infection, I had to be pleased with that. Of course, I wasn't, my 5k should have been quicker. Something else to aim at.

Afterwards I chatted to another engineer (my bachelor's is in mechanical engineering) about the bridge problem. We started off by complaining about how the engineer responsible for the bridge had failed to check in time that it was working. Then as we talked around the subject we began to realise that maybe no one was at fault. The bridge in question is in constant use - it's the entrance to a very large marina. It was probably in use right up until the race, which means it probably failed very close to the race time. Either way, it's probably enough to give the benefit of the doubt. Afterwards the organisers gave a sincere apology and a substantial discount for next years run to all the day's entrants. A lovely and generous touch I thought.

The medal this year is a much more substantial and professional looking model and the t-shirt is a tech shirt for the first time, so no complaints there. The design for the front of the t-shirt is excellent in my opinion, although the powder blue colour probably isn't quite to my taste.

In the aftermath of the race I have, as usual, spent time telling myself I should be perfectly happy with my run. Had the run actually have been 10k I wouldn't have been able to run it hard, a 5k was a good compromise. And despite my illness I still set a PB.

This weekend it's rugby league in Manchester, then cricket at Headingley on Monday, so no running for me.
Hopefully it will give my chest a chance to recover. If you're running this weekend, all the very best!

Ok, I admit it, this shot wasn't taken on Sunday morning, I'm just showing off my photography skillz

If it's not injury, it's illness

When my multitude of injuries finally began to fade in to the background, I began to believe that due to the work I had done, I was far less likely to get injured again. Hopefully, that's true. What I didn't expect to scupper me, was illness.
A few posts ago I described how I became ill with successive colds and then a really nasty flu over Christmas and how long it had taken me to finally get back running. The last few weeks things had been going well. I completed my first marathon, recovered well, then began speed training again. For the first time since the illnesses over Christmas, I had no calf problems. In fact, I had no problems at all.
Which is, of course, why sod's law has been applied to me yet again.

Sod's Law: Category: Sport. No 29845. Subsection 4:
"If one has finally over come one's running injuries after a long period of problems; one will come down with a lurgy. A lurgy like you have never known before. Expect to see purple boils, projection of bodily fluids that could win an Olympic throwing event, a temperature like the surface of the sun and hallucinations surreal like a Mighty Boosh episode."

No running pics this week, so here's a picture of my lion-head rabbit, Mufasa, instead

I was really looking forward to my first outing at the Leeds' half marathon yesterday. Ironically, my entry this year was a deferred entry from last year because of injury. During the week I felt the first tickle in my throat. I did what I could, vit c, zinc, fluids, etc..  All to no avail. I had to move house on Saturday and the house move finally pushed me over from feeling a little under the weather, to feeling like I had run, mouth open, in to the Gillette factory and swallowed for all I was worth.  Even so, I wasn't going to let a sore throat stop me, it would just stop my attempt at a PB. I am, after all, a medal whore. I could saunter round and collect my winnings.
But no. Sunday morning came and I knew there was no chance. The infection had migrated downwards, once again pouring cement in to my lungs. As an asthmatic, I have to be careful. Usually my asthma is well controlled and it doesn't effect my running; but if a chest infection gets me, it can floor me.
Not to give you too much detail, but my cough has become productive and every cough is very painful. So no running for me, but even worse, no work. As a contractor, this isn't good news.

The frustration that runners experience when they can't run is well documented, especially when you start to miss races and especially ones you've already paid for. (The Yokshireman in me again)
This weekend is the Jane Tomlinson 10k in Hull, my home city. Another race I have been looking forward to very much. It's flat and another I had hope for a PB at. No doubt this week will include some difficult choices, unless the choice is taken away and I stay too ill.
The decision of when to restart training is always very difficult. Too soon, or too much and it's easy to become ill again; it's a mistake I've made before and am keen not to make again.

Well, I will keep this short and go back to my wallowing on the sofa (At least I am now sitting back on my own, huge, comfortable sofa now) Wish me well in my convalescing!

Race review: The 2013 Manchester Marathon: 6 weeks to go from 10k to 26.2 miles

Leave a comment or tweet me: @scott_leach

Last year in September, I must have been filled with some sort of odd hubris because I decided, in the face of all logic and sense, to enter the Manchester marathon due to be run on April the 28th, a mere 7 months away.

Those of you who are avid readers of this blog (No one is, not even my mother) will know of my previous injuries and the fact that only 2 years ago I could only manage 2-3 5k runs per week or my body utterly broke down. However, things had been going better and like most of my wild ideas, it seemed good at the time.

A couple of months later and training was going fantastic. On December the 3rd I ran 20 miles in 2:39 and actually felt good. There were no ill-effects (sore nipples aside) and I had a very minimal amount of soreness the next day. Then disaster.....

I spent 2 months ill, culminating in a really nasty flu that turned my lungs in to bags of cement.

A few weeks ago,when the after effects of the flu had settled and I was finally beginning to train reasonably again, I sat down to work out a schedule and see exactly what I had to do. Reality began to set in when I realised had 6 weeks to the marathon and I was running uncomfortable 10k's at best. Put simply, I needed to extend my long run each week by at least 20% each time. 11 miles.....13 miles....15 miles.....18 miles.....22 miles......marathon. Scary thought. I couldn't afford any more set backs at all.

Even the bubble monkey appeared in my bath and told me I was crazy

It didn't start well, my calves tightened up on every run. The calf problem never did go away and it prevented me from doing any interval or speed training. Anyway, to cut a long story short and to get on to the slightly less boring part, the training ebbed and flowed until my last long run before the marathon itself. I set out for 22 miles. At 16 miles I had vision problems- I could see flashing lights. No seriously. At 18 miles my legs told me they were giving up and we'd have to walk. I remonstrated with them and I managed to eke out some more running over the next 3 miles, but there was more walking than running. That was 9 days before the marathon.

Trying to stay positive I concluded that the terrible run had been caused by a combination of a temperature several degrees higher than I had run in for 6 months, causing me to sweat significantly for the first time this year, having only 3 days to recover from the mad mud run I had done and not having slept all that well or eaten very well for the few days before. Still it left me worried and lacking in confidence coming up to the marathon. The possibility of hitting 18 miles and not being able to run any further seemed a genuine concern.

Maybe Scott Jurek could give me some inspiration whilst I drank out of my Wetherby 10k mug?

The week leading up to the marathon found me distracted and restless. The excitement finally kicked in around Thursday (as opposed to the feeling of impending doom) and I began to count down the time to the run.

On Saturday I picked up my running buddy, Dom, from the train station. Dom always keeps me grounded with regards to my running by thrashing my times despite being 10 years my senior.

We headed out for a gentle jog down the canal and pleasingly, it was the first run that had felt good for a very long time. Burger and chips and a couple of pints of Guinness down the pub and we returned to my house.

We both felt like we needed an early night so I started to put together the gear that I would need for the morning. It was then I discovered I had lost my race pack. Cue an hour of frantic searching. But I knew it would be fruitless because there were only 2 places I would realistically have left it and on checking them first, the pack was nowhere to be found. The truth dawned: I must have thrown it out in a frenzied tidying session. To make it worse, I had paid for parking passes for Old Trafford and being the genius I am, I had put them in to the pack so I wouldn't lose them. Ah well, I knew people lost their numbers all the time, you turned up to the info desk and just get a new one. The parking pass may be more difficult, I had the email confirmation and knew the number of the space, I should be able to charm *cough* my way in.

We left Leeds at ridiculous o'clock knowing that queuing for the toilets before the race was pretty much inevitable and that I might have to queue for a new number too. 

The M62 was quiet of course and we arrived in Trafford nice and early.....then we hit the road blocks. We could see old Trafford, but couldn't get to it. Why didn't I write out the instructions they had given to avoid the road blocks? How much more stupid could I be before this was all over? We started to take best guesses but kept being turned away. We were both beginning to get stressed.

Then Dom began to laugh....

"What?" I asked

"Wouldn't it be ironic if we couldn't get to the marathon because of the marathon?

"What, like....we wanted to do your marathon but we couldn't do it because of the marathon"

"Yeah, we couldn't get to the marathon because of the marathon being in the way of the marathon"

Well, maybe you had to be there.

The marshals waved vaguely in the direction of car park N1 and we kept going. There were signposts for every other car park - N2, N3, N4, W1, W2, but we couldn't spot N1. A marshal told us it was only a little further down on the left, so we kept going. Slowly it dawned that we had obviously missed it and if we turned back now we would hit all the traffic heading to the stadium. By now we were both pretty desperate for the loo. The decision was made to ditch the car ASAP, and that turned out to be in a dodgy £10 private car park. We seemingly had no choice. We never did find car park N1 and only actually saw one sign for it which was on the pedestrian walkway at the stadium! The car park remained within the Old Trafford Bermuda Triangle, the same place where Manchester United keep things like fair play and player's maturity. 

The route march to the race village did nothing for our bursting, bouncing bladders and neither did the fear that we would be met with the usual huge queues for the portaloos. Luckily, when we got there, we arrived at a small set of portaloos that had a very short queue and got in quickly. If we had found the main bank of loos, we'd probably still be waiting in the queue now contemplating contacting Norris McWirter about the largest bladder in the world record.

There was no queue at the info desk either and I quickly picked up a new number with integrated timing chip. It left us plenty of time to find the start line, which is a good thing as the signposting to it was non-existent and more cheery, vague waving from the friendly and helpful marshals, nor the map, helped. By following the magnets in my head for a while and more waving from the marshals I arrived at the start line just after the 8:30 deadline to line up, to find it almost deserted. Seems like no one was in a huge hurry to get there. Someone who clearly isn't being paid enough, had thought to put more portaloos there and it seemed rude not to line up and use them again, especially as nerves and the cold weren't helping. It was pretty chilly. The temperature was perfect for a marathon though and over-cast too.

The replacement number. The chip is a small strip on the back

Dom was aiming for a sub 3:15  time and my aim was a more modest sub 3:30. There were pacers on the course and we lined up next to the relevant one, Dom in front of me, obv.

This being my first marathon, I had no real idea what was going to happen. My last long run suggested there was a very real possibility that I would blow up some time after 18 miles. We would have to see. I knew I had the fitness for this, but my muscles, well, they were another story. 

With much ado, finally we set off, only being able to tell when we started by the timing mats as there seemed to be no official "start" banner. For some reason, I settled in with the 3:15 pacer, instead of the 3:30. I had plenty of time to contemplate on this odd and spontaneous decision, but I felt good, and the pace was comfortably within my range. 

I remembering feeling some slight discomfort across the top of my left foot, it didn't last long before it disappeared and was replaced by discomfort under my right foot. Both totally new pains I had never had before. They soon disappeared though. Probably race day nerves. 

Over the next few miles I got in to 2 long conversations with other runners in the 3:15 pack. The distraction was very welcome and the miles passed in a flash. The timing car flew past in the opposite direction followed sometime after by the leading runners, which we all gave a cheer to. I always enjoy seeing the leaders pass by on the other side. 

Along side me a runner in a club vest was giving a shout out to each of his team members that shot away on the other side of the road "Go on Bob!" "That's it Dave, you can do it!" "Great running Ian!"

After he'd shouted to about 8 runners, I made the observation that all his mates seemed to be much faster than him. He laughed and said everyone was. "Not me"  I said, before he started to pull away in to the distance. He was at least 15 years my senior...

Before I knew it we were approaching the half way point at Altrincham. Just before we ran the small loop around the village centre we went over the biggest "hill" on the route, which was, in fact, a small fly over. It was at this point that Dom passed me. Not from behind.....from in front, coming from the opposite direction and he was truly flying. He was so far "In the zone" that it took a second much louder shout before he noticed me. Then he was gone, like a bolt of, well....Usain.

The crowds in Altrincham were absolutely fantastic, seemingly every resident had turned out, and they were really making some noise. They had formed a Tour De France-esque tunnel for the runners to pass through and it was a wonderful boost. Someone was holding up a sign "Keep calm and run a marathon" Made me chuckle anyway.

In the village I spotted 2 women dancing in the street waving their "booties" in to the race route. I lined up pretending that I was going to spank the nearer one and her friend behind spotted me and began to laugh  Then I realised that the 2 women were actually school teachers conducting a choir of small children singing. I quickly decided my joke was inappropriate and dropped my hand sharpish! The choir was a fantastic touch and I am sure that every runner appreciated it just as much as I did.

Here's a video of the kids and the booty:

I passed the half marathon point in 1:35 and in great shape. I felt good. The pace still felt easy. I had no aches or pains. It would be sometime before the wheels started to wobble.

We ran down a long leafy avenue where people had come down to the end of their drives to cheer us along, some had even dragged stereos down to play us along. It all helped immensely. At times I was running with a huge grin on my face. 

The funniest event of the day happened at this point. A woman had been running along in the 3:15 group, she was short and stocky and amazingly determined. She had already had to run off the course once to use the loos and had done very well to catch us again. Just after Altrincham, she announced she needed to go again.

Suddenly she peeled off the road and began sprinting up the path of a private house. The door to the house was open and 2 spectators were standing in the garden. "I need the loo!!" She shouted. "Oh yes, up there!!" they replied and split apart to let her run in to their house! Full marks to the runner for the chutzpah to sprint in to a private house and full marks for the spectators to defer so reverentially to a manic looking woman charging down their path demanding a toilet. After her loo stop she managed to catch us up again, but I think chasing the pack down twice took its toll and she faded badly before the end. I imagine she probably finished inside 3:30 though.

The kilometres started to tick off more slowly on my watch, where the first 20 or so had flown by, sometimes 2 or 3 at a time. At some point there was a bit of comic relief when a runner casually answered his phone whilst not breaking stride, "Yeah, it's going ok. I'll be back in about an hour and a half"

Everyone around chuckled at the blasé attitude of the runner. I decided to impersonate Dom Jolly....

"HELLO! HELLO! I'M DOING A MARATHON......NO, A MARATHON...... MANCHESTER....... NO, MANCHESTER..........NAH, IT'S RUBBISH"

It earned me a big laugh and helped to distracted from the gathering aches.

From somewhere around 10 miles I had been slowly pulling away from the 3:15 pacer and at one point I had looked around and couldn't see him. I started to fantasise about running the 3:10 "Good for age" London qualifying time (Which has since been changed to 3:05, but I didn't know that at the time) It would remain firmly in fantasy land. 

At some point I started to slow and I am not sure how long it had been going on for before I realised it. It was around the 18 mile mark. I looked back and not only had the 3:15 pacer caught me, he was practically on my shoulder. It wasn't long before the pack caught me up and I dropped in to step. It felt good to run in the group and helped keep me going for a while.

"10k to go!! Just 10k" The pacer announced. 

It's a fatal thought because 10k seems easy. How often have I run 10k? Dozens and dozens of times. The thought plays with your mind; and I was beginning to struggle. The group started to gee each other along. A spectator shouted out "Looking good 3:15 group!"

"I'm not f***ing feeling it!" I mumbled. The pacer turned to me and said, "Dig in for a mile and it'll come back, you're doing great." His words really helped and I dug in like a Seamus Heaney poem. (Apologies for the obscure joke, it made me laugh)

"Just a 5 mile recovery run to go!" The pacer joked.

My legs had begun to feel like Beyonce's arse, heavy and wobbly. The pacer kept turning around to see if I was keeping up, but around the third time, I wasn't. There were 4 miles still to go. The wall loomed large, high and impenetrable in front of me. The next mile went down with the pacer still in view, but pulling away. My pace had slowed and I tried to do the mental arithmetic in my head. The pacer would probably finish in 3:13 or 3:14, if I could just keep him in sight for a little while longer, I could still go under 3:15.

But now it was becoming harder and harder. Never having eaten anything during a run, ever, I was reluctant to take any jelly babies or the energy gels they were handing out and decided before the race that I would only eat them if I was really struggling. Dom had told me the night before what a boost they had given him in the past and by this time I was willing to try anything. I grabbed a couple of jelly babies. Nothing. A gel. Nothing. An energy jelly bar thingy. Nothing. But at least they didn't upset my stomach.

All of a sudden the wall was 2 inches from my nose and impossible to avoid and I smashed head-long in to it. I had exhausted every distraction and relaxation technique I had ever read about that my addled brain could still recall. I had sung Kings of Leon's "The face" over and over again in my head including chanting the line "Riiiiide out the wave" as a mantra.

But all to no avail now. I had passed 22 miles and the whole way my pace had remained steady at 4:34 min/k, now I had dropped down to over 5 min/k. My mind announced to me that I could walk from here and still go under 3:30 and I would have achieved my target. But if I walked, then I wouldn't have run a marathon. I've walked the distance many times, none of those counted as a marathon. 

Then my legs stopped. Involuntarily. I was walking. I began beating myself up. Then again, almost involuntarily, they started running again. I had walked less than 50m. I just needed to keep moving, it didn't matter if I was slow. Here's my last 15 kilometres:

Kilometre 39 came down to 5:34, my slowest yet. Then a bright, shining beacon appeared in my head. A thought that would save me, that would keep me moving until the end. It was simple, and it was beautiful.

This is only pain.

I know that sounds ridiculous, but that was it. I hadn't taxed my heart and lungs at all during the race. My breathing had stayed steady and slow and even. I mentally prodded down my body and found only a bad, aching pain in my legs. And that was all. The sports massages I have are ten times more painful. Granted, it's just one muscles at a time during those, but they went on half an hour, I only had 15 minutes to go. 

A chubby guy stepped out of the crowd. He could obviously tell that I was struggling badly. I was moving very slowly considering where I was in the race. He stared me down with fists clenched, red in the face and gave me a rousing passionate speech that I can't remember at all. "Come on! dig in, you've got it" or words to that effect. In equal measures I wanted to hug him and punch him. Either way I appreciated the effort he was going to and the fierceness with which he delivered his pep-talk.

I managed to pick the pace back up a little for Ks 40 and 41, and at some point, Old Trafford came in to view. I could see the giant exo-skeleton attached to the back of the stand. I told myself not to get excited, that it was a huge stand and still some distance away, and just as I was thinking that, the crowd suddenly thickened. It actually was the end. The crowd had come in close again forming a tunnel. The noise they were making seemed huge. I heard a runner give a shout in front of me and the crowd responded with a cheer.

I saw the finish line in the distance and I thought I could do with a cheer like that to get me through.

"Come on!!" I implored the crowd and they gave a huge cheer in response. "Come on!!" I shouted again, the crowd cheered again and suddenly I was sprinting. "Come on!!" the crowd responded yet again (Yes, I was that idiot)

Imagine my annoyance when someone stole my guitar, right out of my hands, mid-song.

I crossed the line in 3 hours 17 minutes and 45 seconds running faster than I had at any other point. It just goes to show the power of the mind and a decent crowd. I was awash with exhaustion and my legs barely wanted to carry on walking, but I could see the medals hanging off the arm of a marshal. They were huge, comically so (It turns out they are based on the London 2012 Olympic medals) One wag posted a picture of it being used as a coaster for his pint glass after the race

The medal as compared to the 2012 Great North Run medal. Told you it was huge!

I dislike it when you have earned a medal and it isn't placed around your neck and you have to pick it out of the goody bag, so I was pleased to bow and have the dinner plate ceremoniously hung on me. The medal, though a little larger than I would have personally chosen, is a fantastic design and looks great. The t shirt in the finisher's pack is the best race t shirt I've ever received too.

My result.

The t shirt and medal. But you'd already guessed that, right?

I sculled down the post-race water bottle and grabbed a banana and a tasty clif bar. Dom was waiting for me at the finish and he congratulated me. "You went under 3 hours didn't you, you bitch?" I said. And he had. 2:55 in fact. We had both smashed our expectations and what's more, Dom had gone way under the automatic qualifying time for all the marathon majors.

I made my way gingerly to the baggage pick up, sore, but happy. Dom was practically crippled. I may have more desire than the average person, but Dom's desire is so huge he cripples himself for his times.

He told me about a "bitch" called Sarah he had been determined to beat. Sarah isn't a bitch at all of course, and we don't know her, but that's one of the ways Dom spurs himself on during a race, by targeting runners in front of him and chasing them down, as he did with Sarah. 

The nearest bar we could find was in a premier inn where we met the world's worst bar maid who was rude, distracted and incredibly slow, but all these things just served to amuse us in our post race euphoria. We told each other the stories of our races and deconstructed them. Half an hour later, my legs came back to life and we made our way back to the car.

It was definitely flat

Post race analysis:

If you'd offered me a sub 3:30 time before the race I would have torn your arm off, but ridiculously, my expectations had changed during the race. I had kept with the 3:15 pace for 22 miles, so to not finish with them was disappointing. Although it's silly to be disappointed, it's also one of the things about me that inspires my training and urges me to faster times, so I am not going to work to change that trait any time soon. All in all I am very happy  for my first marathon. Although I did blow up before the end, it wasn't totally disastrous and I did keep moving. I now have a marathon time I can be proud of and the elusive medal I have wanted and have chased for the last few years, only recently believing I could actually do it.

Post race damage report:

Very pleasingly, pretty much none. No blisters or hot spots on my feet at all. My legs were mildly sore for a couple of days and on Wednesday I completed a 6k recovery run comfortably. Yesterday (8 days after the marathon) I broke my 5k PB, so all in all, things are currently going great. *Pats head to ensure wood is touched* 

Karl Pilkington looked pretty good finishing in front of me*

PS. Expensive nip guards at £10+ per pack?........ Corn plasters for £1.69 (The ones that are a small ring of foam) work just as well!

*That's not really Karl Pilkington, but that really is me gurning like a good-un

Race review: The Pain Barrier, Frickley. 13/4/13

Say hello in the comments or tweet me: @scott_leach

The very brief period at the start when I was clean

I really ought to be a little more careful to check out the crazy races I do before I sign up for them. In the high of finishing the Men's Health "Survival of the fittest" last year, I signed up for this 10k "mud run". The obstacle course in Manchester had been fantastic fun and I searched on line for something else a bit mad to do. This one sounded like a good idea at the time....

Fast forward a few months and the day of this one loomed very large, in a very inconvenient spot as the end of my marathon training was coming up. I seriously considered not doing it as I still needed to fit in my final long run before the marathon and I had almost no idea of the effect a mud run would have on me. And little did I know.

The first conundrum was what to wear for such a race. Gok Wan really ought to do a program on this kind of thing, although perhaps practicality might not be his first concern.
A lot would depend on the weather of course. As usual I set off with a variety of options in my bag so I could change if I needed to when I got there. In the event, the weather was pretty warm. I decided on a pair of above-knee lycra shorts, a long sleeve compression shirt and a dri-fit t-shirt over the top. The t-shirt turned out to be a mistake as it soon became very heavy and wasn't necessary, however, I didn't really want to inflict the sight of me in a compression shirt on the general public without a t-shirt to hide some of the man-boobage. I also needed to decide on whether to wear my GPS watch. I really wanted to be able to tell how far in to the race I was, but didn't want to break a pretty expensive piece of kit. I checked out the specs and found it had an IPx7 rating. Having been an engineer I knew this to be a high ingress protection score, so I decided to wear it. Half way through the race as my hand and arm sank fully in to the mud for the umpteenth time, I wondered if I had made a mistake. There was so much mud on the watch that it was impossible to read at times and wiping it with my muddy hands didn't have a lot of effect, I was spreading the mud more evenly instead of wiping it off. I did manage to just about wipe off the bit with the distance on it though, so it proved useful. Thankfully, it still seems to be working and I have used it since.

My unrealistic expectation of the race was that there'd be a bit of mud, maybe a couple of water crossings and I'd probably go round in 45-50 minutes. Talk about naivety! As the race unfolded, I found I had seriously underestimated just how tough this was going to be.

Looks like a baby crawling on the ground, which is exactly what I felt like.

As I lined up at the start I looked around, eyeing up my "competition". I certainly wasn't deluded enough to think I could win it but no one seemed confident to take a place at the front, and in fact, the people at the front were a few metres from the start line, no one wanting to toe the line. It seemed only a few people were actually keen to try to set a fast pace. The general consensus behind me was of simply "getting round".
Suddenly a little voice spoke up in my head and said "We could finish in the top 10 here". I replied with "What's with the "we", pale face?".

We set off after a few minutes of comic relief when the inflatable Saucony arch collapsed at the start line. Oddly, the same thing had happened when I did the Wetherby 10k last year. And no, I am not going around puncturing them. A few people went off  hard, and I set off at a fairly quick pace of around 4 mins/k. For the first couple of k the course was a dry and reasonable trail and I thought I had better crack on while the going was easy. It really didn't last......

After leaping a couple of ditches, the hills started. Let me get this straight, the people who set this event up are evil, evil I tell you! Not content with running a race on a 4x4 track liberally spackled with man-deep holes filled with mud and water, they had set the course to run up and down the nastiest hill for probably miles around, not once, but at least 2.8 billion times. Well ok, it was something like 4 or 5 times, but it felt like a lot more. The hill was so steep it was impossible to run up, in fact, it was pretty much a scramble. As I said, evil! The effect it had on sapping the strength from my legs was pretty impressive.

As my brain is now trying to block out the memories of the race, trying to recall the exact order of the things we did, even while looking at the map, is tough, so forgive me if I get slightly mixed up. As we came down the massive hill for the 7000th time we entered the biggest water obstacle, so large that a rope was needed to pull yourself through it.

I enter the pool at about 1:08 in the yellow shirt. What the video in the link below doesn't show is that there was a couple of feet of mud underneath the water. Half way across I heard someone in the crowd shout, "Swim, it's easier" It sounded like good advice so I set off.

Nearing the end of the biggest pool

Swimming past the guy in front of me put me in 5th place at that point. Another thing that wouldn't last.

The course continued through huge deep ruts in the land, in the main filled full of muddy water. At times the mud was thigh-deep. Having already lost most of the strength in my legs from the hills, dragging my legs out of the mud time and again was beginning to seriously take its toll. I have no idea where it was on the course, but at one point we entered yet another swamp. This one was nipple-deep and mostly mud. It had to be 30 metres long. Time and again my right leg jammed solid in the the mud. Eventually it became so difficult to keep lifting my legs out that I decided an army-crawl would be a better tactic. It was, but it came with the price of utterly covering me in mud and saturating my already heavy shirt. Worse than that, as we neared the end a splash of muddy water hit me square in the face from a competitor in front of me. I was wearing contact lenses, which helpfully decided to hold some of the mud underneath them and cause me a lot of pain and also meant that I was running through a fog of mud for the next couple of k. I was just beginning to think I might have to pull out and seek help, when suddenly they cleared and I was ok, just about.

This could have been pretty much anywhere on the course

At 6k in to the race I was blowing harder than I ever have in my life. I was beginning to find religion and was praying to any deity that would listen for this torture to end. My shoes AND socks were full of mud, gravel, rocks and god knows what else. Then mercifully there was a section that was on dry land. It was a heavy track, but still, no mud and water at least. I cruised along trying to recover on the hoof, and managed it to some extent. At some point I stopped and emptied out my right shoe. It didn't help much.

More mud, swamps and water and my feet were becoming a real problem. I could feel the rocks and gravel digging in to them from all angles. My arches were beginning to bruise and feel painful. I had no choice but to stop and empty out my shoes properly. I really wanted to carry on rather than stop as I was pretty far up the field and was on course to make my goal of a top ten finish, but my sensible voice spoke up and reminded me of my marathon training and that I couldn't afford to damage my feet. Emptying out my shoes and socks was a much more difficult task than I had anticipated. I need to squeeze them off and the socks needed to be flicked inside out as well as cleaning off the outside, so much debris had worked their way in to them. I probably should have just discarded the socks in hindsight. I had trouble getting my soaking wet feet back in the shoes and by the time I started running again at least 3 minutes had elapsed and annoyingly at least 10 guys had passed me. However, my feet now felt comfortable again and I set off to try to chase down the people who had passed me. I managed to catch a couple before the end of the race, but I was so shattered at this point that it was as much as I could manage.

Full on monkey-gurn mode

Then it started to finally become fun. We entered a tunnel that I think passed under an old railway line. It would have been stupid to run through it as it was too dark to see my footing and the roof got lower and lower as I neared the end. A lot of spectators, including children, had positioned themselves at the end of the tunnel and I could hear them screaming as soon as I entered the tunnel. It was a great feeling being cheered though the tunnel then bursting out in to the forest with the kids going wild and lots of shouts of encouragement. I got a small cheer for springing up on to the bank and off I went again.

The course zig-zagged through the forest and then spat us out in to the biggest mud patch of the lot. It was just about shallow enough that I was able to force my legs through it instead of having to army-crawl. The presence of children was the only thing stopping me screaming out a constant commentary of foul and disgusting language.
I had no idea how far I had still to go. My GPS watch had lost signal on a couple of occasions (Something it has never done before) and was telling me I had at least a kilometre left. So imagine my relief when I rounded the final corner and found myself staring down the finishing straight. "This one is shattered" I heard someone comment in the crowd. Not having that, I thought. I summoned up my last reserves of strength, put on my war face, and sprinted to the finish.

Doing my best to sprint impressively through the finishing line

I crossed the line in 1:05:14, 19th position. Only 3 people out of about 340 went under an hour- that's how hard it was. In the last pain barrier they'd run in Parkwood, the winner had done 43:06, the Frickley course was at least 5 points higher on the evil-psychopathic- genius scale. I was gutted to have finished outside the top 10, which is, of course, a ridiculous emotion for my first (and probably only) mud run. Having to empty my shoes cost me, but then, everyone else was dealing with the same problems, maybe they just ran on with shoes full of gravel?

The leader board.

Stig of the dump, or possibly me, not entirely sure.

After I crossed the line the MC pushed a microphone in my face. It took a minute for me to catch my breath and indulge in some "witty" banter. I waffled something about having sunbathed for 20 minutes half way round and regrettably cracked the obvious and almost certainly oft-repeated mud-being-good-for-the-skin-"joke" . Afterwards I was sorry I hadn't thought to accuse the organisers of breaking the Geneva convention.

The mud pack at the spa I had booked left a little to be desired

Lessons I learned from this race:

1) Check out what I have let myself into BEFORE I turn up.
2) Train for the race. Road running does not prepare you for this kind of insanity.
3) Football socks, tied at the top would have been a much better idea than the shoes liners I was wearing
4) Sod vanity, next time, a short-sleeved and unflattering compression top is favourite!
5) It's amazing how much you want to punch people when they shout things like "It's not called the pain barrier for nothing" 6k into the run when you are totally shattered. Luckily enough, even if I were so inclined, I wouldn't have had the strength to commit the ABH I would have liked to at that point.
6) £100 pairs of Saloman goretex trail trainers are not much help in these situations. That said, they stayed on in the face of extreme provocation and never felt like they were about to be lost in the mud.
7) Running wicking athletic gear such as lyrca shorts and compressions tops under a shower whilst constantly squeezing and massaging them for half an hour will not remove this sort of mud, in fact, it didn't seem to help much at all, the water coming out of them was still dark brown.

After the race I spent quite a lot of time saying how I would never enter another event like this, that it was too much and I would rather do pure obstacle races in between my road and trail races. But predictably, I now feel like having a crack at another and trying to get in to the top 10 with some more specific training.

The event on the whole was very well organised. There was no queuing when I registered around an hour before kick-off. The car parking was well organised and very close to the start. I felt a few more port-a-loos could have been provided, but it didn't take long to get in one. The MC did a good job and kept up the energy well before the race. I was a little disappointed that there was no beer tent, but I did leave fairly quickly after the run so I am not sure if the registration tent started serving later. The medal and tech t-shirt are very nice designs and felt like suitable winnings at the end.

Damage report:

Thighs quite sore for about 3 days afterwards. Ankles felt like they had been battered with a cricket bat. Cuts to the back of both ankles. I am still picking splinters out of my hand 5 days later. Thankfully, little else!

All in all a well run and enjoyable (in a sort of masochistic way) race. This was a very serious challenge and the name "The Pain Barrier" is very well deserved. Would I recommend it? Hell, yes, if you're as big a nutter as I am.

The sad news from the Boston marathon

As I type, the shocking news is still unravelling about the incidents at the Boston marathon. It doesn't seem right at this minute to bang on about my week's running.

For those of you who don't know, currently, the news is that two bombs have exploded at the finish of the Boston marathon, killing 2 people and injuring up to 50. A third explosion took place at the city library. Although we don't know exactly what has happened yet, it seems more than likely the explosions were caused by bombs.

It's difficult to express the contempt you feel for people who perpetrate these terrible crimes. We can be fairly sure this isn't an attack on runners as such, but a strategic hit on a very large public event designed to cause maximum disruption, terror and fear.

The anger is boiling in me, but of course, this is exactly the emotion that allowed the psychopaths who did this to carry out their actions. Instead I will tunnel my actions in a positive way. I will run the Manchester marathon remembering the people killed and injured in Boston. Rather than the fear that this was supposed to spread, it will galvanise me and has made me more determined than ever to complete my first marathon in 2 weeks.

My thoughts and sympathies go out to all the people affected by this moronic and terrible event.

Marathon training: A suicidal schedule

When I finally began to believe that I could actually run a marathon I signed up for Manchester in September last year, around 8 months before the event. I had just completed the Great North Run with no ill effects at all and feeling great, so it seemed like a good idea. What could possibly go wrong? Judging by my luck, anything up to, and including, a nuclear war.
A couple of months down the line, however, things were going great. I wasn't following a set plan; I felt that decent physio and running experience had given me enough knowledge to be able to listen to my body and judge what I was able to do without one and it was working.
On December the 3rd I had built myself up to a 20 mile run. It went very well. I was tired at the end, but had no aches, pains or blisters. After the run I remembered the best bit of running research I have heard in a long while; that the best thing to consume after long runs for recovery, is chocolate milk. I don't care if those good professorial types at the university have got it totally wrong, I am going to believe that piece of research until the day I die!
The next day I had the tiniest amount of soreness and that was it. I was ridiculously pleased. Considering my injury record this was a real triumph. My thoughts turned from just finishing, to finishing in a (relatively) decent time. All was well.
Then I got ill. I had always supposed that if anything would scupper me, it would be injuries, illness hadn't even occurred to me. Still, it was just a bad cold, it'd be gone soon enough, right? 10 days later, I was just about better and previous experience had taught me that I could run at the very end of a cold and the resultant boost to my immune system would kill off the last of the cold.
As it turned out, I learned a valuable lesson that day; whilst a run may help to finish off a dying cold, a too long run may well start it up again.
The cold came back with a vengeance and all its mates. Another 10 days later the germs were just about done with their party in my sinuses. I tentatively started running again. A few days later, I got flu (real flu, not one of those bad colds that people get and call them flu) for only the 3rd time in my life. My temperature was raised for 5 days, and for 3 of those days it was above 39 degrees.

When the flu finally buggered off back to the bowels of hell from whence it had come, my chest felt like that of a 70 year-old career smoker. I'm sure my asthma didn't help with that. Worse than that though, was that my calves had forgotten that I am a runner and had decided to retire. When they were forced to get out of the rocking chair and grab a zimmer frame, they retaliated by tightening up during every run.
No problem though- I had had this happen before. I ran through what solved it last time. Taking my time building the distance, frequency and speed of my running; ice, heat, massage and glute exercises.
To cut a long and  not-very-exciting story shorter, time has started to seriously run out before the marathon.
I realised that my long run each weekend would need to to increase dramatically each week. More than dramatically, drastically, dreadfully, draftily. (I may have run out of words at the end there)
And so I set myself a suicidal schedule: 10 miles, 12, 15, 18, 22, marathon. No time for tapering.
Last week was the 15. It wasn't good. At 6km my calves were sore, at 8km they began to be painful. By 12km they were fine again and I only just felt them for the rest of the run. At 16km my right shoulder began to hurt like a tooth ache and stayed with me for the next 2k. At 19km my left hip started to hurt and became very painful. It helpfully stayed with me until the end of the run. Finishing was a real mental effort (in both senses of the word) 
The next day things were a lot better than I feared. Not too much soreness. I was hanging on to the plan by the skin of my teeth. A sports massage on Wednesday had me feeling much better and I managed a 45 minute 10k and a nice easy 5k.

This Sunday dawned with mercifully better weather for my 18 mile run. I even donned shorts for the first time this year. And nery a boat crashed in to the rocks of Leeds that day thanks to the light houses that are my lower legs. 
I set off at a ridiculous pace, especially considering last week's run. But I listened to my body and it was fine. I decided to trust how I felt. The run went well. This time no hip pain. The calves were sore, but they weren't that bad and they didn't get worse and at times I couldn't really feel them. I completed the 18 miles in 2 hours 15, at a pace 10 seconds per km quicker than the 15 miles the week before.I couldn't help but feel that a lot of it was due to this week's reading.........

Scott Jurek's book, Run and Eat, is a fascinating read so far (Don't spoil the end for me, I have 60 pages to go) His tips about remembering to enjoy running, on breathing and the psychology helped me during the 18 miler.

Today I had a wonderful moment that I described as being like finding money in the pocket of a jacket you haven't worn for months, but not just a tenner, more like £100! I realised that I had miscounted when I calculated the time I had left until the marathon. Turns out I have an extra week. 

Running kit: Modern trainers are a curse

That's right, thought I may as well put the controversial bit in the title, but we'll get to that later.

In my experience I have found that there is more snake oil in sports goods than the reptile house at Tropical World.
Last summer a team at Oxford University examined 431 claims in 104 products. Here's the BBC report on the study and here's the abstract on the BMJ (British medical journal) site. And basically, they discovered it was all pretty much nonsense at worst, and hugely exaggerated at best.
I first started to suspect that something wasn't quite right with what sports goods manufacturers told us when I was constantly told to "drink, drink, drink" from numerous different sources. It just didn't seem to make sense, especially when I was running only 10k on a cool day. When various fancy trainers started to cause me problems, I began investigating and found that there were studies that backed up what I found.
And don't start me on sports drinks, we'll be here for ever!

But anyway, let's try to be positive, it's not all bad....

My Dad did most of his serious running in the early 80s. I think technical materials were around at that time, but obviously, they weren't up to today's standards, nor were they all that commonly used. My Dad ran in pretty much nothing but cotton. Today, I would find it really tough to run without my tech material clothing. Maybe I should explain what I mean by tech material? Here's some of the properties and advantages they have over cotton:
Wicking: Modern materials draw moisture away from the skin as opposed to cotton, which stores it nicely and helpfully rubs it over your skin turning your nipples in to tiny scabs.
Flat seams: To help with chaffing issues. Those cotton seams can feel like razor blades after a few miles
Light weight: The materials start off light and because they don't hold the moisture, they don't feel like you're running in chain mail on a sweaty day.

As you can gather, I love modern running materials and it came as a huge revelation when I discovered it a few years ago as I had always trained in cotton shirts. The added comfort that being able to wear modern clothing; tights, jackets, buffs, gloves, socks, hats, etc, etc is huge.

Here's the sort of stuff I'm talking about, and no, I'm not a rep for Nike!!

And then there are GPS watches. Of all the pieces of running kit I own, I think this is the one that helps me most. I bought mine (a garmin 305) after having a look around a few running forums and seeing what was being recommended by the people actually using them.  I won't go in to a review of the one I own, but I'll tell you the benefits I find from using it. Being able to accurately tell exactly how fast I am running (To a point) is huge. Reviewing the data it collects after each run is incredibly useful and helps me keep track of my progress. I have so often found that runners under or over estimate the distances they run, so it's great to get accurate measurements. Also, I'm a geek, so I love the stats.
Some people prefer not to use GPS because they feel they can get obsessed with facts and figures and forget to enjoy their running. I see their point, but as a lot of my enjoyment in running is derived from challenging myself by lowering my times and upping my distances, I find it invaluable. If you run for other reasons than this, then GPS might not be for you.

Sorry about the blurry photo- I was excited (and knackered) after breaking my 10k PB.
The garmin connect site provides some great stats at your fingertips. It's nice being able to see how many miles I have covered each month in only a couple of clicks. Here's my page if you're interested.

So on to the controversial bit. Trainers.
I'll preface this bit by saying yes, I have read the wonderful "Born to Run" but my opinion is based on reading  around the subject as well, and more importantly,  from my own personal experiences.

In the early 70s the first cushioned trainers were released on to the market. This was a disaster.
Think about this; we evolved to be runners over millions of years of evolution. Why on earth would we evolve to require us to strap an inch of foam to our feet that needs changing every 500 miles or so? It doesn't make any logical sense. Evolution just doesn't make "mistakes" this big. Before the 1970s everyone ran in little more than plimsoles. The first 4 minute mile wasn't run on a foam cushion.

Don't believe we evolved to be runners? Read around the subject of  persistence hunting.

But! I hear you say, we run on pavements and concrete now! We need that foam!
Not true- studies have shown that the more cushioning we have, the harder we hit the ground. When you are forced to run as we evolved to do- on our toes- the correct natural gait takes over and the calves become our shock absorbers meaning we land much more lightly. The majority of us have grown up with controlling shoes with cushioning, so our bodies aren't used to this. It doesn't take too much time or effort to return to your natural gait.

Here's the next controversial bit:

"Gait analysis" in running shops is rubbish, total, total rubbish.

Let me explain by telling you of my own experiences:

When I started running again around 4 years ago I was a very heavy heel striker. My shoes wore away on the outer edge of the heel way before the rest of the shoes fell apart.
In I went to a specialist running shop and the shop owner (who is a very decent runner himself) "gait analysed" me. This involved watching me stand. (Yeah, seriously) He then sold me a very expensive pair of Mizunos. Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of time for Mizunos, they tend to make natural feeling comfortable trainers. The pair I was sold, however, were a bad idea for a heavy heal striker as they had little cushioning there. To give him the benefit of the doubt- maybe he was trying to encourage me to run on my toes. But probably not.
Fast forward a while and I was experiencing lots of different problems (Back pain, shin splints, plantar fasciitis, etc) Again I was "gait analysed" by a specialist running shop. This time using a video camera. I left the shop with expensive Asic gels. To cut a long story short, they caused me hip pain. It took me a while to work out that it was the shoes causing the problem because seriously, how could it be the expensive trainer's fault? The ones I had specially selected for me?
On to a pair of expensive, heavily cushioned Sauconys. I was doing pretty well in these, for a while. Then I developed a pain under the ball of my foot which I only got when running. Swapping to a different pair of trainers removed the problem immediately.

So here's what I discovered: Expensive trainers are very unlikely to solve any of your problems, but they sure as hell can cause a few.

Once again, I can hear people shouting....."But I bought fancy new trainers and all my problems disappeared!!"
You ever thought that maybe it wasn't the arrival of the new trainers that solved your problems, but getting rid of your old, knackered trainers?

Over time I came to realise that by putting my feet in to trainers that control, push and shove my feet in all directions meant that it was taking over the job of the muscles in my feet causing those muscles to weaken and actually worsen my problems. I felt immediate improvement when I ran some very short runs in barefoot trainers. Through experience I realised that using very simple trainers, with less and less control and support actually improved my injury rate. I naturally moved from being a heavy heel-striker, to a mid-sole runner. When I say naturally, I never consciously tried to run differently, but by doing the exercises the physio recommended, it changed all by itself

After I discovered this I found that there was research to back this up. In one study people who had been "gait analysed" by running shops and bought recommended trainers were compared to people who had just chosen their trainers on comfort and fit, straight from the shelves.

There was no difference in the injury rate. None. Zero.

You pay out all that money for the fancy, top-of-the-line trainers, and for that, you get nothing. McDougal in "Born to Run" mentions a study by Dr Bernard Marti  that showed that high-end trainers actually increased your injury risk by 123%
If we want to be cynical, we could say that people who buy more expensive trainers are probably putting in more miles and are maybe already having injury problems, so you might expect there to be more injuries. But 123%? Well, no. And I would hope Dr Marti considered these factors in his study.
Besides, stats show that you have a huge risk of running injury no matter who you are, fat, thin, short tall, male, female, distance runner, sprinter, weekend runner, or obsessive nutter, your injury risk is pretty much the same.

Every beginner's running advice that I have ever seen has always included the immortal line "Get the right trainers" usually followed by advice to get a specialist shop to fit you "properly"

In my opinion and experience, the "right" trainers are simply ones that fit you well and are comfortable. If you buy trainers that "support" your muscles, you will make those muscles weak and that will lead to injury. Instead, work on strengthening all the muscles required to run and you will prevent against injury rather than treating a symptom.

Here's my current trainers (I also run in a pair of Brookes green silence), next to a really, really big leaf (My feet aren't small, honest!)

Ok....ok......here's my full collection.....

Fine, I admit it, my name is Scott and I'm a trainerholic.

I haven't gone in to food and drink supplements here, that is a huge and very complicated subject which although I have my opinions on, I probably don't have enough knowledge to discuss fully. 

That said, here is my very basic opinion: Eat as much natural, unprocessed things as you can. If you need to take supplements, then your diet probably isn't right.

So to conclude, sports goods: Don't believe all the hype.

P.S. I am aware that the phrase "In my experience" is dangerous, because the easiest person to fool, is ourselves. Here's an article that's very interesting in itself, but also discusses this issue (Read through it to find the bit I'm talking about)