unironedman

IN WHICH WE LEAVE IT VERY LATE IN THE DAY TO TACKLE THE ONE PEAK WE HAVE FAILED TO SUMMIT TO DATE, AND WE ENLIST THE HELP OF SOME VERY ‘SUPER’ FRIENDS TO ASSIST IN THE ENDEAVOUR…

Firstly, I should acknowledge straightaway that the 39 steps are in fact 39 seconds. With an average stride length of about 1.1 metres going at a reasonable pace, I could cover about 160 metres. Kits, cats, sacks, wives. Confused yet? Let’s back up the truck…

What I am proposing to take on as this year’s challenge* is to break the 20 minute mark for a 5k. In running, there are a few milestones that runners like to achieve. One of them is to break the four-hour mark for the marathon. Another is to finish an ultra. And the sub-20 5k is definitely one of those goals.

Now, to be clear here, I am not talking about decent club runners who take part in athletics meets on the track. For many of these, such times would be well within the realms of training run standard. My nephew, who favours the 800m distance with his club, would find this all vaguely amusing. No, I am talking about the average runner, like me, who has no aspiration of three hour marathon glory in Boston, or doing a 15 minute 5k at a race meet.

I struggled with the marathon distance for several years before I really applied myself to a proper training plan. That was way back in the dim and distant past. Or 2017, as it’s also known. I managed a 3:56:13. This followed many years of glorious failed attempts stretching back to 1998. In 2018, I did a 43:57 10k out on the roads around Clane in Co. Kildare, plus a 1.38:10 half-marathon in Waterford, and then a year later, in 2019, whilst training for the Connemara 100, I did 20:38 5k on the Le Chéile AC track in Leixlip. It was geared towards getting PBs, and there were several pacers at various times to help you along. I did question the wisdom of this effort when I was in the depths of long-distance training for a hundred mile ultra a few months later. I was convinced I would pull a hamstring and jeopardise the whole thing. Even now, looking back, it was foolhardy at best. But I got away with it.

What I didn’t get, though, was the time. And it was during these few productive years that I was setting some half-decent times. By my own standards, of course. But I had motored along for years without doing anything of note, and once I had cottoned on to the fact that you can improve your times by training harder and smarter and just running faster, well, to paraphrase Arthur Daly from Minder, the world was my lobster.

Time rolled on, as it tends to do. Life happened, as it also tends to do. From a running perspective, I shifted gears down a little, and focused on experiences rather than times. Often with Gary, adventures were sought out that didn’t really involve the watch or pace, other than as a rough yardstick to work out when we might next stop for a break. Distances stretched on beyond the horizon: The Barrow Way: 93kms, Declan’s Way: 115kms, The Wicklow Way 132kms, The Slieve Bloom Way: 77kms. There was the Royal Canal triathlon during Covid, in 2020. These forays required, if not the opposite of pace, at least a focus on endurance.

This lack of structured training and focus will catch up with you very quickly. I had to get the finger out for the Connemara Ultra in April of last year, but it showed in the result how I had failed to really get that base training in. There’s nowhere to hide in a marathon, as I like to opine to anyone within earshot, and that works double when you get close to the 40 mile barrier, and throw in some monster inclines and cold, showery weather. But to borrow another old adage, ‘garbage in, garbage out’. Fun day out, though.

No complaints here, I should add. None at all. I have enjoyed my longer adventures, and I intend to keep going. And hopefully documenting same. And this one will be no different, other than now I am setting a very specific target, and in all honesty, it’s one I really don’t have any business trying to hit. Let me explain.

Firstly, I have never run fast enough, over that distance. That much is straightforward. Some stats pulled from the interweb would suggest that less than 2% of finishers in a competitive 5k event achieve that sub-20 minute mark. These stats jump about a bit when you factor in gender and age, understandably. But the nett result is still heavily-weighted against.

To run a 5k in bang-on 20 minutes, you are running at 4 minute per kilometre pace, or 15 kms per hour. It’s a tantalisingly-satisfying set of numbers, not least when you consider it’s a mix of metric and time, which conforms to its own ancient rules. And as my best time to date is 20:38, which equates to 4:08 pace, you can see I am off the target by a decent amount. And as runners know full well, the metaphorical hill of success gets steeper the closer you get to that target. Put another way, you can find a huge chunk of time when you train properly for a marathon; going from 5 hours to 4 hours is a lot to make up, but can be achieved with a good solid training plan. Going from that mark to a three-and-a-half hour time, however, may prove a bridge too far. The faster you go, the harder it gets. We can think of the frog leaping towards the wall analogy. Each leap gets the frog halfway to its goal, but they are tired. The next leap is halfway again, and so on. The first leap may be a foot long. The next is six inches, then three, and so on. Progress, yes, but not in a linear fashion; certainly not the same level of progress for each step forward. Running is no different.

So I need to find not 38 seconds, but 39, if I am to get 19:59 as a finish time. And 39 seconds is a long time in a relatively short race like a 5k. It’s over 3% of an improvement. And the time to do it was about six years ago. The only thing that I can look to as a glimmer of light on a gloomy horizon is that I set my marathon PB in December of 2022 when I managed 3:42:37 along the canal from Mullingar to Enfield, with Gary hooshing me along on the bike.

I am confident that Gary will be around for this little slice of silliness too. And I have enlisted another ‘super’ pair of friends to help along. These are the Adidas Adizero Adios Pro 4 running shoes. I picked them up this weekend from my favourite running shop, courtesy of Saoirse’s Christmas generosity. The shop is Run Logic, and I have plugged it here before. It’s run by an ebullient Aussie called Ash, who I have dubbed The Shoe Whisperer. We had been in touch by email over the festive period, and I had put forward a tentative shopping list of possibilities.

By the the time I had crossed over the threshold, that was probably whittled down to three options, with the Adidas as the shoe of choice, assuming he had them in stock, plus the Saucony Endorphin Speed 5 being a close second of a few options from the stable. Plus a few Hokas for good measure.

After a chat, Ash dropped over three boxes. First up were Kinvara from Saucony, and they felt good. Great fit, and nice bounce. Next up were the Endorphins, and the improvement was noticeable. Last up, I tried on the Adidas, and instantly I knew I had a winner. The colour may not suit everyone’s taste. Indeed, JC helpfully suggested that I would be ‘seen from space’ when I posted up a quick pic. They remind me of the colour range that Fender guitars went through in the 80s. I had such a cyan blue Stratocaster, and I couldn’t wait to strip the paint down and change the colour. But mother of god, the bounce! And the forward propulsion! It’s all part of the rocker system that these ‘super shoes’ incorporate into their design, along with some element of carbon. In this case, Adidas use carbon rods to mimic, I gather, the metatarsal bones which sit above them. (Your metatarsal bones, I should add; not those of some legendary runner like Paavo Nurmi. My god, can you imagine it?). The shoes want to positively throw you down the road. ‘Go!’ they scream! ‘Run fast!’. Well, at least that’s what I hear whispered in my ear when I put them on.

And the weight! You check the box on the way home to make sure you haven’t left the shoes on the counter. 200g! I asked Google what other things weigh the same, and its AI model came back with: ‘Things that weigh around 200g (or 0.2kg) include a medium apple, a standard chocolate bar, about 1.5 cups of flour or sugar, a deck of cards plus extra, or several AA batteries combined; it’s a familiar weight for common kitchen staples and many everyday small objects.’

If you want an incredibly comprehensive review, check out this website. The guy literally cuts shoes in half and measures them forensically. The Adidas seems to pass all tests with (very much) flying colours. And I even had some spare change to get a pair of socks. They retail at €250, but were at a decent 25% discount, so came in about 187 quid. That is the most I have ever spent on a pair of shoes, and once again, muchas gracias to my Missus for the voucher.

Avid readers will have made the connection to the 39 steps of the blog title. The steps in the book were to be found in Kent, in southern England, but the exact location was of course the key part of the puzzle to be solved in this spy thriller from John Buchan. He wrote the novel while convalescing in the seaside town of Broadstairs (in Kent), and it was his six-year old daughter who delighted in telling everyone that there were 78 steps down to the beach. It fired his imagination, undoubtedly, but he probably felt there were too many steps, so he halved the number. And that’s how we end up with 39.

The novel’s hero, Richard Hannay, is described as a stiff, upper lip kind of a guy with a knack for getting in and out of scrapes. So I will channel some of this daring-do as I take on the challenge. Obviously, unlike Mr Hannay, I hope not to be pursued by ruthless German spies out to kill me. Though I suppose it would put a pep in one’s step…

Ash delighted in poking fun at me in the shop, describing them as a ‘mid-life crisis shoe’. I know what he means. Alas, I feel am actually too old to have a mid-life crisis, and indeed, it may transpire that I am also too old to be tackling this milestone. They say fortune favours the brave, but what favours the foolhardy? Time will tell. Literally. On the pull tab, Adidas have helpfully stitched in ‘THIS TOO SHALL PASS’, something the reviewer on RunRepeat describes as a ‘a cool and motivational touch’. We shall see. It sounds rather prophetic and a touch ominous, to be honest. Perspective, I suppose. The guy bangs out sub-three hour marathons for fun all around the world, so he’s on the right side of history.

At least I’ll look swish.

* When I say ‘this year’s challenge’, I do of course reserve the right to change my mind if it all goes to hell in a handcart, and I plan to add other challenges and adventures as well. I’m crazy, but I’m not completely crazy!