Ealing Half Marathon Race Report

I signed up to run the Ealing Half Marathon about a month after finishing my last full marathon – a delightfully flat course in Manchester. One of the very first things that came up in conversations about the Ealing Half was: hills. As someone who has never really liked running up hills, this was not reassuring. So in the last few months, I have made a point of attending as much hill training as possible, as well as sticking semi-successfully to a training plan.

And the result? Well, either the training has seriously paid off, or someone was overselling the hills!

The Ealing Half Marathon took place last Sunday, and I can only praise it. From the course itself, to the organisation, to the support from the crowds, it was brilliant. Not to mention that it was close enough to home that I not only got to sleep in my own bed, I also didn’t have to get up any earlier than on a normal work day – always a benefit!

We headed off under a slight covering of cloud just after 9am, and spent the next few hours visiting Ealing as the sun gradually burnt them away. Spurred on by my brother, I had pushed myself as close to the start line as I felt I could – a few feet behind the 1:35 pacers, with the purple 1:30 flags in sight. Working backwards from my last marathon time and trying to factor in my training, I felt that 1:35 was a realistic goal, with 1:30 an ideal.

As usually happens in races of any size, it took a little while – nearly a minute in fact – to cross the line. That done, the pace started to pick up, and I let the crowd around me carry me forwards. In my experience, this means that I end up going faster than I initially plan. Certainly, the quick glance at my watch told me that I was moving at sub-7 minute miles, which made me a little nervous. But the pace felt comfortable and sustainable, and I decided to follow my usual race plan and race by effort rather than numbers: if it felt like I could hold it, I would.

By the second mile marker, I’d caught up with the 1:30 pace group, just in time to hit the first significant hill. And don’t get me wrong, it was definitely a hill. It just wasn’t as terrifyingly steep as I’d been anticipating (which is almost certainly down to doing some hill training in Richmond park – the hills there are a lot more daunting!). It helped being with the pace group at that point, because they helped drag us up the hill at a nice steady pace.

Then we hit the downhill and something happened that I certainly hadn’t expected. I sped up and started pulling away. The speeding-up-on-the-downhill part wasn’t too surprising, as I’ve always liked running down. But pulling away from the pace group was. And it made me nervous. I seriously considered reeling back the pace and staying with them, but I still felt so comfortable that doing so would have seemed like a cop out. After all, this was a race and the idea was to run as fast as possible, right?

And the rest of the race went much the same. I was ahead of where I expected to be, and felt like I could hold the pace I was at, for most of the race. I started to feel it more in the last two miles, and that’s when I had to buckle down to hold the pace, and try to focus on my surroundings rather than how tired I was. One advantage of running close to home is that there were plenty of member of my running club out to support us – and the cheers made a big difference in the last painful minutes!

End result: a time of 1:28:32, which is significantly faster than I’d ever hoped. It’s a new PB (though as I’ve only every run the distance as part of a full marathon before, that’s hardly surprising), and it sets the benchmark for next time. Because yes, despite the hills, I’m pretty sure I’ll be back next year, as long as I can fit it in!

Running and Migraines

                                        

So this morning I went for a run. Just a short one, because it was the same day as my running club’s monthly handicap race, but I wanted to get a few more miles in now that I’m less than a month from half-marathon day. So a quick 3-mile dash early in the morning, followed by a relaxed day, then the handicap in the evening didn’t seem like too much to ask.

Except that within the first mile or so, something odd started happening to my vision. I started developing blind spots and lost the peripheral vision on my right side. They came on gradually, and at first I just put it down to a little bit of sun blindness (though that was maybe a bit of wishful thinking – the weather isn’t that great today!). By the two mile mark it was clear that wasn’t the case, and I had to resign myself to the knowledge that I was getting a migraine…

I’ve had migraines for years. My first was an unexpected and rather scary experience whilst sat in the canteen at school. Since then, I’ve had one every 4-6 months. I’ve never been able to identify a specific trigger, except that – slightly counter-intuitively – they tend to come on when I’ve just come through a stressful period. And usually, I stop what I’m doing as soon as I get the aura (the blind spots and changes in my vision), take some painkillers and curl up under my duvet.

But that’s not so easy when you’re more than halfway through a run. I’ve never had a migraine related to running before, so I don’t yet have a strategy for coping with the situation. And needless to say, I didn’t have any painkillers with me! The question was, should I stop running and walk home, or should I press on, get home as quickly as possible and then revert to my normal routine. Sensible or not, I went with the second option.

My migraines are relatively short, in the grand scheme of things. The headache itself usually subsides within 5-6 hours. What does drag on though is the post-migraine (or post-dromal) phase. As a rule, once I’ve had a migraine, I’m more or less out of action for the next 24 hours: it feels like being horribly jet-lagged (or having just worked a night shift). But I have always found that gentle exercise helps: though usually I do stick with just a walk! Today I decided I’d jog to the club run, then maybe offer to help out rather than race, and hope that does the trick. And it did make me feel a little less thick-headed, so goal reached.

Migraines are a pretty common condition – according to http://www.migrainetrust.org/, there are 190,000 migraines every day in the UK. There are several different types of migraines. The most common – referred to as “migraine without aura” or “typical migraines” are severe, one-sided headaches, which are usually throbbing or pulsating in nature and affect everyday life. They are usually associated with nausea, and can also be associated with sensitivity to light or noise. Most people who suffer from migraines (between 70-90%) have this kind of migraine. The next most common type, and the type I suffer from, are “migraine with aura”, which is the same type of headache but preceded by neurological symptoms – these can involve visual changes, numbness or tingling, speech problems or even weakness of one side of the body.

One of the big parts of treating migraines is identifying what triggers them. Lots of things can trigger migraines, and it’s different for everyone – chocolate, wine, exercise, stress… the list goes on. And some people, like me, can’t pinpoint anything (though I’m not sure I mind that too much. At least they’ve never stopped me eating chocolate, drinking wine or going running!). For that reason, one of the mainstays of diagnosis is keeping a headache diary. The diary is also helpful for treatment, because you can assess what works for you. Of course, this is all usually done in conjunction with a doctor!

So – who else out there gets migraines, and what’s your coping strategy? Any more specifically, for all you runners – what do you do if you get a migraine mid run? And when do you feel ready to go back to running?