Chester Marathon 2017 – Dan Donnelly

I was pretty happy with VLM ‘17 (marathon 8) as it was the first time I’d held marathon pace for the whole 26.2 miles. But I’d missed breaking 3:30 by 15 seconds. So the target for Chester was clear!

Training went well but I had a disaster on my last proper run 7 days before the race – my Achilles started giving me sharp shooting pains at 8 miles, so I walked home. It was tender all day and aching the next day. It eased off a bit on Tues and was just about gone on Wednesday. So I did Thursday’s planned sharpener session (3ish miles with 4x400m intervals) and it convinced me nothing major was up with the Achilles … but that there was something amiss as it did start aching again. Given that 26.2 has a habit of finding things out, I was really in two minds whether to run. Dilemma – I knew I was in good shape but didn’t want to end up benched for months. In the end I decided I’d prefer a DNF to a DNS. Meanwhile I had switched off from the race during the week and ended up being quite poorly prepared – I had fuelled as I would have anyway but the logistics where poor and rather last minute. Set off to Chester from Leeds at 06:50 and parked up in a city centre car park about 8:15 and walked off to the racecourse. For some reason I thought the start was 9:30 but it turned out to be 9:00, so I ended up is a bit of a panic. Still, it saved me from any pre-race nerves (and I got to the start with more time to spare than at Abo last year where I was the very last person in the toilet queue … that one was very close!). I was confident in my fitness, so the plan was 7:45-8:00/mi pace, depending how I felt and what was happening to my heart rate. So I set off at what I felt was MP … missed the 1 mile marker but crossed 2 miles in 15:36, so all good. At 3 miles my Achilles started to ache and I thought “here we go”… but it passed. Not much to report after that … I was relaxed, chatted to a few folk and kept my eye on my pace. About 10-11 miles the ache returned. I thought I should perhaps try to get to 13.1 and then stop… but by 12 miles it had gone again. So I kept running. Crossed 13.1 in 1:40:44 … 5 min faster than London, so this was going to be good … or very bad. And then I just kept on running – the ache returned a few times but it wasn’t a real sharp pain and I started to realise that it would pass. At 23 miles I passed the place where cramp had floored me in 2011. 23-25 involved some climbing and these were the only miles where I slowed below 8/mi … they were tough but I was OK. At 25 miles I knew I had this in the bag and so I picked it up… passed the family and ran the final 1.2 miles in 7:36. Official time was 3:22:56 … 1:40.44 at half way, with a 1:42:13 second half.

Split                       Chip       Pace                    Leg         Pace                      Position

10K                         48:09      7:45                      48:09     7:45                        637

20K                         1:35:46   7:42                      47:36     7:39                        592

30K                         2:23:42   7:42                      47:55     7:42                        532

40K                         3:12:49   7:45                      49:07     7:54                        461

Finish                    3:22:56   7:44                      10:07     7:24                        454 (out of 2,644)

So, after trying to break 3:30 for so long, suddenly I smashed it out of the water? What’s going on? As it’s taken me 9 marathons to properly crack this code, so I thought I’d try to reflect on what has helped me to finally become a reasonable marathon runner. If you’ve struggled with marathons like I have, then perhaps some of these tips may be useful.

Here’s the marathon story so far…

Chester 2010 – 4:50:16 … total nightmare – not well, should not have run.

Chester 2011 – 3:32:43 … slowed at 20, crashed at 23.

Abingdon 2013 – 3:38:15 … pushed on at 23, hit the wall at 24.

London 2014 – 3:37:35 … slowed at 20, crashed at 23.

Nottingham 2014 – 3:35:10 … slowed at 19, crashed at 23.

Dublin 2014 – 3:39:10 … deliberately slower “safe” pace – finished OK.

Abingdon 2016 – 3:31:02 … slowed after 23 but didn’t crash.

London 2017 – 3:30:14 … even pace, very tough final 4 miles but no crash!

Chester 2017 – 3:22:56 … even pace, strong at end.

I was 7 minutes faster at Chester 2017 compared with 6 months earlier in London! I was also 10 min faster than I was on the same course at Chester in 2011 – a period in time when I set my current 5K, 10K 10M and HM PBs. So I am not any faster now at shorter distances … but I am much better at marathon running! And I did this on a plan that averaged only 35 miles running per week. How? Well I think it’s down to the following:

1. I spend most of my time carb-depleted and am weight-stable. I generally avoid starch/sugars and prefer to eat meals based on protein, fibre and fat. This reduces carb-dependence, up-regulates fat-burning metabolic pathways and also makes me feel considerably less hungry – I have been weight-stable for 2 years without worrying about calories. I’m not religious about it but it’s become my usual routine.
2. Long runs were always done in a carb-depleted state. I don’t mean just skipping breakfast, which just means the liver is glycogen depleted, but also ensuring that muscle glycogen levels are low too. So, I would run parkrun full tilt on a Saturday, to burn off stored muscle glycogen, and make sure I consumed no carbs between then and my Sunday morning long run (to avoid refilling both the muscle and liver glycogen stores). This really forces the body to run on fat. If you haven’t done this before, and are carb-dependent as I used to be, then you need to go through a few grim weeks of adaptation. But then running on fat becomes easy. This probably wasn’t the key to the latest success, as I’d already sorted this by London ’17 (and partially before Abo ’16) and noticed huge improvements in fuel usage (i.e. no “wall”). But essential to maintain this capacity.
3. For Chester, most of these long runs were faster than I’d done before – at about MP + 20-30 seconds. Running slowly is supposed to improve fat-burning … previously I’ve run at easy pace and perhaps put in a few miles at MP at the end. But I reckon if you are on low weekly mileage, and if you are carrying no stored carbs, then you can afford to go a bit faster. You’re going to be burning fat anyway and you should have the legs for it. The advantage is that you’ll work some of those muscle fibres that the slower-paced runs never get to (unless you’re on high mileage). I did have a couple of runs where I was not able to do this for various reasons … but most were comfortable at this faster pace.
4. I did 10 miles at marathon pace “MP” every week, always in a carb-depleted state. I’ve done plenty of what I called “MP runs” before … the difference this time was that these MP runs were at “lactate threshold” pace. This is the effort level that is sustainable in a real marathon (not “predicted MP” based on shorter race times via on-line calculators which I used before – they were closer to tempo pace). So that started out as 8 min/mile (based on my London ’17 pace and a real life lab-based lactate threshold test) but edged faster as the weeks went on. Alongside the faster long runs, I believe that this was KEY in pushing my lactate threshold out and enabling me to eventually run MP at a higher %maxHR.
5. Low mileage with cross-training to replace the recovery/easy run mileage you’d usually expect between the sessions/LSR. I ran only 35 miles per week (over 15 weeks, not including the final pre-race taper week). Not all that much running! Tues was the MP session, Saturday was parkrun, and Sunday was long run. There were some Thursday 2 x 5 mile commute doubles too but they fizzled out. Long runs topped out at 3 x 20 miles, 2 x 22 miles and 1 x 24 miles. Races were sparse unless you include parkruns as races (I run them like races) … I did a 90:24 HM 4 weeks before the marathon and a 5:53 1 mile track race 2 weeks before, so knew I was in good shape. To get the most out of the 3 key run sessions, I needed to be active on the remaining days but keep things reasonably light. I achieved this through cycling to/from work 5 days per week (unless I did a Thursday run double-commute). If you’re younger and/or more robust than me, then the more traditional easy “filler-runs” may be fine. But for me it reduced my injury risk through avoiding over-training … and it meant I was fresher for the run sessions … and I could get to to/from work for free! Due to summer holidays etc., it came out as 35 miles per week of cycling over 15 weeks.
6. Race fuelling. I do not fuel up on carbs before a training session any more … unless it’s high intensity, which is quite rare when marathon training. But I DO fuel on carbs the day before all races, and sometimes for parkrun too. Train low, race high! For marathons, I carb load from Thursday afternoon, straight after my last run (which includes 4 x 400 m at “1 mile pace”). I eat a lot of carbs Thurs/Fri, and calm it down a bit on Sat to avoid gut issues. Muscle glycogen should be well topped up on race morning. I now know from this cycle that I can run 24 miles in training unfuelled at MP+20s but I still assume that I need carbs to maintain MP over 26.2, although I haven’t tested this. While, the carb-depleted training means I now burn a greater percentage of fat when running at MP, I will be likely be using some carbs at marathon intensity (lactate comes from burning carbs … and I am at/above my lactate threshold). So on race day I had 4 slices of white toast 3 hours before the start in order to top up liver glycogen stores which deplete overnight. But then I avoided any further carbs until 20 minutes into the race. I did this because I wanted to start the race on low insulin levels … insulin potently switches off fat-burning and I want to get the body utilising fat from the off But once underway I take 7 gels during the race, one every 20 minutes, the first at 20 minutes… once the muscles are working away, they should be taking up glucose in an insulin-independent manner, in which case fat-burning should not be switched off. That’s the theory anyway – and now it’s worked, I’ll stick with it. The idea of the gels (60g carbs per hour) is to conserve stored muscle glycogen for the later stages when the intensity goes up. You need to fuel in the early stages, not near the end. So my last gel comes 2:20 into the race … after that stage, it is unlikely the digestive system will absorb any more. This in-race fuelling approach has worked really well in the last 2 marathons, in sharp contrast to earlier ones.

At the moment I still can’t quite believe that I got to the start and executed the race. I hope there is still more to come … London GFA is sub-3:20 and I’d like to have a 70% WAVA marathon. Onwards and upwards!

Chester is a great marathon – the support in some of the villages along the route is fantastic. And it is very well organised. If you’re not keen on York, then take a look at this one. The day was marred by news that a runner had died in the last mile. I’d past him when he was on the floor. He was a similar age to me with 3 kids and some cracking race times. It felt very real and it’s just so sad.