Bead Barmy

Marathon runner, Steve Smith, has taken the weight off his trainers for a while to send us an update on his gruelling training.

As regular readers will be aware, we have been keeping a beady eye on dedicated marathon runner and Bead Barmy follower  Steve Smith (see Making A Run For It).

We are supporting Steve in the 2010 London Marathon, where he will be running in aid of Diabetes UK. Steve has taken a well-deserved break from training to send us the following update:

The next four weeks see our long runs extending close to full marathon distance. We don’t need to do the full 26.2 miles, but we will do a run of 22-23 miles before the end of the month but it should be run at slower than our marathon pace so that we are on our feet for approximately the same time. Our weekly mileage is also on the up.  It was over 40 miles last week and will be over 50 miles by the time we see this month out.

With the longer runs we have to think about hydration and nutrition. It’s impossible to carry all the fluids we should be taking on board, but we do our best.  During our 17 mile run this week we were working out how many wine gums we might need – the answer was too many! If we wanted to replace all the calories we would use up on the day we would need to eat around 135 of them.  However, it’s the carbohydrate intake that is more important. To take sufficient carbohydrate we would need to eat between 150 and 240!

At a lace event Heather and I were attending recently I was talking to one lady, who had made a donation, about one of the runs I had done that week. It involved running 300m up a steep hill and jogging back down as a recovery and repeating it 12 times.  She commented that she didn’t think we would encounter many steep hills on the London Marathon; and she’s right. In fact I believe that the steepest incline is when we run across Tower Bridge, although running up the underpass onto the Embankment always feels steeper, but that may be because it’s after around 20 miles.

The most unkind incline however, is after the finish line!  Every runner has a timing chip attached to their shoe.  As it can take 20-30 minutes for everyone to cross the starting line the chip records the exact time you cross the starting and finishing lines.  After the finish they need to remove the chip. To do this, they make you climb up a ramp so that the volunteers can cut them off. To add insult to injury they are sitting on chairs!!

The Unstoppable Steve!

We feel exhausted just reading about all this running-about. The unstoppable Steve entered a half-marathon as a preparatory race this weekend and we are looking forward to hearing how he fared. We are sure that you, like us, will be following his progress with awe, so we will be sure to keep you posted.

The unstoppable Steve!

If you would like to take a look, Steve has his own web page with regular updates on his training and a place to make donations.

The Diabetes UK registered charity number is 215199.

Posted by: BeadsUnlimited