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> G'dog, mind that calf! I've always found the Preston Park PR to be a bit frustrating as the start is so congested.
It is busy although when I went they had pacing markers, ie 20 mins start here, 22 here, 25 here etc. I thought that was a simple but brilliant idea.
I wanted to do a couple of faster miles today so decided I'd go out after 9am as it was too dark at 6 (and I'd hit the school run in between those times...which I want to avoid. The area where I live is nicknamed Nappy Valley thanks to all the schools in the locale...there are a lot).
Legs didn't feel particularly bouncy so took me a couple of miles to get them turning over. Third mile was a little better so did miles 4 and 5 at what I hoped was around sub-2 pace (HM, obviously...I'm not Kipchoge). First one was slightly over and second was slightly under, so I guess it evened out.
Did a cool-down mile but part of it was up a bit of a hill and found myself working a bit too hard there, so I'm not sure I'm going to manage a sub-2 at Ealing, much as I'd like to. But maybe being more rested will help.
Dave, are you from the Brighton area?
Faithful road shoes now showing more sock than upper after harsh treatment with sand, sea & trails. Got a pr of Nike Kanadia [?] to start on.
Neighbour now broken & seeing chiropractor, as well as doing Pilates. Hopes to return to running in a few weeks.
Haven't read back but I am sure you'll all be doing the spirit of the thread proud. :-)
Done a few cheeky 7/8k runs, some not all recorded on Strava to satisfy the garmin coach plans and my OCD. I've decided to ditch my HR training until end of the month to get the endurance up for Newport 10k. Quite refreshing going out and always going a bit quicker than usual...
16k run for me tomorrow morning to round the week out...
Hamster, a very upbeat update on your training. Newport I recall (perhaps wrongly) as a flat, fast course.
Cal, well done for your Parkrun duties today. Good luck for Ealing.
Angry knee didn't stop me from my weekly parkrun fix and I was rewarded with a season's best time (20.49) and an all time best age grade (81.32%). Perfect conditions helped. Tomorrow, a 10k on a challenging course..............
Feeling it today, though!
Training has gone ok in the meantime - I've run more or less as intended. Got one of the big nasties out of the way last Sunday with an 18 miler with 14 @ MP which went well. Bit of an easier week to follow though I made the mistake of swapping an intervals session with a hills session which my butt and quads didn't appreciate for a couple of days. Yesterday's last run was a progressive 10k - half slightly up hill (river) and took advantage of the return slightly down for a fast second half for 45:57 overall. Warm and humid so a pleasing result for a solo time trial. Will be interesting to see what the legs think about a long run in a few minutes. Will keep it gentle and go for time on feet though (undulating route and pretty breezy anyway).
Well done Jay - that's a huge amount of climb for a 10K!
Well done on that 18, Hazel...guess you're still doing P&D then! A very decent 10K too.
So Ealing Half today, and I was reminded why I really enjoy this race (which I last did in 2016) - the community support is terrific. I knew the first three miles were mainly uphill (nothing steep, but an overall net gain) so kept my pace in check until the downhill mile 4. After that I decided not to look at my watch and run by feel. I actually enjoyed the race - fed off the support and smiled like Kipchoge. It was a little tougher towards the end but after 8 miles or so I was passing more people than being passed, which is a big improvement over Big Half and Richmond. I came in at 2:03:54 official, so I'm still over two hours but the main thing is that I enjoyed the race and didn't feel like I was about to die at any point.
How I've managed to go from a sub-4 marathoner too a 2+ HMer in a relatively short amount of time is another matter, though I don't think it has anything to do with my heart. I think I've just lost a lot more fitness than I realised. The reason I had such bad races at the last two was because I expected I would be able to run a sub-2 and set out at that pace, then blew up and spent the rest of the race suffering.
I'm close to the weight I was at Yorkshire, so I know it's not that...the difference I am seeing from my watch data, though, is in cadence and stride length (average cadence today was 175 whereas it's been 180+ for my fastest half marathons). Stride length wasn't too much shorter, but all those centimetres add up over long distances.
So I think what I need is more of the boring stuff: strength, mobility and drills.
Cal, great that you enjoyed the event. After all , this is the main objective, although, of course the level of enjoyment correlates with performance. Well done anyway.
My own 10k experience today wasn't great. Brace yourself for the excuses:
- fast 5k yesterday
- flu jab yesterday and didn't get much sleep as my arm was sore
- no hill training for months
- I just don't like x-country!
Anyway I managed 50.26 but finished in what Mrs JB called 'considerable distress'. This was largely due to a brute of a hill leading to the finish line. A frustrating issue was that we were running with 5k runners on the same course and when I was being picked off by faster runners, I couldn't tell which event they were in. (The standard of the field wasn't strong, but the local triathlon cub descended en masse.)
Pretty stiff today, so been on the rower doing one minute on/one minute off intervals at a stupidly ambitious pace (for me).
I wish my wife was like that. She used to run and could easily push out 25m 5k's but just fell out of love. I don't find it that difficult to push myself but sometimes having that someone to pull you along would be great. Good interest to do together as well...
Other news just signed up for the Weston Super Half next March... Aim break my 1hr 56m PB
That sounds like a good running relationship, GD.
John, I never have any sprint either. I leave it all out there on the course so by the time I'm in sight of the finish, there's not a lot left.
5 miles for me this morning...saw the sunrise, which was pleasantly pink for the short amount of time that it lasted. I decided to concentrate on cadence so ended up a bit quicker than I normally would for an easy run, though I was never out of breath.
Having said that, I have a bit of a niggle in one of the tendons on the front of my left hip. My hamstring was really pretty grumpy during Ealing and I suspect I may have overused the quads to pull my leg through the gait cycle as the hams and glutes weren't working as well as the should (this is just a theory).
I am hoping it'll ease off but will take a bit of extra rest if it doesn't sort itself out.
Went to the gym a bit later - just upper body stuff. It's a little distressing how much weaker I am now compared to how I was when I was focussed on lifting, but them's the breaks, I guess. My heaviest set on bench press is what I used to warm up with.
It's hard not to look back at what you used to do and compare. I remember bench pressing a decent weight although I've also been a small sparrow like weed, far from that now... although still a sparrow
Bit of extra rest and a bag of peas of all areas will help ! I always hurt in my calves so bought cold compression sleeves I use after a run, quick cold shock really seems to make a difference
Cal/Hamster yes, I'm afraid the weights also begin to suffer with age. I think it's our old friend muscle loss. You have to really fight against it but of course ultimately it's a losing battle. (But of course that's no excuse for giving up, eh?)
Monday and Tuesday were rest days for me after Sunday's exertions, but today I got back in the saddle and knocked 6 seconds off my PB for a nasty hill (about 0.8km) that I've not done for a while. Then repeated the torture with 10 x hill repeats (shorter hill this time). Hard work, but kind of enjoyable.
Anyway, 6 miles this morning, although I overslept until 6.30am which meant waiting for 9am to go out (to avoid the school run and rush hour). Was a nice day by that point, but not warm.
Hip was a little niggly again but warmed up...I suspect it may have reacted to a leg abduction exercise we did in yesterday's pilates class. Tomorrow is a rest day so hopefully it'll calm down again.
Anyway, that 6 means I've hit 1000 miles for the year. Last year I ran 2020 miles, but given I've spent most of the first half of this year injured, I'm rather pleased to get to 1000 this month.
Ouch - sounds like that was a tough 10k course JB - not really PB material. Good time! Well done on the hills too.
Like the parkrun duell GD. And a solid long run on Sunday to back it up. You have an ideal running partner there. I struggle to get my OH out at all - he has annoyed me in the past though in our local 10 miler - I spent weeks training for it and he only went out a few times and was only around 15 seconds slower. Don't think he could do it at the moment though.
Nice to have goal for next year already DH. Did I spot a four legged companion on some strava pics? Is that yours?
I suffered a bit after my hard 10k - I rather stupidly decided to do a rather hilly LR the next day - would have been better off doing a flat one. Just scraped a 16 miler. I also had a day off on Monday and did quite a lot of hilly hiking which I am not currently used to - cue rather achy legs for a couple of days so took it fairly easy. Until today's speed session - 4 x 1200m. The 1200m reps felt much further than last times 1000m ones and as usual I did the first a bit too hard and struggled on the last. Good conditions though - sunny but not overly warm and in particular little wind.
Hazel, 4 x 1200m sounds brutal! Isn't it funny how you can o sessions like this (an harder) and then find that hiking can make your muscles ache? I know that when I go for group walks with my fogey friends (and I'm the youngest), that I struggle to keep up with some of them. But put them in a run and they'd be really struggling after about 15 metres. Now is the time to get that OH out in a head-to-head then!
Brutal wind for today's parkrun. My heart sunk when I saw the conditions. However, in the event it was a cross wind. Times were slower across the board - including mine at 21.14. Just missed out on the 80% AG, but still managed the 2nd best in the field. Even more encouraging was that despite the wind I felt great during the run. I can only put this down to last week's horribly hard 10k and then a hill session in midweek.
Since then, my side/back has been very uncomfortable. It's not bad when I move but I groan every time I turn over in bed or have to reach for something.
Of course that wasn't going to stop me going to my planned parkrun, Dartford Heath, since I'd bought the train tickets and wasn't going to waste them.
Dartford Heath is a bit further from the station than Dartford, which I did in August...the website said 2 miles but it was 1.5. I'd planned to run there and back, so decided to try that and how well I managed would then dictate whether I attempted to run the parkrun or walk around with the Tail Walker at the back.
As it was, I managed to break into an uncomfortable little shuffle and got myself there OK, albeit slowly.
Dartford Heath is a small parkrun (usually less than 100 people) with no amenities as it's on a basically wild bit of land. The course is almost all trail with a couple of short concrete bits, a lot of tree roots and some puddles. I'd been debating whether I could get away with road shoes but decided on trail to be safe, and was very glad of that.
Once we started it took me a while to get running properly but my side/back seemed to ease a little and I was able to pick up the pace a bit. Stride length was definitely affected so I had to make up for that with cadence...good job I've been practising! I finished in 28:15 which I was happy with given I figured it'd be a miracle if I got under 30 minutes. Found out when I got home I was also 2nd lady and first in my age category (I was not the only one...the area seems to have an older demographic and vets outnumbered youngsters). The first lady was a young and fast one...ran around 22 minutes so I wouldn't have caught her even if I'd been on my very best form. So second is good.
The jog back to the station started OK but I could definitely feel my ham tendon more (the side I pulled is on the same side, unfortunately) and I was limping a little bit when I stopped. Not ideal. An Epsom salt bath helped once I'd got home, but I'll take a few days off anyway to let it heal up a bit.
Hazel, all sounding good for your marathon. From a distance it sounds as though your preparation - hydration notwithstanding! - has been exemplary. How are you during the week leading up to a marathon? Do you get a bit restless? Do you get ratty with idiots asking you silly questions?
Did a 8k easy paced run (but still horrible) yesterday (I had too many layers on). Saw quite a few 'virtual' VLM runners. Looked up the results of the pukka event and saw that someone in my age group, VM65, was under 3 hours. I'd have to catch a bus to be that fast. (No insinuation intended!)
John, I dream of times that low good work...
Hazel, Agree with John your prep work has been nothing short of perfection. That is indeed the new 4 legged housemate, now I need to wait 8 more months at least to get him running...
The wifes birthday, torrential rain, work and general daily demands mean I hadn't run in 3 days but managed a 10k last night which was a great stress relief based on weekends escapades. I split the run into 4x2.5k and tried keeping my HR below 150, 155, 160 & 165 for each section which worked really well. Happy with a sub-53m for a training run. Felt strong at the end too... Lets see what today brings
I wasn't too bad after that...I managed a trip to the gym with a couple of miles either side of that, 45 mins on the elliptical and some rehab. Side/back seems to be improving but I'm concerned about the hip/ham tendon as it feels similar to how it did in Feb when I needed a lot of time off. Kind of hoping that's not the case this time.
Cal, I did a 10k on the Concept 2 yesterday. I now realise why I run: I practically drowned in sweat. Ellipticals are meant to be really good for rehab, I think? (I won one once in a competition. It took up rather a lot of space I recall.)
7k today. A reasonably quick 5k (22:55), followed by a rather quicker 1k (3:55 - with the wind) and a slower 1K (5 minutes - into the wind). Looking ahead the weekend forecast hear at least looks pretty good for my 5k (Saturday)/10k (Sunday) double.