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Moraghan Training - Stevie G
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thought that was a straight forward easy run when i read the summery line! But even as a progressive that's a very tidy affair
ps can this cold weather buggar off now...bored of it!
some good training/racing going on and always nice to see a photo of a fish.
particular shout out to CC, that looks a very good session and Phils XC race.
Good work CC - super-strong stuff!
midlands masters xc champs for me on sunday. there was a decent handful at the sharp end but thursday onwards i was feeling sick and my stomach was playing games so my early enthusiasm was diluted as i didnt run friday or sat. So wasnt sure how i would race. in the warm up i noticed they had messed around with the course and it was really twisty and stop start. not ideal for me as normally that venue has long stretches of flat hard mud that i can get a high pace on. Then i saw a few of the people i would battle with. (a couple of england XC masters with great records on XC, one has a sub 70 HM and the other a sub 32 10k in the last few weeks). So it was going to be tough.
I set off in the lead group and sat on the shoulder of who ever took the race on. Every now and again pushed past to liven up the pace. soon we were in a breakaway group of 4. with 2m to go there was a surge and only i could go with the leader so opened up a gap behind us. I pulled alongside to let him know i was still there but over the next mile he worked hard and opened a 20m gap. i couldnt hold it, my legs turned to jelly but i held on thinking if he faulters i can get him in the sprint. He extended his lead through the woods and he had too big a lead on me. i slalomed through the back markers but couldnt get a rhythm going and ran out of race. i cruised in 2nd overall but 1st in the v40 age group. 30secs ahead of 3rd.
Happy with that. and to take some more silverware.
Nice one Dean!
General question about start-line etiquette and maybe looking at Lit as much as anyone else.
Yesterday was typical XC start, maybe 20 across the front. I started a few rows back as I expected to finish behind the first 60 or so and I finished 61st behind 58 men and 2 women. One of those was way out of sight and the other finished 10 seconds ahead of me but we were changing places regularly as she was faster uphill land I was faster on the flat and downhill.
The thing is I was behind at least 10 ladies at the start. Pretty much the same at Hatfield last year, 62nd overall for me and only 4 ladies ahead at the end but masses at the start.
Am I placing myself too far back at the start or are they placing themselves too far forward? My gut feelign is the latter, as an example at Hatfield they have placings at the start and finish so Laura Brine was 19th across the start line but finished 80th and I was 71st and 62nd. SG 36/15 and bus 39/30 for the record.
Well, xc is different for me as I have never raced in a league that has men and women mixed in together, but you do get this in road races. My understanding is that it's generally considered okay to start near the front if you are likely to be one of the leading women, as prizes are awarded on position not time, so if you started several rows back you might miss out on your position even if you ran faster than women crossing the finish line ahead of you. You will get this in road races quite a lot (e.g. I recently did the Stirling 10k, which I was expecting to run in about 37 and a half minutes; I started just a few rows back, ahead of men expecting to run faster than that, but I needed to score for my team in the Scottish champs and they didn't). I and my teammates would normally start nearish the front but stick to the left, so we get a good start but faster men can overtake easily.
It's like a self-selected version of e.g the UKA marathon championships, where the champs women are obviously slower than the men in pen 1 of the blue start, but they get to start at the front anyway so they can race for championship places. We don't start in front of the faster championship men, but we do start in front of men who can run faster than us but are less competitive in their own category.
That sounds perfectly reasonable to me lit.
(I don't think Phil was getting het up about it so this isn't aimed at him at all.)
I don't know why people get so out of shape about this sort of thing when they're not right at the sharp end. If you are at the sharp end of things, then it's up to you to get near the front at the start. If you don't, then you can't complain if someone slower than you was in front of you at the start. I'm thinking of a mate of mine who was probably something like 35th at a Half Marathon a few years ago that we ran together. He was analysing it on chip time vs gun time and he'd came something like 33rd chip time vs 35th gun time and he was getting all pissed off with whoever it was that had cheated him out of his 2 places.
Who. Gives. A. Fuck!?
Well, that guy obviously.
Good work on the session CC82, great XC work PMJ and Dean. Dean pulling it out of the bag again. One of these days he'll actually run as badly as he feels running up to the race
. Saying that- I did feel like shit before the South of Thames and run well. Probably got your jelly legs through the dodgy guts..
PMJ - I'll tell Laura when I see her to sort her start position out ha ha..she runs for LBAC. It is interesting though - I tend to start further back than I should in XC as I'm not that confident and a bit defensive, very feel how I go sort of thing.
Decent training weekend here..10 x 600 around a bit slippy Wrest Park football pitches - one side path, top was potholed/stony path and the two other sides grass. Ended up with 1.51, a couple of 1.53, one 1.58 when I nearly fell over, 1.54's and 1.51 for the last one. Felt quite strong and not that far behind IK for a change (well 20-30 m at the end!!)
Lovely long 15 mile run up to Dunstable and back yesterday. Pretty hilly - so about 7.02 miling was decent enough.
i have no problem with the women who are genuinely racing each other to start perhaps too far forward so they are in sight of each other. i did however have a problem with 1 woman who looked me up and down and then stood in front of me (assuming i was slower than her) at a 10k and as she wasnt a kenyan or jo pavey i moved in front of her as the start was quite narrow. i beat her by about an afternoon so she had no business being so far forward.
good session Simon. Started looking into accomodation for denmark...have you started looking yet?
Women know your limits.
Wasn't that a Harry and Paul skit?
My anecdote on women putting themselves in the firing - sorry, front line of a race, happened at the Hatch End five race.
A couple of women with, "WE have as much right to start at the front as anyone else" attitude - and words, did just that. Big mistake.
The starter warned them what would happen, the guys around them warned them what would happen. All ignored.
The race started - and it happened!
They were knocked and barged from pillar to post in the rush. I was right behind them. Watching.
I didn't do anything except go around their screaming indignation. I certainly didn't add, "Oh shut the 'f' up".
I mean, I like to race, but I wasn't prepared to wipe anyone out while doing so. Even if they could have chosen to start in a safer position.
Personally, I start right to one side of the course. I have to do this since I know how to race at a level pace. Good fun when half the field 'comes back' after ten minutes.
🙂
Ten minutes!? I find the lunatics that rush off at the start of a race are dropping off after less than half a mile normally.
Good session CC and races Dean , Simon.
CC, I should have added that there's the first rush which wipes out a load from around 400m.
Most are simply running as fast as they can go at any moment in time. The reason they come back at around ten minutes is their blood lactate levels have hit maximal levels.
That's why I catch so many and pass them after that time.
If a road racer wants to hit optimum average pace for the entire race, they have to set off at what feels like 3/4 pace, and be prepared to let all and sundry go ahead of them, sometimes almost out of sight.
That takes confidence and nerve.
I don't do 'banking time', because it yields an inferior result to correct pacing. It's physiologically speaking, inefficient.
🙂
Ric - absolutely. I'm still not good at judging pace at the start of a race, which is why you can see me checking my watch about 20 times in the first couple of hundred metres. I catch myself going WAY faster than target pace and rein it in massively whilst letting folk charge past me for me to overtake them all minutes later in some cases!
The one time I ran without a watch in the past couple of years I totally messed up my pacing early on and suffered for it later.
The thing for me is that this is new. I have historically finished in the top 20 and started fast (probably too fast) so started on the front line and whatever happened behind me was irrelevant. Now I am taking a step back and my start and end positions are reasonably well aligned. If a few fast ladies want to be a bit more forward then that is OK, and my place does not change as the races are scored independently, but when it becomes more than a few it does seem to be asking for trouble when the inevitable overtake happens.
Physiologically inefficient to bank time yes but psychologically and practically it can make sense as;
1. Many don't know what pace they can hold and in trying to guess it may start too slow
2. Starting relatively more slowly (by aiming for an even pace) often brings you more congestion (admittedly much less of a problem if you're very good
).
3. Banking time can inspire confidence and racing is often about the mind as well
I think its a "horses for courses" one and generally speaking the better the runner the bigger the case for aiming for an even pace.
Great xc's Dean and Philip and strong training from CC, Bus, Simon, Ric and SG
Thanks to all for the advice on my ankle issue; swelling going down now but colour doesn't look great. At least walking ok now and cycling again.
banking time is often in the head....its been said on these forums many times in race reports "at the half way stage i was going too fast for my training/PB but i banked the time....which was handy as i tired badly towards the end of the race so it helped".
i think Ric is saying, if you didnt go to fast at the begining then you wouldnt have tired badly at all.
If you are trying to stretch a PB then its not really banking time, its pushing the boundaries, as you need to go out harder for that. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt but its good to try sometimes
glad the ankle is on the mend Pete
There's clearly a fine line on "fast starts" versus later meltdown.
I'm pretty certain every pb I ever hit was achieved with a faster first mile than average pace, but then i'm fairly sure every half marathon I ever did had a slower last 3miles than average.
Would they have been faster overall races with a slightly slower start? Possibly, but for me, knowing that mental power of believing I was tracking on course, probably not.
Hope all the healer-eenos are going well and soon to be back.
Lady at work was asking me about her ankle today. Looked a bit discoloured, but clearly just a twist job, and now ok, as she reckoned no pain etc. I "gambled" on being fairly positive that she hadn't broken it, as there may just have been a little pain with that!!
I remember arguing with Ric's pal KK on this forum once, as she reckoned she did the first 5k of half marathons at 5k pace, so she "knew who she was up against" in the women's race.
Loads i'd have imagined anyway, but especially as that sort of mad start could only possibly result in a fair meltdown
As well as those ladies expecting to win, thus being at the front, you'll, like men get the over optimistic.
The last 5miler I did, me and Bus started a fairly humble 5 or 6 rows back (being particularly non confident myself of what I could do), but was surprised to see a gaggle of ladies right in the middle ahead of us.
All of them were overtaken within about 5secs of the race, so i'm not sure how that panned out for them!
My early races and quite a few of my latter one's have been 'blast off and hang jobs', based on optimism.
I'd do a HM going 5:20's, 5:30's, 5:40's and then 5:50's/6:00's the rest of the way.
However, when I set my pb's I ran even. My HM pb was negative splits, 5:45 first mile, 5:30 final mile, with the majority around 5:38's.
What I don't believe in is running really fast early on, with the aim and expectation of slowing down later.
Mind you, numbers can scare some runners. More than one runner on the track has bailed out after hearing a lap time too fast for their sensibilities.
Surely the only way to check one's limits is to go beyond them now and again.
🙂
If you plotted it on a graph, there must be an ideal point at which fast start & later slowdown cancel each other out and you run exactly the same time you'd have been capable of with even pacing. In a marathon, I think that is approx 2 minutes in the first half, i.e if you run the first half two minutes faster than you think you can, you don't destroy yourself and you maybe just have a slightly less fun last few miles for the same result. Which is worth doing just in case you turn out to be slightly fitter than you think you are.
I agree with Pete and Lit, especially the "Horse for Course" bit. Perosnally, whenever I've tried a negative split I've bombed, and that is the same from 5k to marathon. All my PBs (mediocre as they are mind!) have come where I've raced feeling a similar effort throughout - ie getting slightly slower.
I hope Pete is not implying that I am not an elite athlete.
I reckon going off a little too fast can make you enter a level of pain you wouldn't subject yourself to with an evenly paced race. In other words you can try harder if you go off a bit too fast with pride making you hang on that bit more.
The lady you are referring to phil, that you finished just behind has just joined our club. At 16 she looks like a decent prospect.
Dean - yes been on AirBnb for months now and stil haven't sorted anywhere, mainly because other family members have been murmuring about joining us. But I think we are just going to book somewhere this weekend.
Bus, I've never tried for a negative split, any more than I've nominated a race to try for a pb. Both concepts are flawed. It's cart before the horse thinking.
It's the same with in race 'number forcing', where the runner wastes energy fretting about hitting targets and worrying when they miss them. Again, it's thinking about the wrong things.
It's decent training first. Because that's the easiest way to run well. Then in a race, it's concentrating on effort, style, efficiency, breathing patterns, all things in the 'now' which can be controlled.
Luck, shipping extra pain and a following wind seems to be many runners idea of how to get a pb.
I want to run easier and faster. That's why I've gone on a diet - it's speed for no effort.
🙂
Over the years, I have noticed that the PB races over shorter distances (id say up to 10 miles) are the ones where I have gone out hard. You just seem to surprise yourself how little of the race is left - before you know it you have got a PB.
I do think there is a bit of over elaboration on the long runs. For me, I'd just like an average of about 7mm to underpin the sessions. The sessions are the most important bit. I'm not bothered about a certain amount of miles at this pace, certain number at this pace etc etc. It's just to get some miles in.
Mind you, I am a bit old skool like that. Just me and my Casio F91W
elite woman on this thread