Howdy, Stranger!
Categories
The Middle Ground
The materials in this website are in no way intended to replace the professional medical care, advice, diagnosis or treatment of a doctor, qualified personal trainer, therapist, dietitian or nutritionist Runners's World, Part of the Hearst UK well-being network © Copyright 2017
Comments
7 for me today. Back was feeling better so chucked in 3 miles at Mara pace in the middle. Aimed for that section to be at 8m/m pace and it came in pretty comfortably at a 7.58 average.
Organiser has actually come back and said he measured the course changes himself and is clear they are correct and as far as he is concerned course is accurate. He has said that he is happy to remove me from results, which I found unduly defensive.
Yes I will just do a vrecovery run tomorrow and Tuesday then see from there.
For me, it's the simplest explanation unless someone can prove otherwise.
Well toughed out JGav!
Well run, JGav. It's not easy breaking new ground distance wise but it does improve quite quickly. I tend now to maintain my endurance at 15 miles generally as from there it's easy enough to pick it up for Mara training, but it's also good for halfs as well.
Tonight was 4 miles at tempo. Longest tempo session of the training block. Was aiming for about 7:20 average pace. Came in at 29:00 exactly for 4 miles, so 7:15 average. Last mile was 7:07 and I finished it definitely knowing I could have gone further at that pace.
Same session before my November 10k pb came in at a 7:30 average.
Further to that, I just checked and my average pace in that pb was 7:13, so I would only have had to keep the pace I was doing last night (more or less) for a further 2.2 miles to get close to matching that time.
Both my kids have been full of it as well.
Decent few days training with a recovery 7 on Monday then an mlr of 11 Tuesday then 8 with 5 at MP yesterday producing my best pace v hr on that run ever. Just a bodypump class today and spin tomorrow then planning a parkrun Saturday.
Still a bit full of lurgy but got out for a nice 4 mile easy paced run earlier at about 8.28m/m average pace.
Planning a longer run tomorrow, but have half an eye on taper week now, especially with this cold, so it will probably just be 6 rather than 8 miles.
They were trying their new route today. the previous one had 3 sharp switchbacks which is hard going at 5k effort. There was also some question on whether it was short.
Not great weather for running fast, and whilst I had planned a hmp effort I got semi caught up in a fast start. Came in 18.55. The route measures 3.12 miles so no issues there, no sharp turns at all and by the nature of the loop you don't see the back of the field at all on second lap. Only downside is last 0.1 as across grass which today was a nightmare.
on a dry and still day I can't imagine a faster parkrun course that meadures 5k.
For me the effort felt like how I would expect to feel half way through a 10k where id perhaps gone off a bit fast.
Sounds like you've had it rough Gav. Hopefully you're on the mend now.
DT - not sure how that stacks up time wise for you, but it sounds like a decent effort. Have you got any other races before the marathon?
I'm planning a last mini-session tonight before Sunday - just a couple of miles at planned race pace (7:10m/m) to keep the legs ticking over. Other than that, it will just be a few easy paced miles later in the week.
Andrew, hope session went well.
Yes 18.55 on a day like last Saturday at not full effort is definitely a decent outcome. It's my third fastest parkrun whilst not really trying so that's progress.
I am running the Solihull half Sunday but purely as a Mara dress rehearsal to practice my gels and pacing. I'll probably have a proper go at parkrun as well weekend before London.
heavy weekend here. Parkryn yesterday in a 3 second pb of 18.21 followed by Solihull half this morning at Mara pace. That came out at 1.27.15. I was really disciplined first 10 miles holding hr in low 160s then at 10 miles, even though there weren't that many runners about, every one seemed to slow down and I just fed of that picking through the field as I obviously had lots left in the tank.
Average pace was 6 39 and hr was 163 so effort overall about right.
So this morning was my 10k race. Weather was drizzly but not too windy or cold, so not too bad. The course has a couple of undulations early on and in mile 3, and then a nasty little hill midway through mile 6.
Training had been good and paces were generally 10 seconds or so per mile faster than in the build up to my pb back in November. In that race I averaged 7:14 pace, so I thought 7:10 would be achievable in the first 4 or 5 miles and then see how I felt.
In the end, I went a little faster in the first 2 miles than planned (both 6:50). Felt ok, but thought I should rein it in a little so mile 3 was a more sensible 7:14, especially as this mile had a hill in it. Went through 5k in about 21:30. Miles 4 and 5 went by fairly comfortably around 7 - 7:10 pace before mile 6 which has a nice downhill section (where my pace edged up to about 6:40) before the nasty hill I mentioned. Got through this mile in 6:55 pace so I knew that a pb was on and the question was by how much.
Head down for for the final 0.27 miles which were at 6:30 pace, and over the line in 43:52 which is a pb by exactly 1 minute (or 10 seconds per mile, more or less, which shows my training paces were about right I suppose)!
Pretty happy with that, and felt I might have squeezed a little more out of it too.
Well done on the parkrun PB, DT: lots to come off that once recovered from your marathon and the marathon training!
Back to the consultant tomorrow evening re my back. It is not good...
Yes planning to focus on some faster stuff over summer into Autumn.
Alehouse- cricket will start to get in the way from May, in the sense that I find full training and a cricket match each week makes me more of an injury risk so I will need to cut down running to more like base training over the summer.
Plan is to do a local 10k that I’ve always wanted to do on Bank Holiday Monday at the end of May first though. So I’ll train hard until cricket starts in early May then tick over for 2/3 weeks and hope that the training from Jan - May will kick in enough to still be having an effect by the time the race rolls around!
Either way, I have more than achieved my goal for this training block so would be happy just to consolidate and then hit another training block in the autumn and try to improve my pb in November.
Would like to get a 5k pb (ideally down from 20:42 to sub20) this year too, so may have to slip in a parkrun in the next few weeks too if I can. Possibly next Saturday if that isn’t too soon after this 10k effort today?
Hope the consultant has better than expected news for you!