Howdy, Stranger!
Categories
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
I did make it across, just not doing much reading, posting or in fact running at the moment. Just poking my nose in to see that there are injuries and illnesses and far too much interest in random forum buttons going on here - I hope it all improves soon. I'll be back sometime with a better excuse
Hope things pick up soon, Madbee.
What was up with run, Muddy? Connect splits don't suggest a suffering was being had?
I was wondering yesterday whether everyone else finds 20 milers tiring? I just think at this stage, running much slower than Mara pace, they should be pretty straight forward??
Rest day for me today. Off to gym shortly though to soak in the Jacuzzi and have a good stretch in the steam room.
Local race to me offered a 10/20 mile race choice today.
For one minute I wondered what it'd be like going and doing the 20. Then realised it was no entry on the day, and more importantly wondered why on earth i'd pay to go and run 20miles, without a marathon on the horizon, and having not run (until today) further than 13.5miles since May
I think I had one 20 miler in the summer when everything felt fine. The other two were complete slogs.
Stevie - Did you find an alternative race ?
Good to see you on this side, Madbee.
20 miles is definitely beyond me but I did manage 21.6 km this afternoon. Not my longest run but, after looking at pace/heart rate stats, definitely my best ever long run by some margin
Good running and aqua jogging everybody else - Lit does that mean that you are still signed off?
11 for me yesterday - a massive 20.5 miles for the week - feel like I am stiffening up rather than a mid marathon training plan recovery break.
9 weeks to go - or not many weeks until taper - holy shit!
Mile and 5k probably
Looking at 9 weeks left, I expect the next 3 weeks to incorporate good long runs, then a down week to race Wilmslow, then a couple more good long runs before taper...
X-post:
Stevie - Ah I caught up on your thread and saw you were looking at the mile race. Not tempted by Reading or a spring half ? That was a decent long slow run yesterday which by my reckoning puts you in sub 76 territory..
Don't envy you marathon runners. Training seems like a nose to the grindstone stress-fest rather than fun.
Exciting news - I did my 20th different parkrun course on Saturday (a tough hilly one) and as such I have made it on to this list (very close to the bottom).
http://www.parkrun.org.uk/results/mostevents/
and can also buy one of these
http://www.giraffeuk.com/cowhead-shop
Also well done Pete! Imagine if you had the full 64 years' worth of HR data. How fascinating that would be! I'd just like to reiterate that the reason I do marathons is that I really really like marathon training, especially long and medium-long runs. I actually find it a bit hard to imagine why people do them if they don't like long runs, though I am aware that that applies to quite a lot of marathon runners.
Which makes it all the more annoying that I am still not running. However, I do have an exciting new (to me) wobble board to play with as a consolation prize.
Probably look forward to a tonneload of spring and summer shorties, just to get back on the scene, and you can always find a half if needs be.
Lit i hope it's soon. It's a crazy game at times. Felt really knackered after the morn run, then massively lifted by a slow 4miler at lunch. One eye on a tempo tomorrow morn, so early bed, rock n roll!
However some marathon schedules push the mlr runs close together so there's not always the full recovery, and then you have to do it again at the weekend. Do them slower! you may say - but that's not always possible due to a limited time budget and not always better from a form/running economy perspective.
The big downer for me from the marathon training last year was how tired it made me feel. That's not to say there weren't any long term positive effects - my best running spell so far came a few months later. So this year I have the deferred London club awarded entry to take (non-transferrable) and it's really only for the latter reason that I'm keeping the marathon goal for the end of this training block. I think in future I would be minded to take a gentler approach to building mileage and base training which reduces the frequency of long runs and avoids racing a marathon.
By stark contrast, however, I do find that I need so much recovery after the actual race that I don't benefit post-race with other good performances.
If you offered me a long tempo, or short reps , i'd take the latter every time. Might be down to football background, but it just seems more enjoyable, monstering along fast, rather than taking speed off, but going for ages.
The idea of combing 20milers out and then taking on a race distance where you know for certain you're going beyond what your body can store energy wise, doesn't seem fun to me!
However, i love that half marathon race finish satisfaction, so can only imagine the marathon is higher than that. But a half marathon seems to tick all the boxes a marathon would for me, without the risk of obliterating yourself.
Having hung on for about 8 miles feeling dreadful in my last half, and then being ruined, i can't even imagine what hanging on for, say 10-15 miles in a marathon would be like!
Because of the cramp I didn't really get to the bit where I was just trying to hang on to the pace but at 18 miles everyone around me seemed to look and feel great - 5 miles later on even my 9mm plod was picking up walkers and carnage across the road.
In other words if you are at the stage where you are hanging on at 11 miles then you have got the pacing massively wrong and it will be a car wreck - the first half should feel like a walk in the park.
Having said that Lit went off a bit too fast in her marathon PB and slowed over second half so she may have felt she was hanging on for quite a long time but I think she refused to do a race report that year so I don't really know.
Clearly i've never done a proper marathon, but we did cover 26.2miles as part of a club event once, with a few stops for drinks. Boiling hot day, i remember feeling like an absolute shell at the end, even though we'd probably been rucking around at 8min miling
I think I prefer the mp tempo and threshold runs to interval sessions -stopping and starting these old bones all the time takes a toll.
Well I ran my marathon to constant effort and ignored pace and it was still a big old slow down at the end, so on paper I suffered the same fate as Lit. Also I suspect (believe) if I'd used a pace target and ran slower at the start I would still have been baked by 20 miles as it was turning into a pretty warm day.
That sudden realisation that 8 miles is in fact quite a long way to run was horrible, yet I still found myself passing more in the final 5k than passed me which just shows how many do get it wrong. Usually because they decide, without justification, that they just as well have a go at sub 3. I try and explain the madness of this to runners by asking what they would expect to happen if they arbitrarily decided to run a 10k 1 minute faster than their max ability.
I only mentioned it because you may have been able to contradict what I was saying about the ability to hang on for 15 miles.
DT - I did once decide to run the first mile of a 10k a fair bit faster than what I expected to be my max ability that day. Nothing bad happened as I had the good sense to only do that for one mile to see how I was feeling. All my friends went off too fast by accident and died a bit.
I have entered Warwick half for my 13.1@marathon effort session on March 5th. Will be interesting to see how that comes out. So that paves the way for you at the Worcs. champs at Droitwich DT
My marathon split was roughly 1:29, 1:43 (and it was short by 1/4 of a mile!)