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P&D Spring Marathon 2020
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I like the free bump start Macca, nice one on the micro brewery take out, i had some the other week. I manage to protect my running from my beer drinking by having a none before 8.30 to 9pm rule, so i get plenty of other fluids in first.
Hamo - top off, guns out (by cal) i hope weve all been doing our bicep curls at s and c time ! Sadly my back up race was my banker, countrl lanes with LT 400 runner limit, started and finished at a school though, the uncertainty is causing cancellations. My best hope now is Brighton as its coastal, if they run some sort of reduced or staggered race. Or IoW which would usually be around 200 runners. Its hilly so would become a sub3 quest. Theres prizes for age group records and the M50 is 3.09, so theres the motivation........shame as i fancied my low 2.5Xs chances for April.
9m easy this morning.
Congratulations Macca: truly incredible century given a couple of months without a LR til recently & I see you’re back training as normal already!
Mojo well & truly restored then AWC 😀 Great to see you’ve got your daughter involved too. Best of luck with tomorrow’s marathon. Will there be live tracking? 😜
How’s your century progressing John?
Bad luck on NDVM TR but reckon you’re right about the school HQ being the issue.
Sorry to hear you got overwhelmed recently SQ but really heartening to see the support on here. Nice one John especially. Hope you’re actually feeling better now you’ve let it out & reached out. Your recent posts suggest you have 😀
No one can accuse you of slacking Cal. Sounds like a decent 5K given the course selection.
Hamo knocking it out of the park as usual.
Nice 80M week HPR. I’m fine thanks just not synced my watch for a few days.
My recovery tactics paid off with a lockdown Parkrun PB at FoD last Saturday. Warmed up by accompanying my daughter for a lap then cut through to the start & booted it round in 20:09. Followed that with a hilly 10K. Did a hilly 10M Sunday, day off Monday (apart from 36M on the tandem), then 17.4, 18.1, 9.1 & then 19.4M today. Having a walking day with the OH tomorrow so no running even though it’s Saturday!
Hope your LR goes well, John.
6 miles recovery run today - went up to Clapham Common then on to Wandsworth Common this time as I'm a little bored of Tooting, nice as it is. Saw a guy in a Centurion bib so asked him if he was doing the 100 and he said it was his last day today. Wished him luck.
Also saw a big heron on Clapham Common, but not in the water. There's a burger van by the pond (I guess it feeds the anglers, who are back fishing again) and the owner was giving a duck some bread and it looked as though the heron was hoping for something to eat too. He was right by the van.
John - hope the ton is in the bag. No chance of getting near hmp on these long run intervals, id struggle to do hmp for a 3 or 4m LT run.
Cal - push ups and yoga will do it. I wasnt expecting 6m easy from you, you are normally a 5k virtual saturday.
17m inc 3x20min (3min jog) av 6.29 (undulating), 6.26 (flatter), 6.44 (hilly). Good blow out. Probably slightly quicker than MP.
Cal - must be unusual to see a heron on Clapham Common! Is that because of the lockdown? No food vans along my routes fortunately as I would find it hard to resist stopping.
Nice fartlek session!
John - not really - seen them before, there are quite a lot of herons in SW London. Just haven't seen one out of the water begging for food from a burger van, though!
Well done on the 100 and marathon - great stuff! Marathon relay sounds fun.
Long run today. Aim was 14 miles which would take me to 200 for the month (not bad considering I only ran 13 miles the week I was ill) and 900 for the year so far. But I ended up doing 16.
I'd planned a new route - up to Crystal Palace park via Streatham Common (it's a straight line from there), around the park then back via a few different greenspaces I'd spotted on the map. I'd studied the map carefully so as not to go wrong, and I mostly got it right.
I took the most direct route to Streatham Common then ran up the side I normally run down (which is actually a bit steeper than the other side, but doesn't have a hard path) then along the road to Crystal Palace. The sun was in my eyes for a fair amount of this which made it tricky, even with sunglasses, and the road is basically a rollercoaster with some notable hills.
Then I ran down the hill (which has some very steep bits - had to slow right down there - to the dinosaur lake (there are Victorian dinosaur statues there) and along the bottom to where the parkrun starts. I did a lap of the winter parkrun route from memory (it's two laps - I did the single lap summer course the year before and don't remember it exactly) before heading back along the other side of the dinosaur lake and out of the park past the train station.
I have fond memories of my dad rowing me around the dinosaur lake as a kid. It still has boats, but they are pedalos now.
From there I wanted to find South Norwood Lake park so I could run around the lake. It turned out to be a really nice little park and I spotted a grebe on the water.
After that I was supposed to cross the road and go through another little park where the area's second large transmitter stands (it isn't as well known as the huge one in Crystal Palace park, but it's still pretty big - close to 500 foot whereas the CP one is over 720) but I must have missed the path into the park as it wasn't at all obvious from the road. I carried on along the road and found some small woods with a trail path so I took that, which turned out to be very steeply uphill.
From there I went along the road to the other side of the park I was meant to cut through, and found the road I intended to take next (called, memorably, Grange Hill). This one turned out to be a beast of a hill, but I was taking it downhill. I had to go pretty slowly down there. Obviously I will have to do the route in reverse so I can do it uphill next time - I must be masochistic!
The map told me there was another green space just after the hill, and amazingly I found it - more woods, with another trail path that was slightly downhill and rather pleasant.
This brought me out not far from the small wood (Biggin Wood) just past Streatham Common and Norwood Grove, so I cut through there (uphill again...cursing my glutes) then did a lap of Norwood Grove (another hill), onto the common, uphill through the woods then back down through the Rookery Gardens, up the nasty Covington Way hill, down the common the side I normally run up and then home via the route I used last time.
All told it was around 2 hours 51 - I was going pretty slowly for most of it, and aside from when I was huffing up hills (which seemed to be a lot of the time) I didn't feel overly tired. I think a lot of that was down to running a new route - I was thinking more about where I was going and enjoying new surroundings which didn't leave me any time to think about how tired I was. There was a lot of climb - 1,149 feet according to Strava or over 300m on Garmin - which was sufficient to earn me a Strava badge for doing 2000 metres this month (half of that was this week).
Of course, doing three hilly runs in a week has not pleased my achilles - I actually think it gets more stressed by the downhills than the ups - so I will stick to some flatter runs next week to give it a chance to calm down. It's also time for new shoes as my Epics are over 700 miles now. They're still in reasonable shape so I can keep wearing them a bit longer, but will use a fresh pair as my primary shoe.
I did use my hydration pack on this run (with the new bladder) and wore my club vest as this is basically a sleeveless T-shirt and covers more of the rub points than a strappier top. It seemed to do the trick.
Anyway, that takes me to 56 miles for the week, 202 for the month and 902 for the year.
Well done john, mostly comfortable too, youve done a few maras this yr now........i might do 1 more long run session and do 3 x 24, itd give me about 11m of effort. But i will need to change it up soon as i cant keep doing that every long run without digging myself into a hole. Maybe a few weeks of standard long run, mlr, reps and a shortish LT as the bones of a week.
Cal - well done on the 16 and the monthly and yearly targets. I remember looking for the CP transmitter (in an are we nearly there yet way) when we used to travel there for track racing when i was a teen.
8m easy today.
That’s a fine hilly LR Cal. Interesting route by the sound of it & faster pace than my Tuesday 17.4 & Friday’s 19.4 too. How do you find your Garmin elevation compares with Strava?
Another fine marathon John. Quality pacing & nice negative split. I guess your legs’ll be ok by next w/e so long as it’s not a sub 3 attempt
11M & 1200’ at 7:45 average. Scorching in the sun even though I was done by half ten.
I generally go by Garmin as that's what I'm used to - Strava also seems to have a way of shaving off distance or adding a second here and there too. No idea why as I don't use a phone or anything - it's a direct port of the info I upload to Garmin Connect on PC.
Sun was hot today and I finished my run before 9am. Glad I took water.
TR, huge totals!
Jools - another tasty mlr.....as weve had no tapering this yr yet my totals are decent even without any 20s and reduced mileage, if we dont get any (or many) races this yr then i could make the 3660, with a shove on i could make 4000 i suppose, but that would need no racing and id rather have some racing.
Jools well done on the lockdown PR PB and some sizeable back to back runs last week.
TR - that 3x20min looks like a good blow out at a decent pace
SQ - intriguing session, Mona fartlek hills, I keep thinking I should mix it up more with things like this/TRs session above but then, along comes another P&D plan.
John - excellent work on the weeks tonne and a superb solo marathon. As I was reading the report I had to keep reminding myself you started with 70+ miles in the legs ! Great that you don't feel you have been through the mincer either. Well done all round.
Cal - great LR with some decent climbing. Great monthly total too given the down week.
AWC - enjoyed following you tick off the 100, some lovely photos on the way.
Having ticked off the 100 earlier in the week and not feeling too bad I fancied a little (relative) blast so had a look at the other distances Centurion were offering and the half marathon looked like a "virtual race" I could get my name near the top of the leaderboard, if only for a few hours. So Sat morning I set off on a nearby 2 mile loop thinking I could bale if Aprils speed related niggle resurfaced or a blow up ensued. With a 6.28 min/mile target I seemed to lock into 6.20s, helped by a pretty flat course (total elevations same as Wokey). 2 road crossing per lap, 1 horse, bikes and walkers aside, it was almost a perfect course. Pace held until about mile 12 by which time the target was in the bag with a 1:23:51 finish which is better than I expected. Just have to wait to see if I'm a "virtual winner".
So, 18 week plan starts today for London. I've a bunch of varied stuff in the Autumn so whether it's all on or nothing is on, it'll keep me honest and sensible.
Morning all. Somehow it’s three weeks since I last posted. At the moment time seems to both stand still, yet also blur in to one amorphous mass where you can’t tell if something was yesterday or two months ago?! Way too much to go back over, but great running from everyone as ever, especially those doing that 100 mile challenge last week.
Kudos for sharing about your mental health SQ. I think plenty of people have experienced similar, myself included. Like HPR I’ve found my mood very up and down, some days feeling almost normal and other days extremely anxious and unsettled. Weirdly I’ve been worse more recently, I think because of the uncertainty the easing of the lockdown brings. Even if you’re not immediately aware of it, I suppose the inevitable stress, worry and anxiety of the current situation can weigh on you and build up. Hope the meditation helps.
I’ve been continuing to slowly build up. Three runs of five miles, then two five milers and a seven, and then last week I moved up to four runs of five miles. It’s slow going, but the hamstrings, while still a little tight and achey, are definitely continuing to get better. My pace and HR also seems to have improved a little in the last few runs, so hopefully starting to make some progress.
TR...400 is a low limit, you'd have thought it could have sneaked ahead, as you say though the school must have been the sticking point, and probably rightly so. That age group time would be well withing your grasp, hopefully something will go ahead. Class LR and intervals, good session. 4x 20 mins would be a good indicator before a marathon, tough, but it would take less out of you than a straight 90 mins i'd have thought.
Jools...Congrats on the lockdown pb, it has been coming. Sub 20 Saturday? 17.4 and 18.1 are 2 big days back to back, fair play to you.
Cal...Lovely long run, i really enjoy reading your run reports, they are always brilliant. I agree, i find running new routes takes my mind off the actual 'running' too. You'll smash 2020 miles this year no bother at all.
SQ...Excellent work on the mona hills and right idea keeping the easy, easy, only way for it. That Moose fartlek looks interesting, well worth a try.
John...Congrats on the 100 and an excellent way to finish it with a marathon and lovely report too. I know you where below race MP, but that some consistency with the 5k splits turning into a negative overall split. Shows how in control you where, and all at the end of a 100 mile week too, brilliant.
AWC...Congrats again on completing the 100 mile week. Racing marathons on your own is all the rage this year
6 mile recovery on Saturday and a 16 mile 'long' run on Sunday finished off my first week of the plan, and the month on 345 miles.
Double 6 and 5 recoveries today.
Macca...Mad but class half marathon so soon, you are a beast. Fingers crossed you can 'virtually' win. Best of luck with the plan.
Spoons...Glad to hear from you, hopefully the anxiousness can settle a bit for you, though i think everyone totally understands and probably feels the same. Really glad to hear things are progressing for you, hopefully that upward trend continues as i'm sure it will, and the hamstrings behave themselves.
hamo, strong running and a big total! Thanks for your kind words.
spoons, great running - sounds like you are getting over your slump. I get very hot at night myself (par for the course at my age, but in this weather, even more so) so I take a SiS hydration tab before I run and that seems to help a bit.
AWC, great week from you.
Well done on the mara and the ton AWC
Macca - youre a tough nut, with some steely legs. Cracking work so soon after the 100. Fabulous solo 1/2.
Good to see you spoons
Hamo - a light weekend for you for sure.
Cal - hope the rest day helps.
Funny that Macca says he should do a little bit of something else and i spend my time wondering what shall i fi this week, and next week.......so seeing as its 18 wks til vlm (or IoW), or 16 til Brighton i decided to remove the what shall i do this week, and am back on board with Hamo, Macca, AWC and anyone else.
13m
Love it AWC - 100M week including a 50k and a marathon. And he feels fine! A testament to your consistency. Also outrageous from Macca - multiple races in a week! Well done mate. I have enjoyed following you guys and John on this and will look out for something similar soon.
Cheers spoons. Great to see you back posting and running. The fitness is coming.
Tidy 345 for the month, hamo. At that included the lowest mileage week of the plan!
Great to see everyone jumping on the P&D wagon. I’m definitely not starting a new thread - the only one I started resulted in no bloody marathons 😂
Super easy buggy this morning. Slight wind made led to a slight HR rise on the uphill, but other than that 115 - 125. 8.5M at 8:40 pace. Hope to get out early to smash some laps of a local park. Out the way, dog walkers!
I like the sound of a hilly Mona Fartlek session sometime SQ.
Insanity! Macca that HM is outrageous so soon after the ton. Clearly the relatively lighter running during lockdown has freshened you up but maintained excellent fitness & strength.
Club mate of mine did some 100K Ultra on Saturday which involved climbing Mt Whitney in California so 18 times up from the River Wye at Brockweir to Hudnalls above St Briavels for almost 15,000' total!
Apparently I did 75M & 11,786' last week in just 5 days which takes me to 42,450 feet climbed in May which has got to be my highest ever & just over half last year's total climb
Did a rolling 16.2M today out & back along the Granite Way a former railway & now a cycle track. Climb for 3.5M descend for 4.6M then turn round. Easy on the first climb but then allowed the gravity assist to up the pace naturally to turn round after 63 minutes. Upped the effort up the long climb & maintained the effort on the DH back so 59 mins for the 2nd leg. Hard work by the end after yesterday's MLR which included a quad bashing 6.5M hilly tempo in the middle. Gratified to get 5th on Strava for the tempo segment though.
TR...Welcome to the club
SQ...Nice recovery running, enjoy the effort today. Just use the dogs as hurdle practice if they get in your way
Jools...Fair play to your club mate, that is some going. 42 and a half thousand feet of climbing in a month is serious. Nice long run.
10 with 10 strides this morning for me. Any body buying the Alpha flys today?
Cal - Nice totals! On track for 2020 for the year.
John - Quality marathon to finish off the 100 mile week.
Macca - Superb solo HM time!!
Jools - Big week.
SQ - I always like listening to the IRP training talk.
Easy 16 miler on Saturday, 5 miler on Sunday to get to 49 miles for the week. 12 miles today with first 4 miles easy then next 8 miles faster, but still much slower than MP.
Nice bit of progression in the 12M there, Steve.
Interesting to see the Alphaflys released, hamo. I guess that have to, but it all seems a bit odd without guaranteed races.
You have some lovely routes near you, Jools. Massive monthly distance and climbing. Huge.
Out at 5am for this week's main interval session. 8 x approx 600m around a local path, 90s static recovery. Really nice surface to run on. A few twists and very slight elevation changes, but all very runnable. Perfect really. Also included four strides in the warm down. Enjoyed going hard, although I struggle to really smash myself with solo intervals. There was a strava segment anticlockwise, where I moved up to third. I then created one for clockwise. At the moment I am the only runner showing, although I have no doubt this will get updated shortly. Paces, unreliable as my watch is, were between 5:30 and 6:00, for 6.4M at 6:40 average pace. But this really is strava-wankery - I paused the watch for the static recoveries.
My ankle felt less testy than yesterday so I gave it a go - just 6 miles and in a fresh pair of shoes (this pair of Epics is an eye shattering neon pink). There was some low level grumbling from the achilles but the post tib was an intermittent twinging. Not great so I'll be monitoring it. But aside from that, I felt really good, so it's a bit frustrating.
I may try some speed work tomorrow as I know achilles is happier when I'm going fast and the Zoom Flys I use for that do seem to improve my gait mechanics.
Speaking of which, (hamo) I just ordered myself an early birthday present - a pair of Alphaflys. Obviously I will not be wearing them until racing resumes but, well, couldn't resist could I?