Howdy, Stranger!
Categories
Hard Marathon Training with Mike Gratton
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
LD:
nice sentiments I agree, unfortunately about the most us "normal people" can do is to keep or at least get their own house in order. For me this is just to focus on working all the overtime offered and to throw that at the mortgage just incase Network Rail decide to give me a P45.
On a nicer note back to the running.................I am putting together a nice little training group at the club and trying to get some good speedwork done on the track. I am hoping that this may inspire a few others to formalise their training nights so that people don't turn up not knowing what they are going to be doing.
I've also put together a race organising committee and we are looking to promote 4 races next year. So busy times for yours truly and the training is coming along nicely even if the miles are not there yet.
LD - treadmill hills sound like a sensible way of incorporating them into training. I've got a couple of runs that involve around 100 meters of ascent over 2-3k - so basically long and gentle - I like to think of those kind of hills as adding a little something to what would otherwise be a pretty boring 5m recovery run. Most runs I do have at least 3-4 ascents - some long and gentle, others lung-bustingly steep. I used to think that by zooming downhill I was getting some speedwork in for free, but I think that was probably rather naive. For the last couple of months I've started doing proper speedwork round a flat park, and have held back on the descents (apart from last Sunday in the race). I never usually stretch my quads because I cycle most days and that usually seems to keep them loose, but I think perhaps after last Sunday I should have, because they are still sore.
Economics is one of the many subjects that completely baffles me - 700 billion dollars seems such an unimaginably huge sum of money - the number of hospitals / schools / wells etc that could be built in developing countries for that sum must be enormous -surely enough to make a difference. And somehow its needed because a few million people might not be able to pay back their mortgages. It will be interesting to see how these events are viewed in 20 years time. Hope LD is wrong and its not just another opportunity for the rich to get richer. Anyway - I definitely agree there's more to life than money.
Sam - Hopefully I am wrong!
TTT - I have been doing quite a bit of work at Network Rail of late (James Forbes House, Fitzroy House...occasionally the Hop Exchange - all in London). Are you down there?
Tonight, big disaster. I fell over a branch on a dark path whilst running up to the gym. Head first, down like a sack of spuds. My hands took some of the impact, but so did my left hip.
Got up, dusted myself down and I seemed OK. Sadly, 10 mins on the treadmill and a shooting pain in my hip. Since then, progressively got more and more painful. Hurting just to walk around, painful to touch.
Assuming it's bad bruising (since I was OK at first), but it's not great barely 3 weeks prior to a marathon. I can mentally cope with a few days out, physically it might do me good - but I am a worried man!
LD:
no, I'm just a lowly signaller working all over South Yorkshire. I stay away from the smoke as much as I can, in fact I think I only go down there for the marathon or other noteable sporting events.
Be sure to give your hip plenty of icing, 1 tip I was told was to gently rub the affected area with an ice cube, it apparantly works better than just icing with a gel pouch etc.
I'm off to the track now for an invigorating 8x1KM before an eagerly anticipated night shift in Sheffield.
TTT - lowly signaller? I've done some work with the signals team at Tube Lines (as in how they manage their signals drawings)....amazing!!!
Hip feeling a bit better this morning. Even if it's just iboprofen that's taken the swelling out I'm feeling more positive about it. Certainly not possible to run on it though!
Sam I Am - I felt no adreneline....just "what the f*** was that"??? and then,,,"hope no one saw me fall!" and then "ouch my hands are really sore" and then "hope my legs are allright".
Is that a bit like the four stages of grief? Shock, embarrassment, pain, fear?
Tom:
a WAVA of 85% is excellent, and the sort of figure that I am still chasing after. Well done and keep it up.
Tom - I'm impressed! 85% for a comeback race is great - and you will only get better. Hope your distress has subsided. What is your next target race?
Lord D - I am sending healing thoughts for your injury. Let me know if they work.
Susie - if you're still about - I looked again at your impressively-low HRs for your progression run and am very jealous. My past 3 weeks' total running mileage has been
3 weeks ago: 3.5 miles
2 weeks ago: 10.5 miles
last week: 21 miles
All runs at 8:10-8:30 pace, on flat routes (frightened of hills at the moment, especially downhills). My average HR on most of these runs has been 150 bpm. But the last 2 runs have averaged 143 bpm. All have felt like hard work, but I can see some progress. Being very cautious about coming back! I did put in for my GFA place for FLM 2009, but I can't see me toeing the line for it (except in my wildest dreams).
State of the economy: put your savings (if you have any) in an Irish bank. Buy gold.
My daughter was made redundant from Morgan Stanley 2 months ago, but last week found another job in energy-trading in Zurich, so that was a bit scary (she has a mortgage and is highly-leveraged), so my family has already felt the effects And no-one can escape the current inflationary pressures, whether in or out of a job.
The origins of the current crisis are in the Thatcher era when the financial services industry grew because of major de-regulation of it. People who took out too much debt need to be protected from themselves and the avarice of those making the loans. I suspect there will be more regulation when we get out of this. And yes, the poor will suffer most. But I hear 9 new teachers were recruited by the agency which recruits them from a stall set up outside Lehman Bros in Canary Wharf last week, so it's not all bad news. People will be wiser, and interest rates higher once we reach a new equilibrium.
Back to running...it's now dark when I head out the door on my runs, alas. And time for gloves.
The other major contributor to the credit crunch is the banks' willingness to collateralise debt. This was based on the development of mathematical models and financial instruments, that people neither understood nor made any effort to understand. In this respect the regulators and auditors are particularly culpable. The irony is that we now have intervention to repair the "broken" free market.
Acceptance through from FLM this morning. They've changed my number and also start, now going from Red start as I'm sure some of you will be. I don't know how this will get us a better start, because I can only guess that we will be with the rest of the mass start and there numbers are far greater than the little old green start. They say it's to do with not having to be behind the celebs, but I'd rather dodge them than have the elite, then the UK Champs and then the rest of us hoping to go under 3 hours all bunched in together. I shall miss the long walk up to the start from Maze Hill.
15 miles done this morning, just nice and easy pace, it's odd to think that soon this will just be my midweek medium long run.
SC - healing thoughts haven't worked. Something sinister going on I reckon. Still very sore.
Economy? Was Thatcher president of the USA then?
had to laugh at the attempt to blame thatcher for the current mess bush and brown have got us into.
and for the last 10 years governments in UK and US have been powerless to regulate...yeah right
so i guess thatcher should blame the poll tax fiasco on the people in the middle ages who invented the housing rates.
nice try!
Its a quality thread in so many ways...
18 horrid windy rainy miles this morning - so windy it was hard to run in places. It was supposed to be more like 22 but I'd had enough and headed home early. Looks like the weather was much kinder up north.
All I know as an insolvency lawyer is I'm girding my loins (!) for a busy few years. Bout time a recession reared its pretty little head.
Back to running, between kids and other family events this weekend I couldn't find 3 hours to fit in a final 20m run. So, instead, I did 14 on Sat and 10 yesterday. And I felt pretty grim throughout them both. Don't know what's up with me but I certainly don't feel like I'll be able to run a decent 26.2m in 2 weeks time. My thoughts of going at 3 hour pace seem fanciful - the way I feel 4 hours would be a tough ask.
Heard an interview with Norman Stadler at the weekend (IM world champ 2004 and 2006) who reckoned the change to triathlon training caused runners to slow down before they started to speed up again - lets hope he's right.
I'm loving those dark cold nights for running SC - fewer chavs on the street though I did almost get hit by a tractor in yesterday evening's gloom - as it was, I just got splattered with pig plops.
pig plops!!!!?
now that creates a picture
last week was my highest mileage week for quite a while (78) and off the back of 2 hard track sessions last week my calves are telling me they've worked very hard. I've got my 1st XC on sunday as part of the Cutlers Relays in Sheffield. The legs are only 2 miles so it is really a sprint, however Graves Park is hilly and this will be my 1st time there. I just hope that I don't let the team down as I start to build up my mileage again.
SC - actually, the current crisis is one of those instances where, lets face it, most of us will simply never be able to grasp the mechanisms that cause it and whether governments have done the right thing or not. (even though you will understand it much better than most).
The issues appear so complex that experts can't agree.
However, that won't stop every man and his dog having a really strong and completely groundless opinion on it all.
I'd be amazed if there is one reason and one reason only for the current situation. Problems rarely are so clear cut. But there will be scapegoats aplenty!!! Greedy city types, inept politicians, immigrants who caused pressures on housing and put up prices etc etc.
I'd love it if everyone just rallied to the cause instead, but life's not like that is it......?
6.5 miles for me last night while coaching (from the back of the group). But by heck, it's warm out there! I am almost feeling like a runner again, albeit fat and unfit!
The current crisis has been good news for me at work too, Eb. For 10 years, no-one has been very interested in economics, especially macroeconomics. Now suddenly the powers that be want to understand what's going on and what it means for us - they are realising that they can't assume relentless grwoth and low inflation will continue forever. Never been busier at work.
SC - without knowing much about economics, I'd say it's likely not that simple.
If we were to simply look at the past we'd be defending the country by building more cannons to shoot at any rampaging vikings. Times move on and goalposts move. Whereas cholera and typhoid were a menace in the past, now it's AIDS and bird-flu. The problem looks the same, but the cause and cure may be different.
Sadly, we all too often look back, and apply an old solution to a different problem and get it wrong. We do it at work ("it worked for this customer, why is it not working for this one?") and even when running ("I didn't bother with any speed training and set a pb last time, so I won't ever do any speed training this time etc")
That's not to say that the basic rules of economics differ, but applying them to the modern world, the way businesses and individuals live will, I am sure, be no simple matter AND I'll bet there's no solution...well, no cast iron solution. You take advice from governments and top banking people on this and hope they get lucky with whatever they go for....best we can do is support them and not moan if they get it wrong.
If there had been no credit boom, then what would the world look like now? Maybe we need the big booms and bust to shake things up - otherwise might we be a stale old world overtaken by countries like India and China...? Who knows for sure? No-one.
I can't contribute to the economics discussion (other than a load of half-baked second-hand vaguely lefty sentiments) but do keep it up because its fascinating.
10 x 400 for me last night too - off 2 mins recoveries. I have to run them round a local park, dodging glue-sniffers / dog turds / crowds of yoof etc etc, and my times depended to some extent on where I was when the garmin started beeping - some 400s were harder than others due to wind / slight slope etc. The hardi(ish) training definitely seems to be paying off as most of them came in at just under 6 minute mile pace though.
Good to hear things are still improving SC. Hope the hip is OK LD. And being spattered with pig plops doesn't sound like fun, ebenezer, but definitely preferable to being run over by a tractor.
The old legs are aching like hell today.............went out and did 11 miles at about 8:15 pace this morning. question to the more experienced out there, ie SC and susie, but is it normal to ache so much after speed training, even though feeling in quite good shape?
And the other question is...............As I do a lot more miles than the rest of the group, who is going to be faring better tomorrow night? me off big mileage or the others of mainly speed work and rest? It will be interesting to find out the answer tomorrow night.
SC good to see you running and coaching again
What a clot I am! Flights, hotels booked for Frankfurt Marathon, but I was leaving my online entry till the last minute in case I was injured or otherwise incapacitated after Anglesey. Anyway, that last minute was Sunday!!! Well, no major issue cos you can enter the day before, but then I looked at the web site and it had those words....."if there are any places left"!!! Bollocks - I was in a mild state of panic.
I clicked on the online Entry button to see what it said....but to my good fortune it let me go through the whole process and register, and even sent me an email with a race number! What a relief.
TTT - in my experience, I don't feel knackered the next day after speed training. Almost certainly my legs are stiff for the first few miles though. Also, you might find your mates do better off speed work and rest, but once you taper from your high mileage, will you not be flying past them then?
Sad I am - hip is fully recovered! Was painful but OK on sunday and gradually recovered even though I've been running through it.
I also did 400m reps yesterday, but not as Mike suggests in his schedule for this week's 400m reps:
"12 x 400 @ 3km pace, 200 jog rec"......I find that pace really really too hard! I did 5km pace, but just had 40 seconds recovery in between and did 14 of them.
Starting to feel, for the first time, ready for the challenge. Think it's probably due to the booking scare I had.
Glad the hip is recovered LD (and that you got a number for Frankfurt). When I did the 400s I needed every second of my 2 mins recovery - I think I'll need quite a few more months before trying a couple with 40sec recoveries.
My plan was for a flat 15 mile progressive run this morning- I've not done one before - it sort of went a bit pear-shaped at the end, but I'm blaming the wind / lack of experience / zero ability to maintain a steady pace. I started off at 8:20ish, and got slowly faster until I hit 7:08 at mile 10. Mile 11 was supposed to be somewhere around 7:00ish, but came in at 6:50 which was a bit of a shock. I think I was getting blown along by the wind because it felt pretty easy. Mile 12 was 6:54, and also felt easy, but then I turned into the wind and mile 13 was 7:04 and it felt like I was going flat out. I was supposed to do another fast mile but just didn't have it in me so jogged the last couple of miles home at a very slow pace. Lots of lessons learned.
Jog Shop Jog 20m on sunday, and then its tapering until Beachy Head.
Dids.
the legs are still feeling a bit sore but thankfully I can put that out of my mind when running. yestrday i was intending to do a long run, however nature caught up with me and I had to turn for home after 5 1/2 miles. needless to say what had been a nice easy pace quickly became a tempo run.
This afternoon sees us take to the start line in the first XC of the season in the Cutlers Relays in Sheffield, where we shall be competing against the local clubs and also University and Colege teams. It will be interesting to see how we compare to all these young bucks coming through as our team is most definately a "vets" team.